2 books, 1 story

It is both unintentional and fortuitous that the last two books I happened to pull off the pile (and it is a pile these days) and finish recently are both about peculiar, but highly influential religious movements in America.



The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell covers the second wave of Puritan migration into New England, those that settled the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1630's. It deals with the Pequot war, the establishment of Rhode Island, and how a persecuted sect moved far from its point of origin to have some autonomy, variously fought with and conspired with the natives against common enemies, and ultimately ended up persecuting religious dissenters within its own ranks.




Under the Banner of Heaven by John Krakauer is nominally about a grizzly murder that took place in 1984, but that story really just serves as a bookend to a brief history of Mormonism and Mormon fundamentalism, the story of how a persecuted sect moved far from its point of origin to have some autonomy, variously fought with and conspired with the natives against common enemies, and ultimately ended up persecuting religious dissenters within its own ranks. (Also, I wish I'd read it before I started watching Big Love.)

The interesting thing about these books is that while they are written by skeptical outsiders, both Vowell and Krakauer seem to emerge from their subjects with a grudging respect for their cultures and values (apart from the odd act of murder against heretics and/or Native Americans). And while the parallels between the stories are striking, the voices of the authors are distinct. If you've listed to Vowell's contributions to This American Life it is impossible not to hear her distinct, wry voice in your head, which manages to find humor in some pretty dark material without sounding morbid. Krakauer, on the other hand, approaches things with a much more straight-ahead journalistic style (Mark Bowden comes to mind), but also weaves a true crime narrative in the tradition of In Cold Blood.

I was excited a couple of weeks ago to learn that Christopher Hitchens was coming to Seattle in promotion of his recently released memoir, (which, though I'm only a few chapters into, I am enjoying immensely) and then nearly instantly disappointed to learn that the event had been canceled at the last minute.

Now we know why:

I have been advised by my physician that I must undergo a course of chemotherapy on my esophagus. This advice seems persuasive to me. I regret having had to cancel so many engagements at such short notice.

Good luck, Hitch. I wish you the best moving forward, and naturally, I'm not praying for you.

Footnote--As news of Mr. Hitchens' cancer spread through the blogosphere yesterday, virtually everyone made a comment along the lines of the one I made, or to the effect that they would be praying for him whether he likes it or not. Each sentiment has seemed to upset various groups of people. This is silly. For my part, I intended nothing more than a little black humor, not to make any point about his beliefs (or lack thereof.) More to the point, it happens to be literally true that I won't be praying for him, not out of deference to what he believes, but because of what I do.

Cantankerous as he is, I seriously doubt that Hitch finds the sincere prayers of his believing friends and well-wishers an affront. Nor would I, in his shoes...

jose saramago

Nobel laureate in Literature Jose Saramago has died at age 87.

I haven't read everything of his, and haven't loved everything that I have, but what I have read and loved has been very, very good. In particular, Blindness and the The Gospel According to Jesus Christ. In fact, his sequel to Blindness, Seeing is on the to-read stack on my nightstand.

But the main reason I mention him here is that the quasi-title of this blog was inspired by a passage from one of his books.

biblical literalism pisses off fundamentalists

At least it does when R. Crumb does it. His new illustrated version of the book of Genesis has some Christian groups upset over his graphic depictions of the rampant sex and violence (including incest and genocide) that made Genesis by far the most entertaining book in Sunday School.

Though, it should be said, not everyone of faith feels that way about it:

Other leading religious figures have been more supportive of the work. "I didn't think it was satire," said the Bishop of Croydon, the Rt Rev Nick Baines.

"He set out to say; 'this is important, fundamental myth' and it seems to me he's done a good job."

You can buy a copy for your kids this holiday season here.

great sentences

"Not so long ago she'd have dismissed such mysticism; but after last night she was obliged to be more open-minded. The world of mysteries she'd made light of in her spook and spaceship screenplays was not to be so easily mocked. It had come looking for her, found her, and pitched her--cynicism and all--among its heavens and hells...

She no longer had to keep her cynicism polished; no longer had to divide her imaginings from moment too moment into the real (solid, sensible) and the fanciful (vaporous, valueless). If (when) she got back to her typewriter she'd begin these tongue-in-cheek screenplays over from the top, telling them with faith to the tale, not because every fantasy was absolutely true but because no reality ever was."

