Thomas

Don't take my rating too seriously. Whenever I read something like this, I realize that I have no idea how to read poetry that isn't in a rhyming meter or basically anything except for iambic pentameter. I end up feeling pretty dumb. I get lost in all the line indents, the stanzas, never knowing where to pause or what to do. Reading aloud is no help (at least with this, the O'Donoghue translation). I always feel like I'm stumbling around a dark maze blindfolded.

At least this version that I found in a little library has some lovely notations in it from a previous reader.

I've owned this book for several years, but other than a really light skim some time ago, haven't picked it up. I'm coming into a change management role right now and thought I should pick it up. Once again, this is a technical reference book (it's literally called “A Practitioners' Handbook” - so I don't think it is really designed for someone to sit down and read it work for word like a piece of literature. That's not what I did - I did a version of academic skimming with a few sections that seemed particularly relevant getting a deep read. I think the book wants to be read this way given it is highly sectioned and labeled, with key text highlighted. I really liked this.

This is certainly an element of change management from a very particular viewpoint: designers, primarily in the technology domain. That said, I think there is a lot here that can be applied analogously elsewhere. Many of the facilitation, ideation, and planning tools, in particular, strike me as useful. I really liked the tools around Personas and Journey Maps. I saw these in practice for the first time this week unrelatedly and it was great to see a different view of them.

A lot of this book comes across as... Not exactly “dumbing down” academic subjects, but certainly making them easier to digest. If you haven't had an academic research course, and you're not engaging in academic research, the research component of this book is probably very useful. If you have, it might just be a helpful refresher.

I made a lot of marks and bookmarks to come back to this as a technical reference and I do plan to keep it around for access to the tools and cases to see what I can use from it analogously in organizational and programmatic change management.

I really enjoyed this! It has the Standard Science Fiction thing of really weird character names, but I got over that fast. The world is interesting, the systems are interesting, and the characters are compelling. I enjoyed the writing overall, minus a few instances of dialogue that I felt didn't work (mostly between Mahit and her predecessor).

I read this on the bus from Planet Word, my mom having purchased a copy. I liked it! Morose. My mom always had a copy of [b:Where the Sidewalk Ends 30119 Where the Sidewalk Ends Shel Silverstein https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1168052448l/30119.SX50.jpg 30518] around when I was growing up, so it was nice to revisit Shel, if only briefly.

Essentially a late 19th century creepypasta with Lovecraftian tones (aren't all of them? and in this case, I think, predating Lovecraft's work). Creepy, but not really scary. It's the sort of book that is creepy because you wonder if there's any truth to it, the sort of book that makes you want to open up wikipedia and go down a rabbit hole. I think the creepy factor of those books was significantly more back before there were things like the Lovecraft wiki.

I feel like I've heard almost nothing but praise for this and Song of Achilles over the last few years. Song of Achilles has been on my list for a good while, but I happened on this in a little free library so I read it first.

Once I began approaching this as a series of short stories, rather than a single novel, I started having a better time. I think the chapter layout of this robs it a little, because while there are threads that weave throughout, big chunks of the book have nothing to do with the others. It felt like 3-4 short stories.

It probably sounds bad, but I feel like the novel didn't really hit its stride until just before Odysseus appeared. Perhaps that is because the mythology of Odysseus's interaction with Circe provides a firmer scaffolding. Perhaps I'm just too attached to the Odyssey. Who's to say?

Certainly, the back half (and more particularly the final third) is the best part of the book. The first third felt very slow, very boring. Hearing of the gods and titans is fun, but I found Circe kind of annoying, and not very interesting. That said, we definitely get a lot of character growth out of Circe throughout. The Circe at the end is not the Circe at the beginning and this is one of the better character developments I have seen written. Perhaps I enjoyed the final third so much because of all the things set down in the first 2/3rds that I found only passing.

I will probably read Song of Achilles when I can find some time. Once I got through the first third, the book came into its own.

