Eiger Dreams

I apologize for being gone for so long. Everything is in flux right now, but for the better. Whether it be a better job or some more writing gigs, it looks like good news for Garik. There might be some more writing coming along and while it does not pay, it feels great to be actually read. Might bring some more people to the blog as well.

One wonderful recent read isJon Krakauer's Eiger Dreams. It is a compilation of his late 80s and early 90s articles for magazines like Outside and National Geographic. It also features an early version of "The Devil's Thumb" essay from Into the Wild, where Krakauer compares his own youthful exuberance with Christopher McCandless ill-fated adventure.

Krakauer could write a book about dryer lint and I would read it. Actually, I implore Mr. Krakauer to write another book. About anything! Canned mushrooms packed in brine. The history of folding chairs. Electrician's tape. Anything! Krakauer is the literary version of Chuck Norris.

Behind Krakauer's beard is nothing, but another turn of phrase!
Krakauer does not write books. He renders them from the granite under his boots.
No one edits Krakauer's books. He presents them carved in the stones of Everest.

Seriously boss

Krakauer possesses a lovely verbiage. "Sheldon's career coincided with the mushrooming popularity of mountaineering on McKinley," reads one sentence from "The Flyboys of Talkeetna." His choice of words does not originate from the obscure end of the thesaurus, but the forgotten verbs swept away by "to be" variations. I read Krakauer to challenge my own writing skills. Reading him, you can appreciates his knack for journalism and in conversation and research. A real common piece of writing advice is Mountaineering lends an entire list of dynamic and interesting words. I try to insert the word bivouac into everyday conversations, but find I have little opportunity to reference a temporary encampment. Caribiner, crampons, ice axes, glacial airstrip and then there are the locations names like Denali, Chamoix, or K2.

Krakauer does not answer why people climb mountains. But in The Devil's Thumb he mentions how mountain scapes have an almost pornographic feel. In staring at a picture of the eponymous mountain in Alaska, Krakauer says, "How would it feel, I wondered over and over, to be on that thumb nail-thin summit ridge, worrying over the storm clouds building on the horizon, hunched against the wind and dunning cold, contemplating the horrible drop on either side?"

I get the same feeling when looking at pictures of tiny islands. Veteran readers might remember my obsession with these bits of obscure geography. Krakauer's bit on mountaineering verbalizes the sames feelings I have on these spits of land. How would anyone survive if stuck there? How would you deal with the isolation? Would you pace the island from end to end, dominating your city block sized empire?

My favorite piece in the book is "On Being Tentbound," an essay where Krakauer narrates how to live in a phone booth sized fabric envelope for days. Or even weeks. The sense of isolation speaks well to the aforementioned dangerous wonder. Mountain climbers have attempted to recreate Monopoly sets from memory and studied the back of food packages. Since he wrote this in the late 80s, Krakauer just touches on the nascent handheld video games and Walkmans of the time. I would bring my PSP up Everest so I could play GTA: Liberty City Stories in the storm! Woo! Books are important, but you can only bring so many. I would bring all four of Krakauer's as they always offer something new.

Peace

Books I Should Have Already Read, Vol. 5

Punching in for another installment of the series....

Books I Should Have Already Read, Volume 5

Nickle and Dimed

By Barbara Ehrenreich

This is one of those "Ithaca" books that felt like everyone back there had read and discussed. Other examples of such books included Fast Food Nation; Eat, Pray, and Love; State of Denial; A People's History of the United States, and anything by Michael Pollan. What I am trying to say is that I heard a lot about this book and already understood the basic gist of it.

And the subject is one hell of a pitch. Barbara Ehrenreich decided (at the suggestion of her editor) to try and make it as a member of the working poor. She would leave her persona and profession behind to find housing and sustenance on $7 to $8 dollars an hour. She worked as a waitress in Key West, FL; a home cleaner in Maine; and a Wal-Mart store associate in Minneapolis, MN. There are other odd jobs in between (hotel maid, food service worker, etc.) and failed attempts for some others.

Ehrenreich's writing is strong and the narrative is compelling. She distills the ins and outs of job applications to their mind boggling details. As someone who has taken a slew of those Unicru Assessment Tests, (I can tell you that I "Strongly agree" that "It is infuriating when the court lets guilty criminals go free" and "Most people can be trusted.") it was wonderful to read how those tests are just filler. Instead of assessing your personality, the tests are meant to squeeze out your loyalty. And you are not even working for them yet! Would you get any job at all if you put anything but a big fat zero in the "How many dollars of company materials have you stolen in the past year?"

The book's central challenge isn't to any one employer, but the idea of the American Dream. The idea that if you work very hard you can have a piece of the pie and rise up from the bottom rung. This idea is core to our Master Narrative and Ehrenreich's questioning of it makes for a prickly book. Understandably, the book sends the Right into a fit. Ehrenreich does herself no favors when she plays right into the "liberal academic snob" that pundits love to hate. She is able to deduce that a household with books by John Grisham and Rush Limbaugh (Literature she describes as on the "low-end" of the literary spectrum) isn't filled with the brightest bulbs. She attends a church revival in Maine, in hopes of finding some entertainment in a small town, and finds it all quite silly. On the revival, "But Jesus makes his appearance here only as a corpses; the living man, the wine-guzzling vagrant and precocious socialist, is never once mentioned, nor anything he ever had to say. Christ crucified rules, and it may be that the true business of modern Christinaity is to crucify him again and again so that he can never get a word out of his mouth."

Yeeesh. Did I just stumble into Christopher Hitchen's God is Not Great? Cause that is one is still on my "to be read" pile. I am no fan of Limbaugh and an atheist, but did she really need to say those things? I understand that in a book about the poor, it might be wise to mention Jesus since he was all about helping the poor. He was poor himself. But, this is the only mention of him in the whole book! I would have prefered something like, "Hey, it would be great if Rick Warren and Pat Roberston really stumped for the poor and calm down a bit about this whole gay marriage bit."

People were having fun at that revival. It would not be my kind of fun, but they can go nuts. I find writing for free on a blog nobody reads plenty of fun! I am sure those folks would not. Did she met the people in that house and actually have a conversation with them? When I used to live in Ithaca, fellow progressive/left-leaning/hippie/whatever folks, would often judge me by the media I view. "My God, Garik! You watch prime time television!?"

"Hell, yeah! The Office is on and then we can watch Lost!"

Such arguments do the movement no favor. I have ranted about this before, so feel free to browse the archives. Please, browse the archives! PLEASE!!!

Ehrenreich makes some sharper observations when she turns the lens to the working poor's situation. If we expect the "lower class" to cook our fast food meals and stock our Big Box shelves then they need to drive out to the suburbs. Or they find housing in the suburbs. And once the wealthier class gets nervous about having those folks in their neighborhoods, they move further out and continue the cycle. I am new to my little Cleveland inner-ring suburb (Lakewood*), but I often hear how Section 8 housing has ruined it. Lakewood is a nice place to live if you end up cleaning houses in Bay Village or selling Halloween costumes in Rocky River. It is close enough to the outer suburbs and relatively cheap enough to live in.

She challenges assumptions that her jobs were "dumb" jobs filled by "dumb" people. She frames this in light of her academic experience and PhD. It was still hard to learn how to master the backpack vacuum cleaner and register! I understand her viewpoint, but nothing except experience on the actual machine itself will prepare you to handle it. I think what Ehrenreich was trying to do was portray herself as someone considered "smart" by society in "dumb" jobs. An honest analogy, but an awkward presentation that can come off as snobby.

Regardless, these are not dumb jobs. Every job and workplace has policies, politics, and a culture that you need to adjust to. When I am faced with a new register at a new job, I don't think back to my degree. I do that for my writing gigs. In this gig, I am begging the senior staff to walk me through the process.

