Lately I've been grazing my way through a bunch of VHS tapes of older movies which the library discarded.
The Philadelphia Story was good, but not great.
On the other hand, The Ice Storm was simply a waste of time -- mine, the actors, the directors, and everybody else's who was involved with it. Who knew that sex and death could be so boring? Perhaps Ang Lee was making some kind of subtle point about sleepwalking suburbanites. You could appreciate the point just about as well by watching two hours of daytime television, except that it would be more exciting and better acted.
Monday, December 12, 2005
Recent Reads
The Dream of Scipio, by Iain Pears
I picked this up only because I saw it at a dollar store where I was casually browsing while waiting for some freinds to show up for dinner at a restaurant next door. I'm glad I did. It's easily the best novel I've read in months.
Three different men, in three different intertwining plots in three different historical epochs, deal with the problems of love, politics, and the kinds of social chaos that make for interesting history, but make shredded ruin out of the lives of those human beings unfortunate enough to exist during them. In the waning days of the Roman Empire, a provincial aristocrat in southern Gaul faces the collapse of civilization, the apparent failure of philosophy, and an irresistible influx of barbarian warlords. A thousand years later, a gifted young poet becomes entangled in the snares of art, politics and the dreaded Black Plague at the court of Pope Clement in Avignon. In the framing story, a twentieth-century French scholar tries to puzzle out their two lives and the intellectual connections between them while around him, his country succumbs to the influence of the Hitler's Germany.
Pears is reportedly the author of a number of detective novels, and some of the intellectual gamesmanship of the whodunit is evident here. The story begins with a brusque account of a suicide, and only then proceeds to tell the story that led up to that act. Pears is a master at dropping tantalizing hints to the reader as he switches back and forth between characters and timelines, and masterfully intertwines the action of the plot with reminders of the erratic course of history and the philosophical implications of the characters' lives and fates. Does the Dream of Scipio -- a philosophical view of society described by one of the characters in the novel -- justify the ways of man? Can it ever?
A book well worth recommending to any fan of historical mysteries or philosophical fiction. Da Vinci Code readers who don't insist on single-sentence paragraphs and four-page chapters that all end with physical cliffhanger situations might enjoy it, too.
The Portrait, by Iain Pears
I picked this up out of curiousity after reading the Dream of Scipio. The title and cover -- featuring an illustration of a unusual painted portrait-- seem designed to attract Da Vinci Code readers. I read it anyway.
When I started reading it, I felt something like a shock of recognition. The book is very reminiscent in its structure of Walker Percy's Lancelot, a book which had a great influence on me when I read it nearly ten years ago. A narrator, who may or may not be reliable, speaks in extended first-person monologues to an old freind regarding past and present events, the nature and explanation of which may be subject to dispute. And Pears, like a good detective novelist, keeps the reader guessing about his character's ultimate goal may be. (There's just a subtle hint of Poe's Fortunato....)
The Portrait doesn't have the philosophical ambition or weight of Lancelot, but it's a good read in its own right. The narrator's eccentric, perhaps slightly-unhinged persona keep the reader guessing about what he's up to, and his rambling, opinionated discourses about the past events that brought him and his listener together are an entertaining puzzle to unravel.
Ubermensch!, by Kim Newman
What if a small capsule bearing the infant sole survivor of the planet Krypton to Earth had landed near Kleinburg, Germany, instead of Smallville, USA?
Thanks to the poster on the Fiction Magazines listserv who suggested this short story. I'm not sure I agree with the author's implied stance on nature-versus-nurture, though.
On the other hand, though, Frederik Pohl's The Gold at the Starbow's End (1973 World's Best SF, ed. Donald Wollheim), also mentioned on the same listserv, was something of a disappointment. The premise is interesting, but the conclusion is far too redolent of dippy early-70s nostrums about the purported mystical powers of the human mind. I might have found it convincing if the characters were given something more to work with than, well, nihilo.
Poul Anderson's Goat Song, from the same volume, develops some amusing parallels, but ultimately works better as an exercise in literary gamesmanship than an emotionally or intellectually compelling story in its own right. I seem to recall that Anderson wrote an introduction to Silverlock, and it would seem that this story was influenced by the tale of Mr. A. Clarence Shandon and his bardic guide. There are even smidgens of archaic poetry scattered through it. Unfortunately, the story is chained far too closely to its mythic predecessor, and lacks much of the casual irony and emotional vibrancy of Silverlock's clueless narrator. As a result, the story is all too predictable to the readers who recognize it, and probably incomprehensible to those who do not. Anderson's reputation quite rightfully rests on The Broken Sword, The High Crusade, A Midsummer Night's Tempest, and dozens of other works superior to this one, which is at best an hour's mild amusement for a certain type of educated reader.
The Dream of Scipio, by Iain Pears
I picked this up only because I saw it at a dollar store where I was casually browsing while waiting for some freinds to show up for dinner at a restaurant next door. I'm glad I did. It's easily the best novel I've read in months.
Three different men, in three different intertwining plots in three different historical epochs, deal with the problems of love, politics, and the kinds of social chaos that make for interesting history, but make shredded ruin out of the lives of those human beings unfortunate enough to exist during them. In the waning days of the Roman Empire, a provincial aristocrat in southern Gaul faces the collapse of civilization, the apparent failure of philosophy, and an irresistible influx of barbarian warlords. A thousand years later, a gifted young poet becomes entangled in the snares of art, politics and the dreaded Black Plague at the court of Pope Clement in Avignon. In the framing story, a twentieth-century French scholar tries to puzzle out their two lives and the intellectual connections between them while around him, his country succumbs to the influence of the Hitler's Germany.
Pears is reportedly the author of a number of detective novels, and some of the intellectual gamesmanship of the whodunit is evident here. The story begins with a brusque account of a suicide, and only then proceeds to tell the story that led up to that act. Pears is a master at dropping tantalizing hints to the reader as he switches back and forth between characters and timelines, and masterfully intertwines the action of the plot with reminders of the erratic course of history and the philosophical implications of the characters' lives and fates. Does the Dream of Scipio -- a philosophical view of society described by one of the characters in the novel -- justify the ways of man? Can it ever?
A book well worth recommending to any fan of historical mysteries or philosophical fiction. Da Vinci Code readers who don't insist on single-sentence paragraphs and four-page chapters that all end with physical cliffhanger situations might enjoy it, too.
The Portrait, by Iain Pears
I picked this up out of curiousity after reading the Dream of Scipio. The title and cover -- featuring an illustration of a unusual painted portrait-- seem designed to attract Da Vinci Code readers. I read it anyway.
When I started reading it, I felt something like a shock of recognition. The book is very reminiscent in its structure of Walker Percy's Lancelot, a book which had a great influence on me when I read it nearly ten years ago. A narrator, who may or may not be reliable, speaks in extended first-person monologues to an old freind regarding past and present events, the nature and explanation of which may be subject to dispute. And Pears, like a good detective novelist, keeps the reader guessing about his character's ultimate goal may be. (There's just a subtle hint of Poe's Fortunato....)
The Portrait doesn't have the philosophical ambition or weight of Lancelot, but it's a good read in its own right. The narrator's eccentric, perhaps slightly-unhinged persona keep the reader guessing about what he's up to, and his rambling, opinionated discourses about the past events that brought him and his listener together are an entertaining puzzle to unravel.
Ubermensch!, by Kim Newman
What if a small capsule bearing the infant sole survivor of the planet Krypton to Earth had landed near Kleinburg, Germany, instead of Smallville, USA?
Thanks to the poster on the Fiction Magazines listserv who suggested this short story. I'm not sure I agree with the author's implied stance on nature-versus-nurture, though.
