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The book is about a boy, Basil, who shows signs of talent as a sculptor and so a wealthy man chooses to adopt him. When his patron dies, Basil is sold into slavery but eventually bought by the apostle Luke and granted his freedom. Basil then goes to live in he house of Joseph of Arimathea where he is told that he was selected for his skill in rendering human faces with great accuracy and that a group of early Christians would like him to fashion a silver framework to hold the chalice of Christ from the Last Supper. (The author draws his inspiration from the history of the Chalice of Antioch.) That's just the very beginning of a story which deals with the turbulence of that historical era as a backdrop to Basil's deep desire to reclaim his inheritance that was taken from him. The author appears to be well-versed in period history and paints a clear picture of the clashes between the Christians who want to hold on to their Jewish customs, Paul with his campaign to have Christianity open to gentiles, the Zealots and their desire to crush this burgeoning messiah-worship movement, the Sanhedrin and their political machinations, and the Samaritans who cannot be rejected because their lands are so fertile but who are relegated to worse than second-class citizens and who harbor the hugely controversial figure, Simon Magus, who challenges Jesus' reputation as a miracle worker by performing public magical tricks and miracles to the encouragement of the Zealots. Interwoven with this story of history, faith, and adventure is the tale of a tender romance. I felt the ending was a little too Deus ex Machina, even for a book about religious miracles, but that didn't detract much from my overall enjoyment of the story.
Imagine a cross between the classic Dashiel Hammett/Raymond Chandler hard-boiled, film-noir detective story, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, and a Keystone Cops episode and you'll begin to have the feel of this fast-moving, silly, yet engrossing story.
Classic Brautigan at its finest. Not as surreal as some of his later work, but still dream-like in nature. The storyline seems concrete and believable (though odd) but it is presented in a slightly off-kilter manner that bears the seeds of Brautigan's later fantasias. Just as I'd decided that the story was only a pleasantly quirky tale of a few exceedingly free-spiried people, I came to an ending that took my breath away with its poetry and existential beauty.
As should now be apparent, I'm attempting to read all the Brautigan I've never gotten around to reading over the last twenty or so years since I first discovered him (shortly after he, himself, had just discovered the business end of a gun, Hemingway-style.) The first Brautigan I ever read was the hauntingly lovely and surreal In Watermelon Sugar and I finished it both in awe of having read the finest piece of poetic fiction I'd ever encountered in my life and angry that Brautigan had "stolen his talent from the rest of us." A couple of decades of life later, I have no desire to imitate his exit but I've come to judge him less harshly for his choice and also to change my view about what a person of genius and vision does or does not "owe" the world. I've also, in the intervening years read all his published poetry and short stories and every novel with the exception so far of Trout Fishing in America, Willard and his Bowling Trophies, The Tokyo-Montana Express, and So the Wind Won't Blow it All Away. Anyone wishing to send me copies to complete my Brautigan experience?
As for The Hawkline Monster, I found here Brautigan at his best and at his worst. There are passages that sing with his poetic vision and passages that clunk onto the floor sadly. The story is set in 1902 and features several firearms that were poorly researched and verged on anachronistic. The characters are delightful, the story dreamy and surreal with just the right touch of silly playfulness. Despite the occasional thuds where the writing didn't seem to measure up to Brautigan's usual standards, I couldn't stop reading. The subtitle is "A Gothic Western" yet I felt more as if I were reading a mystery thriller and the more that was revealed about the nature of the Hawkline Monster, the more mysterious and compelling the story became.
