​Jackson, Shirley. Life Among the Savages.
    New York: Farrar, 1948.
 
Jackson’s memoir about family life up through the birth of her fourth and final child is entertaining and timeless, though it is written in the 1940s. What contributes to this timelessness is Jackson’s grasp of the universal through developing the specific.
 
This is a woman’s story to tell, though it is for everyone to read. Jackson published many of these narratives in women’s magazines before releasing them in this book. She develops the universal by delving into the concrete. She never names her husband: it is always my husband this, my husband that, objectifying him as the head-in-the-clouds academic that he is, in the same manner in which she, as housewife, is objectified in this post-World War II period. She has pet names for her oldest three children: Laurie for Laurence (which he vehemently sluffs off at one point); Jannie for Joanne, and Sally for Sarah. It’s as if by naming them something more intimate, they cannot possibly belong to someone else, the world at large.
 
What saves her persona from being a martyr is that Jackson actually enjoys being a mother and wife while at the same time pursuing a serious career as a writer of fiction. She would be considered a permissive mother, but such a free household allows all her children to develop unfettered: Laurie is allowed to take on a boisterous, all-boy personality; Jannie develops as one who expresses herself as bluntly as Jackson herself does; and charming little Sally is a princess, who quotes fairy tales and talks in oblique sort of riddles when she is angry about something. To be sure, Jackson spars with her children (and her husband) on occasion, nudges them back and forth over the goal line, but she allows them simply to be. One would love to know how they developed as adults, and how their children fared. 
 
This free and delightful yet sophisticated read is timeless and should be perused by everyone: women and men, old and young, especially those who think they know everything about raising children. They could learn a thing or two from the late Shirley Jackson.

NEXT TIME: My Journey of States-11 Maryland

Franklin, Ruth. Shirley Jackson: A Rather
     Haunted Life. New York: Liveright,
     2016.
 
Roger Straus, Jackson’s first publisher, often called her “a rather haunted woman” (2). She had plenty to haunt her life, especially a mother who fiercely dominated her daughter, even after she became a literary success.

Jackson spends nearly the rest of her life fighting against her mother about how to raise her own children, how to cook and keep house, how to go about her career even though her mother had never had one of her own. At the same time that Shirley attempts to establish a literary career while being supportive of a husband in the related business of literary criticism and raising four children, she seems to love being with her children. She often packs them up into the car to go on day trips. She more or less lets them have free run of the house and town, while at the same time, scolds her children with the same invisible criticism that she learned from her mother.
 
Franklin goes into great detail about Jackson’s literary life, each novel, her famous story, “The Lottery.” She paints an honest picture of Jackson’s life, one that is so interesting, I didn’t want the book to end.

NEXT TIME: My Journey of States—10 West Virginia

Evans, Harold. Do I Make Myself Clear?
    Why Writing Well Matters. New York,
    Little, Brown, 2017.
 
The field of English grammar can be a pedant’s paradise (or nightmare), what with Twitter and texting divining their own rules, and for over 400 pages noted wordsmith Evans sounds off about his favorite peeves. He also, if readers take away nothing else, reminds us that the passive voice (not tense) can bloat a sentence, whereas active voice (subject+verb+object) allows for clearer and briefer writing. Evans takes governmental babble and rewrites it so that one can understand it:

The author reduces the passage’s bloat from 68 words to 46, without reducing its meaning; in fact, he clarifies its meaning. And this goal becomes his overarching purpose. As a journalist Evans hasn’t much use for other inflated language, including what he calls flesh-eaters. One should, for example, use “although” instead of the flesh-eating “despite the fact that” or “like” instead of “along the lines of.” He reiterates what every good eighth-grade English teacher tries to teach: “Don’t pad your writing.” He might have followed his own advice when explaining “flesh-eating” by reducing his verbiage from half a page (plus a photograph of Zoophagus insidians) to a sentence or two. His metaphor is self-explanatory.
 