On the other hand, though, Frederik Pohl's The Gold at the Starbow's End (1973 World's Best SF, ed. Donald Wollheim), also mentioned on the same listserv, was something of a disappointment. The premise is interesting, but the conclusion is far too redolent of dippy early-70s nostrums about the purported mystical powers of the human mind. I might have found it convincing if the characters were given something more to work with than, well, nihilo.
Poul Anderson's Goat Song, from the same volume, develops some amusing parallels, but ultimately works better as an exercise in literary gamesmanship than an emotionally or intellectually compelling story in its own right. I seem to recall that Anderson wrote an introduction to Silverlock, and it would seem that this story was influenced by the tale of Mr. A. Clarence Shandon and his bardic guide. There are even smidgens of archaic poetry scattered through it. Unfortunately, the story is chained far too closely to its mythic predecessor, and lacks much of the casual irony and emotional vibrancy of Silverlock's clueless narrator. As a result, the story is all too predictable to the readers who recognize it, and probably incomprehensible to those who do not. Anderson's reputation quite rightfully rests on The Broken Sword, The High Crusade, A Midsummer Night's Tempest, and dozens of other works superior to this one, which is at best an hour's mild amusement for a certain type of educated reader.
Monday, October 24, 2005
Recent Reads : Gladiator-at-Law, by Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth
Many years ago, I wrote a rather bad short story in which attorneys, rather than arguing their cases before juries or judges, literally fought like gladiators on live television. It was intended to be an absurd satire of the American legal system and television audiences' love of vicarious violence. I didn't realizehow quickly the O.J. Simpson trial, The People's Court, and so-called "reality TV" would approach that level of absurdity in the next few years.
When someone on a fiction-related listserv mentioned the title of this book, I knew I had to read it. So I got a copy by interlibrary loan and read it over the course of my next few lunch breaks at Busy Bee College. I was somewhat relieved to see that despite the title, Pohl and Kornbluth did not have quite the same idea as I had expressed in my clumsy piece of satire.
Despite the title, and despite the rather misleading cover illustration on the 1986 Baen paperback reprint, the book does not actually feature attorneys resolving legal disputes with flaming clubs and elbowspikes. (There are gladiatorial combats in the book, but the attorney-protagonist enters the arena only once, toward the end of the book, and not as a combatant.) It's another of Pohl and Kornbluth's forays into social science fiction, projecting corporate and mass media trends into the future much in the style of other collaborations such as Venus, Inc. and The Merchant's War (originally published separately; later combined as The Space Merchants). In this book, as in the other two, society is portrayed as being dominated by giant, amoral corporations run amok. The seething masses of the population are kept (mostly) docile by updated versions of bread-and-circuses, including sadistic gladiatorial spectacles. In Venus, Inc. and The Merchant's War, the protagonists are in the advertising business, and the focus is on the potential excesses of that trade. In Gladiator-at-Law, the protagonist is an attorney, and the novel deals with the cutthroat world of corporate control.
There's plenty of social satire along the way, as P&K take swipes at shoddily-constructed suburbs, violent entertainment, the social deadweight of "old money", and other targets. There are other similarities between the books as well. P&K seem to have used a similar plot pattern in all three books: complacent drone begins by failing to recognize the flaws in his society, gets pulled into someone's attempt to right a wrong, becomes a target of his erstwhile employers/patrons, recognizes the evils of his society, and finally attempts to correct them through some clever stratagem.
The humor is about as black as it can be, as in this disquisition by a stadium manager planning an evening's program:
There are other faults. The female characters are not much more than plot devices. This is not surprising in a story originally published in 1953. Still, when a female character shows early signs of being something other than an ornamental prop, it would be nice if the authors followed up by having her do something other than get kidnapped and have to be rescued.
On the whole, though, it's a good adventure yarn laced with cautionary paranoia about corporate power and occasional flashes of blacker-than-black humor. And, as it happens, I enjoy such things. Recommended.
Many years ago, I wrote a rather bad short story in which attorneys, rather than arguing their cases before juries or judges, literally fought like gladiators on live television. It was intended to be an absurd satire of the American legal system and television audiences' love of vicarious violence. I didn't realizehow quickly the O.J. Simpson trial, The People's Court, and so-called "reality TV" would approach that level of absurdity in the next few years.
When someone on a fiction-related listserv mentioned the title of this book, I knew I had to read it. So I got a copy by interlibrary loan and read it over the course of my next few lunch breaks at Busy Bee College. I was somewhat relieved to see that despite the title, Pohl and Kornbluth did not have quite the same idea as I had expressed in my clumsy piece of satire.
Despite the title, and despite the rather misleading cover illustration on the 1986 Baen paperback reprint, the book does not actually feature attorneys resolving legal disputes with flaming clubs and elbowspikes. (There are gladiatorial combats in the book, but the attorney-protagonist enters the arena only once, toward the end of the book, and not as a combatant.) It's another of Pohl and Kornbluth's forays into social science fiction, projecting corporate and mass media trends into the future much in the style of other collaborations such as Venus, Inc. and The Merchant's War (originally published separately; later combined as The Space Merchants). In this book, as in the other two, society is portrayed as being dominated by giant, amoral corporations run amok. The seething masses of the population are kept (mostly) docile by updated versions of bread-and-circuses, including sadistic gladiatorial spectacles. In Venus, Inc. and The Merchant's War, the protagonists are in the advertising business, and the focus is on the potential excesses of that trade. In Gladiator-at-Law, the protagonist is an attorney, and the novel deals with the cutthroat world of corporate control.
There's plenty of social satire along the way, as P&K take swipes at shoddily-constructed suburbs, violent entertainment, the social deadweight of "old money", and other targets. There are other similarities between the books as well. P&K seem to have used a similar plot pattern in all three books: complacent drone begins by failing to recognize the flaws in his society, gets pulled into someone's attempt to right a wrong, becomes a target of his erstwhile employers/patrons, recognizes the evils of his society, and finally attempts to correct them through some clever stratagem.
The humor is about as black as it can be, as in this disquisition by a stadium manager planning an evening's program:
"Of course, it's rough -- the emotional values need bringing out. The comedy stuff with the vitriol pistols ought to follow a tense thriller like Man Versus Scorpions instead of another comedy number like the Octogenarians With Flame Throwers. But that's easy enough to fix. Race Against Man-Made Lightning is out too; Stimmens told me himself we couldn't get the equipment from Schenectady...."The appeal of these books is in their satirical projection of a hypothetical future, not in their characterization, poetic prose, or innovative literary structure. For the most part, they work, even though a few of the authors' projections in Gladiator-at-Law fall flat from today's perspective. Suburbs, as a rule, have not decayed into anarchistic slums like the Belle Reve/"Belly Rave" portrayed in the story, although if gasoline prices continue to rise, and if other inventions projected in Gladiator-at-Law ever come to pass, it's still possible that they could. We do not -- yet -- have entertainment programs in which the contestants are stabbed with spears, incinerated with flamethrowers, or eaten by pirahnas. And yet what we do have is close enough that Misters Pohl and Kornbluth can be rightly regarded as minor prophets.
There are other faults. The female characters are not much more than plot devices. This is not surprising in a story originally published in 1953. Still, when a female character shows early signs of being something other than an ornamental prop, it would be nice if the authors followed up by having her do something other than get kidnapped and have to be rescued.
On the whole, though, it's a good adventure yarn laced with cautionary paranoia about corporate power and occasional flashes of blacker-than-black humor. And, as it happens, I enjoy such things. Recommended.
Monday, October 10, 2005
Personal update (or, I Am Cursed.)
I've been delinquent in updating this blog lately, and particularly neglectful of personal news.
For any readers of this occasional and desultory blog who haven't heard from me personally in the past few weeks, the first big news is that I've taken another part-time job in the library of a vocationally-oriented private college up in Michael Moore's home town. Let's call it Busy Bee College. This brings to three the number of part time jobs that I am scrambling back and forth between while trying to keep body and soul together in this so-called profession.
