Book Review: Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey

This is the third of Abbey’s books that I’ve read and the first of his non-fiction efforts.

Covering his time as a Park Ranger at what was Arches National Monument and is now Arches National Park the book calls back to a time before it had paved roads and was overrun by hordes of air conditioned tourists. It also goes back before the build of the Glen Canyon Dam.

Abbey is an exquisite observer of humanity and human nature, never failing to skewer the worst of us. From the fat tourists who never leave the pavement and want to turn nature right back into what they have sought to escape by coming to the wilderness in the first place, to the governmental functionaries who only see the National Park system as another widget to be managed at the behest of unfathomable bureaucracy, Abbey spares no one in his opinions.

Industrial tourism is a phrase Abbey coins here and 50 years after it was written Desert Solitaire has lost none of its poignancy and is more relevant than ever. His acerbic wit is needed today. He is no wilting flower and not some hippy or millennial in his outlook. He is more than happy to take a flamethrower to everything he despises, and that makes him so refreshing. Abbey is not one for compromises and playing nice with others. He’s as rough as the sandstone he inhabits here.

But its not just expressing his anger at those changing the desert wilderness he loves that makes the book great. Its his in depth knowledge of the world that surrounds him. Names of plants and animals roll easily off the tongue. Animal habits and geologic forces are clearly explained. While not formally educated in ecology, Abbey is a genius as relaying the natural world to the reader in all its wonder.

The book takes on an even greater enjoyment for anyone who has visited Moab, UT, Arches, Canyonlands, the Grand Canyon or similar areas of the Southwest. You can visit Delicate Arch in your own memories and compare it to Abbey’s view. You can take the roads as they exist today and then read how they once were, not long ago. Its a wonderful book full of details and revelations about the American Southwest and what it once was, what its becoming, and why we should all feel a bit of sadness in how we have removed part of our own humanity in removing the gift of wilderness.

Book Review: The Last Man by Mary Shelley

Woof…at some 400+ pages and written in early 1800’s English this one was a bit of a struggle.

It was worthwhile however. It definitely has its drawbacks as not only is it written in a language/spelling that is often not aligned with our modern speech and structure causing the reader to interpret what the actual words are or a rereading various passages, but Shelley is extremely verbose and overly flowery. A laundry list of adjectives, similes, and metaphors accompany even the simplest of events and items. Shelley was in desperate need of an editor with a sharp pen and to encourage a much more direct approach from her.

I did find the effort rewarding however. Really the book breaks down into two parts, or two stories. The first being the growth of Verney the narrator from castoff youth to an educated and worldly second fiddle to his eventual Brothers-in-Law Adrian and Raymond. It is through him that the romantic and political machinations are viewed and are the primary topics of this first half. Expecting the work to devolve into a zombie apocalypse in the first 200 pages will bring disappointment when you are instead read of loves won and lost, descriptions of differences between England’s benefits gained by a “republican” form of government vs. one of royal bequeathed power, battles between Greeks and Turks, suicides, infidelity, and so on. Its here where Shelley establishes the personalities and orbits of each of the main characters as a proxy for herself and her friends in real life. I’ll leave description of the linkages between each character and their real life compatriots for elsewhere but leave it as Verney equating to Mary Shelley, Adrian to her husband Percy, and Raymond to Lord Byron, as just some examples. Written after the death of her husband, Byron, and her own children there is a lot to be interpreted here as a reflection of her own views of her compatriots after their passing.

The second half of the work is where the undefined “plague” makes its appearance and drives the action after having been near entirely unmentioned in the first half. After depopulating the rest of the globe the plague arrives in England and begins its ravages, forcing all to resign themselves to their early fates. Over 200 pages all individuals and civilizations are stripped away with each loss weighing on the reader as Shelley keeps the descriptions of the lose the most succinct part of the work. Children and spouses are lost and moved on from in a matter of a sentence or two whereas prior events (a trip from one town to the next) might take up 5 pages. Shelley’s own frequent interaction with death certainly has an impact here.

I originally picked up this work as a result of some of the attention it received during this Covid pandemic. A scourge unseen and unstoppable driving irrational behavior among a global populace seems relevant, no? Shelley is far ahead of her time in many things including the idea that if you survive a virus driven malady you will have immunity from it going forward, as her character Verney does here even if he is the only one to do so resulting in the titular Last Man. It will leave you feeling more that man is doomed to fail no matter what his efforts, reasoning, or inherent goodness may be. Nothing stands in the way of the plague, not love, not intelligence, not courage, not beauty, wisdom or any admirable characteristics. In the end we all fall before death’s scythe whether by virus, our own hand, or any other myriad happenstance. All that matters then is how we face it and what we do with the limited time we’re given. While not a happy resolution to the work…its one I can be satisfied by.

