Woody Guthrie and 100 years of ramblin'

Today is the 100th birthday of Woody Guthrie.  If you don't know who that is, you really should.  You already know a little about him.  In elementary school you probably sung the lyrics to his best known hit, "This Land is Your Land" (which he wrote in response to listening to "God Bless America" being over played on the radio).  And you know his son Arlo's songs, "City of New Orleans" and "Alice's Restaurant".  But you have to listen to more of his work to understand his influence on modern music.  He directly influenced singers from Bob Dylan (who at the age of 19 visited Woody when he was dying, trying to learn as much as he could) to Bruce Springsteen, and his sound has indirectly influenced every folk, country, and rock song with a social message for the past eighty years.  Pretty good for a guy who traveled around the dust bowl in the 1930's playing for farmers and migrant labor.  There are dozens of his songs on iTunes.  I think the Library of Congress recordings are the best because he is being interviewed in between his songs so you can hear his story behind each one, and the sound quality is better.  My favorites are "Dirty Overhalls", "Dust Bowl Talking Blues", "Talking Fishing Blues", "Hard Traveling", "Pastures of Plenty", "Jolly Banker", "Boll Weevil Song", "Do-Ri-Me", and "Tom Joad" (that he wrote the night he saw "Grapes of Wrath").  Check it out and you won't be disappointed.
 

Death of a Salesman

I think this is my second Miller play.  I have read "The Crucible" several times, but I think one this has a whole lot more artistic stage directions and changes in chronology.  Of course, the horribly depressing nature of this story is pretty much summed up in the title, but Miller really does hit on the futile aspects of what we consider as the "American Dream".  Willy has lived his whole life on hope, despite all that has gone on around him.  All he wants is the whole world for his family and he is determined to get it through the modern world of business, despite how horrible this world treats him.   When the reality of his life; the home choked by the city (ruining his garden that he can never plant), the shrinking pay, the lost job, the lost friends, the failures of his sports hero sons, conflicts against that hope to the greatest degree ever in his life, he simply cracks and loses all hold on reality.  He lives in the past, which is the only world he handle, until eventually his delusions convince him to commit suicide.  His brother Charley, says at his funeral:

"Nobody dast blame this man.  You don't understand: Willy was a salesman.  And for a salesman, there is no rock bottom to the life.  He don't put a bolt to a nut, he don't tell you the law or give you medicine.  He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine.  And when they start not smiling back - that's an earthquake.  And when you get yourself a couple of spots in your hat, and you're finished.  Nobody dast blame this man.  A salesman is got to dream, boy.  It comes with the territory."

That shoeshine and smile ultimately fail him.  This story tells us what is horribly wrong with the modern American Dream, but I have been trying to figure out what Miller is saying should be the "right" path, or the good American Dream.  I wonder if Biff (who is a ranch hand out west) and Willy's brother Ben (who tried to go to Alaska and went to Africa and became rich with a diamond mine, or at least he did in Willy's imagination) serve as the alternate to the world of appointments and groveling for nothingness that Willy's world revolves around.  At Willy's funeral, Biff repeats "He had the wrong dreams.  He never knew who he was."  Maybe  Miller is saying that our dream should be one of recklessness, of chances, of bronco riding and diamond mining, of starting for Alaska and ending up in Africa.    

Tale of Two Cities

Well it took me a while, but I finished it for the second time in my life.  The first being in high school AP English.  Of course this is one of the many great books that is wasted on stupid teenagers.  In total, my Dickens resume includes Great Expectations, Hard Times, Tale of Two Cities, and A Christmas Carol.  They are all brilliant of course, but I think that Tale of Two Cities is by far the most action packed, so much so that it could almost be considered a war book.  The chapter about the storming of the Bastille sounds like a longer version of Charge of the Light Brigade.  This was my favorite part out of that chapter, I still remember the imagery striking me when I first read it at seventeen:

"As a whirlpool of boiling water has a centre point, so all this raging circled around Defarge's wine-shop, and every human drop in the cauldron had a tendency to be sucked towards the vortex where Defarge himself, already begrimed with gunpowder and sweat, issued orders, issued arms, thrust this man back, dragged this man forward, disarmed on to arm another, laboured and strove in the thickest of the uproar."

Of course it has the powerful imagery, deep character development, and highly developed plot that all the rest of his work has.  It started from an obscure point and over the span of a couple of decades, bring the story fully round and ties in the the beginning, such as the end of Dr. Monette's imprisonment and later the cause behind it that dooms Darnay. It pulls obscure observations and characters from any point in the story and makes them relevant (Carton's resemblance to Darnay at the trial that saves Darnay, then later saves him again, the wood sawyer that is a spy, etc.).  It describes the violence of the revolution so well that you believe that Dickens saw it himself, which of course he didn't.  These are the things that make Dickens, in my opinion, the best plot man in all of literature.  Then of course there is the portrayal of the civilized British afloat in the sea of French barberry (never mind that the British were going to draw and quarter Darnay for treason).  And the end fight between Madam Defage and Ms. Pross is the perfect good Brit versus evil Frenchie ending.   It makes you feel proud to be British, even when you are not British.

One of the extra things that made reading this book interesting was the actual book itself, which was my mother's copy when she took senior English in 1966.  It has her name written on the spine and the back cover has definitions of certain terms in the book, such as "Old Bailey".  Also written in her handwriting on the side of the last page is  my dad's name, "Johnny".  I have no idea why.  I do know that you will never see that with an E-book, no matter how great they are for the state of reading.

