Review of Arcadia, by Lauren Groff

This little, poetic book soared above my expectations.  Equal parts sunshine and shadow, it tells the story of Bit, a boy raised in a hippie commune in upstate New York.

Any fiction about alternative lifestyles of the 1960's and 70's has the unfortunate potential to become an anticommunist or antianarchist screed.  Groff easily avoids that pitfall by focusing on the hard work of a back-to-the-land, build-society-from-scratch commune, combined with an exacting eye for the personalities (and clash of personalties) involved.  Telling it from the perspective of a sensitive boy makes it possible for her to explore the outcome: what kind of man is made from a childhood that's built on hard labor and semi-starvation, livened with the beauty of nature and communal love.

The book is told in four parts: 1) Bit as a 5-year-old boy when the commune is first being built in the early 1970's, 2) Bit as a 14-year-old, experiencing the commune at it's height and sudden downfall, 3) Bit in his late 30's living in New York City with his young daughter, and 4) Bit in his 50's, returning to the land that once held the commune to care for his ailing mother.

What holds all these pieces together isn't just Bit's story, but the lives of the women around him.  Groff makes it clear that the women of the commune are its center and what keeps it together for so long, and Bit is their child more than he is the child of the men who ostensibly make the big decisions.  Each section of the book is defined by Bit's relationship to key women in his life: the first section belongs to his mother, the second to his teenage love, the third to his missing wife and daughter, and the fourth brings him back to his mother--to the source, so to speak, of his life.

In this journey, Groff touches on interesting themes of freedom vs. responsibility, individuality vs. community, and loneliness vs. connection.  And they emerge as a natural part of the narrative, never as a sermon, so that this book goes down as easily and sweetly as a fine glass of wine.

Review of Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

This book is number one on a list of twelve literary fiction books that I want to read this year, and it was a fantastic beginning.  Usually I don’t like historical fiction that uses real historical people as its main characters because it’s so difficult for a modern author to get the characters’ psychology right.  But Mantel is so steeped in the historical details of her time period and is so skilled at depicting her characters’ motivations that she makes it all look effortless. 

But the subtle psychological details are only one small part of the beauty of Wolf Hall.  Mantel weaves in the details of daily living in a way that propel the story forward and illuminate the characters like the details in a 15^th century portrait.  As a consequence, you feel like you’re living in the period, and the details are never boring or a distraction to the narrative. 

But what I appreciated most is that Mantel understands politics at a level that’s difficult to find in historical fiction published in the US.  She captures both the political machinations at court and the toll that political scheming takes on her characters.  Take this example from an early scene in the novel when Thomas Cromwell witnesses the eviction of his mentor, Cardinal Woolsey, from his palace: “Christ, he thinks, by my age I ought to know.  You don’t get on by being original.  You don’t get on by being bright.  You don’t get on by being strong.  You get on by being a subtle crook…” (Page 49.) 

Or later in the novel, when Cromwell is discussing his own turbulent past with one of his rivals, the Spanish ambassador, Eustace Chapuys:  “But it is no use to justify yourself. It is no good to explain.  It is weak and anecdotal.  It is wise to conceal the past even if there’s nothing to conceal.  A man’s power is in the half-light, in the half-seen movements of his hand and the unguessed-at expression of his face.  It is the absence of facts that frightens people; the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.” (Page 294.) 

And so Mantel conveys a deep link between the way a man like Cromwell wields power, and the way a historian must sift through facts to try and get at the deep inner lives of her characters, which in the end always remain somewhat remote, vessels into which she—and, in turn, her readers—pour their fears, fantasies, and desires. 

Most of all, the author masterfully reveals how the world works, even today.  In the scene in which Cromwell must talk sense into Harry Percy and force him to give up his attachment to Anne Boleyn, he tries to make Percy understand that he might not fear the king, but he should fear his creditors:  “How can he explain it to him?  The world is not run from where he thinks.  Not from his border fortresses, not even from Whitehall.  The world is run from Antwerp, from Florence, from places he has never imagined; from Lisbon, from where the ships with sails of silk drift west and are burned up in the sun.  Not from castle walls, but from countinghouses, not by the call of the bugle but by the click of the abacus; not by the grate and click of the mechanism of the gun but by the scrape of the pen on the page of the promissory note that pays for the gun and the gunsmith and the powder and shot.” (Page 309.) 

Which is, of course, the reason to study history and read historical novels:  because they remind us of lessons from the past that are still relevant today. 

