The Sick Bag Song by Nick Cave
“A young boy climbs a riverbank.”
This tour memoir and more or less book of poetry opens up with the image above of a young boy climbing up a riverbank and feeling like he has a brush with a train passing close by. I was girding myself for the possibility that I had decided to read a book that Nick Cave write after the death of his son in a not impossibly similar situation. That would happen a few months later, and while I know Nick Cave has written about the death and put out several albums after, I don’t think I was up for something that heavy on an afternoon on Spring Break. This book was purportedly written on airline sick bags while Nick Cave and company were touring in 2014. I call it more or less a book of poetry because that’s the form it often seems to take — scrawled musings with a lyric quality to them. Nick Cave’s lyrics have often flipped back and forth between the maudlin and melodramatic to the profound, and the writing here fall into much of the same dichotomy. It’s not a perfect summation, but it has that feel to it. The musings on life in general (as I too have these) end up being less interesting than the specific events and moments he finds himself in during the book like being at Bryan Ferry’s house having dinner and feeling weird (I bet it was weird), and other rock star like events. What I do like about it is that Nick Cave sees himself as a rock star, and he is, so there’s earnest living here (no one ever accused him of not being earnest) and that includes his status as a huge star (even within a narrow audience). The audiobook is also narrated by Nick Cave, and it would have be weird not to, as his specific narration gives a Beat poetry quality to the book as a whole.
The Lemming Condition by Alan Arkin
“Sunlight streamed into the burrow, landed on the floor, worked its way slowly up the wall, and came to rest on Bubber’s face.”
Apparently Alan Arkin wrote some children’s books, like this one. You can guess from the title perhaps the general idea for the book here. A young lemming learns about the upcoming mass drowning called I think “The Big Swim” (I know I know, I have also read Snopes about it), and starts to question it. No one in his immediate surrounding seems to understand why he is and he keeps looking for answers to the basic question of “why?” And only when he meets an older lemming who apparently himself has avoided ever participating does he realize it’s possible to resist, or more so, just not be involved. And so he does, and when everything is over, he notices several other lemmings left over, having apparently slept through the event, and now that they’ve missed it, they’re bummed. The book leaves with the idea that these survivors will carry on the mythos of the next big swim.
It’s a book about conformity, but not really about resisting, not in the traditional way. The culture that includes this huge death drive can be escaped from, but not stopped. The book ends up being a little less like a dystopian novel, and just a little exploration of the Allegory of the Cave. You can have the knowledge, but don’t expect anyone to care.
How Do We Look by Mary Beard
“The history of art is about how we look.”
This book takes a moment in Mary Beard’s own history of looking at art, Kenneth Clark’s television show “Civilisation” coming on when she was young. Apparently this was a kind of awakening for her as she realized that cultures, including her own, could be looked at from outside and not only experienced from within.
From this moment, she takes us through various cultures around the world and applies the general idea of what looking shows us, and what new ways of looking might also opening for someone interested in seeing things from a different way.
Family Life by Russell Banks
“To go back to the beginning would be fruitless, timewasting, pretentious.”
Two competing narrative comprise this debut novel from Russell Banks. One allegorical, and one revelatory. Neither are great, but by the time you get to the revelatory one, it’s well-needed. The allegorical story takes place in a fantasy kingdom. A king is far from home and trying to return, but also trying not to return. He’s waylaid by a foreign adventure and the drugs and sexual exploits this brings about. So while he is trying to get back, it’s not so much to return to his wife that is taking him. Instead, it’s the sense of homecoming in general that motivates him, but also the worry that his wife is moving on or worse taking over. The allegorical element here speaks like a trauma narrative, using archetypal storytelling tropes to mask the damage that the king has experienced over seas.
From the revelatory story thread, from the queen, we learn that the story is really about a man, a Korean War vet, who has gone back into service during Vietnam. This drives a wedge into the family, since it was more or less understood that Korea was his time away, and not this new thing. When he’s shot down and captured, his wife finds a bit of solace in his not returning soon after and feels guilty about this, but also maybe feels a lot of guilt about not feeling as much guilt as she might.
Last Train to Perdition by Robert McCammon
Fangers on a Train. Eh? Eh.
The follow up to “I Travel by Night” in which a cowboy confederate vampires does jobs for hire. In the last book he has taken on a kind of apprentice, and we begin with her wondering if maybe she’s taken on more than she can handle. Like the last book, this one also serves two goals — continue building the world, and tell a specific story within that world. It’s a classic series-building trope, and it mostly works here. This one also ends with the implication of a sequel, but we haven’t gotten that yet. I don’t know what to do with these books exactly as they’re not nearly as good or developed at McCammon’s other books, even the not great ones, but the world itself is quite interesting. I am curious if he got waylaid by his other historical horror series or if this one has fizzled out for him. I suppose it’s possible it will also simply return at some point.
