Medea (Oberon Classics) by Rachel Cusk, Euripides

Kindle Edition, 96 pages, Pub Sept 30th 2015 by Oberon Books, ASIN: B015ZT58N4

Rachel Cusk was invited by London’s Almeida Theatre to write a new version of Euripides’s Medea. The new play is both thoroughly modern and bears the stamp of personality of this talented novelist and memoirist. That she fiercely loves her children, two boys, is apparent. She followed Euripides’s formula, creating a storyline which places the blame differently.

If you remember the story, Medea kills her sons when her unfaithful husband marries the young & well-tended daughter of Creon. Considering how difficult it would be for anyone to contemplate such an act, and considering Cusk was severely castigated by readers for her memoir about motherhood, A Life’s Work, Cusk manages to make her work, like Euripides's work, many things at the same time: strong, agonized, righteous, and tragic.

Commentaries on the original Greek play had different interpretations of Medea herself. One made her out to be a young lover who changed her view of her husband when she’d had children. The things that she liked about her husband when he was a young man annoy her when she’s older. When she learned he was unfaithful and was looking for something new, she poisoned his new wife and killed the husband and sons out of pique and revenge.

A more nuanced interpretation, suggests Medea pursued her ambitious middle-aged husband Jason hotly, helping him to secure the fleece of the Golden Ram and thus develop a reputation as one of the most daring heroes of Hellas. But Medea was an foreigner and when she returned to Jason's home with him, her combative and fiery alien nature grated on the conservative natives . She grew tiresome for Jason and he sought another, younger, wealthier alliance that would increase his standing. Then Medea sought revenge.

Cusk’s Medea has less backstory, though from the voices of the chorus (a group of mothers meeting while their kids playdate, and who cross paths picking up their children at the school gates), we learn that Medea is not liked. She’s smart, but no one really likes her writing, if they read it at all. She’s opinionated, which doesn’t work if one wants a marriage to run smoothly ("she asked for it"). She’s a “snooty cow” because she doesn’t always recognize the women in different settings, her mind on other things. Cusk slips in a Holocaust joke: “She gone very Belsen,” referring to how Medea has stopped eating. “It’s called the divorce diet.”

Meanwhile, Medea turns to the audience and makes her case:

“A bad thing has happened to me
You’re scared that if I name it, it might happen to you, too.
…Sleep, woman, sleep.
You won’t even feel it when he creeps to your side
and slits your throat.
What’s that you say? What about love?
Yes, you’re loving souls aren’t you?
You love the whole world,
You love your little hearts out.
It’s all right, you can hate me.
Go ahead, feel free.
It’s so much easier than hating yourselves.

Medea has other voices speaking with her, ones more intimate: the Tutor and the Nurse and the Cleaner. The Cleaner is clear-eyed and clear-spoken and shares what she learned from her mother: the best revenge is to be happy. Pretend if you don’t feel it. Women are good at pretending.

The eventual playing out of the story is unique yet retains the pain of the original. We hear Creon slyly telling Medea “You know, you look completely different when you smile” while she is in the midst of her life’s most curdling trial. “There’s the sourness again. The problem with you is you don’t know how to love…an unloving woman is a freak.”

The audience undoubtedly feels stress levels rising as the characters have interleaved speaking parts—talking over one another. If you’ve ever been witness to a disagreement, this is one…after another…after another. Any uncomfortableness we feel when Jason and Medea are speaking is relieved by Nurse, Tutor, and Cleaner pointing to the absurdities of male expectations. But the best joke goes to Aegeus, who will become Medea’s second husband.

Aegeus, speaking to a Medea distraught about the money Jason expects from the marriage says he understands Jason is about to get his needs “assuaged” by a wealthy heiress. This word comes as a surprise in the midst of conversation and surely would elicit a burst of laughter in any theatre. The word joke may only work in English, but its excessive formality and sound-similarity to “massage” is a perfect bomb.

Cusk’s originality in portraying the oldest stories of all—love and infidelity—continues to entrance. I am even more impressed now with her fictional trilogy Outline than I was before I read whatever I could of her work. This author is special. In a book talk at Politics & Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C., Cusk says a criterion to use when creating is that a work should be “useful.” Exactly. That’s why her work, her honesty, her humor, her willingness ‘to go there’ is so exciting. What she does keeps us alive.

Below please find reviews of Cusk's other works, in order:
Saving Agnes, 1993
The Temporary, 1995 (not reviewed yet)
The Country Life, 1997
A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother, 2002
The Lucky Ones, 2003
In the Fold, 2005
Arlington Park, 2006
The Bradshaw Variations, 2009
The Last Supper: A Summer in Italy, 2009
Aftermath: On Marriage & Separation, 2012
Outline, 2014
Medea, 2015
Transit, 2016
Kudos, 2018
Coventry: Essays, 2019





Tweet

Aftermath: On Marriage & Separation by Rachel Cusk

Hardcover, 147 pgs, Pub Aug 7th 2012 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (first published 2012), ISBN13: 9780374102135, Lit Awards: J.R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography Nominee (2013)

It used to be rare for me to read through a writer’s oeuvre at once. I was afraid I would show an author I admired to disadvantage. With Rachel Cusk, each book is another, deeper aspect of the same theme so one may move from one to another, gorging intemperately on the ideas there and stagger out like a bee drunk on honey.

Honesty, she says, is critical. If one is going to pay any attention to an author, honesty about the human experience, however coruscating, is key. Men write about war which tears the heart from the body. Women write about domestic issues which tear the soul from the heart. One day this may change. To date, thousands of years since the Greeks, it hasn’t yet.

Clytemnestra took over her husband’s work while he was away fighting the wars in Troy. Cusk calls her unisex, that she seeks equality, now that she’s seen men’s work and can handle it herself. But the ‘pure peace of equality’ does not engender children, or border expansion, or empires.

“It is all aftermath, predicated on the death of what was before…Clytemnestra wants no more begetting. She wants the peace of equality but to get it she will have to use violence. To reach the aftermath, first there has to be the event itself.”

Reading backwards through Cusk’s work, I realize this book is the third piece of a memoir in acts. It begs to read through in a sitting, her writing is so clear, so inescapable, so sharp, so quivering and naked. Her husband barely appears and yet we hear her silent wail, like reverberations impacting eardrums. The children are her Iphegenia, “the sacrifice that lies at the heart of all marriages.”

“Grief is not love but it is like love. This is romance’s estranged cousin, a cruel character, all sleeplessness and adrenalin unsweetened by hope.”

“I blame Christianity,” she says, lashing out. “The holy family, that pious unit…has a lot to answer for….The day feeble Joseph agreed to marry pregnant Mary the old passionate template was destroyed.” Honesty. Where was it then? Where is it now?

She doesn’t eat. In the chapter entitled “Aren’t You Having Any?” her children essentially beg their mother not to disappear, but “it is impossible to eat and stay vigilant.” Her daughter is invited to the party of a close friend, but when the time comes to pick her up, the narrator realizes the friend invited other people for a sleep-over, but not her daughter. She immediately attributes this to her divorce and considers it a calculated cruelty, but someone less involved would certainly make a different assessment. The daughter, perhaps ten years old, is the more adult in this case, urging her mother to drop it:

“They probably didn’t even think about it. That’s just how people are.”

Indeed they are. The chapter called “The Razor’s Edge” reminds us of Antigone, where sacred law meets state law. Creon is Antigone’s uncle who has ordered her not to bury her slain brother because of his alleged crimes against the state, of which Creon is in charge. Creon eventually retracts his threats, but too late. When Teiresias, the blind soothsayer, tells Creon to relent and forgive Antigone lest he perpetuate perversity, Creon first insults Teiresias, and then admits that he is frightened. This, Cusk tells us, is

“aftermath, the second harvest: life with knowledge of what has gone before…true responsibility is an act of self-destruction.”

