The Fall's "Imperial Wax Solvent": Music Review

If you're reading this, you probably already know the sound and the attitude of The Fall. This latest album reminds me of Jack MacGowran, the famous interpreter of Beckett. Smith's on by now reveling into the role of an elder pundit, or at least a raconteur. His poses may throw many listeners off, but watch and listen and you will be rewarded.

Uncompromising, hectoring, erudite, maddening, and either a band you must play immediately, or one that you wait to cue up, depending on when your moods match Mark E Smith and his ever-changing lineups.This latest record proves The Fall's found again a concentration on a rawer, less worked-over, more live-in-the-studio sound. The production is muddier yet when it's The Fall, this mix is intentional, most likely.

This album feels more a product of the streets. It has a twitchy, amp-driven, buggy quality that takes much from dance and DJ-led music today, but which channels this into thirty years of postpunk restlessness, and a love for primitive, plugged-in, garage rock and roots sounds. This album reminded me of the late 90's disc "Levitation" with its electronics and its emphasis on digging into grooves that may not change much, but which intend to repeat and gnaw into the structure of these-- for the Fall-- rather stripped-down, compact songs.

This stress on brevity also recalls an early 00's effort in its tone and feel, "The Unutterable," again by a group of musicians that may not have lasted long as The Fall, but which, as with this one under review, constituted a shift in the members after a period of earlier consistency. Albums tend to vary widely by the musicians who work with MES as The Fall, and the "Reformation" CD that preceded this one did not match the highlights of the more stable band that gave us the decade's solid efforts "Real New Fall" and "Fall Heads Roll." I preface my review of the album, therefore, with context, as this is essential for placing a new disc into a collection of over two dozen studio efforts and counting, pretty much at one each year.

"Alton" opens with lots of processed keyboards, akin to the jungle music experiments on "Levitation." "Wolf" features a straight-ahead, almost retro, guitar riff, akin to mid-00's delivery of short, punchy tunes. "50 Year Old Man" as you'd expect lives up for eleven minutes to its title, as if MES is rapping in his own inimitable fashion to lecture the upstarts. I did not find this as annoying as some have, but certainly it's a test of a true fan, who'd have it no other way given the lyrics.

"I've" returns to "Wolf" in its pared-down style, with a similar rant, even more 50's in its approach. By the way, unlike many recent Fall albums, the sequencing works very well. No song is out of place, no bizarre cover songs throw off the pace, and each track feels exactly where it should fit into the assortment. "Strange", having said this, does make the weakest entry, as Elena's vocal's too languid and imitates her husband's cadences too predictably: I'd have preferred hearing her own voice in her own style. Yet, the music propels the beats along well enough, and it's a brief turn at the mike for Mrs. Smith.

"Taurig" feels endless, lots of electronics and a German influence that may work off of MES with his recent work as Von Sudafed with the duo Mouse on Mars. "Can Can" gives a heavier dose of this mix, but livelier. "Tom" recalls "I've" and "Alton" in a return to spindlier guitar twang; "Latchkey Kid" has a fine fuzz effect over the electronic layers.

"Is" too gives a solid interplay between instruments, locked into a groove. "Senior" reminds me of "Wolf" with a more modern sounding, yet somehow rockabilly feel a title track of sorts. The last song closes with a grinding trade between a sharper sheen and a weary yet wise vocal valediction: "Believe me, kids, I've been through it all."

(Posted to Amazon US today.)

Féile na Lár an tsamraidh

Chuaigh mé ar an ceolchoirm deireadh De Sathairn. Sheinn Pól dord. Tá sé féin go bhfuil an té atá ar thaobh mo láimhe deise. Tá comharsa agam go bhfuil comhtharlú go maith! Cheangail sé na ceolteóirí leis roc-banda "Fada Fairsing." Is maith liom siad.

Tá fuaim acu go bhfuil cosuil le "Gaoth Sheabrac," "Cróm," agus mír na "Codladh." Cheannaigh mé dluthdioscannaí acu le céad dhá dó tri seo fadó. Bhí am sin sular go raibh cuimhne agam faoi Pól nó oirfeadachaí aigesan féin! Measc dream buailtí treibheachtái agus turas sicideiliochtaí leis amhránnaí níos géar. Cumasc siad macalla "phunc" leis "chlocach."

Can na amhranaí leis guth laidir. Níl laige aige ann. Chuala mé Pól go háirithe. Thug sé fein agus an drumadóir cumhacht níos mó ar "Pláinéad gan bhreith" agus "Raic Siobadh go Síoraí." Ábalta tú feiceáil fís téip air leis amhrán déanach anseo. (Caitheann Pól gloiní gréine; tá cuid ghruaig dubh agus fada aige.)

Chríochnaigh "Fada Fairsing" féile na ghrianstad an tsamraidh. "Maidhm Thalún" bhí ainm dí. Bhí plás i gcontúirt ann. Bhí ardán beag amháin ansin. Shíl mé ní raibh spás go leor i measc na sciorradh talún a tógáil léibheann níos mó ann. Bhí lá is teo ann. Ghabh teacht thiar céad céimeannaí. I ndiadh le lui na gréine, ni raibh go fuar go leor fós. D'eirigh gealach, mar sin féin. Tháinig gaoth beag go suaimneach ann.

Bhí meán oiche ann. Bhí cosuil le prataí cnapánach ann. Bhreith mé ar aghaidh ar an radharc. Feic mé cruth mór agus droimleathan ar bun. Bhí cnoc é. Thit tinnte ealainíonaí os cionn an oispidéal na gcontae na nÁingeal. Rug mé ansuid. Tá lá breithe agam inniu. Feicfeadh mé mo mathair nádúrtha ar an an coicis as seo. Tá sí i gcónai i na gCathair Naomh Proinsias ar an thuascairt. Mar sin, b'fhéidir níor scríobhfaidh ar dhá seachtaine anseo.


Summer Solstice Festival

I went to a concert last Saturday. Paul played bass. "He himself is he who is at the right side of my hand close by." He's my neighbor and it is a good coincidence! He joined the musicians in a rock band "Farflung." I like them.

Their sound is similar to "Hawkwind," "Chrome," and a bit of "Sleep." I bought compact discs of the first two of these three long ago. That time was before I had knowledge of Paul or his own musicians! The group mixes tribal beats and psychedelic excursions with harsher songs. They blend an echo of punk with stoner-ness.

The singer sings with a strong voice. There's no weakness there with him. I heard Paul clearly. He and the drummer brought more power to "Unborn Planet" and "Endless Drifting Wreck." You are able to see the videotape of the latter song here. (Paul wears sunglasses; his hair's long and dark.)

Farflung finished the festival of the summer's solstice. "Land Slide" was its name. It was a precarious place. It was only a small stage there. I thought that there was not enough space in the midst of the sharp landcut to build a larger platform there. The day was exceedingly hot. It reached a temperature of over a hundred degrees. After the sun went down, it was not much cooler still. The moon rose, all the same. A small breeze came gently.

It was midnight there. The moon was like a lumpy potato there. I looked out on the view. I saw a large and broad-backed shape at the base. It was a hill. Fireworks fell above the Los Angeles County Hospital. I was born over there. It's my birthday today. I will see my natural mother in the coming fortnight. She lives in the city of San Francisco to the north. Therefore, perhaps I will not write for two weeks here.

