Her Father's Daughter: A eugenic dream

Thinking I might enjoy something along the lines of Laddie, I downloaded another by Gene Stratton-Porter from Project Gutenberg. I'd recently finished Catherine: A Story by William Makepeace Thackeray, which was written to deliberately alienate the reader from all characters; none were sympathetic. Since Little Sister and her brother had charm to spare, I thought Her Father's Daughter would be along the same lines. I couldn't be more wrong.

Yes, there were sympathetic characters, but perhaps not the ones intended by the author. When, in the first speech by the heroine, she refers to a student at the head of her class as a "Jap," I tried to think, well, that may have been normal for the time, much as other terms have come and gone out of polite use. I read on only to find it got worse. She really meant it in the derogatory sense.

Once she got going, there was little question of her hatred for the Japanese. I'll give just one sample:

There is just one way in all this world that we can beat Eastern civilization and all that it intends to do to us eventually. The white man has dominated by his color so far in the history of the world, but it is written in the Books that when the men of color acquire our culture and combine it with their own methods of living and rate of production, they are going to bring forth greater numbers, better equipped for the battle of life, than we are. When they have got our last secret, constructive or scientific, they will take it, and living in a way that we would not, reproducing in numbers we don't they will beat us at any game we start, if we don't take warning while we are in the ascendance, and keep there.

Repulsed by this attitude, I kept reading on the off-chance Stratton-Porter would lead her heroine -- a precocious high school student -- to a change of viewpoint. The benefit-of-my-doubt was not rewarded. Subsequent speeches -- and there are a lot of them for someone who is portrayed as 17-going-on-18 -- are peppered with phrases about white supremacy, "white blood," "America for Americans," "yellow menace," "they all look alike," and so on. Clearly, she ascribed to the idea that biology is destiny, that personality traits are passed through the blood, and embraced Margaret Sanger's doctrine of "more from the fit, less from the unfit."

One might be able to argue that since her heroine appreciates and collects Native American methods and lore she must be open to races beside her own, but I'm not sure Stratton-Porter was aware of this hypocrisy. While saying that only the white race has produced anything of value to the world, her protagonist profits handsomely by publishing Indian recipes that make use of locally-grown wild plants. She had acquired their culture!

Other ironies include:

• A villain with a name as Anglo-Saxon as they come
• Another antagonist who uses hair dye to achieve ideal Aryan looks
• This second villain, nevertheless, has a redemptive awakening by the end of the book -- which should have been impossible, according to the author's point of view, because she was tainted by "bad blood."

Eugenics may have been fashionable back when this was written, but I don't think there's now a need to defend these views as Peter Eickmeier does in "A Closer Look at Gene Stratton-Porter and Her Father’s Daughter." He attempts to prove that, contrary to being a racist, Stratton-Porter was actually an early civil rights activist! . . . that a "closer analysis" reveals "subliminal" messages that uplifted non-white races and enlightened young readers. Maybe I just take things at face-value too much, but I think you'd have to live in Bizarro World to reach that conclusion. The novel read like a tract for limiting immigration to western Europeans. Janet Malcolm's "Capitalist Pastorale" in The New York Review of Books reassured me that I wasn't seeing things that weren't there.

There are other things not to like about this book: didacticism and triumphalism, to name a few. I grew annoyed at the main character's know-it-all bossy-ness -- apparently a trait of her creator.

For those interested in a biblical view of race (that there is only one human blood), I leave you with a link to Answers in Genesis' helpful collection of writings on the subject: http://www.answersingenesis.org/get-answers/topic/racism.

The End of America: Letter of warning to a young patriot, a citizen's call to action

I read Naomi Wolf's book before leaving on vacation, and marked many pages. It's a book worthy of jotting down a few thoughts on the blog. Wolf is an avowed progressive, but one that conservatives can admire for her candor. Anyone can appreciate the warnings put forth in this book. Her premise:

There are ten steps that are taken in order to close down a democracy or crush a prodemocratic movement, whether by capitalists, communists, or right-wing fascists. These ten steps, together, are more than the sum of their parts. Once all ten have been put in place, each magnifies the power of the others and of the whole. Impossible as it may seem, we are seeing each of these ten steps taking hold in the United States today [2007]. (page 11)

What are the 10 steps?

1. Invoke an external and internal threat
2. Establish secret prisons
3. Develop a paramilitary force
4. Surveil ordinary citizens
5. Infiltrate citizens' groups
6. Arbitrarily detain and release citizens
7. Target key individuals
8. Restrict the press
9. Cast criticism as "espionage" and dissent as "treason"
10. Subvert the rule of law

She terms what she sees happening in America as a "fascist shift." By retracing the steps that took Germany, Italy, Russia, and other countries down the road to totalitarianism, she shows how simply and quickly it can happen. She notes just how tenuous our grip on liberty is:

We tend to think of American democracy as being somehow eternal, ever-renewable, and capable of withstanding all assaults. But the Founders would have thought we were dangerously naive, not to mention lazy, in thinking of democracy this way. This view -- which we see as patriotic -- is the very opposite of the view that they held. They would not have considered our attitude patriotic -- or even American: The Founders thought, in contrast, that it was tyranny that was eternal, ever-renewable, and capable of withstanding all assaults, whereas democracy was difficult, personally exacting, and vanishingly fragile. The Founders did not see Americans as being special in any way: They saw America -- that is, the process of liberty -- as special. (page 25)

. . . The Constitution and the Bill of Rights were set forth not as a flag flying merrily but as a bulwark: a set of barriers against what the Founders and their fellow countrymen and women saw as people's natural tendency to oppress others if their power is unchecked. (page 26)

. . . The authors of The Federalist Papers [Hamilton, Madison, Jay] . . . saw all people as corruptible and so set up the system to keep anyone from having unconfined power. It was a truism to the Revolutionary generation that if the fragile mechanism became unbalanced, American leaders too -- of course -- would revert to brutality. We are so removed from the tyranny that the nation's first patriots experienced personally that we have  not only forgotten this crucial insight, forgotten to consider how obvious it was to the fathers and mothers of our country. (pp 28-29)

Of course, if we had not abandoned the doctrine of total depravity everyone would know this. Ironically, it's doubful Ms. Wolf would cater to that belief. Or maybe it's more ironic that a progressive would have to be the one to reteach us an appreciatin for this doctrine.