Am I wrong in suggesting the narrator is right? We will all go through these stages in our life. Cusk is so close to it here, and so invested in her own version of it, that she does not realize this is natural, normal, perhaps even healthy. None of us was ever perfect, so perhaps a little self-destruction (read: ego-destruction) is called for. It’s the rebuilding that makes true love, true generosity possible. It happens regularly in good marriages: the breaking and restitching. Doesn’t it?

This narrator has a larger capacity for love than she ordinarily shares. This is clear in her story about the witch’s house: how she and her daughters rented a set of rooms in an old house but were kicked out by the proprietor before the agreed-upon time was up. She felt the wrong keenly and when she complained, she was deserted in a distant location by the proprietor. Cusk told her friends how she bravely got her own back, but she admits to us that a greater achievement would have been to acknowledge the lack of love and attention the place and the people needed. She sought safety for herself and her children, but sometimes safety is best found by opening up and letting go, rather than by holding on.

This astonishing end to a trilogy of memoirs only makes Cusk's writing all the more precious, knowing it was first written in blood, by her fingernails. It always amazes me that voices of such extraordinary power are not immediately recognized, nourished, protected. We need writers with skills and sensibilities like this, without which we’d have no standard to set the bar. Many thanks to this brave woman willing to share her innermost agonies in exquisite prose for our improvement.

Below please find reviews of Cusk's other works, in order:
Saving Agnes, 1993
The Temporary, 1995 (not reviewed yet)
The Country Life, 1997
A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother, 2002
The Lucky Ones, 2003
In the Fold, 2005
Arlington Park, 2006
The Bradshaw Variations, 2009
The Last Supper: A Summer in Italy, 2009
Aftermath: On Marriage & Separation, 2012
Outline, 2014
Medea, 2015
Transit, 2016
Kudos, 2018
Coventry: Essays, 2019




Tweet

Women & Power by Mary Beard

Hardcover, 128 pgs, Pub Dec 12th 2017 by Liveright (first pub November 2nd 2017), ISBN13: 9781631494758

This book is two lectures modified and dispensing the understanding of a classicist with regard to “The Public Role of Women,” the very title of the first lecture. My markers are all in the second lecture, delivered in March 2017 and titled “Women in Power.” Mary Beard applies her knowledge of ancient languages and civilizations to uncover for us the origins of our notions of sexuality and power. It is not all she knows. It is merely her opinion of what she knows.

As though in a long, amusing conversation with a friend, Beard argues and then changes her mind as she makes her argument, rethinking her earlier teaching of Aristophanes’ comedic play Lysistrata as not just about girl power—“though maybe that’s exactly how we should now play it.”

I have recently found myself modifying my thinking on #MeToo: I opposed much younger women deciding, precipitously I thought, which behaviors went too far when some we clearly agreed did meet criterion for harassment. Those younger women will probably succeed in modifying men’s behaviors when earlier generations did not. They are the ones who will have to live with the success or failure of their guidelines.

The conclusions Beard shares with us at the end of the second lecture are especially trenchant: that power should be recognized as within each of us—within our reach—if we would only seize that power and exercise it. Power exercised does not have to be attached to celebrity, and perhaps is best if it is not so glorified and so removed from each of us. Beard gives an example of this non-celebrity notion of power by pointing to the three women (whose names many of us still do not know) now credited with beginning the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

If power is attached to celebrity, it is interpreted narrowly, circumscribing and controlling that power. The current structure of public prestige is male-dominated and will forever resist the fundamentally different understanding of power as collaborative and diffuse—not a possession but an attribute or a verb. I am excited by Beard’s acknowledgement of power as something quite different than what we have come to accept, for power is individual, and within each of us.

The dignity we gain in light of that realization is very affirming. It entirely works when thinking of oneself in a democracy, for instance, but also as an employee, family member, a member of any group, sect, or religion. Individuals hold the actual power in a society, and it is only our transfer of attention and currency to celebrities that gives them power. When we notice and state publicly “the emperor has no clothes,” well then…it’s over for the emperor.

Beard wishes she'd had the foresight to defend women's right to be wrong without collapse of women's privileges and rights as leaders, spokespeople. This notion parallels the notion of acceptance of people of color as described by Ibram X. Kendi in his groundbreaking work, Stamped From The Beginning:

"Kendi himself has concluded the only way black people would not be discriminated against in some way is if everyone recognize that blacks are at least as talented or flawed as whites and should be treated accordingly, that is to say, with the same amount of attention and acceptance of their potential talent, as for their potential for error. Anything less is racist."

There is more in Beard's manifesto, for instance “if women are not perceived to be fully within the structures of power, surely it is the power we need to redefine rather than the women.” We are reminded that the structures of power may need modification if not dismantling. Beard reminds us there will be winners & losers in this scenario, but these concepts have been a long time coming. I won’t be sorry to see the old ways go.

I loved the little joke Beard included in her discussion of current female leaders being heralded early in 2017 in a headline, “Women Prepare for a Power Grab in Church, Police and BBC.” Beard reminds us that only Cressida Dick, the commissioner of the Met, actually succeeded, surely a comment on who is perceived to have the equipment to lead.

Beard begins her first lecture with a reminder of the earliest example of a man exerting control over the right of women to plead her case or to speak in public: a teenaged Telemachus silencing his mother Penelope in the beginning of The Odyssey. The view of women in the western world has followed on from those earliest myths.

Subtle differences in interpretation of the language of those myths is now giving us new ways to look at sexuality, at women and power. That ancient text has been recently translated by a woman, Emily Wilson, for the first time, and the resultant work has differences from earlier versions. It is wonderfully accessible and thrilling to read, so make sure you give it another go round with this new version.





Tweet

The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson

Hardcover, 592 pgs, Pub Nov 7th 2017 by W. W. Norton Company (first published -795), Orig TitleὈδύσσεια, ISBN13: 9780393089059, Lit Awards: Audie Award for Audio Drama (2009), National Book Award Finalist for Translation (1968), Премія імені Максима Рильського (1979)

The first line in Emily Wilson’s new translation of the Odyssey, the first by a woman scholar, is “Tell me about a complicated man.” In an article by Wyatt Mason in the NYT late last year, Wilson tells us

“I could’ve said, ‘Tell me about a straying husband.’ And that’s a viable translation. That’s one of the things [the original language] says…[But] I want to be super responsible about my relationship to the Greek text. I want to be saying, after multiple different revisions: This is the best I can get toward the truth.”

Oh, the mind reels. This new translation by Emily Wilson reads swiftly, smoothly, and feels contemporary. This exciting new translation will surprise you, and send you to compare certain passages with earlier translations. In her Introduction, Wilson raises that issue of translation herself: How is it possible to have so many different translations, all of which could be considered “correct”?

Wilson reminds us what a ripping good yarn this story is, and removes any barriers to understanding. We can come to it with our current sensibility and find in it all kinds of foretelling and parallels with life today, and perhaps we even see the genesis of our own core morality, a morality that feels inexplicably learned. Perhaps the passed-down sense of right and wrong, of fairness and justice we read of here was learned through these early stories and lessons from the gods. Or are we interpreting the story to fit our sensibility?

