Always a River: The Ohio River and the American Experience (1991) Edited By Robert L. Reid

For almost the entirety of my life Lake Michigan was the dominant geographic feature of where I lived – childhood in the Indiana Dunes, and as an adult in Chicago.  When I retired earlier this year, I moved to Golconda, a small town in southern Illinois where the Ohio River reigns as the dominant geographic feature.  My new home is three blocks from the river -- and importantly, on a hill.  I’ve been studying my surroundings ever since I arrived.  Geography is a key part of local history.

Golconda, before bridges, was originally an Ohio River ferry-crossing between Illinois and Kentucky.  Later, it became home to Lock and Dam 51, part of the massive infrastructure of the “interior coast” of America.  Since the early 1800s, controlling the navigation of the Ohio and its dozens of tributaries has been a major government concern, the nuts and bolts of which was not known to me.  As I often do, I found a book to help explain it to me. 

The book, Always a River, is edited by Robert Reid, Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Southern Indiana, upriver from Golconda.  The book is a compilation of essays by various experts on topics relating to the Ohio River, which streams from Pittsburgh, to its mouth at Cairo, IL (63 miles downriver from me) where it merges into the Mississippi River.  The essays cover such topics as: Native history; the importance of the river in colonial times (French & Indian Wars, War of 1812, and War of Independence); settlement by European immigrants; early industrialization, coal, salt & clay mining,  coal powered electricity, steelmaking, hydro-energy (the TVA includes the Tennessee River, a tributary of the Ohio), uranium enrichment; and the impact all of that has had on river ecology including its role in acid rain.  Also in the book are parts of Reuben Gold Thwaites’ fun “travelogue” Afloat on the Ohio, which I previously read and blogged back in 2015..

One of the key takeaways I have from this book is the chapter on the changing navigation of the river over the years.  What I never realized (or thought about actually) before is that the Ohio River is not particularly deep – wide, but not deep.  Rainy seasons, and dry seasons, greatly impacted the traffic on the river.  Seasonal changes among other factors led to Congress directing the Army Corps of Engineers to develop and implement a plan to make navigation on the Ohio River possible year-round: clearing snags, dredging, wing dams, canalization (part 1) and deeper & longer canalization (part 2).  Not to mention the changes in shipping: canoes, flat boats, keel boats, steamboats, tugboats & barges.  Sounds boring?  It was actually fascinating to this non-engineer. 

Lock and Dam 51 in Golconda, by-the-way, no longer is.  It was built to handle narrow and short barge traffic.  It, along with Dam 50 (Marion, KY), has been dismantled and replaced by the Smithland Lock & Dam (between Golconda & Brookport), capable of handling longer, heavier, barges.  All that remains of Lock and Dam 51 are a row of houses constructed for its Lockmaster staff. Today, those riverfront houses are available as vacation rentals. 

Recommendation:  Yes, for history buffs.

The Polly O'Keefe Quartet (1965 - 1989) By Madeleine L'Engle

Earlier this year, I read a Library of America (LOA) collection of four Madeleine L’Engle novels known as The Wrinkle in Time Quartet.  The novels are science fiction, with a theology subplot.  All four featured the Murray family: married scientists with four children, a daughter named Meg, and her three younger brothers, all exceeding smart.  Meg is the narrator of the series.  At the end of the series, it is evident that Meg will marry Calvin O’Keefe, a character in the novels.

The LOA has now published a second collection of L’Engle novels, The Polly O’Keefe Quartet, which I finished earlier today.  Polly is the daughter of Meg & Calvin, a teenager, she is the oldest of the seven O’Keefe children.  This second series, while a continuation of the first, is very different.  The novels still can be classified as science fiction, and they emphasize even more so the theology, but my guess is L’Engle was testing her skills at other literary genres when she wrote these.  In this quartet, you can find international espionage, romance, environmental activism, and a significant teenage girl coming-of-age aspect that wasn’t really present in Wrinkle in Time.   Significantly, the closing novel, An Acceptable Time, returns to the time-travel plot presented in the first novel, A Wrinkle in Time.