I am not a great lover of poetry and am usually stumped by it. Historically if poetry isn't a haiku or in iambic pentameter I am a little too dumb to read it, because I don't know how to make it sound in my inner voice. Don't ask me to read it out loud. I am self-conscious of this blind spot. I tried reading The Waste Lands last year and was totally bumfuzzled by it.

Anyway, I saw this in a little free library yesterday. Chewed through it rapidly. It is not surprising that I did not relate to all of these, but some of them really dropped into a hollow place within and bounced around, echoing all the while.

I am usually pretty open to vulnerability in my writing but these are pretty raw and I am a little too self-conscious to type the ones that meant the most to me here. But I will obscure them in a bit list of the page numbers for those that spoke to me so loudly:

19, 22, 25, 26, 30-33, 35, 36, 47, 52, 53.

63, 67, 79, 87, 97, 103, 105, 109, 122.

160, 185.

205, 207, 229, 240.

I also really liked the closing poem (?) on an unnumbered grey page towards the back that starts, “and then there are days...”

New review/thoughts from my April 2024 read: https://tbindc.substack.com/p/the-road


Below - review from July 5th, 2023.

The Road is a stunning book. It is dark, cold, and in many ways horrible. The love of the father for the son does radiate through it and ruptures off of the page. The most anxiety-inducing and bone-chilling questions imaginable by a parent are raised directly (“Can you do it? When the time comes? Can you?”) and indirectly.

The vignettes of interaction with other human show the frailty of life without our social contract and suggests how fragile it is. To me, it also suggests its durability over generations, with the child's internal sense of morality so strong - even buoying the father at times.

I'll have a lot more to say about sons and fathers and how this book reads when your own father has paled in comparison to this one in my substack. That said, fatherhood both practically and somewhat cosmically are major themes. Closing with two of my favorite quotes/sections from this readthrough:

“Do you think that your fathers are watching? That they weigh you in their ledgerbook? Against what? There is no book and your fathers are dead in the ground.” (pg 196)

“He rose and build back the fire and sat beside the boy and pulled the blankets over him and brushed back his filthy hair. I think maybe they are watching, he said. They are watching for a thing that even death cannot undo and if they do not see it they will turn away from us and they will not come back.” (pg 210).

More soon.

