The Ugly American (1958) By William Lederer and Eugene Burdick; Movie (1963) Starring Marlon Brando

The war in Afghanistan has now entered its third American presidency, a bi-partisan commitment to … to … to what?  U.S. troops – uniformed and not -- are on the ground and/or dropping bombs in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, The Sudan, and now apparently Niger, and who knows where all else.  Did I point out none of these countries have been mentioned in a declaration of war by the Congress, the only body authorized by the constitution to make such a declaration?  Yet … soldiers die in the thousands and civilians die in the tens of thousands.  

At home, people question whether a call to console gets made, yet nobody ever seems to question the call to arms. Isn’t it time for a rethinking of American foreign policy?

One could begin with a history book or two, though one must wonder if the current, temporary occupant of the White House has ever read a history book.  His ignorance of all things involving governing is a problem, but in all fairness American foreign policy was a mess even before he was foolishly entrusted with it.

The books don’t even have to be “history,” they could be fiction, and The Ugly American by William Lederer and Eugene Burdick would make a good starting point.  If a president doesn’t have sufficient attention span for a book, he could perhaps watch the movie.

Published in 1958, The Ugly American is set in Southeast Asia as the French are being driven out of "French" Indo-China, which would soon become the United States’ nightmare in Vietnam.  The country the book is about is Sarkhan, fictional, yet familiar.  In the book, Americans have gone to Vietnam to try and understand how the Communists are so successfully dislodging the French in the hope of preventing that from repeating itself in Sarkhan. In the movie, the action begins in Sarkhan, with the domino theory the overriding policy concern.

The American foreign service (State Department) is savaged in the book as incompetent, practitioners of imperialism at its worst, and arrogance at its most blatant.  The protagonist in the book, Homer, an American farmer, serves as a role model for what the authors believe America’s role in the world should be. Today we would recognize Homer’s strategy as the Peace Corps, created by Executive Order by President Kennedy just a few years after the book was published. The movie adaptation of The Ugly American was released six months before the Kennedy assassination.

The timing of the book is important – the year after its publication, the revolution in Cuba succeeded in deposing the puppet government and founding the first communist government in the western hemisphere (Cuba is not mentioned in the 1958 book but is mentioned as an example of policy failure in the 1963 movie). At the time, and with puppet governments and colonial “protectorates” all over the globe, the West was fearing the loss of “its” possessions, and the rise of Soviet and Chinese dominance. That sphere of influence debate continues today.  

As always, my preference is that people read the book, however I will qualify that this time by advising that the movie, starring Marlon Brando as the U.S. Ambassador to Sarkhan, is also important.

Movie Trailer: The Ugly American

In the final scene, with Sarkhan in revolt, the Ambassador makes a press statement. A few sentences into his statement at the embassy, the movie cuts away to an American living room where his press conference is being viewed on a black and white television set. The viewer listens for a few brief moments then, just as the Ambassador is beginning to acknowledge U.S. foreign policy errors, picks up and glances at a TV Guide, then switches channels. “The End” displays on the television screen.  

Recommendation: Should be required reading for candidates for President.

The Gatekeeper (2016) By Kathryn Smith

I would venture to guess that there have been thousands of books written about Franklin D. Roosevelt, if not tens of thousands.  In each of these books Missy LeHand, FDR’s personal secretary, is recognized with a paragraph, more often with merely a footnote.  With The Gatekeeper by Kathryn Smith, Missy is given her much deserved place in history. 

Prior to Dwight Eisenhower there was no such title as a Chief of Staff at the White House, though there was always someone around to administer the administration, as it was administering the nation.  This person wielded an immense amount of power, none more important than being the gatekeeper who controlled access to the President. To no surprise the person filling this position was always a man; that is until Franklin Roosevelt entrusted Marguerite LeHand with the authority.  She was appointed his personal secretary, and though she kept that title, she quickly absorbed the role we would today call Chief of Staff. 

Her standing in the Roosevelt administrations came about because FDR trusted her personal integrity, her loyalty to him, her analytic intelligence, and her ability to get things done.  He also knew she’d tell him what he needed to hear, whether he wanted to hear it or not. That he did this at a point in history when women’s empowerment was a new concept, but not yet a goal, speaks volumes.   

Much is made of two other women in the Roosevelt era.  One of course was FDR’s wife, the larger than life Eleanor Roosevelt who remade the role of First Lady, and earned herself a place in history quite independent of his.  She shared his political agenda, and had one of her own with no qualms about battling for it, even when that meant battling him. Yet, history will always also remember “the other woman,” Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, with whom FDR had a long-term affair.  Though common knowledge the affair wasn’t publicly discussed in an era when the personal life of a President was considered off limits to the press. This subject, fodder for so many of the books on FDR, is touched upon in The Gatekeeper only in that Missy, who was loved by both Eleanor and Franklin, and treated as though a member of the family, often served as a go between husband and wife, a role far afield from her official role in the administration.

A few months before Pearl Harbor, Missy suffered a stroke that left her unable to return to work.  For one who had been one of FDR’s closest confidants and operatives during his career as Governor of New York, at his side during the Depression when as President he was a-force-of-nature enactng the New Deal, at his side as a personal friend during the challenging and at times painful polio treatments; she now would be unable to serve during his war-time Presidency. The impact of that change in fortune was devastating to her. 

   

While history seems to have lost Missy, FDR knew her place in it.  The statement the White House issued at her death was:

“Memories of more than a score of years of devoted service enhance the sense of personal loss which Miss LeHand’s passing brings.  Faithful and painstaking, with a charm of manner inspired by tact and kindness of heart, she was utterly selfless in her devotion to duty.  Hers was a quiet efficiency which made her a real genius in getting things done.  Her memory will be held in affectionate remembrance and appreciation, not only by all members of our family, but the wide circle of those whose duties brought them into contact with her.”

By the time of Missy’s death, FDR’s health was also rapidly fading.  He would follow her in death a few months later. 

Recommendation:  Not just for history buffs, this is a fascinating book.

Los Alamos (1997) By Joseph Kanon

The literary formula of writing a fictional story on top of a historical event while risky is not uncommon, though seldom does it work as well as it does in Joseph Kanon’s book Los Alamos.

In his book, the plot centers on solving a murder, your standard detective story. Yet, the victim wasn’t just any victim, he was a security operative at Los Alamos, New Mexico -- the top secret location of the Manhattan Project, one of if not the most significant historical events of the 20th Century. The first successful detonation of an atomic bomb takes places at its Trinity test site in the final chapters of the book.

At Los Alamos, many of the biggest names in science worked under Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, often called the “father of the atomic bomb” to develop a weapon that could bring World War II to an end.  Many of the scientists were immigrants and refugees, many of them were also Jewish, working collectively against time to end the holocaust in Europe that many/most Americans were still blind to at the time. Determined as they were, all of the scientists were also aware that they were creating one evil, to address another. In the end, the war in Europe came to an end before the bomb was complete.  It's first and second military deployment would be on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, hastening the end of the war in the Pacific theater, not on Germany.

                                                                                                             

To-date, there hasn’t been a third combat drop of an atomic weapon, which makes the moral debate in the nonfiction part of this story still relevant today, with nuclear aspirations in Iran and North Korea, and an anti-immigrant, anti-refugee, anti-science, and bellicose administration temporarily in command in the United States.

Returning to fiction, in Chapter 1 of the book the Project's military command limited the feared concern about the crime being viewed as espionage by internally dismissing it as a “homosexual murder,” an obsession of 1940’s and 1950’s America, when “pinko, commie, fag” was a favorite catchall condemnation, and telling everyone else that it was a botched robbery. They don't dismiss the investigation however, bringing in a non-military investigator from Washington to quietly discover what really happened. The gay stereotypes deployed throughout are infuriating, but an accurate reflection of the times.  Significant to the story is that because the murder is categorized as “homosexual” everyone is more than willing to sweep it under the rug, no one wants to talk about it, no one wants to risk coming forward.  That the initial categorization turns out wrong gets acknowledged towards the end of the book, but never corrected by any of the official record – such is history, infuriating or not.

This is the second novel by Joseph Kanon that I’ve read.  A few years ago, I reviewed his book Istanbul Passage, about the transition taking place in espionage after the Cold War.  While I liked the book, I had a geography problem. I believe Kanon failed to capture the essence of Istanbul (which in my mind has the romanticism personified by Turkish Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk), and faulted him for even trying.  Having never been to Los Alamos, I had no concerns about this title; except it ends up that I should have.  I’ve been to many of the surrounding communities in New Mexico where action in the book takes place, including nearby Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and the very remote Chaco Canyon, which is captured perfectly in the book, all-the-way down to the rattle snake’s rattle.