The Rule of St Benedict by St Benedict of Nursia
Benedict’s Rules for Cenobites. Well not entirely. This is a kind of guidebook written by St Benedict of Nursia, and in a lot of ways it’s a book for how to be a good monk, or if an an abbot, how to be a goo abbot. For the most part this book is not really about faith, in the way that faith is more or less assumed here — an audience consideration — but instead is really about the daily workings of a monastery from a few different levels. There’s specific recommendations for the sleeping arrangements of monks (single bed if possible, otherwise in shifts). There’s a set number of times you should allow a wayward monk back into holy orders — three strikes and you’re out apparently.
There’s also a daily set of recommendations to live by. Specifically there’s an additional 65 or so commandments on top of the big time. And they get pretty specific.
Here’s a list:
“In the first place, to love the Lord God with the whole heart, the whole soul and the whole
strength.
Then one’s neighbour as if oneself.
Then, not to kill.
Not to commit adultery.
Not to steal.
Not to covet.
Not to utter false witness.
To honour all men.
To do as one would be done by.
To deny oneself that one may follow Christ.
To chastise the body.
Not to embrace delights.
To love fasting.
To relieve the poor.
To clothe the naked.
To visit the sick.
To bury the dead.
To help in tribulation.
To console the sorrowing.
To become a stranger to worldly deeds.
To prefer nothing to the love of Christ.
Not to carry anger into effect.
Not to prolong the duration of one’s wrath.
Not to retain guile in one’s heart.
Not to make a false peace.
Not to abandon charity.
Not to swear, lest perchance one forswear.
To utter only truth from heart and mouth.
Not to return evil for evil.
Not to do injury, but to suffer it patiently.
To love enemies.
Not to curse in return those who curse one, but rather to bless them.
To bear persecution for righteousness.
Not to be proud.
Not to be given to much wine.
Not to be gluttonous.
The Rule of St. Benedict 6
Not given to much sleep.
Not to be sluggish.
Not to be given to grumbling.
Not to be a detractor.
To put one’s hope in God.
When one sees any good in oneself to attribute it to God, not to self.
But to recognize that evil always comes from self and to refer it to self.
To have wholesome fear of the day of judgment.
With fear to shrink from hell.
To long for eternal life with all spiritual desire.
To have the expectation of death daily before one’s eyes.
Hour by hour to keep guard over one’s every act.
To know for certain that God sees one everywhere.
Forthwith to dash down upon the Rock, even Christ, any evil thoughts approaching the
heart: and to lay them open before one’s superior.
To keep one’s mouth from evil or depraved speech.
Not to love to speak much.
Not to speak useless or mirth-provoking words.
Not to love much or excessive laughter.
To listen with goodwill to holy reading.
To be frequently occupied in prayer.
With tears and groaning daily to confess in prayer to God one’s past sins and concerning
those same sins to amend for the future.
Not to fulfil the desires of the flesh: to hate one’s own will.
To yield obedience in all things to the abbot’s precepts, even if he himself act contrary to
their spirit, the which be far from him: being mindful of that precept of the Lord: “What they say,
do ye; but what they do, do ye not.”
Not to wish to be called holy before one is, but to be so first, whereby one would be so
called the more truly.
By deeds daily to fulfil the precepts of God.
To love chastity.
Not to hate anyone.
Not to harbour jealousy.
Not to love contention.
To avoid elation.
To venerate seniors.
To love juniors.
In the love of Christ to pray for one’s enemies.
In case of discord with anyone to make peace before the setting of the sun.
And never to despair of the mercy of God.”
Not bad really, but talk about a preachy book.
Theodore Roosevelt by Louis Auchincloss
I think I don’t really much about Teddy Roosevelt. I am not an avid history or biography reader, so while I like a good narrative history and like to continuously update what I do and don’t know, the circumstances of Roosevelt mostly escape me except for the myth making elements of his life. And those are all here. What I do know about him probably mostly comes from Candace Millard’s book The River of Doubt, about his ill-fated trip into the Amazon jungle.
Anyway, what I get from this very small history by Louis Auchincloss is that in a lot of ways Teddy Roosevelt is a big giant personality of a president, but who oversaw the US in a relatively dead period of history. That’s not to say that nothing happened, as something is always happening, but it really feels like nothing much big happened. Perhaps that a commentary on his presidency, but I am not entirely sure exactly in what way. He still seems really interesting, but also, I don’t think I would have actually liked him much.
Trump was the cause of a million think pieces and hot takes. This is a think piece, by the historian Michael Kazin that was published in the weeks leading up to the 2016 election. He sees a crooked path for Trump to the White House, but one nonetheless. What this article is specifically about though is the history of populism that Trump was tapping into, the shift in that populism from historical roots, and the haziness of definitions in modern media.
Specifically Trump was talking about white people. When he said I will fix things, when he said things were bad, when he tapped into “economic anxiety”, and everything else he said, he was talking to, about, and for white people. But who exactly were these white people? It’s hard to say completely, at least not until much later. We know that a lot of those white people were not really Blue-collared or working class, but business class and owner class (of businesses like trades and construction etc). We also know that he couldn’t exactly say everything he wanted to, but he could communicate in different ways.
What strikes me as still hilarious looking back and forward is the idea that Trump sees or believes anything. He claims a lot though.