John Walters's Blog, page 22
November 16, 2022
Another Look: After the Rosy-Fingered Dawn: A Memoir of Greece
Greece has always been regarded as the birthplace of western civilization and a Mediterranean paradise. In The Iliad and The Odyssey Homer uses the magical epithet rosy-fingered dawn to describe the sunrise over a land of myth, fascination, and mystery. But when preconceptions and illusions are swept aside, what is Greece really like?
John Walters has lived in Greece for over fifteen years. He has hitchhiked over many of its roads; traveled by camper; journeyed by plane, boat, bus, car, taxi, motorcycle, and on foot. He has lived and worked and raised a family among Greeks. He offers insight from an intimate perspective on aspects of Greek society and culture of which tourists are unaware.
Many have visited Greece and afterwards acknowledged that the country has profoundly changed them. This memoir is for those who feel something special when they think of Greece and Greeks, those for whom Greece holds a special thrall, those who have visited and have their own memories of the place, and those who would like to visit someday and know that when they do they will obtain new insight, new clarity, and will never be the same again.
Click to buy from these distributors:
November 13, 2022
Book Review: Sea of Tranquility: A Novel by Emily St. John Mandel
Sea of Tranquility is marketed as a mainstream novel but it is in fact science fiction. It is a story of time travel and human colonies on the moon, on other planets and moons in the solar system, and on nearby solar systems. It concerns a particular anomaly under investigation by an elite, malevolent Time Institute that ostensibly imposes harsh rules to prevent dangerous paradoxes but in fact is cruel towards its employees in a cold bureaucratic power-hungry sort of way.
Mandel begins her tale on Vancouver Island in British Columbia in 1912, where she first introduces the anomaly, skips forward to an artistic demonstration in 2020, where the anomaly is again revealed, jumps forward again to a book tour in 2203, in which the novel the author is promoting contains glimpses of the anomaly, and finally moves to 2401, the era of the Time Institute. Mandel then progressively backtracks to sew together the different pieces of the story and show how they are all interrelated.
It is a very entertaining story told in a sparse, easy to read style. It is also quite short in comparison to other science fiction tales on similar themes, not much more than novella length after accounting for the numerous blank pages and chapters consisting of only a few sentences. It does not bring any new ideas to the genre, but that’s fairly standard nowadays. Almost all of modern science fiction and fantasy consists of riffs from tropes and ideas first presented in the pulp era of the early and mid-twentieth century. In fact, the definitive time travel paradox stories by which most others are judged were “By His Bootstraps” (1941) and “All You Zombies” (1958), both written by the late great Robert A. Heinlein.
Sea of Tranquility is a worthy addition to the genre. It is fun and entertaining, and the characters are fairly well fleshed-out. It is also topical and relevant to our era in that in one of the timelines a solar-system-wide pandemic is a major plot point.
I recommend this novel. It’s a good book. It is another indication of the absorption of genre literature into the mainstream. I notice, in fact, when I go to the library and peruse the “peak pick” shelves (popular new books that are available without reservation for shorter borrowing periods) that a large percentage of best-selling novels have science fiction and fantasy elements. It made me wonder why one book and not another receives a genre label. Clearly it has nothing to do with content or quality, because I know of many high-quality novels that remain marginalized because of their designations as genre literature. My own preference would be to strip away all such arbitrary labels in fiction and let each book rise or fall on its own unique merits, but that’s probably not going to happen because of the vagaries and strictures of marketing, listings, awards, and so on. Still, this modern trend is an indication that writers can be freer to let loose and sail the winds of imagination wherever they might lead, and that is certainly a good thing.