Book Review: Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke

I’ll be honest and say that I grabbed this book and read it due to Denis Villeneuve announcing that he is now attached to turn the work into a film and with his brilliant versions of Blade Runner 2049 , Arrival, and Dune as well the non Science Fiction but still brilliant Sicario and Prisoners among others, I knew I needed to read the source material. The fact that Rendezvous is written by one of the masters of SciFi that I really only knew from watching 2001 and 2010 only solidified my desire to read it.

I shouldn’t have waited so long.

Its a fantastic work of real (meaning “hard”) scifi. There is no attempt to shoehorn quasi-fantasy stuff in here or silly tangents that seem to scratch the itch of the author, publisher, editor, or audience’s bias or flavor of the day. Yes, that means that character exposition takes a REAL distant backseat as many critics point out. The astronauts that carry the action here are given only the thinnest of backgrounds and descriptions. One is essentially interchangeable with another and any one of them could be a “red shirt” at any time and the reader wouldn’t care.

That said, the lack of character development ends up being one of the strengths of the book. Because of this the reader can put themselves behind the eyeballs of any character and drop themselves right into the middle of any action. It is the READER who is gazing in awe and Rama…it is the READER who is discovering Rama’s secrets and viewing the biots and trying to figure out just what is going on.

This is so effective in part because Clarke is able to convey the truly “awesome” and unknowable craft that is Rama. I was reminded most often of works like Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness as Clarke’s characters look out across the plains of Rama or the Circular Sea…It was the same sort of experience there as it was for Lovecraft’s…The human mind and experience is just not equipped to see and know these things as they are so far outside our limited comprehension. The old “technology sufficiently advanced from existing experience will seem undistinguishable from magic” saying comes to mind here and Clarke is a master of describing in concrete terms, the unknowable or incomprehensible.

The book on its own provides no answers, resolves few questions and leaves the reader just as dumbfounded as its characters. It creates a sense of wonder and questioning and impresses upon the reader just how small humanity is and how little we actually know. We are a small, inconsequential race on a small, inconsequential rock, floating in an unknown sea. Reading Rama is like staring up an endless night sky and feeling a sense of vulnerabilty we don’t commonly encounter…and any work able to generate such sefl reflection is worth my time.

Book Review: Final Spin by Jocko Wilinck

Lets first start with the fact that I am not a Jocko fanboy. Yup, I listen to many of his podcasts and I admire his service as a SEAL and I find common viewpoints with his focus on self sufficiency and self improvement. That said, I’m not one to simply laud a work just because I enjoy other efforts of an individual and I am also more than just a bit critical when it comes to the written word, nor am I running around playing dress-up and in the gym 24-7 scarfing down supplements in an attempt to replicate Jocko’s physique or impression.

With that out of the way, perhaps we can put my commentary on this work in its proper place.

As an interesting novella (which is what it is, not really a full length novel) its worth running through. Its topics are nothing earth shattering—disaffected youth stuck in dead end jobs with no perceived hope of advancement or material improvement. I find no issue with the salty language, descriptions of drinking, or very cursory descriptions of sex either real or implied…those clutching their pearls over such items in the Amazon reviews of the book are not living in the real world nor have ever read Shakespeare, Hemmingway, Homer, the Bible or anything else worth a damn…Life is ugly, messy, and full of icky people doing icky things. Jocko is actually quite reserved in his language and portrayals. There is nothing prurient or juvenile here.

The structure of the work could potentially be offputting to some readers…its not conventional in that the reader is often put inside the head of the main character and rides along with brief snippets of thought. One or two word flashes of cognition are common and move the reader quickly from one page to the next. No need for long expositions, just moving from point to point as the characters make rapid fire decisions. You won’t find flowery metaphors here, just hard edged visuals and movement.

By the end of the work I wasn’t quite sure what Jocko’s position in writing it was. Was he saying that the “down on their luck” males that are the focus of the work should have made better decisions? Was he saying that he (Jocko) could have ended up on this same self-destructive path if not for certain choices? Was he saying we all deserve better than the lives we are commonly “stuck” with? I’m not sure. There are no heroes here, the readers (or at least I) don’t empathize much with Johnny the protagonist, and the topic of an America that has been left behind wishing for something more fulfilling than a brown-collar job stocking shelves is not really unplowed earth.