Overall, Mr. Evans provides a fine review for persons who write or wish to. He directs his writing to the journalist, who is attempting to reach as many readers as possible, but his “Ten Shortcuts to Making Yourself Clear” (Chapter Five) alone are worth the price of the book, and could assist all writers in making themselves clearer, regardless of the genre. Kudos to Evans.

NEXT TIME: New Yorker Fiction 2017

Eisinger, Jesse. ​The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives. New York: Simon, 2017.
 
I’m always a sucker for a provocative title, but I’m particularly drawn in when the content of the book delivers on the title’s punch. In a recent C-SPAN Book-TV presentation of his Chickenshit Club, Eisinger takes readers into the bowels of the 2008 financial meltdown and explains why neither the CEOs nor the corporations they headed were ever prosecuted, why individuals responsible for such bad deeds never went to prison.  Not to give away too much, Eisinger’s explanation is at once simple and complex.

Simply, Department of Justice officials are afraid of certain aspects, for example, so-called collateral consequences, in which innocent employees lose their jobs when a corporation is put out of business. To explore the complexities, Eisenger lays out the history of why our country has arrived at this point where the financial-sector tail is wagging the law. He concludes that without individual accountability reforms are meaningless. Hedge fund managers and CEOs continue their heinous practices knowing they have an excellent chance of not going to prision.

In a perfect world the author would recommend, one, paying prosecutors much more money so they will have the incentive to work as hard as they would for private law firms that can pay more. Two, he recommends diversity in hiring, not merely more women and persons of color, but individuals from different parts of the country, who have graduated from a variety of law schools, not just the elite ones. Also, he would hire older, esteemed attorneys with a track record and a wider vision of the world, as well as those who have experience in consumer protections. Eisinger’s book expounds on what Matt Taibbi introduces in his excellent book, The Divide. Read both if you’re concerned about the fragile yet powerful world of finance.
 
NEXT TIME: My Book World

Bosworth, Patricia. The Men in My Life: A Memoir of Love and Art in 1950s Manhattan. New York: HarperCollins, 2017.
 
For the same reasons I enjoyed reading her biography Montgomery Clift years ago, I sucked down Patricia Bosworth’s memoir of her own life. She is not afraid to search out and write the truth of any situation and do it with dignity and empathy for involved parties. Because for about a decade she is an actor, she becomes acquainted with Montgomery Clift personally, and she approaches her subject with honesty and a certain kindness. The same can be said for her book: all of the members of her family are loved ones, but they are also, at times, bad actors who undermine her life. Her father is a narcissistic alcoholic attorney, a closeted homosexual (according to her mother) whose love is not entirely unconditional; he profoundly affects Patricia’s life when he commits suicide. Her mother is a published novelist (Strumpet Wind) whose career stalls and becomes an ambitious stage mother who plays on all Patricia’s insecurities: Patricia’s actions and achievements are never good enough. The relationship that affects Bosworth the most, perhaps, is her brother, Bart.
 
When they are young they establish a special bond, with even their own form of Pig Latin which their parents cannot understand; they share that language for many years until Bart ceases to think it appropriate. A particularly effective tool peppered throughout the book are her continued conversations with Bart’s ghost. Eerie how she makes it seem as if he’s still alive as he advises her. In his teens, her brother is attracted to males and has sex with a couple of them, including a friend at an exclusive boys’ boarding school. There, after they are discovered together, the friend commits suicide, an act from which Bart never recovers. He, too, eventually kills himself before reaching the age of twenty-one. Bosworth’s father and brother are not the only men she writes about in her page-turner; she outlines in detail her love (and sexual) relationships with several different men, including two husbands.
 
She reminisces about her acting career in which she appears on Broadway with the likes of Daniel Massey and Elaine Stritch. The highlight of this period may be when she appears with Audrey Hepburn in a film, The Nun’s Story. Nonetheless, in spite of Bosworth’s success on the stage, she comes to the realization that she can no longer bare her soul in that manner but must establish a writing career instead. And glad we are that she does. Bosworth’s book—taken from her diaries, her notes, but most of all her remembrances—is a stunning read.
 