She budgets down her earnings to demonstrate how difficult it is to get by on $7 an hour.This provides the greatest challenge to the American Dream of working hard and getting that house in the suburbs However, the book is filled with people that bust their ass everyday doing the repetitive work and still can not rise up. If something was supposed to happen, if something was supposed to "trickle-down," then why hasn't it yet?

All these discussions reveal a inherent conundrum in the book. Most of the debates around poverty, welfare, and the working poor are based on anecdotal evidence. Ehrenreich's book is a great read, but it only represent relatively isolated cases. Her writing is great and you feel for these people,but for every (insert name) she met, someone probably has the opposite example. My parents grew up damn poor and worked hard so that they could prepare me for all this blogging. Oh, and life too. Thanks to the efficiency of Puerto Rican social services, my grandmother (who was in her late sixties when she recently passed) collected WIC and the PR equivalent of food vouchers. I remember her once telling me to run down to the store and use the EBT card to buy groceries. In a moment that would make Ronald Regan** proud, I refused to use the card and instead paid for the groceries (I think it was some rice and Vienna sausages) with a twenty dollars I have saved up from my lunch money. It felt wrong to use that money when I knew we were not lacking. Of course, I also deduced that the cashier would wonder why a fifteen year old was whipping out a welfare EBT card. I got this one, granny. No jail time for me***.

So there are people that abuse the system. Go on the Cleveland.com message board to find supposed proof of these moochers. The rants you read up there are part of that anecdotal evidence. Personal responsibility is a big part of the equation. If you cannot afford something then it is simple economics that you should not buy or have it. Then again, such statements ignore the realities faced by some of the working poor. Hell, I am working poor. Not to dive too much into a sob story, but I have and still do work in similar jobs and situations. It would be great if I owned a car since I have actually been rejected from jobs for not having one. A car would open up a whole other side of town for me. Financing one would be risky, so I am left to sorting out jobs based on their criteria and proximity to a bus line. Ultimately, I am responsible for this, but it speaks well to Ehrenreichs comments on how it can be hard, almost impossible, to break out of poverty. Worse of are those workers that want to climb up and go to school, but have no time. A single working mother might dream of bettering herself, but cannot consider taking a break between her current job and her children.

She challenges the idea that poverty stems from joblessness. All her co-workers are (duh!) employed, but they often work two to three jobs, still struggling to make ends meet. She does not dwell much into her co-workers personal lives (Another quip I had with the book is that it presented everyone but Enhereich as utterly defeated. It seemed no one had hobbies except being a loser and dreaming about going to Dairy Queen), but it seems that most of their money gets spent on necessities. Again, their is plenty of anecdotal evidence that people can waste away their paychecks of vices and unnecessary luxury items. Then there is the argument of what are necessities. Is a car a necessity? Well, no, I guess, but don't we live in a car culture? Is Internet a necessity in today's world? My job searches would be render impotent if I stuck to newspaper classifieds. When does a specific food item become a luxury?

She does mention how all her co-workers either share an apartment house with roommates, friends, or families. Enhereich approaches every situation alone and that takes a bit of the bite out of her argument. Few people end up with absolutely no support groups like a friend to borrow some money from or family member's couch to crash on for a night. I read some critiques online that said this dismissed her entire thesis. I understand that it is rare to find people in such situations as Enhenreich, but this was an experiment and that was a variable she choose to control. Being as she mentions how all her co-workers double up on housing and job (One in Key West actually lives in a van down by the river!), I don't consider this a glaring flaw. She probably chose this condition, including an aversion to social help, particulalry religious charities, to concentrate the impact of her experience. Albeit, these are not conditions you should impose if you find yourself in a similar bind.

The book deserves to be widely read. I mean, it has already, but if there was a book I would have everyone read then it would be this one. It instantly creates discussion and debate because everyone makes (or tries to) make ends meet. The constant back and forth about the "working poor" even with anecdotal evidence demonstrates how it hits across all social spheres. A well off person might not necessarily care about the poor's condition, but they would have something to say about it. Nickle and Dimed obviously wants the reader to agree with Ehrenreich's conclusion that the working poor are screwed by the "owner class." At the very end she even mentions a sort of workers revolution where the poor will realize they are getting the Reganomics shuffle. I don't know if that will ever happen, but Ehrenreich chronicled and wrote about these experiences during the tail of end of the 90s and into the early part of this current decade. It is sobering to read this book in light of the recent mortgage crisis and sour economy. During her Key West sojourn, Ehrenreich mentions how the $5 a day for gas are really eating into her budget. Could it have been conceivable that we would hit a day when people making the same wages as Ehrenreich struggled with $4-a-gallon gas? What about everyone affected by the mortgage crisis? Getting back into the murky waters of anecdotal evidence, what do we say to families that tried to finance a house and had the rug pulled out from under them?

Regardless, the book offers an engaging read about an often forgotten sector of the economy. You can read it and be angry and the companies or the workers, but it will get your mind thinking and ideas churning. And if our economy moves towards a post-industrial one, dominated by innovation and service/hospitality, then you will see even more and more of these jobs in the headlines. There are some other issues with her analysis. She could have always returned to her regular life, if things got dicey. It would be an experimental failure, but security. Few people have such safety valves. But, the heart of the book remains solid. There are many obstacles to "making" it in America and the American Dream from the Master Narrative does not factor any of those. Some of these obstacles are personal and require that an individual prioritize what is important to them. Some of these are economic, racial, social, and gender based. Some can be cured with a quick "Suck it up an deal with it!" Others might need a "Hey, do you need some help?" Nickle and Dimed tells us that this is all very complex and that it deserves our attention.

Peace!

*In all actuality, I love living in Lakewood and do not see much to these arguments. Again, anecdotal evidence. Maybe I live in the "good" part of town. I find the mix of people and classes engaging when compared to the angry hippie echo chamber of Ithaca.
**Not that I was trying to impress him or anything. Ronald Regan gives me the willies!
***My grandma could fill up an entire series of blog posts. About a year before she passed, she got worried that the PR government, in a stunning act of doing something, would bust her for these welfare shenanigans. To make herself appear needy, she proposed sending my sister and I each a sum of some $10,000 to hide. You know, while things settled down and the tax man left. Yes, my grandmother wanted to turn me into an offshore tax shelter. And don't blame this on old age. She was nuttier than pistachio ice cream, but always lucid. The transaction never happened. This was great considering how I would need my own real tax shelter to explain that to the IRS.

Books I Should Have Already Read, Vol 4

Just in time for the movie...

Books I Should Have Already Read, Volume 4

Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

Well, first off, I will defend considering graphic novels on equal footing as any "proper" novel. Reading six issues of your favorite monthly comic book wrapped into a trade paperback format is not reading a novel, but graphic novels are one shots designed with characterization, depth, and length in mind. Graphic novels have won Pulitzer Prizes and Time Magazine considers Watchmen one of the 100 Best of the English language. So, if my lowly opinion isn't enough (It isn't!?) then trust these respected institutions.

Considering that I discovered my inner comic book geek a scant two years ago it makes some sense that I missed Watchmen. However, the work is seminal and won a Hugo award, so it is not like I had failed to hear about it before I stepped into Comics for Collectors one June day.

I had read some of Moore's work before and appreciated the sense of detail and expansiveness to his graphic novels. I enjoyed the hell of out of Top 10 and it's police drama meets comic book world. It had so many injokes and references to other comic books that it really was a delight to read. In a world where everyone has super powers and/or is a super heroes it makes perfect sense for things to play out in comic book logic. So having the exterminator reset the timeline for your mouse infestation makes perfect sense even though you do not remember asking him to do so.

