Southern Bookman

Book discoveries at home during Covid-19

I'll even try to read "Howard's End."

The other day, I glimpsed a paperback of E.M. Foster's novel peeking out from my bedroom bookshelf. The book's been resting there for years unread.

Never mind that Foster's mantra "only connect" looks out-of-place in this era of social distancing. I've read through most of the other books that have been nestling dormant in my home library, so I've come to my end, as well as Howard's.

During the coronavirus pandemic, I've acquired just one new book, Nelson Algren's appreciation of Chicago, "City on the Make." Fearful of catching Covid-19 from some unmasked sneezing bibliophile, I've given up my longtime habit of going to bookstores.

My well-worn Nook e-reader stopped downloading new books and magazines, and I couldn't figure out how to change the software.

Yes, I could buy books online, but I'm boycotting Amazon, now running those absurd TV commercials about what an enlightened company it is. Besides, no recently published books interest me.

Even the libraries have been closed. The Sandy Springs Library that reopened only a couple of months before the pandemic is now doing curbside checkouts of books placed on hold, but the procedure seems as cumbersome as a Hartsfield-Jackson's TSA line.

So, I've been rediscovering books on my bookshelves, many of them I had never read or in which I lasted for only a chapter or two. I've tried to reread books I loved years before, but for some reason, I'm usually unable to return to once beloved narratives. Although I enjoyed Vivian Gornick's recent "Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader," I can't rekindle the literary flame.

Even before the pandemic, my bookstore habit had been reduced to the Peach Shopping Center's Barnes & Noble, the only bookstore left in Buckhead after the collapse of Atlanta's Oxford stores and the Borders chain. Atlanta's few remaining independent bookstores are too far away for frequent visits. Although Buckhead enjoys a profusion of supermarkets and pharmacy chains, it's a book desert.

The old Buckhead Borders, where I covered a book signing of George W. and Laura Bush and whiled away many hours, is now a Container Store. During Borders' expansive years, I also frequented a couple other of its stores. 

Oxford's flagship store in Peachtree Battle Shopping Center was one of my favorite all-time bookstores, along with the also vanished Maple Street Bookstore in New Orleans and Scribner's in New York City. I also searched for books in two other Oxford locations in Buckhead. Alas, the Oxford empire like Borders overextended, and fell when the book bubble burst. The country must have gotten dumber before electing the great unread Orange man.

As with canceled sports, I haven't missed going to the B&N, where I interviewed Rolling Stones pianist and Georgia preservationist Chuck Leavell and glimpsed Elton John flipping through the vinyl records. The Peach B&N had reduced its selection over the years, emphasizing puzzles, games and accessories. It did appear on an upswing before the pandemic arrived, but the nearness of a coughing patron in February sent my paranoia soaring.

I miss perusing literary journals and film and jazz magazines, but I receive several literary magazines and three daily newspapers at my home. I've been surprised to find Harper's and the Atlantic at my local Publix, although the latest Harper's hasn't shown up yet.

Even before the rise of Covid-19, I discovered on my shelves an engaging volume of Alice Adams short stories. Lately, I've enjoyed the late English professor and literary critic Robert Heilman's memoirs about his days at LSU during the Huey Long era and the heyday of the Southern Review under Robert Penn Warren and Cleanth Brooks.

I've recently enjoyed pleasant afternoons browsing through Mike Davis's analysis of Los Angeles, "City of Quartz," and a collection of W.H. Auden's forewords and afterwords.

While I haven't yet returned to Auden's poems, I haven't slighted poetry, delving into a collection of Paul Muldoon's collected poems my daughter won as a literary prize at Princeton and favorite poems by Richard Wilbur and others.

In a pinch, Seymour Krim and Dan Wakefield gave good doses of 1950s and 1960s New York nostalgia.

Now, "Howard's End."

 

 

Times Literary Supplement gives authors' summer reading plans

In the June 26 Times Literary Supplement, well-known writers list the books they're reading this summer.

The TLS feature, matching a holiday reading survey, gives a voyeuristic thrill. The cheerful comments of authors like Hilary Mantel, Joyce Carol Oates and Anne Enright make them seem just like us.

A common motif is that because of the coronavirus, authors will be doing their summer reading at home this year rather than at exotic beaches or idyllic country retreats. Another theme is reading children's books to sons and daughters unable to go to school.

While the authors do seem like regular folks, they don't go in for the light reading associated with the lazy, sun-dazzled season. Oates, for example, is embarking upon Dostoevsky after finishing "War and Peace" and other Tolstoy tomes.

With the coronavirus out of control, Trump's daily outrages, and racial turmoil, the old idea of pleasurable summer reading looks superfluous. Yet, I more and more seek to escape the news, especially the gloom bearers of MSNBC. I agree with them of course, but the strident Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow get my a-fib a-fibbing.

