A complete inversion of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, Mat Johnson’s Pym is a brilliant satire of race relations iA complete inversion of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, Mat Johnson’s Pym is a brilliant satire of race relations in America from a black perspective, one that’s embedded in a creative, fantastical tale, picking up on the enigmatic ending to Poe’s novel. Here it’s not a group of white explorers going to Antarctica and discovering a secret island of black “savages� who betray them, it’s a group of black explorers who follow in their footsteps and discover an albino race of yeti-like creatures who enslave them. While that may sound heavy, it’s really not � the story is playful, there is a lot of humor, and Mat Johnson also touches on other things, like the main character’s failed relationship with his ex-wife.
Just as America loves to think about itself in an idealized way, in this story there is a painter of saccharine landscapes, likely a stand-in for Thomas Kinkade, who has built a giant, idyllic dome down in Antarctica. It’s meant to be self-sustaining but we find out they run it on gas and don’t think of turning the temperature down from 72. It’s a refuge for the explorers but we soon see they’re second-class citizens in a sharecropper type of arrangement, and never completely out of danger. I thought it was a pretty clever metaphor for America, and also allowed for drama that would make a pretty good movie someday.
Throughout the book Johnson’s writing is scholarly, sharp as a tack, and there are no punches pulled in his satire. He explores what it means to be black, “the fact that our ethnic group is the product of a conspiracy theory,� and the nuances of mixed heritage, often skewering people in his own community along the way. Aside from analyzing Poe’s story for context (even including a lengthy excerpt in the appendix), I loved his literary references to black authors, including various slave narratives but also Frank J. Webb’s The Garies and Their Friends, on black experiences with racism in the north. It’s a very satisfying read, one that serves as a rejoinder to a text filled with racist overtones from an American literary giant nearly two centuries later, all of which is still relevant today.
Quotes: On representation in literature: “I like Poe, I like Melville, I like Hemingway, but what I like the most about the great literature created by the Americans of European descent is the Africanist presence within it. I like looking for myself in the whitest of pages. I like finding evidence of myself there, after being told my footprints did not exist on that sand. I think the work of the great white writers is important, but I think it’s most important when it’s negotiating me and my people, because I am as arrogant and selfish a reader as any other.�
On white people: “That is how they stay so white: by refusing to accept blemish or history. Whiteness isn’t about being something, it is about being no thing, nothing, an erasure. Covering over the truth with layers of blank reality just as the snowstorm was now covering our tent, whipping away all traces of our existence from this pristine landscape.�
And this one: “My cousin felt that a white liberal was a Caucasian who said to himself or herself every day, ‘Don’t hate niggers. Don’t hate niggers.� And the rest of white America’s racial perspective was ‘Don’t let the niggers hear you say ‘nigger� out loud.’�...more
In this book from Olga Tokarczuk, set in a mountain sanitorium in 1913 reminiscent of Thomas Mann’s , what stands out to me is the mirror she drew betIn this book from Olga Tokarczuk, set in a mountain sanitorium in 1913 reminiscent of Thomas Mann’s , what stands out to me is the mirror she drew between physical decay (via consumption, or tuberculosis) and mental decay (misogyny, and seeing the world in rigid, binary ways).
The belief that there is more to life than what we usually see is a theme explored in several ways, through hidden forces in nature revealed by those who can divine them, like the 16th century Flemish painter Herri met de Bles, or thought experiments of humans being akin to “flat landers,� fundamentally unable to perceive beyond two dimensions. Perhaps most importantly is that people are also more complicated than simple binary, heterosexual norms, something explored gradually and very subtly in the main character.
I loved those aspects of the book, and the various topical references to the world at this time, as well as various bits of Polish history sprinkled in lightly, e.g. a brief quote from Mickiewicz’s Pan Tadeusz, and mentions of the short-lived Third of May Constitution of 1791 as well as various partitions of Poland.
What stopped me from fully loving the book was that it didn’t quite deliver on the supernatural horror front � it was too much of a slow burn for my taste there, with quite a bit of the book devoted to the patients carrying on in conversation fueled by a rather demonic mushroom liqueur, schwämerei. That of course delivers the ridiculously toxic views against women (that Tokarczuk cleverly shows us in the author’s note at the end are culled from a wide variety of real life historical and literary figures), but it sacrificed elements of the horror story, which often felt like they were left dangling. And then when the climax does come, it seemed rather obvious, and less powerful as a result.
