|
|
There’s certainly one thing Gerbrand Bakker’s The Twin did. It had me pondering how, among other things, age impacts my reading tastes.
 About halfway through a noted author’s new novel set in South Dakota and its history, I gave up. I picked up a postapocalyptic novel, one of my favorite SF subgenres. I put it down a couple pages in and can’t really tell you why. I picked up The Twin, translated from the Dutch by David Colmer, and finished it in less than 24 hours. Granted, the book is less than 350 smaller-sized pages but I was engrossed. I easily understood why it was a finalist for this year’s Best Translated Book Award.
A bare-bones rendition of the plot: Twins Henk and Helmer are the only children in a Dutch farm family. They feel as if they are one until their late teens, when Henk finds a girlfriend and they suddenly grow apart. Henk dies in car accident a number of months later. Helmer is forced to give up college and spends the rest of his life working on the farm. Now in his mid-fifties and still a bachelor, Helmer is bitter about how his life turned out. He has a touch of hatred for his invalid father, who he has moved to a cold upstairs bedroom and hopes will die soon. Meanwhile, Henk’s girlfriend shows up after decades and asks Helmer to take in her teenage son, who happens to be named Henk.
No fast-paced action. No breathtaking conflicts. No dramatic denouement. Some might claim very little happens. But something is happening — life. The Twin’s unhurried examination of Helmer still trying to cope with irrevocable changes in his life becomes a rumination on the paths our lives take, particularly when affected by events outside our control. And that raises the question. Would I have enjoyed this theme 10 years ago or is it powerful because of the perceptions or perspective of middle age?
Ultimately, the answer is probably irrelevant. Instead, it’s the 24 hours of enjoyment and resulting contemplation that’s important.
Sometimes I don’t understand how I could have grown so old. If I look into the mirror, I still see the eighteen- or nineteen-year-old behind my weather-beaten mug.
Gerbrand Bakker, The Twin
Bulletin Board
- The latest developments on The Last Train from Hiroshima, which I reviewed last month, aren’t good. The publisher has pulled the book because the author wasn’t able to answer various concerns, including, according to the AP, “whether two men mentioned in the book actually existed.”
Blog Headlines of the Week
Interesting Reading in the Interweb Tubes
Bookish Linkage
Nonbookish Linkage
- This furthers my confusion on why we aren’t moving forward more rapidly with the development of wind and other alternative energy sources. Most states in the nation, including South Dakota, could produce well more than 100 percent of their electrical needs through renewable sources.
- Oh, oh. Some Bible Belt creationists in the Kentucky Legislature evidently have been paying attention to some of South Dakota’s legislative idiocy.
There is a peculiar comfort in being completely fucked, because there’s nothing to worry about anymore.
Ron Currie, Jr., Everything Matters!
Love stories don’t rank well on my list of preferred movies. When you get right down to it, though, one of my favorite movies — Reds — is just that, a love story, albeit one played out on an epic background. It’s the background that gets me.
 Written, produced and directed by its star, Warren Beatty, Reds tells the story of John “Jack” Reed, best known in the U.S. as the author of Ten Days That Shook the World, his firsthand account of the 1917 Russian Revolution. Clocking in at well over three hours, radical American politics and the Russian Revolution are the stage on which Beatty tells the story of Reed and his wife, Louise Bryant. Beatty infuses the film with history not just with the story and setting but by interspersing snippets of interviews with Reed’s and Bryant’s contemporaries. While I love the historic elements of the movie, it makes Reed and Bryant characters the audience can care about.
Released in 1981, the movie got 12 Academy Award nominationss, including best picture, best actor (Beatty), best actress (Keaton), best supporting actor (Jack Nicholson) and best supporting actress (Jean Stapleton). Of those five nominations, Stapleton was the only winner, deservedly earned for her portrayal of Emma Goldman. Beatty won the best director Oscar, though. Rotten Tomatoes gives the movie a 94 percent rating, saying that, “as it continues to age, the film only continues to grow in relevance, assuring its rightful place at the top of the Hollywood canon.”