V for Vendetta was a great book even though it took me a few reads to wrap my head around it. I have yet to read From Hell and some of his single issue work, but there is still plenty of time.

But, how did I miss Watchmen for this long? Isn't it the best graphic novel of all time? Many believe so.

As I have mentioned before in these posts, it is difficult to write anything new about these works. I started reading comics in a post Watchmen world and the book's influence is apparent. I imagine reading Watchmen when it first came out and rereading the hell out of it because it just felt so real. Wouldn't it make sense that the government would try to crack down on masked vigilantes. If cities can now legislate what kind of oil a restaurant can use then why would they stand by and let some armor clad weirdo jump over roof tops? And Watchmen dares to answer all those "what if" questions like "What is Batman has to pee while chasing the mugger" or "What happens when Daredevil sleeps those two hours every night?" Well, people get hurt and crime keeps going on. Superheroes (Or "Masked Adventurers" as per the book's terminology) inspire fear in criminals, but they might also inspire fear in those they protect. Aren't these people human? Maybe they might mistake me for the perp and crack my back in half by accident? Regular cops did have some code to bind them.

Of course, there are numerous examples of this kind of realism or psychological depth in current comics. I read one analysis of Watchmen that said Moore had released a sort of four-ink genie that now equated gratuitous violence with real and real with good. Hey, Rorschach shoved someone into a refrigerator, so why shouldn't we do the same thing to Kyle Rayner's girlfriend? I think you can trace the umpteen times that Daredevil has been pushed way too far and has had to go way too violent to Watchmen. And where did all this raping in Identity Crisis come from? Well, not Watchmen per se, but I can see the point. Watchmen was wonderful because it broke from comics as a kitschy escape art for kids. Of course, some of those old stories were just lots of fun! Can't we have fun comics and "real" comics. I appreciate some nice realism, but sometimes I want to see a guy drop a battleship on the other guy.

However, this was not the effect Moore and Gibbons had in mind. The reason comics get any respect (albeit still minimum) is from seminal works like Watchmen. And, guess what, the book was both fun and real at the same time! Not for faint at heart, but it had some jokes, some punches, and some thinking to it. What is the real point of a superhero if all they do is fight the sickness of crime? If someone robs a store because they can't make the rent then should the hero try to smash the CEOs that terminated the robber's previous job? Or should the hero punish them both? One for robbing a man of his life and the other for robbing the 7-11 of one-hundred dollars. Why are these masked people better than me? Because they spent more time in the gym than I? Well I had to work! And, I look funny on the elliptical machine.

If you have not heard, there is a Watchmen movie coming out and upon first seeing the trailer I was thourughly confused. After reading the book, there is a spine tingling excitement in seeing the scenes play out now that I understand what is happening. I think they are definetly going for the fanboy approach here. It might be hard on those that are unfamiliar with the book. Spiderman and Batman have a ton of backstory, but in the end they are guys that punch the hell out of the others. The Watchmen do the same thing, but have all those neuroses that make you and me a delight to others.

I did not enjoy the story in 300, but appreciated the director's loyalty to the original comic's panels. If he does the same thing with Watchmen then it will be a movie to enjoy several times*. Just like the book.

Peace!

*Unfortunately Alan Moore has ben quite vocal in his disapproval of the film and his name is never to be seen on any of the credits. I only hope that the movie does well and introduces more people to comics and his work. Even if they came via the film.

Ball Dropped

Chuck Palahniuk released a new book* back on May 20th and I missed it!?!?!?!?! Where the hell was I? Oh yes, sitting here trying to unpack and sending off resumes at the same time. It must be mine and I put a hold on the library's copy faster than Sgt. Slaughter administers the Cobra Clutch.

While I dropped the ball on that and on posts this week, I will have something for you later. I am working on another piece of fiction. Excited? Well, probably not, but isn't that the reason I started this blog? And the reason why you tuned in?

Expect that sometime next week. I write all these fiction pieces on paper before putting them up on the blog. It helps center me and my writing (The posts would be worse if I did not use this paper filter), but it takes time.

Maybe some other pieces between now and then as well.

Peace!

*I have not read any reviews, but I get the sense that they are primarily negative. Is it another X-Files: I Want to Believe? Bah!

Eats

No, I am not dead. Still waiting and still anxious, but I have been reading* and if you are interested...

Give Pete Singer and Jim Mason's The Ethics of What We Eat a try.


I have blogged about Singer in an earlier post. He spoke at IC and he even signed my copy of the book after the event. Which also means I have put off reading this until now.

The book is a nice overview of food production as viewed through three American families. There is a "traditional" American diet family who buy all their groceries at Wal-Mart, a sort of Hippie Yuppie couple that frequent Trader Joes and farmer's markets, and a devout vegan couple. If you want a bit more muck racking and shocking imagery then you might want to read some of Singer's older stuff or something like Fast Food Nation or the last chapter in The Botany of Desire.

When I first read that setup, I was a bit nervous. I do not like WalMart as much as the next person (Or maybe not since they are America's largest private employer), but I am tired of the bashing of people that shop there. After reading "What's The Matter With Kansas," I am always leery of when socially progressive people tend to belittle the people they are trying to help. Oh sure, there are Bubbas and Yokels. And WalMart is your place for cheap plastic crap, but it feels like we lose the message.

Singer and Mason allow people to make their own food choices. If there is a theme to the book it is that food and eating have deep impacts on society and the environment. Eating is an ethical decision made by all of us (Hopefully!) several times a day.

Of course, the WalMart couple has the biggest impact since most of their food comes from traditional agribusiness. The vegan couple has the smallest impact. Singer and Mason heap plenty of praise on their diet, but, unlike the preachy veganism of say a small city in Central New York, their conclusions are backed by observation. The chapters are very readable, almost conversational, and you can hear Singer and Mason saying, "Look, pal. If you were to remove all the meat and dairy in your diet, you would lower your impact, just because! Even an organic farmer with 500 head of super happy cows has to find a place for all the manure and keep clearing fields for grazing." Of course, this all sounds better in the book. There was one bit about the vegan family that irked me and that was when the authors mentioned how the couples kids had never broken a bone, taken antibiotics, or developed any allergies. The 43 year old mothr is able to jog three miles without missing a beat! Much can be said about the health benefits of a well thought out vegan diet, but those last observations seem a bit strained. I have never broken a bone and my favorite summertime meal as a child was three hotdogs with plenty of mustard! You can live well on a diet that includes animal products and while the authors probably inserted that for color, it threw up some red flags not used since the move to Lakewood.

The very last bits of the books actually have a header that reads "You don't have to be fanatical about food choices. " Eating is often a communal activity, regardless of the diet and source of the food. The one big thing that vegan couple misses is going out to eat or to a dinner party without the need for elaborate pre-work. The world might be a better place if we all went back to the land and lived like Edward Abbey in some trailer in the Utah desert. It would be a lot less fun and, yes, we can have both! It will take education and work. While the book does not wax about the interconnections and webs of of our food system, it is complex and frustrating. Organic milk can still come from intensive feed lots where cows are stacked on top of each other. It only certifies that the food is free of synthetics, not that the food is treated nicely. Fair trade certification is not a certification of taste or quality, but of production values. A small family farm might give you hamburgers for a steal just to move some of their products. But you just need to be a savvy shopper and it starts to make sense.

Peace!

Books I Should Have Alread Read, #3

The return! Of posts and and a previous column!