Quotes: On binary thinking: “A sense of inferiority affects one’s whole life, especially one’s thinking. Did you know that? Because we lack confidence, we think up a very stable rigid system to keep us upright. To simplify what seems to us to be unnecessary complication. And the greatest simplification is black-and-white thinking, based on simple antitheses. Do you understand what I’m saying? The mind establishes for itself a set of acute opposites � black and white, day and night, up and down, man and woman � and they determine our entire perception. There’s nothing in the middle. Seen like that, the world is far simpler, it’s easy to navigate between these poles, it’s easy to establish rules of conduct, and it’s particularly easy to judge others, often reserving the luxury of obscurity for oneself. � This protects from reality, which is built up of a multitude of very subtle shades. If anyone thinks the world is a set of stark opposites, he is sick. I know what I’m saying. It’s a powerful dysfunction.� “But what is the world like?� “Blurred, out of focus, flickering, now like this, now like that, depending on one’s point of view.�
On democracy: “Democracy, my dear friend, does better within polytheistic systems,� said Herr August. � “Because polytheism prepares our minds to look at the world as being diversified, full of different energies that coexist. Monotheism is more suited to feudalism because of its hierarchical structures of superior and inferior beings.�
On hypocrisy and conformity: “Every society has two pillars of activity: hypocrisy and conformism,� said Dr. Semperweiss. � “So hypocrisy always cites high-flown ideas that build a community. One should believe in them and show that one believes in them, but at base nobody takes those ideas entirely seriously. They are for other, and should be in force for them. Whereas conformism is a mode of moving about within this imaginary world that tells us to ignore everything that sticks out and doesn’t fit. And forgetfulness serves this purpose.�
On our inner worlds: “All these matters absorbed his mind, drawing the world inside, into the large, chaotic space that each of us carries within like an invisible piece of luggage that we drag after us all our lives, without knowing why. Our true self.�
On modern art: “That is how art thinks nowadays,� began Thilo. “It holds that a depicted object is only our mental projection of it, what know about the object, whereas in fact we have no access to what it really looks like or what it actually is. In other words, even traditional representation art creates objects rather than rendering their truth in reality. By doing so, it closes our minds instead of opening them.� �. “But modern, progressive art, the twentieth-century kind, has far greater ambitions. It wants to go beyond these limitations, to stage a revolution in perception, it wants to see things in a new way, from many viewpoints simultaneously, even ones that seem impossible. Cubism, futurism.�
On thoughts and meaning: “…he might certainly have noticed how thoughts arise and what they are like � they are wisps of sensations carried by time like gossamer, moved by the wind, trails of tiny reactions that arrange themselves into random sequences eager for meaning. But their nature is volatile and impermanent, they appear and disappear, leaving behind an impression that something really did happen and that we took part in it. And that what we are stuck inside is stable and certain. That it exists.�...more
A novel from Asako Yuzuki that is “about food and murder� that had its moments and wasn’t a bad read, but which fell a little short in both categoriesA novel from Asako Yuzuki that is “about food and murder� that had its moments and wasn’t a bad read, but which fell a little short in both categories. I certainly appreciated the bits of feminism and the perspective of women trying to enjoy the pleasures of life, be they food (butter!) or sex, but constantly subjected to the male gaze and judgment. These included references to an era in Japan when high school girls were sexual commodities, when walking around Shibuyo in a school uniform would result in the open ogling of middle aged men who would hold up a “certain number of fingers to indicate the price they’d be willing to pay.� There was also an interesting commonality in the reporter and the suspected murder, amplified by the latter’s manipulation, but also a big difference in their views of being a “traditional� woman, consciously not surpassing the men around them, vs. having a career. I also liked the little glimpses into Japanese culture, just one example of which was the term otaku (a person with an all-consuming obsession, like gaming, to the detriment of their social skills).
Unfortunately, the “mystery� completely fizzled for me, and the food aspect that climaxed with a turkey dinner never really had me salivating, though I will have to try adding dabs of cold butter and a bit of soy sauce to rice. About halfway in there was a twist with the main character’s friend, who was delightfully a bit of a wildcard, but it didn’t go anywhere interesting from there. Similarly, there are all sorts of hints about lesbian attraction dropped in throughout the book, but they are never really expanded on or explored. Often repetitive and too long, this felt like it could have used editing down. As this was a British translation, you’ll also run across occasional Britishisms, e.g. cladding, tannoy, perspex, hob, and revising for an exam.
Quotes: On anime: “So much was demanded of the fourteen-year-old heroine: she had to be cute, innocent, strong, obedient, hard-working, and sexy. If this was all you watched, it stood to reason a real woman was going to seem difficult to handle and more trouble than she was worth.�
On being a wife and mother: “Yet I couldn’t rid myself of the sense that if I stopped moving, the merry-go-round called our family would simply cease to rotate. If I stopped moving, then I wouldn’t be loved. And if I was the one moving, then I had no proof that I was loved. What did it mean to be loved, in any case? Was it to be needed? Why, then, when I was helping people in this way, did I feel this hollow and miserable?�
And this one: “The quickest way for a modern Japanese woman to gain the love of a man is to become corpse-like. The kind of men who want those women are dead themselves. Indeed, it’s because they’re dead that they’re so terrified of anyone with a sense of life about them.�...more
A historical dramatization that essentially takes place all on a single fateful day, November 8, 1519, when the Spanish, led by Cortes, were invited iA historical dramatization that essentially takes place all on a single fateful day, November 8, 1519, when the Spanish, led by Cortes, were invited into the island city of Tenochtitlan by Moctezuma. With chapter titles like “Before the Nap,� “Moctezuma’s Nap,� etc, I have to say, there were times when I felt like I would have preferred a narrative that covered more of the Spanish conquest, despite the glimpses we got into the broader context through flashbacks and flashforwards (including one to Enrigue writing the book). On the other hand, it immersed me into the world of the Colhua and Mexica natives (who would come to be called Aztecs by English historians in the 19th century “who really had no clue�), their extraordinary city of Tenochtitlan, and the culture clash with the greedy, brutal Spaniards. This feels like a must read to anyone interested in this period of history, especially as the perspective is shifted and Enrigue is so balanced in his account.
There is certainly violence here, and we see both the cruelty of the natives� human sacrifices, as well as the cruelty of the conquistadors� massacres, an example of the latter of which is recounted with an interspersed prayer to Jesus Christ, the hypocrisy of which can’t be clearer. Enrigue exercises masterful restraint, however, and I loved all of the bits of historical detail he got in here. The Colhua’s use of hallucinogenic mushrooms because they wished to catch glimpses of the ethereal gods they believed roamed the world, and their overuse by Moctezuma. To see horses for the first time and be mesmerized by them. To use braziers to light rooms because candles had not been invented in this part of the world. To see “shit as a treasure� in inland farming regions, where absent cow and sheep, human feces was used diligently as fertilizer. And so on.
