How the French Invented Love: Nine Hundred Years of Passion and Romance, by Marilyn Yalom

9780062048318

Harper Perennial, 2012

400 pp

(arc -- my thanks to the publisher and to Trish at tlc book tours!)

TLC Book Tours

 "The French eroticize everything..."

Before you sit down with this book, do yourself a huge favor.  Along with your cup of tea or coffee (or perhaps in this case your café au lait) grab a notepad and a pen because you will find yourself wanting to write down and remember the huge list of titles mentioned in this delightful, insightful and entertaining book.

 As the author notes, the French have long been considered the most passionate "purveyors of love" and in How the French Invented Love, Marilyn Yalom examines how this idea came to be.   From the days of the early troubadours to modern-day movies, the book is  a 900-year journey through the construct of  "l'amour á la française."   It is a look at how the French have "championed themselves as guides to the art of love," incorporating into their works all of the traits Americans find titillating but which the author says we are "reluctant to admit as normal." Where we're much more focused on morality in love, the French have been drawn to erotic and sexual passion that over the course of time came to find different expression via the medium of  plays, letters, books, art, and  poetry.   Of course, while the French didn't actually invent the concept of love per se,  Ms. Yalom notes that they did spend nine centuries reinventing it in its many variations.  From Abélard and Héloise, the "Patron Saints" of lovers in France, the book winds its way through the invention of romance through Courtly Love, through Gallant Love, Comic and Tragic Love, Seductive and Sentimental  Love,  Oedipal "Yearning for the Mother," to name only a few.  Same-sex love is also highlighted as is love as viewed by the Romantic writers and beyond. While discussing each shift in thought, the author takes her readers through several authors whose works illustrate her main ideas, populating her book with famous writers such as Balzac, Stendahl, George Sand, Flaubert, Gide, Colette, and Proust, in whom the author finds an "ongoing source of beauty and truth...humor and insight."  As Yalom examines these writers and their contributions to the ongoing paradigm shifts, she also takes up discussions of some of their works but stops herself here and there,  so as not to spoil the book for  prospective readers.   Aside from gaining the benefits of the author's remarkable expertise in French literature and her analysis of how the French have historically carried on with romance, passion, sex and marriage, the author also inserts her own personal commentary here and there throughout the book.

As the author notes, to do a  "proper" job on the French history of love would require a minimum of ten volumes, so don't expect to find every French author's work in this book.  But  How the French Invented Love is a multifaceted, little gem of a book, very intelligently written and entertaining at the same time.   It's okay  if you know very little or absolutely nothing about French literature; it is extremely readable and written in a way that anyone can understand.  There is so much here that, as I noted right away, you will want to have pen and paper handy not so much for notes, but for titles that may strike your fancy as you're reading through the book.  What I really, REALLY enjoyed about this book is that the writer examines her topic and shares her love and passion for French literature as a reader.   While she is also a professor, you can really sense the great enthusiasm she has not just for the literature, but for France and its people as well.  I also liked the fact that the book  can also be read as a very brief social history of France from the heyday of the aristocracy, into the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, down through la belle époque and on into modern times. Along with the discussion of their works, the author also includes glimpses into the lives of several authors and how their real-life experiences often bled through into their writing. How the French Invented Love is just a super book all around.  It actually makes you stop and think about your own life and loves -- and whether or not we Americans may have really missed the boat as far as our hang-ups re morality over our passions, especially considering the debates over same-sex marriage.  Seriously,  why shouldn't people feel free to love and be with the people they're the most passionate about?  Maybe we should take a lesson from the French, especially in this case!

My only minor issue with this book  is that the  title is a bit of a misnomer.  I mean, really, the French didn't actually invent love, but constructed their own reinvented versions of  l'amour francaise over time.    This could be a bit misleading, but really, it's such a non-issue in the bigger scheme of things -- if you are at all inclined toward literature and especially toward love, you'll really enjoy this one.

 The tour continues: click here to find where the tour of this book goes next!

quick link: 12 Who Don't Agree: The battle for freedom in Putin's Russia, by Valery Panyushkin

9781609450106
Europa Editions, 2011
originally published as 12 nesolasnych,  2008
translated by Marian Schwartz
259 pp

Well, this was an oops. I didn't realize until I bought this book that it was nonfiction, but as it turns out, I started reading and couldn't put it down.  The subtitle for this book says it all.  The author features 11 people (with himself as #12) whose courage and determination for change led to a movement against the increasingly repressive measures of the Russian government. In this time of global spring, including our own Occupy Wall Street Movement, the book is extremely relevant.  Considering the politics involved, it was an intense read.  You can find my thinking about this book here.  Highly recommended.

*Clandestine in Chile, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

9781590173404
NYRB Classics, 2010
originally published 1986, Henry Holt
translated by Asa Zatz

In 1973, Salvador Allende's government collapsed under the weight of a military coup orchestrated by the U.S. and Augusto Pinochet came to power.  Immediately on the heels of this coup, any dissidence (or perceived dissidence) was violently repressed, leaving thousands of people dead, imprisoned or just gone without a trace, and the repression went on over the period of Pinochet's reign.  Thousands more went into exile to escape this regime and some were forbidden to recross the Chilean borders.  In 1985, one of these exiles, film director Miguel Littín, then living in Spain, decided to return to Chile secretly to make a documentary about life under the military dictatorship. The plan was actually hatched earlier, when he failed to find his name on any of the lists of exiles allowed to return published by the Chilean government . He did however, find it on a list of 5,000 people not allowed to come back.   He notes

I had lost the image of my country in a fog of nostalgia. The Chile I remembered no longer existed, and for a filmmaker there could be no surer way of rediscovering a lost country than by going back to it and filming it from the inside.

 Leaving his wife (who had also fled from Chile) and children, and with the help of members of the Chilean resistance, Littín carefully organized several film crews to shoot in different areas, and also set up a conduit for getting the ultimately more than 100,000 feet of film out of the country. Clandestine in Chile is Littín's story about his experiences and what he encountered while he was there.  Author Gabriel García Márquez (himself a friend of Allende) interviewed Littín about his experiences, and according to Francisco Goldman, who wrote the introduction to this work, "whittled down six hundred pages of transcript into this hundred-page book." Littín procured false papers, divested himself of  his facial hair and lost weight (in case people remembered him) and with help from an activist who posed as his wife, entered Chile in the guise of a businessman from Uruguay. His total time in the country was about six weeks, during which time he and his three separately-assigned film crews (assisted by Chilean crews who also belonged to the Popular Front): the Italian crew would be ostensbly filming of a documentary on Chile's Italian immigrants, with the Italian architect of the Moneda Palace as one of their subjects; the French group would be doing an ecological film; and finally, the third crew with Dutch credentials would be studying recent earthquakes.  None of the crews knew about any of the others (offering a sort of "hush-hush" aspect to this book), and they would actually be focusing on the Chilean people who continued to live under Pinochet's dictatorship and how well or not the country had fared in the 12 years since the takeover.  Littín and various members of his crews and activist friends had a few hair-raising experiences that read here and there like a spy novel (strange phone calls in the middle of the night, being followed, moving from hotel to hotel, post-curfew escapes etc.,), and Marquez does a wonderful job putting down as much as he can in a true-life reportage that resulted in this book.

Clandestine in Chile is very well written and absorbs the reader at the start.  As noted, there are a few semi heart-stopping moments, but some of Littin's experiences are also poignant; for example, when he "accidentally" finds himself at the home of his mother.

Littin's observations in 1985 offer a brief glimpse into how the old regime had not been forgotten in Chile some 12 years later, and how the people both underground and publicly were doing what they could to fight back, even in small measures.  Frankly, I was a bit moved at how difficult (and quite frankly even strange) the whole process must have been for Littin, and how very odd he must have felt to be back in his native country to which he (as of 1985) could never return. My only criticism of the book is that parts of it seemed to have taken on a bit of literary license and were a bit fluffy, especially during some of the conversations in which Littin was involved. Yet on the whole, the 1973 coup, and the ensuing regime of Pinochet and his repression of dissenters are all topics of great personal interest, and the book offers another part of the human story for those who are also interested in this topic.  I'd also love to see the resulting documentary, but as of yet have had no luck in even locating a copy.  Highly recommended.

