Thomas

For such a short book, I have a lot of thoughts! I really enjoyed this. There are definitely some parts that show the time in which it was written, but putting those aside, I thought the play with god concepts really fun.

I'm not sure what my favorite line of the book is, but at first glance, it might be: “I know the gods love blood, and that is why I have offered it to you...“

The other thing that stands out: emotionally-stunted, angry, men in the 40s were a lot like emotionally-stunted, angry, men in the 2020s. Crazy, huh?

Exquisite and crushing.

Quite an interesting read! I like time travel stories, but they can spin out of control quickly. This one stayed pretty grounded and I thought the cop TV show framing device was interesting.

There were some definitely parts of the book that made me raise an eyebrow - especially the main character's internal-ish monologue and use of some words that I would associate with hypermasculinity. I'm thinking that this is intentional on the author's part to connect to this character's idolization of the TV show cop. It's something I'm still thinking on.

Bonus star purely for the 80's noir vibe. That said, I do have questions about some of the characters and what their purposes were. One, in particular, who seemed a bit of an Elizabeth Holmes examination.

As a long time NPR listener (though, I confess, not consistently of All Things Considered, I do the morning shows usually), I eagerly signed up to go to Politics & Prose's event at Sixth&i where Ari spoke about his book with Audie Cornish. It was a great conversation and I was glad I picked up a copy of the book while there.

The book is pleasantly short, and filled with essays glimpsing Ari's life and work. I particularly enjoyed the discussion of the Syrian Refugee Crisis and was moved by the essay around the Pulse Nightclub shooting.

I would have loved even more discussion of Sam Sanders' theory on hard and soft news. I'll have to do some of my own searching to see if Sam has talked about this on his podcasts!

A stunning critique of our systems and how we allow, and benefit from, their designed system of taking from the poor to prop up the rich. Those with experience growing up in poverty and working with the impoverished will find much to be furious about, and just as much to be inspired by.

I wrote a longer review / reflection with my thoughts on the book from the perspective of someone who has worked on homelessness for some years here: https://www.thomasbates.info/field-notes/book-review-poverty-by-america