Meanwhile, the Spaniards had no grand plan, described in one place as “No one had any thought then of reaching Tenoxtitlan, but they really had no clear idea about anything. � They were making things up as they went along, with extraordinary results.� It’s a little confusing at times, but Enrigue effectively makes us feel the politics of other city states in the region, the fracturing of which was exploited. We also get little details like needing to use a dagger to cut toenails, and the Spaniards reeking to high heaven, resulting in the Colhua approaching them with flowers held to their noses. Even the double translation required, from Nahuatl to Mayan, then Mayan to Spanish (Castilian) to communicate reveals just how jarring this interaction was, something hard to fathom today.
It's an intelligent, fantastic read, and the only thing I really didn’t care for was the scene with Malintzin (La Malinche), the translator who would have a child by Cortes, recovering from her sodomization by him and passing gas in the tub, even though it was brief and amplified the sense of what Cortes was doing to all of these people. On the other hand, in her murmured line “Just wait, son of a bitch, just wait,� we get a nice bit of foreshadowing to the cathartic finale. If only this was how it turned out, if only this had been just the beginning of a unified, strong response to the invasion. It’s fascinating to think about.
A few quotes, the first, on European behavior in the New World: “Things happened to people when they got to the Indies, anyway. The prospect of owning human souls without any accountability brought out the dark side in some: they set their dogs on their Tainos for the slightest fault, watching with glee as they were devoured. Others, given their own room and bed in the Indies for perhaps the first time in their lives, embarked on erotic journeys that in Extremadura would have led to beatings and public shaming at the very least. Others turned mystical, believing that the inhabitants of the land belonged to the lost tribe of Israel. In this context, Aguilar’s eccentricities � tattoos aside � were even praiseworthy: he bathed every day, he abhorred alcohol, he dosed himself with mushrooms, which made everyone happy, and not magic cacti, which drove them mad.�
And this even longer one, on the roughly 40,000 skulls strung up to make rattles in the temple; which I thought was brilliant: “It would have been amazing if while Caldera stared at the huey tzompantli, lost in the malign daze produced by this display of the banality of life, a breeze had sprung up: the gentle clatter of the skulls and vertebrae would have become a clacking buzz, a roar, a clamor of flutes and rattles; the depraved music of a priestly caste and a political class anointed by fear, maybe, but also a grandly formal reflection on the foundations of any system of religious thought: we don’t last.
Seen from the twenty-first century � a century terrified by the finitude of the body � a temple like this is first and foremost an affront. For a sixteenth-century Spaniard, who had witnessed wars and auto-da-fe and seen the rebels of his time die, rot, and wither in cages hanging at the gates of cities, it would have also been astonishingly hygienic in its presentation of the macabre realities of life. The white floors; the skulls, bleached and bare. All sanctified by a tidy geometry. It wasn’t an edifying display of the suffering to which errors in conduct would lead, but a representation of things as they are: inside each of us is a skull, and that’s all that will be left of use when we’re gone; thanks for your participation.
If Caldera had taken his walk dressed in Castilian fashion and in the company of other captains, he would have had to shake his head in disapproval, proclaim his horror, cross himself. Alone and dressed as a Colhua, he would have seen the hey tzompantli as intensely Christian � dust we be � and illuminating, as perhaps we too if we could shed the moral superiority of societies that do their killing out of sight. He would have seen it for what it is: a triumph of design.�...more
In this rollicking story of a young man named Not Sidney Poitier, Everett explores identity and what it means to be black in America, but in a way thaIn this rollicking story of a young man named Not Sidney Poitier, Everett explores identity and what it means to be black in America, but in a way that’s light and humorous. The character has inherited wealth but still struggles to be accepted without reference to his skin color, and in his various misadventures, Everett riffs on the story lines of several of Sidney Poitier’s films, including The Defiant Ones (1958), Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967), Lilies of the Field (1963), In the Heat of the Night (1967), and possibly others I’m not familiar with. The skewering of rednecks living literally in Peckerwood County made for easy (though satisfying) satire, but there are lots of other more subtle bits, like the hypocrisy of being against affirmative action re: college admissions, but having taken full advantage of legacy admissions. He perhaps overused the “I am Not Sidney Poitier� vs. “I am not Sidney Poitier� joke, but some things never got old, like his hilarious take on Ted Turner’s random non-sequiturs. Overall, a little uneven, but a fun and meaningful read.
A few quotes: “’News will be the new entertainment,� she said. ‘Trust me, Not Sidney. It won’t be enough to report it, news will have to be made. It’s going to be a bad thing, but it’s going to be.� She slid the first batch into the oven and closed the door. ‘That’s where we’ve gone. Everything in this country is entertainment. That’s what you need for stupid people. That’s what children want.’�
“I’m beginning to think the only difference between being black and being white is that if you’re white you just don’t know about your blood, you’re dumb to your blood, ignorant about that one drop. White people fear that one drop like we fear the rope.�...more
Published as a novella, this really feels more like a short story, and in any event, I found myself wishing it had been more fleshed out. On the otherPublished as a novella, this really feels more like a short story, and in any event, I found myself wishing it had been more fleshed out. On the other hand, the sharp characters, little bits of humor, and Eggers� way with words, they’re all here, so if you’re looking for the literary equivalent of a tasty snack, this may be for you.
