Bubbas book club

[Running Rebel]

The biggest fear for me the last couple years and possible clue to something wrong was that Bubba hadn’t added anything to the book club for three years. I believe he got as much enjoyment writing the reviews as I had reading them. In the last decade the book club was probably more influential to me than the albums though both spurred me to read novels he had read, and liked. It opened up an entire new world of literature and hundreds of books I loved. I’ve been re-reading the reviews, like reading lyrics and they are amazing, interesting and inspiring. He had a real gift.

 

 

But there was one I put off for a reading for a while because I knew what it was and I want to share. It speaks for itself. It’s from one of my favorite novels, Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna, though I am skipping to the second half and relevant part to our story.

 

—-

 

Gender and sexuality have always been important in literature—to the characters, and to the authors. It is noteworthy that in both of these novels, one character veils his true sexuality, sometimes even from himself. In both cases, redemption is achieved—or at least offered—by the love and respect of one woman.

 

Love and respect, love and respect—I have been carrying those words around with me for two years, daring to consider that perhaps they convey the real meaning of life. Beyond basic survival needs, everybody wants to be loved and respected. And neither is any good without the other. Love without respect can be as cold as pity; respect without love can be as grim as fear.

 

Love and respect are the values in life that most contribute to “the pursuit of happiness”—and after, they are the greatest legacy we can leave behind. It’s an elegy you’d like to hear with your own ears: “You were loved and respected.”

 

If even one person can say that about you, it’s a worthy achievement, and if you can multiply that many times—well, that is true success.

 

Among materialists, a certain bumper sticker is emblematic: “He who dies with the most toys wins!”

Well, no—he or she who dies with the most love and respect wins.

 

But why didn’t anyone ever tell me this? No one—not Mom and Dad, not Reverend Chisholm at St. Andrew’s United Church, not Miss Masters in Grade Six (she gave small prizes to students for memorizing bible verses in the early ’60s—probably not allowed these days), not Jesus, not Confucius, not Mohammad, not Krishna—no one ever seems to have imparted the simple idea that what we are supposed to do down here is go out into the world and earn love and respect.

 

Steve Martin once spoke of a life lesson he had learned: “No one will ever love you for working hard.” That is true, but it doesn’t stop many people from subconsciously living by that belief (guilty!). It is equally true that you will not earn anyone’s respect without working hard—not only at pursuits that might be respected by strangers (writing great novels, hitting things with sticks), but by living each day with the kind of integrity and generosity that earns the respect and love of friends and family members.

 

Then there’s love and respect for oneself—equally hard to achieve and maintain. Most of us, deep down, are not as proud of ourselves as we might pretend, and the goal of bettering ourselves—at least partly by earning the love and respect of others—is a lifelong struggle.

 

Philo of Alexandria gave us that generous principle which we have somehow succeeded in mostly ignoring for 2,000 years: “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”

 

Great literature takes us into that battle, and in every example I can think of—every celebrated novel of the past few hundred years—there is a quest for love and respect.

 

Perhaps I have wandered a long way from a review of these two great novels.

 

Or not.

—-

 

Yes Neil, you captured it perfectly, All the love and respect. Your fans the world over.

 

 

[Running Rebel]

Another thing, probably wishful thinking on my part but way back in episode 6 at the end of a long review of Hemingway, he wrote this.

 

Hemingway left the manuscript for Under Kilimanjaro in a Havana safety-deposit box, along with those for A Moveable Feast, Islands in the Stream, and The Garden of Eden (each also published posthumously, in that order). He called those manuscripts his “life insurance policy,” meaning that he wanted them to remain as a legacy for his survivors. He meant his wife and children, of course, but we too are his survivors, and I am glad for these last few treasures from his imagination, his ambition, his life, and his character.

Flawed or not, they are still diamonds.

 

I wondered if he left something for Olivia, for when she gets older. But again, she has a wealth of material to spend a lifetime getting to know her dad. That alone is a special gift.

[grep]

>>I wondered if he left something for Olivia, for when she gets older.

 

Perhaps the original lyrics to Sir Gawain and The Green Knight. :)

[Running Rebel]

One theme throughout Neil’s review of books is his “Gold Standard” simply being “smart and funny”. He spent some of the last reviews adding in Canadian authors and Newfoundland seems to spur a bunch of good authors to write about it. One of his last reviews was was of a book called A Colony of Unrequited Dreams. He doesn’t say it, but if you would like to get a peek into the soul of Bernie Sanders, for better or worse, this is the book. It’s first Prime Minister Joe Smallwood who was real, but turned to fiction in this novel, is a worthy model. Sad and hilarious. Though one of my favorite characters of all time Sheilagh Fielding whose acid wit is unmatched berates and loves poor Joe and everything about life. There is a hilarious part where England tries to dump the island as a “Colony” to save money and the people get drunk, riot and revolt to prove their are incapable of ruling themselves.

 

Another novel that sticks with me is Michael’s Chabon’s Telegraph Avenue and want to thank Neil for adding “hooptedoodle to my lexicon.

 

“Hooptedoodle” comes from the comic Prologue to Steinbeck’s Sweet Thursday, the sequel to Cannery Row. A couple of the shared characters — bums — are discussing the first book:

 

One night Mack lay back on his bed in the Palace Flophouse and he said, “I ain’t never been satisfied with that book Cannery Row. I would have went about it different.”

 

Mack goes on to describe to his friend, Whitey No. 2, what he likes in a book, in terms of chapter titles and lots of “talk,” and some description, but not too much.

 

“I like to know what color a thing is, how it smells and maybe how it looks, and maybe how a guy feels about it — but not too much of that.”

 

“You sure are a critic,” said Whitey No. 2. “Mack, I never give you credit before. Is that all?”

