Creation, by Gore Vidal

I should say at the outset that I think Gore Vidal was among the finest writers of the last century (and part of this one), that I’ve read many of his books, that this is my second reading of Creation, and that I miss having him in the world.  He was a keen observer of human behavior and a razor-sharp critic of politics.   We could use his incisive wit and his mischievous charm in this climate so filled with self-righteousness and anger.

But at the moment I want to focus on this book.  It is an important work.  What do I mean, important?  I mean it will give the careful reader the rudiments of an education about human beings that transcends time and place, and ultimately teaches humility.  We could use more of that in our public discourse today, as in all times, as in all places.

The story takes place long ago between 520 and 445 BCE in Persia.  Cyrus Spitama is the fictional grandson of the real Zoroaster, founder in the fifth century BCE of Zoroastrianism, the primary religion of Persia, modern day Iran, for more than a thousand years.  It was mostly pushed out by the Muslim conquest of Persia in the 7th century CE but continues to have a small number of adherents in Iran and India.  These facts I learned when the story sparked my curiosity and I spent a little time with my friend Wikipedia.  During my re-reading of Creation I spent quite a lot of time with my friend.  Cyrus, being grandson to the founder of the leading religion of the time, was well schooled in religious thought, particularly Zoroastrian thought, and naturally he saw it as the one true faith with the one true explanation of the two big questions: 1) how did all this get here (creation), and 2) what happens to us after we die?

Because of his relation to Zoroaster, Cyrus is fetched to the court of the Persian King Darius and brought up there along with the sons of nobles, including Xerxes, son of Darius, and future king.  At the time Persia was the most powerful kingdom in the world, at least that part of the world.  It included all of modern day Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Israel, Syria, Jordan, Turkey, and probably Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan.  There were numerous Greeks at the king’s court, who incited numerous conflicts with Greek cities.  But Darius was interested In the lands to the east--India and Cathay (modern China), which were reputed to have great riches.  So Darius sent Cyrus as an ambassador, along with a caravan of goods to be traded and a contingent of the army to protect them.  Darius wanted to know what they had to trade, who were their rulers, the size of their armies, and how they fought.  Obviously, empire was on his mind.  

Cyrus was also interested in religion and spreading the faith founded by his grandfather.  His journeys enabled conversations with a surprising set of leaders, including Mahavira, a revered prophet of Jainism, Siddhartha Gautama, better known as the Buddha, founder of Buddhism, Laozi, author of the Tao Te Ching and founder of Taoism, and the great Chinese philosopher Confucius, all of whom happened to be alive at the time in history.  As reader we get to be a fly on the wall in debates between these great thinkers and founders of world religions.  We are left with the observation that each of them sees the other’s ideas as primitive, curious, and wrong.  Of course all this takes place long before the appearance of Christianity or Islam, but the suggestion that the same thinking would be applied to them is unavoidable.  

Late in life Cyrus travels to Athens where he is contemporary with Socrates, Sophocles, Pericles, Democritus, Thuycidides, Herodotus, and others whose names I would recognize if I’d studied ancient Greece.  The wars between Persia and Greece were known in Persia as The Greek Wars; in Greece they were known as The Persian Wars.  

Much of the narrative described the politics of the time, with insider’s knowledge.  Of course Vidal made up the conversations he imagined might have taken place, but being a savvy student of politics and human nature, his fabrications are very believable. Having run for Congress, and lost, Vidal had more than a passing familiarity with politics.   When Cyrus Spitama is old, and serving as the Persian king’s ambassador in Athens, he is confronted by Thucydides, a conservative Greek politician following an oration by Herodotus on the Persian/Greek wars.  “Thucydides spoke to me in the vestibule of the Odeon.  ‘I suppose that a copy or what we've just heard will be sent on to Susa.’ [Susa was the city in which the Persian king’s court was held at that time of year.] “Why not?’ I was both bland and dull, the perfect ambassador. ‘The Great King enjoys wondrous tales.  He has a taste for the fabulous.’”  Later, in a more congenial setting, Cyrus elaborates.  “When he [Herodotus] said that she [the Persian queen Amestris] had recently buried alive some Persian youths, the audience shuddered with delight.  But the true story is quite different.  After Xerxes was murdered, certain families went into rebellion.  When order was restored, the sons of those families were executed in the normal manner....”  I guess civilization has progressed somewhat.  

The narrator Cyrus Spitama, a fictional character, having been raised at the Persian king’s court, favors the nobility, as one might expect.  Talking about Greek politics, he says, “The leaders of both factions are aristocrats.  But certain nobles--like the late Cimon--favor the wealthy landowning class, while others--like Pericles--play to the city mob....continuing the work of his political mentor Ephialtes, a radical leader who was mysteriously murdered a dozen years ago.  Naturally the conservatives were blamed for the murder.  If responsible, they should be congratulated.  No mob can govern a city, much less an empire.”