"I was reading my manuscript [...] and I noticed that Senator Daniel Patrick Moynahan is singled out for criticism in three different chapters. have nothing in particular against the senator from New York. There are plenty worse in the nation's upper house -- John Kerry, Edward Kennedy, Christopher Dodd, Claiborne Pell, Alan Cranston and the appalling Howard Metzenbaum, to name just six." (preface, page xix)
Having thoroughly enjoyed reading O'Rourke's treatise on economics, Eat the Rich, last year, I thought I'd take him for a spin on politics next. I found that O'Rourke took his usual course of missing important facts -- or possibly choosing to overlook them for poetic sake, being at heart more of a humorist than a political/economic pundit -- which brought him to a skewed conclusion that would appear more solid if I weren't already aware of the details he skipped over or misrepresented. In the case of Parliament of Whores, O'Rourke comes to the conclusion that government is immoral. Given the author's strong libertarian leanings, this should not be surprising. O'Rourke determines that government is immoral because its only purpose is to redistribute wealth. While the vast majority of government activities can be boiled down to wealth redistribution, I feel this is an overly simplistic and reductionist view of government. I do agree with O'Rourke that much of government is designed to perpetuate itself, but I don't believe that people would be better off without government (which would be the case if it were truly immoral as claimed.)
O'Rourke recoils from a government where he does not feel that everyone is fully carrying their weight, paying out in taxes the same amount they get back in benefits. In a perfectly privatized world, people only get what they pay for and only pay for what they get. But is that truly the case? Suppose the people in a poor neighborhood cannot afford to pay for fire protection. They are also too poor to maintain their buildings up to code ... or up to what should be code, since without government there is no building code. When one of their shacks bursts into flame, the fire spreads quickly because there are no hired firefighters to put it out. By the time the fire reaches a neighborhood that has paid for fire protection, it is out of control and many people will suffer unnecessarily, including people who had paid good money to avoid such an incident. this is but one example of why I am willing to accept a society where some get more in return than they paid out while others pay more than they get in return. Is it truly so immoral for an overseeing body to decide that it is in everyone's interests to pay taxes according to their means, even if that means that some people get fire coverage for free? What about national defense? Education? Would we really want to live in a world with an underclass that was not even educated well enough to work in a factory, that carried unchecked disease, that was desperately rioting in the streets for lack of bread or clean water? In short, would we really want to live in medieval Europe? For I sincerely believe that a shift to pure libertarianism would usher in a new age of feudalism.
"A dying pheasant, with its neck twisted, lay on the snow, beating feebly with its wings. When he heard Bambi coming he ceased his convulsive movements and whispered: "It's all over with me." Bambi paid no attention to him and ran on." (chapter X, page 142)
If you hope to find the cheery and uplifting Bambi of the Disney movie, don't read this book. The book by Felix Salten (translated by Whittaker Chambers. Yes, that Whittaker Chambers!) that inspired Walt is a beautiful, haunting masterpiece and it is also bleak, grim and sometimes disturbing. Moreover, it is a far harsher diatribe on the unmitigated evils of man than the Disney film. While man is depicted as a careless slayer in the film, he is repeatedly portrayed in the novel as one who destroys everything good with which he comes into contact and one who enslaves those he does not kill, forcing them to both love and hate him and to desperately seek to betray their own kind to earn his favor.
The book has that same plotless feel to it as the movie and a similar heavy focus, especially earlier in the novel, on beautiful nature scenes -- this time beautifully described rather than beautifully animated. While the characters are still "talking animals" they are very different from the movie, not so cutesy and twee, more real and believable as actual animals even though they've had human-like thoughts and emotions injected into them. The book does start out as light-hearted as the movie, but mid-way through it grows dark and bloody and disturbing. Emotions frequently run high, but not in a maudlin or sappy way. This is a very intense and dark novel, written at a reading level appropriate for the average twelve year old but containing scenes and emotions not suited to more sensitive readers of any age.
Folks either love or hate Ann Coulter -- few people familiar with her work are ambivalent about her. I have to say that, while I sometimes find her too caustic for comfort, I fall into the love camp. In this book, Coulter examines the connections between American leftists and communists. I tend to double-check Coulter's facts and was shocked and dismayed to find verification for her claim that the Roosevelt White House was filled with communists, the biggest of them all being FDR himself! Coulter also takes on the legend of McCarthy in a frank and startling manner that's guaranteed to have you thinking differently about that era of American history. I can never in good conscience use the word "McCarthyism" again and now realize that the biggest victim of name-smearing was McCarthy himself. Leftists will hate this book; middle America will be shocked by the truth behind many of our history's lies that is revealed.
