1. lac (also lakh) — (in India) one hundred thousand, esp. of rupees; (fig.) a large, indeterminate number
He died as he lived, the master of lac on lac of rupees, without even an ostentatious tomb to mark his passing.
2. indiction — fifteen year time period used in Roman Empire from time of Constantine into the Middle Ages; also denotes particular year within an indiction, e.g. “twelfth indiction” meaning twelfth year of (a given) indiction
The ships left London on the third day of December in the tenth indiction for the Mediterranean Sea with the young duke on board with all his retinue.
3. settle — long high-backed bench; something to sit upon
The sacrifices were placed upon a rough stone settle at the foot of the altar.
4. apolune — highest point of an orbit around a moon
The Eagle reached its initial apolune of approximately 55 miles within an hour of lift off from the moon’s surface.
5. pone — bread made from corn; loaf of such (or other) bread
And now this beggar, who would have been delighted to get even a half pone and some pork fat, became quite selective when presented with a choice of desserts.
6. shambolic — messy, very disorganized
The film is merely a shambolic display of CGI set pieces of explosions loosely tied together with a fractured plot ruined further by pointless dialogue delivered by terrible actors.
7. ovine — of or like sheep
He disdains all of his ovine followers even when meeting them one-on-one, going so far as to say plainly to them, “You’re not that important.”
8. enosis — political union of Greece and Cyprus; movement seeking such a union
Naturally, Erdogan’s latest actions have subjected the already strained politics of enosis to even stronger pressures.
9. dysania — difficulty in getting out of bed
I wish I had been able to label as dysania what my unfeeling mother called “just being a teenager”.
10. weir — small dam in a stream; fence or net in waterway for catching fish
A well-placed weir provided the entire village and much of the surrounding community with herring.
How to Overthrow the Government, by Arianna Huffington Shrub, by Molly Ivins & Lou Dubose Stupid White Men, by Michael Moore
I have said before that reading political works years after their publication is an instructional exercise. The intervening years make plainer the ingrained biases of both the author and the cultural milieu of which he is a part. When the reader was also a participant in that very milieu, the psychological effects of revisiting the political ‘scene of the crime’ can be quite disconcerting—if you are the type of reader prone to being disconcerted.
Yours Truly is such a reader, and reading these three political works written during the run-up and the follow-up of what was once one of the strangest elections in U.S. history—the Bush-Gore contest of the year 2000—gave me pause as I realized just how naïve we all are when we were younger, no matter how cynical our younger selves believed themselves to be. As well, these three books written in the smoke and fury of that political battle highlight just how crazy our current times have become, whilst also underlining how direct is the line between that mad political season and the present day in the once United States of America. The three books I read recently are as follows: Shrub: The Short But Happy Political Life of George W. Bush, by Molly Ivins & Lou Dubose; How to Overthrow the Government, by Arianna Huffington; and Stupid White Men … and other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation, by Michael Moore. The titles themselves may give some indication of my own political bent, for which I make no apology; I do not apologize for my parents, unless I have invited you to dine at my house when they are present. Of the three books, the bio by Ivins & Dubose is the best reported, Huffington’s call to action is the best written, and Michael Moore’s book is the funniest. We’ll look briefly at each in its turn.
Taking the worst first: Moore’s Stupid White Men is a glib attack on the fascistic ideals and actions of the nascent Bush administration in its first few months in power. (By “fascistic” here I refer to that alliance of industry, finance, and the rich (often going by the name ‘big business’) that chooses to view governments as extensions of their own power and which were instrumental in the aiding the Nazis as well as the Italian movement from which ‘fascist’ derives the name.) His heart may (may) be in the right place, but he cannot resist making his stupid little jokes, and his suggestions for remedial or resistive actions are either laughable (though not in the way he intends), impractical, or merely stupid. His focus upon the pro-business, anti-environment, anti-worker ‘accomplishments’ of the Bush administration (pp. 32-36), however, shows plainly how the line from ‘W’ to our own time is much clearer and much more direct than one might like to suppose. Moore lists almost fifty actions taken by the baby government—much less than a full year had passed since Bush’s inauguration—that will sound all too familiar to our putatively more modern ears, including the famous tax cut of which 43% benefitted only the wealthiest 1%. The rest of the book is the usual bite-sized chapters lambasting the new president and the titular Stupid White Men for their usual crimes: oppressing blacks, destroying education and the environment, building more prisons, & c. Not that these are not depredations of some moment, but they were not novel plaints even in the year 2000, and many of the worst actions had begun under Clinton (as Moore himself notes).
The biggest problem for Michael Moore, however, is Septermber 11th. The book was written before the attacks orchestrated by Osama bin Laden, and publication was apparently held up afterwards. Though Moore in some fashion persuaded HarperCollins to release his work in spite of the buoyancy the terrorist assault gave to President Bush, the words already written suffer greatly (that is, even more so than from their poor quality alone) from the altered circumstances. For example, Moore’s opening chapter harp on the fact that George W. Bush is destined to be only a one-term president, as his unpopular actions and the fact that he ‘stole’ the election seem to indicate to Moore. Reading this prophecy now may produce a chuckle (possibly), but Moore shows a poor understanding of the American mass mind, it seems, and his words aged more quickly than McDonalds fries left out all night. Though he hearkens often to his blue-collar roots in Flint, Michigan, Michael Moore’s writing betrays the usual elite dependence upon a staff of researchers and ‘quote boys’, mixed with notional bromides à la Thomas Friedman, as when Moore frames his depiction of increasing disparity among American workers and the rich by referencing his many conversations with airline pilots … as one does. This, along with his quite slippery grasp of facts and figures, make this book just not that worth reading, then or now.
On the other hand, Adrianna Huffington’s jeremiad against the decline of the American ideal, How to Overthrow the Government, is a well-researched, well-written, and well-argued work, full of facts and insights from the best think tanks in the business. The quondam conservative turned liberal activist uses the usual well-reasoned analyses of the problems facing American democracy to present the not quite usual recommendations for approaches meant to ‘take back’ the government ‘of the people’ from those monied interests who have stolen it, apparently. Devotees of The West Wing will find the policy statements quite familiar, as citation after citation is made to this report and that survey and this policy institute’s proposal to fix the increasingly problematic distortions to what once may have been a good system but which now is being severely strained under the continued assault of money and the ever-present ‘special interests’. (If you are not one who has watched The West Wing, just think about those people you knew who were interested in student government in high school; Huffington’s approach is like that.) Published in the last year of the Before Time, 2000 A.D. or C.E. (à votre choix), the trade paper edition includes a preface demolishing the Bush v. Gore decision as a rare glimpse behind the curtain behind which the monied interest usually manipulate the affairs of the United States. In this analysis, as in her savage insights into the so-called ‘War on Drugs’, Huffington demonstrates her brilliance and her ability to perceive clearly just how severely damaged everything has become. She issues a resounding call to battle the forces arrayed against democracy, before it it too late. Alas, as the past score of years have shown, it may already have been too late. Certainly it is much later now than it was when she promulgated the strange ideas in this political book. Unfortunately, most of her suggestions are mere heat lightning or fevered policy dreams, not practical actions that might actually a) be done by real people and b) have any chance of success.
Meanwhile, back in Congress, Senator Mitch McConnell and his friends are thumbing their noses at the future. Like drunks on a bender, they know we’re on the road to political ruin, but don’t have the will to admit they need help.
Huffington unwittingly proves that plus ça change, plus la même chose. Although … twenty years is a pretty long time to continue a bender, even by alcoholic standards.
This was published, of course, long before The Huffington Post found its place among those seeking MSNBC and the Daily Kos as sources of information. Five years before, in fact. Ms. Huffington was exhibiting her ability as a liberal policy wonk, while aptly pointing out the flawed approaches of both parties. In this, she triumphs over the other two works under consideration in this quick report. (Though to be fair, Shrub never claims to look at anything beyond W’s reign as governor of Texas.) Though Michael Moore harps on some of the issues with the Clinton administration, Huffington is devastating in her analysis of how both parties have become beholden to interests which have little to do with the citizens and voters they claim to represent. Unhappily, as I already said, the stratagems she proposes (anonymous campaign donations, ‘none of the above’ choice on ballots, the usual boycotts against stuff we/they don’t like, etc.) either won’t work or won’t happen. I also said this book is the best written, and that’s true. However, it is long, full of the details and data that policy types love, and yet there is nothing new here. I suspect (though I didn’t read this book then, I was not a complete novice politico even two decades past) that there was little new in this volume even when it was published. But perhaps that’s the nature of all political books of this ilk, those that are shelved in ‘Current Events’.
Just as our two-party system is showing unmistakable signs of exhaustion, and the public’s suppressed discontent is ready to be tapped, a disaster in reform’s clothing stands poised to take advantage. Like the townsfolk in an old Western, the millions who feel shut out of our “unprecedented prosperity” may thrill at the sight of a masked man riding to their rescue—until it turns out he isn’t the Lone Ranger, but a racist punslinger bent on turning them against one another.
Huffington is talking about Pat Buchanan, another name that nearly induces nostalgia nowadays.
The last book in our patriotic trio, Shrub, co-written by Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose, is a good example of what real journalism looks like. It doesn’t pull punches, supports all of its contentions, deftly uses telling examples to cut its target down to size (and a pretty small size that is), but is always fair, never overreaching itself, and forthrightly revealing just what it can and cannot prove. Ivins and Dubose humanize George W. Bush in this political biography, while at the same time showing his complete unfitness to be President of the United States. But that, as they point out, has never been a disqualification for the highest office in the land, as we have learned to our dismay. The book may also be a needed anodyne to recent changes in the zeitgeist which may have made Bush fils a better president in memory than he was in fact. Shrub is by far the most entertaining and engaging of the three books reviewed here, though you may learn a bit more about Texas state politics and legislative procedure than you really care to. But trust me, the stories are funny and the reporting is brilliant.
Marshall Kuykendall, a leader of the Texas property-rights movement, was asked a few years ago to cite one single example of the government seizing property without just recompense, since the Constitution expressly forbids this. Well, huffed Kuykendall (and he does huff), what about the Emancipation Proclamation, setting slaves free, taking private property with no compensation whatever to their owners from the feds. Kind of hard to think of a response, isn’t it?
Just one example of the trenchant reportage of Ivins and Dubose.
Of the three books, Shrub is the only one still worth reading today, though you might have to be stuck in a house with no Internet connection and only this book before you’d be likely to pick it up. But that’s mainly because most of us readers have little interest in how the Texas ‘weak governor’ system of state government works, and because interest in how George W. Bush would act as leader of the free world is merely an academic question now. Ivins and Dubose are very clear in their intention to focus solely upon the facts about the Man Who Would Be King, and seek to divine his likely behavior as president by his actions in the role of master of ceremonies for the great state of Texas. All the same, this is a good read, if a tad limited by its self-imposed limitations. Plus, it’s written in Texan, or at least as much of it as can remain comprehensible to us outsiders.
So there was [state senator Drew] Nixon, sentenced to six months in a halfway house, which he worked off a weekend at a time. He made the obligatory postconviction public plea for forgiveness, with his wife at his side, and went for counseling. This remarkable player rose to the occasion late in the session; he told Bush that vouchers are bad public policy and that he would not step aside to let the bill on the floor. Bush had arrived to lean on Senator Nixon personally as the press watched. The man who had raised $20 million for one statewide race, been reelected with 61 percent of the vote, and by this time was widely believed to be the forty-fifth president of the United States had to turn one vote from a member of his own party who is, frankly, a dipshit. Bush couldn’t do it.
Bush tries to do a job he was elected to do.
So would I recommend you read political books twenty years out of date? No, I categorically would not, unless you are researching biographical or historical details. Otherwise, I would advocate the opposite, and even then some. I strongly suggest instead that you do not read political books at all, of any stripe. There may be a handful of well-written books worth reading for that fact alone (I am reliably informed that Obama’s books are exemplars of compelling English), but the vast majority of such works are not worth your time.
Why, then. would I subject myself to three (!) books of this type? To be honest, besides the fact that I am a catholic omnivore when it comes to reading, I find that I have to have some subject matter in the smallest chamber in my house, to which I am forced to withdraw from time to time by nature’s necessities. And I need reading material of which I can read either a page or two or longer passages as the situation requires, without having to worry that the fascination of the book will induce too long a sojourn which might tend to cause piles. These books fit that bill admirably, and I can recommend them to you on that basis, and that basis alone.
I have finally finished reading my 500th book since I started tracking such data back in June of 2015. This half-millennium mark was crossed by the completion of the sociological study of consumer habits of the lower-class project dwellers in Manhattan, The Poor Pay More. I received this book in error thinking instead to receive a science fiction work of the same title by Fredric Brown. I now believe that the online book listing was erroneous, as I find no such work by the noted author in a quick search on the Interwebs. Nonetheless, the trade paper reprint of the seminal 1963 study of the buying habits and constraints of those families at the bottom of the pecking order was an interesting read, if a bit dry. (At least it was not the unpalatable blather of most sociology.) David Caplovitz presents plainly and persuasively the results of a milestone survey of over five hundred families of the urban poor, showing how predatory salesmen and stores combine with all-American urges towards consumption to create a situation where high prices and shoddy goods are foisted upon those members of society who are least able to afford them. Plus ça change …. This situation has only been exacerbated in our current United States, although most of these families would likely just be living on the streets nowadays, competing for the scarce resources of discarded aluminum cans. Ah, progress. Anyway, a worthwhile study.
Finishing this book means that I have read another hundred books* since the last such milestone reached on January 16th, 2020. Ergo, a mere 241 days have passed since I completed my 400th book, giving an average reading pace of 2.41 days per book read. This is the fastest pace yet since I began tracking in June of 2015. The averages for each century are as follows:
2.41 days/book – Books #401-#500
2.97 days/book – #301-#400
2.79 days/book – #201-#300
4.83 days/book – #101-#200
6.17 days/book – #1-#100
The current torrid pace is due to a conscious determination to read both quick reads as well as some works with questionable right to belong in my library. I may now try to pick up the pace even further, but time will tell that tale.
1 Book per 2.41 Days
My overall pace for the entire run of 500 books may be seen by using the estimate of 1930 days since this book tracking project began. (The initial books did not have actual completion dates associate with them, so I am using June of 2015 as my guide here.) This gives a total pace of 3.86 days per book.
As usual, I’ll be back with more detailed analysis after I have a chance to massage the data. As well, of course, I’ll be posting a listing of the last set of books read.
*As usual, I exclude comic books and their ilk from my calculations.
His naked legs were covered with scratches from the thorns in the surrounding boscage he had forced his way through.
2. entablature — (architecture) horizontal construction supported by columns in classical temples and the like, consisting of an architrave, a frieze, and a cornice
The roof had long ago collapsed, but the marble entablature still hung suspended against the sky, like a thick ribbon of stone supported by the fluted columns.
3. sacerdotal — of or related to priests, priestly
Only when he stepped off the Vespa and unzipped his leather jacket was his sacerdotal collar revealed.
4. nooning — noonday meal or rest period
Micah caught up with Jim Stryker’s boy the next day as the child was leaving school for the nooning.
5. ruck — crease, fold, or wrinkle
Jepperson paused to smooth away a ruck he imagined he saw in his shirtfront, and then knocked firmly on the door.
6. flense — to slice away the fat (from a whale or a seal)
Any sentimental feeling she had once had for the balding economist had long ago been flensed from her psyche by the cutting remarks and acute incivilities of Jens.
7. costive — constipated; slow or unenthusiastic in action
Maddie was no longer surprised that Richard’s costive assistance came too late to help, so tardy had he become in all things since losing his firstborn.
8. steeplejack — one who climbs steeples and towers to effect repairs
One of the prize items in his collection was The Night Climbers of Cambridge, a paean to the student steeplejacks of that university who once roamed freely over its roofs and spires.
9. nepenthe — drink inducing forgetfulness of pain or sorrow
He turned to work as his nepenthe for even in his dreams he was troubled by the unceasing ache of losing her.
10. flews — hanging flaps of the upper lips of certain dogs
He could see them coming in the distance now, the hounds’ noses already affixed to the scent, their flews dragging in the red clay, their necks straining for the release of the leash.
Bonus Vocabulary
(Latin)
in pectore — “in the breast” or “in the heart”, term used by Catholic Church to denote secret actions
Many observers believe the last in pectore cardinal appointed by the pope was the bishop of Hong Kong, already a target of the Communist Chinese government.
1. barracoon — temporary holding place for prisoners, esp. slaves
The king wished to drive the emigrants away from Port Cresson so that the barracoon could be reopened and his lucrative trade in human souls could recommence.
2. caftan (also kaftan) — loose-fitting, full-length garment with long wide sleeves, worn throughout the Middle East, the Maghreb, and parts of Asia
The landlord met us at the door wearing an expensive periwinkle caftan with rich brocade, though Agatha pointed out to me later that the hem had been repaired many times, and that the material was thin at spots due to repeated washings.
3. conn (also con) — to steer a ship or sailing vessel
You’ll have need of a man very familiar with these islands to conn your craft through the treacherous reefs to the hidden inlet where they’ve beached the Rockaway Beech to repair their damage from the storm.
4. con — (obsolete) to know, to understand
But the best I can say of William Tinker is that though he neither cons his craft nor has innate skill, still he is quite persevering in his ignorant attempts to fashion useful tools.
5. acclivity — rising slope
Before Bernhard’s forces grouped in the oaks along the river’s edge rose a gentle acclivity to the treeless ridge.
6. stews — brothel, brothels, neighborhood in which brothels predominate
The taverns, playhouses, and the stews are his natural element, and I doubt much that this nouveau ‘Lord’ will fare well beneath the cutting eyes and biting tongues of the gentlemen and women of the court.
7. huggle — (obsolete) to hug
Just as a mother huggles her newborn to her breast, so did Dylan hold the mewling kitten in his arms.
8. periphrastic — overly wordy, circumlocutory, characterized by use of many words for a single word or a shorter phrase
Though the document was boldly stamped across its face ‘Not A Bill’, I struggled in vain through the periphrastic prose to determine just what this seemingly official paper actually was.
9. doxology — short formula of words in praise of God
Pieter was the loveliest, kindest man I ever met, and every word he uttered seemed to me a doxology, full of joy and never an ounce of rancor.
10. bittern — wading bird related to, though smaller than, the heron
Suddenly the boom of a bittern seeking a mate startled me out of my twilight reverie on the dock.
1. draegerman — specially trained miner who is expert in underground rescue
The boisterous draegermen, still prideful after their success at the Slewton Slide, kept teasing the old miner at the end of the bar.
2. ted — to spread out or to strew for drying
As the orange sun cast its parting rays upon the newly mown field where the tedded hay still lay ready for gathering on the morrow, Bealiah wondered how his sister could ever think of leaving their heavenly homestead.
3. rhombencephalon — hindbrain
The student will soon discover that the separate parts of the rhombencephalon are not always easily distinguishable when working with lizard brains.
4. absquatulate — to flee, to abscond, to leave hurriedly or secretly
The plan was simplicity itself, though only such backwoods fools would give money to complete strangers and not expect them to absquatulate the moment their purses were full of the local specie.
5. pantophobic — fearful of everything
As easy as it might be to lapse into a pantophobic nihilistic despair, we must resist the urge and pick ourselves up each day, steeling ourselves for the evil which sometimes seems much more than sufficient for any twenty-four hour time period.
6. gaylord (also gaylord box) — large and rugged cardboard box for shipping and storage
At the end of almost a full week of intensive work we accumulated over fifteen gaylords of recyclable material extracted from the tumbledown woods behind the once beautiful mansion.
7. morse — (archaic) walrus
The oldest among them, a weather-beaten man whom all the others living in these rude huts assured us was the fiercest hunter of morse, declared emphatically that the morse had no horn at all upon its brow, though he allowed that the sea beast had very dangerous tusks and teeth.
8. arpent — old French unit of area roughly equal to an acre, still used in Francophone America
The sons were no wiser than Descaux père, fighting endlessly over a dozen worthless arpents of swampland while the lawyer’s fees ate away both the profit and the capital of the old sugar plantation.
9. adversion — (obsolete) attention
Just as when our mind’s eye in a dream begins to wake the moment we focus our adversion upon the peculiar narrative of the dream, so has she lost interest in each suitor from the time she first deigns to notice him and his plaint.
10. cosher — to feast; to pamper
Many a vassal finds his stores insufficient for the winter after the lord of the manor comes to cosher for a long weekend’s hunt.
Bonus Vocabulary
(grammar)
sentence adverb — adverb modifying entire content of a sentence
Though debates still burble about whether ‘hopefully’ is acceptable as a sentence adverb, the wisest course whenever considering a sentence adverb is this: Don’t.
1. penetralia — innermost part (esp. of a temple); most secret or private parts
We rushed into her well-appointed toilette, and found her already dying, lying in the very penetralia of her boudoir before a beautiful Art Nouveau vanity, a tortoise-shell brush still clutched tightly in her hand.
2. chary — wary, shy, sparing, choosy
Benjamin has become much more chary of his time since Mrs. Betanthorp roped him into that charity event as an auctioneer.
3. cinchonism — quinine poisoning
Though Pete Le Gevre had the characteristic headache and deafness associated with cinchonism, we missed the confirming tinnitus because he had had that symptom for years due to his work backstage at The Angry Ratchet.
4. gentilitial — of or related to a particular people, country, or nation; belonging to family or kin
Though they continued to enjoy their gentilitial privileges for some more decades, the actual power had decisively shifted to the stewards who maintained the regency despite the opposition of the Queen Mother.
5. firk — to move suddenly, to be lively; (obsolete) to cheat
And on a beautiful spring night the lads and the lasses all would firk it beneath the ancient oak almost unto the sun’s rising, missing only the music to make it a dance.
6. micturition — the act of urinating
In almost all cultures standard taboos exist around the acts of micturition and defecation, so the research party was doubly startled by what they discovered upon the island.
7. dysuria — painful or difficult urination
What should have been a pleasurable relief was made a fiendish hell by the demon of dysuria.
8. shirty — ill-tempered
Enright was a shirty little thug who’d flunked out of reform school before his thirteenth birthday, but he possessed the native cunning of all cornered rodentia.
I quickly realized another advantage of traveling with an obscenely wealthy companion, as all of our luggage and other impedimenta were made the sole concern of several of Roger’s numerous staff, and he and I were free to saunter about the city completely unencumbered.
Bonus Vocabulary
(British slang)
cop off — to have sex with (someone)
While I were locked up my best friend was copping off my best girl, with me none the wiser.
The Lies That Bind, by Kate Carlisle (A Bibliophile Mystery, #3 in the series)
Kate Carlisle is no Raymond Chandler, and her book—The Lies That Bind—is an affront to his project of raising mystery fiction to the level of literature. If anything, the author of this, the third in the series of so-called ‘Bibliophile Mysteries’, has lowered the standards of literary detection to that of the most vanilla romance novel, wherein the girl gets the man in spite of the seeming obstacles, which in this case means that two murders and as many brutal assaults are merely McGuffins to distract us from the foregone conclusion of ‘Will She or Won’t She?’ She will, though any steamy action will take place offstage or in the reader’s imagination, which is hopefully more fecund and more suasive than that of our author.
Alice kept turning and bucking, fighting to get Minka off her back, but it was like trying to remove a giant tick. Minka wasn’t letting go.
Girl-on-girl action turns into mere horseplay through poor wordplay
Ms. Carlisle’s crimes against the written word are many, but most have been reclassified as mere misdemeanors in the post-PC age, where typos are ascribed to thumb typing and grammatical mistakes are blamed upon autocorrect. Perhaps better editing might have averted some of the most galling errors, but the same may be said of today’s most literary and literate works; editors long ago were deemed non-essential personnel, and vanished and almost forgotten is the heyday of the formidable editors who trained and shaped rough writers into greatness—titans such as Max Perkins and Joan Kahn. But the flaws are many, and the only thing that stands out in her novel is the shallowness of her descriptions, characters, and plot.
This was only the second evening of class but the group was already beginning to meld nicely. As everyone worked, the personalities of some of the students rose to the fore. I’d like to think we were all getting used to each other’s quirks and foibles, but some were more easy to acclimate to than others.
Cynthia and Tom, for instance, tended to bicker quietly over almost anything. The subject matter could be as trivial as the choice of covers for the books they were making. ….
Gina and Whitney liked to talk, too, but at least they were entertaining. Both were pop-culture fanatics and proud of it. They told me what they’d seen on TMZ the previous night; then Gina showed everyone the GoFugYourself.com app on her phone. Kylie and Marianne both begged to see the latest red-carpet disasters.
Mitchell was a jovial man, cheerful and interested in the others’ lives. Dale, Bobby, and Jennifer, on the other hand, worked quietly and kept to themselves.
When Alice wasn’t texting her boyfriend, Stuart, or rushing off to the bathroom, she would absently rub her stomach while she worked. Fortunately, she was blessed with a self-deprecating sense of humor, so most of the students found her charming, despite her health issues.
Personalities, quirks, and foibles—Oh, My!
Kate Carlisle, or at least her narrator, the inharmoniously named Brooklyn Wainwright evince a boutique view of reality. (Do not worry, dear reader, there will be an explanation, a lengthy explanation, for that unusual and ‘kicky’ name.) In this worldview, apparently formed by attending gallery openings and purchasing the handiwork of one’s friends, every craft shop opening is a triumph, a splendid success for creative types who never need worry about supply chains and customer service, nor fret over upcoming rent payments after weeks of empty showrooms populated only by occasional ‘Just looking’ customers and the sullen teen watching the cash register whenever she is not watching her phone. Add to these scenes the fact that the action (if one may call it that) in this novel (ditto) is set in San Francisco, where the only thing higher than the rents are the … no, nothing is higher than the rents in San Francisco. Which makes most of our cute cast of characters like the cast of Friends, living far beyond any visible means of support.
Like many San Francisco neighborhoods, South Park was a mix of chic and charm with a hint of scruffiness around the edges.
Brooklyn knows the charm of the bourgeoisie
Not that the San Francisco of this book is recognizable to anyone who ever lived in The City. Save for a chilly night breeze on the opening page, the weather in this fictional SF is always beautiful, with clear blue skies compared to a painting by François Boucher. Though our protagonist lives in a South of Market factory converted into apartments, with the obligatory lesbian neighbors (sculptors) and the gay couple (chef and hairdresser), she has the understanding of a tourist when it comes to the 49 square miles of San Francisco. For instance, she revels in driving down Lombard Street to clear her head, which has the opposite effect for most SF residents and is done only under extreme duress imposed by visiting family. She parks her car in Union Square to go to Chinatown (which I suppose is one way to avoid the homeless in the ten blocks or so between her apartment and Dragon’s Gate), where she rhapsodizes over the butcher shops in the first two blocks “into the heart of Chinatown”. Um, no.
We walked along the narrow sidewalk, past electronics stores and teahouses and jewelry shops filled with ivory, jade, and amber and thousands of rainbow-colored strands of beads. Souvenir shops hawked every conceivable tchotchke known to man, from ornately beaded silk slippers and wallets in every color to wooden back scratchers, articulated wooden snakes, kites of every shape and size, willowy bird cages, Chinoiserie teapots, jewelry boxes, and delicate eggs on wooden pedestals.
Butcher shops displayed rows of cooked ducks hanging from metal racks, drying in the breeze. Baby bok choy, snow peas, and ruffle-leafed Chinese cabbage filled the vegetable stands in front of the markets. I breathed in the scents of fried wontons and sweet sausage buns and wanted to eat everything I could smell.
Two blocks into the heart of Chinatown, we found the address on Mr. Soo’s business card.
Pro tip for writers doing research online: the meat and produce markets in Chinatown are on the opposite end of Grant Avenue from the Union Square entrance
But this superficial understanding of San Francisco is no great crime. Heck, Steve McQueen in Bullitt managed to find a shortcut from Bernal Heights to Ghirardelli Square which in no way detracted from the best movie car chase of all time. No, it is more the unrelenting nature of the shallowness, the banality of the feeble, which casts this book into a literary black hole from which no interest can escape. Even the putative subject of our bookbinder-cum-detective is described in language better suited for an in-flight magazine than for a narration purporting to describe the narrator’s true vocation and passion. The only passion given to any subject in The Lies That Bind comes when Brooklyn rhapsodizes over food or wine, and even that is not allowed to come between the trite set pieces of ‘action’ and the pallid description and characterization which make up the bulk of this ‘novel’.
