Hmm. That hiatus was more lengthy than I expected.
The last thing I've read has been Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson. I unexpectedly sympathized with its reviewer in Esquire. Yes, the reviewer said, it's Johnson, it's good, but I never want to read another book about the Sixties. (The reviewer's tone was sullen, as if some loved one were tied up in a backroom somewhere, someone about whom the reviewer felt ambivalent and who would be released only when the review was in the editor's hands.)
Unlike Already Dead, which may be my favorite work by Johnson (it has a much wilder streak of black humor and a stronger sense of place than Tree), many parts of Tree seemed sustained by sheer professionalism. Tree's protagonist is Skip Sands. Skip has been put at a huge disadvantage by his creator: his big entree into fighting communism on the ground is reworking a huge collection of file cards on myth and intelligence. His uncle, a legendary colonel whom Skip reveres, has arranged this job. Skip's frustration is believable and palpable, but he's been boxed in by the author and, more than 400-plus pages later, his fate begins to wear.
The appearances by the Houston brothers, Bill Jr. and James (here in a sort of prequel to Johnson's first novel, Angels), thus are very welcome: both of them are avatars of unintentionality, boxed in by class and inclination, stomping through the world, punching and getting punched. What they stir up never smells very sweet, but they get the air moving around. A little less welcome are appearances by Kathy Jones, a high-strung Jehovah's Witness and the only major female character, who eventually (much later, in the epilogue) gets from Skip the precursor to what they call on Jezebel a Crap Email from a Dude: a letter that is touching, wistful, and, given the stretches of distance and time, useless.
However. This is Denis Johnson. There is a certain authority in Johnson's writing that keeps you (meaning me) reading. The writing, as ever, is amazing. You keep reading for its sake, and not the story, necessarily.
Less recently read, also with somewhat less pleasure than I've read his previous works, was Ken Bruen's Priest. Mostly a non-fan of Irish writing (possibly because I'm ignorant of what's out there), I devoured earlier Bruen books. Speedy and lean, they were quick reads in the best possible sense. Speed and darkness: a wonderful combination. To all appearances, Bruen has singlehandedly made Irish noir a going concern (and I note with amusement that the literary John Banville, whose books I probably should read but somehow never do, is now writing in this genre).
Bruen's descriptions of the contrast between his Ireland of memory and the new Celtic Tiger, an Ireland that might as well be a foreign country or on another planet to someone who knew Galway when, are fascinating, and Jack Taylor, the protagonist of all the Bruens I've read so far (save for American Skin), is a sympathetic guy, despite the usual drinking and drugging and assholery that's now requisite, or so it seems, for main characters in detective fiction. So far, so good. However. Take Bruen's previous Jack Taylor installment, The Dramatist. [Spoiler alert.] The Dramatist had a dramatic, not to say melodramatic, ending, in which Taylor, given the sacred charge of looking after a child, lets his best friends' small daughter fall to her death. A sick joke? Or not? [Spoiler alert off.] I came to Priest with a not-altogether kosher reason for reading: Okay, Bruen--how are you going to make me want to read about this guy now? And, yes, there's a similar situation in Priest, the same but different, a joke sprayed on with blood.
Another reason I seem to be delighting less in the series is the frequency with which Bruen points out how very Irish is this quirk or that way of saying something. These Irish-isms seem to be signaled with a capital 'I' in a way I hadn't noticed in previous outings. Is Bruen having his readers on? ("You want Irish, gentle readers? I'll give you Irish.") Or is maundering about the Irish character some sort of trait in real Irish life and thus a sign of place? Having never been to Ireland, I don't know. Maybe Bruen has done such an thorough job of explaining the new Ireland and Galway that now, when something is Irish, I don't need to be told. Someone should be told, possibly, but it isn't me.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Thursday, October 18, 2007
"Office of Population Affairs?"
While reading a post on Balloon Juice about G. W. Bush's latest abstinence-lovin', contraceptive-hatin' appointee to head up family planning at HHS, I was interested to notice her title: "deputy assistant secretary of population affairs."
Population affairs. It sounds like a phrase from another era, possibly from the Bureau of Indian Affairs circa most of the 19th century, when our fair government was removing the original inhabitants between the 49th and 32nd parallels from their homes. (I was interested to see that we still have a Bureau of Indian Affairs; the name has not been updated.) Or perhaps it sounds Soviet; I can imagine Kremlin apparatchiks in the department of population affairs gazing out from Moscow, musing on how best to quell rebellious Ukrainian kulaks.
What, I wondered, is the work of the Office of Population Affairs? As best as I can make out, it's to give away grant money. One grantee formulated the following stunning hypothesis: "...[R]elationships with partners, parents, and peers during adolescence will influence romantic and sexual relationship development...." Gee, ya think? The reward for this show of brain power was a healthy chunk of Adolescent Family Life grant money.