Farflung's My Space Page
"The Farflung Galaxy" Band Site
Landslide Festival Blog

The Cloud of Unknowing: Apophatic Blogging

Apathetic? No, apophatic, that which transcends the utterance. The phatic, that which I recall dimly from grad school learning refers to a sound not necessarily freighted with meaning. At least expressible in mere syntax or lexicography. Perhaps calligraphy?

What would the anonymous English mystic, circa 1370, who penned this treatise have to say about our attempts to fill our far busier, if no less anguished, world with meaning? How can we ever penetrate the mentality of those who preceded us, trusting in signs and portents now explained by science, or common sense?

Re-reading Michel Houllebecq's moving, detached, and stubbornly odd 2000 novel "The Elementary Particles" on the treadmill before it got to a hundred degrees outside this morning, I noted a passage about what the narrator calls "white noise." This sensation pulsing within once filled our ancestors with the imminence of their reunion with the sundered divine; for us today, at least me (has my faith been not lost but misplaced?) and H's characters in the wake of the 60s and the breakup of their parents' families under consumerism, capitalism, and libertinism, the sound filling our bloodstream as it thickens and clots reminds us only of our death. For Meister Eckhart's negative theology, the "via negativa," he appealed to what God's not.

I pulled down my Paulist Press edition of "Cloud." I always have been haunted by Fr. Simon Tugwell's preface, citing Eckhart (but not with an exact quote; I've traced this concept so far in vain, perhaps fittingly so): "We must, in Eckhart's striking phrase, strive to be as we were before we were created. Only so are we really one with God." (xxii)

This powerful concept, that in turn has been one that ever since I can remember, all my life I have stumbled around in some Wordsworthian, Neo-Platonic sense, reminded me of when, early in meeting Layne, I investigated Eastern Christian thought. It talks of a similar process that denies articulation to understand divinity. We know God not by His essence, but only His attributes. The core of the Force eluded us. Perhaps not unlike our galaxy's center, all black holes, keeping the stars wheeling, within an increasingly incomprehensible realm of dark matter and invisible energy.

Well, visit my spiritually infused friend's titular blog and sample the mystery beyond verbal flounderings like mine. Is its creator taking the piss out of us? Or, making a profound comment on what we know we don't know, if all the fundamentalists and atheists in the world to the contrary? Perhaps in what Buddhists call "luminous emptiness" we too will find our salvation. It figures Harry (aka Bob) created this Zen-like space amidst the mundane sort of secular, self-indulgent, and busily blithering blogs. Happy sweltering searing Solstice to all.

Photo:Carl McColman's AnamChara: The Website of Unknowing.

Martin Amis' "House of Meetings" Book Review

Starting this after I read "Koba the Dread" a few years back and recently "London Fields" and "Time's Arrow," I plunged into it with pleasure, if a novel about a pair of gulag survivors can be classified as such. It's far more earthbound than the other two novels of Amis I finished, and expands the insights of life under "Koba" into an initially compelling fictional tale. It also, as had "London Fields," strongly reminded me of Nabokov, but in a different fashion. The earlier novel played with the narrative conventions; this one takes the detached mood, more like "Ada" in its rather off-handed evocations of otherwise shattering events. For instance, a son's death happens in the Soviet-Afghan war in Salang Tunnel as do the deaths of rebelling slave laborers at Norlag as if off-stage, and this begins to diminish the power of the more brutal, immediately visceral scenes of camp life or the narrator's earlier relationships.

After a while, I began to notice that I did not care about the key figures in the book much. The love triangle, if you can call it that, allows us to root for none of the sorry participants. We understand why Stalinist life has beaten them down into an attenuated going through the motions, but Amis rarely concentrates this difficult, entropic, state into words that move us. For example, the narrator falls for an English woman, Jocelyn, with her beloved four big Georgian poetry anthologies: here's a lost chance to inject wit and edge into the plot, but their simpering potential fizzles. Especially after the storyteller's release, the women he takes up prove remarkably uninteresting, and only Ananias manages for a few pages to leap out of the gloom as a garish caricature that reminds you of Amis' skill to satirize when he sets his mind to it.

Here's one passage that summed up best the book's attempt at a commentary on Russia.

"Between 1946 and 1957 I ate two apples, one in 1949 and one in 1955. Now I went to however much trouble it took to eat an apple every day." He buys these rare delicacies from usually the same seller. "In the queue there were currents of recognition and mistrust. If the line was fifty Russians long, there would be seven or eight who had been away [at the gulags]. There would be another seven or eight who had helped put them away. I would meet the eyes of men and women who agreed what an apple was. I ate everything, the core, the seeds, the stalk." (150)

A great scene, but too few of these make the suffering vivid, rather than existential, in these pages. The narrator tells us he feels like a lab rat let out of a cage, "still rattling around the abandoned lab, long after the experiment is over. And now expected to just live out their lives." (185) A few pages earlier, after shocking news: "I looked into the mirror and I felt I could just remove it, my face. There would be clasps, behind the ears, and it would come away..."(174) The precision of a hesitant voice sharpens such sentences, in Nabokovian fashion. Amis can write well, but too many passages elsewhere rumble on with less memorable descriptions, and it's hard to become interested for long in such a tediously told tale of numbing events far from mundane.

Amis appears to have deadened his own sensibilities in equating his authorial voice with that of his beaten-down protagonist, and the result may work better as a fictionalization of parts of such texts as he credits, such as Anne Applebaum's magisterial history of the Gulags, rather than as a novel on its own terms. When you get a sentence about the titular House of Meetings and its rendered like this, you do despair a bit that such a promising topic turns into an ambitious but rather dispiriting attempt to dramatize the burned-out spirit of a beaten man: "liquid tentacles of injustice and culpability flowing out from the head of the octopus, and you as its beak." (127) Perhaps this is a second-language emigré trying to express himself in English, but it's not the best phrase ever conjured up by Amis. Nabokov could have corrected this, maybe from his exact knowledge of appendages and orifices of many fauna!

(All titles mentioned here reviewed by me on Amazon. In May, 2008, I blogged on the two Amis novels, and "Ada.")

Robert Ferrigno's "Prayers for the Assassin" Book Review

I blogged about this novel recently when wondering if it's only speculation about, thirty years from now, an Islamic Republic's takeover of most of the U.S. after "The Zionist Betrayal" takes out DC, NYC, and Chicago with nuclear weapons and Mecca's tainted for a millennium hence with a dirty bomb. Not my usual fare, but it's an intriguingly imagined, deftly plotted, and only momentarily plodding theological thriller. Allah does not enter the deadly realm of assassins for a modern Old Man of a mountain, but its shadow warriors, spies, and double-crossers evoke familiar elements of cat-and-mouse games while placing them within a vividly rendered West Coast America.

This portrayal allows Ferrigno to gradually enrich the background without getting too bogged down in exposition. It's a little long, but the scope of the new world order the novel's inhabitants have learned to navigate over three decades of immense change needs time for the author to elaborate, and then to place his chases and intrigues within this meticulously drawn society. Flashbacks necessarily convey key "historical" information. The cast of characters once in a while kept me hazy as to who was doing what, but this may be due to my own lack of experience with this genre rather than any fault on Ferrigno's part. Chapters often scatter the settings. He moves the scenarios around as if he's making a film, manages to control the dialogue for verisimilitude, and has a lot of fun with his details of how most of America would fare under a Muslim theocracy where, no less than earlier Christian or Jewish lands, "moderns" battle if more steathily with fundamentalists. Best not to mention the fates of Jews, unbelievers, or those pursuing certain alternative lifestyles.