--Clive Barker, The Great and Secret Show

watchmen

It's been reviewed to death, already, so I'll keep this brief: much like Sin City, the film adaptation of Watchmen exhibits a respect for the source material and the fans thereof that borders on reverence. Many scenes are storyboarded straight out of the book, and much of the dialog is verbatim, including, fortunately, many of the best moments from the book ("I'm not locked in here with you, you're locked in with me!")

The book is incredibly dense, making a complete translation to screen an impossibility (even with the entire comic-within-a-comic subplot axed, the film clocks in at just under three hours.) Still, Snyder is to be applauded for getting as much in as he could. And for many well-crafted (if easy to miss) references--mostly visual--to the parts he had to leave out. The opening titles in particular tell a ton of the back stories that were woven into the original.

Casting was superb (though no amount of old lady makeup can make Carla Gugino not hot...I would have cast her as the younger Silk Spectre, and someone actually old as her mother.) Jackie Earle Haley's Rorschach in particular was stellar.

As much as I enjoyed it, I have no idea how it will stand up to a naive viewing. Actually, if you never read the book and have seen the movie, I'd be interested to know what you thought.

Anyway, all of the above is really just an excuse to post this, about the horror that could have been:

stuff i've been enjoying lately

--Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart. At any given time I usually have a smallish paperback book that I carry around to read while waiting (doctors offices, oil changes, etc.) in addition to whatever is perched on my nightstand. This has been that book for me lately and now people all over the waiting rooms of Durham think I'm The Crazy Guy Who Giggles While He Reads. The chapter in which the protagonist writes a grant proposal for a Holocaust museum is beyond hilarious. And if you can make that funny, you're a freakin' genius. My habit of reading authors' second books first continues to pay off.

--In the mood for old (read: mid-1980's) horror movies, I rented Reanimator and John Carpenter's The Thing this past weekend. For fairly obvious reasons, I appreciate the satirical take on the culture of academic research in Reanimator much, much more now than when I was 12 (or however old I was when I last saw it). And I realize I'd really like a Mistkatonic Medical School T-shirt (though one of these might be OK) just to see who gets it.

The Thing scared the hell out of me when I was little. It's still pretty scary. The scene where the guy being treated with a defibrillator (he's really The Thing! Watch out!) is on the table and his chest opens up into a gaping maw of teeth and bites off the doctor's hands is a classic that will make you appreciate how much CGI sucks. (I watched that part a few times.)

--I re-read The Watchmen last week for probably the first time in over 15 years, in advance of the movie coming out in March. (The trailers make my head tingle.) There is no way the movie can be as good. And I will still go see it the night it opens.

"I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center."

--Kurt Vonnegut, AKA Kilgore Trout et al.

RIP

raw/rip

fnord

Via Jesse Walker comes news that Robert Anton Wilson has reached the next stage in his evolution.

The last thing he is known to have written is the following, posted on his blog Saturday:

Various medical authorities swarm in and out of here predicting I have between two days and two months to live. I think they are guessing. I remain cheerful and unimpressed. I look forward without dogmatic optimism but without dread. I love you all and I deeply implore you to keep the lasagna flying.

Please pardon my levity, I don't see how to take death seriously. It seems absurd.

comparitive health care and a book report

I am still alive (thanks for asking, AB). M and I have been off visiting family for the past couple of weeks, mostly in the intermittently frozen tundra of southeastern Manitoba.

Without getting into personal details, a great deal of our time was spent in a hospital (visiting) which afforded me an "opportunity" to see firsthand a bit of something about which a lot of Americans have both strong opinions and no firsthand knowledge: namely, the Canadian health care system. I don't claim that my limited perspective makes me an expert, but it is worth pointing out that the system does not appear to be as abjectly horrible as some make it out to be.

Neither does it inspire (in me) anything resembling a desire to see it emulated here. The staff I observed were, as a group, very diligent and caring. They were also understaffed and probably a bit overworked. Communication among various units was abysmal. Without family or friends following up on things and advocating for you, you run the risk of things sliding a bit longer than they should, on pretty basic stuff (like changes to medication, changes to diet, etc.)

Bottom line: given the choice, I'd rather get sick in the States. Higher out of pocket costs don't bother me much; one, because the tax rates up north are higher, so you're paying anyway, and two, because frankly I can afford it. If I were closer to the poverty line than I am (and make no mistake--I am not rolling in money here), maybe it would appeal to me more, but I since most of the agitators for SocMed I've encountered are also the type that buy $3 coffee and shop at Whole Foods, I think they should be careful what they wish for...

