BOOKS

"The Shack", by Wm. Paul Young

I recently read a book that changed my perceptions, or illuminated some previously held ones, and wanted to share my thoughts on this book with those around me, including those who occasionally peek on here to see what I am up to.

I just finished this book today and am still digesting it, so I am sure I will have more to say about it in the future. After I finished it, I went back through it and marked certain passages that really seemed to speak to me. In fact, the whole book seemed to be speaking to me, which is something I haven't felt in a long time. I wanted to write about it now while I still had the copy in my hands, and before I send it to someone who I would really like to share it with.

I have become aware that there is a lot of controversy about this book in Christian circles, which shouldn't really surprise anyone (isn't there always, particularly in terms of Christian fiction?). It doesn't surprise me, in a way, in terms of what I read in the book. There are some unusual ways of confronting ideas in the novel, a prime but obvious example that God is personified by a large African American woman with a sassy attitude and penchant for cooking and funk music. There are also some unusual ideas for approaching some questions of faith. The most notable examples that are highlighted in the controversy are the explanation of the trinity, and salvation and its relationship with sin.

This book was recommended to me by my friend Rachael, who had listen to me struggle with some common questions of faith. The same questions I raised, and many of us Christians raise, are dealt with in this book, and answers are offered, although not always the ones you would expect, questions such as:

How does a merciful God allow evil to exist in this world?

Why do bad things sometimes happen to good people?

What is expected of us in our relationship with God, and what can God offer us, and why?

What does God's love mean for us in terms of a relationship with Him, and with others?

How does the Trinity work, really?

How do we reconcile with those who have pained us in our life? How do we reconcile with God for the pain that exists in life, even when we love and trust in Him?

What does sin mean in this world, and does God use it to make decisions about our lives, both here on earth and after?

This is a book about forgiveness, and about how to love. This book may challenge some ideas you have about God, or confirm them. For me, it opened up my heart to accept some ideas I had been fighting in my personal life and relationships, although not in a way I would have expected, nor that all I know agree with. I feel like it helped me grow in my relationship with God and with others close to me in my life, as well as those I don't know as well but who are involved in the community around me that God intended for us to be involved in. I feel it calling me to walk down the dock of faith and trust, even in the absence of certainty, and love in the way God calls us to love, and not just in the way that our society teaches us to love. It's letting go of these preconceived notions, and freeing ourselves to really trust completely, that let Peter walk on water, with Jesus by his side, and right now, that is what I am intending to do.

Faith. Trust. Love.

Listening to: Fugitive, Indigo Girls, Swamp Ophelia
BOOKS
Sylvia Plath
Letters Home: Correspondence 1950-1963
Selected and Edited with Commentary by Aurelia Schober Plath
This book made me so very sad. I put it down with a heavy heart and haven't even wanted to explore how I felt about it, for a while at least. The ending, well, it just killed me.
In this collection of letters sent home by Sylvia Plath, we are shown the subject viewed by her family, and boy, do we just fall in love with her. Sylvia was a delightful person, very mature for her age always, insightful, and talented. She was also very ambitious. In these years, we see how she sets goals for herself and her writing. In her late teens she was sending out articles to Seventeen, and was a published author of short stories before she made it into Smith College. We see her struggles through the letters, stories of dates with boys and always a dedication to her art. She agonized endlessly about her works being sent out, always with great excitement and fear all the same. She set timetables and developed relationships with editors. Her ambition was strong, and we see how fiercely she pursued her writing goals.
Once I read comments from fans about the movie based on her life (see Sylvia), and some were angry that the movie only starts around the time Sylvia meets Ted Hughes, who became her husband. Her fans were angry at the injustice, because by only looking at that part of her life, you miss all the stuff that came before, and that is the stuff that was remarkable about Sylvia. If you only saw her in relation to Hughes, you missed her achievements before him, such as the attainment of a Fullbright scholarship to earn her M.A. at Cambridge and the scores of published poems and stories she had under her belt before she married the man who would outshine her and then walk out on her, leaving her to face her demons alone.
Sylvia was determined to be a writer, and not just any writer, but a Writer, one of significance and fame. Her marriage with Ted Hughes complimented that dream, as he was also a published poet some few years older than her, and who challenged her and pushed her as a poet. Her letters talk about the help he gave her in terms of studying for her masters degree and inspiring many euphoric poems involving nature.
After I had watched the movie "Sylvia", I had been mad for three days over Ted Hughes. After this book, I can't say that was any different. However, I did understand things a lot better. I see why she had fallen in love with him, and stayed in love with him. There is so much happiness in their early years. Sometimes I wondered, while reading this book, how much happiness was worth the unhappy ending? Does the means justify the end?
And poor Sylvia, she put up such a courageous front. Her letters are always positive, and full of hope, and you wonder how this was a girl who suffered from depressive thoughts. Was it a shield to her family of her true deeper struggles? In the commentary by her mother, we learn of an episode Sylvia had where she had to withdraw from school due to mental breakdown, around the time she was rejected for a prestigious writing class.
This episode was clear in S.'s mind as something to avoid, and also perhaps she wanted to not worry her mother with. Perhaps her later struggles with Ted were something she didn't feel comfortable writing home about. Problems arose when Ted began having an affair, and S. was very jealous and sad about it. During this time, she never wrote news home about it, but it was readily apparent when her mom came to visit them for that summer. Shortly after, Sylvia Plath divorced Ted Hughes, which was very difficult for her financially. She retained full care of their two young children, Frieda and Nick. (Coincidentally, and tragically, during the time I was reading this book, news broke that Nicolas Plath,"Nick", committed suicide in Alaska).
After this break up of her ten year marriage, she struggled to make ends meet and continue writing. It was the coldest winter in London's history. Keeping warm, she would write in the morning before the kids rose. She was extremely sick of the flu, nearly died of it during this time, but this was also the most productive few months of her life. She was considered a quite famous poet in London around this time period, and had meetings with editors and two books in publication...when the book ends abruptly with the arrival of sad news for the mother of this wonderful woman.
The last letter in the book was dated February 4, 1963, and is full of assurances that things are looking up, she has plans for the future, she wants her mom not to worry about her. This last letter ends with the mention that she will see a doctor referred to her who will "help me weather this difficult time".
This is how the book ends (which is the most tragic part, but if you don't like spoilers, you don't have to read it).
On February 12, 1963, my sister received a cablegram from Ted, telling us "Sylvia died yesterday" and giving details of the time and place of the funeral service.
Her physical energies had been depleted by illness, anxiety and overwork, and although she had for so long managed to be gallant and equal to the life experience, some darker day than usual had temporaily made it seem impossible to pursue.
Sniff.
more on that later

