David G. Cookson's Blog, page 10

Wanderers

Wanderers by Chuck Wendig

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I put this book on my list before realizing that it was more than a book…it was a tome, an epic, 780 page-worth of an “end of the world” saga that would be a saga in and of itself to get through. I wasn’t prepared, so I did what a lot of people do: I procrastinated. I put it aside. “I’ve already gone through one Massive Book this year [Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky) and I don’t have any time in my busy schedule to fit two into the same year.”

But I had a week off and set about getting through this. And I’m glad I did.

Wanderers begins with Nessie, the fifteen-year-old sister of the seventeen-year-old Shana…who quite suddenly and unexpectedly starts walking away from home, in a sleepwalker trance, unseeing, unhearing, unspeaking and impenetrable. She walks and soon is joined by others in the same condition…walking to a destination and unable to be stopped by anyone. The “flock” soon grows to hundreds of people, who are then joined by their loved ones who care for them along this mysterious walk, who are known as “shepherds.”

And while there is a lot that springs from that premise, there is not much I can say that would not be a spoiler. But in this story, there lies an apt parallel to the real world outside in 2020 America. A virus, a contentious presidential election with fanatics mobilizing and wishing death on the incumbent; a scientific community beleaguered by hostility and ignorance. A panicked populace who do not understand what is happening or why these “walkers” are doing what they are doing; the weight of the world put on scientists and doctors to figure out a mystery that could impact all of humanity…

And into this world which is quickly going off the rails is an aging Rockstar, a disgraced scientist, a preacher who has lost his way and a militia madman who winds up being one of the most evil characters depicted on a page anywhere, as well as the families and friends of the walkers who all try to fill their roles in this dying world.

Man, this is a trip. It goes from one idea and builds and it never really slows down or drags. There are revelations throughout and up until the very last page. The book doesn’t give up. It is relentless and somehow it sustains itself over 780 pages. Incredible plotting and structure.

One warning: there are a several acts of brutality that may be difficult to get through. I actually put it down for a day after one incident occurring about halfway through because it was so shocking and a little uncomfortable. The feeling passed.

I highly recommend Wanderers. It’s worth the effort. It will take you through the weeks of the pandemic and while it won’t make you forget anything; it at least offers a small ray of hope that comes with a pyrrhic victory.




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White Fragility

White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


White Fragility is about the difficulties we have when addressing issues about race with white people. Chapter by chapter, Diangelo takes her experience in diversity training to make the case that white people do not like talking about race issues precisely because talking about them damages the status quo that white people consciously or not, protect at all costs.

She doesn’t mince words, and she doesn’t pull back from the premise that basically we live in a society that is comfortable for white people and alien to non-white people. There is overwhelming white control of our major institutions: To that end, she lays out the following facts (which I have truncated just for convenience):

Ten richest Americans=100 percent white.
US Congress, US governors, US President and Vice President= 90, 96 and 100 percent white, respectively.
People who decide what tv shows we watch, books we read, news is covered, or music is produced= 93, 90, 85 and 95 percent white, respectively.
(This is all on page 31.)

Robin Diangelo comes at this from the perspective of sociology, which looks at overall trends and patterns in human behavior. You can nitpick and find an exception somewhere that contradicts what she says, but it does not render the arguments any less valid. She notes the reactions she gets when she speaks about these things and how so often white people come at her with the same anger and arguments.

“For many white people, the mere title of this book will cause resistance because I am breaking a cardinal rule of individualism—I am generalizing.” (P. 11)
Many white people are defensive when confronted with the question of their own racism: “my grandparents were Italian/Irish/whatever and they experienced racism so I’m not a racist…” (you are leaning on an accomplishment that you didn’t earn, and your immigrant forefathers assimilated and are now seen as “white.”) or “I’m friends with a Black person,” (yeah? The very point she makes is that racism is structural and baked in and is a part of all of us whether we know it or not) She confronts these and many more in the text.

