NYC Day 37: In Which I Rest and Immerse Myself in the Wide Sargasso Sea

The elderly Jean Rhys (at left) at her home in Cheriton Fitzpaine, Devon

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With the temperature across New York City heading for the 90 degree mark, the humidity levels not far behind, and city authorities issuing heat warnings and opening local cooling centers, I decided the smart thing to do would be to stay in. Even the promise of chilly air-conditioning at Brookfield Place could not entice me to descend into what would have been a stifling subway system for the 40 minute ride downtown.

There was nothing for it but to crank up the portable air-con unit in the apartment, and engage in some writing, reading, and account balancing. And since I have been making good use of my commuting time over the past few weeks reading several of the books I have purchased thus far, I thought I might add some comments about one of those titles in today's post.

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WIDE SARGASSO SEA*
Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys tells the story of the 'mad woman in the attic' who is apparently an unseen figure in Charlotte Bronte's, Jane Eyre (a book I have not read), and what a sad and melancholy -- but beautifully written tale it is.

The dust jacket notes: Set in the Caribbean, it's heroine is Antoinette Cosway, a sensual and protected young woman who is sold into marriage to the prideful Rochester. Rhys portrays a society so driven by hatred, so skewed in its sexual relations, that it can literally drive a woman out of her mind.

[Jean] Rhys was born in Roseau, the capital of Dominica, an island in the British West Indies. Her father, William Rees Williams, was a Welsh doctor and her mother, Minna Williams, nee Lockhart, was a third-generation Dominican Creole of Scots ancestry. ("Creole" was broadly used in those times to refer to any person born on the island, whether they were of European or African descent or both.) [Source: Wikipedia]

In the introduction, written by Francis Wyndham we learn:

For many years, Jean Rhys has been haunted by the figure of the first Mrs. Rochester  - the mad wife in Jane Eyre. The present novel ... is her story. Not, of course, literally so: it is in no sense a pastiche of Charlotte Bronte and exists in its own right, quite independent of Jane Eyre. But the Bronte book provided the initial inspiration for an imaginative feat almost uncanny in its vivid intensity. From her personal knowledge of the West Indies, and her reading of their history, Miss Rhys knew about the mad Creole heiresses in the early nineteenth century, whose dowries were only an additional burden to them: products of an inbred, decadent, expatriate society, resented by the recently freed slaves whose superstitions they shared, they languished uneasily in the oppressive beauty of their tropical surroundings, ripe for exploitation. It is one of these that [Jean Rhys] has chosen for her...heroine.

Among other things, the book is quite open about the resentment and racism that 'the recently freed slaves' (mentioned by Francis Wyndham in her introduction), express towards the expat British. Terms like 'white cockroach,', 'white nigger' and other epithets are hurled by the local children at their white counterparts, and the understandable resentment that many former slaves feel towards their former owners and overseers, bubble along beneath the surface of all their post-colonial relationships.

From time to time these resentments boil over, leading to one of the key incidents early in the book when the family home is attacked by a mob of angry villagers. This incident results in the death of a minor, but important character in terms of the arc of the book, and without giving more of the story away, let me just say it's all downhill from there. However, the writing is so evocative of time and place, so infused with detailed descriptions of landscape and the natural beauty of the island settings, that it was impossible to turn away and not look at the horror that was slowly smothering Antoinette and the increasingly poisonous relationship with her new husband, Rochester.

It is a relationship that begins to sour soon after their wedding, even as they settle in to their honeymoon in a remote location along with several servants and other staff. Antoinette's newly minted British-born husband has no understanding of the norms, mores, and culture of the islanders he has landed amongst, and even less interest in learning about or understanding them, thus setting the scene for conflict and misunderstanding that spirals increasingly out of control.

I was reading the book on the subway a couple of days ago, and as I closed the book and began putting it away in my bag, I heard a female voice say, "Sir, I love that book!"

When I looked up at the young woman who had spoken, I agreed that the book was a great read, and replied to the effect that although I had not yet finished it, this was a book that I would want to read again. She agreed and said that she had read it three times herself, and that it was one of her favorite books. I added that this was a book that had been on my 'radar' for many years, and that I was only now getting to read it, and that I was very happy that I had finally gotten around to doing so.

It was a brief conversation if only because I was about to get out at the next subway station, but I could see that other commuters were showing interest in what we were saying. Unfortunately, it didn't occur to me to hold the book up so they could see what we were talking about. If something like this were to happen again with another book (unlikely), I will make sure I do just that.

This book is definitely a 'keeper'. The writing borders on the poetic much of the time, and despite the overall mood of dread I had as I progressed through the story, I knew this would be a book I will keep and read again at some future date. I even thought I might read Jane Eyre, but Rhys's book may have spoiled any pleasure I may derive from doing that. If you have read Jane Eyre and wondered about the mysterious woman in the attic, this is definitely the book for you. I recommend it highly.

More information
Wikipedia entry for Jean Rhys... 
Wikipedia entry for Wide Sargasso Sea...

*Wide Sargasso Sea becomes book number 28 in my self-imposed 52-Book-Year Challenge, in which I aim to read an average of one book per week throughout the year.

Any questions, comments or suggestions? How about complaints or compliments? Let me know via the comments box below.

Jean Rhys at her cottage in Devon. 

