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This month’s list is quite short, largely because my lust diminishes when I have books stacked up to review and plenty of other books that I really, really want to read. I guess that is one of the things about being an adult — common sense can put a damper on lust and distinguish between it and love. That said, it isn’t like there was no lust this month:
1Q84, Haruki Murakami — To be honest, I have a bit of trepidation about putting this on the list. It isn’t often I lust after 1,000 page novels, particularly when I am so far behind the way it is. But 1Q84 I’ve been reading about the unabashed anticipation for this book appearing in the U.S. for well more than a year. I am on the reserve list at the library but fear it may be a two-week loaner.
Lost Memory of Skin, Russell Banks — I’ve never read any of Banks’ work and I think it’s the relatively unique concept of this book that attracts me. It is a novel about a young man who must register as a sex offender, wear an electronic ankle bracelet and cannot live within 2,500 feet of anywhere children might gather. This means the only place he can live is under a causeway in his hometown.
Report Card:
Year to Date (January-October 2011)
- Total Bibliolust books: 46
- Number read: 34 (73.9%)
- Started but did not finish: 5 (10.9%)
Cumulative (September 2008-October 2011)
- Total Bibliolust books: 195
- Number read: 152 (77.6%)
- Started but did not finish: 14 (7%)
I have come to believe that living your well-read life is measured not by the number of books read at the end of your life but by whether you are in book love today, tomorrow, and next week.
Steve Leveen, The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life
Some historical events take on such significance they become ingrained in a nation’s culture. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy is one such event. In part because of the conspiracy theories that have grown up around it, nearly 50 years later we still see a variety of books, both novels and nonfiction, published about it. The assassination and the questions of conspiracy that arose almost immediately are the building blocks for Mike Palecek’s latest novel, Johnny Moon. And while the conspiracy theories are a driving force, certain readers will see an ability to evince the times as the novel’s real strength.
 The title character is a third grader in a Catholic school when Kennedy is killed. Johnny is flush with not only the hopes and dreams of a third grader — becoming physically fit in response to Kennedy’s promotion of fitness — but the hopes and dreams that reflect the Kennedy Administration more broadly — going to the Moon and fighting Communism. In fact, Johnny is fond of quoting the phrase from Kennedy’s speech announcing the lunar program, that Americans pursue such goals “not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” This is a unique time in American history, post-50s but before the tumult and disarray of the late 1960s. It is a time that seemed so much simpler and clear.
Johnny’s story reflects the disruption of the times. The sister of a nun at his school witnesses the assassination. Glimpses of her story reveal various facts with which anyone who has read about the conspiracy theories is familiar. Johnny, occasionally picked on for his seemingly odd ways, becomes the leader of an odd assortment of people who come to believes the school boiler possesses special powers, powers that among other things may reveal what really happened in Dallas. Johnny leads classmates, nuns and a couple maintenance workers on a type of vision quest to assuage the rupture in their previously ordered world and the suggestion that the assassination may not be as it seems.
At times, this search may strike readers as a tad confusing. Moreover, it doesn’t quite ring true the Catholic school environment in which it occurs. This is surprising because perhaps the strongest part of the book is Palecek’s ability to capture the culture and and atmosphere of Catholic schools at the time. As he notes in a prologue, in the 1960s “every berg, town and ville in the Midwest boasted a Catholic block of school, rectory and convent.” That was certainly the case in my hometown, where I was a second grader in a Catholic school at the time of the Kennedy assassination. The school took up half block. The rectory and sat on a quarter of a block across the street. And even though my hometown had a population of less than 15,000 at the time, it had two Catholic schools.
There is no doubt the Catholics took pride in JFK being the first Catholic president. That pride bolstered the sense of exhilaration many others in the country felt. But it also bolstered the Catholic education system being one in which patriotism and religion went hand-in-hand, particularly when it came to “the Red Menace.” It was virtually doctrine among students in Catholic schools that unless the government continued to battle Communism, the Catholic Church would be a primary target when the Russians invaded. Regardless of the size of the town, children in Catholic schools “realized they would be soon rounded up by Russian soldiers and made to line up in the playground and say there is no God.”
Thus, although Johnny Moon‘s main theme purports to be the Kennedy assassination, those of a certain era, particularly those who attended a Catholic elementary schools, will see it differently. To us, Johnny’s life and beliefs are a surprisingly insightful and accurate commentary on an aspect of life never forgotten but rarely finding its way into print.
They looked at JFK on TV, smart, handsome, smiling, funny, and just knew they were in the best place and time there had ever been…
Mike Palecek, Johnny Moon
For reasons not worth detailing here, for the last 25 years or so I only go to ophthalmologists for my eye exams. Once again yesterday that habit paid off.
When the routine of your annual eye exam becomes different than the year before and the year before that, etc., etc., you tend to notice. The ophthalmologist thought I might have one or two tears in the retina of my right eye so wanted me to see a retinal specialist before I left. Now anyone would sit up and take notice of a retinal tear. But a dozen years ago another basically routine eye exam revealed a detached retina in that same eye. (From that experience, I can tell you that if the person doing your eye exam asks, “Have you had anything to eat today?”, your exam is no longer routine.) Aside from trepidation, the worst part of that surgery was being told I shouldn’t read or drive for six weeks. My wife might well say it was the longest six weeks of her life.