At times I felt the author failed to establish her point because perhaps she was rushing it to print. It takes the form of a letter to a young friend upon his taking the citizenship oath, and is fairly brief. This helps make it readable without getting bogged down in too much proof, but I felt she probably was taking some of her proofs from memory and sort of "piling on." A few times she alludes to something that goes unexplained. It would have also helped her case if she'd dug a little deeper in order to cite some conservative voices in support of her premise. I am confident they are there.

Frequently, she makes a statement about what was going on in America at the time the book was written -- 2007 -- that, given what has happened since then, strengthens her case or (at times) may weaken a point. For instance, on page 36, she says, "Free citizens will not give up freedom for very many reasons, but it is human nature to be willing to trade freedom for security." Then she goes on, "But we are not wracked by rioting in the streets or a major depression here in America today." What a difference a few years make! We've had a major financial meltdown and a protest movement known as Occupy has grown. Wonder what she would say now?

On page 109 she notes the various student uprisings around the world that have led to democratic reforms, but should she pin her hopes on American students? Academia in this country is so one-dimensional, so non-diverse in its thinking, that it's hard to believe universities could be considered bastions of freedom.

On page 116 she offers an example of media manipulation, supposedly by the Bush administration or conservatives in Congress, but what did she think of NPR's firing of Juan Williams?

A few pages later she worries about the "current of lies" in the information stream and the average person's difficulty sorting through all the messages. Does she have the same qualms now, in the age of Twitter, Facebook, and Wikileaks? I wonder what she wrote about the Arab spring. In fact, on page 151 she despairs of the treatment of activists in Egypt, but look what happened in Tahrir Square this past year!

Nevertheless, her warnings have resonance. One page 23 she recounts how people living under the threat of a fascist shift "adapt to fear through complicity. . . . [W]hen a minority of citizens is terrorized and persecuted, a majority live out fairly normal lives by stifling dissent within themselves and going along quietly with the state's acts of violent repression. . . . [F]ascist regimes can be 'quite popular' for the people who are not being terrorized."

We should be concerned about point number six. It is a serious matter. From her current post as a writer for the UK's Guardian, Wolf reported on the striking down of a section of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) – "which had been rushed into law amid secrecy and in haste on New Year's Eve 2011, bestowing on any president the power to detain US citizens indefinitely, without charge or trial." US district judge Katherine Forrest declared "facially unconstitutional" language that the Bush administration initiated and the Obama administration perpetuated.

Related:

• I intend to also read Thomas Paine's Common Sense this summer.
• Extremism normalized, by Glenn Greenwald in Slate
• Christopher Hitchens on Freedom of Speech - nobody better

Kasztner's Train: In a word, devastating

Kasztner's Train, by Anna Porter, is the "true story of an unknown hero of the Holocaust." This was a tale I didn't know, not only because it centered on a man I'd never heard of -- Reszo Kasztner -- but because it took place in Hungary. I'd read stories of that era from Germany and Poland, France and Britain, Holland and America, but never Hungary. Events in the newly formed state of Israel provide a subtext as well -- and many of them were also unknown to me.

I won't go into the details of Kasztner's epic, one that should stand alongside those of Oscar Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg for having saved 20,000+ Jews from the death camps. What interested me equally was the story of the Nazi's whom I found to be enormously bloodthirsty. This was and remains unimaginable to me, as it sadly did to so many who stood in their direct path. Indeed, it is this unbridled imagination for killing that set the Nazis apart, and an equal but opposite inability to imagine the horrors they intended that rendered their victims so helpless. And the Jews' would-be saviors so hapless.

As I read, I marked many passages that illustrated both points.

Page 19 describes the attitude of nations who could have helped -- unwilling to put themselves out. Canada would only take "certain classes of agriculturalists" -- a ranking that would save few. "Brazil would only accept those who could show certificates of baptism." And so on.

Page 63 records Schindler's recollection that "Himmler was disappointed with the rate of the killings" at Auschwitz. Page 66, that "corpses are used for chemical raw materials." Page 74 - lifts removed the bodies from the gas chambers and the "kapos" made quick work of removing gold teeth, hair ("used as insulation on torpedo warheads"), and hidden baubles. Page 75 - Himmler is now satisfied. The crematoria at Auschwitz had reached the "initial goal of 4,400 human bodies a day, or more than 120,000 people a month." (Sounds frighteningly similar to the figures of a few years ago for America's abortion holocaust.)

On page 96, Eichmann was worried. Transportation to the gas ovens could handle "only 12,000 people a day" at full capacity. The 100,000+ refugees waiting for deportation would "put undue stress both on the gas chambers and the crematoria."

Sadly, it wasn't just German cruelty highlighted here. Page 118 - Romanians "were the people who had thought it a grand idea to hang Jewish bodies in butcher shops."

Page 131 - "Final Solutions" abounded in the Nazi mind. Why not march Russian Jews into the Pripet Marshes? But those proved too shallow, so "survivors were herded into gassing trucks" and their bodies driven to nearby ditches. "The idea was to spare German soldiers the horror of listening to the children's screams." Euphemisms hid what was going on from the average soldier.

Page 137 details the Nazi commitment to the annihilation of the Jews. Some officers "argued that rail lines should be used for troops and their provisions," but Eichmann's representative overruled them and "established the fact that the Reich considered the elimination of Jews to be its top priority, even as bad news continued to arrive from the frontline." All Hungarian Jews were to be transported to Poland (Auschwitz).

Meanwhile, Jews hoped for the best. Page 158 - "Very few tried to escape. Families stayed together, still imagining they were being resettled in another part of the country. Life would not be easy, but they would survive." They thought Germany needed workers, and that "when this madness was over, everyone would come home."

