There is a part of our culture that is discovering, or rediscovering, the use of psychedelics for spiritual awakening, enhancing creativity, pushing us out of our rigid habits.  Pollan’s book is full of information, history, credentials, universities and scientists – all needed to provide the gravitas to make the average reader take a serious look at a subject usually dismissed or joked about.  Pollan has a long way to go to educate us away from our view of psychedelics as 60’s party drugs.

He is successful in this very thought-provoking book.  The similarities of altered states described by mystics, shamans, faith healers, saints, monks, and Pollan himself convinced me they are describing the same thing – a different consciousness that is a real part of the human psyche, not some drug induced hallucination. 

What are the implications?  Will psychedelics give us a short cut to the elusive meaning of life?  Researchers today are extremely careful to talk about controlled settings with trained assistants.  Neuroscientists work hard to keep up with rapidly expanding knowledge about the workings of the brain. There is excitement in the mental health field because of successes in the treatment of PTSD, depression, fear of death in the terminally ill – stubborn areas with currently few successful treatments.   And the mid-life crisis?  That remains to be seen. 

Shortly after reading Pollan’s book, I found an article in the New York Times entitled “The Psychedelic Revolution is Coming.  Psychiatry May Never Be the Same.”  It states, “Psilocybin and MDMA (Ecstasy) are poised to be the hottest new therapeutics since Prozac.  Universities want in, and so does Wall Street.”  Well, if Wall Street wants in and the New York Times is writing about them, psychedelics must be something to pay attention to.

But there is a double meaning.  The phrase also refers to being in the water, as in under the water, with the wave above.  Not where the surfer is supposed to be.

Theroux, who lives on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii, captures the beauty and attraction of the ocean, the culture of the big wave surfers, the grandeur of the island, as well as the poverty of the local residents, the ignorance of the surfers (“There’s a difference between Arkansas and Kansas? who cares?”), the homeless encampments.  Ostensibly about surfing, this is a book about how to live life.  The details of the surfing experience are exquisite in and of themselves, plus they draw in the non-beach, non-surfer person with their metaphorical quality.

Joe Sharkey, known to all in the area, is a competitive surfer who has lived just the way he wanted to – day after day in the surf, sex and drugs at night.  But now, he is 60, that precarious time of life when he realizes he is no longer at the top of the pack.  At this vulnerable point, an accident occurs that sends him into a tailspin – under the wave.

Theroux examines Joe’s life choice: the childhood in Hawaii that led him to be a surfer, the joy and exhilaration that kept him doing it. (Joseph Campbell of bliss fame would approve of these passages.)   Joe’s rescue is a counterpoint to the things left out of his loner surfer’s life: human connection, love and kindness.  

An unusual topic also explored is that of adult hero or celebrity worship which rears its head throughout, leading the reader to ponder just why it is that adults fawn over other adults they don’t know.    Maybe it is some genetic thing that pushes us to connect ourselves to someone successful.  A stray mastodon scrap may come our way.

Summing up the things wonderful in Joe’s life, and the things missing, is this quote about reading: “Talk of books, here especially, seemed irrelevant.  What was the point of mentioning these inert objects while on the beach, facing the moonlit sea flickering with chop and now and then a wave bursting in blackness offshore and crusted in white; these palms, this mild air and moonglow – it was all beyond books…”   (Maybe it is, but can’t we have both?)

I read this alongside Michael Pollan’s book and couldn’t help but compare the portrayals of drug use.  Theroux’s portrait is the antithesis of Pollan’s carefully choreographed, privileged experiences.   Drugs here are not for supervised medical use or spiritual development but instead crush the lives of disturbed school children, dropped out surfers, the jobless poor.

This is a good description of Cynthia Ozick’s book and her views on life.  Her characters each have plenty of darkness in their lives – intellectual Jewish refugees from Germany in the 1930’s tossed into the U.S. without position or respect.  And, a young woman who lost her mother when a child, living with an impoverished gambler father uninterested in her.  And, a young man like Christopher Robin who lived with a father who preferred his created version to the real son.  The light of their happiness is fleeting.  Love, success, or money appear but are often lost or unsatisfying.

In addition to happiness in their lives coming only intermittently, glimmering refers to their partial understanding of the reality around them.  The scholar has a reverence for the ancient past, but will never understand those lost thinkers in full.  The physicist has an insight, but it needs to be enlarged and developed.  People fall in love but have only a superficial understanding of their beloveds.  Our heroine leaves for a hopeful, but uncertain future.