As noted, I love the history aspect. Moreover, not only does Beatty portray that history in the epic cinema format many of the scenes dealing with the revolution and its aftermath invoke the larger than life approach Soviet filmmakers used in their own movies of Revolution. Beatty also does a fine job portraying the earnest idealism of Reed, a journalist who would actually end up being buried in the Kremlin Wall in recognition of his contributions to the Soviet state. But the real star of the film is Keaton.
Keaton certainly wasn’t a newcomer. After all, Annie Hall, several other Woody Allen movies and the first two Godfather movies (the only two worth watching) all preceded Reds. But Keaton rises to another level here. Her Bryant is mercurial and fiercely independent but also matures over the course of the movie, perhaps being even more of a realist than Reed. This could well be Keaton’s finest performance.
The movie, which was not released on DVD until 2006, does not glorify Reed or the Bolsheviks. In fact, the Bolsheviks come across as having more interest in the power of the state than the individual and straying from the dream of the workers’ collective. In fact, even Emma Goldman — whom the U.S. deported to Russia — wants to leave Russia because she sees this becoming another repressive government. As a NYT film critic wrote at the time the film was released, “‘Reds’ is not about Communism, but about a particular era, and a particularly moving kind of American optimism that had its roots in the 19th century.”
It is an optimism that now seems almost naive: the formation of Socialist and Communist parties in the American political system, expressing a desire to unite the working class and elevate perceived social good over capitalism. Yet another part rings all too true. Americans are great at talking about change. Actually working to bring it about is another thing altogether. Beatty’s Reed is willing to do that work and advocate that agenda internationally. Perhaps that’s why the Reed-Bryant relationship is the focus of the movie. After all, why would any red-blooded moviegoer fork over good money to see a story about an American who is, horror of horrors, a Communist?
I think voting is the opium of the masses in this country. Every four years you deaden the pain.
Emma Goldman (Jean Stapleton), Reds
Today, the UK celebrated World Book Day, described as “the biggest annual celebration of books and reading in the UK and Ireland.” (Quite the concept, ain’t it?) As part of the event, the organizers sponsored a couple surveys that produced some intriguing results
One asked which best-selling book of the past decade people would give to young people. It should come as no shock that Harry Potter topped the list. It’s some of the other nine that are surprising. The 9/11 Commission Report came in seventh while The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins was ninth. I find it interesting that the 9/11 report would even make the list, let alone the top 10. And while I know Europe is far more secular than the U.S., I am almost floored by the fact Brits would consider one of the leading tracts of so-called new atheism to be among the most important books to pass on to younger people.
Another survey asked people whether they have lied about reading certain books. Once again surprising me, 42% lied about having read George Orwell’s 1984. Now I can understand people lying about having read War and Peace31%) or even The Bible (24%). And I actually think there’s some lying going on when only 15 percent said they lied about reading Steven Hawking’s A Brief History of Time as I think it is probably the most unread best seller of all time. Still, I would have expected more people to have read 1984 at some point.
One other interesting tidbit: Richard Dawkins made both lists. Six percent of the respondents said they lied about reading his The Selfish Gene.
So on this World Book Day, if I have one modest wish, it is that, at least for a day, we ponder the real and spiritual poverty of a life lived without the ability to read[.]
Victoria Barnsley, “Why World Book Day Matters More Than Ever”
In honor of National Grammar Day … it IS “March Fourth” after all … do you have any grammar books? Punctuation? Writing guidelines? Style books?
More importantly, have you read them?
How do you feel about grammar in general? Important? Vital? Unnecessary? Fussy?
I admit it upfront. The main — if not the only — reason I’m posting on this topic is so I can use the closing quote. And even then it doesn’t really have anything to do with grammar, just style books.
I don’t have any grammar books to my knowledge, although I have been known to check online resources once in a while. I do, though, have several writing and style books. There is, of course, the king — The Elements of Style — which I re-read too infrequently. I have two or three others, mostly picked up while I was pursuing a journalism career.
I also hang on to some outdated editions of both the AP Stylebook and the UPI Stylebook. And when I say outdated, that means both of them are more than 25 years old. I keep them around, though, because I’m familiar enough with the format that they’re an easy reference for resolving usage issues.
