In the Very Abstract: Desert Notes: Reflections in the Eye of a Raven by Barry Holstun Lopez

Desert Notes: Reflections in the Eye of a Raven by Barry Holstun Lopez, is a series of essays about the American southwest desert.  This is an odd critique coming from me, but I found the book too abstract and mystical.  Yes, it is about the desert, but it is not really grounded enough in the reality of the desert.  It is a thought bubble most of the time.

Yes, he writes well; sure, the work is lyrical.  But in the end I wanted a better sense of real time and real place.

...gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance...

George Washington's letter to the Jews of Newport, Rhode Island, 1790

Gentlemen:

While I received with much satisfaction your address replete with expressions of esteem, I rejoice in the opportunity of assuring you that I shall always retain grateful remembrance of the cordial welcome I experienced on my visit to Newport from all classes of citizens.

The reflection on the days of difficulty and danger which are past is rendered the more sweet from a consciousness that they are succeeded by days of uncommon prosperity and security.

If we have wisdom to make the best use of the advantages with which we are now favored, we cannot fail, under the just administration of a good government, to become a great and happy people.

The citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy—a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.

It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

It would be inconsistent with the frankness of my character not to avow that I am pleased with your favorable opinion of my administration and fervent wishes for my felicity.

May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants—while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.

May the father of all mercies scatter light, and not darkness, upon our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in His own due time and way everlastingly happy.

G. Washington

Men We Reaped: A Memoir by Jesmyn Ward

Men We Reaped: A Memoir by Jesmyn Ward, is devastating look at the author’s upbringing in coastal Mississippi.  While Ward does concentrate on the women in her family, but it is the men that are front in center.

The phrase, being a black man in the south, is repeated many times in this work. This phrase is brimming with swarms of challenges, frustrations, sorrows, and deaths, and is the arch of the author’s narrative.  Growing up, Ward lived in a world much like a war zone composed of the very old, and the very young. The men in her life were both strong presences, but also fleeting.  They were incarcerated, dead, addicted, or gone.  

Men We Reaped is the story of one black family.  But it is also the story of the legacy of racism in our country; the awful toll that it takes on the lives of men, women and children.  

Gods Without Men: a novel

Hari Kunzru’s novel Gods Without Men is a familiar type of work, one that is very prevalent these days.  Spread across many characters and time periods, there is a linking element, a three spire pinnacle rock somewhere in the American desert southwest, which ties the work together.  All sorts of people are drawn to these to rocks, miners, religious fanatics, UFO nuts, hippie communes, tweakers cooking meth, and day trippers.

Kunzru writes well, keeps the lines of his sprawling novel untangled, and winds up producing a solid novel.  Despite its complexity, its premise is rather simple: does life have some kind of organized, rational meaning, or is it random, chaotic, and only intelligible through flashes of intuition.  In this novel (as in life) we never find out.

The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon's Last Uncontacted Tribes

More than five-hundred years after Columbus arrived in America, there are still thousands of uncontacted Native Americans deep in the upper Amazon.  The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon's Last Uncontacted Tribes by Scott Wallace, documents the 2002 expedition to monitor the tribes (without contacting them) and gather evidence of encroachment by loggers and miners into their protected land.

aerial photos of uncontacted people

The author accompanies the mercurial Sydney Possuelo, the often unlikely “savior” of uncontacted peoples.  At the time of the writing, Possuelo was a high ranking official in FUNAI, the National Indian Foundation of Brazil.  This government agency attempts to keep the tribes in the state which they are in; one such group, called “The Arrow People” actively enforce their isolation through force in one of the most remote portions of the upper Amazon.

aerial footage of uncontacted people

Reading this book is an education.  In a world where we expect complete contact, instant information, Google street view - to have a group of indigenous people out of contact is simply astonishing.  That a government agency fosters this is even more astonishing.

aerial footage of uncontacted people

We must wonder, thought, how long can this go on? Will the will to keep these people isolated continue, or fall victim to greed, corruption, indifference, and racism.  Are these people the last of victims of Columbus?

Wilderness Tips

Margaret Atwood is such an accomplished writer, that it is difficult to find any fault with her work.  This is especially the case with Wilderness Tips, a collection of short stories.  The stories mainly revolve around various girls summer camps outside of Toronto.  There are some deviations here and there. 

Atwood is so good, she is nearly too good; I come away from her stories, realizing that the craft is nearly perfect, marveling at her abilities, but soon I can’t really remember much of what she wrote – at least not specifics. 

Is she too perfect?  Could her writing use some jagged and rough edges?  Some jarring and strange landmarks?

The Way of Man: According to Hasidic Teaching by Martin Buber

The Way of Man: According to Hasidic Teaching, by Martin Buber, does not suffer from the often labyrinthine language of his later works (I and Thou!)  This work is short, simple, explaining the lives and examples of various Hasidic rebbes - but its very simplicity masks its profundity.

Buber re-worked the Hasidic world-view for a wider, less halakically oriented audience, and this is evident in this collection.  The unity of living that Hasidism fostered in its early years, a world without barriers or walls, is what Buber seeks and finds. The light of God is everywhere, and the individual person exemplifies this potentially highest form of existence. 

I admire parts of Buber's Jewish existentialism.  It is a shame his brand of Judaism did not find a wider audience.

Democracy: An American Novel

Democracy: An American Novel by Henry Adams, written in the years after the Civil War, explores the implacable connection between corruption and participatory government.

Adams is, not surprisingly, not sanguine about the prospects of political idealism and selflessness in our form of government.  Moneyed interests, narrow thinking, and self-interest always “trump” the greater good.

Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America by Patrick Phillips

Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America by Patrick Phillips, should be essential reading for all Americans.  Phillips details what would be called, in a Jewish context, a pogrom.  

A sadly typical tale of Jim Crow era racism and lynching in 1912 leads to far wider and more drastic consequences.  In a few short years, Cumming Georgia and Forsyth county were “cleansed” of African–Americans.

This ban was enforced by terror, both latent and manifest, well into the 1980s. A series of civil rights marches in 1987 heralded the beginning of the end of Cumming's apartheid.

But the end came not so much from a change of heart by the white residents of Cumming, but by changing demographics.  In the 1990s Cummings was transformed from a rural farming community into an affluent Atlanta suburb.  African-American farm plots, stolen by white residents in 1912, are now the sites of multi-million dollar mansions.  Old Cumming and its haters just died – both biologically and economically.

We are left to ask, has what racism and violence did quite well, is gentrification now carrying on? 

Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends

Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends by Gertrude Landa is a book from the turn of the century, written for children, and hobbled faux archaic English and a lack of sources.  

Where did these stories come from?  Some I recognize from the Talmud, but a simple source list would help immensely.  Many stories are non-Jewish with an extremely light Jewish veneer.  This is fine, and natural, but in a book without notes, it sets the reader adrift.