Zeitoun, by Dave Eggers

9780307367943
Vintage (paperback)
2010;
originally published 2009, McSweeney's Books
337 pp.


In 2005, Abdulrahman Zeitoun and his wife Kathy, along with their family of three children, lived in New Orleans. That summer, life was going on as normal for the Zeitouns - after years of working for others, Abdulrahman ran a successful contracting and painting business, their little girls were watching and acting out the dvd of Pride and Prejudice for the umpteenth time, and Kathy acted as stay-at-home mom as well as business partner for her husband. Life was good for this family. 

But as Katrina approached the Gulf, expected to hit New Orleans and hit it hard, Kathy started getting nervous and grabbed the kids, some clothes and the family dog and left to stay with family in Baton Rouge. Her husband decided to stay back and look after the house & his business interests. Kathy wasn't happy about his decision, but Abdulrahman was insistent.  Then came the hurricane, the breaking of the levees, and the aftermath of it all. After the storm was over,  Kathy, unable to get back into the city, was able to keep in sporadic contact with her husband, who managed to convey that he was okay. Day after day she listened to the news, and as the situation deteriorated there, she grew more uneasy. And then one day, Abdulrahman just stopped calling.

The straightforward prose is easy to read and although the book weighs in at about 300 pages, it captures the imagination quickly as the reader gets caught up in the story.  As it goes on, the intensity picks up to where this book is nearly impossible to put down. The story clearly belongs to Abdulrahman Zeitoun and his family, even though it is Dave Eggers who brings their account to life in a professional and journalistic manner, helped by an army of researchers and fact checkers as well as the Zeitoun family itself.


Zeitoun examines the post-hurricane situation through the eyes of a man who lived it and the effects his experiences had on himself and on his family. It's not just an account of a Katrina survivor, nor is it an in-depth  tell-all about the failures of the local, regional, state and  federal government responses. There are plenty of places where those types of accounts are available. Instead, Abdulrahman Zeitoun's story steers the reader to the point of  a head-on collision between post-9/11 policies, racial & religious intolerance, and the efforts of these agencies to regain any measure of control after the most devastating natural disaster in this country.  The book sends the message that something vital to our sense of well-being as American citizens is broken and desperately needs fixing -- and I'm not talking about the levees in New Orleans.

Read this book, then pass it along to someone you know. If you're not shaking your head in disbelief, let's just say I'll be very surprised.

(sorry about the typeface change...I am having trouble moving from MS word to here.)

Columbine, by Dave Cullen

ISBN: 9780446548928

Twelve (Grand Central Publishing, Hachette Book Group) 2009

First Trade Edition, 2010



Back in 1999 my daughter was 10, still in elementary school and I never worried about sending her there each day. I mean, why would I? We lived in Santa Barbara, CA, a beautiful city on the coast where life was good and the worst thing we had to worry about at her school was the occasional episode of kids picking on other kids (not on my kid, but the parents were all aware of the major troublemakers). Then things sort of changed for a while on April 20th, when in Littleton, Colorado, high-school seniors Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went to school like they did every other day, bringing an arsenal of guns and bombs and going on a killing spree that left 13 dead and several others wounded.  I couldn't get past the fact that the parents of the children who'd been killed had said good-bye to their kids that morning, never to see them again.  So for some time, I just sat and let CNN take me through the day's events, waiting for any new information they would broadcast about Columbine.  And from that day until this past week, I totally believed that the Columbine shooting was all about a couple of misfit kids who went into the school to take their revenge on all of those who had made fun of them or who had scorned them. I believed that Harris and Klebold were members of some creepy group known as the Trenchcoat Mafia who got some of their ideas from Marilyn Manson and waited precisely until April 20th because it was Hitler's birthday. And you know what? I wasn't alone.

Columbine is Dave Cullen's attempt to set the record straight.  It is the culmination of ten years of the author's research and hard work, based on witness testimony, police reports, survivor accounts, FBI files and psychological investigations, and last but not least, Harris and Klebold's own writing and video. As part of his work, Cullen  examines and attempts to debunk the "truths" put forth by  the media at the time, which we probably accepted because we were so eager to understand how this could happen and why. For example, rather than being outcasts at their school, both Klebold and Harris had friends, did quite well academically and participated in school events and were considering the senior prom.  However, Cullen argues for the fact that Eric Harris was a psychopath who could play the game and play it well, knowing precisely how to act for authority figures, while Dylan Klebold, who was more of just a follower, was suffering from severe bipolar depression and ultimately suicidal. Not that he's trying to excuse their behavior, but his research gives readers more of an insight into the why. Furthermore, the diaries and videos left behind indicated that Harris' plan was to take out the entire school (not just selected targets) with bombs and napalm placed in strategic locations, even as far as having bombs explode from the car to reach people who escaped the building and the police and medical personnel who would come once word got out.

Cullen offers a chilling recreation of what probably happened that day, which is extremely disturbing. Nearly as frightening were the actions taken (or not taken in some cases) by the Sheriff's department, whose officials realized they had made some really bad mistakes prior to Columbine as far as Harris and tried to cover their own butts. He also examines the aftermath of the shooting on the survivors and their families as well as the families left behind, does so very professionally -- no tabloidish reporting here. The book is obviously well researched, leaning on facts and eyewitness accounts, and never comes across as contrived.

If you're interested, after reading Cullen's account, you just might want to go back and revisit what you think you know about that day in April 1999.  I wasn't there, so I can't possibly swear to the veracity of everything that Cullen says, but his account is highly credible and makes for an intense read. If you are at all curious about the events of that day and want a fuller picture than the one offered by the media at the time, I most highly recommend you read this book.

(continuing from April) The Harvard Psychedelic Club, by Don Lattin

ISBN: 0061655937

Harper One

The real title of this book is a long one: The Harvard Psychedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America. It's a good book if you're into this sort of thing, easily readable and it raises a lot of questions for further exploration.

Lattin's central thesis is that these four men, "three brilliant scholars and one ambitious freshman," who were all together at Harvard University in the early 1960s, were able to transform not only their own lives but much of American culture as well, stemming from their involvement (or in one case, non-involvement) in a psychedelic drug research project started by Timothy Leary.  He notes that these people, collectively the Harvard Psychedelic club, "each in his own way" led Americans to think about themselves from an inner point of view regarding mind, body and spirit. And it all started in 1960, when Leary, on a summer vacation in Mexico with his son Jack, tried some psilocybin mushrooms known as "flesh of the gods" along with a bottle of beer.
 
The book goes on to sketch out the lives of these four men and their involvement with Leary and his mind-expanding research. Timothy Leary, whose slogan "turn on, tune in, drop out" would become a catchphrase for the counterculture movement of the 1960s, was a Harvard professor of psychology in 1960. Along with Richard Alpert, who had a PhD in psychology and did research into human consciousness (and who later went to India and was reborn as Ram Dass), he started the Harvard Psilocybin Project (which ultimately became the "Harvard Psychedelic Project as mescaline & LSD were introduced) at the university's Center for Personality Research, where participants would take controlled doses and report their experiences. Huston Smith (author of The World's Religions) was a friend and admirer of Aldous Huxley, whose mystical experiences with mescaline became the basis of his famous work The Doors of Perception. Smith met Leary through Huxley, and was talked into taking part in the psilocybin project because Leary wanted someone who knew "something about mysticism" and religion to experience the drug and then analyze the reports in terms of the mystical. The fourth member of the group, Andrew Weil, a student (now a well-known advocate of alternative medicine & wellness), tried to get involved in the Psychedelic Project by the time LSD was drug of choice in mind-expansion research, but was turned down due to his undergraduate status. Weil's roommate was befriended by Alpert and let into the program, and in revenge, Weil became a whistle blower and basically shut down the project and got Leary and Alpert ousted from Harvard. That's when everything really started, and when LSD and Leary started making their way out into the public, away from the confines of the ivied halls.