Frankenstein

Well, I abandoned the Nook for a "real" book for a month or so, picking up one of my old AP English books from high school.  Now, this is a real horror story.  And it is surprisingly easy to read for being written almost 200 years ago.  Even more amazing when you consider that it was written by a 19 year old that got scared from a night of story telling (from her weirdo husband).  I can still remember reading this when I was 17 and being impacted by the description of the desolated world of the lab in the Orkneys.  And of course, the best part is that in the end, it really isn't about good vs evil, in the traditional sense like a horror movie or story would be about today.  The good vs evil fight is in the heart of humanity, seen in both Victor and the monster.  Of course, the part that definitely does not translate into modern story telling is how articulate the monster is about his emotions.   Can you imagine imagine Michael Meyers delivering a five minute monologue about his emotional needs after he kills someone?  Also, the whole Victor marrying his step sister thing wouldn't go over too well either.  

Also, I thought about how the Robert Deniro movie does a pretty good job, except that it focuses way too much on the process of actually making the monster, which the book pretty much skims over.

Not sure what to read next.  I downloaded 4,200 pages of classic poetry to my Nook (for the low price of $4.99), so I will have plenty to read for a while.  I need to focus on finishing some of my own stories.   Seriously!!!    

PS...a reference to Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner in this book got me to go back and read that poem again too.

Like one who, on a lonely road,
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And, having once turned round, walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.

It by Stephen King....the most disappointing book I have ever read.

So I "finished" this book, or at least I read my fill.  What made me so mad about this 1,029 page book was that I know Stephen King is a really good story teller/writer, but with this book he took a great idea and let it get away from him until he ruined it.  Don't get me wrong, the first 500 pages were great.  There was a good set up to the plot.  There were great detailed accounts of the main characters that made the reader emotionally engaged with the story.  All of this was accomplished with a balanced combination of flashbacks and current plot movement.  Everything was going ok.  But then somewhere around page 500, the whole plot movement went into neutral for about 400 pages.  Virtually all of the second part of the book was completely pointless to the outcome.  I found myself skimming after page 750 or so and I didn't see anything important until around 900 and even then the climax drug along painfully.  The actually confrontation with the monster was wierdo psychological and it didn't fit with the reved up physicall violence in the rest of the book. After reading Pet Sematary and The Shinning, I was very disappointed.  But I guess when you have cranked out as much as he has, there have got to be some stinkers, even with ones that were made into movies. 

I think I am done with King for a while, but I haven't figured out what I want to read next.  It needs to be something good.

Lord Jim

Yes, it took me a long time to finish this book, but I took a little side journey and read my favorite book, For Whom the Bell Tolls.  It was supposed to get me geared up through the our baby moon vacation and the last couple of months of Beth's pregnancy, which it did beautifully.  So I let Robert Jordan rest in the pine needles and I started in on Lord Jim.  Conrad is very good at visualization.  When you read his books, you really feel that world of the British empire, of pith helmets and martini henry rifles, of a time when the entire coasts of Africa and Asia were the back yard of Britian.  The details of the places and people have a dream like quality.  There is a heavy nautical theme that seems to run through all of his books that I have read so far. Even Heart of Darkness, a book about the jungle, takes place mostly on a boat in a river.  Lord Jim was told in a narrative form that rambled more than any other narrative book that I have ever read, but it was done in a way that made the story from Marlow even that more real.  Often an outcome would be alluded to fifty or more pages before it was actually revealed. 

Jim fights his way back from his disgraced fortune of cowardice (making a decision that any of us would have likely made), becomes the benevolent "ruler" of a primitive land in Malaysia, and is ultimated murdered by his evil "foil" character, Gentleman Brown.  There was still that dark overtone that was so blarringly present in "Darkness", but it was not as refined or obvious at all times.  It was a good book by a brilliant British writer, but it was a lot of work to read.  I am going for a little something easier for my fall reading, which usually has to include some horror for the season.  I have read "The Shining" and "Pet Sematary" by Stephen King, so for my next try at King work, I am reading "It".  The made for TV movie scared the crap out of me as a kid so I can't wait to see what the book can do. 

The Wilding: A Novel; by Benjamin Percy

I was not a fan of this book.  I now have no respect for the NPR book reviewers, who put this author in the realm of Jack London.  This was no "To Build a Fire".  The main problem I had with it was that the only character that I liked was the homicidal grizzly bear.  First, I would like to say that it is a decent story.   The part about the deer hunt is pretty well done.  Even though there were some things that didn't add up, like why they were hunting in the middle of the day and how a 12 year old kid makes a 200 yard plus kill on his first hunt ever after only firing a gun five times in his life.  The problem I had with it I think stems more from the pure dislike I had of every major character.  I liked the grizzly bear.  He at least took action.  Justin, the primary character around whom the entire book is really centered is so weak that he cannot even whine forcefully.  He just drives his Subaru and shops at Whole Foods while getting bullied around by the world.  I suppose that he gets transformed in some way at the end, but that is never really expounded on.  Stories like this reinforce my endearment toward Hemingway, who's every letter carried a sense of strength.  I also think that my dislike comes from a complete disconnection in something that I only know to call "global philosophy".  We all know what this is whether or not we have a name for it.  Whenever you experience art, whether a book, or a song, or a painting, you either "get it" or you don't "get it".  If you really "get it", you feel a connection to the artist in some deep way to a point where you feel that you share some common aspect of soul.  I can definitively say that when it comes to this story, I didn't get it.

Next, I am reading Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad.  I have a lot more hope for this one.  There is a worn copy of Heart of Darkness and Secret Sharer on my shelf that has remained one of my favorite books since I read Heart of Darkness in senior English.