Books | dual personalities

This and that

by chuckofish

“It’s better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.”

–Herman Melville

This statement was quoted by House Beautiful Editor-in-Chief Sophie Donelson in her July/August column. She doesn’t say where the quote comes from, but it probably wasn’t from the book on her nightstand. Of course, she was quoting Melville in reference to home decoration and that is valid I suppose, but poor Herman was talking about something different. Sadly, he knew a lot about failure.

Today is Melville’s birthday, so let’s give some thought to how to celebrate. You could check out this website: Melville’s Marginalia Online, a virtual archive of books owned and borrowed by Melville (1819-1891). Amazing! If you are in New York City, you could take the Melville walking tour. Whatever you do, be sure to wear your Herman Melville t-shirt.

Screen Shot 2017-07-31 at 11.44.45 AM.png And by that I mean, please don’t. (Maybe Ms. Donelson found the quote on a t-shirt!)

Well, moving on…we have heard a lot lately about the total solar eclipse that will occur around 1 p.m. on Monday, August 21. The last total solar eclipse here in flyover country was in 1442. As you can see, we are right in line for some great viewing!

Screen Shot 2017-07-31 at 11.02.42 AM.png We have, of course, been reminded ad nauseum to obtain special protective glasses if we plan to watch, so I sent off to Amazon for some of these. Am I cool or what? (Well, the OM is a scouter, so I always try to be prepared.)

Are you wondering how I am going to tie up Herman Melville’s birthday and the total eclipse of the sun? Here is a section of his obit in the New York Times of October 2, 1891:

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Sad, sad, so sad.

Discuss among yourselves.

3 Comments

July 31, 2017

Steadfast resolution

by chuckofish

We had perfect flyover weather this weekend–and to think, it was 108-degrees last Saturday! Anyway, we had a pleasant weekend, although we did very little. I went to a few estate sales and got a few things,

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including this book which I have been looking for for quite some time.

I also found a nice Hitchcock table and four chairs for daughter #1 who will now have room in her flyover apartment for such things!

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After taking the table apart, the OM and I wrestled everything into my Mini Cooper and his Accord and were pretty proud of ourselves for doing so.

I also sat outside and read a good deal of Longmire #9, which was excellent. It includes exchanges like this:

I opened the volume to the title page and read: “The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, Volume XXV, History of Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming 1890.” I gently closed the heavy, leather-bound hardback and rested it against my chest. “Is this book for sale?”

She smiled at me with all the warmth of a Moroccan rug salesman. “Do you know what it’s worth?”

“I do.”

“Twenty-five dollars.”

I studied the marbled edges of the pages. “That’s not what it’s worth.”

“I wasn’t negotiating a price; I was simply trying to see if you knew the value.” She sighed deeply and picked up another from one of the towers near her. “I’m past the point of caring what things cost; I just want to know that beautiful and important objects are in the hands of people who will appreciate them.”

…I stood there holding the two books and looking at the piles around us–they were like literary land mines just waiting to explode minds…

And this:

He smiled, and a line settled alongside the upturned corner of his mouth as he popped the lid on the center console–he knew all my caches and cliches–and pulled out an extra box of shells. “What other weapons do we have?”

I started the Bullet and pulled the gear selector down into drive. “Steadfast resolution.” I turned and looked at him, not as if he would take the option, but it had to be said. “If you want out now would be the time.”

He actually laughed as he reloaded the round. “I try never to miss an episode of Steadfast Resolution–it is my favorite program.”

Having finished Longmire #9, I am now reading Cheyenne Autumn by Mari Sandoz, a classic novel published in 1953 about the 1,500-mile flight of the Northern Cheyenne from the Indian Territory back to their home in the Yellowstone region in 1878–because Henry Standing Bear put it on his list of 10 Books to Read. Is it weird to take literary suggestions from fictional characters?

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I don’t think so either.

Meanwhile we continued to receive adorable pictures of the wee babes in Florida

We also heard from daughters #1 and #2 enjoying one last weekend together in NYC!

