I did enjoy E. M. Forster’s 1910 classic novel, but it was kind of a sleepyhead read. It’s written in a way that makes the reader reread a lot of paragraphs...and sometimes this literary critic still didn’t get the crux of what the author was saying. This has nothing to do with the author’s known love of symbolism, per se. Although I never did find out what the "wych elm tree" with pigs teeth stuck in the trunk (at the Howards End estate) was meant to represent. “Do you think that the tree really did cure toothache, if one believed in it?” “Of course It did. It would cure anything...once.” While Forster used less descriptive writing than most authors of his era, his prose was impeccable, although I would have preferred less circling of the wagons and more of let’s get to the point style of writing. Forster was known to like writing about social class differences and hypocrisy (posturing and deceit) especially from the rich man towards the poor man, and his humanist attitude is full-blown in Howards End. Every so often, the author tried his hand at the English dry sense of humour, but unfortunately it came off as deadpan. I am aware that I’m playing a cat and mouse game (love that idiom) with a big time writer, who also published two other bestsellers: A Room with a View in 1908 and A Passage to India in 1924, besides Howards End (all three were adapted into films). My friendly taunting aside, I liked this novel that Wikipedia said compared thoughtless plutocrats (the Wilcoxes), bohemian intellectuals (the Schlegels) and the struggling middle - class aspirants (the Basts).
The novel is set in the turn of the century England when automobiles and horse and buggies still shared the muddy road. The focal point of the novel wasn’t about who owned the Howards End estate (for me anyway), but how three different classes of people interacted. By the way, I don’t use an apostrophe between the d and s in Howards End because the author didn’t use it in his novel. Anyway, the wealthy family is represented by Henry and Ruth Wilcox and their children: Charles, Paul, and Evie. Business is pure capitalism to Mr. Wilcox...It’s a variation of “it’s my way or the highway.” They have several places to live, but Mrs. Wilcox prefers her inherited property, Howards End. Next, meet the Schlegel sisters, Margaret and Helen, and their younger brother Tibby. They are sometimes advised by Aunt Julie Munt. You never find out what happened to their parents, or how they get 500 to 600 pounds each per year. They live in an apartment they call “Wickham Place” in London and enjoy the operas and artsy things of London (they belong to the famous Bloomsbury Group). They meet the downtrodden Leonard Bast, who is trying to get to the middle class from the repressed class, at (of all places) the opera. Leonard is trying to bone up on the musical and literary world in order to move his station in life up one notch. Leonard has his umbrella taken by Helen Schlegel in error at the opera’s end and follows the sisters home to retrieve it. The Schlegels take a liking to Leonard, but he is too overwhelmed and self-conscious to stay for tea. Are you excited yet?
The Wilcoxes and the Schlegels met while touring Germany (the Schlegels father was German, but was naturalized in England). While in Germany, Helen falls in love with Paul, but the brief encounter falls apart when Helen visits Howards End later in the year. We will meet Leonard’s mistress (not married yet), Jacky, later in the novel. I only bring her up, because on page 48, the reader gets his first look at Forster’s descriptive writing. “A woman, of whom it is simplest to say that she was not respectable. Her appearance was awesome. She seemed all strings and bellpulls - ribbons, chains, bead necklaces that clinked and caught - and a boa of azure feathers hung round her neck, with the ends uneven. Her throat was bare, wound with a double row of pearls, but her arms were bare to the elbows, and might again be detected at the shoulder, through cheap lace. Her hat, which was flowery, resembled those punnets, covered with flannel, which we sowed with mustard and cress in our childhood, and which germinated here yes and there no. She wore it on the back of her head. As for her hair, or rather hairs, they are too complicated to describe, but one system went down the back, lying in a thick pad there, while another, created for a lighter destiny rippled around her forehead. The face - the face does not signify. It was the face of the photograph, but older, and the teeth were not so numerous as the photographer had suggested, and certainly not so white.” Okay, so he is a descriptive writer after all (haha).
The story is too complicated to tell you any more. It is boring at times and full of surprises at other times. If you are working on building up your knowledge of early 1900s English novelists...then this is the kind of book you want to read. I highly recommend this novel, but have your sleeping cap nearby (haha).
RATING: 5 out of 5 stars
Comment: Besides the three novels I mentioned that were adapted into film, there are four other E. M. Forster works converted to film: a 1945 short film, A Diary for Timothy; 1987’s Maurice; 1991’s Where Angels Fear to Tread; and 1998’s Plug.
As I said in the above text, E. M. Forster was known for surprises and symbolism in all of his novels. One major question is always: “Howards End, the place, is clearly of value for other reasons than its material actuality. It stands for something. How would you describe what it stands for?” Unfortunately, I thought about that throughout the novel and couldn’t come up with an answer (same as the wych elm tree).
Nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature in 16 different years has to be an exercise in futility. E. M. Forster died on 6/7/1970 at the age of 91 in Coventry, England.
Wednesday, October 10, 2018
Tuesday, September 25, 2018
O PIONEERS!
When I reviewed Thomas Hardy’s novel, Far from a Madding Crowd (see my review of 1/26/2015), I asked the question, “Can anybody write better prose…” Well, Willa Cather’s 1913 novel comes close. Here are some samples: The crazy Norwegian, Ivar, who lived like a hobbit in the Nebraska hillside, is described as, “He was a queerly shaped old man, with a thick, powerful body set on short bow-legs. His shaggy white hair, falling in a thick mane about his ruddy cheeks, made him look older than he was.” How about a boy swinging his scythe (that’s how they cut the grass in those days) in a graveyard, “He was a splendid figure of a boy, tall and straight as a young pine tree, with a handsome head, and stormy gray eyes, deeply set under a serious brow. The space between his two front teeth, which were unusually far apart..” or, “Milly was fifteen, fat and jolly and pompadoured, with creamy complexion, square white teeth, and a short upper lip.” or, two woman, Marie and Alexandra, talking to each other outdoors on a sunny day, “They made a pretty picture in the strong sunlight, the leafy pattern surrounding them like a net; the Swedish woman so white and gold, kindly and amused, but armored in calm, and the alert brown one, her full lips parted, points of yellow light dancing in her eyes as she laughed and chattered.” Okay, so now you know Willa could write.