I have heard a lot about this book. Bummed that I felt an ethical panic that resulted in me leaving my apartment in the middle of the day, unprompted, a week or two ago to go to the book store and buy it.It's short and readable. The question is: is anyone that's likely to pick up a book called “On Tyranny” going to make a decision to adjust their lives to ingest its lessons? I don't know. This is the same fundamental question facing all of these books, from Albright's [b:Fascism: A Warning 35230469 Fascism A Warning Madeleine K. Albright https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1513524068l/35230469.SY75.jpg 56577028] to something as basic as Goodwin's [b:Leadership: In Turbulent Times 38657386 Leadership In Turbulent Times Doris Kearns Goodwin https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1519455513l/38657386.SY75.jpg 60268060]. Anything that promotes a ‘patriotic' value or thing that yearns for us to not passively accept the fall of a great experiment is subjected to a purity test. But I will try to put the crushing cynicism I'm feeling right now aside to think more about this book. I'm trying to do that because I have watched the same ten-minute video of Obama talking about cynicism periodically for the past, what, maybe ten years? (Youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxuwazaXOMg). I really do believe that cynicism is a chronic condition that can wrap around your eyes and blind you and then proceed to your heart and hollow it out.The lessons are straightforward. I appreciate the historical element to them. It is one thing to know that everything happening right now has a direct analog in the fall of the Wiemar Republic and rise of Hitler and other fascistic leaders to power. It is another to read it spelled out succinctly and bluntly. I have personally witnessed in my work steps taken that mirror those that occurred back then. It is alarming, and is causing me a sort of crisis of confidence. I have shared with people I work with, and repeated to myself, that we have to remain calm, mindful, and carefully navigate. We cannot let ourselves panic and be pushed back into nothing. That's the goal of all this chaos.p54-55 - “In fact [Churchill] himself helped the British to define themselves as a proud people who would calmly resist evil. Other politicians would have found support in British public opinion to end the war. Churchill instead resisted, inspired, and won. ... Churchill did what others had not done. Rather than concede in advance, he forced Hitler to change his plans.” (emphasis mine, -TB)Back in November, a thing I worked on was quietly shuttered. The phrase, “strategic retreat” was used. It pissed me off something terrible. It was the first time I was majorly angry in my job. There is no strategic retreat. If ground is ceded it must be fought back and time is long and suffering in that time is the responsibility of those who refused to even attempt to hold back the tide. Snyder talks about this a lot in this book: anticipatory compliance. Changing things in an attempt to detract attention, giving up ground to hide or to not attract attention. I understand the want for this, but is there an imagining that by doing this, you are not simply capitulating to the pressure of a despot? I hate that I see people lying to themselves that, if we can just be very quiet and make it through a few years of stress, we can bring all of this back out of a box someday and pick up where we left off.That is not how this works. If you put this in a box, it will be lost. You cannot set your values down. If you hide them, they will suffocate and die within you. They need nurturing and they need exercise.p124 - “If the politics of inevitability is like a coma, the politics of eternity is like hypnosis: We stare at the spinning vortex of cyclical myth until we fall into a trance—and then we do something shocking at someone else's orders.”At work these past few weeks, I have heard our current situation described as a “swinging pendulum” and I think this is a manifestation of learned helplessness. I do not believe there is a pendulum. I think there is a clash between good and evil. The pendulum, as they describe it, are bulges in the fight. If you take for granted that the fight is a pendulum and will swing back as a matter of physics, you are ceding the fight.A quote that people go to, that I hear a lot, from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” Yet, I so often hear this in a capitulating or passive framing. As if we can simply accept that things will get better. This is something of what Snyder calls the politics of inevitability. King never meant for this statement to be a release from our responsibility to our fellows and ourselves to be the ones forcing the bend. The arc only bends because pressure is exerted upon it. We cannot be passive.I am thinking about this every day. Because I do not know exactly where my role is. How can I use what exceedingly little skill that I have to make any meaningful difference? Is my only role really as someone who might be able to pump breaks or mitigate harm? I don't feel very good about that. I want to do something.Snyder does not demand that we all take to the streets. In some ways, the resistance he imagines is small and obtainable (lesson 12, make eye contact and small talk). In discussion the other day, someone I was speaking to said they think this will continue until something gets people in the street, a sort of general strike. I am skeptical that such a thing is possible in this country. I don't think we have the in-the-streets culture of a country like France or others. Much of our populace is completely captured either in this cult of personality or in crushing poverty, and often both.Still, I think that we all have some role to play. I think identifying that role is non-trivial. I think this book is good reading for those who want to be able to start identifying even small things they can do in their lives to begin.