I think we are all naturally self-centered.  Okay that’s obvious.  What I mean is that we see the world in a certain way, the way we are accustomed to seeing it, which for the most part is the way the world makes sense to us.  I understand distances in miles and feet; when someone says 150 kilometers, I have to do a mental calculation to convert it to miles (90) before I understand it.  Why don’t they just use miles like we do.  But then we also know that the metric system is simpler, more rational with its multiples of 10 than the English system with 5280 feet to the mile and 12 inches to the foot.  

If we travel widely with an open mind we begin to become aware of our self-centeredness and think rationally about other ways of being and doing, sometimes learning better ways.  Thus we begin to learn humility.  Reading Creation with an open mind can introduce us to the same lesson.  That is why this book is important, and I humbly recommend it.  

God Talk

“We Need to Talk About God” appeared In Sunday’s opinion section of the NYT.  It’s an op ed by Jonathan Merritt, an outspoken and sought-after writer, speaker and advocate for Christianity and for increased influence of Christian thought in American life.  In the column he laments that, when he moved from the Bible Belt to New York, his conversations stalled when he started to use word like “saved” and “grace” and “gospel”, this in spite of polls indicating more than 70 percent of Americans identify as Christian.   

I have a revelation for Mr. Merritt: people lie to pollsters.  The last thing most Americans would tell a stranger whom they have no reason to trust and no obligation to be candid with, is that they don’t believe in God.  The most reviled label in America, several rungs below politician and lawyer, is atheist. I was raised Methodist so it would be easy to say I identify as Christian, certainly more than Muslim, or Hindu, or Jewish, or Jain, or Taoist, or Zoroastrian.  Besides, I do enjoy Christmas gift-giving and hiding Easter eggs. 

But the truth is I’m atheist.  Here’s what that means: I don’t believe there is a sentient being who is all-powerful, or all-knowing, or certainly not all-good.  Let me emphasize that I believe this.  I don’t know it to be the case any more than Mr. Merritt can know that God does exist.  It is by definition unknowable.  It is a matter of belief.  I believe that when I die, the lights will go out, “darkness will veil my eyes” as Homer put it in The Iliad.  No heaven, no hell, no halfway houses.  I will cease to exist, forever, just as I did not exist in the forever before I was born.  No reincarnation as a worm or a dolphin (have to admit dolphin looks like fun).  

So when someone says they are “saved”, of course that’s more than a little bump in the conversational road.  That clues me in that this person not only believes in God, heaven, hell, and divine inspiration of the Bible to name a few key points, but most significantly, this person is obligated to “witness” to me and try and “save” me.  I suddenly remember there is something very important I must do, like rearrange my sock drawer.  Merritt notes that “Jesus’ final command to his disciples was to go into the world and spread his teachings.  You cannot be a Christian in a vacuum.”  Islam, from the little I know of it, is more direct.  “Kill the infidels!”  In other words, stop being an infidel and I won’t kill you.  Looks like a hopeless impasse to me, especially with Christians and Muslims both in possession of weapons of mass destruction.  

God, Allah, Yahweh, Vishnu, Zeus, Mazda, they’re all the same to me.  According to my belief about death, it doesn’t matter whether you believe in heaven, hell, or reincarnation, because when you die you’ll never know whether you were right or wrong.  And neither will I.  As far as I’m concerned, you can believe any fool thing you want.  Where I draw the line is when you try and push your beliefs on me, or make my children participate in your prayers, or use my tax money to promote your particular beliefs.  Johnathan Merritt thinks we need to talk about God.  I’ll be happy to have that conversation with him but I don’t think he’ll find it very satisfying.  

A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles

Imagine being confined to a hotel, not in a fancy suite with a view and room service, but in a sixth floor garret, dusty and cramped.  Imagine this after being born to a life of wealth and privilege.  You have been warned by the authorities that you will be shot if you should venture out of the hotel.  And imagine this for more than thirty years.  Such is the lot of Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov in the era that followed the Bolshevik revolution in Russia.  He is punished for the crime of having been a member of the “nobility” and for declining to repent his unchosen place in life, as none of us chooses the circumstances of our birth.  He is saved from execution only by virtue of his actions in support of workers during the turmoil of 1905, an uprising that was ultimately put down brutally by the Tsar.  But he is stripped of nearly all of his possessions, declared a “Former Person”, and confined to the Metropol Hotel in Moscow.  

The thing I like most about historical fiction is that it brings real characters and events into focus, and imagines the ways people must have felt.  On numerous occasions while reading this book I paused to look something up on the internet to see what was readily available.  The Metropol Hotel was, and still is, a fine hotel in Moscow, a short walk from Red Square, the Kremlin, the onion domes of St. Basil’s, and in easy sight of the Bolshoi.  It’s easy to look at in satellite view on mapping apps.  In another instance I found that, in their fierce opposition to collectivization, peasants in the early 1930’s did in fact slaughter their own livestock rather than turn it over to the state.  I find history fascinating.  Plus it seems events in real life are always more extreme, more unbelievable than in fiction.  No novelist would write the events of American politics over the past two decades because it’s just too contrived to be believable.