BOOK REVIEW

VANITY OF DULUOZ

by Jack Kerouac

"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity"

Ecclesiastes 1:2

My, my, Jack. What have you done?

The answer, it seems, is "everything under the sun".

This book starts and ends with reference to Ecclesiates, or the "Wisdom of Solomon", from the Old Testament. It shows a Jack who, in his older years, did in fact turn back to his "little lamby Jesus", as opposed to the Buddhism heavily endorsed in the last Kerouac book I reviewed (see Dharma Bums).

It is also the prattle of old and hardened Jack, heavily hitting the sauce during this time and entrenched in the cultural viewpoint of his mother. The book was written in a tone directed towards his third "wifey", Stella Sampas, in an attempt to show her where he had been and how he got to where he is now. The story is a recap of Jack's "formative" years, covering time periods from his early years as a student and athlete in Lowell, MA, to his time in the Merchant Marine, and ending with the death of his father in 1944. It is essentially the description of the events that led him to find his calling as a writer.

It is also the most boring and tedious work I have read of his, and runs a close tie for the most difficult Kerouac book for me to finish (up there with Visions of Cody). I would not recommend this book to anyone who was not a serious Kerouac fan like myself. In truth, it was only my desire to know all about his life and read every line he has written that compelled me to finish this book. I kept wanting to put it down in place of another fiction novel.

The book is somewhat interesting in that it includes details from Kerouac's life history not found in other places. Some of the stories from the Merchant Marine days are actually fascinating, including his travel to exotic locations. It amused me to read stories about him leaving the boat when he wasn't supposed to to get drunk somewhere, sometimes losing all his money in the meantime and having complicated scenarios where he has to somehow get the money to get back to the boat. To know about what inspired him to write before he wrote anything that amounted to much was engaging, and I would love to get my hands on a copy of The Sea is My Brother, or the manuscript he lost in a taxi cab that was never recovered or published.

Another facet of the book that I found interesting as well is how he refers to his friends, or doesn't, in this book. By this time in Jack's life, his friendship with Allen Ginsberg had lasted through several decades. Ginsberg was, I believe, instrumental in getting Jack published and getting him literary attention. Even though their friendship had suffered a cooling off period due to Kerouac absorbing some of his mothers anti-sematicism, Ginsberg was still victim to phone calls in the wee hours of the morning from a drunken Jack. However, Kerouac says very little about Ginsberg in this book, even though this was a significant friendship during this time period, and what he does say is not very nice ("I never really liked him much", also a suggestion that Jack and his first wife felt Allen to be lecherous). The book does, however, wax sentimental about William Burroughs (all these people by pseudonym, of course), who by this point had put Kerouac clean out of his life for all his wine-reeking offensiveness as a friend.

Historically, this book is important in terms of understanding how Jack the boy became Jack the man, who published many novels of importance during his lifetime. However, it is written with little of Jack's usual "poetry-like prose", is missing the language that made his previous books so popular. It is a good story without the narrative and depth to support it. The style is tedious and the tone pretentious, and I would put any other Kerouac book in front of this one as more accurate examples of what I loved about his writing.

AND THE BEAT GOES ON....
To continue with my occasional riffs on Beat Generation books, and my quest to re-read all of the "Dulouz Legend", I have another book review to share with you....
DHARMA BUMS
by Jack Kerouac