Most of the Christians have fled into the Bible Belt, and after another Civil War, the Catholics now become the despised underclass under an Islamic rule of varying clout. Nevada's Free State gets rich off of everyone else as a pleasure zone. Ferrigno saves his best chapter for a decayed Disneyland where "rent-wives" troll Little Nemo's ride for customers, and where one sets up shop in the shark's mouth.

A few small details regarding Catholicism were incorrect, unless the Church changed radically by 2035. It's doubtful any man could have been ordained in what would have been our own present-day times at 21; similarly that a nun would beat a girl, at length, for a casual joke made in religion class in an American suburb these days. Nuns do not wear cassocks, only priests. And nuns do not live in rectories, so how a character can hide in one if the convent where she lived comes under search confused me.

Ferrigno keeps his cleverness in check, although his sheer delight in running with this tale becomes infectious. Cynicism permeates these pages. Room for social commentary, cultural satire, crude put-downs, and basic page-turning adventure means a pared-down prose that, while not calling attention to itself, shows skill. I also sensed the author in this line about the chief of the Assassins: "He lacked sobriety in the deepest sense, which is to say, he was often amused at the world and at himself." (284) It's a thought-provoking entertainment, too. His endnote acknowledges Simone de Beauvoir's remark that generated Ferrigno's "debt" for "the inception of this book." She responded to a journalist who asked her "how it felt to have created a body of work that negated the existence of God." De Beauvoir answered: "One can abolish water, but one can not abolish thirst." (399)

This book spawned a sequel, "Sins of the Assassin." That means more of Rakkim, Sarah, and who knows whom will keep readers eager for the next installment. Ferrigno's created a marvelously sinister world of enough hi-tech gadgets to convince us that the bad guys will keep pace despite or because of terrorism and a regression into enforced piety and mass coercion. The prices, however, of a snow dome or a coffee and croissant appeared not to keep up with inflation, and if anything may have decreased slightly. Yet, the economy in much of the Islamic Republic's tottering. Perhaps we will learn more about the reasons in the next story. At least the oil prices came down.

(Posted to Amazon today.)

Seán Stiofán Mag Robhartaigh & Misean Naomh Gaibráel

Bhí mé féin a bheith láithreach ag ceiliúradh ar maídin seo. Fhreastail mac leinn féin a baint amach céime astu na ollscoil nuair múin mé. Nílim ábalta insint sibhsa coinceap sin go sámh as gaeilge. Labhairt an teanga sin faoi smaoineamh sin go éagsúla. Is féidir leis chomh mór leis céimeannaí.

Chuaigh mé go Misean Naomh Gaibhráel. Thosaigh sé i 1776. Níl áit níos sean é chomh ceánn amháin níos úr é ina Éirinn, ar ndóigh. Ach, tá fiorgneoireacht is aosta anseo ina ceantair seo i gCalifoirnea Thuaidh, go cinnte. Thit sé ina fhothrach i ndiadh saorstat Mheicsiceo. Dheisigh duine leis grá mhór stairiúil é. Thosaigh siad seo céad bliain fadó.

I measc siad, chruinnigh Seán Stiofán Mac Robartaigh a cabhair na tionscnamh. Bhíonn a chlann go raibh i gconaí in aice leis Baile Dhún na nGall. Chumdaim Clann Mhag Robartaighaí ar saltair na Naomh Colmcille. Rug tuismeitheoiraí Shéain ansin. Mhear siad ag imeall Na Gleannta. D'imigh an h-athair agus an mhathair aigesean féin ansuid go Meiricea. Tháinig siad i bPeannsiolbháiniach. Fuair tú duine go leor na gcontae céanna mar a bhfuaris é. D'oibrigh siad go ard, a tochailt ar lorg guail.

Bhíodh mianadoir Seán i dtosach. Rinne sé danta freisin. D'fhág é go Butte ina Montanaigh. Bhí dlíodóir é idir sin agus tráthas. Chaill sé airgid nuair go raibh ag ceannaithe sé mian na gcopar Mheicsiceach. Bhí sé tinn. Bhí plúcadh Séan. Bhog é go na gCathair na nAingeal i 1901.

Thug sé plean a leagan amach. Bhí mian aige a cothaím na scéim a cheilúireadh na misiní Spáinneachaí. Chuir sé altannaí ar "Na Amannaí" ina cathair nua aige. Scríobh sé tóstal. Bhí rath ar an ngnó aige.

Chuala lucht féachana an drámaíocht ina baile Naomh Gaibhréal. Fhás lucht éisteacha. Bhí maith leo a vhéarsaíocht eádhromái. Ni raibh céann eile ach rann ghrinn. Gheobhaidh sé féin an tri file na cúirte na Stat Órga, mar sin féin. D'éirigh sé dhá oiread ina Dáil na gCalifoirnea. Fuair sé bás go a Rhainse Rhós Ghlic ina Tujunga.

Feiceann mé na sleibhte cá mhair sé san treo sios ar fad mo teach. Shíl Seán an dúrud dúchas na Sean-California. Thóg sé na halla maorga cá go raibh mé ag dulta go buaic bailcríoch inniu. Dhún saor fada níos mo.

John Steven McGroarty & San Gabriel Mission

I myself was attending a graduation this morning. Students "waited on" themselves "to take off" the degree from the university where I teach. I'm not able to tell that concept to you all easily in Irish. That language speaks about that idea differently. It's as if more by stages.

I went to Mission San Gabriel today. It was built in 1776. There's no place very old like this newish one in Ireland, of course. Still, it's the oldest building here of this district in Southern California, certainly. It fell into ruin after the republic of Mexico. People with a great historical love repaired it. They started this a hundred years ago.

Among them, John Steven McGroarty (1862-1944) gathered to help. His family used to live near Donegal town. The McGroarty clan kept the psalter of St Colmcille. John's parents were born there. They lived around Glenties. His own father and mother went away from there to America. They came to Pennsylvania. You'd find lots of people from the same county who'd gone there. They worked hard, searching for coal to mine.

John used to be a miner at the start. He made poems too. He left for Butte, Montana. He later was a lawyer after a time. He lost money when he had bought a Mexican copper mine. He was ill. John had asthma. He moved to Los Angeles in 1901.

He got a plan set out. He sent articles to the "Times" in his new city. He wanted to promote a scheme to celebrate the Spanish missions. His enterprise succeeded.

An audience heard the drama in the town of San Gabriel. The crowd of hearers grew. They liked the light verses. They were nothing else than entertaining stanzas. He would find himself the third Poet Laureate of the Golden State, all the same. He rose into two terms in the California Legislature. Death came to him at his Rancho Chupa Rosa (Cute Rose) in Tujunga.

I see the mountains where he lived in the direction above my house. John possessed much affection for Olde California. He built the stately auditorium that was where I went for culmination today. He closed a long life very well.


Photo from Wikipedia/ Griangraf le Vicipéid:The San Gabriel Civic Auditorium, a classic example of "Mission Revival Style architecture," was built in 1927 as the "Mission Playhouse" specifically as a venue for McGroarty's production of The Mission Play, which chronicled the history of California. The structure was modeled after the Mission San Antonio de Padua in Monterey County.

Losing Irish Identity, Long Gone Before Lisbon?

