Category Archives: Book culture

Grace Paley

Mother’s Day sermons can get pretty saccharin, so this year when I was looking for readings for Mother’s Day, I turned to Grace Paley. No one could write about motherhood with less sentimentality, or with more humanity, than Grace Paley. Nobody could write about people with such a depth of humanity. I love her stories. Nothing happens in them, but they sound like real life to me. The characters are people I know, and they do things I can imagine doing myself. I can’t think of any other short story writer whom I like as much.

She died on Wednesday, at age 84. She called herself a “somewhat combative pacifist and cooperative anarchist.” If there were an afterlife (which she and I doubt very much), she would organize protests in the afterlife, just as her characters organize protests and political action in her stories….

A group of mothers from our neighborhood went downtown to the Board of Estimate Hearing and sang a song. They had contributed the facts and the tunes, but the idea for that kind of political action came from the clever head of a media man floating on the ebbtide of our lower west side culture because of the housing shortage. He was from the far middle plains and loved our well-known tribal organization. He said it was the coming thing. Oh, how he loved our old moldy pot New York.

…The first mother stood up… when the clerk called her name. She smiled, said excuse me, jammed past the knees of her neighbors and walked proudly down the aisle of the hearing room. Then she sang, according to some sad melody learned in her mother’s kitchen, the following lament requesting better playground facilities….

will someone please put a high fence up
around the children’s playground
they are playing a game and have only
one more year of childhood. won’t the city come…
to keep the bums and
the tramps out of the yard they are too
little now to have the old men … feeling their
knees … can’t the cardinal
keep all these creeps out

She bowed her head and stepped back modestly to allow the recitative for which all the women rose, wherever in the hearing room they happened to be. They said a lovely statement in chorus:

The junkies with smiles can be stopped by intelligent reorganization of government functions….

from Grace Paley’s story “Politics”

The best way to remember Grace Paley would be to engage in that kind of cooperative creative political action, of a combatively pacifist nature.

A rockin book of poems

My favorite living Unitarian Universalist poet is Everett Hoagland. Everett’s poetry was featured in our denominational magazine in the March/April, 2000, and Spring, 2004 (with interview), issues. His poems have been published in magazines ranging from poetry journals like The American Poetry Review and The Iowa Review, to the general interest magazine Essence, to political publications like The Progressive and People’s Weekly World. Everett also does worship services based on his poetry.

Everett has just published a new book of poetry, and he’s donating all proceeds from its sale to Treatment on Demand, a non-profit here in New Bedford that does fantastic work in the areas of HIV/AIDS and substance abuse. So for ten bucks, you can get a rockin book of poetry, perfect for reading out loud, poems that will in turn make your blood boil and serve as a balm for your soul in these crazed times of war and injustice.

Keep reading for Everett’s words on where the money is going, and how to order this book. (Hey, why not buy an extra copy of this book for your church’s youth group.) Continue reading →

Appreciations of Richard Rorty

Philosopher Richard Rorty died on June 8.

Jurgen Habermas writes an appreciation of Richard Rorty: Link. Not much of substance, but a nice appreciation by the man who is now arguably the greatest living philosopher.

Daniel Dennett’s appreciation is here — scroll down half way to find it. Dennett said that a difference between Rorty and himself was that he wanted the approbation of scientists, while Rorty wanted the approbation of poets.

Stop whining.

While stupid alter ego Dan is prostrated by the heat (actually, it’s a combination of his allergies, the heat and stupidity), Mr. Crankypants is back for a moment to berate all the idiots who are mad at the New York Slime for publishing a review of the latest Harry Potter doorstop-sized book before the official release date of the book. The horror!

The people who write in to the public editor of the N. Y. Slime say how “disappointed” and “upset” they are with the newspaper’s editors. Wait, isn’t this the newspaper that published George W. Bush’s false accusations that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Is this is the newspaper that you would trust with a review of a book that you really care about? Apparently, the answer to this second question is “yes”:

“I am shocked that The New York Times didn’t consider how upsetting this review would be to fans, like me, who have taken this journey with J.K. Rowling for many years and desperately just want to enjoy the final book without knowledge or hint of what is coming,” said Karl Hinze in a typical e-mail to Times editors.

Mr. Crankypants has advice for Mr. Hinze, and all the other Harry Potter fans who read the reviews before they read the book: Don’t read book reviews of books you care about, before you read the book. Especially not in the Times.

Completely shameless promotion

It finally arrived. Carol finally got a copy of the book she has been working on for the past year or so. The book, titled Reusing the Resource: Adventures in Ecological Wastewater Recycling, was published by the small non-profit she runs, Ecowaters — in other words, Carol co-wrote the book, edited it (with lots of assistance from her mother), and laid it out. The book has also been the cause of a certain amount of angst in our household, as it slipped farther and farther behind schedule over the past six months.