These delicious questions operate in deep consciousness while we pleasure in learning more about that liar Odysseus, described again and again as wily, scheming, cunning, “his lies were like truth.” He learned how to bend the truth at his grandfather’s knee, we learn late in the telling, and the gods exploited that talent when they helped him out. It served him well, allowing him to confuse and evade captors throughout his ordeal, as well as keep his wife and father in the dark about his identity after his return until he could reveal the truth at a time of maximum impact.

There does inevitably come a time when people react cautiously to what is told them, even to the evidence their own eyes. The gods can cloud one’s understanding, and truth is suspected in every encounter. These words Penelope speaks:

"Please forgive me, do not keep
bearing a grudge because when I first saw you,
I would not welcome you immediately.
I felt a constant dread that some bad man
would fool me with his lies. There are so many
dishonest, clever men..."

Particularly easy to relate to today are descriptions of Penelope’s ungrateful suitors like Ctesippius, who "encouraged by extraordinary wealth, had come to court Odysseus’ wife." Also speaking insight for us today are the phrases "Weapons themselves can tempt a man to fight" and "Arms themselves can prompt a man to use them."

There is a conflicted view of women in this story: "Sex sways all women’s minds, even the best of them," though Penelope is a paragon of virtue, managing to avoid temptation through her own duplicitousness. She hardly seems a victim at all in this reading, merely an unwilling captor. She is strong, smart, loyal, generous, and brave, all the qualities any man would want for his wife.

We understand the slave girls that Odysseus felt he had to “test” for loyalty were at the disposal of the ungrateful suitors who, after they ate and drank at Penelope's expense, often met the house girls after hours. Some of the girls appeared to go willingly, laughing and teasing as they went, and were outspoken about their support of the men they’d taken up with. Others, we get the impression from the text, felt they had no choice.

Race is not mentioned but once in this book, very matter-of-factly, though the darker man is a servant to the lighter one:

"…[Odysseus] had a valet with him,
I do remember, named Eurybates,
a man a little older than himself,
who had black skin, round shoulders, woolly hair,
and was [Odysseus's] favorite our of all his crew
because his mind matched his."

Odysseus’ tribulations are terrible, but appear to be brought on by his own stubborn and petulant nature, like his taunting of the blinded Cyclops from his own escaping ship. Cyclops was Poseidon’s son so the behavior was especially unwise, particularly since Odysseus’s men were yelling at him to stop. Later, that betrayal of the men’s best interests for his own childish purpose will come back to haunt Odysseus when the men suspect him of thinking only of himself--greediness--and unleash terrible winds by accident, blowing them tragically off course in rugged seas.

We watch, fascinated, as the gods seriously mess Odysseus about, and then come to his aid. One really gets the sense of the gods playing, as in Athena’s willingness to give Odysseus strength and arms when fighting the suitors in his house, but being unwilling to actually step in to help with the fighting. Instead, she watched from the rafters. It’s hard not to be just a little resentful.

Wilson’s translation reads very fast and very clearly. There always seemed to be some ramp-up time reading Greek myths in the past, but now the adventures appear perfectly accessible. Granted, there are some names you’ll have to figure out, but that’s part of being “constructively lost,” as Pynchon has said.

A book-by-book reading of this new translation will begin March 1st on the Goodreads website, hosted by Kris Rabberman, Wilson’s colleague at the University of Pennsylvania. To prepare for the first online discussion later this week, Kris has suggested participants read the Introduction. If interested readers are still not entirely convinced they want this literary experience now, some excerpts have been reprinted in The Paris Review.




You can buy this book here: Tweet

Winter by Ali Smith (Seasonal #2)

Hardcover, 336 pgs, Pub Jan 9th 2018 by Pantheon Books (first published November 2nd 2017), ISBN13: 9781101870754, Series: Seasonal #2


Ali Smith wrote this book fast, and I think that is how she intends us to read it, at least at first. We slow down when her images and meanings start to coalesce on the page and we suspect there is much more to this than the twitter-like, depthless sentences that don’t seem like they are adding up to anything. Afterwards, an image emerges. What is more suited to tweeting than a Canada warbler?

The story, as such, is that a young man breaks up with his girlfriend Charlotte right before a Christmas he’d wanted to bring her to his mum’s house to introduce her to his mother. He finds a substitute girl, who happens to be waiting at a bus stop, rather than go through the humiliation of saying he no longer had a girlfriend. He pays her—Lux she is called, though he’d never asked—to stay the three days of the holiday.

Art grew in the course of this book into a grander vision of himself. He writes about nature, the churn of seasons, in a blog he calls Art in Nature. Though he rarely writes anything political, he is thinking about making his work a little more political, like the “natural unity in seeming disunity” of snow and wind, “the give and take of water molecules,” and “the communal nature of the snowflake.” He, Art, is not dead at all, though he is being crushed by his ex-girlfriend Charlotte on Twitter.

Charlotte is pretty clear-eyed:

The people in this country are in furious rages at each other after the last vote, she said, and the government we’ve got has done nothing to assuage it and instead is using people’s rage for its own political expediency. Which is a grand old fascist trick if ever I saw one…the people in power were self-servers who’d no idea about and felt no responsibility towards history…like plastic carrier bags…damaging to the environment for years and years after they’ve outgrown their use. Damage for generations.

Plastic carrier bags? This is where Smith shines, making her argument so clear and relatable and yet so absurd. She’s funny. She’s right and wrong at the same time, like most of us. Like Art. Smith draws environmental degradation, suggesting chemical (nuclear?) drift in the air can settle like snow, like ash, like slow poison on our lives. She compares the influx of refugees fleeing for their lives in the Mediterranean to exhausted holidaymakers using their friends’ recommendations on the ‘best places to stay.’

Many images float around this book, inviting us to make connections: Iris-eye, art-Art, stone with a hole in it-eye, stone with the weight and curvature of a breast-Mother Nature…once we begin, we start looking for these parallels everywhere. Lux— she had some kind of luxurious brain, a luxurious education studying what she wanted (like Shakespeare, violin, human nature), and the luxury of floating through the world unencumbered and unafraid.

Lux is an out-of-body experience, an angel who appears and disappears, a Canada warbler blown off course. Lux is grace. Lux brings the two sisters together and reminds them of their shared history, of love, of the importance of struggling to create bonds. Lux tries to convince Art to stay after the three-day Christmas holiday to talk, late at night, to his mother. At first he refuses, but when Lux says she will help, he looks forward to it.

Soph, Art’s mother, is not crazy but prescient, depressed, and old. The word Sophia in ancient Greek and early Christian times meant wisdom, and clever, able, intelligent. Iris, the sister from whom Soph was estranged, is not a religious do-gooder but is targeting critical needs to save what’s best of the human race. She is named for Iris, the Wind-Footed Messenger of the Gods. Her presence signifies hope.

Smith is also concerned with truth, and at some point Lux points to the notion that the truth of a thing may be confused with what we believe to be true. Is there objective truth? This question has been argued since time immemorial. It is back with a vengeance, and must be adjudicated daily, moment-by-moment within each of us.

Art in Nature continues to exhibit itself throughout the novel: a female British MP is barked at by the grandson of Winston Churchill, who is also an MP. He says it was meant as a friendly greeting, she accepts the non-apology. Smith interprets this incident as snow melting on one side of furrowed ground in slanted winter sun. It turns out the stuff Art writes in his blog material is invented. Lies, one could say, but close enough to real to sound remembered. This novel has a lot to do with art and politics and what the difference is between them.

