Matthew McElroy > Recent Status Updates

Another train book- its been on my shelf, so I'm going to put myself in seclusion and see what happens.
So far, it's ridiculous. The thesis is there is a curse on the Kennedy family, that starts with Joseph Kennedy, Senior. It may originate with a curse placed on him by rabbis, in response to an outward and disgusting display of anti-Semitism.
But then why does your timeline start in the mid-1800s?

Thurgood Marshall on Lieutenant Commander and prosecuting attorney James Coakley: "I have never run across a prosecutor with a more definite racial bias than that exemplified by Lieutenant Commander Coakley."

The material is compelling, but there is something about the writing that leaves me cold.
Maybe it's the material itself: the people asking for peace, like the Shoshone and the Omaha are being massacred between the Sioux and the United States.
The Seven Sioux nations are defending their territory, but they have been pretty vicious about it since long before white people/Europeans/Americans showed up.

What a great book to read to someone you love. It's slowing down the pace, but it's a nice way to end the day. It is the purest type of fantasy. Not speculative, not sci-fi, just straight whimsy.👸🌈🐉🌠🗿

The Supergirl and Robin pages have been the best part of this. It is a surprisingly readable collection so far. Light colors with a dark story. I don't love DC, but I like the interaction of the two highest level characters, Superman and Batman, with some also-rans, like Doon Patrol.

God has many mysteries, and I believe His advice is "Be still and know that I am God." And we do our best to make meaning from the stories in the Bible.
I don't know if I can ever reconcile the story of Job. It isn't Job's faith, it's the death of the servants and family members. That's the part that never sits quite right.

Paraphrasing here, but Vonnegut says of writing, artists usually bring order to chaos. He decides he will bring chaos to order. Which is why he is a character in his book, in which the two main characters are another author, Kilgore Trout, who has also created a character, Dwayne Hoover (who does not look like a man named Dwayne Hoover).

The section on fame was much different than what you would expect. It included a set of brothers who have done some writing and acting. A man from New Mexico who became a pitching coach with the Cubs. And a woman who wrote a best selling novel, that I'm not familiar with.
The stories are better than Rather's writing.

Thurgood's coming.

I am fascinated to see what research the authors did to get this level of detail.
America has done a pretty lousy job with Native Americans throughout history. They were barbaric savages, peaceful naturalists, spiritual guides, but always a single group of people. Clavin and Drury make it clear that even among the Plains nations, there is a wide variety of lifestyles.
The Sioux are not my favorite.

Expository writers get a bad rap. Don't tell us what is happening. Show us.
Vonnegut is an expository writer. He's excellent at it. He calls out society for what it is. Materialistic. Greedy. Homophobic. Racist. Sexist. There is a bizarre passage where he gives the width and length of men's members. Then the bust-waist-hip measurements of several women. What gives these numbers any importance?
Society.

I read this more than a decade ago, so I can't remember what appealed to me the first time. It's complex, with at least two narrators, driving two storylines. Vonnegut created Kilgore Trout and Trout created Dwayne Hoover. Hoover and Trout are the two protagonists of the story. Trout is on a roadtrip across the United States to read at an arts festival being held by his only fan, Eliot Rosewater.

There is some excellent stuff in here and some... eyebrow raising stuff in here. I'm early on, so the good: the hard work at providing Native American history, even before the arrival of barbarian hordes from the east. They do a great job of explaining how there are different cultural groups within larger... ethnicities? If we talk about Plains Indians, there are 30 nations, and those are broken into smaller tribes.

I think every boy in the suburbs goes through a Kurt Vonnegut phase between 22 and 28. I haven't read much by him in a long time, but I remember loving the creativity and candor of his stories.
Vonnegut is always at the edge of his stories as the narrator. He writes like a friendly man at a local bar, telling you a story he overheard about a neighbor.

I ❤️ that this all of a sudden turned into a heist story.

Each of these characters is familiar, but the story is unique. I'm pretty sure we are supposed to be aware that Fantastica is where the characters of our stories live. I'm not as sure that the populace (can't really call them people or humans) knows that they play a role in our stories.

If you cocked your head a bit, The Underground Railroad was a story about America. Same here. Doc Roberts, the good 'ol boy WASP has a made up story about his family arriving on the Mayflower, instead of just being another immigrant family. He hates the new Eastern European immigrants, but he's willing to ally himself with other Europeans against the hordes of Blacks and Jews.

If you are in my approximate age range (I'm 42) the movie the Neverending Story has one of the most traumatic scenes of our young lives. I'll say I was about 7 when I saw it the first time.

That scene does not happen in the same way at all. It's not better or worse, it's just different, and strangely placed.

The inexcusable phrase of the Nazis was, "We were just following orders." At the same time, The United States, supposedly a country built on freedom of conscience and individuality, has told 50 men they have committed mutiny if they refuse to follow a single order that has already resulted in 100s of deaths.
Folks, if you have an incident of this happening to white soldiers, please let me know.

Love this story- perhaps the hallmark of McBride's stories are the sprawling quilt of characters. He's better than anyone I can think of at giving you 400 unique characters with their own backgrounds, mannerisms and quirks. Then over the course of about 300 pages, he patches together something wonderful.

I like the stories where people work hard to become comfortable. Like Melissa who started a cleaning business. That seems much more aspirational, even if it isn't as inspirational. Rather does seem to want as many different versions of this story as possible.

Just plugging along. Rather is doing solid storytelling here. He's got a good mix of pacificists, immigrants and people who grew up outside the typical avenues to wealth and prosperity.
The first section was about people who fought for their right to express themselves- a devout Catholic fighting against war, and an American-born Japanese who fought to have the US acknowledge its work camps during WW2.

Another bus trip to Philadelphia, another book that has sat on my shelf too long.
Will Rather take the soft way out? Everything is awesome and anyone can succeed with a little hard work?

Or will he tell real stories of Americans who failed before achieving, and the obstacles that the country placed in front of them? Often intentionally?

For about 90 more years from the setting of this book, even in states with well- run education systems, deaf children were quickly classified as low-functioning. This continued into the 2000s, and probably still occurs.
Of course a person who can't hear has special needs. But once they obtain language; ASL or the ability to write, they are as capable as anyone else.

There seems to be an unreliability to Vrba's version of events. Not that he's a liar, or even embellished events. But his bitterness stuck with him through life where he used a certain level of his platform to tear down other people, and not just people who were obviously evil.
The other thing- when did we learn the Holocaust happened? More and more, it seems that it doesn't really hit the public until the 1970s.

We are winding down here.
Unfortunately, Vrba won't get the closure he deserves. But as a survivor, even the people who betrayed him continue to show up in positions of power.

I'm only focused on him as the hero of this story. I'm not dismissing the millions of people who never had a chance to escape.

I wish I was good at anything as James McBride is at writing.

It was just me and the book on the bus yesterday.
It's a fascinating, though wildly upsetting, read. Rosenberg and Wetzler make every effort to get this story told and NO ONE wants to listen. The British, the Americans, the Hungarians, even some Jewish leaders who refuse to believe it.
Freedland hasn't said Post Traumatic Stress Disorder yet, but it seems pretty obvious.

White people fight against rules that are unfair: principled patriots
Black people fight against unfair rules: traitorous mutineers