Though some of the information in this book is out of date, most is not
only accurate but currently in vogue in the diet and nutrition world. I applied
the principles I learned in this book and the next one listed here to my
own life and as a result I feel vigorous, younger, more full of energy, more
emotionally stable and I have lost 28 pounds so far over the course of just
a little over two months. We hear the message so often -- refined sugars
are bad for you -- that most of us tune it out. Sugar is added to so many
foods that one can only avoid it by making a special effort to eat wholesome,
natural foods. But if you're feeling older than the calendar says you are,
if you're overweight, if you're feeling dragged down and low on energy, try
giving up all refined sugars for just one month and see if you don't feel
better for it. The change in my own life has been outstanding.
This easy-to follow cookbook has a wide variety of recipes, all designed
for the hypoglycemic. I have pre-diabetes and noticed that most recipes available
for diabetics still use refined white flour and refined white sugar in them.
These refined foods make me feel just awful -- though I didn't realize it for
a long time because I'd felt awful for so long that I had re-defined it as
normal. The Krimmel's cookbook isn't exotic in any way. The ingredients are
all normal things one probably already has around the house or can get at their
local grocery store. The foods are very recognizable to anyone used to the
Standard Western diet. But the recipes have little adjustments here and there
... and no added refined sugars! Yes, there are even wonderful dessert recipes
included, using fruit rather than sugar to satisfy the sweet tooth. I copied
down some of the recipes that most appealed to me, but I will be checking this
book out of the library several more times before I will have a chance to enjoy
all the recipes I want to try from it.
Kimball's book was surely shocking a decade and a half ago when it was first
published, but the topic has been chewed over so much in the intervening fifteen
years that reading this text was somewhat anti-climactic for me. It seems in
many ways that we have gone beyond being shocked by postmodernism's travesties
and attained a blasé indifference towards the perversions of modern
academics. Tenured Radicals is worth reading for a view of just how disgusting
the excesses have become or for a recent historical view of the changes in
academia, but if you keep up with information about education, don't expect
to find anything new here.
Most people have probably never heard the name of The Brown Buffalo, Oscar
Zeta Acosta. But many are familiar with him as the "fat Samoan lawyer" who
accompanied Hunter S. Thompson on his 1971 trip to Nevada, immortalized in
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. In reality, Acosta was fat and he
was a lawyer but he was Chicano, not Samoan. In Revolt of the Cockroach
People,
Acosta tells of the Chicano Liberation Movement in California that followed
on the heels of the similar black movement. In a free-flowing style similar
to but not derivative of Hunter S. Thompson's gonzo writing, Acosta tells quintessential
Sixties tales of violence, drugs, sex, explosives, and revolution.
Cornwell very obviously did a tremendous amount of research for this book.
Her thesis is that famous painter Walter Sickert was the serial killer known
as Jack the Ripper. Cornwell buttresses this surprising assertation with a
great deal of evidence, although much is circumstantial. Whether you accept
or reject her verdict, this is a fascinating book. In laying out the case,
Cornwell must show us many related aspects of 19th century London, ranging
from the types of bladed weapons a Londoner of the time would have bean able
to acquire easily to the nearly unbelievable pollution problem London faced
at the time. Cornwell touches on the history of the London Metropolitan Police
(an interesting segment for those who toy with the idea of privatizing the
police force) and compares forensic techniques of the day with the astonishing
technology available to forensic scientists today. You will learn why a wise
person avoided going to the hospital at all costs, even his own life, and some
of the ludicrous Ripper accusations of the time, including Joseph Merrick,
the Elephant Man. Even if you aren't one of those who gets a voyeuristic thrill
from reading about the horrific Whitechapel murders, you will enjoy this book
if you enjoy the smaller details of history. For, above all, this is a history
book. Not the sweeping history of wars and world leaders, but the everyday
history of button hooks and pawn tickets.