Iris writes

& th diff dear Neph is more betwn artist and politician—endlss enemies coz they both knw THE HUMAN will alwys srface in art no mtter its politics, & THE HUMAN wll hv t be absent or repressed in mst politics no mtter its art x Ire

Ali Smith—and this is only the second novel of hers I have read—is a skilled interpreter of our lives. She is involved in the struggle with us, and has enough understanding to recognize #MeToo began with the Access Hollywood tape; the rest, on both sides of the Atlantic and around the globe, is fallout. She doesn’t want us to lose hope, but recognizes the route to betterment is long and arduous, which is why she occasionally blows a Canada warbler off course in the middle of winter to thrill us with what is possible.

I note Recorded Books and narrator Melody Grove won Audiofile Magazine's coveted Earphones Award for "conveying every nuance in the second movement of Ali Smith's Seasonal Quartet." Sounds like it would be a wonderful experience, to listen to this marvelous book speaking of a very dark time in all our lives.



You can buy this book here: Tweet

The War That Killed Achilles by Caroline Alexander

Hardcover, 296 pgs, Pub Oct 15th 2009 by Viking Adult (first pub January 1st 2009), ISBN13: 9780670021123

What is so startling about the Iliad is its immediacy, its emotion. Real, recognizable feelings and behaviors are so evident that the fact they happened in a time before Christ just falls away. We find ourselves rooting for these men and women even as we see the plotting of the gods and they obvious way they place a thumb on the scales of justice.

Once one has gone even a little way into the Iliad, one’s curiosity blooms: how can this story have survived? what is its history? are there more stories? how did people learn this story? One wants to talk with someone else about the book, someone knowledgeable, a teacher perhaps. Alexander obliges, but she is interesting not just for first-time readers. She has her own translation of the Iliad, and has a vast understanding of the other works from this time, as well as the culture.

The stories of the Iliad and the Odyssey may never really leave one after an encounter with them. There are darn few pieces of literature in history that have that kind of impact. It is endlessly interesting to read new translations and go through the whole thing again every couple of years, listening to debates about who does it best. This has gone on since they were first delivered orally. Alexander’s book indulges that curiosity, leading a discussion of points we raced past in the midst of discovery.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this in conjunction with this latest reading: this time I listened to Stephen Mitchell’s version, read Peter Green’s, and consulted all the earlier versions. I really loved the new translations but think I may prefer Fagles above the others. It is just so easy to get stuck into poetically, and the edition, I have to admit, is so luxurious and pleasing with its deckled edges and parchment-colored paper (as opposed to white). It is easier to turn the pages, which is something which frankly never occurred to me before. It is lightweight. In a book of this size, that is something.

If you notice that the spelling of character’s names in my various reviews of this book are all over the place, just understand that practically every translation of this book has a different set of spelling concerns. Today one can guess which edition others are reading by the way they spell characters’ names. I happen to love this diversity. It adds to the awe-struck understanding that this work has been translated endless times by endless people and makes one wonder: how has it changed over time after being touched so much?

The sumptuous funeral accorded Patroklos accords with heroic burials in different cultures from different ages, allowing for the input from cultures who enjoyed the Iliad after its initial introduction. The detail of the burial is consistent with the pattern of archeological evidence. Alexander shares a discovery in 1980 on the Greek island of Euboia of an Iron Age burial site the owner wanted for a vacation home. It was the site of a heroic burial dating approximately to 1000 B.C. which contained the bones of a 30 to 45-year-old male wrapped in a fine linen robe buried alongside a woman adorned in gold. This is close to Homeric times and provides evidence that heroic burials as described in the Iliad happened at least from this Iron Age site.

Alexander is able to bring many of the questions we have together in one place while referencing scholars who have tried to answer. She acknowledges the Iliad has been called the “poetry of combat” but she says it is not merely “impersonal slugging matches” but personalized heroic deaths, giving life to men at the moment of their death. It makes me weep to think of it.

And yet, Alexander points out that the Iliad insistently humanizes the enemy, despite recording endless pathetic deaths: three times as many Trojans die as do Achaeans. We have sympathy for the Trojans. This is the way the book is written.

Alexander writes beautifully here:

“Priam and Achilles meet in the very twilight of their lives. Their extinction is certain and there will be no reward for behaving well, and yet, in the face of implacable fate and an indifferent universe, they mutually assert the highest ideals of their humanity.”

And this, dear friends, is how we know that man is not merely a greedy sod out to “win” what they cannot ever truly win, for time erases glory made of gold. This is a very worthwhile accompaniment to the great Iliad. Thank you, Caroline Alexander and Viking Press for a truly interesting and inspiring work of scholarship.



You can buy this book here: Tweet

The Iliad by Homer, translated by Various

Foolish me. I thought I was going to look at the different editions of The Iliad and choose the one most readable but did not reckon with the overwhelming beauty of the language and story. The truth is, it does not matter which edition you choose, so long as you read at least one. It is inevitable that you will find yourself drawn to the question of the most beautiful and complete rendition but you may (wisely) concede defeat at the beauty of each.

The Homeric epics are said to be the greatest martial stories ever sung or written of all time, so if for some reason they did not resonate for you in high school, you may want to revisit what your teachers were talking about. When they describe the death of a man in the full bloom of his strength looking like an flower in a rainstorm, head and neck aslant, unable to withstand the beating rain, we understand. I listened to the audio of Stephen Mitchell’s streamlined translation, and it was utterly ravishing and compelling.

The Iliad is one episode among many in Homer’s epics, and it may have been assumed that listeners of the original spoken performance would be familiar with all the players in this war. It is argued by some, including British scholar M.L. West, that The Iliad has had pieces added to it over the years. Stephen Mitchell follows West’s scholarship and strips out the extra passages, a notion expanded upon in a review of Mitchell’s translation by classicist Daniel Mendelsohn in The New Yorker (2011). Mitchell’s translation may be the most readable, the most listenable one in English. It is also the shortest. Mitchell also shortens the lines in English so that they have speed and momentum for an impressive delivery.

The recent (2017) Peter Green translation, begun when Green was nearly 90 years old, is similarly easy to read; Green tells us that he began in a relaxed attitude for diversion and completed the whole within a year. Colin Burrow reviewed Green's translation in the June 18th 2015 edition of the London Review of Books. Neither the writing or the reading of this version is anguished or tortured, and Burrow points out that Green was a historian but didn't allow that to obfuscate or weigh down the poetry.

The Green & Mitchell versions both retain a long recitation of those who prepared their ships to sail with Agamemnōn to Troy to bring back Helen, the wife of Menelaös. One imagines ancient listeners shouting when their region is named, much along the lines of the cheering section of a field game, when each player’s name is called. And later, as the blow-by-blow of the battle proceeded, one imagines each region cheering when mention of their leader is declaimed, though some died horrible deaths.

This is another reason to read this ancient work: We live and die not unlike one another, we who lived so far apart in time, and perhaps the ardor young men of today have for the sword and for fame will be doused by the utterly desolate manner of death recounted here, one in particular that I cannot forget: a spear through the buttock and into the bladder meant a painful and ugly death. However, it is true that Achilles chose fame over life, knowing that his exploits in Troy would mean his physical death but his fame amongst men would be sung for “thousands of years.”

One wonders how the ballad was delivered—in pieces or over a period of days—perhaps in sections by different singers? Caroline Alexander, after a lifetime of her own research into the Homeric epics argues in The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer's Iliad and the Trojan War that the work certainly required days to recite, and may have been performed in episodes. The length of the piece now suggests the work was once short enough to be memorized, with a few repeated lines leaving headspace for the singer's invention and modification as befits the oral tradition.