Paul Connolly writes to the Irish Independent, in a letter distributed via Gaelport.com, about a common observation, but one no less perplexing for that. The sartorial, recreational, media, and attitudinal allegiance post-(partial)independence attests powerfully to an earlier Connolly's warning that the Green Flag replacing the Union Jack would matter not, unless the capitalist system changed. Well, it never did. Is Miss Ivers right about Gabriel Conroy being a West Briton after all? I bet Joyce would have loved today's cosmopolitan city, let alone Sam Beckett or Flann O'Brien. Not sure about Michael Cusack aka The Citizen, however, or his grumpy hound Garryowen.

Is there some 19th-century essentialist definition of the now archeologically discredited Continental Celtic race to blame? Are we stuck in a romanticized vision of a heritage beholden more to German poets, French painters, and British hikers from a couple of centuries ago? Marcus Tanner, in a book I reviewed (see my blog or Amazon US), "The Last of the Celts," a few years ago offered an obituary for this sort of vapid essentialism. I wonder if he's more correct than I gave him credit for. Despite the best efforts of Oideas Gael and such worthy endeavors to revive the fior-Gaeltacht, it's nearly breac there as across the remnants of the Atlantic fringe. While I learn and enjoy and pass on my fumbling knowledge of the Irish, I do wonder if we're teaching Esperanto by another name, or post-conciliar Latin. Most days I differ, but today, I agree with Tanner. Is it all too little, too late?

19ú Meitheamh 2008

Lose our identity with Lisbon? It's already long gone

During a post-Lisbon poll debate on RTE, a panellist commented that we don't regard ourselves as Europeans. We think of the Germans and French as being the real Europeans. The panellist may have had a point here. For decades following our independence we were the Albania of the north, isolated from mainland Europe and dependent on Britain for everything.

Membership of the EU freed us from that stranglehold and gave us real freedom, freedom of choice.

Since then we have not made much effort to really engage with the rest of Europe -- witness our lack of proficiency at continental languages. Part of the blame must rest with successive governments who have merely paid lip service to this area. Cable TV suppliers to the greater urban centres do not provide any foreign language stations. Instead all we get is an avalanche of Anglo-American pop culture -- without much protest from ourselves.

While we have demanded and got recognition for Irish to be accepted as an official language in the EU, at home we consistently turned our backs on the use of Irish, long before the foundation of the State.

Therefore I feel it is very hypocritical of us to incur the huge expense to the taxpayers of Europe in order to provide translation for this virtually dead language.

It is ironic that just as so many of us campaigned against Lisbon on the basis that we would lose our identity, hordes of us were preparing to flock to the parts of Spain that have become virtual Anglo-ghettoes, with the Spanish language giving way to English.

When soaking up the sun, we claim to be annoyed when other nationalities refer to us as English -- but at same time, we stroll into a shop and expect to be spoken to in English.

Or let's look at another aspect of Irish life. Any visitor to Dublin airport when Manchester Utd or Liverpool are gearing up for a big game would be amazed at the number of Irish people dressed in full supporters' regalia filling up the bars as they await their flights to the UK.

What kind of national identity is this? Do Danish people go in such numbers to see German Bundesliga games? Or Belgian fans go to see French or Italian matches. No they don't. They follow their own teams.

PAUL CONNOLLY
CO KILDARE

www.independent.ie
Irish Independent - Lthch:
Letters to the editor.

Photo: Crispin Rodwell. Ireland Derails a Bid To Recast Europe's Rules. June 14, 2008. New York Times. This wall in Dublin says more than the slogan; it looks like (at least) two out of the three strollers are immigrants to Ireland, or the children of them. Globalization thunders on, and the Irish complexion alters. I hesitate to affirm that they will embrace learning Irish with more enthusiasm. as some teachers predict, than the great-grandchildren of 1916's generation.

However, the media has played up the Nigerian emigré or Polish child who dazzles all with sudden bursts into Gaeilge, unburdened by dead generations and living malcontents. Call it the "Yu Ming Is Ainm Dom" syndrome. That vivid novelty, on the other hand, illustrates the duller norm. It appears to me, such exceptions perhaps aside, that Irish may loom as irrelevant to most of them as to most native Irish children.

Did Apache inspire fluency within America's arrivals? Irish identity may transform as multihued and polyglot as America's now. If so, Gaelic may go the way of the passenger pigeon if not the buffalo, or most Native American tongues, let alone the majority of our world's languages. Irish may not withstand the pressure added by no longer merely English but Chinese, Polish, Lithuanian and Hausa in the streets of Limerick or Cork or Belfast. Still, bemoaning its fate in the conqueror's tongue leaves me open to my own inconsistencies. But, too late to Irish, in that language I stumble along through middle-aged baby talk.

My Night on the Town with Niall

I don't talk much about my sons on this blog, unless I am grousing, but Niall did me proud tonight. He showed me his portfolio of work from his 7th grade, and I was impressed by any pubescent lad who can write about Pico della Mirandola, not to mention Dido, Machiavelli, Richard Feynmann's six easy pieces (yeah, right), and Hamlet. Not to mention a tour de force parody of Dante's Inferno in his own triplets. Here he managed to balance a satire on steroids in sports with his take on terza rima.

His teacher in Humanities dinged him, I think harshly even though I am a fellow teacher of such, for not submitting his final essay for the class. His grade was lowered to "progressing towards" rather than "meets expectations" as a result. Harsh standards, but look at his Latin. He's ending his second year with an 88% and he earns the same terse judgment, whereas I as proud father argue he merits acclaim. Still, I suppose Niall's getting ready for the college prep track, in ways I never found in my own hapless self-taught reading and browsing and random library searches.

We went later to The York, where I had a Green Flash Hoppy Red Ale and chips with my fish rather than the fries I enjoyed so much last week with Layne. Homemade, the chips were solid, but I prefer the herbed taters in limp rather than crispy form. No Lagunitas IPA, which I had my heart set on after trying the local Craftsman Real Ale last week, but I suppose it's a good sign for freshness that the draught taps change so often. Niall had chicken wings and ordered, by habit, a refill of his Diet Coke. The waiter explained gently that he needed to go to the bar to do so, it being a bar, but frankly we forgot this etiquette and he gave him one on the house, I think. The bill was exactly what I had budgeted, to the penny, but $40 for a snack at a gastro-bar, as my wife deems this place where a kid can sit along dad, is more an Irish price than an American one, and reminds me how much rarer a treat it's now to eat out at all.

On the other hand, a stop at Big Lots! on the way home found us wandering under Spanish-speaking announcements from the speakers, amidst Sun Chips, baby strollers, lots of pillows, and a guitar-shaped clock for sale. I did not find the particular electronic doohickey I needed that a student told me I could score there. But, we did note $10 for 50 CD-R's and $7 for that small speaker plug-in to an iPod Niall needed for future reference. With but one dollar in my wallet, and that for the transfer to my bus tomorrow from my train, we need to watch our expenses.

The sun was up and the car thermometer was at 91 degrees when we left, so our night on the town, solstice day nearing, ended before sunset. At the bar, Niall and I chatted about the various movie versions of "Othello," the folly of assigning "War & Peace" to teenagers, and Kobe's chances given his knee injury. We ignored the slumping Dodgers.

