Matthew McElroy > Recent Status Updates

The Ballad of Ballard and Sandrine was a bit long, but solid. Majorlena... whoof. That's a doozy of a tale. Its the Iraq War. A member of the armed forces shows up out of nowhere. And who always travels with the army?

I will definitely find more stories by Jake Jakeman (I'll have to check his name)

There have been a ton of good stories in here. Many of them make use of the horror theme: what scares you the most in real life? And then riff off that. The most scathing of these, so far, is Tender as Teeth, by Stephanie Crawford and Duane Swierczynski. I'm not sure I can explain it here without giving it away, but it is worth reading under any circumstances.

As a friend noted, It's the only rich man's revolution in history. So our values are inherently colored by what rich people valued. Much of that has been good. And much of it has been incredibly harmful, unfair, and untrue. The framers of the Constitution may have been brilliant, but that doesn't mean they were virtuous.

Little America was good, not great. And Black and White Sky had an interesting premise with a confusing conclusion.

Then along comes Stephen Graham Jones to put everything right. If horror is about fear of the unknown, and the unknown is the inhuman, then a zombie story with anthropologist protagonists is peak creativity.

What makes a great short story? That isn't a rhetorical question. All four of these stories have been excellent. Some of them cover a space of only 15 minutes. Others a few days, maybe a few weeks. It's not just a condensed novel, but the creation has to be similar. There has to be a problem, rising action, climax, all of that.
I wonder what is more difficult, writing a novel or a short story?

Whoa!
What a turn!
I'm going to be checking out many of these authors.

Oh, THAT is how you start a story collection! Foreshadowing you'll never see coming.

The southern states and the major advocates for independence, continue to prove they do not want to sacrifice much more than time in pursuit of independence.
Virginia and South Carolina can't pay soldiers and basically ignore the problem altogether. Maryland at least allows people to use wildly devalued paper money.
While working men are fighting in the war, the landed gentry levies taxes that few families can pay.

The chapter titled "Spreading the Word" is 20 pages of the most tense, humanizing writing I've ever experienced. Liz is being incredibly stubborn, but you realize that she is declaring her equality. The Gimp is being tolerant and understanding, but you realize he's still a slave catcher. There are watermen who are willing to give the slaves a fair shake, but they are still part of a brutal system. Incredible.

Vonnegut is open-minded and encourages tolerance while mocking prejudice and existing social norms.
The island of San Lorenzo was abandoned by multiple European countries. When Africans take command of a ship and land on the island, the emperor who wants to defend the island is identified as a maniac.
Vonnegut is a great writer and chooses his words carefully. Why would it require 'mania' to want freedom?

Yardley is a bit more enjoyable, writing about sports. Not pleasant, but there is much less at stake. His eulogies for his departed friends are honest and moving. I wonder if the book would have benefitted from putting the positive writing first.

In reading the sections that are more targeted, Yardley is a bit more enjoyable. Not happier, or more pleasant, but his screeds aren't as unwelcome. I enjoyed his writing about sports. His eulogies for his friends were moving and well-considered.

Yardley's column, The First Thanksgiving from 11/27/1995 is one of the most ridiculous things i have ever read. How to sum this up?
The New York Times published an article explaining how schools were moving past the traditional "Indians helped the Pilgrims" story. Yardley responds with satire, but it is so convoluted that it ceases to be anything meaningful.
He's still hasn't found anything that makes him happy.

Man, Jonathan Yardley does not have many nice things to say. If he self-curated these columns, he must be inherently negative.
The first section was mostly literary criticism, but he doesn't have any positive criticism which doesn't seem like a coincidence. The section titled "Media Madness" doesn't bode well either.

The parallels to Whitehead's Underground Railroad are strong, but I'll try not to be labor that point. Liz Spocott is very different from Cora. Liz is an active participant in her escape and pursuit of freedom, even if she is more hesitant about it all. While Cora felt like a stand-in for being Black History in America, Liz feels like a more complete character. And the characters around her are more complete as well.

The Newburgh Conspiracy has always fascinated me. What prompted Washington to that level of theatrics? What prompted officers to demand pensions, without supporting their enlisted men? Why didn't the Continental Congress have a meaningful plan to pay soldiers?
And 250 years later, what does "Support the Troops" mean? Should I show more loyalty to a paid army than Thomas Jefferson?