Is it worth a quick read for a high schooler looking for direction? Yeah, I think that’s who this might be best targeted at…someone who is searching for direction and a way out. I’m not sure it will result in the best course of action but at least it might get such an individual thinking of what they want their life to become. If it serves that purpose in a few cases, then Jocko likely should be happy with the end result. For me? Its a bit “fast food-ish” Quickly consumed, enjoyable the time spent with it, but not entirely fulfilling or weighty.

Book Review: Masters of Chaos by Linda Robinson

Damn…I should have liked this book. Right up my middle-aged, white guy, desk-jockey, alley.

Unfortunately it is a 400 page “report” by a “reporter” vs. a story or a consumable work that provides any context or analysis. The most interesting part is the last 20 pages when the author begins to draw conclusions about the things she has seen, people interviewed, and the longer arc of history.

The rest of the work sounds simply like a restatement of an amateur reporter’s list of “who, what, where, and when”…without including even much of the “why”.

All of the special forces members covered in this deserve better. They are reduced to mere shells or cardboard standups. No reader can distinguish one from another or trace the events of a reappearing individual from one event to the next. Simply recounting “Bob was in Panama in 1990 where he led team X in the conflict” and then 100 pages later “Bob returned to the conflict zone in Somalia four years later where he roped into a village” and then 100 more pages later “he retired to write a book on unconventional warfare” does not make for an insightful or interesting read.

None of this is to say what Robinson is recounting her is fake, embellished, or unremarkable…it is. The Special Forces have done remarkable things with limited resources and in ways the American public doesn’t recognize—very different things than the more widely heralded SEAL Teams and other “Tier One” operators. These special forces deserve their skills and accomplishments recounted with the full background, analysis, commentary, color, description, and character that they possess. This isn’t that.

My last gripe here is with the hacks doing the back cover recommendations of the book. In no way did these individuals actually read the book before they were paid to provide a quote. Hell…John McCain and Robert Baer use nearly the same language in their first sentences in these promotions that tell you they were given a script and told “I’ll give you $5000 if you sign off on having said this so we can promote the book under your name”. There is a TON of work done on the actions special forces of all kinds (using the SF term here very generally) over the past 20 years. Choose a different one than this.

Book Review: Red Roulette by Desmond Shum

As a detail of the typical corruption occurring within China over the past 25 years as it became a foremost geopolitical power Red Roulette is a solid education. Making clear that the entire system is grossly broken with the red elite trading influence and favors for wealth, Shum reveals his position in it all. He and his now ex-wife were at the center of influence peddling being close partners with the wife of China Premier Wen Jiabao for nearly two decades.

Parlaying such a personal relationship into sweetheart investment and development projects made Shum a millionaire hundreds of times over but did not protect him or his ex-wife from Communist inquisitions and eventually kidnapping and imprisonment for his former spouse (who was allowed to make a single phone call just prior to this book’s publishing in the middle of the night to Desmond asking him to stop its publishing…and then back into the gulag she went).

As political fortunes changed within China and Xi Jinping rose to power and now General Secretary for life and the hard(er) line Communists/Nationalists have risen in prominence, “reformers” like Jiabao and the Shum’s have been arrested, “disappeared” or kept to house arrest and silence. Once these useful idiots played their part in recovering China from the disasters that were the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolutions and the Red Second Generation (the Princelings or Crown Princes of the Communist Party) was firmly back in power (largely the offspring of original Communist revolutionaries) there was no need for soft players like Jiabao nor those with a capitalist or non-bloodline bent such as Shum…so off to the glue factory these people went.

Red Roulette is not a great piece of literature. It is stilted, sometimes boring, often self aggrandizing in its nature. It does however detail the inner workings of the relationships that make (made?) China work at its peak of uninhibited growth. Looking back now after the “disappearance” of Jack and Pony Ma as well as the breathtaking confiscation of their (and their shareholders) wealth by the Red Chinese, one only wishes that such a slap in the face to Western feelings about how much had not changed within China in recent periods had come earlier. Not that it wasn’t recognized—JP Morgan Chase had a policy for years of giving cushy positions and benefits to the “princelings” in order to gain access and favor in the Chinese market…they had just done so thinking that China had changed….corrupt, yes…but still playing by Western rules of similar glad handing corruption—local politicians giving concrete contracts to their cousin Bob for a new bridge style of unethical behavior. What is revealed here is something different. A truly Chinese “long game” of corruption and acquisition of unfathomable, global power to be concentrated in the hands of the Communist elite. Shum was played like a fiddle…as was his wife…and Jiabao…and the rest of the “reformers” that were the Chinese face to the West throughout the early ‘00s. Shum’s work comes 20 years too late and and may assuage his guilt over having made his bones because of the system but it comes across as far too little, too late.