But Mantel also understands the conflicts of that time period.  She’s been accused of doing what many historical novelists do:  imposing modern tastes on her main character.  Her depiction of Cromwell is of a man who treats women as human beings and not property, who is kind to children and animals, who’s skeptical about the existence of an all-powerful and all-knowing God.  But the final showdown between Cromwell and the inflexible Thomas More, who’s been imprisoned in the Tower of London, embodies the struggle of a rising middle class pulling Europe out of the religiously repressive Dark Ages and into a more secular, humanistic world.  The exchange begins with Cromwell: 

“I am glad I am not like you.” 

“Undoubtedly.  Or you would be sitting here.” 

“I mean, my mind fixed on the next world.  I realize you see no prospect of improving this one.” 

“And you do?” 

Almost a flippant question.  A handful of hail smacks itself against the window.  It startles them both; he gets up, restless.  He would rather know what’s outside, see the summer in its sad blowing wreckage, than cower behind the blind and wonder what the damage is.  “I once had every hope,” he says.  “The world corrupts me, I think.  Or perhaps it’s just the weather.  It pulls me down and makes me think like you, that one should shrink inside, down and down to a little point of light, preserving one’s solitary soul like a flame under glass…”  (Pages 519-520.) 

And this is what elevates Wolf Hall to the level of art; the fact that it works on so many levels makes it one of the best novels I’ve read in years.  I can’t remember reading a modern historical novel this good.

This Year's Reading List

This year I wanted to plan my recreational reading more than I have in past years.  I seem to flit from one mystery series to another, and while there’s nothing wrong with reading a good mystery or two, I haven’t been getting to the much better books that are gathering dust on my shelves.  With that in mind, I made a list of 12 fiction books that I want to read this year, approximately, one per month, although I probably won’t read them in the order I’ve listed them below.

Top Ten Fiction Books to Read in 2013 (plus a couple of classics)

1.    Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel
2.    Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel
3.    NW, Zadie Smith
4.    The Yellow Birds, Kevin Powers
5.    Arcadia, Lauren Groff
6.    The Round House, Louise Erdrich
7.    Live By Night, Dennis Lehane
8.    This Is How You Lose Her, Junot Diaz
9.    State of Wonder, Ann Patchett
10.  The Orchardist, Amanda Coplin
11.  Classic #1: Swann’s Way, Marcel Proust
12.  Classic #2: Germinal, Emile Zola

Numbers 1 and 2 are both winners of Britain’s Man Booker Prize for fiction, and they’re the first two books in a trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, the infamous secretary to Henry VIII.  Historical fiction is right up my aisle, so these are must-reads for me.

Number 3 is Zadie Smith’s novel of four Londoners who grew up in the same council estate but who lead very different lives as adults.

The Yellow Birds made several of the year’s best novel lists for 2012.  It follows two, young US soldiers during a stint in northern Iraq, where they’re thrown into the midst of an urban battlefield.

Number 5 narrates the history of a commune in upstate New York from the 1960’s to the present day through the eyes of the first child born there.

Number 6 needs little explanation, since Erdrich’s works are heavily reviewed and discussed in the US media. This one has garnered a lot of praise, and I’m interested in taking a look.

Dennis Lehane is one of my perennial favorites, so Live By Night was going to make this list no matter what.  And it’s historical fiction novel set in Prohibition-era Boston.  What’s not to like about that?

I have a secret to confess:  I’ve never read Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which would make me a pariah in any group of supposedly well-read people.  And I say, “So what.”  I’ll just make up for it by reading This Is How You Lose Her.

I’ve heard so many people rave about Patchett’s State of Wonder that I broke down and bought a copy, but it’s been gathering pixel dust on my Kindle ever since.  I’m determined to get to it this year.

Number 10 made a few of the year’s best lists, too.  The Orchardist was written by a local author and is set in the Cascade foothills, so I’m eager to see what the fuss is about.  And, again, it’s historical fiction, which I deeply enjoy.

The two classics on this list hardly need an introduction.  This year is the 100^th anniversary of the publication of Swann’s Way, so it’s about time I got around to reading the first book in Proust’s monumental work, Remembrance of Things Past (or In Search of Lost Time, depending on how literal you like your translations to be).

I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I’ve never read Zola’s labor classic, Germinal, but it’s true, I haven’t.  It’s time to change that.

 

Review of “Paranoia & Heart-Break; Fifteen Years in a Juvenile Facility” by Jerome Gold

Jerome Gold worked for fifteen years as a counselor in a juvenile detention facility in Washington State, from 1991 to 2005, and this is his day-to-day journal.  It’s a gripping read, and the reader soon begins to care as much about some of these kids as the author does himself.