Back to the story, Count Rostov is a full-throated gentleman, not in the sense of feeling entitled to make demands of others, but in the sense of treating others with courtesy and respect, and always behaving with dignity.  His philosophy, manifested in his actions over the ensuing three decades boils down to this:  A man must master his circumstances or he will be mastered by them.  [Apologies to any women readers.  I’m just stating it as it would have been stated by a Russian gentleman in 1922.]  As it happens, the Metropol Hotel accommodates highly placed government apparatchiks, diplomats from other countries, and well-heeled travelers from around the world, in short, just the class of people the Count knows best.  Thus, without giving away essential details, I can affirm that the Count makes his place in the hotel and masters his circumstances as best could be imagined.

The political aspects of the story beg a comment.  Mr. Towles uses his characters to deliver insightful thoughts on the matter.  My thought is that, sure enough, in the days of the monarchy, there must have been people of privilege who, like Count Rostov, acted with decency and dignity, a credit to their class.  But there were also just as surely privileged rogues and incompetents who flaunted their unearned position.  After the revolution, when all were supposedly equal--obviously they were not.  Party officials most certainly celebrated lavishly in the same banquet halls of the Metropol that previously served nobles--the same wealth, or poverty, was shared by the competent and the incompetent alike.  Fools enjoyed unearned parity with those whose good works deserved greater rewards. In both regimes it’s the unearned position that rankled.  The United States, a meritocracy in principle, boasts equality of opportunity, with rewards proportionate to people’s good works.  That’s the principle.  I suppose the tension between that principle and reality will exist as long as the nation does, a part of the journey toward a more perfect union.  Viva the journey, long may it live!

Someone, by Alice McDermott

A warmly and touchingly told story of an ordinary life.  And there’s not a thing wrong with that.  It reminds me of the lyrics of a Paul McCartney’s song, “Some people think the world has had enough of silly love songs.  But I look around me and I see...it isn’t so.”  Marie is born in and lives out her life in Brooklyn, one of two children in a working class family, far from wealthy but not terribly poor either, gets hurt in love, then finds love and marries, bears and raises children, nothing out of the ordinary.  Nothing.  And yet it’s a story that draws you in.  Maybe it’s the ordinariness that feels familiar, and still important, as if the snub of one world leader by another is no more significant than a slight of one grade schooler by another.  The hurt is the same.  The small injuries and triumphs are familiar, relatable to all of us, I would think. 

Marie tells her story in first person, as it should of course be told, and she uses plain language, words you would not doubt would come from an ordinary girl from Brooklyn.  “...[she] blew some exasperated air from her pooched-out lip.”  “My father smelled, always, of fresh newsprint and cigarettes, of the alcohol in his faded cologne.”  McDermott makes rich use of smells throughout, the sense that most strongly piques our memory.  Her descriptive passages are vivid, so clear and simple I can picture the scene, I can feel it.  “I pushed my glasses back on my nose.  In the fading evening light, the stoop beneath my thighs, as warm as breath when I first sat down, now exhaled a shallow chill.  Mr. Chehab walked by with a brown bag from the bakery in his hand.  He had his white apron balled up beneath his arm, the ties trailing.   There was the scent of new-baked bread as he passed.”  An ordinary child observing and ordinary setting.  Nice.  

Of course there were moments that made me tear up a little, which is no great accomplishment given that I’m a sucker for touching moments.  But it would be a weakness if this book failed to elicit that response, given the kind of story it is. In a scene later in life, her brother has just been released from a mental institution following a breakdown, and she and her children are making small talk in the kitchen, pretending there’s no awkwardness in the situation.  Marie notices her brother still wears the hospital bracelet.  Without a break in the conversation, “I slipped the kitchen shears between the plastic cuff and the blue underside of his narrow wrist.  I neatly cut the think in half, then touched his knee before I carried the bracelet to the trash.”  She calls it “the thing” and disposes of it as if her action could dispose of the reason for his time in the mental institution just the same.  Very sweet. 

It sort of reminds me of stories by Anne Tyler, stories of no earth-shattering import, just ordinary people living their ordinary lives, but told in a way that feels important, feels familiar, feels true. Nice, pleasurable reading.

Ramp Hollow, the Ordeal of Appalachia, by Steven Stoll

After I posted a flattering review of Hillbilly Elegy, the powerful memoir by J D Vance, and sent a link to my daughter in the NC mountains, she replied that it (Hillbilly Elegy) had been roundly trashed by people in her circle, and suggested I consider there may be factors other than poor culture, namely outside influences, that have made the Appalachian culture so destitute.  She, being the strong willed and intelligent woman her mother raised her to be, went a step further and recommended I read Ramp Hollow, and then went further than that and bought the book and sent it to me to read.  And no excuses!  Okay, okay, I guess expressing an opinion can have consequences.  Here I go again.

Hillbilly Elegy, a memoir, was a bit of a departure for me because I tend strongly toward fiction in my reading habits.  Ramp Hollow was a major detour with its three hundred pages of generously footnoted citations and quotations by an extensive range of experts from squatters in the Kentucky hills to United Nations researchers in central Africa.  Very thought provoking and not easy reading.

