Michael Chabon. Manhood
for Amateurs. I’ve read four of
Chabon’s novels, and I liked them all.
This book is sort of an autobiography.
The recorded version is read by the author, and I felt like we were in
the same room and getting to know each other.
Mostly he talks about being a father and taking on his share of managing
the household and taking care of his children.
He reminds me of my son, who splits a job with my daughter-in-law so
that each of them can be home 3 or 4 days a week. It’s another reminder that men in my
generation thought we were doing the best we could and didn’t realize how much
we were missing. If you watched “60
Minutes” on October 21, you saw Stephen Spielberg describing his absentee
father and how that relationship showed up in his work. Absentee fathers miss a lot and so do their
children. October 2012
.
Norman F. Cantor. In
the Wake of the Plague. When I read recorded books, I sometimes do it
in 5 to 10 minute periods snatched here and there. It makes it hard to follow a highly developed
line of reasoning and sometimes it’s hard to cope with unfamiliar names. I was feeling that this short book by Cantor
was somewhat anecdotal until I got to his summing up in the final chapter. In the end, neither Cantor nor any of his
predecessors on this subject can offer definitive answers on the causes and
long term effects of the Black Death, but the journey to get to such
conclusions as can be drawn is fascinating and his summing up makes sense even
if he cannot tell us that he has the final answer. Some of the things he can tell us are that
the labor shortage after the plague was advantageous to development of a strong
yeomanry in England and the entry of women into productive activities like
brewing, that the greater wealth and therefore freedom created for yeoman and
the minor aristocracy who had acquired larger holdings weakened the institution
of the monarchy, that the shortage of candidates for the clergy resulted in the
ordination of younger, less educated men and a general dumbing down of the
church hierarchy, that the plague favored the rise of the Lollards who
challenged church teachings, that art may have reverted to spiritual abstractionism
for a time, and that the complicated real estate pleadings in 14th C
English courts established a fully developed body of real estate law which we
are still using today. Along the way we
learn that the high death tolls may have been a combination of bubonic plague
spread by fleas carried by black rats and anthrax from sick cattle. The anthrax idea is supported by the fact
that many who died did not have the tell tale buboes in the groin, armpit and
neck areas and also the distribution of deaths, which tended to be lower where
there were no cattle. He also mentions
that there are theories about extraterrestrial pathogens. Apparently there is a lot of organic matter
out there in space, and, knowing that, we can ask where the plague was between
the outbreak in 600 CE and 1348 CE.
There are theories that human epidemic diseases come and go because they
lose their potency as populations develop immunity and then reoccur when
reinforced or reintroduced from space.
Wherever the pathogens may be stored, in space or Africa or Asia, it’s
clear that Europe was especially vulnerable in the 14th C because it
had enjoyed a warm and favorable climate and virtually no epidemics form 800 to
1300 CE and thus the population had little or no residual immunity. Cantor gives us a nice summary of Plantagenet
politics to the extent it was affected by the plague – Edward III’s attempt to
establish a Castilian alliance was thwarted when his daughter Joan died of the
plague in Bordeaux on her way to marry Pedro, the Castilian heir. We learn that
Edward II was deposed, probably because he was gay, and that he was put to
death by a red hot poker rammed up his anus.
Richard II was also gay and after he was deposed was probably starved to
death. Cantor spends most of a chapter
on the burning of the Jews who were tortured into confessing that they had
poisoned wells and caused the plague. Cantor
also spends some time with Thomas Bradwardine who had just become Archbishop of
Canterbury, when he died of the plague on August 19, 1349. Cantor mentions his treatise which suggested
that space is much larger than 14th C science could conceive or
church theology could allow. It wasn’t
published until 1618. I had never heard
of him so I went to Wiki and learned that along with being a contemporary of
William of Occam, he was mentioned in Chaucer’s “The Nun’s Priest Tale,” where
he is ranked with Augustine and Boethius, and that he was author of a whole
slew of scientific treatises that might have led to a break through to modern
science but for the lack of calculus. Recently
I tried to reread Barbara Tuchman’s A
Distant Mirror and felt like I was wallowing in details of battles and
intrigues, but there was none of that feeling in this book by Cantor. An interesting read. October 2012
.