Race is a social construct. There are no commonalities among Black people or white people that come about because of genetics or biology. It is entirely a product of societal conditioning.
This kind of blew my mind to realize it.
*
This book throws cold water on white people. And to be honest, we really need that.
I’d love to buy extra copies of this just to see who would read it. I’d love to share it with other white people but I am almost certain it would fall on deaf ears of fragile white people. That this or that argument is slightly off so therefore I will disregard the whole book (some people are literal as fuck and defensive as hell.). Some people will fail to accept the premise that the US is still basically a white country, having been founded and forged on the backs of slaves and indigenous people.

No…no one wants to hear that. But it would be nice if they did…








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Ministry of Truth

The Ministry of Truth: The Biography of George Orwell's "1984" by Dorian Lynskey

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Ministry of Truth is a survey of George Orwell’s life as it relates to his crowning achievement: 1984, the novel.

1984 is a classic of modern literature, about Winston Smith and a totalitarian government where freedom is not only curtailed, but not even thought of. It is full of paradoxical language and phrases that have come to be called “Orwellian”: War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. Big Brother is watching you. He who controls the past controls the future…” (If you haven’t read it, please do. It says so much about the way we think and you will see many of these things in the world today.)

It is a novel that is often cited and adopted by those on both ends of the political spectrum, and used someone ironically by the purveyors of Orwellian concepts (“Alternative facts,” anyone? “Truth isn’t truth?” “Just remember what you’re reading or seeing is not the truth.”)

Lynskey provides an overview of the path Orwell took, the people he met, and links it to his views that formed the backbone of his books. His time slumming it in Paris and London as a lowly dishwasher for the excellent novel Down and Out in Paris and London and is a great commentary on the class system in those countries. His working for the Indian Imperial Police cemented his views on Imperialism and led to Burmese Days. (Some criticize this and call him a sell-out for the Man but the author concentrates more on how this changed him and I for one believe that he went in thinking one thing and came out thinking something else, and was a better man for it.) The time he spent in the Spanish Civil War formed his views on Fascism and the idealistic yet murky views of the paper-thin difference between many of the competing ideologies, and led to Homage to Catalonia.

The author takes exception to the myth that 1984 was a depressing book that was that way because he was sick when he wrote it. The fact that Orwell died shortly thereafter is unfortunate but the book was planned to be a certain way years earlier and was not influenced by his condition.

It is an intriguing book that might promise a little more than it delivers. While it is easy to see why people can make comparisons to what is going on the world to the world of 1984, Ministry of Truth only offers one chapter at the end to explore this. But it is good for providing a context for how Orwell’s life prepared him for his last book. I highly recommend it.




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Radio Free Vermont

Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance by Bill McKibben

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


218 page “fable” about a band of New England rabble rousers who decide that their fair state might be better off if they formed their own union, separate from the United States. Sure, it has been tried before, but this is not over slavery or “state’s rights” and no one is declaring war on anyone. This would be a peaceful transfer of duties and powers and would work great if only the Federal Government would just keep their nose out of things…

Vern Barclay is a 72-year-old Vermonter who broadcasts his messages from a secret location, and with some help, leads his group in the fight against the homogenization and destruction of Vermont culture, perpetuated by out of towners who bring Coors beer and try to erect unnecessary structures. But the gods of the valley are not the gods of the hills, as Ethan Allen said, and with that, the revolution is on!

I grew up about 30 miles south of the Vermont border and I can identify with the resentment people felt about folks from New York coming in and trying to remake our region in their image. But in this book, the Vermonters treat the newcomers with bemused kindness, teaching simple survival tactics, like how to drive in the mud and how to fire a gun. It says something about the nature of government; how at its very heart, it is supposed to be about the citizens. How it should be the role of leadership to take care of the nitty gritty, like plowing snow from the roads and picking up the garbage.