The second big news is that I may not be able to keep getting to any of them, since someone stole my car this weekend. I'll spend the afternoon trying to get the registration and insurance updated on the old truck. Won't it be fun commuting for 120 miles a day at 12 miles per gallon.
May pestilential, painful, incurable boils infest all car thieves everywhere. May their balls shrivel, their teeth fall out, their eyes go blind, and their limbs be struck by quivering palsy. May they live in excruciating pain, crawling upon their bellies for all to look upon and jeer at and kick them like the despicable animals they are.
I've been delinquent in updating this blog lately, and particularly neglectful of personal news.
For any readers of this occasional and desultory blog who haven't heard from me personally in the past few weeks, the first big news is that I've taken another part-time job in the library of a vocationally-oriented private college up in Michael Moore's home town. Let's call it Busy Bee College. This brings to three the number of part time jobs that I am scrambling back and forth between while trying to keep body and soul together in this so-called profession.
The second big news is that I may not be able to keep getting to any of them, since someone stole my car this weekend. I'll spend the afternoon trying to get the registration and insurance updated on the old truck. Won't it be fun commuting for 120 miles a day at 12 miles per gallon.
May pestilential, painful, incurable boils infest all car thieves everywhere. May their balls shrivel, their teeth fall out, their eyes go blind, and their limbs be struck by quivering palsy. May they live in excruciating pain, crawling upon their bellies for all to look upon and jeer at and kick them like the despicable animals they are.
Recent reads (in brief)
The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant
The fictionalized saga of several women from the Old Testament, as narrated by Dinah, the daughter of Jacob and Leah. A better read than most "bestsellers" and book club selections.
Bear Flag Rising : the Conquest of California, 1846, by Dale Walker
The U.S. of the nineteenth century was about as aggressive and acquisitive as they come. Walker tells a tale of hypocrisy, greed, and ambition.
Celtic Lore, by Ward Rutherford
An extensive but somewhat unfocused collection of examples of Celtic lore and customs that have survived in European culture. The author's thesis seems to be that the Celts had a greater cultural impact that is usually attributed to them.
Metaphors we live by, by George Lakoff
Lakoff's writings on politics and communication have been highly recommended on DailyKos and elsewhere. However, I wasn't particularly impressed by this book. He seems to expend a great deal of effort proving that much of the English language and the thought processes that underlie speech are made up of metaphors. No duh, Sherlock. Perhaps Don't Think of an Elephant will carry the analysis a bit further.
The Atrocity Archives, by Charles Stross
H.P. Lovecraft meets cyberpunk, courtesy of a secret government organization called The Laundry, which spends its time making sure that theoretical physicists, computer programmers, and "stoned artists from Austin, Texas" don't accidentally create energy patterns that will release the demonic beings that dwell "at the bottom of the Mandelbrot set." Great geeky fun.
The Double Shadow, by Clark Ashton Smith
This is a slim collection of otherwise hard-to-find CAS short stories recently collected and republished by Wildside Press. They don't quite hit the mark established by Smith's Averoigne stories, but they're pleasant enough. The Voyage of King Euvoran seems imitative of Dunsany. The Double Shadow is reminiscent of a Lovecraft story filtered through CAS's exotic fantastical settings rather than HPL's haunted New England. The other four stories are typical CAS exercises in literary decadance, in which plot is less important than the creation of a langorous and exotic atmosphere. The Maze of the Enchanter is atmospheric and disturbing, if a bit predictable to anyone who's read CAS's other tales of self-absorbed and self-indulgent sorcerors. The Willow Landscape is an uncharacteristically gentle story of an unusual enchantment. Not bad, although for those unfamiliar with CAS, Arkham House's collection A Rendezvous in Averoigne is a better place to start.
Recollections in black and white, by Eric Sloane
A slim collection of pen-and-ink drawings of historic buildings, with Sloane's commentary on their significance and his techniques for portraying them. I always enjoy glancing through his work, whether he's describing buildings, or old tools, or any other aspect of American life in days gone by.
Voelker's Pond : a Robert Traver Legacy, by photographer Ed Wargin, with essays by James McCullough
This book was given to me when I left the Queen City of the North. It's largely a collection of color photographs and personal recollections of its namesake, the private fishing camp of John Voelker. Voelker was a prosecutor and judge from the Upper Peninsula who, under the pen-name Robert Traver, wrote tales of courtroom drama such as Anatomy of a Murder and odes to troutfishing such as Trout Madness. His prescription for warding off the pestilential insects of the northern forests may be of particular interest to Fiend: "If you are hardy enough, smoke Italian cigars. They smell like burning peat bog mixed with smoldering Bermuda onions but they're the best damned unlabeled DDT on the market; all mosquitoes in the same township immediately shrivel and zoom to earth. {Fellow fishermen occasionally follow suit.}"
The Eye of the World, by Robert Jordan
I really can't put my finger on exactly why I haven't enjoyed this book. The characters are fairly well-drawn and sympathetic, and unlike some "best-selling" authors, Jordan does write coherent sentences that more-or-less make sense from one chapter to the next. But for some reason I just can't seem to get interested enough in the story to enjoy it.
The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant
The fictionalized saga of several women from the Old Testament, as narrated by Dinah, the daughter of Jacob and Leah. A better read than most "bestsellers" and book club selections.
Bear Flag Rising : the Conquest of California, 1846, by Dale Walker
The U.S. of the nineteenth century was about as aggressive and acquisitive as they come. Walker tells a tale of hypocrisy, greed, and ambition.
Celtic Lore, by Ward Rutherford
An extensive but somewhat unfocused collection of examples of Celtic lore and customs that have survived in European culture. The author's thesis seems to be that the Celts had a greater cultural impact that is usually attributed to them.
Metaphors we live by, by George Lakoff
Lakoff's writings on politics and communication have been highly recommended on DailyKos and elsewhere. However, I wasn't particularly impressed by this book. He seems to expend a great deal of effort proving that much of the English language and the thought processes that underlie speech are made up of metaphors. No duh, Sherlock. Perhaps Don't Think of an Elephant will carry the analysis a bit further.
The Atrocity Archives, by Charles Stross
H.P. Lovecraft meets cyberpunk, courtesy of a secret government organization called The Laundry, which spends its time making sure that theoretical physicists, computer programmers, and "stoned artists from Austin, Texas" don't accidentally create energy patterns that will release the demonic beings that dwell "at the bottom of the Mandelbrot set." Great geeky fun.
The Double Shadow, by Clark Ashton Smith
This is a slim collection of otherwise hard-to-find CAS short stories recently collected and republished by Wildside Press. They don't quite hit the mark established by Smith's Averoigne stories, but they're pleasant enough. The Voyage of King Euvoran seems imitative of Dunsany. The Double Shadow is reminiscent of a Lovecraft story filtered through CAS's exotic fantastical settings rather than HPL's haunted New England. The other four stories are typical CAS exercises in literary decadance, in which plot is less important than the creation of a langorous and exotic atmosphere. The Maze of the Enchanter is atmospheric and disturbing, if a bit predictable to anyone who's read CAS's other tales of self-absorbed and self-indulgent sorcerors. The Willow Landscape is an uncharacteristically gentle story of an unusual enchantment. Not bad, although for those unfamiliar with CAS, Arkham House's collection A Rendezvous in Averoigne is a better place to start.
Recollections in black and white, by Eric Sloane
A slim collection of pen-and-ink drawings of historic buildings, with Sloane's commentary on their significance and his techniques for portraying them. I always enjoy glancing through his work, whether he's describing buildings, or old tools, or any other aspect of American life in days gone by.