Recommendation:  You bet, completely engrossing.

Skinny Dip (2004) By Carl Hiaasen

Am I the only person in the known world who had never read a Carl Hiaasen book? He clearly is quite the prolific author, with multiple best-sellers and a huge following. Recently my friend Daniel sent me Hiaasen’s book Skinny Dip, it was a great read, actually fun might be a better term.  The genre would be "a summer read." 

Skinny Dip  is a page-turner, sort of a cross between Gone Girl and Mad Magazine.  It’s also one of those books where you really can’t say a lot about the book without giving a spoiler alert.  I’ll give you some limited information: it is set in the Florida Keys and the Everglades; it’s a detective-like story; and it has sharks, alligators, cobras and seniors as bit players.  Submerged way deep in the story is a serious subplot about pollution. 

It also has a least one hearty, irreverent, laugh per page.  Oh, and if you were planning a cruise for your anniversary, you might want to reconsider, wait until after you read this book. 

Recommendation:  Fun book, make a margarita and pull up a deck chair.

Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed The World (2001) By Margaret MacMillan

Near the end of 1918 an armistice was signed ending the main hostilities of what was then known as the Great War. During the first six months of 1919, the victors met in Paris to draft the terms and conditions of “the peace” which culminated in the Treaty of Versailles, signed on June 28, 1919, and several separate treaties.  History soon changed the narrative, marking the Treaty as the beginning of the next war, and changing the war’s name from the “Great War” to World War I, initiating a sad but convenient numbering system. 

Paris 1919, by Margaret MacMillan, is a scholarly, though readable, detailed documentation of what happened at that peace conference. The book neither sets the blame for World War II on the top negotiators, nor does it let them off the hook. In fact, it goes to great length to underscore that top negotiators – U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, and to a lesser extent Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando -- knew that their grand plans were flawed documents, acknowledging that the hype of a lasting peace guaranteed by a League of Nations sounded nice, but had little relevance to the facts on the ground. These men basically redrew the maps of Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and parts of East Asia, at times not even knowing where the countries in question were, rather on what their inhabitant's thoughts on self-determination might be.

One cannot argue that “we, the world” paid a steep price for many of these decisions, we have.  Name a 21^st century international “trouble spot” and you can trace it to Paris 1919.

For a history buff, this book is full of details with MacMillan expertly dividing it between the personalities involved, and the geographic regions being cut up.  The personalities involved, directly or indirectly, goes well beyond the primary Allied negotiators, including the likes of: Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Herbert Hoover early in their political careers, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Lawrence of Arabia, Gertrude Bell, (to-be-King) Feisal, Chaim Weizmann, James Balfour, Joseph Stalin and Vladimir Lenin, Lu Zhengxiang, Prince Saionji, Benito Mussolini, and viewing from the sidelines a young man named Adolph Hitler; and many more – there were well over 1,000 official delegates at the conference, all leaders, or leaders-in-the-making. That MacMillan was able to connect the dots in an understandable formula, was no small undertaking. 

Recommendation:  Yes, for history buffs, and required for history majors.

The Immense Journey (1957) By Loren Eiseley

Literature is not what one expects when tackling a book by an anthropologist, yet great literature is what one unearths when reading The Immense Journey by Loren Eiseley.

The book is Part I of the Library of America’s publication titled Loren Eiseley: Collected Essays on Evolution, Nature and the Cosmos, Volume One, edited by William Cronon. The Library of America (LOA) is my favorite source of reading material.  It is a non-profit publisher dedicated to keeping in print important writings by American writers, preserving the availability of classics of literature that have passed their commercial appeal, but not their importance.  Their books are available individually, or via subscription – I’m not sure when I started my subscription, but my personal library now includes 182 volumes from LOA.

Eiseley (1907 – 1977) was a scientist, an anthropologist & paleontologist, who became an educator, crossing over to writer … and a very good writer.  You can call him an "off-spring" of Henry David Thoreau, credit him as the literary father of Carl Sagan, and rank him as a “kissing cousin” contemporary of Ray Bradbury.  

The Immense Journey was his first book, collecting 13 of his essays that had been printed in magazines or as academic papers.  It was published in 1957, when I was four years old.  That date is important when reading his work because in 1957 carbon-dating was a new technology, and DNA sequencing merely a somewhat bizarre theory. Yet, his essays are as on target in 2017 as they were then.

While a scientist, Eiseley was also decidedly a naturalist.  My favorite selection in the book is The Judgement of the Birds.  It needs to be required reading for humanity, of all species.

The opening essay, The Slit, is a captivating short story about descending into (and out of) a mountain crevice, and taking account of the anthropologic passage of time while doing so. How Flowers Changed the World is an important exposition on Darwin.  And, Little Men and Flying Saucers is one of two humorous essays on scientific fraud – science as P.T. Barnum would have it.

Recommendation:  All in all a completly interesting collection that has left me eager to read more of Eiseley’s work.

Audubon: On the Wings of the World (2016) By Fabien Grolleau & Jeremie Royer

Perhaps your name has to be Timmy to appreciate this story: The first “book report” I ever wrote was on Lassie Come-Home by Eric Knight, when I was around 8 or 9 years old.  The report was part of a letter I mailed to my late grandmother, who we called Nanny, when she spent a month or so vacationing in Monterrey, Mexico.  She got me the book before she left on her trip; I’ve been reading, and often “reporting,” ever since.  Note: in the book the kid’s name was Joe, when it was made into a television series is when his name was switched to Timmy. Lassie, a collie, will eternally be Lassie.

With that tale as a preface, one of my neighbors has an 8 year-old daughter. I’m always buying her books, trying to get her hooked on reading.  My campaign got off to a slow start though; she was decidedly unimpressed with Lassie (she has a cat). However, I have discovered that she’s totally into graphic books.  This is not my genre, but at this point I believe getting her to be excited about reading is way more important than what she reads.  And, I seem to have hit the jackpot with these graphic books, especially those by author Raina Telgemeier (Sisters, and Smile).  I always read the books before I give them to her, and then verbally test her when she’s finished reading them.  She scores well on my interrogations.  I’m excited (latent teacher syndrome).

Okay, sorry for that long winded introduction.  I recently gave her the graphic book Audubon: On the Wings of the World, a biography of John J. Audubon (her grandmother is into bird watching). She loves it, even though parts of the narrative/graphics are rather dark, like when Audubon slips into hallucinations during a long bout with “the fever.”  The illustrations are impressive -- a must considering the topic -- and the narrative is on target.  And did I mention that I loved the book? 

Recommendation:  When next you are looking for a gift for an 8 or 9 year old child, or for an old guy going through his second (third, fourth) childhood – it’s a winner.

Exit West (2017) By Mohsin Hamid

Published earlier this year, Exit West by Mohsin Hamid is one of the most interesting books I’ve read … ever.   The novel is brutally current, and can be categorized as dystopian, though it does hold out hope for individuals, if not the world.  The final chapters call to mind Aldoux Huxley’s 1932 novel Brave New World in style, though not in subject.

Geography is everything in this book, but importantly the opening city is not revealed -- it could be Kabul, it could be Mosul, or it could be Aleppo.  Exit West starts as the love story of and young man named Saeed, and Nadia, a young woman he meets in university.   She’s clad head to toe in a burka – not because she is religious, but as a defense mechanism to ward of unwanted attention.  She also drives a motorcycle.

Mohsin Hamid

While Saeed and Nadia are the main characters of the novel, they are not the story being told. Hamid uses these characters to bring to their place in history two broader subjects: life in a city/country under siege, and the reality of life as a refuge/migrant. 

Saeed & Nadia live in an unnamed city where religious fundamentalists are slowly, but unmistakably taking control.  Their day to day life is a romance, and a nightmare.  While the political good guys vs. bad guys nature of the situation is acknowledged, in reality it doesn’t really matter.  What matters is that regardless of who is firing the rockets, the people being hurt are civilians trying to live ordinary lives; made difficult to impossible when where you live has become unsafe, you don’t have freedom of movement, and basic utilities such as water, sewage and electricity are sporadic, then non-existent.

Like many, Saeed & Nadia make the difficult decision to leave.  In literature and throughout world history, we’ve read that story before – and Hamid handles it superbly with the metaphoric device of calling such an escape "going through the door” without knowing what’s on the other side.  The only thing people know for sure it that it will be somewhere else.  It is a decision being made today by millions of people, throughout the world. “Choosing” to become a refugee is as dramatic a change as one can make in life, and seldom a choice. At one point the narration explains “it was said in those days that the passage was like dying and like being re-born.”

