Book Review - Oona Out of Order by Margarite Montifore

Well, it was a good idea - sort of. A woman travels through her own life out of sequence. She jumps from 19 to 51 first - and then to other ages, back and forth. We never learn why.
I realized this at chapter 3 and should have stopped reading then and there.

I wish the writer had thought this one out. As it is, Oona doesn’t experience her years out of order, she just views them that way. Nothing she sees at 51 changes her at 27. ( Because if it did, 51 would change. ) While visiting age 51 she meets someone who she doesn’t know she’s met, but who knows he has met her. But how can this scheme work when they re- meet at younger ages? It doesn’t.

By the end, Oona learns how to appreciate life but it matters not one whit that she went out of order to do so. The whole time travel scheme is irrelevant. And I think it is much harder to understand your life out of sequence than in sequence.

Many call this book one of the best reads of the year.

I call it a gimmick.

Book Review - The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books

The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books by Edward Wilson - Lee

Columbus and the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. By the end of this fascinating book you will be gobsmacked about how we ever had the day off for that guy. But this book is about his son Hernando, the founder of the 16th century Google.

Both like and unlike his dad, Hernando Colon collected the world. Hernando, though, did it by collecting global knowledge. He amassed a library of about 25,000 books and items published around the world. I know this sounds like a "so what". However, a library is more than a building with books on shelves. It is a method by which global knowledge is distilled, organized, distributed and noticed. But libraries in this form did not always exist. Enter Hernando, heir and "illegitimate" son of Christopher Columbus.

He travelled with Columbus on his 4th voyage to the "new" world". He was a life-long witness to the discovery era. In the 16th century countries played a bizarre, massive game of Finders Keepers: if you landed on it it was yours. To this end, Columbus personally claimed financial rights to the places he - well, let's say places he visited. His rather violent tenure as governor of these isles (the places many vacation on today) resulted in his ultimate expulsion therefrom - in chains no less. However, the Columbus family was in the in-crowd and by hook or crook the sons won financial rights and in some cases governance of these lands for many years after the voyages. The story of the fight for these rights is something straight out of a tele-novella - out of wedlock babies, powerful alliances by marriage, lawsuits heard by the Vatican, summits with the Portuguese about how to measure the latitude of the world in order to know who owns what, etc.

Along the way Hernando starts collecting books. At this time books are proliferating like modern-day podcasts. Rome and Venice turnout to be the cultural crossroads where books from many countries are bought and sold. (By the way, at this time Rome is already a tourist trap where Judas' rope and a vial of Mary's milk are on view and already a place where it's careless to go out to dinner without a will. But I digress... as does this book, down many curious side paths.)

To ensure that he doesn't re-purchase the same book, Hernando begins to catalogue his purchases. This then leads to creating the practice of adding indexes to books, to summarizing books so searchers know what it is about, to identifying the author (thereby giving rise to the personalization of academia), to displaying books on their spine as opposed to flat, the creation of the predecessor to the card catalogue which allows for an infinite reshuffling of how to organize information and the valuation of popular culture publications. Hernando's overarching idea is that there is information everywhere, but it won't matter if you don't know where to find it. He and his growing team had to ponder how people look for info. Should "asp" be categorized under "serpents" or "snakes" or "demons"? Should "hemlock" be under "plants" or "poisons"? This is something modern search engines wrestle with everyday. The Big Idea is that the truth of any item can be seen from many vantage points. What Hernando sought to do would only truly become possible in our digital age. (I often think of what Frank Lloyd Wright would have built had he had access to more modern materials. The Guggenheim Museum, of course, gives us a hint.)

Hernando also created epitomes, which were a brief explanation of a book's content. The plan was to distribute these so people knew what information was available. While this created a community of in-the-know people, it of course was not as powerful as the modern day web where recipients can easily share and discover between themselves. But the germ of the modern day web is there.

In addition to organizing books he made localized maps of Spain. Similar to the purpose of the Google camera cars, he sent people out to survey the landscape, had locals verify it and then sent others out to triple check it. He had ships take logs on their journeys so he could collect crowd-sourced data to help with sea navigation. (I mean, I just don't get why we are talking about his father.)

He dies in 1539. Five centuries later Google launches Project Guttenberg, today's version of everything from everywhere in one searchable place.