The four novels are:  The Arm of the Starfish, 232 pages, published in 1965; Dragons in the Water, 252 pages, published in 1976; A House Like a Lotus, 242 pages, published in 1984; and An Acceptable Time, 242 pages, published in 1989.

Recommendation:  Yes, I’ve enjoyed reading these.  As with the first collection, it is important to read them in sequence.

Red Star Over China: The Classic Account of the Birth of Chinese Communism (1938) By Edgar Snow

This week as the Chinese celebrate the 70-year anniversary of the People’s Republic of China and the Communist Party consolidation of power, China finds itself as the lead story on two major international news fronts: a trade war with the United States, and a battle of attrition with Hong Kong.  The issues behind both of these news stories are not new, but the bargaining dynamics have changed in these seven decades. To overstate it, China has long ago ceased being a third world country, in fact, it no longer needs to bargain at all.

Everything about state policy is governed by China's history, a direct result of a disreputable and abusive mistreatment by colonial powers (including the United States) and their Chinese puppets. This history, unknown to or forgotten by those who still try to bully China today, shapes Beijing’s world view. And why shouldn’t it?  Concurrent with PRC's short history, the world has witnessed an uneasy stalemate with the former Soviet Union under the reality of mutually assured nuclear destruction.  And now with China, what looms is a mutually assured economic destruction … there will be no winners.

Lost to western policymakers was that the cause of overthrowing imperial dynastic rule in China did not start as a matter of Communists vs. Nationalists. It was a matter of Chinese vs. foreigners & their puppets.  Did the political split have to occur?  One can make a convincing argument that the Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek was merely another western puppet, backed & bankrolled by the U.S. and other western nations who bet on the Nationalists to protect “their” interests -- and lost that bet. The Chinese peasantry on the other hand, including Mao Tse-tung who was extremely well read in western democratic writings, had no other choice but to seek allies where available to protect the interests of the Chinese people.  At the time, that available ally would have been the Soviet Union.

American & western contact with, and understanding of, what was going on in China beyond the treaty ports was limited.  Next to nothing was known about the Communists who seemed to be winning popular support among the “peasants.” Until that is, Edgar Snow an American journalist was invited into the Chinese interior stronghold of Yenan where Mao Tse-tung and other revolutionaries had sought refuge to regroup after the legendary Long March.  The invitation had a motive, Mao hoped to tell the world the other side of the story.

Snow would spend several months living in Mao’s camp, conversing with him daily and informally.  Snow would write the first western published biography of Mao, his policy beliefs, and how he & the Community Party captured the loyalty of the masses, building them into a peoples’ movement strong enough to expel the machinations of the more modern, more powerful, western world.

Recommendation: Yes, for any reader of history, especially for the detailed history of the Long March; and anyone interested in current events.

South of the Border, West of the Sun (Japanese 1992, English 1999) By Haruki Murakami

The author Haruki Murakami is a mega-success both in Japan and internationally.  He’s an excellent, complex, deeply personal writer. I raved about the first book of his I read: Colorless Tsukura Tazaki and His Yearsof Pilgrimage. In it the lead character was a young man experiencing youthful anguish in his friendships, and painfully carried that anguish with him into adulthood to the point it harmed his ability to have loving relationships. Your heart broke for him.

Not so, in South of the Border, West of the Sun. In this book, Hajime, the main character, has an equally confused youth, but never does any self-reflection until much later in his adult life. As a student he has a close friendship with a girl named Shimamoto. They are both an only child. Both are extremely intelligent and loved to sit together and listen to “old” music from their parent’s generation. The book’s title comes from a Nat King Cole version of the song South of the Border, West of the Sun and Duke Ellington’s Star-Crossed Lovers plays a plot role.   

Significantly, Shimamoto has a polio disability causing her left leg to drag noticeably as she walks. As they get older, Hajime will eventually stop seeing her, and drops her from his life entirely when he leaves for university, moving to the big city. Dating is basically a social climbing activity for him, and he eventually advances his career, marrying the boss’s daughter. Later, Hajime and Shimamoto will reconnect very briefly and he will learn the impact his behavior had on her life. Hajime is, in my read, a total cad. 