November 5, 2022
On the Reading and Implementation of Self Help Books: Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, Tiny Habits by B.J. Fogg, and Others
We all need help. We all have areas of our lives that need improvement. In my case, I find myself living alone in a one-bedroom apartment after having raised five sons overseas (mainly in Greece) in an extremely lively atmosphere, effectively isolated since the COVID pandemic began, struggling to survive financially, rejoicing at the end of each month when I manage to pay my rent and other bills one more time. I work as a freelance writer and publisher and I don’t want to change that, but I wonder why prosperity has eluded me when others in similar occupations seem to be flourishing. I am continually reading, so it is natural for me to seek assistance through books and research. With this in mind, I perused lists and reviews and suggestions and culled some self-help books from the library.
At first I thought not to write reviews of these self-help books. After all, there is a stigma attached to them. Although some are wildly popular, they often tend to offer impractical or overly simplistic advice intended only for a certain strata of persona. As you will see when I get into details, this is the case here too. However, I have undergone this experience of studying these books to see what they have to offer, and I want to pass on whatever I have gleaned to you.
The first book will remain unnamed, and I’m sorry about that. I know it would be more helpful to focus on the exact title, but with very few exceptions since I began to write reviews I have decided to avoid denigrating specific books and authors. Anyway, the book is about standing alone and having courage in a world that often will not accept you. A noble sentiment indeed, one that I have long held and tried to live by, which is why I picked it up and decided to study it: as some positive reinforcement of my own convictions. I spent an afternoon perusing the book and carefully reading certain sections. In the end, I set it aside. I couldn’t get past the author’s background and attitudes. Touted on the cover as a “New York Times bestselling author,” she is an exceedingly wealthy woman, the owner and CEO of numerous companies based on her self-help teachings, and approaches the subjects of vulnerability, empathy, courage, and so on from a position of high privilege. I culled some good ideas, or reinforcement of some of my existing ideas, from some of the thoughts I read, but overall I felt that from her exalted, protected status she could not offer much to ordinary people.
Then I turned to one of the best-selling books of all time: Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. In my poverty-stricken situation I figured that if a thought process alone could make me wealthy, I was willing to go for it, so I spent another afternoon going over Hill’s book. My conclusion was that it wasn’t for me. First of all, Hill (who first published his book in 1937) bases his research solely on interviews with super-rich white men who ruthlessly exploited countless others to accumulate wealth for themselves. He represents them as examples to follow, but in numerous cases their riches were based upon the poorly-paid toil of their many employees. Besides his morally questionable examples, though, the main objection I had to Hill’s methods was the religious flavor of his advice. To follow through on his suggestions, you basically have to worship money. You have to desire riches above all else and implant auto-suggestions by continually repeating out loud (as if through prayer) your goals for the accumulation of riches. It is little different from the pleadings of acolytes to the Roman god Mercury, the Greek god Plutus, the Hindu god Lakshmi, and the gods of wealth and prosperity in numerous other cultures. Not for me, thanks. I have higher priorities. I am not going to give money godlike status.
The third self-help book I perused during this study was Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything by B.J. Fogg. This is the book I found most interesting and useful. It does not pretend to spirituality or claim to be a path to enlightenment. Instead, it offers practical tips on how to easily change personal habits by making adjustments in behavior. Living alone, as I said, and having the need to work long hours, I have developed many habits that help get me through my work, exercise regularly, eat healthily, and so on. I find that Fogg’s methods of breaking down habits in terms of motivations, abilities, and prompts to be useful and hopefully effective. This is the one book of the three that I decided to read all the way through instead of just skim.
In conclusion, I advise you to use what works. If you find books that help you out in certain deficient areas of your life, go ahead and implement their advice. However, be wary of books that supposedly offer secret formulas to success or of authors whose examples belie the supposed wisdom they impart.
November 2, 2022
Another Look: Dark Mirrors: Dystopian Tales
When it malfunctions, a teacher discovers a microchip implanted within her forehead which was designed to eradicate her free will. She determines to rescue the orphaned children in her care from a similar fate.
In the aftermath of a conflict in which all adults were killed or driven away by their progeny, children and teens roam the streets of a ruined city. When they near the age of 21 they must play the ultimate game, snuff sport, to prevent themselves from becoming hated adults. A lone grown-up who re-enters the city on a mission of reconciliation is captured and put on trial for his life.
