The Road Through the Wall (1948) By Shirley Jackson

 

Shirley Jackson’s first novel, The Road Through the Wall, is semi-biographical. It is about a young girl named Harriet growing up in post-WWII suburban America, a unifying theme in Jackson’s early novels and short stories. Later in her career Jackson would turn to horror topics including her best-known work The Haunting of Hill House, which has been adapted numerous times for movies and television shows.

While Harriet is the main character in The Road Through the Wall, there is a large contingent of “others” in the book, her neighborhood friends, classmates, siblings galore, and their nemeses the parents. I think the word “generic” applies to the kids, and to the personal goals set for them by their parents. Just pages into the book I already had the folk song Little Boxes playing in the back of my head, written & composed by Malvina Reynolds in 1962 and made famous by Pete Seeger, and used more recently as the theme song of Showtime’s serial Weeds.

Little Boxes sung by Pete Seeger

The novel includes several interesting little side stories amongst the ordinary days, mixed in with the never-ending dynamics of who is part of the “in crowd” and who is not, and why, told at the level of the children, and also at the level of the parents. At the top end of this us and them scale, and uncontested, was the distinction between homeowners and renters.

One of the side stories is of Harriet being persuaded into visiting a Chinese man her friend Virginia met while shopping in town. Harriet knew her parents would not approve of visiting an adult man, rather on a Chinese one. Yet, they went anyway, though they nearly canceled at the last moment out of fear of the unknown. The meeting, with tea and cookies, turned out to be eye opening, multi-cultural, interesting, and without incident. Among other things, the girls discover the man lives in the house as a servant, not as the proprietor – a class distinction handed down to them from their parents.  The girls do not visit a second time.

Another interesting side story is the decision by the adults in the neighborhood to start a Shakespeare reading program for the kids. Without objection (or even the notion of an objection), the program organizer announced his decision to not invite Harriet’s friend Marilyn to participate in the program. Marilyn is Jewish and lives in a rental. He explains this exclusion by stating he did not want to offend Marilyn by subjecting her to a reading of The Merchant of Venice.

Throughout the storylines, everyone is in high dudgeon because a subdivision is being built next to theirs, and they will have no say in what “class” of people will be moving in, possibly harming the desirability of the neighborhood. Currently, a wall exists between the new and the established, though the developer had indicated the wall is coming down, streets and sidewalks will be connected with theirs, new kids will be in the school system.

The novel concludes when a 3-year-old girl dies near a hole in that wall. No one knows if it was an accident, a murder, or what.

Recommendation:  Yes, though I have read this theme before.

Dear Alben: Mr. Barkley of Kentucky (1979) By James K. Libbey

 

This summer I picked up several books – a $5 bag to be precise – at the McCracken County Library’s book fair. McCracken County includes Paducah, Kentucky, across the Ohio River and down a few miles from where I live. One of the books I selected while browsing was a biography of Alben Barkley, a name I recognized but actually knew little about. Lake Barkley in the Land-Between-the Lakes is named after Barkley, as is the regional airport in Paducah. I knew he was a longtime Congressman, and I was vaguely aware he was Vice-President under President Harry Truman.

The book is an interesting read.  Barkley grew up in western Kentucky, near Fancy Farm – home of a legendary annual political fair and picnic. He made his early career in Paducah – as County Judge Executive (in Kentucky this is the title given to the county administrator). Barkley won his first term in Congress during Woodrow Wilson’s presidency. Politically speaking it was a different era, Kentucky was reliably Democratic and patronage, not policy, was the name of the game. Barkley was a master of the patronage and spoils system. He also successfully secured federal funding for a bridge across the Ohio River from Paducah, KY to Brookport, IL -- a big boost for the local economy.

