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Flanders: A Rough Theater for War

5/28/2021

A WRITER'S WIT
Probably induced by the asthma, I started reading and writing early on, my literary efforts from the age of about nine running chiefly to poetry and plays.
Patrick White
Author of Voss
Born May 28, 1912

P. White

My Book World

Groom, Winston. A Storm in Flanders. The Ypres Salient, 1914-1918: Tragedy and Triumph on the Western Front. New York: Grove, 2002.

The author of Forrest Gump changes his hat to historian here. In 276 pages he does a superb job of summarizing this one battle of World War I. In some ways the war is a family squabble: “England’s George V, Russia’s Nicholas II, and Germany’s William II were all cousins, either directly or through marriage, descendants of England’s Queen Victoria” (6). Mostly, Groom documents the wastage: the millions of soldiers’ lives lost on all sides, the Brits, the Belgians, the French, and the Germans. (Not to mention civilians, the Canadians, and others who aid the Allies.) The huge “puddles” caused by shelling and excessive rain. The Christmas where all fighting stops and soldiers from both sides “celebrate” together. (What? you ask.) The lack of quality leadership on all sides. One failure passes off his work to another failure of leadership. And the only people who suffer are the men in the ranks and civilians. I don’t know about the Triumph Groom references in his title (except that the Allies “win”), but there is certainly a lot of Tragedy. Millions of people of one generation are never able to see their lives come to fruition, mostly because of the hubris of a few men.

NEXT BLOG: Tuesday, June 15, 2021

A Writer's Wit: John Cheever

5/27/2021

I got back to work on the book about a month ago, but was dealt some crushing financial blows three weeks later and now I’m back in the short story business. I want to write short stories like I want to fuck a chicken. [Excerpt from a letter to writer John Weaver, February 24, 1947.]
John Cheever
Author of The Wapshot Chronicle
Born May 27, 1912

J. Cheever

TOMORROW: My Book World | Winston Groom's A Storm in Flanders

A Writer's Wit: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

5/26/2021

We are no more free agents than the queen of clubs when she victoriously takes prisoner the knave of hearts.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Author of The Turkish Embassy Letters
Born May 26, 1689

M. W. Montagu

FRIDAY: My Book World | Winston Groom's A Storm in Flanders

A Writer's Wit: Ralph Waldo Emerson

5/25/2021

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics; to endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social position; to know even one life has breathed easier because you lived; this is to have succeeded.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Author of "Self-Reliance"
Born May 25, 1803

R. W. Emerson

FRIDAY: My Book World | Winston Groom's A Storm in Flanders

The Horizontal Near Southwest

5/21/2021

A WRITER'S WIT
A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.
Alexander Pope
Author of The Rape of the Lock
Born May 21, 1688

A. Pope

My Book World

Flores, Dan. The Horizontal Yellow: Nature and History in the Near Southwest. Albuquerque: U of NM Press.

First of all, I love that Flores takes possession of this subject right away with the term, “Near Southwest”—a region stretching from eastern Louisiana and including all of Texas and New Mexico. I come over twenty years late to reading this elegantly scripted book about the area’s ecology, but the ideas he expresses here seem to gain urgency as time passes. Flores alternates sections of family history (French and Spanish) and other histories with first-hand accounts of living, say, on the Llano Estacado, as well as poetic and lyrical sections of fiction to bring alive said histories.

Flores is always on the move. After advanced schooling at Texas A&M, he explores, to mention a few places, the Chihuahuan desert, the Southern Plains of Texas (Llano Estacado or Steaked Plains), Abiquiu, New Mexico—finally lighting in Montana. But the Horizontal Yellow of which he speaks is the once real, now metaphorical, wave of yellowing grasses that cover what locals call, with a certain inelegance, the South Plains. It is where he builds a primitive place to live in Yellow House Canyon, about thirty minutes from where he teaches at the local university. It is where he lives with two wolf-dog hybrids as their alpha male (a role he doesn’t particularly relish; it’s the critters’ idea). It is a place remaining in his heart as he makes his home up north, where he can establish and retain a closeness to nature that the Texas South Plains has mostly expunged from its existence. His is an admired life but one I’m not sure I could pursue myself. I adore my life in town—Internet, TV, central heat and air—a bit too much.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Winston Groom's A Storm in Flanders

