2007 Reading Blog by Ernie Seckinger Bumper sticker on my car: So Many Books, So Little Time (Next to: Fight to Rewrite Alabama's Constitution)
January
****Ghostway by Tony Hillerman How many times have I read this book or listened to the audio version? I'd have to look back through this blog to count. Very nice. A fine story but what captures me is the landscape in Hillerman's books. Simply put, he writes in color!***Errand into the Wilderness by Perry Miller. Original 1956, this the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press's 1964 edition (I believe Miller died in 1963). This is a difficult book to get through, at least for me, for a couple of reasons. Miller's writing here is a bit convoluted and I found I really have so little interest in the Puritan experience that motivation to wade through his prose is hard for me to summon. However, parts did stimulate my thinking. At one point Miller reminded me of my problems with E.O. Wilson's Consilience. In referring to Emerson as mystical Miller goes to Webster's thus: 'mysticism to be the doctrine that the ultimate nature of reality or of the divine essence may be known by an immediate insight.' Wilson, in general in Consilience and specifically in a personal communication, called a transcendentalist approach one of seeking an ultimate epistemology. This seems consistent with Miller's Websterized definition. However, I am speaking not from an attempt to analyze Emerson's ultimate motivation but from a dual perspective of Bloomian aesthetic pleasure in reading the body of work left to us by the Transcendentalists and secondly a component of 'meaning.' Now here is where we differ. Wilson juxtaposes the latter (as would I'm sure a host of others) against the scientific method. I do not at all do this. Science and its methods leads us down the path of a literal understanding of nature, its origins, and its operation. Transcendentalism, and I could perhaps throw in modern-style religious practice, concerns itself with how we feel, personal actualization, aesthetic pleasure and the like. In no way, that I see, feel, or think, are these approaches at odds with each other or even of the same domain so as to come into conflict. To be completely straightforward about the matter, my approach to Nature is indeed about the warm and fuzzy (and even the prickly fear of things that go bump in the night--or the wilderness) while nature under scientific scrutiny continues to reveal theoretical information about dark matter and elemental particles spinning off practical products like satellite TV and iPods.
February
**** Grand Expectations by James T. Patterson. History of the U.S. from 1945 to 1974. This book is a continuation of the Oxford History of the United States. It is in clear narrative prose that as in Freedom From Fear allows me to read economic history and remain awake. Under a more genuine rendition of 'fair and balanced,' Patterson provides dispassionate assessments of the players from FDR, Truman, and the Establishment.**** Restless Giant by James T. Patterson. The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore. This really is Volume II of Patterson's contribution to the Oxford History of the United States. His reach stretches from 1945 to 2001 and even provides some context through 2005. I applaud him for his courage to tackle such recent events without having the luxury of passing time to sort out what was important and what may turn out to be a flash in the pan. He had to make those choices and here they are in print for the future to see, a courageous act. Reading such recent history, the reader can slip into a sense he or she is reading an issue of Time or Newsweek since anyone of an age to likely be reading this book read those news magazines and saw these events unfolding on the nightly news. Once again, Patterson has excelled at placing the events we all know and find distasteful, from gridlock in Congress to Bill Clinton's peccadilloes, in what context there is to have in his 2005 book. Those who study historiography a century from now will not find this book a required source, but the other published volumes of the Oxford History of the United States as well. Bravo Oxford! Now, where are the rest of the volumes?
*** How to Read and Why by Harold Bloom. "It is not the function of reading to cheer us up, or to console us prematurely...Why read? Because you will be haunted by great visions..."
March
*** Inherit the Stars by James P. Hogan. OK, a comfort zone book that I have read more than once before. So I needed comfort. A fine story.*** The Gentle Giants of Ganymede by James P. Hogan. Ditto above.
***** Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. To use Dostoevsky's name in conversation is literary de rigueur, but how many actually read him? I've had the surreal experience of reading Notes from Underground on the city bus in Atlanta and now Crime and Punishment. Often cited as one of the 'hard books' or as a ponderous Russian novel, I found it quite readable and while of tragedy and a few scenes of gruesome crime, black humor often appears. I found it to be for St. Petersburg what Ulysses is for Dublin though not as multi-layered as the latter.