It’s basically an anti-capitalist screed and a paean to agrarianism.   Capitalism is an easy target.  Western civilization is largely based on capitalism and look at the evils rampant in our world--poverty, ignorance, pollution, greed, injustice, racism, shiftlessness, dependency, fraud, corruption.  It’s a long list and capitalism can be linked to all of it.  On the other hand it’s easy to praise the simple virtues of the good-hearted agrarians, the farmers who till the soil and make their living from the bounty of the land and the sweat of their brow.  

But it’s more than that because Stoll offers some solutions that may enable a sustainable civilization, or at least postpone the ultimate demise of humanity on planet Earth.   First, let me get some criticisms out of the way.  

Stoll reviews a lot of history, and properly cites his sources, but he goes out of bounds for a historian when he asserts what he thinks people believed.  “...investors believed the best use of the Kanawha Valley was to remove its trees and dig its coal.  They believed that these commodities enriched not only them but West Virginia, the United States, and even the world--that imposing private property over these mountains enlisted a neglected land and a forgotten people in an inevitable movement.  They also believed that nothing stood in their way.”  We really have no way of knowing what individuals believed about something a hundred years ago, or even yesterday.  In putting thoughts into their heads, Stoll presents them as condescending, rapacious, evil.  Maybe they were just being human.

In Chapter 1 Stoll laments the way industrial agriculture passed over the mountains.  In a long paragraph describing what he believes outsiders in the late nineteenth century thought of Appalachia, he blames the prejudices of elites for seeing the area as not being suitable for industrial agriculture.  There’s no need to vilify investors over that.  It’s simply that large scale farming in the mountains would be less profitable than in the plains.  Not impossible in the mountains, just less profitable.  So the investment capital went elsewhere.  No need to impugn anyone’s motives as anything other than profit seeking and simple arithmetic.

Stoll goes after economists for not giving fair credit to agrarians.  Quoting an adviser to the World Bank in the 1960s, “All the agrarian economists of the world agree that if those people were removed from the land agricultural output, far from falling, would increase.”  Stoll thinks that’s wrong because they are giving zero value to the food produced by the agrarians.  They aren’t.  The smallholders  are just feeding themselves.  In terms of efficiency, output divided by input, agrarian efficiency is 1; industrial agriculture efficiency is greater than 1, so the agrarian economists of the world were right.

Stoll weakens his own case when he says, in characterizing the plight of the mountain people, “If I gloss over some of their social problems, it is because I have my eyes on other things.”  Well, thank you for acknowledging your prejudice.  America operates along a  continuum from ‘individual responsibility’ on the right end to ‘cooperative effort’ on the left.  As the political pendulum swings, and public sentiment shifts one way or the other, we never leave that continuum, and thank goodness for that because we could never have come this far without both ends playing a part.  Stoll declares that he is marching all the way to the left end of the continuum to make his case, and thereby yields any pretense of considering all factors.  I guess I should acknowledge that he declares his intention instead of leaving it to the reader to divine it.

Stoll looks to me like he’s taking on Goliath, and losing, when he attacks what he calls the “theory of stages”.  “As simple as a child’s bedtime story, the theory of stages nonetheless served as the commonplace representation of material progress for centuries, exerting enormous influence over how elites (name-calling again) in the Atlantic World thought about history, political economy, and race...  Never has there been a model of reality so utterly divorced from reality.”  Divorced from reality?  If civilization didn’t pass through stages of development, how does he think we got to where we are now?  Twenty-first century civilization didn’t get dropped here in one fully developed piece by aliens (Or did it?  Take it from there, conspiracy theorists!).  I get it that describing the development of civilization in stages enables one to place one stage as more advanced than another, and therefore the less advanced one can be seen as needing to be brought into the future.  It can be seen as giving the more advanced group permission to mess with the other one.  This is a sad state of affairs, sure enough, but hardly new.  After all, the mountaineers that Stoll is defending aren’t exactly natives; they emigrated from Sweden, Scotland, and Ireland to kick out the native Americans, who crossed the land bridge between Asia and Alaska to claim the bounty of the continent.  

Stoll doesn’t say much about religion, but there’s an obvious connection between Christianity and capitalism, a holy matrimony, so to speak.  Both urge the believer to put off the present in favor of a future reward, the Christian investing prayer and faith and good works for a future in paradise after death, the capitalist investing a portion of earnings in return for compound interest. Together these two have created the juggernaut that is Western Civilization.  Stoll states, “Some pronounce the coming of industrialization as necessary and even inevitable.  I reject this mysticism.”  I reject his rejection.  Maybe not necessary, but definitely inevitable.  It may have been an inevitable result of the nature of human beings, the drive to compete, the fight or flight reflex, the impulse to dominate and procreate.  But add to that the combination of Christianity and capitalism, and you have inevitability.

Stoll says the transition to poverty in Appalachia “...came about under four linked conditions: population pressure, loss of the homeplace itself, ecological destruction, and the dwindling value of mountain commodities.”  I can picture the first as leading to the other three.  Dad and mom give their hundred acres to the three kids who each give theirs to their three, etc.  In three generations it’s down to three acres apiece, not enough to subsist on, especially considering not all of the original hundred acres are suitable for farming.  The rules of the Commons Communities would have to have a mechanism for limiting the population. 