The book is punctuated by statements like this, from page 162: "By the end of May 217,000 people had been deported from Hungary, a daily average of 12,056, or 3,145 per train." Page 184 - "By the end of June, more than 400,000 Hungarian Jews had been deported to Auschwitz, and most of them were dead."

Lack of imagination prolonged the suffering. Page 182 - "The Red Cross had not been helpful to Europe's Jews until now, reasoning that the organization's function was to help prisoners of war; Jews were prisoners in their own countries, or in countries allied with their own, and therefore they were outside Red Cross jurisdiction." As Bergen-Belsen was being liberated, the storehouse was found to contain "mountains of Red Cross food parcels, medication, and clothing; none of it had been distributed to the inmates." (page 289)

The endless categorization of people into national and ethnic groups at Bergen-Belsen, a work camp, was described by an inmate this way (page 207): "It was as if some crazed people had given vent to a maniacal, pointless collecting passion. And even now that there are few Jews left to categorize, the insane collecting and sorting goes on unabated."

Essentially what Kasztner did was bargain with the Germans -- Eichmann himself -- for the lives of as many Jews as he (backed by Jewish agencies) could buy. Page 219 - "He was convinced that the Germans were negotiating in relatively good faith, that they had been ready to sell what they called 'valueless human material' in exchange for goods of value to them" -- trucks, cash, etc.

The international community continued to worry about what to do with so many Jews (page 218, 229). The U.S. had filled its quota. Some nations were afraid of an influx of Jews, others refused to take any at all. Some accepted a paltry few.

Page 246 - "In mid-October, Captain Alois Brunner began to empty the Sered camp of it's almost twenty thousand Slovak Jews. . . . The rest, including all the children, were murdered in Auschwitz. Brunner had always taken great pleasure in the murder of children." Later in the book he is said to have been "fond of saying 'it is more important to kill Jews than to save German soldiers.'"

Page 274 - "The war in Europe was obviously coming to an end, but Hitler and his generals made a last, desperate move to enlist everybody in to the defense of the tottering Reich. They also continued with their plan for the destruction of the Jews."

Hitler's last will and testament, dictated in the bunker where he killed himself, "laid the blame for the millions of dead on everyone except himself and exhorted all Germans to continue murdering Jews." (page 293)

Dieter Wisliceny was the last person to have seen Eichmann, who told him "he would gladly jump into the grave happy because he had killed six million Jews." "That gives me great satisfaction and gratification," he said before disappearing. (page 309)

Even more shocking than the cruelty of the Nazis and lethargy of other nations was the attitude of "old settlers" in Palestine toward the new arrivals after the war's end. "The Yishuv wished to maintain its hard-won image of itself as a distinct, proud, uncompromising people belonging to this land through history and love -- unlike the frightened, beaten Holocaust survivors who kept arriving and claiming their share of a common future." They were known by the slang term "sabon," soap, referring to the "Nazi's alleged practice of making soap from the boiled bodies of their victims." (page 314)

Page 315 - "The quasi-governmental Jewish Agency was not interested in immigration for the sake of the survivors; rather, as Ben-Gurion said, it wanted people . . . to help win the war and to build a country."

Israelis were indifferent to what had happened during the Holocaust. "Survivors seemed embarrassed to discuss their experiences. The Yishuv certainly did not want to hear about them." Polite conversation around kibbutz dinner tables revolved around any other topic. (page 317) "Nobody likes to remember that he was saved. Nobody wants to be grateful for his life. It's a terrible feeling to owe someone your life." (page 328) That's why, after he emigrated to Israel, Kasztner felt unappreciated by the people whose lives he had spared from certain death.

About ten years after the war, Kasztner was accused of having hidden information about Auschwitz, collaborated with the Nazi's mainly to save himself and his family, and personally profited from the negotiations. A long, painful trial for libel ensued, which he lost. Hansi Brand, his mistress, theorized the nation needed someone to blame for their shame (page 343, 345). Kasztner wanted to know, "How can someone who never faced the Nazis judge those who did?" (page 347) A ruined man, he was shot and killed by zealots, but later his memory was exonerated on appeal.

At his trial, after his initial defense of the charges against the accuser, and after his own ill-chosen words were thrown up at him, he fell into a stunned silence. It was as if the paralysis of disbelief had finally infected him too. He couldn't imagine why this was happening to him, after all he had risked.

Reflecting on the Holocaust, one survivor said, "We didn't want to know what we knew." "In Israel . . . the political leadership scrambled to dissociate itself from the 'Jewish lambs.'" He went on, "The heroes were the paratroopers and the people who revolted in the Warsaw ghetto. Poor Rezso was an antihero. Who would stake his Israeli leader image on supporting a man who saved lives by negotiating with the Germans?"(page 376-377)

I've brushed over the story to focus on the details that leave one shaking one's head in wonder and bewilderment. How could it happen? How could these things be done? Why couldn't anybody stop it? In a word, the effect of this book is devastating.

Related:

• Holocaust survivor Wiesel returns Hungarian honour
• Captain Witold Pilecki: The Auschwitz Volunteer - Fascinating story. He got himself rounded up and sent to Auschwitz so he could document what was happening. In fact, I can't recall, but he may have been mentioned in the book about Kasztner. No one believed him.
• A long shadow: Nazi doctors, moral vulnerability and contemporary medical culture - From the abstract: "More than 7% of all German physicians became members of the Nazi SS during World War II, compared with less than 1% of the general population. In so doing, these doctors willingly participated in genocide, something that should have been antithetical to the values of their chosen profession. The participation of physicians in torture and murder both before and after World War II is a disturbing legacy seldom discussed in medical school, and underrecognised in contemporary medicine."