Voelker's Pond : a Robert Traver Legacy, by photographer Ed Wargin, with essays by James McCullough
This book was given to me when I left the Queen City of the North. It's largely a collection of color photographs and personal recollections of its namesake, the private fishing camp of John Voelker. Voelker was a prosecutor and judge from the Upper Peninsula who, under the pen-name Robert Traver, wrote tales of courtroom drama such as Anatomy of a Murder and odes to troutfishing such as Trout Madness. His prescription for warding off the pestilential insects of the northern forests may be of particular interest to Fiend: "If you are hardy enough, smoke Italian cigars. They smell like burning peat bog mixed with smoldering Bermuda onions but they're the best damned unlabeled DDT on the market; all mosquitoes in the same township immediately shrivel and zoom to earth. {Fellow fishermen occasionally follow suit.}"
The Eye of the World, by Robert Jordan
I really can't put my finger on exactly why I haven't enjoyed this book. The characters are fairly well-drawn and sympathetic, and unlike some "best-selling" authors, Jordan does write coherent sentences that more-or-less make sense from one chapter to the next. But for some reason I just can't seem to get interested enough in the story to enjoy it.
Sunday, October 02, 2005
The politics of questions and answers
I've mentioned before that I seem to be on the mailing lists of just about every political party in the U.S. Recently, among the stamp-signed photos of Our Leader and the hysterical pleas for money to fight the great menaces of America-Hating Liberalism, Right-Wing Radicalism, Radical Abortionists, Anti-Woman Activists, and so forth, I received yet another political survey form, this time from the Democratic National Committee.
I've seen these things before, and usually chuck them into the trash after briefly glancing over them and chuckling over the blatantly biased phrasing of the question. ("Do you support our President's war against those who seek to destroy American lives and values?" "Do you believe that government should take more of your paycheck in order to support radical left-wing social projects?" "Do you believe that women should be held captive to an outmoded view of male domination?")
Most such surveys are purely push-polls, designed to influence the emotions and opinions of those who receive them. Getting an accurate view of the survey-taker's preexisting views is the last thing on the mind of the people who write them. Instead, they're intended to arouse the True Believers to mail in money and march to the polls to vote the party line on Election Day. That's why they're mailed predominantly to people who have already been pre-selected as likely supporters of the group sponsoring the survey, by virtue of party membership lists or, in my case, probably because they subscribe to a political magazine of a certain type.
I was surprised to notice that the DNC's survey was phrased in relatively nonpartisan terms, and most of the multiple-choice options actually offered reasonably unbiased summaries of the most common arguments for or against the proposal under discussion. For example:
I didn't send the survey in, but I have to have a certain amount of respect for a survey that actually tries to do what surveys are supposed to do, and in the future, I'm more likely to respond to surveys like this one than to ones that demand I choose between "Yes, I support our President! My contribution is enclosed!" and "No, I hate America".
I've mentioned before that I seem to be on the mailing lists of just about every political party in the U.S. Recently, among the stamp-signed photos of Our Leader and the hysterical pleas for money to fight the great menaces of America-Hating Liberalism, Right-Wing Radicalism, Radical Abortionists, Anti-Woman Activists, and so forth, I received yet another political survey form, this time from the Democratic National Committee.
I've seen these things before, and usually chuck them into the trash after briefly glancing over them and chuckling over the blatantly biased phrasing of the question. ("Do you support our President's war against those who seek to destroy American lives and values?" "Do you believe that government should take more of your paycheck in order to support radical left-wing social projects?" "Do you believe that women should be held captive to an outmoded view of male domination?")
Most such surveys are purely push-polls, designed to influence the emotions and opinions of those who receive them. Getting an accurate view of the survey-taker's preexisting views is the last thing on the mind of the people who write them. Instead, they're intended to arouse the True Believers to mail in money and march to the polls to vote the party line on Election Day. That's why they're mailed predominantly to people who have already been pre-selected as likely supporters of the group sponsoring the survey, by virtue of party membership lists or, in my case, probably because they subscribe to a political magazine of a certain type.
I was surprised to notice that the DNC's survey was phrased in relatively nonpartisan terms, and most of the multiple-choice options actually offered reasonably unbiased summaries of the most common arguments for or against the proposal under discussion. For example:
3. Do you support new tax cuts targeted at working families?My conclusion: the Democrats, who have lost a lot of political clout in the last decade or so, are genuinely trying to figure out what voters think and what voters want. While Republicans confidently use their "surveys" to blast propaganda into the ears of their likely voters, the Democrats feel the need to actually figure out what their supporters really think. This could be taken as a sign of political weakness, I suppose, or as evidence of basic confusion about what the Democratic party stands for. It could also be taken as an example of the difference between top-down and bottom-up political organizing that some posters on DailyKos and elsewhere claim to see between the Republican and Democratic organizations.
O Yes, with our economy struggling, working families need a tax break.
O No, additional tax cuts at this time will only worsen the federal deficit.
4. Should the government put a high priority on stopping American manufacturing jobs from being "outsourced" to overseas workers?
O Yes, the manufacturing jobs being lost are essential to our economy.
O No, American consumers benefit from cheaper goods made overseas.
5. Do you support raising the minimum wage from its current level of $5.15 per hour?
O Yes, the minimum wage should be increased to help workers make ends meet.
O No, raising the minimum wage will hurt small businesses an cost jobs.
I didn't send the survey in, but I have to have a certain amount of respect for a survey that actually tries to do what surveys are supposed to do, and in the future, I'm more likely to respond to surveys like this one than to ones that demand I choose between "Yes, I support our President! My contribution is enclosed!" and "No, I hate America".
Recent Reads
Turning on the girls, by Cheryl Benard
Some months back, I read a book titled Moghul Buffet that turned up in the library's stack of unwanted donations. I enjoyed the book's ironically detached narrative voice, a kind of "Dear Reader..." narrative persona that helped coat the brutal sexism of its setting in Pakistan and the murders, deceptions, and betrayals of its plot with just enough satirical distance to help readers get through the story, but not so much as to make light of the sickening reality on which it's based.
Early this year, after reading some positive reviews of a book titled Turning on the girls, I requested an interlibrary loan copy without noticing that it was by the same author. Once I finally realized that I'd seen the author's name before and looked her up in the library catalog, I realized that she was also the author of a nonfiction book about women in Afghanistan that I had glanced at a year or two ago. That's the last time I'll fail to notice her name.
Turning on the girls is another fictional story laced with satire. This time, Benard's targets are closer to home for Western readers. Her scattered targets include militant feminists, smarmy/sensitive New-Age-Guys, old-style male chauvinist pigs, political Utopians of all flavors, and more than anything else the strange, strange world of romance novels, erotica, and other sexual fantasies.
From the blurb on the front flap: "It's 2000something, the world has just been taken over by women, and things are wonderful, or at least they will be just as soon as the new rulers finish fixing things. And here's Lisa, a dedicated young employee of the new government, ready to do her part. Why does she have stacks of pornography, love stories, and romance novels on her desk? Well, that's her job! To come up with politically correct sexual fantasies for women. No more lovesick simpering, no more masochistic daydreams! Women are going to learn to be turned on by healthier, more dignified fantasies -- just as soon as Lisa can come up with some...."
Benard's targets are almost too easy, but she skewers them beautifully. I enjoyed both the comically exaggerated machismo of the male-chauvinist resistance movement and the equally exaggerated dogmatism of the New Order's Ministry of Thought (Department of Values and Fantasies, Subdepartment of Dreams). The well-meaning attempts of the New (feminist) Order to re-educate men are good for a few chuckles, too. But the parts of the book that had me literally doubled up with laughter were our earnest young heroine's efforts to research her assigned subject. Her bewildered reaction to romance novels, and the ludicrous but plausible examples of her research materials that the author helpfully supplies, are worth the price of the book. And that's without even mentioning poor Lisa's puzzled attempt to figure out Anne Rice's "Beauty" books.