However, one Family Planning research grant went to "CONnecting with Teens About Contraceptive Use (CONTAC-U), whose purpose is to "reduce 1-year pregnancy rates among adolescents" by developing "a clinic-based intervention intended to increase contraceptive use...." It seems that AFL, which pushes abstinence, is a bit at odds with OFP. OPA must be an interesting place to work, to say the least.
What strikes me most forcibly about OPA is its intrusiveness into personal lives, especially those of the young and powerless (and in the case of one 2006 project, Mexican-American, or, as the grantee phrased it, "teen moms of Mexico origin"). For that matter, what strikes me about the whole conservative project is how willing its backers are to support intrusiveness into any and all areas of life. Before the 2000 election, one conservative friend stated that, for her, it was all about "personal responsibility." What I didn't say then, but thought later, was "What business of the government's is anyone's 'personal responsibility'? Who's going to means-test for that? You?" The Office of Population Affairs provides one answer to that question.
Population affairs. It sounds like a phrase from another era, possibly from the Bureau of Indian Affairs circa most of the 19th century, when our fair government was removing the original inhabitants between the 49th and 32nd parallels from their homes. (I was interested to see that we still have a Bureau of Indian Affairs; the name has not been updated.) Or perhaps it sounds Soviet; I can imagine Kremlin apparatchiks in the department of population affairs gazing out from Moscow, musing on how best to quell rebellious Ukrainian kulaks.
What, I wondered, is the work of the Office of Population Affairs? As best as I can make out, it's to give away grant money. One grantee formulated the following stunning hypothesis: "...[R]elationships with partners, parents, and peers during adolescence will influence romantic and sexual relationship development...." Gee, ya think? The reward for this show of brain power was a healthy chunk of Adolescent Family Life grant money.
However, one Family Planning research grant went to "CONnecting with Teens About Contraceptive Use (CONTAC-U), whose purpose is to "reduce 1-year pregnancy rates among adolescents" by developing "a clinic-based intervention intended to increase contraceptive use...." It seems that AFL, which pushes abstinence, is a bit at odds with OFP. OPA must be an interesting place to work, to say the least.
What strikes me most forcibly about OPA is its intrusiveness into personal lives, especially those of the young and powerless (and in the case of one 2006 project, Mexican-American, or, as the grantee phrased it, "teen moms of Mexico origin"). For that matter, what strikes me about the whole conservative project is how willing its backers are to support intrusiveness into any and all areas of life. Before the 2000 election, one conservative friend stated that, for her, it was all about "personal responsibility." What I didn't say then, but thought later, was "What business of the government's is anyone's 'personal responsibility'? Who's going to means-test for that? You?" The Office of Population Affairs provides one answer to that question.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Life Is Nothing But Contrasts 2
The more I read in Poor People, the more I ( a global warming anguishist) crabbily began to notice the unmentioned jet rides: to Russia, Thailand, Yemen, Vietnam, Japan, China, etc., etc. There are a lot of these etceteras in the pages of Poor People; William Vollman can't be accused of having a small carbon footprint, at least not in his travel habits. However, very few of us living la vida moderna are pure in this respect, unlike the majority of people in Vollman's book. Except when they make once-in-a-lifetime desperate attempts to migrate to a better life, the people Vollman interviewed pretty much seem to stay in place.
Vollman wrestles with the definition of poverty, constructing an income table of subsistence earning around the world--but, as he writes, how do you establish equivalencies between "one person's 'living normally' and another's unqualified 'need' versus his 'rock bottom' need?" Another question Vollman asks (this is a question he prods readers into asking, as well) is "Would I grow wretched as I imagine, were I transformed into one of them? Actually, the bright, humid slowness of their lives gives me hope that I could 'adjust'."
He writes about the invisibility of poor people, and his most chilling example of this is what happens when people to whom invisibility is culturally prescribed--e.g., women in Taliban Afganistan--lose their safety net and become doubly invisible. In Taliban Afganistan, women who become destitute are forbidden even to beg because they are not allowed to be seen, in the name of respect for women.
Vollman asks poor people what they think: why are some people rich, some poor? They cite education, they cite intelligence, they cite selfishness. One poor young man in Mexico agrees that the rich are selfish: "They guard what they have.... It could happen that they will lose their money and be poor in the street and it will be a poor person who helps them out."
The author writes about Kazakhstan, where there is a consortium of oil producers, Tengizchevroil (TCO), headquartered in a very small town I'd never heard of, where old houses, the house of the poor, are being torn down for hotels and office buildings and almost everything connected with TCO is top secret. From government officials to workers to interpreters--if they're willing to talk at first, they soon aren't. Due to oil refining, almost everyone in the has dire health problems. And most people Vollman encounters aren't willing to talk about that. However, as one young resident tells Vollman, "On the one hand, we think about our health. On the other hand, we think about money from oil." Of course, as Vollman notes, they aren't the only ones, writing "We create the demand for TCO's product, we pollute the atmosphere with it, and...we don't give a rat's ass." (Pause here to think about jets. However, it can't be said Vollman doesn't give a rat's ass.)
