Egypt, Greece and Rome

One of my fantasies is to come back as a born again history teacher. I would love to teach a two year advanced placement sequence on Mediterranean and European history stretching from the dawn of agriculture in Syria and Turkey to the latest conflicts over the European Union and Greek debt. Well, maybe not that contemporary, but at least through World War II. This book by Charles Freeman could serve as a good text underlying the first half of the course on the Mediterranean worlds.

The book cover such a wide time--from about 4000 BC until the Islamic invasions of Syria and Spain in the seventh century--and a wide area--all of the Mediterranean civilizations--that there can be little unity of theme to it. It falls in five major areas: the ancient Near East, Egypt, Greece, the Hellenistic city-states, and Rome, which really ought to be subdivided into the rise of the Roman republic and the establishment and eventual decline of the Roman empire. But really, while the book covers the Sumerians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Hittites, the Minoans, the Mycenaeans, the Israelite, the Gauls, the Germans, etc., etc., the emphasis of the book is in the title--Egypt, Greece, and Rome, with well over half of the book devoted to Rome.

The book is really about the rise of city culture in the different Mediterranean civilizations. Cities in the Tigris-Euphrates valley center on the control of water and the creation of surplus grain. With the incipient cities of the ancient near east--Uruk, Ur, Eridu--by about 3000 BC, also come the first kings that we know of, although it is interesting to note that these kings often shared power with the merchant classes as trading became widespread. Egypt was a bit different in its development as abundance was created by the natural cycle of flooding of the Nile river, and the Pharaoh became a symbol of the cosmic harmony that enabled this cycle. The infamous Sargon subjugated a large portion of the Tigris-Euphrates valley in establishing the first known empire in about 2300 BC, and the even more famous Hamurabi promulgated his law code some 500 years later. But something brought these civilizations to a screeching halt about 1100 BC or so--volcanic eruptions?, new methods of warfare?, the sea people? Freeman doesn't go into any depth for the reasons for the decline. Out of the ruins of this "Dark Age" appear the neo-Assyrians, the Israelites, and a bit later, the Greeks. Egypt appears to get back on track, and the Babylonians appear again as power players. Soon enough, new bad boys--at least to the Greeks, Egyptians and Babylonians--take over the Near East, the Persians.

For me, things take off with the late archaic culture of the Greek peoples who begin populating first the eastern Mediterranean with colonies that eventually spread across north Africa and as far west as Spain as well as across the Black Sea. Then begins the "power to the people" movement that eventually led to the rise and spread of democracy. Freeman characterizes Greek cities as a place where people could hammer out the rules of living together--the rise of politics. This was "the dawning of a new age, that of the city state, where justice can perhaps be made a reality," and the city becomes a place of communal bonding contrasted to earlier cities which served more to glorify the ruler. In Athens, especially, this came about with the reforms of Salon as order threatened to break down under the increasing debts owed by the lower classes to the aristocrats. This was also a time when wealth and opportunity were spread to a lot more people with the massive migrations of Greeks throughout the Mediterranean world. Aristocrats were becoming more and more dependent on the citizens to serve as soldiers, first with the small land owners becoming hoplites and later with even poorer citizens needed to row the triremes of the Athenian navies.

This need to hammer out disputes in the public forums also led to the "incentive to find first principles from which debate could begin." The ability to speak and argue in public forums put an increasing premium on the facility of reasoning, especially in the cities of the Ionian coast, probably the richest cities in the Greek world at the time, and led to searching for the underlying forces of the universe. "This attempt to give a single, rational account of the natural order can be seen as a key movement in the evolution of western culture, and eventually the first formulations of philosophy. "The archaic age deserves to be seen as one where a particular attitude of mind took root, perhaps, as been suggested, because of the intensity of life in the polis. It involved the search for an understanding of the physical world free of restraints imposed by those cultures which still lived in the shadow of threatening gods." At the same time, a revival of aristocratic values in the face of threats from the Persian empire--arete, glory, manliness, and valor--become important in the defense of liberty. Now man and his freedom become the measure of all things.

This could not last. Hubris, or overweening pride, brought about the fall of the Athenian empire, and the rise of Macedonia put a demise to the independence of the Greek polis. At the same time, however, Alexander and his armies spread Greek culture and city life, along with the development and glorification of the individual, throughout the region.  Alexander's tutor, Aristotle, suggests "that there is an underlying purpose to nature, that of the fulfillment of every living being through the correct use of the attributes it possesses....the highest state that all human beings should aim for, is eudaemonia, happiness."

Macedonia also established a new political system for the polis, however, the monarchy. The army and the nobility owed loyalty to the king, not to the city or the state, and the divine right of kings became the norm in the Hellenistic empires. Alexander's legacy was "a form of monarchy, based on absolute power, an aura of divinity, and conspicuous consumption," a legacy later picked up by the Roman emperors and eventually most of the rulers of Europe until the French revolution.

Then come the Romans. To tell the truth, I'm beginning to lose steam on them. They are the baddest bullies of the ancient world--in a world full of bullies--and probably most responsible for who we have become. There are just times when I find myself pulling for Hannibal or the Gauls or Philip, knowing the outcome in advance. There's the dreadful certainty of a militaristic group first conquering Latium, then the Etruscans, the Samnites, the Carthaginians, Asia Minor, Greece, and Egypt: from Britain to Mesopotamia and essentially all points in between. And somewhere along the way the Romans decide to take on each other. When the Gracchi brothers try to reform the practices of the aristocracy seeking to hoard the new found wealth of the republic, violence takes over the politics of the city leading first to Sulla, then Pompey, Julius Caesar, and Augustus, who establishes a military dictatorship. Short intervals of peace and order give way to more civil wars and military dictatorships, interspersed with emperors who border on the criminally insane--Caligula, Nero, Commodus, Caracalla, etc--with the famed Roman legions running amok on occasion. Eventually the price of keeping the empire was just too great--over 70% of the state's resources went to the military. By the time that Constantine pulled out of Rome in 325, a general "systems collapse" appears to have begun, at least in the west.

