Cannery Row

This was my second "reading" of the book and reminded me yet again that Steinbeck is the great American novelist. While the plot isn't much, Steinbeck's descriptions always blow me away. The opening line really says it all: "Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream." It is a poem written in prose, a celebration of a time and a place, even with all the rough edges of homelessness, poverty, drunkenness.

Mack and the boys living at the Palace Flophouse provide whatever plot there is to the story, of course, with their scheming and planning for the two parties, which inevitably go bad. As Mack says, "Ever'thing I done turned sour...If I done a good thing, it got poisoned up some way." And that's as close to pathos or pity as the book really comes, even though most of the characters are really down and out, living on the edge of destitution. At the same time, Doc somewhat envies Mack and the boys "There are your true philosophers...Mack and the boys know everything that has ever happened in the world and possibly everything that will happen...In a time when people tear themselves to pieces with ambition and nervousness and covetousness, they are relaxed."

And this appreciation of the down and out characters of Cannery Row, from the whores of Dora's Bear Flag Restaurant to the artist Henri and even Lee Chong underlies the poem that is Cannery Row. Steinbeck fits in short descriptive chapters, like the sailors leaving the bar and dawn or Mary Talbot's discovery of Kitty Cassini killing the mouse or the dog eating the entrails thrown out by doctor who had embalmed the writer Josh Billings. It's written with humor and a tenderness that bring out the nostalgia and the dream. Parts of it are laugh out loud funny. Parts of it are just sheer beauty and wonder.

And then the old Chinaman with the loose sole on his shoe flip flapped up the street every evening and every morning in the eternal round of the day, so that the story plays out as a small vignette against the ongoing tide of sea and humanity. (and wouldn't Steinbeck be appalled by what they have made of Cannery Row with it's tourist shops and restaurants, now?) No wonder Cannery Row is one of my all time favorite novels.

Author: Steinbeck, John

Date Published: 1945

Length: 6 hr 1 min

Narrator: Farden, Jerry

The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo

I don't have much to say about this book. Sara and I listened to it on a couple of trips to and from Durango, and it filled the time quite nicely. I don't normally care for crime or mystery novels, but it fit the bill as a book that both of us might enjoy, and it worked that way, much as a Dan Brown novel. It reminded me a lot of Brown, as a matter of fact, and had some interesting plot twists as Mikael and Salander uncover the mysterious disappearance of Harriet Vanger 40 years ago.

There are a number of interesting characters that play throughout the book, especially as Mikael uncovers the Vanger family past and some of its ties with Nazism. Lisbeth Salander was undoubtedly my favorite character in the book as she continually stands up to her abusers--the scenes with the sadistic Bjurman would border on funny if they weren't so brutal and graphic in their depiction of his sadism and her revenge--and I was pretty disappointed at the very end of the book when she looks forward to hooking up with Mikael only to see him walking away with Erika Berger, his longtime lover.

But in the end, the book wraps up a little too neatly, too tidily, and outside of Salander's disappointment, too happily, I guess. It's also kind of amazing how prominently computer hacking skills play into the plot of the novel and in solving the crimes of the book, kind of the same phenomenon on current television crime shows like NCIS or Criminal Minds where computer specialists--also somewhat social outcasts--play major roles.

Author: Larsson, Steig

Date Published: 2005

Length: 16 hr 20 min

Narrator: Vance, Simon

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

No doubt that Shirer is dated. His language is loaded, and it continues right through the end of the book. How many times do we have to hear about the fat and corrupt Goerring or megalomaniacal Hitler or the sycophantic Ribbentrop or misguided Chamberlain? It really does get to be a bit much.

And, even at 1150 pages, the book if far, far too short to do justice to the material. It felt like Shirer raced through the events, especially after the Germans overran the Maginot line and damn near captured the British at Dunkirk. Also, a lot of background knowledge is assumed as the story is told as much as possible from within the viewpoint of the Third Reich, as much as this is possible for an outsider who is not very objective. The Japanese, for instance, appear very quickly on the scene with the signing of the Tripartite  Agreement and then drags Germany into war with the US with a last minute treaty coming the same day after the first major German defeat at Moscow. And where was any mention of the Yalta pact?

But Shirer has given me a firmer grasp on the order and cause of events that lead to the rise of Hitler and National Socialism. And, especially in retrospect, it all seems so nuts. How did Hitler rise from not even having a majority of seats in the Reichstag in 1933 to having full dictatorial powers just a few short months later? It was such a cynical manipulation of events and people for the Nazis to gain power and to keep it--especially with the claptrap about lebensraum and jewish conspiracies and Hitler's personal destiny to lead Germany to greatness--but the German people bought into it. They were willing to trade civil and individual liberties away for prosperity.