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I went to church because I was reading and was treated to this lesson:

26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. 27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God. 28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34 Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:26-39)

I don’t know about you, but I cannot read verses 35-39 without a tear coming to my eye. Great stuff.

Have a great week!

3 Comments

July 25, 2017

“And the moral of the story is?”

by chuckofish

“What is it with you white people and morals? Maybe it’s just a story about what happened.” He paused for a moment. “If an Indian points at a tree, you white people are always thinking, What does that mean? What does the tree stand for? What’s the lesson in this for me? Maybe it’s just a tree.” (Virgil White Buffalo in Hell Is Empty)

While waiting for cabs and resting between long walks and Big Events last weekend, I sought solace in the company of Walt Longmire in the Wyoming mountains. Hell Is Empty is amazingly apropos reading for wiling away hours in LaGuardia Airport! (“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”–Shakespeare, The Tempest)

Anyway, at the beginning of this novel we are told that one of Walt’s deputies, regretting a stint in higher education devoted almost exclusively to criminal justice, is attempting to fill in some of the literary gaps. Walt and his deputies, plus the dispatcher and the lady who runs the diner have all made book lists for him. Dante’s Inferno plays a big part in the rest of the story.

Craig Johnson, understanding that his readers would want to know, thoughtfully includes the different lists in an appendix to the novel.

Of course, Ruby, the dispatcher and my soul sister, includes The Holy Bible (NT), The Pilgrim’s Progress, Inferno, Paradise Lost, My Antonia, The Scarlett Letter, Walden, Poems of Emily Dickinson, My Friend Flicka, and Our Town.

How great is that? I guess I’ll have to read My Friend Flicka!

I love lists.

My list would include: The Holy Bible (NT), The Book of Common Prayer, Moby-Dick, The Catcher in the Rye, O Pioneers!, The Big Sky, The Waters of Kronos, The Big Sleep, Gilead, Lonesome Dove…

I’m sure I’m forgetting something important that I really love. You know how that goes.

Here’s Frederick Buechner on a similar theme:

THE WRITERS WHO get my personal award are the ones who show exceptional promise of looking at their lives in this world as candidly and searchingly and feelingly as they know how and then of telling the rest of us what they have found there most worth finding. We need the eyes of writers like that to see through. We need the blood of writers like that in our veins.

J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye was one of the first books I read that did it to me, that started me on the long and God knows far from finished journey on the way to becoming a human being—started making that happen. What I chiefly learned from it was that even the slobs and phonies and morons that Holden Caulfield runs into on his travels are, like Seymour Glass’s Fat Lady, “Christ Himself, buddy,” as Zooey explains it to his sister Franny in the book that bears her name Even the worst among us are precious. Even the most precious among us bear crosses. That was a word that went straight into my bloodstream and has been there ever since. Along similar lines I think also of Robertson Davies’ Deptford trilogy, Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier, Rose Macaulay’s The Towers of Trebizond, George Garrett’s Death of the Fox, some of the early novels of John Updike like The Poorhouse Fair and The Centaur, John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. I think of stories like Flannery O’Connor’s “The Artificial Nigger” and Raymond Carver’s “Feathers” and works of non-fiction, to use that odd term (like calling poetry non-prose) such as Annie Dillard’s Holy the Firm and Geoffrey Wolff’s The Duke of Deception and Robert Capon’s The Supper of the Lamb or plays like Death of a Salesman or Our Town.

What 10 books would you put on your list of must-reads? Think about it.

But excuse me, I have to get back to Absaroka County…

6 Comments

July 19, 2017

Fix our Thoughts on Thee

by chuckofish

You may have noted that yesterday was the bicentennial of Jane Austen’s death.

I thought this article was very interesting.

And, of course, the new bank note is in the news. Screen Shot 2017-07-18 at 11.03.38 AM.png I have a feeling Jane would be non-plussed by the whole bank note thing. Especially with the quote on the note which is causing twitter controversy.

