Beth's Books: A Higher Loyalty

Those who know me understand that I am more than a little biased towards James Comey. I find him credible and honorable. I will do my best to write this review in the spirit of fairness and openness and—

OMG I LOVED THIS BOOK SO MUCH!

Okay, okay, I'll admit that there is a fair amount of confirmation bias in my love for this book. I despise the "president" and I like Comey very much. Nothing in this book changed my feelings or thoughts about either. 

What struck me is that Comey seems very genuine. Whether he writes about his experiences with bullies when he was a kid, or about when he behaved in a bullying manner when he got to college because of 'groupthink' (something he says he remains ashamed of even all these years later), you can tell that it was part of what shaped his worldview. I have said all along that Trump is a schoolyard bully and Comey seems to have had that feeling, too. "All bullies are largely the same. They threaten the weak to feed some insecurity that rages inside them." Very true. 

Comey admits to struggling as an adult with ego and over-confidence. It seems obvious that he also has enough self-awareness to realize that about himself and does his best to counteract that by encouraging others to confront him and push back against his preconceived notions, whether it is his wife or President Obama. 

I found him quite funny and enjoyed the stories about the "presidential apple" for his youngest daughter, learning tips for cooking turkeys from Martha Stewart's shows, and especially his recounting of the infamous curtain incident when he tried to blend into the curtains in the Blue Room. His abiding love for the FBI is also apparent (he even dedicated the book to all the men and women of the Bureau). As someone on Twitter said, "Get yourself a man who loves you the way Comey loves the FBI." 

I also found him deeply philosophical as he recounted his reasoning behind the decisions he made during the 2016 election. I've felt all along that he made the choices he did in order to protect the nonpartisanship and integrity of both the FBI and the DOJ, and he talks about that at length. I think he really was faced with a Scylla and Charybdis moment, not once, but a few times, and he made the only decision he could. 

I get frustrated at hearing the pundits on both sides say that "he should have done this" or "he shouldn't have said that." Or he shouldn't have said it when he did. He has explained over and over how he came to the decisions he did (although there is still some classified stuff out there that he can't disclose). I find his thought processes credible and well-reasoned in the context of doing what was best for the FBI/DOJ and their nonpartisanship. It is easy to second guess someone when you've never been in such a position. There is also a ridiculous amount of semantics involved, especially among those illiterate in legalese. I am certainly not literate in that language but when he explained the subtle difference in legal terms and why they matter, I understood. 

I also enjoyed his thoughts on intelligence vs judgment. It's one thing to have the intelligence to understand facts and figures, to understand something intellectually, but it has to be tempered with good judgment and the ability to look at a problem from other perspectives. He recounts a great conversation with President Obama in which they discussed the Black Lives Matter/Blue Lives Matter movements and the conflicts between young black men and law enforcement. They each got each other to see certain views from other vantage points. That is the mark of true thinkers, the ability for self-reflection, self-awareness, and the ability to approach things with a sense of humility and accept that there are other ways of looking at things that wouldn't occur to you because of your own life experience. 

Oh, how I love to have those types of discussions myself! Going deeper than the easy, superficial talking points and bouncing ideas off of each other. Getting someone to understand your viewpoint and getting them to understand yours, and finding points of consensus when you realize that you both hold many of the same thoughts. We seem to have lost that recently. I miss it. 

I admire and respect some of the same people that he does, including President Obama and James Clapper. I also despise some of the same people that he seems to, including Dick Cheney (who comes across every bit as evil and humorless as I've always thought) and the current "president." Comey doesn't use the word 'despise,' but his disdain and visceral dislike for both comes across loud and clear. 

I think Comey is right when he says that while Trump might not be medically unfit to serve, he is morally unfit. He is devoid of ethics and does not possess the ability to provide ethical leadership. Comey was reminded over and over of his dealings with Mafia bosses earlier in his career and I think the comparison is a suitable one. Trump cares not one whit about societal and political norms, nor about defending the Constitution. He cares only about how things will affect him and about uncompromising loyalty to HIM. People like Comey and professionals in the FBI and DOJ are utterly foreign and incomprehensible to him: people who took an oath to the country and the Constitution, not to any particular person. 

In interviews, Comey has said that he sees this as a situation where we need to put our moral and ethical values—who we are as Americans and human beings—above partisan politics and issues, whether it's gun control or tax cuts. I couldn't agree more. I disagree with the right on so many things but can we get back to the place where we all agree that we value the basic premises of free speech and other Constitutional rights above partisanship? I believe we must if we are to move forward and be our best selves. 

I think that a leader who expects fealty to himself rather than respect for the rule of law cannot be part of that equation. 

Vote accordingly, Citizens. 

Beth’s Books - Enemies: A History of the FBI by Tim Weiner

I’ve made no bones about my fascination with former FBI Director James Comey, Special Counsel Robert Mueller III (also a former FBI Director) and his investigation into “Russiagate,” and the FBI in general. As I’ve said before, if I had my career to do over again, I’d definitely consider a lab job with the FBI. Wouldn’t that be fascinating and rewarding? I sure think so.

Anyway, I came across this book and thought it would be interesting to read up on the birth and history of the Bureau. I wasn’t disappointed! Here are a few of my takeaways.

1. I would be fascinated to pick an FBI agent’s brain (or a former Director’s...call me, Dir. Comey!) about their thoughts on J. Edgar Hoover. Good grief, what a conundrum! On one hand, he made the FBI into the powerhouse that it is, consolidating power and making it a force to be feared (and too often, hated). But wow, he did some really bad things. He circumvented the rule of law and sometimes just ignored the law entirely. I have read that Director Comey kept a copy of the letter signed by Hoover authorizing the illegal wiretap of Martin Luther King, Jr. on his desk to remind him of the abuses possible in the office, and it was practice to require new recruits to visit the Holocaust Museum in DC to remind them of the same thing. Comey added a requirement for recruits to visit the MLK Memorial as an added reminder.
2. The FBI wasn’t computerized at all until the 1990s and they didn’t have an extensive network until much later than that. Can you imagine doing the kind of work they do without computers?
3. There was some discussion of moles within the Bureau. There are many reasons that people “turn,” but I had to wonder, “How could anyone betray their country that way?” I cannot imagine that kind of treason, no matter how much money was thrown at me or what kind of blackmail or perks. Beyond the dishonesty and betrayal of it, you’d have to know that you’d eventually get found out, right? How stupid.
4. The saga of Director Mueller and then-Deputy AG Comey defending AG John Ashcroft while he was in the hospital, fending off the nefarious efforts of the Bush administration (in the form of Andrew Card and Alberto Gonzales) to continue the unconstitutional Stellar Wind program that collected personal information on pretty much everyone, read like a spy thriller!
5. I was surprised to read how close the FBI came to being dismantled entirely in the mid-aughts, due to the practices and directives of the Bush administration.
6. That was staved off partly due to the efforts of Robert Mueller who is obviously an impressive person. He reshaped the Bureau into something that was more honorable and above-board than it had been for many years, and I believe that James Comey continued that culture of accountability until you-know-who fired him and I will never like you-know-who because he did that, so there.

I’ll include a couple of passages that I found particularly interesting.

“Nixon believed that if a president did it, it was not illegal.”

Remind you of anyone?

“The Watergate hearings convened by the Senate wrung damning testimony out of Nixon’s foot soldiers. Pivotal stories in the press laid out the facts. But the information, almost all of it, had its source in the work of the FBI. And the information had a gathering strength, each rivulet flowing together into a mighty river, the force that lets water cut through solid rock. Backed by federal grand juries and the prosecutors who led them, the FBI’s investigators preserved the rule of law against the obstruction of justice. And under law, the agents were accomplishing an act of creative destruction that the radicals of the Left could only dream of achieving. They were bringing down the president of the United States.”

Again...remind you of anything? Robert Mueller, save us! More on Mueller.

“Mueller had a sharp mind, a first-rate temperament, and a high regard for well-crafted cases. The future director of the FBI was a born leader. And he was a marine.”

I especially like that “well-crafted case” part. If I were you-know-who, I would be very worried.

And finally, because Comey is still my homey, this on his efforts to protest the unconstitutionality of the Stellar Wind program.

“Comey was a persuasive advocate. One of the FBI’s favorite prosecutors, the grandson of an Irish police commissioner, he had worked with skill and intensity on terrorism cases as the United States attorney in Manhattan for two years after the al-Qaeda attacks. The trust vested in him that day showed that the awe-inspiring force of American national security rested on personal relationships as well as statutory powers.”

I just bet he’s persuasive! [grin]

This took me a while to read, partly because it was a little dry in spots, but mostly because I eased up on my book-reading while I enjoyed the summer. I still read plenty on my news feed, because there was plenty to read, wasn’t there? Great googly-moogly. This book really started to buzz for me when I got into the more recent history because this is stuff that I remember, and I enjoyed reading about the background of those things. I was still kind of young when Watergate happened, so I probably need to read a book about that, too.

In the meantime, I’ll just keep living and experiencing the Russiagate investigation in real-time, and know that Mueller’s efforts will be thorough and meticulous AND that Comey will be vindicated.

Beth’s Books: A Comparison

If you go home with somebody, and they don’t have books, don’t fuck ‘em!

~~ John Waters

There are many books that I love, but I have two that are my co-favorites. The one that would be considered a classic is The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck) and the more modern, pop culture-ish one is The Stand (Stephen King).

I read the latter many years before the former. To be honest, if I had to pick one favorite, one that I could read over and over again, it would be The Stand. (Sorry, Steinbeck.) Why that book? It’s not traditional “literary” material, i.e., the critics weren’t enamored of it. Well, screw that.

It means a lot to me because I read it in my formative years, when I was in high school, and that was during a time when I was traveling a weird, dark road. I look back at it now and I’m really not sure where that came from, but it was this strange mix of authoritarianism and rebellion, and the authoritarianism part is so far removed from who I am now that I really don’t understand what was going on in my head. Teenagers, right?

Anyway, something in that book just clicked everything into place for me. It was rebellion against authoritarianism, and finally realizing that the two were mutually exclusive meant everything to me. It was a genuine epiphany. It was the age-old question “Will you use your powers for good...or for evil?” Reading about Stu, Glen, Larry, and Ralph making their stand for good honestly changed my life. I’m not a bad seed, by any means, and my ship would have righted itself at some point anyway, but I still remember reading the book and going, “Yeah. That’s the side I want to be on. I want to fight for what is right.”

When I was thinking about these two favorite books the other day (everyone thinks about their favorite books, right?), I initially thought, “It’s weird that these two books are my favorites. They’re so different.”

Then it hit me. They really aren’t that different at all. MIND BLOWN.

That’s right! It was another epiphany! I love having those!

It made me think of the old essay question to “compare and contrast” two very different things. I always loved those exercises because I could usually come up with some pretty good arguments for both. I won’t bother much with the contrast part here, because those are pretty obvious: different time period, different circumstances, different types of people, that kind of stuff. What interests me more are the similarities. And believe me, until just the other day, this had not occurred to me.

• They are both, at heart, apocalyptic novels. The Stand (TS) is certainly the more dystopian story, with over 99% of the world dying from a killer strain of influenza. A lot more people died in that universe. But think of the poor Joad family in The Grapes of Wrath (GoW) and every other family displaced by the Dust Bowl. Wasn’t that the end of the world—at least as they knew it—for them? When you can’t raise any crops and your family is starving, that’s pretty apocalyptic, isn’t it? So what do you do?
• Road trip! In my world, road trips are a fun adventure, but in the worlds of TS and GoW, it is a matter of survival. In GoW, the Joads travel west, as did so many other refugees of the Dust Bowl, in order to find a better life and a way to survive. A dream of a better life. In TS, the survivors of the plague traveled west because of dreams that compelled them to find the source of those dreams. Something was drawing them both west. And along the way, what did both encounter?
• Challenges. The road before you is not always easy. The Joads encountered hostility from people they met, the road was fraught with danger, and people were lost along the way. The survivors of TS had to scavenge for food, deal with hostile, unhinged people, and cope with the end of the world as they knew it. In the expanded version of the novel, they have to attempt an emergency appendectomy on one of their group. Can you imagine? Both the survivors and the Joads had similar experiences as they traveled west.
• Good versus Evil. While TS treats this more literally, with a showdown between those who have aligned with the positive force in the universe (call it God, because that is what Mother Abigail believed it was) and those who threw their support to someone who is possibly Lucifer himself, the Walkin Dude, Randall Flagg, the Joads have to deal with the banality of evil, to use Hannah Arendt’s phrase. They encounter petty men who despise them for their refugee status and exploit them for cheap labor. They live in horrible conditions and there is no easy way out.
• The triumph of Good over Evil. Although that’s a little ambiguous in both stories. The survivors of TS eventually prevail over Randall Flagg, but it’s clear that he’s not entirely gone. There is still a worrying doubt about whether anyone has learned anything from what should have been an obvious lesson. Tom Joad has his moment of righteous fury and kills a man, and he gives a stirring speech about how he’ll be there when anyone is getting screwed over. But he has to flee and leave his family, so his moment of righteousness came at great cost.

In conclusion, as in all great apocalyptic novels (or movies, or TV shows), the reader must answer the question, “What would I do in this situation? How would I handle it? Would I be on the right side or the wrong side?” Part of the appeal, at least for me, is the psychological aspect of it. How do we react when we are in dire circumstances? (It’s why “The Walking Dead” is my favorite show.)

I know that my advice would be to stick with the good. Do what you need to do in order to survive and protect your family, but you really want to be on the side of good.

Be like Tom Joad.

Beth’s Books: Look Who’s Back

I rode a tank

Held a general’s rank

When the Blitzkrieg raged

And the bodies stank

Please to meet you

Hope you guessed my name

~~ “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones

Written by Timur Vermes, translated from German by Jamie Bulloch

Ausgezeichnet!

This book was excellent and amazing. Published in Germany in 2015, it tells the story of Adolf Hitler—yes, the real one—waking up in 2011 Berlin. No explanation is given as to why he survived his suicide and burning with Eva Braun, but none is needed. That is not the point of the book.

As the Führer learns that he has awakened 60 years after his last memory, he attempts to navigate the modern world. He is mistaken for a comedian and actor/impersonator, soon attracts the attention of the networks, and gets a segment on a comedy show. He is a hit with many viewers (although some do not find him amusing at all) and seen as a master satirist. He never breaks character to anyone because he is, of course, the actual Hitler. He delivers speeches he gave decades ago and they begin to resonate with a certain segment of the population. He becomes so popular that he is given his own show.

This is one of the best dark humor books I’ve ever read. It manages to take one of the most abhorrent figures in world history and make him somewhat sympathetic. Of course, just as you’re going along and thinking, “Well, it was kind of nice what he said to her,” he then thinks about how it was necessary to eliminate as many Jews as possible and that his efforts were not in vain. I often felt a combination of horror and hilarity. It can’t be an easy thing to evoke such opposing feelings in a reader, but Vermes does it perfectly. (Credit to the translator, as well. It is not easy to translate German and retain the humor.)

There were parts that made me laugh out loud, such as when Hitler wonders at the absence of candles in the hospital due to concerns about fire:

I cannot recall large numbers of buildings having been damaged during my time in government, despite the generous use of candles. But I do concede that, from 1943 onward, the statistics become rather less meaningful given the increasing absence of buildings.

Then there is Hitler’s visit to Oktoberfest, where he strikes up a conversation with a woman. She speculates on his operations, meaning plastic surgery in order to look more like the real Hitler, but he takes it as literal military operations and mentions Sea Lion, Barbarossa, and Cerberus. She says she hasn’t heard of them, thinking that he is talking about plastic surgeons.

She scrutinized me. “I don’t see any scars,” she said with the air of a professional.

“I’m not going to complain,” I said. “The deepest wounds are those that Fate inflicts upon our hearts.”

“You’re right there,” she said with a smile, holding her beer toward me.

This is an absolutely brilliant indictment of celebrity worship, social media, politics, and the cult of personality. How is it possible that a somewhat charismatic, completely narcissistic blowhard with delusions of grandeur could rise to a position of political power while spouting racist, xenophobic, sexist rhetoric?

Heyyyy, wait a minute…!





Look Who's Back

Beth’s Books: The Girls by Emma Cline

"We all want to be seen."

The words of the narrator, Evie Boyd, sum up the underlying theme of this excellent debut novel. Fourteen-year-old Evie feels a vague sense of unease with her upscale, late sixties suburbia life, as well as the role she is expected to play as a young woman. She feels the need to belong, to have others notice her and acknowledge her existence. Early on, she thinks, "All that time I had spent readying myself, the articles that taught me life was really just a waiting room until someone noticed you—the boys had spent that time becoming themselves."

Someone finally does notice her: the titular girls, especially one named Suzanne. Evie is attracted to her in both an erotic and envious way. Suzanne seems defiant to the niceties of society and appears to be a free spirit. Evie falls in with the girls who eventually take her to the ranch, where several of them are living under the guidance of the supposedly brilliant and charismatic Russell. As Evie is drawn into the circle, she spends more and more time at the ranch, partying and getting deeper into their lifestyle.

Of course, the ranch, the girls, and Russell are thinly veiled stand-ins for Charlie and the Manson family. If I had to guess which Manson family member is the basis for Suzanne, I'd guess that it was Susan Atkins, AKA Sadie. Although we spend most of the book in 1969 as Evie relates the story of that strange summer that ended so violently, we also get the adult Evie looking back at her experience there. She ponders why she was so easily sucked into the group and wonders what she might have been capable of. She still lives in some fear and horror at the events of her past but also misses that initial sense of belonging...and of being noticed. The young Evie was beginning to realize the power of femaleness and the control that can be gained from it, a lesson she learned from the girls at the ranch.

For a non-horror book, it left me with a deep sense of dread, sadness, and understanding. Although Cline's prose can get a little much at times, it actually worked quite well. So many of Evie's distant memories are triggered by scents or sounds or a particular kind of light. It made me get inside her head and understand her feelings on a deeper level. It made me remember my own sense of wanting to belong at that age and wanting to be noticed.

This is an excellent book—and a debut novel!—my favorite of the year so far. Highly recommended.

The Girls by Emma Cline

Beth’s Books: The Walking Dead Psychology

(Subtitled Psych of the Living Dead, edited by Travis Langley)

It’s been a while since I wrote about The Walking Dead, and with the midseason finale of Season 6 coming up, this seems like a good time!

Besides, I absolutely loved this book. It takes a serious look at the psychological aspects of the show, both why viewers watch and the toll the Zombie Apocalypse (or any other type of apocalypse) takes on survivors and affects their behaviors. Psychology has always been a casual hobby of mine, and of course, I am truly obsessed with the show, so this was right up my alley. The book is a collaborative effort of several Psychology professors and counselors, and they all offer interesting insights on varying aspects of the show.

So why do we watch? One of the authors posits that it is because we have a longing for a sense of community, deeper relationships, and connections. There are no cell phones or computers in the ZA. No television, no Internet, and none of the constant bombardment of stimuli that we are subjected to on a daily basis. The survivors have to rely on each other for everything and deep relationships are formed. When you place your life into the hands of others on a daily basis, forging such strong bonds is a major contribution to your survival.

There is also a strong sense of nostalgia for things lost. The survivors feel it as they make their way through the wasted land filled only with walkers; something as simple as the ice cubes in Andrea’s glass of lemonade at Woodbury are seen as a long-lost luxury. After Rick and Carl flee the prison and find refuge in an empty home, Carl looks at the video games in a kid’s room and the big screen TV with longing...then rips the cord off of the useless TV to use to secure the front door. The viewers feel it, too. Seeing abandoned homes and signs of the people who lived there, seeing rusted cars grown over with kudzu, seeing a world that has ended for the vast majority of human beings...how can you not feel a sense of longing for what has been lost? The premiere episode of the show is called “Days Gone Bye” for a good reason.

Another author believes that part of the show’s appeal to so many of us is that it causes us to reflect on existential questions such as the meaning of our lives and to what purpose we would continue in such a scenario. It may cause us to confront our fears and think about how we would react in the ZA. Would we retain our humanity? Would we grow hungry with power like the Governor, or would we do whatever it takes to protect our family, like Rick is trying (and not always succeeding) to do? The author draws an analogy between survival in the ZA and survival in the death camps of the Holocaust. It’s not a bad analogy because surviving both would take courage and the ability to confront the worst that humanity has to offer. How can anyone deal with such inhumanity (in the ZA, both from the walkers and from certain other survivors) and come through unscathed? It’s natural to question our own abilities to deal with such extreme circumstances.

As for the survivors’ response, they are all suffering in varying degrees from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. They have all seen and done some incredibly horrible and brutal things and are under constant stress and constant fear. All of this can result in unpredictable behavior and bad decision-making, both of which can cost you your life or the lives of those who are looking to you for protection, resulting in further stress and survivor’s guilt. Many of the survivors have experienced psychotic breaks, such as Morgan after losing his son Duane, or Rick after Lori died. Michonne spent months by herself, talking to her dead boyfriend as if he were there. One of the big questions in the series has been, “Do you get to come back?” In other words, after all you’ve seen and done, do you get to survive with your humanity intact? It’s a question that is still being answered for many of our survivors.

The most interesting chapter to me was the one that considered Daryl Dixon’s transformation from angry redneck to reliable soldier, and even to transformative hero. The author looks at Daryl in the context of Joseph Campbell’s ‘hero arc,’ in which the character embarks on a journey of self-discovery. Daryl is compared to the classical hero Ulysses, who experiences hardships and tests in his travels and learns much about himself in the process. Daryl was an abused child, growing up in sad circumstances; he looks for Sophia with such dedication because he thinks about how he wished he could have been saved when he was a child. It has taken the ZA to make Daryl realize his potential as a human being with meaning to his life, and a valuable, trusted member of the group. As such, Daryl is a symbol of much-needed hope in the apocalyptic world. If Daryl can overcome what he did and grow into a position of trust and leadership, then there is hope for all of us. Daryl sets the bar high and challenges us to become our own “better angels.”

The book also does a few case studies of some of the characters to see if they fit the profile of a psychopath. Shane, the Governor, the Claimers, Negan, and others are examined using professional criteria.

The book concludes with the thought that zombies help us confront one of our biggest fears: our own mortality. We see that the zombies are simply bags of meat, without purpose or meaning other than finding their next meal (and hopefully it’s not us). We all have a desire to find meaning in our lives, to be more than another bag of meat. The book feels that The Walking Dead succeeds in showing the human struggle to find meaning in life, even knowing that our mortality is inevitable, and that our struggle matters.

So why do I love the show so much? Because it makes me think about all these things. Yes, you can say that it is “just a TV show,” but I’ve always felt that good TV can speak to us on a level that makes us address certain things in ourselves and also connects us with others who feel the same way. The best shows make you wonder how you would react in certain situations, whether it’s Walter White confronting a cancer diagnosis or Don Draper dealing with his past and the rapidly changing world around him. The Walking Dead makes us wonder what we would do in order to survive...or would we even want to? And why?

Highly recommended for anyone who is a fan of the show, comics, or novels.

Beth’s Books: Double shock powah!

A lot of good books have come out already this month, and I want to write about the new publications from my two favorite authors: Stephen King and Anne Rice.

First is Anne Rice’s Prince Lestat, in which she revisits the vampire world, including the Brat Prince himself. This book was a total delight. It’s been a while since we had a vampire book from her, and seeing the vamp gang again was like seeing old friends. Very old friends. Lestat is his usual irrepressible and impulsive self, but he isn’t one to back down from his destiny.

When a mysterious Voice begins plaguing blood drinkers all over the world, exhorting them to use the Fire Gift to burn the young ones, the vampires who are fairly new to the life (so to speak) are killed horribly. The group of elder vampires come together to figure out how to deal with this threat to their existence. As it becomes clear who (or what) the Voice really is, it is obvious that it is not just the young ones who are at risk; their entire tribe could be wiped out.

It was wonderful to read of these elders coming together again, after so many years of isolation from each other. They really are a family, and they each bring their own beauty and strength to the group. Rice’s description of the reunion, with all of these exquisite creatures dancing as they become caught up in the music, is a thing of beauty. Her writing is spare and concise in this book, able to convey a moment or a scene with minimal verbiage.

There seem to be a few things that are unresolved (what is up with you, Rhoshamandes?!), and I hope this means that Ms. Rice is happily back in the world of her Children of the Savage Garden. I think there are many more tales to be told there, and I look forward to them all.

Next is Stephen King’s latest, Revival. Oh my goodness.

This book gave me the creeps more than almost all of his other books. I still recall how The Shining bothered me so much at the time, and several others have lingered with me. But this one gave me a very uneasy feeling that has stuck with me several days after finishing it, and I don’t think it is going to leave me anytime soon.

I don’t want to give anything away, because you really don’t know where he’s going with this story until late in the book, but I’ll say that it is a bleak novel without any innate sense of hope. This seems like a bit of a departure for King...I usually finish a King book feeling that somehow, some way, every little thing’s gonna be all right. I finished this one with sense of horror, thinking, “Well, I guess we’re all fucked.”

King explores two things extensively in this book: music and religion. The protagonist of the book is Jamie, a good kid who gets into music at an early age and loves what rock and roll makes him feel and where it takes him. Except for that pesky addiction, but I won’t say anything more about that. What was fun to read was the sheer joy that Jamie experiences as he begins to get into music. Although I’m not a musician myself, I’m a huge fan, and I understand how music can move a person. I think it’s fair to say that all musicians start out as fans, so in that regard, I can relate.

As for the religion aspect, if the right wing religious people get a whiff of what this book says about religion and the existence of any god, they’re going to have a thrombo. This is King’s most damning condemnation of religion that I’ve ever read. Previous books have had a bit of a religious element to them. He has always explored the conflict between good and evil. The prime example is Mother Abigail and Randall Flagg from The Stand (and other mentions in various books). As Mother Abigail tells Nick in that book, when Nick says writes that he doesn’t believe in God, “Well, He believes in YOU!” That sense of possibility and mystery is gone in this book. This is more of an attitude of “if God exists, he’s a sadistic and psychotic asshole.” It’s quite an interesting change, and I wonder about the pathway that has brought SK to this point, and if this reflects his own views or is just a part of the story.

It’s obvious that he has nothing but contempt for religious charlatans and grifters. I share his contempt, and I find it dismaying that there are still so many such people out there. None have quite the dark side of Charles Jacobs, though...at least as far as anyone knows…!

A couple of great reads, and I recommend both of them highly. If you’re into that sort of thing, of course. Not for everyone!

Beth’s Books: From Here To Eternity by James Jones

This is #62 on the Modern Library’s Top 100 list, and yes, I’m still plugging away at that list!

I started this last summer, but got a little bogged down in it, so I set it aside for other books after making it about halfway through. (It’s an 860 pager, so I’d already read what would normally be considered a fairly good-sized book.) I recently returned to it, and I was still struggling with it a bit. Although Jones was very descriptive, he tended to get a little too wordy at times, and I was to the point where I was almost ready to give up...but I was over 60% of the way through (I read this on my Kindle), so I decided to keep going.

I’m so glad I did. By the time I got about 85% of the way through, the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred, and after that, I just didn’t want to put it down.

You can read the synopsis elsewhere. A very brief description is that it takes place in Hawaii, with the main location an Army base, in the time leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor and our entry into WWII. We get to know several characters quite well, including Sgt. Milt Warden and Pvt. Robert E. Lee Prewitt, and I came to care about these characters very much. We follow them through various Army-related and decidedly NON-Army activities, such as love affairs, drunken binges, and visits to town and its bars and whorehouses. One of the main reasons I kept reading was because I wanted to find out what happened with some of these characters.

The main thing this book gave me was a glimpse into the lives of the WWII-era soldier. I have never read or watched anything that brought them to life as much as this book. I read the restored version rather than the original 1953 heavily edited version. All the profanity, all the sex, all the anger and hostility and human frailty is there. With the passing of several decades, I believe we have come to see WWII veterans as noble warriors, and have mythologized the Greatest Generation to a remarkable degree. I’m not saying this is wrong. My Dad and several of my uncles were WWII veterans, and they were remarkable men who did remarkable things.

However, they weren’t saints. I don’t know how much of a hellraiser my Dad was during the war, although I know he was a bit of a one before he joined the Army! He didn’t talk about the war much, and it wasn’t until I was probably in my late twenties that he told me a few stories. I think he had his share of fun...there was one story he told me about wandering around some city in North Africa with one of his buddies. It sounded like they were having a pretty good time!

This book showed the bravery as well as the humanity. The soldiers weren’t all innocent young rubes who walked on water. They were ordinary men who went into an extraordinary situation and sometimes did extraordinary things; sometime they just did ordinary things. Like every other human being.

I am very glad that I persevered on this book. I enjoyed the weaving together of the characters’ stories, but most of all, I enjoyed it for the sense it gave me of what my Dad might have been like as a young soldier, about 15 years before I was born. I don’t think that his experience was necessarily like those of some of the guys in the book, but I bet he knew guys who DID have similar experiences. It helped me to think of them as human beings rather than vague “Greatest Generation” demi-gods.

That makes me appreciate even more what they did.

Beth’s Books: The Unlikely Disciple

I can’t remember where I first heard about this, but it’s been on my wish list for a while. What an intriguing premise: a kid raised in a Quaker home and attending the “liberal elite” Brown University, spends a semester attending the über-religious Liberty University. You know...the one started by Jerry Falwell. So when I saw a good price on Amazon, I grabbed it.

The student/author, Kevin Roose, didn’t go into this with a mean-spirited motive. This was no scathing exposé of abuses at Liberty, or an effort to write a book about how everyone going there is a foaming-at-the-mouth fundamentalist. He approached it as a genuine learning experience and decided to make the most of his time there by seeing how religious conservatives live and act. He also learned quite a bit about biblical history while he was at it.

He found out quickly that his hallmates were pretty much like any other student at a secular college, except they didn’t act out on their urges as much as those kids. They didn’t really have much opportunity to, but they also didn’t really want to (for the most part), and some of them even appreciated the strict rules, because it took temptation out of their way. Although he often felt bad about his duplicity (he was posing as a born-again Christian, remember), he came to genuinely like many of the guys in his hall. He found them bright, fun, and overall pretty decent guys. (Except for one virulent homophobe, who happened to be one of his roommates.)

A few things were genuinely jarring and upsetting for him, though. The casual use of using the words “faggot” and “queer” as insults were hard for him to reconcile. Falwell supposedly mellowed in his hateful rhetoric in his later years, but the culture of homophobia remains strong at the college, at least from Roose’s experience. His hope was that when some of these guys get out into the real world and begin to interact with openly gay people, they will realize that they’re not scary, awful people who are going to burn in hell. I hope that for them, too.

What was hardest for him to reconcile was some of the things that were taught. In a couple of mandatory classes for freshmen, young earth creationism was taught, with the professor flat-out saying that evolution was wrong and the Bible was right. It all happened in six days, six thousand years ago. The professor wore a white lab coat and frequently reminded the students that he was a “real scientist.” Perhaps a little too much reminding?

As the end of the semester approached, many of his fellow students expressed concern about the “summer slide.” Away from the strict rules of Liberty, they feared that they would give into temptation and do things forbidden on campus, like drinking and even having sex. Many of these students seemed genuinely fearful of the prospect. So much fear! When the death of Falwell happens a few days before commencement, it sounds like there was almost mass hysteria on campus. It struck me as a bit of false idolatry, the way Falwell was almost worshiped on campus, although many of the students realized that he definitely had his faults. Roose was able to interview him about a week before Falwell’s death, and he found him to be a kind man who seemed to be sincere in his faith and desire to save others from eternal damnation. I’m sure that this was a foreign concept to Roose (raised a Quaker, as I mentioned), but as someone who grew up in an evangelical family, I can testify to the fact that people genuinely want to ensure your salvation. Roose still had a problem justifying Falwell’s extreme homophobic stance, and simply couldn’t do it. That is nothing unusual about evangelicals, though. It’s the “love the sinner, hate the sin” thing.

What really chilled me was his quote from one of the campus pastors to the students towards the end of classes: “My biggest worry about you...is that you’ll become educated beyond your obedience.” In other words, don’t get too educated, because it might make you question your religion. After writing that he’s impressed at the intelligence of many of his classmates as well as their intellectual engagement, Roose put it this way:

[Liberty is] a place where academic rigor is sacrificed on the altar of uninterrupted piety, where the skills of exploration, deconstruction, and doubt—all of which should be present at an institution that bills itself as a liberal arts college—are systematically silenced in favor of presenting a clear, unambiguous political and spiritual agenda.

Roose found that sad, and so do I. The purpose of an education—especially by the time you get to college—is to get you to question and think in a critical manner. If you want to reconcile your beliefs with scientific fact and with what you are taught, you can work around that in whatever way you can. But discouraging kids from questioning because it might shake their faith is just reprehensible in a college atmosphere, in my opinion. That’s not a university...that’s a seminary.

It’s not all sadness, though. When Roose wrote about the anti-masturbation support group one of his advisors asked him to go to, he had me laughing out loud. The name of the group was Every Man’s Battle, and if that isn’t funny enough, they had to talk about their successes and failures of the past week, as well as strategies to keep them from straying. Roose was highly uncomfortable, and when it was his turn to speak, he said something like, “Well, it’s getting warm outside, so girls are wearing less clothing…” and all of the guys groan and agree that they hate this time of year, and one says, “Spring is my Achilles heel.” I just wanted to hug each one of them and say, “Guys, it’s okay. You’re young men, and you aren’t going to hell because you crank one out once in a while...or even a lot. You’re healthy and it’s okay.” But then I guess giving them hugs would have been counterproductive to the purpose of the group, eh? Poor guys.

I liked this book so much that I gave it five stars on Shelfari and found the author’s website and sent him an email to tell him how much I enjoyed it. He went into this project with a kind heart and a willingness to learn about something that was very alien to him, and I think that is admirable. He was able to get by the initial strangeness of the situation and enjoy himself in many ways, and ended up making some very good friends. He kept in touch with many of them, and about a year after he went back to Brown, he confessed to them what he had been up to...that it was an experiment that he was going to write a book about. To his surprise, no one reacted with anger, and they still wanted his friendship. I got the impression that he felt he learned a lot about tolerance and trying to understand others’ viewpoints and beliefs. Even if you don’t agree with them, it’s not really fair to vilify them, unless they are harming others by what they say and do.

Unfortunately, I feel that Jerry Falwell did just that. Because he became so politically active, his beliefs were pervasive in Republican politics, and they continue to this day among a significant faction of the party. I respect your beliefs up until you are doing everything you can to suppress the rights of others based on your version of religion and on your holy book. THEN we’ve got a problem. We don’t base our laws on any religious book, contrary to what some misguided individuals believe; we base them on our Constitution.

I recommend this book very highly. It was a fascinating read.