Eventually, Barkley moved up to become a U.S. Senator – and this is the part of his history that I knew nothing about. In due time he was selected as the Senate Majority Leader – as such, he served as the point man on legislation proposed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to lift the country out of the Great Depression – putting him at the heart of the New Deal -- and making him perhaps the most popular Democrat after FDR – and one of the few who could bridge the schism between northern progressives and southern conservatives in the party.  Many of his colleagues were ready to support Barkley as a presidential candidate in the 1948 election. However, FDR’s death had elevated Vice-President Harry Truman to the White House, and Barkley was unwilling to challenge an incumbent Democrat.

An aside:  Barkley’s maternal grandmother was a cousin to the first Adlai Stevenson, making Barkley a distant relative and contemporary of Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson II, who managed to win the 1952 Democrat Presidential nomination that many say was meant for Barkley.  Stevenson then went on to predictable defeat running against war hero General Dwight Eisenhower.  The first Stevenson by-the-way was Vice President under Grover Cleveland's second presidential term.

Recommendation:  Like many biographers, Libbey’s treatment of Barkley borders on idolatry – that said, it is a great read for political junkies, and those familiar with west Kentucky geography.

Fly Already (2013-2018 Hebrew, 2019 Yiddish Translation, 2019 English Translation) By Etgar Keret

 

“Daddy Look!”  It is amazing how two people can look at the same situation and produce entirely different interpretations. For example: a father is taking his son to the park when the kid spots a man standing on the edge of a roof top. “Is he a superhero?” asks the kid, as his father yells “don’t do it!”  Ah, the trials and tribulations of being a dad, talking down a potential suicide, without alarming his son. “Fly already” shouts the kid!

Fly Already is the title story in a 2019 English translation of short stories by Etgar Keret, a phenomenal and fun writer. I have read several of his books and attended a lecture he gave in Chicago some years ago. He has a virtual trademark irreverent sense of humor, fun despite his seeming obsession with suicides, a frequent subject in his writing.

Many of his works have a semi-autobiographical touch to them, particularly those with a father and young son storyline. Keret explained once that as a writer he does not work regular hours, so he is similar to a “stay at home Dad,” while his wife works a 9 to 5-plus. He spends a lot of time at the playground in the park.

In addition to Fly Already, other stories in the collection are:

A sad, but hysterically funny story about a man who seems to have failed at everything in life, titled The Next-to-Last Time I Was Shot Out of a Cannon.

The book’s cover art, a fish smoking on a balcony, relates to At Night, a short story about a boy who cannot sleep and gets out of bed. Every night he sees a Goldfish who has exited its fishbowl and is watching television with the volume turned off. The fish will go back into the bowl before dawn.

One of the less funny stories in the collection is Windows, about a man who has been hit by a car and loses his memory. He is placed in an “apartment” to recuperate and is monitored via video cam. He is only able to phone and speak with the people at the support center. He no longer knows how long he has been in rehab.

In divorce cases involving child custody Judges routinely pre-judge the mother to be the better parent and award her custody without any consideration as to whether or not that is actually true. In To The Moon and Back a father never gets to see his kid on his birthday, always the next day. Equally routine, fathers will then overdo it on a birthday present.

Dad With Mashed Potatoes is a thought-provoking story about how children whose fathers have “gone away” find a rabbit and pretend that Dad has not really gone away, he has merely shape shifted. Drives the mother nuts.

In all there are twenty-two short stories in this collection.

Recommendation:  Light reading, fun.

I’ve previously blogged Keret’s: Suddenly a Knock at the Door and The Seven GoodYears, a Memoir.

Biophilia, The Diversity of Life, Naturalist (2021) By Edward O. Wilson

 

The Library of America’s partial collection of works by E.O. Wilson is fascinating, and at the risk of sounding silly, his memoir, titled simply Naturalist, is enchanting. His peers consider him “the natural heir to Charles Darwin.”

E. (Edward) O. Wilson is an entomologist, a branch of biology that studies insects, and a Research Professor Emeritus at Harvard University. He is the world’s leading authority on myrmecology – the study of ants. He is also an exceptionally good writer, having won two Pulitzer Prizes for Literature (general nonfiction), first in 1978 for On Human Nature, the second in 1991 for The Ants. Significant to readers of his works, he created the popular course on biology for non-science majors at Harvard – he knows how to communicate to/with non-scientists.