But at last the book has finally arrived, fresh from the printers. I got to leaf through a copy this afternoon, and I can tell you that it’s an attractive book, beautifully designed, chock full of solid information about reusing wastewater. I particularly like the fact that there are fifty short profiles of people and companies that have already built wastewater recycling into their homes, businesses, and skyscrapers — which makes you realize that recycling wastewater is not some hippy-dippy pipe dream, but financially viable reality. There are even a few illustrations by me (my only contribution to this project).

And if you really want to buy a copy, please buy it directly from Ecowaters. Amazon and other online booksellers force Ecowaters to cut their profits in half, and those profits are what fund their presentations, tours, and the rest of their educational mission. Available online using Paypal here. (I warned you that this was a completely shameless promotion.)

Book excitement

Friday

On a quiet side street in Somerville, Mass., two pre-adolescent girls were slowly pushing themselves along on their scooters. They were deep in conversation, ignoring the middle-aged woman walking just behind them (their mother?) — not ignoring the woman, but so engrossed in their conversation they weren’t aware of her. I barely caught the murmuring of their voices, but as they passed me I heard one of them say, “…but then in the sixth book, he….” Of course:– they were talking about Harry Potter.

Saturday

I was browsing in a used bookstore in Central Square, Cambridge. Two twenty-something clerks were chatting with each other.

“Did you hear that yesterday, some guy with a bullhorn was standing in Harvard Square shouting spoilers to everyone who walked by?”

“That’s just –” and the tone of her voice tells reveals how despicable she thinks it is. “People should be allowed to read the seventh book on their own.”

“I heard someone grabbed the bullhorn away from him or something.”

“Good.”

Sunday

J—-, who is headed off to college next fall, came to church. During social hour he was in a corner reading a large book. “The last book?” I asked him.

“No, I’m rereading the sixth book first,” he said. He had gotten his copy of the final Harry Potter book at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday from Baker Books, an independent bookseller near New Bedford. He arrived at about ten, and was first in line. He said Baker Books was extremely well organized — the books were pre-ordered and pre-paid, the staff talked to everyone in line and checked them off on their master list, and when 12:01 came, everyone filed in and just picked up their book. “It was over really quickly,” he said. “But I heard the Barnes and Noble in the mall wasn’t well organized, and it took forever.” We agreed that independent bookstores are the best.

Too many books…

Between reading for sermons and reading for pleasure, the pile of books next to my writing table has gotten pretty high. To help me remember what I’ve read in the past two weeks, here are short takes on a few of those books:

The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and other Hangouts at the Heart of Community, Ray Oldenburg.

Oldenburg claims to be a sociologist, but this book is filled with undocumented assertions that smack of nostalgia for a time that never existed. Worse, the book is rooted in prejudices of which Oldenburg doesn’t seem to be aware. Like this sentence telling why wine bars are driving pubs out of business:

The wine bars are more comfortable [than pubs], cosmopolitan, and favored among working women and the softer male that one finds everywhere throughout the modern world these days….

Based on that statement, I guess I’m glad that Oldenburg’s favorite “great good places” are fast disappearing.

Passion: New Poems, 1977-1980, June Jordan.

Jordan claims the poetic tradition of Walt Whitman, and claims Whitman as a poet of liberation, which works for me. Her poems are certainly poems of liberation. Yet she isn’t Puritanical in her liberative message. Take, for example, the poem “Alla Tha’s All Right, but,” which Sweet Honey in the Rock made into a song:

Somebody come and carry me into a seven-day kiss
I can’ use no historic no national no family bliss
I need an absolutely one to one a seven-day kiss…

Amen. I’m already figuring out how to use this poem (and others of her poems) in a worship service….

A Man without a Country, Kurt Vonnegut.

Vonnegut’s last book is short, uneven, and slight. But it’s got some kickin prose epigrams buried in the meandering text…

Shrapnel was invented by an Englishman of the same name. Don’t you wish you could have something named after you?

…and for good measure Vonnegut throws in some delightfully vicious offhand ad hominem attacks on U.S. political leadership:

…She wrote, “I’d love to know your thoughts for a woman of 43 who is finally going to have a child but is wary of bringing a new life into such a frightening world.”

Don’t do it! I wanted to tell her. It could be another George W. Bush or Lucrezia Borgia….

…and you’re quite sure Vonnegut feels he has listed the most violent man first. Slight as it is, I’ve already read this book twice.

Drawing the Line, poems by Lawson Fusao Inada.

Not just poems, but some good clear prose too, mostly telling quiet stories with lots of depth. The prose poem “Ringing the Bell” tells about a Japanese-American boy in a multi-racial neighborhood, making friends with a Mexican-American boy and his family. “Picking Up Stones” tells about a Zen teacher in an internment camp during World War II who wrote words on stones and scattered them outdoors. Some of the poems aren’t stories; “Just As I Thought” begins…

Just as I thought: One blue jay
                        shakes
                        a whole morning.