When Saeed & Nadia arrive on the other side of their first door they are on the beach in Mykonos where tourists pay no more attention to them than they do sand crabs, and authorities round them up and remove them to a refugee camp.  Saeed and Nadia will walk through many doors, through many refugee camps, to destinations where they are seldom met with open arms.  Throughout they will meet other refugees from every corner of the earth, and will hear their stories, people escaping war zones, and others escaping crippling poverty.  Their names, their languages, their places of origin are interchangeable, their stories are the same.

Recommendation:  Strongly.

Barkskins (2016) By Annie Proulx

The novel Barkskins by Annie Proulx is epic by every definition of the term.  It checks in at 716 pages, not counting the family trees; it spans three centuries of history, and its geographic spread ranges from the Netherlands and France, to New France (Canada), New England (US), with side trips to London, Australia, New Zealand, China and the Amazon.  Topics include U.S. history, Canadian history (quite distinct from U.S. History), Native history, the timber industry, managed forestry, land ethos, and ecological disruption, the role of women in society and business, the friction between adopted children and biological children, and the place of non-Cabot & Lodges in New England society.  Oh, and the Great Chicago Fire.

Take a breath.  And let me point out, it is a great read.

A plot summary, grossly brief, is that Barkskins is the interlocking family histories of the Dutch-French Duquet “Duke” family, and the Sel family which is an intermarriage of a French indentured-immigrant Rene Sel and Mari, a Mi’kmaw Indian. The Dukes found a lumber dynasty that generations of the Sels are impacted by.   Barkskins – by the way – is a term applied to anyone in the timber/logging industry.

Proulx is the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Shipping News, a book that I did not particularly like.  She is also an accomplished short story writer whose work includes the highly regarded Brokeback Mountain – which if my memory serves me runs about 60 pages.  What really clinches Proulx place as a versatile writer is that she has proven quite proficient writing about “male” topics – Barkskins is about the timber/logging industry, while Brokeback is set in the sheep ranching industry, both of which are wholly male.  The lead character of The Shipping News, Quoyle, is also a man.  This is not to say that Proulx cannot write about women – let me tell you that when Barkskins is made into a movie (when, not if) the competition in Hollywood for the role of Lavinia is going to be intense.

The environmental subtext of the book is all encompassing; it would be wrong to call it a “sub plot” because it is there, on every page.  The book begins in the late 1600’s with the unfettered harvesting of timber and clearing of land on the east coast of North America, because it seems unlimited; the consequences of that unregulated clearcutting of the forests impacts every generation thereafter.   Near the end, the owners of the Duke Company begin to convert to the concept of forest management, though they do so to protect their investment, not the environment.  

Recommendation:  Set aside some time, this is an important book and great read.

Old Filth (2004) By Jane Gardam

While American readers can (normally) understand the notion of imperialism -- admit it or not, we are stellar practitioners of it -- we don’t readily acknowledge the notion of empire building.  We view global dominance as something that just happened because we are good guys, not something that was built.  The British Empire on the other hand didn’t just happen, it was built.  The process usually (always?) began with the military, but colonial administration was the crowning achievement – pun intended.

“The Empire on which the sun never sets” required a colossal bureaucracy to run it; that bureaucracy is often referred to as the “Raj,” a term originally coined to describe the British rule of India, but its application eventually grew to cover the administration of the entire global empire, from Hong Kong to Singapore, Ceylon, India, Rhodesia, South Africa and more.

Old Filth, is a by-product of the Raj.  The title is the nickname of a colonial barrister stationed in the then British colony of Hong Kong.  The moniker stands for “failed-in-London-try-Hong Kong.”  The book is part of an entire genre of British literature often called “children of the Raj.”

Written by Jane Gardam, it is a biography of a fictional Sir Edward Feathers, a Brit who was born in China, where his father was part of the colonial administration.  Eddy, as was the case with most foreign born children of Raj bureaucrats, was sent back to England (Wales actually, because it was cheaper) for his education.  He was sent to a boarding school, along with other Raj children, at a very young age because his mother had died during his birth.