Review of Eat Pray Love

Eat Pray Love is the story of a woman's search for self-awareness. In an age of self-aggrandizement, it's surprising she waited so long. What Elizabeth Gilbert does at the age of 34 is make work to grow up - by not doing any work for a year, pursuing pleasure in Italy, devotion in India, and balance in Indonesia. To her credit, she does a good job of sharing her adventures and lessons; her writing is interesting, endearing, honest, and funny. I applaud her for getting off anti-depressants, facing the beasts within, and learning to cope. There's no difficulty reading this book, but when you get to the end, there's also no sorrow that it's over. As much as I appreciate Ms Gilbert's ability to write about her journeys - both geographic and emotional - I have to say Eat Pray Love lacks the depth necessary to make its impact last.

Of course, maybe that's not her goal. After all, she's writing about Herself. The goal of her pursuits is to find Herself. But this is exactly the downfall. She tells little of the countries she visits or the people she meets except as they relate to Herself. Not even religion/spirituality can lift her from her self-centered focus. (But then, if your god is within, I guess that's where you have to look.) If there's anything here to lead readers to gain an understanding of the world, appreciation for their place in it, or help to overcome their own obstacles, it's hard to find.

Near the end of her book Ms Gilbert has a revelation: "Many times in romance I have been a victim of my own optimism." (chap 96) Indeed, optimism to the extreme - not only about romance but life as well, and at the cost of truth. Let's hope she's no longer her own victim.

Next up: Two books about food

You are invited to a feast for the senses and the spirit! In The Spirit of Food, 34 adventurous writers open their kitchens, their recipe files, and their hearts to illustrate the many unexpected ways that food draws us closer to God, to community, and to creation. All bring a keen eye and palette to the larger questions of the role of food—both its presence and its absence—in the life of our bodies and spirits. Their essays take us to a Canadian wheat farm, a backyard tomato garden in Cincinnati, an organic farm in Maine; into a kosher kitchen, a line of Hurricane Katrina survivors as they wait to be fed, a church basement for a thirty-hour fast; inside the translucent layers of an onion that transport us to a meditation on heaven, to a church potluck, and to many other places and ways we can experience sacramental eating. In a time of great interest and equal confusion over the place of food in our lives, this rich collection, which includes personal recipes, will delight the senses, feed the spirit, enlarge our understanding, and deepen our ability to "eat and drink to the glory of God." Contributors include Lauren Winner, Luci Shaw, and Wendell Berry. Edited by Leslie Leyland Fields.

Our other selection -- from what is likely to be a completely different perspective -- is Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. The Los Angeles Times' reviewer said: “Gilbert’s journey is full of mystical dreams, visions and uncanny coincidences…Yet for every ounce of self-absorption her classical New-Age journey demands, Gilbert is ready with an equal measure of intelligence, humor and self-deprecation…Gilbert’s wry, unfettered account of her extraordinary journey makes even the most cynical reader dare to dream of someday finding God deep within a meditation cave in India, or perhaps over a transcendent slice of pizza.”

In honor of the subject matter, we intend to meet at a restaurant for our May meeting. What shall it be -- Italian, Indian, or Indonesian?

Review: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Good book; good discussion. Rebecca Skloot ably presents a story that spans decades, changing values, and a spectrum of emotions. It's a story of scientific discovery intersecting with family tragedy. And while readers somewhat know the end of the story, our understanding unfolds in much the same fashion as the truth about Henrietta's cells dawns on the Lacks family.


Rebecca Skloot's color-coded system for arranging the three narratives.

The author's interest in Henrietta Lacks as the source of the famous HeLa cell line began in high school, and she tracked it for more than a decade. The tale could have been told in an unwieldy and dry consecutive order. Skloot chose to "braid" three narratives: the life of Henrietta and her family, the scientific legacy, and her own involvement in bringing the family and Henrietta's cells together. The chapters are brief, and the story moves back and forth between threads. What's remarkable is how what she leaves us with at the end of one chapter leads to the subject of the next, although the timeframes can be separated by many years.

Skloot explains her writing process -- years of research followed by years of writing and rewriting -- in this YouTube video. In this interview, she also discusses her process and the decision to insert herself into the narrative. (Her rationale turns out to be much more sound and her technique more skillful than that of Mary Roach; here the "intrusion" helps tell the story, while in Stiff  it hinders.) There's another lengthy interview with the author here.

Our discussion revolved around our own impressions and some of the questions provided on the author's website. We were interested in the issue of informed consent, and also on the history of science. We remarked on how uneven and tainted the progress of knowledge has been. Critics like to blame religion for many wrongs, but what they replace it with is hardly pure, as we've also seen in Stiff and The Genius Factory. There's an allusion to another of our past reading subjects, Charles Lindbergh, in his dubious connection with eugenist Alexis Carrel (he of the "immortal" chicken liver).

The science could have gotten heavy, but this nonfiction book reads like a mystery novel. Because I don't want to forget why Henrietta's cells are so remarkable, why they still make news, I'll close with the explanation here:

Scientists knew from studying HeLa that cancer cells could divide indefinitely, and they'd speculated for years about whether cancer was caused by an error in the mechanism that made cells die when they reached their Hayflick Limit [the lifespan of normal cells being preprogrammed]. They also knew that there was a string of DNA at the end of each chormosome called a telomere, which shortened a tiny bit each time a cell divided, like time ticking off a clock. As normal cells go through life, their telomeres shorten with each division until they're almost gone. Then they stop dividing and begin to die. This process correlates with the age of a person: the older we are, the shorter our telomeres, and the fewer time our cells have left to divide before they die.

By the early nineties, a scientist at Yale had used HeLa to discover that human cancer cells contain an enzyme called telomerase that rebuilds their telomeres. The presence of telomerase meant cells could keep regenerating their telomeres. The presence of telomerase meant cells could keep regenerating their telomeres indefinitely. This explained the mechanics of HeLa's immortality: telomerase constantly rewound the ticking clock at the end of Henrietta's chromosomes so they never grew old and never died. It was this immortality, and the strength with which Henrietta's cells grew, that made it possible for HeLa to take over so many other cultures -- they simply outlived and outgrew any other cells they encountered.