I like Ozick’s language.  Her use of glimmering is a creative way to prod the reader into reflecting on the meaning of the novel.   Her descriptions sparkle: “I had endured typing for three hours…The tender balls of my fingers tingled, as if sparks had shot up from the keys; their glass shields had captured the light, and sent violet streaks into my pupils.”   I liked the double meaning of, “Or was she Ophelia, whom true madness submerges?”

This book starts out slowly, but the characters soon exert a fascination.  Add to this a poetic command of language, the author’s insights on life, and we get a novel well worth reading.

But it is Ozick who wins the prize.  She celebrated her 93^rd birthday in April and in the same month, published her latest novel, Antiquities, to excellent reviews.  According to Random House, she has been at the “height of her powers” for fifty years now.   What an example!

Early in the day, Henry watches local demonstrations against the Iraq war on television.  As the day progresses, the demonstrations intrude on his own life when he has a small automobile accident because of a detour.  The repercussions of this build, leading to a crisis in his home.

This thin line of a plot ties together the episodes of his day.  Each activity is very heavily detailed.   In the description of the squash game with his friend, lob by lob, serve by serve, return by return, every action and emotion is reported.  When he talks about his profession of neurosurgery, word after esoteric medical word describes his specialty.  What is the point of this onslaught of detail?   Does McEwan expect the reader to enjoy a vicarious game of squash? Educate himself on the details of brain surgery? 

This part of the book doesn’t work.   Instead of providing a link into the situation, the dense details build a wall too thick to penetrate.  The interesting concepts of a life told in one day, the invasion of a distant war into a happy life are offset by a surfeit of unwanted details.

Her appealing detective is well developed and after a few books I knew him well.  Brunetti, lover of gourmet food often cooked by his wife, drinker of excellent wine found throughout his home city of Venice, reader of classical literature, is the star around whom the novels revolve.    There is also Leon’s devotion to social justice and environmental issues, her love of Venice, and the ability to compose a compelling plot with a riveting climax.  When she gets the balance right, the book is terrific.

Among thirty books, all are not equally terrific, but her latest, Transient Desires, is one of the better ones.  Here, the issue is human trafficking and the difficulties of apprehending just one player.   Leon’s familiar jabs at bureaucracy, interest in the skilled reading and playing of suspects, her admiration of Elettra’s magical computer skills are all present.  I don’t usually think of pacing as a characteristic of a novel, but Leon’s is distinctive and shines here.  It is like a piece of music, slow, stately, powerful, building to a crescendo, gripping, and tragic. 

Our detective, Kubu, which means hippopotamus, is black, very heavy, and like the Venetian Brunetti enjoys his meals and wine.  Like the real hippo, his instincts are sharp and he moves surely through the twists and turns of an intricate plot full of red herrings.  The mystery unfolds against the grandeur of the Botswana countryside, diamond mines, witch doctors and traditional cultural practices leavened with state-of-the-art satellite imagery and computer technology.

I thought of this when I watched the Hemingway special on PBS.  His first two wives commented on how they would devote their lives solely to him, and so they did.  They would always be available.  One said he would come before her children.  And how did he treat them?  Doormat is the correct answer.

I meant to end here, but in thinking further about Hemingway, I would like to add that he is a good example of the difference between an artist and his work.  I really like his spare style and whenever excerpts of his work were read my head came up from the catalogs I was browsing through and I was caught by just those few lines.

In the note at the end of the book she tells us that the captured children adapted to their native lives, became Indian, rarely readjusted when returned “home,” and wanted to return to their Indian tribes.  I wonder if some genetic memory ingrained in us for millennia is triggered by a return to hunter/gatherer life.

One of the two main characters, the captain, is an older Civil War veteran tasked with returning the rescued captive child Johanna, the second main character, to her less than welcoming aunt and uncle. The return to her relatives is the plot that drives their odyssey through lawless Texas.  The very likable characters are the strongpoints and invest the reader in the outcome.  Johanna, only ten, has been traumatized by two violent uprootings and struggles to understand the incomprehensible white ways.  The one good fortune in her young life was to be entrusted to the captain, grandfather, kontah, as she eventually calls him. 

The captain, in his 70’s, earns his living by reading newspapers to assemblies in small towns, presenting them with news of the world.  We in turn get to read the news of the west in post-Civil War times. 

There is a movie based on the book which does an excellent job of bringing the times and the place to life.  Tom Hanks makes a fine Captain.  The story line, though, is very different – not as believable as Jiles’s with quite a few sappy touches.  But it is Johanna who spoils the show.  The fire, strong willed independence, and Indian fierceness of the book’s character are all missing, and we are left with a sympathetic little girl in a “nice movie.”