Thomas Hardy’s above mentioned novel and Willa Cather’s novel share a similar plot. Both protagonists inherit a farm, Thomas Hardy’s Bathsheba from her uncle in the late 1800s England, and Alexandra from her father in turn of the 20th century Nebraska. The Nebraska area was populated with many recent immigrants; mostly Swedish, Norwegian, German, Bohemian and French trying their hand as first time farmers. Droughts and poor soil resulted in crop failure for most of them. Our heroine, Alexandra Bergson (about 12 years old at the time) promises her dying dad that she will not lose the farm, and, in fact, will find ways to make it highly successful. Her two older brothers, Lou and Oscar, want to give up and leave the area. Alexandra’s younger brother, Emil is on her side. Alexandra talks the boys into mortgaging the farm to buy up more land in hopes that the land will eventually become valuable...making them wealthy landowners. As the years and tears go by, Alexandra has made a success of the farm. Alexandra gives Lou and Oscar their own land and sends Emil to college. Life is good, but Alexandra is lonely. Her sorta boyfriend, Carl Linstrum, had to move with his family many years ago to St. Louis, because his father got a job in a cigar factory. Carl, now 35 years old, returns to visit Alexandra, but Lou and Oscar see him as a charlatan wanting to weasel Alexandra out of her money. Is it true? Or is it really Lou and Oscar who want her land?
Willa Cather treats the two romances in the novel almost as sidebar events. I never saw them coming until just before they developed. The courting of Alexandra by Carl almost never happened since he moved away so long ago and was on his way to Alaska to gold pan when he decided to visit Alexandra. He was fifteen years old when he left with his family to St. Louis and now he was thirty five. He only wanted to stay overnight, but Alexandra stretched-out his stay for months. The neighbors started talking and the two older boys objected to his continued sojourn. They eventually forced him out of town. Will Carl and Alexandra be reunited in the future? The second romance between Alexandra’s youngest son, Emil, and Marie Shabata (nee Tovesky) was purely on the sly since Marie was married. I didn’t anticipate the results of the romances... were they going to be tragic, hopeful, or a combination thereof? Throughout the novel, Willa Cather had a way of hiding things from the reader... then she would turn the crank on the jack-in-the-box and something unexpected would pop out. This is not your typical cowboys and indians novel like the ones that were typically being written by authors like Zane Grey or Owen Wister. Did Willa Cather title her novel after Walt Whitman’s poem, Pioneers! O Pioneers! (yes, she did), first published in 1865 in Whitman’s Leaves of Grass? Yes, it was the days of Horace Greeley’s Go West Young Man, let the Manifest Destiny start.
RATING: 5 out of 5 stars
Comment: From the introduction and notes by Chris Kraus:
Considered one of the great figures of early-twentieth-century American literature, Willa Cather derived her inspiration from the American Midwest, which she considered her home. Never married, she cherished her many friendships, some of which she had maintained since childhood. Her intimate coterie of women writers and artists motivated Cather to produce some of her best work. Sarah Orne Jewett, a successful author from Maine whom Cather had met during her McClure’s years, inspired her to devote herself full-time to creating literature and to write about her childhood, which she did in several novels of the prairies; one of the best known is O Pioneers! (1913), whose title comes from a poem by Walt Whitman. A critic of the rise of materialism, Cather addressed the social impact of the developing industrial age in A Lost Lady (1923) which was made into a film starring Barbara Stanwyck. For One of Ours (1922), a novel about World War I, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1923.
On April / 24 /1947 Willa Cather dies of a cerebral hemorrhage in her Madison Avenue apartment in New York City. She is buried in New Hampshire. She was 74 years old.
Thomas Hardy’s above mentioned novel and Willa Cather’s novel share a similar plot. Both protagonists inherit a farm, Thomas Hardy’s Bathsheba from her uncle in the late 1800s England, and Alexandra from her father in turn of the 20th century Nebraska. The Nebraska area was populated with many recent immigrants; mostly Swedish, Norwegian, German, Bohemian and French trying their hand as first time farmers. Droughts and poor soil resulted in crop failure for most of them. Our heroine, Alexandra Bergson (about 12 years old at the time) promises her dying dad that she will not lose the farm, and, in fact, will find ways to make it highly successful. Her two older brothers, Lou and Oscar, want to give up and leave the area. Alexandra’s younger brother, Emil is on her side. Alexandra talks the boys into mortgaging the farm to buy up more land in hopes that the land will eventually become valuable...making them wealthy landowners. As the years and tears go by, Alexandra has made a success of the farm. Alexandra gives Lou and Oscar their own land and sends Emil to college. Life is good, but Alexandra is lonely. Her sorta boyfriend, Carl Linstrum, had to move with his family many years ago to St. Louis, because his father got a job in a cigar factory. Carl, now 35 years old, returns to visit Alexandra, but Lou and Oscar see him as a charlatan wanting to weasel Alexandra out of her money. Is it true? Or is it really Lou and Oscar who want her land?
Willa Cather treats the two romances in the novel almost as sidebar events. I never saw them coming until just before they developed. The courting of Alexandra by Carl almost never happened since he moved away so long ago and was on his way to Alaska to gold pan when he decided to visit Alexandra. He was fifteen years old when he left with his family to St. Louis and now he was thirty five. He only wanted to stay overnight, but Alexandra stretched-out his stay for months. The neighbors started talking and the two older boys objected to his continued sojourn. They eventually forced him out of town. Will Carl and Alexandra be reunited in the future? The second romance between Alexandra’s youngest son, Emil, and Marie Shabata (nee Tovesky) was purely on the sly since Marie was married. I didn’t anticipate the results of the romances... were they going to be tragic, hopeful, or a combination thereof? Throughout the novel, Willa Cather had a way of hiding things from the reader... then she would turn the crank on the jack-in-the-box and something unexpected would pop out. This is not your typical cowboys and indians novel like the ones that were typically being written by authors like Zane Grey or Owen Wister. Did Willa Cather title her novel after Walt Whitman’s poem, Pioneers! O Pioneers! (yes, she did), first published in 1865 in Whitman’s Leaves of Grass? Yes, it was the days of Horace Greeley’s Go West Young Man, let the Manifest Destiny start.
RATING: 5 out of 5 stars
Comment: From the introduction and notes by Chris Kraus:
Considered one of the great figures of early-twentieth-century American literature, Willa Cather derived her inspiration from the American Midwest, which she considered her home. Never married, she cherished her many friendships, some of which she had maintained since childhood. Her intimate coterie of women writers and artists motivated Cather to produce some of her best work. Sarah Orne Jewett, a successful author from Maine whom Cather had met during her McClure’s years, inspired her to devote herself full-time to creating literature and to write about her childhood, which she did in several novels of the prairies; one of the best known is O Pioneers! (1913), whose title comes from a poem by Walt Whitman. A critic of the rise of materialism, Cather addressed the social impact of the developing industrial age in A Lost Lady (1923) which was made into a film starring Barbara Stanwyck. For One of Ours (1922), a novel about World War I, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1923.
On April / 24 /1947 Willa Cather dies of a cerebral hemorrhage in her Madison Avenue apartment in New York City. She is buried in New Hampshire. She was 74 years old.