It’s fun and inspiring and could offer hope for those of us living through the daily reminders of awfulness in 2020. At the very least, it’s a cool title.




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Lake Success

Lake Success by Gary Shteyngart

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The novel is set in the last year of the Obama administration, during the run-up to the 2016 election. 40-something hedge fund manager Barry Cohen manages billions of dollars in assets and is married to Seema, a beautiful and super smart first-generation immigrant. These people are super rich and super privileged. Barry would seem to be on top of the world.

But with an SEC investigation looming and a diagnosis of autism for his three-year-old son, Barry does what any man would do: he panics. He runs away on a Greyhound bus trip across America on an ill-conceived journey to reconnect with his ex-girlfriend, Layla, with whom he remembers himself being a better and happier and more creative person; an aspiring writer who never quite got there (though he did name his financial group This Side of Capital in a nod to F. Scott Fitzgerald).

On the way he stops in Baltimore where he fancies himself a potential mentor to a crack dealer, Richmond where he somewhat improbably winds up staying with his ex’s parents, and points south on his deluded journey of self-discovery.

Barry fancies himself a lost soul, one whom finance has corrupted. He laments the person he has become (or so he says) and somehow feels that reconnecting with his past would be the best way to free himself from this supposed unhappiness. He thinks all this while lugging around a collection of expensive watches and leaving his family behind to deal with his legal fallout.

Meanwhile, Seema is left with a young child and federal investigators looking for her husband, living the life that Barry has made possible by living the new American dream, for better or worse.

How Barry finds his way back and how Seema deals with it form the backbone of this novel which says everything you need to know about privilege in America, where consequences never hit those in power. There is an ominous quality to the journey that Barry takes, where he cannot decide what he needs to do to redeem himself or reconnect with himself. All the while he never really acknowledges that he is never the victim, that the people he ripped off and the people that he has abandoned are all just part of the system. Barry gets the privilege of just leaving everything to “find” himself, all the while encountering real people who don’t get the option of dropping out of their lives.

In many books of the last 4 years, the 2016 Election is used as a reference point, meaning many things to many people. For most of us, there was a sense of foreboding and uneasiness and shock and disbelief…here it is used as the culmination of the triumph of privilege: the proof that neither ripping people off, abandoning your family, infidelity, or “pussy grabbing” would ever truly come back to hurt you.

This is the 2nd Shteyngart book I have read, and it makes a good bookend to Super Sad True Love Story. He nails so much about what is wrong with America, but he does it in a funny way. They are both worth reading while we wait for whatever comes next.




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Bit By Bit

Bit by Bit: How Video Games Transformed Our World by Andrew Ervin

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


In a breezy little book, we go through a 15 chapter survey tour of both the history and the impact of video games on our culture, exploring the role they have served in our lives, debating the big questions like: are video games an art form? Ervin has provided a decent background and set up for a uniquely modern phenomenon and laying out it’s legacy, as we now have entered a phase where people play video games in leagues, for money (actually, that’s been going on for a while now, this book came out in 2017).

As a former casual gamer, I was excited to check this out. I came up with the Atari 2600; had a dalliance with a Coleco; moved on to the Original Nintendo Entertainment System --which I got bored with after a month and sold to a friend-- played A Sony PlayStation 2 for about a year in 2004. My last serious gaming came more than a dozen years ago with the Nintendo Wii. I have been out of the game for a while now, mostly due to lack of interest.

Bit by Bit starts even before what I had initially believed to be the first video game (SpaceWar!) and starts us at Tennis For 2, which he argues is really the first video game, though others consider it a quasi-computer game. We move on the SpaceWar! as a logical product of the Cold War, finally moving up through Pong and the Atari system, the video game crash of 1983 and then the rebirth of the industry with Nintendo and beyond. It’s stuff I’ve read before, but nonetheless I still find it enjoyable.

Bit by Bit is not an exhaustive history or analysis, but it is a journey through a world that exists just under our noses.