[I’m still amazed in this day and age how a book produced by one of the top companies in the country can make it through all that scrutiny with a typo:
 
“I was able to slip into the wings just as Bobby begain [sic] belting out ‘I Believe in You,’ the signature number” (350).
 
How many copyeditors overlooked this error and how many times? How many times did the author or her staff herself read the galleys? Amazing.]

NEXT TIME: New Yorker Fiction 2017

Daniel Connolly. The Book of Isaias: A Child of Hispanic Immigrants Seeks His Own America. New York: St. Martin's, 2016.
 
This panel presentation was part of the Tucson Festival of Books, in which author Connolly speaks of the status of children of undocumented immigrants. In the book that takes five years to research and write, he says that the vast majority of these children are citizens, yet they are often not only mistreated but when their parents are deported they have no lifeline. He states that enforcement of immigration laws varies from region to region. For example, in Arizona there are guards and walls. In Memphis, Tennessee, where he lives, the workforce depends heavily on immigrants, and the laws are not always adhered to. A fascinating discussion, and it looks like a fine read—on my wish list, for sure. He shares the stage with Julissa Arce, author of My (Underground) American Dream: My True Story as an Undocumented Immigrant Who Became a Wall Street Executive.

​Daniel Connolly's Book-TV Presentation

NEXT TIME: Earth Day 2017

Maureen Dowd. The Year of Voting Dangerously: The Derangement of American Politics. New York: Twelve, 2016.

I’ve viewed both of these presentations, one held at the Miami Book Fair and the other at the Tucson Festival of Books. In the first one, shortly after the 2016 election of our forty-fifth president, she speaks directly to her book, how, after covering 45 for over thirty years, she’s arrived at some conclusions as to how he won the election. In the second video, she is questioned by host, Peter Slen, of C-SPAN’s Book-TV, a fine interviewer, who speaks to her about not only the book but her entire career. In both events the New York Times columnist from Washington, DC, is quite candid and astute in her assessment of President 45. She says we’re in for quite a ride. Tune into to one or both talks to find out why!

Maureen Dowd at the Miami Book Fair
Maureen Dowd at the Tucson Festival of Books

NEXT TIME: New Yorker Fiction 2017

**March 20, 2017, F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The I.O.U.": In this story set about a hundred years ago, a New York company publishes the long-awaited book of an author who writes of his astrological connection with a nephew having died in World War I. ¶ On the Contributor’s Page of this issue, one learns that this story was to have appeared in Harper’s Bazaar in 1920 but never did. One must wonder . . . could it have been because largely it is a plot-driven narrative with a clever trick ending? Who wouldn’t want to read that in 2017? I would imagine that the New Yorker turns down thousands of such stories a year but makes this one exception merely because it is written by FSF. Now, I’m a fan of his—I taught and annually re-read The Great Gatsby for a decade—but I believe he would now rise from his grave and shake a fist at us knowing that this story, not nearly as developed as “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” or “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” has made it into print at long last. Yet more unearthed works of Fitzgerald’s, collected in I’d Die for You and Other Lost Stories, is out in April. Cahn’t wait.
Illustration by Seth.

NEXT TIME: My Book World

Terry McDonell. The Accidental Life: An Editor's Notes on Writing and Writers. New York: Knopf, 2016.

As editor of Sports Illustrated, Esquire, and Rolling Stone, McDonell reveals scintillating details about his relationship with such writers as Hunter S. Thompson. His fascinating presentation sustained my interest throughout. First aired February 18, 2107.

 
Dean Baker. Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer. Washington DC: Center for Economic and Policy Research, 2016. In this book Baker “argues that government policies, not globalization or the natural workings of the free market, have led to the upward redistribution of wealth seen around the world over the past four decades.” His logical and comprehensive lecture offers one of the most compelling arguments I’ve ever heard on the subject. First aired January 17, 2107.
 