Ahhhh. Very nice. I loved this book.
I actually read this the first time when I was a teenager, but I think I didn't absorb it completely. I couldn't remember many of the details, and my memories were connected with two guys I knew in school that reminded me of the main characters. Perhaps it is just that during that time, my understanding was that they WERE characters, fictional devices used to tell a story about hiking up a mountain and hitchhiking. My knowledge of Kerouac's life is much more complete now, and now, half a lifetime later and reading it again, I understand. I see the character "Ray Smith" as Kerouac himself, telling a story centering around his friend, Gary Snyder(pictured above as he was at the time of the book), known as "Japhy Ryder" in the novel.
Now, granted, Kerouac always told a version of the truth, although probably not all the truth. He certainly made free use of poetic license. He also tended to base his characters on real people, who were "true romantic heroes of the West", but distorted them and blew them up so that what you are seeing is really a caricature, not a character.
Gary Snyder himself said at one point Dharma Bums was not Kerouac's best work, and that "it was written too hastily". It is true that Kerouac was under a lot of pressure from his editors to produce a book to follow up "On the Road" that had more commercial appeal than some of the other things he was working on at the time (like "Visions of Cody", which is a tough read, even for a Neal Cassady (aka "Cody") fan).
However, I really liked this book this time around. It has some of the best descriptions of natural beauty that I have read ever in a novel. He gives detailed descriptions of hikes taken with Snyder, including a climb up Matterhorn, that took my breath away. This is Kerouac laying the groundwork for the "rucksack revolution" he visualized, and probably inspired lots of young people to pick up packs and head for the open road and undiscovered vistas.
The book ends where "Desolation Angels" picks up, with Kerouac on an isolated mountain top in Washington called Desolation Peak (here in the pic). I found it very interesting to read this description of his adventure here, with him painting it in happy tones, instead of the depressing tones of "Desolation Angels". Instead of focusing on his loneliness and inner struggles, he describes the scenery and his place in it with happiness and peace.
Snyder certainly influenced Kerouac in terms of religion. Kerouac was already intrigued by Buddhism when he met Snyder, but here in this book, you see Snyder teaching him more about this religion that they both had in common at this time. Snyder was truly and deeply Buddhist, and teased Kerouac that at the end of his life, he would be praying to his Christian God, with all his notions of "little lamby Jesus", and that teasing was right on. Here in this book, though, they introduce several notions of Buddhism that may have inspired readers to learn more about eastern religions themselves.
Overall, I decided that this was the ONE book I would ask my husband to read. We have been married for ten years and he does not read or have any interest in hearing about the books that mean so much to me, but he told me early in our marriage that he would read ONE book that I selected and talk about it with me. Ten years later, I still had not found that one book that summed up everything I liked about reading.
Well, folks, this one is it.

DOWN THE REVOLUTIONARY ROAD

This weekend, my best girlfriends and I met at a lovely Greek restaurant. We watched the sun set over downtown in a cozy little booth eating hummus. Then our group of two became four and we connected from across wooden tables. I was dragging my friends out to see "Revolutionary Road", which apparently is only playing at the LandMark River Oaks theater in the greater Houston area at this time. Remarkable.

The first show was sold out and the evening found us all united in laughter at a recording studio "in the ghetto", surrounding by interesting people. After this, we sipped hot cocoa in a cappucino bar, then sat in stuffy theater for sad story. There are no happy endings here.

I read this book and I wanted to discuss it with my friends. It was a very thought provoking novel. The movie, not so much. The truth is in the details, and it is difficult to analyze something without all the facts. Just watching the movie, you don't get the tiny little facts.

However, I still want to analyze. I will post viewpoints here.

The first two questions deal with choices and roads...

Book Review
Jack Kerouac
King of the Beats
A Portrait
by Barry Miles
Thank you, Barry Miles. Such a lovely portrait you drew of my Jack.
(intended sarcasm). This book, I believe, was a big reason I became depressed last month. It is a haunting, depressing sort of portrait, the kind that has some redeeming quality but you just don't want to look at.
The label "King of the Beats" had a taunting quality towards the end of Kerouac's life, when he felt misunderstood and miscast by the American public. He spent the last ten years of his life drinking it all away. He basically killed himself with alcohol over a prolonged period of his life, and it is fascinating to wonder why.
Reading this book was a sharp, hard look at Kerouac as a wandering neurotic. It does not display Kerouac in a redeeming light, especially after the 1940s. It does, however, give great insight into the relationship between Jack and his first wife, Edie Parker. The first one hundred pages out of three hundred total are devoted to Jack's life before he went "on the road", and this is a vital part of history transcribed in a detail not seen in the other two Kerouac biographies I read recently. It was interesting to learn that Jack slept around, and then she did the same to get back to him, which caused a split in the relationship. This pattern he repeated with his second wife, Joan Haverty, who bore him a daughter he never claimed.
Barry Miles is harsh in his commentary about Kerouac's relationship with his daughter. Jack later gave her permission to use his name, and she wrote two of them before dying at an early age, a death that Miles strongly pins on Kerouac's drunken chest. Twice in the book, Miles condemned him for denying his own child, for not being there for her.

"His fans claim that he had a great heart, but he cared more for his cat than for his own daughter and there is all the difference in the world between sentimentality and sensitivity."

Miles demands that Kerouac "be held responsible for his daughter's misery" and suggests his absence caused her family to be so desperate that she sold her body in the streets at a young age, while he drank away his fortune.
In the end, this book left me wondering what kind of man would Jack had been if he had ever gotten past himself and experienced a true deep personal growth, if he had allowed himself to mature. If instead of trotting all over the world looking for kicks, what if he had allowed himself to be a family man, and take care of his responsibilities, transcend his personal issues with women and God? What if Kerouac hadn't become a drunk, but instead a mature person, equipped with the right tools to handle his fame and provide for his family?
I used to hold Jack Kerouac up as this romantic figure. I even fancied I would be in love with him if I had met him in true life. It is easy to think that when reading his incredible prose that sounds like poetry. The man was a genius with words, but he was terrible with people. After reading this, I realized that had I known him, I would not have wanted to be friend or lover to him. He took, he used, he overextended, and he offended.
Once of his friends with his early days, before Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady came in his life, was Henri Cru. Miles shows us Cru ripping up Jack's last letter to him and "flushing them down the toilet with all my other memories of Jack". Even patient Ginsberg had almost had it with him towards the end, although he remained a faithful friend, despite the anti-semitic beliefs Kerouac shared with his mother. Who knew, Kerouac, a big fan of McCarthyism as well?
Basically, Miles gives a portrait of Kerouac that is not a flattering one. He even suggest some sexual trysts that I am not sure I believe. We see Kerouac as manipulative, promiscious, and full of self-aggrandizing dreams about being the best novelist in the world.
He was scornful of others work, incredibly jealous, and not above send scathing letters to his friends, then call them at two in the morning, drunk and wanting to talk. He was the kind of friend you would get rid of fast, the kind of lover who would never last. He wanted to have a spiritual faith, but not abide by its codes of conduct. He is basically someone only a mother could love, and perhaps his did, a little too much.
In the end, I had to drop Kerouac as my romantic fantasy, and that loss was staggering. I think I am going to have to go read one of his best books just to get a fix for my hurting heart.
Thank you, Barry Miles. Such a lovely portrait.
(wiping tarnish off a crown of thorns)