The first introduces Antonia, a new widow exploring the supposed tried and true methods of dealing with grief.  The second presents her as part of a closely knit family of four Latina sisters.  The last is the rocky love story of illegal teen immigrants whom she befriends while she vacillates as to how much she can offer them as she tries to recover herself. 

The title brings to mind at least two possible meanings:  how the one who has died lives on in the words and actions of those left behind, but also what it is like to build a new life after the known life ends.  I thought all three of the story lines sounded promising and I could foresee how they could all weave well together.  Alas, I was too optimistic; Alvarez’s stories fell flat.  But perhaps she was more realistic than I as life’s sections don’t tie themselves into nicely resolved packages.

I don’t like books, or movies, about war, but the summary I read didn’t alert me strongly enough, and there I was with a purchased book and an agreement to read it for a book group, so I struggled through.  By the end, I found this novel and the questions it raised compelling.  What is it that has to be missing from life for someone young and healthy to prefer death?  What is it exactly that we want to live our lives for? 

In the story, the martyrs-to-be are religious, but I didn’t see that as the underlying motive for their desire.  The author explores the other reasons that have brought this group to “this place of assisted suicide,” to fight one chaotic senseless battle after another and to find a kind of peace in doing so.  The dismal scenes are balanced by the unexpected presence of poetry and art, brought to the space by artists, journalists, and the soldiers themselves.

Cleary, an Oregon author who died recently, wrote about the universal experiences of childhood: getting a new sibling, the first day of school, jealousy and anger.  Although her stories are about children, adults can extrapolate and recognize the situations of meeting a new manager, walking alone into an unknown group, exasperation with a family member.  These timeless children’s stories with simple family plots are a good respite from more serious fare.

But this is so emphatically a black family.  In the third sentence we are told they are black and their race is emphasized throughout the book. “Black fingers pulling violin bows…dark lips around horns, a small brown girl…” Does this emphasis on the race of the family add to or subtract from a universal story?  What is the point of this emphasis?  One possibility is that Woodson wants to counteract the current onslaught of books about blacks as poverty stricken, blacks as victims, blacks as slaves.  Instead, we have a successful loving middle-class family dealing with not so unusual problems.

One of my sister readers felt strongly that the portrayal of the family as black was not overdone.  The characters were just being described, as characters are, and it is we the white readers who were hypersensitive to the black details.  The other felt that a large percentage of readers would not be surprised to meet a successful intact black family and that the emphasis on their race was unnecessary. 

No violence he emphatically states, and there isn’t any.  What there is of course, is plenty of superb French food, first class wine, and the incomparable superiority of all things French.  The Vintage Caper, where three million dollars of stolen premier cru wine must be found, is very appealing to us wine country folks, but so is The Marseille Caper which takes off with the same delightful characters.

The NJ town names appealed to me as that is where I grew up, but I soon realized that Hackensack of the 1910’s had little in common with Hackensack of the 1950’s when I knew it.

The novel I read, Miss Kopp Just Won’t Quit, was relaxing yet informative.   As expected, Miss Kopp, very much ahead of her time, had to put up with the derision and lack of respect by many of the politicians who controlled her department.   But I was startled by the cases she dealt with.  I hadn’t realized the extent of the powerlessness of women and what the implications were.  Stewart, an obvious feminist, calmly tells her story and brings these situations to life.  This series is historical fiction based on a family of three sisters.

We have an observer, a young (?) woman, who riffs on artwork that comes her way.   There is a painting that appeals to her; she comments on it; then there are some acute observations about the artist; then there is what the art piece makes her think about. That particular chapter comes to an end.  She encounters another art piece and the stream of consciousness inspired by it starts again.  This structure actually works.

This entertaining and instructive book will appeal to someone interested in the visual arts.  It can be read “as is” – just learn from the information given and enjoy the perceptive vignettes.  Or – spend time looking up the painters mentioned, especially the obscure unheard of ones, and discover something.   I especially liked the fact that she included the evoked thoughts and emotions of the observer as part of the “seeing” process.    

As a reader, I was pleased that she quoted from literature to describe the personal attraction a person might feel towards a certain artwork:  A.S. Byatt calls it “the kick galvanic;” Stendhal, the “fierce palpitation of the heart;” and Gainza doesn’t do badly herself.  “It grabbed me nonetheless.  More than that: it unsettled me.”