Some of the plot hinges are a bit creaky and contrived, especially toward the end of the book, but I enjoyed it thoroughly. Highly recommended. I'll be waiting for Benard's next book.
Turning on the girls, by Cheryl Benard
Some months back, I read a book titled Moghul Buffet that turned up in the library's stack of unwanted donations. I enjoyed the book's ironically detached narrative voice, a kind of "Dear Reader..." narrative persona that helped coat the brutal sexism of its setting in Pakistan and the murders, deceptions, and betrayals of its plot with just enough satirical distance to help readers get through the story, but not so much as to make light of the sickening reality on which it's based.
Early this year, after reading some positive reviews of a book titled Turning on the girls, I requested an interlibrary loan copy without noticing that it was by the same author. Once I finally realized that I'd seen the author's name before and looked her up in the library catalog, I realized that she was also the author of a nonfiction book about women in Afghanistan that I had glanced at a year or two ago. That's the last time I'll fail to notice her name.
Turning on the girls is another fictional story laced with satire. This time, Benard's targets are closer to home for Western readers. Her scattered targets include militant feminists, smarmy/sensitive New-Age-Guys, old-style male chauvinist pigs, political Utopians of all flavors, and more than anything else the strange, strange world of romance novels, erotica, and other sexual fantasies.
From the blurb on the front flap: "It's 2000something, the world has just been taken over by women, and things are wonderful, or at least they will be just as soon as the new rulers finish fixing things. And here's Lisa, a dedicated young employee of the new government, ready to do her part. Why does she have stacks of pornography, love stories, and romance novels on her desk? Well, that's her job! To come up with politically correct sexual fantasies for women. No more lovesick simpering, no more masochistic daydreams! Women are going to learn to be turned on by healthier, more dignified fantasies -- just as soon as Lisa can come up with some...."
Benard's targets are almost too easy, but she skewers them beautifully. I enjoyed both the comically exaggerated machismo of the male-chauvinist resistance movement and the equally exaggerated dogmatism of the New Order's Ministry of Thought (Department of Values and Fantasies, Subdepartment of Dreams). The well-meaning attempts of the New (feminist) Order to re-educate men are good for a few chuckles, too. But the parts of the book that had me literally doubled up with laughter were our earnest young heroine's efforts to research her assigned subject. Her bewildered reaction to romance novels, and the ludicrous but plausible examples of her research materials that the author helpfully supplies, are worth the price of the book. And that's without even mentioning poor Lisa's puzzled attempt to figure out Anne Rice's "Beauty" books.
Some of the plot hinges are a bit creaky and contrived, especially toward the end of the book, but I enjoyed it thoroughly. Highly recommended. I'll be waiting for Benard's next book.
Recent Reads
The Book Shop : a novel, by Penelope Fitzgerald
A kindly, intelligent, book-loving woman in a decaying English town starts a small business. In the process she renovates a derelict building, helps revitalize the local economy, provides jobs for otherwise idle teenagers and self-proclaimed intellectuals, and makes the world of books and ideas accessible to an otherwise isolated population. Naturally, someone with money and political connections is offended, and takes legal and social action to halt this dreadful menace to their ego.
It's a story of hopeful idealism versus pigheaded selfishness backed up by money, social position, and sly legalisms, and it should be required reading for anyone in the US where the Supreme Court's ruling in Kelo v. New London makes such things the law of the land for anyone who is unlucky enough to own a house, business, or any other property coveted by the local government's golfing buddies, "campaign contributors", business partners, or corporate sponsors. (See here for more background on this egregrious sellout of citizens' Constitutional rights by the Court, and what Americans who believe in Constitutional rights are doing about it.)
The Book Shop : a novel, by Penelope Fitzgerald
A kindly, intelligent, book-loving woman in a decaying English town starts a small business. In the process she renovates a derelict building, helps revitalize the local economy, provides jobs for otherwise idle teenagers and self-proclaimed intellectuals, and makes the world of books and ideas accessible to an otherwise isolated population. Naturally, someone with money and political connections is offended, and takes legal and social action to halt this dreadful menace to their ego.
It's a story of hopeful idealism versus pigheaded selfishness backed up by money, social position, and sly legalisms, and it should be required reading for anyone in the US where the Supreme Court's ruling in Kelo v. New London makes such things the law of the land for anyone who is unlucky enough to own a house, business, or any other property coveted by the local government's golfing buddies, "campaign contributors", business partners, or corporate sponsors. (See here for more background on this egregrious sellout of citizens' Constitutional rights by the Court, and what Americans who believe in Constitutional rights are doing about it.)
Recent Reads
The Last Disciple, by Hank Hanegraaff and Sigmund Brouwer
Radio's Bible Answer Man responds to the "Left Behind" phenomenon by writing (or co-writing) a fictional treatment of the Book of Revelations which adheres to a more historically-oriented interpretation than LaHaye and Jenkins. The Beast of John's prophetic vision is identified as the depraved Emperor Nero, and the Tribulation as Rome's persecution of Christians under his deranged rule.
There's plenty of dissension among Biblical scholars about the proper interpretation of Revelations, but the version put forth by Hanegraaff strikes me as far more plausible than LaHaye's and Jenkins' projections of John's visions into the present day and the future. Hanegraaff acknowledges the difficulty of interpreting mystical visions both in an explanatory epilogue and through a character in the story, a former Jewish rabbi, who notes while analyzing John's cryptic writings that a skillful user of symbols can make them encompass multiple meanings, and use them to conceal as well as reveal meaning. Hanegraaff's epilogue states that his purpose is not to "call into question the orthodoxy of the Left Behind authors", but this doesn't keep him from quoting a passage from one of their books, in which LaHaye's and Jenkins' version of AntiChrist performs a miracle by raising himself from the dead, and arguing that this literal, rather than symbolic, interpretation of certain passages in Revelations violates several basic Christian principles:
The Last Disciple, by Hank Hanegraaff and Sigmund Brouwer
Radio's Bible Answer Man responds to the "Left Behind" phenomenon by writing (or co-writing) a fictional treatment of the Book of Revelations which adheres to a more historically-oriented interpretation than LaHaye and Jenkins. The Beast of John's prophetic vision is identified as the depraved Emperor Nero, and the Tribulation as Rome's persecution of Christians under his deranged rule.
There's plenty of dissension among Biblical scholars about the proper interpretation of Revelations, but the version put forth by Hanegraaff strikes me as far more plausible than LaHaye's and Jenkins' projections of John's visions into the present day and the future. Hanegraaff acknowledges the difficulty of interpreting mystical visions both in an explanatory epilogue and through a character in the story, a former Jewish rabbi, who notes while analyzing John's cryptic writings that a skillful user of symbols can make them encompass multiple meanings, and use them to conceal as well as reveal meaning. Hanegraaff's epilogue states that his purpose is not to "call into question the orthodoxy of the Left Behind authors", but this doesn't keep him from quoting a passage from one of their books, in which LaHaye's and Jenkins' version of AntiChrist performs a miracle by raising himself from the dead, and arguing that this literal, rather than symbolic, interpretation of certain passages in Revelations violates several basic Christian principles:
In a Christian worldview, only God has the power to raise the dead. If AntiChrist could 'raise [himself] from the dead' and control 'the earth and sky', Christianity would lose the basis for believing that Christ's resurrection vindicates His claim to deity. Further, if Satan possesses the creative power of God, this would subvert the post-resurrection appearances of Christ in that Satan could have masqueraded as the resurrecting Christ. Moreover, the notion that Satan can perform acts that are indistinguishable from genuine miracles suggests a dualistic worldview in which God and Satan are equal powers competing for dominance...." (p. 394)Unfortunately, the plot of the story in which these ideas are presented is both predictable and plodding, the prose is unspectacular, and few of the characters are more than stereotypes. Still, the book is a useful corrective for wild theorizing of the Left-Behind variety, and it's moderately entertaining as historical fiction set in the turbulent decline of the Roman Empire and the surreptitious growth of the early Christian church.