When you get down to it, the development of western civilization in the Mediterranean basin really seems to be about the rich wanting to continually line their own pockets. Greed drives the world, whether its Sargon demanding tribute from the conquered cities of Sumer or Roman emperors plundering the continents for lavish shows of consumption and wealth. The same greed also drives the development of the best and the brightest--the sudden influx of wealth built the glories of Athens and Rome. But maybe its also when the wealth and glory and power begin to recede that the impulse to look inward and individual growth takes over. Or, maybe, the politics of scarcity lead just to meanness and strife. In any case, it seems to be where our civilization is headed these days.

Author: Freeman, Charles

Date Published: 2004

Length: 736 pp

electronic print

Rhino Ranch

I am bummed to finally see the Duane Moore novels come to an end. I first read Last Picture Show shortly after the movie came out, though I did not actually see the movie for years afterwards, and I even liked Texasville and When the Light Goes though they were both trashed in reviews. I've even visited Thalia, uh, Archer City, on more than one occasion, even before Booked Up opened its doors a few years back. In short, I've come to like and to identify with Duane as we have both grown older and I'm sorry to lose him as a friend.

OK, Rhino Ranch in pretty unrealistic in much of its plot and with many of its characters. Billionairesses and top notch chefs and porn stars hanging out in Archer City? I don't think so. And are there really that many meth heads cooking out in the open fields? I find that pretty hard to believe. The whole concept of the Rhino Ranch is pretty hard to believe, too, but there are enough game ranches and wildlife preserves dotting the Texas landscape now that maybe it isn't all that farfetched. And how about all those young things--at least two, anyway--that keep offering themselves to Duane? (Jimmy said that McMurtry really is a horny old man, a judgement seconded by Sara) Or that he didn't know that Annie was a meth freak while he was married to her?

And the final pages do read like McMurtry has gotten tired of the whole gig and is trying to bring the saga to a close. Of course, one of McMurtry's faults has been an inability to bring some of his books to a satisfactory close, but the ending of Rhino Ranch, where he covers 10 years in about two paragraphs or so, reminds me a lot of That Evening Star where Aurora's grandson remembers his final moments with her about thirty years later.

But I do think that McMurtry was spot on with many of his characterizations and puzzlements of old age. Duane, as always, is a pretty passive observer of life that continually surprises himself with his feelings and some of his impulses. He's also surprised at all of the changes happening to himself and to his friends and to Thalia as they all grow older, especially as he watches so many of his friends die. (Of course, nothing matches his surprise in having Karla suddenly die in an automobile acccident in Duane's Depressed--Sara reached over and slugged me when she read that part a few years back, "You didn't tell me that Karla dies!") And Duane's reverie where he considers that it would just be OK to go to sleep and not wake up seems to be a thought that I'm having more and more these days myself. It's just kind of a resignation that the best is over and the rest is just kinda sitting around watching it all come apart. So much of that comes from Duane's rudderlessness, his loss of sense of purpose, his feeling of pointlessness. These are feelings that I'm having to deal with more and more myself and it feels right on to have McMurtry give voice to them.

Author: McMurtry, Larry

Date Published: 2010

Length: 2010

print

The Brothers Karamazov

I'm still trying to mull this over. This is obviously a "classic" and recognized as Dostoyevsky's culminating masterpiece, and it has sat on my bookshelf for, what, 40 years now, at least since I first read "The Grand Inquisitor" in LS 52 with Kay Bethune in 1970, if not before. But whereas Ivan comes off as the protagonist in telling his "poem" as he calls it, and hence, a heroic figure for me at the time, that is certainly not the direction of Dostoevsky's thinking at. In short, Brother K may be an important book but it just didn't turn out to be an enjoyable read.

The fact of the matter is that Fyodor Pavlovich and Dmitri Fyodorovich (Mitya) are buffoons--idiots, really--and I just didn't care for them at all. And it is the trial of Mitya for killing Fyodor that is the central plot structure of the book. Ivan and Alyosha are really the only major characters in the book (well, I should include Father Zosima, but he dies early on) worth caring for, and that includes the females Grushenka, Katarina and even Lise. Nobody seems to have a clue. The first half of the book with Fyodor and Mitya furiously quarreling with each other over Grushenka, while Mitya also dumps Katarina after spending large sums of her money, is really unpleasant, relieved only by "The Grand Inquisitor" and maybe by conversations between Zosima and Alyosha. Then so much of the rest of the book is taken up with Mitya's protestations of innocence "I am a scoundrel but not a thief or a murderer" that become so tiresome after a while. I guess my real reaction to his conviction in the trial, even though we know he is innocent, is "who cares." He and his father are so led around by their dicks--the sensualist Karamazov personality that is pointedly described again and again--that if Mitya didn't kill his father, he would have sooner or later killed someone else. And neither he nor Fyodor had a clue that Grushenka was playing them all along.

It sometimes takes a shovel to beat an idea into my head, and the cover of the Norton critical edition has the "troika" of the prosecutor's speech emerging from the heads of the bothers, implying that the story of the bothers is the story of Russia: the out-of-control sensualist Dmitri, the intellectual and skeptical Ivan, and the saint Alyosha. Many commentators claim that Ivan and Alyosha represent the fight for the Russian soul. Of course, it is Ivan who says that without God, all things are possible, and hence leads directly to the murder of Fyodor Pavlovich, and so Ivan is instantly discredited. Alyosha is almost goodness itself, if quite naive and simplistic in his thinking. And since the book ends with the exclamation "Hurrah for Karamazov" I guess that means he wins in the end, especially with the exhortation of love and remembrance to the boys at Ilyusha's funeral.

This leaves out the fourth brother, Smerdyakov, and it is he who is misled by Ivan's Enlightenment philosophy and actually kills Fyodor since all things are possible. But then he ends up killing himself while Ivan goes mad (of brain fever?) after his "interview with the devil." Evil really does permeate the book and makes any kind of optimistic view of human nature impossible without the saving power of the orthodox church.