—Notes/highlights:* p35 - You might one day be offered the opportunity to display symbols of loyalty. Make sure that such symbols include your fellow citizens rather than exclude them.* p37 - “We have seen that the real meaning of the greengrocer's slogan has nothing to do with what the text of the slogan actually says. Even so, the real meaning is quite clear and generally comprehensible because the code is so familiar: the greengrocer declares his loyalty in the only way the regime is capable of hearing; that is, by accepting the prescribed ritual, by accepting appearances as reality, by accepting the given rules of the game, thus making it possible for the game to go on, for it to exist in the first place. (Snyder quoting [a:Václav Havel 71441 Václav Havel https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1300059716p2/71441.jpg].)”* p54-55 - In fact [Churchill] himself helped the British to define themselves as a proud people who would calmly resist evil. Other politicians would have found support in British public opinion to end the war. Churchill instead resisted, inspired, and won. ... Churchill did what others had not done. Rather than concede in advance, he forced Hitler to change his plans.” (emphasis mine, -TB)* p66 - You submit to tyranny when you renounce the difference between what you want to hear and what is actually the case. The renunciation of reality can feel natural and pleasant, but the result is your demise as an individual—and thus the collapse of any political system that depends upon individualism.* p68 - The final mode is misplaced faith. It involves the sort of self-deifying claims a president made when he said that “I alone can solve it” or “I am your retribution.” When faith descends from heaven to earth in this way, no room remains for the small truths of our individual discernment and experience. What terrified Klemperer was the way that the transition seemed permanent. Once truth had become oracular rather than factual, evidence was irrelevant. At the end of the war a worker told Klemperer that “understanding is useless, you have to have faith. I believe in the Fuhrer.” * Connection to my clinical deprogramming thing.* p71 - [Fascists] used new media, which at the time was radio, to create a drumbeat of propaganda that aroused feelings before people had time to ascertain facts. And now, as then, many people confused faith in a hugely flawed leader with the truth about the world we all share.* p79- (TB: Snyder is making an analogy between publishing/sharing falsehoods and our behavior driving cars.) We know that the damage will be mutual. We protect the other person without seeing him, dozens of time every day. (TB: reminds me a lot of [a:Erving Goffman 149 Erving Goffman https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1210309065p2/149.jpg]'s facework theory, which was a sociological thing on how people engage with one another with a concerted effort to protect not only their face (reputation, impression) and that of those around them. Has fascinated me since I read about it in the UIC stacks in 2013.)* p81 - “Make eye contact and small talk.” (Lesson 12), then p32: “You might not be sure, today or tomorrow, who feels threatened in the United States. But if you affirm everyone, you can be sure that certain people will feel better.”* p84 - Protest can be organized through social media, but nothing is real that does not end on the streets.* p120 - We learned to say that there was “no alternative” to the basic order of things, a sensibility that the Lithuanian political theorist Leonidas Donskis called “liquid evil.” Once inevitability was taken for granted, criticism indeed became slippery. What appeared to be critical analysis often assumed that the status quo could not actually change, and thereby indirectly reinforced it.* p124 - If the politics of inevitability is like a coma, the politics of eternity is like hypnosis: We stare at the spinning vortex of cyclical myth until we fall into a trance—and then we do something shocking at someone else's orders. * TB: I have seen our current situation described as a “swinging pendulum” and I think this is a manifestation of learned helplessness. I do not believe there is a pendulum. I think there is a clash between good and evil. The pendulum, as they describe it, are bulges in the fight. If you take for granted that the fight is a pendulum and will swing back as a matter of physics, you are ceding the fight.* p126: “If young people do not begin to make history, politicians of eternity and inevitability will destroy it. And to make history, young Americans will have to know some. This is not the end, but a beginning.”