Monday, September 17, 2018
Hillbilly Elegy
This is a long dissertation on what it’s like to be a poor white living in a Rust Belt town in Appalachian Kentucky. This somewhat boring (although funny and sad at times) memoir by J. D. Vance shifts back and forth from his family’s original homestead in Breathitt County, Kentucky to the move north to Middletown, Ohio, where they will try to improve their family’s social position. But as you will find out...that’s not an easy task. The average person calls the people of Scots-Irish descent hillbillies, rednecks or white trash. And the name calling is mostly justified. By author J. D. Vance’s own admission, “We do not like outsiders or people who are different from us, whether the difference lies in how they look, how they act, or, most important, how they talk. To understand me, you must understand that I am a Scots-Irish hillbilly at heart.”
First of all, I should have told you that this entire book is narrated by J. D. Vance. Tediously, he will tell the reader how he rose above his childhood, did a tour with the U.S. Marine Corps, graduated college at Ohio State and later graduated with a law degree from Yale University. After all these accomplishments, he will remind the reader that he is still a hillbilly and proud of it! And he doesn’t sugar coat his youth. “The fact that hillbillies like me are more down about the future than many other groups - some of whom are clearly more destitute than we are - suggest something else is going on. Indeed it is.” They have too many problems for me to enumerate in this review...go get your own copy. Further on, Vance says, “It’s about reacting to bad circumstances in the worst way possible. It’s about a culture that increasingly encourages social decay instead of counteracting it.” This Vance guy talks like a lawyer (Haha).
Vance further states that one hillbilly problem is: “Too many young men immune to hard work.” Author Vance, himself, wasn’t immune to work, but his poor upbringing was his albatross. Living at many different addresses (since his mother was married five times) coupled with his mom’s drug addiction didn’t give Vance a firm base to start life. Luckily, he had grandparents that he could go to for solace and housing in between mom’s bouts with drugs. He lovingly calls them papaw and mamaw throughout the book. During that part of his life, he says,”I earned my first bloody nose at five and my first black eye at six. Each of these fights began after someone insulted my mother. Mother jokes were never allowed, and grandmother jokes earned the harshest punishment that my little fist could administer.” The hillbilly rule is that it’s okay to start a fight...only if a man insults your family. This last rule was unspoken but clear.”
Family arguments usually depended on who Vance’s mom was married to at the time, “Mom and Bob’s (husband number ?) problems were my first introduction to marital conflict resolution. Here were the takeaways: Never speak at a reasonable volume when screaming will do; if a fight gets a little too intense, it’s okay to slap and punch, so long as the man doesn’t hit first; always express your feelings in a way that’s insulting and hurtful to your partner; if all else fails, take the kids and the dog to a local motel, and don’t tell your spouse where to find you…” Is that priceless advise or what? Vance talking (in general) about hillbillies, “Why didn’t our neighbor leave that abusive man. Why did she spend money on drugs? Why couldn’t she see that her behavior was destroying her daughter? Why were all of these things happening not just to our neighbor but to my mom? It would be years before I learned that no single book, or expert, or field could fully explain the problems of hillbillies in modern America.”
The fact that J. D. Vance admits (in the above statement) that the book to understand the plight of the hillbilly hasn’t been written yet is the reason why I really got nothing out of reading this book. Listen, I know that it topped the New York Times bestseller list for a long time (8/2016 - 1/2017) and that there are over 11,500 reviews on Amazon, but there’s nothing to learn from reading this book. Vance sums up hillbilly life: “Out of the frying pan and into the fire. Chaos begets chaos. In stability begets instability. Welcome to family life for the American hillbilly.” That’s the answer?? He further says, “How much of our lives, good and bad, should we credit to our personal decisions, and how much is just the inheritance of our culture, our families, and our parents who have failed their children? How much is mom’s life her own fault? Where does blame stop and Sympathy begin?”
I will leave you with a funny parable Mamaw told a young Vance: A young man was sitting at home when a terrible rainstorm began. Within hours, the man’s house began to flood, and someone came to his door offering a ride to higher ground. The man declined, saying, “God will take care of me”. A few hours later, as the waters engulfed the first floor of the man’s home, a boat passed by, and the captain offered to take the man to safety. The man declined, saying, “God will take care of me.” A few hours after that, as the man waited on his roof-his entire home flooded-a helicopter flew by, and the pilot offered transportation to dry land. Again the man declined, telling the pilot that God would care for him. Soon thereafter, the waters overcame the man, and he stood before God in heaven, he protested his fate: “You promised that you’d help me so long as I was faithful.” God replied, “I sent you a car, a boat, and a helicopter. Your death is your own fault.” God helps those who help themselves. This was the wisdom of the Book of Mamaw.
RATING: 4 out of 5 stars
Comment: I really wanted to give this book three and a half stars, but Amazon only accepts whole numbers and this book was better than a three...thus the four star rating.
I’m really not a memoir reader. I just knew this book was a big seller and decided to read it without doing any homework on it’s subject matter.
The only memoirs I liked were: Lauren Bacall by Myself (published in 1978) and WIRED: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi by Bob Woodward in 1984 (which really wasn’t a memoir).
And if I’m having trouble sleeping, all I have to do is start reading Jon Meacham’s 2008 book American Lion, the story of our 7th president, Andrew Jackson. I’m falling asleep just thinking about it...zzzz.
First of all, I should have told you that this entire book is narrated by J. D. Vance. Tediously, he will tell the reader how he rose above his childhood, did a tour with the U.S. Marine Corps, graduated college at Ohio State and later graduated with a law degree from Yale University. After all these accomplishments, he will remind the reader that he is still a hillbilly and proud of it! And he doesn’t sugar coat his youth. “The fact that hillbillies like me are more down about the future than many other groups - some of whom are clearly more destitute than we are - suggest something else is going on. Indeed it is.” They have too many problems for me to enumerate in this review...go get your own copy. Further on, Vance says, “It’s about reacting to bad circumstances in the worst way possible. It’s about a culture that increasingly encourages social decay instead of counteracting it.” This Vance guy talks like a lawyer (Haha).
Vance further states that one hillbilly problem is: “Too many young men immune to hard work.” Author Vance, himself, wasn’t immune to work, but his poor upbringing was his albatross. Living at many different addresses (since his mother was married five times) coupled with his mom’s drug addiction didn’t give Vance a firm base to start life. Luckily, he had grandparents that he could go to for solace and housing in between mom’s bouts with drugs. He lovingly calls them papaw and mamaw throughout the book. During that part of his life, he says,”I earned my first bloody nose at five and my first black eye at six. Each of these fights began after someone insulted my mother. Mother jokes were never allowed, and grandmother jokes earned the harshest punishment that my little fist could administer.” The hillbilly rule is that it’s okay to start a fight...only if a man insults your family. This last rule was unspoken but clear.”