Which reminds me...I did read a handful of good books. One of which was Hell's Half Acre, by Will Christopher Baer. I've been meaning to write about Baer for a while now: A sample:

The guy is sputtering and I catch him by the lapels, as if to help him up. The mocha is dripping down the front of his pants in little chocolate rivulets and the guy moans in despair. No one pays us any attention and I glance up the street to see that John Ransom Miller is disappearing around the corner. I apologize loudly and use my right hand to smear the whipped cream around on my guy's chest and slip my left hand into his breast pocket, palming his wallet.

My favorite shirt, the guy says. My favorite shirt is ruined.

It's not ruined, I say. Take it to your dry cleaner and it's good as new.

I can't, he says. I'm a communist.

What?

I don't believe in dry cleaners. They are servants of the ruling class.

How about that. I just mugged a communist and I will eat my hat if his wallet is not empty. The last time I looked at a newspaper, the Russian government was running vodka into Canada and selling used office furniture for pennies. The guy has probably got moths in his pockets. I give his collar a brutal tug and he flails weakly at me. He is so mournful that I'm tempted to slap him around but I don't have time for such indulgences.

You motherfucker. What kind of communist drinks a mocha with whipped cream?

The guy moans. I can't help it, he says. I'm a victim of advertising. I walk past a Starbucks and I become a robot. Their mochas are divine.

The gods are laughing at me. I can hear them up there.

You're a class traitor, I say.

The communist goes limp in my arms and I drop him like a sack of compost. He immediately curls up on the sidewalk and I imagine he will lie there until the stormtroopers come for him.

Good stuff. Savage prose. Modern noir at its finest. He gets compared to Chuck Palahniuk, but in truth, I think Baer has a better voice. Check him out (if you like your stories drenched in blood and postmodern pop culture references, that is).

1001 949 reasons to hurry up and retire

If there are two things that tickle my OCD-like tendencies, those would be books and lists. And especially lists of books.

Here are "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die". (via)

There are plenty of authors I would count among my favorites (Murakami, Saramago, Garcia-Marquez, McEwan, Dick, and even Heinlein and Palahniuk), some I've only read a bit of but thouroughly enjoyed (Roth, Eco, Atwood), some I've never read but always meant to (Greene, Wolfe, Rushdie) and many, many more that I've never considered or heard of.

Which is good, because I sure would hate to run out...

I do find it heartening to know that I've covered a respectable 9.5 (I'm in the middle of The Cloud Atlas) of the 69 listed in this century so far, but I'm way behind the curve on the 20th.

Before that...I just can't be bothered. My theory is that film and then especially TV forced people to write much better novels in order to make a living at it.

Oh, and the fact that Alan Moore's The Watchmen is on the list kind of makes it for me. I would have also included Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, mainly because it's the first thing I remember reading where the idea of writing with a particular style really clicked for me (I think I was 11 or 12).

Addendum--I finally had a moment during a lull in the lab to go through the entire list...it appears that I have read 52 books on the list in all (not counting the one I'm currently reading) and only 7 of those are from earlier than 1900 (and I'm pretty sure I read all of those in school).

book meme (or, the brief return of lazy blogging)

Blogging has been sparse. I don't apologize--life beckons. It will continue to be sparse until at least the end of September, when I will be coming to you live from a new house and a new time zone. Details, if you care, can be found over multiple posts here.

Anyway, I saw this one over at Henley's place, and I thought it was cool, so I decided to grab it even though I wasn't tagged.

One book that changed your life:

It's cliche, but if I'm being honest, I can't think of another single book that shook up the way I thought the way Atlas Shrugged did.

One book you have read more than once:

Dancing Naked in the Mind Field by Kary Mullis

One book that you would want on a desert island:

Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child


One book that made you laugh:

Novel by George Singleton

One book that made you cry:

Atonement by Ian McEwan


One book you wish had been written:

I wish that Bill Hicks had written a book before he died.

One book you wish had never been written:

I don't know--pick any insidious self-help book that reduces the complexities of human relations into catchy slogans and simple answers.

One book you are currently reading:

American Pastoral by Phillip Roth


One book you have been meaning to read:

Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain

Now tag five people:

Anybody who wants to, run with it...