I wonder now which European language has the most translations, and do they sometimes dare to attempt translations from ancient Greek to, say, French, and then to English? It seems we have enough scholars understanding ancient Greek to give us satisfactory versions without resorting to piggybacked translations. An attempt was made by John Farrell in the Oct 30, 2012 edition of the Los Angeles Review of Books to untangle the English translations and sort them for clarity and poetry. Those of us who love this work will read all the versions, especially the fascinating introductions to each in which the translators themselves wax eloquent about what they loved about it. Mitchell's introduction is especially accessible and impelling: I couldn't wait to get to the story.

I have read reviews of people who prefer Lattimore, Fagles, Fitzgerald, or Lombardo translations and all I can say is I’m not the one to quibble about great works. Daniel Mendelsohn "graded" four translations in the article discussing Mitchell's translation. It must be a curse and a blessing both (for one's self and one’s family both) to understand ancient Greek and to feel the desire to translate Homer. All the questions any editor/translator must address, e.g., spelling, which edition is ‘original,’ more poetry or prose, whether to render the translation literally or by sense…how exhausting the decisions, but how fantastically exciting, too.

In the end, whichever edition gives you the greatest access for your first attempt to breach the ramparts of this ancient work is the one to choose for a first read. The other editions will naturally come later, once you have the sense of the story, a few names nailed down, and have that deepening curiosity about the poetry and the beauty.

One last observation is that the men in this epic were mere playthings of the gods, gods that could be cruel, petty, jealous, and vengeful. These gods were helpful to individual men or women insofar as it helped their cause vis à vis other gods. There was striving among men, but most of the time human successes or failures had less to do with who they were than with who they knew. Was it ever thus.

※ Mitchell: Paperback, 560 pgs, Pub Aug 14th 2012 by Atria Books (first published -750), Orig Title Ἰλιάς, ISBN13: 9781439163382; Audio Pub: Simon & Schuster Audio, 10/11/2011, Unabridged, ISBN-13:9781442347311

※ Green: Paperback, 544 pgs, Pub May 14 2015 by University of California Press, ISBN13: 9780520281431

※ Alexander: Paperback, 608 pgs, Pub Sept 13 2016 by Ecco, ISBN13: 9780062046284

※ Fagles: Paperback, Deluxe Edition, 683 pgs, Pub Apr 29 1999 by Penguin Books, ISBN13: 9780140275360

※ Fitzgerald: Paperback, 588 pgs, Pub Jan 2 2004 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, ISBN13: 9780374529055

※ Lombardo: Paperback, 574 pgs, Pub Mar 12th 1997 by Hackett Pub Co, Inc., ISBN13: 9780872203525

※ Lattimore: Paperback, 599 pgs, Pub Nov 15th 2011 by University Of Chicago Press, ISBN13: 9780226470498


You can buy this book here: Tweet

Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure & The Importance of Imagination by J.K. Rowling

Hardcover, 74 pgs, Pub Apr 14th 2015 by Little, Brown & Co, ISBN13: 9780316369152

This commencement speech was originally given in 2008 at Harvard, and it was not lost on Rowling that the people she spoke to had lives that were perceived by the outside world as every bit as magical as Harry Potter’s.

That may be why she focused on failure, a thing Harvard graduates may not be expected to know enough about, and imagination, which she credits with making the world a better place. Utter abject romantic and financial failure after her graduation with a Classics degree taught her what resources she had inside that failure could not destroy, but paradoxically could set free. And Rowling tells us that imagination has to do with empathy—imagining worlds we have not lived—and how critical that is for a world in which we want to live.

Rowling was eloquent on the subject of her first paying job at Amnesty International in London where she learned that terrific and terrible evil can exist, and how empathy can allow our indignation and refusal to submit to surface. Those who refuse to see the burdens under which others struggle can collude with evil through apathy, without ever committing an evil act themselves.

University-educated young people will have some idea of the world outside their doors and will be able to conceive of solutions for the very difficult problems that plague us. In a way, Rowling’s speech would be best widely read outside of Harvard’s yard, among those folks who are fearful of what is to come and who are not sure they have the mental strength and intellectual resources to meet future challenges they cannot even imagine.

One of the things that those attending Harvard are expected to understand and to internalize is competition. And yet, our success in the world—the success OF the world—may depend on cooperation. What worries me more than a few Harvard graduates escaping those hallowed walls thinking they just want to claw their way to the top of the heap are the people who have begun to disparage education, learning, empathy, compassion, and self-knowledge. This is the far greater danger, the looking backward, the denial of science, of imagination. Rowling says

“We do not need magic to transform our world; we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.”

You can buy this book here: Tweet

Coyote America by Dan Flores

Dan Flores has done something fascinating in this book, rehabilitating the image of a persecuted carnivore lowest on our opinion roster of animals, including cockroaches and rats. He makes the case that coyotes should be America’s national avatar, displacing the bison or buffalo. Extremely clever, adaptable, and pioneering, the coyote was designated a principal deity by American Indians--North America’s oldest deity, responsible for creating all of North America.

Flores tells us that coyotes live within a couple miles of us at all times now…even those of us in major metropolitan areas. Coyotes are cosmopolitan, and have been living in urban areas since the time of Columbus at least. They are perceptive, wily fellow-travelers with us.

”Suffice it to say here that as we humans head off into an uncertain and probably dangerous future of our own making, it might be wise to keep an eye on [coyotes]. I, for one, am going to be very interested in how coyotes cope with the twenty-first century and what insights we might draw about our own circumstances from a coyote history that so often seems to mirror ours.”

Coyotes are predators, feeding mainly on small mammals, birds, or fruits. They are sociable, hunting in packs. Contrary to the notion that coyotes were responsible for cattle kills, they were nearly always scavengers of large animals as befit their position in the ranking of predators in the larger ecosystem. Very nearly killed off as pests since the end of the nineteenth century, they have none-the-less persevered.

Flores suggests we look to the Indian coyote stories, of which there is a rich seam, to understand human nature: “who better to illustrate that than self-centered, gluttonous, carnal Coyote?”As we began to understand our own animal natures, the study of other social animals leaves “little doubt that…canines also understand equality and inequity…and experience both a rudimentary form of empathy and some basic theory of mind…an essential sense of what in human terms we would call 'right and wrong.'”

Employees of the Wildlife Services’ Predator Research Center, whose greatest advocate is the American sheep industry, is responsible for killing by aerial shooting roughly 35,000 coyotes from the air annually. Even they readily admit that coyotes have personality: “They’re individuals. Like people, some get into trouble.” Sheep farmers claim to lose some percentage of lambs to coyote packs every year. The federal government spends an equal amount of money (the cost of the lambs) to kill or sterilize coyote. Hmmm...a good use of federal tax dollars?

This book is a wildlife biologist’s dream. Readable, eloquent, well-argued, it looks at coyote history from many angles and leads even those of us with reason to dislike the disruptive canines to a grudging admiration and wonder. Of course, sport hunters probably don’t read peer-reviewed ecological articles, but Flores points out that ecosystems tend to develop some balances in response to threats and flourishing in their environment. Trying to kill coyotes takes natural balances out of the equation.

Flores ends with examples of coyote in art, and reminds us again how the animal is portrayed as a caricature of human nature, for example Wile E’s comic overconfidence (remind you of anyone?), unswerving obsession with a goal, and unfailing faith in technology. (Even that swath of red-gold hair has something of the coyote about it.) But I don’t want to carry the metaphor too far. After all, coyote in modern day parlance means a person who sneaks illegal aliens into the U.S. from Mexico.

NPR's David Greene interviewed Dan Flores about this book on coyotes.