Some of Hernando's catalogues survive. But of his vast collection, only 4,000 items are extant, signed and annotated by him, along with the date and place of purchase. They are are located in Seville. Truly a reason to visit.

A reason to read this book?

If you want to know about :

Early colonialism

Libraries- it is a true eureka moment to break the Trumpian walls of nationalism in favor of gathering thought, both high and low culture, without regard to religion, language or region.

Spanish history- I thought Ferdinand and Isabella was a love story, but it was really more of a coalition government

New world horticulture - Hernando planted and cultivated many of the plants he brought back from the "new" world, changing the landscape of Seville.

Distinction of academic disciplines

Sack of Rome and Papal goings on

Book collecting

This is dense reading and I recommend the audiobook. Also adding a review in case I have not convinced you to read this one.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/the-story-of-christopher-columbuss-son-the-ultimate-completist/2019/03/12/7438f79e-44f6-11e9-aaf8-4512a6fe3439_story.html#comments-wrapper

Book -Review - “Janet and Me” by Stan Mack

This is an emotionally balanced true love story. With beautiful drawings, sadness and humor the author relates what life for him and his partner was like after her fatal cancer diagnosis. It is hopeful and honest. The images are conceptually specific. The big idea and individual story are made loud and clear by the consistent renderings of their apartment, travels, and the hospitals and the friends. I was struck by one image where she is facing the computer reading about her disease, but the reflected light from the computer bathes her in darkness. And another where she is realizing the poor prognosis while he is yet doing what it takes to live - exercising. And another where he admits to imagining what his life will be like when this particular pain ends. This is an important book. It made me remember that the start of any love story already includes its end.

Book Review - "Less" by Andrew Greer

“Less” by Andrew Greer
The main character in this book, Arthur Less, is an aging gay man whose ex -lover is very ill and whose most recent ex-lover is marrying a younger someone else. You may think that a middle aged sorrowful gay man is not a character you can relate to. But I don’t know any American who has traveled broadly who hasn’t had this experience:

The Moroccan bus tour guide: ‘ “I am sorry for the unpleasant surprise of the heat.”
From the back, a female voice: “Can you turn up the air?”

Some words in Arabic, and then vents begin to blast warm air into the bus. “ ‘

Less goes on a worldwide tour to avoid the fact of aging and the fact of his midling career and the fact of his lost loves. Everything that happens to him has probably has happened to you. Maybe it wasn’t a hot gay man wearing a banana speedo on a rocky SF beach, but I’m betting there was someone who knocked you off your feet who still haunts you. Some job that was different than you thought. Something new about your reflection in the mirror that you dislike. As all really good novels, this exposes shared humanity from a very particular vantage.

The writing is impeccable. The story moves in and around Less’ history using the fluidity of waves of his memories that come about in the midst of daily life - as memories tend to do. Despite this moving back and forth and back again through time the reader is never lost as to what is current, past or daydream.

Don’t they say you spend the first half of life leaving home to find yourself and the second half trying to get back home? It’s something like that. Well, this book is about that. And the funny way you imagine what other people from your past are doing while you’re walking your dog. It’s not quite regret, but more like a pang to know what else could have been at any moment.

Lastly, this novel flawlessly drives home its ideas, with each chapter progressively providing deeper color and clarity of its themes as the plot organically and logically plays out. He sticks the landing. Which for writers is as hard to do as anything Simone Biles does.

Highly recommended. A quick, funny and meaningful read - and you can also check this off your list of Pulitzer Prize reads while you’re at it.

Leaving you with more beautiful prose: this economic description of a party goer’s demise: “… Perhaps it’s the pale Moroccan wine, poured glass after glass at dinner, ... or perhaps the gin and tonics requested after dinner, when she sheds her clothes and slips into the courtyard pool, where turtles stare at her pale flesh, ... the water rippling from her backstroke... or perhaps the tequila she discovers later once the gin runs out, when someone has found a guitar and someone else a shrill flute and she begins an improvisational dance with a lantern on her head ... or the three loud claps... a sign they are up too late for Marrakech.“

You really should read this one.

Book Review - "Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey" by Washington Irving

Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey
By Washington Irving

So it turns out that the author of Sleepy Hollow - Washington Irving- was also an investigative journalist/biographer.

In this book he details a weekend stay with the famous Sir Walter Scott, author of Ivanhoe. Scott actually lived the romantic life of a big time, celebrity author. He lived on a massive estate where he built his dream “cottage”. He had a happy family life and pack of faithful dogs who were very close to him. There are more paintings of him with his dogs than his kids.

