Roberto Bolaño's endless novel breaks new ground, ground best left undisturbed.
According to Amazon, two of the novel's statistically improbable phrases are "next dead woman" and "raped several times." The deaths and the rapes represented by these cold statistics are endless, drily recited with the enthusiasm of names in a phone book.
First, we cease to care about the women as individuals. There are too many of them. They blur. Next we cease to care about the women as a group, the set of all women murdered in Santa Teresa, Mexico. They are left in vacant lots, city dumps and along roadways. They are long ago and far away.
Then, we (this reader, at any rate) become disturbed when we realize that we have ceased to care. This realization is what I have taken away after reading this novel, and for me, that alone is its power.
Now is the time to do what you love
by Nancy Whitney-Reiter
Picture this: Joe, a fry cook in Gainesville, Florida, wows his family and friends with his Chesapeake Bay Wild Striped Bass and Braised Short Ribs on evenings and weekends. After dreaming of opening a restaurant "somewhere near the Big Sur," he sells his house, packs his family into a car and heads for California. Joe will learn the multiple definitions of "nightmare" and "disaster" before year's end.
Or picture this: Joyce, who lives in Decatur, Illinois, has always loved children. She's wondered for years whether to become a teacher or open a daycare center once her own children leave the nest. But she keeps waiting for some future moment when her world is more settled, ensuring that "what night have been" will remain "what never was."
Dreams, some say, will take up as much space as we allow. According to Nancy Whitney-Reiter, most of us spend our careers trying to achieve success as it's defined by others rather than proactively following our dreams and doing what we love. Yet, "Now is the time to do what you love" makes clear that ill-defined career-change goals may remain pipe dreams if we take no action or may become nightmares when we fail to consider realities and create a comprehensive plan.
After establishing the rationale for changing careers sooner rather than later, Whitney-Reiter leads readers through a frank assessment of exactly how their dream jobs will impact that lives, their emotions, their finances, their physical condition and their families. She includes pros and cons, examples, reality checks and "Is-It-Worth-It?" checklists.
When considering finances, for example, the checklist includes such statements as "I am willing to invest a significant amount of time on understanding and improving my financial picture" and "I understand that my expenses might actually rise during my transition between careers." If one doesn't agree with such statements, s/he may face roadblocks to his or her success.
After successfully working through the advice and checklists in part one, part two leads career-change dreamers into "Taking the Plunge." To avoid the financial and emotional nightmare of becoming trapped in a new career that doesn't meet expectations, one should make a sound written plan and find various ways for trying on the proposed career to see if it fits.
"Jumping into a new career," says Whitney-Reiter, "is akin to jumping into an unknown river. It may look beautiful and inviting from a distance, but you really have no idea what it's like until you become immersed in it. Sticking your big toe in--taking a trial run--allows you the opportunity to test the waters first."
Part three analyzes the realities and requirements of popular career and second-career choices, including converting hobbies into money-making opportunities, leading travel groups, teaching and care-giving, social work, public speaking, nonprofits, real estate and law enforcement. Those considering these careers will find options, laws, certifications and other vital specifics. Others may discover a career they hadn't yet thought of and/or sound examples of the kinds of considerations any new career includes.
Immensely well organized and practical, "Now is the time to do what you love" is the perfect companion for anyone who is dissatisfied with their current career and/or who is considering a second career after they retire from the first. To become viable realities, dreams require work. Whitney-Reiter's experience, research and interviews show those ready to take the journey the important milestones to leaving a job that's just a job and entering a fulfilling career doing that makes them personally feel successful and happy. The book is a very wise dream catcher.
The book is supplemented by online resources. Whitney-Reiter is also the author of Unplugged: How to Disconnect from the Rat Race, Have an Existential Crisis, and Find Meaning and Fulfillment
Buffaloed by Fairlee Winfield
When teenager Ovidia Odegard arrives in the United States in 1904, her first duty is to find suitable work so she can begin paying back her uncle for his out-of-pocket costs in sponsoring her immigration from Norway. Her dream, though is not only to be an American, but a Westerner, and that includes wearing a fancy buckskin jacket.