BOOK REVIEW

Kerouac: A Biography

by Ann Charters

The word on the beat streets is that Charters' biography is the best of the works intrepreting Jack's life and influence. This was the book to read, so when I came across it, naturally I had to buy it.

I read the preface by the author first, written in 1986, some fourteen years since the book's original publication, which was about four years after Kerouac's death.

In it, Ann Charters describes how her husband Sam, who was a poet and novelist, helped her write the book while they were living in Sweden as a protest against Vietnam. She notes that Gary Snyder and Micheal McClure gave her encouragment along the final stages, which is interesting to me. These are the two literary minds and friends of Kerouac's helping to preserve his legacy after his premature death, because they felt his story needed to be told through Charters. The book is dedicated to Allen Ginsberg, who gave Charters great assistance during the writing of the book, with interviews and unlimited access to his archives and photos.

Initially, the book felt very dry to me. I was just starting to get disappointed that I wasn't reading anything I didn't already know, based on reading the "early" books of "The Duluoz Legend" - Visions of Gerard, Doctor Sax, and Maggie Cassidy. It seemed to be reciting facts that we all knew to be true - that Kerouac was born in Lowell, MA; was an athlete at school; lost a brother at an early age.

Around Chapter Three, the story began to broaden some, when Kerouac moves to Ozone Park and begins dating Edie Parker. This is an interesting relationship to me. He marries her, then leaves her two months later, saying later he felt himself getting too comfortable.

Depth was given to the relationship between Allen Ginsberg and Kerouac in this novel. It becomes very clear that Ginsberg was a major help in getting Kerouac published, and yet was rebuffed by never being developed into a major romantic hero in his novels, with Kerouac instead writing character study novels featuring Neal Cassady and Gary Synder. In the book is a photo Charters snapped of Allen Ginsberg, John McClellon Holmes, and Gregory Corso linking arms at Kerouac's funeral.

Jack got a little help from his friends. Ginsberg worked tirelessly to promote him among the literary set, poets and writers from New York and San Francisco. Holmes is credited with naming the Beat Generation and his novel Go was the first to be published covering this group of people, the circle of literary influence. Gregory Corso was by this time a well known Beat poet.

Through this novel, one could see how it would have aggravated people like Kenneth Rexroth, who had spent his professional life developing the San Francisco poetry scene, to see these characters - three guys from New York, and one from Lowell - become known for bringing the "Poetry Renaissance of San Francisco", where poetry was never dead.

This book comes alive with the relationships between people, and a sense of who each of them were and their place in Jack's life. To me, this is part of what I enjoy about the Beat poets - how they helped each other during different times with inspiration, editing, typing, and promoting. They influenced each others work or provided a muse. These "power friendships" amaze me.

Without Neal Cassady, without Allen Ginsberg, if made to face his responsibilities instead of having cross country adventures, what would Kerouac have been? We are all influenced by the people around us, and in this case, it led to a revolution of the mind, and the legacy of an author who transcribed the world he saw around him.

In the end, there was many details about Kerouac's life that I learned through this book, and it was an enjoyable read. I have a greater understanding of the relationships with people and places that helped Kerouac transcend his own unraveling, becoming the legend that he always thought he was meant to be.

Book Review

THE TIPPING POINT:

How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

by Malcolm Gladwell

This is without a doubt the best book I have read this year. It is a book that will change the way you think about people, fads, fashions, and events.

Published in 2000, this book generated a lot of buzz in the business world. In fact, I had heard it mentioned in my company, a speaker at a conference addressing how we could use the ideas in the book to push our agenda within the company, or the industry as a whole.

When I had a chance to borrow it, I did. It took me a few weeks to finally decide to pick it up. The back synopsis seemed dry and did not attract my interest. Once I began reading it, though, I couldn't put it down.

The concepts that Gladwell puts out there in this book now provide a framework for the way I view social and business interactions. I found myself using the lexicon in the book with a friend and realized when she gave me a blank look that I would have to loan the book to her before we could continue the conversation. I want all my friends to have read this book so we can talk about it.

The main idea of the book is that social epidemics work through certain principles, and the inspiration of this book is to apply those principles to cause ideas, trends, and social behavior to cross "the tipping point" in a positive manner.

The principles outlined in the novel include an examination of the "Three Rules of Epidemics" - the Law of the Few, The Stickiness Factor, and the Power of Context. Through several real-life examples, Gladwell shows us just exactly what those rules mean and how they work.