A Writer's Wit: Margery Allingham

5/20/2021

Mourning is not forgetting . . . . It is an undoing. Every minute tie has to be untied and something permanent and valuable recovered and assimilated from the dust.
Margery Allingham
Author of The Tiger in the Smoke
Born May 20, 1904

M. Allingham

TOMORROW: My Book World | Dan Flores's The Horizontal Yellow

A Writer's Wit: Lorraine Hansberry

5/19/2021

Children see things very well sometimes—and idealists even better.
Lorraine Hansberry
Author of To Be Young, Gifted and Black
Born May 19, 1930

L. Hansberry

FRIDAY: My Book World | Dan Flores's The Horizontal Yellow

A Writer's Wit: Patrick Dennis

5/18/2021

I always start writing with a clean piece of paper and a dirty mind.
Patrick Dennis
Author of Auntie Mame
Born May 18, 1921

P. Dennis

FRIDAY: My Book World | Dan Flores's The Horizontal Yellow

Elegies for Two Homelands

5/14/2021

A WRITER'S WIT
That cry of the soul to be lifted out of the bondage of the narrow circle of life, which carries up to God the protest and yearning of suffering man, never finds a more sublime expression than where humanity is oppressed and religion is corrupt.
Hall Caine
Author of The Shadow of a Crime
Born May 14, 1853

H. Caine

My Book World

Akhtar, Ayad. Homeland Elegies: A Novel. New York: Little, Brown, 2020.

This is one of the most enjoyable and yet profound contemporary novels I have read in a long time. I had to keep reminding myself that it was indeed a novel, so interwoven is the plot with events we’ve all lived through in the last twenty years. The protagonist’s parents, both physicians, move from Pakistan to Staten Island in the early 1960s. When he is still young, the family relocates in Wisconsin. Throughout, readers get a feel for what it is like to live in America if you are not white-skinned, if you speak with an accent, or in any way attempt to retain religious or cultural customs from your former country. Not pleasant, to say the least.

At one point the car of the protagonist (by now a renowned playwright) breaks down in Scranton, PA. He is directed by a kindly highway patrolman (ah, good) to a mechanic who turns out to be related to the patrolman (uh oh). He is quoted a particular price for one problem, but when he picks up his car, he ascertains there is a second problem he’s not been informed about and is charged almost three times the original quote. He must phone his bank and make arrangements to raise his credit card level (and interest rate) to cover the cost.

The white-skinned reader must take note. This part is NOT fiction; this sort of explicit bias happens every day to dark-skinned, “other” people in America. People who work hard, people who pay their taxes, people who try hard to color inside the lines but somehow come up short in the eyes of so-called natives (whose ancestors were immigrants). The novel is really about how this man and his father handle their American lives differently: one an elegy for Pakistan and one for the USA. It is worth every minute of the reader’s time to live vicariously through these brave souls who come to American to build a better life. Theirs are true profiles in courage.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Dan Flores's The Horizontal Yellow

A Writer's Wit: Daphne du Maurier

5/13/2021

Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind.
Daphne du Maurier
Author of The House on Strand
Born May 13, 1907

D. du Maurier

TOMORROW: My Book World | Ayad Akhtar's Homeland Elegies

A Writer's Wit: Philip Wylie

5/12/2021

Material blessings, when they pass beyond the category of need, are weirdly fruitful of headache.
Philip Wylie
Author of When Worlds Collide
Born May 12, 1902

P. Wylie

FRIDAY: My Book World | Ayad Akhtar's Homeland Elegies

A Writer's Wit: Zilpha Keatley Snyder

5/11/2021

Teaching in the upper elementary grades had given me a deep appreciation of the gifts and graces that are specific to individuals with ten or eleven years of experience as human beings. It is, I think, a magical time—when so much has been learned, but not yet enough to entirely extinguish the magical reach and freedom of early childhood.
Zilpha Keatley Snyder
Author of The Changeling
Born May 11, 1927

Z. K. Snyder

FRIDAY: My Book World | Ayad Akhtar's Homeland Elegies

A Wilde Man Indeed

5/7/2021

A WRITER'S WIT
What is marriage but prostitution to one man instead of many?
Angela Carter
Author of Angela Carter’s Book of Fairy Tales
Born May 7, 1940

A. Carter

My Book World

Ellmann, Richard. Oscar Wilde. New York: Knopf, 1988.