WEEK FIVE EXPENSES*

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ONGOING WEEKLY EXPENSES

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Museum Memberships $19.15 ($25.15)

AT&T SIM card $16.25 ($25.38)

MTA Pass $30.25 ($39.92)

Accommodation $152.00 ($200.00)

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Total Ongoing: US$217.65 (AU$290.45)

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ADDITIONAL DAILY EXPENSES

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Sunday, 16 July | Expenses $41.75 ($53.40)

Monday 17, July | Expenses $53.10 ($66.95)

Tuesday 18, July | Expenses $85.53 ($111.05)

Wednesday 19, July | Expenses $16.85 ($21.15)

Thursday 20, July | Expenses $86.50 ($114.95)

Friday 21, July | Expenses $23.00 ($29.05)

Saturday 22, July | Expenses $0.0

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TOTAL: US$306.73 | AU$396.55

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Total Expenses Week 5: US$524.38 (AU$687.00

*Figures in brackets are Australian dollar amounts

My-52-Book-Year #23: The Virginian

The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains, by Owen Wister was published in 1902, and is said to be the first ‘true Western’ ever written. As such it can also claim to have been the precursor to a new genre of novels that has since gone on to spawn a million others. 

The book is dedicated to Theodore Roosevelt who, judging from the dedication must have read early drafts of the book and provided comments and feedback to Wister.

The Dedication reads: Some of these pages you have seen, some you have praised, one stands new-written because you blamed it; and all, my dear critic, beg leave to remind you of their author’s changeless admiration.

The story begins with the arrival of an unnamed narrator (the Tenderfoot) in Medicine Bow, Wyoming, and his encounter with a tall, handsome stranger (the Virginian), who remains nameless throughout the novel—tho’ late in the book he is referred to as ‘Jeff’ by one of the other characters, although it is not clear if this is his real name. 

The novel revolves around the Virginian and the life he lives, first as a cowboy and general hand, and then later as a foreman on the ranch of Judge Henry Taylor. Woven throughout the book, which covers a period of around five years, is the Virginian’s barely controlled conflict with his arch enemy, a man called Trampas, as well as the Virginian’s romance with the pretty schoolteacher, Molly Stark Wood. 

All the Western tropes are here, gunfights, Indian raiders, cattle rustlers, rattlesnakes, hangings, and an on again/off again romance between two seemingly mismatched lovers from vastly different backgrounds and social classes. With all these elements to play with, Wister skilfully weaving together a tale of action, violence and betrayal, hate and revenge, and love and friendship.

By and large I enjoyed the story, and thought that Clint Eastwood in his younger days would have played the character perfectly. I’m surprised Eastwood never directed himself in the film. Actually, now that I think of it, Eastwood did direct himself in other variations of this story. While not always nameless, as played by Eastwood the tall, dark stranger turns up in movies like Pale Rider, High Plains Drifter, A Fistful of Dollars, For A few Dollars More, and other great Westerns.

But back to the novel. I did think the Virginian was just too perfect for the setting and the historical period in which the book is placed. He was slow to anger, rarely raising his voice about anything, and was calm and measured in his responses to whatever affront may have been directed at him. He was self-assured, knew his strengths and weaknesses (not that he had any weaknesses), was clear-headed, decisive, a complete gentleman and … on and on and on. Seriously, this guy was simply too perfect for the period being written about.

The only lapse in his demeanour came when he was frustrated enough about something or someone to occasional utter a curse or two, although always under his breath. The narrator/Wister however did not feel that it was proper to actually share these curses with readers. It seems that the delicate dispositions of readers at the turn of the 19th century would not have been able to cope with this. The closest we get to a real curse comes when Trampas calls the Virginian a son-of-a-bitch (although that curse is written “…son-of-a—.” Clearly the word ‘bitch’ was deemed too coarse to spell out for the delicate eyes of readers in 1902!

By the way, the Virginian’s response to this epithet has become quite famous in its own right. Laying his pistol on the table at which he, Trampas and other cowboys have been playing cards, the Virginian delivers the now classic line, “When you call me that, smile!”

Several other passages from the book caught my attention, and I couldn’t help wondering at their origins. For example, in one passage of dialogue the character, “Scipio le Moyne, from Gallipolice, Ohio”, while referring to the villain Trampas says:

“Trampas is a rolling stone,” he said. “A rolling piece of mud,” corrected the Virginian. “Mud! That’s right. I’m a rolling stone. Sometimes I’d most like to quit being.”

Now I don’t for a minute assume that this is the first time the words, “I’m a rolling stone” are appearing for the first time in print—but then again who knows?

Some other brief quotes took my fancy as well. 

“When yu’ can’t have what you choose, yu’ just choose what you have.”

“In bets, in card games, in all horse transactions and other matters of similar business, a man must take care of himself, and wiser onlookers must suppress their wisdom and hold their peace.”

In other words, don't butt in when it's none of your business.

While the language of the novel is a little dated, The Virginian: A Horseman of The Plains is still worth setting aside some time for. The book is available as a free download from the Gutenberg Project website, as are eleven other titles by Owen Wister. Click here to download the eBook… 

- o0o -

Note: The cover illustration above is from the Early Bird Books eBook edition. This is not free but can be download from the iBooks store for just ninety-nine cents (higher charges may apply via iBooks stores in countries other than the United States).

My Current Reading List

~ I suspect that I am like most inveterate readers, in that I often have more than one book underway at any particular time. I don’t know why this is. What is it about some books that keep you glued to the page, reading late into the night, while others manage to keep you engaged for the first few chapters before your interest begins to tail off to the point you finally give up (though not completely), and you turn to that second or third book on your tottering pile of reading material stacked on the dresser next to your bed?

I also suspect that the comment about ‘not completely’ giving up is also true for many readers. Some half-read books sit next to my bed or on the bookcase in the lounge room for weeks and months, waiting patiently for my return. These books may not have the ability to keep me up late at night, but neither do they fall completely off my reading list. There is just enough of interest in the story they are telling to keep me on the hook, waiting for the right moment to take up the tale again.

As for my current reading list—the three books I have been juggling this month are Jimmy Breslin’s Table Money, J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, and Joseph Michael Reynolds’ Dead Ends, a book detailing—as the subtitle states—The Pursuit, Conviction, and Execution of Serial Killer Aileen Wuornos.

I started out the month with Table Money, by Jimmy Breslin. I have mentioned Breslin in other posts, noting that to date I have bought eight of his books. Of these eight I have read four titles, and Table Money was going to be my fifth Breslin book.

Table Money recounts the story of several generations of ‘sandhogs’, a name adopted by the tunnel workers who toiled beneath the streets of New York City carving out the subterranean tunnels that brought fresh water to the great metropolis. All the Breslin trademarks are here—hard working, and even harder drinking working class immigrants; corrupt politicians and union leaders; brutal bosses and their meaner henchmen who stand over the immigrant workers ensuring they remain unorganised and un-unionised; and long-suffering wives and their under-educated children.

Despite the glowing praise for the book (“…a serious literary novel, a superior work of fiction.”—The New York Times; “…a heavyweight saga in an era of welterweights,”—Los Angeles Times; and “…easily Breslin’s best novel.”—Library Journal), I found the going tough and put the book aside around a quarter of the way through.

Last week I bought J.D. Vance’s much acclaimed memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. Subtitled, A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis—the ‘culture in crisis’ being that of white working-class Americans. James David Vance grew up in the Rust Belt city of Middletown, Ohio, and the Appalachian town of Jackson, Kentucky. His grandparents were “dirt poor and in love,” and moved north from Kentucky to Ohio to escape the endemic poverty that surrounded them in Jackson. 

They raised a middle-class family, which eventually included the author who went on to graduate from Yale Law School, and who has now written a timely book that may provide some of the answers to the many questions being asked about the rise of the alt-right in America and the unexpected rise of Donald Trump to the Presidency of the United States.

Again, despite my interest in America and American politics, and despite the fact that I was settling into the book quite comfortably, I somehow managed to distract myself by working on entries for this blog, and by the other general reading that I do. And then, wouldn’t you know it, before I could get back to Hillbilly Elegy, along came Aileen Wournos.

Wournos was one of those atypical phenomena that thankfully come along all too rarely, that is, a female serial killer. I had seen and been greatly moved by the 2002 film, Monster, in which Charlize Theron portrayed Wounos with a stunning Academy Award winning performance that would earn her an Oscar for Best Actress—so when I saw the eBook being offered at a discount for just USD$1.99, I jumped at the chance to buy it. 

Joseph Michael Reynolds was a journalist for Reuters at the time Aileen Wuornos was embarking on her late-1980s killing spree, and it was Reynolds who first broke the story in the national media. First published in 1992, Dead Ends traces the story of Wuornos, a person who might have fitted very well into J.D. Vance’s book as just another of the millions of down on their luck working Joe’s with few prospects, and even fewer options for escaping the hole they had found themselves in. Holes, it should be said, that they mostly dig themselves.

Here at last is a book that has managed to keep me up at night. As I write, I am down to the final few chapters, and with less than an hour or so of reading remaining, I will finish the book later today. I will then make my way back to Hillbilly Elegy, and before the month is out, I will take another look at Jimmy Breslin’s novel. Having said that, there are dozens of other books straining for my attention, and any one of those might win out over Table Money or for that matter Hillbilly Elegy.

My 52-Book-Year: The Ways of White Folks

 Back in February, in a post titled, Writers From Life’s Other Side I wrote about how over the past few years I have been seeking out writers that have slipped under my radar, despite the accolades they have won for their writing. One of those writer’s is the great African-American author, Langston Hughes.

I have been aware of Langston Hughes for a long time—years in fact—but I had never read any of his poetry, plays, novels or short stories until I read The Ways Of White Folks.

James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967) was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form called jazz poetry. Hughes is best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance in New York City. He famously wrote about the period that "the negro was in vogue", which was later paraphrased as "when Harlem was in vogue”.

The Ways of White Folks is a collection of short stories first published by Hughes in 1934. Hughes wrote the book during a year he spent living in Carmel, California. Arnold Rampersad, in A Centennial Tribute to Langston Hughes writes that the collection is, “marked by pessimism about race relations, as well as a sardonic realism or, contextually: humorous racism,” and adds that the collection is among Hughes’ best known works. 

The Ways of White Folks consists of 14 short stories, including "Cora Unashamed”, “Home”, “Passing”, and “Father and Son.” The fourteen stories cover the gamut of white/black relationships, and Hughes is not shy about using the 'N' word—that is nigger—often, and in all its shades of meaning.

The collection opens with "Cora Unashamed" — described by David Herbert Donald (in a 1996 review for the New York Times), as “…a brilliantly realized portrait of an isolated black woman in a small Middle Western town, who stoically survives her own sorrows but in the end lashes out against the hypocrisy of the whites who employ her.”

Two of the stories, “Home”, and “Father and Son”, end with lynchings. In “Home,” Roy Williams, a brilliant young violinist returns to Hopkinsville, the small provincial Missouri town he left seven or eight years earlier to pursue a successful concert career in Europe (during the years between the two world wars). It is not long before Roy is confronted with the racism he had left behind years earlier:

“An uppty nigger,” said the white loafers when they saw him standing, slim and elegant, on the station platform in the September sunlight, surrounded by his bags with the bright stickers. Roy had got off a Pullman—something unusual for a Negro in those parts.“God damn!” said one of the white loafers.

As he departs the station platform Roy hears someone mutter, “Nigger.” His skin burned. For the first time in half a dozen years he felt his colour. He was home.”

Over a few short weeks, the resentment from the ‘loafers’ as Hughes calls them, continues to build until their animosity and envy boils over into uncontrolled rage at this black man, who had the temerity to escape the confines of his home town and travel to Europe, where he played the music of “Brahms and Beethoven, Bach and Cèsar Franck” in the great concert halls of Paris and Berlin.

When Miss Reese, “An old maid musicianer at the all white high school,” invites him to perform for her students, her well-meaning invitation only serves to stoke the anger and resentment from many in the town.

The students went home that afternoon and told their parents that a dressed-up nigger had come to school with a violin and played a lot of funny pieces nobody but Miss Reese liked. They went on to say that Miss Reese had grinned all over herself and cried, “Wonderful!” And had even bowed to the nigger when he went out!

The story ends when Roy takes a late night walk through the town centre, and is set upon by a mob who beat and kick him mercilessly. The final paragraph is both brutal and poetic:

The little Negro whose name was Roy Williams began to choke on the blood in his mouth. And the roar of their voices and the scuff of the feet were split by the moonlight into a thousand notes like a Beethoven sonata. And when the white folks left his brown body, stark naked, strung from a tree at the edge of the town, it hung there all night, like a violin for the wind to play.

Poster from the PBS American Collection
adaptation of Cora Unashamed (2000)

Clearly, Hughes pulls no punches in his depictions of 'white folks' and their foibles, fears, hates, contradictions, and murderous natures. To be black in America, when Hughes wrote these stories, was to live in fear that whites, well meaning and otherwise, had virtually free rein to do and say what they wanted when it came to the lives of the American negro in the years following the Civil War. The truly horrifying thing is realizing that today, in vast swathes of America, little seems to have changed.

All of the stories in this collection are brilliantly realized, and each one examines an aspect of the droll, horrifying, humorous, bizarre, and often mysterious—ways of white folks. The stories are steeped in the violence, and confusion of Depression Era America, and the collection immediately drew me into its orbit of small town Southern life, and big city mysteries.

On May 22, 1967, Hughes died in New York City at the age of 65 from complications after abdominal surgery related to prostate cancer. His ashes are interred beneath a floor medallion in the middle of the foyer in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. It is the entrance to an auditorium named for him. The design on the floor is an African cosmogram entitled Rivers. Within the center of the cosmogram is the line: "My soul has grown deep like the rivers,” from his poem The Negro Speaks of Rivers, which is reproduced here:

The Negro Speaks Of Rivers

I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset

I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

~ Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes is surely a writer I need to read more of.

More Information about Langston Hughes 

On Wikipedia...

At Poets Org… and Poem Hunter… 

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture…

The Silicon Jungle, 1985

During one of my periodic trawls through the Gutenberg website, I spotted a recent upload for The Silicon Jungle, which was published in 1985, and which is about when I first started mucking around with computers! I did a quick scan through the book and had to marvel at how arcane the world of computers was, way back when the technology was just beginning to find its feet so to speak.

Rothman’s computer of choice at the time was a Kaypro II, which he considered to be the perfect computer for his needs. I can see why—it had a very impressive—wait for it—64K of RAM. Yes, dear reader, that really is 64,000 kilobytes of RAM (Random Access Memory). Incredibly, the file size of the book cover seen here is a very modest (by today’s standards), 99,000 kilobytes.

Reading through books like The Silicon Jungle, I am reminded of the much quoted statement that was once attributed to Thomas J. Watson, the chairman and CEO of IBM from 1911—1956, which went something like: ‘I think there is a world market for maybe five computers’.

Modern research suggests that it is highly doubtful that Watson ever made this statement, but be that as it may, many other authors and experts have made their own assertions about computers and the software and hardware that is needed to run them, and Rothman was one of them. To choose just one example of many, try reading his thoughts on the humble computer mouse without laughing out loud, thirty-two years after he wrote them.

“If you’re a trained, high-volume production typist,” asked Seymour Rubinstein, the WordStar* developer, “what are you going to do with a mouse except feed it cheese?” Score one for Rubinstein. He says mice are great—if you have three hands. Doing graphics? A mouse, maybe. But damned if I’m going to take my hands off the keyboard to push the cursor from one spot on the screen to the next. It’s simply too much wasted motion. I instead just press the cursor keys right above the main keyboard. Or I use WordStar’s cursor-moving commands. And even if I hadn’t learned touch typing a quarter century ago, I’d still wonder if a mouse for word processing wasn’t the Silicon Valley version of The Emperor’s New Clothes. Next time you’re in California, maybe you’ll see Apple execs naked in the streets as well as their hot tubs. Well, maybe not. The mouse could be a great marketing tool for sales reps peddling Macs or Apple IIc’s to people hoping to do word processing. But experienced typists? Many would probably groan over all the excursions that the mouse forced them to take from the main keyboard.

By the way, my first computer was a state-of-the-art Commodore 128D. So take that, Mr. Rothman. My system had double the memory of your flashy Kaypro II. Sadly (or should that be, happily?), it wasn’t long before Rothman’s Kaypro II, and my Commodore 128D were superseded by much more powerful computers with virtually unlimited amounts of RAM and hard drive storage. If you don’t believe me, look at the advert here for a 10MB hard disk—a bargain at just $3,398.00. At that price, I bet people were snapping them up!

*Note: WordStar was one of the most popular early word processing programs. Of course, it was soon to be relegated to the dustbin of software history with the rise and rise of Microsoft Windows and the new graphics-based word processing software which included MS Word, WordPerfect, Lotus Word Pro—and those pesky mice that somehow found their way into the hands of every computer user.

53,000 Free Books and Counting

I know I have mentioned the Gutenberg website before, but it won’t hurt to mention it again. The site is a clearing house for almost fifty-four-thousand books, all of which are in the public domain, and all of which can be either read online, or downloaded for free to eReaders such as Kindle’s, iPads and other portable devices that can use the ePub format. If you are a keen reader, and you have never checked out the site, you are surely missing out on a great treasury of amazing literature.

My 52-Book-Year #2: The Broken Shore

Peter Temple is one of Australia's best crime writer’s. He is a five-time winner of the Ned Kelly Award, Australia's most prestigious prize for crime fiction, and his novels have been published in at least 20 countries. He is also the writer behind the Jack Irish series that screened on Australian television last year—not that I had connected the two things (author/TV series) before I started to read The Broken Shore.

As per the standard tropes of the genre, our hero, Joe Cashin is plagued by the usual lawman's deficiencies: a failed relationship, smokes and drinks too much, is something of a loner, and has a hard-assed superior who thinks he alone has all the right answers, and who also thinks the crime at the heart of the book has been quickly solved and neatly wrapped up. Of course, Cashin does not agree and continues to follow up loose ends and new leads on his own. Needless to say, Cashin is proved right.

The story revolves around the brutal murder of a rich, elderly white man, at the (possible) hands of three Aboriginal youths. There is plenty of intrigue, false leads, dark secrets, small Australian country town politics, and seamy murders to keep lovers of the genre happy and guessing throughout the book.  

The quality of writing is a big step above most of the crime fiction I have read over the past couple of years. Temple writes were others fear to tread. He makes liberal and frequent use of the coarsest of everyday language such as c - - t, f - - k, and Australia’s versions of the ’N’ word, abo and boong. His police officers are believable, and their talk rings true, and happily, Temple doesn't waste a lot of time with filler of the sort I dislike so much in crime fiction—extended descriptions of landscape, streets, nature, and the back stories of his lead characters. When he does mention these elements they are brief and too the point. 

South African born, Peter Temple turned to fiction writing in the 1990s with the publication of his first Jack Irish novel, Bad Debts. This, and his subsequent Jack Irish novels (Black Tide, Dead Point, and White Dog) are set in Melbourne, and feature a protagonist who is both a lawyer and a gambler. In 2012, an ABC Television and German ZDF coproduction produced two full-length films of the first two Jack Irish books, with the international film star, Guy Pearce in the title role. How he juggles the two potentially conflicted occupations (law and gambling), is what helped to make the television programs, at least, great viewing.

Temple has also written An Iron Rose, Shooting Star, and In the Evil Day (known as Identity Theory in the US), as well as The Broken Shore and its semi-sequel, Truth. Based on this one story, I would be more than happy to seek out more of Peter Temple's work, and there is a lot of it, apart from the four Jack Irish novels.

—o0o—

My 52-Book-Year #1: Apex Hides The Hurt

Apex Hides The Hurt, by Colson Whitehead, was the first book I read at the beginning of January to kick off my 52-Book-Year Challenge. For a book that spends a lot of time talking about the importance of names, it was clearly a deliberate choice to feature a central character who remains nameless throughout the book. The man, referred to throughout only as 'he', is a nomenclature specialist. That is, a person whose skill in the advertising and market world is the naming of product names.

Apex, an adhesive gauze in the style of Band-Aids is our anonymous heroes career-crowning glory, and the product 'hides the hurt' in more ways than one. In fact, it is so good at hiding the hurt, that he loses a toe because the product masks an injury that festers and putrefies beneath the product's secure covering (sorry, did I just give away an important plot point? Not entirely, but never mind). Luckily, this is only part of the story Whitehead carefully unravels.

The main plot centres around our anonymous main character and his contract to help the council of the small town of Winthrop resolve an internal fight to decide on a new name. The three main choices being New Prospera, favored by a local software magnate; or to keep the existing name, Winthrop, favoured by a descendant of the town’s namesake; or to revert to the original name of the town, Freedom, since the town was originally founded by free blacks.

Written into his contract before our specialist agreed to take on the contract, was a clause that stipulated the town elders must accept whatever name he decides on. By the end of the book he decides to name the town… — oh, okay then, I won’t give that away. Before making this decision our protagonist must learn the history of the town, and that of its leading citizens, while getting to know the contesting forces, and forging alliances where he can. The book is filled with wry humor, and much insight into the world of the nomenclature specialist.

I was particularly taken with this sentence referring to the Hotel Winthrop where our consultant stays while working on the problem at hand; Whitehead observes—or is it our consultant—that, "It was a good place to make a bad decision, and in particular, a bad decision that would affect a great many people."