That said, this post’s ending quote is my nominee for the greatest stylebook entry in history. It comes from the UPI Stylebook I used while working for it in 1980. Sadly, I see the last sentence is not in the current edition available through Amazon. Why not use humor in teaching style, especially when it makes the point so well?
burro, burrow A burro is an ass. A burrow is a hole in the ground. As a journalist you are expected to know the difference.
UPI Stylebook and Bureau Manual (circa 1978)
Religion has been with us as long as there has been human civilization, if not longer. Conversely, for as long as there has been human civilization, religion has been a battleground, both real and theoretical. Even today we see it in fanatics killing those with whom they disagree or the advent of the so-called “new atheism. Too often lost in both the pervasiveness of religion and the commotion it can generate is the key question of its purpose.
 Lionel Tiger and Michael McGuire are among the latest to investigate and opine on the answer to that question. At bottom, the one they provide in God’s Brain is quite simple. Taking the position that any one religious belief or total lack thereof is immaterial to finding the answer, they conclude that the purpose of religion is to “brainsoothe.” In other words, religion exists to help the brain deal with both internal and external stress and anxiety, something they call “brainpain.”
Tiger and McGuire are not the first to analyze the brain’s role in religion. Some have argued that religion is an evolutionary tool so humans can cope with knowing death is inevitable, an awareness other species do not possess. Others debate whether the brain specifically originated religion or if it is simply the result of neural connections that evolved for other purposes. Still others question the whole idea that religion may be “hardwired” into the brain, containing it is simply a sociological adaptation. Tiger, a professor of anthropology, and McGuire, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist, combine their expertise and ultimately conclude the brain is both the source and principal beneficiary of religion.
God’s Brain is meant for a lay audience. The authors frequently express their concepts in simple, everyday terms. For example, “Religion is to the brain what jogging is to the legs.” Even those of us who can barely cope with chemistry for dummies can grasp that concept. That may be in part due to the fact they are dealing with a subject that has far less empirical data than other subjects. Still, McGuire and Tiger invoke a wide range of social and “hard” sciences, whether brain chemistry or the study of nonhuman primates. Although the range can make the material somewhat kaleidoscopic at times, they do not let the book become too abstract or academic.
Essentially, McGuire and Tiger see religion as a coping mechanism for the brain to deal with anxiety, fear and stress. They argue that the socialization, rituals and beliefs that make up religion help the brain alter itself, to “brainsoothe.” To some extent, their contention turns religion into a self-sustaining system. “As oxygen is to air, guilt is to religion,” they observe. Yet what is one way the brain copes with guilt? Through religious ritual, such as Catholic confession, and belief, such as the forgiveness of sins.
Some, particularly those with a fundamentalist bent toward any religion, may see this theory as an effort to substitute brain chemistry for God. Tiger and McGuire take pains to point out and aim to predicate their analysis on it not being dependent on whether any or all religion is true. They argue that because religion is “as diffuse as oxygen and seemingly as imperative,” we need to attempt to understand it as it is rather than fight over its validity or value. In that regard, even with its occasional weaknesses God’s Brain is a welcome respite from the frenzied cacophony that too often attends discussion of religion.
Religion pleases the brain’s sweet tooth.
Lionel Tiger and Michael McGuire, God’s Brain
I really don’t need to be lusting. Last month’s lust, along with a taste of this month’s, is taking roost. As occasionally happens, it seems a majority of my library “holds” come in at about the same time. As a result, I have five library books at the top of the TBR list. While, fortunately, only one of those is a 14-day loan item, my two “bonus” books from my Archipelago Books subscription have already arrived.
But lust is lust and things tend to even out in the end. Only two items on this month’s list are currently available through the library.
Black Hills, Dan Simmons — Although I loved Dans Simmons’s Hyperion series, I’ve haven’t read anything of his other than that. I figured this book might be a time to catch up. where George Custer’s ghost enters the body of a young Sioux boy at the Little Big Horn. The boy has the ability to see the past and future by touching people and later helps build Mount Rushmore, which is is also plotting to blow up when FDR visits.
The Listener, Shira Nayman — As often happens, a favorable comment on a book blog puts this on the list. The novel tells the story of the relationship between the director of a psychiatric hospital and a German scientist who claims to have committed himself to the institution to hide from his brother, a former Nazi.