Just this quote, on memories of compliments, ah ain’t it the truth: “Helen did not usually consider herself so young and vibrant � she was thirty-one and had not exercised meaningfully in eighteen months � but she took the compliment, stored it away, knew she would visit it often.� ...more
There is such a gentle spirit to R.K. Narayan’s Swami and Friends, which sentimentally looks back at the years of childhood in a way that reminded me There is such a gentle spirit to R.K. Narayan’s Swami and Friends, which sentimentally looks back at the years of childhood in a way that reminded me of Jean Shepherd’s In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash, the basis for the film A Christmas Story. The hero of the story, young Swaminathan Srinivasan, copes with strict school teachers, his father, and friends who come and go, dreaming of becoming the next Maurice Tate and cricket stardom.
As with other books I’ve read from Narayan, it focuses more on the foibles of human nature as opposed to politics, though through a demonstration he does prefetch India’s move towards independence (“England is no bigger than our Madras Presidency and is inhabited by a handful of white rogues and is thousands of miles away. Yet we bow in homage before the Englishman! Why are we become, through no fault of our own, docile and timid?�). As the book was written in 1935, I loved these little bits.
Narayan’s writing is simple and direct, but he pokes at emotions in subtle ways in telling what is also a universal story. It’s not a masterpiece but it feels wholesome and enjoyable. I’m also sucker for endings which have a parting at a railway station, so that worked for me too....more
Ten short stories from Junot Diaz, published about a decade before The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and with similar themes of the Domenican immiTen short stories from Junot Diaz, published about a decade before The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and with similar themes of the Domenican immigrant experience. There is such a vibrant, no holds barred energy to Diaz’s writing that despite depressing aspects of gritty stories, this was a pleasure to read. My favorite was Fiesta, 1980, but there wasn’t a bad one in the bunch. Recommended....more
“Everywhere I caught glimpses of the person I could be if only I were a completely different person.�
I read this book after enjoying the short story f“Everywhere I caught glimpses of the person I could be if only I were a completely different person.�
I read this book after enjoying the short story from Erin Somers in McSweeney’s Issue 72, Washing Up. It’s about a 29-year-old woman whose career as an assistant to an aging late-night talk show host (and a would-be comedian herself) has never truly blossomed. When the talk show is canceled, on a lark she accepts his surprise invitation to join him for a long weekend at his mansion, even though the two have never been romantically interested in one another and there is a significant age gap.
While the subject isn’t particularly pleasant, Somers has a way with words and a wry sense of humor, things which kept it interesting to me. Hugo Best, the talk show host, seemed to be a combination of Jay Leno and David Letterman, and I liked the banter about the art of comedy. Along the way she also touches on issues of celebrity, class, and aging. While I never fell in love with this, I’d love to see more from Somers.
One last quote: “Cal kept glancing at me in the rearview mirror as he drove me back. He offered to stop for fries if I was hungry. I told him my problem was amorphous and existential. You couldn’t just throw fries at it.�...more
Certainly a timely collection given the fall of the al-Assad regime in Syria on December 8, 2024; McSweeney’s had published this just three days earliCertainly a timely collection given the fall of the al-Assad regime in Syria on December 8, 2024; McSweeney’s had published this just three days earlier, and one can infer from guest editor Alia Malek’s introduction that it was written in roughly April. Now do one for Russia, McSweeney’s!
Unfortunately, while I appreciated the perspective shift and springboard into learning more about Syria, I found the 16 stories to be terribly uneven. I’m not generally a fan of the inclusion of excerpts of novels, and it didn’t help that a full six of these were in that category, and I say that despite liking one of them. Despite the heart being in the right place, it ended up being one of my least favorite collections from McSweeney’s.
With that said, these were highlights, and my favorites: - The Things Heaven Cannot Tell People, by Mustafa Taj Aldeen Almosa - Diary of a Cemetery, by Fadi Azzam, an excerpt from the novel Suduf - Spring Diary, by Odai Al Zoubi...more
McSweeney’s Issue 74 comes in a school lunchbox, includes a few packs of “artist cards� fashioned after baseball cards, and some pencils, creative pacMcSweeney’s Issue 74 comes in a school lunchbox, includes a few packs of “artist cards� fashioned after baseball cards, and some pencils, creative packaging which I don’t normally go for, but found clever. Unfortunately, the issue is just a “greatest hits� collection, said to be covering the “last ten years,� but with no story older than Issue 50 from 2017, meaning I had already read all of these, and not long enough ago to want to revisit them again, though I did for a few anyway. The distribution of the 14 stories (counting the 3 one-page efforts as one) was as follows:
If you haven’t been a subscriber or a regular reader, you may enjoy this collection, even if I would quibble over some of the choices (which the editor fully admits is subjective). If you are a subscriber, you might feel more effort should have been made to delve deeper into the catalogue, or to not present this in the main Quarterly Concern series. Overall, a disappointment with the editing, not the writing....more
In this rather massive tome, Vidal successfully gives us the feeling of being in Lincoln’s White House, surrounded by his “team of rivals� and confronIn this rather massive tome, Vidal successfully gives us the feeling of being in Lincoln’s White House, surrounded by his “team of rivals� and confronted with the South seceding. He is strongest when he highlights the menagerie of people from the era, ranging from the better known, like the members of Lincoln’s cabinet, the ambitious Wiliam Seward and Salmon Chase, the timid general George McClellan, or the radical Republicans in congress like Thaddeus Stevens, but also in more obscure figures in Washington D.C. or the army at the time. He clearly did a lot of research here, and one certainly gets the sense for the time and place.