This review is reposted from elsewhere and primarily about ROTK:

I deeply enjoyed reading the first two LOTR books, after an encounter in my youth that put me off of them. Yet, for whatever reason, ROTK stands alone. I inhaled this book. I basically didn't put it down once I'd picked it up. Did I spend my holiday Monday off of work, drinking wine, following my cat around my apartment, reading it to her out loud, and in character? None will ever know for sure.

A lot of folks apparently didn't like The Rings of Power show. I really enjoyed it, and I'm grateful to it and to the House of R podcast for getting me to try reading these books again. What a delight!

I liked it! Reading about the South is always a little fascinating. The regionality of this country is at times hard to reconcile, especially today with this vague monoculture and supposed shrunken world. I did not grow up in The South, but I grew up in a place that was quite insistent it was Southern, and would you please remember that, everything in their character insisted.

A few times in the Southern notes, Didion talks about free flag decals. Impossible not to think of Prine's Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore an incredible song as applicable in the late 60's as it was in 2002 and 2025. I say 2002 because I remember after 9/11 and the years following when the local newspaper would come with full page inserts: one side an American flag, the other at times a tearful eagle. These were all over the place. You couldn't pass a busted up mobile home or hole-roofed house without seeing them in the windows.

So, while Didion is trekking around the South in the 60's, it sure does feel like the Southern region of the state I grew up in. Similar people, maybe with some proclivities a little dampened. Same fondness for the high school gymnasium and the one restaurant in town. There is a lot that I see familiar, anyway.

The short section of Western notes is quite different. I don't relate to the San Francisco or Sacramento of it all, though it is lovely writing.

Part of it is simply what looks right to the eye, sounds right to the ear. I am at home in the West. The hills of the coastal ranges look “right” to me, the particular flat expanse of the Central Valley comforts my eye. The place names have the ring of real places to me. I can pronounce the names of the rivers, and recognize the common trees and snakes. I am easy here in a way that I am not easy in other places.

Southern

Quite good, though dated. I found the first half far more interesting than the second. Jacobs has a tendency to ramble a little as she illustrates her points by long passages of examples. I think these would have been quite valuable 50 years ago on publication, but today they are archaic.

I don't typically log screenplays that I read, but I read this quite closely alongside the film tonight. Lots of wise decisions made in turning the script into a film. See my review on Letterboxd: https://boxd.it/5I65ZL

Exquisite and crushing.

McCarthy's third novel. The one I've enjoyed the least. It is very dark, about someone with a sad life who descends into depravity. I read in two sittings, last Sunday and today.

It feels like McCarthy still finding his form. The story is more or less a character study, following Ballard throughout his life. It's difficult to say why I leave so uninterested in Ballard. It it not an interesting thing to be sad and lonely. Maybe the things that happen to a person to render them this way can be interesting, but watching a person descend was not for me. Ballard is dealt a bad hand and makes no decision to help himself, or even to not hurt others. He demonstrates little care for anyone, and is cold and isolated to the point of being a figment of nature.

I wonder why McCarthy wrote this story. Where does it come from? Is it an expression of anger? I have not read either title deeply enough to make a connection, but some elements of it feel much more thoroughly explored in Blood Meridian. McCarthy's sort of biblical view of evil and humanity. A view that I don't know enough about for which to say whether I agree or not.

You can certainly tell a difference between these earlier novels and The Road. People read The Road and feel it is bleak and depressing, but at its core The Road is about love and endurance and pushing on. Carrying the light, no matter how dark it gets. These earlier novels feel much more cynical and shrouded. There is no light in Child of God. It is about a person who is wounded and wounds others until he is taken back by the earth.

It feels like there is something here in that in the first half of the book, Ballard's backstory is explored. His eviction from home, suicide of his father. I think we're supposed to understand that Ballard is pushed farther and further from society and he degrades as a result. That's fine. I don't think it is interestingly told. There are sad and lonely people all around. You can stand next to someone and they are a thousand miles away, some place in their head. Remembering or wishing to forget. That they continue on is more interesting than this story of a person choosing to harm others and become wrath.

This is probably closer to a 3.5 for me. James writes lovingly about his mother, and the stories he shares about their youths and upbringings are interesting and endearing.

I had a hard time getting past James's consistent use of “Mommy” in referring to his mom. Adults referring to their parents as mommy or daddy always makes me cringe a little. I understand that to a point this is a regional/cultural/generational thing, but for me it's too much. It doesn't come across as warm for me. I call my mom “Mom” and she's in my phone by her first and last name, not “mom” so... It felt weird every time I saw it, which of course was every page.

James's faith is clearly important to him, and to his mother. They both talk more or less non-stop about it and its role in their development and lives. For James's mother, this is a critical element of the story, and the movement between Judaism and Christianity is interesting. For James's story, it seems less interesting and more like sermonizing. James does a lot of sermonizing in his other books, and usually I have to just grin and bear it.