0 Stars. American Bloomsbury by Susan Cheever. Simon and Schuster 2006. There is no excuse for a book like this. I really cannot believe such a large publisher could release it. Many errors of fact and in my opinion tone mar this book to a more than fatal level for it is not just about it but the fact that so many were printed that this bad portrayal of the Transcendentalists will be a somewhat standard reference for a generation. Simon and Schuster and indeed the author should be ashamed!
April
*** Giants' Star by James P. Hogan. Hogan is just ditto, do., and ditto every time I read these. Just good fun, good reads, a very fine story. And a bit of a thought provoker on matters of relations among ethnicities. Do we need that now? Well....** Transcendentalism, Perfectionism, and Walden by Daniel S. Malachuk. The Concord Saunterer, N.S., Volume 12/13, 2004/2005, 283-303 . An article in the multi-year volume done so in commemoration of the sesquicentennial of Walden. I began this as an antidote to American Bloomsbury, an error-filled, almost mean-spirited book. Malachuk's purpose here is to reverse the 'de-transcendentalizing' of Thoreau and the major 19th century intellectuals once called Transcendentalists and that they were from the beginning oppositional. "Thoreau's transcendentalism provides the authority... to question authority."
** American Individualism by Herbert Hoover. 1922. Yes, that Herbert Hoover. Within this book-form essay of 72 small pages lies several point of Emersonian light on American individualism. Hoover embraces that and goes further by making his philosophy clear:
In this I see both a commitment to individualism (which is of course the point of the book) but also a refutation and resistance to aid which would, in a mere 10 years, come to haunt Hoover's legacy.that while we build our society upon the attainment of the individual, we shall safeguard to every individual an equality of opportunity to take that position in the community to which his intelligence, character, ability, and ambition entitle him; that we keep the social solution free from frozen strata of classes; that we shall stimulate effort of each individual to achievement; that through an enlarging sense of responsibility and understanding we shall assist him to this attainment; while he in turn must stand up to the emery wheel of competition.***** Henry David Thoreau by Joseph Wood Krutch. American Men of Letters Series, William Sloane Associates, 1948. A nice analysis of Walden and Thoreau as a writer. His view of Walden's four distinct "matters:"
(1) Life of quiet desperation(2) Economic fallacy responsible for (1)
(3) Close to nature life and its rewards
(4) Higher laws perceived transcendentally whose rungs are
(a) Wildness(b) Gentle and austere life
(c) Transcendental insight
Self-reform brought up time and again as the center of Thoreau's personal philosophy.
**** Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee . 1999. This came to my notice through a reading friend. A friend who knows I am always in the hunt for literary fiction--and that I am generally disappointed with what is so touted of late. Something about Disgrace is different and better. It is of the same slice of life method as McEwen but this book spoke more to me than say Saturday. Was it the South African setting, the person who recommended it, the story and issues between the covers? Perhaps all of the above.
**** All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville-West. As this wonderful book closed, I came to realize that the last phase of Lady Slane's life was one in which she lived deliberately so that upon death, she did not find that she had not lived at all.
*** Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors by Nicholas Wade. Penguin Press 2006. As an archeologist, I often find myself somewhere between skeptical and enraged at journalistic treatments of human prehistory. Not in this case though. Actually I'm happy to have come upon a popular treatment of that story, most specifically the human populating of the world, from a genetic perspective--backed up by the archeology. A couple of spectacular factoids here are:
The original Homo sapiens sapiens migration out of Africa 50,000 years ago may have been a band of only 150 people.0.5% of the world's population may be descended from Genghis Khan.
