Greed Again

I did indeed turn to Studs Terkel this week, beginning his book on the divisions in our society, The Great Divide, a collection of interviews by Mr. Terkel and his staff in which they asked Americans what they thought about the state of the American Dream. It's quite interesting, especially since it was compiled in the mid-80s, an era characterized by tremendous greed, its signature movie being Wall Street, which came out in 1987, around the time this book was published (early 1988).

Some things I've learned so far are that some people were disappointed with Reagan, some regretted voting for him, but others thought he was right on--smart, courageous, wise.  Indeed, there seems a tremendous desire on the part of some of the interviewees in the book to explain why "greed is good" (to quote Wall Street).

One interesting aspect of the book was that the stock market crash occurred during the interviewing process so that the interviewers were able to go back to people they had talked to before the crash to get their responses after it happened.  Not surprisingly, those in the financial profession were the most anxious to play down the significance of the crash.

It seems Mr. Terkel tried to include all walks of life in the book, from dentist to stock broker to factory worker to farmer. Some of the opinions are harsh, some surprising. It's an interesting look at that era.

What was perhaps most disturbing about the book, though, is how much that time resembles our own. It seems that we didn't learn much, that not much has changed in 25 years, and in fact the "great divide" is wider than ever.

Until next time . . .

Hemingway and Curwood

I've finished reading Personal Injuries and I enjoyed it very much, though the ending was kind of sad.

In the meantime, I've been reading another of my books to my mother over the phone: Nomads of the North, by James Oliver Curwood. I think she's enjoying it, although she would probably agree with me that the author does get a bit carried away with description from time to time.

Curwood wrote in the early 20th century and was very popular in his day. Nomads of the North was published in 1919, at a time when detailed description in novels was expected and commonplace. As I was reading the novel, it struck me that Ernest Hemingway, who began publishing in the early 1920s, offered the reading public a style that at the time must have seemed terribly stark and annoyingly spare of information. These days it is Hemingway's journalistic style that's commonplace, so it's hard for us to appreciate what a shock that kind of minimalist writing must have been to readers used to the florid prose offered by writers such as Curwood.

Here is an example of what I mean. Following is a passage from Nomads of the North:

He was about to gasp his last gasp when the force of the current, as it swung out of the whirlpool, flung Neewa upon a bit of partly submerged driftage, and in a wild and strenuous effort to make himself safe Neewa dragged Miki's head out of water so that the pup hung at the edge of the driftage like a hangman's victim at the end of his rope.

In this passage, the narrator is attempting to describe a life-or-death struggle, but by the time the reader slogs through all the words to get to the action, the terror of the moment is lost.

Compare with this passage from Hemingway's story, "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," which also depicts a life-or-death struggle:

the gun-bearer shouted wildly and they saw him coming out of the bush sideways, fast as a crab, and the bull coming, nose out, mouth tight closed, blood dripping, massive head straight out, coming in a charge, his little pig eyes bloodshot as he looked at them.

Hemingway was a master at this style of writing, sometimes referred to as journalistic. The theory behind it, called the iceberg theory, requires that most of the meaning of a passage remains below the surface. Here is a Wikipedia article that elaborates on it: Iceberg Theory.

I've found an October 31, 1926 New York Times' review of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises that shows how new this technique was to readers at the time. Here's an excerpt:

The "more literary English" this reviewer refers to may be the kind employed by Mr. Curwood and his ilk as opposed to the "lean, hard, athletic narrative prose" that Mr. Hemingway became synonymous with in his lifetime.

My next book will be non-fiction, I think. One of the "T" books, of course. Perhaps I'll go to Studs Terkel next. I'll keep you posted, in any event.

I've been reading Scott Turow's 1999 novel, Personal Injuries this week. It's pretty good--a mystery, of course, but not a murder mystery. It's a legal thriller not unlike John Grisham's typical effort. Plenty of flawed lawyers, judges, police and suspense keep the reader reading.  Nothing profound, just entertainment. A film of the book was planned but never materialized, though Dustin Hoffman was promoting it back in 2007. What else can I say? I'm enjoying it.

The Yank's Adventure

Well, I finally finished A Connecticut Yankee and I must say it was an enjoyable book, though a bit chaotic at times. There was a lot of satire in it besides a pretty decent story; Twain makes fun of some very serious issues, chief among them slavery. Though it was over by the time the story was published in 1889, Twain was no doubt still seeing slavery's deplorable after-effects and lamenting man's inhumanity to man.  Though I must say, his character Hank Morgan was certainly far from perfect and subject to many of man's worst flaws.

I recommend the book, especially if you haven't read it since high school, but you'll have to tolerate a little bit of old fashioned writing.  One of these days I want to see the movie with Bing Crosby again, as I remember very little of it.

I'm on to another "T" book next, though I don't know which one yet.  Maybe a non-fiction this time . . .  I'll keep you posted!

A Humorous Sojourn

This week I began my "T" books, starting with a popular book about punctuation (!) by Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots and Leaves.  It was very funny and very well written!  I had been given it as a gift years ago (since it came out in 2004, it was probably 9 years), and never gotten around to reading it.  Its audience seems to be puncto-philes (I'm making that word up) or even puncto-fanatics, which means I'm the perfect person to read it.  Fortunately for the publisher, it was, as they claim on the book's jacket, "a runaway bestseller," much to the author's astonishment.

I enjoyed reading about her exasperation at the signs we see every day--supposedly to communicate an important message--that are atrociously punctuated, and at the alarming increase in poorly punctuated emails and other such published writings that should be more carefully composed and proofread. It was heartening to realize I'm not alone!

But if someone were reading it just to learn about punctuation, I think the book would be less than ideal. The author tends to get into the weeds about how words should be punctuated, ending up discussing all the exceptions to the rules, something that, I've learned, confuses puncto-phobic people to the point where they throw up their hands and say, "Well, it doesn't really matter, then, does it?" That's not exactly the result Ms. Truss and I are looking for.

But if you just want a laugh about how language is constantly evolving and sometimes stumbling on its way to communication, you'll enjoy this book as I did.

Since that was a short book, I was able to start another on the "T" list, this time a novel by Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.  I had read the book many years ago, but don't really remember it.  I've also seen the movie starring Bing Crosby, but don't remember much about it, either, other than that there was singing, as there always is with Bing Crosby movies.  The story involves a factory worker in late-nineteenth-century Hartford, CT who is hit on the head with a crowbar, and when he comes to, finds himself in King Arthur's court. Since the character, Hank Morgan, is a pragmatic sort of fellow, he makes the most of his time-travel.  And since Twain is telling the story, he does it in a very comical way.

In the years since reading the book the first time, I've studied the history of the middle ages, so I'm enjoying the book in a different way this time, appreciating how Twain is making fun of that era as well as his own.  It's a funny thing about Twain: I always forget what a good writer he was! Once I get used to the late nineteenth-century style of writing (rather full and florid, as a rule), I find myself thoroughly entertained by Twain's clever way of looking at the world and its people.

So, two humorous books in a row ain't a bad thing!  I'll let you know how our Connecticut Yankee fares in the next installment.