The book’s ultimate thesis is that there should be a place for agrarianism in the modern world, perhaps all over the world.  He provides an excellent depiction of peasants or smallholders, and their ‘commons’.  In a simplistic model, smallholder families live on modest plots of land, say 5-10 acres, which they farm for most of their food, and they share a forest, a commons, in which they all hunt and forage and harvest for fuel and building materials.  The commons is essential to their subsistence.  “The only rule for living on an ecological base is to observe its limits.”  But there is the rub--humans multiply.  Known as the ‘tragedy of the commons’, the problem is that some people eventually take more than their share, crippling the commons for everyone.  One person strips the land of its trees, another poisons the water with chemical effluent, another pollutes the air.  Or growth in population over-stresses the ecosystem.  It’s one of the causes of collapse in Appalachia.

How can the commons be saved?  Wouldn’t it be lovely if agrarianism worked?  Who doesn’t love the romantic appeal of the ‘back to the land’ agrarians, the yeoman farmers, independent, living off their wits and the sweat of their brows? It’s a near universal appeal, as if it’s in our DNA, like the attraction of a fire in the fireplace.  For the first million years of human evolution we hunted and gathered from the forests, huddled around a fire for warmth and safety, and for almost as long we farmed the land.  There probably is something in our DNA that attracts us to these images.

Maybe it actually can work.  Stoll steps up and offers a solution--the Commons Communities Act.  It’s a law he proposes by which the United States would create a number of commons communities, complete with legal boundaries that include a commons to be available for use by all the inhabitants.  Population would be limited to a specified number of households, and they would be self-governing.  No non-resident, trust, or corporation would be permitted to purchase property in the community.  Reminds me of Amish and Mennonite communities; the persistence of those communities suggests that it may actually be possible.    But it must be acknowledged that it isn’t for everyone.  And what happens when a rich vein of some valuable ore, say gold, is discovered in the middle of their commons?  Or when the rest of society is getting ever more cramped and eyes the spacious comfort of the commons communities?  Existence would not be without its stressors.

All in all, it’s an unhappy situation in Appalachia today.  Stoll quotes from an article, almost a rant, published by Eric Waggoner, a teacher at West Virginia Wesleyan University, in 2014 following a major chemical spill that poisoned water for many people. In it he excoriates the corporations, greedy coal companies grasping for profit while impoverishing the workers, and elected officials who enabled the ripoffs.  Then, in a paragraph that could have come straight out of Hillbilly Elegy, he fumes, “And, as long as I’m roundhouse damning everyone, and since my own relatives worked in the coal mines and I can therefore play the Family Card, the one that trumps everything around here: To hell with all of my fellow West Virginians who bought so deeply into the idea of avoidable personal risk and constant sacrifice as an honorable condition under which to live, that they turned that condition into a culture of perverted, twisted pride and self-righteousness, to be celebrated and defended against outsiders. To hell with that insular, xenophobic pathology. To hell with everyone whose only take-away from every story about every explosion, every leak, every mine collapse, is some vague and idiotic vanity in the continued endurance of West Virginians under adverse, sometimes killing circumstances. To hell with everyone everywhere who ever mistook suffering for honor, and who ever taught that to their kids. There’s nothing honorable about suffering. Nothing.”

But then Stoll makes a breathtaking misinterpretation of that rant.  “As long as West Virginians continue to blame themselves for everything and yield their power as citizens, nothing will improve.”  I would argue that as long as they blame others and expect others to fix things, nothing will improve.  It’s only taking responsibility and exercising power as citizens, as Stoll notes, that can lead to change.  Maybe he and I are actually saying the same thing.  I keep thinking about what is necessary and what is sufficient to bring about a result.  Accepting responsibility for their circumstances may not be sufficient to change things, but it darn sure is necessary.   And it might be sufficient.  But blaming outsiders is neither necessary nor sufficient.

I’ve come across as argumentative and critical in this review of Steven Stoll’s book.  Let me make amends.  He has delivered a thoughtful, important, well researched and well written work that shines much light on the story behind J D Vance’s memoir, and the story of Appalachia in general.  I honor his work and thank my daughter for bringing it to my attention.  If humanity is to endure within our planetary ecosystem, we must become a sustainable civilization.  As population continues to grow, stresses on our global commons will increase, bringing the world ever closer to the brink of un-sustainability. It is often said that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.  If we ignore the history of failing ecosystems, we may be doomed to a future that perhaps cannot be repeated.

Sailing Alone Around the World, by Joshua Slocum

In this time of terabytes and drones and private space launches, I find it inspiring and grounding to take a genuine look back at times past, at events as significant in their time as any in ours.  Joshua Slocum was the first person to complete a solo circumnavigation, done over three years from 1895 to 1898.  Now there is a regular race run every four years, the Vendee Globe, with a dozen or more entrants, and the record stands at 57 1/2 days.  