I really need to ponder and read about Brothers K some more.

Author: Dostoevsky, Fyodor

Date Published: 1880

Length: 735 pp & 34 hr 50 min

print and audio

Narrator: Davidson, Frederick

The Great American Novel

I don't know that I have anything to say about this novel. It's an early Roth and it makes me think that maybe I've kind of had my fill of Roth for a while. None of his other books have even come close to American Pastoral. Great American Novel is a total farce, but it's a joke that just went on far too long for me. Some of it was laugh out loud funny, but maybe I was expecting something else. Judging by other people's reaction to the book, I suspect that's the case. It's a book about a major league that was totally expunged from the historical record during World War II. One of the teams, the Port Rupert Mundys, set a record for ineptness and losing after they were kicked out of their home stadium for the duration of the war. Then when their beloved manager dies, a former player, Gil Gamesh, takes over the team as they begin spouting Marxist doctrine, hence the banishment of the league. Other players have similar mythological names, including the one armed right fielder, Bud Purusha, the pitcher Spit Baal, Smokey Woden, Mike Mazda, Chico Mecoatl, etc. And of course, the narrator of the story is the venerable sports writer, Word Smith. To be sure, there are good moments in the book, such as the famed outfielder who admits to his lover that he enjoys hitting triples more than making love to her, but it was just so over the top that I didn't find it all that enjoyable.

Author: Roth, Phillip

Date Published: 1973

Length: 14 hr 37 min

Narrator: Daniels, James

The Evolution of God

Wright tackles much of the same ground that Karen Armstrong covered in History of God, mainly the conception of god as it expands and grows--evolves--from the earliest hunter gatherer tribes through the three Abrahamic religions. And it pretty much comes down to this: "Cultural evolution was all along pushing divinity, and hence humanity, toward moral enlightenment." Man's conception of god has grown to include more and  more peoples and ideas  as he has come into "non zero sum relationships" with them. A win-win philosophy underlies our developing sense of humanity and the extension of our moral compass and compassion.

"the births of all three Abrahamic religions were exercises in large-scale social engineering. With ancient Israel, once-autonomous tribes drew together, first into a confederacy and then into a state. The birth of Christianity saw a second kind of social consolidation, not of tribes but of whole ethnicities.…With the birth of Islam both of these thresholds—the conglomeration of tribes and of national ethnicities—would be crossed in short order"

While Wright begins with chapters on hunter-gatherers, kingships, and early middle eastern states, the heart of the book really focuses on the development of god and moral compassion in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Perhaps the best part of the book for me was the growth of Yahweh from a small-time Canaanite deity in the court of El (There is no evidence for the whole exodus story and the conquest of Canaan by Joshua et. al--The Israelites seemed to have coalesced as a people in the late Bronze age) and taking on more characteristics of the other gods in the court--especially Baal--as he grew in importance and influence. Josiah and his main man Hilkiah--he who miraculously found the Deuteronomic  Code in the rebuilding of the temple of Jerusalem--enforced monolatry on the people of Judah, forcibly destroying the temples and the priests of the other gods in the region, as reflected in the famous showdown between Elijah and the priests of Baal. This allowed Josiah to consolidate power in Jerusalem and consolidate the ethnic identity of the ancient Israelites. This monolatry was eventually pushed into monotheism by the time of the second Isaiah. Eventually, Philo pushed the idea of god to the intellectual conception of the logos, or as the creation and design of the universe.

Wright picks up with the story of Paul, here. He really doesn't have a lot to say about Jesus, for he maintains that there really isn't much to say. Jesus burst upon the scene proclaiming that the kingdom of god was coming very, very soon, but it was really up to his followers to establish a religion. Paul was the winner here,  bringing the message to the gentiles and hence transcending ethnic boundaries and enlarging the conception of god again. Wright does a good job of deconstructing Paul's message, especially his message of brotherly love that appears in his letters to some of the churches he founded, primarily as a means of consolidating his control over those churches after he moves on. It is a message of how church members should treat one another, not for mankind in general. But the gospel of John picks up on this and extends the idea with Philo's logos.

Wright is less convincing in his treatment of Islam. He maintains that Mohammed pushed the idea of god further than Paul and John as his worship of Allah grew beyond a small sect worshipped in Medina into a multinational empire controlled by religion. Mohammed's treatment of non-believers then also vacillated between intolerance and tolerance depending on how much he needed alliances with other peoples.

Finally, Wright seems to speculate this this growth in the conception of god might even present a good argument of the existence of god. "The existence of a moral order, I’ve said, makes it reasonable to suspect that humankind in some sense has a “higher purpose.” And maybe the source of this higher purpose, the source of the moral order, is something that qualifies for the label “god” in at least some sense of that word." It seems a bit far fetched to me to jump from talking about win-win strategies between people based on "non zero sum" relationships to assuming some kind of moral order and higher order to the universe.

Author: Wright, Robert

Date Published: 2009

Length: 567 pp & 18hr 27 min

electronic print & audio

Narrator: Morey, Author

The Breast

What a bizarre book. Try to explain to anybody that the narrator has been turned into a 155 pound breast and then tries to tell what it feels like. He pays homage to Kafka, obviously, and Gogol, but beyond that, what to say. The narrator is David Kapeesh, however, whom I last saw as the narrator in the Dying Animal, so that lends more meaning to it. At least I know that he does not remain a 155 pound breast forever. Funny that he did not mention this episode in Dying Animal, though. The most touching parts of the narration come when David is trying to deny what has become of him and convince the doctors that it is nothing more than a psychotic episode that he will eventually snap out of. He's also concerned about keeping hold of his old life, especially as a professor of comparative literature and ponders the departmental politics of his predicament. He also dwells at length on the sexual feelings aroused in him by touch and the fact that he can only be aroused and not climax. It is outrageous and funny enough, but somehow it just never got around to making a point. It's a great exercise in style and narration, but little else that I can see.