The most interesting thing about this book, for me, is having it change my read of his two most recent books, Deacon King Kong (my favorite of his) and The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store (my least favorite of his that I've read). These books clearly feature characters and stories from his childhood and the history of his mother, sometimes adapted and sometimes not so much. James talks about this in particular with Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, but reading this enriched them both for me.

Perhaps the most violent book I've ever read, certainly one of the most disturbing. It is dark, depraved, disgusting, and funny enough to feel bad about. Passages make you want to put the book down and stare, others make you laugh ruefully - others are just outright funny. I walked away from this book, not really knowing what to make out of it.

Bateman is a vapid nitwit, knowing essentially nothing except for fashion, audio/visual equipment, and how to misuse power tools. He clearly does not know himself or those around him. There is a recurring bit throughout the book that no one recognizes anyone else, and this relates to one of the core themes of the book: it simply doesn't matter. Vanity, surface, status - the image of status - that's all Bateman understands, and all anyone in the book is interested in (except for Jean, and a few characters that Bateman totally dismisses).

I feel compelled to share: I am wearing a “Slaughterhouse Five” shirt from the Writer's Museum in Chicago, white khaki pants from Old Navy, the socks and briefs are from Bombas, the watch is from Apple, the glasses Warby Parker (prescription, to Bateman's chagrin). The last haircut was... perhaps five months ago. My shoes are perhaps four years old and from Shoe Carnival.

What to say...

Friends in my spec-fic book club have been talking about House of Leaves off and on for a while. I took one look and said, “not for me, babe.” A few weeks later I was having drinks with some folks and one asked something to the effect of, “do you like ergodic literature?” After ensuring they hadn't said, “erotic literature,” I replied, what the hell is ergodic literature?”

A while after that, I was in my neighborhood bookshop looking for a copy of something I can't remember. I was in a money-spending mood and saw House of Leaves poking out of the shelf, one copy, already a little removed. Is this for me?

I opened it up and thumbed through. One of the first pages proclaims, “This is not for you.” Well, we can't have that, can we? But $30 for an odd book that I might hate? I was in the right mood for it.

I did a lot of chuckling as I read, because it started to teach me a lot about how I read and interact with books. A bit in, I caught myself writing a note, asking a question in the margin. I thought about that. Here I am, asking a question in the margin (asking who?) of a fiction novel that is essentially about an academic write-up of a movie that may or may not exist, about a house that may or may not exist, that may or may not (but definitely isn't) be cousin to The Doctor's TARDIS. Oh, and there are footnotes by not one, not two, but three different sources and connections to not one but two appendices.

It's just clever! I enjoyed engaging with the story. Decoding messages in an appendix after reading 50 pages of someone's descent into mania and psychosis - why not? But decoding a second message in the same place? That practice making everything else suspect (do the dropcaps mean anything? Does the translation say what the editors, what JT, says???).

All very, very, fun for me. I loved the constant in and out of the multiple stories, the intentional immersion breaking, the mystery. Nothing is true, but everything is true. Who can you trust? It's a work of fiction, what's it matter? Why are you flipping back to a piece of paper that's in a collage to identify a symbol, what are you some kinda nerd?

I had a really, really, good time reading this. I may have looked a nut rotating it and taking pictures and flipping them so I could read other parts, but it just tickled my fancy. I'll let other, smarter, folks talk about what it all means. I just had a good time.

What more can be said about Les Misérables that has not already been said?

I began “reading” this book as an audiobook in December 2019, after falling into the musical. While not the longest book or audiobook I've ever read/listened to, the density of Les Mis was, at times, a pleasant challenge. I read several books alongside Les Mis, often taking breaks or taking time to reflect, instead of plowing through. I probably managed about half of the book in a year, with long gaps in between, until for some reason a few weeks ago I was engrossed again in it. I finished the latter half of the book in just a few weeks.

The story is beautiful. The asides examining Waterloo, social conventions, even slang, were fascinating. It is often clear to see Hugo's beliefs shine through the long monologues of some characters, or through their soul wrestling conundrums. I had a cold shiver at times realizing that the same sentences could have been written today.