Truth be told, the only part of the story I liked was Hajime’s mid-life career crisis which resulted in him deciding to open a nightclub. 

So, how does one judge a book when one loves the writing, and hates the plot? Murakami is a superb writer; I will read more of his works. But I got to tell you, I wish I would have skipped this one.

Recommendation:  No.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940) by Carson McCullers

Carson McCullers debut novel The Heart is a Lonely Hunter was written in 1940 when she was only 23-years old.  It was an immediate bestseller and routinely ranks as one of the top 100 English-language novels of the century.  It is set-in small-town Georgia in the “recovery” years after the Great Depression. It was explosively controversial when published and remains so today because of the issues raised in the book: the spread of communism, rising fascism in Europe, and income inequality and racism in America.

The main character in the book is a deaf mute named John Singer.  He carries a card he presents to people when he meets them explaining that he is deaf, but an expert lip reader, he will write out sentences when necessary.  It is to him that the other primary characters reveal themselves, routinely telling him everything that is on their minds, believing he understands and agrees with them because he rarely lets them know otherwise. They are: a girl going through adolescence, he lives at the bordering house run by her parents; the widowed owner of a café where much of the action takes place; a labor-organizer/budding communist, who works as a carnival barker and is an alcoholic; and an African American medical doctor.  Singer’s story is never clear even though his attachment to another deaf mute, Spiros, who has been forcibly committed to a mental institution by an Uncle, plays a major role in the novel.

   

Many reviewers of the book have zeroed in on “love” as being what motivates each of the characters. I don’t, at least not in the sense of a lonely hearts club romance.  Longing is a factor, but it is not necessarily a physical love.  Mick, the young girl, for instance longs for an escape from the town, a career as a composer – she is devastated when she must take a job at Woolworth's when she is just 16 to help her family.  She realizes the decision will likely end her education, end her ambitions.             

“Mick frowned and rubbed her fist hard across her forehead.  That was the way things were.  It was like she was mad all the time.  Not how a kid gets mad quick so that soon it is all over – but in another way.  Only there was nothing to be mad at.  Unless the store.  But the store hadn’t asked her to take the job.  So there was nothing to be mad at.  It was like she was cheated.  Only nobody had cheated her.  So there, just the same she had that feeling.  Cheated.”

The doctor, old and in poor health himself, encompasses the longing in the book most clearly.  He has struggled and longed to see his family, and his people, rise up and prosper, only to see them beat down by the South, and then beaten down further by their acceptance of those circumstances. He oddly shares the political philosophy of the labor organizer (and in fact even named one of his sons after Karl Marx).  He puzzles over his friendship with Singer, the only white man he feels understands him.

Near the end of the book, Singer will commit suicide.  He does so when he learns that his friend who was forcibly institutionalized has died. Spiros, a troubled young man on multiple fronts, as a fellow deaf mute, was the only one who Singer thought knew him.  He was to Singer, what Singer was to the other characters in the book.  This comes strikingly clear shortly after Singer learns of Spiros’ death.  He is passing a tavern/restaurant when he realizes there is a table of three deaf men signing away inside, he stops and joins them briefly, though doesn't feel welcome.  He departs to catch his train. Singer’s lonely heart is the lack of a community that understands his reality.

Recommendation:  Yes, and no.  This is not an easy read, if you are looking for pleasure reading, this is not it.  If you are looking for biting, often painful social criticism, this is a masterpiece.  The 1968 movie of the novel is, in a word, awful.

There There (2018) By Tommy Orange

Over the past few years, I’ve read and reviewed several books from the Native (American) Literature genre.  Almost exclusively, these titles have dealt with “Rez Life” -- the impact of growing up and living, permanently or seasonally, on a reservation.  Last year however author Tommy Orange added a new and often ignored topic to this literally canon with his book There There set in an urban “ghetto” in Oakland, California. 