Spurred by the ambitious reading of the TLS authors, I might try again to finish "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." But Gibbon would seem too much like cable news.

 

Stone Mountain carving should fall to nature, Ryan Gravel says

Let natural vegetation cover the Stone Mountain monument.

That's one of several proposals made by Atlanta Beltline progenitor Ryan Gravel and historian Scott Morris to diminish the power of the gigantic sculpture of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis.

Gravel and Morris in an opinion article in the British-based The Guardian say they want the 150-foot carving removed altogether, but admit that it's too large for that to happen. Instead, they call for immediate actions that would obstruct public viewing.

"The sculpture is an irreparable scar on an ancient mountain with a long history of habitation and use by indigenous people," according to the article written by Gravel with historical information from Morris.

The article points out that although the carving originated in the early 20th century, it was not completed until 1970, a symbol of Georgia's defiance to federal civil rights legislation and Supreme Court decisions. The carving was completed as Atlanta built a national reputation as "the city too busy to hate."

Without periodic maintenance, trees and plants would grow from the carving's mountain crevices, Gravel says. He even wants the state to blast soil into the carving to enhance the vegetation's growth. The monument overgrown with vegetation would symbolize the collapse of the Confederacy, he says

He also wants to stop mowing of the Memorial Lawn, the gathering spot for viewing of the park's laser show, cast upon the monument. With the lawn eventually turning into a forest, the laser show would cease.

I doubt that Gravel's proposals will ever be adapted, but I'd love to see trees and brush growing from the hateful sculpture of the three Confederate leaders on horseback.

One of Gravel's proposals should be carried out with little opposition: Removing all references to the Confederacy in the park, such as renaming Robert E. Lee Boulevard and Stonewall Jackson Drive.

The article concludes with a call for long-range planning so that the park represents all of the state's citizens. Gravel points out that demographic changes will give Georgia a majority non-white population in a few years.

That Gravel published his article in the American edition of a British publication raises the question of why The Atlanta Journal-Constitution didn't print it instead of its usual banal opinion pieces. Did the AJC think Gravel's proposals too controversial for conservative suburban readers, if any remain?

Perhaps our fine local newspaper is doing a major article on Stone Mountain's future and why Georgia glorifies the Confederacy at its major state park.

 

 

 

 

AJC's Bill Torpy links Atlanta shooting spree to police backing off from "proactive" enforcement

Atlanta has turned into a war zone because police fear doing their jobs, according to AJC columnist Bill Torpy.

Torpy in his Monday column disclosed a spike in shootings and deaths recently following charges against police officers in the Rayshard Brooks killing and a Taser attack against college students during a protest downtown.

"Violence is off the chain in Atlanta," concluded Torpy, taking on the duties once filled by AJC police reporters.

From May 31 to June 20, 75 people have been shot in Atlanta, with 11 killed, he found. Last year during the same period, 35 shootings resulted in five deaths, he said.

While Torpy didn't mention race, most of the incidents were likely blacks shooting other blacks.

The crime surge coincides with a big falloff in police making traffic stops, Torpy reported. In the third week of June, 50 car stops by police were reported, compared with an astounding 3,000 over the same period last year, he found.

He reported that Atlanta officers are backing off from "proactive policing" because of the criminal indictments and fatigue from dealing with the recent protests of the George Floyd killing.

"Being proactive will probably get you indicted under the current state of affairs," Jason Segura, head of the city police union, told Torpy in castigating Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms for calling for arrests and sanctions against police. "She's going to listen to the mob," Segura said.

Torpy asked "where's the outrage?"over the crime wave. What about the outrage over police not carrying out their duties to the fullest?

 

 

 

 

 

John Bolton's stinkbomb explodes

John Bolton's "The Room Where It Happened" has landed.

It seemed pointless to read reviews by Jennifer Szalai in The New York Times and Barton Swaim in The Wall Street Journal. Revelations in the book about Donald Trump's corruption, mental instability and cozying up to dictators had already appeared in The Times and WSJ's news columns. Why waste any time reading the book?

Despite Trump's lawsuit against release of his former national security adviser's White House expose, the WSJ published an excerpt in its Saturday Review section. Although the WSJ's editorial page frequently defends Trump, albeit turning against him more and more recently, Rupert Murdoch's newspaper disclosed some of Bolton's most damaging accusations about Trump's dealings with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Trump responded to the book's arrival with his usual fulminations, claiming that Bolton is one more enemy who should be thrown into Trump's fantasy jail.

Slate's Fred Kaplan said that Bolton's own foolhardy views disclosed in the book are as disturbing as the Trump vignettes. Bolton shows himself as more extreme than Trump on Iran and North Korea, Kaplan said.