Just as I thought: The streetsweeper
                        is related
                        to the preacher….

…and goes one for six rhythmic pages, a collection of images and sounds and feelings that makes most sense when read (or chanted) aloud.

The Case of the Perjured Parrot, Erle Stanley Gardner.

A millionaire is found dead in his mountain cabin, with a parrot watching over his body. Perry Mason is called in, and he discovers that the parrot swears like a trooper and says things like, “Drop that gun, Helen…. Don’t shoot…. My God, you’ve shot me.” By the time the novel is done, there are three parrots (one of whom is brutally and bloodily murdered), a man who may or may not be dead, and a murder case that’s solved in the middle of the coroner’s trial.

In this crazy world, if I can’t get a seven-day kiss, at least I can read a Perry Mason novel.

Found poem

The weather was so perfect this afternoon — clear blue sky, refreshing breeze blowing out of the west, cool and delightful temperature — that I needed an excuse to get outside. I walked the three or four blocks over to Upstair Used Books. Ira, the owner of Upstair Used Books, has been working the library book sales, and he had a lot of new poetry.

I saw a book titled Sunflower Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry, and pulled it out to look at it. Tucked inside there was a sheet of typing paper — the good stuff, thesis paper — folded in half and with a short unsigned poem centered and neatly typed on it:

Near the solstice,
Everything sleeps, like
Thunder beneath the earth.
The passes are closed,
And the travelers rest.
Light flicker across
The valleys below.
The moon, almost full,
Bodes well.

So I bought the book.

As I was paying Ira for the book, I showed him the poem tucked inside it. He read it over once. ” ‘Thunder beneath the earth…’,” he said.

“Yeah, like something out of the Yi Jing,” I said. “That poem is really why I’m buying the book. Maybe I’ll frame it, the way it’s typed….”

” ‘The moon almost full…’,” said Ira, reading the poem over again. ” ‘Bodes well.’ Yeah, I like it more the second time. Hey, would you make me a copy….” So I went out and made a photocopy and brought it back to him. An unsigned found poem — who could resist?

Reading Boswell

Over the past ten years, I’ve been desultorily reading Boswell’s Life of Johnson. Today we’d call it a masterpiece of non-fiction that combines psychological insight, reportage, collage, anecdote, and narrative. But really, it’s a book about the moral and spiritual life of a public intellectual.

Last night, I came to this passage:

1777: Ætat. 68.]–In 1777, it appears from his Prayers and Meditations, that Johnson suffered much from a state of mind “unsettled and perplexed,” and from that constitutional gloom, which, together with his extreme humility and anxiety with regard to his religious state, made him contemplate himself through too dark and unfavourable a medium. It may be said of him, the he “saw God in the clouds.” Certain we may be of his injustice to himself in the following lamentable paragraph, which it is painful to think came from the contrite heart of this great man, to whose labors the world is so much indebted: “When I survey my past life, I discover nothing but a barren waste of time, with some disorders of body, and disturbances of the mind, very near to madness, which I hope He that made me will suffer to extenuate many faults, and excuse many deficiencies.” …

If Boswell were writing today, he would no doubt attempt to psychoanalyze Johnson; he would find that Johnson lacked sexual outlet following the untimely death of his wife, that Johnson’s “constitutional gloom” was in fact a clinical depression which could have been cleared up with a mood-elevating drug, that Johnson had Tourette’s Syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder, and that the disability of being blind in one eye (the result of a childhood bout with scrofula) affected him throughout his life. And if Boswell lived here in the United States, he probably would have gotten infected with our national mythology that the “pursuit of happiness” is the highest good, and he would have recommended a combination of psychoanalysis and happy consumerism to end Johnson’s woes.

I don’t know about you, but I certainly have surveyed my own life and thought, What a barren waste of time! –How little I have done (nothing, really) to leave the world better than it was I came into it! Better to say what is true than hide behind a bland psychologizing:– The usual liberal psychotherapy provides a pitifully meager answer to the question, How ought I to live out my life? Nor do the conservative platitudes of our time offer anything more; they just cloak psychology and pointless pursuit of happiness in strident nationalism or religious excess.

So we find more and more essentially sane people getting diagnosed as crazy-depressed and dosed up with anti-depressants. Our public discourse doesn’t allow us to carefully and honestly survey our lives, let alone admit that when we do survey our lives we are likely to find a good deal that is barren. Last night I took a long walk, thinking about what I’ve done with my life; and I found much that was barren. Anyone who is honest would find the same. What to do? Having already rejected strident nationalism, prosperity theology, religious fundamentalism, bland psychotherapy, over-medication, happiness through consumption, and a few other pointless things, I settled on some good honest soul-searching. I was not particularly happy to do so, and it’s never pleasant to realize that the barrenness of one’s own life is in part a reflection of the barrenness of public life. My deficiencies and faults didn’t go away. But when I went to sleep, my dreams were rich and untroubled, and I awakened with renewed energy.