Gardam’s fascinating tale is about how this virtual orphan, with a father far more interested in the Empire than in his own son, managed the English education system, and qualifies for Oxford.  But, as he is set to enter Oxford, Britain is becoming the next target in World War II, with German planes bombing the country, at first, uncontested.  What happens next makes for a great read. 

In time, Eddy will graduate from Oxford, tire of England, and relocate to Malaysia in pursuit of his father, lost when the Japanese captured Singapore where his father had fled to “because it was invincible.”  Eddy goes on to establish a legendary reputation as a foreign-service barrister in Hong Kong, before retiring back to England.  Much of the book is told in flashback. 

Recommendation:  I canceled appointments to devote more time to reading this book, that’s how much I enjoyed it.

George Ade (1964) By Lee Coyle; and George Ade Anthology (6 book volume)

Hidden in plain sight.  Interestingly enough, the sign above marking the George Ade Plaza on the east bound Indiana Toll Road (I-90) is in Portage, IN, the town where I grew up. As a kid did I ever ask who is George Ade? Well, no, not once. Several weeks ago I received an email about a house for sale in Brook, IN (about halfway between Chicago and Lafayette, IN) -- I almost bought a weekend home in that vicinity ten years ago, and have been receiving occasional For Sale listings ever since. Anyway, I went online to see what I could find out about the town.  I had been to Brook before but really couldn't remember much about the place.  In the Wikipedia post it gave the population as 980 (roughly the size of the Chicago high rise I live in) and it mentioned that George Ade's country estate, Hazelden (pictured below), is in Brook.  There was that name again!

My curiosity won ...  Turns out the life of George Ade very much plays to my Indiana childhood, and to my adult life in Chicago. He was born (in 1866, the year after Abraham Lincoln was assassinated) and raised in Kentland, IN -- farmland just south of "the Calumet Region" which in the later half of the 19th century was also farmland. After graduating from high school, he "went away" to that new college just opened up in Lafayette: Purdue University.  In 1924, as an alumnus, he made a major contribution toward the construction of Purdue's football stadium ... he's the second half of Ross-Ade Stadium, home of the Boilermakers.

While at Purdue he was the editor of the its student newspaper.  He had a job at the Morning Star, a mouthpiece for the local Republican party, but left it for a relatively more profitable position at the Lafayette Call, in part because at the Call he got free press passes to performances at the Grand Opera House in downtown Lafayette.

In 1890 he moved to Chicago and with help from his college buddy John T. McCutcheon, got a job with the Chicago Record covering small time breaking news stories.  This time period was the hey day of Chicago journalism with nearly a dozens daily newspapers competing for the next big headline; it was the newspaper era immortalized by the play, then movie The Front Page. McCutcheon, who was originally from South Raub, IN, would find fame as a newspaper cartoonist -- in later years his work would win the Chicago Tribune its first Pulitzer Prize.  He too has a Toll Road Plaza named after him (the west bound Plaza in Portage) -- tollway plazas are apparently the Hoosier equivalent of a Pulitzer.

Working at the Chicago Record, Ade was promoted and given his own column, titled: Stories of the Street, and of the Town.  He built the column into what became a Chicago journalism staple, stories about the common man on the street -- a later master of this would be the famed Mike Royko, whose fictional Slats Grobnik represented the thoughts of everyday neighborhood guys.  While Ade did not have a regular character like Grobnik, what he did have was a mastery of street slang, and an ear for finding humor -- editors initially skoffed at the slang, until they realized the public loved it.  Ade and McCutcheon would frequently "hit the town" in all-night partying and prowling that provided endless inspiration for their respective careers.  The two would later collaborate on several book projects, and do the "grand tour" of Europe together.

Ade's first works published as books were actually collections or longer versions of his newspaper columns.  He showed an astounding ability to capture different cultural backgrounds, with his Stories of Chicago covering the city's ethnic smorgasborg; Ade's Fables about life in small Midwestern towns, and People You Should Know, among other titles -- six of which have been reprinted recently in George Ade Anthology. These works cover such topics as an around the world trip taken by a successful couple who had never been outside of their small Indiana town before; a story about marrying right, and the downside of penny-pinching (death before you can enjoy life).  One of the better known, and still funny, fables is: The Culture Factory, a several page essay about frat life on a college campus (it appears in People You Should Know).