Vollman wrestles with the definition of poverty, constructing an income table of subsistence earning around the world--but, as he writes, how do you establish equivalencies between "one person's 'living normally' and another's unqualified 'need' versus his 'rock bottom' need?" Another question Vollman asks (this is a question he prods readers into asking, as well) is "Would I grow wretched as I imagine, were I transformed into one of them? Actually, the bright, humid slowness of their lives gives me hope that I could 'adjust'."
He writes about the invisibility of poor people, and his most chilling example of this is what happens when people to whom invisibility is culturally prescribed--e.g., women in Taliban Afganistan--lose their safety net and become doubly invisible. In Taliban Afganistan, women who become destitute are forbidden even to beg because they are not allowed to be seen, in the name of respect for women.
Vollman asks poor people what they think: why are some people rich, some poor? They cite education, they cite intelligence, they cite selfishness. One poor young man in Mexico agrees that the rich are selfish: "They guard what they have.... It could happen that they will lose their money and be poor in the street and it will be a poor person who helps them out."
The author writes about Kazakhstan, where there is a consortium of oil producers, Tengizchevroil (TCO), headquartered in a very small town I'd never heard of, where old houses, the house of the poor, are being torn down for hotels and office buildings and almost everything connected with TCO is top secret. From government officials to workers to interpreters--if they're willing to talk at first, they soon aren't. Due to oil refining, almost everyone in the has dire health problems. And most people Vollman encounters aren't willing to talk about that. However, as one young resident tells Vollman, "On the one hand, we think about our health. On the other hand, we think about money from oil." Of course, as Vollman notes, they aren't the only ones, writing "We create the demand for TCO's product, we pollute the atmosphere with it, and...we don't give a rat's ass." (Pause here to think about jets. However, it can't be said Vollman doesn't give a rat's ass.)
Monday, October 15, 2007
Life Is Nothing But Contrasts
Just Finished: Poor People, William T. Vollman
Richistan, Robert Frank
Don't read these books back to back. You could get whiplash.
After I overcame my revulsion for the cuteisms of "Richistan," "Richistani," and "Richistanis" (not to mention "instapreneurs"), Richistan was pretty readable. In all, though, Richistan seemed the product of a mind steeped in journalese, and not just any old journalese, either, but that of the Wall Street Journal. I don't know if Robert Frank is simply one of the WSJ writers (good cop) whom most people seem to separate from the editors (bad cop) prone to unreconstructed Gilded Age musings, or if he writes WSK editorials, but Richistan reads, in a few places, as if its writer had to perform an uneasy balancing act.
The germ of the book apparently began at a boat show, when someone remarked to Frank, "You look at all these boats and you'd think everyone's making loads of money. It's like it's a different country." Well, golly gee: "Today's rich had formed their own virtual country. They were, in fact, wealthier than most nations...," Frank writes. "They were creating Richistan." (This last sentence is given its own paragraph.)
Frank says "Almost anyone, anywhere can make a fortune today with the right idea." He fails to add "and the right amount of capital." Then he gives a quick rundown of "arcane, oddball products" that have made fortunes. Oddly, most of them seem food-based: an updated mozzarella cheese with "ideal melting properties," Double Bubble redux, salsa, meat products, potato products, baked goods.... While new, improved mozzarella clearly is based on some sort of an idea, a Tyson's is a Tyson's is a Tyson's, for which plenty of capital already existed and so, presumably, did the idea. This unconscious undercutting of the shiny new theory of Richistan happens more than once.
Frank plumbs the depths of the "service heart," in a chapter on 'butler boot camp' (taught by a former Marine). He writes "If you ask any butlers in training why they decided to spend the rest of their lives catering to the whims of the rich, they'll inevitably mention their 'service heart'." One trainee, who had come to butler boot camp with previous experience, says she would "sometimes ask myself, 'Why is it so important to me to get him the right kind of potato chips? ...What is wrong with me?' But then I realized there are others out there like me. I really feel like I've found out what I was meant to do." This has the whiff of the Wal-Mart smiley face.
The chapter on "performance philanthropy" made a certain amount of sense. I opted out of tithing to United Way due to its chairman's misuse of funds; I was saddened to learn that the Nature Conservancy had plopped vacation homes on some of its land (marshlands, if I'm recalling this right); and then there was Red Cross post-9-11. I've read too often about how little of your charity dollar goes to mission and how much to administration and perks. This chapter focuses on a rich techy who specializes in an oxymoronic pursuit: entrepreneurial charity. His region is Ethiopia and his track record seems impressive: 1,657 wells, 190 schools, 99 health clinics, and 24 large-animal vet clinics. He says his projects "sometimes cost half as much as similar projects run by the big aid groups." The oversight, ultimately, is his alone, taking the dictum "If you want something done right, do it yourself" in a new direction. I have the nagging sense, though, that there are far too few rich techies to get this particular job done.