This book of exhaustive research concerning Wilde’s life is a pleasure to read from his family history to his imprisonment years later and his resulting exile in France. Prior to reading this book, I had always had the impression that Oscar Wilde’s life (except for prison) was one wild ride (pardon the pun). And in some ways it was. He, even after experiencing financial success, was always in want of money, primarily because he was such a spendthrift, spending or giving away money he honestly didn’t have. He cared not about what people thought of his extravagant ideas, his extravagant living. Yet Wilde faced great public disapproval of how he lived his life. His only friends were other homosexual men or those liberal enough to accept him.

His downfall came in the package of one man, Lord Alfred Douglas, a much younger man, an aristocrat who both loved and used Wilde. If Wilde had never met him, he might have met his match with some other party, but I doubt it. The latter part of Wilde’s sad life was battling Douglas’s father in court. Lord Percy Douglas, Marquess of Queensberry, managed to have Wilde sent to prison for two years because he didn’t want Wilde near his son. Wilde did his prison time, and it broke him, both physically and emotionally. He never wrote anything substantial again, was always begging others for money, and suffered physical ailments that eventually brought on his premature death at forty-six. Ellmann’s distinguished book, more than thirty years old now, does great justice to the life of an extraordinary writer who lived, until he could no longer bear the speed of light, entirely ahead of his time.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Ayad Akhtar's Homeland Elegies

A Writer's Wit: Theodore H. White

5/6/2021

If you make a living, if you earn your own money, you're free—however free one can be on this planet.
Theodore H. White
Author of The Making of the President Series
Born May 6, 1915

T. H. White

TOMORROW: My Book World | Richard Ellmann's Oscar Wilde

A Writer's Wit: Sylvia Pankhurst

5/5/2021

I know we will create a society where there are no rich or poor, no people without work or beauty in their lives, where money itself will disappear, where we shall all be brothers and sisters, where every one will have enough.
Sylvia Pankhurst
Author of The Suffragette
Born May 5, 1882

S. Pankhurst

FRIDAY: My Book World | Richard Ellmann's Oscar Wilde

A Writer's Wit: David Gutterson

5/4/2021

Time made me change. I gradually woke up to the realization that this is who I am, an author, a public figure, and I couldn't just hide in my study, tapping away at the keyboard and pretend that I didn't have a role to play beyond stringing words together.
David Gutterson
Author of Snow Falling on Cedars
Born May 4, 1956

D. Gutterson

FRIDAY: My Book World | Richard Ellmann's Oscar Wilde

Master of Go Go Go

4/30/2021

A WRITER'S WIT
The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn.
Sir John Lubbock
Author of The Pleasures of Life
Born April 30, 1834

Sir J. Lubbock

My Book World

Kawabata, Yasunari. The Master of Go. Translated by Edward G. Seidensticker. New York: Vintage, 1972 (1951).

Western readers should probably read more eastern literature, myself included; it would give us a broader view of the world. Wikipedia defines the game of Go in this manner: “Go is an abstract strategy board game for two players in which the aim is to surround more territory than the opponent. The game was invented in China more than 2,500 years ago and is believed to be the oldest board game continuously played to the present day.” In this book (hybrid of novel and nonfiction), the game has moved to Japan. For Kawabata the game of Go provides a wonderful extended metaphor for one man’s life. Shusai, Master of Go, spends time toward the end of his life in battle with a player named Otaké, a fine player but hypochondrial man. The game moves from venue to venue, where players may take hours to decide a play, where weeks may pass before the continuation of the game. There are end notes that help to explain the game. A brief but head-spinning read.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Richard Ellmann's Oscar Wilde

A Writer's Wit: Jill Paton Walsh

4/29/2021

It is only grown-ups who want children to be children; children themselves always want to be real people . . . .
Jill Paton Walsh
Author of A Presumption of Death
Born April 29, 1937

J. P. Walsh

TOMORROW: My Book World | Y. Kawabata's The Master of Go

A Writer's Wit: Ian Rankin

4/28/2021

I still think most writers are just kids who refuse to grow up. We're still playing imaginary games, with our imaginary friends.
Ian Rankin
Author of In a House of Lies
Born April 28, 1960

