The Lines Between Us: Two Families and a Quest to Cross Baltimore’s Racial Divide (Lanahan)

There are many cities I know of that are still struggling to cope with the persistent legacy of redlining. The challenge of writing about it, though, and Lanahan seems to recognize this, is that redlining did not come from nowhere; nor did it happen in isolation. Therefore, the structure of this book is what lets Lanahan down. There was never going to be a way for him to keep this focused just on two families, and so his cross-cutting between and among certain ‘plots’ seems largely arbitrary here. The book never really builds momentum because the story has so many strands going at once.

Lanahan shifts the structure in response to the murder of Freddie Gray and its aftermath, and that part is the most compelling and remains well-connected to the rest of the book.

I was also surprised to find that Lanahan never really discussed his research methods either in the book or in some kind of author’s note.

And why is Barbara Samuels called ‘Barbara’ and not ‘Samuels’? That just struck me as odd.

In the end, this book serves as a good interviews. We meet key players, are acquainted with key issues, questions, and legal precedents, and we see the impact of these on the lives of real people. But the book is neither a clear nor a compelling narrative. And it does not really move one to action (which, admittedly, may not have been the goal). I enjoyed it because I lived in Baltimore for a short time, but if you are trying to understand the issues involved or even the history of Baltimore, it should not be the first place you turn.

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction (Salinger)

Ever since I heard about the Salinger exhibit at the New York Public Library, I’ve been in a Salinger mood. The first details Buddy’s adventures as he tries to get to the wedding reception for his brother, who never actually showed up at the wedding. This one has elements of Catcher in it, a kind of journey to nowhere with a motley supporting cast. How can you not love that uncle? Salinger goes after some familiar themes, namely phoniness, and his words are funny, true and, in some places, a little bit wistful, even sad.

The find for me here is “Seymour: An Introduction.” There’s an energy here that I haven’t found in Salinger’s writing before. He’s still seeking the meaning of some kind of authenticity and though he’s writing about that same brother, he’s aware that he’s, in fact, writing about himself.

Both are well worth reading.

The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories (Schulz)

These stories are completely unexpected. Magical realism from. . . Poland? They generally and loosely revolve around the narrator and his father, but really not much happens. Schulz’s gift is in his descriptions and personification. The rise of the dictators and increased anti-Semitism are poisoning the very air. Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass is, as advertised, the masterpiece here. This is probably not one to try to read straight through, but to visit for a few stories at a time.

World’d Too Much: The Selected Poetry of Russell Atkins (Atkins)

Ever since I moved to Ohio, I’d heard about Atkins. I was disappointed not to make his appearance at Karamu during Cleveland Book Week. The Cleveland State University Poetry Center put out this great book, and even if I didn’t always understand it, I admired his work greatly. The man made his own rules. It was like he looked at the dictionary and conventional poetry and said, “Thanks, but I got this.” I’m sure there are those who could say that he belonged to one school or another, or that he was influenced by or was an influence on others. Me? I just relished insights into a completely original mind. From his opening Manifesto to his Poetry-Dramas, I relished the opportunity to explore his work. It’s rare that one encounters work so completely unprecedented or imitated.

Interesting. WordPress would not let me tag this with the proper title. It will not accept World’d. That’s how much he invented his own language.

All My People Are Elegies: Essays, Prose Poems and Other Epistolary Oddities (Dougherty)

A brief, cliched moment of self-indulgence.

I was riding a train from somewhere to somewhere else. I got to talking to this woman, older in my memory, but I was younger then, so maybe she wasn’t that old. She worked, I think, with the terminally ill. She was willing to talk and I liked her stories, and finally I asked what had been on my mind. “Doesn’t it,” I wondered, “get depressing after a while?” Her response is the end of my memory, though it may not have been the end of the conversation. She said, “No, they teach me so much.”

I didn’t understand her comment then, but I think I do now, having just finished Dougherty’s amazing collection. I admit that when I first heard the premise during his book release live on Facebook (how cool was that!), I was worried. Would he anger the editors that may have control over the future of his work? Perhaps one or two petty ones might recognize themselves and be bothered. Who knows? And in the end, who cares?

Because what Dougherty brings to each piece (they read as poems to me) is first a sense of perspective – where having a poem rejected rests compared to the struggles of his patients, his co-workers, and his family. And as I moved through the collection, I thought he seemed to be gently re-shaping the meaning of rejection, away from the premise of the “Dear Editor,” approach to one that was reaching across a divide to find some kind of bridge of understanding, a bridge that connects “compassion and failure.” And finally, and almost miraculously, he finds in rejection some hope. (And this is common, I’ve found, in Dougherty’s work. Despite all that he and those around him experience, he has found both reason and language for hope.)