Family arguments usually depended on who Vance’s mom was married to at the time, “Mom and Bob’s (husband number ?) problems were my first introduction to marital conflict resolution. Here were the takeaways: Never speak at a reasonable volume when screaming will do; if a fight gets a little too intense, it’s okay to slap and punch, so long as the man doesn’t hit first; always express your feelings in a way that’s insulting and hurtful to your partner; if all else fails, take the kids and the dog to a local motel, and don’t tell your spouse where to find you…” Is that priceless advise or what? Vance talking (in general) about hillbillies, “Why didn’t our neighbor leave that abusive man. Why did she spend money on drugs? Why couldn’t she see that her behavior was destroying her daughter? Why were all of these things happening not just to our neighbor but to my mom? It would be years before I learned that no single book, or expert, or field could fully explain the problems of hillbillies in modern America.”
The fact that J. D. Vance admits (in the above statement) that the book to understand the plight of the hillbilly hasn’t been written yet is the reason why I really got nothing out of reading this book. Listen, I know that it topped the New York Times bestseller list for a long time (8/2016 - 1/2017) and that there are over 11,500 reviews on Amazon, but there’s nothing to learn from reading this book. Vance sums up hillbilly life: “Out of the frying pan and into the fire. Chaos begets chaos. In stability begets instability. Welcome to family life for the American hillbilly.” That’s the answer?? He further says, “How much of our lives, good and bad, should we credit to our personal decisions, and how much is just the inheritance of our culture, our families, and our parents who have failed their children? How much is mom’s life her own fault? Where does blame stop and Sympathy begin?”
I will leave you with a funny parable Mamaw told a young Vance: A young man was sitting at home when a terrible rainstorm began. Within hours, the man’s house began to flood, and someone came to his door offering a ride to higher ground. The man declined, saying, “God will take care of me”. A few hours later, as the waters engulfed the first floor of the man’s home, a boat passed by, and the captain offered to take the man to safety. The man declined, saying, “God will take care of me.” A few hours after that, as the man waited on his roof-his entire home flooded-a helicopter flew by, and the pilot offered transportation to dry land. Again the man declined, telling the pilot that God would care for him. Soon thereafter, the waters overcame the man, and he stood before God in heaven, he protested his fate: “You promised that you’d help me so long as I was faithful.” God replied, “I sent you a car, a boat, and a helicopter. Your death is your own fault.” God helps those who help themselves. This was the wisdom of the Book of Mamaw.
RATING: 4 out of 5 stars
Comment: I really wanted to give this book three and a half stars, but Amazon only accepts whole numbers and this book was better than a three...thus the four star rating.
I’m really not a memoir reader. I just knew this book was a big seller and decided to read it without doing any homework on it’s subject matter.
The only memoirs I liked were: Lauren Bacall by Myself (published in 1978) and WIRED: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi by Bob Woodward in 1984 (which really wasn’t a memoir).
And if I’m having trouble sleeping, all I have to do is start reading Jon Meacham’s 2008 book American Lion, the story of our 7th president, Andrew Jackson. I’m falling asleep just thinking about it...zzzz.
Monday, September 10, 2018
Preface
It’s been a little over three years since my last Book Reviews And Comments By Rick O was published. Well get ready, because Volume three is out. It features one hundred forty eight reviews, two Rambling Comments, one promotion, a short story by Rick O (I Remember? A Short Story) and one Christmas remembrance (Memory of a Bygone Christmas) by review contributor Pat Koelmel. I had a lot of fun doing these reviews and enjoyed the numerous emails the authors sent me after seeing my review of their book. Almost all of the writers agreed with my comments with a few exceptions. I pointed out their strengths, weaknesses, and tried to compare their book with another writer’s similar book. Kind of like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of literature (I didn’t find anything ugly). I would like to thank contributors Deron O, Kai O and Pat Koelmel for their energetic guest reviews. In my previous review book, I listed the top ten books that I read during that time period. Well, let’s do this time period (8/27/2015 to 9/10/2018), but this time I’ll also include the first line of my review of the their books:
Number one- Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier. Sometimes I wonder why I’m wasting my time reading contemporary novelists when I can read classic authors such as Daphne Du Maurier (1907-1989), who wrote this 1936 romantic suspense novel.
Number two- Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. “Shiver me timbers”, this novel was a treasure.
Number three-The Virginian by Owen Wister. Is this 1902 story by Owen Wister the blueprint cowboy (the author designates them as cow-boys or cow-punchers) novel for thousands of novels and movies yet to come?
Number four- God’s Little Acre by Erskine Caldwell. Erskine Caldwell’s 1933 novel God’s little Acre is Southern Gothic at its best.
Number five- The Girl Before by JP Delaney. This is the best psychogenic thriller I’ve read in a long time.
Number six- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. Betty Smith’s entertaining 1943 novel is reminiscent of Charles Dickens’ novels of the mid 1800s.
Number seven- A Gentleman in Moscow. What a wonderful novel. What marvelous prose.
Number eight-The Woman in the Window by A. J. Finn. The author, A. J. Finn, has weaved a Alfred Hitchcockian type tale that reminds me of the 1954 movie, Rear Window.
Number nine- The Fireman by Joe Hill. This novel was literally on fire for 747 pages.
Number ten- Everybody Behaves Badly by Lesley M. M. Blume. Mon Dieu, Lesley M. M. Blume has written more than an historical novel revolving around Ernest Hemingway’s writing of The Sun Also Rises (1926).
The front cover photo is Rick O at his favorite vacation spot, Waikiki beach, Hawaii. Photo taken by Derek O. The back cover is Rick O and his grandchildren, Kalena O, Kaleo O and Kai O at Masa Sushi Restaurant in NJ. Photo was also taken by Derek O.
Number one- Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier. Sometimes I wonder why I’m wasting my time reading contemporary novelists when I can read classic authors such as Daphne Du Maurier (1907-1989), who wrote this 1936 romantic suspense novel.
Number two- Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. “Shiver me timbers”, this novel was a treasure.
Number three-The Virginian by Owen Wister. Is this 1902 story by Owen Wister the blueprint cowboy (the author designates them as cow-boys or cow-punchers) novel for thousands of novels and movies yet to come?
Number four- God’s Little Acre by Erskine Caldwell. Erskine Caldwell’s 1933 novel God’s little Acre is Southern Gothic at its best.
Number five- The Girl Before by JP Delaney. This is the best psychogenic thriller I’ve read in a long time.
Number six- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. Betty Smith’s entertaining 1943 novel is reminiscent of Charles Dickens’ novels of the mid 1800s.
Number seven- A Gentleman in Moscow. What a wonderful novel. What marvelous prose.
