Meditations is a collection of personal reflections written by
Marcus Aurelius (121-180), the Emperor of Rome from 161 to 180 AD. The
writings reflect the life of a Stoic. The Stoic philosophy is not like
asceticism, which is a lifestyle of abstinence and frugality. Stoicism, as
represented in Marcus Aurelius' writings, is closer to Zen; the Emperor-author
emphasizes focus, moderation, self-control, and harmony.
I
appreciate how Marcus Aurelius begins the day by
focusing on the values he wants to live and exhibit through his
behavior. I also love this lesson and promise: "From Alexander the Platonic,
not frequently nor without necessity to say to any one, or to write in a
letter, that I have no leisure; nor continually to excuse the neglect
of duties required by our relation to those with whom we live, by
alleging urgent occupations."
Note: The version I read was translated by George Long and was published in a
Harvard Classics edition that also includes Plato's The Apology, Phaedo,
and Crito, as well as Epictetus' The Golden Sayings.
I peek outside, then I am drawn through a French door onto the patio. My eyes pull left to the neighbor's house. Through its large bay
window I find the eyes of an obese killer, more monster than man. He is a horrifying blob stationed at a breakfast table. He wears women's lingerie—a black teddy. He wants to take my life now.
I briefly lose sight of him as he rushes out the back of his house and exits his garage. But, then, he is all I can see. Because he gushes into my yard and is closing in at a paralyzing speed. The impulse to run takes me.
Roaring nearer, he warns me that he will now begin asking questions, and if I
answer correctly, I can live a few seconds more. Here's how it will go. First he will sing, and I must finish the lyrics. So he begins singing "Hallelujah."
I scramble onto a trampoline in the yard, and he corners me there. He is singing, and I think, "She tied you to her kitchen chair, and she broke your throne, and she cut your hair." He is at the
edge of the trampoline now. I jump left, he moves left; I jump right, he
is there. He is unbelievably fast, and he is singing, and his voice grows incredibly loud. I am in the air, and his singing comes out now in two voices—a high, loud shriek and a low
moan. He disappears under the trampoline as I begin coming down, and he is right under me. I try to will my body forward, a lunge unpropelled, an attempt made weak with terror. I wake, bolting upright
in bed, hearing my own pitiful, last groan.
I read everything in "The Complete Stories of Truman Capote." These are shorts laid out by the famous, brilliant American author. The stories are wonderful, of course. But the introduction is ridiculous—almost hateful. It includes the following passages:
This man who impersonated an exotic clown in the early, more private years of his career and then—pressed by the heavy weight of his past—became the demented public clown of his ending...
And,
In his final wreckage, this slender collection of short stories may well have seemed to Capote the least of his fulfillment ... by his own refusal to conquer his personal hungers ...
Awful.
Of the earlier Capote works collected here, "A Diamond Guitar" strikes a chord. But the best of all the stories was the later work, "Mojave," written in 1975. The protagonists' detachment makes the exotic and strange seem sadly familiar.
Nikolai Gogol's play, "The Government Inspector," satirizes political corruption in Imperial Russia. Russia is incurably corrupt, so while the play, published in 1836 (and revised in 1842), is presumably set in the mid-19th century, it remains relevant—and not just in Russia. In the play, small-town corrupt local officials receive news that a high-ranking, undercover inspector general will investigate the town's corruption problem. The locals mistake a pathetic, lowly civil servant, Khlestakov, for the inspector. Khlestakov and his servant take full advantage.
I read a version that included stage adaptation notes written by director Michael Langham. Langham's introduction emphasizes, among other things, that the corrupt mayor, rather than Khlestakov, is the central figure. I appreciate book editions that include notes like this. Sure enough, the mayor has the best lines. I found the work a quality read.
Notes: It is understood that corruption threatens all nations. Populist movements are perhaps most susceptible.
Think of someone you love, whose love for you is such a given that you sometimes take them for granted.
Imagine that person far away, the hostage of a violent zealot. Imagine your loved one, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, forced to their knees. Imagine that person positioned before a high-definition camera in the desert. Imagine, dressed head to toe in black, the zealot crowding in the picture with a highly polished knife.