The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories, Ian Watson and Ian Whates (eds.) — Alternate history is one of my favorite subgenres of SF. I already have a number of novels and anthologies on my bookshelves. So it’s hard to resist another short story anthology that includes some of my favorite writers. It is on the lust list early, though, as the book isn’t slated for release until May.
Solar, Ian McEwan — I’m a McEwan fan so, despite the fact the novel supposedly deals with teh politics of global warming, it couldn’t help but make the list. It comes out at the end of the month and I’m at the top of the library reserve list.
Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History, David Aaronovitch — I have to admit the various assessments I’ve seen of this book by a British journalist has me running hot and cold already. My intrigue about how conspiracy theory has blossomed may offset my concern that the book serves up a rehash rather than an analysis of those theories.
2017, Olga Slavnikova – Let’s see. A Russian novel combining Russian politics and SF that won the Russian Booker Prize. How could this book, releasing later this month, not be on the list?
36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction, Rebecca Goldstein — At first, this novel about a “new atheist” professor didn’t sound all that intriguing. But the online and written comments and reviews I’ve seen of the book, written by a Macarthur Award (“genius grant”) recipient pushed it onto the list.
Report Card:
Year-to-date (January-February)
- Total Bibliolust books: 10
- Number read: 3 (30%)
- Started but did not finish: 1 (10%)
Cumulative (September 2008-February 2009)
- Total Bibliolust books: 96
- Number read: 60 (62.5%)
- Started but did not finish: 4 (4.2%)
…all distinterested lovers of books, will always look to [literature], as to all other fine art, for a refuge, a sort of cloistral refuge, from a certain vulgarity in the actual world.
Walter Pater, Selections from Walter Pater
Local news items and letters to the editor over the last few weeks crystallized something for me. Too many of my fellow Sioux Falls residents suffer from pothole perspective. And it’s pernicious.
Every year the prospect of spring is associated with potholes, problems that are perennial and inevitable. Yet while our potholes get patched every year, some say potholes show our tax dollars are misspent and we need to forget about “unnecessary” items. That perspective spends too much time staring at the ground and worrying about the inexorable effect of nature. If people took their eyes off the ground and thought about holes that are preventable, it would greatly enrich the city and its residents.
For example, a significant portion of voters saw an indoor swimming pool as “unnecessary.” As one of the leading opponents recently said, swimming outdoors makes far more sense that swimming in an air-conditioned heated pool in the summer. That’s a pothole perspective. Lifting our eyes off the ground we’d see the indisputable fact that at least half of the year it makes no sense to swim outdoors. Perhaps that might suggest that providing a lifetime recreational opportunity to our residents without the necessity of joining a private gym or going to a motel for a night or weekend might be of benefit. Yes there is an initial outlay but, at the same time, there will be user fees, rental fees and the additional sales tax and other income generated by hosting local, state or regional swim meets.
While weather may be problematic for outdoor pools, the pothole perspective says that when you can’t use the outdoor pools at least there’s plenty of ice for skating or hockey. If anyone wants more indoor ice, it must be private groups who would benefit because the “public” has all the sheets of ice it needs. Seems, though, that the ice rink in the Expo Building on the fairgrounds closed for the season last week for repairs. That means hockey practices must be moved — to Iowa. That means the girl’s state varsity hockey tournament must be moved — to Sioux Center, Iowa. Yes, it would cost local government money to help build and maintain an ice facility. At the same time, even if all you worry about is economics, there are again user fees, rental fees and the like. Not only is that money going to Iowa, the sales tax and revenue from various tournaments is heading to that state also, along with Rapid City, Huron or Brookings. Does the state’s largest city really want to provide less recreational opportunity to their residents than those other communities?
Yet naysayers aren’t the only ones affected by a pothole perspective. Mainline pothole visionaries say there’s no need for an events center because we’ve already got the Arena. Borderline pothole visionaries say the lack of an events center is a cultural and economic pothole and the way to fix it is to allow cities to levy an additional sales tax. Yet when the several-ton truck known as the Legislature says the city can’t have its preferred patching material, there’s no Plan B. Now while opponents are complaining about real and imaginary potholes, supporters stare at the events center pothole and complain. Meanwhile, the cultural and economic potholes get deeper and wider and the city is outclassed by other cities in the region and state.