Another book for the book club - another book I did not enjoy very much. I wanted to enjoy it, but I think the book is just not for me. There is way, way, WAY too much going on. If a book is going to take 500 pages, I'd like it to earn that - and unfortunately, I don't think this did. The author clearly has a lot to say and a lot churning in their mind, but putting it all in one book has robbed any of the stories from shining. One must ask - where, oh where, is an editor when they're needed most? This should have been 250 to 300 pages max and should have focused on just one part.When I read the Acknowledgements and saw that this is sort of meshed together from three or four different things, I basically slapped my head and said, “of course, it is,” out loud to the coffee shop. It's painfully apparent.Some of my gripes up front... I found the naming of characters to be really... weird. “Pivotal Moment,” “Epiphany Foreshadow,” “Allegory Paradox.” I don't think this is even explained away as translation, as so many things in this book half-are. Towards the end of the book, when certain artifacts are named after literary tropes, I started to REALLY roll my eyes. I think these are all intended to be sort of tongue-in-cheek funny, but they just annoyed me. Another gripe... Do you ever read a book and see something and think, “Oh, this author has clearly just binged a bunch of so-and-so or this-and-that.” Well, me too, and it happened big time in this book. I have no way of knowing for sure if the character of Nicholas Solitude was created after watching just a little too much Doctor Who, but WOW does it seem like it.I think I also really bumped against the author's writing style. I found the switches between first person and third person very strange. The dialogue OFTEN does not ring true - people just do not speak in the way they do in this book. Example: “For what it's worth,” CHARACTER said, “I greatly prefer that you're not dead.” “The circumstances are appealing to me as well.” The WHAT? People do not talk like this. The character repeating this isn't even a robot or something where you could sort of pretend that it's just a weird characterization. This happens over and over again. The dialogue just doesn't ring true for me and it really stopped me from getting into the story.Speaking of getting into the story. I got so irritated on page 290 that I picked up a pencil and wrote a note below my little sticker mark (how I typically mark bits in books). At page 290, the author takes several paragraphs to go into the background history of something that is almost completely irrelevant to the story and is never revisited again. This just KEPT happening all throughout the book. EDITOR - where are you? WHY are huge swaths of this book devoted to telling me about things that have no impact on the story? If it's worldbuilding - SHOW, don't TELL. The book loves to tell me things, but skips over so much of the showing. At 300 pages, this book should have been starting to wrap up.The author also seems to love firing off tweets in the text. I noticed this with [b:The Terraformers 60784471 The Terraformers Annalee Newitz https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1649899400l/60784471.SY75.jpg 64155389] by [a:Annalee Newitz 191888 Annalee Newitz https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1608627466p2/191888.jpg] as well. If you're writing speculative fiction - I kindly ask that you remember you're writing a BOOK. You don't need to contain your social commentary to 180 or 250 characters mid-stride. SHOW ME the consequences of what you're upset about, SHOW ME why things are not working right, SHOW ME how they can be better. Here are some examples of the author firing off a tweet:“At the age of fourteen, I knew the Building existed, but no-body I knew really liked to talk about it. They didn't teach us about it at school. I lived in one of those Americas where they printed textbooks with blank pages so that school boards could just decide on the fly what repressive bullshit they felt like teaching.”Any idea how much weight that string of sentences has on the story? None - absolutely none. This happens frequently, where the author will say how bad a thing is, but do nothing to show WHY or HOW it is bad, or WHAT can be done better. This isn't social commentary, it's tweeting. The author also calls Earth-floors hell worlds at one point which I think is also supposed to be funny. Unfortunately, all it does is sort of illustrate the total lack of clarity around how this world works. Everything is in a big building, that you can go outside of where there are folks and spaceships... But there are infinite floors that are world-sized (question mark??), and infinite, but not infinite... Certain modes of transportation open interdimensional rifts... but they still need to be aimed manually? I don't get it.I really hate to rag on this book so intensely. There were parts that I liked, but I had to work to like them. How I wish this book were 300 pages and that the author worked with an editor.In the spoiler below, I call attention to an opportunity to END the book radically on page 441.Finally... My hopes at a really funny ending were CRUSHED on page 441, where I saw such an amazing opportunity to end the story and shave 40 pages of pretty incomprehensible gobbledygook into what would have actually been a pretty funny meta joke. I'm going to write out what I wrote out at the back of the book as an alternate ending, picking up about midway down on page 441:"Then just put a stop to all this shit once and for all," said Carissa. Write The End in your little book and let's be done with it.""Oh, come on.""No, you come on Tabitha," Carissa snapped. "Rindasy and I are only in this mess because of you.""It doesn't work like that, even if I wanted it to!" Tabitha yanked out a clean sheet from her notebook, "here. You think everything's so easy?" Tabitha seized her pen and wrote, "The End###Just end it right after the "d" in "End" - no period, no closing quotation mark. That would have cracked me UP! I'd probably have been a little annoyed too. But you know what? If that'd been the end on page 295 or 320, and not before the closing action on page 441, I'd have been pleased as punch.

Reposted from elsewhere. I wrote this quickly and may eventually come back and do a full review; I've had a lot churning in my head around this work for the past few weeks and need to let that settle before I attempt a full review.

—

Started and finished this book this week. I read it basically in two sits. As someone who works on homelessness policy, and used to work in direct service, I just couldn't put it down. So much of what Dr. O'Connell says I could hear coming out of my mouth, and out of the mouths of folks I've worked with over the years.

There were several moments when I just put the book down and started at the coffee shop table. I kept thinking, “man, we need to do so much better.” It had an odd effect of both depressing and motivating me.

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!