Books I Should Have Already Read #3


A Walk in the Woods
By Bill Bryson

Well, it is not a classic, but Bryson is a popular author with books about subjects ranging from hiking, popular science, etymology, and the UK. He is an honorary Officer of the British Empire and an university chancellor. Also, Robert Redford already secured the rights for the book and will make it into a movie sometime soon. Some serious credentials.

This book escaped me all throughout college where many fellow environmental studies students praised its narrative of the Appalachian Trail. I have discovered that those that love hiking only like one thing second to that and that is reading about it. OK, well, they are individuals so one hiker might really like pistachio flavored ice cream as his second choice and another always gives Maine Coon cats her second place medal. I have never really sensed a real desire to talk about hikes from the hikers. While you are on a trail, the fact that the only controlled variables in the whole hike are that strip of earth and whatever you have strapped to your back make for some serious, "Well, you just had to be there" moments. Except for really wacky moments like losing your pants while trying to ford a creek or being chased by bees in the shape of a fist! Or, just regular bees. Equally terrifying. They always want to take you there, however. Then you won't need to listen or read! Hikers are a friendly lot and, in my experience, always want to bring more appreciation to their trails.

And by hikers, I mean hikers. The kind of people that have actually taken their Nalgene bottles outside of the office. Or, a person who doesn't even own a Nalgene since the clunky plastic seems to pedestrian. Maybe that bright purple bottle will attract a bear, rookie! You ever thought of that!? These folks sleep in their sleeping bags for fun, laying them over an old comforter situated on the porch. Their boots are lost to the reverse gravity of their feet pounding the earth and not eaten away by the whorls of winter salt.These folks have wardrobes full of natural hues. Hunter greens, tans, granite, sage, and mahogany brown. But these colors, on these folks, are not drab. The energy of their stride and the adventure make everything come alive until you realize why should you hike in anything else. Certainly not something purple, because it might attract bears! And not in blue jeans, at least according to Bryson's research.

A UK resident in my previous book club tried to get us to read Bill Bryson's Notes from a Small Island once and I wonder if A Walk in the Woods would have shown up here any earlier if we had chosen his suggestion. Better late then never because I appreciate Bryson's honest voice and snarky wit. I have no idea if any of the cartoony events he mentions actually happened in the exact circumstances in the book, but I came to trust Bryson in the early chapters. He does an immense amount of research on the (roughly 2,100) mile long trail, but never feels overbearing or depressingly authoritative. If you read these posts and realize that my voice switches from observation to exposition (see above) then you probably realize that I am a big fan of "wonder." Bryson never loses that wonder, framing the trail and the journey, in the path's scale. Until I read the book, I never understood exactly what the trail was. I had ex-girlfriends, classmates, co-workers, and colleagues tell me about the desire to walk it from Maine to Georgia (or vice versa), but what the hell was it. I was always trying to impress these people (or at least get along with them) so I never really asked. But, Bryson, paints a trail that is meticulously maintained and well traveled, albeit rarely completed. When your local municipality has a 500 foot road with potholes able to disable a tank (I am looking at you Ithaca!), an unbroken trail of 2,100 miles maintained by an alliance of the unlikely (volunteers, state officials, entrepreneurs, federal officials, etc.) can restore your faith in humanity. Bryson and all his fellow trail writer/advocates portray a national treasure, the kind of narrative that has saved the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil development. I will probably never hike the trail, but I ma glad to know that it is there and that others can enjoy it.

The book features a particularly fresh point of view. Bryson likes to hike, but he also loves cheeseburgers and can't help but feel laughed at while purchasing his supplies at the outdoor store. His hiking partner (Stephen Katz) wheezes and whines throughout the climb and tosses supplies because they were too heavy on his back. While trail veterans might roll their eyes at such unfit people hiking the trail, Bryson and Katz democratize the trail for all of us whose hardest hike ever was the steepest incline possible on the gym's elliptical machines. Before reading the book, I knew it was humorous, but I still expected a serious anti-establishment tone to it. Something along the lines Edward Abbey or Bill McKibben, where hikers can find themselves in wilderness and lose all the absurdities of "modern living." Such works spoke to the people I mentioned before and I imagined Bryson doing the same, except with some MST3k wit and not Abbey's crabbiness.

Instead, Bryson makes the trail a physical and metaphorical through line for the eastern seaboard. The segment in Northern Georgia brings up the necessary Deliverance reference and how such stereotypes have harmed the region's image. A side trip through Pennsylvania mentions Centralia, PA; an abandoned town siting on top of a continuous old mine fire.


Of course, it is odd to find a hotel on top of Mount Washington and that you can drive your car all the way up one of the highest peaks in the continental US. My limited experience with hiking is in the El Yunque rain forest back home where you can walk up to the highest (publicly accessible) point on a 3,526 feet tall. It is an easy hike, with the only hazards being the poorly marked signs dating back from the 70's and slightly washed out ridges near the top forcing you to hop the length of a little bit less than a yardstick. But even here there are roads, where, if you made it pass the rangers, drive up to a concrete shack built for some communication towers. It feels phony there and more so on the Appalachian Trail. There is a sobering statistic where Brysion says, "Ever twnty minutes on the Appalachian Trail. Katz and I walked farther than the average American walks in a week." Maybe that has changed since the book came out in 1998 ( most of the trip happened in 1996), but it reamins powerful. There are asides on the death of the small trails towns to multinational chains and the commercialization of the trail. All these asides come across as mournful and not vindictive, something I have seen in such hiking literature. Shouldn't we be blowing up the bridges, Mr. Bryson?

Bryson portrays fellow travelers in cartoony tones. Selfish day hikers that actually dress like they are out for a safari and an irritating latch-on that had the annoying tendency to pinch her nose and blow, in an effort to clear her head. Apparently she honked all the way along the trail and when the guys ditched her, later feeling bad, are able to identify her by asking fellow passerbys if they had heard the honking girl. And they meet those people that your parents warned you about when telling you never to accept rides from strangers along with enough local color to make ten PBS specials!

Bryson appreciates the trail and venerates it, but never takes it beyond what it actually is. The trail is nature, not magical, and packs dangers for those ill prepared. He reflects on the fears created by the nine murders in the trails and how these are isolated cases, ill compared to the potential for twisting your ankle or dying of hypothermia. Bryson and Katz only walk abot 870 miles of the trail by the time they quit. The took a cab along part of the Virginia section, following a road that runs parallel to the trail. In Pennsylvania, Bryson goes it alone and has to rely on his chair, hiking to the next checkpoint and then hiking back to previous one where his car was parked. He then drives up to the new start, doubling back on himself in a snail's paced hike through the Keystone State.

When Bryson and Katz quit, I found their epilogues wholesome. While a "crunchy" hiker might sneer at their lack of devotion (Katz is excited to watch X-Files that first night after calling it quits. My hero!), Bryson mentions how 870 miles is still a whole hell of a lot. From New York to Chicago he says and that few people ever complete a true, non-stop, one season hike. He ends with more respect for the trail and the "cubic" woods that surround it. More respects for the comforts he has at home and the love of his family. "Yes and no," is how the boys described their feelings at the end and if that means finding the middle ground, then more people should read this book.

Peace!

Deeper Archives

One lovely thing about finding a new blog is reading through that blogger's archives. The act helps you familiarize yourself with the blogger and see how he or she got his or her voice. It is akin to tapping into a hot, still aired show into it's third season. You get all the back episodes on DVD box sets or watch them online to understand why everyone is so stoked for a fourth season.
Maybe, someone out there, will stumble upon this blog and say, "I need to read more of Garik! There is still an hour left until quitting time!"