The zealot speaks to the camera, his hand on your loved one's shoulder, telling you there is no choice. He tells you that forces beyond all three of you have forced this moment. The zealot tells you that your loved one will die, and that, although he will slit your loved one's throat, he did not choose to.
Imagine the zealot puts the knife to the throat of your beloved and cuts through the skin, tears into the muscles, saws through the tendons, and hits bone. Imagine your loved one gurgling, blood urging out. That's how they die.
The episodes in Jesus' Son hang on degenerates, but the narrator's simple, intimate diction conveys a sense of peace rather than anxiety about or perverse fascination with the damaged scenery and people at issue. This collection of short stories by American author Denis Johnson is quite good. I learned of Jesus' Son by reading the essay, "Does Recovery Kill Great Writing?," published in The New York Times Magazine in March 2018. The essay includes this quote from Johnson's collection: “The sky was torn away and the angels were descending out of a brilliant blue summer, their huge faces streaked with light and full of pity.” I was intrigued. Then the essay's author reveals, "While I was studying at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, I spent my nights at the writers’ bars on Market Street, and I spent my days reading the other writers who had gotten drunk in that town before I’d gotten drunk there: John Berryman, Raymond Carver, Denis Johnson." Having read this, when I picked up Jesus' Son, I expected Johnson's stories to boil up in America's less populated stretches of shadow and pain. Not so.
My favorite stories include "Dundun," "Emergency," and "Dirty Wedding." In a scene in "Dirty Wedding," the narrator, having accompanied his girlfriend to the abortion clinic, is asked to wait outside the building among pro-life protestors. Johnson writes: "It was raining outdoors and most of the Catholics were squashed up under an awning next door with their signs held overhead against the weather. They splashed holy water on my cheek and on the back of my neck, and I didn't feel a thing. Not for many years."
Note: Jesus' Son was published in 1992
This reading of The Collected Short Stories of Richard Yates was my first exposure to the author's writing. A few years ago, I saw and very much enjoyed the film adaptation of what is perhaps Yates' most famous work, "Revolutionary Road." Hard to believe and somewhat sad that I lived this long without reading this brilliant American writer.
Yates (1926–1992) masterfully crafts poignant stories in which personally profound events happen quietly. These are moments the characters will likely relive with feelings of melancholy or bitterness. This book includes stories from previous collections Eleven Kinds of Loneliness and Liars in Love, plus several stories under a chapter heading named "The Uncollected Stories." Of these short stories, I loved "A Glutton for Punishment," a brilliant study of a pathological failure drawn to graceful defeat. I also loved "The B.A.R. Man," a story in which the tension rises until the last word. Yates' stories sometimes end with a feigned punch, and I flinch. "A Convalescent Ego," the last story in this anthology, does the opposite; I laughed as I read it on a plane, and the end warmed my toes.
Notes: Revolutionary Road, the 2008 movie directed by Sam Mendes, stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet; but Michael Shannon owns it, of course, with his performance.
Kojak: You know, in a way, I admire her. A little kid, out of the sewers by her fingernails. No father, a lush for a mother.
Crocker: Why did you walk away from her?
Kojak: (Laughs) You know, I remember seeing a picture once. About this guy, came out of the streets, made it big. When he was a kid, used to have holes in his soles. So now he's got 200 pairs of shoes, he's rich. But he'd still cut a guy's heart out for a pair of shoes. That's why.
Note: 20 November 1977
Sitting on the front porch in the middle of the night and debating whether a tree needs trimming. I wish I could make those limbs disappear. I wish I could make other things happen. I would start with that tree. But I should think bigger. Surround myself with a giant wall? Bring lots of people over here? Go somewhere else? No. Would I want to just lie on the couch at my parents', watching a movie with mom and dad? Would I want to live forever? Be young forever? Have billions of dollars just to live and die comfortably? Maybe there is nothing else anymore.