Reposted from elsewhere...

I read this in anticipation of a book club coming up this week (actually finished this on February 16th). I hadn't read any of Annalee's previous work, and am not super well-read in Sci-Fi, and certainly not what I would call more environmental science fiction. It was interesting, though I thought it had a little too much going on at times. I thought the actual writing was fine - a little stiff, and some things were said in ways that just didn't need to be (as in, the author describes a character's reaction but then says point-blank the emotion they are feeling in ways that aren't necessary).

I enjoyed the book's exploration and boundary-pushing of what personhood is and how we conceive of it. Though, some characters sort of undermine this (example: the living trains essentially separating into biped or quadruped “bodies” to function in larger society). The moral message is... not subtle. The antagonists (which sort of weirdly shift midway through) are cartoonishly evil and did not really ring true for me.

I rated this 3/5 on Goodreads. I think it was a fine read, I'm curious as to how it'll be received at the book club. At least a full start of that is because I found the use of pronouns and exploration of gender, personhood, and plural/singular people (as in, dyads identifying as singular, not simply someone using they/them pronouns) very interesting in this.

I picked this book off my shelf a few months ago knowing that I was on a high-speed collision course with a re-read. I am not sure where I got this copy. It is dated on the inside cover in handwriting 1966. It is blue clothbound and cotton paged, and the pages feel very nice.

Book spoilers below.

I love the book. It is 250 pages of heartbreak and lovesickness. Every character within is detestable. Jake, the protagonist, is wounded in the war and it is suggested that what happened is he got his penis shot off, or at least rendered totally inoperable. The first time I read this I thought it was his testicles that he lost, but this read I think it is more than that. Jake is in love with Lady Brett, a woman that passes in and out of his life seemingly with the sole purpose of torturing him. She claims several times to love him, too, but she cannot maintain any relationship and engages in numerous affairs with basically ever male character in the book.

One of her favorite things to do is talk to Jake about her affairs right after asking if he still loves her. She'll say she loves him and then talk about another man. Or she'll ask Jake to set her up with another man. And Jake, the masochist that he is, basically facilitates this. I wonder if it's because he feels that, since he can't sleep with her, this is the closest he can get to giving her pleasure.

I find all that pretty tiring. For one, I think it is insanely lacking creativity in a very straight way. There are more ways to give pleasure than a penis and besides, there are tools available for such a thing. I think if these two really loved each other, they could figure something out. Hence my thought that Brett does not actually love Jake at all. I think she is dependent on him for getting her out of messes. She uses him. I think there's a part of her that enjoys flaunting her triumphs in front of him. I think she is very cruel. I think there is basically no behavior that could be more cruel than what she does.

And yet, Jake just takes it all. Early in the book, a different character is lambasted by his fiance and Jake asks why he takes it. Why doesn't he ask himself? He does nothing at all to set boundaries with Brett. He seems just happy as can be to be punished over and over again. Part of me understands this in a frustrating way. But Jake seems to resign himself to getting drunk and watching all of this as a passenger. He always comes to her aid whenever asks. Very frustrating.

The book has a lot of stuff that any consummate depressee can appreciate. Some great quotes:

* p31 - My head started to work. The old grievance.
* p31 - Probably I never would have had any trouble if I hadn't run into Brett when they shipped me to England. I suppose she only wanted what she couldn't have. Well, people were that way. To hell with people. The Catholic Church had an awfully good way of handling all that. Good advice, anyway.. Not to think about it. Oh, it was swell advice. Try and take it sometime. Try and take it.
* p34 - It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.
* p148 - I could shut my eyes without getting the wheeling sensation. But I could not sleep. There is no reason why because it is dark you should look at things differently from when it is light. The hell there isn't!