May
* Black Lamb and Grey Flacon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia by Rebecca West. The Viking Press, 1941. Some time ago I read that if one had any pretensions toward an understanding of Yugoslavia, then Black Lamb and Grey Falcon must be on your reading list. At first opportunity, I bought a copy, a nicely done 1958 printing in one volume. The book began with promise, if for nothing else, her writing style. Speaking of Franz Josef's anachronistic rule:
It was true that there was already shaping in his court a disaster that was to consume us all; but this did not appear to English eyes, largely because Austria was visited before the war only by our upper classes, who in no country noticed anything but horses, and Austrian horses were good.But by page 135 I found that I could take no more. While not making a Federal case out of it, she does not transcend her time or station regarding race and ethnicity. Also the whole of Yugoslavia's story has but one bright spot--Sarajevo of 1984--and that is not on her itinerary. Why can't we all just get along?**** Hawthorne, a Life by Brenda Wineapple. Knopf 2003. A nice read and a comprehensive biography of Hawthorne. For me, a quote from Moncure Conway seems up Hawthorne, "his genius was to be got at only in his pages." I highly recommend this book but this along with the Cheever entry above makes me wonder where all the fact checkers have gone! She says Fortress Monroe is a naval base and that Thomas Wentworth Higginson was in the 54th Massachusetts. The former is most definitely an Army installation and the latter unit is know to any moviegoer at that of Robert Gould Shaw.
*** Glitz by Elmore Leonard. If you want to read a book guaranteed to entertain, then pick up an Elmore Leonard! End of story.
June
** Man's Unconquerable Mind by Gilbert Highet. Highet's mind here is in the right place; he is calling for human thought to get us out of the pit. I agree with 2 of his statements:His three errors of Western contemporary education are:also(1) schools exist to train children to be sociable
(2) education is a closed-end process
(3) learning and teaching ought to have immediate results
Three Trends Toward Tyranny:(1) Nationalism
(2) Statism--divine right of government officials
(3) Technology's ability to monitorSound familiar?
** John Updike: Modern Critical Views. Edited and with an Introduction by Harold Bloom. One wonders why Updike has not received the Nobel Prize for Literature. Many place this egregious oversight of the academy in the lap of late 20th century and now early 21st century backlash against white Protestant makes, particularly when they happen to be American and well-to-do, especially if this wealth comes from the writing. I thought that until I read Bloom's introduction. Bloom, the master of the personal bibliography (and I will make no attempt to count his myriad entries--many anchoring a collection of critical--not essays--but pieces than can be viewed as easier fodder for high school papers than can Cliff's Notes) here does his all to pedestrianize Updike.
As my tone suggests, I could not disagree more. Bloom ignores contextual issues he so often finds unimportant but are the essence of life for many. For me, Updike is
a master storyteller (why Dr. Bloom is this not a part of the aesthetic pleasure you laud?)
One of the few if not the only widely-read author examining the WASP male in the 1960s and 1970s (and continuing).
And that experience not shying away from sex or religion.*** Thoreau's Moral Vision. being Chapter 4 of Andrew McMurry's Environmental Renaissance: Emerson, Thoreau and the Systems of Nature. University of Georgia Press. 2003. 131-183. Emerson used Nature to discuss human nature, but Thoreau was not into the opposition of nature and culture. Thoreau, seeing the flowing sand perfused by a living force, is saying there is nothing inorganic. Mother Earth?
***** The Maine Woods by Henry David Thoreau. Princeton University Press, 1972, Edited by Joseph J. Moldenhauer. So nice to read these fine words every morning then check Richard Lenat's annotations every evening. See http://thoreau.eserver.org/mewoods.html for a text of The Maine Woods and his annotations.
...the poet must, from time to time, travel the logger's path and the Indian's trail, to drink at some new and more bracing fountain of the Muses, far in the recesses of the wilderness.The Anglo American can indeed cut down and grub up all this waving forest and make a stump speech and vote for Buchanan on its ruins, but he cannot converse with the spirit of the tree he fells--he cannot read the poetry and mythology which retire as he advances. He ignorantly erases mythological tablets in order to print his handbills and town meeting warrants on them.
Amen.
**** The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. MacAdam Cage, 2003. My second time through this surprisingly literary novel. At once a love story, science fiction, a modern treatment of The Odyssey, just a fantastic read.