Author: Roth, Phillip

Date Published: 1972

Length: 1 hr 50 min

Narrator: Colacci, David

Big Rock Candy Mountain

I really wanted to put this book down and abandon it in the first half of the story. I first tried listening to it with Sara, and it went nowhere with either of us. It was primarily about Elsa's leaving home and hooking up with Bo, up to the point after they got married and tried to make a go of it in Washington with a small cafe. Elsa seemed too much of a self conscious cypher and Bo was just Joe Jock who wanted to make a bundle of money. Neither of them seemed all that interesting and the plot was going nowhere.

Then I tried to finish listening to it by myself, while Bo and Elsa separated--or should I say after Bo ran away after abusing Elsa--and then Bo reached the point of bankruptcy with the farm in Canada after he persuaded Elsa to come back. I just found Bo intolerable. I couldn't feel anything for him and his travails as he convinced himself of one get rich quick scheme after another and dragged Elsa--and now the boys Chet and Bruce--along with him. I couldn't understand why Elsa allowed herself to go back to him, although her only options were to settle into a quiet life of conventionality and boredom in Minnesota. Especially in the audio format, I just found Bo suffocating, much as Elsa found herself smothered by him, especially as he began to bully his way around people, whether at the old Swede's farmhouse or with the bartender's family in North Dakota during his first bootlegging run during the flu epidemic. His character really began to deteriorate under the pressures of making money, showing itself with the mocking attitude toward the old British couple in Canada and then shooting the bird in front of Bruce and Elsa who were shocked by the brutality of the act.

I thought I'd give the book another try as a print novel, and that seemed to make all the difference. Also, Chet and Bruce were beginning to make a difference with the narration of the novel and the tensions in the family, rather than Elsa worries and sorrows and Bo's scheming, and the book became akin to Look Homeward Angel. I can't imagine that Stegner didn't have Wolfe in mind when he wrote the book for the parallels are too great--dysfunctional family trying to make it in the early 20th century, told from various points of view in the family, finally settling on the youngest son to have the final say in the book. It is Bruce that has some of the more interesting thoughts and experiments in narration (as in the car ride back to Nevada after his first semester in law school) and it's hard not to wonder whether great stretches of the book are autobiographical.

In short, I grew from loathing the book--or maybe more particularly, loathing Bo--to thinking that it was a very good, if not great, novel of American life. Having seen it through to the end and looking back on it as the history of a family, especially the family of a bootlegger during prohibition, and ending up in Salt Lake City, no less, gives the book a perspective that borders on insight into the human condition, what great literature is supposed to do. The final parts of the book, with Elsa dying and Bruce taking care of her--then reflecting on her and the rest of his family--contain great writing, even in the scenes where Bo reflects on his own situation and becomes desperate for money. He is even less likable than earlier in the book, as his needs and wants become even more hardened and self-centered. But as Bruce reflects, Bo had been very capable and even showed tenderness at times. It's almost as if Stegner asks: How does a bootlegger become as he is? What drives him? What becomes of him? And make no mistake, it is Bo's book. He is the center of its universe, and when he shoots himself finally, it brings a fitting end to his story and gives the book a finality and impact that was unexpected. 

Author: Stegner, Wallace

Date Published: 1943

Length: 563 pp & 25 hr 38 min

print & audio

Narrator: Bramhall, Mark

Of Mice and Men

You would think that I'd have been all over this given my enthusiasm for Steinbeck a few years ago, but this was my first real encounter with the book since I was a sophomore in high school, and Andy Bernea and I did a cutting for our Drama 1 class. I was George and he was Lenny, and he got a standing ovation from the class for his performance. I was along for the ride.

The book is so fucking bleak. As Sara said, you know it's going to turn out badly, but it makes Grapes of Wrath seem like a comedy. And there is a lot that seems unrealistic about the story, even though it is considered a story of realism. Mainly, Lenny. Given his behavior around the puppy and the ease with which he crushed Curley's hand and killed Curley's wife, it's hard to imagine that he would have made it as far as his did without being locked up. Sara pegged him as psychotic, especially when he threw the dead puppy around, and it just doesn't seem real that he had not been incarcerated or killed before then. Interesting that Steinbeck says that he worked with Lennie and watched the real "Lennie" kill the ranch foreman with a pitchfork.

Curley and his wife don't seem all that plausible to me, but maybe that's a product of the times that I grew up in. For Curley to go around trying to pick a fight with the ranch hands, or then to insist that he was going to gut-shot Lenny when he found him just doesn't ring true with me. The code of the west comes to the Depression?

Candy and Crooks provide enough pathos throughout the book to keep it depressing. Both of them are in dead ends with their lives with nothing to look forward to after being essentially destroyed by their jobs. Candy seems as simple as Lennie much of the time, and his hopes are of course shattered when Lennie dies. Crooks almost buys into the dream of a house and a farm, but pulls back in refusing to hope for something better.

I find it hard to believe that this has been taught in American lit for so many years. I wouldn't even begin to know how to approach it with kids who have so little background knowledge. Maybe it's a fit with depression era literature, but it seems that there must be better stuff out there. And if I were going to teach a short Steinbeck novel, I'd go for Cannery Row over Mice and Men.

Author: Steinbeck, John

Date Published: 1937

Length: 4 hr

Narrator: Hammer, Mark

Star Island

OK. Hiaasen is a lot of fun--and Star Island is fun--but the last couple of books are running thin. I enjoyed his earlier books--especially Skin Tight, Double Whammy, Stormy Weather, and Skinny Dip--a lot more. There's ust too much name dropping and brand name dropping in Star Island for my tastes. Yes, it is a book about modern notions of fame, stardom, and the paparazzi, and the inherent absurdity of it all, but it does leave me kind of cold.