It’s far from a complete list, but random things which stood out for me included Lincoln’s use of the “blue mass� (upwards of 33% mercury) for severe constipation, and President’s Park with its unfinished Washington Monument being the site of the daily slaughter of cattle and pigs, which combined with the odor of a stagnant canal, led to overpowering odor. We also get a nuanced portrayal of Mary Todd Lincoln, who was a progressive voice in a slave-holding, secessionist family, yet with the fatal flaw of lavish spending, and having seances to speak to her dead son Willie, following his devastating death.
There are various details of the war of course, most of which I believe will be known to those who’ve studied the period, but Vidal does a reasonably good job at bringing them to life. The terrible nearness of the conflict is striking, a couple of times when Washington D.C. is vulnerable to an attack (which really makes one wonder ‘what if�), and when through binoculars Lincoln can see the large Confederate flag hanging at an inn in Alexandria, Virginia, the one that 24-year-old Elmer Ellsworth would die taking down, the first Union officer to die in the war. We also get quite a taste for the supreme difficulty Salmon Chase faced financing the war effort at a time when there was no income tax, in which he established a national banking system, issued paper currency, and sold war bonds to wealthy investors.
The main reason for not liking the book as much as I did when I started reading it, soaking up all of the history as I went, was that unfortunately Vidal repeats some of the falsehoods propagated by Lost Cause historians. It’s like he got lost in the details and missed the critical main points, or that he was so intent on not producing hagiography that he swung the pendulum too far in the other direction. Or, perhaps it’s because he grew up in the south, as he mentions in the preface.
The main sins of the book relate to what Vidal writes about the Constitutionality of secession, the reason for the war, the view of Lincoln as a dictator (and one operating without a higher moral cause), and the completely unexamined elephant in the room, the opinions and life in the South at the time.
On the Constitutionality of secession, Vidal goes from this exchange early in the book: “But the Southern States regard the organization of the Union as a more casual affair. As they entered it of their own free will, so that can leave it.� “But no provision was ever made in the Constitution for their leaving it.� “They say that this right is implicit.� “Nothing so astounding and fundamental would not be spelled out in the Constitution.�
To this load of crap at the end of the book: “You see, the Southern states had every Constitutional right to go out of the Union. But Lincoln said, no. Lincoln said, this Union can never be broken.�
Vidal fails to mention that secession was illegal per the Constitution, for the clause that allowed it in the earlier Articles of Confederation had been removed, and as Lincoln put it, because no government provides for its own dissolution. He does not mention that Southern states agreed that secession was not a right in 1814, when New Englanders talked about doing so because of the War of 1812, or that Andrew Jackson opposed South Carolina’s threatened secession in 1832. He presents a view that it is Lincoln and Lincoln alone who has come up with this view, that everyone else would have let the South go.
Related to this, through a conversation between John Hay and newspaper editor Charles Eames, Vidal also regurgitates the Lost Cause falsehood about the reason for war. He has Hay aimlessly wondering what the war was about, that it was “like the fever; it came for no reason and left for no reason.� Eames then puts the war on Lincoln to preserve the Union, that only after the fighting did he “shift over to the slavery side,� and that the South was just “fighting for independence.� While it’s true that Lincoln’s motivation was to preserve the Union, what’s ridiculous in this dialogue is that it fails to mention that the South seceded for no other reason that slavery, which Southerners fully realized at the time, as evidenced in a myriad of their founding documents and articles from their leaders.
A page later he mentions a mulatto waiter “as loyal to the Confederacy as his employer,� and then a chapter later writes this: “Like most natives of Washington, David had been amazed by the Union soldiers� hatred of all Negroes. By and large, Southerners got on well with them. After all, they grew up with their niggers; and they liked � even loved � the ones who kept their place. � After all, wasn’t that what the war was supposed to be about? How the institution of slavery gave the South an advantage over the North’s so-called free, if ill-paid, labor.�
Good grief. And this snippet may be the only place in the book where Southern life is mentioned at all. While there are references to Lincoln’s often contradictory views as he tried to navigate a moderate position within the progressive party of the period, there is never a single mention of the absolutely vile viewpoints of the South and how that mattered to what was going on. Instead we get a far from flattering view of the radical Republicans in Congress, men who were true heroes to the country in pushing progress before and after the war.
Vidal closes part two with William Seward mouthing the Southern viewpoint, that Lincoln had made himself into an “absolute dictator without ever letting anyone suspect that he was anything more than a joking, timid backwoods lawyer.� Later while Lincoln and Seward discuss the phrasing “government of the people, by the people, and for the people,� he has Seward wondering what “of the people� meant when it’s obviously a reference to not having a king, and then has Lincoln murmur that a “race of eagles,� e.g. an elite group, an alpha � like himself, like Bismarck � could suffice. Nothing could be farther from Lincoln’s views or the spirits of his writings.
Along these lines, Vidal overstates Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus as evidence of his wielding dictatorial power. The Constitution explicitly provides that “in cases of rebellion� that it may be suspended, a bar the secession clearly met, yet you’d never know it from the way Lincoln and his cabinet members talk about it. The Lincoln presented here is upholding the Union for the Union’s sake, damn the Constitution, and out of his own aggressive statesmanship, not because of his fidelity to its having a higher moral purpose, its dedication to the proposition that all men are created equal. Conveniently Vidal does not go into any depth on Lincoln’s efforts after the war to get the 13th Amendment passed.
In trying to build this into a type of Shakespearean tragedy, Vidal begins swaying more into things he imagines or wishes were true, vs. actual history. There are assassination attempts on Lincoln as he rides his horse at night, resulting in a bullet hole through his top hat not once but twice. He implies that Lincoln’s real grandfather was the slavery advocate John C. Calhoun, which was shaky at the time, and which has been refuted by DNA testing. It leads to a terrible final chapter that includes the insane (and highly melodramatic) view that Lincoln had “in some mysterious fashion, willed his own murder as a form of atonement for the great and terrible thing that he had done.� Good lord, this was perhaps the worst ending to a book I’ve ever read, let alone a historical drama.