I. Rankin

FRIDAY: My Book World | Yasunari Kawabata's The Master of Go

A Writer's Wit: Mary Wollstonecraft

4/27/2021

Women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions which men think it manly to pay to the sex, when, in fact, men are insultingly supporting their own superiority.
Mary Wollstonecraft
Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women
Born April 27, 1759

M. Wollstonecraft

FRIDAY: My Book World | Yasunari Kawabata's The Master of Go

Sillitoe: Good Judge of Human Nature

4/23/2021

A WRITER'S WIT
Write. Enjoy writing. Then, and only then, worry about the business end of it. Start loving your hobby, and then you can't go too wrong.
Arthur Phillips
Author of The King at the Edge of the World
Born April 23, 1969

A. Phillips

My Book World

Sillitoe, Alan. The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner. New York: Penguin, 1992 (1959).

I enjoyed this mid-century collection of stories by British writer, Alan Sillitoe, because each male protagonist is a bit different, sometimes very different, from the leading bloke in one of the other eight narratives. Whether it is the sarcasm of the famed title character or one who wonders why his ex-wife has pawned a painting he thought she wanted back for sentimental reasons or the quizzical nature of a young man who narrates Eddie Buller’s sad story, each character is honed from Sillitoe’s astute observations of human nature.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Yasunari Kawabata's The Master of Go.

A Writer's Wit: Janet Evanovich

4/22/2021

You can get through very serious and sometimes horrible and sometimes embarrassing and very awkward situations with humor. It gives us a way out.
Janet Evanovich
Author of Fortune and Glory: Tantalizing Twenty-Seven
Born April 22, 1943

J. Evanovich

TOMORROW: My Book World | Alan Sillitoe's The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner

A Writer's Wit: Charlotte Brontë

4/21/2021

It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.
Charlotte Brontë
Author of Jane Eyre
Born April 21, 1816

C. Brontë

FRIDAY: My Book World | Alan Sillitoe's The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner

A Writer's Wit: Rebecca Makkai

4/20/2021

Writing a short story is like painting a picture on the head of a pin. And just getting everything to fit is . . . sometimes seems impossible.
Rebecca Makkai
Author of The Great Believers
Born April 20, 1978

R. Makkai

FRIDAY: My Book World | Alan Sillitoe's The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner

'The Prophets' More Than Slavery

4/16/2021

A WRITER'S WIT
Wicked gave us a story that The Wizard of Oz did not. Two sides to every story.
Abbi Glines
Author of The Vincent Boys
Born April 16, 1977

A. Glines

My Book World

Jones, Robert Jr. The Prophets. New York: Putnam’s, 2021.

This tremendous first novel seems at once both realistic and impressionistic in its articulation. The former because Jones’s portrayal of slave life in the nineteenth-century American South stinks with human toil and sweat, both black and white: “Mississippi only knew how to be hot and sticky” (27). The only relief may be the Biblical-like Yazoo River’s coolness. The novel is impressionistic in large part because it is as nonlinear as a novel can get: there are slave ancestors, the lives of a female king, whose descendants populate this hot and sweaty setting. If readers think this is only a novel about two young male slaves who have “grown up” together on the Halifax plantation (slaves call it “Empty” or “That Fucking Place”) and become lovers at a young age, may they soon discover their mistake. Single chapters are devoted to various characters within this “kingdom” of depraved corruption of Capitalism. Slaves tell their own truth. Owners live out their own truths: their indifference to pain (except their own), their greed, their ultimate unhappiness brought on by the shame and disgust they must feel (deep inside and unrecognized) at the mistreatment of fellow human beings.

In this book, sex between Samuel and Isiah isn’t sex but a stunning line of poetry that indicates what has happened: their red-and-white barn is an Edenic setting for their love. You sense the act has taken place but it is communicated with ease and subtlety. Neither is the sex graphic, nor is it quotidian, like, say, John Cheever’s Then they rolled over and went to sleep.

I believe I shall read this novel again and again. More than ever, white people need to wake up and see what a terrible blight slavery has been on our country’s history, how its stories cripple our present and our future if we fail to deal with slavery's legacy. Jones’s novel opens wide a window into our history by way of a beautiful and savage piece of art that will only unfold more as time passes.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Alan Sillitoe's The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner