Quick Stop

Just stopping by for a quick check-in this evening.  I've been out-of-town the last couple of days to attend a family funeral and that has limited both my reading and my blogging efforts.  I think I went through internet withdrawal pains last night when I realized I would have to go for more than 24 hours without access to the net.  I'm almost embarrassed to mention how "lost" I felt.

I did start a mystery by Algerian author Yasmina Khadra called Moritouri.  The novel is set in Algiers during some of the worst of the Moslem infighting that happened there in the1990s and 2000s.  I am particularly intrigued by the novel because I lived in Algiers for more than a year just when the chaos was beginning there.  In fact, the U.S. government and my employer evacuated us from the city in late 1993 just when things were getting out of hand.  I was so naive while living there that I walked the streets alone for hours at a time, wondering why I was getting so many dirty looks and the silent treatment from everyone but some of the children.  This was just weeks before Western hostages started being taken in Algiers - when they were not just immediately taken and beheaded.  I was stupid - and lucky.

I did sense that there was a very corrupt and decadent "underground" society there that the rich and powerful exploited for their own purposes but it was all kept very quiet and secret because, after all, Algeria is a Muslim country and "that kind of thing doesn't happen in a Muslim country."  Khadra is the pen name of Mohammed Moulessehoul, an ex-officer in the Algerian army (an army that was as brutally murderous as the terrorists it fought).  He is now in French exile and has revealed his true identity.

Now, Morituri is very "noir" in tone; that is,very dark with lots of exaggerated "attitude" on the part of its hero, so I don't really know how to judge it on the realism scale.  That, though, is part of the fun - Yasmina Khadra has created an Algerian Philip Marlowe, out-Chandlering Raymond Chandler himself.

Tallgrass

In Tallgrass, Sandra Dallas explores one of the more shameful aspects of American World War II history. Shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese-Americans were rounded up and imprisoned in various interment camps spread around the country. Tallgrass is the story of the impact one of those camps had on the locals of rural Ellis, Colorado, and those citizens that were forced to live within its fences for the rest of the war.

The story is told largely in the voice of young Rennie Stroud who lives on a Colorado beet farm with her parents and older brother. Rennie is well-placed to tell the story since her family’s farm is within easy walking distance of the new internment camp suddenly thrust upon the community. The townspeople are immediately curious about, and generally suspicious of, the newcomers, believing that the government has confined them to the camp for good reason. The Strouds, however, are an open-minded bunch, believing their new neighbors to be nothing more than a group of American citizens suffering unfair treatment at the hands of their government. This does not make the family at all popular with the majority of their fellow townspeople.

When a young girl, a friend of Rennie’s, is found brutally raped and murdered, most everyone in Ellis blames the Tallgrass camp for bringing this kind of criminal to their little community. Those already inclined to mistreat the camp’s residents verbally, are now even more inclined to threaten them physically and revengeful violence is only narrowly averted – for the moment.

Rennie has a different take on the situation. As more and more of the county’s young men, including her brother, volunteer to join the fight, it becomes difficult for the local farmers to plant and harvest their crops. In what the Strouds see as a win-win situation, they finally get permission to hire three young Japanese internees to help keep their farm solvent. As conditions continue to change, the family hires the sister of one of the boys and, eventually, two other Japanese women to help with the increased household workload. Over time, and despite the animosity aimed their way, the Strouds come to think of their Japanese employees as their extended family.

Tallgrass is a coming-of-age novel for Rennie Stroud, but it is equally a coming-of-age story for the whole town of Ellis, Colorado. That Rennie does a better job with the process is sad but not surprising. As the news from the Pacific front grows worse, and more local boys are killed or wounded there, the camp and its residents are often threatened with violence from the locals. The local sheriff finds it difficult to identify the murderer in their midst, and the Tallgrass internees will never be trusted or accepted for who they are until he does.