Another mystery solved: The Lacks Cancer Center at St. Mary's Hospital in Grand Rapids, MI, is not named for Henrietta but Richard J. Lacks, a prominent area businessman. In 1999, his family pledged $10 million toward the construction of the new center if the hospital raised addition funds.

Review of Death Comes to Pemberley, by PD James

Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

What were the professional reviewers thinking when they all praised this book? Had they actually slogged through it or only read the promos? Were their employers so in debt to Knoph that they couldn't breathe a word of criticism? I was relieved to find the sane comments of real readers on GoodReads (link above). My thoughts echo many of theirs.

I had such hopes for this book, a combo of two delicious elements like chocolate and peanut butter. What could be better? What could go wrong? Sorry, dear Dame, but you should stick to Inspector Dalgliesh.

View all my reviews

April title: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

One reviewer said of Rebecca Skloot's book: "Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences. Another said, “HeLa cells been the source of profound advancements in medical, biological and genetic research, but up until now the story of Henrietta Lacks and her legacy has never been heard. Her story served as the spur for reform movements in medical ethics and patient privacy, and Skloot shares the details with both candor and sensitivity.” I'm intrigued.

Author information and reading group guides

Review of The Blue Star

The sequel to Jim the Boy is considerably more grown up, and we found it to lend perhaps more insight than we wanted into a teen boy's mind. Nevertheless, Tony Earley is capable of transporting us into that mind and another time.

We like to think youth is a simpler time than adulthood, small town life than the big city, or the 1940s than the 2010s, but The Blue Star blows those fallacies/fantasies out of the water. What could be more fraught with hazard than love in any age? Or war, conscientious objection, and race relations?

Similarly, who could be under more pressure (peer or otherwise) than a high school senior or a pregnant teen? Who's life is more at risk than an impoverished, beautiful woman? Who is more dangerous than a powerful, jealous man?

There is little of the boy Jim's charm in the teenager he became, except at his most awkward moment late in the book the the kitchen with his girlfriend's mother. Parts are very strange (Jim's dream/vision during the truck ride up the mountain with Bucky's coffin, conversations with Dennis Deane).

A discussion question asked whether Jim was our favorite character in the novel, and why or why not. I'd have to say not, because, as in the earlier novel, the uncles stand out. Here are men who've passed through all that teenage angst, know themselves, are assured of their place in society, and accepting of their responsibilities. They have honor -- a virtue that we barely recognize.

Jim is just learning what love costs the beloved. In this sense, The Blue Star is anti-romance, and maybe that's the male perspective shining through. A worthy perspective.

March selection: The Blue Star

We read Tony Earley's charming Jim the Boy the first year of this club's existence. Now we turn to its sequel, The Blue Star. About the two books, a New York Times reviewer wrote:

In an interview eight years ago, Earley described Jim the Boy as “a children’s book for adults,” and The Blue Star has a similar feel. It’s such a deceptively simple strategy — to take the unembellished storytelling style of children’s literature and to bend it to adult themes — that many novelists will feel like smacking themselves on the side of the head for not having thought of it themselves. But it is no easy feat, especially to stay inside the hazard lines of sentimentality.

USA Today says:

I'm happy to report that Earley's The Blue Star works as a sequel and a lovely coming-of-age story that can be savored on its own.

Earley's debut dealt with a year in the life of 10-year-old Jim Glass, guided by a widowed mother and three bachelor uncles in a tiny North Carolina town during the Depression.

The sequel covers Jim's senior year in high school. He's come to "appreciate that there were no older boys. He and his friends were it." It opens in the fall of 1941, three months before Pearl Harbor. World War I still is thought of as "The Great War."

Discussion questions

Review: February selections

The Michigan Murders, by Edward Keyes, lived up to its billing as a classic in the true crime genre. How does a writer maintain suspense throughout a book when the reader knows from the outset the killer's identity, the fact he was caught and convicted, and that he sits in prison to this very day? Right up to the verdict I was convinced he might somehow get off!

The "Coed Murders," as they were known, occupied vague space in my girlhood memory. It is satisfying now to have those recollections demystified without the tale losing any of its power to alarm. How different Michigan was before the killing spree began -- hitchhiking a routine travel option, doors left unlocked. John Norman Collins stole a piece of our innocence. It was good to be reminded of something I knew, but of which I was barely aware.

I think Keyes succeeded because he patiently registered the humanity of the tale -- the quaintness of his usage of pseudonyms for the killer and victims, the normalcy of lives interrupted by a loss or horrible discovery, the near misses of dedicated and diligent policemen, the methodical building of a case, and the anxiety over the possibility of acquittal. How in the world did police ever solve cases without cell phones and DNA evidence?

My one disappointment was in the new epilogue for this special edition, by Laura James. I expected she would update us on how DNA evidence pointed to a different killer for the 3rd victim, Jane Mixer (a.k.a. Jeanne Holder). And how an 8th victim (counting the one in California) has been tied to Collins -- Eileen Adams, kidnapped from Toledo and found in Ypsilanti in 1967. This information I came up with via Google search. I was left wondering whether any other remaining evidence from the unsolved murders had been submitted to modern tests.

Stiff: The Curious Live of Human Cadavers, by Mary Roach, left much more to be desired, at least according to half our group. I expected to be let in on the secrets of autopsy and forensic science, but instead was "treated" to the author's self-absorbed insights, annoying asides, wild tangents, inane observations, and sick humor. To my thinking, she belongs in the order of a Jack Kevorkian for all her fascination with the macabre. I just couldn't feel as she did about her subject.

I'm not more squeamish than most, but admit I stopped reading a chapter short of the one on cannibalism lest even one of my eyes detected a single vowel therein. (I cannot abide any mention of Hannibal Lector or The Silence of the Lambs.) Yet I think I approached the book with an open mind. We discussed it as a matter of respect, and again I think we differed on whether the author shares that sense. I did sense, however, that the people she interviewed -- in the various labs and morgues and mortuaries -- did have respect for the human dead. She seemed curious about their respect in the way she kept remarking on it.

Still, her chapter on how death is determined and currently defined was enlightening. Plain English is helpful for understanding a topic so vital to questions raised by organ donation and end-of life care.