The people of Earth are losing a war with aliens that they themselves provoked. Every able-bodied person is being called up to serve in combat, even prisoners. A battle-hardened general enters a prison to recruit a woman who refuses to fight, but who may have a most unusual special ability that can turn the tide of the war.
These and other tales offer terrifying glimpses of Earth’s future gone wrong.
From the author’s afterword: “When I postulate dark futures it is not to get you to despair. When I hold up dark mirrors before your eyes it is not so that you will see the worst in yourself and do yourself in. Far from it. Some of our greatest illuminations come from deep dark prose. Dark literature is not meant to overwhelm us. It is meant to purge us, to provide catharsis. It is a cleansing and purifying process. We must be aware of the evil within before we can clean it out.”
Click to buy from these distributors:
October 29, 2022
Book Review: I Love You but I’ve Chosen Darkness by Claire Vaye Watkins
I got it into my head that I have been reading a lot of nonfiction lately and I needed to get into a novel. I conducted an online search to see what my local library had on hand, and if something piqued my interested I researched it further. Since I have begun to rely almost solely on the library for my reading material (for pecuniary reasons) I try to take out at least two books at a time so that if I do not connect with one I can turn to the other. After this particular run, I got about seventy-five pages into the first novel I started and tossed it aside. Not bad, but too predictable, too repetitive. And then I picked up I Love You but I’ve Chosen Darkness.
Immediately I was hooked by Watkins’s prose. She has the most refreshing, original, flamboyant, dynamic voice I have experienced from a fiction writer in a long time. Every time I picked it up I experienced great joy. I would laugh out loud; I would weep; I would pause frequently to let the awe settle over me. I would also frequently look at Watkins’s picture on the back flap of the jacket cover. She’s dressed casually and her hair is unkempt; this is all in keeping with the tone of the book. But the most captivating thing is her expression. She is smiling, but in her eyes you can see the complexity and pain that the novel brings out.
This story is the real deal. It is an autobiographical novel. Watkins basically tells her own story with embellishments. She even uses her name as the protagonist and the real names of her parents as she tells their back stories. She does, though, draw the line at revealing the real names of the husband and child she leaves behind when she decides to burst free of her cloying monogamous lifestyle.
She starts out with a description of her acute postpartum depression, and then tells the tale of how her father joined Charles Manson’s murderous cult, how he got free of it, how he met her mother, how he dies young and her mother descends into a nightmare of Oxycontin addiction and overdoses. Watkins then returns to the present, in which she flies out west for a reading, realizes she can’t live the life she used to live, rebels, and doesn’t return. Instead, she hooks up with boyfriends, takes lots of drugs and has lots of sex, wanders into the desert where she was raised, and begins to live her own idiosyncratic life. After a year off on her own, she reconciles with her husband and daughter and they come to live near her but not with her.
At first glance the story seems to be of a selfish, irresponsible woman who abandons her family for a life of hedonism and profligacy. However, it is clear that underlying her stoned, horny, pleasure-seeking exterior there is ongoing pain from an unhealed wound. Ultimately she seeks out the solitude of the desert (albeit with a liberal supply of cannabis) to sort things out.
I wondered as I read what was really going on. The title speaks of choosing darkness but after reading the book it is apparent that she doesn’t mean darkness in the sense of evil. She makes a lot of choices that the majority of people might not agree with, but sincere seekers after truth do not look for majority opinion when they are finding their unique paths in life. In the novel the narrator professes atheism, but what came to me as I read this were explanations concerning meditation by Christian writers and eastern mystics. For instance, St. John of the Cross writes of the necessity of going through the “dark night of the soul” when seeking enlightenment or God. And Thomas Merton, a Catholic monk who extensively studied eastern meditation, wrote that when you encounter God as a result of a sincere search, God manifests in contemplation not as light but as darkness. Whether she believes in God or not, I think that the type of darkness Watkins refers to is the kind you come to when you are all alone in the void of eternity. Some people feel they have to come to that point before they can move on, and some people come to that point and stay right there.