And sometimes it can be pretty funny. It has one of my favorite jokes in a Hemingway book:

* p136 - “How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”

There is a bunch of stuff in the bullfighting about steers and all that and sure there's some themes you could connect Cohn and Jake to Steers and others to the others and blah blah blah. It doesn't really matter because I don't really care about all that. It's a book about Jake being in love with someone who isn't available to him and he doesn't know what to do with that other than to absorb all of the pain in the world. The book closes with Brett and Jake riding in a car, pressed together. Brett saying how good they could have been together (not that they put any work into even giving it a shot!). Jake says, “Yes. Isn't it pretty to think so?”

Pretty thoughts will only get you so far. And the prettiest thoughts and the darkest thoughts have this in common: they hurt the most.

A very good book full of hateable characters! Classic Hemingway, the asshole knows how humans are.

By the way – the more I read the more I'm convinced he might have been gay. Lady Brett and the other women are described in whatever way. But he is so interested in describing men and their faces and their pretty lips and eyes. He writes about men how I write about men. It's a shame because I am frankly sick of reading about straight relationships and would love to read about gay love and/or grief in the style of Hemingway.

I had not read any Agatha Christie before, and I have to say what a pleasure it was to start here. I listened to the audiobook version, performed by Dan Stevens. It was a fantastic performance, reminiscent more of radio drama than of a pure audiobook. For the last several hours I just could not pull myself away from it.

A brief, but engaging, examination of the battle of Alesia and more generally the context and events leading up to it. The book is short - Goodreads reports 96 pages, though my copy was 142 pages - and so full of pictures the actual text is short and digestible and could easily be read in one sitting if the reader desired. I enjoyed the several maps that are included and used this to acquaint myself somewhat with the context before I begin Carolyn Hammond's translation of Caesar's Commentarii.

Caro's second volume in his long biography covering Lyndon Johnson's rise to and utilization of power is as interesting as the first, perhaps because it shatters some aspects of Johnson which have crystalized or at the least become somewhat opaque with the passage of time.

It is rare for folks to believe any politician is 100% on the clean and narrow, but it is another thing to see the levels of brazen chicanery that some are capable of. I knew very little about LBJ before diving into these books - he was not a President of much focus in my education other than mentions when discussing the various civil rights legislation passed during his Presidency. What I did know essentially boiled down to his campaign button: “All the Way with LBJ.”

What is clear from Caro's work here is that Johnson was singular in his focus: he wanted to obtain power. It is not clear why other than to correct from childhood experiences, and Caro teases future analysis of what he will do when he obtains power throughout the first two LBJ volumes. What becomes even more apparent as one reads this second volume is that the petty and conniving methods used on his college campus and as part of the “Little Congress” are the rule for LBJ, rather than the exception (at least so far). There were events in the book which were so blatant, so brazen, as to be shocking even to a reader in today's political world. Johnson's campaign strategy of all-out-assault on Coke Stevenson's reputation is certainly an ancestor of today's political campaign strategy, but the outright theft of an election is at least today more technical as opposed to petty theft.

I was somewhat taken with Caro's description of Coke Stevenson. The parallel I grew for him was that of Abraham Lincoln: largely self-educated while working through the day and into the night. His approach to campaigning seemed, at least superficially, somewhat simple. The distinguishing feature between the two is the lack of both magnanimity and political gamesmanship as traits in Coke. Where Lincoln was gifted with political intuition and the will to use it, Stevenson comes across as fairly inept on this front. Whether this ineptitude is due to lack of skill or ethical aversion to such gamesmanship is perhaps debatable - Caro's frame in this work is that it comes from ethical aversion, or perhaps even that Stevenson simply believed it was not necessary to engage until too late.

While I ‘read' this book primarily through Grover Gardner's wonderful narration of the Audible audiobook, there were times when I stopped to review the printed text or read portions in print via the Kindle edition. One portion of the book which is left out of the audiobook but included in the Kindle and print versions is Caro's afterward, specifically his discussion on his presentation of Coke Stevenson and response to articles that emerged after this book's initial publication. I would consider this afterward a required element to this book and was disappointed that it was not included in the narration. The afterward contains some critical context and discussion on Stevenson and his reputation as it exists today and how it has been impacted by the victory of Johnson and his generation (in a way, it serves as an interesting example of reality versus ‘history is written by the victor').