Screen Shot 2017-07-18 at 11.08.49 AM.png I have to say, I concur. We can assume that no one involved in designing the note had ever actually read one of her books. But there are memes galore, so…that counts, right?

One more big eye roll and then we’re done.

This probably didn’t sell out.

But this made me tear up a little. Amazing Americans.

Have a good day!

Give us grace, Almighty Father, so to pray, as to deserve to be heard, to address thee with our Hearts, as with our lips. Thou art every where present, from Thee no secret can be hid. May the knowledge of this, teach us to fix our Thoughts on Thee, with Reverence and Devotion.

2 Comments

July 10, 2017

“Stay calm, have courage and wait for signs”*

by chuckofish

Screen Shot 2017-07-09 at 2.01.32 PM.png Well, there is bound to be a big let-down after a big event that you have planned for so long… IMG_5623.JPG.jpeg …and I am in the middle of it. Good grief, two weeks of non-stop socializing with family and friends and people staying in your house… IMG_5585.JPG.jpeg

IMG_5596.JPG.jpeg But c’est la vie. This past weekend I did very little but straighten up the house and do laundry. I still have more straightening to do, but I made a lot of progress.

I also spent a good amount of time with my new best friend Walt Longmire, who has joined the ranks of my small club of Best Fictional Characters Ever (Holden Caulfield, Philip Marlowe, Dick Summers…). The book (NOT to be confused with the television show) I just finished was As the Crow Flies, which ends with Walt’s daughter getting married in a traditional Cheyenne ceremony.

…the two birds I’d noticed were crows circling right above the meadow, the primaries of their wing tips spread like fingers as they rode the thermals that lifted them into the cloudless sky.

Maybe it was an omen, but I decided to take it as a good one. I’d heard that crows mate for life and are known to raise their young for as long as five years.

Sometimes you don’t get that long.

I thought about Audrey Plain Feather and how her life hadn’t turned out the way she’d hoped–maybe nobody’s did.

My wife Martha’s hadn’t. Mine hadn’t. Even Henry’s hadn’t.

Maybe Cady’s would.

It’s hopes like this that you cling to at major turning points in your life and, more important, the lives of your children. You keep going, and you hope for the best, and sometimes, maybe not very often, your hopes come true.

I also watched Red Beard (1965) directed by Akira Kurosawa and starring Toshiro Mifune. I had read about this film on the Mockingbird website and knew it was a favorite movie of the Rev. John Zahl, but had never seen it or really heard much about it. Indeed, the British Film Institute’s 2015 list of “10 Essential Kurosawa Films” did not feature Red Beard. But there is a Criterion Films DVD and so I got it from Netflix.

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And let me tell you, this is a great, great movie! It poses the question, “Why is there so much suffering in the world?” The answer is illusive, as we know, but there is solace to be found in knowing that there are, indeed, good people in the world. This is the lesson learned by several characters in the movie including the protagonist, a young, arrogant doctor played by Yuzo Kayama. Red Beard, Toshira Mifune, is one of the good people. He has learned to overcome his own arrogance in order to love people where they are and to help them. It reminded me of Sunday’s Gospel, where Jesus says, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11: 30)

Indeed, the movie is about love and grace and is absolutely amazing. There are so many great scenes–I tear up just thinking about them!–such as the scene where the clinic serving women scream the name of the dying child (“Chobu!”) down the well to pull his soul back from the dead. Do not put off seeing this great movie because it is three hours long and you think you are not in the mood for a “downer” movie. It is inspiring. Also, I was struck by the acting in this movie, which is so, so good and rather subdued by Japanese standards.

Anyway, I just loved it and highly recommend it to you. I watched it alone, of course. The OM left after half an hour to water the shrubs. I guess he wasn’t in the mood.

But, hello. Someone left this “toast prop” at my house!

It’s the simple things, right?

*Cheyenne motto

5 Comments

June 21, 2017

A little Wednesday rant

by chuckofish

Daughter #1 just told me something really disturbing.

She said that the Hallmark Channel has announced that it has started production on the At Home in Mitford movie based on the first book in Jan Karon’s beloved series.