Shirer makes it clear that the Germany professional army corps shoulders a lot of tehe blame. While political institutions borke down under the stress of economic conditions in post WWI Germany, the army was still able to maintain control, especially over the politics of the time, as needed. (Can't help but see parallels with the riots in Egypt right now) But the army seemed to blithely and willingly concede to Hitler's initiatives until it was too late to control his rise to power. Finally, the officers' corp was unwilling to break the oaths of personal loyalty that they took to Hitler, rather than the state, shortly after he declare martial law. None of them had to the balls to stand up for what they thought was right at the time that it mattered. And the assassination attempts that were made read more like comedies of errors than like real events.

Hitler damn near came close to pulling it off--his domination of Europe and eventually the world--losing in the end to a couple of his own misguided decisions--to break off the Battle of Britain prematurely when the Germans had the RAF on the ropes, and the decision to delay Operation Barbarossa for six weeks to exact revenge on the Yugoslavs.

In all, it really is such a sad tale of human nature and human history gone wrong, and that's the way that Shirer tells the tale. His book may not be the most straightforward or objective account of the Third Reich, but it did a good job of pulling it all together for me in a single narrative line and giving me a better grasp on the events.

Author: Shirer, William

Date Published: 1960

Length: 1147 pp & 57 hr 14 min

print & audio

Narrator: Gardner, Grover

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

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A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy

This is certainly a much different look at many figures of the Enlightenment than I've come across before. Israel maintains a major split amongst Enlightenment writers: the Moderate Enlightenment, as represented by Newton, Locke, Voltaire, Rousseau among others, and the Radical Enlightenment of Spinoza, Bayle, Diderot, d'Holbach, Helvetius, Paine, et. al. 

"Radical Enlightenment is a set of basic principles that can be summed up concisely as: democracy; racial and sexual equality; individual liberty of lifestyle; full freedom of thought, expression, and the press; eradication of religious authority from the legislative process and education; and full separation of church and state. It sees the purpose of the state as being the wholly secular one of promoting the worldly interests of the majority and preventing vested minority interests from capturing control of the legislative process." (Preface)

Israel traces this split back to Spinoza's positing of one substance--pure materialism--as the metaphysics of the universe, without the corresponding split between mind and matter "Spinoza…forged the basic metaphysical groundplan, exclusively secular moral values, and culture of individual liberty, democratic politics, and freedom of thought and the press that embody today the defining core values of modern secular egalitarianism" (location 1955) In other words, Spinoza really underlies most modern thought.

The moderate enlightenment figures, especially Voltaire and Rousseau, really come off fairly badly in Israel's eyes. Whereas I've kind of thought of Voltaire as an Enlightenment hero, to be revered alongside Erasmus and Montaigne, Israel sees him as a major conservative figure, who attacked the church, it is true, but only to destroy the abuses of its power and to consolidate power with the aristocratic classes. Of course, Israel may be talking more about the later Voltaire, but he maintains that Voltaire "consistently opposed radical thought and its egalitarian aims" throughout his career. Voltaire almost comes off as a pitiable figure at the end of his career as he stops attacking the church and begins attacking la philosophie moderne and its deplorable tendencies toward evolution, among other ideas. He recognized that his own influence over the ideas of the day were waning.

That's because a flood of literature in the 1760s-1780s bought about the predominance of the ideas of the Radical Enlightenment, culminating in the French Revolution. Israel vents against the historicism of the revolution for failing to emphasize this role and concentrating almost exclusively on social and political forces at work. "One cannot begin to grasp the revolutionary position in 1789 rightly without acknowledging that philosophisme was seen to have engineered a vast "revolution of the mind." And this phenomenon is in turn inexplicable without looking at the long, and in part self-conscious, build-up to its climax in the 1770' and 178os of a radical tradition reaching all the way back to the 166os. (location 1861) And it was the thinking of Rousseau that directly influenced Robespierre and the Jacobins in the excesses of the Terror, not the supposed "coldly clinical, unfeeling machine of rational ideas" that many critics of the Enlightenment have pointed to.

The moderate enlightenment thought lost influence because, in the end, it could not effectively criticize the abuses and social grievances of the day. The radical enlightenment became the "mouthpiece" for social resentment, calling for radical equality, the redistribution of wealth and happiness, and the universal education of mankind. It seems to me that that is still the world that we strive for today.

Author: Israel, Jonathan

Date Published: 2009

Length: 296 pp & 7 hr 28 min

electronic print & audio

Narrator: Adams, James