Providentially, Nancy Russell–the wife of the famed Montana cowboy artist Charles M. Russell–is looking for a housemaid at the couple’s home in Great Falls. When Ovida sees a copy of Russell’s pictorial “Studies of Western Life,” she can’t wait to board the train and head for the West she’s seen at the Nickelodeon.
When she arrives in Great Falls, she finds a dirty, modern city, and once she meets Charlie Russell, she begins discovering that the idealized West as it exists in books and movies is gone–if it ever existed. While Nancy Russell wants contracts and sales for Charlie’s art, Charlie would rather spend his time spinning yarns about the old days with his “bunch” down at the saloon. Not surprisingly, the house is a mess.
“Buffaloed” is Ovidia’s story as told to her grandson Billy just before she died at 94, and it all begins when she mentions a secret she has never shared with anyone: the famous Charles M. Russell mural “Lewis and Clark Meeting the Indians at Ross’ Hole” at the Montana State House of Representatives” wasn’t really painted by Russell. It was a con, or so Ovidia claims.
Ovidia dangles this con before her grandson’s eyes throughout her remembrances because, as she sees it, he wouldn’t understand it if he didn’t know what happened in the Russell household from the moment she reported for work. What had she gotten herself into?
That scene, Billy, what I saw when the door opened is drawn in my memory with indelifble pencil. I'll never forget it. Charlie Russell stood in the little parlor right off the entry, shirt off, half-naked, his bare torso twisted at a contorted angle, one arm raised as if to throw a spear. Instead of a spear though he helf a long handled paint brush. He was looking backward ovef his shoulder into a large mirror as he twisted and turned. Meanwhile an Indian woman in full buckskin costume squatted on a dirty read and yellow blanket in front of him. She held a long pipe and wore a great many beaded neckllaces. Heavy turquoise stones hung down from her earlobes.
This well-researched book is just the kind of yarn that the master of tall tales, one Charles Marion Russell (1862-1926), would endorse without hesitation. The dialogue, the atmosphere, and the historical period in “Buffaloed” are superb. Fans of Russell and Montana history will discover that the book includes real events and places along with a supporting cast of historical personages.
In his book “Montana Adventure,” a friend and contemporary of Russell, Frank B. Linderman, writes that “Charlie Russell was the most lovable man I have ever known.” This is the Charlie Russell who emerges in Fairlee Winfield’s wonderful novel.
Now, if you live in Montana, mostly everything having to do with Charlie Russell is sacred, and that includes a lot of living and story telling that was also delightfully profane. Ovidia does have a confession to make in regard to that mural, but this is a novel, of course.
Winfield’s disclaimer at the beginning of the book reminds us that “Buffaloed” is a work of fiction. In addition to the standard reference books about Charles and Nancy Russell, Winfield also had a more personal resource for this story: her Norwegian grandmother did work in the artist’s home and had a lot of humorous and gritty stories to tell.
Noah's Wife
by T. K. Thorne
Author T. K. Thorne brings us the mythic story of Na’amah in her beautifully written novel “Noah’s Wife.” Using research indicating that a flood about 5500 BCE nearly decimated the settlements along the southern shore of a fresh water lake known today as the Black Sea, Thorne has created a rich, multidimensional and richly imagined account of the Biblical flood from a feminine point of view.
Na’amah’s difficult birth left her with a pinched-head disfigurement that would have given the elders cause to cast her out had her grandmother Savta not convinced them the condition was temporary. Tubal-Cain will not forgive his sister for killing their mother in childbirth, though his actions stem in part from a secret Na’amah does not know. As a member of the hunting clan, Tubal-Cain despises Na’amah’s obsession with sheep and for being, in his estimation, somewhat dimwitted and without value. When Na’amah is twelve years old, she asks her grandmother why she keeps telling her she is special.
She is special, Savta says, in a way that can never be spoken of openly. Mother-Goddess has chosen her as a spokeswoman; yet this is a time when the goddess’ influence is waning in favor of a patriarchal Father-God belief system. The highly superstitious elders would throw Na’amah into a pit in the center of town used for meting out punishments if she openly professed a belief in the goddess.