Richistan, Robert Frank
Don't read these books back to back. You could get whiplash.
After I overcame my revulsion for the cuteisms of "Richistan," "Richistani," and "Richistanis" (not to mention "instapreneurs"), Richistan was pretty readable. In all, though, Richistan seemed the product of a mind steeped in journalese, and not just any old journalese, either, but that of the Wall Street Journal. I don't know if Robert Frank is simply one of the WSJ writers (good cop) whom most people seem to separate from the editors (bad cop) prone to unreconstructed Gilded Age musings, or if he writes WSK editorials, but Richistan reads, in a few places, as if its writer had to perform an uneasy balancing act.
The germ of the book apparently began at a boat show, when someone remarked to Frank, "You look at all these boats and you'd think everyone's making loads of money. It's like it's a different country." Well, golly gee: "Today's rich had formed their own virtual country. They were, in fact, wealthier than most nations...," Frank writes. "They were creating Richistan." (This last sentence is given its own paragraph.)
Frank says "Almost anyone, anywhere can make a fortune today with the right idea." He fails to add "and the right amount of capital." Then he gives a quick rundown of "arcane, oddball products" that have made fortunes. Oddly, most of them seem food-based: an updated mozzarella cheese with "ideal melting properties," Double Bubble redux, salsa, meat products, potato products, baked goods.... While new, improved mozzarella clearly is based on some sort of an idea, a Tyson's is a Tyson's is a Tyson's, for which plenty of capital already existed and so, presumably, did the idea. This unconscious undercutting of the shiny new theory of Richistan happens more than once.
Frank plumbs the depths of the "service heart," in a chapter on 'butler boot camp' (taught by a former Marine). He writes "If you ask any butlers in training why they decided to spend the rest of their lives catering to the whims of the rich, they'll inevitably mention their 'service heart'." One trainee, who had come to butler boot camp with previous experience, says she would "sometimes ask myself, 'Why is it so important to me to get him the right kind of potato chips? ...What is wrong with me?' But then I realized there are others out there like me. I really feel like I've found out what I was meant to do." This has the whiff of the Wal-Mart smiley face.
The chapter on "performance philanthropy" made a certain amount of sense. I opted out of tithing to United Way due to its chairman's misuse of funds; I was saddened to learn that the Nature Conservancy had plopped vacation homes on some of its land (marshlands, if I'm recalling this right); and then there was Red Cross post-9-11. I've read too often about how little of your charity dollar goes to mission and how much to administration and perks. This chapter focuses on a rich techy who specializes in an oxymoronic pursuit: entrepreneurial charity. His region is Ethiopia and his track record seems impressive: 1,657 wells, 190 schools, 99 health clinics, and 24 large-animal vet clinics. He says his projects "sometimes cost half as much as similar projects run by the big aid groups." The oversight, ultimately, is his alone, taking the dictum "If you want something done right, do it yourself" in a new direction. I have the nagging sense, though, that there are far too few rich techies to get this particular job done.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Short Take: Merle's Door
Currently reading: Poor People, William T. Vollman
Just finished: Merle's Door--Lessons from a Freethinking Dog, Ted Kerasote
The first part of the title puts me in mind of a Merle Norman spa (if such a thing exists) and trips my irony meter, since author Ted Kerasote is clearly an outdoorsman and his dog was rough, tough and brainy. Irony aside, Kerasote pulls off the unlikely feat of rendering Dog to English and making the reader believe it. Four legs, two legs: we're not so different after all.
Just finished: Merle's Door--Lessons from a Freethinking Dog, Ted Kerasote
The first part of the title puts me in mind of a Merle Norman spa (if such a thing exists) and trips my irony meter, since author Ted Kerasote is clearly an outdoorsman and his dog was rough, tough and brainy. Irony aside, Kerasote pulls off the unlikely feat of rendering Dog to English and making the reader believe it. Four legs, two legs: we're not so different after all.
Mirage: The Conclusion
Palm Beach County: the world in a drop of water. In Palm Beach proper, average daily use (does this mean you, Mr. Trump?) is 13,ooo gallons per day. In Belle Glade, where a third of the residents live below the federal poverty level, they average 1,000 gallons per day. Monthly water bills in Belle Glade? A flat $62.50. Monthly water bills in Palm Beach? A bit less than $30, depending on consumption. "Worldwide," Barnett writes, "the poor generally pay much more for water than the rich." And that's not all: as a resource, water is underpriced. That's why we squander so much of it.
With so much wasted, "[w]ill water become the oil of the twenty-first century?" T. Boone Pickens, owner of 27,000 acres over the Ogallala Aquifer, is betting on it. Barnett relates how, by 2005, Pickens had contracted with 75 Texas Panhandle landowners, securing water rights to 100,000 acres, along with financing for a 171-mile pipeline. Where water is concerned it would appear Texas is ahead of the privatizing (not to mention feudalizing) curve.