On the way home we discussed Marx, and the difference between communism and capitalism, after Niall asked if there could be a business that was non-profit. I tried to explain the concept of surplus labor and why the ideals of shared effort and common wealth failed given human greed and laziness and incompetence. We also managed to understand in five minutes or less the crucial differences between the Dems and the GOP regarding laissez-faire economics. Niall approves of such, while he critiqued liberal reliance on bureaucracy. As we pulled up to the house, he paraphrased McCain on NPR today regarding his distinctions from Bush regarding the environment. Again, quite a performance, I admit. Last night, at dinner, I tried a similar discussion at dinner about legalizing gay marriage, but Leo and Layne got in a spirited battle that made me look maladroit for my attempts at intellectual table talk involving the four of us.

I find my thoughts in less politically charged moments lately drifting back to my last summer in Donegal. Our nation depresses me. The economy's tanking. Part of me says just deserts, but part of me also suffers, for my salary's not keeping up either, Layne's business faces uncertain shifts and the aftermath of a 100-day strike. Unlike many denizens of The York and like all the parents at the school tonight, we have more mouths to feed than those who opted out of the breeding of such champions as Niall and Leo. Gradually, but more dramatically the past few months, the impacts of global warming, outsourced jobs, Big Lots! types of bargains, and $40 snacks catch up to our habitual gluttony. The costs of so much we took for granted, the experts warn us, now chide us for our former extravagance, and people may finally be tightening their belts for the long haul. If they can suck in their guts a notch or two.

Perhaps for coping skills, or a less expensive alternative to serotonin regulators or therapists or Oprah's self-help club pick this month, my personal escape carries me back to scenes of Glencolmcille. My own frustrations at my country's future and the squalor of its present recede when I conjure up images of its panoramas under a brisk, cloudy, changeable sky. The air's sharpness and the hint of the sea which you could not smell but which beckoned on the near horizon a few hundred yards off tantalized me. This smoggy city, this endless traffic, and this unending blare all compete against the mental retreat I create of an admittedly romanticized Atlantic vista. After all, that's why I endured an all-day bus journey and pinched my pennies to revel and cringe in Irish-language immersion, two weeks facing my own fears and overcoming my own reluctance to push myself to my limits in that outpost.

But, who's to blame me for my inner sanctum? How long the rays stretched out there along the coast, when you could see them rather than the torrential rain that blanketed the islands a year ago. I miss the mists, but I do find myself drifting back into them regularly. I endure reality, and long for vacation. This gives meaning to our travel, the heightened awareness we create when we shake up our surroundings and delight in the novelty. I suppose millions around me on the trains do so each year, while I trudge along, another commute, another series of stations I've seen thousands of times before. All of us today become natives amidst tourists, at least in Ireland or L.A. Here, I live far away the rest of my busy life in a hectic city six thousand miles away from that steady shore. People come from all over to gawk, while I bury my head in a novel and wonder where's in my native city left any novelty.


P.S. He'll be going to camp in six weeks; here's a snap from him that same summer a year ago, reaching new heights in his own fresh terrain, pushing limits too away from home, there then.

Canada's Unfree Speech

I suppose Islam really does mean submission. Mark Steyn's on trial in Canadian court for his Maclean's cover story (October 23, 2006). He quoted a Norwegian mullah's claim that Muslims are multiplying "like mosquitoes." Steyn now finds himself accused of a hate crime. His predicament reveals not only Canadian tolerance at its most ludicrous, but the New York Times' complicity. I agree--which is not often-- with this perspective advanced by Beltway neo-con journalist Vivienne Goldberg's son Jonah in his op-ed column in today's Los Angeles Times. Goldberg, a token right-winger in an overwhelmingly liberal newspaper, shows up the NYT's own posturing in its craven coverage of Steyn's trial. I might add that it was the first I heard of this trial, when I read Adam Liptak's June 12, 2008, NYT piece. I remember how it surprised me. Liptak's bias tilted away from First Amendment sympathies. He appeared to favor in his selection of viewpoints those who called for censorship of opinions. America, it seemed, was in the minority here and perhaps foolishly so. Liptak included many advocates of restrictions on free speech that offended large groups or caused unease.

In Canada, as Goldberg explains, all that's needed for a claim to go forward is a claim that someone's offended. The process, in Goldberg's judgment, sets up a kangaroo court. Taking offense at Steyn, a New Hampshire-based reporter, the Canadian Islamic Congress filed charges. Maclean's had denied them a forum for rebuttal. Even though the sources number Muslims who are quoted as demanding accommodation with the West, the CIC fumed. Rather ironically, the CIC turned its own complaint into an Exhibit A of free speech in the West under attack by those who wish to place the assertions of belief above those of reason. Even if the assertions leap from the lips of fellow Muslims, they are still seen as damaging to the gentle Muslim sensibilities in Canada. The accused finds himself trapped in an Orwellian star-chamber.

Steyn cannot even summon claims by ecumenical supporters of Islam in his defense. For instance, he cannot borrow the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan William's infamous estimation that shariah would have to be incorporated in some form into future British law. Such opinions support Steyn's investigation into the spread of restrictive Muslim culture and archaic attitudes across the Western democracies. For, Williams' remarks appeared after Steyn's excerpt from his book, "America Alone," and so are inadmissible. The additional twist that Steyn quotes a Nordic-based imam's triumphalist prediction of the demographic victory of Islam also finds itself distorted by the British Columbian tribunal of the Canadian Human Rights Commission. I suppose unless you can find an anodyne utterance from a believer, best to mention nothing at all. The Human Rights Commission has never in thirty-one years dismissed a case as unfounded.

Steyn is charged with fomenting hate even when-- or because-- he chooses an Islamic cleric's own boast. Free speech, a government prosecutor explains, is an American concept to which this Canadian spokesman (or spokesperson who chooses an identity of the male gender?) gives no value. A judicial haven for anyone infatuated with the politics of victimization, we find Steyn crossing a border into where the burden of proof rests on the one summoned to court. This legal burden makes judges in America (I mean the U.S.) look enlightened still, for once. For the sensitive Canucks, filing the protest itself serves as proof of "guilt" against the one denounced. Talk about blaming the victim. Truly a topsy-turvy rabbit-hole. Perhaps British law has not receded so far from the land where the Queen's profile looms along with the loon.

Two days ago (here and on Amazon), I reviewed the Onion's atlas, "Our Dumb World." Turning to p. 023 ("For the United States, See Pages 9-22," the headline advises), I admit in its defense that our frostier neighbor earns its distinctions. "Nearly as prosperous as the U.S., Canada wastes its resources lowering greenhouse gas emissions and offering paid maternity leave to new mothers, all the while allowing its lagging entertainment industry, struggling fast-food businesses, and weak military to go tragically underfunded."

I suppose I should not be so unsettled at the Steyn case. The Canadians might charge me with ethnocentrism as egregious as that mocked on every page of the atlas. After all, speaking of prejudices from the dominion "where the past comes alive and bores you to death," it's a clash of one typical image against another. On the atlas' next page, I found on the map a citizen "who says 'eh,' 'shoot,' and 'stereotypes are social constructs that not only divide groups of people, but create an oppressive mind-set that hinders progress for all.'"

An oppressive mind-set: look at that Maclean's headline again. "Why the Future Belongs to Islam." Women shrouded, a girl's glowering eyes half-downcast. Hindering progress for all. Satire or prediction?

Adam Liptak: New York Times. June 12, 2008. "Unlike Others, U.S. Defends Freedom to Offend in Speech".