This was a great read, and I am excited to continue on in this series!

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.

A great profile of the most powerful woman in US political history.

I grew up during the years, and in a geographic area, dominated by conservative media. My entire knowledge of Nancy Pelosi (until the famous White House meeting with which this book opens), was that she was Democratic Leadership and that the Right utterly hated her. To say I had no opinion of Pelosi would be an understatement, it was only a vague knowing that she existed.

In the more recent years of the Trump administration, I came to be far more aware of her. As I'm sure is true for many, however politically engaged or attentive I was during the Obama Administration, attention heightened during the 4 years of Trump. Her method of handling the situations presented to her was admirable, and it should be hard to find someone who has paid attention to her who does not, at least, respect her.

In the past few years, I have often been grudging about what I saw to be a too-conservative Democratic party in many ways manifested by Pelosi in the Speakership. I made the mistake of many: confusing her political machinations with her policy beliefs. This book does a fantastic job of examining Pelosi's early years and rise, and how they have shaped her approach to this work. You come away with a much different understanding of Pelosi: that she was not unlike an AOC of her generation. The author, Molly Ball, in an early portion of the book cites Pelosi's affinity for a Lincoln quote: “...public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed.” Ball notes that many people misinterpret this saying; observing it to mean that politicians should follow the public sentiment. Pelosi is not a victim of this misinterpretation.

Unlike Sam Rayburn, who would not question a Representative who said, “This vote will hurt me in my district” - Pelosi expected action. Ball describes that Pelosi's expectation was that Representatives should go to their districts and sell - the shape public sentiment and find power in that work. Later in the book, a series of interactions with AOC are discussed, and an AOC tweet is quoted, “That public “whatever” is called public sentiment. And wielding the power to shift it is how we actually achieve meaningful change in this country.” (https://twitter.com/aoc/status/1147668951834476545?lang=en) - interestingly delivered in retort to Pelosi's critique of Twitter power.

The profile examines Pelosi's rise to power and her mastery of those levers and notes that her pragmatic approach is not a dereliction of her liberal early days, but the recognition that comes with so many years of wisdom: power is only useful if you can get something done. Speaker Pelosi has certainly accomplished much in her career. I'm hopeful that years later, Molly Ball or another biographer will take another look at this figure of our lives who has gone unstudied by most outside of GOP strategy sessions.

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.

Light of the Jedi is an enjoyable Star Wars book. With its plentiful Jedi and optimism, the look into the High Republic era is an interesting setting. There are very many characters, perhaps so many as to make them a little hard to keep track of or care about. That said, some recur enough to build a relationship - such as the Padawan Jedi Bell and his Master Greatstorm, or Avar Kriss.

A few of the decisions made in the book are a little questionable to me. Especially in later chapters, the timing is hard to understand. The book's chapters rotate between characters. That gives the impression that events depicted are happening concurrently (and to add to this, it is often that transitions move to another character in the same setting, perhaps on an opposing side). A situation unfolds on a relatively remote planet, for example, which is ongoing for many chapters. While that rather fast-paced thing is happening, it seems that other characters are crossing huge distances, doing big tasks, etc. I don't want to give away any of what happens, but it seemed like bizarre timing, which somewhat took me out of the story.

Further, the writing at times is repetitive. To emphasize some things or thoughts of characters, the author repeatedly repeats lines or writes lines with similar ideas. This is a little tiresome, especially at the start of the book. About 1/3rd of the way through, this became so tiring I stopped to consider if this was written for a younger audience that might need things restated so frequently.