Dan Flores is a historian, A.B. Hammond Professor Emeritus at University of Montana-Missoula, who has written several books about the American West and the animals who reside there. This year he also published a book called American Serengeti: The Last Big Animals of the Great Plains, perhaps in conjunction with the movement by Sean Gerrity, president of American Prairie Reserve, committed to wildlife conservation and hoping to create the largest wildlife complex ever assembled in the continental United States. "When complete, the reserve will comprise some 3.5 million contiguous acres (more than 5,000 square miles) of native grassland in northeastern Montana, with a goal of restoring the wildlife abundance the landscape once contained." [National Geographic bio].

Here is Dan Flores addressing the 32nd National Cowboy Poetry gathering about the history of America's Serengeti, and here is Sean Gerrity at an Aspen Institute gathering to elicit donations for his project.


You can buy this book here: Tweet

Medicine Walk by Richard Wagamese

Canadian author Richard Wagamese manages to slow our heart rate down with this story of an Ojibwe Indian who lost his bearings, and about an old man and a boy living on a farm carved out of the wilderness. Stories told and listened to form the heart of this novel: one feels sure that if only there were enough stories, things might have turned out differently. But in the end, the larger story—the story of this novel—lets us know that life encompasses both the tragic and the magnificent and to know one, we must know the other.

"When you share stories, you change things."

The land is central to this novel: how it nourishes and refreshes the spirit, how it returns generosity shown it. The old man and the boy live in concert with the land and, having learned its lessons, treat one another with a gentleness and love that approaches the sacred. "Just get it done," is what the old man tells himself and teaches the boy, and throughout their lives together the two of them face difficulties or obstacles with the same quiet fortitude and firmness. They discover the pleasure in bending one’s back to difficult work, and in contemplating the end of a task well done, whether it be straight, square, strong fencing or burying a man, facing east, in stony ground.

The boy’s father, Eldon Starlight, had left his son with the old man because he couldn’t find the strength within him to care for another. When gradually the outlines of Eldon’s life come into focus, we discover his struggles are mostly internal, that despite the gifts of his physical health and strength, he hadn’t enough strength of spirit to see him through the inevitable twists and turns of an unexamined life. His addictions explain, but do not excuse, his inattention to the only things that really matter. Eldon realized, at the end, that he really wanted a connection with his heritage and with the land, and the boy, though he had reason to hate his father, showed just what kind of man he was becoming by honoring him, padding his grave with moss and boughs and sprinkling it over with tobacco. His upbringing and connection with the land developed reserves of generosity within himself that he could share when the world displayed too little. There is terrible pain in the world, but there is also grace.

The section of this novel that deals with Franklin bringing his father to his final resting place, finding his way in the woods, encountering a bear, fishing without line, hunting without a gun, the boy generates love. He is sixteen and a man in all the ways that matter.

The bare simplicity of the narrative, and the clarity of the language both hold a beauty that is rare in novels today and makes this a standout. The harsh reality of someone dying of drink is achingly real and truly described, as is the beauty and bounty of open forest. The relationship between the old man and the boy defines what sustains us in a world that too often feels outside our control. In the end, we are all is nourished, blessed even, by the strength their relationship.

"Feels good to miss things…it makes you know you’re living, that you touched something, that something touched you."

I listened to the audio production of this book, beautifully read by Tom Stechschulte, and published by Recorded Books. I highly recommend this book, this meditation, for centering oneself in a busy world and for reminding us of what is important.

In an interview with CBC Richard Wagamese says that this is his best novel, and that it may lead to another novel or two to flesh out the lives described within. To my thinking, the novel stands on its own, though I would love to see more of this author's work and reprise the feeling I had when I read/listened to it.


You can buy this book here: Tweet

The Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks

Geraldine Brooks is gifted with the uncanny ability to speak in tongues not her own. David, the second King of Israel, was "the first man in literature whose story is told in detail from early childhood to extreme old age." In this novel, Brooks writes in the voice of prophet Natan who stayed by David’s side through his long life, from the moment Natan exhibited his channeling of a voice not his own--the voice of the source of all things, called ‘the Name.’ This is particularly fitting, since Brooks’ skill in reading the past mirrors Natan’s gift to read the future.

While the Bible is the original source for much of David’s story, Brooks used the works of more lately scholars, e.g., Robert Pinsky’s The Life of David, and David Wolpe’s David: The Divided Heart, to paint a picture of a complex and lavishly gifted man who failed to rein in the passions that all men harbor and to which some fall prey. It is a powerful tale of bravery and woe, justice and corruption.

Through it all, we see the state of Israel taking shape, despite the tendencies of a "strife-prone people quick to fan grievance, to take sides and foment revolt." David lay a calming and just hand on the remains of many a defeated and bereaved enemy, and ruled fairly…until vigilance over his passions waned in the full throat of his power.

If David’s story predates Herodotus by half a century, it is the oldest piece of history ever recorded. Brooks brings back to life the characters and their environment, the violence and the adulation, the resentments and the love with such richness that we can smell zaatar on roasting bread and taste the bite of goat-cheese feta. Brooks’ own perspective is rich with understanding and generosity for both the greatness and the failures of man. David’s last son, Solomon (she calls him Shlomo), upon learning the details of a battle, would say, "there is nothing new under the sun;" all had happened before, if one looked back far enough in time. And so it may be.

This is the tale of how an abused and neglected boy overcame his origins, slay Goliath, and became an uncommon warrior and king. And it is the story of how power will corrupt, lest one guards with unceasing vigilance one’s baser instincts. Brooks points out in her Afterword that the story of David may not be just a parable but must define an actual figure "for no people would invent such a flawed figure for a national hero." David lives in these pages at least.

I am very pleased to be able to offer an advance reading copy of this title to one interested reader of my blog (U.S. residents, please). Sign up below and I will email the winner to ask for a mailing address. The book will come to you direct from the publisher, Viking Penguin. I will close this giveaway on September 30, 2015. Tell your friends. I look forward to hearing from you.

A winner has been chosen. Thanks everyone.


You can buy this book here: Tweet

To Rise Again at a Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris

Ferris, as you might be able to tell from the title, is all about religion in this novel. His main character, Paul C. O’Rourke, is a dentist—a dentist with a taste for the absurd. He is funny, especially when he is trying not to be. His practice in New York City keeps him crazy busy, so he allows himself only a few indulgences. He is a Red Sox fan in New York, which means he must watch every game (except the 6th inning), taping them to watch later if he has something else on his schedule. The ritual is one which gives structure, and a kind of meaning to his life. He wants something. He still has desire of a sort.

O’Rourke tries to be normal, just so that he can get along with other folks, but he is like a space bot acting human: it’s all wrong. O’Rourke is having a crisis. He doesn’t get the point “of it all,” and he especially doesn’t see God acting in the world. So when a patient tells him he is part of a long-lost race of non-believers in God (any god), O’Rourke wonders if perhaps it isn’t just possible: To be genetically indisposed to believe in God.

O’Rourke wants something to be everything: absorbing, challenging, meaningful. His girlfriends had close family ties, and O’Rourke found that to be meaningful for awhile: he wanted to be a part of their families as much as he was interested in the women themselves. But their religious affiliations always proved a barrier. O’Rourke didn’t believe in God.

One night O’Rourke wakes in the middle of the night and the city outside his window is completely quiet. Not a person could be seen, though earlier the streets were filled with people.

