"Atlanta Review: Poland Spring/Summer 2023"

There is never a bad time to read good to great literature, and I often read literature much older than this poetry journal from 2023. Every year, the "Atlanta Review" publishes two issues. One of those issues will have about half of the writing from a selected foreign country. In this volume, the "Spring/Summer 2023" volume, the selected country was Poland. I am somewhat fascinated by Poland for a variety of reasons. I know oone or two Polish immigrants in the US. I have also read and written a small amount about the Polish Resistance during World War II. Poland suffered greatly during the war and resisted nobly throughout the war. This volume of the "Atlanta Review" is well worth reading whether or not you have an extensive interest in Poland or not. Of the 128 pages in the book, a little more than half are dedicated to the work of a large group of Polish poets, both historical and current. While I was not greatly impressed by a few of the poems, much of the writing is well above average. The book also has brief biographies of all the poets in the book, and those of the Polish poets are well worth reading to maximize the readers understanding of these people and their work. There are roughly 20 Polish poets who have work in the book. A few have only one poem while several of these writers have multiple poems in the book. Read them all when you locate a copy of the book. They are well worth the time to read them. All have been translated into English. Maria Konopnicka and Boleslaw Lesmian are two of the more notable historical Polish poets whose work appears here. The book is well worth investing the time and effort to locate a copy, and since it is only three years old, it won't require much of a search of used book websites to locate a used copy. Or, if you are not the type of reader who still prefers to hold a paper book in your hand, you can download the entire volume at this link on the journal's website. Enjoy!

"The Patron Saint Of Ugly" by Marie Manilla

This is a review of a book by Marie Manilla of Huntington, West Virginia which I wrote about ten years ago for submission to a magazine which ultimately went defunct at about the same time. The review was never published. I had recently had a question from a reader who identifed herself as "Ms. Teacher" who teaches in WV and was looking for books to use in her classes to promote knowledge of the state and it's culture and people. I had responded to her comment with a question, among others, as to whether or not she has used the works of Marie Manilla in her classes. I was reviewing some old storage devices today and realized that I ought to post this review here since I have never actually written about this wonderful book on this blog. I unreservedly recommend this book for any teacher in Appalachia to consider as text material in high school literature classes. In fact, this book was chosen in 2021 for the West Virginia One Book One Read Project by the WV Culture Center. I also wrote an article which was published on the Mildred Haun Review Journal website about this book in comparison with a classic old Appalachian collection of short storys by Mildred Haun called "The Hawk's Done Gone". Haun's book is also a masterpiece of Appalachian fiction and contains some of the best Appalachian dialect writing I have ever seen.That article can be found at this link but it doesn't have a direct link to each article so you have to go to the link and scroll to page 10 to find it. Thanks for the effort in advance! I also recommend the West Virgiinia Culture Center unreservedly as a place to take students of any age in the school systems of Appalachia on a day trip. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Patron Saint of Ugly Marie Manilla New York: Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin 2014 $13.95 (paperback, 334 pages) The Patron Saint of Ugly, Marie Manilla’s second novel and third published book is set in a dying fictional town called Sweetwater, WV. The protagonist is a young woman, Garnet Ferrari, who is being studied by the Vatican for possible sainthood due to her purported ability to heal those with afflictions which make them ugly to the rest of the world. Garnet is a member of an Italian American family whose members are just unique and noticeable enough to be my relatives or yours. Garnet’s body is covered with port wine birthmarks which constitute a map of the world and her personal cross to bear. The novel juxtaposes Catholics & Protestants, immigrants & native born, Irish & Italian, rich & poor, young & old, beautiful & ugly, Old & New Religion, and WV and the rest of the world. Manilla’s manner of dealing with these juxtapositions is reminiscent of Flannery O’Connor at her best. The novel won the Weatherford Award as best Appalachian Novel in 2015. The novel is presented as a series of audio tape transcriptions which Garnet is recording for the Vatican investigator sent to determine her legitimacy as a saint. They contain her autobiography and persistent denial of that sainthood as well as her deep seated desire to know that her Italian Catholic father loves her. Ms. Manilla leads us along a wonderfully wrought path from Sicily to Sweetwater that makes us all examine our own personal relationships, desires, ambitions, and flaws. Ms. Manilla’s rich sense of humor will give you a frequent chuckle and an occasional belly laugh along the way. While hundreds of supplicants travel to her door on Dagowop Hill in search of healing, Saint Garnet hides in her inherited mansion and seeks her own redemption from the highly personal demons which complicate her life along with her port wine map of the world. Along the way, Saint Garnet and the small circle of people who know, understand, and love her each suffer their own struggles. The novel introduces numerous characters all of us have known, or believe we knew. They are the familiars of all our lives, the loving and devoted grandmother, the struggling mother who deserves more, the despised and perverted cousin, the working class father who seeks to give a wonderful wife all she deserves, and the brilliant but misunderstood sibling. Ms. Manilla blends all these characters and themes into a wonderfully woven story which assists the reader in coming to self-knowledge and a fuller appreciation of her own flawed life and family. She also artfully kills off a few characters for the good of the story. For more than a hundred years, Appalachia and West Virginia have benefitted from the lives, works, and descendants of Italian American immigrants who came to perform the tasks which were too onerous or dangerous for those who persisted in the belief that they were too good, or smart, or rich, or valuable to perform those tasks. The Patron Saint of Ugly has now joined the ever growing list of such achievements from which we have all benefitted. Ms. Manilla utilizes skills learned in West Virginia and honed at the University of Iowa Creative Writing Program to create a masterful and memorable work which leaves the reader hoping for more from this group of characters and their creator. This book is a must read for the lover of Appalachia and Appalachian literature.

"Appalachian Folk Tales" Compiled and Edited By Loyal Jones

Loyal Jones was one of the small handful of individuals who created the field of Appalachian Studies during his lifetime. There were perhaps no aspects of Appalachian Culture which Loyal Jones could not disucss cogently and clearly on a moment's notice. But Appalachian Folk Tales was an area about which he produced only a small amount of writing despite being a well known public speaker on both Appalachian Folk Tales and Appalachian Humor. He also cowrote several books on Appalachian Humor with song writer and playwright Billy Edd Wheeler. But this little book of a mere 117 pages constitutes the majority of his work on the title topic. "Appalachian Folk Tales" was published by the Jesse Stuart Foundation in 2020 only three years before his death at 95. The book was marketed as an introductory text on the subject for grade school aged children to "...delight and inform the children of today". The roughly three page "Note To Parents And Teachers" which serves as an introduction or foreword to the book was dated by Loyal Jones as having been written in 2010. The book contains a total of twelve Appalachian Folk Tales as told by several of the prominent experts over the last half century or so. Two of the stories have Loyal Jones listed as their author although the tale "Mutsmeg" is described in his introduction to it as having been publicly told by at least four other leading experts on Appalachian Folk Tales including Cratis Williams and Leonard Roberts who were two of the most skilled in the genre. Loyal Jones' introduction to "Jack Goes a-Hunting" describes it as having been either told or written in both "...Old World and American folk tale collections". Every tale in this little book is worth hearing and remembering. Each of them is a shining example of the folk tales which have been told and passed down from generation to generation in Appalachia ever since Old World settlers first came to this country. This book can serve as an introduction to Appalachian Folk Tales for anyone interested in the subject at any age. It is a great place to start if you know little about the topic and want the base of your knowledge to be well grounded from the beginning. Enjoy it!

Loyal Jones Photograph Above Copyrighted by Roger D. Hicks

"Fifty Best American Short Stories", Edited by Martha Foley

I love short stories, and I consider the short story to be the best form of all writing in literature. It has almost no room for error. Even the simplest little changes can either make a short story truly great or turn a potentially great short story into something very ordinary. I have read and studied the short story form ever since my high school days which were a mighty long time ago. I also write and have published about 20 short stories in at least 12 states in a variety of both college and university literary journals and some of the better online websites. I published my first short story in my twenties. But I don't pretend to be an expert on the short story, and I surely don't pretend to be a great short story writer. I do profess to be a good short story writer, and I believe the significant number of editors and/or editorial committees who have accepted and published my stories is some level of proof of their agreement with me about my self assessment. The best way to become a good to great short story writer is to read stories by the authors whom other people who understand the short story believe to be the best in the world. Everyone has their own opinion of what a great short story is, and there is room for some disagreement since the idea of stating what is a good to great short story is very subjective. It should also be very objective and sometimes editors are more subjective than objective. I remember one story I submitted to a book project in Texas, as I recall, and I got a handwritten rejection from the editor who had rejected it which said something to the effect that "This story really doesn't fit our project goals, but it sure is an interesting story." Did that editor mean that "interesting" was a good thing or something less. Since he bothered to send me a handwritten rejection, I assume he liked the story. You never know in a case like that. But to get to the point of this blog post, I am actually supposed to be writing about the book of stories which I recently finished by reading one stor a day from the book with my wife. This particular book, "Fifty Best American Short Stories" Edited By Martha Foley, was published in 1986 and contains stories from 1915 to 1964. It contains short stories from several of my favorite authors although the stories the editor chose are sometimes not my favorite stories by a particular author. It also contains some stories from people whom I had never read who might not make anyone's top ten or top fifty list of short story authors which speaks to that subjectivity of which I spoke earlier. But it is overall a very good book of short stories and well worth reading. The authors in this collection whom I had already placed on my list of favorites includes Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Ray Bradbury, Flannery O'Connor, and Shirley Jackson. Interestingly, the editor did not include the story I consider to be each of those writers' best. She might have been bowing to copyright restrictions on what she considered their best but included another story from each of them in a bow to what she considers their overall greatness. Or maybe we just have differing opinions, hence subjectivity rears its head. If you can find a copy of this old collection, buy it, read it, and make up your own mind while trying to be totally objective about the process.

"Kinfolks: The Wigus Stories" by Gurney Norman

A recent reread of this book was, naturally, prompted by the death of its author, Gurney Norman, who is most famous for his first novel, "Divine Right's Trip: A Novel of The Counter Culture" which I had reread and written about earlier this year. I honestly don't remember the first time I read this collection of short stories. It is composed of a collection of ten short stories which have a cast of common characters who are all either family or friends of the protagonistg, Wilgus Collier, an Appalachian male who is raised in the home of his maternal grandparents. I believe all but one of the stories had been previously published in several literary journals around the country. In some respects, an argument could be made that it is a similar kind of collection to Mildred Hauns's "The Hawk's Done Gone". However, this collection falls a bit short of Haun's book in being a major part of the argument about what actually constitutes a novel versus a collection of short stories with a common setting and a common cast of characters. Norman's book and the stories it is comprised of is less tightly timelined across the lives of the characters, and falls a bit short in the depth of the character development of most of the characters as opposed to Haun's work. Enough about that. The protagonist is a member of a family which has a complicated structure and mercurial interactions. He is the grandson living in the home of his grandparents, is a close friend of his slightly older uncle Delmer who teaches him how to drink among other acts of coming of age. This book is generally perceived a series of coming of age stories and spans the boys adolescent years to his young adulthood. He is better educated than the other family members and is often viewed as a source of assistance when family problems arrives. One of the stories is about the illness of the grandfather and Wilgus' spending a night sitting with him in hospital. A similar incident with different characters is also a significant part of "Divine Right's Trip" in which D. R. the protagonist in that book performs the same chore for a family friend. The family fight often, love each other always, and show it clearly when the chips are down. They might fight each other in private but they always fight common enemies in public. These stories will make you laugh, and make you cry. They will make you a fan of Wilgus and his extended family. I sincerely doubt that any of these stories will be forever enshrined into the pantheon of great American Literature. But they are already enshrined in the pantheon of serious Appalachian Literature. This book is well worth reading especially if you are a devotee of the American short story.

"Memoirs of a Geisha", Rereading A Classic Novel

My initial reading of this book took place about 2003, about 6 years after the book was originally published. I chose to reread it with my wife because we had both loved it when we read it the first time. On second reading, the book is just as great as I had viewed it over 20 years ago. It is written by the author, Arthur Golden, as a memoir in the first person with the narrator being the protagonist, Sayuri, a poor young Japanese girl who has been sold, along with her older sister, by her father after the death of her mother to a leading man in their poor seaside fishing village in rural Japan. The buyer immediately sells her to the owner of an okiya in the large city of Gion to be used as a maid initially, but ultimately to be trained as a geisha. The dictionary definition of a geisa is "A Japanese girl or woman who is trained to entertain professional or social gatherings of men with conversation, dancing, and singing". That simplistic definition is a bit short of reality. The girls who are being trained to become geisha are nothing short of slaves, property, belonging to the female owners of the okiyas into which they have been placed. An okiya is a house which is run by an older woman, sometimes a retired former geisha, In the house, this owner will have at least one and sometimes more geisha whose work supports the entire household which is composed of the owner, perhaps an assistant or two who may also be former retired geisha, one or sometimes more young apprentice geisha, and several support staff who function primarly as maids, cooks, and errand girls. Often the maids are young girls who are being considered for training as geisha when they are older. There is a complete culture represented by the geisha, the other members of their okiyas, and their customers who are usually well to do men some of whom may even be among the richest in the country. This culture is thoroughly represented by Arthur Golden in the book and he actually trained in college to become an expert on Japanese culture and language. Incidentally, this is his only published book so far as I know, and that is a tragedy. This novel is classic and was a massive best seller when it was first published. In the okiya to which Sayuri has been sold, the primary geisha is a woman named Hatsumomo who is one of the best known and highest earning geisha in Japan. But she is a foul tempered, manipulative, and totally unlikeable woman who is the villian of the book. She does all she can to prevent Sayuri from ever becoming a geisha by lying, manipulating all those around her, and working on a daily basis to destroy the life, hopes, and dreams of Sayuri. But since she is the primary wage earner in the okiya,she is the one person on whom all the others in the house are dependent. Sayuri manages to meet and become befriended by another geisha, Mameha, who takes her under her protection and assists her in succeeding to become a full fledged geisha. Very early in the book, Sayuri meets only briefly a man referred to as The Chairman, who owns one of the largest companies in Japan, and she falls in love with him. But due to the strict social protocols of Japanese culture,she cannot make her feelings about him known. She does find steady work entertaining the Chairman over time along with his right hand man who is a former war hero who has lost an arm and been severely burned during the war. But he is compassionate despite being gruff, brusque, and overly honest in his criticisms of those around him. He and Sayuri become close friends and he wishes to become her danna, a Japanese expression for a man who provides for a geisha without ever marrying her. That relationship never happens and Sayuri near the end of the book takes actions to ensure that she doesn't ever become the beneficiary of his assitance. This is a powerful novel which provides a lenghthy ongoing portrait of live in Japan both for geisha and all those around them in the years leading up to War War II and beyond. Sayuri suffers hardships both as a child and as a geisha especialy during the war. But in the end she has become an independent woman in control of her own life and circumstances. It is one of the finest novels I have ever read about life in Asia in general and in Japan in particular. It can be found on any used book page on the internet and is still in print. Read it! You will love it!

"Aylesford Place: The Second Year" by Steve Demaree

On July 8, 2025, I wrote a blog post about the first book in this series by Steve Demaree, "Pink Flamingoed". My wife and I just finished book two in the series, "Aylesford Place: The Second Year". These books are self-published by Steve Demaree and he sells them on most of the available internet book sellers including Amazon. Aylesford Place is a mythical neighborhood on a single street in a town somewhere in Central Kentucky. The real Aylesford Place is located just north and east of the University of Kentucky campus right off Euclid Avenue. Physically, the mythical street in the books bears little resemblance to the real Aylesford Place. The neighborhood in the book is peopled by a collection of eight or ten different households ranging in age from late twenties (perhaps) to somewhere near the late seventies or eighties. Most of the characters have lived on Aylesford Place most, if not all, of their lives. However, the characters whom I consider to be the primary protagonists of the book are a young couple, Brad Forester and Amy Carmichael, a male mystery author and his female photographer girlfriend, who are married by the end of this book. Their best friends are Allison Davenport and her boyfriend Chuck Madden who are also married by the end of the book. As this novel begins, Chuck lives elsewhere in the mythical town and Allison owns her own home on Aylesford Place. After the wedding, they are both residents of Aylesford Place. Brad and Amy, after their marriage, decide to remodel the two adjoining Aylesford Place homes in which they were already living to make a connector between the two and turn Brad's house into a Bed and Breakfast. Allison is in a wheelchair and runs some kind of never quite fully described business from her home. Her inclusion as a character in the novel, actually a major character, is the best part of the book for me since my wife Candice has been in a wheelchair for almost thirty years. I commend Steve Demaree for creating this character and dealing with her appropriately. Few novelists in today's world have the strengthy of character to create such a character in their books. I suspect that Steve Demaree has, or has had, someone in his life in a wheelchair. He has Allison take part in the life of the neighborhood just as fully and functionally as any other character. She tackles life head on and usually wins. Nothing seriously dangerous of deadly ever happens on Aylesford Place. Everyone in the novel is generally always happy. They might have brief periods of being less than content but the causes are never earth shattering and they always come to a happy ending. For me, two of the major aspects of good fiction writing are the creation of an element known as Conflict and the Resolution of Conflict. Not much of that happens in Steve Demaree's books. No one ever develops cancer, hepatitis, insanity, or much more than an occasional headache or hangnail. The books lack sufficient of the reality of life to be the kind of writing that makes one wish to see the next book in a series. My wife Candice likes these books considerably more than I. I doubt that I would have read the second book if she had not wanted us to read it together as we always do with one book at a time, spending about 30 to 45 minutes a day with Candice washing our breakfast dishes while read from our ongoing book aloud. It works for us, keeps us close, and interested in the same topics most of the time. Our habit can be a good one for other couples to try, especially if you both love literature. I'm simply saying I love a higher class of literature.

"Introducing The Short Story" Edited by Henry I. Christ & Jerome Shostak

It has always been my belief that the short story is the ultimate form of written fiction. Yes, I love novels, plays, and poetry but the short story has the most elements to recommend it for long term literary pleasure. The short story can be read in a minimum amount of time since most are less than 5,000 or 6,000 words in total, although some can be as much as 20,000 words but that is a fairly rare event. But my ultimate reason for loving the short story is that it is a very unforgiving form of literature to write. In 5,000 words or even less, there is little room for error. A literary mistake on the writer's part in a short story represents a far greater percentage of the entire story than such a mistake in an 80,000 or 100,000 word novel. What might be a forgiveable error in a medium to long novel can completely alter the short story of a reasonable length. What does a writer have to provide in a short story? The key elements in a short story are Plot, Characters, Character Development, Confict, and Conflict Resolution. Many respected authorities on short stories disagree as to the minimum key elements of a short story. But most of those authorities list at list five elements and some as many as nine or ten. The elongated list then grows to contain Plot, Character, Conflict, Conflict Resolution, Setting, Theme, Point Of View, Character Development, Tone, and Style. Some authorities might disagree about one or more on that elongated list, but they would generally agree that a good to above average short story must contain most of those elements. The editors of the book in question, "Introducing The Short Story", list Plot, Character, Setting, and Theme. I chose to buy and read this book more because of the twenty-eight short stories it contains as examples of the seven qualities of short stories which they editors list. The seven sections they chose to list are Plot, The Magic Of Imagination, The Surprise Ending, All In Fun, Short Shorts, Fellow Creatures, and World Of People. For each of those seven sections, the editors included 4 short stories as examples of the qualities in stories. The book is presumbly intended as a high school level text in a class on the short story, and that class would most likely be considered an Advanced Placement course in most high schools. I bought it simply to read the twenty-eight examples and not for the introductory and closing material attached to each section. When I scanned the book's list of stories, I found only five stories which I had read before and I have been reading short stories for something in excess of 65 years. I found almost a dozen authors listed among the stories whose names and work I knew above and beyond the actual five stories I had previously read. But in the stories I had not read, I found I liked nearly all of the editors' choices and came to love two or three of those previously never encounered stories. In "The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell, I found one of my favorie stories of all time. I had first read and loved it in my freshman year of high school, and I have been recommending it ever since. It is one of the best action and suspense stories ever written anyone. "The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty' by James Thurber is also one of my personal favorites which also crops up in my life from time to time. "Lonesome Boy, Silve Trumpet" by Arna Bontemps is a wonderfully written story about a little African American boy in New Orleans who loves music, learns to play the trumpet against his mother's adivce, and finds himself the featured musician at a most unusual party. Two of the stories in the "Surprise Ending" section of the book are fine examples of the work of Guy de Maupassant and Ambrose Bierce. No one can say they fully comoprehend the lenght breadth and depth of the short story who has never read anything by either of those two masters. Maupassant was a French master of the short story who wrote several hundred during is lifetime along with a few novels which are less remembered and lauded than his short stories. Ambrose Bierce's "A Horseman In The Sky" is a masterpiece only slightly less well known that his "An Occurence At Owl Creek Bridge" which was turned into one of the best loved of all "The Twilight Zone". And Bierce's own demise in the Mexican Revolution which he was covering as a journalist is a story in itself. He simply disappeared and to this day no one knows where or exactly when he died. If you are a high school or even college level English, and especially Short Story teacher, this book can be a valuable resource for you in the classroom. But if you are simply a reader of the short story, and find a copy of this book lying in a junk store for a dollar or two, it is well worth the money to buy and simply read the stories and totally ignore the supporting writing from the editors. But even better, if you are a lover of the short story who wants to know more about how that form of fiction works internally, this is a great place to start learning.

"African Short Stories" Edited by Chinua Achebe & C. L. Innes

The short story is, in my opinion, the greatest form of literature in the world. When I make that statement, I understand fully that fans of both the novel and drama will take offense. But consider this, an average short story contains somewhere between about 1,000 to a maximum of about 10,000 words with a lot of room for argument about both minimum and maximum lengths. The average short story contains about 3,000 to 4,000 words. Therefore, the author of a short story must be able to tell a compelling story in less than 10,000 words and still bring into that story all of the necessary elements of a short story: plot, character, setting, and theme. I would argue that a good to great short story must also possess conflict and conflict resolution. There are some literary critics or simply lovers of the short story who also mention the necessity for a short story to contain tone and point of view. Some others who also believe themselves to be experts on the short story mention "want or goal" which I believe is simply a left handed way to say, or avoid saying, plot. These same people mention "decisions" as being necessary in a short story. I would say that "decisions" in a short story are simply part of plot, character development, or conflict resolution. But enough hair splitting about what a short story is required to contain. A simpler way to put it is that a short story must tell a story which contains at least 4 or 5 elements and reach a conclusion about what has happened in the intervening few thousand words. A short story is the greatest form of literature because it has so little room for error on the part of an author. Most of the stories in this little collection from Africa achieve that rather confining goal. The book is edited by Chinua Achebe and C. L. Innes and contains twenty stories from African writers which are divided into four geographical groups for the four points of the compass on the continent. The book was originally published in 1985. I won't go so far as to say all of the stories impressed me to the point that I would have included them with the remaining majority. But one or two of the stories are truly impressive feats of writing and at least a half dozen are better than average when compared with the better short stories found in other parts of the world. Most of them can be defended as being clearly African in nature. Some of them are addressing what can be called universal themes from all the world over. My personal choice as the best story in the book is called "The Will of Allah" by David Owoyele which is a masteful telling of an unusual story which clearly contains all those key elements. There are two characters who are professional thieves who make a living together robbing the homes and perhaps businesses of the people around them. They don't particularly like each other and are simply what could be called business associates who make a living in the dead of the night by victimizing the innocents around them. They go out together to rob someone and randomly choose a home in which they find a large basket similar to those in which the local people are known to keep their most important possessions. One enters the home and passes the basket and its unknown contents out a window to his partner who goes to their meeting place and opens to the basket to find that it contains a cobra belonging to a person who apparently practices as a a snake charmer. He is immediately bitten and knows he will die. He puts the lid back on the basket and when his partner catches up with him allows the partner to also open the basket and be bitten by the cobra. Then he uses the last of his life strength to reach inside the basket and kill the cobra while being bitten several more times. Naturally, both men die and the will of Allah has been carried to its logical conclusion. With the death of the two protagonists, it is amazing that the story also contains some better than average humor. In the middle of the story, I laughed out loud at least a couple of times as the two men who dislike each other carry out their plan and the necessary conversation to bring it to a conclusion. If I were ever to be asked (which will not happen in this world) to put together a collection of my favorite stories in all the world, I would include "The Will of Allah". It is truly great story. There are several other better than average stories in the book including selections from former Kenyan President Jomo Kenyatta whose story is a fine piece of writing about the nature of politics; Bessie Head who died young and is still recognized as one of Africa's best writers; and Nobel Prize Winner Nadine Gordimer. This little book is well worth reading.

Reflections On Rereading "The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come" by John Fox, Jr.

The first time I read this book must have been at least forty or fifty years ago, maybe even longer. I didn't like it then and I like it even less now. Yes, John Fox, Jr. could write well. But that is not the real issue(s) which I have with this book. It is often described as an Appalachian book since it is set primarily in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky. It is also sometimes described as a Civil War novel which is a bit more accurate. But the majority of the book is not about the Civil War, perhaps less than 20%. That is enough to say about my doubts about it being a Civil War novel. It is most frequently described as an Appalachian Novel and has been for nearly all of the 120+ years since it was published in 1903. I disupte the idea that it can be called an Appalachian novel. Yes, it is set primarily in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky in a fictional area that is roughly near the headwaters of the Kentucky River, perhaps in the region of the current Kingdom Come State Park in Harlan County. Yes, many of its characters, including the protagonist Chad Bufford are natives of Appalachian Kentucky. But John Fox, Jr. was not remotely an Appalachian man. He grew up and lived much of his life in the area in and around Lexington, Kentucky, which is not remotely a part of Appalachia. It is the heart of the Bluegrass and Central Kentucky. Fox later moved to Big Stone Gap, Virginia, which is in Appalachia. Upon his death there, he was returned to Bourbon County Kentucky for burial in a family graveyard. Bourbon County is very much in the heart of Central Kentucky. For those who might have a tendency to make the claim that if Fox spent time in Appalachia and lived there at his death it made him an Appalachian, I would ask you if you believed that if you moved to Watts in Los Angeles, California, would it make you either African American or Hispanic? You know absolutely that it would not. Neither did living in Appalachia make John Fox, Jr. an Appalachian. As for the novel itself, I believe, based on my life and experiences as a native Appalachian with a strong base of knowledge and expertise in Appalachian Culture, that "The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come" is actually an anti-Appalachian novel. Throughout the novel, Fox will sometimes make a few positive comments about the people of the Appalachian Mountains in Kentucky and will, almost immediately, follow those postive comments with very negative statements, stereotypes, and defamations. Those negative descriptors he resorted to include poverty, ignorance, illiteracy, feuding, and a wide variety of other defamatory remarks. The Encyclopedia Virginia website describes the novel as a local color novel which is more accurate than the claim that it is Appalachian. The California Learning Resource Network website describes local color as being: Local color is a literary term that refers to the unique cultural, regional, or social characteristics that are often used to describe a particular place, community, or group of people. Sometimes "The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come" is described as being a coming of age novel which is also more accurate than saying it is Appalachian. The novel has Chad Buford, the teenage protagonist, making his first trip to Frankfort, Kentucky, as part of a log floating operation down the Kentucky River. When he arrives in Frankfort with his friends he is soon hopelessly lost in "the big city" and forced to try to make his own way back to the mountains. This type of description of a mountain boy becoming lost on his first trip to town is a typical case of portraying native Appalachians as being inept in urban areas and can be found in hundreds of cheap, tawdry novels today, many of whose authors may well have learned the trick from Fox's work. Miraculously, Chad is rescued by Major Buford who turns out to be a relative who suspects their kinship and takes the boy in with the unspoken idea that if he can prove the relationship he will have the boy educated and made into a gentleman. As the novel progresses, that is exactly what does happen. Major Buford takes him in, he falls in love with the daughter of a general who at least initially either belittles or ignores him for his coonskin cap and backward mountain ways. Eventually, Chad becomes friends with the girl, her two brothers and the entire family of General Dean. Then the Civil War intervenes and the novel turns toward the conflicts between family members and neighbors in both Central Kentucky and Eastern Kentucky. One of General Dean's sons joins the Confederate Army and the other, along with Chad Buford, joins the Union Army. In the mountains, two brothers, both giants, Daws Dillon and Tad Dillon, who also join opposite sides of the war and come to hate each other totally. It is an interesting point that Fox chose to create two giant brothers in the novel since a very famous giant, Martin Van Buren Bates, was born in Letcher County Kentucky, not far from Kingdom Come in Harlan County. Bates lived from 1837 to 1919, fought in the Civil War at 7 feet 9 inches and later toured the world as a sideshow act. It is even possible that Fox met Bates during his time traveling in the mountains to buy land and mineral rights from the locals. I have little doubt that the Dillon boys are both based on Martin Van Buren Bates. The Civil War ends and Chad Buford goes to visit his friends in the mountains who include Melissa Turner, a young woman whom Chad grew up with and who saved his life during the Civil War by misleading Rebel sympathizers who were attempting to waylay and kill Chad. As a result of her winter trek through the mountains to save Chad, Melissa becomes ill and dies. Upon Chad's return to the mountains, Melissa is dead and he doesn't even stay for her funeral before returning to Central Kentucky and then on to an unwritten life wandering the country. This failure to attend the funeral of a close friend is a very basic misstatement of behavior by any native Appalachian, especially in 1865. Another related misrepresentation of life in the time of the novel describes Major Dean's disinterment of Chad's parents to transport their bodies for reburial on his Central Kentucky farm with his relatives. At the time of the novel, nothing was considered more sacred in Appalachian Culture than the graves of the dead. This is just one of many misrepresentations of the Appalachian lifestyle in the middle nineteenth century. While "The Litte Shepherd of Kingdom Come" is an entertaining novel and written in a professional literary manner, it is an insult to every Appalachian who ever lived and loved his/her culture and homeland. If you choose to read it, paperback copies can be found all over the nation. But read it with a very jaundiced eye. It is not what it is often misrepresented to be.

"This Proud Heart" by Pearl Buck

On several occasions on this blog, I have written about the works of Pearl S. Buck, one of the small handul of American writers to receive a Nobel Prize in Literature and one of my favorite writers of all time. I have writte3n about "The Good Earth", her most famous novel, which I believe is also one of a very small group of the best novels in all of literature. She followed "The Good Earth" with two other novels in the "Good Earth" trilogy, They are "Sons" and "A House Divided". While either of those novels could have been a career best for many writers, they are not among Buck's best works. I read everything I come across by Buck and still have numerous of her books to be read. Fortunately, a year or so ago, I bought a large collection of books, actually 5 commercial peach boxes full, from the estate of a local school principal. This one we are discussing today I found in a small group of books I bought at a small "junk store" in Rowan county Kentucky which also included a unique first edition of Jack Kerouac's first novel, "The Town And The City", which was published under his legal name John Kerouac, the only one of his books to have been published that way. "This Proud Heart" is one of Buck's lesser known novels which is set in the United States with purely American characters for the most part. The protagnonist is a brilliant woman, Susan Gaylord, and begins when she is a high school student who has shown a great deal of talent in more than one area. She is the daughter of a professor father and a dedicated housewife mother, has one sister, Mary, several years younger and not really close to her older sister. Her father is a somewhat frustrated poet in addition to being a professor in a small college. He has chosen to devote his life to his familiy and his primary profession but does manage to write poetry and publish some of it in small magazines. Susan comes to understand her father's frustration with his life decision and vows to do more to control her own life and its outcomes. She is a talented artist and piano player as the book begins but chooses to marry her high school sweetheart, Mark, who is a totally devoted husband to her and works in the real estate business after they marry. But Susan finds herself interested in sculpture and uses a barn on the old farm they buy to create a piece in wood which is composed of a family of four, a husband, wife, and two children, a son and daughter. That piece is submitted to a contest for a piece to be placed in the lobby of a hospital financed by a very rich man in New York. The piece and her work in general is supported by a famous male sculptor, David Barnes, who has a house in the small New England town in which Susan and her family live. Barnes is a brusque, short spoken man who has strong opinions about Susan's talent and her inablility, as he sees it, to succeed as a sculptor in the United States. He strongly encourages her to come with him to Paris to study under another great sculptor and a man who teaches anatomy to sculptors. She refuses until the untimely death of her husband Mark due to typhoid fever. After his death, she packs up her children and their maid to travel to Paris to actually do what Barnes has suggested. During her time there, she meets another man, Blake Kincaid, who is also a sculptor of much less talent than Susan. They fall in love and she marries Blake which proves to be a less than perfect decision. They return to New York where he lives in considerable wealth and she grows more and more hampered by his efforts to control her, minimize her talent, and disparage her work as a sculptor. She comes to realize these things about Blake and rents a studio in the poor neighborhood near his ostentatious home where she meets and sculpts marble statues of some of the people in the neighborhood. David Barnes returns to the novel from Paris and assists Susan in getting her works into a gallery for an exhibition which confirms her talent and leaves her with a full understanding that she cannot succeed as a sculptor if she remains with Blake. She moves her family back to her hometown after the death of her father and decides to end her relationship with Blake. The novel leaves the whole situation somewhat in midair at the ending but we see that Susan has been able to understand that she must be independent in order to do her best work. The novel is also widely discussed as one of Buck's better works in support of feminism. Susan Gaylord is a strong, successful, competent, talented, and highly motivated woman. For the time in 1938 when the novel was published, she is an amazingly modern woman. I suspect that this novel is somewhat biographical with the sculpting being a substitute for Pearl Buck's writing and Blake being a character based on Buck's missionary first husband whom she divorced to marry her editor and publisher after her early work caused such a stir in the literary world. While I would not say this is one of Buck's best novels such as "The Good Earth", "Imperial Woman", or "The Living Reed", it is a fine novel and well worth reading.

"Maggie: A Girl Of The Streets" by Stephen Crane

Many time on this blog, I have mentioned that I often buy books at what I refer to as "junk stores", Goodwill, Salvation Army Thrift Stores, etc. I find all kinds of less common books in such places. One of my favorite little places to buy such books is at a little shelf outside the door of the snack shop, gift shop near the entrance to Pavilion H at the University of Kentucky Hospital. It is actually located in the hall between the entrance to Pavilion H, the old main hospital section, and the kiosk where patients sign in. I believe the little gift shop is operated by some arm of the hospital auxillary. The little book shelf operates solely from donated books which must come from a variety of sources including medical staff, auxillary members, patients and their visitors and might contain anything at any given time. All the books sell for some minimal price, usually 75 cents. Due to the fact that my wife has frequent appointments at the Kentucky Clinic across the street, I often take a long walk around the medical buildings in order to get my exercise, cruise past the little bookshelf, about 2 feet wide and 4 shelves high, browse what it contains, and buy anything that interests me. My last purchase there included the book I am writing about now, "Maggie: A Girl Of The Streets" by Stephen Crane, the author of "The Red Badge of Courage" which is a much better known book. The edition of "Maggie..." which I found there is actually A Norton Critical Edition which contains a great deal of critical and historical material in addition to the full text of "Maggie..." which is actually a novella of only 58 pages. But this edition also contains about 200 more pages of the supporting writings, photographs, and maps of New York City in the late 19th century. It was edited by Thomas A. Gullason, Ph. D., an English Professor at the University of Rhode Island. It is an excellent piece of work both from the simple aspect of being a fine novella by one of America's best early novelists, and by virtue of being a fine piece of editorial work by someone who clearly understood his materieal well. The book was originally published in 1893 and the text Dr. Gullason used is that original text. He has wisely not fiddled with the language of the time, has inserted numerous and sometimes voluminous footnotes to provide extensive information about the language used, geography at times, and other aspects of life in New York City in the late 19th century. I read the book with my wife Candice as we do nearly every day. I read aloud from our chosen book as she washes our breakfast dishes. When she finishes, I rinse the dishes. We take turns choosing the books we read and it is an exercise that works well for us in terms of both literature and personal relationship. This was obviously a fast read, in terms of the text of novella alone. In light of its brevity, it was a very nice book to read. Crane's writing does use some now antiquated words at times but he was a fine novelist as anyone knows who has ever read "The Red Badge of Courage". His writing style was actually much more modern in nature than most of his peers at the time. The novella still stands up to just about anything from any modern author in today's times. Maggie is the oldest daughter of a poor, Irish, working class family living in an early tenement in New York. Her mother is an abusive, alcoholic. Her father is an abusive, heavy drinking wagon driver in the streets of the city. Her brother Jimmie is a street urchin with a violent nature. The entire family and every one around them is simply striving to stay alive in a very hostile environment. As Maggie matures into a young woman, she becomes enamored with a friend of her brother named Pete who is a bartender and passes himself off as being much more than he actually is in terms of his money, lifestyle, worldly ways, etc. Maggie falls for Pete, leaves home to be with him after a particularly violent incident with her mother. She is wined and dined by Pete early in their relationship, taken to concerts, bars, and other forms of entertainment and comes to believe that Pete will improve her life. As the novella progresses, it becomes apparent that Pete is a womanizer who is totally in everything purely for his own satisfaction. Eventually, Maggie leaves Pete after he tires of her and moves on with an older woman whom he considers more interesting, charming, and attractive. Maggis is rejected by her mother and the family as a "fallen woman", and dies on the streets. It is obviously a very dark novella filled with poverty, alcoholism, womanizing, prejudice toward minorities, and nearly everything negative that New York offered in the 1890's. But it is a fine novella and well worth reading. If you can find a copy, get it, read it, and come to understand the poverty that immigrant working class families suffered in the early days of our country. And, in light of the recent hatred, animosity, and aggression toward the immigrants who once were and still are the real builders of our country, it is fine novella to read in today's politically disastrous times.

"The Diving Bell And The Butterfly" by Jean-Dominique Bauby

 

My wife Candice and I just finished reading this fine little book by Jean-Dominique Bauby in the manner in which we have been reading books regularly for several years now.  While Candice washes our breakfast dishes, I read aloud from whatever book we are reading at the time.  When she finishes washing the dishes, I stop reading and rinse them.  I put them away later.  We alternate who chooses the next book we read, and this one was her choice.  Our previous book which I chose was "Band Of Angels", a novel by Robert Penn Warren which I wrote about at this link.  For us, this book is personal.  Bauby was the editor of "Elle", the French fashion magazine, when he suddenly, and apparently without any warning, suffered a severe stroke in his early forties which left him with "Locked In Syndrome".  Locked In Syndrome is a condition due to a stroke or other form of brain damage which leaves the patient completely paralyzed, unable to move or speak, and without any realistic hope of recovery.  Usually, the patients mind is working perfectly well inside a completely dysfunctional body.  Sometimes, as in Bauby's case, the patient is able to blink one or both eyes which is utilized to facilitate a form of communication.  Bauby, his friends, family, and providers were trained to use an alphabet system with the letters of the alphabet arranged in order according to their frequency of use in French, his native language.  The person communicating with such a patient is required to read the letters one at a time, wait until the patient blinks in response to a letter, write that letter down, and repeat the process until a word is spelled.  Then a sentence, and thus a conversation.  Bauby and a young female employee of his publisher utilized the system for him to write this book which is, understandably, only 132 short pages of about 175 words each for a total of approximately 23,000 words. Admittedly, that is a small word total for most adult non-fiction books.  But for a book which was produced using the method described above, it is a phenomenal piece of work for both Bauby and his publisher's employee.  

 

For my wife and I, the book is a personal matter for two reasons: 1) my wife has been in a wheelchair for about 26 years, and in a power chair for about 5 years due to a rare genetic disorder; 2) when I was an undergraduate at Morehead State University, I had a professor whose husband, a retired psychiatrist, suffered a massive stroke which left him with "Locked In Syndrome".  On one occasion, my former professor told me the story of her husband's stroke and eventual death.  They utilized some such system of eye blinking to discuss his condition, absolutely devastating prognosis, and their possible options in the matter.  Admittedly, they were a couple who were unusually prepared by their professional lives to deal with such an issue in their private lives.  Her husband was a retired medical doctor and psychiatrist who had run a large state operated mental health treatment system.  His wife was a doctoral level professor of social work who had also worked in mental health setting in the past.  But, as she told me the story, it was obvious that she was still totally devastated by the decision they had reached in his case.  They had discussed their problem and their options, as I described above, and her husband chose to be disconnected from life support and to die rather than to linger for whatever time the health care system could have kept him alive.  Admittedly, my wife and I have a very unique perspective from which to assess Bauby's incredible little book.  

 

The book is written in very short chapters, very little pages, and is an incredible read both for its brevity and its breadth in how much information it contains.  Bauby says little until almost the end of the book about the actual event of his stroke.  It moves from short segments about his life in a state government operated system for very difficult neurological cases in France to segments about his life before his stroke to other segments about how he spends his time when he is alone in his hospital bed.  He discusses his creation of fantasies about what had previously been his goals and dreams, his life with his young children and wife, and his professional life as the editor of a major French fashion magazine.  This is a book which a good reader can finish in a single sitting.  But it is also a book which can require some time between sittings for the reader to absorb and process the information it contains.  This is an incredible book and well worth reading by every reader  

Appalachia Day Homecoming, AliceLloyd College, October 12, 2024

 

Yesterday, October 12, 2024, I attended Appalachia Day Homecoming at Alice Lloyd College with my wife Candice, our friend Eugenia "Genia" DeCoursey Hall, and her friend Sharon White who is the wife of John White with whom I worked nearly fifty years ago as cooks at Kentucky Fried Chicken in Prestonsburg, Kentucky.  Genia, Sharon, and I had all attended ALC many years ago and Genia and I have been friends for over fifty years.  My wife Candice is actually an alumnus of the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, in Platteville, Wisconsin.  But over the last 32 years, she has become a lover of Appalachia and Appalachian Culture.  Candice and I left our home at about 8:30am in an attempt to arrive by no later than 10am since it is about a 70 mile drive from our house and somewhere near 30 miles of the trip is over two lane roads including US 460 from our house to Salyersville, Kentucky, Kentucky 7 from Garrett, Kentucky to the Floyd/Knott county line, and Kentucky 899 from there to Pippa Passes where the college is located.  Amazingly, we got there in time to get the last handicapped parking space on the highway on campus instead of having to park half a mile away.  Most of the various vendors were already set up selling a large variety of arts, crafts, food, and books.  The crowd was comfortably large but not overwhelming.  The main highway or street through campus was shut down totally and vendors were actually set up in parts of the road where visitors wandered around or stopped to listen to local musicians and the Alice Lloyd College Choir, The Voices of Appalachia.  

Candice and I had driven together, naturally, and Genia and Sharon had driven in Genia's car but arrived a couple of hours after us.  Candice and I had naturally worn our Kamala Harris shirts and, since it was a fairly cool early fall morning, we had chosen to wear Harris/Walz shirts on the outside and Harris/Walz tee shirts underneath so we could change our outer layer when the sun warmed up to about 75 or 80 degrees.  The photo above is of my Harris tee shirt which my regular readers have seen before.  I had not been on the property very long when I encountered a man who approached me and said he liked my shirt.  We had a fairly long conversation about politics on which we agreed fully, learned that we hadfew friends in common from the ALC days.  Then to my surprise, he asked me to take a selfie with me and actually used both our phones to get the photo below.  I told him of the death of a good friend of both of us a few years ago due primarily to a tragic accident in which our friend had been asleep in a recliner in the living room of  his ground level apartment and was hit when an impaired driver literally drove into his living room. Then we parted ways.  The photo below is of the two of us at Appalachia Day. 

 

Then Candice and I wandered around, sometimes together, sometimes separately, looking at the things which interested us, talking to a few people here and there, getting registered, etc.  Candice also decided she wanted to order a sweatshirt which ALC was selling which is Appalachian in nature.  The people who were selling the shirts for the college could only provide a few tee shirts on the spot, could not take credit or debit cards, and Candice had to pay in advance for the shirt with cash, fill out an order card, and wait some undetermined time to receive the shirt.  I am certain that more of the shirts would have been bought if all those issues had not been part of the deal. The photo below is of Candice's Harris/Walz tee shirt. 

I saw an older Mennonite woman selling books at a table next to some male author whom I did not immediately recognize.  Since I have numerous Mennonite friends in our home county and also have known a few members of the Mennonite congregation in Knott County where Alice Lloyd College is located, I moved over to her table and struck up a conversation with her.  It turned out that we did have a few friends in common and I bought a copy of one of her books, "Flooded...Yet Not Alone" by Miriam Moyer, which is an oral history type book about survivors of the 2022 Eastern Kentucky Flood in Knott County which is the county of my birth and childhood. 

 

While I was talking to Miriam Moyer, the man next to her approached us and said, "You are Roger Hicks aren't you?" At that point, I recognized him as Dr. Dennis Campbell, a psychiatrist from Campton, Kentucky, with whom I had worked for about three years in my other career as a mental health and substance abuse therapist.  We had a fairly long talk and I did not immediately buy any of his books, of which he has written about a half dozen since he retired a few years ago.  Eventually, I did return and buy two of his books after I was assured that Candice didn't want to buy anything else from other vendors.  I knew and told Dennis that since he lives not far from me that I could always get in touch with him and buy his books later.  The books I bought from Dennis are "Tales From The Red River Gorge" which was actually published under the pseudonym Maribeth Wagner, and "To Conquer Eternal Summer" which was published under the pseudonym B. Camp.  "Tales From The Red River Gorge" contains two fairly long stories, one of which is described as "A Romantic Suspense Thriller".  The other is described as "A Tale Of Wilderness Survival".  I always enjoyed working with Dennis and trusted his skills absolutely as a psychiatrist when we were working together in an environment where most of our clients were dually diagnosed and suffering from serious mental health issues in one of the poorest counties in Kentucky.  

 

 

I knew that my friend Genia had also been a nurse in the medical practice where Dennis worked for several years as a general practice medical doctor before returning to the University of Kentucky to complete training as a psychiatrist because, as he puts it, "I realized that a very high percentage of the clients I was treating as an M. D. were also suffering from mental health problems."  I can't wait to read his books. When Genia and Sharon arrived, Genia and I returned to Dennis' table to have another conversation with him together since he knew us both but had never known that we are nearly lifelong friends.  I also introduced him to Candice.  The second of his books, "To Conquer Eternal Summer",  is described as "A Cultivation Trilogy" which is within the field of Fantasy Literature.  Dennis' books are all available from Amazon. 

During the course of the day, I was approached at various times by two more couples who also gave me compliments about my shirt(s) and briefly talked politics with all of them.  One couple was a retired high school history teacher and his wife from Carter County Kentucky who described TRAITOR Trump as  "very dangerous".  I gave him the titles of a few books which also describe that same trait of TRAITOR Trump the same way in more lengthy and accurate words.  Another couple were ALC students, a male senior communications major and his girl friend who also felt  very strongly that America and American Democracy are in danger from TRAITOR Trump.  Another couple, perhaps in their thirties, were from Marion County Kentucky and approached about the shirt and expressed their fears about the upcoming election and the dire possibility that TRAITOR Trump could actually be elected for the first time in his life.  Candice and I ate lunch from a food trailer specializing in some Anglicized "Mexican food".  Candice didn't eat much there and I had a steak fajita which was bland but fairly good.  Then we checked in again with Genia who had somehow gotten separated from Sharon White, tried to help her locate her, and eventually gave up to leave in time to get back home at a reasonable hour.  It was good day and wonderful to spend time with friends, both old and new, and to receive some new reading material.  

A Very Rewarding Visit With My Surgeon!

In previous posts (post #2) over the last few years, I have discussed a couple of visits (post #1) I have had with two of my doctors, a surgeon (post #3) and a cardiologist.  About six years ago, I discovered that I had a life threatening blockage of one of my carotid arteries and a surgical procedure was recommended which I finally accepted about four years after the original diagnosis.  During that four years, I engaged in a serious regimen of exercise, mild medication treatment, and a stringent change to my diet, all of which resulted in serious reductions in my blood pressure, weight, overall health risks, and even my opthalmic pressures in both eyes.  I had the surgery roughly two years ago and have been fine ever since.  Immediately after my original diagnosis by a local general practitioner who is friend of mine, I began to see these two specialist and have done so ever since.  About three months after the surgery, I was put on a program of one year follow up visits with both doctors and see each of them once a year and once a year only unless some future serious change in my health requires closer treatment.  

 

When I have any serious appointment for any reason, and especially for medical visits, I always carry whatever book I am reading to the visit since waiting room and even examination room waits can be longer than  just a few minutes.  I always read during those waits unless I sometimes become engaged in a positive conversation with another patient.  As I had said in two of the blog posts linked above, during those particular visits both of these doctors noticed what I was reading and engaged me in conversations about the books at those times.  This is not a very common practice among doctors and, right or wrong, I have always considered the fact that they did so to be a compliment to the quality of my reading material.  I never read what I call "light reading" or "drug store fiction", and neither do most doctors.  They are universally too busy.  But I learned long ago that nearly all doctors have been engaged, like me, in a lifetime habit of reading or most of them would never have become doctors in the first place.  This past Friday, September 13, 2024, I had my regular annual visit with my surgeon and went to the visit reading "The Road To Unfreedom" by Timothy Snyder whose works I have written about on more than one occasion on this blog, and about which I will most certainly write more in the future.  Snyder is one of the best historians, authors, and political thinkers in America today.  He is a professor of history at Yale University and holds an endowed chair there where such a guaranteed lifetime position would be one of the most competitive jobs in education in the world.  Snyder writes in about a half dozen languages, reads in about four or five more, is an incredibly diligent researcher, and an author any high level reader has to respect.  This particular book is the third of his works which I have read and I will write about it in the near future when I finish it.  

As my surgeon entered the examination room, he glanced at my book, asked me "what are you reading today?" and turned to my wife Candice to say, "he never lets me down when he recommends me books".  The first ten minutes or so of our conversation were about Timothy Snyder, his work, politics, and books in general.  Then for about two minutes, he said, "your ultrasounds are great. You're perfect.  Your arteries are perfect."  and we returned to our conversation about politics, literature, and travel since I had told him I had bought "Black Earth: The Holocaust As History And Warning" by Snyder at the El Paso Holocaust Museum in 2017.  When we finished our conversation and he was ready to move on to his next patient, he actually walked with me to the front desk to tell the staff when I needed to return and we ended our conversation there.  I won't see him for another year unless some catastrophe strikes and I need his medical expertise on short notice.  But I know in advance that I will carry whatever book I am reading then, hopefully a biography of Kamala Harrris, President of the United States, and we will discuss it and whatever we both have been reading shortly before the visit.  And he will continue to provide me the same excellent, potentially life saving medical expertise he always has.  Then both of us will go out to order whatever book the other has recommended.  That is the kind of doctor I wish all of you could benefit from on a regular basis.  

Since originally completing and posting this blog post, I have become engaged in a long and rewarding messaging exchange with one of my former high school teacher whom I have been in regular contact with over the last several years.  Our exchange this time was prompted by this blog post and she said during that exchange that We need you to stay around and get our country back on track.Those kinds of compliments about my writings on politics are what keep me writing on this blog and in other venues,  both because I know that if we don't save democracy in this election we may well lose it forever, and because I know that I am correct about this situation in America today and my writing just might change a few minds in the right direction. 

"The Town And The City" by Jack Kerouac--Thoughts On A Rereading

 

"The Town And The City" was Jack Kerouac's first published novel and was released by Harcourt, Brace, and Company in 1950.  It began one of the greatest careers in American fiction for Kerouac and was the initial expression of what would become known as The Beat Writers.  I read it the first time in about 1974 after having been exposed to Kerouac by Robert "Bob" Snyder who was the Director of the Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College in Beckley, West Virginia.  Bob was a professor, mentor, and friend to me and dozens of other young Appalachian writers.  I had no exposure to Kerouac at all prior to that, especially in the public school system of Knott County Kentucky.  I might have heard his name but had never read a single thing he wrote until that time.  By the time I began to read him, he had published more than a dozen novels and was a household name in most of literate America.  I had slowly evolved from a young Appalachian boy who was deeply interested in literature, politics, and the arts into a more developed reader and writer and a hippy and opponent of the Vietnam War.  That metamorphosis was complete after my time at the Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College in the company of Bob Snyder and the other faculty and students at what was a small, somewhat experimental campus Antioch had set up as an outreach to what they considered to be disadvantaged groups in several locations around the country.  I was immediately enthralled with Kerouac's writing and the first of his books I read was probably "Dharma Bums" or "On The Road".  I quickly went on to devour nearly every printed word the man ever wrote and regretted that he did not live to write that much more.  He is truly one of the 8 or 10 greatest writers America has ever produced and one of the few about whom it can be said that he actually established, along with several of his friends, a new school of writing.  

Recently, on one of my many trips to small "junk stores", I wandered into a first edition copy of "The Town And The City" which I had bought in a small pile of other older, less  important books in which I was also interested.  As I was going through the owner's small shelf of used books in what is essentially a small antique shop, now on its way out of business to be replaced by a booth in a Peddler's Mall, I saw the title on the spine of the book, pulled it off the shelf and was amazed to see that Kerouac and Harcourt, Brace, and Company had originally published the book under the name "John Kerouac".  I never said a word to the owner whom I like personally, but who knows little or nothing about books and writing.  I immediately laid the book in "my pile" and moved on, as I always do, to find what I want in such stores and then to negotiate a blanket price for the lot.  To say the least, I paid less for the lot than I would have to obtain this book alone which was published under his legal name instead of the pen name he had adopted later and which became how he will always be known to the world.    Admittedly, the book is an ex-library copy with typical library markings and some clinging evidence of a former library dust jacket, but it still well worth keeping forever to me.  

My wife had previously read only two of Kerouac's books and had liked those: "Visions of Gerard" and "The Subterraneans" which we had actually read together with me reading out loud while she washes dishes which I rinse and put away later.  She had tried one of his other more stream of consciousness novels previously and didn't like it at all.  So I had decided to try the softer, gentler, deeply loving pair of novels to attempt to hook her on Kerouac. It had worked and now we moved on to this unique copy of "The Town And The City".  This book is in most ways a very typical first novel by an American author who is deeply committed to getting himself published.  But is also a very good novel, not great, but quite good, well structured with a well developed group of central characters, the Martin family in a small town in Massachusetts and later in New York City.  It is about their lives as a family unit and as individuals and is quite long at 499 pages compared to most of Kerouac's later works.  It leads us through this large family's lives in the years preceding World War II and the War itself, shows the development of the individual children into unique adults, their individual departure from the family nest, a wonderful old farmhouse on the edge of a small, close knit town.  It also depicts the father's descent into gambling, drinking, and losing his small printing company, and eventually the home.  He becomes a printer in companies owned by others, and eventually moves with the wife and two youngest children to New York where he works the last of his career and dies old and broken down in a small apartment.  

The later sections of the book contain two interesting segments.  First, in an encounter on the streets of New York, one of the Martin sons who seems to most closely depict the author himself meets a small group of other young men who appear to depict the young Ginsberg and Burroughs or perhaps Gregory Corso.  Another of the characters in that small group is called "the young thug Jack" which is a fascinating way for Kerouac to have described himself.  To my knowledge, this is the first time America was exposed in literature to part of the group of people who would become known as The Beat Writers.  At the end of the book, the funeral of the father, George Martin, is set in the small New England town in which he and his wife grew up and were married.  The depiction in the conclusion of the novel is one which could have been typically been written about a funeral and visitation in almost any small, rural town in America.  It could have definitely been written about funerals in general in Eastern Kentucky where I grew up.  The entire town turns out to bring George Martin home, say goodbye to him, and bury him in the little country church yard.  A large collection of distant relatives from both sides of the family show up, many of whom the Martin children have never met.  But all of them seem to remember George Martin and his wife.  It is a wonderful depiction of a funeral in rural America and points out just how clearly Kerouac intended to contrast his character's lonely death in a small apartment in the largest city in America as opposed to the funeral which his native small town was willing to provide to one who had not lived there in many years.  It is the perfect ending to a long, complex, wonderful first novel by anyone's standards.