Slocum was in no hurry, mind you.  As he sailed out of Boston harbor on a lively breeze, he notes, “A thrilling pulse beat high in me.  My step was light on deck in the crisp air.  I felt that there could be no turning back, and that I was engaging in an adventure the meaning of which I thoroughly understood.”  That line still leaves me a bit puzzled.  Perhaps he was simply saying that, by dint of his extensive experience aboard ships as a sailor, a mate, and a captain, having made numerous passages to far ports of the world in merchant ships and having witnessed the countless hazards, he fully recognized the dangers inherent in what he had undertaken.  But that sheds little light on why he was doing it.  I still don’t know the answer to that question.  The best I can speculate is the same reason for climbing high peaks and voyaging to the moon--”because it is there.”  

Once he had resolved in his mind to do it, I believe nothing short of death would have stopped him.  His plan was to sail from Boston across the Atlantic, through the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal, and so on.  When he arrived at Gibraltar after a difficult passage across the North Atlantic, he was advised by British naval officers there that piracy was rampant along his planned route and he would be unwise to pursue it.  No worries.  Slocum was a prudent seaman, respectful of the knowledge and advice of other seafarers.  So he headed back across the Atlantic for South America, to go around the world the other way!

Here are a few essentials that Slocum did without: an engine, GPS, EPIRB (emergency beacon), radio, weather forecasts, autopilot, canned food, bottled water, refrigeration, a depth sounder, company, sleep. He published the book in 1900 when most of the items on that list did not exist so it was of little note to him that he did without them. I’m still astounded that his 37 foot sloop, “Spray”, would hold a course for hours, even days at a time without a touch on the helm.  No modern boat will do that.  

Slocum’s writing style is humble, relating actions he took and why he took them, without making too much of it.  For example while anchored in the Strait of Magellan at the southern tip of South America, he went ashore, cut a tree, and shaped and fitted it as a “jigger”--a mizzen mast--to aid in the long passage with the favorable trade winds across the Pacific.  Are you kidding me?  Adding a mast to the boat, changing the rig like there’s nothing to it?  That would have required additional shrouds, a stern sprit, a boom, lines for a halyard and sheet, sail hoops.  He never mentioned the sail but presumably he cut and sewed a suitable one.  

He apparently ate a lot of flying fish that landed randomly on his deck.  I know that happens, I’ve seen it often at sea, but they’re bony mostly meatless little critters, and covered in scales.  Smelly too, very fishy.  I think my stomach would have rebelled....unless I was starving, which I suspect was the case with Slocum a lot of the time.  On his arrival at Gibraltar, he described himself as “..thin as a reef-point.”

Strange that only now at age 67 I am reading this book.  I remember my Dad recommending it to me as a child, maybe ten or twelve years old.  I probably wasn’t interested in “that old stuff”, my attention drawn more to the likes of Tom Swift.  My dear 95 year old aunt, my Dad’s younger sister, offered it to me recently and I am thankful for that.  I only wish that my Dad could know that I read it and share his respectful appreciation.

Fastnet, Force 10, by John Rousmaniere

Why had I not read this book before now?   It’s a harrowing account of sailboats caught in a severe storm.  I’ve spend a good deal of time at sea in sailboats myself, delivering boats up and down the East Coast and offshore to the far Caribbean islands.  And Lord knows I’ve been in storms.  I guess it’s the racing aspect that kept me away.  In delivering a boat my priority is safety for my crew, the boat, and myself.  In racing you push things to the limit--the boat, the sails, the rigging, the crew--all in the search for speed.  You take risks I would never consider on a delivery.  So why would I be interested in a story about yachties taking foolish risks for bragging rights?

On a recent visit my brother offered the book to me, and I had a little time so I opened it and started reading.  I was quickly drawn in.  First, of course, by the photos, black and white and grainy, then by the preface which presents the key facts of the case along with the following quote from the official inquiry: “the sea showed that it can be a deadly enemy and that those who go to sea for pleasure must do so in the full knowledge that they may encounter dangers of the highest order.”

Six men were lost overboard never to be seen again, and nine more died of drowning or hypothermia.  Five boats sank, twenty-four more were abandoned by their crews, and 136 sailors were rescued by helicopters or other vessels.  Shocking outcomes for a sporting event.  

Rousmaniere’s telling is gripping and skillful.  He has been an acknowledged authority in the sailing world for decades.  He’s the author of The Annapolis Book of Seamanship, which is something of a bible for sailors, and which has occupied a prominent spot on my bookshelf for a long time.  His qualifications as an expert positioned him well to write this book.  More importantly, he was there...as a competitor on the forty-eight foot sloop Toscana. 

The race is a 605 mile course from the southern coast of England to a lighthouse on a rocky outcropping off the southern shore of Ireland known as Fastnet Rock, and back to England.  On August 11, 1979, a fleet of 303 boats started the race, with more than two thousand sailors and high hopes aboard.  Of those, only 85 boats finished the race; 194 retired (stopped racing and headed for port), 19 were abandoned at sea and later recovered, and 5 sank.  Gone.