Review forthcoming. (Working on an essay about this book for a contest.) essay:
Saturday's Child
Ellis' cryptic novel about the excesses of yuppies in the 1980s alternates
between gripping and tedious, mirroring the tension and tedium of a cut-throat
world where people are nothing more than the sum of their possessions. Readers
in their late thirties and older will recognize the essence and substance of
the 1980s in the details of the story. The main character, Patrick Bateman,
is as much an allegory as an epitome of the self-centered, success-driven urban
professional. Warning: this novel contains graphic, detailed sex and graphic,
disturbing violence. A reader who is at all squeamish about either would do
well to avoid this novel. It should be noted, however, that these elements
are crucial to the story and the symbolism and the book would be significantly
lessened without the visceral, emotional impact these scenes have on the reader.
Very readable. There are a couple of places where the author seems to be using
only the data that are most positive for the pro-firearms-ownership side and
ignoring contradictory data, but overall he makes a very strong case for the
currency of the Second Amendment, for its intention as a protection of individuals
rather than state armies, and for - to use John Lott's phrase - the idea that
more guns means less crime. I think anyone with an interest in firearms and
the Second Amendment will be pleased they read Poe's book and find it both
entertaining and informative. While the basic arguments are the same ones seen
in many other places, many of Poe's elaborations and examples will be new,
even to those who have read many other books and articles of a similar nature.
Graham's book is about more than just computer programmers, though programming
takes up well over half this volume. His book is about innovation, exploration
and discovery. There were times when I felt his information was inaccurate,
but overall the author seems on track and many of his observations are startling
in that they tell you things you already knew ... or realize you should have
if you'd just thought about things a little longer or slightly differently
than you did. Most of the essays in this book are also online on Graham's web
site, so if you want to try the book out before you buy it, read Why
Nerds Are Unpopular,
Hackers and Painters, What
You Can't Say, Good Bad Attitude, The
Other Road Ahead, How to Make Wealth, Mind the Gap, A
Plan for Spam, Taste for
Makers,
Programming Languages Explained, The
Hundred-Year Language, Beating
the Averages,
Revenge of the Nerds, The
Dream Language, and Design
and Research. If you get the book, you will get those essays listed but
not linked and also get some very interesting photos, a preface, a glossary,
and a subject index (as well as the knowledge of having helped a writer profit
from his work and a spiffy hard thing you can hold in your hands and read in
the bath.)
I picked up Sharp's book, knowing it would be outdated, because it was written
around a time when I was just beginning to be subjected to multiple IQ tests.
I remember many of the tests she describes being administered to me, including
some of the Piaget cognitive development tests (and I seem to have this hazy
memory of getting a Piaget test in the house across the street, administered
by now playwright Marsha Norman. Could this be a constructed memory or did
it actually happen? I did live across the street from Marsha Norman. I remember
her family was very strict and her house seemed dark and formal. But I digress.)
Because I was reading this book for a specific purpose, most of what I would
have to say in review of it is more personal than general. I felt it was an
excellent book for giving a feel of the history of IQ testing and a critical
snapshot of where it was at in the early Seventies. Sharp's view of where the
IQ test was heading was not clearly focused and appears not to have caught
hold anyway. IQ testing, to the best of my knowledge, is still exceedingly
similar to Sharp's description of it in 1972. While the author lays down possibilities
for refinement, few seem to have caught hold generally. Thus, this book is
not only informative but a bit depressing as we can see that the troubles with
testing have been known for decades as well as some posisble solutions but
progress is slow and change difficult so we are still stuck with lesser instruments
than we could have.
While my custom has been to not list school books, I realized after finishing this book that the reason that has been my custom in the past is that I tend not to read my school books. Oh, I skim them. Sometimes I consult them. Sometimes I use them to steady a wobbly table leg. But, by and large, the books I'm assigned for classes are dull, uninteresting, convoluted, and generally not worth bothering with. The books I was assigned for a class in symmetry this semester were definitely the exception and will be coming in on this list, one by one, as I finish them.