Number eight-The Woman in the Window by A. J. Finn. The author, A. J. Finn, has weaved a Alfred Hitchcockian type tale that reminds me of the 1954 movie, Rear Window.
Number nine- The Fireman by Joe Hill. This novel was literally on fire for 747 pages.
Number ten- Everybody Behaves Badly by Lesley M. M. Blume. Mon Dieu, Lesley M. M. Blume has written more than an historical novel revolving around Ernest Hemingway’s writing of The Sun Also Rises (1926).
The front cover photo is Rick O at his favorite vacation spot, Waikiki beach, Hawaii. Photo taken by Derek O. The back cover is Rick O and his grandchildren, Kalena O, Kaleo O and Kai O at Masa Sushi Restaurant in NJ. Photo was also taken by Derek O.
Tuesday, September 4, 2018
this ISLAND EARTH
What would you do if you ordered condensers from your regular supplier (Continental) and instead received superior condensers from another supplier that you didn’t order from? Meet engineer Cal Meacham from Ryberg Instrument Corp. Cal tested the new parts and they were phenomenal. They came from a company named Electronic Service-Unit 16 with no return address or phone number. Cal told purchasing agent Joe Wilson to order a gross more. When the gross was shipped to Ryberg they were only billed 30 cents apiece! Joe tells Cal that Continental doesn’t know anything about the order. Once again, they came from Electronic Service-Unit 16, but this time the order came with a catalog that listed and showed parts that Cal and Joe never heard of. On top of that, the pages weren’t even paper. “Joe, this stuff isn’t even paper.” Cal’s fingers merely slipped away. “That’s as tough as sheet iron!” The catalog lists catherimine tubes among other strange parts. Joe arched his eyebrows. “Ever hear of a catherimine tube? One with an endiom complex of plus four, which guarantees it to be the best of its kind on the market?” Cal says, “What kind of gibberish is that?” Cal turned the pages until “He came to a inner dividing cover at the centre of the catalogue. For the first time, the center cover announced, Electronic Service-Unit 16 offers a complete line of interocitor components. In the following pages you will find complete descriptions of components which reflect the most modern engineering advances know to interocitor engineers.” What’s a interocitor and who are these people that sent the catalogue? Welcome to the world of Raymond F. Jones, who wrote this 1952 sci-fi classic (later a 1955 movie).
On page eleven Cal finds out that a neighboring plant has also been receiving unknown parts...this time from Electronic Service-unit 8. That plant’s purchasing agent ordered special gears from a different company, but got two perfectly smooth wheels from Unit-8 instead. He said that, “He was about ready to hit the ceiling when he discovered that one wheel rolled against the other would drive it. So I mounted them on shafts and put a motor on one and a pony brake on the other. Believe it or not those things would transfer any horsepower I could use. And I had up to three hundred and fifty. There was perfect transfer without measurable slippage or backlash. The craziest thing you ever saw.” Cal decides to order all the parts necessary to build an interocitor. Almost two weeks go by. Then suddenly fourteen crates arrive. “They stood seven feet tall and were no smaller than four by five feet in cross section.” There are no instructions. Cal needs to use all his past knowledge of engineering and the pictures in the catalog to try to put this together. If he does succeed in putting it together, how does he turn it on? What does it do? Cal is stunned when Joe tells him that the bill for all those crates (4,896 parts) was only twenty-eight hundred dollars. On page twenty-five, after many trials and tribulations, Cal finishes assembling the interocitor. It’s some kind of communicator with a TV- like screen attached to it. He plays around with it and finally gets a fuzzy image on the screen. A masculine voice suddenly says, “Turn up the intensifier knob.” After Cal adjusted the knob, the image came in. Cal said, “Who are you? What have I built? The man (who has a high forehead and white hair) on the screen said, “We’d about given you up, but you’ve passed. And rather well, too.”
The strange man says, “You have passed the test!” Cal says, “What do you mean? I have made no application to work with your-your employers.” A faint trace of a smile crossed the man’s face. “No. No one does that. We pick our own applicants and test them, quite without their awareness that they are being tested. You are to be congratulated on your showing.” The man convinces Cal to come to work for them. Cal couldn’t think of any reason not to go. “There were few that he could muster up. None, actually. He was alone, without family or obligations. He had no particular professional ties to prevent him for leaving.” The man says on page twenty-eight, “Our plane will land on your airfield at six p.m. It will remain fifteen minutes. It will take off without you if you are not in it by that time. You will know it by its color. A black ship with a single horizontal orange stripe.” This is where I will stop my review so you can enjoy the meaty part of the story uninhibited. This sci-fi novel could have easily been read in one day. But then I wouldn’t have had this pleasurable feeling that I’ve had for the past three days. You have to savor this novel like a fine wine.
RATING: 5 out of 5 stars
Comment: Raymond F. Jones’ sci-fi novel was made into a movie in 1955. It starred Jeff Morrow as Exeter (his name in the novel was Jorgasnovara), Rex Reason as Cal and Faith Domergue as Ruth. The movie finished 74th in gross earnings that year. Oddly enough it opened as a double bill with Abbott and Costello meet the Mummy! Oh, the good old days. I remember when you went to the movies you saw two movies, several cartoons, and the world news all in one sitting. You were armed with popcorn, soda and a candy of some sorts (that’s the only part that’s the same as today). And maybe later...a food fight.
The movie was remade for TV in 1992, but I didn’t find much info on it. It starred Gloria Estefan and Kenny Loggins (two singers).
The 1952 novel and the 1955 movie had many differences, especially the ending.
On page eleven Cal finds out that a neighboring plant has also been receiving unknown parts...this time from Electronic Service-unit 8. That plant’s purchasing agent ordered special gears from a different company, but got two perfectly smooth wheels from Unit-8 instead. He said that, “He was about ready to hit the ceiling when he discovered that one wheel rolled against the other would drive it. So I mounted them on shafts and put a motor on one and a pony brake on the other. Believe it or not those things would transfer any horsepower I could use. And I had up to three hundred and fifty. There was perfect transfer without measurable slippage or backlash. The craziest thing you ever saw.” Cal decides to order all the parts necessary to build an interocitor. Almost two weeks go by. Then suddenly fourteen crates arrive. “They stood seven feet tall and were no smaller than four by five feet in cross section.” There are no instructions. Cal needs to use all his past knowledge of engineering and the pictures in the catalog to try to put this together. If he does succeed in putting it together, how does he turn it on? What does it do? Cal is stunned when Joe tells him that the bill for all those crates (4,896 parts) was only twenty-eight hundred dollars. On page twenty-five, after many trials and tribulations, Cal finishes assembling the interocitor. It’s some kind of communicator with a TV- like screen attached to it. He plays around with it and finally gets a fuzzy image on the screen. A masculine voice suddenly says, “Turn up the intensifier knob.” After Cal adjusted the knob, the image came in. Cal said, “Who are you? What have I built? The man (who has a high forehead and white hair) on the screen said, “We’d about given you up, but you’ve passed. And rather well, too.”