Book Review: Travels With Charley by John Steinbeck

This is the first Steinbeck work I’ve ever read. No, never read Grapes of Wrath in High School or similar, no, never watched any of the films based on his work—East of Eden, Lifeboat, or others.

That said, this work intrigued me more than others likely for the topic—a solo trip in a camper around the country just to see what can been seen and learned.

And learn and travel he does. From Long Island through Vermont to Maine, all the way across the top of the country through the Wisconsin Dells, Minnesota, the Badlands, out to his birthplace in Northern California, down through Texas and out into New Orleans and then back home to NY.

Yes that skips large portions of the country with the mid-Atlantic and center of the country untraveled and much of the midwest unmentioned as he traveled through them quickly or ignored them after what is the finish of the work in New Orleans. Still, he hits on the huge changes that were going on in the US at the time (very early 60’s during Kennedy-Nixon election) and the themes he carries through are oh so relevant today.

Now I have a bit of bias in liking this tale he weaves as virtually every location he visits is one I have as well. Admittedly not in the same trip but over the years I’ve been to New Orleans, crossed Texas multiple times, spent time on the West Coast, in the Badlands, at Niagra Falls, along the coast of Maine, in Montauk…So I can compare my experiences to his.

I end up coming away with similar feelings as he did…albeit 50 years later. I feel, as he did, that America is struggling. That it is out of sorts, lost its way and at conflict with itself. Maybe everyone feels that way in such a big country where ideas and feelings are rarely in alignment with one’s neighbor. Certainly his feelings that Americans are a mix of people that changes in culture from locale to locale and not at all a homogenous group carries to today. As do other ideas including what was a recent, for him, development of the trailer home and trailer parks, march of technology, fear of global annihilation. No dilatant however as I might have thought him to be, he carries very non-current day liberal attitudes towards many things including gun ownership, hunting, self reliance, etc. that have now become an anathema of the Left. I’m not sure Steinbeck would be welcome in today’s Montauk or San Francisco societies. He finds too much in understanding with the Southerners who fear the changes racial integrations are bringing.

Which is really the core of the work. While his time through Texas is the funniest of his anecdotes—never have Texans been described more accurately and more incisively than here, it is his time in New Orleans that you feel his emotions at the fore. Completely portraying the fat, useless, Southern white hags who would show up on a daily basis to scream obscenities at the African Americans simply trying to go to school, Steinbeck spares no punches in exhibiting the backwards nature of these people. Visiting New Orleans today I can’t imagine such attitudes and behavior being condoned but in the backwoods of LA and MS….its clear such thinking exists to the current. The book is worth it for his supposed first hand account of these early school integrations in the South and the bitterness that existed on one side and the distrust on the other. The book will raise real questions in the reader’s mind in the conversations that follow—with an virulent racist Steinbeck gives a ride to after breakfast one day, an African American student who is terrified of Steinbeck’s whiteness and attempts at conversation, and an “everyman” who tries to rationalize the situation—not to forgive it or condone it…but to explain why it came to be.

Steinbeck is great here in producing a bit of a travelogue, a bit of an adventure, a bit of reportage, a bit of social commentary. As a peek at what the state of the US was in the early 60s just prior to so much social upheaval it is well worth the time and as a look at issues that we continue to struggle with today, it is timeless.

The only thing I can’t forgive in the work? His traveling companion. A Poodle? Disgusting. Get a real dog or get a cat. Anything but a poodle…I honestly think its because of the poodle that I had not read this to date. I’ll ding it and him slightly for that…

Book Review: Come Back Alive by Robert Young Pelton

Picked up this book a while back out of my like of RYP’s prior works to include Licensed to Kill, The Hunter, the Hammer, and Heaven, and World’s Most Dangerous Places.

While LTK and THTHAH are recounts and commentary on RYP’s visits to various conflict zones and interactions with people in such locales, Come Back Alive is more in the form of WMDPs in that it is intended to be more of a “guide” for folks encountering such issues are areas. While WMDP does a country by country breakdown of typical issues in numerous countries and is both entertaining and educational on issues in each location (and quite lengthy), Come Back Alive is more of a general guide to events one might encounter—kidnappings, bad food, lethal animals, car accidents, high altitude sickness, etc.