Review: Life of Pi, by Yann Martel

How did Pi survive? By learning to live with a tiger, or learning to kill a cannibalistic cook? That is the question.

Pi's questions -- Which is the better story? Which do you prefer? -- throw us off. Any answer to these questions are pointless, except to show the bent of the reader's mind. I'm more interested in the author's mind.

Answering Pi's questions does, however, seem to be the task he wants us to undertake. In his not-to-be-missed essay, "How I Wrote Life of Pi", Yann Martel reveals that his theme is "that reality is a story and we can choose our story."

To me that exercise is less interesting than contemplating the one "fact" we know: Pi survived longer than any other castaway. Was it survival of the fittest? Or was it part miracle, part human domination of nature? Is it an evolutionary tale, or a tale of biblical dominion?

Strangely, the tale without animals is more about natural selection than the one with animals. It's more brutal and hopeless. Man is just another animal. There is more evil in it -- the French cook kills for no reason -- without an explanation for evil. In fact, could that be the point of the book, that evolution has no explanation for evil (or for good)?

The story with animals takes care to not attribute evil to them -- they're just acting by instinct, yet that instinct can be curbed and molded to the will of the subduing human. That's why it's much more hopeful, and why, I believe, Pi survives. It's not so much that Pi survives in spite of the tiger (and the hyena), but because of them. They keep him sharp. Richard Parker gives him purpose, an object to admire and even love.

This is why descriptions of the book can be so oxymoronic. Life of Pi is a book of terrible beauty. It is both horrifying and delightful.

And this is why the story with animals is better, and the one I prefer. Could it also be why it's the one that sparks the imagination most, inspiring such stunning visual depictions? I hear they're making a movie.

Illustrations: http://education.theage.com.au/cmspage.php?intid=136&intversion=268; http://www.hollywoodnews.com/2011/06/02/hobbit-news-triggers-release-date-shift-for-life-of-pi/; http://thesefleetingmoments.deviantart.com/#/d1sokfl. Find more by Googling "Life of Pi."

Next up: Stiff and The Michigan Murders

For 2,000 years, cadavers -- some willingly, some unwittingly -- have been involved in science's boldest strides and weirdest undertakings. Stiff, by Mary Roach, is an oddly compelling, often hilarious exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem. (Her latest book is Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, which also looks interesting.)

Southeastern Michigan was rocked in the late 1960s by the terrifying serial murders of young women, whose bodies were dumped in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti. In each case, few clues were left at the scene, and six separate police agencies were unable to end the horror. Then, almost by accident, a break came. Edward Keyes wrote the true-crime story, The Michigan Murders, which will be a second February selection.

Review of Home, by Marilynne Robinson

This book illustrates the dichotomy between the idea of home and its reality. "Home" the idea might evoke feelings of comfort, safety, companionship, desire fulfilled; synonyms such as "refuge," "shelter," and "haven" come to mind. Who wouldn't want to live there?

The book shows that a home might actually be a place of discomfort, disappointed and stifled longing, and misunderstandings; if not a place of outright danger it might house prickly-edged sensibilities that must constantly be circumvented or soothed.

The Boughton home is the latter, as much as the old man and his grown son and daughter long for it to be the former. The distant past -- the lore and furniture of ancestors -- encroaches and cannot be removed. Glory and Jack are clearly not "at home" there.

Page 102: "He lets us wander so we will know what it means to come home. What does it mean to come home?"

Page 282: "What kinder place could there be on earth, and why did it seem to them all like exile? Oh, to be passing anonymously through an impersonal landscape! Oh, not to know every stump and stone, not to remember how the fields of Queen Anne's lace figured in the childish happiness they had offered to their father's hopes, God bless him."

It's not, of course, that the current occupants are bad people or don't try to be a family. Indeed, they work very hard at loving each other, but are constantly thwarted because their own more immediate and unavoidable pasts join the fussy, dark curtains in crowding out the sun.

Experience had taught [her parents] that truth had sharp edges and hard corners, and could be seriously at odds with kindness. They had learned that excessive devotion to even the highest things seemed and probably was sanctimonious, and that the one sufficient measure of excess was that look of annoyance, confirmed in themselves by a twinge of embarrassment, that meant the line had been crossed. They recognized grace in the readiness of the darkest sinner to take a little joke, a few self-effacing words, as an apology. This was something her father in particular, who was morally strenuous but sociable, too, had learned to appreciate cordially. Truly there were perils on every side in the pastoral life, and her father was wary of them all. (page 17)

Kindness, however, was one of the things that irked Glory. She found her black-sheep brother too polite as he tip-toed through the minefield, and her father too quick to forgive (before he had been able to reconcile his tone of voice with the intent of his heart). Rev. Boughton had taken the view that a man's "crime was his punishment."

Maybe great sorrow or guilt is simply to be accepted as absolute, like revelation. My iniquity/punishment is greater than I can bear. In the Hebrew, her father said, that one word had two meanings and we chose one of them, which may make it harder for us to understand why the Lord would have pardoned Cain and protected him, and let him go on with his life, marry, have a son, build a city. (page 101)

The most telling line is on page 247: "Her family was slower to forgive a failure of discretion than they were to forgive most things actually prohibited in Scripture."

The father believed his prodigal was grieved to not belong, lonely in the midst of a large and boisterous family. "How could I be angry at that?" he says to Jack. Taking responsibility, he says, "I should have known how to help you with it."

No, it's not that this is a bad family, a miserable household. It's just very realistically drawn. Robinson patiently includes every gesture and eye-blink to convey how fraught with hazard love/home can be.

Jack cleared his throat. "It's been good to be home. It really has."

The old man raised his eyes and studied his son's face. "You've never had a name for me. Not one you'd call me to my face. Why is that?"

Jack shook his head. "I don't know, myself. They all seemed wrong when I said them. I didn't deserve to speak to you the way the others did."