The artist, Douglas Bourgeois, says, “I paired them together because of their individual voices as poets.  Their oppositeness – being from different centuries, different sexes, different races, with different styles of expression – is eased by their both being true to the rhythm of verse.”  Hmmm…poetry?  I think of rap as misogynistic and nasty.  I might open my mind on this subject if I could understand the words.

The featured white tern is a bird whose nesting habits we monitor while we are visiting.  It is a seabird that is fond of Waikiki and nests in trees right along the most tourist traveled avenues.

Fedarko is a lyrical writer who brings the incomparable wild beauty of the place to life from the “nighttime sky salted with stars” to the lush wildflowers and stores of Anasazi corn still to be found. We learn to empathize with the boatmen and their aching addiction to the river and the untamed nature it symbolizes.

But – his plot moves in as straight a direction as the river boats that constantly veer around boulders and turn sharply from huge waves.  Although the boat is in the water in the first chapter, it doesn’t finish the race until the last.  In between, we learn about the reactions of the first European discoverers of the Grand Canyon; we get lessons about El Nino, weather patterns, and the results of these patterns from all over the world for months before the race.  Then there is the history of dam building, the technicalities of construction and operating them.  There is the superiority of the wooden dory to the rubber raft plus all the details in its design.  A history of the birth of the Sierra Club…. the immersion in rowing skills…Whew.  This true story has become a legend and Fedarko recounts every detail.  

I found these diversions into the eddies, backwaters, and side streams too many.  I like to immerse myself in a story that flows along at a good pace.  This book reminded me of musicals, a genre I find frustrating.  Just when the action is getting started, the characters stop to sing and dance and the forward motion of the plot abruptly stops.  I must say however, that the other six readers in my group enjoyed the details of these side trips and found them educational and interesting.  Thumbs up, they all said, while mine was neutral.

The Liar’s Dictionary by Eley Williams joyfully plays with language and words – the more bizarre and esoteric, the better.  Odd words, made up words, forms of words, alliterative words.  I had been told to read this on Kindle so it would be easy to look up the unknown words, but I forgot.   After a while, a very short while, looking up all the words I didn’t know stopped being fun.  “occasional blarts of oboe,” “he had set his abecedarian course.”  “…he is quite widdershins.”  The made-up words were memorable: “asinidorose (n.) to emit the smell of a burning donkey.”

Emerging from all these words are two stories a hundred years apart that take place in the same lexicography office.  The earlier, Victorian, plot features a delightful twitterpated young man who takes it upon himself to add mountweazels to his dictionary entries.  A century later a tribade young woman, coming to terms with her sexuality, is hired to root them out.  These creative stories have unexpected endings and nicely bring the book to a close, finale, culmination.!

Maybe expectation was the problem as both of these men would probably tell me.  I expected to like it.  I expected to learn from it.  I expected to have at least one life lesson.   I was disappointed.  Why didn’t I like this five-star book? 

The life problems they discuss are many: grief, anger, fear, loneliness, cruelty, ambition, envy, despair, illness, death.  Oh my.  It was overwhelming.  Advice is given for each problem.  I tried to find a unifying thread in the answers.  Think of others; don’t concentrate on yourself.  Feel compassion and act generously; happiness is contagious; do what you can where you are.  Maybe these precepts to live by sound trite because they are so true.  At the end of the book, there are practices for meditation.

Julian was an English anchoress (someone who withdraws from the world to a life of prayer) and mystic in the Middle Ages.  She wrote Revelations of Divine Love which is the first book written in English by a woman.   Julian lived through two iterations of the Black Death, the first of which killed at least half the population of her area.  Because of her religious faith, she lived in seclusion.  Pandemic and quarantine?   No wonder she is having a resurgence.  Currently, churches are exploring her idea of solitude strengthening faith.  Her positive message, “All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well,” echoes Bishop Tutu’s and the Dalai Lama’s optimistic teachings about looking for and finding joy in life.

These last few months I’ve had the pleasure of reading three books written by people I have a connection with, in some cases a tenuous connection, but a connection.

The most recent was a gift from one of the members of my “other” book group.  When I was struggling with getting this blog online, Merrily kindly put me in touch with a friend who “publishes and might help.”  Indeed she publishes.  Agnes Bushell has written a dozen books and has helped start her own publishing company, Littoral Books situated in Portland, Maine. 