And then there are the blue-sky technology freaks who bet on Aquifer Storage and Recovery, or ASR. On first read, it sounds like a good idea: when it's wet, withdraw water and store it underground to use during droughts. When it's dry, reverse the process. What could go wrong? Well, for one thing, basing the project on cost, rather than hydrogeological data: there's arsenic in the parts of the aquifer where ASRs have been sunk. "The mix of highly oxidized ASR water with the low-oxygen water...in the Suwannee Limestone [layer of the aquifer] causes arsenic underground to 'mobilize'." Oops. And then there's desalinization, costly and ineffective.
Barnett posits that the problem of water in Florida may be due to Floridians losing touch with it. You can't swim in Crystal Springs anymore, due to water bottling. You can't see the ocean for the condominiums. However, as she points out, we have a choice: we can continue the giveaways, we can put our faith in unproven technology, we can continue to ignore land-use plans, or "we can spend [our tax dollars] on water-conservation, land-preservation, and restoration projects."
My take? Everyone in Florida (and possibly the United States) should read this book.
With so much wasted, "[w]ill water become the oil of the twenty-first century?" T. Boone Pickens, owner of 27,000 acres over the Ogallala Aquifer, is betting on it. Barnett relates how, by 2005, Pickens had contracted with 75 Texas Panhandle landowners, securing water rights to 100,000 acres, along with financing for a 171-mile pipeline. Where water is concerned it would appear Texas is ahead of the privatizing (not to mention feudalizing) curve.
And then there are the blue-sky technology freaks who bet on Aquifer Storage and Recovery, or ASR. On first read, it sounds like a good idea: when it's wet, withdraw water and store it underground to use during droughts. When it's dry, reverse the process. What could go wrong? Well, for one thing, basing the project on cost, rather than hydrogeological data: there's arsenic in the parts of the aquifer where ASRs have been sunk. "The mix of highly oxidized ASR water with the low-oxygen water...in the Suwannee Limestone [layer of the aquifer] causes arsenic underground to 'mobilize'." Oops. And then there's desalinization, costly and ineffective.
Barnett posits that the problem of water in Florida may be due to Floridians losing touch with it. You can't swim in Crystal Springs anymore, due to water bottling. You can't see the ocean for the condominiums. However, as she points out, we have a choice: we can continue the giveaways, we can put our faith in unproven technology, we can continue to ignore land-use plans, or "we can spend [our tax dollars] on water-conservation, land-preservation, and restoration projects."
My take? Everyone in Florida (and possibly the United States) should read this book.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
First We Had Some Water
Still reading: Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern U. S., Cynthia Barnett
First we had some water, then we didn't (who knows if we'll ever get to say "and then we did"). It's hard out here for a Floridian, and Mirage makes it clear it's our own damn fault.
After the prehistoric period, the colonial period, the lamentable period of Andrew Jackson and the Seminole Indian wars, the civil war era and just until the Gilded Age, a lot of Florida's history can be described in two acts: (Act 1) a valiant, idiotic, ultimately successful struggle to drain the state's wetlands, and (Act 2) a halfhearted (expensive) attempt to patch up the destruction, mainly to provide adequate water for developers, whose Sunshine State party has been going on since the 1920s, and their thirsty customers, who dote on green grass, at home and on the golf course.
Development and its discontents have had consequences: Florida's droughts are droughtier, its sinkholes sinkier, its saltwater intrusion more intrusive. Wetlands would have ameliorated all this. We have worse freezes and more fires. For the most part, when Florida became a state in 1845, these were not concerns to the extent they are now. The first state flag said "Let Us Alone." (We wish.)
Many of these inconveniences and disasters can be traced to early giveaways of land and water--for example, an 1879 bill awarded 10,000 acres for each new mile of canal or railroad track built. Through a deal brokered to pull Florida out of a legal crisis, Pennsylvania mogul Hamilton Disston bought four million acres for 25 cents each, in return for draining 12 million acres north and west of Lake Okeechobee. If Disston pulled this off, half of these 12 million acres would return to him. Clobbered by the 1890s depression, Disston began to mortgage his land for loans and then to default; in 1896, he committed suicide.
A precedent had been set; giveaways continued as development accelerated after WWII. From 1970-80, Florida "had among the the most extensive wetlands loss in the nation." I could not but find a sort of grim amusement in the irony of my state first getting rid of its water and then trying to put it back.
Barnett has written an invaluable history. Her style is clean, clear and fast, making Mirage a pleasure to read. The book just gets better as she discusses Everglades restoration, how lack of wetlands affects the weather, the eager concessions made to JOE, "the state's most ambitious developer since Hamilton Disston," and the first shots fired in the water wars.
Now I'm up to the chapter on water bottlers. The concessions given to water bottling companies make the ones to St. Joe look meager, so at the moment, I'm taking a break from the embarrassment of living in this not-so-brave new Florida that has such government in it. (to be continued)
First we had some water, then we didn't (who knows if we'll ever get to say "and then we did"). It's hard out here for a Floridian, and Mirage makes it clear it's our own damn fault.