Although I am extremely enthusiastic about this book, I have to add that I feel it sags a bit in the middle. Part of the reason is that Watkins has included several chapters composed of letters her mother wrote to her cousin when she was a preteen and teen. They contain typical news a teenager might share about boyfriends and getting high and so on, but in my opinion they add little to the overall story. Otherwise, like I said, I love Watkins’s authorial voice, and I feel that discovering this book has been a great literary experience.
October 22, 2022
Book Review: A Savage Dreamland: Journeys in Burma by David Eimer
It is oddly appropriate that I am writing this during a rare power cut of several hours (and counting) in my apartment complex – appropriate because normally we here in Seattle can count on having electricity and other utilities twenty-four-seven, and if we don’t, we panic. Most of Burma, on the other hand, as described by Eimer in this fascinating memoir/travelogue, is used to going without electricity and other amenities. It exists as a sort of pocket in time, several decades behind the rest of the world. Some of the author’s descriptions even of Yangon (Rangoon), the largest and most westernized city, remind me of India when I visited it back in the 1970s. India at that time forbade western companies from establishing franchises. As a result, there was no Coca Cola or MacDonald’s or any of the other ubiquitous international brands we have come to expect everywhere in the modern era. Eimer explains that Burma is like this now. No foreign businesses such as Starbucks are allowed.
But not being able to grab a fast-food burger or a frappe at every corner is the least of Burma’s problems. The nation has been crippled by a sordid history of oppression: international wars, wars for independence, civil wars, and misguided selfish governance almost nonstop for as long as it has been a nation. First the British came in with the purpose of extracting its jade, opium, and other treasures. Then the Japanese invaded during World War II. Then the British returned. Then soon after independence a military junta took over, enriched themselves, and further impoverished everyone else. Finally (in 2015) there were free elections, but so far (this book was published in 2019) little has changed. The poverty described is all the more shocking to me as I contrast it with the mega-yachts and estates the size of small countries that the world’s richest people waste their money on, oblivious or uncaring about the destitution of so many people in the rest of the world.
Eimer makes a knowledgeable and erudite tour guide to modern Burma. He begins in Yangon, contrasting Golden Valley, the haunt of the country’s millionaires and diplomats, with one of the city’s largest slums. But it is when he travels outside Yangon that his account becomes truly fascinating. The majority Buddhist population mainly lives along the banks of the Ayeyarwady (Irrawady) River, while the vast bulk of Burma’s landmass consists of outlands inhabited by a multitude of persecuted minorities. Eimer travels to as many of these locales as he is able (some are strictly forbidden to foreigners) and describes the land and the people who live there.
For instance, he spends Christmas in Chin, an underdeveloped Christian territory in the far west. Below Chin is Rakhine, a territory along the coast, where the Muslim population is being driven out and exterminated. Eimer explores the Myeik Archipelago in the far south and tells tales of pirate exploits and conquests in the islands. He goes to Shan state and writes of the various militias that are fighting each other; this state is in the heart of the Golden Triangle so they also war over dominance of the lucrative smuggling of heroin and methamphetamines to China and Thailand. To visit some of these areas in Shan state and in Kachin state in the far north, Eimer had to enter Burma illegally at remote crossings from China and Thailand. Few writers would have been able to accomplish this, but Eimer has a lot of experience as a journalist in China and Southeast Asia and plenty of courage to go along with his local knowledge.
This is a fascinating book about a part of the world that has been all but forgotten compared to splashier, more flamboyant events happening in other countries. However, as the world becomes increasingly globalized, in our hubris we should not neglect people like the Burmese, who have so many positive qualities (as we all do) but need assistance in catching up.
October 19, 2022
Another Look: Painsharing and Other Stories
After nuclear war, a survivor of the monster-populated ruins of Oakland California joins the crew of a clipper ship sailing the waters of the Pacific. A typhoon shipwrecks him on a tropical island whose inhabitants share a bizarre secret.