On its release, the book garnered mixed, but generally positive reviews with the New York Times placing it among its list of the 100 Most Notable Books of the Year. The Library Journal praised the book, noting that Whitehead does Shakespeare one better by posing the question, “What's in a name, and how does our identity relate to our own sense of who we are?” The San Francisco Chronicle gave the novel a mixed review, commenting, "It's pure joy to read writing like this, but watching Whitehead sketch out a minor character's essence with one stroke, while breathtaking, makes one wish the same treatment was afforded the people who ostensibly inhabit the novel's complex ideas." 

Finally, Jennifer Reese, writing for Entertainment Weekly, called the book "a blurry satire of American commercialism", adding, "it may not mark the apex of Colson Whitehead's career, but it brims with the author's spiky humor and intelligence." Ignoring the obvious pun in her comment, Jennifer was right about the book not being the high point in Whitehead’s career. That was to come ten years later when The Underground Railroad, his latest book, was published in 2016.

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Thanks to Wikipedia for providing some background information about Colson Whitehead, and for the various newspaper and magazine reviews quoted in this article.

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Readers interested in reading Apex Hides The Hurt, or The Underground Railroad may choose to do so by purchasing either the print or eBook versions via the links below. By doing so you will be supporting my blog at the same time. Thanks in anticipation.

Click here to purchase Apex Hides The Hurt…

Click here to purchase The Underground Railway…

Writers From Life's Other Side

A small selection of books bought this year

Over the past few years I have made a point of seeking out writers that have never been on my radar, despite the accolades they have garnered for their writing. I am especially interested in discovering and reading writers from ethnic backgrounds that offer a new and unique (for me), view of life that I have never experienced or imagined. Additionally, I have been seeking out male and female writers of colour, who tend to add another layer of insight and experience to their writing that non-white male and female writers are simply unable to provide.

Among my female 'discoveries' have been Maya Angelou (I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings); Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God); Jesmyn Ward (Men We Reaped, and Salvage The Bones); and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (That Thing Around Your Neck, and Americanah).

Male writers of colour that have also come to my attention and join my list of new 'discoveries' include the brilliant and insightful Ta-Nehisi Coates (The Beautiful Struggle, and his stunning follow-up, Between The World And Me); Teju Cole (Every Day Is For The Thief); Colson Whitehead (Apex Hides The Hurt); Ernest J. Gaines (A Gathering of Old Men); and Daniel Black, whose recent book The Coming, I examined here...

Still more of my recent book buying adventures

Of course, I am not completely ignorant about the pantheon of great African-American writers who were, or are contemporaries of the above writers. Men such as Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, W.E.B DuBois and Ralph Ellison are names I have been familiar with for many years. Of these four writers, the only one I had read was James Baldwin. Indeed, earlier this year I reread two of Baldwin's now classic essay collections, Nobody Knows My Name (from 1961), and The Fire Next Time (1963).

I had read these and other books by James Baldwin during my 20's, but was motivated to read them again because two contemporary writers, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Jesmyn Ward have responded to Baldwin's famous essay, The Fire Next Time, by publishing in these past couple of years, Between The World And Me (Coates, 2015), and a collection of modern essays edited by Ward called The Fire This Time (2016).

Until recent years, my knowledge of female minority writers has been all but non-existent. I have read Toni Morrison over the years, and while I was familiar with Alice Walker and her book, The Color Purple, I had not, and still have not, read that or any other of her books. To be honest, I can not recall having read a novel by another woman of colour before Toni Morrison, which, for an avid reader like myself, feels like a terrible admission to be making.

Clearly I have a lot of catching up to do, and the list of authors, both male and female that I am adding to my reading list, continues to grow and expand. I just hope I have the time and energy to do the authors and their books, justice.

Here are links to some of the books I have read (or plan to read) this year...

• Between The World And Me, and The Beautiful Struggle, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Salvage The Bones, and Men We Reaped, by Jesmyn Ward
• The Underground Railroad, and Apex Hides The Hurt, by Colson Whitehead

All are worth reading.

My 52-Book-Year Challenge

Just a few of the eBooks on my iPad 

Welcome to my 52-book-year challenge. I have always been an avid reader. My mother used to recall how, as I child, I could often be found in a quiet corner of the large garden surrounding our home reading comics and books.

This love of reading helped guarantee good English grades throughout my school years, and the enjoyment and knowledge I get from books has continued throughout my life until here I am, at age 68, still trying to match the rate of my book reading with the pace of my book buying.

Already this year I have purchased 32 print books, and eight eBooks! I have read eleven books to date, and my goal is to read a minimum of 52 books by the end of the year. I managed to do this last year, despite spending three months in New York City (from where, by the way, I returned to Australia with a small case filled with books).

In 2015, I read a total of 90 books. No wonder I needed to invest in a new pair of reading glasses! Of course, I have not been able to maintain this reading pace all my life. Work and family obligations, as well as other interests and activities, often got in the way of my reading habit, and ate into much of the spare leisure time I had to devote to my book collection. However, now that I am retired I seem to have hours to spare, and when not online reading through my daily newspaper and magazine updates from the New Yorker, New York Times, The Guardian, and other online publications, I make time to work through my ever expanding collection of books.

Given the extent of my current book collection, both in print and digital form, I have more than enough books to keep me reading for the next couple of years before I have to supplement my reading list. However, I simply can't walk past a bookshop (whether selling new, secondhand or remaindered books), without stopping to browse the titles on display.