Na’amah, who–in today’s terms–is an Asperger savant, does not believe in either Mother-Goddess or Father-God. While she doesn’t understand why her extreme sensitive to sound produces color visualizations or why she can perceive the low-frequency vibrations that precede earthquakes, she has no interest hearing about secret missions for a purported Mother-Goddess. She wants to be left alone to tend her sheep and experience the magic of life as the natural world presents it to her.
“Noah’s Wife” begins twenty-one years before the flood and focuses on Na’amah’s betrothal and marriage to Noah the boat builder, her mistreatment at the hands of her own people as well as the nearby River People, and her forced need to come to terms with her special talents. In mythic terms, she undergoes both an outer, physical quest and an inner spiritual journey.
Thorne has created a deep and fully formed cultural backdrop for Na’amah’s quest, complemented with a highly detailed physical world and well-defined characters. Like Tosca Lee’s account of First Woman in “Havah: The Story of Eve,” Thorne’s “Noah’s Wife” represents an epic alternative to a well-known patriarchal story. The result is a novel of great enchantment, suspense and power.
The March of Books
Copyright (c) 2003-2010 by Malcolm R. Campbell. Some images copyright (c) 2003-2010 by www.clipart.com. Copyrights for tips are retained by their respective contributors. All Rights Reserved.
Now is the time to do what you love, 2666, Buffaloed, Staccato, Noah's Wife, Daughter Am I, A View Inside Glacier National Park
that matched his full head of hair and peered at her. “You
don’t know who they were?”
“No. Until I got your letter, I’d never heard of them.
Since they’re Stuarts and so am I, I thought they might be
distant relatives, but why would they leave me everything
they own?”
Mr. Browning cleared his throat. “It’s simple. They were
your grandparents.”
Mary shook her head. “I don’t have any grandparents.
My father’s parents died before my birth, and my mother’s
parents died shortly after.”
“Be that as it may, James Angus Stuart and Regina
DeBrizzi Stuart were your grandparents. They had one son,
Peter Thackery Stuart, who married Gwendolyn Jane Smith.
They, in turn, had one daughter. Mary Louise Stuart. You.”
--
Colorado author Pat Bertram follows up "More Deaths Than One" and "A Spark of Heavenly Fire" with a mystery about a young woman on a discovery quest to learn who were grandparents were and why her father told her for many years they were dead.
When Mary Stuart is told by an attorney that her supposedly long-dead grandparents have just been murdered and have left their farm to her, she's more than a bit curious. Her father refuses to talk about them. Those who will talk are elder gangsters from the days of the big con who like sharing their memories and their view of the way the world works.
As Mary travels from town to town tracking down people who might have known her grandparents, those she's talked to already are more than happy to come along for the ride. What a wonderful group they are! For Mary, it's a very personal quest, learning about her heritage. It's also a dangerous quest, for the person or persons who killed her grandparents might be coming after her.
Pat Bertram has created a alternately humorous and suspenseful mystery. Her likable protagonist learns a lot about the world--and about herself--and she learns it quickly. She has to or she might be the next one to die. I highly recommend "Daughter Am I" to readers who like dangerous, fast-moving novels with both charm and depth.
Daughter Am I
by Pat Bertram
Satire With A Twist
"Staccato" is staccato: sharp, crisp, almost percussive--like gun shots, like a cane tapping on the floor or striking a shoulder, like light reflected off a black Porsche Targa, like the piercing cold of a Great Smoky Mountains night.
Two years into his career as a world-class concert pianist, young Nicholas Kalman finds his absent father's journal. It's written as a warning to Nicholas, or perhaps a confession. "Beware of this man you call, Uncle," it says.
The uncle is Alexander, the tyrannical, club-footed, cane tapping maestro and mentor. He's crafted the talented Nicholas into a dazzling musician who crushes the competition in every venue. He drinks. He expects perfection. He lashes out when angry.
Alexander demands unquestioning obedience from Nicholas, the cloyingly submissive second-string pupil Timothy, the imposing butler Sampte, his niece Elaine, sheriff's deputy Steven Hawk, and everyone else who dares enter his ten thousand square foot mansion in the Great Smoky Mountains.