There has been talk of this for years and the million dollar question has been: Who will they cast as Father Tim? Most suggestions by fans have ranged from the stupid to the deranged, but the producers have gone beyond deranged, casting Cameron Mathison, a soap star and hunk whose career high point was being on Dancing With the Stars.

O.M.G. Are you kidding me? We’re talking Father Tim–aging, overweight, bald, and diabetic!

Granted Anthony Hopkins (Jan Karon’s choice) and Robert Duvall may not have been available, but there must be some B-list aging actor out there who would have jumped at the chance to play such a great character.

More like it, thank you

Okay, maybe they’re too old now. Shockingly, Father Tim was my age in the first book, so why not

or even

Okay, too high end? Then find someone like that. Someone who looks like he might have actually read the Bible or a Wordsworth poem and is a little the worse for wear.

Clearly the producers just don’t care. They are going to turn this spiritual book into a folksy Hallmark movie about a folksy small town where romance blooms folksily, i.e. cupid even finds ministers who are hopeless bachelors.

We won’t even go into the fact that Andie McDowell was cast as Cynthia.

Good grief, what is the world coming to? Stupid question, I know.

6 Comments

May 31, 2017

What are you reading?

by chuckofish

Someone at work has been cleaning out his bookshelves recently and I have been the recipient of several good mystery novels. First I read an Easy Rawlins mystery by Walter Moseley which was well written and held my interest.

Then I started the first Longmire mystery with low expectations and was rewarded with a real prize.

I am enjoying this book so much! It is well-written and character-driven and the characters are all fascinating individuals. It is slightly humorous, and by that I mean, it does not take itself too seriously, as I think the television version tends to. Plus, bonus: Walt is a lawman with a literary bent. He is always making literary references, but not in a pretentious, stuffy way. Rather, he is always kind of kidding when he does so.

“I took a sip of my coffee, sat the folder on the counter, and began reading the newspaper. “In the cold, gray dawn of September the twenty-eighth . . .” Dickens. “. . . The slippery bank where the life of Cody Pritchard came to an ignominious end . . .” Faulkner. “Questioning society with the simple query, why?” Steinbeck. “Dead.” Hemingway.”

“You know, Balzac once described bureaucracy as a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.”

“What’d your buddy Balzac have to say about inadmissible evidence?”

“Not a lot. I think he considered the subject beneath him.”

“I wandered past Vic’s office and looked in at the explosion of legal pads. The display was daunting, and I would be cursed at if I messed up any of what I’m sure was a carefully detailed arrangement. We were little but we were mighty. I thought of Don Quixote, being far too powerful to war with mere mortals and pleading for giants.”

That is just how his mind works.

I am happy to note that as of May 2017, Craig Johnson has written 12 novels, 2 novellas and a collection of short stories featuring Sheriff Walt Longmire of Absaroka County, Wyoming.

My kind of guy.

One of these days I am going to quit my job and move to Wyoming and get a job as the admin to an overworked sheriff. You think I’m kidding?

(The painting at the top is by Mary Cassatt.)

6 Comments

May 8, 2017

“All who confess his name, come then with hearts aflame”*

by chuckofish

Well, this weekend was beautiful–70+ degrees and sunny. Gorgeous. We needed it.

I had a very busy weekend–estate sale-ing, attending “an event,” working in the yard, dining with friends (ordering a cocktail!), going to church, and so on.

Two of the estate sales I went to were at homes of people I had known and loved. This is always sad and a bit awkward. Both were at homes where the husband had died suddenly and the wife had been whisked off to an assisted living home immediately afterward. Both wives are suffering from dementia and I wonder if they had any idea what was happening to their homes. Maybe that is just as well.

I did rescue two embroidered/needlepoint bricks.

This weekend I also read a fair amount of the two books I am currently reading.