Michael Chabon. The
Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. I was
already very high on Chabon before I read this, his Pulitzer Prize winner. To create the world in which his story
unfolds he must have done a huge amount of research on the early days of the
comic book industry and on who was who in the arts in New York City from 1938
through the 1950s. The two principal characters are Joe Kavalier, who was a
young Jewish magician’s apprentice and art student in Prague, when the Nazis
invaded , and Joe’s cousin in Brooklyn, Sammy Clayman, an ambitious young guy
who wants to create the stories told in comic books. Joe’s family sold everything to get enough
money to send him to their relatives, the Claymans, in Brooklyn. The Nazis didn’t let him out, but he
eventually escaped in a coffin consigned to Lithuania, where, like many
European Jews, he obtained a transit visa for Japan. Eventually he got to Brooklyn, where he
teamed up with his cousin Sammy to draw comics.
They were successful and made some real money, although they hardly
shared in the big money they made for their firm’s owners. Joe saved all of his earnings and used them
to try to rescue his younger brother, Thomas who had remained behind in
Prague. On Dec. 6, 1941 the ship full of
children including Thomas that had sailed from Lisbon was torpedoed near the
Azores and all of the 325 children aboard were lost. On Dec. 7, 1941 Joe enlisted in the US Navy
in the hope of getting some revenge on the Nazis. He left behind his pregnant girl friend, Rosa,
and his close friend and collaborator, Sammy.
Joe didn’t die, but he didn’t come back, because he didn’t know
how. There are a couple of love stories
here, some incredible acts of friendship, an intricate plot and a satisfying
outcome. All of this is played against
the incredible background of the comic book business and characters like
Salvador Dali and Orson Welles. October
2012
.
Barbara Ehrenreich. This
Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation. This book is something of a rant, but what a
rant! She makes the case once again that
the poor in this country are being screwed, that all systems are skewed to
favor the rich, and that things are only getting worse -- she published this in
2008 so, like the rest of us, when she was writing she understood things were
breaking bad but didn’t foresee how incredibly bad the recession was going to
be. I was blown away by Nickel and Dimed,
but this is even better. I was going to
suggest that she may have recycled some earlier work, until I checked the
publication date of Bright-sided. Instead I can say that this book contains a
preview of her indictment of the “positive thinking industry” that she develops
so completely in Bright-sided. My advice is this: Whenever you are unsure about political and
economic issues, read two chapters of This
Land is Their Land before you go to bed, and you will wake up a Social
Democrat. October 2012
.
Robert Fulghum. What
on Earth Have I Done? This
turned out to be a series of short essays read by the author. They were charming stories about his
neighborhood in Seattle and reminded me of Garrison Keillor’s tales about Lake
Woebegone, but without the irony. I
didn’t stay with him very long, because I thought I could make better use of my
time. Maybe I should pick up one of the
unread New Yorkers that are lying all
over the house. October 2012
.
Robert Heinlein. The
Cat Who Walks Through Walls, A comedy of Manners. Colonel Colin Campbell and Gwendolyn Novak
are having dinner at the best restaurant on Golden Globe, a space habitat run
by a private company. While Gwen is in
the restroom, a man sits down uninvited at Campbell’s table and tells him
“Tolliver must die,” and then is shot in the heart from somewhere behind
Campbell with an exploding dart. Later
Campbell is accused of Tolliver’s murder and the murder of the man at his
table. He and Gwen escape to the moon in
a rattle trap of a budget rental rocket but find the moon no less
inhospitable. Through this all we get a
great description of what life will be like in the 2180s -- it is Ayn Rand style capitalism pure
enough to please Paul Ryan -- and then
the real story begins. Gwen and the
Colonel are rescued from the moon by the Time Corps, after which he learns that
Gwen was the leader of the original revolt on the moon more than 100 years
earlier, has been rejuvenated and is now a senior member of the Time Corps,
that there are many timelines and the Time Corps can move around among them,
and that he has been recruited to help Gwen recover a sensate giant computer from
the moon. The book is connected to
several of Heinlein’s earlier works and he even refers to events in science fiction
works of other authors. It’s all great
fun. Pixel the cat who walks through
walls refers to Schrodinger’s cat, the one that may or may not exist until you
open the box and let it out. October 2012
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