The examples are just as fascinating as the principles themselves. I was particularly intrigued by the Case Study on Chapter Seven, entitiled "Suicide, Smoking, and the Search for the Unsticky Cigarette". It examines why antismoking programs have not been successful in stopping teen smoking, and offers another approach from examining the problem under the filter of the principles. It is a great example of how sometimes people make generalities or assume they understand what the cause of the problem is without really looking at if the data fits it.

In this case, as in the other examples in the book, Gladwell has really done his homework. He is trying to determine how those principles apply to this problem. The Law of the Few shows us, through the data from Hans Eysenck's work, there is a certain core "smoking personality" that includes attributes that most heavy smokers share, and that those attributes are considered rebellious and impressive to teenagers, and makes them more likely to try smoking themselves. However, of those teens who try smoking, only some of them find it appealing enough to continue as a habit.

Through the work of Alexander Glassman, a Columbia University researcher, Gladwell identifies the "stickiness factor" of smoking as it relates to psychiatric disorders, and implies that the secret to how "sticky" smoking is relates to the genetic makeup of an individual; e.i., how the body processes serotonin and dopamine. Preventing smoking through billboards and advertising that explains the harmful effects of smoking, therefore, would not be as effective at reducing the "stickiness" of the habit as treating depression would be, or treating the cycle of addiction.

There is more, lots more, but you'll just have to read the book to check it out for yourself. You'll read about the "broken windows" theory, and how, when applied to graffiti and farebeating on New York subways, this simple idea created safer subways. You'll learn about the techniques the Childrens Television Network used to make Sesame Street "sticky". Most of all, you'll learn techniques on how to effect change yourself, in your part of the world, in a way which benefits society at large.

Book Review

Wagons West!

A Series by Dana FullerRoss

"How do you keep yourself from

going crazy watching kids all day?",

asks my mother-in-law

"Get a book", says her sister.

While out on the western front, watching kids play at my mother-in-laws, I really needed a book. I had temporarily misplaced the Solzhenitsyn book I discussed in a previous entry.

I'm not really good at sitting still, as my friends know. I need to have something to do.

My mother-in-laws sister had given her a box of books from a rummage sale. A collection of them caught my eye and eventually I picked one up, Texas!, and read it in about two days.

Then I picked up another one, California!.

Then followed Oregon!, Independence!, and Washington!.

This had me reading this part of the series in the following volume order: Fifth, Sixth, Fourth, First, Ninth, out of twenty four, covering American history from 1837-1876.

I spent so much time in my head with wagon trains and pioneers, and being out in the Old West, that I begin to think like one. I viewed the world from the mentality of a survivor. I enjoy books the most when they teach me something, and these books were full of history and a peek into a different kind of life, where women had to make meals from scratch around the campfire and men had to hunt and fend off predators and enemies.

I also gained some new understanding of the "manifest destiny", and how settling these areas was important to the future of America as a young country. Pioneers were not just adventurous and self-reliant, they were also patriotic.

I was most intrigued by the characters in the story. I didn't realize how emotionally invested I was with them, though, until my favorite character died in the ninth volume. I missed him, and so did the family he belonged so. That is the hook that draws you into this series.

I felt like Ross's writing style was much like Danielle Steel, with more diverse characters and less romance. There was a lot of love in these books, between families and friends, but it stopped short of being sappy or droll.

Instead, it was a vibrant look into history, and made it come alive with human nature and understanding.

BOOK REVIEW

One Day In the Life of Ivan Denisovich

by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize for Literature

When I was visiting my friend Misso, I was in open admiration of his large collection of books, mostly of social and political significance. I asked him if I could borrow one, just one book for my trip. He thought for a while, and then said, "I know...here", and handed me a copy of this book.

I would recommend to anyone planning on reading this book to make sure it is an issue published after 1967, the "new edition", and to stop first and read the publisher's note, introduction, and the section entitled "Instead of a Foreword". Without reading those pieces, much of the cultural and historical significance of the book would be lost.

The publisher's note includes a letter written by Solzhenitsyn to the Fourth National Congress of Soviet Writers in 1967 which outlines offenses against creative works by the Soviet censorship agency, and rebukes the Union of Soviet Writers for not taking a stronger stance to support the forward movement of Soviet culture by opposition to the censorship of works. He accuses the union of turning a blind eye to unjust imprisonment, persecution, slander and press abuse of its writers without showing them public support, and in fact being the very ones to hand over the names of 600 writers to the government, who promptly sent these writers to prisons and labor camps for nothing more than expressing "their anticipatory judgments about the moral life of man and society, or to explain in their own way the social problems or the historical experiences that have been so deeply felt in our country."

The last part of the letter is a list of personal grievances towards the Union, including the theft of his intellectual property, a novel called "In the First Circle", which was taken away by the state and denied publication, but then published and passed around a select group of literary officials.

Curiously enough, during the time I was reading the reviewed novel, Solzhenitsyn and "In the First Circle" were making the news, now some forty years later. This now celebrated work is being published for the first time in English, in an uncut version anticipated to be released by HarperCollins in 2009.

Reading this letter gives a good sense of the political situation of the time, and an understanding of why some citizens were in the labor camps of the time period, the setting of the novel at hand.

The novel is exactly what it is titled - one day in the life of a man named Ivan Denisovich, who is a prisoner in one of these camps. There is nothing terribly remarkable about Ivan, or "Shukhov", as he is also referred to. He is not a leader of a revolt against the guards. He is not a highly regarded member of the labor force who gains special privileges, nor is he a lowly peon who gets picked on. He is the middle of the road, average, every day prisoner, and in choosing that type of person, on a day like every other day, with no spectactular action happening, lies Solzhenitsyn's genius.

One would expect the characters to feel depression about their situation, about unfair punishment, being forced to perform difficult manual labor outside in the Siberian winter, with the temperature below zero and with very little nourishment. Here, though, lies the beauty of human beings, the ability to adapt to their situation and find sources of joy and hope, even in the most hopeless of situations. The feeling one gets upon reading this novel is that during times of survival, the character of man is more resilient than one would think, even if happiness exists only in making it through another day of life, or obtaining a special treat through an act of loyalty or acquiscence. Even though Ivan's life left much to despair about, like a wife he hardly knows after years of forced seperation and will probably never see again, or a physical surival based on conserving the small portions of bread rations and soup made from rotten fish and old cabbage, he doesn't go to sleep at night lamenting his fate, instead feeling happy and lucky.

Comparing the situations of the prisoners in the book, and with the addition of knowledge gained by written the introductory pieces, to today's culture in America, one walks away with a renewed appreciation for the freedoms and protection granted by our Constitutional amendments. The book serves as a reminder of the importance of creative works in preserving historical context and deepening our understanding of human nature.

Book review

Jack's Book: An Oral Biography of Jack Kerouac

by Barry Gifford and Lawrence Lee

I bought this book at City Lights bookstore when visiting San Francisco. I wanted to learn more about the life of Kerouac, the writer I adore the most. After reading about fourteen of his books since my teenage years, I feel as if I know him well already, but I still wanted to fill in the gaps. I wanted to know the reasons for his eventual unwinding in the downward spiral of his latter years. I wanted to know what became of his friendship with Cassady, and what killed his relationships with women.

In the end, the book did not offer me any answers for two of the questions I wondered about originally. I liked the author's literary device of allowing others to actually tell the story, but felt like there was not enough of that. It came across as a narrative full of holes interspiced with sections from interviews with the other players, whose stories were as difficult to follow sometimes as the narrative. Some chronology was lost in both the narrative and the interviews, and I would go back to see if I missed something often, only to realize it was just never there or fully explained.

This book was originally published in 1978, so reading what Kerouac's friends, lovers, and acquaintances had to say about him needs to be tempered by the fact that this was less than ten years after he died. It has now been almost forty years, so I think it would be interesting if these authors did another set of interviews and see how perspectives have changed.

The authors set out to let these people who knew Jack intimately tell the story of his life. In the introduction, they state their objective as "we hoped [the result] would be a big, transcontinental conversation, complete with interruptions, contradictions, old grudges, and bright memories, all of them providing a reading of the man himself through the people he chose to populate his work."

It is interesting from a psychological standpoint this choice the authors made to let people tell the stories the way they remembered them, after their personal internal "revision" of events. The authors allowed the reader to decide for themselves which version was closest to the truth. In the end, they let Kerouac's lifelong friend and fellow "Beat Generation" crony Allen Ginsberg read the uncorrected galleys before publication of the book. Ginsberg's response, Gifford says, was branded in his memory: "My God, it's just like Rashomon - everybody lies and the truth comes out!"

Just like Kerouac himself, each of the versions of the truth present contradictions and yet somehow are strains of the truth, the truth as revealed through the eyes of perception. This is apparent even in his novels. Kerouac is known for his method of prose which involved telling a story of his varied experiences, often with the same circle of friends, but many of those friends interviewed for this book expressed that the version Kerouac presented in his novels was often different from the way they remembered it. For instance, the woman who was the model for the character Mardou Fox in the Subterraneans says about reading the manuscript of the novel when it was completed that "these are not the times as I knew them and the people, with the exception of his friends, were not as I knew them." This is a common refrain, and it would suggest to some that Kerouac was adjusting the truth, or perhaps not telling the truth, but I believe it was that he applied his unique filter to the experience, like we all do, and perhaps offered a romanticized version of the truth, such like the ones we all tell ourselves.

In the end, I decided that it was John Clellon Holmes whose version of truth in this novel most likely coincided with my opinion on the truth. He, of all of Kerouac's friends, seemed the be the one who understood him the most intellectually, and Ginsberg seemed the one who understood him the most emotionally.

Holmes was a fellow writer whose book Go, (published after Kerouac's first novel and before the publication of On the Road, the book that made Jack famous) was the first written mention of "the Beat Generation", and the phrase entered American lexicon when Gillbert Millstein reviewed Go for the New York Times. In 1952, Millstein asked Holmes to write an article defining the generation for the Sunday section of the Times, and Holmes complied with "This IS the Beat Generation", and this set the stage in some respects for the movement move into media hype which in the end, became part of Jack's demise.

Holmes seemed to understand that with Kerouac, with all of us, it is not the black and white, but rather the shades of grey that define us. He understood the man behind the contradictions. Others offered varied interpretations of Kerouac's baffling religious beliefs, but like Holmes, I understand that it was possible, although it seems counterintuitive, that Kerouac could both be a practicing Catholic and a budding Buddhist. Kerouac was known in his latter years for his interest in Buddhism, and several friends recount seeing him carry A Buddhist Bible around with him, but yet he could never turn away from the idea of his "little lamby Jesus" and continued to turn to his saints and Catholic traditions to feel closer to his savior. Both the ideas of Buddhism and Catholicism are apparent in his work, and he sort of moves between them. It makes sense to me personally as a former Catholic who only truly feels closer to God through worship after a traditional Catholic Mass, but who has explored Eastern religions as well, and believes one can blend those ideas into a coherent personal philosophy about religion. This is not a popular idea among fundamentalists in either sect, and even Kerouac's friends remember being confused, or simply thought Kerouac could not let go of Catholicism because of his mother.