The first thing that strikes you is the terrible histories of these kids, and the fact that each was once a victim of a violent crime or abuse at an appalling young age.  Many, but not all, of the kids are gang members or have older siblings or fathers who were involved in gangs.  Gold was working at a time when the crack cocaine epidemic was taking its worst toll on impoverished communities, and he spent much of his time trying to teach these kids how to resist drugs and gang culture.

But violence isn’t solely the province of gang activity; poverty and isolation are also big factors.  Most of these kids were trying to make the best choices they could when their options were severely limited.  In most of their families, violence and sexual abuse was passed down through generations.  And Gold and his colleagues do their best to break the cycle.  But the author also makes it clear that they’re trying to counteract the effects of a racist and dysfunctional system.

About halfway through the book the author describes a conversation with a friend, who’s a parole officer: “I deal with a disproportionate number of black and Hispanic kids—disproportionate to their numbers in society—whose families are impoverished, who almost always come from single-parent families, whose mom or dad or both have a drug or alcohol problem, whose mom or dad themselves may have served time or are serving time. So let’s face it: society doesn’t love these kids and wants them exactly where they are: in prison. And I am society’s representative. I am the father society wants them to have, even though I despise society for all the reasons the best of my generation despises society. So, however I want to see myself, I do represent oppression.”

He describes the inherent conflict in trying to teach kids to follow the rules of the system—go to school, get a job, live by society’s standards—but at the same time he has to teach them how to question the authority of gang leaders, abusive parents, and criminal justice authorities who don’t treat them fairly.

And this is where Gold’s book really shines.  He doesn’t just talk about the children in the facility, he also illuminates how these facilities are run, by whom, and for what objectives.  And like any institution, some employees are good at their jobs, and some are terrible.  Meanwhile, the administrators have no clue what it’s like to work directly with the kids, and sometimes they make terrible decisions.  Some psychiatrists are good, but others are wedded to a treatment agenda that won’t work for every kid, and they refuse to adapt accordingly.  Adequate funding is always a problem.  And beneath it all is a persistent struggle by staff to avoid burnout and to see each new kid in the system as someone who can be rescued and rehabilitated.

This book should be required reading for politicians and public policy makers.  But everyone can benefit from a better understanding of why kids commit crimes and how hard it is to piece together a normal life once a child has been abused, acts out, and then is incarcerated.

Not All Guns Are Created Equal

Seven killed at a Sikh temple.  Twelve killed and 58 wounded at a movie theater.  What do these two mass murders have in common?  The weapons used.

When we talk about gun control, gun advocates repeat the old refrain:  “guns don’t kill people; people kill people.”  While there’s truth in that, we should also add:  “the type of gun used can make one murder into a mass murder in a matter of seconds.”

The shooting two weeks ago in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, was accomplished with three weapons:  a 12-guage, pump-action shotgun; a Smith & Wesson M&P15 semiautomatic rifle; and a Glock 0.40-caliber semiautomatic pistol.

To kill 12 people and wound 58, the shooter had to fire a huge number of rounds in a matter of a few minutes.  The gunman started with the shotgun, which probably fired about 5 rounds, then switched to the semiautomatic rifle, which was fitted with a 100-round ammunition barrel.  He sprayed the crowded theater with a shower of bullets until the ammunition barrel jammed, then he dumped the rifle and pulled the semiautomatic pistol.

Now, the semiautomatic rifle he used is an AR-15, which is similar to the military’s fully automatic M-16.  The AR-15 rifle used to be restricted for civilian purchase and use under the 1994 assault weapons ban.  The ban expired in 2004, and politicians have been too cowardly to renew it ever since.  The high number of casualties and wounded in the Aurora shooting is a direct result.

The 0.40-caliber Glock pistol is similar to 9-mm handguns, which are popular with drug gangs and are used in the vast majority of mass murders in the U.S.  Gun control advocates have been trying for decades, with the help of the nation’s police departments, to restrict the manufacture and sale of 9-mm handguns for those very reasons.  We shouldn’t be surprised, therefore, that the man who shot up a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, yesterday also used a 9-mm handgun as his weapon of choice.

In debates about gun control we should always remember that not all guns are created equal.  Some can raise the death toll from two or three people to a dozen within a matter of minutes.  As a society we have to ask ourselves:  should we allow everyone the freedom to rain death on the maximum number of people in the shortest amount of time?

Is a few people’s “fun”—the ability to spray targets at the local gun range with a semiautomatic weapon—worth the lives of so many innocent and unsuspecting people, some as old as your beloved grandparents, and some as young as the unborn child lost by a pregnant woman wounded in the Aurora, Colorado, shooting?