Jonah Goldberg: Los Angeles Times. June 17, 2008. "Canada's Thought Police"

Maidin Callánach

Tá fothramaí éagsúlái go minic anseo. Go deireanach, cloiseannamar torann difriúil ar an sráide. Tógann an teach go leor in aice linn. Ní maith liom é. Tá sé ro-mhór ann. Cruinníon sé thar triu pairceannaí. Níor críochnaíonn é fos. Thosaigh sé trí nó a ceathair de bhlianta go ham seo. Níl cuimhne agam anois!

Tháinig leoraithe go luath. Chuala siad ar ocht a chlog ar an maidin ar feadh coicis é. D'éirigh muid go hionduil sular an am sin, ach is maith linn a codhladh nuair ní bhíonn ag éirí ar an deireadh seachtaine, mar sin féin.

Le déanaí, dúisíonn mé le moch na maidine. Níl mé ábalta fanacht ar mo leaba. Rinne mé seo le linn m'óige. Léigh mé leabhair nó nuachtan. Ach, d'fhág mé an tir na bringlóideachaí inniu. Fuair mé achlaíocht a dhéanamh.

Shúil mé ar an muallain coise aríst. D'fhoghlaim faoi draiocht ar an iris. Scríobh draídóir an alt fada ar na h-"Airpir" nua. D'imir sé ina cluichí Oilimpeacha na hAsarlaí. Bhíodh sé Stocaim ina tSualainn anuraidh.

Tógann trí thithe riomhainn. Líonann an bhaile leis fuaim glórach. Tá gleo mór os cionn agus ar bun. Tugann macallaí a bhaint as na cnoic.

Imeoidh casúir ord. Cloisfidh muid na h-ein agus an cat. Seán is ainm dó. Dreapann sé suas an crann. Troideann na h-ein leis. Bhuall siad a eireaball. Níl fheadfainn sé a breith orthu. Feiceann seo trí ár fuinneogaí. Gaireann muid ar an radharc amaideach. Tá Seán féin ag meamhlach. Tá sé go feargach, ach is maith leis freisin.


A Clamorous Morning

There's different dins here often. Lately, we hear various commotion on the street. A large house is near us. I don't like it. It is too big there. It gathers across three lots. It is not finished yet. It started three or four years ago. I do not remember myself now!

Trucks came early. We heard them at eight o'clock in the morning during the past fortnight. We get up usually before that time, but we like to sleep when we don't have to rise on the weekend, however.

Lately, I wake up early in the morning. I'm not able to stay in my bed. I did this when I was young. I would read books or a newspaper. But, I left the land of dreaminess today. I got exercise myself.

I walked on the treadmill again. I learned about magic in a magazine. A magician wrote a long article in the new "Harper's." He competed [=played a game] in a Conjurer's Olympics. It was {=used to be] in Stockholm in Sweden last year.

Three houses [are being] built around us. The neighborhood fills with loud sound. There is a great tumult from above and below. It brings the hills to re-echo.

The heavy hammers will go away. We will hear the birds and the cat next door. Juan is his name. He climbs up into a tree. The birds fight with him. They hit his tail. He cannot catch them. We see this through our windows. We laugh at the foolish sight. Juan himself mews. He is angry, but he likes it too.

Griangraf/ Photo:A Tree of Cats/ Crann na gCat 2008-01-18

"Our Dumb World: The Onion Atlas" Book Review

Mine never came with the "Free Globe Inside" promised on the cover, but I bet it was stolen from my copy which I borrowed from the library. It's a challenge to take on around two hundred countries, maps, flags, and funny little photos and keep you not only amused but educated-- at your own ethnocentricity, ignorance, half-baked notions of everywhere else outside a hundred miles from where you live, and those hazy regions where what passes here for fact actually makes sort of sense. Madagascar's ruled by lemurs; Taiwanese labor under a perpetual sense of second-class diligence; Western Sahara's Africa's success story thanks to its (un-)inhabitability; Andorra's a giant retail outlet. Uruguay could be Paraguay, Chile's too skinny, and Delaware stays a state only to warn the Federal government not to make that mistake again.

It's best to peruse this a few pages at a time, then to give it a rest. Like reading "The Onion" itself, the humor's certainly unrelenting, but the snarky, ironic, and half-erudite, half-idiotic tone verges both on brilliance and sarcasm in copious amounts of one-liners, cartographic captions, and haughty, sophomoric text. It's instructive to have your own lack of education and information overload tossed back at you, from places you barely know on real maps, and as ignored footnotes in textbooks. You'll find such reading habits excoriated when you get to San Marino!

My ancestral land, I found, after centuries of British subjugation, "has at last managed to beat the stereotype of the poor, drunken, fighting Irishman to a bloody pulp." (141) Across the Northern border, I can attest to the veracity of this claim: the people there "are envied for their beautiful accent, a lyrical brogue that reminds many listeners of an aggressive, expletive-ridden poem." (140) Meanwhile the "Leading Cause of Death" remains, post-ceasefire, apparently "going to the pub."

Elsewhere, in my home state, "at least it's sunny." I agree with what the experts here say. San Francisco's the "alternative-lifestyle capital" where you find thousands of young men "living openly off trust-fund money wherever you look." My hometown "is home to some of the kindest and most outgoing people in the world until they realize you're not an agent." If you break into showbiz, you face "the biggest acting role" of your life: "pretending like nothing is wrong while everything around" you turns to #$*%. (022)

Mexico's frontier's charted, where "dozens of Americans" can be found "crossing the border in hopes of escaping work." (025) Hungary's "porn name" is "Gary Hung," while a student can be found mapped fantasizing about his hot teacher "giving legitimate algebra lesson for once." (171) It's better in these places than Africa. The map of Senegal shows where "major imports are peanuts and pretzels" may lead to unrest. Neighboring Gambia's migration pattern similarly causes challenges: "More citizens leave the shallow end as they get older." (104) Lesotho's history's pithy: the original inhabitants "are now dead." (064) The Democratic Rep. of the Congo does track the abyss where humor collapses into misery, and even the writers pale at what they find in the "Home to the world's most horrifying ventriloquist act." (069)

This clash of pampered Western sensibilities and Third World pain makes the atlas, in this section, less lighthearted and more Swiftian in its take on human frailty and geopolitical savagery. Niger's "only available form of birth control remains pregnancy." (097) Malaysia finds the spot where a "Muslim environmentalist" can be tracked "chaining wife to tree." (223) Vietnam hosts a "POW who still thinks U.S. lost the war." (219) But, there's a 20-square-mile "Impossible-to-Satirize Zone." Iraq does not have one yet, but you can plot their "Coalition Troops Welcome-Back Center." (123)

India's introduced as a place where "they fix slow Internet connections while standing waist-deep in sewage, reassure anxious customers that everything will be fine with their hard drive between cholera-induced fainting spells, and listen to iPod-related complaints while fending off giant football-sized rodents." The next page shows the place where you may meet a "librarian with dislocated hip filing Kama Sutra under fiction." (109) Out of such contrasts, indeed, humor and satire and insight into where Wests and Easts, Norths and Souths meet but fail to connect enriches this book, which rewards the browser with thought-provoking cleverness as well as insipid puns, sublime comedy, and lots more flag-related quips than you or I could have come up in a thousand all-nighters in a dorm room or campus watering hole.