This pothole fixation keeps far too many from seeing the growing gaps and fissures in our culture and recreation and our revenue sources. I’m not saying local government is solely responsible to fix those gaps or to fully fund these and other facilities in Sioux Falls. There needs to be public-private partnerships and private investment to get such facilities built and help make them as self-sustaining as possible. But simply staring at a pothole doesn’t fix it.
Thinking the inescapable pothole plague is more important than our future quality of life truly is staring at the ground. Anyone who tries to move forward while fixated on the ground takes great risk. Unfortunately, a pothole perspective that seems almost endemic is bringing Sioux Falls far too close to falling off a cliff.
A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.
Saul Bellow, To Jerusalem and Back
Bulletin Board
Blog Headline of the Week
Interesting Reading in the Interweb Tubes
Bookish Linkage
Nonbookish Linkage
A learning experience is one of those things that say, “You know that thing you just did? Don’t do that.”
Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt
For whatever reason, I don’t recall where or when I first saw Midnight Cowboy. But I do know that from that very first time, one scene and piece of dialogue has stuck with me.
 “Ratso” Rizzo, played by Dustin Hoffman, and Joe Buck (Jon Voight) are crossing a street in downtown New York City against a “Don’t Walk” sign. When Ratso is almost hit by a cab, he glares at the driver, pounds on the hood and yells, “I’m walkin’ here! I’m walkin’ here!” The next line isn’t too bad either. He says to Buck, “Actually, that ain’t a bad way to pick up insurance, you know.”
I always think of that scene — over which there is disagreement whether it was scripted or ad libbed — when I hear or think of the movie. Released in 1969, the film is its own cultural icon. The core plot is fairly simple. Buck, a Texan who thinks he’s quite the love stud, comes to New York to seduce and live off rich women. As NYC is wont to do, his dreams are crushed. He ends up being taken in (using the phrase in more than one sense) by Rizzo, a streetwise and lame homeless person. With content dealing with sex and drugs, not to mention male prostitution, the movie was originally rated “X.” Yet Midnight Cowboy became the only X-rated movie to win the Oscar for Best Picture. (When it was re-released in 1971, the rating was changed to “R” without a single change in the movie.)
Both Hoffman and Voight were nominated for the Oscar for Best Actor — losing to John Wayne in True Grit. My favorite line ended up 27th on the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 best movie quotes. Hoffman ranked seventh on Premiere Magazine’s list of 100 Greatest Performances of All Time for his portrayal of the “persevering, slumping, filthy, sweaty, rodent-like tubercular street hustler.” The appropriately named Ratso came in 33rd on the magazine’s list of the 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time. The film itself was named to the National Film Registry in 1994, was 36th on the AFI’s 1998 list of America’s 100 greatest movies (but dropped to 43rd ten years later) and gets a 90 percent rating at Rotten Tomatoes.
But it really is the characters who make this film. Roger Ebert summed it up quite well, saying “a 1994 viewing of the film confirms my original opinion, expressed in 1969, that the movie as a whole doesn’t live up to its parts. And that Joe and Ratso rise above the material, taking on a reality of their own while the screenplay detours into the fashionable New York demimonde.” It’s how Joe and Ratso rise above the material that is enthralling.
Hoffman’s Ratso is unquestionably one of the best performances of his career. We see and understand the relationship between him and Buck as it develops and what it grows to mean to each. Buck may be naive and Ratso a seedy street hustler but both have dreams. Despite — or perhaps because — those dreams and life turn more nightmarish, their relationship becomes stronger. Even though neither achieves his dream, both characters are unforgettable.
The X on the windows means the landlord can’t collect rent, which is a convenience, on account of it’s condemned.
Ratso Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman), Midnight Cowboy
|
Reading Challenges Notable Books
2 / 6
(33% complete)
1 /10
(10 % complete)
8 /12
(66 % complete)
0 / 6
(0 % complete)
0 / 4
(0 % complete)
Disclaimer The views expressed here are mine and mine alone. I do not speak for my law partners, our associates, staff and clients or my family and friends. Not only should any opinions here not be attributed to them, chances are they probably don't agree with me.
 Contact me You can e-mail me at prairieprogressive at gmaildotcom.
|