My voracious appetite for books ranges across fields and genres that include history, crime, travel, literature, philosophy, politics, the arts (music and film), and many others. The genres I rarely if ever read include romance, historical fiction, food related titles, fantasy novels and far too many other genres to mention. There are simply not enough hours in the day, or years left in my life to read all the books I would like to be able to read.

I will endeavor to add reviews of all, or most of the books I read to this blog as the year progresses.

My 52-Book-Year #11: The Coming

In The Coming, Daniel Black recounts the horror surrounding the capture of hundreds of native Africans, the weeks-long sea journey to America, and the subsequent sale into slavery of those few hardy native men and women who survived the brutality meted out to them at every step along the way.

In his Dedication to the book, Black writes:

“This book is dedicated to the memory and celebration of African souls lost in the Atlantic Ocean. We have not forgotten you. You are our strength. We, your children, exalt you and sing of your glory forever. This is also for those who reached land but never made it home. Your struggle was not in vain. We remember you. We name our children after you. We travel to Mother Africa and take you with us. You are home again.”

This is not any easy book to read. There are no snappy one-liners, no jokes, and little to ameliorate the constant horror that unfolds across some 280 pages. The book's narrator, recalls in unrelenting detail the almost constant abuse (beatings, whippings, rapes, and murders), experienced by the hundreds of captives from the moment of their captivity, to the moment they either died during the voyage or were sold into a life of bondage and slavery.

Lest readers of The Coming think that the author is overstating the events he describes in his novel, let me quote in full from The Irish Penny Journal, dated Saturday, November 28, 1840 (#22, Vol.1):

HORRORS OF THE SLAVE TRADE.—Commander Castle, R.N., while on service with the preventive squadron in 1828, in command of H.M.S. Medina, captured the Spanish brig El Juan, with 407 slaves on board. It appeared that, owing to a press of sail during the chase, the El Juan had heeled so much as to alarm the negroes, who made a rush to the grating. The crew thought they were attempting to rise, and getting out their arms, they fired upon the wretched slaves through the grating, till all was quiet in the hold. When Captain Castle went on board, the negroes were brought up, one living and one dead shackled together; it was an awful scene of carnage and blood; one mass of human gore. Captain Castle said he never saw anything so horrible in his life.

In the year 1831, the Black Joke and Fair Rosamond fell in with the Rapido and Regulo, two slave vessels, off the Bonny river. On perceiving the cruisers they attempted to make their escape up the river; but finding it impracticable, they ran into a creek, and commenced pitching the negroes overboard. The Fair Rosamond came up in time to save 212 slaves out of the Regulo, but before she could secure the other, she had discharged her whole human cargo into the sea. Captain Huntley, who was then in command of the Rosamond, in a letter, remarks—“The scene occasioned by the horrid conduct of the Rapido I am unable to describe; but the dreadful extent to which the human mind is capable of falling was never shown in a more painfully humiliating manner than on this occasion, when, for the mere chance of averting condemnation of property amounting to perhaps 3000l., not less than 250 human beings were hurled into eternity with utter remorselessness.”

Note: A Google Maps search suggests that the Bonny River mentioned in the above quote is in the region of Port Harcourt/Bonny Island, Nigeria.


Despite the horrors he writes about, Daniel Black's writing is remarkable beautiful, even to the point of being poetic. The following excerpts will give readers a sense of the overall mood and feel of the book and Daniel’s writing.

We wailed to remind ourselves we still existed. We wailed the names of our women above, whose screeches and pleadings drove us mad. We wailed for those who’d be dead by morning. We wailed for sons without fathers. Fathers without families. Families without communities. Communities without elders. Elders without children.

Writing about the impending birth of a child conceived as a result of rape and abuse during the sea voyage from Africa to the New World, Black writes:

Crewmen had used her body as a plaything, and now she carried someone’s offspring. She wanted to love the child, at least the part that was hers, but how do you divide a living thing? How do you love one part and seek the destruction of the other? And which part belongs to you? This was a mystery with no answer.

In her book, Where The Twain Meet, published in 1922, the Australian author Mary Gaunt writes about her travels through the Caribbean and in particular Jamaica. In successive chapters, Gaunt traces some of the history of slavery and the introduction of slaves into the Caribbean and Jamaica.

There are far too many horrific examples of abuse to select from in Gaunt’s book, but these few quotes from just one chapter, The Castles On The Guinea Coast, should more than suffice to support the research that Daniel Black put into writing The Coming. Unfortunately, Mary Gaunt neglects to provide details for the books or reports she quotes from throughout Where The Twain Meet, which makes it impossible to know more about a man called Spear, who she quotes from often.

Spear, in his book on the American slave trade, tells how, in the days when the trade was being suppressed, the British warship Medina, on boarding a slaver off the Gallinas River, found no slaves on board. “The officers learned afterwards, however, that her captain really had had a mulatto girl in the cabin … but seeing that he was to be boarded, and knowing that the presence of one slave was enough to condemn the ship, he tied her to a kedge anchor and dropped her into the sea. And so, as is believed, he drowned his own unborn flesh and blood, as well as the slave girl.”

In another passage, Mary Gaunt quotes a man called, Phillips, who I assume is the captain of a slave ship.

“We had about twelve negroes did wilfully drown themselves, and others starved themselves to death, for ‘tis their belief that when they die they return home to their own country and friends again. I have been informed that some commanders have cut off the legs of the most wilful to terrify the rest, for they believe if they lose a member they cannot return home again. I was advised by some of my officers to do the same, but I could not be persuaded to entertain the least thoughts of it, much less to put in practice such barbarous cruelty to poor creatures who, excepting their want of Christianity, true religion (their misfortune, more than fault) are as much the works of God’s Hands and no doubt as dear to Him as ourselves.” Surprising words from a slaver!