A group of students and travelers interested in classical archeology are touring Turkey to visit ancient religious sites.  At one of them, The Oracle Pool of Apollo, an incident occurs that breaks up the group.  One of the members doesn’t continue with the tour, nor does she go home, nor contact anyone, and is apparently missing.  The search for Ruth is the plot line that drives the story.  The wonderful characters draw you in.  There is the white-haired pastor named Grace, her ex-hippie boyfriend Artemas, her lesbian friends who want her to marry them, the journalist Orestes and his business partner Pete.  The religious names add to the fun and support the theme.  Plus, there is the occasional bit of playfulness with them:    “ ‘…I feel rain is coming,’ Cassandra said, meekly, trying not to sound prophetic.” 

This was also an educational book for me.  I am ignorant of the geography of the Middle East today, never mind two thousand years ago.  What were all those Greek archaeological sites doing in Turkey?  Luckily, I have historically minded friends, one of whom, the ex-librarian, kindly sent me a map showing that ancient Greece surrounded the Aegean Sea and included what is now Turkey.  This support from real life friends is something Agnes might appreciate, as an exploration of friendship is one of the themes of this book.  You can find it at www.littoralbooks.com. 

I was interested in this subject and when, before her book was published, I read a different one about wealthy individuals, I recommended it to my book group.  We read it, but Uneasy Street, The Anxieties of Affluence by Rachel Sherman received mostly thumbs down and didn’t spark the conversation I had hoped.  Readers didn’t like its statistical methods and had little patience with the problems and justifications of the wealthy.  Now that I’ve read Jen’s book, I wonder if something else was going on as well.  Did we illustrate one of her points?  Talking about money is hard; we are conditioned all our lives not to do it.

 Jen proposes that we work to change this cultural practice and become more open on the subject of personal means.  Through her own personal experiences, she lets us see that refusing to discuss money leads to false assumptions about those whose income is different.  They are no longer seen as individuals, but as part of a homogenous group, “the wealthy.”  Awkwardness arises even among family and friends.  For example, who pays the restaurant bill?  Is the wealthy one expected to pay for everyone?  Or would people think she was flaunting her money by offering to do so?  Jen reminds us that being wealthy is only one of a person’s many characteristics and like everyone else, wealthy people are all different from each other.  Being open to acknowledging differences diminishes feelings of separateness. Her book is available through local book stores and Amazon.

I thought it would be fun to ask my friend, Jennifer’s mother, to write a little something about her daughter’s book.  Would we write the same thing?  We don’t often get to hear from someone so close to an author.  Here are her comments.

We Need to Talk is my daughter’s “memoir about wealth” which she wrote to help very wealthy women overcome their guilt and insecurities about having “too much” money.   There is a great deal of prejudice against the very wealthy—the 1%—and having been brought up in a normal middle class family, she wants to share some of the problems she had and the techniques she had to learn about how to handle great wealth gracefully.  And she found in her research that women of all backgrounds and all income levels share this same insecurity.  It surfaces when you offer to pay for lunch and hurt your friend’s pride or when you find yourself not talking about where you shop for clothes or where you are vacationing.  Siblings with different incomes often have issues involving expectations and generosity. I found her ideas very insightful and I hope you will share my interest.

I thought about Steph’s book when I read Drive Your Plow Over The Bones of The Dead.  Both deal with subjects on the edge of implausibility.  In his book Presidents’ Day, Stephen Werbel gives us an ordinary 90 year-old grandmother who, in an unpremeditated attack, successfully assassinates the president of the United States and remembers nothing about it.  Did she really do it?

Sylvia, unhappy, angry, and depressed, finds an outlet for her feelings in competitive bridge.  Participation in a tournament puts her in a hotel at the time the president is there also.  She carries a gun at her husband’s insistence because she is often out alone at night.  For some reason she sits down in the area the president will pass through.  And then??  Sylvia can’t remember.

 Steph, who in an earlier life was a school psychologist, meticulously builds his case.  Here is an opportunity to learn about some of the more unusual workings of the mind.   Having been in the educational field, Steph is a good teacher who explains, repeats and summarizes.  While some of this is helpful, too much slows the pace of the book and keeps the story from moving along.

Sylvia’s hatred of Trump and her action offer a bit of wish fulfillment for the author.  I was worried that Presidents’ Day would be out of date after the election, but apparently, as the ex-president continues to draw attention to himself and generate strong feelings, it is still timely.  Despite the subject, this is a feel-good book, as the author adroitly works things out in the end.  It is available through Amazon.