Two of Hiaasen's previous characters return in Star Island--Skink and Chemo--but outside of Skink's tying a sea urchin onto the balls of the condo developer, or his taking a shit in the washing machine of his former lieutenant governor, he seems out of place. And, Hiaasen keeps reiterating the absurdity of Skink's appearance, almost as if her were padding the book. Chemo comes off a lot less creepy than his previous appearance in Skin Tight, and even achieves a certain amount of compassion in his refusal to kill Bang Abbott, the paparazzo, or Ann DeLusia, the double for Cherry Pye. Ann is really the only sensible character in the book, and it's her story that drives the novel. Cherry Pye is a complete caricature of stardom--think Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton--although it is hard to think caricature with the likes of them on the loose. Cherry's parents and her agent are the real culprits, in a sense, as they lead blood sucking lives leeching on their daughter's stardom. And she has no talent to begin with. Keeping her straight and sober, and cleaning up the messes when she doesn't, forms the major part of the book, and it's all doomed to failure until the end of the book when Ann steps in and forces sobriety on Cherry. Of course, it was hard to keep a straight face when Linday Lohan's father announced that he was opening an addiction facility this past week--he could have stepped straight out of this novel.

So Star Island turned out to be a pretty forgettable book. It started off with some promise, but then it started to lose direction and ended up tying up a lot of loose ends when the rest of the story didn't coalesce. Maybe Hiaasen should write about novelist who can no longer bring their A game to the table with the distractions of living up to their own fame.

Author: Hiaasen, Carl

Date Published: 2010

Length: 11hr 31min

Narrator: Hoye, Stephen

Rapt: Attention the Focused Life

"Those who learn to control their inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy."

That pretty much explains the book in one sentence. The rest of the book elaborates on the theme over and over, coming back to it in different ways. It's the "Power of Positive Thinking" for the first decade of the Twenty first century. That doesn't make what Gallagher say any less true, but's its really just re-covering ground that been covered over and over before. It's one in a spate of new books that combines positive thinking with neuroscience and meditation, like The Happyness Hypothesis or Mindfulness or Wisdom: From Philosophy to Neuroscience. As Grayling writes in his review of Wisdom: "polysyllabic confirmation of what common sense and received wisdom knew long ago." While I want to believe in this literature and its insights, it leaves me unsatisfied and unconvinced in the long run. I've spent a lot of time working at meditation and visualization, thought stoppage, and mind control, and somehow it just doesn't really lead to a better life. I've tried reframing my negative emotions and replacing them with positive thoughts, but I'm still the same old putz that I always was--quick to anger, slow to forgive, slovenly in habit. Sometimes I've been able to direct my attention to goals over a relatively long period of time--like a couple of years ago when I had a really satisfying season riding brevets--but most of the time I stew that I'm not getting any closer to any of them.

That being said, Gallagher does have good advice about how we should lead our lives even if we can't follow it. "Optimal human experience" kicks in when we're completely focused on doing something that's both enjoyable and that's also challenging enough to be "just manageable."

Again, much of her advice brings on the "duh" response: "The first step toward any relationship is focusing on someone who returns the favor. If the bond is to become intimate, both parties must commit not only to paying rapt attention to each other, but also to the effort of seeing that person's often very different world which entails lots of communication."  "The antidote to leisure time ennui is to pay as much attention to scheduling a productive evening or weekend as you do to your workday." "Nothing is as important as I think it is when I'm focusing on it." "Aware of our limited focusing capacity, I take pains to ensure that electronic media and machines aren't in control of mine."

If nothing else, the book has pointed me back to William James where a lot of Gallagher's thinking is grounded. I want to go back to find out what he has to say. I do seem to go back to James, Emerson, and Thoreau a lot. That doesn't make me a shallow person, does it? Or does it?

Author: Galagher, Winifred

Date Published: 2009

Length: 244 pp & 7hr 45min

electronic print & audio

Narrator: Merlington, Laurel

The Little Ice Age

Fagan argues that many of the important movements and events of modern Europe --and probably the rest of the world as well--can be traced back to changes in the climate that left the world colder and wetter than it had been in the late medieval ages or than it is today. The late medieval ages, known as the monde plein and called the "Medieval Warm Period" by Fagan, lasting from about 800 to 1300 CE, were fairly warm and conducive to cereal crops throughout Europe. This enabled the age of Viking exploration and raiding and population increases all around Europe, encourage mass migrations of peoples and the great cathedral construction going on. Around 1300--more specifically the winters of 1315 and 1316--the climate turned much colder, leading to massive crop failures. Since the vast majority of peasants lived on a subsistence level, starvation, disease and death remained the norm for quite some time. This marked the beginning of what Fagan calls "The Little Ice Age," a period of extreme fluctuation and climactic extremes that lasted until about 1850. While a few good harvest years might occur, many or most years had lower crop yields. Fagan explains a number of mechanisms for these variations, especially the NAO index or positioning of the normal high pressure/low pressure gradients, the movement of the Gulf Stream which normally warms Europe, and volcanic eruptions reducing the amount of sunlight striking the earth.

Fagan explores a number of historical trends and events that happened in reaction to the little Ice Age. Britain and the Netherlands adopted more efficient agricultural practices  that helped ease the burden of famine, if not poverty, in later times. He also traces the development of the Black Death during this time which may have reduced the population of Europe by a half to two-thirds. The British developed a large fishing fleet after the Pope approved the eating of fish during Lent. Consequently, the British gained widespread control of the seas and the Hanseatic League declined precipitously in economic importance. He also discusses the weather underlying the French Revolution and the Irish potato famine in a particularly bitter denunciation of the failure of the British government to relieve the suffering of the Irish. The final chapters close with the possibilities of global warming: "We can only imagine the potential death toll in an era when climactic swings may be faster, more extreme, and completely unpredictable because of human interference."

I really wanted to like this book since it had a lot of important things to say and it presented a lot of information in a new light. But I got the feeling that a lot of it was history channel lite. It covered a lot of information for a long period of time in a short amount of space. The narrative ties together a number of widely disparate events hence reducing the unity of the arguments and explanations. A lot of the narrative is also fairly recursive, repeating information that had been give earlier. So while the book did cover a lot of information, somehow it just wasn't all that satisfying.