Recent Reads
Married to a Stranger, by Nahid Rachlin
I read this because Rachlin wrote a blurb for a friend's book, and because that friend seemed to have regarded her work highly enough to include her work in an anthology and in her writing classes.
I can see some reasons why Rachlin's novel would have appealed to S. The setting in pre-revolutionary Iran and the pervasive concern with family relationships and women's status in marriage and in the society as a whole also appear in S.'s work.
However, I never really felt the kind of direct connection that I felt with S.'s descriptions of similar situations, or with graphic novels such as Maryam Satrapi's Persepolis. The story Rachlin tells is interesting enough, but the prose and the characters' emotions, with one or two exceptions, seem rather flat. Perhaps this is deliberate on the author's part, an attempt to replicate the psychological repression that comes from living in a society such as she describes.
It may also be that my lack of personal experience with the milieu of the story makes me partially deaf to the story's emotional tones and undertones. Perhaps this is further proof that one can never quite fully understand how another person perceives the world, no matter how much one wishes to do so.
Married to a Stranger, by Nahid Rachlin
I read this because Rachlin wrote a blurb for a friend's book, and because that friend seemed to have regarded her work highly enough to include her work in an anthology and in her writing classes.
I can see some reasons why Rachlin's novel would have appealed to S. The setting in pre-revolutionary Iran and the pervasive concern with family relationships and women's status in marriage and in the society as a whole also appear in S.'s work.
However, I never really felt the kind of direct connection that I felt with S.'s descriptions of similar situations, or with graphic novels such as Maryam Satrapi's Persepolis. The story Rachlin tells is interesting enough, but the prose and the characters' emotions, with one or two exceptions, seem rather flat. Perhaps this is deliberate on the author's part, an attempt to replicate the psychological repression that comes from living in a society such as she describes.
It may also be that my lack of personal experience with the milieu of the story makes me partially deaf to the story's emotional tones and undertones. Perhaps this is further proof that one can never quite fully understand how another person perceives the world, no matter how much one wishes to do so.
Recent Reads
The King's English : Adventures of an Independent Bookseller
Betsy Burton, proprietor of the King's English bookstore in Salt Lake City, describes the trials and tribulations that she's experienced in the story's twenty-plus years of operation. Along the way, she describes what it's like to organize booksignings, dinners and other events for authors ranging from the sublime (Isabel Allende seems to be a particular favorite) to the cranky (not named, but described in excruciating detail) to the eccentric (John Mortimer and his ubiquitous bottles of champagne) to the controversial (Jon Krakauer, whose book Under the Banner of Heaven was unpopular enough with Mormon fundamentalists that many local venues were unwilling to host them, and Burton was obliged to supply security staff.) Her accounts of censorship issues in the local schools, and of her observation of suspected "vice squad" cops suspiciously prowling the shelves of the bookstore looking for something to object to, are both disturbing and funny. (She makes a point of saying that it's not the fault of the Mormons, or at least not entirely so.) Her firsthand reportage of the ongoing war between independent bookstores and big-box corporate retailers, and the strategies that they use against each other, are invaluable. I particularly enjoyed her account of how TKE dealt with the Harry Potter frenzy after being stiffed by a book wholesaler who promised to deliver the books by the Big Day and then refused to do so. Keep the customer satisfied...
The King's English : Adventures of an Independent Bookseller
Betsy Burton, proprietor of the King's English bookstore in Salt Lake City, describes the trials and tribulations that she's experienced in the story's twenty-plus years of operation. Along the way, she describes what it's like to organize booksignings, dinners and other events for authors ranging from the sublime (Isabel Allende seems to be a particular favorite) to the cranky (not named, but described in excruciating detail) to the eccentric (John Mortimer and his ubiquitous bottles of champagne) to the controversial (Jon Krakauer, whose book Under the Banner of Heaven was unpopular enough with Mormon fundamentalists that many local venues were unwilling to host them, and Burton was obliged to supply security staff.) Her accounts of censorship issues in the local schools, and of her observation of suspected "vice squad" cops suspiciously prowling the shelves of the bookstore looking for something to object to, are both disturbing and funny. (She makes a point of saying that it's not the fault of the Mormons, or at least not entirely so.) Her firsthand reportage of the ongoing war between independent bookstores and big-box corporate retailers, and the strategies that they use against each other, are invaluable. I particularly enjoyed her account of how TKE dealt with the Harry Potter frenzy after being stiffed by a book wholesaler who promised to deliver the books by the Big Day and then refused to do so. Keep the customer satisfied...
Thursday, September 22, 2005
For Sale: one ore dock, slightly used
My Beautiful City On The Bay contemplates what to do with the monolithic, 800-foot-long solid concrete ore dock that has sat unused in the Lower Harbor since the Soo Line railroad stopped loading ore into lake freighters twenty-five years ago. Developers propose "dividing the dock into three floors, with the top two floors renovated into about 50 apartments and the bottom floor retained for parking." I'm not sure exactly how they propose to turn the ore bins into apartments, but it certainly would be interesting to see their architectural drawings. The loading chutes might be a convenient way to get rid of unwelcome guests.
Note to Fiend: it's sort of an island....
My Beautiful City On The Bay contemplates what to do with the monolithic, 800-foot-long solid concrete ore dock that has sat unused in the Lower Harbor since the Soo Line railroad stopped loading ore into lake freighters twenty-five years ago. Developers propose "dividing the dock into three floors, with the top two floors renovated into about 50 apartments and the bottom floor retained for parking." I'm not sure exactly how they propose to turn the ore bins into apartments, but it certainly would be interesting to see their architectural drawings. The loading chutes might be a convenient way to get rid of unwelcome guests.
Note to Fiend: it's sort of an island....
Monday, September 19, 2005
A superior view, indeed.
From the Yooperrails listserv, a link to the website of Superior View, a business in Da Yoop that has an incredible collection of old photographs of the region and makes them available to anyone who's interested. A good-quality, "suitable-for-framing" reproduction will cost a few bucks, but their subject-categorized image index includes reduced-size images that make for interesting browsing.
A reminder, I suppose, that every once in a while the free market of eclectic individuals throws up a solution to a problem that the public sector is unable or unwilling to address.
From the Yooperrails listserv, a link to the website of Superior View, a business in Da Yoop that has an incredible collection of old photographs of the region and makes them available to anyone who's interested. A good-quality, "suitable-for-framing" reproduction will cost a few bucks, but their subject-categorized image index includes reduced-size images that make for interesting browsing.
A reminder, I suppose, that every once in a while the free market of eclectic individuals throws up a solution to a problem that the public sector is unable or unwilling to address.
Friday, September 16, 2005
The Oxford American : The Southern Music Issue
The Oxford American's 2005 Southern Music issue and its accompanying CD arrived a while back. For me, Sammi Smith's whisky-voiced rendition of "This Room for Rent" is the highlight of the collection. "Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb", from the Pilgrim Travelers, is an entertaining piece of Cold War evangelical wackiness, and I was pleased to note that the insightful profile that accompanies it is by Bob Darden, editor of the Wittenburg Door, sometime gospel-music reporter for Billboard, and one of my former professors at Thee University. Zora Neale Hurston singing "Crow Dance", a black folk song with African roots, is of some historical interest, and there's a smattering of good tracks from big names, including a live recording of Elvis Presley's first public performance of "Suspicious Minds", to go along with the usual (for the OA) selection of forgotten bluesmen and eccentric, obscure garage bands and lounge singers.