I always look forward to visiting the Waikiki library.  Yes, it is open.  There is a limit of 15 patrons who wait outside the glass doors until waved in.  Once inside, there is a sharp-eyed security guard watching intently to make sure six feet distancing is kept – and masks go without saying.  Computers have heavy plastic shields over the keys that can be easily sterilized.  At the checkout counter, (no automatic check out in Hawaii) there is a five-foot table between patron and librarian to ensure distancing.  Whew.  But it worked – and probably next time I go I won’t think it at all unusual.  The new normal.

It didn’t hurt that Tokarczuk, at 59, qualifies as an “old lady,” as does the main character of her book.   She didn’t disappoint. 

This novel is grounded in the reality of a bitter winter in a small hamlet in the Polish forest. As the year progresses, we get to know Janina whose interests fly above the solidity of this setting.  She is a reader who, with a friend, is translating the metaphysical poet William Blake.  She is a vegetarian and aggressive animal rights voice in a land of hunters.  She is a retired engineer who satisfies her craving for order with an extensive knowledge of astrology.  She is an old woman ignored by those in control.

Through all of this runs the thread of the four mysterious murders.    Are they revenge killings by the hunted deer as Janina proposes?  This edgy novel raises serious questions and is not content with expected answers.  The title is a reference to a poem by William Blake which encourages us to question, or plow up, the ossified ways of society.  Tokarczuk excels at this.  Originally written in Polish in 2009, the book was translated into English in 2018 and won the Nobel Prize for Literature that year. 

Vine and fig tree?  Where had I just heard that phrase?  It was in a line from Amanda Gorman’s inauguration poem.  Originally from the Old Testament, the phrase was popular in the 18^th century when it signified peace, freedom, and patriotism.  George Washington used it when he wrote about his new country-to-be, “everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”  And Napoleon when he was encouraging his troops, “each of you…under his own vine and fig tree, will be enjoying the property won by your valor.”

That phrase is so not the right tone for this forward looking, energetic and optimistic poem.   Many have talked about the meaning or her presentation, but I especially like how she played with the words:

And the norms and notions  
Of what just is  
Isn’t always just-ice

(There is that idea about questioning norms again.)

We lay down our arms  
So we can reach out our arms

And the vivid images:

 It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit,
 It’s the past we step into
 And how we repair it 

Having a nod to literature by our new president after having four years of a president who didn’t read was a pleasure.  Having it be one of the highlights of the inauguration was best of all. 

This year because of Covid, there are just Zoom meetings which I haven’t participated in.  But on my daily walks, I did listen to one of their chosen books, The Color of Air by Gail Tsukiyama.  This pleasant story shows the importance of friendship and community to a close-knit group of Japanese who had been brought to cut cane in the sugar fields of Hilo in the early 1900’s.  Tsukiyama is interested in the weight past decisions and experiences continue to exert on their present lives.  Unlike Tokarczuk who sees the stultifying side of tradition, Tsukiyama shows us the comfort people take in ritual and “the old ways” as help in coping with the passing of time and the uncontrollable Pele.   

Tsukiyama tried hard to make this a “Hawaiian” book and the repetition of mangoes, sweet bread, tropical breezes, etc. became tiresome as did the overuse of the Pidgin “yeah.”  I did learn things about the sugar cane and was startled to learn that plantation owners rode horses and used whips on the Japanese, and presumably Chinese and Filipino workers, well into the 1930’s.  All this is told against the backdrop of a real-life eruption of Mauna Loa.

At the end of Clarissa’s day, we have seen her past, present, fears, and contradictions flow together as a whole cloth.   She is a woman who takes joy in the ordinary things, “…that one should wake up in the morning; see the sky; walk in the park…. how she had loved it all…”    Woven with the weft of her happiness is the warp of the darker sides of life.  Clarissa is aware of approaching age; she is in her fifties and has been ill.   Her path crosses with the heart-rending story of a suicidal soldier with PTSD and his young, isolated war bride.

The secret for me is to read this novel a little at a time.  The bloom comes off the slow pace, lack of plot and action.  But for a while each day, I can immerse myself in the metaphorical language, savor the poetry, enjoy the sharp observations, and participate in the memories of wonderfully drawn characters.

At the end of the Pleistocene, up to 11,700 years ago, Asia and North America were joined by a “bridge” 1000 miles wide.  How people moved from Siberia, to Alaska, then the rest of North and South America, probably by boat, is the adventure he imagines.  Childs makes this tale so alive by trekking across the ice himself and ruminating on how things would have been done differently in the Pleistocene.  One time he travelled with his mother.  (I am very impressed with Mom.) 