Author: Fagan, Brian

Date Published: 2000

Length: 217 pp

print

Look Homeward, Angel

Be very careful about revisiting the classics of your youth. I tore through Thomas Wolfe when I was 20-21 years old and thought that Look Homeward Angel was the Great American Novel. Now I am greatly disappointed with it and not quite sure why.

Maybe since I read this together with Time and the River and You can't Go Home Again and The Web and the Rock, I thought that it was about Eugene Gant and I identified with the writer's life back then. I even took up smoking a tobacco pipe after seeing Gregory Peck as F. Scott. But while Eugene dominates the last half of the book, it's really about the family, which is a lot more dysfunctional than I remember. Or maybe I saw Gant, the father, as an overblown George Robert. His rants about "Mountain Grills, Mountain Grills!" has the flavor of some of dad's put downs of the Panhandle, although he never really denigrated granddad in the manner of Gant excoriating the Pentlands.

As an interesting aside, one article that I came across derives the "Mountain Grill" epithet from Edmund Spencer, for whom a grill was a porcine fellow who ate all the time, who seemed to derive that from Homer. Is this another instance where Wolfe throws in subtle literary allusions, taking delight in his own comparative language? And so could a comparison be made to T. S. Eliot shoring up the ruins of his life with literary allusions in the Waste Land? I was certain struck with the similarities at some points with The Portrait of An Artist as a Young Man when the book hyper-jumps into stream of consciousness, as when Eugene and his father are walking to the movie theatre.

Perhaps part of my disappointment comes from the narration of the audiobook. Much of the book's jumping back and forth between characters and thoughts is signaled in print by paragraph breaks which is missing in the audio version, making it needlessly confusing at times--a pause, a change in voice and/or inflection might help here. It's just a book that does not do well in a audio version.

Ultimately, all the characters in the book, including or especially Eugene--are buffoons. In that regard, it's a comic novel. The brunt of the comedy often comes with Gant's heaping of abuse and invective on Eliza and here family that is at once humorous but also selfish, mean spirited, and cruel. It's a love less marriage, almost complete devoid of any tenderness, and this is reflected in the way the children end up. Only Daisy seems to escape. Grover dies young; Ben becomes hateful and cynical until he, too, dies. Helen verges on hysteria, and Luke has a load of anger lying just become the surface that occasionally explodes on other members of the family. Eugene also comes off as both hateful and naive. His explosion against the family when he gets drunk for the first time is probably even the most hateful and selfish episode in the book, and he becomes so taken up with himself and his sense of self-entitlement. So is "Look Homeward, Angel" really about adolescent angst and is that why I was so taken with it?

Finally, what to make of the "O Lost" passages? Are they literary and overblown flourishes? They just seem a bit silly now.

Interestingly, as I pick up the book and read the print version, the voices speak more naturally to me, the characters seem more familiar, the asides more realistic. I should really go at it again, this time solely as print, and see how it strikes me.

Author: Wolfe, Thomas

Date Published: 1929

Length: 22hr 22min

Narrator: Sowers, Scott

In Search of the Dark Ages

This book was written to accompany Michael Woods' first history special for the BBC back in the late 80's, and it has all the virtues and vices of a television script. It is written in a breezy style and is very readable, but it is pretty shallow in depth. However, I did learn about about the rulers of Britain from the Roman conquest until the coming of William the Conqueror, and I have a better idea why the British think of themselves as Anglo Saxon, even though the latest genetic evidence shows that the majority of the people have genes that predate even the coming of the Celts.

Woods begins with Boudica's revolt, showing how Roman many of the major cities in Britain had become. Even when the Roman government fell--after Constantine (the Brit, not the Great) took off to the mainland to try and claim the Roman empire as his own--the British still saw themselves as heirs to the Roman government and way of life, at least until the conquest by the Danes later in the first millennium. England fell into a number of small kingdoms and chiefdoms, with the Angles, the Saxons, and later the Jutes invited to serve as mercenaries for some of the warlords and kings. This was also the period that produced the Arthurian legends, but Woods can find no concrete evidence for Arthur's existence, considering the legends really more the product of a later myth making and story telling time. The Angles and the Saxons slowly gain power as Britain coalesces around three major areas: West Saxons, East Angles, and Mercia, with Northumbria kind of a wild card.

The book is really speculation on some of the major personalities of British history during this time: Aethelstan, who was really the first king to be recognized as such by the majority of the smaller kingdom, Alfred, who ran a successful guerilla campaign after the Danes invaded the island and threatened to completely overrun it, and Ethelred the Unready, who appeared to vacillate during the last invasions of the Danes until Britain fell to Canute in 1013. But Northumbria was already pretty much under Danelaw at that point, being part of the Norse trading kingdom that extended from Denmark/Norway through England and Dublin to Greenland, fueled mainly by the slave trade.

But that Danish overlordship comes to an end in 1066 when William, himself just two generations removed from being Viking invaders in France, defeats Harold Godwinson at Hastings. Godwinson had just marched the length of England after beating off another invasion force led by Harold Hadrada. But somehow Godwinson was seen as the last of the Anglo Saxon kings that had ruled Britain since Offa's reign in the 780's. The Norman invasion represents a real turning point in power and redistribution of wealth as the thegns, former petty rulers and "nobility," become second class citizen. The people really saw themselves as Anglo-Saxons in language and culture, by then, an identity forged by Aethelstand and Alfred and fostered greatly by Bede's Ecclesiastical History. The Normans were seen then primarily as invaders and interlopers from the continent ruling a foreign peoples.

Author: Woods, Michael

Date Published: 1987

Length: 250 pp

print

Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome

I dunno. I found Hadrian boring. Maybe I find Roman life boring--but I did enjoy the Claudius books. I do have a much better handle on the history of the early empire now, although I'm still a bit fuzzy on the civil wars that preceded Domitian's rise to emperor. The reign of Hadrian marks the zenith of the Roman empire at its greatest power and influence. It was Hadrian, also, however, that set the limits to Roman growth after Trajan found that he could hold Parthia after he had defeated its army.

