The River of Heaven: Poems by Garrett Hongo

Garrett Hongo is a poet who inhabits many worlds.  This is very clear in The River of Heaven.   The poems are uniquely Hongo’s, inhabiting his world, exploring the people, flora, and landscapes of the poet’s eye.  It certainly helps, but is not necessary, to read Hongo’s rich and moving memoir, Volcano.  So much of what he writes in this collection of poems is reflected in that book.

In the years since this collection has been published, the last poem, “The Legend,” has become popular.  On YouTube numerous people recite and analyze the work.  Reading it in today’s environment, it is understandable.  The story of a senseless act of violence on an immigrant Asian man, and the refusal or inability of the people around him to help, is an apt symbol of alienation for our times. As the man dies a gunshot wound, as he lay dying in the street surrounded by people, even “[t]he noises he makes are nothing to them.”

He dies alone, separated, even from the poet who feels “…so distinct / from the wounded man lying on the concrete / I am ashamed”

All that the poet can give the dead man is a Chinese legend, of the Weaver Girl and the Cowherd, who, despite their love, are banished on opposites sides of the heavenly river, and can only meet once a year across a bridge of magpies.  

Hongo gives the man one day of solace in death.   The hands of the weaver girl will take up his cold hands.  The implication, perhaps, is that her hands are warm and gentle.

Strange Tribe: a family memoir, by John Hemingway

In Strange Tribe: a family memoir, by John Hemingway, the author laments efforts by his extended family to capitalize on the Hemingway name to sell everything from furniture to eye-wear. This memoir does much the same, but with key differences and more nuance.  The author is telling his story, and the story of his father, Greg Hemingway, which in turn relates to his father, Ernest Hemingway, and long shadow he cast over their lives.  But we wouldn’t read this book without Ernest Hemingway as its anchor.    

I suppose the greatest justification for this book, from a scholarly angle, is the light it sheds on Ernest Hemingway and gender.  Since Lynn’s biography in the late-eighties, scholars have cast a new, and entirely justified eye on Hemingway, his characters, and gender.  The fact that his youngest son, Greg Hemingway, cross dressed, and sometimes called himself female names, and began to transition to a woman late in life, is this supposed to give us insight into Ernest Hemingway’s  experiments with gender, both on or off the page.

I’m not entirely sure.  Authors experiment with whatever they wish to explore.  Perhaps it comes from their core, or maybe it is just a form of play.  Who knows?  Without that connection, this book is a very sad recitation of mental health issues, substance abuse, and child endangerment.  John Hemingway's parents were unable to parent him.  Hemingway or not.  This book is about a broken family.

Kosher Nation: Why More and More of America's Food Answers to a Higher Authority

Kosher Nation: Why More and More of America's Food Answers to a Higher Authority, by Sue Fishkoff, is simply a fascinating read.  The author takes many areas of the modern kosher scene, places them in social, historical and political context – and in the process, does so in an entertaining and instructional way. 

This book plots the rise of the modern, post-war, kosher food boom.  One reason for this boom is the growing affluence of many American Jewish communities.  This is combined by the very nature of kashrut to become more exclusionary over time, and with the fracturing of Jewish communities.  A kind of frum arms race begins, as each group seeks to out kosher the other.  Soon, we are looking for microscopic crabs in the NYC tap water, and scrubbing the green out of a leaf of lettuce.

I can’t imagine another work that handles this topic, and others, with quite so much depth and range.  Fishkoff has written a definitive book.

The Forever War

In reading The Forever War by Dexter Filkins, most of the time I thought, simply, that this man is crazy.  Sure, he is a war journalist, and his job is to go out and report in war zones.  So Filkins does just that in this book.  He is in Afghanistan covering the civil war before 9-11.  He is up in Tora Bora a few days after America’s unsuccessful attempt to kill Bin Laden.  

He is in Iraq for the American invasion and then the costly insurgency.  He is with the Marines as they take back Fallujah. Bullets fly passed him.  Marines are hurt or killed in horrible ways.  After pages of this, it beggars belief that one person would put himself in harm’s way so consistently.  He is in dangerous places, where he could be kidnapped or killed.

Filkins, no doubt, had his own motivations.  And probably paid a price.  What we get is without cost: reporting that is so real, so authentic, it is often difficult to read.  The life and death struggles of the people Filkins reports are gut punching palpable, sad, enraging.  American’s twenty-first centuries wars still drag on; Filkins was an early and unique witness in the thick of it.

Autumn in Venice: Ernest Hemingway and His Last Muse, by Andrea Di Robilant

There are not many appealing aspects in Hemingway’s life and work after the Second World War, and Autumn in Venice: Ernest Hemingway and His Last Muse, by Andrea Di Robilant, does little to change my opinion.  Hemingway’s post-war life was filled with not nearly enough work, and far too much eating, entertainment, drinking, distractions, travel, avoidable head injuries and delusional thinking.

We see all of this in Autumn in Venice, and more.  Sure, he produced work after 1945.  But he left behind manuscripts which, if he finished, may have very well redefined and reinvented his legacy as a writer.  Instead, his promise was flushed away.

You can read, cringe-worthy detail by detail, how all this came about in this excellent biography.

The Burning Island: Myth and History of the Hawaiian Volcano Country

The Burning Island: Myth and History of the Hawaiian Volcano Country by Pamela Frierson, is a work primarily concerned with the scientific and religious/spiritual significance of active volcanoes in Hawaii, mainly on the Big Island.  But there is more.  She also delves into the fascinating world of Hawaiian Real Estate, and the building of subdivisions on (relatively active) lava flows.

The book was written in 1991.  Some of the info is out of date.  The Hawaiian Riviera was never built.  I’m unsure what else is dated.  I sense a great deal.

Everything Has Two Handles: The Stoic's Guide to the Art of Living

I have long read the Stoics, and thought they have a philosophy of life that can benefit us all.  But Stoicism, as an ancient philosophy, must be updated for modern audiences. 

Ronald Pies has done just that in Everything Has Two Handles: The Stoic's Guide to the Art of Living.  Pies shows the links of Stoicism to CBT, Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism.  Certain Stoic ideas and techniques can be helpful to weather life’s difficulties, and can augment our modern religious experience.  Pies has written a clear book that provides added shifts to Stoic philosophy for our life and time.

The Ambulance Drivers: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and a Friendship Made and Lost in War

The Ambulance Drivers: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and a Friendship Made and Lost in War, by James McGrath Morris, is a fascinating book about two complex men.  This book also provides a vital service.  No one reads Dos Passos anymore, unless it is in a college class, or if you are doing you PhD on the USA trilogy. 

Hemingway is still well-read.  Whatever they hear about Dos is from Hemingway’s cruel rendering of him in his memoir, A Movable Feast.  So, Dos gets a much-needed face lift .  His work, especially the USA trilogy, was a watershed moment in American letters.  Critically, it had a far greater impact than any  of Hemingway's work. 

But as you read Morris’s well researched book, we see that neither man was a saint.  They were difficult people.  Both were competitive, embittered, and often nasty.  The writing life is difficult.  They were often sad and unsatisfied men. Read about it in this fascinating book.

The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies

The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies, by Alan Taylor, is a unique book about the War of 1812.  Taylor shows how the war was more about the impressment of American sailors by the British; it was a cultural battle over what it meant to be a citizen of the American Republic, and a British subject.  For in 1812, this question was far from settled, particularly along the northern front, which is the sole area Taylor covers.  In this border region, alliances frequently shifted among all the groups in Taylor’s subtitle.

Taylor makes an interesting point about the outcome of the War of 1812.  Mostly categorized as a draw, with both sized gaining nothing, it was really, Taylor asserts, the United States that won.  American nationalism surged after the war; it was less of a floppy concept.  Westward expansion increased (at the cost of Britain’s Indian allies) and Great Britain never become a dominant force in North America.  Canada would become and remain the smaller and less dynamic cousin of its neighbor to the south.

The United States did not conquer Canada in the War of 1812, but it hardly mattered.   But northern expansion would not have given the US much. The stage had been set for Manifest Destiny and West.

Florida: short stories

Florida, a collection of short stories by Lauren Groff, features, in nearly every story, the state in the title.  

Certainly, this is an interesting collection.  Groff knows how to tell a story that is off kilter, familiar but odd.  Many collections like this are being published, it seems to be part of our zeitgeist.  

This is our world, we live in it, but it is sliding away from our grasp.  Both at the center and the margins, our actions and the world’s responses no longer correspond.  In such a world, the stories in Florida are our grand narrative.