Rousmaniere related in some detail the experiences of several unfortunate boats, as well as his own experience on Toscana.  He describes waking to violent pitching and rolling of the boat as the wind and seas built.  “I slid back aft to dress: damp long underwear, damp wool socks, damp green turtleneck jersey, damp gray wool sweater....  With a clownish balancing act, hopping on one foot, I shoved my feet into the damp yellow boots”. This is real.  Everything gets wet, and pulling on damp clothes is a struggle in itself complicated by the lurching motion of the boat.  He proceeds to tell in detail the harrowing and exhausting process of tying in a third reef in the mainsail and changing jibs.  I can feel the intensity of that effort in the dark of night with the boat pitching and rolling deeply.  The concentration required is extreme.  This part of the story can only be fully appreciated by those who have had similar experiences.  

To me Rousmaniere shows his maturity and wisdom in his commentary on the rash statements by the Monday morning quarterbacks.  Some claimed it was inexperienced sailors who lost their nerve, or small boats, or lightweight designs, or poor decisions by the race committee, and glib remarks were made like “The storm wasn’t that bad.  I’ve seen worse.”  One by one Rousmaniere presents data and reasoning that casts doubt on every explanation except the storm itself, and the extreme seas which broke and rolled over the hapless boats.  Nearly half reported being knocked down ninety degrees, and a third reported knockdowns beyond ninety degrees (mast in the water) including some that rolled a full 360 degrees.  That is well beyond my worst experience, and well beyond anything I hope to encounter.  

I guess this book isn’t for everyone, but it’s good reading for anyone who contemplates going to sea in a sailboat.

Hillbilly Elegy, by J.D. Vance

I have to think that J.D. is a pretty brave young man, well prepared to take heat and stand by his book.  It’s a loving yet unflinching no-holds-barred account of the culture into which he was born, and from which he managed to escape.  He must certainly have been sharply criticized by relatives, friends (maybe former friends),co-workers, and acquaintances who have read the book, and probably some who haven’t but heard others talking.  “He done forgot where he come from.”  “That boy’s got too big for his britches.”  “He thinks he’s better than us.” “He better not show his prissy face around here no more.”

And why would he?  Somehow he managed to finish high school, do well enough at Ohio State to get into Yale Law, marry a beautiful girl who is also a Yale Law grad, and now he has written a best seller.  The future is wide open for J.D. Vance.  He has a Wikipedia page and his own website. Wait, never mind the website.  I went to it and got nothing but a list of links to headings like “Hillbilly Housewife,” “Bluegrass Music,” and “Arthritis”.  Regardless, J.D. is not about to rejoin hillbilly culture.

The book itself is a memoir that traces his path from Jackson, Kentucky, an area known locally as “the holler”, where he is “raised” by an extended family that includes his mother, a pitiful model of bad choices and drug addiction, a series of men, including his real father for the first six years until he gave JD up for adoption to become a serious evangelical, his grandmother and grandfather, Mamaw and Papaw, and a motley group of uncles, aunts, and cousins, who seem to be about as acquainted with the law as with employers.  He credits Mamaw and Papaw with saving him from a life of poverty and helplessness, and most likely drugs.  Not by setting a good example of how to behave and get along with people (In Chapter 1 he calls Mamaw a “pistol-packing lunatic”), but by caring about and for him. They were always there for him and went to great pains to make sure he was safe and fed. 

It’s still a bit mysterious to me.  How J.D. came out smelling so like a rose in spite of all the strikes against him.  I should probably re-read the book to see if I can make sense of it.  

I should re-read it anyway because it’s an important work. It’s well written, filled with remembrances of actual events [It’s a memoir. Duh.] well told, touching, often frightful, more often sad and pathetic.  Sometimes infuriating.  Like the guy who never shows up on time for work, takes overlong breaks, sometimes doesn’t show up at all, and then blames everyone else when he gets fired.  Ridiculous.  Also, the language in the book is unsparing and true, right down to the expletives, always appropriate to the situation.

Why do I see this book as important?  Vance writes about the need to change hillbilly culture, to give their children a better chance at healthy productive lives.  The book is jammed with bad examples set by the adults in his world, and good examples not set which he realizes only when he gets to college and sees people behaving differently.  

Is it political?  Absolutely.  Isn’t the future of our children something that should be political?  Can’t we look at areas of poverty, high crime, poor health, drug addiction, and high need for government assistance and acknowledge that there is something wrong that can’t be entirely blamed on someone else?  Maybe J.D. Vance is the kind of person who can offer solutions from within the culture, not just calling for more government programs, but calling on the people themselves to do better for their children, to live better lives.

I’m willing to bet there are similar lessons to be learned by other failing cultures, perhaps inner city blacks.  But this is not the book for them.  J.D. Vance can speak to and about hillbilly ways because that’s where he came from, it’s what he knows, and he is living proof that a better life is possible for them.  But it’s hard to change culture.  I can hear a voice from Kentucky, thick with scorn and cigarette smoke, “Well just listen to Mr. England going on with his prissy talk about us.  He don’t know nuthin. Thinks he’s better than us.”