The strange man says, “You have passed the test!” Cal says, “What do you mean? I have made no application to work with your-your employers.” A faint trace of a smile crossed the man’s face. “No. No one does that. We pick our own applicants and test them, quite without their awareness that they are being tested. You are to be congratulated on your showing.” The man convinces Cal to come to work for them. Cal couldn’t think of any reason not to go. “There were few that he could muster up. None, actually. He was alone, without family or obligations. He had no particular professional ties to prevent him for leaving.” The man says on page twenty-eight, “Our plane will land on your airfield at six p.m. It will remain fifteen minutes. It will take off without you if you are not in it by that time. You will know it by its color. A black ship with a single horizontal orange stripe.” This is where I will stop my review so you can enjoy the meaty part of the story uninhibited. This sci-fi novel could have easily been read in one day. But then I wouldn’t have had this pleasurable feeling that I’ve had for the past three days. You have to savor this novel like a fine wine.
RATING: 5 out of 5 stars
Comment: Raymond F. Jones’ sci-fi novel was made into a movie in 1955. It starred Jeff Morrow as Exeter (his name in the novel was Jorgasnovara), Rex Reason as Cal and Faith Domergue as Ruth. The movie finished 74th in gross earnings that year. Oddly enough it opened as a double bill with Abbott and Costello meet the Mummy! Oh, the good old days. I remember when you went to the movies you saw two movies, several cartoons, and the world news all in one sitting. You were armed with popcorn, soda and a candy of some sorts (that’s the only part that’s the same as today). And maybe later...a food fight.
The movie was remade for TV in 1992, but I didn’t find much info on it. It starred Gloria Estefan and Kenny Loggins (two singers).
The 1952 novel and the 1955 movie had many differences, especially the ending.
Friday, August 31, 2018
Mad Mischief
The author sent me a copy of her novel to read and review:
I have a menza menza opinion on Susan St. John’s first novel. I assumed that a novel set in East Africa (Kenya & Tanzania) would have a lot of excitement...it didn’t. Throw in a safari with all the wild animals roaming freely...there has to be some sort of mishap, right? No, there were no incidents, no attacks, no narrow escapes involving the wild animals. That disappointed me. Then I said to myself, but this novel is so well written, so I kept going for all of its 437 pages. And I’m glad I did. Gadzooks, I loved the descriptive writing except when it occasionally got overdone. What do I mean about overdone? Well on pages 93 through 95, the author describes a man and woman in a Toyota Land Cruiser that approaches and passes (going the other way) the vehicle of our female protagonist, Sarah. How can you write three pages describing their immaculate clothing, or the man’s jewelry, “A loose-fitting gold-link chain encircles his neck, sparkling above a chest full of dark, curly hair visible through his half-unbuttoned shirt.” And guess what? That’s three pages describing a couple that you will not see or hear from in this story again. There are other things that somewhat annoyed me; such as Sarah didn’t seem to realize that she was bipolar until a doctor near the end told her so. Then she totally accepted that and took his advice. And the ending? Let’s not talk about that. So what did I Like? A lot actually. I loved the way the author kept the main characters to a handful. Other than the above mentioned exaggerated pages 93-95, Susan’s descriptive writing was refreshing...as was her prose. I can see that she has storytelling abilities, she just needs to add some pizzazz...get the reader excited! Surely a lion could have attacked one of the minor characters. Somebody could have been rescued from a quicksand pit! One of the rhinos (that the safari goers saw) could have charged the truck...something was needed. Susan’s novel reminded me a little of Karen Blixen/Isak Dinesen's 1937 book (later adapted into a movie) Out of Africa, also set in Kenya. Is that a compliment to the author? I guess it depends on whether you liked or disliked Blixen’s book. Enough already, what was the story about?
Sarah and her husband Peter hire Max Einfield to be their guide on a safari to East Africa. Sarah and Peter are not close anymore and Sarah hopes that this trip will revive their marriage. But it seems that all Peter is interested in is his new camera equipment. Max, who has a PhD in Zoology, is also the pilot of the safari plane and a known big game spotter. Sarah wants to record their trip’s experiences in her journal. But Max and Peter spend the whole trip harassing her to stop the journal. I never understood why Max, in particular, also berates Sarah about walking barefooted (a safety issue) the entire book. I could never figure out why these two men were so mean to her. By the way, the reader finds out that Sarah is bipolar, but I didn’t notice her having any severe mood swings. She only complained about a strange bronchitis or pneumonia cough throughout the novel. The threesome are later joined on the safari by Thad and Julia and the safari event’s owner, William. Later you will meet “world renowned” wildlife photographer, Brandon Howard. He flits in and out of the story, as does William, making it a Cormac McCarthy friendly five main characters novel. The following are some lines from Susan’s novel that illustrate her ability to write descriptive prose: Sarah describing Thad, "Sarah judges that Thad is above six feet tall and probably weighs in over two hundred pounds. His head juts forward so as to hear every word. His ears look like a pair of catchers' mitts, making the sentences of others into baseballs each glove reaches out to catch. He has the appearance of a yuppie poster child for the forty-something success story that he is.”, the sun setting, “The sun goes down as if being swallowed by the sky.” and to avoid scurvy, “Max picks up a slice of lemon covering the cut fruit and sucks it hard, using his tongue to wipe the acid from his teeth. He picks up a second piece and repeats the ritual with the sourness reflected only slightly in his expression.” Nice clean (not overstated) subtle descriptive lines.
I think that it is sad that Ernest Hemingway and his lost generation of writers decided that descriptive writing was passe. What possessed these writers to change the rules. Anyway, I for one, still enjoy reading the out of style way...descriptive.
RATING: 3 out of 5 stars
Comment: I mentioned Ernest Hemingway’s group of American and British expatriates. The whole group went to Spain in 1925 to see the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain and watch the bull fights (and drink heavily). The trip’s result was Hemingway’s first novel published in 1926 - The Sun Also Rises.
As far as the movie I mentioned, Out of Africa starred Robert Redford and Meryl Streep. It garnered seven Academy Awards and three Golden Globes. But my favorite African movie (also set in East Africa) is the 1951 adventure film The African Queen starring Humphrey Bogart (he won the Academy Award for Best Actor) as the drunken riverboat captain and Katherine Hepburn as Sister Rose. I also liked the 1964 movie Zulu, which featured the epic battle between the British Army and the Zulus in 1879. Finally, I also enjoyed the 1995 adaptation of Michael Crichton’s 1980 sci/fi adventure novel Congo.