If I were to have any critiques, it would be with this particular translation - the Julie Rose translation. While generally good and enjoyable, every once and a while a phrase strikes out that is distinctly out of modern times. I noticed this much more in the latter half of the book. The first occurrence was “on cloud nine” - I had to go to the source material to see how this was originally written, and I did that a few times (again in the Argot chapter). While I've had several years of French classes, those have decayed in memory. My new goal is to, someday, have my French at such a level where I can read this in the original text. I look forward to many more readings of this in the future. This will go on my shelf permanently.

I don't have many thoughts on this. Engaging screenplay for a 1970's PBS movie. The language is very Cormac, and I appreciated the story. Relatively unremarkable as far as a Cormac goes.

I have to say that I'm a bit disappointed in this. I think it is a rare case of not one but both of the adaptations I've seen being better than the source material.

Anthony Minghella's 1999 film with Jude Law as Dickie and Matt Damon as Tom, has a lively excitement and almost eroticism (especially in the first third) that the book simply does not have, almost shies from. Plus, we get the legendary Philip Seymour Hoffman as Freddie.

The more recent adaptation, the 2024 mini-series directed by Steven Zaillian featuring Andrew Scott as Tom and Johnny Flynn as Dickie, feels custom-made for me. Scott is about double the age of book Tom, and I did not find Johnny Flynn to be in any way comparable to Jude Law (but then, who is?), but the ambiance, the cinematography, and the fantastic performances by Scott, Dakota Fanning as Marge, and Eliot Sumner as Freddie (even if not remotely book accurate) produce a thing that is much more compelling than this book.

It is very readable, I'll say that. Few chapters if any are more than 10 pages, so there's always a sense of getting one more chapter in. Then again, Tom is simply not an enjoyable character in this debut. His self-hatred becomes tiresome, and while there are interesting bits in his exploration of Dickie and navigating his schemes, it all falls a little flat for me.

I wonder about the reception of this book on its publication in the 1950s. The 1999 film will have viewers thirsting over Jude Law. The 2024 mini-series has us thirsting over Andrew Scott, wishing we could go on a European vacation with the ill-gotten-gains. The 1955 book gives us a (closeted? probably?) Ripley that essentially detests everything, most of all himself; he is capricious, and mostly trades off of the incompetence or good faith of others, not necessarily his own cleverness.

I am not sure why I expected the book to be a little more gay, or at least a little more gay-friendly. I think many of my fellow gays have fallen for a straight guy, perhaps had the question of, “I don't know if I want to be him, or sleep with him.” Tom clearly has this feeling, but is self-hating to the point of denial and scorn. Almost to the point of unawareness. I guess this was the expectation in the 1950s. The book rarely misses a chance to throw out words like fairy and sissy and queer, and again, I guess these are all the words that would be going around in the 1950s. The end result, however, is not the erotic, dark, passion of the 1999 film or even the 2024 adaptation. Instead, the scene of Tom dressing as Dickie feels more like Norman Bates wearing his mother's clothes than something of passion. Tom is simply very cold, and his blue flame only crackles to life when he is smashing someone's head in with an ashtray or lying to the police about it. Or, watching someone else struggle to lie.

In any event, the book is readable but after the first third it became a little laborious. I have a copy of the third book, but I probably will not get around to reading any of the sequels.

An exceptional look into Lincoln's political mastery. I ‘read' this through Audible, with the exceptional narration of Suzanne Toren. Being from Illinois, a love of Lincoln was part of the package growing up, but I had never realized the depth of greatness Lincoln really could pull from. His magnanimity, calmness, and self-confidence blending into something very one of a kind. In the closing chapters, as the war draws to a close and the amendment is pursued, one is left with extreme sadness at the thought: “what would our country be like today if Lincoln's Reconstruction had continued?”