It's pleasant to listen to, but for some reason doesn't have quite the same eccentric kick as previous iterations. None of the tracks send chills down my spine like the first time I heard, say, King Pleasure's "Swan Blues" or Esther Williams' version of "No Headstone on my Grave" from the 2003 collection, or Wilco and Billy Bragg's "When the Roses Bloom Again", Dolly Parton's "Silver Dagger", or Todd Snider's "Back to the Crossroads" from the 2000 collection. Nor do any of them make me laugh like Earl Scruggs and Billy Bob Thornton's bizarre hick-hop version of "Ring of Fire" from the 2002 version, although the DeZurik Sisters' intricately playful "Arizona Yodeler" comes close. Perhaps I'm becoming jaded.
Don't let me discourage you if you have the slightest curiousity about southern music. It's still better than just about anything you're likely to hear on the radio, it's pleasantly eclectic, and the accompanying articles about the musicians are entertaining and informative. And the OA, which is currently on its third life after relocating to Little Rock, Arkansas, could use the money. (Other online reactions to the music issue, mostly positive, can be found here.)
The Oxford American's 2005 Southern Music issue and its accompanying CD arrived a while back. For me, Sammi Smith's whisky-voiced rendition of "This Room for Rent" is the highlight of the collection. "Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb", from the Pilgrim Travelers, is an entertaining piece of Cold War evangelical wackiness, and I was pleased to note that the insightful profile that accompanies it is by Bob Darden, editor of the Wittenburg Door, sometime gospel-music reporter for Billboard, and one of my former professors at Thee University. Zora Neale Hurston singing "Crow Dance", a black folk song with African roots, is of some historical interest, and there's a smattering of good tracks from big names, including a live recording of Elvis Presley's first public performance of "Suspicious Minds", to go along with the usual (for the OA) selection of forgotten bluesmen and eccentric, obscure garage bands and lounge singers.
It's pleasant to listen to, but for some reason doesn't have quite the same eccentric kick as previous iterations. None of the tracks send chills down my spine like the first time I heard, say, King Pleasure's "Swan Blues" or Esther Williams' version of "No Headstone on my Grave" from the 2003 collection, or Wilco and Billy Bragg's "When the Roses Bloom Again", Dolly Parton's "Silver Dagger", or Todd Snider's "Back to the Crossroads" from the 2000 collection. Nor do any of them make me laugh like Earl Scruggs and Billy Bob Thornton's bizarre hick-hop version of "Ring of Fire" from the 2002 version, although the DeZurik Sisters' intricately playful "Arizona Yodeler" comes close. Perhaps I'm becoming jaded.
Don't let me discourage you if you have the slightest curiousity about southern music. It's still better than just about anything you're likely to hear on the radio, it's pleasantly eclectic, and the accompanying articles about the musicians are entertaining and informative. And the OA, which is currently on its third life after relocating to Little Rock, Arkansas, could use the money. (Other online reactions to the music issue, mostly positive, can be found here.)
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Recent reads: The Johnstown Flood, by David G. McCullough
The events described here are almost eerily reminiscent of the recent situation in New Orleans, except that they happened over a century ago. Proof of the Eternal Return of human negligence, perhaps?
Engineers had stated for years that the dam at Lake Conemaugh, 15 miles upstream from the steel-milling town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, was in need of competent repair. Those with control over the dam insisted otherwise, and performed such repairs as they did see fit to perform in a cheap, desultory and incompetent fashion. The rains came. The dam failed. And on May 31, 1889, a city died.
Some excerpts from McCullough's description of the aftermath of the flood:
The events described here are almost eerily reminiscent of the recent situation in New Orleans, except that they happened over a century ago. Proof of the Eternal Return of human negligence, perhaps?
Engineers had stated for years that the dam at Lake Conemaugh, 15 miles upstream from the steel-milling town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, was in need of competent repair. Those with control over the dam insisted otherwise, and performed such repairs as they did see fit to perform in a cheap, desultory and incompetent fashion. The rains came. The dam failed. And on May 31, 1889, a city died.
Some excerpts from McCullough's description of the aftermath of the flood:
Along the Frankstown Road on Green Hill some 3000 people had gathered. On the rim of Prospect Hill and on the slopes above Kernville, Woodvale, and Cambria City the crowds were nearly as big. Chilled to the bone, hungry, many of them badly injured, hundreds without shoes or only partly clothed against the biting air, they huddled under dripping trees or stood along narrow footpaths ankle-deep in mud, straining their eyes and trying hard to understand.A compelling story told by a skillful storyteller, with enough detail that a reader can understand how the disaster occurred, what created the danger in the first place, and how people worked together to salvage their lives afterward. Highly recommended.
Spread out before them was a vast sea of muck and rubble and filthy water. Nearly all of Johnstown had been destroyed.... (p. 184)
The problems to be faced immediately were enormous and critical. People were ravenously hungry, most everyone having gone twenty-four hours or more without anything to eat, and now there was virtually no food anywhere.... Moreover, there was no water that anyone felt was safe to drink.... There was almost no dry clothing to be had and no medicines.... (p. 188
But by noon things had begun to happen, if only in a small way. Rafts had been built to cross the rivers and to get over to those buildings still surrounded by water. People on the hillsides whose houses had escaped harm and farmers from miles out in the country began coming into town bringing food, water, and clothing.... (p. 188)
That afternoon, at three, a meeting was called in Johnstown to decide what ought to be done there. Every able-bodied man who could be rounded up crowded into the Adams Street schoolhouse. The first step, it was quickly agreed, was to elect a 'dictator'.... (p. 189)
[Arthur J.] Moxham was a fortunate choice. He took charge immediately and organized citizens' committees to look after the most pressing and obvious problems. Morgues were to be established under the direction of the Reverends Beale and Chapman. Charles Zimmerman and Tom Johnson were put in charge of removing dead animals and wreckage....
Dr. Lowman and Dr. Matthews were responsible for establishing temporary hospitals. Captain Hart was to organize a police force. There was a committee for supplies and one for finance....
Captain Hart deputized some seventy-five men, most of whom were employees ofthe Johnson Company sent down from Moxham. They cut tin stars from tomato cans found in the wreckage....
As dusk gathered, the search for the living as well as the dead went on in earnest." (pp. 190-191))
Defining moments
This editorial from the Chronicle of Higher Ed. caught my attention today.
For those who don't have subscription access, I'll summarize. The author, a history professor, asked his students to identify the most important event in their fathers' life. Some listed Big Historical Events like the Vietnam War, the civil-rights movement, etc., that are discussed in typical American history textbooks. Others listed arrival in the U.S. as an immigrant, or some significant event overseas that influenced their fathers' decision to emigrate. But the majority identified, instead, some purely personal event:
For my father, for example, the decision to finish his college education at a state university with a strong engineering program, and his later decision to go to law school after he became dissatisfied with engineering as a profession, seem to have had the most far-reaching effects in determining the course of his life. It got him off the farm and out of the Ozarks and sent him on a peripatetic career, living as far east as Pennsylvania, as far south as Texas, and taking occasional trips to countries around the world.
For my grandfather B., it's a little harder to tell. Perhaps it was his fathers' death of pneumonia when he was twelve years old, leaving him as the primary male support for his mother and his younger siblings. Or perhaps it was a genuine text-book Historical Event, the Great Depression that hit shortly thereafter, making life on a hardscrabble hill farm even more difficult than it was before. Or perhaps it was his stint in the CCC camp where he quickly became a gang foreman due to his hard-work ethic, his stubbornness, his mechanical aptitude, and the burly build that made potential troublemakers reluctant to challenge him. Perhaps the vocational course in sheet-metal working that he took on the eve of World War II, or the job that he was offered working the aluminum-shaping drophammers in an East Coast bomber plant during the war. Again we see economic considerations directing a life: that job took him out of the Ozarks and away from the hardscrabble farm country. Even today he talks about the long, long drive from Baltimore back to Kansas City, where he spent the rest of his working life in an oil refinery before retiring back to the small town in the Ozarks that he had never quite forgotten.
For my female relatives, the choice of spouse seems to have been the most dominant influence on their subsequent lives -- or at least the most obvious one that is apparent to me. (I'm not necessarily privy to all their personal experiences!) Of course, this is largely due to the fact that, whether by their own inclination or due to the prevailing social customs of the time, they had no long-term careers of their own and, to a large degree, followed their husbands and their husbands' jobs around the country.
As for myself -- well, I'm not sure that's quite obvious, even to me. Every move from one place to another, from infancy to the present, could be looked at as a critical event, since it introduced me to new people and places. Every new acquaintance who has shaped my thinking and affected me in both good ways and bad, The loss of freinds who had, over the years, become like a distant but intimate part of myself. The books and movies, etc., that have shaped my thinking. Getting a masters' degree in library science. Every change of job, including the one that took me from Texas to Michigan.
Big news events like the September 11 attacks and the war in Iraq have affected my own life mainly in indirect ways and through the way that observing them has affected my view of the world. I have been fortunate in not having any freinds or relatives who were directly affected by these events. My closest brush with a major catastrophe was a recent interview for a job at a university which was devastated by Hurricane Katrina shortly afterward. I didn't get the job -- thank God for small favors, eh?
Finding out about This Thing Called Blog must also rank somewhere among the defining events of my recent life. Heck, even a long-ago, casual decision to post a comment on the blog of somebody who lived in an entirely different country could have momentous effects....
This editorial from the Chronicle of Higher Ed. caught my attention today.
For those who don't have subscription access, I'll summarize. The author, a history professor, asked his students to identify the most important event in their fathers' life. Some listed Big Historical Events like the Vietnam War, the civil-rights movement, etc., that are discussed in typical American history textbooks. Others listed arrival in the U.S. as an immigrant, or some significant event overseas that influenced their fathers' decision to emigrate. But the majority identified, instead, some purely personal event:
In some ways the even greater challenge to the conventions of the field came from the majority (55 percent) of students who listed private matters as most decisive. A few of the answers were self-referential, whether flippant ("having me"), conventionally sentimental ("meeting between him and my mom"), or the opposite ("father not a part of my life"). More responses singled out death -- of parent, sibling, friend -- as a historical influence on their father. (One student elaborated, "death of his mother -- my dad has nine siblings, so he had to help out because they live in Poland and he lives here.") Culinary schooling in Rhode Island, admission to the Chicago Fire Department, entering the Marines, quitting drinking, getting shot, imprisonment in Texas, retirement, divorce and single parenthood, college graduation at age 50, and health and money problems rounded out a long list of life-altering events.Before even reaching this passage, I had come to the conclusion that this was true of most of my relatives. Although I don't pretend to be able to identify *the* most important event of my father's or grandfathers' lives, I can make pretty good guesses at the two or three most likely possibilities, even after leaving aside the obvious answers like being born healthy, meeting their future spouse, or the general childhood environment that helped form their personality.
For my father, for example, the decision to finish his college education at a state university with a strong engineering program, and his later decision to go to law school after he became dissatisfied with engineering as a profession, seem to have had the most far-reaching effects in determining the course of his life. It got him off the farm and out of the Ozarks and sent him on a peripatetic career, living as far east as Pennsylvania, as far south as Texas, and taking occasional trips to countries around the world.
For my grandfather B., it's a little harder to tell. Perhaps it was his fathers' death of pneumonia when he was twelve years old, leaving him as the primary male support for his mother and his younger siblings. Or perhaps it was a genuine text-book Historical Event, the Great Depression that hit shortly thereafter, making life on a hardscrabble hill farm even more difficult than it was before. Or perhaps it was his stint in the CCC camp where he quickly became a gang foreman due to his hard-work ethic, his stubbornness, his mechanical aptitude, and the burly build that made potential troublemakers reluctant to challenge him. Perhaps the vocational course in sheet-metal working that he took on the eve of World War II, or the job that he was offered working the aluminum-shaping drophammers in an East Coast bomber plant during the war. Again we see economic considerations directing a life: that job took him out of the Ozarks and away from the hardscrabble farm country. Even today he talks about the long, long drive from Baltimore back to Kansas City, where he spent the rest of his working life in an oil refinery before retiring back to the small town in the Ozarks that he had never quite forgotten.
For my female relatives, the choice of spouse seems to have been the most dominant influence on their subsequent lives -- or at least the most obvious one that is apparent to me. (I'm not necessarily privy to all their personal experiences!) Of course, this is largely due to the fact that, whether by their own inclination or due to the prevailing social customs of the time, they had no long-term careers of their own and, to a large degree, followed their husbands and their husbands' jobs around the country.
As for myself -- well, I'm not sure that's quite obvious, even to me. Every move from one place to another, from infancy to the present, could be looked at as a critical event, since it introduced me to new people and places. Every new acquaintance who has shaped my thinking and affected me in both good ways and bad, The loss of freinds who had, over the years, become like a distant but intimate part of myself. The books and movies, etc., that have shaped my thinking. Getting a masters' degree in library science. Every change of job, including the one that took me from Texas to Michigan.
Big news events like the September 11 attacks and the war in Iraq have affected my own life mainly in indirect ways and through the way that observing them has affected my view of the world. I have been fortunate in not having any freinds or relatives who were directly affected by these events. My closest brush with a major catastrophe was a recent interview for a job at a university which was devastated by Hurricane Katrina shortly afterward. I didn't get the job -- thank God for small favors, eh?
Finding out about This Thing Called Blog must also rank somewhere among the defining events of my recent life. Heck, even a long-ago, casual decision to post a comment on the blog of somebody who lived in an entirely different country could have momentous effects....
Friday, September 09, 2005
The Nick Bantock-ization of Sherlock Holmes
Courtesy of "Professor Pangaea" by way of the FictionMags listserv: Sub Rosa, A Correspondence by Wire.
Courtesy of "Professor Pangaea" by way of the FictionMags listserv: Sub Rosa, A Correspondence by Wire.
Yarns, ripping and otherwise
After Carlos mentioned the DVD release of Ripping Yarns on his blog a while back, I felt a strange, uncanny compulsion to get my own copy. I remember seeing episodes from this series on the dorm TV while doing laundry years ago at Thee U. -- that is, when there wasn't a mob of frat guys hanging around and insisting on watching MTV's Top Ten or a football game instead. I can't help but wonder whether it's really as funny as it seemed then. Will it be as appealing when I can watch it at my leisure, instead of having to catch precarious and fragmentary glimpses in between trips to the washer and dryer?
Until then, there's Tales From the Vault, the Library of Canada's tribute to Canadian adventure yarns, to tantalize a taste for delicious pulpy goodness.
After Carlos mentioned the DVD release of Ripping Yarns on his blog a while back, I felt a strange, uncanny compulsion to get my own copy. I remember seeing episodes from this series on the dorm TV while doing laundry years ago at Thee U. -- that is, when there wasn't a mob of frat guys hanging around and insisting on watching MTV's Top Ten or a football game instead. I can't help but wonder whether it's really as funny as it seemed then. Will it be as appealing when I can watch it at my leisure, instead of having to catch precarious and fragmentary glimpses in between trips to the washer and dryer?
Until then, there's Tales From the Vault, the Library of Canada's tribute to Canadian adventure yarns, to tantalize a taste for delicious pulpy goodness.
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