Surprising words from a slaver, indeed! How Phillips, Spear and the many other captains of slave ships could rationalise the hypocrisy between their so-called Christianity and the truly awful brutality they inflicted on their captives is beyond comprehension.

In several extended passages, Black seems to be writing about the world and society as it is today, while at the same time offering a commentary about a life of excess and indulgence before capture:

The allure of things caught our eye and made many of us desire what none of us needed. We began to throw away food simply because we didn’t want it. We crafted so much garb we couldn’t wear it all. We made huts large enough for ten when there were only five. This was not everyone, but it was enough of us to plant the seeds of excess among a people who generally valued simplicity. We had invited this plague of materialism and it had come.

As much as I marvelled at Daniel Black’s skill as a writer, I became emotionally exhausted by the constant descriptions of physical, mental and sexual abuse that filled the pages of The Coming. Add to these the regular descriptions of degradation (men and women lying and living in their own excreta and urine, vomit, and menstrual blood, et cetera), and I found myself wishing the book would end so that I, and the narrator of this sorry tale could finally get some peace.

But then maybe that is Black's intention. There is no way to pretend that the history of slavery was anything but savage and barbaric. The capture and removal of millions of Africans to the so-called New World, deserves to be exposed in all its many abhorrent ways. Especially since the legacy of this hideous trade still resonates around the world today, especially in the United States.

Daniel Black has written numerous books including, Perfect Peace, They Tell Me of a Home, The Sacred Place, Listen To The Lambs, and Twelve Gates to The City.

Daniel Black's writing is eminently suitable for quoting, as the following two quotes pulled from the book illustrate:

Silence is the enemy of history, and history is all we have.

— Daniel Black, The Coming

Greed cares not who carries it. It simply longs to live. And it can live in the heart of any man.

— Daniel Black, The Coming

Despite the graphic nature of The Crossing, I commend Daniel Black for writing about this import subject, and highly recommend the book to my readers, who may wish to purchase the book from Amazon in either print or eBook format via the link below.

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UPDATED: MARCH 26, 2017

Since first publishing this review on February 19, I have read more about the slave trade and the awful abuses that took place during one of the worst periods of Western history. As a result I have updated the initial review with quotes from The Irish Penny Journal, dated Saturday, November 28, 1840 (#22, Vol.1), and from Mary Gaunt's 1922 book, Where The Twain Meet. Both of these publications can be found on Gutenberg.Org.

Metropolitan Museum (NYC) Free Publications

Screen shot of MetPublications Portal

During my 2010 visit to New York City, I paid a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (colloquially called the ‘Met’), and made a point of visiting The Cloisters, that branch of the Met Museum devoted to the art and architecture of medieval Europe. The Cloisters was a short 10-15 minute walk from where I was staying in Washington Heights. I wrote about that visit here, so I won’t cover old ground today. Instead I wanted to let you know about a treasure trove of online publications that all art lovers, visitors to New York, and New Yorkers themselves will surely want to explore further.

Like the online publications collection available at the Getty Museum website, the Metropolitan Museum has also made available hundreds of publications through their own online portal via the MetPublications section of the website.

About MetPublications

MetPublications is a portal to the Met's comprehensive publishing program with 1,500 titles, including books, online publications, and Bulletins and Journals from the last five decades. Current book titles that are in-print may be previewed and fully searched online, with a link to purchase the book. The full contents of almost all other book titles may be read online, searched, or downloaded as a PDF. For the Met's Bulletin, all but the most recent issue can be downloaded as a PDF. For the Met's Journal, all individual articles and entire volumes can be downloaded as a PDF.

I don’t know about you, dear reader, but when 1,500 publications from one of the world’s leading art institutions are made freely available to anyone with an internet connection, that constitutes a real treasure trove. Back in 2010, I was completely unaware of this resource, and anyway I didn’t have an iPad which would help me make the most of that knowledge―even if I did know about MetPublications. However, now I do have an iPad, and I do know about the Getty Museum publications and those from the Met Museum, so lately I have been making up for lost time by downloading and reading some of the catalogues and bulletins from both organizations. By the way, you don't need an eReader to access these publications, they can be downloaded to your laptop or desktop computer as well.

The Unicorn Tapestries

Which brings me back to my visit to The Cloisters. There are some unique and priceless works of art on display in The Cloisters, and probably none more so than the seven Gothic Unicorn Tapestries the building is famous for. I was familiar with the tapestries (which depict the Hunt For The Unicorn) in a very general way, and as much as I enjoyed seeing them, my visit suffered from a lack of real knowledge about the background and history of these magnificent works. Even worse, I had absolutely no way of ‘reading’ or understanding the importance of the hundreds of individual images woven on to these treasures.

Thankfully, all that changed after I discovered MetPublications and the numerous catalogues and bulletins available there that examine the Unicorn Tapestries in great detail.

I know, I know, you could argue this information came four years too late, but when I return to New York City next year, and return again to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and to The Cloisters, I can assure you I will be much more knowledgeable and informed, not only about the tapestries, but about many other works of art, and the buildings that house them.

I will review some of the publications I have downloaded at a future date. In the meantime, why not check out both the Getty Museum and The Met Museum, and see what exciting treasures you can discover for yourself.