I originally read the book, or large parts of it, in 2013, but was interrupted by moves and was never able to return to it. I was able to get the audiobook in 2018 and was halfway through it when distracted by schooling. Finally able to return for the second half, it's a book I think is worthy of another, complete, readthrough in the future.

I have a vague memory that a high school teacher assigned this out of one of those big Literature textbooks. Maybe the one with the teal spine and black cover. I remember loathing it and finding it dreadfully boring. I think a lot of the texts assigned in high school literature classes are stupid things to assign people with very little life experience. And I say that as someone who adored The Great Gatsby and would only find in later years just how deeply parts of it spoke to me. The Old Man and the Sea did not speak to me in high school, because the parts of my spirit that it could speak to were still under construction and had yet to grow ears.

I know that Hem did not love ideas of theme or symbolism in his stories and routinely mocked critics for thinking about them. In a letter to Bernard Berenson he wrote:

Then there is the other secret. There isn't any symbolysm [sic]. The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The shark are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is shit. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know.

“Take a rest, small bird” he said. “Then go in and take your chance like any man or bird or fish.”

It is silly not to hope, he thought. Besides, I believe it is a sin. Do not think about sin, he thought. There are enough problems now without sin. Also I have no understanding of it.

I have no understanding of it and I am not sure that I believe in it. Perhaps it was a sin to kill the fish. I suppose it was even though I did it to keep me alive and feed many people. But then everything is a sin. Do not think about sin. It is much too late for that and there are people who are paid to do it.

* p50 - That was the saddest thing I ever saw with them, the old man thought. The boy was sad too and we begged her pardon and butchered her promptly.
* p55 - “Take a good rest, small bird,” he said. “Then go in and take your chance like any man or bird or fish.”
* p60-61 - The clouds were building up now for the trade wind and he looked ahead and saw a flight of wild ducks etching themselves against the sky over the water, then blurring, then etching again and he knew no man was ever alone on the sea.
* p64
* There are three things that are brothers: the fish and my two hands. It must uncramp. It is unworthy of it to be cramped.
* I wish I could show him what sort of man I am. But then he would see the cramped hand. Let him think I am more man than I am and I will be so. I wish I was the fish, he thought, with everything he has against only my will and my intelligence.
* He was comfortable but suffering, although he did not admit the suffering at all.
* p66 - “I told the boy I was a strange old man,” he said. “Now is when I must prove it.” ¶ The thousand times he had proved it meant nothing. Now he was proving it again. Each time was a new time and he never thought about the past when he was doing it.
* The page made me think of Hamlet. “...to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing, end them...” Hamlet holds a special place in my heart and I suppose I see it in many things.
* p88 - I must hold his pain where it is, he thought. Mine does not matter. I can control mine. But his pain could drive him mad. (TB: were it so easy.)
* p103 - “But man is not made for defeat,” he said. “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”
* p104-105 - It is silly not to hope, he thought. Besides I believe it is a sin. Do not think about sin, he thought. There are enough problems now without sin. Also I have no understanding of it. ¶ I have no understanding of it and I am not sure that I believe in it. Perhaps it was a sin to kill the fish. I suppose it was even though I did it to keep me alive and feed many people. But then everything is a sin. Do not think about sin. It is much too late for that and there are people who are paid to do it.
* p110
* “I wish it were a dream and that I had never hooked him. I'm sorry about it, fish. It makes everything wrong.” (TB: feeling like you've ruined something in the seeking of it or the attainment of it, or of its vision, anyway.)
* Now is not the time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.
* p115 - What will you do now if they come in the night? What can you do? ¶ “Fight them,” he said. “I'll fight them until I die.”
* p117 - I hope I do not have to fight again, he thought. I hope so much I do not have to fight again.

Another of his short stories - it's good. I prefer his longer work.

Another early McCarthy demonstrating everything for which his form would become beloved. Haunting. It reminded me of things I haven't thought about in years, from growing up more or less on a non-farm farm.