Visitors from Earth on a far planet discover that a group of white tigers with enhanced intelligence are terrorizing the locals. As one of the visitors escorts a young crippled girl back to her village the tigers begin to hunt them.
At the edge of the solar system an interstellar spacecraft is ordered by an unknown power to change course and fly to Pluto; when it refuses to comply the entire crew is mysteriously killed. An unlikely team goes to investigate and are confronted with a life-or-death conundrum stranger than anything they could have imagined.
On a distant planet the ultimate civil punishment is to be genetically deformed into a monstrous beast and forced to live in the forbidden compound called Purgatory as slaves of the State. When authorities arrest and condemn the woman he loves, a man determines to find and save her, even if he must descend into Purgatory itself.
In these and other gripping science fiction tales John Walters explores possible futures on Earth and other worlds.
Click to buy from these distributors:
October 15, 2022
Book Review: From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life by Arthur C. Brooks
I hesitated before writing this review because I have mixed feelings about this book. I don’t like to write reviews of books I dislike out of respect for fellow authors in general; however, this book makes some good points that are worth discussing before proffering somewhat one-size-fits-all solutions to the dilemmas that older people face. I should say wealthy older people, because besides offering too-trite solutions, Brooke directs his advice primarily to successful people who need to cope with a diminishment of their success as they age. Still, as I said, there is some good food for thought herein.
Brooks starts off with the depressing declaration that for everyone, whether successful or not, decline is inevitable, and to corroborate this fact he offers the examples of well-known classical musicians such as Bach and Beethoven. However, he points out that there are ultimately two kinds of intelligence: fluid intelligence, which manifests when young and propels spectacular achievements, and crystallized intelligence, which is wisdom accumulated through experience. In other words, when you are young you have raw smarts, but when you become older you are able to benefit from drawing on a store of wisdom and knowledge. Brooks insists that at a certain point you have to repurpose your life to rely more on crystallized intelligence, to switch from innovative activities to instruction, teaching, service, and counsel.
According to Brooks, there are two curves in life: the fluid intelligence curve, which tracks early success and plays out and starts to decline around age forty, and the crystallized intelligence curve, which begins later but continues on into old age. All you have to do is jump from one curve to the other and you’ll be fine.
A profound difficulty to this approach, of course, is that everyone is different and cookie-cutter solutions such as these are unable to account for anomalies. Not to mention in the present tragic economic environ there are fewer and fewer people who are able to live the idyllic rapid-climb-to-success life that Brooks seems to suggest is common to so many. He assumes that his readers have taken the traditional route to success and are financially secure. My life has been anything but normal and I have never possessed an abundance of finances, so it was hard for me to relate to some of the advice he was giving.
Nevertheless, there are enough useful suggestions in the book that I kept reading. For instance, it is good to come to accept that you will ultimately decline and die, because it gives you better perspective in deciding what to do with the remainder of your time. Brooks brings out the value of human relationships and how they become even more important as you age. This is certainly true, and yet for many people solitude in old age is inevitable. Kids become adults and move out, and friends die. In my case, all of my closest friends from my youth, from Clarion West, and from my writing career have died. Not much I can do about that. On the downside, though, the spiritual advice Brooks offers is very surface-level and insubstantial, like slapping a Band-Aid on a mortal wound.
In conclusion, don’t expect to find a formula on “finding success, happiness, and deep purpose in the second half of life” in this book or you will be disappointed. However, it is for the most part an entertaining read, and you may be able to glean some useful tips and strategies that will help you along your way.
October 8, 2022
Book Review: The Last Wilderness: A History of the Olympic Peninsula by Murray Morgan
Murray Morgan was a journalist based in the Pacific Northwest who penned the entertaining history called Skid Road: An Informal Portrait of Seattle. The Last Wilderness, which focuses on the history of the settlement and exploitation of the Olympic Peninsula, is no less entertaining.