Lattin quickly traces these four people from their beginnings through the whole hippie and counterculture movement on into the present, and his book makes for really interesting reading for many reasons, not just because of the whole drug thing. Now here come the buts:
1)I'm still not sure why Huston Smith is included as a major player as a member of the Harvard Psychedelic Club.  He did have some early involvement in the psilocybin project, but wasn't so much known for his advocacy of mind-altering drugs but for interfaith understanding as a step toward peace in the world. Huston had actually begun to slowly disassociate himself from Leary some time later.
2) There were already movements afoot for changes away from the status quo going on already in the 1950s leading into the 1960s: poets and writers were already taking steps in moving toward nonconformity, the civil rights movement was already drawing young college students into action, and Jack Kerouac and other members of the  beat movement were looking for something new within themselves, urging others to follow. It doesn't seem just that Lattin would place Leary's ideas of consciousness expansion through the use of mind-altering drugs as the cornerstone of change from the 1950s to the 1960s.
3) While I understand that the author would have to interject some of Leary's autobiographical material into his work, my guess is that some of the  information gleaned from it was probably fabricated or at the very least, ramblings from a disturbed mind. Leary was probably so far gone in 1983 by the time the autobiography came out that it would be difficult to trust a lot of what he said. Let's just say he may be an unreliable narrator at some times.

Lattin's book on the whole is interesting, and it's a good read if you're interested in the psychedelic revolution and its proponents in the 1960s and the whole counterculture that existed and grew at the time. A lot of space is also given over to what happened as these people moved on in life as attitudes changed.  It is an extremely readable book and made me want to explore this time period a bit further, and any author that can pique my curiosity like that is okay by me.

*The Stoning of Soraya M., by Freidoune Sahebjam

ISBN: 1559702338

first English-language edition

1994 Arcade Publishing

Let me begin by offering a quotation from the preface:

"After the shah was deposed and the fundamentalist regime headed by the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in February 1979, many dubious elements of the population, including common-law criminals who had been jailed for good reason under the shah, were released from the country's  prisons. Taking advantage of the religious fervor sweeping the land, a number of these people, especially those with at least a basic knowledge of the Koran and its tenets, donned clerics' garb, gave themselves the title of mullah, and roamed the country seeing opportunities for self-enrichment or, quite simply, to conceal their past from the authorities."

In 1986, the author was waiting in a small mountain village in Iran for a contact to take him over the border into Pakistan, when he was offered tea by an elderly woman. She then proceeded to tell him that two weeks earlier, her niece Soraya had been stoned to death for being unfaithful to her husband, and that she had been innocent of the charge.  The author's contact showed up and he had to leave, but he promised the woman he'd be back, and he returned some six months later to hear her story, which ended up being the substance of this book. The book recalls a beyond-horrible crime instigated by one of these above-mentioned mullahs in cahoots with Soraya's husband.  This mullah (Sheik Hassan) had been in prison and was running away from the regime that put him there. He had fled to a small village of about 250 people where he was able to quickly gain the trust of the village leaders and become the go-to guy for settling disputes, and he was able to profit monetarily from his position as well. The sheik's background is important, because he represents one of those people whose position allowed him to manipulate religious beliefs for his own gain, and in this particular case, vengeance.

The basic story is this. Soraya's parents had betrothed her to Ghorban-Ali whom she had known since childhood and whom she didn't like even then. He was an abusive husband and later father, who would beat his wife regularly and then start in on his children. He spent a great deal of time turning his two older children against their mother. When he wasn't in the village, he was involved in black-market and other illegal activities until the change in regime, when he became a prison guard and realized his potential for power over others. Once he got a taste for power and life in the city (and the gains he'd made financially and materially in his position as prison guard) he no longer wanted to be a peasant from the village, but instead wanted to live the life of Riley in the city complete with a 14 year old honey that he wanted to marry. The problem was his marriage to Soraya, and how to get rid of her; ultimately with no way out of the marriage, he turned to Sheik Hassan.  And this is when Soraya's life went from one of abuse to one of utter horror.

There are a couple of things worth mentioning. First, there is no doubt that this event actually happened, and there is no doubt that stoning as a punishment for adultery is a reality among some Muslim fundamentalists in some areas. You can go to any human rights organization's website and find out all that you want to know about it there and to be fair, you can go to the website of Al-jazeera (an Islamic news organization) to read about recent developments about stoning as well. It is also an abominable practice that is beyond my scope of comprehension in the realm of human cruelty.