Kaplan cites a passage from the book that pictures Trump  as having the attention span of a 2-year-old. Trump's unable to focus on one subject, continually veering off to pursue bizarre associations in his mind.

Kaplan's piece made me wonder if Lin-Manuel Miranda can take action against Bolton for appropriating the"room where it happens" lyric from Miranda's smash musical "Hamilton."

It sounds like Bolton's memoir should have been called "the room where it didn't happen."

 

 

Charleston makes new reckoning with past in removing Calhoun statue

Charleston has taken major strides to atone for its slavery legacy, but I never thought the city would remove the John C. Calhoun statue.

Mayor John Tecklenburg and the Charleston City Council decided last week to take down the 115-foot-tall Calhoun monument, which towers above Marion Square about three blocks away from Mother Emanuel A.M.E. church, where a white supremacist slaughtered nine church members five years ago.

Vice president during two presidential administrations, a cabinet member and a prominent U.S. senator, Calhoun was a leading spokesman for the South and slavery as conflicts with the North deepened in the 19th century. A series of congressional compromises failed to prevent the Civil War.

Although Calhoun died 10 years before the Civil War began, he was revered across the South as one of the fathers of the Confederacy for his theory of nullification, which held that a state could reject federal law.

Erected in 1896 when Confederate monuments were placed throughout the South following the end of reconstruction, the Calhoun statue standing upon a massive Doric column was a symbol of the Confederate "lost cause" and the return of white supremacy.

The statue's site is one of Charleston's many history-drenched spots. The Citadel military school was located at the square from 1842 to 1922. Its barracks is now an Embassy Suites Hotel.

Once the parade ground for Citadel cadets, the grassy square is now a gathering spot for  tourists and College of Charleston students. A Saturday morning farmers market is a pleasant ritual.

Named for Revolutionary War hero Francis Marion, the square is owned by two exemplars of the city's military tradition dating back to the early 19th century, the Washington Light Infantry and the Sumter Guards. In the 1950s, the grand old military companies stopped plans to turn the square into a parking lot. The bastions of old-time Charleston oppose the Calhoun statue's removal, as does the Charleston Post-Courier, which published an editorial calling for a historical interpretive plaque.

Under Tecklenburg and the council's plan, the monument will be moved to a museum, if any can be found to take it. The statue will be toppled first, and then the column taken down in stages rather than having another statue placed upon it.

Perhaps the Daughters of the Confederacy's Confederate Museum will take the statue, although it would probably have to be placed outside, again giving Calhoun a prominent spot.

If protests against dismantling the statue falter, it will likely molder in a landfill or warehouse somewhere along with other Confederate monuments.

 

 

Globe has six-month opportunity to reduce carbon emissions, IEA chief says

Pandemic recovery plans give the world a last chance to build a green economy, according to the International Energy Agency chief.

Nations must take action to reduce carbon emissions in the next six months or climate change devastation will be unavoidable, IEA Chief Executive Fatih Birol told The Guardian.

Global emissions are rising again with the haphazard reopening from the coronavirus shutdown. In April, emissions fell an average of 17 percent over last year's totals, according to media reports. But in June, CO2 emissions were just 5 percent less than in 2019.

An IEA report said that the world will spend $9 trillion in economic stimulus plans in the next few months. That money should be spent on green jobs to make buildings more energy efficient and on solar and wind power projects, the IEA said.

Spending decisions for the six-month period will determine the economy's structure for the next three years, Birol said. Without major programs now, emissions will keep rising, making climate change inescapable.

 

New York Times' A.O. Scott blends film, book criticism

New York Times film critic A.O. Scott on Wednesday explained his recent move to literary criticism.

In an "Inside the Times" essay, Scott points out that he was a book critic before his hiring as the Times' movie reviewer. His series for the Sunday Book Review on forgotten American writers returns him to literary criticism.

Scott in the article supports the universality of cultural criticism over specialization. He quotes the late Los Angles Times food critic Jonathan Gold, who started out as a music critic. "Criticism is criticism," Gold said, as cited by Scott.  "An aria is like a well-cooked potato."

Following Gold, Scott claims that "any product of human creativity, however humble or highfalutin', exists to be appreciated, interpreted and judged. Whenever we take the time to listen, taste, watch or read, criticism is what comes naturally."

Cultural purists would argue that distinctions are vital, that a Beethoven symphony differs from a gourmet meal. Those traditional elitist views have been challenged by the rise of film and other popular arts. That a jazz composition by Duke Ellington displays artistic refinement comparable with a Mozart concerto is no longer disputed.

In supporting the primacy of criticism, Scott makes an appealing call for an aesthetic approach to life. Following Robert M. Pirsig's philosophy of quality in "The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," I've sought to bring such an appreciation to daily life. An Arby's can satisfy while a fine restaurant falls short. Yet, sometimes a potato is just a potato.