*** The Inner Circle by T. C. Boyle. My cursory bit of research has not turned up a sure connection between this novel and the film Kinsey though it seems one is based on the other. But the Inner Circle goes further into the life of one of his acolytes. It does not read like a parody, but in 1940s and 1950s America, nearly chronicles the dual absurdity of Kinsey's non-scientific and inductive surveys and the public attitudes toward sex (as opposed to actual behavior). I hooked up with this book not in response to a high level of interest in Kinsey, but in a driving need for literary fiction. The book delivers, in both departments. I was prohibited from laying the book aside by its clear and precise writing style. Indeed a reading pleasure, with a different sort of story to boot.
July
*** Drop City by T. C. Boyle. Viking. 2003. In reading this book, I had a similar experience to my earlier read of the same author's The Inner Circle. His fine writing kept me going through a story I initially had little interest in. By the end of the book, I was taken in and even interested in several of the main characters, of which the Alaskan winter is one. I still think the whole hippie 'thing' was a bit odd. I am more of an individual myself and do not generally subscribe to 'groupthink.'**** Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations by Craig Nelson. Viking 2006. From the Daphne, Alabama Public Library. Since I am a former child educated in American public schools, I of course have many times heard the name of Thomas Paine and his pamphlet Common Sense. But the plethora of facts and events unknown to me remind me of my course in Chinese history when every word was new! Since this is the, or one of the, last books I will read before a major move, I had no real intention of taking extensive notes during my morning reading. I sit here before more than 20 pages of notes! Fear not,; I will not bore you with a recapitulation of this book, but I do feel compelled, because of my prior ignorance, to point out a few misconceptions I had.
The first was strengthened during the C-SPAN broadcast of Thomas Paine during its American Writers' Series. There again I heard that Thomas Paine was not a U.S. citizen. Then and especially now after reading Nelson's biography, this is as meaningless a statement to me as to say neither was John Paul Jones. Does it really matter given their contributions and in an era of loose citizenship rules? John Paul Jones has, posthumously, become a citizen and is even entombed at the U.S. Naval Academy. If any lingering doubt remains over Paine, even after statements made by Washington, Jefferson, and Monroe, then such citizenship should be granted him. Immediately. Before his 275th birthday rolls around. Now for some of these factoids and events:
He came to America with a letter of introduction from Benjamin Franklin.Becomes a fast friend of Franklin.
Franklin's grandson Benny Bache becomes his publisher.
Said "We have it in our power to begin the world again," later quoted by Reagan.
Said "These are the times that try men's souls."
Made first published use of the term United States of America.
Given credit for popular support of the American Revolution by the founders.
Long time close friend of George Washington (though this relationship later dissolved)
Close friend of Lafayette.
Present and involved (via writing) in the French Revolution, became a deputy in the French assembly before the Terror. Argued against the king's execution. Caught up in the Terror. Imprisoned in the Luxembourg. Gouverneur Morris, the then ambassador, not energetic in seeking his release.
Escaped England due to a warning by William Blake.
Paine a Deist, not an atheist as is so often said, even now. "I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life…" He beat Christopher Hitchens to the sentiment that "All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit…"
Current right wing Christian fundamentalist interpretation of the founders notwithstanding, Nelson here maintains that the Age of Reason, while considered radical today, then reflective of mainstream Anglo American religious discourse.
Lincoln converted to Deism after reading and studying The Age of Reason.
The Smith-Franklin-Paine faith prominent in the rise of the American "self-made man."
I rest Nelson's case. An intriguing book. And man.*** The Book That Changed My Life Edited by Roxanne J. Coady and Joy Johannessen. Gotham Books. 2006. From the Daphne Public Library. Always a sucker for a new book on books, I checked this out from the library. Made up of a fine introduction about reading, followed by 71 short essays by writers, how could I lose! I more perused than read this book, reading those writers I knew and those books I'd read. I think this would be different than the intention, which probably assumed readers would take it as a reading list. Perhaps even me, in conceited moments, think likewise of this website. But each time I delve into books like this, I find my patience wearing thin. The key is most often the reader's independent--or near so--discovery of memorable and life-changing books. Certainly they may entertain and perhaps enlighten me, but me as an inner living individual must find these transcendent experiences alone, even if by serendipity. The denouement to this is, that to find such requires a lot of reading. Probably constant (for we change in response to experience and what we read). Probably a lifetime of reading.