Tallgrass is a worthy addition to World War II home-front fiction, especially as it relates to what happened to Japanese-Americans during the war. It is written in a manner, and at a level, that makes it more effective as a Young Adult novel than as something aimed at an adult readership, however. The Strouds are just too perfect to be entirely believable and the Japanese characters are generally of the stereotypical variety. This one is perfect for middle and high school libraries and could be used as good supplemental material in history classes at either of those levels.

Rated at: 3.0 for Adult Readers
Rated at: 4.0 for YA Readers

The Glass Rainbow

By my count, The Glass Rainbow is number 18 in James Lee Burke’s wonderful Dave Robicheaux series – and I have read and enjoyed them all.  In the Robicheaux series, Burke has created two of my all-time favorite fictional characters: Dave Robicheaux and Clete Purcel.  Amidst all the violence and mayhem found in a typical Dave Robicheaux novel, these two men manage to nurture one of the most touching male friendships ever created by a novelist.  It is a friendship that literally keeps both men alive, and it is hard even to imagine what either of their lives would have been like if the two had never met.

The Glass Rainbow is about the search for a serial killer who has killed seven young women in Jefferson Davis Parish, just minutes from Dave’s home in New Iberia, Louisiana.   Suspecting that Herman Stanga, a lowlife New Iberia pimp, might know something about several of the victims, Clete and Dave confront him at his home.  Their visit to Stanga’s home gets the attention of someone who does not appreciate their efforts, and the race is on.   Will they survive the investigation?  Will Dave’s wife and daughter survive it? 

Seldom has Dave Robicheaux been confronted by evil of this magnitude.   It is said that psychopaths recognize, and have a way of finding, each other.  Dave and Clete are dealing with a snakes’ nest of psychopaths this time – and not all the snakes in it appear to be poisonous before they bite, leading to what is perhaps the most nerve-wracking finale of any book in the series (I could barely turn the pages fast enough to get through it).

Without a doubt, The Glass Rainbow is one of the best books in the series.  It is filled with action and the long-running characters face more personal danger in it than they have in a while.  But what makes it even more special is the way that Burke share’s Dave’s innermost thoughts and philosophies with the reader.  Dave Robicheaux is a thinker:

            “Someone once said that had Sir Walter Scott not written his romantic accounts of medieval chivalry, there would have been no War Between the States.  I doubted if that was true, either.  I believed the legend of the Lost Cause was created after the fact, when the graves of Shiloh and Antietam became vast stone gardens reminding us forever that we imposed this suffering on ourselves.”  (Page 121)

            “How about oil?  Its extraction and production in Louisiana had set us free from economic bondage to the agricultural oligarchy that had ruled the state from antebellum days well into the mid-twentieth century.  But we discovered that our new corporate liege lord had a few warts on his face, too.  Like the Great Whore of Babylon, Louisiana was always desirable for her beauty and not her virtue, and when her new corporate suitor plunged into things, he left his mark.”  (Page 242)

“In the alluvial sweep of the land, I thought I could see the past and the present and the future all at once, as though time were not sequential in nature but took place without a beginning or an end, like a flash of green light rippling outward from the center of creation, not unlike a dream inside the mind of God.”  (Page 243)

“George Orwell once wrote that people are always better than we think they are.  They are more kind, more loving, more brave and decent…But too often there are times when our fellow human beings let us down, and when they do, all of us are the less for it.”  (Page 293)

“Don’t let anyone tell you that age purchases you freedom from fear of death.  As Clete Purcel once said in describing his experience in a battalion aid station in the Central Highlands, it’s a sonofabitch.  Men cry out for their mothers; they grip your hands with an intensity that can break bones; their breath covers your face like damp cobwebs and tries to draw you inside them.  As George Orwell suggested long ago, if you can choose the manner of your death, let it be in hot blood and not in bed.”  (Pages 351-352)

And my favorite:

            “Because that’s the way I’ll always see her.  A father never sees the woman.  He always sees the little girl.”  (Page 390)

Despite all he has experienced or witnessed in his life, Dave Robicheaux is still a white knight; he plays by the rules even when confronting the most repulsive of the bad guys.  Protecting those who cannot protect themselves is his mission in life, and he does it well.  One day there will be no Dave Robicheaux in New Iberia and it will be a poorer place.  So will the inner-world of readers everywhere.  James Lee Burke proves here that he is still very much on top of his game.