There are only two points of interest for me in Hadrian's life--his fondness for Grecian culture and his relationship with Antinous. Hadrian was something of an intellectual dilettante, and in some way the height of his intellectual curiosity came when he was given the chance to participate in the Elusinian mysteries. He also studied Stoicism, which gained greater status with Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, in addition to being a great patron of the arts, temple building, and great public works all over the empire. Everit makes it clear that Hadrian had a loveless marriage, and, following Trajan, much preferred the boys. There is some indication that he may have scored political points early in his career with his choice of bed fellows. At the same time, he had a complex relationship with Trajan's wife, who could have been his adoptive mother. She may have fabricated the story of Trajan's choice of Hadrian to succeed him as emperor.

Hadrian may have fallen in love with Antinous when Antinous was about 13, and they were inseparable in the last few years of Antinous' life. Everitt suggests that Hadrian may have had Antinous sacrificed, however, when they were in Egypt, as part of a magical cure for erypsalis. Also, there is some hint that Antinous may have resisted getting buggered by Hadrian. Hadrian was following the classical Greek model of eronimous--the elder man who takes a young boy as a student and a lover--pedagogy and pederasty. Everitt includes an interesting discussion towards sex and same sex relationships in Rome--it was OK to be the penetrator but not the penetratee.

Antinous' death signals Hadrian's going over the edge. He had Antinous deified by the Senate and then put into a mausoleum near his villa on the estate that he built just outside Rome.Yet, it seems that Hadrian spent most of his time away from Rome, whether in the Danube region or the Rhine or Egypt or Britain, or especially Greece. There is a lot of insight into how the empire was governed as Hadrian's corp of administrators and functionaries followed him on his journeys.

The signal event in his career was the brutal suppression of the Jews. He passed a number of laws trying to eradicate Judaism, including building a statue to Jupiter over the temple mount, and eventually completed the diaspora by forbidding any Jews to come near to Jerusalem. In the process the Legions took heavy casualties and lost a full legion in one season of campaigning.

Finally, Hadrian had some of his closest advisors put to death near the end of his reign. By then, he was out of control, perhaps caused by the constant pain that dogged him for a number of years. Hadrian was not a popular ruler, haughty and overbearing at times, full of himself and his sense of entitlement. He had had four senators put to death at the beginning of his reign, and the senate never forgot nor forgave. Everitt makes it clear that the Roman empire went downhill after Hadrian, probably through Marcus Aurelius' campaigns for expansion on the Rhine.

Author: Everitt, Anthony

Date Published: 2009

Length: 14hr 25min

Narrator: Curless, John

When the Light Goes

A short little book, short little chapters, a slight read. The book got savaged in reviews when it came out, but I enjoyed it. I identify with Duane and his late life crisis. He comes back from a trip to Egypt to find a new young secretary in his office, and the book revolves around his involvement with her and with his psychiatrist. A lot of raunchy sex--although that's not quite right since he has a lot of trouble with his arousal. It is an old man's fantasy, I guess, and it really leaves Duane disoriented. On top of it, he has heart problems and ends with open heart surgery. And he's still depressed, but there's something appealing about the dysfunction that is his life, his family, his friendships, and his towns. Probably Roth does a lot better in this territory, but then he's not nearly as funny as McMurtry. Parts of the book, even or especially when Ruth Popper dies, made me laugh out loud. Honor hits the nail on the head when she tells him that he never let anyone, including Karla, come close to him in his life, and maybe that's what makes him all the more appealing to me. In any case, I had to finish the book before I could move on to Rhino Ranch, which the reviews say brings the whole Thalia saga to a close.

Author: McMurtry, Larry

Date Published: 2007

Length: 195 pp

printn

Alexander Hamilton

Alexander Hamilton is probably the least favorite of the "founding fathers/brothers," but probably the most influential in establishing the American government and the American economy. If Chernow is to be believed, Hamilton almost single-handedly established the executive branch of the government, and then fought like crazy to keep Adams and Jefferson from dismantling what he had accomplished.

Chernow also makes clear that Hamilton's greatness came because Washington was able to keep him in check. When the two went their separate ways, Hamilton became a curmudgeon and really kind of lost a lot of his perspective. He also became a bundle of contradictions, as seen in his increasing religiosity, his affair with Mariah Reynolds, and even his duel with Aaron Burr--he refused to shoot to kill--all the while condemning dueling, especially after his eldest son was killed in a duel. 

A fairly poignant story about his wife Eliza, who was faced with his debts and with raising the family alone after Hamilton was killed. Chernow really does turn Hamilton's critics, especially Jefferson, Madison, and Adams, into buffoons and hypocrites, and at times I felt like he had become Hamilton's publicist and apologist over 200 years after the fact.

Author: Chernow, Ron

Date Published: 2004

Length: 36hr 58min

Narrator: Brick, Scott

To The Lighthouse

I have to confess that I have been afraid of Virginia Woolf. I have put off re-reading her for a long time now as I feared getting bogged down in stream of consciousness and never getting through it, kind of like Ulysses. But after listening to the first half of the book, to the point where Mrs. Ramsey begins to climb the stairs after the dinner party, casting her glance back down upon the dining room, knowing that it is the past and behind her, I wondered if perhaps it is the greatest novel of all time.

Woolf does such a marvelous job of capturing our minds, moving easily from one character to another, and does it in complete, understandable sentences. Even though the whole tradition of dressing and preparing for a formal dinner every night is such a foreign concept to me, I feel like Woolf has essentially captured the way we think, moving from thought to impression to feeling, quickly and easily, maintaining ironic distance to the events for each of the characters. Mrs. Ramsey is certainly the center of the universe, and it is she that pulls everything together as the psychic center of the novel, but even she has such an ironic distance to her role that it shadows every thing else in the book.