The retinal specialist confirmed there were two tears. Even with a scleral buckle from my prior surgery holding the retina in place, I figured that eye didn’t have a good track record for good things happening. Within half an hour I was in a room just down the hall and he was zapping my right eye (repeatedly) with a laser. Within minutes of the roughly 15-minute procedure, I walked out of the clinic with no restrictions. In fact, the worst part of driving back to work was that my eyes were still dilated from the basic exam.
How amazing is technology? I arrived at 10 am for a routine exam. I walked out of the clinic at 1:15 pm, having seen two ophthalmologists and had eye surgery and was able to return to work. How much was the procedure and is it covered by insurance? Didn’t ask, don’t care, doesn’t matter — we’re talking about the ability to see (and read) here.
So I’ll say here what I’ve often told people. Your eyes deserve their own annual physical — by an ophthalmologist. Sight is worth far, far more than any additional cost (and I don’t think it’s a helluva lot). And, by the way, after this is posted, I’m going to go read and revel in it.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
Sylvia Plath, “Mad Girl’s Love Song,” Collected Poems
Interesting Reading in the Interweb Tubes
- Consider the context (“A book symbolises the whole intellectual history of mankind; it’s the greatest weapon ever devised in the war against stupidity.”)
- Quack Prophet (“Whether it’s the Dead Sea Scrolls or Finnegan’s Wake, there’s a long literary history of taking the garbled and the fragmented and looking for lucid meaning beneath.”) (via)
Bookish Linkage
Nonbookish Linkage
A man who can laugh, if only at himself, is never really miserable.
H.L. Mencken, Minority Report
The main ramifications of historic events are frequently easy to see. Often, though, we overlook the ripples that produce unexpected, or even untended, effects. Take 9/11, for example. It didn’t take a great deal of thought to realize it would bring the U.S. into direct armed conflict with al-Qaeda. And it was barely six weeks later that the Patriot Act went into effect. But in looking at the world after 9/11, Dominic Streatfeild doesn’t limit himself to the obvious.
 Streatfeild displays the unforeseen aspects of the event from the outset of his highly readable book, A History of the World Since 9/11: Disaster, Deception, and Destruction in the War on Terror. The first chapter tells the story of Mark Strovo, now sitting on death row in Texas for the October 4, 2001, murder of the operator of a convenience story and suspected of other such deaths. What does that have to do with 9/11? Well, Strovo targeted “sand niggers,” darker-skinned individuals who appeared to him to be Muslim. A convicted felon and admittedly racist before 9/11, Strovo told a television station after his arrest, “I did what every other American wanted to do but didn’t have the nerve.”
In telling Strovo’s story, Streatfeild examines some of the aspects of America and the post-9/11 rhetoric that contributed to the rage reflected in Strovo’s actions. Granted, Strovo is suspected of having committed a variety of retaliatory acts against prior to the murder and it takes someone predisposed to criminal violence to act out in such an extreme fashion. Still, there is little doubt about the strength of anti-Muslim emotions after 9/11 and some viewed Muslims as a threat. And if you’re wondering how Strovo so easily identified his targets, “Ay-rabs” to use his term, the answer is he didn’t. The man Strovo shot to death was Hindu and came to the U.S. from India in 1982. In fact, all the suspected victims and potential victims were Asian.
A History of the World Since 9/11 points out that 9/11 had unintended effects worldwide. For example, Streatfeild examines the adverse effect it had on the World Health Organization’s vaccination efforts seeking to eradicate polio worldwide. Not only did U.S. military action wholly disrupt efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan but it reinforced pre-existing suspicions in Africa and elsewhere that the vaccination program was actually an American plot against Muslims. Streatfeild, a British journalist, makes a crucial observation in the book. Whether those beliefs are true — just as whether the U.S. lied or killed innocent people — may well be irrelevant. “What does matter is that a huge percentage of of people in the Arab world believe them.”
Streatfeild’s irritation and frustration is evident throughout the book. Nowhere is it more evident than in the chapters dealing with what could be considered self-inflicted damage. Thus, A History of the World Since 9/11 explores the extraordinary rendition of a German citizen of Egyptian descent, a kidnapping, imprisonment and interrogation based entirely on mistaken identity. Streatfeild also takes the reader to the weapons depots the U.S. military failed to secure after the invasion of Iraq, the looting of which provided most of the explosives and other weapons that would be used against U.S. troops during the so-called insurgency.
Yet perhaps the most frustrating events featured in the book is the chapter examining the Bush Administration’s claims in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq that Iraq had been trying to purchase aluminum tubes to greatly expand a nuclear weapons program. It may be the most condemning account of the Bush Administration’s actions during that period I have ever read. Streatfeild leaves little doubt that not only did parts of the government and intelligence community take only one view of the facts, they ignored and even suppressed definitive contrary evidence. It makes clear that part of Secretary of State Colin Powell’s crucial speech to the United Nations was predicated on withheld information, if not affirmative misrepresentations.
There is no doubt Streatfeild views the reverberations of 9/11 as more disastrous than the attacks themselves. It’s equally clear that he condemns what nations and governments have done in the name of fighting terrorism. Yet even though A History of the World Since 9/11 does have a predisposition, it is an engrossing piece of reportage in which even those who may disagree with its conclusions can gain insight and knowledge about the impact of 9/11 on the history of the world to date.
9/11 brought us together. A decade on, not only is the United States the most reviled nation on earth, but a third of its own citizens believe their government to have been complicit in the bombing of the World Trade Centers.
Dominic Streatfeild, A History of the World Since 9/11
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