After the prehistoric period, the colonial period, the lamentable period of Andrew Jackson and the Seminole Indian wars, the civil war era and just until the Gilded Age, a lot of Florida's history can be described in two acts: (Act 1) a valiant, idiotic, ultimately successful struggle to drain the state's wetlands, and (Act 2) a halfhearted (expensive) attempt to patch up the destruction, mainly to provide adequate water for developers, whose Sunshine State party has been going on since the 1920s, and their thirsty customers, who dote on green grass, at home and on the golf course.
Development and its discontents have had consequences: Florida's droughts are droughtier, its sinkholes sinkier, its saltwater intrusion more intrusive. Wetlands would have ameliorated all this. We have worse freezes and more fires. For the most part, when Florida became a state in 1845, these were not concerns to the extent they are now. The first state flag said "Let Us Alone." (We wish.)
Many of these inconveniences and disasters can be traced to early giveaways of land and water--for example, an 1879 bill awarded 10,000 acres for each new mile of canal or railroad track built. Through a deal brokered to pull Florida out of a legal crisis, Pennsylvania mogul Hamilton Disston bought four million acres for 25 cents each, in return for draining 12 million acres north and west of Lake Okeechobee. If Disston pulled this off, half of these 12 million acres would return to him. Clobbered by the 1890s depression, Disston began to mortgage his land for loans and then to default; in 1896, he committed suicide.
A precedent had been set; giveaways continued as development accelerated after WWII. From 1970-80, Florida "had among the the most extensive wetlands loss in the nation." I could not but find a sort of grim amusement in the irony of my state first getting rid of its water and then trying to put it back.
Barnett has written an invaluable history. Her style is clean, clear and fast, making Mirage a pleasure to read. The book just gets better as she discusses Everglades restoration, how lack of wetlands affects the weather, the eager concessions made to JOE, "the state's most ambitious developer since Hamilton Disston," and the first shots fired in the water wars.
Now I'm up to the chapter on water bottlers. The concessions given to water bottling companies make the ones to St. Joe look meager, so at the moment, I'm taking a break from the embarrassment of living in this not-so-brave new Florida that has such government in it. (to be continued)
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Dead Animals
Currently reading: Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern U.S. , Cynthia Barnett
Just finished: Coal Black Horse, Robert Olmstead
I'm a sucker for a horse story. The titular character kept me reading Coal Black Horse, but I had a hard time appreciating the virtues of this Civil War novel due to the author's diction. Here's one example: "He walked a shambling gait, his knees to and fro and his shoulders rocking." Maybe someone should digitize this; I tried to visualize it and failed. (How do you "walk a gait"?) Here's another: "[Men] came and went; they ached and pained. They laughed privately and cried to themselves as if heeding a way-off silent call. They were forever childish, sweet and convulsive. They heard sounds the way a dog heard. They were like the moon; they changed every eight days." American men. They were different in 1863.
The story gets underway when Robey Childs is sent off by his mother to bring his father back from the war. (It's unclear at first if they live in the south or the north.) Where, Robey asks, will I find him? Go south, go east, then go north, says his Delphic mother. All right, Robey says, and off he sets on a "cobby gray horse with pearly [?] eyes". A cob is a small, sturdy saddle horse, so why does such a horse break down before they get to the general store (which you'd think wouldn't be that far from home)? However, this circumstance does inspire the extremely generous store owner to give Robey a replacement horse, a coal-black "Hanovarian." (A quick search indicates that German warmbloods--or German coach horses as they were then called, a category including Hanoverians--were first imported into the United States in the 1880s, making Robey's coal-black "Hanovarian" an anachronism.) As a character, 14-year-old Robey has sleep-walked through his role thus far, for all the volition he's shown, but he's awake enough to feel inferior to his splendid new horse. As well he might. The horse saves his bacon more than once. There's a believable misfortune when the coal-black horse is stolen, followed by a miracle: the U.S. Army agrees to return his horse during a war involving cavalry.
Olmstead does better at penning scenes of violence. An attack on a train yard is described minutely, with the general chaos of battle providing a backdrop for the particular details of human and equine carnage. A desultory love story, on again, off again, is less successful, possibly due to the characters' speech, somehow laconic and mannered at the same time. The author is good at scenes involving unlikely actions brought on by desperation; these scenes almost verge on magical realism, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were historically accurate. And Robey's father, although briefly seen, believably gives meaning to Robey's mythic quest.
On the whole, though, the book is undercut by inexact or awkward writing: "women with green hides sewn to their feet" (ouch), "[h]e was not so intent on hiding as he was avoiding being seen" (and the difference between hiding and avoiding being seen is?), and "gaunt horses with pinch-nosed hackamoors that wrung their tails" (you tell me how it's possible for a hackamore to wring a horse's tail). Since I've never read anything by Olmstead before, I was glad to run across the story "Walking with Syd," a meditation on guns, dogs, death and suicide, which displays less vexing diction. "Walking with Syd" contains this true statement: "Children, or children-like people should not be allowed to name. It is no fault of theirs. They don't know all about names and how they mean...." In the context, that is exactly right.