Perhaps there is nothing more damning than the exchange between Herbert Mitgang and Vidal. Mitgang commented that Vidal had accepted the rather outrageous revisionist belief that "Lincoln really wanted the Civil War, with its 600,000 casualties, in order to eclipse the Founding Fathers and insure his own place in the pantheon of great presidents." In response to his, Vidal wrote, "Yes, that is pretty much what I came to believe."
If you’re interested in reading about Lincoln and want historical accuracy, I’d suggest Doris Kearn’s Goodwin’s Team of Rivals instead. If you’d like something poetic, but which captures the humanism of Lincoln far better than what Vidal did here, I’d recommend George Saunders� Lincoln in the Bardo. While the details contained within Vidal’s writing are seductive, his overall conclusions and messages are insidious, and dangerously wrong....more
A collection of 25 manifestos from 1909 to 2023, with a good chunk of them, ten, coming from the 50’s and 60’s. There are some real standouts here, buA collection of 25 manifestos from 1909 to 2023, with a good chunk of them, ten, coming from the 50’s and 60’s. There are some real standouts here, but this is also an uneven collection, and it got a little tiring reading the polemics especially when they were long. The format was big and bold, fitting the content, but the Historical Context and Notes on the Authors at the end was terribly presented � small white font on all red paper that was very difficult to read, a poor editorial choice. All in all, on the strength of the more inspiring efforts and the spirit of the thing, a reasonably good read.
Best of the bunch: Dada Manifesto (1918), by Tristan Tzara, which so eloquently makes the argument for the inherent subjectivity of art, and the need for artwork that is independent, spontaneous, and defies logic.
Second Declaration of Havana (1962), by Fidel Castro, which points out the imperialistic sins of the United States in Latin America, its undermining of free elections counter to its theoretical ideals, and exerting a force “more powerful and cruel than the Spanish colonial empire.� He of course conveniently avoids his own issues with human rights and the authoritarian nature of other communist regimes, and also plays fast and loose with facts and figures, but it was a perspective shift as he laid out his case.
Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female (1969), by Frances M. Beal, which felt ahead of its time, and certainly poignant reading in light of Kamala Harris’s defeat in the Presidential election.
The Gay Manifesto (1970), by Carl Wittman, which while I wish hadn’t been presented in its original typewritten form (as the copy was at hard times to read), stood out for how pioneering it was, how it defied putting all gay people under one stereotypical umbrella, and how he related to other oppressed groups. He also comments on sex: “I like to think of good sex in terms of playing violin: with both people on one level seeing the other body as an object capable of breathing beauty when they play it well; and on a second level the players communicating through the mutual production and appreciation of beauty.�
The Combahee River Collective Statement (1977), which laid out the case for black feminism, and whose line “…how little value has been placed upon our lives…� resonated decades before BLM. It also called out racism in the white women’s movement and misogyny in the black power movement, quoting a pamphlet from the latter with very regressive content, starting with the line “We understand that it is and has been traditional that the man is the head of the house.�
Why Cheap Art? (1984), by Peter Schumann, a one page manifesto that felt spontaneously written, but whose lines like “Art is not a business!� certainly rang true.
The Advantages of Being a Woman Artist (1988) by Guerilla Girls, also a one-pager, which humorously skewered the power structures and biases women artists face.
I Want a President (1992) by Zoe Leonard, still another one-pager, but whose words certainly felt apt in the age of Trump: “I want to know why we started learning somewhere down the line that a president is always a clown: always a john and never a hooker. Always a boss and never a worker, always a liar, always a thief and never caught.�
Press Conference for a Tree (2023) by Eileen Myles, whose free form verse criticizes both very local events in New York City politics and park planning, but also the larger context of a colonial capitalist mindset.
The ones I disliked: The Manifesto of Futurism (1909), by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who among other things vows to glorify war, destroy museums and libraries, and fight against feminists and the “fetid cancer� of professors. It’s notable that a decade later, he wrote the Fascist Manifesto and became an active supporter of Mussolini.
Manifesto of Surrealism (1924), by Andre Breton, which aside from being far too long at 42 pages, is tediously written and unfortunately unedited, because he eschews polish, which shows. At the heart of it his commentary on channeling the subconscious and avoiding reasoning in artwork has its merits, but there is too much other chaff surrounding it, e.g. very dated views on mental illness and Freudian interpretation of dreams, a critique of Dostoevsky’s writing, etc.
S.C.U.M. Manifesto (1967), by Valerie Solanis, which is 20 long pages of hate-filled ranting against men, generalizing the entire sex into the enemy, and making ridiculous assertions like “There is no human reason for money or for anyone to work.�...more
Tom Ripley is back in this sequel which Highsmith wrote 15 years after introducing the character, thus beginning a cycle which would eventually total Tom Ripley is back in this sequel which Highsmith wrote 15 years after introducing the character, thus beginning a cycle which would eventually total five books published over a span of 36 years. You’d hardly notice the gap, as the story has a lot in common with its predecessor and picks right up with Ripley six years later, now married to a rich woman and living in France, having gotten away with murder. While that seems like a nice enough arrangement for him to have retired from grifting, he’s gotten himself involved with an art forgery enterprise, and trouble comes when a buyer suspects the paintings aren’t authentic.
There is a whirlwind of dual/assumed identities in what follows, and great tension as Ripley calculates the steps forward in that cold-blooded yet urbane way of his. Naturally, things get increasingly complicated as they go along, and eventually lead to more murder. Pressure comes from the buyer who has deduced something’s amiss and the police of course, but also a visitor from the family of the murder victim of the first book, as well as a wild card in the guilt-ridden artist who’s actually been painting the forgeries.
The book flows quite well and always had me wanting to read the next chapter, despite the logistical details of getting around from place to place, and dealing with things like poor phone call connections. This is also of a generation that was very into smoking and drinking, so that pervades the novel as well. While the events strain credulity in ways that make this a step down from the first book, I thought it was solid and a fine use of a remarkable, memorable character....more
This is fiction, but Joyce Carol Oates provides quite a window into the practice of medicine in the 19th century, particularly as it related to women.This is fiction, but Joyce Carol Oates provides quite a window into the practice of medicine in the 19th century, particularly as it related to women. Set mostly in a female insane asylum, it tells the story of the doctor there who experiments on them as a forerunner to gynecology, performing operations that are as cruel as they are ignorant. Believing that insanity stems from parts of the uterus set loose in the blood and therefore around the body, for example, he performs hysterectomies, removes clitorises, or pulls every tooth without a second thought. He uses “medicine� like cocaine drops, arsenic, and mercury, bleeds patients to “cool their blood,� and forcibly restrains them with straitjackets and other means. Those who die are secretly buried, off the record. Oates dedicates the book to “the unnamed as well as the named� women in the past who endured these kinds of trials, mostly without a voice.
This is a period of time when admission to the asylum could be forced by the family or husband over a woman showing some independence, speaking up for herself, or not wearing a corset, with the poor in particular then prone to experimentation. Doctors look down on midwives or even studying the female body as a “hell-hole of filth & corruption.� As a lot of it occurs over the 1830’s through the 1850’s, there are parallels drawn to slavery, especially as it related to the indentured servitude of nurses which was often extended beyond the seven year “contracts� for arbitrary reasons, with those indentured powerless to alter their circumstances. One of the doctor’s nurses comes up with a procedure for fistula, a true step forward, but he then takes all the credit for it. Aside from critiquing the state of medicine at the time, it’s clearly a critique of the patriarchy as well, and true of any time.
While it’s a compelling read, one of the things that held the book back for me was how repetitive its middle was, with the doctor going from one outrageous procedure to the next, his nickname “the red-handed butcher� growing as he goes. I thought the early sections which had a couple different narrators were effective, and wish this had been done more uniformly throughout the book. Oates saves the voice of the deaf-mute Irish girl for the end which was refreshing, but by then I just wanted to finish. A tough read, and obviously prepare yourself to be outraged if you take it on. Pretty impressive work for Oates at 86 though.
Just this quote, on the affluent: “That is the lie, Brigit. That those who are ‘blessed by God� are deserving & those who are poor, who have no property or possessions, who are unwell or disabled deserve their fate & not our sympathy.�...more
This is a work that embodies the best of science fiction as a genre � fantastical concepts and yet grounded in real science, philosophically deep in iThis is a work that embodies the best of science fiction as a genre � fantastical concepts and yet grounded in real science, philosophically deep in its probing of our little lives in the vast universe, and delivering plenty of commentary on life in the real world. One element of the latter comes in the form of bluntness about the devastating and disastrous Cultural Revolution in China, which was rather surprisingly not censored by the Chinese government.
To me, the inclusion is a critical part of the novel, fitting with the themes of chaos and entropy in the universe (particular for inhabitants of the fictional world of Trisolaris) and mankind’s violence and nuclear proliferation, things which are counterbalanced by the rationality of science, environmentalism, and empathy. On the one hand there is a feeling of existential angst and feeling of meaninglessness, on the other, a feeling that life is beautiful in each of its precious moments. These are things that can all be true at the same time, and Liu presents them that way.
Liu is also piercing in his observations about mankind’s destruction of its only home, the Earth, things which take literal form, but we also see the elemental flaws in humanity revealed in the three main reactions to another life form: nihilist “burn it all down� thinking, naïve religious worship, and selfishly looking out for oneself only.
Great characters, broad in its literary and historical references, and a page-turner of a story. Things like the scientific explanation of what’s happening on Trisolaris in front of Galileo, Aristotle, and Copernicus followed by the reaction (“burn him�) were brilliant; the “human computer� made me smile too. Very well done, and looking forward to reading more from this author.
Quotes: On mankind: “I’ve lost hope in the human race after what I’ve seen in recent years. Human society is incapable of self-improvement, and we need the intervention of an outside force.�
“If you really lived during the Cretaceous Period, you’d be fortunate. The period we live in now is far more frightening. Right now, species on Earth are going extinct far faster than during the late Cretaceous. Now is truly the age of mass extinctions! So, my child, what you’re seeing is nothing. This is only an insignificant episode in a much vaster process. We can have no sea birds, but we can’t be without oil. Can you imagine life without oil?�
On meaning: “I thought that life was truly an accident among accidents in the universe. The universe was an empty palace, and humankind the only ant in the entire palace. This kind of thinking infused the second half of my life with a conflicted mentality: Sometimes I thought life was precious, and everything was so important; but other times I thought humans were insignificant, and nothing was worthwhile. Anyway, my life passed day after day, accompanied by this strange feeling, and before I knew it, I was old.�
On the universe: “One night, Ye was working the night shift. This was the loneliest time. In the deep silence of midnight, the universe revealed itself to its listeners as a vast desolation. What Yu disliked most was seeing the waves that slowly crawled across the display, a visual record of the meaningless noise Red Coast picked up from space. Ye felt this interminable wave was an abstract view of the universe: one end connected to the endless past, the other to the endless future, and in the middle only the ups and downs of random chance � without life, without pattern, the whole curve like a one-dimensional desert made of all the grains of sand lined up in a row, lonely, desolate, so long that it was intolerable. You could follow it and go forward or backward as long as you liked, but you’d never find the end.�...more
I bought and read this because it had appeared on a New York Times list of �22 of the Funniest Novels Since ‘Catch-22’� earlier this year, and while iI bought and read this because it had appeared on a New York Times list of �22 of the Funniest Novels Since ‘Catch-22’� earlier this year, and while it held some promise early on, it rather quickly became too one-note and couldn’t sustain itself over 273(!) pages.
DeWitt’s writing is wickedly satirical and I liked the sprinkling of actual wisdom about the business world amidst its outrageous and absolutely filthy premise. The book peaks early in a chapter called Special K, with its observations about needing to accept things for what they are, human guilt and the urge to dominate, and how those things relate to sales, while dropping in humor like “You take a bunch of guys and maybe for some of them The Man was Elvis, and for some of them it was Jimi Hendrix, and for some of them it was Kurt Cobain, but the thing they all have in common is that they would never sing, ‘Everything is beautiful in its own way� unless someone held a gun to their head (and maybe not even then).�
The trouble is that the variations on the premise were as uninteresting as they were unappealing, and there were so many retrograde ideas floating about in here that I suppose were meant to be funny, but which seemed rather close to being accepted as truisms. The performance of “alpha males� does improve, some of the women in these degrading positions go on to highly successful careers, politicians who use the service now follow through with their campaign promises, etc. The variations in pigmentation among Caucasians that would compromise anonymity is completely ignored, as if “white� is a single thing, but for African Americans it’s called out. The “Mexicans and Nicaraguans� are equated with the “very cheapest materials� in a competitor, whereas the inventor’s titular service only uses the “highest quality of staff.�
Now that’s probably all meant as part of the satire, but as those kinds of views are unfortunately still held and the satire doesn’t go even further in these directions as exaggeration or provide a challenge, it doesn’t always seem to be mocking them. Regardless, it wasn’t very enjoyable reading over its second half. This would have been much better as a short story or a novella.
Just this quote, on men: “One of the things that can put on a strain on a relationship, after all, is that men tend to equate a relationship with sex on demand.�...more
In this collection of 31 short stories from Anne Enright, which includes all of Taking Pictures (2008), quite a bit of The Portable Virgin (1991), andIn this collection of 31 short stories from Anne Enright, which includes all of Taking Pictures (2008), quite a bit of The Portable Virgin (1991), and a couple tales from First Fiction: Introductions 10 (1989), there is certainly a refreshing bit of female perspective and a sober look at the sadder aspects of the human condition. Even when she writes candidly of sex, it’s usually about the bad kind, but despite a general sense of disenchantment in her characters, there is at least some degree of buoyancy to her work that probably stems from her cleverness. Enright is an intelligent writer, demanding attention from the reader, and her stories are creative, often going to unexpected places. I have really enjoyed a couple of novels of hers, The Green Road and The Forgotten Waltz, and saw flashes of that same brilliance in some of these stories.
Unfortunately, this is a collection that is strongest in its first half, which means the stories from Taking Pictures, since Enright elected to sort them in reverse chronological order. There are several clunkers in the second half, which made finishing the book less enjoyable, and left a bad taste in my mouth. While that may show the evolution of the writer’s ability’s which may hold interest to her more ardent supporters, to me it felt like deep album cuts of a band’s lesser work being included on a greatest hits album. In any event, if you’re interested in short stories from Enright, I’d recommend just starting with Taking Pictures instead of this broader collection.
My favorites: Yesterday’s Weather Here’s to Love Honey Switzerland What You Want Shaft Pillow...more
Weaving the history of politics in the Dominican Republic over the 20th century with the story of a family over three generations and writing with sucWeaving the history of politics in the Dominican Republic over the 20th century with the story of a family over three generations and writing with such flair and intelligence, Junot Díaz created a masterful book here. He’s so fearless, never worrying about political correctness, bluntly assessing the brutal regimes of Trujillo and Balaguer, and letting it rip from beginning to end, freely dropping in references to works of fantasy, untranslated Spanish, and little snippets of the supernatural. The result is a work containing a history lesson, a drama, and comedy, one that kept this reader on his toes and engaged from beginning to end.
The book tells of the fall from grace of an affluent family, starting in the present with the nerdy, obese titular character, his strong, rebellious sister, their sometimes overbearing mother, who we find was once rebellious and in love herself, and finally getting to their grandparents, whose lives were gradually destroyed by Trujillo. The immigrant experience is often written about, but it has such vitality here, and elements like the chapter on Oscar returning to the D.R. (“Oscar Goes Native�) were among my favorite in a book full of great chapters. Because of all its references and ideas this is a book that takes active effort to read, but I found it rewarding, and well worth it....more
What a delight to find this little story while visiting Dubrovnik, first performed in that city in 1550 at a wedding feast. The explanatory notes and What a delight to find this little story while visiting Dubrovnik, first performed in that city in 1550 at a wedding feast. The explanatory notes and illustrations help to bring the story of a country bumpkin being tricked by mischievous/cruel young men into believing there is a way he can turn back the hands of time and become young again. I think references to Drzic being the “Croatian Shakespeare� are a bit exaggerated, but this is a fun, witty read.
Oh, and note to translators, perhaps by the “ornament so bright,� on p. 86, Stan is referring to the moon. ...more
Loading...