His fame and fortune however, came not from his books, but from his musical comedies. In 1904 George Ade had three plays running simultaneously on Broadway: The County Chairman; The College Widow, and The Sho-gun (set in Korea, it is a revision of his earlier play The Sultan of Sulu, set in the Philippines).  I cannot find any collection of all of his plays, and it appears that several of the manuscripts have been lost to time.  I've located The County Chairman in the archives of the non-circulating Special Collections section of Chicago's Harold Washington Library, and have an appointment to see it next weekend.

The County Chairman, set in fictional Antioch, is inspired from his experience working at the Lafayette Morning Star covering local politics.  The College Widow is as vintage Hoosier as one can get.  The book is about the football rivalry between fictional Billingham and Atwater Colleges -- by the author's own word, it is patterned after the real life rivalry between the Wabash Little Giants and the DePauw Tigers, now distinguished as the annual Monon Bell game.

Ade's only full length novel, The Slim Princess, is a humorist's version of the standard "the older sister must marry first" plot.  In Ade's telling the story is set in Bulgaria where "fat" is valued as a sign of beauty, creating a problem because the desirable scale-tipping younger sister can't get married because her older sister is "slim" and no one in their country wants her.  The "slim and older" sister is eventually married off to an American playboy.

Recommendation: I have to admit this little research project on George Ade was fun -- as a humorist his work stands the test of time (even if his name has faded away). The biography by Lee Coyle is written in the same vein, and is a great read, though only available second hand because it is out of print (my copy was "withdrawn from stock" from the Belfast Reference Library in Northern Ireland; through Amazon).  The more recent George Ade Anthology provides a good overview of his work, though it contains none of the biography -- it does include The Slim Princess.

A Portait Of The Artist As A Young Man (1916) By James Joyce

As I continue toward my goal of finally conquering James Joyce’s classic Ulysses, I began by reading Dubliners several weeks ago, a collection of character studies.  Now, I’ve completed Joyce’s first full length book, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, a semi-autobiographical text.

Joyce was born and raised in Ireland, yet chose to flee to Paris after university.  In Portrait of the Artist, the title character is Joyce’s alter ego, Stephen Dedalus.  His coming of age crisis, if one wants to classify it as such, is masterful writing, completely intense, and not at all an easy read, even at a relatively short 224 pages.  The Norton Critical Edition that I read included nearly 400 pages of notes – most of which I passed over.

Without the notes however, one needs a fairly strong knowledge of: Irish history, the Catholic catechism, and Church structure vis-à-vis diocesan and orders (in this case, both Franciscan and Jesuit).  After one chapter of A Portrait, I had to stop and do a review of Irish history, building on a solid basis that I had not realized I had acquired just by living in Chicago, occasionally referred to as Ireland’s County Cook.

The chapters of the book relating to Stephen’s early childhood delve heavily into Irish political history, as discussed at a family dinner party.  The heated discussion laid bare the divide between those who viewed the institution of the Church, as the guarantor of the Irish people, and those who viewed the diocesan structure as selling out to the colonizers. 

When Stephen enters university however, is when his personal dilemmas materialize, and he’s faced with questions of sexual awakening morality.  He has pre-marital sex, which delights him, but then plunges him into the depths of guilt, compounded by priests and a theology that forbids this.  The strongest section of the book details Stephen’s confession, which occurs as he is being urged by his teachers to consider the priesthood, a temptation to most males born in the Church.  His post-confession personal homily is some 40 pages long, intense, and decisive.  He will never be able to live up to the standards of a priest, because he does not believe in those standards.

Some of Joyce’s best narrative is the dialogue between Stephen and his university classmates as they question everything, and then question the answer – an at times vicious circle of academic arrogance and pomposity, as these overly educated people wield their education for sport.  Joyce captures this academic subculture perfectly.

In the end, Stephen prepares to depart Ireland, not out of repudiation, for Joyce will make his life work chronicling the country and its society; but out of a need to find a neutral space where he can think about the world, not respond to it.

Because I have attempted to read Ulysses before (actually, I’ve tried several times), I know that page one of the book will re-introduce Stephen Dedalus to readers.  Now, I think, I’m better prepared for that challenge.   

Recommendation:  James Joyce is a genius writer, but he is not light reading.  Prepare to devote the needed time and thought if you pick up any of his works.