Just finished: Coal Black Horse, Robert Olmstead
I'm a sucker for a horse story. The titular character kept me reading Coal Black Horse, but I had a hard time appreciating the virtues of this Civil War novel due to the author's diction. Here's one example: "He walked a shambling gait, his knees to and fro and his shoulders rocking." Maybe someone should digitize this; I tried to visualize it and failed. (How do you "walk a gait"?) Here's another: "[Men] came and went; they ached and pained. They laughed privately and cried to themselves as if heeding a way-off silent call. They were forever childish, sweet and convulsive. They heard sounds the way a dog heard. They were like the moon; they changed every eight days." American men. They were different in 1863.
The story gets underway when Robey Childs is sent off by his mother to bring his father back from the war. (It's unclear at first if they live in the south or the north.) Where, Robey asks, will I find him? Go south, go east, then go north, says his Delphic mother. All right, Robey says, and off he sets on a "cobby gray horse with pearly [?] eyes". A cob is a small, sturdy saddle horse, so why does such a horse break down before they get to the general store (which you'd think wouldn't be that far from home)? However, this circumstance does inspire the extremely generous store owner to give Robey a replacement horse, a coal-black "Hanovarian." (A quick search indicates that German warmbloods--or German coach horses as they were then called, a category including Hanoverians--were first imported into the United States in the 1880s, making Robey's coal-black "Hanovarian" an anachronism.) As a character, 14-year-old Robey has sleep-walked through his role thus far, for all the volition he's shown, but he's awake enough to feel inferior to his splendid new horse. As well he might. The horse saves his bacon more than once. There's a believable misfortune when the coal-black horse is stolen, followed by a miracle: the U.S. Army agrees to return his horse during a war involving cavalry.
Olmstead does better at penning scenes of violence. An attack on a train yard is described minutely, with the general chaos of battle providing a backdrop for the particular details of human and equine carnage. A desultory love story, on again, off again, is less successful, possibly due to the characters' speech, somehow laconic and mannered at the same time. The author is good at scenes involving unlikely actions brought on by desperation; these scenes almost verge on magical realism, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were historically accurate. And Robey's father, although briefly seen, believably gives meaning to Robey's mythic quest.
On the whole, though, the book is undercut by inexact or awkward writing: "women with green hides sewn to their feet" (ouch), "[h]e was not so intent on hiding as he was avoiding being seen" (and the difference between hiding and avoiding being seen is?), and "gaunt horses with pinch-nosed hackamoors that wrung their tails" (you tell me how it's possible for a hackamore to wring a horse's tail). Since I've never read anything by Olmstead before, I was glad to run across the story "Walking with Syd," a meditation on guns, dogs, death and suicide, which displays less vexing diction. "Walking with Syd" contains this true statement: "Children, or children-like people should not be allowed to name. It is no fault of theirs. They don't know all about names and how they mean...." In the context, that is exactly right.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Adorable Loonies
Still Reading: Two Years before the Mast
Currently Reading: Coal Black Horse, Robert Olmstead
Just Finished: Nature Girl, Carl Hiassen
Adorable loonies--and I'm not talking about Canadian currency (which just got more adorable by achieving parity with the dollar). Nope, this adorable loony is the main character in Carl Hiassen's Nature Girl. As I read, I kept thinking, "There's someone Honey Santana [eye-roll] reminds me of. Who could it be?" Reading on: "Right. Serge Storms."
Hiassen has always written about people who, if they aren't crazy, are at least caricatures, and vice versa. Here, a possibly bipolar protagonist encourages the willing suspension of disbelief in one's readers. Good thing, too, since Honey is the main engineer of Nature Girl's wholly improbable plot. She also has a tendency to hear dueling tunes in her head; e.g. "Smoke on the Water" v. "Rainy Days and Mondays." Without the bipolar aspect, my willing suspension wouldn't have been quite so willing. (Tim Dorsey, you've served the cause well.)
Rudeness in Florida--the road rage of entitlement yuppies and rednecks alike, the window-rattling truck muffler of the kid next door--is pretty much a given and something with which everyone must deal. Honey's quirk is that she can't deal; her quest is to school one snotty telemarketer selling "ranchettes" in Gilchrist County, who, because Honey didn't hang up, grievously insults her. If she can make him see the error of his ways, the world will be a better place for her boy Fry. Through subterfuge and manic energy, she tricks the telemarketer into paying a visit to her neck of the woods: Everglades City and the Ten Thousand Islands. If he can see the glory that is wild south Florida, he'll be a changed man. Or not.