NEXT TIME: New Yorker Fiction 2017

My lover ("life partner" in modern parlance) and I met on February 14, 1976. We've always celebrated that day as our anniversary and not the weekend four months later when we moved in together. There are two problems with this choice. One is trying to dine out the same evening that every other couple in town is. The other is what to get him. Everything either has hearts all over it or comes in the shape of a heart or is in some way very RED, making it more of a Valenersary present. No matter. For our 25th anniversary we threw our party in June so that we wouldn't have to compete with others trying to hire a caterer (and weather would not be an issue). Some years we traveled. For our 20th, we went to Hawaii. For our 30th we took Amtrak from Ft. Worth to NYC. This year we are planning an overnighter in Archer City, Texas. There we will stay in the Spur Hotel established in 1928. The next day we will peruse the shelves of Larry McMurtry's book store, Booked Up. Frankly, Larry prices his books based on their market value, not to move them. But in the past I have found some treasured first editions of authors whom I adore, and I treasure them to this day. If you can, stop in and browse the shelves of his four-building complex located on the same streets where McMurtry's 1971 The Last Picture Show was filmed. If you take a look at the Booked Up Web site, you may be tantalized by his list of New Arrivals. Be sure and allow plenty of time for your visit because if you leave before you've looked at it all, you may feel like you've left something behind!

I’ve displayed some more examples of last month’s “skin of plastic that so often covers a recyclable plastic bottle.”  Surely this skin, too, isn’t recyclable, nor the one covering the tissue box.

Other non-recyclable items: lids or caps found on just about every product packaged in plastic. Again, we might say, 'Why worry?' Well, sooner or later Mother Earth is going to get a belly fully and regurgitate all this stuff from her innards and scatter them at our feet. And what about Braun’s plastic container of alcohol (probably) made in Germany with NO recycle symbol on its surface or the plastic mailers we all receive when we purchase items through the mail?

Whatever happened to the term “bio-degradable” bandied about in Time and Newsweek articles in the 1970s? It seems that the problem anymore isn’t so much what recycles and what doesn’t (often a recycling process uses yet more energy than it is worth to make the substance useful again), but what will be digested by Mother Earth and what will give her gas. There exist small and pitiful moves among fast food vendors to utilize containers made of corn, but so far, not one of these magnates has signed on to do this in a big way.

I never thought my friends and I would be spending our retirement fighting to keep our pensions at their current levels, but that very battle may be on the horizon if certain (Republican) Texas legislators get their way. Yes, these shysters would like to convert our pension from a “defined benefit plan” to a “defined contribution plan.” They would, in essence, like to privatize our pensions. I won’t go into the details because others more articulate than I already have written articles that explore the issues in full, but suffice it to say the former is a promise to deliver the same check month after month until the day a retiree dies, and the latter only promises to take one's money, making no commitment to see that a retiree receives anything.

Look for links at the end of the post for further reading.

I’m largely concerned with teacher/retiree response to this development. The entire time I taught from 1974 to 2002, teachers in Lubbock Independent School District and indeed from across the state belonged to four, count them, four organizations/unions. The state legislators might as well have invented the concept of divide and conquer; they had to have laughed each time four organizations approached them with similar but usually differing goals. When I first taught, many teachers’ incomes often were "gravy" for the household, the spouse (usually the husband) earning more than enough for the family. The little woman’s (or man’s) income was his/hers to do with as s/he pleased. What did s/he care if no raise was offered by the local board or by the state? As time passed, however, reflecting our society at large, more and more Texas teachers wound up being single parents attempting to provide for their own offspring by way of a paltry teacher's salary. And still teachers did not unite in one voice.