"I felt so forgotten, so passed over, so left behind, so lost out. I was sure not only that everything worth doing had already been done while I was asleep but also that, now that I was awake, there was no longer anything worth doing. My first instinct was to reach for my me-machine. It put me in instant touch, it gave me instant purpose…No one had called or emailed or texted. I would do practically anything, I thought, to have them back—I mean the strollers and lovers of a few hours earlier, so that I might have another chance to stroll alongside them…and, after awhile, to leave the Promenade, off to bed for a good night’s sleep—or to that one vital thing among the city’s offerings that night, that one unmissable thing that makes staying up all night a treasure and not a terror—and then to rise again at a decent hour—to walk the Promenade in the light of a new morning…oh, come back you people lost to darkness! Come back, you ghosts, the day is hard enough. Don’t leave me alone with the night…There was the hum of the river, and the last desultory traffic of the night washing by on the expressway below. I can only suggest the effect it had one me, that is the feeling that my life, and the city’s, and the world’s every carefree, winsome hour, were perfectly without meaning."

In the final pages of the novel, O’Rourke finds himself understanding a little of how others manage to get through their days. If it doesn’t hurt, there is no reason to worry about it. "What’s the point of dwelling on all the shit and the misery?" He’d like to do as others do, but one senses his melancholy. He is lonely and there is no God.

Finally, O’Rourke concludes that there is no certainty, no freedom from doubt, “there is only will.” We may retain the doubt, but we must still act, and in the acting, we may have enough to sustain us spiritually. It makes sense to me what Ferris says about religions: that they are less concerned about God than they are about the religion itself. And all religions have this problem. They can sometimes even lose sight of morality itself, a failing no involved God should permit.

O’Rourke was free to change his affiliation from the Red Sox to the Chicago Cubs, and take a swing with a cricket bat at a ball that came in fast and low one day in Kathmandu because while he still had doubt, he also had hope. The pitcher was his patient, a patient with perfect teeth.

I had to work hard on this book for many days before I caught glimmers of Ferris' meaning. I don’t think it is because I listened to it rather than read it. The listening helped because the reader, Campbell Scott, was drier and funnier than the voice I had in my head as I read, but it is true I couldn’t mark the sections that wove the religious quest together. They got buried under the avalanche of extraneous associations the story of the dentist practice provoked.

There is nothing wrong with a little existential angst, especially if it makes one doubt and not be an arrogant prick. But Ferris is right. It doesn’t get one anywhere and itself has no meaning. One can only do what needs to be done and go on with it. Unless, of course, you don’t. Go on with it, I mean. That's the other option.


You can buy this book here: Tweet

This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein

Klein has every reason to be depressed about the way governments the world over are relinquishing their responsibilities when it comes to air, water, and land pollution. Although she admits to faltering in looking forward to the future we have left for our children, in the end she does not quail: she comes to see that there is a glimmer of hope that humans might actually slow or stop other humans from destroying our habitat, and the habitat of other species on the planet. In fact, our salvation may only be possible if the electorate, the populace, refuse to accept what we are being offered by our governments and the corporations “serving our needs.”

Oh, what a thing man is…but Klein’s concludes that “humanity is not hopelessly selfish and greedy—the image ceaselessly sold to us by everything from reality shows to neoclassical economics.” Climate change is not merely about climate: Klein explains how it has always has been and always will be about social justice. It isn’t about the politicians or corporations, really, any more, it is about us, though it is true that corporations

“have become the authors of the laws under which they operate…In fact, current trade and investment rules provide legal grounds for foreign corporations to fight virtually any attempt by governments to restrict the exploitation of fossil fuels, particularly once a carbon deposit has attracted investment and extraction has begun. And when the aim of the investment is explicitly to export the oil, gas, and coal and sell it on the world market—as is increasingly the case—successful campaigns to block those exports could well be met with similar legal challenges, since imposing ‘quantitative restrictions’ on the free flow of goods across borders violates a fundamental tenet of trade law.”

Klein makes the inescapable point that we are currently legally bound to accept fracking, oil drilling, and coal extraction on or near our own land and that stopping it from happening requires court action. The poorest and most disenfranchised among us usually have the least tools, but fortunately in Canada and areas of the U.S., some native Indian communities find that the original land grants give them some clout when refusing extractive industry, a strange reversal of fortune in this era of “Drill, baby, Drill.”

"many non-Native people are starting to realize that Indigenous rights—if aggressively backed by court challenges, direct action, and mass movements demanding that they be respected—may now represent the most powerful barriers protecting all of us from a future of climate chaos."

This is about us. We have the power. Politicians and corporations just make the ride more comfortable or less. One could argue that they are not responsible for changing the world—we are. So…it is time to take action and put in place the kind of leadership we seek. Diverse constituencies must come together to make transformative change.

Klein makes the point that the touted “jobs” that are reaped in building, for instance, the tar-sands pipeline would be swamped by the jobs created if that investment went into green investment. And speaking of investment, it is not enough, Klein asserts, merely to divest of extraction industry stocks, but it is also necessary to reinvest those monies in the place they might do the most good: “today’s climate movement does not have the luxury of simply saying no without simultaneously fighting for a series of transformative yeses—the building blocks of our next economy that can provide good clean jobs, as well as a social safety net that cushions the hardships for those inevitably suffering hardships.”

A couple of months ago I reviewed Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, a book the journalist Chris Hedges collaborated on with the graphic artist Joe Sacco. That book describes the “sacrifice zones” in the United States that sustain the extractive industries and a corporate mindset, rather than a consideration of the wider body politic by “sacrificing” certain areas of the country and land to degradation so that the rest of us can live comfortably. Klein mentions the same phenomenon, but she puts us in the driver seat:

“To fail to [confront an imminent and unavoidable climate emergency]—which is what we are collectively doing—knowing full well that eventually the failure could force government to rationalize ‘risking’ turning whole nations, even subcontinents, into sacrifice zones, is a decision our children may judge as humanity’s single most immoral act.”

Klein does discuss the responses and solutions proposed by scientists and corporate entities have given to obvious indications of climate change, to give the other side their say. But in wide discussions with the larger scientific community, the solutions thus far proposed all have hideous effects that may be worse than the problem. For instance, one idea that apparently has gained some traction is the concept of exploding sulfur dioxide particles into the atmosphere to reflect the sun’s rays and some of its heat, similar to a volcanic eruption. Unfortunately, most scientists agree that this would have deleterious effects on monsoon and other weather patterns and certainly would have consequences we have not yet determined. In other words, the proposed fix is to carry on with our lifestyles and almost certainly do more damage, rather than thinking about how to conserve, protect, to think of the world and the creatures on it as a whole. We could utilize our best minds and skills to recreate our energy future, but that opportunity to date is being wasted on chimerical solutions rather than the more obvious one of paying attention.

What Klein does show us, sadly, is how in the past green movement proponents and non-profits have tried to work with oil and gas companies but have ended up in their pockets: “chummy green partnerships” she calls it. “The climate movement has found its nonnegotiables…and it is delivering some of the most significant victories the environmental movement has seen in decades.” There is a movement afoot, and motion has been detected in pockets of resistance across America and the world. It is gaining mass and momentum, and she is urging us to jump onboard and make the changes we wish to see. We have the power.

What use is despair? If we are going down, we might as well go down fighting. Klein quotes Yotam Marom, an organizer with Occupy Wall Street in New York: “The fight for climate isn’t a separate movement, it’s both a challenge and an opportunity for all of our movements. We don’t need to become climate activists, we are climate activists. We don’t need a separate climate movement; we need to seize the climate moment.” Just possibly we might be able to change the world.

This is a big book, but not a difficult or dense read, since undoubtedly the reader that picks up this book will be familiar with some of the facts. It is a fascinating discursive discussion covering the whole world when giving examples of pollution from and resistance to extractive industries. It is a massive collection and organization of information and a real work of generosity. Thank you, Naomi Klein!

--Later-- Still thinking about this book when I picked up Hannah Arendt's Responsibility and Judgment, essays written after her report on Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. I found myself thinking about Arendt's definition of evil alongside Klein's thesis. Check it out here.