I swallowed the bite and almost swooned. The buttery ravioli sauce was extraordinary. “Oh, my. I need a moment.”
“It’s rather good, isn’t it?”
As good as it gets, at any rate
But again, none of this rises to the level of felonious abuse of literary license (though the incessant petty infractions of bad writing might call for a hefty fine). Of course her love interest is a suave British former secret service agent, and of course her female bêtes noires are all vile harpies. And naturally Brooklyn herself has as parents a couple of Deadheads who now live on a Sonoma commune run by Guru Bob (I’m not kidding) where the quondam hippies are now all winery millionaires. And though her ‘intuitive’ mother is now learning Wicca, yet cannot remember whether to do “the banishment spell during the full moon or the waxing moon”, such trivial characterization still constitutes no great crime against reading humanity.
And I was not even considering penning another of my futile jeremiads against bad writing whilst struggling to ignore the completely ridiculous plot point around which much of this book supposedly turns. To wit: central to this ‘mystery’ is a rare almost first edition of Oliver Twist, lovingly restored by the protagonist and expert bookbinder, Brooklyn Wainwright. Our narrator is pressured by one of the evil harpies mentioned above not to divulge to prospective buyers that the volume she had brought to scintillating life is not the true first edition, which was not published under Charles Dickens’s name, but under his journalistic pseudonym, ‘Boz’. The restored book, however, has Dickens listed as the author as well as slightly different illustrations, making the volume not worth the tens of thousands it will fetch eventually in the seedy black book market this novel claims to exist. Where to begin? First off, anybody buying this Dickens novel would know exactly what points to look for in a true first edition. Secondly, any amount of restoration to a rare book, no matter how small, drastically decreases its value to a collector (and yes, they can tell)—and this book was given to Brooklyn “in tattered pieces”. And finally—and here we leave the confines of the novel and take a quick glance at the Interwebs, already available when this novel was published in 2010—the Oliver Twist first edition was issued in 3 volumes, meaning that the ‘book’ that drives so much of the plot isn’t even half of the needed McGuffin the author wants it to be. (By the way, you can find very nice copies of the true first edition online for around $10,000 if you’re in the market.)
“Another dead body?” I cried, having officially reached the end of my rope. “What the hell is going on with me? Was I a serial killer in a past life? Why do I keep finding dead people?”
Enough already.
“I agree it’s all become a bit chary,” Derek confessed as he struggled to keep the bookcase suspended.
“Chary? I hope that’s another word for totally unfair and highly annoying.”
“Something like that,” he said, grimacing as he shifted to lower the bookcase.
Strangely enough, ‘totally unfair and highly annoying’ would make a fine subtitle for The Lies That Bind
No, even this basic ignorance of the very subject our heroine is supposed to be expert in was not sufficient horror to impel me to write another of my pointless reports on books. That dishonor belongs to the passage quoted above, wherein our British former secret service agent and therefore (in the logic of such books) expert in the King’s English utterly misuses the word ‘chary’. I stumbled over this passage and tried in vain for some time to ascertain just what word the author thought she was using; I finally had to confess my ignorance. (Hairy? Harried? Scary?) So for this final felonious assault upon the very language itself, I charge The Lies That Bind with its multitude of crimes and plead that it be consigned to the dark donjon of unworthy books.
The Middle English definition describes how this book makes me feel
However, such a fate is not to be. Not only has Kate Carlisle met with success with her Brooklyn the bookbinder series of ‘mystery’ novels, she has foisted another improbably named character upon the unwary world in the Shannon Hammer ‘Fixer-Upper Mysteries’. Set in the fictional town of Lighthouse Cove, California (which is consciously modeled as a West Coast variant of Miss Fletcher’s Cabot Cove), that new series has already seen eight books and three Hallmark Channel movies. And the ‘Bibliophile Mysteries’? We’ve been discussing book number three, and number fourteen was published only last June. Putting both series together, that means 2.2 books per year for the past decade. Oh, and Ms. Carlisle has already contracted to deliver at least two more books in each series. Well, as I say often about myself, “If I’m so smart, how come …”
Psychiatric nosology frequently ignores the cultural determinants of so-called mental illnesses.
2. fulminate — to flash like lightning; to explode; to thunder forth condemnation(s); to inveigh violently
Though the board has fulminated numberless edicts, motions, and denunciations against the developer, the situation remains exactly as it was one year ago.
3. peach — to inform against; to divulge
We stayed out of the ambit of Veronica James as much as possible, as she was known as a narc, having peached her parents to the cops for growing marijuana in their garage.
4. inconscient — unconscious
Try as you might to appeal to their reason, this mob is under the sway of inconscient passions and forces that cannot be negated by logic.
5. facetious — waggish, not meant to be taken seriously; humorous
I was on the very verge of calling my banker when I realized that Tomas was being merely facetious in making his ill-advised remarks about a run on the Central Bibb Trust & Bank.