I have a menza menza opinion on Susan St. John’s first novel. I assumed that a novel set in East Africa (Kenya & Tanzania) would have a lot of excitement...it didn’t. Throw in a safari with all the wild animals roaming freely...there has to be some sort of mishap, right? No, there were no incidents, no attacks, no narrow escapes involving the wild animals. That disappointed me. Then I said to myself, but this novel is so well written, so I kept going for all of its 437 pages. And I’m glad I did. Gadzooks, I loved the descriptive writing except when it occasionally got overdone. What do I mean about overdone? Well on pages 93 through 95, the author describes a man and woman in a Toyota Land Cruiser that approaches and passes (going the other way) the vehicle of our female protagonist, Sarah. How can you write three pages describing their immaculate clothing, or the man’s jewelry, “A loose-fitting gold-link chain encircles his neck, sparkling above a chest full of dark, curly hair visible through his half-unbuttoned shirt.” And guess what? That’s three pages describing a couple that you will not see or hear from in this story again. There are other things that somewhat annoyed me; such as Sarah didn’t seem to realize that she was bipolar until a doctor near the end told her so. Then she totally accepted that and took his advice. And the ending? Let’s not talk about that. So what did I Like? A lot actually. I loved the way the author kept the main characters to a handful. Other than the above mentioned exaggerated pages 93-95, Susan’s descriptive writing was refreshing...as was her prose. I can see that she has storytelling abilities, she just needs to add some pizzazz...get the reader excited! Surely a lion could have attacked one of the minor characters. Somebody could have been rescued from a quicksand pit! One of the rhinos (that the safari goers saw) could have charged the truck...something was needed. Susan’s novel reminded me a little of Karen Blixen/Isak Dinesen's 1937 book (later adapted into a movie) Out of Africa, also set in Kenya. Is that a compliment to the author? I guess it depends on whether you liked or disliked Blixen’s book. Enough already, what was the story about?
Sarah and her husband Peter hire Max Einfield to be their guide on a safari to East Africa. Sarah and Peter are not close anymore and Sarah hopes that this trip will revive their marriage. But it seems that all Peter is interested in is his new camera equipment. Max, who has a PhD in Zoology, is also the pilot of the safari plane and a known big game spotter. Sarah wants to record their trip’s experiences in her journal. But Max and Peter spend the whole trip harassing her to stop the journal. I never understood why Max, in particular, also berates Sarah about walking barefooted (a safety issue) the entire book. I could never figure out why these two men were so mean to her. By the way, the reader finds out that Sarah is bipolar, but I didn’t notice her having any severe mood swings. She only complained about a strange bronchitis or pneumonia cough throughout the novel. The threesome are later joined on the safari by Thad and Julia and the safari event’s owner, William. Later you will meet “world renowned” wildlife photographer, Brandon Howard. He flits in and out of the story, as does William, making it a Cormac McCarthy friendly five main characters novel. The following are some lines from Susan’s novel that illustrate her ability to write descriptive prose: Sarah describing Thad, "Sarah judges that Thad is above six feet tall and probably weighs in over two hundred pounds. His head juts forward so as to hear every word. His ears look like a pair of catchers' mitts, making the sentences of others into baseballs each glove reaches out to catch. He has the appearance of a yuppie poster child for the forty-something success story that he is.”, the sun setting, “The sun goes down as if being swallowed by the sky.” and to avoid scurvy, “Max picks up a slice of lemon covering the cut fruit and sucks it hard, using his tongue to wipe the acid from his teeth. He picks up a second piece and repeats the ritual with the sourness reflected only slightly in his expression.” Nice clean (not overstated) subtle descriptive lines.
I think that it is sad that Ernest Hemingway and his lost generation of writers decided that descriptive writing was passe. What possessed these writers to change the rules. Anyway, I for one, still enjoy reading the out of style way...descriptive.
RATING: 3 out of 5 stars
Comment: I mentioned Ernest Hemingway’s group of American and British expatriates. The whole group went to Spain in 1925 to see the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain and watch the bull fights (and drink heavily). The trip’s result was Hemingway’s first novel published in 1926 - The Sun Also Rises.
As far as the movie I mentioned, Out of Africa starred Robert Redford and Meryl Streep. It garnered seven Academy Awards and three Golden Globes. But my favorite African movie (also set in East Africa) is the 1951 adventure film The African Queen starring Humphrey Bogart (he won the Academy Award for Best Actor) as the drunken riverboat captain and Katherine Hepburn as Sister Rose. I also liked the 1964 movie Zulu, which featured the epic battle between the British Army and the Zulus in 1879. Finally, I also enjoyed the 1995 adaptation of Michael Crichton’s 1980 sci/fi adventure novel Congo.
Friday, August 17, 2018
LINCOLN in the BARDO
George Saunders’ avant-garde novel gives me plenty of fodder to chew on...so to speak. Since Abe Lincoln is in it, one would say the genre is historical fiction. But I saw a new genre the other day that some people are putting this novel in...magical realism. Where did that come from? And I thought weird fiction was a far out genre. Silly me. This novel is experimental and also ergodic at the same time (in this case, many pages with limited writing). It has endless narrators with their names in lowercase under every line they say, such as, “As the man continued to gently rock his child.” (under that line, the reverend everly thomas), “While his child, simultaneously, stood quietly leaning against him.” (under that line, hans vollman) and “Then the gentleman began to speak.” (under that line, roger bevins iii). Do you see what I’m saying? This same model of identifying the narrator is also used when a line is borrowed from a book or article; such as, “The doctor assured Lincoln that Willie would recover.” (under that line, In ‘The President’s Hippocrates,” by Deborah Chase, M.D., account of Joshua Freewell). Did you notice that when a book is mentioned, it has the proper capitalization? Finally, there is heavy use of “op. cit.”, which means, “in the work already cited.” Of course that adverb is likewise under a line of text. Anyway, I thought I would mention these technical things before you plunge headlong into Saunders’ novel. By the way, I’m not complaining...I liked the inventiveness of the author.