"Oh!" his father said, and he closed his eyes. "That was what I waited for. That was what I wanted." (page 311)

At first I read into it the idea that what was wanted was the admission, but that seemed cruel, and the father was not cruel. What he wanted was the naming, to be known as "father" by the much-beloved son. He wanted his son to resume his proper place, to request -- even demand -- the fatted calf.

Home is a place we presume to belong, where we are accepted for ourselves.

Reviews of Lilith, The Man Who Was Thursday

Wordsmith and I had read these books in the past, and both found them to be quite different from what we recalled. Perhaps that's owing to their dreamlike qualities.

It's a genre I don't find tremendously appealing, but the books are very readable. There's enough in them to grasp hold of, to keep you from feeling that just anything can happen, as in the dreams we remember upon waking. The Man Who Was Thursday, by GK Chesterton, is subtitled "A Nightmare," but it hadn't seemed so "wild" the first time I read it. What I remembered was its suspense and intelligence. This time through I noticed more its humor.

My strongest impression of Lilith, (George MacDonald) from the first reading was the delight I felt in the Little Ones, a feeling shared with the narrator. They had awakened in him a protective, nurturing feeling, and that was something to which I could relate. But I had completely forgotten everything about the ending. More about forgettable endings later.

So, it's good to read things more than once, years separated, because you bring to them a different sensibility and you might learn more of what the author had in mind. For instance, as a young person when I read Lilith, I would not have been keyed in to all the epistemological and existential questions that the book asks and answers (Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I? How do I know what's real? What should I do? What happens when you die?). It's not that I wanted to learn the answers this time around, but that I could recognize them and see what MacDonald was trying to do.

A few important thoughts we took away from it:

Vane, the narrator, wants to be the hero in his own story. That's a fair assumption for a main character, but it's not to be the case here. He eventually learns the folly (vanity) of it.

At the beginning of the story, he's told that doing something -- seemingly any decisive deed -- will turn the strange world in which he finds himself into his home. He imagines himself capable of knowing what to do and bringing it to pass, but errs by resisting what is asked of him -- obedience, belief, dying.

He, like every one of us, thinks dying is what you do at the end of life, but it's really the beginning -- here and in the world MacDonald creates. Time and again Vane is implored to lay himself down -- die to self -- but it's so hard. Proper dying is surrender to the Maker's will, not to self-loathing or despair.

A few important quotes from Lilith:

When one says to the great Thinker:--'Here is one of thy thoughts: I am thinking it now! that is a prayer--a word to the big heart from one of its own little hearts.'

[T]o understand is not more wonderful than to love.

In this world never trust a person who has once deceived you. Above all, never do anything such a one may ask you to do.

You lost your chance [to love the Little Ones], Mr. Vane! You speculated about them instead of helping them.

One of the sentences I highlighted in TMWWT is, "Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity." Maybe that's Chesterton's point, although I liked it better when I read it as a straight suspense thriller. The levity kind of ruined it for me. I can't decide what Chesterton means. Is he saying that anarchists are ridiculous, or that people who worry about them are ridiculous? I guess both could be true.

Wordsmith and I spent more time discussing Occupy Wall Street than the book, and there could be lessons here for them and us:

You've got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would be from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

. . . When duty and religion are really destroyed, it will be by the rich.

What I really couldn't understand was the ending. I didn't remember it at all. In fact, all that really stuck with me was the tension of the early chapters. (It was as though I'd stopped reading altogether.) The culmination affirms a biblical worldview, but is stranger than Lilith even though everything happens in "the real world." It calls into question what is real. My last highlight:

Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal.

Upcoming selections

We went ahead at our September meeting and set out the selections for the rest of the year, based on the list we've been compiling of Books We Want to Read Before We Die.

First up, for October . . . Lilith, by George MacDonald, and The Man Who Was Thursday, by G.K. Chesterton.

About The Man Who Was Thursday: "G. K. Chesterton's surreal masterpiece is a psychological thriller that centers on seven anarchists in turn-of-the-century London who call themselves by the names of the days of the week. Chesterton explores the meanings of their disguised identities in what is a fascinating mystery and, ultimately, a spellbinding allegory."

About Lilith: "Rich in symbolism, steeped in paradox, this is a tale of a man's journey and his coming to terms with the frailty of humanity when it is seen in the light of God. MacDonald never hides the basis of his paradigm--that there is a God who loves us, who knows better than we do what is best for us--rather, he weaves it into a rich tapestry of adventure wherein key characters make known the paradox that is at the heart of Chrisitianity: he who would be first must be last."

Both are very different, a little difficult, interesting. We should have a good discussion on the 20th.

November - Home, by Marilynn Robinson. We read Gilead our first year. This is a follow-up book. You might want to read Gilead if you haven't already. Great book.

December - off

January - Life of Pi, by Yann Martel. Winner of the 2002 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. "Pi Patel is an unusual boy. The son of a zookeeper, he has an encyclopedic knowledge of animal behavior, a fervent love of stories, and practices not only his native Hinduism, but also Christianity and Islam. When Pi is sixteen, his family emigrates from India to North America aboard a Japanese cargo ship, along with their zoo animals bound for new homes. Life of Pi is at once a realistic, rousing adventure and a meta-tale of survival that explores the redemptive power of storytelling and the transformative nature of fiction. It's a story, as one character puts it, to make you believe in God."

February - The Michigan Murders, by Edward Keyes, and Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, by Mary Roach

March - The Blue Star: A Novel, by Tony Earley. This is a sequel to Jim the Boy, our first-ever selection, a sweet tale. You'll want to read it.

April - The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot

May - The Spirit of Food, by Leslie Leyland Fields, and Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia, by Elizabeth Gilbert

We settled on these, and then, on the way out the door at Schuler's I saw a book by a feminist writer I've appreciated: Naomi Wolf's The End of America: Letter to a Young Patriot. I'd like us to squeeze this in by making it our summer reading selection, or first thing next September. It would be a good lead-in to the 2012 election. And it has linkages to Thomas Paine's Common Sense. We should read them both.