Moreover, Texas legislators and the public at large always seem to have acted as if a teacher is some sort of a missionary, that we should be happy to receive what we get, for, after all, we’ve assumed a calling of some sort. Pitooey. Working sixty hours a week without fair remuneration is not a calling. Skillfully raising test scores is not a calling. Inveigling students to learn how to read when they care not to is not a calling. Teaching is a skilled profession that requires at least one degree (which includes state certification) plus much devotion, and, even though districts seldom reward those with advanced degrees in terms of salary (I mean really reward), there are plenty of people who earn advanced degrees in hopes of becoming a better professional. The time has arrived for teachers/retirees to act differently. If local districts are to recruit bright, altruistic young people to teach, the profession must offer them more in the way of salary and benefits (one of which includes a decent pension to offset an average salary package and the lack of social security to boot).

There are over 800,000 Teacher Retirement System of Texas (TRS) members, made up of both active teachers and retirees. I contend that we 800,000 must act differently this time in the face of what the Texas legislators wish to do to our (and it is our) pension fund. We must be pro-active, to use a term we all heard a lot before we left teaching. We must read carefully about what these men (and they are mostly men) intend to do to our fund.

We must be united. Texas Retired Teachers Association (TRTA) works hard to keep us all informed. The organization lobbies without fail during the legislative seasons. But are their efforts enough? Without question we all should pay the yearly fee and join their ranks, but is TRTA adequate in a world where conditions can change in a second? I have in mind the young woman who brought Bank of America to its knees by petitioning them with 350,000 signatures protesting a proposed $5 month fee for using a bank ATM. How about the Egyptians, the Tunisians, who brought down corrupt governments through social networking Web sites? I have in mind the Occupy movement. Is our issue as big as theirs? You better believe it is, or we, too, may wind up getting the shaft like Wisconsin teachers with regard to collective bargaining (which, by the way, is not legal in Texas).

We must not allow anyone to divide teachers from retirees. Retirees must fight the legislators that wish to make current educators pay a higher contribution rate, and current teachers must support the plight of a retiree, who has been living on the same monthly check since 2001 (more than a 30% loss in spending power). We’re two sides of the same thin dime, and we must support one another without allowing the legislature to divide and conquer us.

And we have to figure out a way to bring this issue to the attention of the public, particularly in Texas. We have to bring state legislators to their knees (or at least their senses). Might we write a petition that people can sign online? Might we unite—old and young, people of all ethnic groups, gay and straight—by way of Facebook and Twitter? Might people, right or left, finally tire of the Machiavellian treatment we’ve been receiving for years from these high-handed people, who act without thinking about the larger consequences, who have God-knows-what kind of designs on our $110 billion fund?

The Texas legislators would tell you that the fund is failing. The $110 billion TRS fund is NOT failing; it is not in great need of tinkering. It is among the top six pension funds in the United States. It has a high international ranking, as well. It has taken some hits including the Enron debacle over a decade ago, or earlier, in the mid-1990s, when Texas legislators reduced their contribution to the fund down to a mandated 6%, where it has remained. These far right legislators claim that the fund is “failing,” but it is not. It is healthy, in spite of their efforts to neglect or destroy it over the years. It is well managed by professionals who know what they’re doing. The fund has even recovered from the hit it took in 2008. Instead of seeing how they can dismantle it, Texas legislators ought to be figuring out a way to fully fund the plan. They should not only bring their contribution back to mid-1990s levels, at the very least, but they should pay the fund back for all the money lost during that fifteen year + period. Texas is still a wealthy state. In our oil-rich economy, our legislators could figure out in a minute how to fund this plan if their feet got hot enough. We must hold their feet to a certain fire.

This is not an issue just for whiny teachers/retirees who somehow never appear to be grateful for what they’re given. This is an issue for parents and their children. It is an issue for anyone who lives in a neighborhood with children. If districts can’t recruit qualified teachers who can look forward, at least, to a fair retirement, then what hope is there for improving education? A district can have the newest equipment, the best in technology, but if there aren’t competent and caring teachers to employ the use of these things—and most studies show that teachers are the most important factor in providing a great education—then what hope is there? Please help. Get involved. Act.

FOR FURTHER READING:

Texas Retired Teachers Association

Teacher Retirement System of Texas