I found Whip Hand on a basement bookshelf and brought it upstairs to read. Written by Dick Francis, the British steeplechase jockey and prolific crime fiction writer, it is the second in the Sid Halley series about a former jockey, who has been crippled in a racing accident and now works as a private investigator. The novel received the Gold Dagger Award for Best Novel of 1979, as well as the Edgar Award for Best Novel of 1980. I am really not a big fan of the crime fiction genre, but I am enjoying this book as much as I did back in 1979 when I read it for the first time. It is Dick Francis at the top of his game.

I had to interrupt Dick Francis when Elizabeth Strout’s new book, Anything is Possible, arrived in the mail. You may recall that I loved My Name is Lucy Barton, which was published last year, and this book, which is sort of a sequel–in that Lucy Barton is a character in this new book. She has written a memoir (My Name is Lucy Barton) and we read about the people in the small town she has written about and how they react to the book. It is wonderful and I am racing through it. Strout is such a good writer, it is kind of unnerving.

The boy and his wee family came over for Sunday dinner, forcing me to close my book for awhile.

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And I saw a flicker close-up on the patio.

(not my photo!)

Weekend complete! Have a good week!

*Hymn 478, F. Bland Tucker

4 Comments

April 18, 2017

Meanwhile back at the ranch

by chuckofish

I started reading The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, an international bestseller which I picked up in the giveaway basket at work.

So far, so good. It is well written and well translated (by Robert Graves’ daughter!), but it is overly romantic in its attitude about everything–from books to women.

“I leafed through the pages, inhaling the enchanted scent of promise that comes with all new books, and stopped to read the start of a sentence that caught my eye.”

I’ll let you know how far I get.

Meanwhile…

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Not that I ate any chocolate bunnies or even eggs this year. No way. Maybe a jelly bean or two…

3 Comments

April 12, 2017

This and that

by chuckofish

Recently I discovered that Brenda Ueland, author of If You Want to Write, wrote an autobiography. I found a used copy online and ordered it.

Brenda Ueland was a wonderful free-spirited girl growing up in Minnesota, and she seems to have always managed to keep that inner light. Many women lose it for various reasons: anxiety, depression, responsibility…but Brenda remained true to herself and honest. I find her fascinating. Although we are very different, we see eye-to-eye on most important things.

In other news, did you know that yesterday was the 55th anniversary of the release of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance? Please note that this was the first occasion of John Wayne calling someone “Pilgrim” in a film.

Tonight would be a good occasion to watch this great, great movie. I like to think of my parents going to see it in 1962. Did my brother go? He was 11. I remember going to see it at the movies, but it must have been when it was re-released at some point. I think I was about 8 or 9 or 10, because I was really still too young. I mean I was quite traumatized by Lee Marvin who was so scary.

There is real violence in this movie–too bad beatings of James Stewart and Edmund O’Brien, you will recall. Martin Scorsese, who is a big fan of director John Ford, never learned that it’s what you don’t see that is so scary.

Anyway, it also makes for good Holy Week fare, since this movie is about personal sacrifice and all that. John Wayne gives up everything for love, (spoiler alert) shooting Liberty Valance and burning down his house.

I will also note the passing of Don Rickles the other day. He appeared in one of my favorite WWII submarine movies early in his career in a straight part. Can you spot him in this German-dubbed scene from Run Silent, Run Deep (1958)?

This would be another good movie to watch–while toasting old Don, alias Mr. Potato Head.

And, finally, here’s a good word from Joyce Meyer.

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God has blessed me, and I am happy!

5 Comments

dual personalities

Category: Books

August 1, 2017

This and that

by chuckofish

July 31, 2017

Steadfast resolution

by chuckofish

July 25, 2017

“And the moral of the story is?”

by chuckofish

July 19, 2017

Fix our Thoughts on Thee

by chuckofish

July 10, 2017

“Stay calm, have courage and wait for signs”*

by chuckofish

June 21, 2017

A little Wednesday rant

by chuckofish

May 31, 2017

What are you reading?

by chuckofish

May 8, 2017

“All who confess his name, come then with hearts aflame”*

by chuckofish

April 18, 2017

Meanwhile back at the ranch

by chuckofish

April 12, 2017

This and that

by chuckofish