Naturally, Kerouac's mother is present throught the book, and several friends offer up understanding along a lifelong theme of Jack's interdependent relationship with his mother. Perhaps that relationship has to do with Kerouac's inability to maintain successful relationships with women. The authors do little to explain Kerouac's marriages, and in fact no interviews with the three women Kerouac married are present in the book except for at the end when his last wife, Stella, discusses his return to his hometown and the day he died. She had been married to him for two and a half years at the time of his death, and helped him in those years take care of both his ailing mother and himself, by this time deep into alcoholism and seclusion.

Neal Cassady, the central figure in most of Kerouac's work, was present very little in the last ten years of Kerouac's life. I think this is an interesting facet that could be explored more deeply, and may look to other sources to help me understand what happened to their friendship that inspired Jack to both develop his unique writing style and give him material with which to fill at least two of his thirty published books. At the height of Jack's fame, right after On the Road was published and and during the media storm that followed, Cassady was arrested on trumped up drug charges and spent two and a half years in San Quentin. Kerouac explains the changes in a television performance, perhaps an excerpt from something written, as saying "we are still great friends, but have moved on to different phases of our life", but Cassady expressed some bitterness in a letter to a journalist quoted in this book, "I'm not interested in Jack's book or all that phony beat stuff or kicks....Jack and I, we drifted apart over the years. He became a Buddhist and I became a Cayceite [the prophet Edgar Cayce]. Yeah, he was impressed with me. Let's see if he was impressed enough to send me a typewriter."

After Cassady's release, Kerouac still saw him occasionally, but their lives took different directions. In the latter phases, Cassady was heavily involved with Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters, and Kerouac was heavily involved with alcohol and his inner demons, which mostly revolved around his inability to deal with the sudden fame that On the Road provided him. Kerouac was held up in the media eye as "The King of the Beats", a title he resisted, and his drinking seemed to result due to this inner conflict, but because of this fame, he was finally able to sell the other books he had written.

I found those latter years most intriguing. I had read Big Sur, his book that chronicled his downward spiral at his darkest moments, but never thought about the fact that this was 1960 and his despair continued until his death in 1969. I think it is sad that after all his interest in religion, he could never find that faith that would allow him to transcend his fame. His friends all talk about wanting to help him during those years, but being unable to stop the vicious cycle of binge drinking and depression.

The flavor, then, of this book at the end is bitterness and a failure to triumph over these demons. It is reminscent of the last ten years of Elvis Presley's life, and their lives both ended in a similiar aspect, with their agony being flushed away in the great toilet of life. He didn't live long enough to see the lasting effects of his legacy. If I could rewrite the story, it is the ending I would rewrite, much like Kerouac's mother requesting Jack change the ending to Pic, or Kerouac himself rewriting the ending to The Town and The City, what I think is his greatest novel, with the character most like him simply walking out into the West. That is the way I would like to remember Kerouac, simply walking out into the sunset for further adventures.

I would like to explore further how "beat" became "beatnik", and examine Kerouac's meaningful relationships more thoroughly, but that is beyond the scope of this review. For now, I will just leave the readers with the video above, to listen for themselves the scope of Kerouac's genius and develop for oneself your impressions.

Book Review
DEAD CERT

by Dick Francis

Yes, folks, I have deviated from my Kerouac fanaticism for a second to bring you something completely different, a "horse of a different color". I feel this book is notable, and deserves to be reviewed.

It is notable in the respect that it is a Dick Francis book I actually read and enjoyed, first time I can say that. I have acquired several Dick Francis books over the years, mostly from my mother. I can't really say this is her fault, because I never mentioned that I disliked them. I suppose she thought that I would like them because his books all have horses in them.

I was going to mention that perhaps she thought I would like his books because I was addicted to Walter Farley books when I was I was an adolescent, which are primarily about horseracing. Then I thought about it and realized most of the books I chose to read as a child were about horses (elementary school I was all about the Billy and Blaze series and Marguerite Henry), and in fact the reason I was an early and avid reader was because my motivation to learn to read is so that I could read this book we had called All About Horses.

However, those stories are all different than the kind of books Francis writes. His books are primarily "whodunnit" mysteries that have horse racing as a backdrop. Originally I thought I didn't like them because of that fact, because I would say I really didn't like mysteries. Then I started thinking about if that was really true, because for one I have been reading a lot of mysteries in the past couple years and also, in a way, every book is a mystery. If you didn't have the desire to find out what happens next, whether it is who the main character is going to get out of the mess, if the star-crossed lovers will ever be able to work it out, or what becomes of a family or character in the book, then you aren't really interested in continuing to read it. The reason a person finishes reading a book is to know how the story ends, and in a way that is solving a mystery.

Every book may be a mystery, but not every book is about sleuth, about a character using deduction and logic to solve a crime. That was the primary action of the main character in this book, Alan York. Alan York is a steeplechase jockey who sees his good friend, who is racing in front of him, take a nasty fall on his horse and die as a result. York is convinced this was no accident, and for the remainder of the book, he is trying to solve the mystery of "whodunnit" and why.