This book was the foundational text for the class. I recommend it highly to anyone who wants to get a better feel for what mathematicians actually do and think about and work with. Folks who never got into the higher math classes often have a warped notion of what mathematics is all about. At the level of algebra and geometry and calculus, math is about memorizing formulas and recognizing in which situations to apply them. That's an important thing to learn, but it is not useful for imparting an idea and a feel of the field of mathematics as a whole. Farmer's book brings home the understanding that mathematics is, at its heart, about patterns and that mathematics is not so much about memorization and application as it is about discovery.
The level of mathematical understanding required to get something useful
out of this
book is low. I believe the professor required beginning algebra as the pre-requisite.
If you can count to six, recognize the difference between a square and a
pentagon, and understand that variables like n, m, or x can be used as substitutes
for numbers then you have enough mathematical sophistication to work your
way through this book and gain insights into the beauty of higher math.
This is a short but fascinating book on epistemology, ontology, and the meaning of life. I want to urge anyone with an interest in ideas about what it is that makes us human to look for this book. It appears that there was a time when it was very popular (it was first published in 1977) but it has fallen into semi-obscurity since then. Indeed, I was the first person to check it out from my library in sixteen years. (Though I note that Wikipedia has a lengthy article about A Guide for the Perplexed.) I have a critique of the critique that appears on the Wikipedia site. I feel the Wikipedia author did not fully understand what Schumacher meant by "self-aware." In case I am unable to get it addressed on the site, I will address it here with two excerpts from Schumacher, for his concept z, self-awareness, is a difficult one to grasp.
The Wikipedia reviewer claimed that animals do have self-awareness because many can recognize themselves in a mirror. All normally developed adult humans can also recognize themselves in a mirror as well, yet Schumacher says on page 132:
The human being, even in full maturity, is obviously not a finished product, although some are undoubtedly more "finished" than others. With most people, the specifically human faculty of self-awareness remains, until the end of their lives, only the germ of a faculty, so underdeveloped that it rarely becomes active, and then only for brief moments. This is precisely the "talent" which according to traditional teachings we can and should develop threefold, even tenfold, and which we should on no account bury in the ground for safekeeping.How could someone go so far astray in the understanding of Schumacher's meaning as to mistake such a rarely developed faculty with simply recognizing one's image in a mirror? When I first read Schumacher's definition of self-awareness, I felt strongly that "self-awareness" was a poor label for it, but could think of no better. Schumacher, himself, realizes that his term is open for misunderstanding, as he explains on page 17:
Moving from the animal to the human level, who sould seriously deny the addition, again, of new powers? What precisely they are has become a matter of controversy in modern times, but the fact that man is able to do -- and is doing -- innumerable things which lie totally outside the range of possibilities of even the most highly developed animals cannot be disputed and has never been denied. Man has powers of life like the plant, powers of consciousness like the animal, and evidently something more: the mysterious power "z". What is it? How can it be defined? What can it be called? This power z has undoubtedly a good deal to do with the fact that man is not only able to think but is also able to be aware of his thinking. Consciousness and intelligence, as it were, recoil upon themselves. There is not merely a conscious being, but a being capable of being conscious of its consciousness; not merely a thinker, but a thinker capable of watching and studying his own thinking. There is something able to say "I" and to direct consciousness in accordance with its own purposes, a master or controller, a power at a higher level than consciousness itself. This power z, consciousness recoiling upon itself, opens up unlimited possibilities of purposeful learning, investigating, exploring, and of formulating and accumulating knowledge. What shall we call it? As it is necessary to have word labels, I shall call it self-awareness. We must, however, take great care to always remember that such a word label is merely (to use a Buddhist phrase) "a finger pointing to th emoon." The "moon" itself remains highly mysterious and needs to be studied with the greatest patience and perseverance if we want to understand anything about man's position in the Universe.
This very short novel about whales is lovely, lyrical and mystical. It was
a quick and enjoyable read. The story is slightly anti-human, but no worse
than many Kipling stories ... perhaps a bit less misanthropic than classics
such as The White Seal.
An excellent and riveting collection of biographies of famous mathematicians.
Copyright © 2002, 2006 Sparrow Rose Jones. All Rights Reserved. Graphics courtesy of Medieval Woodcuts Clip Art.