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On the Bright Side

On the Bright Side: The New Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 85 Years Old by Hendrik Groen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


“Hendrik Groen” is a pseudonym for the author of this diary from 2015. Hendrik is an 85-year-old resident of a retirement home in The Netherlands. He is also a member of an exclusive group called the “Old But Not Dead Club.” These are 8 people who have decided that they are going to live their lives to the best of their ability, eating interesting food and experiencing things as best they are able (there are 8 or them because that is the number that can fit in the minivan that takes them on their adventures). And all throughout, Hendrik chronicles it, replete with references to actual events that occurred in 2015, offering commentary and observations. Along the way, there is possibly one of the best accounts of what growing old is like; the frustration of having to depend on a an elevator that is always breaking down, or having to put on your shoes and socks when you can’t bend. Or the more serious yet inevitable fact that you are closer to death than most, and you may watch your friends go one at a time.

This is a terrific book. It is not so much a tight narrative as it is the journey of a man through the arbitrary confines of a year in the life. The short/mid length chapters are simply the entry for the day. And within each entry in the picture of a former schoolteacher living his life and trying to get through the day with his optimism intact. At times, it is hilarious. And at other times, it is tear-jerking.

I did wonder whether or not this was a real person somewhere off in the Netherlands writing an entry a day: an 85-year-old publishing his thoughts. Or if it was simply a very clever writer with a special insight on the aging process, a nurse or other medical practitioner. Either way, it doesn’t matter.

This book is actually a sequel, though I believe the author covered the events of the previous year when necessary. There is not really a tight story arc, but life provides its own narrative.

If we’re lucky, we get to grow old. What we do once we get there is up to us.







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Super Sad True Love Story

Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The financial crisis of the late 00’s is the basis for a novel that envisions an outcome that differs from the original timeline that we all experienced. The United States is falling apart and the Chinese are ready to swoop in and collect on their debts. And it is in this timeline that we find our hero, Lenny Abramov, 39 year old son of Russian Jewish immigrants and employee of the Staatling-Wapachung Corporation, working as a Life Lovers Outreach Coordinator (Grade G) in the Post-Human Services Department. His job is to find clients who have a favorable rating for the life extension services.

At the start, we find Lenny in Italy, on assignment, looking for people who fit the profile. Lenny has had a fairly unsuccessful year abroad, though he does manage to sneak in an affair with an Italian woman and then finds the impossibly cute Korean American woman who is 15 years his junior and might as well be from another planet. Her name is Eunice Park. She is 24, with a “major in Images and a Minor in Assertiveness.” She is a contrast to Lenny, who is all about books and ancient concepts, devouring War and Peace.

They form an odd couple, a May to December sort-of romance, but the dueling narrative viewpoints (his and hers) show how far off they are from each other. Lenny experiences career setbacks and his sense of self-worth is very fragile. Eunice has overbearing parents who would like to see her with someone more successful and younger and…Korean. Their goals seem misaligned most of the time, yet…there is a warmth that comes out in every childish name call (affectionately calling him “Nerd face” or “tuna face.”).

And then the novel’s world barges in and reminds us of how small we all are. The country falls apart and impacts their lives and security and suddenly, the older and insecure poster boy for life extension services reject, Lenny Abramov seems like the last person who can help.

This is a hard book to nail down or classify. While it is a love story, it is also a dark, biting commentary on the way that people are pawns to the goals of government and corporations. The house of cards that the United States is based upon could easily come down, and in fact, in the world of Super Sad True Love Story, it has. At the same time, it is extremely funny and off-kilter and made me want to check out more from the author.




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Imaginary Friend

Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


From the author of The Perks of Being a Wallflower…which I never read and never saw the movie, but I have to assume that it is nothing like this….

Christopher is a young child who lives in a small town with her mother Kate, who is on the run from her latest abusive boyfriend. Christopher and his mom make the best of a bad situation, making rituals that they follow (movie night every Friday, beer on the rocks for mom, etc.…) and while Christopher is not a good student, he tries very hard.