Deborah J. Ledford's thriller tears through mountains and music with a steady rhythm in perfect time with the maestro Alexander's music room metronome. Nicholas finds a his lover's body in his Porsche. Timothy perfects his Prokofiev to steal the limelight. Sampte does what he's ordered to do. The metronome ticks and the cane taps as the bodies pile up, as Nicholas searches for a killer and runs for his life, as Hawk investigates a grim case, as Alexander orchestrates notes and lives, as readers turn "Staccato's" pages, quickly, crisply, sharply throughout Ledford's toccata-like virtuoso performance.
“Who were James Angus Stuart and Regina DeBrizzi
Stuart?” Mary asked, trying to ignore the mounted heads of
murdered animals staring down at her from the lawyer’s
wood-paneled walls.
Conrad Browning took off the silver-framed eyeglasses
Staccato by Deborah J. Ledford
Nobody decides to go mad. Tragedies occur—forces of nature, emotional distress, sorrow for those taken too soon, terror writhing below the skin.
Other elements drive people to madness—smoldering rage, silent words that never stop rambling in the mind, unrequited passion, even
merely following the path of destiny.
Coming in February...
Observations of an Earth Mage by Smoky Trudeau
Full color photos throughout! A wonderful gift for nature lovers everywhere featuring prose and poetry celebrating the beauty and splendor of the natural world. Humor and drama. From the magnificent vistas of El Capitan to the grandeur of the crashing seas, share the mysteries of the world with author Smoky Trudeau.
"A room without books is like a body without a soul."
--Cicero
"A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas—a place where history comes to life." --Norman Cousins
2666
by Roberto Bolaño
"2666 is as consummate a performance as any 900-page novel dare hope to be: Bolaño won the race to the finish line in writing what he plainly intended as a master statement. Indeed, he produced not only a supreme capstone to his own vaulting ambition, but a landmark in what's possible for the novel as a form in our increasingly, and terrifyingly, post-national world." -- Jonathan Lethem, New York Times
Comedy Thriller
Mountain Magic
Satirical Essays
Friends Poem
Flood Article
My Books
Since A View Inside Glacier National Park includes my article about the 1964 Montana flood, it would be unfair for me to write a formal review. Here, then, are my first thoughts on the day my copy of the book arrived in the mail.
In his introduction, Ranger Naturalist Bill Schustrom writes that it's gratifying to see visitors returning to the park year after year. "There is a spirit or an intangible aspect here drawing us back. As we return there is a community of share experiences--stories."
Anyone who has visited Glacier National Park shares a common bond with the writers of these stories, even those based on events from years ago...Susanna Anderson's memories of a trip to the park prior to World War II...Verna Jarrow's hike to Sperry Glacier around 1930...Joyce O'Neil's recollections of the 1929 fire...Jan Mertmaker's 1938 CCC story...Anne Marie Broenen's experience at St. Mary Lodge during the flood of 1975...and my own memories of Many Glacier Hotel during the flood of 1964.
I am happy to see a story about the fire of 1936 by the late Ray Kinley, my old friend and long-time Glacier employee. John Hagen, founder of the Glacier Park Foundation, remembers hiking the North Circle Trail. Tessie Bundick, historian for the Glacier Park Foundation, has written of her experience as a "Texas flatlander" working as a seasonal employee at Many Glacier Hotel in 1962.
Of his vision quest along the Backbone of the World, Ken Camel writes, "I was surrounded by a powerful landscape. The Spirit was now talking directly to my soul. I didn't need to hear any words as he who opens his mind is ready to learn. His message: 'My young soul, look around you; seek not to look to other lands for your Dream. Look to our land, and the lands of your ancestors. This is where you belong, and your People need to Share this vision.'"
Those of us who have shared this vision and told our stories of the last 100 years hope more will come and experience the Crown of the Continent each in their own way and their own time during the next 100 years. Surely, their own stories will follow.
A View Inside Glacier National Park: 100 Years, 100 Stories
Edited by Kassandra Hardy
This National Park Service book commemorating Glacier National Park's 2010 Centennial is available at the Glacier Association
My evolving To-Be-Read List for 2010
Death With Interruptions, Jose Saramago
Echo in the Bone, Diana Gabaldon
Nature's Gifts, (April) edited by Smoky Trudeau
Observations of an Earth Mage, (Feb.) Smoky Trudeau