Well, if you like books and the kind of jokes you read in the "Movies I Should Have Already Seen" bits, then you can peruse my Bookcrossing shelf and see the reviews for all those books I contributed to the wonderful experiment of BXing. Like the blog, the earlier posts feature a wide variety of typos and hasty text. The newer ones are sharper and my most recent one was the longest review in my BXing career. So many Bookcrossing reviews are short and lacking. "Hey, I liked it," is not going to get me on a cross-town bus so I can search underneath every desk at a local park for any book.

Enjoy, and another post coming up soon!

Peace!

Still More Great Works Defiled!

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

R.B. MacHoppy!

I'm faking crazy! WOO HOO! I'm the ward's resident trickster, supplier, and pimp. Hey, everyone loves an Irishman willing to strangle the hell out of our tormentor. I got Billy laid! I represent free will, uncontrolled by the system. A counter-culture messiah, I am, along with Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, all those Beatles, etc. etc.

Chief Pigden!

I represent your potential to rise up against the system. I'm an old school John Locke (Of Lost fame)! Never tell me what I can't do...but only after R.B. MacHoppy has shown me the light. I Raged against the machine even before Zach De La Rocha read his first piece of Marx, except I took it literally. Now that the Combine is dealt with, I need to get these shoes out of my way.

"Hey, finally a character I can enjoy playing. Sex, drugs, and the World Series on TV!"

"Yeah, too bad I have to kill you in other to save the ward and our collective spirits.

"Good tim...YOU CAN TALK!? KILL ME?! I thought we were going to Hollywood these posts up and have me and the chief open a sports bar on the Columbia reservation!"

"Nope, sorry. We stick true to the source material here, buddy. I'm trying to turn these into educational posts so I can get grants from the federal government."

"Oh, ok. Sure. I am sure they will pick this and your posts over something like Sesame Street. Or re-runs of Arthur."

"You know these feathers are much more a Plains Indian motif. Not that it is very representative of Native American culture in anyway..."

Peace!

Bad Advice

Write what you know is the worst piece of writing advice I have ever heard. Well, OK. The actual worst piece of writing advice I ever heard was "You can do it, Garik!," but that is enough self-pity for one post.

While in college, I had the pleasure to hear author Salman Rushdie speak. I have yet to read anything by Rushdie, but the guy is scintillating. He had a death mark put on his head! Like Han Solo! Or Lorca, if you want to keep with this literary theme. In his speech, Rushdie mentioned how "write what you know" was silly. It endangers writers who dare write about something embrassing or vicious. Rushdie mentioned how he struggles with critics considering his work autobiographical and how in one such piece (where the protagonists commits rape) people then assume that maybe he raped someone. Of course not!

That little nugget of ancient advice dismisses writers and imagination. And in the Information Age, it underestimates how we can all relate to one another and explore life minutiae. My favorite form of procrastination is just surfing on Wikipedia, seeing where each link will take me. And because of those Wikipedia trivia sections, you can play a simple game of one to three degrees of separation between anything.

Hey, what exactly is FM radio? Ah, I see. Oh, look, a section on pirate radio. Oh, sweet, that one pirate radio episode of Pete and Pete! Remember that!

Another issue with "write what you know is that...I don't know anything. Well, nothing useful outside of a game of Jeopardy.

Thanks to my current job I can refer you to several community colleges in 35 states that might or might not recycle! And I have this weird obsession with municipal boundaries. And little tidbits from History Channel specials like, did you know, the record for most pizzas ordered in one night was the day of the O.J. Simpson White Bronco car chase!?

I know plenty of goofy shit too like that the Autobot Prowl in the Transformers Animated universe practices Metakallito and that the Daredevil villain Bullseye could kill you with a piece of poop and, hence, when in captivity he is only fed a liquid diet.

The Sum of My Knowledge. And I have a B.A. in all this crazy stuff!*

I think it might be time to give up on this high art stuff and try my hand at the goofy observations blogging realm. It worked for David Campbell and it might work for me!

Nerds, upload and blog up!

Peace!

*Well, one I honorarily gave myself. Self made nerdy man! Even though mom did buy all the Magic Cards.

The Year in Books: 2007

Hope you all had a Merry Chrismahunakwanzeid! The New Year is just four days away and hope that is equally festive.

In one of my few blog traditions, I present my year in books. If there is one thing I like more than reading books, it is talking about books.

First, the raw list...

)1 Blind Man's Bluff - Sherry Sontag, Christopher Drew, and Annette Drew
2) Cat's Eye - Margaret Atwood
3) Big Box Swindle - Stacy Mitchell
4) Strapped - Tamara Draut
5) Blame It On The Rain - Laura Lee
6)Spook - Mary Roach
7) Ransom - Jay McInerney
8) The Last King of Scotland - Giles Foden
9) Man Without a Country - Kurt Vonnegut
10) Cod - Mark Kurlansky
11) God's Politics - Jim Wallis
12) Stories Rabbits Tell - Susan E. Davis and Margo Demello
13) Platypus - Ann Moyal
14) The Big Oyster - Mark Kurlansky
15) The Food Chain - Geoff Nicholson
16) Perfect Circle - Sean Stewart
17) Rant - Chuck Palahniuk
18) Suburban Safari - Hannah Holmes
19) The Demon in The Freezer - Richard Preston
20) In Persuasion Nation - George Saunders
21) Glamorama - Bret Easton Ellis
22) Snowcrash - Neal Stephenson
23) Sandworms of Dune - Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson
24) The Three Only Things - Robert Moss
25) Snow Flower and the Secret Fan - Lisa See
26) Reefer Madness - Eric Schlosser
27) The Braindead Megaphone - George Saunders
28) Songbook - Nick Hornby
29) Watership Down - Richard Adams
30) Reservation Blues - Sherman Alexie
31) Into Thin Air - Jon Krakauer
32) Schulz and Peanuts - David Michaelis
33) The United States of Arugula - David Kamp
34) Rosemary's Baby - Ira Levin
35) The Stepford Wives - Ira Levin
36) A Guinea Pig's History of Biology - Jim Endersby

I always try to shoot for fifty books a year, but I now realized that was a lofty goal. I cheated on my old lists, counting those books I read for school. Not textbooks, of course, but those paperbacks professors put in syllabi. Botany of Desire for Science Writing? Frankenstein in Science Fiction? Stone Butch Blues in Personal Essay? Well, alright!

Amanda told me that at a conference she attended, one of the speakers cited a study that found "genius" level people read, at least, 23 books a year. I'm no genius, but it's good to know that I can apply for the club. Look at my list, guys! 36 books! No, I don't know the 500th digit of Pi, but 36 books! Woo!

The book club fizzled out this year after folks moved away or, myself included, took on extra work. I still remember the first meeting in Stewart Park, looking for the lawn chair with a hand-drawn sign reading "Ithaca Book Club." Some really great reads, especially books that I would have never picked up; particularly Perfect Circle by Sean Stewart, which is on the list. I hope everyone from the club continues to read and enjoy!

Other notables books on the list include...

Rant by Chuck Palahniuk for making me want to puke. And in the purely biological sense, mind you. A great read, albeit not my favorite Palahniuk books. I understand how Palahniuk's previous book, Haunted, made folks queasy. Legend says that several folks passed out while he read an excerpt of it. Cannibalism, doll raping, and dangerous masturbating never got me as queasy as Rant's "toiletery swarm" and the boy that can tell each girl in town from her used tampons and each man from the leftovers in a condom's reservoir tip. ACK! FREAK OUT!

Strapped by Tamara Draut for showing me I'm not alone. Forget the aging boomers and old-timers that say use Generation-Y 20 and 30-somethings have it easy. And that's all I will say because I can feel myself get into rant mood. I'm too close to the subject of the "starving young professional." I will not do the book justice by ranting. Please read it, especially if you a parent that doesn't understand why we can't get jobs with health care or vacation time.