I won’t spend much time on this review. The book was not worth anyone’s time. RYP has just taken the Boy Scout’s Handbook here and sprinkled in a few snarky comments about how you are more likely to be killed by a hippo than a lion, that you should run away from a fight and not worry about self defense, and that the third world has lots of bad drivers. There is little to nothing here that common sense or a year in Cub Scouts wouldn’t have already taught you (bring water to the desert as its real dry out there type of advice). The work is disappointing in the utmost given his keen observations and experiences related in his other works. Round file this work in the recycling bin.

Book Reviews: Quick Hits On Three Books

Trying to keep up my reading these days and closed out three works in the past month and a half, all in different genres and of different qualities.

Double Star by Robert Heinlein: Less a sci-fi novel than a “caper” it is still a fun read. In a very innocent, 50’s sort of way this is a light work with a down on his luck actor “everyman” being selected for his physical likeness to one of the most important men in the solar system. His job? To impersonate said important man while that individual is out of commission and cement the alignment of the native inhabitants of Mars with humanity and bring equality to all. Of course various pitfalls are encountered along the way including assassination attempts, betrayals, love interests, and so on. If I use the phrase “a rollicking good tale” that would describe it nicely. Nothing you are going to pull your hair out philosophizing over but a great little book to be entertained by.

Casting Into the Light by Janet Messineo: This ended up on a number of outdoor publications’ lists of notable works and I’ve certainly been interested in various fishing and ocean endeavors. It was unfortunate then that it was such a bore. Janet is a surfcaster focused on bluefish. She recounts her youth, introduction to surfcasting and years honing her craft on Martha’s Vineyard. The book is more or less simply a collection of personal anecdotes and remembrances of her past 40 years of surfcasting. Most of them not particularly interesting in nature or on the written page. There is no thread of continuity in the book other than simply the passage of time. No true theme that drives the recounting of events from one period to another. I might have more interest than most simply because of my geographic familiarity with the region and its aquatic life. Others will likely feel it to be more of a slog than I did in getting through it.

Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy: The third in McCarthy’s “Border Trilogy” after All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing this work follows the two protagonists who were the solo focus (individually) of the prior works, now together working on a southern New Mexico ranch. COTP is actually an extension of The Crossing more than anything. As its central character in Billy Parnham states [paraphrase here] “I’ve gone down there three times and never once came back with what I went down to get”. By “down there” Parnham means Mexico. In COTP it is his fourth and final trip there to assist his friend in John Grady Cole that is the pinnacle of the three books. If you’ve read McCarthy’s books, by this point you know things are going to end badly when Cole falls for a Mexican whore but it doesn’t make the journey to that finale any less wonderful. It is again McCarthy’s ability to draw out descriptions of the deep southwest culture and geography that are so fantastic. Edward Abbey would be pressed to do a better job of desert, rock, sand, dust, coyote, horse and blood descriptions. McCarthy writes like someone who has lived these lives he describes. COTP does read like an extra long chapter of The Crossing and feels slightly overweight compared to the prior two in the series but still an great closer to a classic modern Western triptych.

Book Review: The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy

The second in McCarthy’s “Border Trilogy” series, “The Crossing” finds itself in an odd position of being a “sequel” that is better than its progenitor but also far less well known.

Much of that has to do with the poorly received “All the Pretty Horses” film. Still, “The Crossing” is the better of the two works. More complex than ATPH it shifts between three distinct stories, each connected to the protagonist’s three trips across the border into Mexico. The most remarked upon is the first of these three in an attempt by the young man to return a wolf to its supposed native mountains across the border. The book ends with that same character’s efforts to discover and return his siblings bones to the United States.

What occurs in between are numerous highs, lows, quasi-mystical conversations, horrific violence (of course), descriptions of nature worthy of a naturalist poet, and an adherence to an outmoded sense of honor. Like ATPH this work is headed by a young male who encounters events and people constantly at odds with his view of life. At every turn life is set against him only to fail in grinding him beneath its boot. Yes, Billy Parnham, like John Grady Cole in ATPH is a husk of himself by the end but…its a husk that is still upright and holds to his ideals.

Be forewarned...the book is hard, as all McCarthy’s are for one reason or another…Here it is McCarthy’s lack of English translations for speech between characters conversing in Spanish. No help is given to the reader in translating these sections were are very significant. Some contextual cues surround these passages but it is largely left up to the reader to either understand it or not. It gives the book a feeling like much of McCarthy’s works—that you are missing something. That there is something just under the surface that you are missing that might help you understand what stands behind the passages but just out of your grasp. That’s not a bad thing.

Book Review: Hammer's Slammers by David Drake

Wish I could say I got through this and enjoyed it. Not to be however. As I’ve stated previously, I have made an executive decision to put books down and move on that I don’t enjoy rather than struggling through them to completion as I used to. There is just too little time for bad books.

So what made me put it down? I mean its kinda in my wheelhouse being a military sci-fi work right? Well, it falls into a category of those same works that really turns me off…which are sci-fi books in general and military sci-fi books in particular that project waaaaay out into the future (interplanetary travel, multi-world empires, and so on) and yet incorporate so much of what is present in our current world as to be unbelievable. There is zero possibility of a suspension of disbelief on my part or an investment in a story when the author is project some thousands of years in the future and yet…here we are with protagonists using “guns” and fission power plants, and adhering to what we have as modern religions which drive entire societies. Sorry but your book felt aged a year after it hit print and it feels grossly aged now.

Drake, for whatever his military and educational background (which is seemingly deep and notable) lacks for imagination beyond what he sees in front of him today (or 1979 as it were when he wrote it). His military experience from Vietnam is taken and projected far into the future and it reads that way—a mishmash of militarisms from 50 years ago mixed with technologies that we are already familiar with but projected thousands of years forward. Sorry…but we have drones, we have fission, we have homosexuals serving in the military, we have advanced laser weapons, small scale nukes, and, yes, relevant here, even large scale mercenary armies operating at the whim of various governments. The book reads like someone imagined the military of 1985 from a position of 1979 and then picked it up and transplanted it to the year 3500 with nothing having changed in between. Been there, done that, and moved on. I much prefer a work like The Forever War by Joe Haldeman which also falls into the military sci-fi genre but is more focused on the depth of characters and human nature than machines and technology. Human nature endures. Technology does not.

Add to that the “pulpy” nature of the work (just the name of the book alone sends shivers down my spine) and it feels like an unserious piece. Just couldn’t do it. Its content and flavor belong more in a pre-teen’s comic book than it does in a deep military-sci-fi work. Next!

Book Review: All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

I always seem to have an issue starting Cormac McCarthy works. The lack of punctuation, capitalization, and other structure devices throws me for a loop to start and makes me wonder if I really want to continue with the novel. It truly does get you to reframe how you read and how you interpret what are the thoughts or descriptions of the author vs. statements and viewpoints of the character.

I always continue however simply because the content is just so damn good. Yes its violent and highly masculine in nature. Yes it borrows from Hemingway and other “male” authors. Yes, it is highly likely to be “cancelled” along with his other works in the near future as being a last vestige of an older world version of what is quality writing. There is no magic-realism, there are traditional male/female roles presented, violence is a way of getting things done, now discarded ideas of independence, stoicism, honor, objective truth, and so on are seen as valuable. In short? Your modern high school teacher having been “educated” at Smith or Marist or other Liberal Arts junk factories will not only hate it but seek to eliminate it from acknowledgement.

Now, as for All the Pretty Horses itself, its by far the most “enjoyable” of McCarthy’s works I’ve read so far (others being Blood Meridian and Outer Dark) but still tells the tale of a doomed protagonist. From the beginning, no matter how pleasant the scenario (and maybe this is just from knowing McCarthy’s tendencies) the reader can feel the guillotine hanging over the characters, readying its fall at any moment. None escape the impact of seemingly inconsequential actions and associations.

I won’t get into the exact details, many of which you may know if you have watched the generally detested film version of this novel that came out in 2000 and which I’ll now have to go back and rewatch simply to make my own comparison after having read the book as I originally viewed it some decade or more ago and do not remember any feelings on it one way or another.

The core of the novel takes place in the ranchland and deserts of Northern Mexico though does venture into the towns and a prison of that same area in the just post WWII period. We often think of films and works like The Wild Bunch and others as showing the true end of the American West as being something taking place in the late 1800s or at the latest, very early 1900s, but McCarthy has drawn the closing of the American West forward some 50-80 years to the mid 20th century. In truth, McCarthy is pointing out that these issues, these cultures, these landscapes and the “hardness” that they demand, never go away. The independence and self reliance that is seen as an outdated characteristic associated with the white, American, cowboy, never really go away just because times change—thus the reason why McCarthy has moved his same motifs into very current periods with No Country for Old Men and his flashier pop-spinoffs like Taylor Sheridan have put forth works like Sicario and Yellowstone.