Towards the end, this line shows up: “I wouldn't call it a plan. It's more like five impossible things in a row.” And I wonder - would the Jedi Master that said this actually say it? While the padawan references the Master being demanding of “impossible tasks” - that's a padawan. Throughout Star Wars, it's made clear that all things are possible through the force, so that a Master (or even a Jedi Knight) is approaching things this way is a little strange. Just a small trifle.

In the end, the book is worth a read, but be prepared to set some small irritants aside.

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.

This was an impulse buy. I read this several years ago at the height of my Francophile days when I was able to speak French about half as well as I could read it. Now I can read it okay and speak it only when drunk, and quite poorly.

My mom told me a week or two ago that she wanted me to think about going to Paris again. This is something I have wanted to do for years but I have never traveled internationally and not much domestically. You read Baldwin and Hemingway and Hugo and the others and see Paris as this imperfectly perfect place. Somewhere that a lost person can go to figure things out. I am not convinced any such place really exists outside of the mind, but in the same breath I'll say context matters. Anyway I'm filling out passport paperwork again and maybe I will save enough to go and cheaply.

I thought a lot about tortured artists reading this. Hemingway spends a lot of time beating himself up over his thoughts and actions, in a way I to which I can relate. I struggle to relate to his infidelity and his brutishness. But he is also pretty petty and sensitive to displays of wealth in ways that I understand.

That's beside the point. What I mean is, we have this idea that great suffering produces great art. There seems to be a lot of validity to that. I wonder about the origin of that suffering and the ability for a person to be well and to protect themselves and continue producing. It is one thing to go through external circumstances or to navigate the interior struggles of love and loss and pride and shame. Hemingway talks about people all around him and even to an extent talks about trying to be a friend to people (Fitzgerald et al), and yet we get a sense that he is pretty isolated in his darkest thoughts.

Time and culture are pretty different now, but we still see men struggle to express their emotions and feel badly when doing so. So much great art is the product of suffering, isolated people pouring blood onto the page privately. I don't think you need be unhealthy to produce great art. Surely you don't have to isolate and punish yourself for your feelings under the guise that by virtue of suffering you will write well. Possible that Hemingway would disagree. I certainly haven't written any novels so what the hell do I know? Seems like a raw deal, though.

Not sure where this thought goes, but I am thinking even in films like Michael Mann's Thief or Heat. Mann loves a man on a mission, a man of purpose and work (very masculine stuff here, folks). But in these cases the person has isolated themselves from great love, at least to an extent or at least until the crux of these films. The pain of the isolation and the longing for belonging are the inciting elements. A Movable Feast and Hemingways other works are largely WWI and following years affairs. Thief and Heat were 1981 and 1995 respectively.

We are now in 2024, in mere days 2025. What do these stories look like if the love is not only a vulnerability but a support and strength?

I thought about this watching Whiplash (again) last night. There's a scene in which Teller's character breaks up with a girl he's seeing. Because he believes that to be great – one of the greats – he must do it alone. She says, “and you think I would keep you from that?” And he says some 19 year old version of yep. What a mistake, what a tragedy, to believe that we are stronger alone. That art must be solitary and suffering. It would be a terrible thing to be true.

—

A few weeks ago I was talking Hemingway with a friend and she asked if I'd heard this rumor that he was actually gay. I said no and found it pretty hard to believe. I thought it was possible he was actually a hound.

Then I re-read this and I am not convinced he didn't love Fitzgerald, at least in a way. There are many forms of love. But the way in which Hem describes Fitz on pages 149-150 of my battered Scribner classics edition is quite affectionate:

“Scott was a man who looked like a boy with a face between handsome and pretty. He had very fair wavy hair, a high forehead, excited and friendly eyes and a delicate long-lipped Irish mouth that, on a girl, would have been the mouth of a beauty. His chin was well built and he had good ears and a handsome, almost beautiful, unmarked nose. This should not have added up to a pretty face, but that came from the coloring, the very fair hair, and the mouth. The mouth worried you until you knew him and then it worried you more.”