His list of science awards is lengthy and includes: Crafoord Prize, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences; Newcombe Cleveland Prize, American Association for the Advancement of Science; the Kistler Prize; the King Faisal Prize; Global Environmental Citizen Award; and the International Cosmos Prize.

Wilson was (is, he is now 92), born in Birmingham, Alabama and grew up bouncing around the Alabama gulf coast and Florida panhandle, between custody sharing parents who both moved a lot. For entertainment, he would wander around the woods and wetlands where he developed his love of all-things nature. By the time he finished high school he was an Eagle Scout and had been “born again” in the Southern Baptist Church. He was not old enough to see military service in World War II. He received both his BS and MS from the University of Alabama. Eventually he became a research assistant at Harvard, while working on a PhD, and became a tenured professor thereafter.

Reading his memoir also amounts to reading a history of advances in the science disciplines of biology – starting with field biology, through evolutionary biology, geobiology, microbiology, environmental biology, and eventually into sociobiology (human) – a field of theoretical biology that remains as controversial today as evolution was in Darwin’s time. His involvement in studies such as island biological diversity is particularly interesting – even conducting an experiment in the Florida Keys where researchers destroyed all life on several small islands so as to witness and record the “return to life” on the empty islands.

Recommendation:  Absolutely. While at times the “science” in Wilson’s writings can become a bit complex for non-scientists like me, what comes through clearly is his passion for natural biology. The Naturalist is a not necessarily easy read, but one definitely worthwhile.

My other blog posts on environmental biology include:

The Immense Journey by Loren Eiseley

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

Charles Darwin: The Naturalist Who Started a Revolution by Cyril Aydon

Fallout (2017) By Sara Paretsky

 

Count me in as one of the legions of fans of Chicago author Sara Paretsky and her fictional private detective V.I. Warshawski, protagonist of a series of nearly 2 dozen really good mystery books, and one so-so movie starring Kathleen Turner. Turner was okay, but Hollywood screenwriters mistakenly (and arrogantly) believed they could improve the storyline … they were wrong.   

I’m sure I’ve read at least a dozen of the mysteries, though not lately.  So, when I picked up Fallout at a bookfair recently, it was like a reunion … there was Lotty Herschel and Max Loewenthal, Sal the bartender, Bobby Mallory from the CPD, and of course Mr. Contreras and the dogs: Mitch and Peppy.  I hadn’t realized how much I missed them.

Almost all of Paretsky’s books are set in Chicago, not so with Fallout.  It starts in Chicago, but the mystery quickly moves on to Lawrence, Kansas and its surrounding farmland.  The case is a missing persons search – but like all of Vic’s cases, gets complicated fast.  Fallout expands into a complex plot of intertwined murders, family dynamics, anti-nuclear demonstrations, police cover-ups, espionage and chemical warfare. (At times I thought I was reading Vince Flynn). The climatic end of the book takes place in a missile silo in the middle of a sorghum field!

An aside: There is quite a bit about Cold War era missile bases in this book, which reminded me of the Nike base in Portage, Indiana where I grew up.  It was operational from 1956 to 1976.

One of the joys of reading a V.I. Warshawski mystery is that Paretsky knows her geography, she has Chicago down perfectly.  She surprisingly knows Lawrence pretty well too.  But then Paretsky was born in Iowa and grew up in Kansas, staying just long enough to get a B.A. from the University of Kansas).   

Recommendation:  You bet, and if you’ve ever read a V.I. Warshawky mystery, then I don’t have to explain why.

Peony (1948) By Pearl Buck

 

I purchased the novel Peony by Pearl Buck at a book fair this summer. Great book, at a phenomenal price -- $5 for a bag of books! I put it in my bag without even reading the dust jacket because I’ve read Buck before (The Good Earth and The Mother) and knew whatever it was about, it would be set in China, and it would be a good read.