To tell the story of the first people who landed in the East, he chose a site in Florida with Iberian-like relics and explored the idea of people following the ice from Europe to New York and travelling down the east coast.  Once again, he lives the adventure as, minimally equipped, he travels with snakes and alligators through the swamps.  The second half is more information filled but we thought “Atlas” a misnomer as there is a disappointing lack of maps.

I love how Childs shows the truths hidden in myths passed down throughout the ages.  Raven was originally white (the color of animals who live on the ice).  He was naughty (of course) and punished by being held over a fire.  When he escaped, he was scorched black (a more suitable color after the ice receded).   I can see how Childs, a storyteller himself, would feel a kinship towards these oral traditions.

He also wonders why ancient people living in Alaska might have thought about trying to get around all that ice in the first place.  What made them think there would be something on the other side?  He posits that they watched the noisy cranes and flocks of migratory birds come in the spring and leave in the fall.  Where were they going?  Wouldn’t it be an adventure to find out?   And they might have gotten their answer relatively quickly.   Childs tells a story about someone in current times who travelled by kayak from Alaska to South America in two years.  Maybe a hardy ice age explorer was sent in his umiak to do the same thing.

I was intrigued and found a fuller version of the myth in “Tales of the Menehune” published by Kamehameha Schools Press.  Hawaiian people knew about the benefits of fire for cooking because they saw what happened along the burning edges of lava.  Breadfruit and bananas were roasted and delicious.  But they didn’t know how to make fire by themselves.  One day Maui and his brothers were fishing and from the boat saw a column of smoke rising.  When they got back to shore, they saw that birds, the moorhens, had started a fire, stolen their bananas and roasted them.  The myth goes into some detail about Maui’s negotiating tactics, but eventually he gets one of the moorhens to teach him how to start a fire.  As the bird is leaving, Maui takes a blazing stick and makes a mark on the little hen.   And so, as often happens in real life, it was the little hen in the background who knew what was really going on.

He explores our present bad habits, such as mouth breathing, and their history.  He examines ancient practices of restorative breathing plus extreme breathing techniques for warming and calming.  He reminds us that disciplines such as singing and athletics make excellent use of the old methods of controlled breathing.

With acute observation, Nestor finds unexpected similarities in the number of syllables in Asian and North American chants and Western prayers, all designed to promote the ideal of 5.5 breaths per minute.   Looking at things from a different perspective, he doesn’t see carbon dioxide only as a waste product but potentially a benefit in the regulation of anxiety.  Yes, this is a far-ranging book that puts a scientific spin on ancient ideas and overlooked research– -plus an appendix of breathing practices

After this familiar beginning, Guest List goes in its own modern direction with a very strong plot.  Main characters get their own chapters and tell the story from their points of view.  Creation of atmosphere worked the least.  I felt that Foley was following a template for murder mysteries:   storm, wind, crashing waves, jagged cliffs, the bog, ill-omened birds, cemetery.  Nothing was left out.   Nonetheless, this is a good story, a page turner, and distraction from the real-life tension of the times.

I applaud its attitude toward old age.  Ulysses, the adventurer, is home now after a lifetime of war and travels and is expected to act the part of old wise counsellor.  But sitting home acting his age is not for him.  He does not want to be “an idle king.”  He does not want to “rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!” He dreams of setting out again…

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail,                                                                          'T is not too late to seek a newer world….                                                                               To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths                                                                                Of all the western stars…                                                                                                           To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

 

Wilkerson’s own personal experiences of being black, being unseen, bring it into focus.  She compares slavery and racism in our country to the caste system of India and holocaust of Nazi Germany.

Our larger book group discussed this timely book the day after the mob attack on the US capitol.  The insights we gained from it helped us understand why people did this, why so many are attracted to Trump, and that unanswerable question for many of us, why do people vote and behave against their own interests.  Wilkerson’s plausible answer is that they are willing to give up things that would help them in the short term to protect their long-term interests. What are those long-term interests?  To keep the prestige, power, and supremacy they feel is their due simply because they are white.  People will vote and act against anything that might help the brown or black person rise above the lowest rungs of society and threaten white position.  It is especially threatening for the white people who feel unsuccessful to see nonwhites getting things they are unable to get for themselves.                                                                                       

But it is not all fluff.  I expected this to be a welcome contrast to Wilkerson’s book, but the depressing mistreatment of and attitude towards the brown caste by the dominant white caste (her word is colonizers) suffuses the essays.  In her discussion of the Brady Bunch in Hawai’i she points out that teen Greg Brady may ogle the many “bikinis” on the beach but when he speaks to one, she isn’t a local girl, but a blond Californian.