Review: Silas Marner

Somehow I made it through school without having to read Silas Marner. If what Susan Hallender said is true, then I think that's a good thing. One sure way of killing great literature is to force a person to read it. I'm very grateful for Wordsmith's selection of this classic. I may never have read it otherwise, because unfortunately it has that taint of being "a book you read for school."

If I were a young person, I know I would have had a hard time completing the book. At one point I couldn't figure out Eliot's point in suddenly introducing the townsfolk through their lengthy discussion in the pub. Who are all these people and why should I care? For I while I put the book down because I cared about Silas and Eppie too much and feared something really awful would happen to them.

A good writer doesn't waste anything, and Eliot is a good writer. Tension is natural in any love story; she doesn't have to do anything really awful to her characters to keep you interested. And the scene in the pub is, after all, important because this isn't just a story. It's an examination of civic life. How do people live together? What orders their lives? How do they handle crises? How do they treat strangers?

It's also an examination of faith versus reason. Lantern Yard seems to represent a hyper-spiritual community, where faith is mistaken for mysticism and superstition. Knowledge and reason are mistrusted. It doesn't eradicate envy and greed, theft or falsehood. It doesn't know what to do with them.

Raveloe villagers, in contrast, have things, enjoy food and drink, go to church irreligiously. It isn't devoid of faith at all, as evidenced by the hearty exhortations of Dolly Winthrop. People know what they believe and have woven it into the fabric of their lives. (Nice metaphor, eh?) At least they behave correctly toward Silas, and they remind him to behave correctly, too. I'm thinking of the scene where Silas accuses a fellow who's been in his home of taking the gold. Another man reminds him of the law against presuming guilt until it's proven, a law derived from the scriptural requirement of two or three witnesses. They accept Silas, they help and seek justice for him. They support him in his adoption of Eppie. It's not accidental that Lantern Yard ceases to exist, overtaken by the Industrial Revolution, while Raveloe thrives.

Eliot seems to admire the natural and rustic. She writes of "unnurtured souls" and "least-instructed human beings" as being capable of the highest, finest qualities.

"There is hardly a servant-maid in these days who is not better informed than Miss Nancy; yet she had the essential attributes of a lady -- high veracity, delicate honour in her dealings, deference to others, and refined personal habits. . . ."

Aside from Silas, I found the character of Godfrey Cass most interesting. He was complex. There was more actual tension in the story concerning him. Would he sacrifice himself? Would he do right by Nancy? What kind of man was he? Would he insist on having his way? Would he ruin everything?

Nancy's a little flat, but she asks herself a good question, with which I'll close: "I can do so little -- have I done it all well?"

Wordsmith's Summer Reading

This summer I've read a couple of Daphne du Maurier books: The House on the Strand and Julius. Neither was what I expected - not like the mysteries I've read - but both were well written and really interesting. Julius follows the life of a man from birth to death and depicts the reality of and relationship between evil in the world and in the human heart. The main character of The House on the Strand lives in two worlds... or so he thinks. Du Maurier is so good at convincing you to believe something and then turning everything around to show you what's really true.
Right now I'm finishing up Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper. Twain's never been a favorite of mine, but I might reconsider since I'm enjoying this one.
Next I'm planning to read The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, then on to George Eliot's Silas Marner, our September selection. I love summer reading!

Selection for September: Silas Marner by George Eliot

Here's what Susan Hallender said about it in an Amazon review:

Question: How can you ensure that a person will hate a book? Answer: Make her read it for 7th grade English class, make sure that the language is old-fashioned, and above all, make sure that the ideas and concepts are over her head. If that's what happened to you, and that's why you have an aversion to Silas Marner, and you are now over 30, pick it up again. Read it twice. Silas Marner is one of the greatest novels in the English language.

. . . When you're all done, before you file Silas Marner on the shelf, go back and read the paragraph about Silas' thoughts when he discovers that his hordes of coins are missing. If you have ever felt sudden extreme loss, you will recognize the stages of despair from disbelief to acceptance "like a man falling into dark water." Which is why this book is not suitable for children, and is most appreciated by those who have undergone their own moral redemption.

Silas has been the inspiration for many other characters, including Dicken's Scrooge. He has been portrayed in movies, including "A Simple Twist of Fate" starring Steve Martin. But none is as good as the original. If you haven't read it since junior high, try it again. Silas Marner is an excellent book. There's a gem of human understanding in every chapter.

See you September 15th!

Thoughts on The Beautiful Side of Evil

I don't plan to say too much, but what I will say is that Johanna Michaelsen truly opens your eyes to some things that we don't like to think about or dwell on. And that's probably how it should be. The point that comes through in The Beautiful Side of Evil is that it's a mistake to think too much or too little about the matters she discusses. (You can see I don't even like to put them into words.) The occult is definitely not something to play around with. Her book is fair warning.

Which brings me to a question that occurred in our discussion: What's so beautiful about evil? The author certainly leaves no beauty to be desired there. It seems to me that the reason more people don't fall for this stuff is they're not so open to any experience as Johanna was. They're more doubtful about strange phenomena. They're frightened of it. For good reason. It has no fascination for me.

Strangely enough, in my mail this week at work was a catalog from Inner Traditions. I have no idea how I got on their list; it was addressed to me at one of my blogs for work. I can't think of any reason they would connect it to what they're selling. I mention it here because their list of products reads like some of the things Johanna warns about. To me, it was interesting the kinds of things this new-agey catalog brings together:

Books about new consciousness ("How to thrive in transitional times and participate in the coming spiritual renaissance") and plant wisdom ("Consulting plant spirits for spiritual and psychological guidance and healing"). Books about "ghostly processions of the undead" and "talking animals." Other topics include yoga, voodoo, "rebel angels," the planetary mind, essential oils, Chi Kung, shamanism, Tai Chi, neurofeedback, and end times. On facing pages there's a book about the Temple of Solomon and another about invoking the scribes of ancient Egypt.

So, this stuff is definitely out there. And it's really OUT THERE, if you get my drift. Buyer beware!