Backing all of McCarthy’s prose is his clearly deep love of the terrain and environment itself. His descriptions of the brush, dirt, dust, animals, vegetation, landscapes are near without equal (Edward Abbey perhaps?) in my various readings. This is not a novel written by someone who has a cursory knowledge of the hardscrabble lives of those living on the Western edges of our country (whether that is US or Mexico) but someone who has lived it first hand. The phrase “write what you know” comes to mind and McCarthy knows the depths of both man and nature better than almost anyone else I have read.

Book Review: River Master by Cecil Kuhne

I wish I could say I thought this book was worth everyone’s time. The topic is certainly worth it. John Wesley Powell’s running of the Colorado river from Wyoming through the Grand Canyon was the first of its kind—at the least showing that such a trip could be done and adding to America’s knowledge of itself if nothing else. Not up for debate is the trip’s status as the first to ever explore these realms (yes, not even the indigenous peoples had run and recorded the length of the Colorado) and return news of them. No one knew if the river was navigable or what features, geology, flora or fauna could be confirmed held within its canyons. Powell sought to uncover these and return news of them to the American public.

The trip’s faults—poor planning, inexperience, internal conflicts, lack of resources, etc. are worth examining as are the personalities of Powell and the others involved.

Unfortunately this book doesn’t cut it for quality or depth of work. Cecil Kuhne is reportedly a writer for the Washington Post, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, and many others. I would hope his other works are better compiled but in reality given his other works are largely “anthologies” and collections of other peoples stories…I suspect not. I’d instead guess that he is largely a human version of a “adventure literature food processor” consuming lots of other people’s information and material, chewing it up and spitting it out in some sort of reconstituted form, putting his name on it and making a buck off claiming the content as his own. Good work if you can get it.

This work in itself needs to be MASSIVELY edited. There are literally pages and pages of repeated events and descriptions. Beyond shear repetition of content, Kuhne’s vocabulary appears to be a tad limited as well given. Descriptions of waves and stone color are heard over and over and over.

Kuhne saves the only real analysis for the final pages of the book—and I agree with his viewpoint that Powell has been not nearly criticized enough for he and his trip’s failings. Powell’s elevation to near American sainthood alongside Lewis and Clark, Robert Peary, and Hiram Bingham, should definitely be under scrutiny (as should Peary…but that’s a different story) given the exploration’s as well as Powell’s personal failings.

The rest of the book seems to be merely a reprint of other sources and works, little original material is to be found here. A mere wikipedia reading would give you as much information. In short? This is a weak effort at a worthy topic. Powell’s exploration of the Colorado and the unknowns that surrounded were a huge and dangerous undertaking, one worthy of admiration and examination. Unfortunately this book doesn’t cover it to the extant it deserves.

Book Review: Tarawa by Robert Sherrod

A great work of art this is not. A great account of one of the US’s bloodiest battles in WWII, it is.

Robert Sherrod was a journalist, a war correspondent primarily working for Time and Life through much of his career. Tarawa (sometimes labeled “Tarawa: The Story of a Battle” is a very narrow view of one man’s observances of one of the amphibious landings at Tarawa, one of many of the Kiribati islands in the South Pacific that had to be retaken from the Japanese.

Exclusive to perhaps a time forgotten, Sherrod makes almost no comments, observances, or recaps of things he did not see first hand. This is a true “newspaperman’s” accounting in the most traditional sense. Sherrod takes you from his time in the transport ships to wading ashore to the first initial encounters with the Japanese defenders through his wanderings around the island after the battle was resolved. All of this from purely his own eyes.

One doesn’t get a sense of the larger battle, the wider strategy, the importance of the operation, the behind the scenes machinations, its longer term implications…Sherrod takes you there with him, reports what he saw and cuts you loose the moment the battle is over.

None of this is to say the work isn’t valuable…it is. It gives you a first hand view of what the American Marines faced taking the island. You get the unvarnished violence of such acts—from both sides. Here are the bodies cut in half, the missing limbs, the torched bodies. Here are the random things that make war sometimes a surrealist event—the tiny cat who survives and is cared for by a man who likely just finished killing scores of his fellows…the incongruous survival of a pane of glass when all else surrounding is blasted away. Its that “truth” that Sherrod saw that I think he sought to convey to the public.