Second, there's no doubt in my mind that as far as the story this book tells, the stoning of Soraya M. a) reflects a plan conceived by a few misogynistic individuals who deliberately used the existing Sharia laws for their own personal gain and b) was allowed to happen as a result of an abuse of power in this small village.

To get the full story, you need to read the book. It is a difficult story but an eye-opening one that you will probably not soon forget. I know I won't. I don't think I need to see it on the big screen, though.

*In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote

ISBN: 0679745580
Vintage International

I was actually going to read Cormac McCarthy's The Road, but somehow I misplaced my copy and didn't feel like upending everything so took the next book on the stack.

In Cold Blood is one of those books I've owned forever, and one I take out periodically to reread just because I like it so much. I don't have many of those. Long before there were two biopics about Capote's experiences in Kansas and the writing of this book, In Cold Blood had already captured not only my attention, but my respect as well.

I won't delve into the details of the story because they are so well known it's not necessary to rehash them here. And we all know that with this one work, Capote created a new and at the time rather unique type of quasi-journalistic reporting which led many future writers of  true crime to rework their research into novel-like form.  But unlike many of the writers of that particular genre, there's nothing over the top or sensational between the covers,  neither is there the "just the facts, ma'am" approach. It's an intelligent book that demands participation from its readers.

Part of the reason, I think, that this book works well is that the author works into it some anticipation on the part of the reader. For example, by page 5 we already know that there were "four shotgun blasts that all told, ended six lives," then again on page 13, we find out that that particular day of work for Herb Clutter was going to be his last. And so it goes, with each family member, until we get to the actual killings. Interspersed throughout the story of the Clutters is that of their murderers, and we know that at some point in time the two stories are going to meet up in one tremendous bloodbath. But it's the getting there that is the best of this book -- we have to meet the inhabitants of Holcomb, Kansas, the KBI agent and his family, et cetera et cetera, until Smith and Hickok make that trip down the driveway lined with trees and make their way into the Clutter's home. But even then, Capote doesn't give away what actually happened, but rather moves on to workers coming to do their chores at the Clutter farm, and then the events that led up to the discovery. It's some time before we learn what really happened. The pacing of the book is impeccable. We get to the heart of the matter only after we've spent time with the Clutters, their neighbors, and the killers, getting to know each a bit at a time.

If Capote was trying to evoke some kind of sympathy for the two murderers, he didn't get it from me. There's one spot in the novel where, in trying to make the case that the two killers were legally insane at the time of the murders, someone watching the trial later says something along the lines of  "well, I had a tough life, but I didn't kill anyone," or something to that effect. On the other hand, one of the things I like about this novel is the backstory of Hickok and Smith, because I have this inherent need to know what makes people do what they do. During this reread, during the scenes of the trial, I couldn't help but think that today it would be likely that a defense lawyer could probably a) get both of them off for several reasons, or b) get their sentences reduced to spending time in some sort of institution for the criminally insane. But in the 60s, that wasn't about to happen. There's food for thought right there.

In Cold Blood  remains one of my favorite books, and whether or not it's real or, as some have criticized, a blend of fiction and reality, it doesn't change anything for me. I loved it the first time I read it and I still do.

The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, by David Grann

and now for something completely different. I've had my eye on this book ever since I learned that it was going to be published, and probably pre-ordered it months ago.  The author, David Grann, is the author of Lost City of Z, one of my all-time favorite books. Grann isn't a novelist, but rather he writes wonderful essays, and has been featured in the New Yorker.  So you should assume immediately that this book isn't going to be another Sherlock Holmes pastiche, because it's not. Instead, it's a book of essays, but don't let that put you off. It is absolutely delightful.

Grann has this thing about people who are absolutely obsessed about what they do, a fact you already know if you've read his splendid Lost City of Z.  In this book, he takes his readers on a journey through a dozen different profiles.