6. ebrious — intoxicated; addicted to drink; of or related to intoxication
I certainly hope that these words were penned about me by some ebrious cad for I’m damned if I’ll allow a sober person to call me such names.
7. micturate — to urinate
The unrepentant miscreant was discovered micturating upon the very slippers that had sent him packing to the back yard only the day before.
8. harrow — to break up (as with a harrow); to crush, tear, lacerate; to despoil
He protested that he only wished me well, but Jeremy had so harrowed my deepest feelings in our previous encounter that I shied away from any more of his supposedly helpful verbal depredations.
9. fecund — capable of giving birth or of producing fruit; fruitful, prolific
Perhaps the story of my mistakes may provide fecund material from which true creative works may arise, just as delicious mushrooms may sprout forth from the most feculent manure.
10. excurrent — exiting, running out
Fighting against the excurrent high schoolers bursting their bonds on this the last day of school, the maudlin detective meditated as best he could in the noise and shoving upon the vicissitudes of life and just what percentage of these quondam students would come under his purview.
One of the reasons (among many) that I despair of ever pulling together mix CDs for my cousins, is the occasionally wondrous serendipity of random play choices by iTunes on my phone whilst driving to and fro. Recently the last two days of July saw just such fortuitous track listings pulled out of the algorithmic æther as I went to and from work. The song choices are not perfect (the Latin selections, in particular, could have been better, but the fault is more likely with the paucity of my collection than the Brownian Motion behind my phone’s choices), but I have to ask myself if I could have sequenced better even given weeks of planning.
Here is the listing for the songs heard going and coming, on July 30 2020:
July 30, 2020
Going (side A)
time: 28:35
“Leben heisst Leben” – Laibach
“Brothers In Arms” – Dire Straits
“Here You Come Again” – Dolly Parton
“Come Rain Or Come Shine” – Billie Holiday
“In The Light” – Led Zeppelin
Coming home (side B)
time: 29:53
“I Am A Rock” – Simon & Garfunkel
“Man Or Animal” – Audioslave
“Dónde Están” – Siempre Así
“Driving Your Girlfriend Home” – Morrisey
“Bongo Festeris” – Jack Costanzo
“World On A String” – Neil Young
[live version from Roxy: Tonight’s The Night Live]
“Pifa” (pastoral symphony) – from Handel’s Messiah
Karl Richter w/ The London Philharmonic Choir
Perhaps even better than the day before, the next set of music made me doubt my ability to curate a mix CD for friends and family; it also made my commute much more enjoyable that it would have been otherwise. Not all random mixes from iTunes are this good—I’ve been told that my car music is mostly unlistenable—but I like it. I do not stream, and see no reason to do so as long as I get music like this.
That said, here is the listing for the following day, July 31, 2020:
July 31, 2020
Going (side C)
time: 25:50
“Haitian Divorce” – Steely Dan
“I’m Bound For That Promised Land” – Hank Williams
“Prelude” – Joe Gallant & Illuminati
“Your Latest Trick” – Dire Straits
“Close The Door Richard” – Burl Ives
“Let The Bass Go” – The D.O.C.
“Suite In A: Allemande” – from Book II of Marin Marais’s Pièces de Viole
performed by Jérôme Hantaï & Alix Verzier on bass viols and Pierre Hantaï on harpsichord
Coming home (side D)
time: 28:11 (not including bonus track)
“Think It Over” – B. B. King
“Bees” – Laura Cantrell
“Der Letzte Countdown” – The Heimatdamisch
“Talisman” – Air
“Sunshine And Clouds And Everything” – Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!
“Mockingbird” – Eminem
“Du-Tam” – [Serbian folk song from old 78 collection (not mine)]
“Hip Length” – Ursula 1000
Bonus Track: Lowell Thomas 6:30 PM [Eastern War Time] broadcast for NBC News on D-Day
The songs offered by my phone come from a panoply of playlists both smart and otherwise which I maintain in iTunes (and which I fear may leave me—as massive amounts of hand-picked album art left some early adopters—if I ever “up”grade to the latest MacOS*) and have crafted with both attentiveness and negligence over the past decade or so. Thus, for example, track numbers A2, A5, B6, B11, C1, C4, C6, and D13 come from heavy rotation playlists, while numbers A3, B14, D7, D10, and D15 derive from lists of most recently added tracks. The remainder bubbled up from semi-random rules meant to capture stuff I haven’t heard in a long while, stuff I liked a while back, and stuff I’ve never heard. I should also point out—as if it were not painfully obvious to most of y’all who perused the tracks listed above—that I am hopelessly stale bourgeois boring person who has ‘taste’ only in the same way that a person who eats nothing but donuts can be said to have a ‘diet’.
* I plan to write in more detail about my woes with the Apple ecosystem later, so please strive to hold back your knee-jerk responses of “You should use Linux!” or “Serves you write for not just buying a PC!” until then, if ever.