Although the story is strange, it is quite simple. Basically, eleven year old Willie Lincoln is dying from a horrible cold and fever upstairs while Abe and Mary Todd are entertaining downstairs at a State Dinner in the White House. “They dined on tender pheasant, fat partridge, venison steaks, and Virginia hams; they battened upon canvasback ducks and fresh turkeys, and thousands of tidewater oysters shucked an hour since and iced, slurped raw, scalloped in butter and crackermeal, or stewed in milk.” “Yet there was no joy in the evening for the mechanically smiling hostess and her husband. They kept climbing the stairs to see how Willie was, and he was not doing well at all.” The next day...Willie dies. Mary Todd is too distraught to go to the burial. Judge Carroll loans Lincoln a space in his family’s crypt at a Georgetown cemetery, so Abe can temporarily bury his son (Willie will be buried at a later date in Illinois). Unknown to anybody is that the cemetery is populated by many ghosts that are in a bardo state. Bardo is a Tibetan term for existing between death and rebirth. Most of the cemetery’s population didn’t even know they were dead. Some people have gone to the final judgement; one scurried back after he saw what his punishment was going to be (was it the reverend everly thomas?). How did he do that? They socialize during the night and go to their sick-beds (they don’t say coffin, because they believe they are sick, not dead) at dawn. When Lincoln arrives to bury Willie in the borrowed white crypt, the whole cemetery citizenry is abuzz. What’s in store for Willie after the Lincoln burial party leave? And how do the ghosts handle Lincoln coming back in the evening to hold and coddle his dead son for the last time? Is Willie now a ghost?
The story behind the novel is interesting. According to Wikipedia, “The novel was inspired by a story Saunder’s wife’s cousin told him about how Lincoln visited his son Willie’s crypt at Oak Hill Cemetery in Georgetown on several occasions to hold the body, a story that seems to be verified by contemporary newspaper accounts.” And according to The Guardian (a British newspaper), George Saunders said the following in 2017, “Without giving anything away, let me say this: I made a bunch of ghosts. They were sort of cynical; they were stuck in this realm, called the bardo (from the Tibetan notion of a sort of transitional purgatory between rebirths), stuck because they’d been unhappy or unsatisfied in life. The greatest part of their penance is that they feel utterly inessential-incapable of influencing the living.” The only ghost that understands their plight is Reverend Everly Thomas (the Judgement Day escapee from paragraph two). His friends, Mr. Bevins and Mr. Vollman don’t have a clue on what’s going on. The reverend says, “Many times I have been tempted to blurt out the truth to Mr. Bevins and Mr. Vollman: A terrible judgement awaits you, I long to say. Staying here, you merely delay. You are dead, and shall never regain that previous place. At daybreak, when you must return to your bodies, have you not noticed their disgusting states? Do you really believe those hideous wrecks capable of bearing you anywhere again? And what is more (I would say, if permitted): you shall not be allowed to linger here forever. None of us shall. We are in rebellion against the will of our Lord, and in time must be broken, and go.” Grab your own copy and enjoy this very strange novel.
RATING: 5 out of 5 stars
Comment: The Lincolns had very little luck with the health of their children. Three of their four sons didn’t make it to adulthood. Edward Baker Lincoln died at the age of four in 1850 from tuberculosis; as you know, Willie Lincoln died at the age of eleven in 1862 from fever; Thomas Tad Lincoln almost got to adulthood but succumbed to heart failure at the age of eighteen in 1871.
Robert Todd Lincoln (8/1/1843 to 7/26/1926) lived to the ripe age of 82. Robert served briefly for Gen. Grant in the closing days of the Civil War. Robert’s grandson, Robert “Bud” Todd Lincoln Beckwith (died in 1985) was the last person known to have direct Lincoln lineage.
Although the story is strange, it is quite simple. Basically, eleven year old Willie Lincoln is dying from a horrible cold and fever upstairs while Abe and Mary Todd are entertaining downstairs at a State Dinner in the White House. “They dined on tender pheasant, fat partridge, venison steaks, and Virginia hams; they battened upon canvasback ducks and fresh turkeys, and thousands of tidewater oysters shucked an hour since and iced, slurped raw, scalloped in butter and crackermeal, or stewed in milk.” “Yet there was no joy in the evening for the mechanically smiling hostess and her husband. They kept climbing the stairs to see how Willie was, and he was not doing well at all.” The next day...Willie dies. Mary Todd is too distraught to go to the burial. Judge Carroll loans Lincoln a space in his family’s crypt at a Georgetown cemetery, so Abe can temporarily bury his son (Willie will be buried at a later date in Illinois). Unknown to anybody is that the cemetery is populated by many ghosts that are in a bardo state. Bardo is a Tibetan term for existing between death and rebirth. Most of the cemetery’s population didn’t even know they were dead. Some people have gone to the final judgement; one scurried back after he saw what his punishment was going to be (was it the reverend everly thomas?). How did he do that? They socialize during the night and go to their sick-beds (they don’t say coffin, because they believe they are sick, not dead) at dawn. When Lincoln arrives to bury Willie in the borrowed white crypt, the whole cemetery citizenry is abuzz. What’s in store for Willie after the Lincoln burial party leave? And how do the ghosts handle Lincoln coming back in the evening to hold and coddle his dead son for the last time? Is Willie now a ghost?
The story behind the novel is interesting. According to Wikipedia, “The novel was inspired by a story Saunder’s wife’s cousin told him about how Lincoln visited his son Willie’s crypt at Oak Hill Cemetery in Georgetown on several occasions to hold the body, a story that seems to be verified by contemporary newspaper accounts.” And according to The Guardian (a British newspaper), George Saunders said the following in 2017, “Without giving anything away, let me say this: I made a bunch of ghosts. They were sort of cynical; they were stuck in this realm, called the bardo (from the Tibetan notion of a sort of transitional purgatory between rebirths), stuck because they’d been unhappy or unsatisfied in life. The greatest part of their penance is that they feel utterly inessential-incapable of influencing the living.” The only ghost that understands their plight is Reverend Everly Thomas (the Judgement Day escapee from paragraph two). His friends, Mr. Bevins and Mr. Vollman don’t have a clue on what’s going on. The reverend says, “Many times I have been tempted to blurt out the truth to Mr. Bevins and Mr. Vollman: A terrible judgement awaits you, I long to say. Staying here, you merely delay. You are dead, and shall never regain that previous place. At daybreak, when you must return to your bodies, have you not noticed their disgusting states? Do you really believe those hideous wrecks capable of bearing you anywhere again? And what is more (I would say, if permitted): you shall not be allowed to linger here forever. None of us shall. We are in rebellion against the will of our Lord, and in time must be broken, and go.” Grab your own copy and enjoy this very strange novel.
RATING: 5 out of 5 stars
Comment: The Lincolns had very little luck with the health of their children. Three of their four sons didn’t make it to adulthood. Edward Baker Lincoln died at the age of four in 1850 from tuberculosis; as you know, Willie Lincoln died at the age of eleven in 1862 from fever; Thomas Tad Lincoln almost got to adulthood but succumbed to heart failure at the age of eighteen in 1871.
Robert Todd Lincoln (8/1/1843 to 7/26/1926) lived to the ripe age of 82. Robert served briefly for Gen. Grant in the closing days of the Civil War. Robert’s grandson, Robert “Bud” Todd Lincoln Beckwith (died in 1985) was the last person known to have direct Lincoln lineage.
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