Posted to Amazon today as "Where's My Free Globe?" The Onion: Our Dumb World Interactive Site

George Saunders' "In Persuasion Nation" Book Review

I heard the author at a book reading when his previous collection, "Pastoralia," came out. I asked him how he conceived his intricate, twisting stories. He replied that it was like tossing a stick out for your dog to fetch, but the dog comes back with a baby's severed (I hope) arm in his mouth. Or maybe it was a doll's head, or a real one. You get the picture, however.

As "Pastoralia" marked a shift into more humane characters if no less bizarre scenarios away from the corporate-psychobabble-consumerist dystopias of his first collection, "CivilWarLand in Bad Decline," so "In Persuasion Nation" depicts his fumbling figures adrift in a more media-driven setting, farther from the tract homes, chain stores at the strip malls, and "business parks" of his earlier stories. He's an acquired taste, and not a quick read despite the superficial facility of his prose. Like Vonnegut, with whom I sense here an increasing connection, Saunders strives to marry the morality tale to the satirical invective against homogenization and conformity that masks its domination in the cant of buyer's (or voter's!) choice, free-enterprise, and relentless salesmanship.

More humanity, and less concentration on verbal tics and ingenious vignettes, shows Saunders' evolution as a writer. The four sections gather stories into patterns that, especially at the start and closing, recalled for me an unlikely but indirectly perhaps influential predecessor: James Joyce's "Dubliners." As nearly a century ago the pattern of social paralysis emerged through stories arranged from childhood to adolescence to public life to maturity, before entering the sublime and disturbing epiphanies of "The Dead," so here do twelve entries arrange themselves in a similar order. Part One takes on growing up; Part Two enters into suburban families; Part Three explores speculative terrain of lab research, mass marketing and media blitzing; Part Four combines character studies with harrowing accounts of violence past and present. Each section's prefaced by a brief excerpt from "Bernard 'Ed' Alton" who in his "Taskbook for a New Nation," targets those who will not conform to the cornucopia of crap.

The "health of our commerce" is first defended by such Power-Point middle-management protegees. Saunders in earlier fiction delved into their world. Now, he looks out on those who are sold such a bill of goods. The first three stories explore "free"-enterprise that limits autonomy. "I CAN SPEAK!tm" introduces a baby's toy, a mask that makes the tot articulate beyond infant ability; "My Flamboyant Grandson" enters a near-future in which citizens are beholden to tap in to an electronic system haranguing them for marketing "opportunities" and a grandfather's grim duty to this Orwell-meets-Philip K. Dick surveillance contrasted with his wish to allow his charge a bit of freedom. The elderly man tries to rebel:

What America is to me, is a guy doesn't want to buy, you let him not buy, you respect his not buying. A guy has a crazy notion different from your crazy notion, you pat him on the back and say, Hey pal, nice crazy notion, let's go have a beer. America, to me, should be shouting all the time, a bunch of shouting voices, most of them wrong, some of them nuts, but please, not just one droning glamourous reasonable voice. (21)

Wise words as we witness a presidential campaign or a P.R. blitz. "Jon," nearly a novella, takes on a community where children have been raised as a test market and can by "lendelling" call up in their visual field by blinking an array of memories mixed with databases of endlessly recalled ads that tug at heartstrings cleverly. The tale, I thought, was about to end just when it hesitated and gained verisimilitude (no easy feat) and continued into a more satisfying conclusion than I'd anticipated.

Saunders' ability to take on longer stories bodes well for his staying power. So many of those with whom he might be compared such as Richard Brautigan, Nathanael West, or even later Pynchon or Vonnegut, have foundered in keeping up their imaginary powers. Part Two's prefaced by "Ed"'s defense of preferences, against those who "citing equality, deny our right to make critical moral distinctions." The weakest story, "My Amendment," imagines a legislative remedy for gender mis-matches, but it fails to engage, and its dullness as a letter to the editor keeps it plodding. "The Red Bow" by far turns the grimmest entry here, a suburban apocalypse as the lives of pets are pitted against the death of a child. It'd make a great short film. "Christmas" stays totally realist, as its race and class tensions give a calmer indication of Saunders' willingness to step outside of his familiar funhouse milieu. "Adams" explores neighborly tensions also, but ends rather in a pat fashion.

The third section opens with "Ed" targeting dissenters and naysayers. Those who refuse to go along with the program make these three stories the closest to Vonnegut and these capture a countercultural flavor, not dated in its attitudes, but updated for our wired sensibilities. "93990" briefly considers primate lab experiments in a thoughtful, nearly understated way. "Brad Carrigan, American," tackles ambitiously the complacency of our national greed and our ethnocentric ignorance. Why Brad's backyard morphed and how this tied into his predominance on this reality-TV show remained less than clear to me, but this may be intentional, as the blurred explanations fit into the ultimate fate of the protagonist. The hand of the satirist may be rather heavy in parts of this story, but its conclusion managed to gracefully place this setting within one that recalled many tales of mortality and fate.

Similarly, the title story plunges you into a place reminding me of a Tibetan bardo, a liminal realm of the afterlife. Creatures and characters from ads who have been pitilessly forced perhaps by a divine power or its false similacrum to enact their pummeling and submission to clever animated products (it's hard to describe this!) decide to fight back against their commercial tormenters. It reminded me of a Harlan Ellison story in which people realize they are trapped within a larger, capricious, power's evil consciousness. Jim, "the penisless man," protests as he struggles for enlightenment whether the characters could not join "to devise a more humane approach? An approach in which no one is humiliated, or hurt, or maimed, an approach in which the sacred things in life are no longer appropriated in the service of selling what are, after all, merely--" 171) He's cut off at that moment by a higher power, so his moment of articulation remains attenuated. But, it's as close as we come in this collection to Saunders' defense of the human (even in CGI form?) against the implacable rulers who dominate individual freedom and crush our better selves. Theologically intriguing, it veers into the spiritual after it had begun on an equally inspired parody of commercialized sentiment. The story ends perfectly.

The last two, in part four, take on "Ed" who warns that people must not let their words be used against them. It's ambiguous, as by now "Ed" in this dictum may be taken up on the side of the dissenters, I suspect. "Bohemians" returns to the working-class stagnation of "Christmas." It shares a humble Chicago setting; it's realistic, more nuanced look at two elderly ladies each claiming to be refugees from Eastern European pogroms, and how the boy who tells the story must grapple with what he learns about their pasts. It's comparatively straightforward, and such urban coming-of-age tales make for a respite from the demanding and disorienting fictional worlds that dominate Saunders' imagination.

"Commcomm" returns to the title story's combination of a moral clash that involves supernatural forces along with ghostly characters mingled with institutional power. A daunting mix, this time not the media but the military, as a base faces shutdown and Homeland Security wishes to replace its facilities with its own. The story cannot be summarized further without spoiling the plot, but it marks an advance. Saunders by now can combine his half-humorous, half-poignant depictions of office politics and workplace dissension with his more gruesome indulgences into violence and death, while somehow rising above to a graceful conclusion that again reminded me of an epiphany in a Joyce story, above the paralysis, for once, rather than mired in it.

GeorgeSaundersLand: Author's website Michael Schmelling's photo suits a key moment in "Jon." (See also my review of his 2012 collection "Tenth of December" 10-24-12 at Amazon US)

Congratulations, Dr. Bob!