The answer is no.  Gun control is not the all-or-nothing proposition that the NRA would have you believe.  The type of gun matters, and Americans and the politicians who represent us need to realize that sooner and not later.

 

To Bain or Not To Bain: That’s Not the Question

The media continues to obsess about whether Mitt Romney ran Bain Capital from 1999 through 2001.  As the New York Times puts it, “At stake is whether Democrats can hold Mr. Romney responsible for a series of now-controversial investments Bain made during the period in question, including companies that specialized in outsourcing, laid off some of their workers, or declared bankruptcy.”

Yes, Democrats have run ads that question Romney’s responsibility for outsourcing American jobs.  And, yes, Romney has denied that he was in charge of managing investments at Bain during the period in question, when he was living in Utah working at his new job managing the Olympic Games.

During that three-year period Romney was still listed as the chief executive and sole owner of the parent company Bain Capital Inc. and his name appeared on 142 different documents that were filed with federal regulators.  But in practice, he probably didn’t have anything to do with making specific decisions on which companies were bought and sold by Bain’s various funds.

This is an aspect of Wall Street that’s difficult for most working class Americans to understand.  A rich man’s name may be on the legal documents of a company and he may draw a six-figure salary (as Romney did, receiving at least $100,000 from Bain Capital in 2001) for any number of reasons that have nothing to do with putting in an honest day’s work.  Sometimes wealthy people are paid only for the use of their names, and they never sign any documents, read any of the documents they do sign, never attend board meetings, never provide any advice, and never make any decisions.

Nice work if you can get it.

Remember, though, that the money paid to rich people for the use of their names is part of the enormous profit squeezed out of the companies owned and managed by hedge funds and private equity companies like Bain Capital Inc.  Jobs are outsourced and companies run into the ground so that outsized profits can be wrung out of them in order to pay wasteful overhead, including outsized salaries to rich people who don’t do anything.  Mitt Romney has benefited enormously from this disgusting practice, and he’s never condemned it.

Mr. Romney claims that he was never involved in outsourcing jobs.  But he did profit from the practice.  And he’s never actually said that jobs should stay in America and that everyone should invest in America.  According to his 2010 tax return—the only one he’s made public—he has many investments in offshore funds through his Bain Capital holdings.  Most of those offshore funds were set up so that clients of Bain Capital could avoid paying U.S. taxes.

The real issue is whether working class Americans think a man like Mitt Romney represents their interests.  After all, that’s the main question we should ask ourselves before we vote for any politician:  does this person understand and agree with my interests and concerns, and can he represent me?

The answer is that Romney neither understands nor cares about the economic conditions under which most Americans live.  He’s been content up till now to live off the profits of a system that has shrunk the “middle” class to a handful of people making over six figures a year and plunged the majority of Americans into poverty and insecurity.

And he’s happy about that.

King 5’s Cowardly Reporting

On Monday, local TV station King 5 aired a special report on their 11:00 news hour about ocean acidification and its effect on the local shellfish industry.  They spent several minutes on the topic, but managed to avoid mentioning the words “global warming.”

 
They did give a partial reason for ocean acidification:  more CO2 in the water causes the water to become more acidic, and there’s more CO2 in the water because there’s more CO2 in the air.  But they didn’t go on to say anything about the sources of all the extra CO2 in the air.

Ocean acidification is a well understood and predictable side-effect of global warming, and the fact that it’s now observable and progressing much more rapidly than climate scientists predicted is a major piece of proof in the global warming hypothesis.

Furthermore, King 5 viewers need to know where CO2 comes from:  coal-burning power plants (which make up about half of our utility plants in the US), certain industries (especially oil refining and extraction), and the tail pipes of our automobiles (unless you drive a fully electric car or one that burns cooking oil).

Maybe Americans didn’t realize that they were choosing to drive their SUV’s at the expense of being able to eat shellfish in the future, but that’s no excuse for hiding that fact now.  Ocean acidification is man-made, not some mysterious natural event, which is what the King 5 report implied.

There’s no excuse for such an act of journalistic malfeasance.  I felt sorry for Lori Matsukawa, who looked as if she could barely keep herself from blurting out the words “global warming, folks, that’s what this is all about.”

We have a scientific community that accepts global warming as a fact.  We have a President who accepts global warming as a fact.  Our higher courts have ruled that global warming is a fact.  It’s past time for the media to report it as a fact.  Because, as the King 5 report proved, you can’t accurately report on the effects of global warming, if you can’t admit that it even exists.