Structured in three parts, all headed by quotations from various Sherlock Holmes stories, the first section is subtitled "Any Truth is Better Than Infinite Doubt." Here's the guy whose lifelong ambition was to write the ultimate and the definitive biography of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. After there was a dispute over some of Sir Arthur's papers, the subject of this essay was found dead under some murky circumstances. Was it murder or suicide?  Then there's the incredibly sad and horrifying case of the Texas man who may or may not have set his own home on fire, killing his children, and who may have paid the ultimate price due to the zealousness of certain arson investigators. The third entry in this section is the odd story of a French man that reads along the lines of Tey's Brat Farrar or even the movie "The Changeling," leading into the strange account of a man who may or may not have been guilty of murder, based on a book he wrote.  Finally, there's the story of a firefighter who lost all memory of what happened to him on 9/11 as his unit went into the towers before they collapsed.

Part Two, entitled "A Strange Enigma is Man," contains four stories: one about one man's obsession with giant squids, one about the Sandhogs deep under the streets of New York City, one about a man whose life was spent as a criminal, and the fourth relating to why a championship baseball player won't give up.

Part Three, "All that was monstrous and inconceivably wicked in the universe," contains three essays.  The first of these is about the Aryan Brotherhood and how it got its start, as well as its impact on prisons and law enforcement.  The second focuses on Youngstown, Ohio, a city long under mob control. The final essay in this section (and in the book) stopped me cold. It focuses on a known Haitian political and death-squad leader who somehow ended up in New York as a real-estate agent. Even though the US government knew that this guy was an assassin, for "political" reasons, he's still free here in our country. If this one doesn't creep you out about the political system in our country, nothing will.

Grann is an absolutely fabulous writer and his essays will keep you interested up to the minute you turn the last page. His approach is different and definitely holds your attention, and the added bonus is that you get a chance to learn a lot about things you probably had no clue about otherwise. I can most highly recommend this book and this author. And as a sidebar, if you have not yet read his other book, run, do not walk, and go get it.

also reviewed at Book Review Party Wednesday, 4/6/2010

Death on the Barrens: A True Story of Courage and Tragedy in the Canadian Arctic, by George James Grinnell

First, my thanks to Librarything and to Goodreads both for sending me this book through their respective Early Reviewers programs. 

This is a tough one to review because my expectations were different than the reality of this book.

George Grinnell, the author, lays out the story of how in 1955 he and four other guys, all under the leadership of one Arthur Moffatt, spent about three months on a canoe trek from Stony Rapids in Saskatchewan to Baker Lake in Nunavit to get away from the world for a while.  Moffatt was the kind of guy who would much rather be communing with nature and indigenous peoples than living the hustle in the real world, and he had planned this trip intending to add a kind of spiritual reinforcement to daily life. He brought no radio, no modern conveniences, nothing really except supplies to live on and a philosophy about nature and living in the world. Grinnell, from a well-placed and rather famous family, was a rebel in his youth, always blasting away at capitalism and the system. This trip was right up his alley. From the time Moffatt, Grinnell and the others grabbed their paddles and started on their long journey, there were the occasional bouts of blizzards, rough waters, near-starvation, changing allegiances among the men  and other tribulations in an environment that would either make or break a person. Grinnell hung on mentally by keeping Moffatt's spiritual and philosophical teachings in his head while, according to him, the others were more worried about their physical needs.  Sadly, Moffatt never made it back alive, and as the book opens, the rest of the group are being questioned by the Mounties about Art's death. 

What I discovered about this book is that the real point of this book is not the "death on the barrens" of Arthur Moffatt, but rather about George Grinnell himself. He spends a huge chunk of time on his prominent family background, his personal life up to that point, and how after a life of  rebelliousness he came to find a spiritual inner wellness and meaning to life while on that canoe journey that ultimately took Moffatt's life. Although the story of the expedition itself is well told up to the point of Moffatt's death, this account is widely interspersed with philosophical musings from Zen koans, Inuit lore, literature, poetry and Moffatt's personal philosophy that helped George find his peace, only to lose it later after he had to make his way in the real world once more.

To be very honest, I thought from the title that the author was presenting a book about an expedition gone very, very wrong, and the chapter on the Mounties questioning the rest of the group about Moffatt's death made me even more intrigued to see what the heck had happened out there in the Canadian wilds in 1955. What I discovered was that both the title and the teaser opener were a bit misleading.

Books about spiritual awareness and how people find it, lose it and find it again  really aren't my cup of tea, but for many people out there I'm sure that this story might be quite motivational and inspiring.