His final piece ends, “Dear Editor, not all rejections are the same, and some, well, they are a kind of hope, the way the stars are a kind of hope, so far in the dark there above the railroad tracks and the tenements and a gymnasium, emptying out with the last stragglers and quips and hollers of those years so long ago before we’d ever even fallen –“

That last dash is everything.

So what do I learn from listening (and these words beg to be spoken out loud – find some examples of him reading on YouTube) to Dougherty? I learn that love is a sticky noted heart placed on your forehead by someone who struggles with words. I learn that “we should . . . feel grateful and laugh for the stench of being alive.” I learn “[h]ow we need to keep listening, to keep reaching.” I learn that “[r]ejection can mean freedom, not prison.” And finally, I learn that “[w]e are waiting for the cue that means, come in. We do not know what will happen when we open the door.” And I learn that I need to keep Dougherty’s words close to my hands and close to my heart.

Barnum: An American Life (Wilson)

I’ve always had a place in my heart for the circus. I never wanted to run away to join one, but I went to them often, though like others, I started to move away from them because of issues related to animals and interest in Cirque de Soleil. I’ve always liked circus stories, maybe for the same reasons I like stories about minor league baseball. There are these unplanned communities of necessity featuring a wide variety of characters who bring together a wide range of stories. And somehow, in the end, there is a performance.

Barnum’s story is a great American one. A story of self-invention and re-creation (and re-creation) mixed with American History, evolving social issues, and public spectacles. I could see teaching this one day as long as I didn’t have to show that Hugh Jackman movie. It is staggering to me to think of Abraham Lincoln and Barnum or Queen Victoria and Barnum. He moved through so much history. He had his flaws (personal and political), his friends, his enemies, and his rivals.

And though his name is generally linked with the circus, the majority of his life was spent on museums and various traveling shows.

Wilson clearly admires the man, though this does not prevent him from offering his criticisms of Barnum’s choices. He is aware that he’s judging him in retrospect which tempers his comments, but this is no fawning biography. We get a portrait of a fully American soul who apparently never said that there’s a sucker born every minute.

Red Cavalry and Other Stories (Babel)

I understand the desire to collect all of these stories in one place, but after a while they all blurred together. With little knowledge of Russian history, I made my way through them and after a while, I felt like I had gotten the point. War is anything but glorious and organized, people treat others (like Jews and women) badly, horses are important, and everyone drinks a lot. A few stories stood out, but in the hurry to get to and through the next one, I didn’t really note them. There are some sharp insights as well. Mostly, though, life is nasty, brutish and short.

This is a book to dip into from time to time, not one to read all the way through.

Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling (King)

This is an interesting, if not particularly compelling book. It humanizes the artist by showing how he had to deal with family issues, money troubles, rivalries with other artists, a flaky and militant Pope, and his own demons all while painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Thankfully, for this non-artistic reader, King explains (but does not dwell on) Michelangelo’s various artistic techniques.

I had the good fortune to see the Sistine Chapel, and I don’t think I appreciated it that much. It was crowded, and I wasn’t always sure what I was looking at and had little idea about the process that went into making it. I don’t think I’m going back to see it, but I am looking forward to this –

http://clevelandmuseumofart.art/exhibitions/michelangelo-mind-master

Ducks, Newburyport (Ellmann)

Phew. I think this has probably been the longest break between reviews. I have been reading. I’m on a committee for an award for children’s biographies, and I haven’t been able to confirm whether I’m allowed to review those. I’ve also got bookmarks in too many things. Some of that is for work. Some is for book clubs. Some of it is because this one is so bloody long that at times I would get frustrated with it and pick up something else. But (exhale), I have finished!!!

This needed to be long for it to work structurally, because the two initially separate strands need time to build on their own before they can come together. That’s not a spoiler. You’ll see it coming; you’re supposed to.

I wonder about the editing process here. Much of the novel is stream-of-consciousness. One reviewer called it a list, but I don’t think that’s quite right. We are gleaning insights into one woman’s mind. She reminds me a lot of the Julianne Moore character movie in Safe. She’s afraid of life, and slowly, we learn why. And we understand.

The prose is musical. You can’t read it for five minutes at a time. It’s hard even to know where to put your bookmark. There are no paragraph breaks and little white space. It’s challenging. This reminds me of what I know (which is not necessarily much) about modernism, as first presented to us by Woolf, Faulker and Joyce.

Is it worth it? In the end, yes. It’s an achievement in both form and content. This may be the book that’s most representative of the era in which we live. I was sometimes stunned by how current it is. So yes, I’d read it, but maybe not during the school year while you’re reading other things.