I started reading Zane Grey's Western novella "Riders of the Purple Sage," but I could not stand the unworldly prose. Bits of it were salted goodness; most of it was sour. For example, the good:
The life of his eyes dulled to the gloom with which men of his fear saw
the approach of death. But death, while it hovered over him, did not
descend, for the rider waited for the twitching fingers, the downward
flash of hand that did not come.
But the sour dialog included this:
"Oh! Don't whip him! It would be dastardly!" implored Jane with slow certainty of her failing courage.
And prose like this:
Jane's subtle woman's intuition, even in that brief instant, felt a sadness, a hungering, a secret.
There have been many Western-genre works that I have enjoyed. But, I decided, as I sometimes do, that I did not want to spend my time trying to push through this one. There are many other works worth the time.
Notes:
I had just started chapter three.
The word "sage" (and "purple") was overused and worked into the prose unnecessarily.
Horror novella "The Hellbound Heart," published in 1986, was the basis for the 1987 film, "Hellraiser," which became something of a horror franchise. The novella, written by Clive Barker, opens with a devoted hedonist solving a puzzle box that introduces him to the Cenobites, a religious order dedicated to extreme sensual experiences. The Cenobites immediately own Frank, the filthy bastard, and doom him to an eternity of unfathomable pain and misery--which, I guess, gives them pleasure. That event sets up a silly story about how Frank's sister-in-law, who became infatuated with Frank upon marrying his brother, discovers and almost rescues Frank, so to speak, by murdering a couple of guys. The writing style, plot, and characters were ridiculous. This is a twisted story, really, but aside from coming across a few good phrases describing some intense sensations, I felt silly reading "The Hellbound Heart."
David Axelrod emerged on the national political scene as Barack Obama's invaluable strategist during the 2008 campaign. After the campaign, Axelrod stayed on as Obama's senior advisor for half of the first term. He returned to the campaign trail for Obama in 2012. While these events, covered in Axelrod's memoir, Believer, are momentous, I enjoyed the beginning of Axelrod's story most of all.
When he was a child, the future strategist, born in New York City, witnessed a John F. Kennedy campaign speech. Axelrod cites that moment as a formative experience. He had caught and internalized the political optimism of the day. He recalls the experience with undiminished sincerity.
I also enjoyed his brief recount of Chicago's modern political history. This memoir also offers a little of the guilty pleasure of gossipy criticism, such as when Axelrod criticizes Elizabeth Edwards for micromanaging the 2004 presidential campaign of her husband, John.
Axelrod
went to college in Chicago, then started as a journalist investigating
Chicago politics and corruption. He had his own column in a city
paper by age 18. Axelrod was friends with Obama long before they campaigned together, both having built careers out of Chicago politics.
Axelrod keeps the narrative moving. He could have written a whole book on just the first week in the White House, with the whole country groaning under the weight of the the financial crisis. But Axelrod gives those monumental days only the standard highlight reel. His writing is crisp, clever, and often funny. His forty-year career goes by too fast at times. He is an underrated and undervalued figure in our national politics. His enduring belief in the promise of America is precious.
I know there were moments there when I told myself, "Hold on to this feeling." But all I remember is how I felt seeing the seven-day outlook on the local news of a city I was about to leave forever. And, out on the sidewalk, under the old church awning, all that regret and anguish stored up in a man's face.
Mark Leibovich wallows in the networking and social maneuverings in This Town—which is, of course, Washington, DC. He kids DC's political players about the unseemly side of their work but never condemns them. Leibovich paints an absurd picture and sort of shrugs it off. His easygoing prose makes a shrug seem like the natural reaction. This Town delivers the goods for political junkies—especially if you tracked national politics from 2007 to 2013. Hearing how embedded Washington correspondents are is discomfiting. But if disillusion has already set in, the disappointment in This Town lands softly.
The short piece, "Herodias," appears in Gustave Flaubert's 1877 work, Three Tales. (The other two tales are "A Simple Heart" and "Saint Julian the Hospitalier.") "Herodias" concerns the characters and events surrounding the beheading of John the Baptist.