Scott began his series, which will appear in the Sunday Book Review, with an appreciation of the Western writer Wallace Stegner. While I found Scott's defense of Stegner's work unconvincing, I will look forward to his subsequent installments.

As Scott points out in his Inside the Times article, books and film are perceived differently yet share affinities. His broader focus is a gift to Times readers.

 

 

 

Remembering Stephen Crane

I've rediscovered Stephen Crane, one of my favorite authors during my college days.

Like Keats, Crane died young of tuberculosis. Crane, the author of the best-seller "The Red Badge of Courage," was 28. 

Crane was a product of the rough-and-tumble New York newspaper and magazine world of the 1890s. "The Red Badge of Courage," lauded for its realistic depiction of combat although Crane had never gone to war, didn't make him financially secure.

The novella gives an impressionistic account of a young soldier's experience of battle. Isolated from his unit, the soldier wanders through a hellish landscape in which natural beauty contrasts with the horror of death. The never named battle has similarities to Chancellorsville.

In the last chapter of his well-traveled career,  Crane was a correspondent covering the Spanish-American War, writing an account of Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders. Crane had first met Roosevelt, then New York City's police commissioner, when testifying in favor of a woman accused of prostitution.

Constantly writing for money, Crane during his life made reporting trips to the untamed western United States, Mexico and Greece, where he covered the Greco-Turkish War. Beginning with "Maggie, A Girl of the Streets," he kept writing fiction such as "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky" and "The Blue Hotel" along with "The Red Badge of Courage."  He also wrote poetry.

Outside of "The Red Badge of Courage," his most famous and accomplished work is the non-fiction "The Open Boat," based on his surviving a shipwreck off the coast of Florida.

In 1896, Crane was en route from Jacksonville to Cuba on the SS Commodore when the ship sunk after striking a sandbar. Crane and three others were adrift in a boat for 36 hours before deciding to swim for land in turbulent waves. Battling the surf, Crane and two others made it to Daytona Beach, the other man drowning.

"The Open Boat" is a masterpiece of realistic writing, marked by the depiction of humans struggling against an uncaring nature.

Before Hemingway, Crane was the model of the dashing, adventurous American writer and war correspondent. "The Red Badge of Courage" and "The Open Boat" have never been matched.

 

Of Bob Dylan, Emily Dickenson and William Faulkner

Here are some nuggets from my weekend reading:

"Murder Most Foul": After reading Bob Dylan's interview with Douglas Brinkley in the Sunday New York Times, I finally listened to "Murder Most Foul." Dylan's 16-minute documentary song about the John F. Kennedy assassination is surprisingly the Nobel Prize winner's first No. 1 hit on the Billboard chart. I would have bet "Like a Rolling Stone" had reached the top spot.

Like an ominous Gregorian chant, Dylan murmurs the lyrics against a repeated musical phrase. He recycles the familiar conspiracy themes of the assassination, and with contrived rhymes cites a number of cultural figures connected with it. The result is a collage of cliches with few moments of liftoff.

Emily Dickenson, transsexual: Thumbing through my tattered anthology of American literature from college days, I wandered through the large selection of Emily Dickenson's poetry.

I was surprised to discover that in several poems, Dickenson said "when I was a boy," referring to her childhood. Intrigued, I found a critical essay that said that Dickenson made the cross-gender reference when discussing the scientific education she had received, more like a boy's than a girl's.

William Faulkner's "The Evening Sun": In William Faulkner's short story published in the same anthology, the doomed Quentin Compson narrates a event from his childhood. In the story, Quentin, his sister, Caddy, and brother, Jason, witness their parents' interactions with a family maid named Nancy. The Compsons' black servant, Dilsey, also appears.

Faulkner's novel "The Sound and the Fury" reveals the Compsons' adult fates. One chapter is narrated by Dilsey, who upholds traditional values.

In the story, the Nancy. fears being killed by her common-law husband, Jesus, because he believes she's pregnant with the child of a white man.

The young Compsons barely understand the adult actions. Illustrating the closeness of whites and blacks in the segregated South, Nancy lives close by, and even stays in the children's room for a night.

The children's father, Jason, discounts Nancy's fears. In the last scene, Nancy brings the children to her primitive house, hoping that their presence prevents Jesus from murdering her. The story ends with the father coming to take the children home, leaving Nancy alone. The implication is that she will be killed.

Faulkner critics point out that Quentin is about 24 when he narrates the story, although in "The Sound of the Fury" he commits suicide at age 19 while a student at Harvard. The children's relationships foreshadow their tragic adult personalities.

Maligned because of her race, the character Nancy blends stereotypical elements and surprising individuality. While undoubtedly offensive to black readers, the story gives a complex view of black-white relationships in the Jim Crow era, rising above crude racism.