A new blog--added dutifully to my links here--"Harper Berry Hollow," celebrates Bob's doctorate from UC Santa Cruz (and I presume not CSU Monterey Bay or San José State?) in Education. I'm relieved that it's not from the U. of Phoenix. Now that he's reached his "terminal degree," I am sure we will all have to address his august culmination of his diligent matriculation with appropriate awe and abundant humility.

P.S. I came across not any mention of "Harper Berry Hollow" yet as a phrase on Google, the blog being too new, but all three words appear in a July 1st, 1888, New York Times entry on a Gettysburg commemoration of the Louisiana "Tigers" by General Longstreet. A battle is given as "Harper's berry." And a hoot and a "hollow" echo elsewhere there. So, this fits into "Harry"'s description in the comments page on this initial entry of Chris' looking like a West Virginia Hillary voter. Sort of-- that's the whole reason why we have a Mountaineer State, that internecine fracas.

Bob's doctoral pomp & circumstance

Don De Lillo's "Underworld": Book Review

This took me two weeks, and I wondered if it'd be worth the effort. The heft of the book had discouraged me before, but the beginning bravura panorama of the Polo Grounds game and the closing pages with a less ostentatious, but surprisingly thought-provoking scene also in a New York where crowds gather for another miracle does manage to bookend this massive work satisfactorily. The challenges lie in what comes between, seven hundred pages of characters who you constantly shuffle among, unsure often who they might be for a few pages, or how they fit into the larger plot.

De Lillo does not satisfy the reader wanting as in some Dickens novel all the characters to match up and align by the end. It's messier, and truer to life if not fictional craft of what we expect in a neat narrative. I liked this. The scope narrows and expands without warning, but by the last 100 pages, the vistas begin to enlarge and contract both. De Lillo takes on, by the conclusion, big questions, but he does not reduce them to pat answers. I almost forgot about more than one character, so attenuated might be the lapse before their earlier and later turns on stage. I wish the book came prefaced with a dramatis personae! Let the book continue, don't resist the occasionally puzzling dead end, and move on. Not all the subplots will find resolution anyway. You come away both humbled and puzzled by his conclusion, one I certainly never saw coming.

Elements never quite fit, and the baseball's trajectory into the hands of various collectors does not align with the wanderings of the main figures as I'd anticipated. After a while, I learned to put up with the languid passages, and gained patience. The iconic baseball and the nuclear core represent the key symbols, but they are not as easily pegged down or pinned for a reader's facile understanding. This is a clever, haranguing, and frustrating story, for it's both hyper-aware in its jittery prose and smarter than the usual entertaining fare.

It's serious, if with lots of clever put-downs thanks to the Italian American one-upsmanship, and while you may find certain characters that you glom onto with affection, others will bore you. Like life, their permanence in the plot as you get to know them will differ, and without warning, people drop in and out of the vast events. De Lillo alternates Nick Shay's first-person voice with many other ones, and while I wish the omniscient recorder of this diverse cast sometimes registered more emphatically the necessary accents, moods, and personalities, even those (like Klara and Sister Edgar) who bored me early on turned out to be worthwhile, albeit many many chapters later. Don't give up on anybody you encounter early on in these dense pages.

The waste theme, the FBI-Hoover surveillance, the wanderings through deserts and suburbs, apocalyptic tension, and childhood wonder all emerge and overlap, again in a nearly imperceptible form for much of the time. The contrast of Nick's Italian neighborhood then vs. the Bronx today gradually assumes its symbolic significance, but very glacially. The pace has to slow often, so while the energy ebbs and flows, stick with the plot's byways and asides. The prose shimmers at times, yet more or less does not call as much attention to itself. Dependably intelligent, this book takes on enormous themes. I'm not convinced that De Lillo can not top this book. It recalls Roth, Dos Passos, Kesey, Hemingway, Updike, Mailer, Vonnegut, Heller, and Barth, to name a few American peers and predecessors. He's at the top of his game here, but I think he's capable of yet another turn or two at bat that might match or surpass this game.

(Posted to Amazon today, with 335 others before me!)

Ag siúl triu sraíde cathairach.

Shiúl mé ar an sráid Dé Domhnaigh caite. Fhreastaim Niall scoil Dhomhnaigh air. Bhí mian agam a dul amach ag spaisteoireacht. Ni raibh am agam ag gol ar an muillean coise. Mar sin, thug mé turas de shiúl cós.

Chuaigh mé triu An Coill Chuillean Oir. Bhí sé teas ann. Las an taithneamh níos geal.Bhí an solas go lonrach. Ní raibh scathannaí ann. D'imigh mé amuigh faoin spéir gorm. Thosaigh mé ag imeall bóthar na Luí na Gréine. D'éirigh crannaí leis foscadh timpealleacht na h-Ospidéal na Paistí. Nuair fuair mé ar an ospidéal eile, Na Ríoga, d'fhág cosán fothainiúil.

Chas mé faoi dheis. D'inis ollphoball pictiúrlainne 'An Radharc' faoi scannán nua leis eachtra Mhic Eoin na Indiachaí. Thiomeáin gluaisteáin go sciobtha ar aghaidh mé ar an margadh mór. Fadó, thóg láistéan go leor ann. Bhí áit aon uair amháin ar an scannán "Éadulaingt" i 1915. Chonaic duine siogioreacs ann. Tá sé loc carranna inniu.

Tháinig mé siar. Líon an baile leis sean-tithe agus teach tráchtalaí beagaí. Dúirt cós sráide stampa dáta 1925. D'fhág scoil nua oscailte a múintim mac leinn is mó ann. Léigh mé fógraí leis na teangachaí na Téalainn agus na Fhilipeanachaí. Chuala glorthaí na Airméin agus Meicsiceo.

Fhill mé ar ais aríst. In aice leis an timpeall, chruinnigh dhá buachaill. Sheas beirt os cionn geata. Bhí spunóg plaisticín saor bán ann. Dhóigh siad é leis gloine formhéadúcháin faoi iomlán gréine. Bhí dóchas char ní dhéanamh a dochar seangán dearg. Nuair bhí mé óg, d'iarr mé seo.


Walking through city streets.

I walked on the street last Sunday. Niall attended his Sunday school. I needed to go out on a stroll. There was not time for me to go on the treadmill. Therefore, I took a 'tour on my feet.'

I went out through East Hollywood. It was warm there. The sunshine grew brighter. The light was luminous. There were no shadows there. I went out under the blue sky. I started around the road of the going down of the sun (=Sunset Blvd.) The trees rose up with shadiness around the Children's Hospital. When I got to the other hospital, "The Kingly" (=Kaiser), I left the shady pathway.

I turned to the right. The marquee of the Vista moviehouse told of a new film with an adventure of "Jones of Indiana." Cars drove rapidly in front of me into the supermarket. Long ago, a grand stage-set was built there. It was once a place for the film "Intolerance" in 1915. People saw ziggurats there. It's a parking lot today.

I came westward. The neighborhood filled with old houses and small businesses. The sidewalk date stamp said 1925. I left the new school opened to teach so many students there. I read signage in the languages of Thailand and the Phillipines. I heard voices from Armenia and Mexico. The hospital made directions in all four languages-- and English.

I returned back again. Near the temple, two boys gathered. The pair stood above a gate. There was a cheap white plastic spoon there. They burned it with a magnifying glass under the bright sunshine. I hoped that they were not doing harm to a red ant. When I was young, I tried this.