Well. 

The Enchanted, by Rene Denfeld

Wow, this was a hard read.  Not the writing or the language, but the subject matter: death row inmates.  The protagonist is a woman, referred to only as “the lady”, who researches and defends people on death row, not to exonerate them but to try to save them from the ultimate punishment.  These are not nice people.  They are vile, violent, sick, repellent, dangerous, hateful, ugly, nasty, dreadful people.  They are mentally and/or emotionally ill.  They could be called evil if you believe in that sort of thing.  They have committed hideous crimes.  If you were a loved one of one of their victims you would likely want to see them dead, if even with your own bare hands.  And yet.....

These are people, human beings.  They were born naked infants just like the rest of us.  What led them to the acts for which they have been condemned to die?  That is the question that drives “the lady.”  She starts with the assumption, the belief, that something in their past, made them into what they are, or at least the part of them for which they are to be punished.  Maybe the father or mother, maybe a grandfather or an uncle, or a neighbor, maybe a complete stranger.  Someone.  Someone else who can be blamed.  Not to entirely shift the blame, and punishment, onto someone else, but to lighten the weight of responsibility on the inmate.  To create an opening for understanding and sympathy for the person whose hands have committed the depraved act.  

Her task is not pleasant.  It takes her deep into the ominous prison, in a private room with the inmate in an ancient wooden cage, for conversations in which she patiently waits for crumbs of memories--names, places, events.  It takes her to places of the inmates’ childhood, lonely and sometimes dangerous places, to interview people who may have known.  As I said, it’s a hard book to read.  No bedtime story.

The author, Rene Denfeld, based her writing on more than a decade of work with violent offenders, including some on death row.  According to her Wikipedia page, “...her life and writing revolves around preventing and healing trauma.”  She seems to believe that even the worst of us has value and deserves a chance at redemption.  WWJD?

Coincidentally, the New York Times Magazine, in its annual issue of short tributes to important people who died in the previous year, included Scharlette Holdman, a woman sometimes credited with developing the field of “death penalty mitigation.”  Her clients included Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, Jared Loughner, the shooter in Tucson who killed six and wounded others including U.S. Representative Gabby Giffords, and her last, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.  Over a fifty-plus year career she held to the belief that her clients were not monsters, just “terribly flawed human beings.”

On reflection, I am reminded of the enduring “nature versus nurture” debate.  These defenders of the accused tilt heavily toward the nurture side, believing that the inmates were not born as felons, but that circumstances in their lives molded them badly.  It’s an optimistic viewpoint in that it argues that if society could be improved, innocent babies would no longer be transformed into the types of flawed humans who commit horrible crimes.

I am reminded also of Anthony Burgess, a lion of twentieth century literature and a personal favorite of mine, who argued that we have the ability to choose good or evil, that we can recognize an opportunity to do good or to do evil, and choose evil.  “If he can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange--meaning that he has the appearance of an organism, lovely with colour and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil.”

Perhaps society, with its boundless capacity for good and for evil, is the clock winder.

Talk, Talk, by T. C. Boyle

I’ve enjoyed another novel, Tortilla Curtain, by this writer, and Sue has read several, so I decided it was time to revisit him.  His writing is very modern in its subject matter and style.  This story portrays a clash between very different worlds, and a reckoning, a detente if not an embrace.

Dana is a deaf woman, educated, honest, hard-working, in a promising new romance.  Bridger, her boyfriend, is a tech worker, also honest, and headlong in love with Dana.  Peck Wilson is a criminal, ex-con, living the high life on his latest scheme, identity theft.  Peck steals Dana’s identity and, besides binge spending with her credit cards, lets his own history become hers.  So when she is pulled for a minor traffic violation, the cop sees a record of assault, robbery, and other assorted misdemeanors and felonies, he approaches with gun pulled and arrests her.  She endures a long weekend of rough treatment and insult, made incalculably worse by her deafness.  After release, her righteous anger moves her to pursue the thief.  Bridger eagerly joins her.  

The collisions of worlds--between the law-abiding and the criminal, between the hearing and the deaf--is well developed, revealing a rich combination of research and Boyle’s fertile imagination.  I do worry about identity theft.  With the hacker attacks on Yahoo, Uber, even the government, I’m sure much of my personal data is out there.  Just yesterday at a doctor’s office I was asked to sign an insurance authorization that showed, on hard copy, my name, address, date of birth, insurance group number, and my Medicare ID, which happens to be my Social Security Number, a fact that even the lamest of identity thieves would know.  Uber data included a credit card number.  I feel vulnerable, and reading this book certainly did nothing to allay my concerns.  

Perhaps years from now technology will have all but eliminated identity theft.  But the sound wall that segregates the deaf from the hearing, the disabled from the non-disabled, will endure, and the insights into that separation offered by this book will have lasting value.  

This was a good read.  Boyle’s writing sparkles, careens, booms, rumbles, and flashes, in his descriptive passages as well as the plot lines.  Highly imaginative and enjoyable.