Stories Rabbits Tell by Susan E. Davis and Margo Demello and Watership Down by Richard Adams because I love rabbits. Guinea pigs, too!



Schulz and Peanuts by David Michaelis for being the best read of the year. I looked forward for this book about the iconic strip. I learned English by watching those animated Peanuts episodes and I had that damn Snoopy Snow Cone maker that never worked! Michaelis works in strips to chronicle Schulz's life and the humor still rings true. Charlie Brown as this everyman who asked why can't we be happy or just get it. Considering that both Ronald Regan and the 60's counter culture considered Peanuts an icon speaks volumes about the strip's intelligence and observation.



Most interesting is Schulz himself who comes off as conflicted in the book. Incredibly determined and aggressive, yet he never understood why people liked his work so much. Worldly, but terrified of leaving Minnesota and, later on, California. Haunted by his parents; who never believed cartooning would amount to anything, yet inspired his strips. Introverted, yet he never denied an interview request from any reporter or author. Wary of commercialization, but unable to empathize with the exploited factory workers that made the products. Proto-father to an entire generation of modern cartoonists. He hated Garfield and snubbed Jim Davis, who just wanted Schulz's approval. So did Cathy Guisewite of the Cathy strip. He freaked out at Lynne Johnston of For Better of For Worse when she ran by the idea of killing the Patterson's family dog. (Quick aside: Unlike most comics, For Better of For Worse, is told in real-time. Hence, character's age and most dogs just don't live twenty something years). Schulz threatened to kill of Snoopy, just to eclipse the weight and media hype of what he believed was a dumb move on Johnston's part.

Understandably, some of the Schulz children have taken offense at the later parts of the biography. Particularly Schulz's idea on love and affection. He feel in love quickly, ending his first marriage by dating a woman almost twenty-years his younger. Yet, he felt he could never love anyone back, having been denied that by his own mother. From the book alone, you would imagine he never loved his kids! Instead, he just liked them. It is wonderful that the Schulz children have warm memories of their father and want to protect his legacy. However, Michaelis counters the idea that Schulz was this happy old man filled with love for animals and small children. As his strips represented an American generation, he had to be an equally diverse man. Kowtowing to the master narrative of this American icon would be a disservice.

HAPPY NEW YEAR AND HAPPY READING IN 2008!

Peace!

Singer at IC

Last week, Amanda and I went to see Peter Singer speak at IC. Singer is most famously known for his book Animal Liberation which still acts a major touchstone for the animal rights movement. If you have ever taken an Introduction to Ethics course sometime in the past three decades then you have probably read something by him. Most likely the essay, Famine, Affluence, and Morality, which charges everyone living in financial security to do everything they can to help those who lack the stability. I.E., if you can donate half our your paycheck to UNICEF and not endanger your own life, then you are morally responsible to do such. Feel free to discuss, class.

He introduced the term "speciesism," which meant discrimintating against something because it was another species. If it was OK kick the dog because it's just a dog then that is speciesism. He also has block-rocking* views about abortion and euthanasia. The right to lifers do not like him and neither do several advocacy groups for senior citizens and the mentally/physically disabled.

His talk focused on food and our ethical connections to food. While it was great to actually see Pete Singer in person (He really does exist, outside of the textbook that the bookstore won't freaking take back!), we both left the talk dissapointed. We both wanted to hear something new, but Singer focused his talk on a public presentation about how our food is produced and the conditions of factory farming. Coming out of the environmental studies program and living in Ithaca for six years, most of what he said was old hat.

There were little bits of gold during the talk. I always imagined Singer as a very crunchy-professor type who would fit in as well at Greenstar Cooperative Market as Princeton University. However, we both listened to a practical, intelligent man who used logic and reason to argue his points. Even if you don't agree with Singer, his stlye proved refreshing amongst all the rhetoric we hear. He focused almost entirely on farm animals saying that dogs and cats have it much easier then the animals we do interact with the most--livestock.

Most appreciated was his stance on local foods. Actually, stance is a bad word for what Singer said. More of a cavaet on local foods. For the most part, local foods are better for the welfare of the environment, the people on the farm, and the animals. Shipping food from only a hundred miles away uses less fossil fuels than something from 1,500 miles away. Local farms tend to be smaller operations that cannot use their size to intimadate workers. Neither can they afford to lose profits and capital by scamming clients. Finally, local farms tends to steward the land, instead of exploit it, because they cannot just pikc up and move to new pastures.

Still, these are all generalities. Local doesn't necessarily mean better, just that it is local. Technically, I could get local tomatoes in December if I went to a hothouse up a Cornell. Is the energy use there any worse then the energy expended to ship a non hot house tomato flown up from Florida? Singer also advised that people need to educate themselves about local farms and their practics. Yes, local famrs and businesses are much likelier to be caring and kind, but it is not a guarantee. The beauty of local structures is that you can go see them for yourself! He concluded by saying that if you wanted to eat local then you had to combine that with seasonal, which was an additional commitment. He also added cavaeat to the "organic" label, pointing out that you can have 100% organic beef and milk from equally horrible factory farming conditions.

I appreciated Singer's characterization of vegetarianism and veganism. When asked by an audience member if he was vegan he answered yes, but added that he considered such diets more of an ethical stance then something about personal piety. It is not that eating meat, cheese, and eggs is bad. Instead the issue rests in the fact that most of the meat and dairy produced in this country comes from factory famrs that do not reflect the true cost of that product at the butcher's block.

Singer ended the talk by saying "I have given you a lot of information, but not many answers." I suspect he wanted most of the talk to center around the Q & A discussion. Ethicists prove their muster when faced with questions. If not you are just an empty essayist or, worse yet, a blogger**! Organizers only allowed for a few questions because of time constraints. I remember planning events at IC with my cohorts in the environmental society and trying to balance the wrap-up time. It's difficult considering that everyone does need to get back to their lives (Earth Week always fell on the week right before the last day of class. Mothafucker.) and still want that extra knowledge. A lot of people stuck around for the Q & A and considering that everyone I spoke to aftwerwards was dissapointed by the talk, I feel I am not alone in my thoughts.

As a quick aside, Amanda and I have begun to make official airs of leaving Ithaca for good come late spring/early summer. Nothing concrete as of now. We are not giving away our cache of trash tags and Ithaca Hours just yet! But who knows. Expect some big blog posts about that later, but I will miss the speakers that come through the town. For how much heat the colleges get (and deserve!), you could have seen the Dalai Lama, John Ashcroft, and Pete Singer all withing the same two month stretch.

Peace!

* Chemical Brothers can go with anything. Even ethics! I purposefully did not summarize Singer's views because both he, and the introduction at the talk, mentioned that his long essays and books are often warped and condensed to scintillationg talking points. Reading my one setence about speciesims does not do any service to Singer or his critics. Feel free to read for yourself on-line.

** I kid! I kid! Blogging, citizen journalism, and user generated media is the wave of the future. But we can still have fun, no?

Dropped Books

In the past year or so, I have become a hard-liner when it comes to book. I employ a strategy called the "100 Page Rule." I read each and every book I get for the first 100 pages and if it doesn't entice me by then, it gets the drop.

I know it sounds mean, but I want to tap into the things that I love and that challenge me. No need for dead weight.

It is with mixed emotions that I have to drop my latest read, Jimmy Carter's The Hornet's Nest.

Readers of the blog will know that I very much like President Carter. Considering his history as the 39th president, you have to mention that when talking about this book.

Carter has about a dozen plus books to his name, focusing on subjects from the presidency to friendly monsters. I haven't read any of his other pieces, but considering that they were produced throughout his lifetime, I know he is doing something right when it comes to writing.