Listen. I've written a lot of stuff about people that I find very fair, and it sounds a lot like that. This was nuts to read right now. You cannot tell me that Hem didn't feel like kissing Fitz with that description, I simply will not believe it. He even throws in the “on a woman” disclaimer. Hem, you can't fool me, old buddy. I have been there.

Not that I am interested in a straight/gay dichotomy. I find it not useful today and in the 1920's the socio-cultural understanding of gender and sexuality would be so different as to render it even less useful. I believe in love, and lust, and I don't know which Hem had for Fitz but that is some very pretty writing.

Closing with a few lines that stood out to me on this read:

* Not a line but a thought: wrote a big “Fuck you Stein” re: Gertrude's thoughts on “homosexuals.” Fuck off.
* A line about the writing of Sherwood Anderson: “...I liked some of his short stories very much. They were simply written and sometimes beautifully written and he knew the people he was writing about and cared deeply for them.” (emphasis mine; I flagged a lot of Hem talking about his writing style.)
* “We're always lucky,” I said and like a fool I did not knock on wood. There was wood everywhere in that apartment to knock on too.”
* “Memory is hunger.”

4/14/23 - This is one of my all-time favorite books, and I picked up my paperback copy and started reading then re-reading chapters I particularly enjoy earlier this year. Then a few weeks ago I resumed a previous re-read on the audiobook version. Early this morning while walking I finished up the last third or so of it, so I'm calling this as a 2023 book for me. I love this book!

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!

My second time reading this, about 10 years later. When an author as works like The Stand, and The Shining (not to mention huge worlds and explorations of them, like The Dark Tower series), it's hard to point to a magnum opus. Still, I wonder if this is it.

11/22/63 isn't a horror like many of King's works, not really. Yet, it features some horrific events, with the same can't-put-the-book-down grip. It may well be his most romantic book - and is there any kind of story that carries romance like time travel?

This capped a month of King for me, which started with On Writing (I suppose I read that in October, but I'm counting it) and included Carrie, Fairy Tale, The Gunslinger, The Drawing of the Three, Duma Key, and ended with 11/22/63. I haven't read such a concentrated dose of King's work since High School. I had such a good time! It taught me a lot about things King does in his work, phrases he likes, and themes that recur in his work. Mostly, it made clear to me things that I do that I took from King over the years.

The first time I read this book, I was in Kansas with bupkis to do except read and trounce around in the woods. I remember reading this and [b:Under the Dome 6320534 Under the Dome Stephen King https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1511289992l/6320534.SY75.jpg 6760952] together, inhaling them over what was probably a week. Duma Key is the one that stands out the most to me, even though Under the Dome is certainly much closer to my life experience.King likes to say that writing is telepathy - and it shines through in this book. Everything feels so clear to me as I read, and I was surprised at how much stuck in my memory. There are certain scenes (and paintings) in the book that have always bounced around my brain, but sometimes as I read, I remember something I've forgotten just as it is happening, and it's a delight.This is probably one of my favorite King stories because of how tangible it feels.

Reading this is like being tucked into a warm bed and feeling absolutely comfortable.

A few favorite lines from this readthrough:

* “However, no one knew quite why it did this because it invariably delivered a cupful of liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.”

* ...“the recession came and we decided it would save a lot of bother if we just slept through it.”

* “Ten million years of planning and work gone just like that. Ten million years, Earthman, can you conceive of that kind of time span? A galactic civilization could grow from a single worm five times over in that time. Gone.” He paused. “Well, that's bureaucracy for you.”

* “What does it matter? Science has achieved some wonderful things, of course, but I'd far rather be happy than right any day.“

* “And I write novels!” chimed in the other cop. “Though I haven't had any of them published yet, so I better warn you, I'm in a meeeean mood!”

* “...an acute attack of no curiosity.”

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.