It’s fascinating to see his daily life and to hear thoughts of the time. For ex he once saw a Sequoia tree from America which he revered as being similar in value to the obelisks from Egypt in that they similarly protected the natives. He was a Scottish nationalist who honored the border clans for keeping Scotland safe from England and treasured the Scottish culture. This is a painting of an out building on his lands.

Part 2 covers Newstead Abbey located in Sherwood Forest - Lord Byron’s ancestral home. The abbey is like all things Byronic - from afar they look boldly romantic, but when examined closely they’re tawdry and underwhelming. His is a tale of inherited near-wealth, unearned privilege and aggressive laxitude. Not entirely due to his fault, only a few rooms of the abbey were actually furnished and liveable. The others were used for fun and games - including digging up skulls and placing coffins about. He left England to help the Greeks defeat the Ottoman empire during which fight he died early. Again, sounds heroic, but he left also to escape debts and babies and scandal. And despite that gloriously romantic photo we have of him, he was overweight and treated women poorly.

It is though valuable to read Irving’s account as he visits the home just a few years after Byron’s death. ( The housekeepers who knew him and even the dog that accompanied his body back to England were still alive. ) Also, Irving gives an account of the relics of Robin Hood’s haunts in Sherwood. Those are less convincing chapters, but whether true or lore, that part is actually romantic.

BYOB - Bring Your Own Book - The American Dirt Controversy

k 

“American Dirt” - if you don’t like it, don’t read it. People get to write the fiction they want in the same way people get to read the fiction they want.

A novel is imagined. It is not a documentary or a memoir or a true account. It is absurd that the writer has to be the person they write about. First, if that were true, how could you. populate a novel? It has many people. ( And if you believe Virginia Woolf and FS Fitzgerald, each character shares one thing in common- and that is a bit of the author. There is no escaping the author’s fingerprints and that includes when a person of color writes about a person of no color.) Second, no argument can be sustained that this is a requirement when we know that with great success Flaubert wrote about Madame Bovary and Tolstoy wrote about Anna Karenina and Wharton wrote about Ethan Fromme and Christie wrote about murderers.

What is does take to write a worthy novel that’s well beyond your direct experience is one of two things: being a masterful writer with a strong imagination OR being a masterful writer who knows the subject area well because you have lived very, very near to it. Like the distance and view between you and it is like that of a window screen. Let’s use Harper Lee as an example of that when she wrote Mockingbird.

When a writer selects a subject it is because it has caught her eye. When you read a novel you are looking through an authorial eye. Quentin Tarantino never had a stunt double in his life. But one day he noticed a stuntman and his actor talking on set and had a, dare I say, novel idea. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was birthed.

A writer of literary intent is not writing a story for you. A writer writes what works for them. There is just no other way to do it. And that makes sense: there are many of “you” and only one writer. Think about Game of Thrones. The writers had one ending to their story. You and I and the neighbor had others. The story must spring from one voice: the author. Miraculously, every now and then the author’s story as told through her eye is so emotionally and psychologically true and beautiful that it is effective for many others. That is why there are a few masterpieces and then everything else of varying degrees of quality and value.

If American Dirt is a competent, but not great novel, it may be because even the five years of research the author did cannot replace the unconscious sensibility that one who sensibility that one who has lived it / almost lived it has. Still, there are many ways to approach this novel. You can read it as an immigration story told from the authorial pov of a white upper middle class American. The protagonist is not in what we think of as the usual immigrant situation, so this can be read as a telling of a rarely examined immigration story. No one can say that this would never happen or that the more common immigrant stories are so important that this one is unworthy.

Or it may be that American Dirt is a novel of little merit. IMHO that is about 88% of what is sold anyway so what’s the uproar about? If the beef is that the publishing industry ignores certain voices, there are better remedies than damning the creative efforts of one writer and extending that damnation into the dangerous territory of decreeing who can tell what story.

There are many, many stories and storytellers. We will never run out. If you don’t like this one, read some something else. Or write one. And hope for a miracle.

Wuthering Type: “they” is the Word of the Year, so they say

Wuthering Type: “they” is the Word of the Year, so they say: The proponents of they/ them never fully answer how we clear up the non- gender significance of the word: plurality. They argue that they wa...