The Hornet's Nest is an ambitious book about the Revolutionary War in the American South. It does a great job at showing what life was like back then and in challenging the ideas of the American Master Narrative. I was excited to read it, and disappointed to have to drop it.

My biggest hangup? If the book were presented as a non-fiction account than I would be fine with it. Carter did an amazing amount of research, learning how Colonials made shoes and bought land. The minutiae in the book create a wonderful sense of place especially as the characters move from Philadelphia and into the Georgia. However, it is supposed to be a novel. As one reviewer on Amazon said, "It isn't a page turner."

With very little dialogue, the book feels handed to the reader. The sheer amount of detail would serve a historical textbook well, but as a novel it takes away from the central action. When the book does feature dialogue, it sounds like something pulled from an 8th grade oral presentation on the Revolutionary War...."Most colonial governments met the official requests from London for financial contributions, which rarely even covered the expenses of the colonies. But, in fact, a lot of merchants, including my own company, continued to trade freely with the French even during the conflict." That quote comes early in the book from a character named Mr. Know, who serves as a sort of Greek chorus for the protagonists. He is referring to the French-Indian War and Colonial involvement in the conflict. Why should our protagonist join the rebels? Insert Know. Oh, know we see!

I dropped the book around page 150. Maybe it was building towards something much bigger. Entire chapters were often designated to introduce a new character who could have played a larger role in the later plot. A friend of mine, who read the book, said this was the kind of book you wanted when stuck in an airport. I can see his point. With the amount of details and the sweep of this book, you want to give it a good chunk of time.

I was excited to read the book. Who had ever heard of any standard US history course mentioning anything about the Revolutionary War outside of New England? A great idea and some good words to go with it, but the attempt to fictionalize parts of this unknown history falls flat.

I still think you are one of the coolest, President Carter! I look forward to reading your other books in the new year! Peace!

Up A Mountain, and Down Some

Jon Krakauer is a writer I just came across, but I have devoured his short list of books. I do not tend to like specific books, instead focusing on specific writers, and its is a lot easier to pack away Krakauer than Sherman Alexie or Kurt Vonnegut.

I cried after reading Into the Wild. I do not plan on watching the recent movie about it because this is the first book ever where I don't want my imagery influenced by a directors, even if it's Sean Penn. Good books leave concrete images in your head. If they leave amorphous shapes that you need a movie to shape up then something was lost in translation. Don't take that as my stance against Hollywood or people making movies out of books. It just was a damn fine story to begin with, regardless of medium.

Looking back at lists of books I have read, I am amazed at how I have forgotten entire details from certain books. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, which I just read last year, is lost to me. I remember liking the book, but I guess not enough to really enjoy it. However, Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven will always stay with me. The mix of gumshoe reporting and honest analysis of America's homegrown religion, Mormonism, is signature of Krakauer's style. All his books are honest, no spin, which is why those involved in them sometimes get pissed at him. He deals in very personal subject. The death of a lone boy in the Alaskan wilderness. A warped faith fueled double murder in rural Utah. Or a disaster on Mount Everest. I have to sympathize for all those families because Krakauer has the wonderful ability to craft final moments to his readers. In Into Thin Air, the subject of this post, he relates the final moments of an experienced Everest guide, Rob Hall, as he is trapped at the top of the mountain in a freak storm. Krakauer presents the time through a series of radio snippets that Hall shared with a camp lower on the summit. They eventually patch him through to his wife back in New Zealand where his last words to her are: "I love you. Sleep well, my sweetheart. Please don't worry too much." Remember, Hall is at THE TOP OF THE WORLD IN A HURRICANE-FORCE SNOWSTORM! The preceding conversation with his wife was rather cheerful, with both dismissing the fact that the had no hope. His wife, also an experienced climber, was later quoted as saying anyone stuck up there might as well be on the moon.

Krakauer makes it feel like he is there in the radio tent exchanging the dispatches. However, he is actually at another camp, trying to save his own life after stumbling off the summit in the early throes of the storm. However, his journalistic integrity shines through and he creates a highly involved narrative of the events from his research.

Krakauer also writes, gut-wrenchingly, that while he lay in his tent, another climber stumbled in. Being in better shape, this climber tried to rouse Krakauer and tell him to come out and shine lights and bang pots around the camp. His hope was to create a makeshift beacon for those trying to escape the whiteout. Krakauer, fighting off exhaustion and frost bite decides to stay, later learning that only 350 yards away there were survivors trying to find there way back in. During his research back in the states, Krakauer discovers that once he did go out into the storm to search for survivors he thought he saw Andy Harris, another climber that perished on the mountain. For months, Krakauer's report was considered the official report of Harris' death. That Krakauer saw him, but in the whiteout and scramble for human lives, though he was OK for the momemnt. It was assumed Harris died of exposure and his body never recovered. Krakauer later discovers, during a routine interview, that he mistook another survivor for Harris. He later had to tell the authorities and Harris's family that he was wrong and that no one exactly knew what had happened to Harris. Some later reports believe he took a wrong step in the storm and fell of a ridge and the face of the mountain.

As readers, we all find this interesting, but we need to remember this all happened recently and in our lifetimes. These aren't stories of the Titanic or Mt. Vesuvius. These are people whose families could read this very blog and critique what I have to say. Writing from the comfort of safe haven, Krakauer, justifiably, presents, the climbers that day as archetypes we are familiar with. A posh Manhattan socialite that drags accessories and portable TVs up the mountain. A Japanese housewife trying to defy the gender roles in her country. Rival climbers trying to beat each other to the top. Of course, all these people are not that simple, but we need to create instant bonds with them, if not, then the book is lost. And because Krakauer wrote the book (He first wrote a magazine article about the piece) as a form of catharsis, the entire plot is framed as his way of handling the events. Being that the book is cathartic*, even Krakuer admits it is not his best, and it does feel a little weaker then his others, a little bit more jumbled at first before it all becomes clear. With the other books he had the distance of an investigative reporter with no investments in the stories he chronicled. Of course, it is still a great book, only diminished by the fact that Krakauer is trying to fight off personal demons at the same time. Others have critiqued his narrative saying he ignored certain stories (particularly about his own climbing slip-ups) and did not interview everyone involved. To many, including myself, he is the official voice of that tragedy, but everyone has a story and everyone wants to make sense of the event in their own way. His just happened to gain the most attention because he is an amazing journalist!

Peace!

*In the introduction to the book Krakauer says, "I agree that readers are often poorly served when an author writes as an act of catharsis, as I have done here." That is a sharp piece of writing advice. Most of the posts on this blog are cathartic, if not masturbatory, and you can judge the quality of them. Must be the whole writing for an audience of one:yourself. However, like Krakauer, I hope to pull something from all this.

Books I Should Have Already Read, #2

I am back after another long hiatus. I did spend a lot of time watching Transformers, but its the usual excuses for why I have ignored the blog.

And to return, here is the long awaited second installment of a blog series that premiered earlier in the year.

Books I Should Have Already Read #2

Watership Down

Damn, I loved this book. And not just because it is about rabbits! Rabbits that sing songs and tell animal myths to each other! Rabbits that survive against countless enemies, including themselves. Rabbits with names like Cowslip, Bigwig, and Blackberry! OH MY NO!

I am not going to deny that the sheer amount of bunnies in this book didn't make me heart get twitterpatted. I adore rabbits, mostly because, like everyone, I can conjure up instant images of them. However, living in PR, I had not bunnies to chase around or even look at. We had lizards. Lots and lots of lizards. Anoles are just not that evocative. The first time I saw an Eastern Cottontail rabbit pop out of the forsythia bushes on the Ithaca College campus, I freaked! Here is a reenactment. Just this tall awkward guy squatting over some grass and clapping his hands saying....