From a kayak outing perfectly set on a river feeding into Chokoloskee Bay (tangled mangroves, spiderwebs, herons, gray pelicans) to the dead python on the Tamiami Trail, Hiassen's eye for Florida is superb. His descriptions of wild and not-so-wild Florida as well as the seamlessly inserted accounts of Florida history make me wish Hiassen would try to write a straight literary novel of the state. I've been reading and enjoying Hiassen for years; at long last, speaking just for myself, I'd be ready for something new and different, if not completely new and different: a Hiassen novel where the humor takes a backseat to the message.
Currently Reading: Coal Black Horse, Robert Olmstead
Just Finished: Nature Girl, Carl Hiassen
Adorable loonies--and I'm not talking about Canadian currency (which just got more adorable by achieving parity with the dollar). Nope, this adorable loony is the main character in Carl Hiassen's Nature Girl. As I read, I kept thinking, "There's someone Honey Santana [eye-roll] reminds me of. Who could it be?" Reading on: "Right. Serge Storms."
Hiassen has always written about people who, if they aren't crazy, are at least caricatures, and vice versa. Here, a possibly bipolar protagonist encourages the willing suspension of disbelief in one's readers. Good thing, too, since Honey is the main engineer of Nature Girl's wholly improbable plot. She also has a tendency to hear dueling tunes in her head; e.g. "Smoke on the Water" v. "Rainy Days and Mondays." Without the bipolar aspect, my willing suspension wouldn't have been quite so willing. (Tim Dorsey, you've served the cause well.)
Rudeness in Florida--the road rage of entitlement yuppies and rednecks alike, the window-rattling truck muffler of the kid next door--is pretty much a given and something with which everyone must deal. Honey's quirk is that she can't deal; her quest is to school one snotty telemarketer selling "ranchettes" in Gilchrist County, who, because Honey didn't hang up, grievously insults her. If she can make him see the error of his ways, the world will be a better place for her boy Fry. Through subterfuge and manic energy, she tricks the telemarketer into paying a visit to her neck of the woods: Everglades City and the Ten Thousand Islands. If he can see the glory that is wild south Florida, he'll be a changed man. Or not.
From a kayak outing perfectly set on a river feeding into Chokoloskee Bay (tangled mangroves, spiderwebs, herons, gray pelicans) to the dead python on the Tamiami Trail, Hiassen's eye for Florida is superb. His descriptions of wild and not-so-wild Florida as well as the seamlessly inserted accounts of Florida history make me wish Hiassen would try to write a straight literary novel of the state. I've been reading and enjoying Hiassen for years; at long last, speaking just for myself, I'd be ready for something new and different, if not completely new and different: a Hiassen novel where the humor takes a backseat to the message.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Hello, World
Having never had a blog, I see the material as notes on what I'm reading now, with occasional sidetrips. Whatever else it turns out to be, it's going to be idiosyncratic.
Currently reading:
- Two Years Before the Mast, Richard Henry Dana, Jr.
- Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties, Robert Stone
About to read:
- The Mistress's Daughter, A.M. Homes
So, Robert Stone. My introduction to Stone was Children of Light, which I've seen described as his worst book and the only work of his I've seen remaindered. So much for critics: it remains my favorite Stone work. Take one Gordon Walker, a fragile, glib, selfish screenwriter-actor who's separated from his wife and invariably cranked on coke, add him to a movie set where his presence is unwelcome, and have him try to recreate a halcyon romance with Lee Verger (Luanne from the bayou to her friends), a schizophrenic actress on the comeback trail and just as fond of a toot--well, the equation equals a trainwreck it's hard to look away from. Children of Light contains a favorite Stone leitmotif: the sinister married couple who seem to have been together forever. Here, that couple is Patty and Walter Drogue Jr., respectively a trophy wife before the phrase was current and the director (both first seen naked in a hot tub in the equally naked company of Walter Drogue Sr., a Hollywood legend, and all of them cracking wise). It's a book full of sordid delights and economy of description, with a harrowing ending and humiliating coda. Something for everyone, in other words.
As a not-fan of memoir (although I'm willing to make exceptions), I found Prime Green mainly interesting for the fictional origins it reveals: the real-life Maoist horoscope-writing hack who appears in Dog Soldiers: "Don't be afraid to ask for a raise, Sagitarrius! Your boss always keeps some of the value of the labor for himself!" We learn that Merry Prankster Neal Cassady's parrot is the model for the highly annoying fictional character Willie Wing's parrot in "Porque no Tiene, Porque le Falta, from Bear and His Daughter. Presumably Neal Cassady is equally the model for Willie Wings--much pickled, I'd guess. Or possibly not.
Distillations from real life transmuted to compelling fiction fascinate a certain turn of mind (which I possess), but this fascination is pretty closely related to the fascination with gossip--not, I'd guess, the reason an author would hope you'd read his book. The sharpest insights in Prime Green often come from hindsight: Stone writes that he bore witness, "unwittingly, to a worldwide development," the so-called "War on Drugs." The ensuing havoc, the "damage to American and foreign jurisprudence, the outlaw fortunes made, the destroyed children, and the gangsterism are all well known." And
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