In classic Vonnegut fashion, he's using sleight of hand to get you to focus on one thing, while hiding another. We are supposed to be focused on this story about San Lorenzo and Mona and the corporal and all of that. But I have a feeling we are getting a heavy dose of Vonnegut's philosophy. I can't imagine creating an entirely new religion without believing parts of it.

I've read a fair amount of American history, and the Revolutionary Era fascinates me. And the more I read it, the more I'm convinced that the brilliant ideas about restricted government and individual rights were never intended to extend to everyone.
The people who advocated the most for separation were the wealthiest, and when they need to pay soldiers on the ground they pull have short arms and deep pockets.

It's impossible to read this and not think of Colson Whitehead's Underground Railroad, which was excellent. Both books feature an enslaved woman running for freedom. A spectacular act of violence is the catalyst for each. They feature a slavecatcher who is... not 'hateful' but sees Black people as a simple source of revenue. The slavecatchers have Black assistants they seem to 'appreciate'.

Vocabulary update:
Wampeter- the pivot of a karass; anything can be a dampener, nouns, proper nouns, ideas, etc

Dr. Koenikker invented something called ice-nine which rearranges the way molecules of liquid rearrange themselves. If anything was exposed to ice-nine, it would automatically freeze, and freeze everything around it.

A quick vocabulary lesson:
Foma- harmless untruths
Karass- a team that does God's will, without ever discovering what they are doing
Kan-kan- the instrument that brings you into a karass
Sinookas- the tendrils of a person's life

Virginia's flag says "Sic Semper Tyrannis" which translates to "thus always to tyrants", a nod to their role in advocating for freedom from Britain. Jefferson, Madison, Mason and others were crucial in defining our understanding of liberty and human rights. Virginians were not so invested, and struggled to raise a meaningful militia. 90 years later, they were the most notable traitors in the War of Southern Treason.

Clint Smith leaves us with this wonderful exhortation- to sit down with our elders and let them tell us our stories. But even Smith, an incredible writer, and presumably, talented interviewer, had trouble getting the full story out of his grandparents.

I think there is something in every Black person of a certain time and place that limits how much they will say at one time. At a certain point, they all get quiet.

Chris Power said this is "a reading experience unlike any other". Thank goodness.
On p151, we are finally made aware that the narrator may not be the actual author. The first phase just starts. The second phase has the shortest of introductions: "From the Book of Disquiet" composed by Bernardo Soares.

Telling a story through a different narrator is not inventive. That narrator having nothing to say or do is new.

What am I reading?

P111 "Those of us who are not pederasts wish we had the courage to be so. A dictate for action inevitably has a femininity effect. We missed our true vocatio. As housewives and idle chatelaines because of a sexual mismatch in our present incarnation. While we do not totally believe this, to pretend we do savours the blood of irony."

I wish I'd done more with my Sociology degree. 17 years teaching history hasn't been bad. In Senegal, while visiting Goree Island, Smith meets a teacher named Hasan Kane. Kane asks Smith if he knows a man named Ibrahima Seck. Seck gave Smith his tour of the Whitney Plantation.

And the sociologist in me asks, what are the odds? Okay, these are Black men. Dedicated educators. Working in similar fields. But still...

The idea that the Statue of Liberty was originally designed to hold broken shackles in her hand because the French architect wanted to celebrate the abolition of slavery is one of the most surprising facts I've learned this year.
The fact that the idea was crushed because they were afraid of offending American financiers may be the least surprising fact.

The thematic organization of the book is excellent. While everything is more qualitative than quantitative, Smith represents the widest variety of experiences possible. This is the first chapter where Black people initiate the history.
Galveston Island is the home of Juneteenth. It's where the initial declaration was made in 1865, where Al Edwards pushed to have it recognized as a state holiday in Texas.

The Blandford chapter has been the most upsetting, more than Angola. Angola relies on half-truths and lies to maintain power in Louisiana. For whatever it's worth, Angola has a financial stake in denying the impact of slavery. United Daughters of the Confederacy are propagating a lie that even the grandchildren of the Confederacy have rejected. Lee's descendents have supported the removal of his name from public.