I liked Prato’s information and sharp observations but thought her language a little too breezy.  I suppose that I am showing my age, but I like some decorum in a book and fewer f-words.  She talks about the islands, including Kaua’i the Garden Isle, as a refuge, a place of healing.  This is the perfect segue to the next book I want to talk about.                                                             

 As always with Lively, I love her musings on time, the past, and memory.  The discussions of the “uses” of a garden, as refuge or creative expression, were interesting.  But those chapters that were essentially lists of flowers species, gardens, gardeners, gardening books?  I found them boring and skimmed through.   No, it was the philosophical sections I enjoyed.

She says, “I have the universal old age failing with names…but in fact (plant) names seem to surface more readily than those of politicians or celebrities, which is as it should be, as far as I’m concerned.”

I like her attitude about removing plants that no longer serve the purpose she wants.  That section combined with the section on husband-and-wife gardeners reminded me of my own situation when I want to remove something. I see it as overgrown, out of proportion, three times bigger than its intended size and my husband says – but it is doing so well!

And finally, after talking about the expulsion from that first garden so central to our mythology, she wonders if there is something primeval about people’s affinity for gardens, “Here we are, …in possession again….”  Yes, I like Lively’s attitude.

                                                                                        

In addition to the definition, the daily page has other word facts and games which I don’t usually take the time for, but this one intrigued me, “You Need a Hobby:  7 Words for Those Who Pursue Their Passions.”  I liked cruciverbalist, a person skillful in creating or solving crossword puzzles.  And then there is phillumenist, one who collects matchbooks, or matchbook labels.  Really? People do that?  Probably, not so much since smoking has declined.  The idea of hobbies though resonated with me in our time of still-being-quarantined.

Addendum

I meant to end on the relatively upbeat note of hobbies during quarantine, but have found myself, the last few days, looking up the exact meaning of words like sedition and what was the Reichstag and what does it mean today.  These are not words or concepts I ever expected to need to know in connection with my own country.  My reading time has been devoted to newspapers.  First, there was the reporting of the incredible attack on the capitol and now, the thoughtful analyses, opinion pieces, and editorials that being written.  One from the NYT especially struck home, “…the mob tested more than policy or ideology.  The intentions of the president’s supporters struck at an idea at the core of the American experiment – that, in time, the country’s commitment to democracy will overtake its history of intolerance.”  In Caste, Wilkerson wonders about the same thing.  If people have to choose between whiteness (supremacy) and democracy, which will they choose?

That is what happened with Nabokov’s Pale Fire.  The language is still poetically beautiful and funny.  The story is still outrageous.  Nonetheless, it was also more boring and incomprehensible than I remembered.  Is this typical of memory – we make things nicer than they were?  Or have our tastes just changed?  This kind of literature requires a lot of effort and maybe we just want something more accessible. Nonetheless, this rather difficult novel is worth thinking about.  And if at its end we’re left wondering, “Really, what is the truth of it all?” Maybe that is the point.

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I’ve always loved a good story and sometimes that story appears in a movie not a book.  Brigsby Bear, creative and original, is one of those movies.  It isn’t a mystery; it isn’t a love story; there isn’t any violence.  It is a tale of compassion and kindness, a story about people helping a unique main character adjust to reality and come into his own.  I hadn’t heard  much about this movie beforehand so it was an unexpected pleasure.

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Speaking of reality, I am sometimes reminded that reading can have a very utilitarian use.  In this time of semi quarantine, I entertained myself one day by cleaning the dishwasher, in particular the filter.  Afterwards, I decided that reading the manual to see how often this activity is recommended would be a very good idea.

All this reading for information got me thinking about more serious topics, non fiction books available about the environment, poverty, or civil rights.    

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As readers, we often turn to books to educate ourselves on these problems.  I have just started to read Caste, The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson.  It is an overwhelming examination of race and its affiliates in the United States, India, and Nazi Germany.  She is an excellent teacher who gives clarity to difficult-to-define words such as race, class and caste.  As all good teachers, she gives many examples which is where the overwhelming part comes in. More to come on this one when I finish it.

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Now that the solstice has come and gone, we are all looking forward to the new year and lighter days.  In the excellent NYT article, “How We Survive Winter,”  Elizabeth Dias says, “Look for the smallest bit of beauty around you…at a time where it seems like the mega-systems are all broken…return your gaze to the small….The great irony of winter is that the moment darkness is greatest is also the moment light is about to return.  Each year the winter solstice comes with the promise that the next day will be brighter.”  Sounds good to me.