The second half of the book doesn't work quite so well for me, but with Mrs. Ramsey gone, perhaps that's as it should be. The book does come to a satisfying conclusion as Ramsey, Cam and James finally do reach the lighthouse--with all the wonderful symbolism of the sea and the light--as Lily Briscoe finishes the last stroke of her painting: "There, I've had my vision." Perhaps it's all about life persevering in spite of it all, the resurgence of all those feelings and ideas over a span of so many years, like re-infusing the house with life to ward off the eventual decay and destruction that beset it during years of neglect and absence. And yet, "No happiness lasts" is Mrs. Ramsey's verdict. In any case, the book is a tour de force that demands and will reward rereading and reflection.

Author: Woolf, Virginia

Date Published: 1927

Length: 7hr 45min

Narrator: Leishman, Virginia

Freedom for the Thought that We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment

Billed as a biography of the first amendment, the book is really a riff on some of the major themes and cases that have defined freedom of speech. Surprising that the first amendment wasn't really enshrined in American jurisprudence as we know it until the mid 20th century and later.

The first amendment had not been the absolute guarantor of free speech until the supreme court began definite it so, especially under justices Holmes, Brandeis, Frankfurt, Black. It was Homes who formulated the "clear and present danger" clause that has blocked so much espionage and sedition legislation and who also formulated the phrase "freedom for the though we hate." It has been judicial activism--coupled with the 14th amendment--that has enshrined the First Amendment, especially in cases like Near vs. Minnesota in 1927 and NY Times vs. Sullivan in 1964 that defined the standards of libel and public figure.

But Lewis is not an absolutist for the first amendment. In particular, he believes in limits when free speech impinges on the right to privacy for non public figures, and in some cases of protecting a report's sources when national security and clear public interest in involved, especially in present days when so many people claim to be journalists for electronic publications. "For one thing, it is plainly wrong to quote anonymous sources in pejorative comments on individuals." Lewis also has trouble with the supreme court's decisions on campaign finance, using the first amendment as a way of allowing unlimited campaign contributions that have made elections so expensive.

Author: Lewis, Anthony

Date Published: 2007

Length: 5hr 49min

Narrator: Lovejoy, Stow

Zorba the Greek

This book had the most visceral impact on me of anything I had read when I first encountered it 40 years ago. When I finished it, I sat up in bed crying all night, certain that I would soon be dead. Fred Streng called it Makyo--illusions--and told me to forget about it. And yet I lived with the conviction that I would soon be dead for quite some time. 

I wanted to live the siren call to life of Zorba--or was it the movie or was it the album? Hard to say now. It still reads like the call to live the essential life unfettered by mind, by convention, by reason. But there is no glorification of the common man or of any innate goodness in man--the Cretans make short shrift of that argument. 

The book is not really about Zorba. It is about Boss. It's about his struggles to escape the bookish life and to be free in his own mind. He sets up Zorba and the Buddha as diametrically opposed forces, seeking to exorcize the Buddha while emulating Zorba. Zorba is certainly no saint--he has killed, he has robbed, he has lied, he has cheated. He has just taken on life as it has come at him. But he is presented as the epitome of freedom, free to do as he chooses when he chooses. It just takes a bit of madness, a lot of courage, a willingness to pursue an action whatever the cost, the damages, the difficulties, to be consumed by the passions of the life. Zorba was consumed in the moment, whether making love to Bouboulina, or shoring up the walls of the shaft, or rigging up the cable system, playing the santouri, dancing on the beach, or locked in mortal combat with Manolakas. The boss does feel freed from the constraints of his life, even as he leaves Zorba.

So do we live the vitalist life--open to passions and desires and dangers--this was the climbing life for me--or do we seek detachment and use mindfulness to escape the illusions and being caught up in the world, subject to the rages and the fears and the loneliness and depression of being alive? I'm afraid that Zorba did not speak to me this time like he did when I was 20 years old. And it's a huge loss for me. I've settled into old age and mediocrity, sliding into death and afraid of dying a bitter old man.

Author: Kazantzakis, Nikos

Date Published: 1946

Length: 320 pp

print

The Plague

Has Camus become such an integral part of my thinking that his thought seems obvious? Man lives in an absurd universe. Bryson makes that clear in Short History. Shit happens for which we are not prepared to deal. Look at the real statistics on the plague--the black death--and look at the dislocations to the society and the economy when it struck.

Of course, Camus is dealing with individual response and reaction--individual consciousness. Isolation, alienation, and death are man's fate. But once you've said that, so what? I was kind of plodding along with the mediocrity of people's lives and the seeming mediocrity of the book--great ideas wrapped in mediocre literature. We are all reduced to the level of the bean counter, and we just dress up the details of life to get through the day.

But that's not true, either, when we come to the death of Othon's son and the vivid portrayal of his agony and death and the inability of any of the characters to do anything about it. This leads to the confrontation between Panelou and Rieux, the priest and the doctor. Panelou gives a sermon that accepted the child's death as a part of God's plan, and Rieux refused to accept it, even though he was powerless to stop it. This leads to the rooftop confession by Tarrou to Rieux: "each of us has the plague within him…we must keep endless watch on ourselves lest in a careless moment we…fasten the infection on [someone else]. What's natural is the microbe. All the rest--health, integrity, purity--is the product of the human will, of a vigilance that must never falter…some of us, those who want to get the plague out of our systems, feel such desperate weariness, a weariness from which nothing remains to set us free except death." And then, of course, Tarrou dies.

Or maybe we are all like Grand, who tries incessantly to get one sentence right. Everything else, he feels, will fall together if he just gets the cadence and the imagery right with the once sentence, based on the unreal expectation of how people will react to it. So is what he does any different from the asthmatic bean counter? And is what Rieux does any different from them? Camus keeps playing exile as a major theme--exile from each other, from ourselves, from an indifferent universe.

Author: Camus, Albert

Date Published: 1947

Length: 10hr 53min

Narrator: Jenner, James