My 'The Book That Changed My Life?' So many I have to recount relative to my life's stages. Childhood: Charlotte's Web . Teen Years: The Northwest Passage and Typee . Young Adult: Thomas Hardy's novels, The Giants Trilogy . Now: Thoreau's Journal and Walden and Cimak's Waystation . If forced to reduce all to one alive within me:Thoreau's Journal .
**** The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara. Original 1974, this a Ballantine Books trade paperback, 1996, 19th printing purchased from Barnes & Noble via a gift card from my fine co-workers upon my retirement. As the blurbs say, the greatest historical novel of the Civil War. Recounts not just the Battle of Gettysburg but the inner thoughts of many of the generals and a colonel or two who were actually involved in the battle, some of whom there died. As I approached Pickett's Charge in the reading of this book, I was reminded of the 50th anniversary of that fateful day and the veteran's reunion assembled there from both sides. As the veterans began a re-enactment, the Confederates moved across the field. The Union veterans rushed out from their position and met them halfway. Just too horrible a thing to recreate--instead of fatal volleys, hugs were the order of the day.
**** Looking South, N.A. 1, The North-South Continental Highway by George R. Stewart. Maps by Erwin Raisz. Riverside Press, Cambridge. 1957. Purchased several years ago at a Ponce deLeon, Florida army-navy store from their stock of books discarded from the Fort Rucker post library. Just a marvelous travel book. Definitely not PC in that he attributes lighter complexions in Nicaragua to the U.S. Marine occupation during the 1920s! Other than that, very nice descriptions of the Pan American Highway as it existed in the 1950s and its history back to Spanish colonial times.
This will be my last update of this reading blog before I move from marvelous Daphne, Alabama to my new home of Hiawassee, Georgia. Daphne and its library will always hold a special place in my heart. Future updates to follow for August and beyond from the North Georgia mountains.
August
Among many others, one reason I moved to Hiawassee, GA was to escape the heat of the Gulf Coast. Well, almost everyday I've been here, the temperature has been in the 90s! Damn that global warming!** The Sense of Paper by Taylor HoldenBeing a searcher for good paper to use with my fountain pens and a searcher for decent literary fiction, how could I go wrong with this novel! An OK read that made me think about paper. A better use of my time than a few things I've gotten into in the past.
**** Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi. Of course I have heard all the buzz about this book over the last 3-4 years. I even started to read it once--well via an audio version. Why I could not get into it I think has more to do with Iran than the book itself. I, like many Americans, just do not like to think about Iran. We made huge mistakes there in the past and now the proverbial chickens have come home to roost. That being said, I and I think you owe it to the people of Iran to read this book. It is not as it at first seems to be a book on books although some of that genre spills into its pages. This book is about the author and other people caught up in daily life in an authoritarian society that was once more accepting of free or at least freer thought. Might that have a lesson for us as we piece by piece dismantle out Bill of Rights through inattention to those who would abuse the Constitution rather than by revolution.
September
* The Novels of John Steinbeck: A Critical Study by Howard Levant. University of Missouri Press, 1974. Whew! this guy does not like Steinbeck. I read a good bit of this presumably forgotten work to look for further insights into Steinbeck's work. Well, I think it is enough to say that Steinbeck lives on in his work. By the way, I was the first person in 7 years to check this out of the Mountain Regional Library in Young Harris, GA.
October
****Noa Noa, My Voyage to Tahiti by Paul Gauguin Lear, NY 1947. Purchased at the Fannin County Friends of the Library Booksale held in conjunction with the Georgia Literary Festival, 29 Sept in Blue Ridge, GA.
Created January 20, 2007 Updated September 9, 2007