Then one day, Christopher disappears into the Mission Street Woods, and doesn’t come back for 6 days. And when he does, he does not come back alone. He has acquired an imaginary friend, who instructs him to build a tree house in the woods. It seems odd and harmless but what no one realizes it that Christopher’s imaginary friend is quite real, and that the treehouse is only the beginning of a battle that will encompass the small town and have consequences affecting this world and beyond…

Wow. The twists and turns that this one takes are many and they all move this giant book forward one short chapter at a time.

Please let me address the elephant in the room. Several, in fact. Yes, this book is insanely long. The print is extraordinarily small or else this would have been over 1000 pages. It took me over two months to read (it was aided by the pandemic and the fact that my library is closed, and I didn’t have to return this right away). Did it need to be this long? Maybe. Would I have finished this if it were not for these extraordinary circumstances? Maybe, but the very size of this book makes it un-portable. It had to stay home, I could not read it on break time or on the bus. But like I said: the chapters are short and make it easier for the reader to digest. And finally, yes, it is very, very Stephen King-like. But that’s not a bad thing, for it is a tribute and not a copy. Apparently, Chbosky is a huge fan. He does a good job with it.

All that said, my four stars reflect the overall entertainment value, and while I feel like I have climbed the reading mountain with this one, it was worth it. Following these people leading desperate lives and finding solace in magical solutions (that turn very dark) is quite the journey. Like King, Chbosky has a good ear for working class people, and he writes like he understands what it’s like to be poor and bullied.

In this time where the world has come to a standstill, Imaginary Friend is here to occupy you for a while.









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A Very Stable Genius

A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America by Philip Rucker

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The Trump administration provides a headline a day. Sometimes, it provides many headlines a day. No doubt, Donald J. Trump, who is a mercurial and divisive president who demands the public’s attention through Twitter and massive rallies, also has an innate knack for owning the news cycle. For the purpose of this book, Washington Post reporters Rucker and Leoning choose to slow it down and take a snapshot of his time in office so far.

Starting from the election in 2016 and ending at the end of 2019, Ruck and Leoning, through extensive interviews and primary source material, provide a chronicle of all the greatest hits of a term in office. From inauguration, to investigations, the Mueller report, firings, missteps, impetuous decisions, and many, many firings and comings and goings of staffers, we see a picture of a president who has shown time and again that he will always go his own way, even when it contradicts with the advice of people with greater knowledge or experience.

The pattern of most of these chapters becomes familiar. Someone comes into the Trump orbit (or someone who was already there), has ideas about how something should be done, and believes that he/she has the solution and can make Trump see things his/her way. Soon, Mr. Trump sees a slight, an insult, or otherwise shuts his mind off to the person, begins a helter skelter campaign to insult and berate or belittle the person, on Twitter or to the press, or to his followers and fans at rallies. And sooner or later, that person is out. See: Mattis, Kelly, Nielsen, McGahn, Tillerson, etc. etc…
Trump wants to go it alone. He doesn’t like taking advice. He cannot be convinced to change his mind about anything. Even when people all around him are trying to serve his often-confusing direction, he never seems to see much beyond the moment. And as we see from the twin failures of the Mueller Report and the Impeachment (which takes place as the result of his actions with the Ukrainian President, an episode referenced in the epilogue), Donald Trump usually lands on his feet.

America is being tested by an unusual leader. Loved by many, hated by many others, Trump is a dividing line between Americans. One day, 20, 50, 100 years from now, legal scholars will point to some incident in the Trump administration to use as a precedent in a future Presidential case. Students will pore over the details of a (for better or worse) unusual presidency. People who care about history will have (hopefully less-heated) discussions about what is going on in America circa 2020. It remains to be seen what will become the definitive work of the Trump Administration. This book might be a good place to start.







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