It has its limitations, to be sure; for instance, it mentions the Native Americans who lived on the peninsula long before white settlers arrived only in passing, and Morgan writes from the perspective of the 1950s, when the book was first published. Nevertheless, it is full of fun anecdotes and fascinating facts about the European explorers who first encountered the peninsula, the establishment of customs posts at Port Townsend and Port Angeles, the ravaging of the towering primeval forests by rapacious lumber mills, the attempts to run train lines into the wilderness, the establishment of Olympic National Park, and the loneliness of the crews of the lighthouses on the islands off the west coast.
Amidst this broader history, Morgan zooms in to highlight the lives of idiosyncratic individuals. For example, he tells of John Huelsdonk, also known as the Iron Man, who established a farm in a valley deep in the wilderness on the western side of the mountains. Huelsdonk made money as a cougar hunter and also by carrying incredibly heavy loads for other people through thick forests and over steep hills. He tells of Bill Gohl, who would brag about the many murders he committed in the bars frequented by workers from the lumber mills in the Grays Harbor area. And he tells of Home, an anarchist community established in a remote part of Puget Sound; eventually its free-spirited approach to life and lack of law enforcement drew the ire of the powers-that-be.
For me personally, the Olympic Peninsula has always been a place of beauty and wonder. When I was very young, my parents made yearly visits with my siblings and I to Lake Crescent Lodge on the north end of the peninsula. The lake was far too cold to swim in, but we kids would play at the water’s edge. My older sister and I once decided that we would construct a path across the lake with rocks and pebbles we found on the shore. We named our creation Walters Walk. We kept at it for hours but didn’t make much progress, which isn’t surprising considering that it is over a thousand feet deep, one of the deepest lakes in the state. Our trips to Lake Crescent ceased when my parents bought a beach cabin on the eastern shore of Hood Canal from which we could see the magnificent Olympic Mountains.
When I was a young teen, one of my brothers and I joined a CYO hiking trip into the Olympics. We rented backpacks and filled them with food and other items we’d need, and then with the rest of the group we hiked through forests and over foothills for about a week. At one point we slid down a snowfield, and at another point, while I had wandered ahead of everyone else on the trail, I came face to face with a black bear.
Later, when I was about nineteen or twenty or so, I decided that I would hike solo back into the forests I’d explored with the group as a youth. My dad dropped me off at a trailhead and I hiked for hours, eventually coming to a campsite in a meadow at the base of the foothills. As I stood there, though, instead of exultation I was overcome with a feeling of loneliness and dread. What if I encountered a bear then when I was all alone? I changed my plans and hiked back out, spending only one night in the wilderness. (I later did get over my trepidation about exploring mountains all alone when I trekked into the Himalayas along unmarked footpaths without map or guide.)
Anyway, back to the book. Morgan has an intimate, informal style that works well as he shares tales of the early history of the Olympic Peninsula. This book is recommended for armchair explorers, but be warned: it may cause you to long to come and see this incomparably gorgeous wilderness for yourselves.
October 5, 2022
Another Look: Love Children: A Novel
It is the mid-1970s. The Summer of Love and the Woodstock Music Festival have come and gone. Into the atmosphere of cynicism and doubt following the wild optimism of the youth revolution the Love Children, raised from birth by benevolent aliens, come home to Earth. Sexually free, telepathic, and honest to the extreme, they are appalled to find that the world they left behind is full of darkness and deceit. As they set about using their extraordinary powers to bring light and unity back to their world, they run up against a sinister alien force intending to keep it in darkness.
This is my first novel, a science fiction tale that contrasts the telepathically advanced and pacifistic alien culture human orphans are brought up in with the selfish and violent societies on Earth to which they return to search for their parents. It’s a fast-paced science fiction adventure set in exotic locales such as Nepal, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Thailand, Greece, the San Francisco Bay area, and a spacecraft orbiting Earth.
Click to buy from these distributors:
