Outer Dark - Cormac McCarthy

The circumstances we are born into are beyond our control. While human life issues from a darkness, for some the world itself is a type of outer dark. What narrative we create out of our lives is of our own making - largely meaningless. McCarthy's story, resembling a parable, ends with a road that leads nowhere, save a tangled way.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig

This time through, the story strikes me for its unity of journeys: how the narrator's intellectual journey is mirrored and given color by the landscape he moves through, by the experiences between he and Chris, by the way concepts are unified with the person. So landscape (of the world and mind), concepts, and interpersonal relationships merge into a story of the person. Perhaps that is meant to be Pirsig's synthesis. I have read the work enough that it serves as a reminder and cause for reflection on how I have changed. It remains an aspirational work to engender a hoped-for unity of work, person, and understanding. That such a path is useful, and such an outcome possible, is comforting.

From a 1974 interview with Pirsig, "The goal is just to live your life without too much fuss about it."

The Snow Leopard - Peter Matthiessen

"Have you seen the Snow Leopard?"
"No! Isn't that wonderful."

On this re-reading, what jumps out to me most are the aspects of zen and how that can interweave with journeys mental, physical, geographic, and emotional. Matthiessen and Schaller's journey with their sherpas and porters into the Dolpo(a) region of Nepal are a reminder of the space for adventure in this world and that travel and exploration can (also) be ways of turning inwards. Peace of mind, as Pirsig reminds us, is not attained at the mountain, nor is it given by the mountain. It is either brought with us to the mountain or cannot be achieved at all. In striving we hope to learn that all we really needed was right here all along. Everything is already present, as it has ever been.

"Better tea and wind pictures, the Crystal Mountain, and blue sheep dancing on the snow--it's quite enough!"

High Fidelity - Nick Hornby

Back with Rob, Dick, and Barry. This time I was struck by the parallels between Rob's life - recently adrift at the age of 35 - and my own. While these three always felt like contemporaries, only as I have gotten older can I begin to understand the creeping germs of hopelessness that come with age. It helps make sense of Barry's motivation to join his 'hip young gunslingers,' and Dick's monomania for new music. Rob looks around his apartment, his store, and his emotional life and begins to recognize a dustiness; a clutter to things that have been kept too long. Laura recognizes his inability to put one foot in front of the other and how the comfort of routine simultaneously keeps him grounded and unhappy. Rob's revisiting of his top-five, desert-island, most memorable split ups (in chronological order) are a rare case where his dwelling on the past actually catalyzes his freedom from it. Throughout the book Laura is really the only catalytic force. She moves Rob to confront himself and in doing so the possibility that they might have a life together. Laura is movement and action; Rob, Dick, and Barry are comfort and routine. Our lives need both.

Rebel Yell - S.C. Gwynne

Gwynne’s storytelling of the life of Stonewall Jackson gets better and sharper as this history goes along. Chancellorsville is particularly animated and thorough and in this ultimate moment Jackson’s actions and responses mesh well with Gwynne’s evocation of the character throughout. The biography peels back the legend. The difficulty in treating Jackson, or any Confederate, in our modern moment, is how to treat the cause; perhaps those difficulties are given too short shrift. Gwynne does show that, while the conflict tore the country apart, a type of camaraderie existed across the lines. 

“Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees.”

All the Pretty Horses - Cormac McCarthy

Sad and evocative in a variety of ways. The story moves with a liveliness that I had missed on previous readings. The language and dialogue is seamlessly constructed and moves with the narrative between people, the landscape, and horses. Action also becomes a slowly-emerging form of understanding a person’s character.

Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy

Third time in less than a year and I feel like I am starting to get it. The extent of the driftlessness and suffering cannot be overlooked. The judge, whether right or wrong, targets the Kid because he alone kept himself removed from the cleanliness of pure violence the others partook in. If war is god, then to withhold pieces of oneself is a type of defiance akin to Lucifer. Non serviam. Yet the judge, in his worldliness is a type of violence personified. And, therefore, he fits; is equipped for each situation. God as recognizable to the uninitiated, is dead. The judge, even in his seeming immortality which makes any claim dubious, may be the manifestation of an entirely material cosmology. One either blissfully or dangerously without arbiter. There is a trace of right and wrong in the Kid (though what are his actions on the raids?). It seems the judge cannot abide this. Finally, even the Kid is swallowed by the embrace of war as god.

The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy

On the back cover of The God of Small Things is a review by John Updike, in which the author says (paraphrase) that great novels need to invent their own language and in so doing create their own world. Roy creates new ways of talking and writing and thus thinking and experiencing the world in her novel. This starts slowly but grows throughout the book in a way that becomes seamless - transporting the reader into the world of Roy's creation. The book in complicated, complex, and nuanced. Deserving of all the praise it has received.

Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy

A sparse story about violence in 1840s Mexico. Populated by memorable, terrible characters. McCarthy pushes the edge of how a reader identifies with the wretched and the violent. Above all else stands the judge. And they are dancing.

The Stranger in the Woods - Michael Finkel

Finkel seeks to uncover what could posses a Maine from central Maine to live, on his own, in the woods for 27 years. That is exactly what Christopher Knight accomplished. Finkel is a generous interlocutor who attempts to unweave what to so many people may seem a crazy undertaking. If we are to take Knight at his word it may be that he simply sought to be alone.

Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer

One of the remarkable late-twentieth century on-the-road stories weaving adventure and, eventually, death at the limits of North America. Chris McCandless remains something of a cult figure whose experience resonated with many disaffected seekers. Krakauer is a sympathetic, yet thoughtful and careful biographer. On this re-reading McCandless' idealism and commitment strike me a symptomatic primarily of youth and energy; neither of which deserve criticism.

The Civil War, a Narrative: Fort Sumter to Perryville - Shelby Foote

Reread, repost: The first of Foote's three-part magnum opus on the American Civil War. This is the interweaving story of the men, both Union and Confederate, who would grapple for the future of the American experiment. Foote's is a piece of by-gone scholarship. Battles take center stage and the lives of great men loom large. Witness Lincoln and Davis, McClellan and Lee, Stonewall and Hooker.

Foote conveys sideline skirmishes and massive battles with equal attention. Both the mountains of eastern Tennessee and bloody excesses of Shiloh are given space. As the conflict ratchets ever upward (more Americans were killed at Shiloh alone than all prior American conflicts combined), Foote unblinkingly peers into woods, along the trenches, and across the fields. He excels in communicating the chaos, noise, and uncertainty of battle without losing individual voices in the fray. It is so terrible to behold because men do the reaper's work: mowing one another down. Embodying the terrible scythe.

By the end of the first volume the country is firmly entrenched in the indispensable American conflict. Many on both sides thought it would be a short and decisive war. While the Confederates pursued international recognition, the Union believed a crushing blow on the road to Richmond would demoralize the South. By the end of 1862 this much was clear: there would be no easy resolution. The South had won its share of signal victories; in many cases Union armies seemed to under-perform.  At this juncture the feeling is simultaneously one of hard-fought experience and a tenuous waiting. While the Confederacy struggles to prop up an impoverished nation and resource-limited army, the Union has yet to bring down its hammer. By the beginning of 1863 it appears that only through overwhelming force would the Union prevail. While only through northern exhaustion could the Confederacy break-away.

The Crossing - Cormac McCarthy

Reread, repost: As a person comes of age their own story takes center stage. When we are younger we inhabit the orbit of adults; our parents and elder family members. The world is defined by and in relation to them. As we grow and chart an independent course our actions increasingly become our own. Yet we are never freed entirely from our ties to others. McCarthy's novel is, among many other things, about the tension between ties that bind and independence. Billy Parnham's story becomes about himself, but as time goes by and he remains disconnected, it is increasingly populated by the lives of others. Yet, these are mere episodes. Parnham passes-by and passes-through. Finally, alone on the border plains, Parnham is unable, or unwilling, to let others into his life fully. He seems truly alone.

Lonesome Dave - Larry McMurtry

A great western and a true adventure story filled with humor and sadness.

The Snow Leopard - Peter Matthiessen

Reread, repost:
Journeys are what we make of them. The heart, friendship, loss, memory, or love can measure the vast expanses of an undiscovered continent as surely as miles beyond miles in faraway lands. Similarly, the mind and heart can be explored and found anywhere - habits of both precede our footsteps on the road which rises up to meet us, just as we are needed to land our paces.

Matthiessen's work is a true travelogue - in that the landscape ends up evoking and reflecting the traveler's internal life. Matthiessen looks into the mountains of the Dolpo region and time and again sees himself reflected, looking back at him. Do we find it strange that Matthiessen titles his book after a most elusive creature which he will never see? We should not. This is a book about death and emptiness, about missing and longing. Matthiessen's journey is in search of himself amidst spaces of loneliness, both internal and external. To be one's own companion, or, rather, to be acquainted with the companionship of the universe - this too is the traveler's road. V. S. Naipaul famously wrote that "the world is what it is." Such a sentiment could be comfortably appended to this journey.

Home: Tales of a Heritage Farm - Amy Scoones

A thoughtful book about we all make our own sense of place, how the world impinges upon us and enables us to live our lives.

A Time to Kill - John Grisham

Having recently re-watched The Firm, I was in the mood for Grisham. Captures the foibles of the interactions of America's justice system and race in a divide landscape.

The Covenant - James Michener

Reread, repost:

Reread, repost: An epic of South Africa. From prehistory when the rhythm of the land was counted in moons and migrations, through age of exploration and the coming of the Europeans, to the British conflict, and apartheid, Michener weaves a tale of the land and its people that walks the balance between truth and fiction. It is interesting that a novelization of a nation's past (and present) can feel like it encapsulates more of a country's true spirit than a strictly historical account can. Michener's is clearly a thoroughly researched and painstakingly crafted account. He tries to disentagle relationships between people, animals, and the land, and to even account for the historical motive forces behind the seemingly impenetrable walls of apartheid and the multivalent divisions between whites and blacks, British and Boer, Coloureds, and Xhosa, Zulu, and Khoikhoi. The reader is left wondering at the questions that may have no discernible answer: how does an unfinished nation function as a coherency? Worth the investment to meet the 1,000+ pages.

The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Franzen's enduring work focuses on the promises and shortcomings that keep people, and particularly people within their families, preternaturally unhappy. The Lamberts are one unique case that, however, can stand in for the rest of an alienated, yet well-off society. This is a strong treatment of Franzen's recurring theme of despair in a world of immediate comfort but existential uncertainty.

The Quiet American - Graham Greene

Love, loss, adventure, and cynicism in French Indo-China (Vietnam). Foreign misadventures of naive Americans feel strikingly contemporary. Greene's prose hums and arrests.

Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe

The original adventure story of a man wrestling with his faith and isolation. Still relevant and vibrant.

Born to Run - Christopher McDougall

Reread, re-post:
Starting with the basic question, "why does my foot hurt?" Christopher McDougall travels around the world and puts his own body on the line to discover the secret of the running people: that humans may be biologically born to run. Though such a claim may ring dubious to many of us - there are many well-respected thinkers and knowledgeable people who will claim that the human body is an imperfect machine never designed to take the stress and strain of running - McDougall marshals evidence that he argues is hidden in plain sight.

Taking a broad sweep of running nutrition, competitive history, technique and maybe even a few secrets along the way, Born to Run has already cast a broad shadow over the running community and continues to find its footing deeper in the popular consciousness. Reading a bit like a modern Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the work starts off with simple premises and comfortable realms of thought (issues like training techniques, human physiology and athletic shoe construction) and slowly develops a deeper thesis: that running has made us into the people we are, that modern man (and woman) has what it takes, is outfitted like no other species on this Earth, to run and that it was this unique ability that allowed us to compete and survive for millions of years. Finally, McDougall talks about the important effects of running for each person. Beyond health and fitness, he looks to the proof he sees in some of the greatest runners he has encountered and finds that, almost without fail, the best long-distance runners are those who participate out of the sheer joy of running, the extent to which it fulfills their humanity and binds them together.

Like many other works relying upon an intuitive connection with the reader, Born to Run succeeds or fails to the extent that we are able to identify with its premises. This is my second time reading the book and I feel as though I have found even more to mull over the second time. If nothing else I find it a work that energizes me to get out there and be one of the running people; that it continues to change the way I think about running and my own well-being is, I believe, testament enough as to whether McDougall's work is successful.