If there is one tangent that Sherrod allows himself to indulge in from time to time it is his disdain for the stateside public. Referencing coal mining and other labor strikes in a time of war, the public’s belief that all battles could be one simply by bombing from 30,000 feet, that all Americans had to do was to show up to win the battle, and so on, Sherrod allows this feeling to shine through—That America is soft in its stateside population, that it has no real concept of war or what it takes to fight a war, that the media is not honest with the public about the difficulties of war and I think he hopes to change that or at least not be part of it.

Sherrod was good acquaintances with Roosevelt in these years and would press the President to allow the airing of a film about Tarawa which showed the battle in gruesome reality. The film was originally going to be hidden from view as it was felt the American public would lose their will to support the war if it was shown just how brutal and difficult the war actually was and the film was too violent to meet the then current Hollywood standards with only the President allowed to approve its release. Sherrod would be quoted as saying “I tell the President the truth. Our soldiers on the front want people back home to know that they don't knock the hell out of them every day of every battle. They want people to understand that war is a horrible, nasty business, and to say otherwise is to do a disservice to those who died.”

A quick read and more than a little dry, don’t expect Tarawa to “entertain” you, it simply seeks to inform you. And by those standards it succeeds in covering this bloody battle where some 4700 Japanese were killed in less than three days on a piece of land only two miles long and 800 yards wide with the Americans suffering 1000 deaths of their own. To give you an idea of just how amazing it is that the Marines suffered only 1000 deaths (another 2000 injured) understand that in the time the Japanese held the island they had constructed at least 500 machinegun equipped, concrete enforced, pillboxes to solidify their defense along with 40 separate artillery emplacements. This was the largest Pacific invasion to date at this point in the War and drove home just how difficult the Japanese would be to roll back. With the 4700 Japanese dead there were only 17 that surrendered…most deciding to fight to the death or commit suicide rather than surrender.

Sherrod reveals all the ugliness of war while still honestly representing the heroism of the Marines he accompanied. One could do far worse is learning what our forces faced in the Pacific than starting here.

Book Review: A Separate Peace by John Knowles

While ostensibly about teen boys I’m not sure that this book is targeted at that audience.

I had picked it up due to its frequent listing on books for teen boys when looking at works for my own son to read. John Knowles used his own experiences at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, NH (one of the most prestegious schools in the nature acting as a feeder to the Ivy League) to drawn upon as well as his time in the US Air Force at the end of WWII.

Core themes here include numerous ones you would (in my opinion) want any son to learn in his youth—loyalty, strength, kindness, independence, athleticism, competitive nature, etc. A young man’s time at such an academy should shape what he is for the future—here we see it also forever impact their lives for both good and bad.

Its main characters, Gene and Phineas, share a friendship like many young men do when put in such close circumstances…they both love each other (and I do mean "love”) as well as have, at least from Gene’s perspective, a decided jealousy of the other for what Phineas can do that Gene can’t. Its this desire to outmatch his best friend’s efforts that cause the cascading set of events resulting in bitter self examination for one of them.

Many have pointed to a homosexual element to A Separate Peace…and it is there in some of the teens interactions and language—however—the author has strongly disagreed that he ever had any intent to include any homosexual interactions between any of the characters. If he says so, I would tend to agree…so what do I attribute it to? I see only what I have come to view as the “homosensual” (a term a college professor of mine coined) nature of these schools. In any situation where young men are thrown together for extended and confined periods of time there is bound to be this sort of contact and commentary between one another. Disagree??

Please go see Winston Churchill, George Leigh Mallory, and any number of other male histories of those brought up through the English Academy system of education in the 1800 and 1900’s of which there is buckets of documentation. This contact between males may or may not end up sexual nature but either way it was understood by those of the time that these sort of relationships would develop in such environments and would naturally dissolve upon their transition to the “real” world. With Knowles having been brought up through such a system it is natural that he would describe actions and events that may appear to modern eyes to be homosexual in nature but in reality are “merely” the type of contact that often develops between young men in such situations having little to do with true “sexual” attraction a we think of it in the male-female “norm”.

Regardless, the book doesn’t focus on this issue, I just wanted to mention it. The novel itself is deeply affecting and could be seen as both an anti-war novel as well as a “coming of age” tale. In both regards it succeeds and is well worth anyone’s time in reading, particularly any man’s time as there are numerous items and emotions that will readily appear familiar to those found in both one’s own youth as well as their present. Its lessons are universal in time and place and more boys would be better off if they took the lessons to heart.