What I was not expecting was an opening chapter describing in some detail a Passover Seder.  Peony, the title character, is a bondsmaid for a Jewish family living in K’aifeng in China circa 1850.  Chinese, she was brought into the household (bought) to be a playmate for the family’s young son, David. She has been a part of the family since childhood, though as a bondsmaid, she is not part of the family – a problematic distinction.

Until reading this book, and subsequent research, I was not aware a small Jewish community existed in China as far back as the 1600s. The underlying story is about how it peacefully co-existed with and eventually assimilates into the larger Chinese population. 

Buck tells this story on two levels, one with the character storyline of the book, the other with a fascinating ongoing discussion of comparative Confucian philosophy and Jewish theology between David’s father, Ezra ben Israel; and a Chinese merchant who is his father’s closest friend.

In the storyline, David is the key character. He is infatuated with the daughter of a major Chinese merchant.  Yet, his very orthodox mother wants him to marry the daughter of the Rabbi.  And Peony is secretly in love with David but cannot act on it because of her status as a bondsmaid.

A reoccurring theme in the novel concerns the personal debate within each of the Jewish characters concerning eventual return to the Promised Land vs. staying in China where they have safely lived all their lives. Significantly (or co-incidentally), Buck had the book published in 1948, the date of the re-establishment of the nation of Israel.

Recommendation:  Excellent.

Luce and His Empire (1975) By W. A. Swanberg

 

Luce … and His Empire.  That would be Henry Robinson Luce, born in China in 1898, the son of Presbyterian missionaries.  His achievements include being the Founder, Publisher, and Editor-in-Chief of Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated magazines.  No less than Winston Churchill publicly named him one of the most influential people in America. His name is synonymous with the period of history that came to be known as the American Century.

Author W. A. Swanberg’s extensive biography of Luce covers three major topics:  1) his invention of the weekly “news” magazine format used by Time, building it into a world-wide publishing giant; 2) his use of his publishing empire to try and make post-dynasty China both a Christian nation, and a democracy; and 3) his flagrant use of political propaganda, thinly disguised as objective news.  If one is concerned about the state of “news” in the world today, but especially in the United States, then note this: Luce’s legacy has been a “how-to” blueprint for Rupert Murdoch and his Fox News/News Corp. media empire.

Luce was Yale, Class of 1920, which comes with elitist baggage and perhaps one of if not the best alumni networking pedigrees in the world.  Out of Yale, Luce and friend/academic rival Briton Hadden, jointly founded Time magazine with initial investments coming from fellow alumni.  Their initial strategic plan was to not have correspondents, but to gather stories from daily newspapers and condense them, unattributed, in a weekly newsmagazine.  Their premise was that busy people did not have enough time available to read everything, yet they wanted to be informed on current events. 

This business plan quickly morphed into not only choosing what stories were important enough to be printed, but also telling readers why.  As the Time’s editors, they would pick what news they wished to highlight, and re-write it to fit their political beliefs.  The “cover of Time” quickly became the most important place in American politics. The “thankful” public subscribed in the millions – and the advertising dollars came rolling in.  Hadden lived long enough to see their joint business become a financial success but died long before it peaked under Luce’s sole control.

Luce took the company’s financial success, and built it into a publishing Empire, making him one of the richest and most influential men in the world.  He would marshal that power in support of his causes, ranging from supporting the corrupt Chiang Kai Shek in the Chinese civil war (because he was nominally a Christian and definitely an oligarch), to bashing Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, yet have a cordial relationship with John F. Kennedy (or more accurately, JFK’s father Joseph Kennedy).  Militantly anti-communist, Luce was the country’s chief advocate of a Cold War strategy.  Historically, the book spans everything from the Great Depression to the Vietnam “Conflict.”  Luce died in 1967.

Recommendation:  Yes. I found Luce and His Empire to be critical to any examination of Twentieth Century world history; not to mention the birth of today’s biased “journalism” format.