BUNNNY! EEEEE! YAY!

I think someone might have called Campus Safety upon seeing me. But, I got away. Quick as a bunny!

I don't know much about writing. Have you read what I post here? And I know even less about writing children's literature, but I can see the classics when they come across.

Watership Down never, ever talks down to its audience. For a book compiled from bedtime stories Richard Adams told his daughters, it never loses it edge, which is weird since it is book about rabbits-the iconic prey animal.

Imagine being one of his daughters and seeing this wonderful gift your father gave you. If your parents ever had some goofy character they threw around in stories and yarns then imagine Chambon* or El Culebron** becoming this modern classic. And then they made a movie. And an animated series. And they referenced it Donnie Darko, Lost, Gundam, and Wallace & Gromit. That George Lucas considered it one of his inspirations for the uber-mythology of Star Wars. That there are over 300 editions and it have never been out of print! Yeah, awesome! Thanks, dad!

People that are not into fictional universes often ask why would someone get so wrapped up in fake people and events like with Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, Doctor Who, or The Rocky Horror Picture show. There are as many answers as their are cult-classics and geek fests, but I always appreciate the amount of effort put into creating these fake universes. Great ones reflect our own real world and they should always invite another visit, whether it be through tons of crazy stuff happening in the background (ex., The Simpsons) or the mythology in Watership Down. Adams actually researched rabbits, discovering that wild bunnies live in a quasi-caste system with some dominant males ruling warrens. That the cutesy animals are actually vicious little fighters that can tear each other apart when fighting over food or mates. And that the bucolic imagery of rabbits living happily in the fields is false. Everything kills them.

The book portrays a group of English rabbits (The only rabbits in the world to actually live underground) that listen to the prophecy of one pipsqueak named Fiver. The group flees their home because Fiver feels it will be soon destroyed and then travel across the English countryside looking to establish a new colony. Realizing they are all guys (Do'h!), they try to find some female rabbits to populate the new home. Hilarity does not ensue. But we do get adventure, heroism, tragedy, and action!

Adams gives the rabbits the standard commando team breakdown. Of course, this probably wasn't as cliched back then, but you got: the tough one (Bigwig), the smart one (Blackberry), the leader (Hazel), the first lieutenant (Silver), the annoying one (Fiver), etc. He throws in a villain (General Woundwort) and disastrous uncontrollable events like dog attacks and farmers. He creates a dichotomy between domestic and wild rabbits. The band tries to free some domesticated females from the farm and, in a funny exchange, begin to fantasize about the dolled-up domesticated females with their ears that hang down or fluffy Angora fur! The rabbits have a language called Lapine which consists of a sort Hawaiian/Celtic, onomatopoeic jumble of letters. "Hrududu" means any man-made vehicle, "Silflay' for eating out in the open, and "Hlessi" for a rogue wandering rabbit. A true triumph the imagination.

Watership Down has a certain darkness to it, showing that nature, while adorable, is vicious. The rabbits believe in a sort of rabbit Robin Hood named El-ahrairah (Yeah, I can't say it either) who defied the Creator (Firth) and brought doom upon all rabbits In a take on the Judeo-Christian original sin concept, El-ahrairah's insubordination destroyed the equality of all creatures. Firth gave all the other animals unique attributes to better hunt and kill rabbits.

"For Firth has give the fox and the weasel cunning hearts and sharp teeth, and to the cat he has given silent feet and eyes that can see in the dark..."

Other children's literature would dismiss the sheer suffering of rabbits. We would know that the fox and weasel eat them, but our band will never say such things. It will be like Finding Nemo where the sharks are bumbling fools! Yay! Adams does not dismiss any of this. He does have Firth give the rabbits great speed and intelligence, but still hands them the shaft.

"All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, cunning, prince with the swift warning."

I love the message and it sums up why I wish I had read this book as a kid. Kids will be "Sweet rabbits on adventures!" But as adults we can come back to this intelligent read and be soothed by the rabbit's travels, whether how saddening. So no matter who your enemies are (Foxes, bill collectors, rampaging robots, the landlord, your boss, Republicans, etc.), take a lesson from the rabbits and keep fighting because it will only enrage them more and, hey, you might even make it. Adams is not the first to write down such a philosophy. During the Spanish Civil War, author and bane of my existence during Spanish AP literature class, Miguel De Unamuno told a Nationalist leader, "You will win, but you will not convince." That same spirit lead the US civil rights era. I am sure everyone has heard or read the famous quote "It is better to die on your feet then live on your knees," which is often attributed to Emiliano Zapata. "The people united will never be divided," is a close second behind "Fur coat and cowboy hats aren't immune to tear gas!" when it comes to my favorite protest chants. However, Adams is the first time I have ever heard those words and been actually moved. It is one thing to get angry or challenged, but the rabbits pluck and determination just made me feel good.

I don't do the book justice. I get all lackadaisical when talking about things that I truly enjoyed. I am right now reading a phenomenal biography on Charles Schulz that I will share on the blog soon, and already I am struggling with the words. I hope you read the book or even check out the old 70's animated movie, which is up on You Tube. I have no idea who reads this blog, but if some random parent stumbles across this, maybe looking for the Transformers DVD or something, I hope that you get your kids to read this book. Some of said that the violence and darkness in it (especially the movie) are too much for kids***. We spend a lot of time as a society trying to hide ourselves from the ugliness in the world. Nothing makes me sadder or angrier then when someone says, "I don't watch the news because it is just so depressing." or "I don't get involved in politics." AAARRRGGGGHHH! It is so easy to dismiss things, instead of trying to understand and challenge them. The rabbits could have easily laid down and waited to be eaten by one of "the thousand." Instead they fought, challenging the role that the creator itself gave them. The book's biggest achievement is demonstrating that courage, compassion, and cunning exist in creatures most, incorrectly, view as cute and dumb.

PEACE!

*What my nephew calls his imaginary friend. I think it's supposed to be French. "Chambon, I am with zee Freeeencch Reziztanze!

**Some imaginary wrestle my mom would call herself when we played fight. It means the big snake, which is getting a bit to Oedipal for me.

*** Don't worry! The story has a marvelously happy ending! No joke, a bit realistic since even the pluckiest wild rabbit dies of old age at four years, but happy nonetheless!

Great Works Defiled

Huckleberry Piggy!

I'm a picaresque, conflicted American hero! Maybe I am a nascent racist that can't escape the social norms of my 19th century ante-bellum South! Or maybe I will rise up an do the right thing? In the words of the great George Saunders, I ask, "How can anyone be truly free in a country as violent and stupid as ours?" I represent an America where one follows their moral conscience, even though it might not be what society expect or want of us Oh, and I wear a straw hat.


Rabbit Sawyer !


I show up at the end of Piggy's book and take much of the human drama out of it. I only care about what you can gain from others, whether from adventure novels, river grifters, or just bamboozling Aunt Kate. I represent an America where you look out for number one. Don't trust me to paint your fence. I wear a straw hat too, because it's kind of what we did during the Antebellum period.

"Wait, what the hell, why does Piggy get more text than me!?"

"Because, I'm a complex character! You're one-sided and lack depth!"

"Whatever, at least kids don't try to blast out 11th English grade papers about me. Most just read the Cliff Notes anyway."

"Hemingway said all American literature comes from my book and he can beat you up!"

"Damn old man. Forget him and that fish. And those Hills Like White Elephants!"

Peace!*


*Actual posts to come soon, folks. World Environmental Blog Day on October 15th and the second installment of Books I Should Have Already Read!"