Flaubert casts as the central figure Herod Antipas, now commonly known as King Herod. At the time of the events, however, Herod was probably referred to as Antipas, and he was seen as more of a governor, a regional figure, than a king. Flaubert depicts Antipas as a weak ruler manipulated by his wife, the title character, Herodias, a princess from a powerful family of vassals of the Roman Empire.
Antipas was unpopular, perceived by his public as sycophantic and idolatrous. Added to the ruler's frustrations was John the Baptist's high-profile condemnation of the marriage to Herodias—a scandal; to marry Antipas, Herodias divorced her first husband, Herod II, Antipas's half-brother.
In Flaubert's telling, Herodias uses her daughter, Salomé, to seduce Antipas and persuade him to take John's head. Flaubert deals us a story rich in politics, sex, and violence, then combines them all in the climactic scene of Antipas's seduction and John's beheading.
The soil in the Mid-Atlantic sops up the irony and becomes poison. Blood loosens the ground, and roots stay exposed in the late season of water-cooled air. The thickest trunks pull away when a hellacious wind comes and weakens their will. Yours breaks. Though you're lit up at night, still the main attraction is fallacy.
Billy Budd, Sailor is Herman Melville's last novel. It tells us the story of a handsome, well-liked, naive young sailor, Billy Budd, who was drafted into the British Royal Navy in 1797. While at sea, the ship's master-at-arms, John Claggart, grows deeply envious of Budd and falsely accuses the young sailor of organizing a mutiny--an especially serious charge given that the recent mutinies in the Royal Navy have led to martial law at a time of ramped-up fears of French aggression. When confronted by his accuser in the presence of the ship's captain, Budd clocks Claggart, who drops dead. In the text, Budd's shocking, violent turn seems to erupt from a desperation born of his stutter, which renders him powerless to defend himself with words in the moment. A court martial ensues, and although nobody believes Budd was organizing a mutiny, the officers sentence the young sailor to death. To not execute him would risk encouraging actual mutiny and, therefore, national security. Melville's prose is characteristically and wonderfully eccentric, but the events and themes (law and reason?) in this very slim novel feel undercooked. It was published posthumously and should probably be considered unfinished. The book's latter portion reads like a coda rather than a conclusion.
Note: Is Claggart's accusation leveled out of maliciousness or out of a self-deceiving need?
Some people like estate sales, wandering through a stranger's home, seeing pieces of another life. Some people like being in the office when everyone else is gone or reading a letter written to someone else. You feel distant, tempted to feel, almost involved, but still in control.
Frankfurt begins this meditation on bullshit by examining the definition offered in Max Black's 1985 essay, "The Prevalence of Humbug": bullshit is the "deceptive misrepresentation, short of lying, especially by pretentious word or deed, of somebody's own thoughts, feelings, or attitudes." Frankfurt gets his footing here, but says this definition fails to adequately capture "the essential character of bullshit." Frankfurt next mines a few bullshit-related anecdotes and quotes to uncover his theoretical understanding of bullshit. The somewhat oversimplified synopsis of that understanding is that what is essential about bullshit is that (1) the bullshitter cares not for what is true or false, like the liar and the honest man (in fact, the bullshitter could be saying things that are more or less true and still be bullshitting) and (2) the bullshitter says whatever suits him at the moment in an attempt to deceive his audience about what he is up to and who he is.
The prose in "On Bullshit" is crisp and graciously plain; Frankfurt's essay, an exploratory philosophical analysis, manages to avoid philosophy jargon and name dropping.
Note: This is good:
One who is concerned to report or to conceal the facts assumes that there are indeed facts that are in some way both determinate and knowable. His interest in telling the truth or in lying presupposes that there is a difference between getting things wrong and getting them right, and that it is at least occasionally possible to tell the difference. Someone who ceases to believe in the possibility of identifying certain statements as true and others as false can have only two alternatives. The first is to desist both from efforts to tell the truth and from efforts to deceive. This would mean refraining from making any assertion whatever about the facts. The second alternative is to continue making assertions that purport to describe the way things are but that cannot be anything except bullshit.