You can buy this book here: Tweet

The Inferno of Dante translated by Robert Pinsky

This is far and away the best and most accessible translation I have read and I looked at several since 2010. But best of all is that it can now be listened to, as Pinsky's 1995 translation is read with great cognition by Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky, Nobel Prize Winner Seamus Heaney, Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize Winner Louise Glück, and Bolligen Prize Winner Frank Bidart, in a new production cosponsored by Penguin Audio and FSG Audio. It doesn't take long to listen to, and it packs a punch, just like the original should have.

Dante's The Divine Comedy is an epic poem in three parts and was written in the 14th Century, at a time when oral traditions in storytelling were still prevalent. One benefits from hearing the work spoken aloud, as in all poetry. But in this audio presentation we get only Part I, The Inferno and not Purgatorio and Paradiso. How I yearn to learn that the latter parts will also be translated by Pinsky. I have read Part I many times, Part II once, and never Part III. I'd like to see what Dante has to say about heaven. The whole work was originally entitled Commedia, and in later centuries other artists added the "Divine." The meaning is the same: our God plays with us humans...setting us difficulties and seeing how we manage. Many of us fail.

I came away wondering if this is the version of hell that the Catholic Church promulgated and has adhered to for centuries. Wikipedia says it is, and that in fact, Dante drew on St. Thomas Acquinas' Summa Theologica from medieval Christian theology. It is grim. It is horrible. It is hell in every definition. It is so similar to what I was taught that I wonder now how it is possible that so little has changed in Church teachings and at the imaginations of our religious leaders that no one has come up with a more hellish (or even a different) scenario. How little ignorance is excuse for wrongdoing in Dante's eyes. We have only ourselves to blame, he says. How clear our human moral conundrums seem from this fiery pit.

Remind yourselves of moral wisdom, and listen, just listen to our greatest living poets read Dante.

You can buy this book here: Tweet

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright

Hardcover, First Edition, 430 pgs, Pub Jan 17th 2013 by Alfred A. Knopf, ISBN13: 9780307700667, Lit Awards: National Book Critics Circle Award Nominee for Nonfiction (2013), Andrew Carnegie Medal Nominee for Nonfiction (2014), National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction (2013)

This 2013 National Book shortlist nominee for the Nonfiction Award is in many ways a classic of investigative journalism. There is practically nothing Wright left out about the ways and means the Church of Scientology was established and how it continues. Considering the Church is shrouded in secrecy and its documents confidential, this was a strenuous bit of digging. His thoughts at the end of the book are enlightening, especially the bit about art—how this church seems deficient in artworks, though one could reasonably argue that it is based on the most convincing fiction ever written. And what is good fiction if not art?

I am not going to deny that listening on audio to this book was almost unbearable. It wasn’t the delivery nor the writing that overwhelmed me, but the subject matter. Wright begins this massive investigation with an introduction that concludes with the following paragraph:

”I have spent much of my career examining the effects of religious belief on people’s lives—historically, a far more profound influence on society and individuals than politics, which is the subject of so much journalism. I was drawn to write this book by the questions that so many people have about Scientology. What is it that makes the religion alluring? What do adherents get out of it? How can seemingly rational people subscribe to beliefs that others find incomprehensible? Why do popular personalities associate themselves with a faith that is likely to create a kind of public relations martyrdom? These questions are not unique to Scientology, but they certainly underscore the conversation. In attempting to answer them in this book, I hope we can learn something about what might be called the process of belief. Few Scientologists have had a conversion experience—a sudden, radical reorientation of one’s life; more common is a gradual, wholehearted acceptance of propositions that might have been regarded as unacceptable or absurd at the outset, as well as the incremental surrender of will on the part of people who have been promised enhanced power and authority. One can see by this example the motor that propels all great social movements, for good or ill.”

What we find, after reading or listening to Wright’s testimony, is that many people find a group, a type of acceptance, and a structure of belief that gives them guidance on how to act. Most are normal, everyday people who want to be good, and perhaps want even more—celebrity, for instance, since the Church places celebrities in an enhanced position of authority in their hierarchy. They want to be better people, to be leaders, to be listened to. Just as people flocked to read Dale Carnegie in “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” people flocked to hear Hubbard, who used many of Carnegie’s tenets in his own writings, among other things. He also used his own research to create an elaborate step program for believers, promising more power and authority the higher one rose in the levels.

Hubbard comes across as delusional, or a clever illusionist who struggled all his life to find a way to achieve the glory and attention he thought he deserved. According to documents uncovered by Wright, Hubbard lied about his military record and the illnesses he suffered. He was a science fiction writer of some repute before his stint in the military, and could research and write easily and with some coherence. He sought stability in his financial income and managed to put his skills to work creating an elaborate “religion” that required both paying for the “step” materials as well as unquestioning fealty and obedience on pain of punishment—not in the afterlife as the Christians do, but in the here and now—by imprisonment and slave labor.

It didn’t take me long to understand that Hubbard was not someone I would believe to get me across the street safely, let alone allow him to tell me how to think. But Wright goes on and on, piling fact upon data until finally he concludes that religions are seldom built on strict truth anyway but beliefs, and that most religions, when examined for their grounding in historical fact come up short. (Disclaimer: I was a Catholic once. I came to think the Catholic Church was a large, empty mitre, but that was back after I’d stopped being indoctrinated daily in my near-teens.)

No matter what Scientologists believe, Wright’s book is a damning assessment of the Church of Scientology, pointing out instances of criminal behavior and flagrant abuse still going on. These activities are so egregious that I barely had the stomach to listen to it. When we get to the part about Tom Cruise and his Church activities and behaviors, it read like a gossip column but with the libelous parts still in. Cruise denies all of it, but we get a picture of what his life must be like as a superstar. If you needed reminding never to envy someone else his/her life, you’ve got it here.

The Church probably should be stripped of its designation as a religion which, because of its tax status, keeps the church alive. The wealth mostly goes to keeping the top ranking officers in handmade shoes and designer clothes. But I just can’t bear to spend another minute thinking about Hubbard and his team—it feels like a sin.


You can buy this book here: Tweet

Bewilderment by David Ferry

I did not know this was a book of poetry when I ordered it. It was on someone’s very interesting list of “Best Books of 2012” and I thought I’d heard the name of David Ferry, but I couldn’t remember where. On Christmas morning, I rose much earlier than everyone else and felt I’d received a very special gift when I pulled out this slim volume to read with my coffee. Then I remembered where I’d seen his name: on the most popular translation of Gilgamesh at my local bookstore.

David Ferry is a learned man who wears his erudition lightly. His understanding of humankind feels deep and ancient and he can write as piercingly of the men of myth as he does of the homeless adrift upon our streets. The vulnerability he reveals in his poems leaves the reader breathless; the depth of his knowledge leaves the reader grateful. I found myself following threads and searching names, recognizing phrases and oft-told stories, lost in the glory of his well-chosen words. After, having made some connection with ancient souls, I was ready to participate in the pageantry of my holiday.

In this collection, Ferry gives us new poems, translations, and poems written in response to the work of other poets. It is a delight from start to finish. A beautiful thing is "Dedication to His Book" by Catullus I, to Cornelius Nepos, or Cavafy's "In Despair." These words are better seen than not seen.

But listen, first, to David Ferry reading "Soul", the poem from which he takes his title. And read of bewilderment by another name: "That Now are Wild and Do Not Remember."

David Ferry won the 2012 National Book Award for this collection. The University of Chicago Press deserves kudos for the beauty of this volume and the quality of the printing.

You can buy this book here: Tweet