The reason I think this book is superior to the other Francis books I have tried to read has something to do with this character, York. You just can't help but like him. He is a determined, intelligent fellow who will stop at nothing to find the truth, even if it costs him the thing he wants most at this point (the love of a woman). He has a code of ethics he follows even when it would behoove him not to, showing him to be honorable and a man of integrity.

An example of what I mean by this is that when he was visiting the grand home of his love for the weekend and meeting her upper-class relatives, who looked down at him in disdain because of his profession, he did not come out and admit to them that he was an amateur jockey and that he was a man of wealth and means who actually had a more professional job as a trader of securities. He could have pulled his family's card out of his hat at that moment and admitted that his father was the head of the wealthiest trading company in England, and had bought him a fancy car and three horses so that he could dabble in his little hobby on the side, and this would have won his love's family over. However, he doesn't tell them this because he wants to keep the playing field level between him and his fellow jockey friend who is also competing for the heart of the same girl and not take an unfair advantage. It was a sense of loyalty to his friend that prevents him.

This same sense of justice and loyalty to his friends is what compels him to seek the people responsible for the death of his friend Major Davidson, even though he is wounded several times in the attempt. The horses do not play a large role in the book, except as a backdrop, but my favorite part of the book did involve an amazing getaway ride from the racetrack to the countryside, with York riding Davidson's horse Admiral, reputed to be the best racer in the country, over rough obstacles to outwit the bad guys.

The book is an action packed read that never keeps you waiting. Every incident is crucial to the entire story, with not a wasted word in there. It read, in fact, like a steeplechase race in some respects, galloping along and up and over obstacles. Even on York's breaks from racing, he is pursuing justice and stumbling over clues that get him closer to the finish.
The book was written in 1962 and was the first book Francis ever published. After this one, he cranked out one book a year until his wife's death in 2000 slowed him down. It takes place in England, and I don't know if it is the time or the place, or if is the fact that it is the steeplechasing arena the book takes place in, but the horse talk is a little different. York refers to the racehorses as "hunter 'chasers", which is a term I have never heard. Around this part of the world, we call similar types of horses "hunter/jumpers". Steeplechase is a horse sport that is much bigger "over the pond" than in America, and maybe I haven't heard the term because it is particular to this sport. Francis shows his familiarity with the world of racing by vivid descriptions of setting, taking the reader into the jockey's changing areas and letting them in on the locker room talk, and introducing jockey slang.

Among the words he introduces is the phrase "dead cert", which is simply shorthand for "dead certain." It is a phrase the jockeys and bookies used to describe a horse-rider team that was certain to win a race. The problem with being a "dead cert" is that people know you will be out in the lead, first one over a fence, first one into danger. Major Davidson was the first "dead cert" introduced in the book. Will Alan York succumb to the same fate, or will justice be the next "dead cert"?

I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys Sherlock Holmes style smarts combined with a little horseplay. Read it, I'm dead certain you'll like it.

Book Review

Orpheus Emerged

by Jack Kerouac

I read in the introduction that Orpheus Emerged was published posthumously by the estate of Jack Kerouac following his death in 1969, but while looking at the copyright information, I see that it was actually published in 2000 by the "Estate of Stella Kerouac", his widow (the last unlucky wife). My feeling is that Kerouac never pushed this book to publication himself, and perhaps not even Stella, because it represents a stage in his writing career that was somewhat sophomoric. It is clear throughout the book that Kerouac has not yet found his "voice", the style of writing that would make him famous, and in some ways had not found his vision of what he was trying to relay to the world. However, even in saying that, even though this is not the Kerouac that defined the Beat Generation, this is still Kerouac, and it is still beautiful.

This work has not the physical descriptions of place, the poetic prose, the long rambling sentences that made Jack famous, but it retains quality of its own. It acts more as a flash photo, as a description of a group of people at one moment in time, that makes a statement about men, women, and relationships during the late 1940s. It captures the essence of Jack as a young man in a process of self-discovery without being utterly personal, as well as the other writers and drifters that would become an important part of his life as the core of the Beats.


One of the reasons I liked this book was precisely part of that core, because part of my interest in the Beat Generation lies in the friendships and literary ties between this group. I find it compelling that this core drew inspiration and effectively immortalized each other in their various writings. This particular book, or rather "novella", was written during the time that Kerouac first fell in with some of these people at Columbia University, and so it is our first look through Jack's eyes at some of these friends. We have "Leo" as a young Allen Ginsberg, questioning the world and humanity, we have Lucien Carr possibly as the character "Micheal", William Burroughs and his wife as "Anthony" and "Marie" -- the gang's all here.


Each of the characters are reflections of the perceptions Kerouac had of his friends during these early formative years, the years of the "New Vision" literary line, and his perceptions are with the soft glow of early infatuation and the excitement of new ideas, of sharp college minds before becoming jaded and edged with the disappointment of life, the "tired and down and out" version of beat. This early stage of the Beat Generation captured in this book is more true to Kerouac's original meaning of the term "beat", as in "beatific", as in a quest for a deeper spiritual understanding, as illustrated by the discussion of poetry written by Michael, which Leo and Paul criticize but secretly long to understand, poetry speaking of the transcendent path towards a greater connection with the Divine.


My overall impression when finishing the novel was "oh, this one might be my favorite yet," but I say that after putting down each one of his books, and I know that ultimately it would not replace The Town and The City as representative of what I love about Kerouac's writing. The Town and the City ties Jack the intellectual with Jack the hipster, the wide eyed youth looking at postwar America in all its gritty and sublime detail, all the while tying it to the universal and conversely individual experience of visceral life, in words of poetic prose.