Rated at: 5.0

The Nook vs. the iPad

To be fair to Barnes & Noble and the Nook, I'm posting a comparison today between the Nook and the iPad.  In passing, the Kindle is also mentioned and, in fact, the Kindle App for the iPad is used for comparison purposes to the Nook.  Now, I suppose I need to find something featuring the Sony Reader just to cover all the major e-reader bases.

It's Kindle vs. iPad

Those of you considering the purchase of an e-book reader might want to take a look at this short comparison of the Apple iPad to the Amazon Kindle.  The video impresses me as a fair representation of the strengths and weaknesses of both devices.  I have had an iPad since July of last year and I am loving it more every week, it seems.  In my opinion, it's no contest even with the substantial difference in price because the iPad is capable of doing so many things so well.  I have the basic version that, with accessories, cost me about $575.  I like the idea of having a multi-purpose device instead of yet another single-use gadget, but that's just me.  Take a look; I hope this helps a bit if you're on the fence.

Wolf: The Lives of Jack London

Jack London, the man who several years before Mark Twain’s death unseated Twain to become America’s favorite author, was a man of contrasts.  Illegitimately born into a poverty stricken environment, for much of his adult life London would employ a full domestic staff, including a personal valet.  Even as an avowed and outspoken advocate of socialism, he saw nothing wrong with living the luxurious lifestyle his personal labor eventually earned him.  He was a staunch defender of the rights of “native peoples” but is said to have been a “racialist,” believing that no good would come from a mixing of the races.

London’s era was one still very much influenced by the sexual mores of the Victorian Age but he was always sexually active, even when married, and made little effort to explain his actions to either of his wives.  He enjoyed the company of children but was never close to the two daughters he fathered by his first wife, allowing them effectively to slip out of his life.  Those who knew him considered London a “spiritual” man, but he detested the way that religion helped maintain what he saw as an illegitimate and unjust society and considered himself an atheist.  He was capable of superb writing but was willing to do as much “hackwork” as it took to support his lifestyle.

Even in death, London was a mystery.  That he died in his sleep at age 40 is not disputed; the cause of his death, however, is still open to discussion.  Did London die of an accidental overdose of morphine or, as many suspect, was he so depressed that he decided to take his own life that night.  He was known to be upset about his health and the shape he was in but adamantly refused to change the lifestyle that was rapidly killing him.  Even had he not died as he did, it is unlikely that Jack London would ever have seen his fifties.

James L. Haley

All of this is explored in Wolf: The Lives of Jack London, James Haley’s recent Jack London biography.  Hayley approaches London’s life by dividing it into segments based on the various occupations that occupied him during his 40 years.  Those occupations range from what London called “work beast” (when, as a youth, he worked in places such as a pickle factory for ten cents an hour) to pirate, seal hunter, hobo, student, gold prospector, writer, muckraker, war correspondent, sailor and rancher.  Each of these jobs is given its own chapter treatment; other chapters include those on London the “lover” and London the “celebrity.”

Haley’s technique works well to explain how Jack London managed to reinvent himself as a world-class author.  This approach also puts a human face on a man who has too often in the past been stereotyped simply as a socialist/communist who happened to write very good novels or as a man’s man who traveled to the wilds of Alaska and the South Seas in search of new topics for his books.  The real Jack London, as it turns out was more motivated by finding a way to make a living with his mind rather than his back than by anything else.  That he succeeded to such a degree is a tale resembling those stories that so enthralled London himself as a young reader in San Francisco.

The odds were heavily against Jack London, but he made it.  James Haley tells how London did it in a very readable, and memorable, biography that is sure to please fans of literary biography.

Rated at: 5.0