 

“No,” said Mack. “Sometimes I want a book to break loose with a bunch of hooptedoodle. The guy’s writing it, give him a chance to do a little hooptedoodle. Spin up some pretty words maybe, or sing a little song with language. That’s nice.”

 

One prize hooptedoodle in Telegraph Avenue is a central chapter that continues a single sentence for about ten pages. Not many writers could make that work, or even feel the need to try, but at Bubba’s Book Club, we like a little hooptedoodle. (Just not too much.)

 

—

 

I missed the run-on sentence in the review and did not catch it until I read the book and was a couple pages into it. It’s an ENTIRE CHAPTER, lol. And it works. And it’s beautiful. I think of how Neil had to struggle over lyrics and how he appreciated the right and perfect use of language and this is just ducking hilarious. And perfect. Smart and Funny.

Edited January 13, 2020 by Running Rebel

[Running Rebel]

Last one, and I can safely say Neil did not do LSD on his death bed.

 

A review of the Aldous Huxley novel Ironically written Sept/ 2011

After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, Aldous Huxley

 

“The proper study of mankind is books.” Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

 

Excerpt.

 

Today, Aldous Huxley is best known for his dystopian novel Brave New World, in which a docile populace is pacified by a drug called “soma,” which is both tranquilizing and euphoric, and by the promotion of gratuitous sex to encourage sensual indulgence and mindless compliance with the Authorities. Reproduction is industrialized, dehumanized, and “castes” of people are bred into specific levels and functions in society.

 

To people of my generation, growing up in the ’60s, Huxley was also famous, and infamous, for having written about his experiences with mescaline and LSD in The Doors of Perception (said to be where the rock band the Doors got their name) and Heaven and Hell.

 

“There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.”

 

On that subject, I have been saving the most eyebrow-raising biographical fact about Huxley—his deathbed request.

Aldous Leonard Huxley’s last day on Earth was November 22, 1963—the day of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. (C.S. Lewis also died that day.) During Huxley’s last hours, at his home in Hollywood, California, he was unable to speak. According to his wife, Laura, in her memoir, This Timeless Moment, he wrote her a note requesting, “LSD, 100 µg, intramuscular.” She duly gave him an injection at 11:45 a.m., and another a couple of hours later.

 

One cannot even begin to imagine what he felt, or saw, as he faded away . . .

 

“Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.”

 

Obviously, I consider this book to be a masterpiece, a major and enduring accomplishment by a writer who possessed a certain genius—a lively intelligence with the art to express it gracefully. As stated earlier, the novel’s deeper themes have echoed back to me for months now, a rare and enduring resonance that a musician would call a “long reverb.” Or another musical term, with subatomic associations, a “slow decay.”

 

That is also a metaphor for the grail of longevity—for which Jo Stoyte is willing to sacrifice everything.

 

After Many a Summer Dies the Swan is a rich and varied feast for the mind.

 

A final quote from Huxley demonstrates the delicacy and power of his intellect, and offers a thought well worth contemplating in regard to our own lives. Like the novel, you can think about it for a long time.

 

“The most valuable of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it has to be done, whether you like it or not.”

Edited January 13, 2020 by Running Rebel

[Running Rebel]

Can’t sleep. So another.

 

There is an ongoing attack the last few years against Postmodernism, which is greatly misinterpreted. It’s been pushed by a popular Canadian podcaster whose name I won’t mention. I remain thankful for introducing me to a wealth of PoMo authors and art that I cherish and reflect upon on a near daily basis. John Barth is one of the great influences I got from Neil. I have a signed first edition Sot Weed Factor

 

Every Third Thought: A Novel in Five Seasons, John Barth (2011)

 

Even into his early eighties (born 1930), the long-reigning master of postmodernism (hipsters call it “po-mo,” or even “pomo”) demonstrates his endurance as a playful-yet-profound observer and contemplator of humanity and life. The title refers to aging — how an old man’s every third thought is of death, quoting Prospero in The Tempest, when he is planning to return to Milan, “Where every third thought shall be of my grave.” The main character is an elderly author who remains upbeat and energetic, reflecting, “That still gives First and Second Thoughts to get stuff done in.” The irrepressible John Barth chronicles life’s late stages with the same crafty sleight-of-hand and bawdy gusto he brought to portraying youth — when it might be said that every third thought was of another end.

John Barth published his first novel, The Floating Opera, in 1956. (In one of his later non-fiction pieces, Mr. Barth describes a young writer in a small house in Upstate New York with a full teaching load and a young family. His writing is accomplished in stolen hours, with the aid of earplugs and amphetamines.)

 

John Barth blossomed into his own mature style with The Sot-Weed Factor in 1960 — highly intelligent and deeply learned, yet somehow warm and friendly, darkly comic and satirical — and always with a light-hearted carnality that might be dubbed “satyrical.” Since then Mr. Barth has produced a steady monument of works large and small, all interwoven with mythology, history, magic realism, unconventional techniques, and dark or ribald humor. I number several of his novels among my “dearest favorites” (seems the right descriptor), perhaps especially The Tidewater Tales (1987), a kind of sentimental touchstone. I certainly consider John Barth a member of my literary “lifetime achievement” pantheon. Many of his novels — in fact all of them — dwell among the select “rereadable” list.

 

In recent years I have reread a number of his early novels chronologically, and it occurs to me that perhaps the best way for a new reader to experience John Barth’s writing would be to start at the beginning.

It’s quite a journey . . .

 

[Running Rebel]

>>I wondered if he left something for Olivia, for when she gets older.

 

Perhaps the original lyrics to Sir Gawain and The Green Knight. :)

 

I would not be surprised if after some time passes we find Neil did write something posthumously for everyone. And air trust it will be ...smart and funny.