Oakland, like most North American cities, has neighborhoods that are often the “first stop” when a Native individual or family arrives in town from a reservation. These neighborhoods, like first generation immigrant communities, are generally low-income neighborhoods where people learn about their new environments, and get their first jobs, all the while being able to connect with people who understand and respect the culture they are coming from.  The existence of these neighborhoods is part of a familiar, even predictable, pattern of urban settlement.  

   

When I began the book, I immediately guessed wrong. It is structured as a collection of intermingled short stories, each about a particular character.  After story #2 about a young man’s grant project, I thought I had the book figured out.  His idea was to produce a video of Native (full-blooded, or not) residents of Oakland, letting them talk on camera, without a script, of their life experiences -- much of the taping would take place at Oakland’s Pow Wow.  Because of this, I jumped to the conclusion that the book was a written version of the project. And, in a way it is.  There There could easily stand on its own as a sociology research study, the material is there, it’s a key part of the character development of the story.  And, it reads sort of slow at first, the way a study would.  And if it stopped there that would be fine, it’d still be a good book.

What is a Pow Wow?

But, as I eventually discovered, the book isn’t a textbook, it is essentially an action-thriller, masked as a sociological survey.  It seems the people whose lives we get to witness are often tangentially connected, and in many cases actually related. Their stories will come together at the Pow Wow.   Despite being a first-time novelist, Orange expertly takes us to the climax.  At about three quarters of the way through the book, the chapters start to get progressively shorter, with no digressions, yet lots of detail.  Reading speed picks up dramatically, and you are there, in person, holding your breath. And that, without a spoiler, is all I’m giving you. 

Recommendation:  Yes.

Clock Without Hands (1961) By Carson McCullers

I am finding retirement to be a time for tackling authors I always meant to read, but never could find the time to do so. One of those authors is Carson McCullers.  Her classic The Heart is a Lonely Hunter has been on my reading list for a long time.  I’ve just started reading the Library of America collection of her Complete Novels.

I did not begin with Lonely Hunter however, I picked her last novel instead, Clock Without Hands, published in 1961.  It is a “Southern Gothic” text set in the town of Milan, Georgia. The selection was made because of its relevance to current (2019) political events.  Clock Without Hands has four main characters, one of whom is a proud segregationist former Congressman.  The former Congressman is called “Judge” by everyone, as a title of respect.  He’s routinely referred to as one of the South’s “leading citizens.” 

The plot revolves around the differing world views of the Judge, his grandson Jester, and a young African American, Sherman Pew – so named because he was abandoned at birth, left in a church pew.  Today we look at this debate and wonder how the Judge’s “old South” world view was ever tolerated, rather on accepted as politically tenable in the halls of Congress, and we question the excuse of “that’s the way it was back then.”

The book’s end coincides with the Supreme Court decision ordering the integration of public schools, a KKK meeting convened by the Judge & the local Sheriff, and a bombing.

The fourth main character in the book is the town pharmacist, J.T. Malone.  While he is involved in the main plot, his subplot (inserted for symbolism) is heart wrenching, in Chapter 1 he is diagnosed with leukemia.  He dies in the book's final paragraph.

McCullers’ writing is incredible, flawless. Her status as a cutting-edge author is secured by a pantheon of stories with plots and characters that remain controversial today, and were definitely taboo in the 50’s and into the 60’s.  Her depiction of the small-town South of that era is frightening, and I dare say on target.

My only prior exposure to McCullers is the movie adaptation of Reflections in a Golden Eye, starring Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor.  I will definitely read it, as well as the other seven novels in the collection. 

In her personal life, McCullers was friends with Tennessee Williams, another author identified with the South.  I did not know that until reading the Wikipedia post on her when I finished Clock Without Hands.  That friendship is apparent however because as I was reading the book, the similarities between the Judge, and “Big Daddy,” a character in Williams’ classic Cat on a Hot Tin Roof had occurred to me – not as a plagiarism issue, but one of character construction in Southern literature. 

Recommendation:  Yes, absolutely.