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My Years with Gabo

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The Mayan Ruins at Chichén Itzá

The Mayan Ruins at Chichén Itzá

It was November 1975. For the first time in my life, I was outside the United States on my own. I always thought it was somehow significant that my first bid for freedom from those endless bad weather trips back and forth to Cleveland to see my parents was a two week vacation in Yucatán. When visiting the ruins at Chichén Itzá, I stayed at the old Hacienda Chichén, which contained the cottages used by earlier archaeologists. I was within walking distance of the ruins.

Back then, a road cut through the ruins. On one side was the Castillo and the structures best known to visitors; on the other, there was Old Chichén. By the side of the road, there was an open-air souvenir stand with thatched roof that sold the usual tourist junk. On the side, there was a book rack that happened to have a Penguin paperback edition of Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967). I had heard of the author before and was just beginning to wake up to that breakout generation of Latin American writers that included Borges, Cortázar, Vargas Llosa, and García Márquez. Here in front of me was a grey-covered Penguin (“This edition not for sale in the United States”) that looked like an interesting read.

How could I not read a book that opened this way:

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. At that time Macondo was a village of twenty adobe houses, built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs. The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point.

That was my first acquaintance with the Colombian writer whose work was to become a lifelong pursuit with me. Ever since, I have rationed the books I read by him so that I didn’t run out too soon. Yesterday, I re-read Chronicle of a Death Foretold, which I last read thirty years ago in a magazine that had an illustration by Fernando Botero. (I forget which magazine it was.)

Since my first acquaintance with Colonel Buendía in 1975, I have gone on to read:

  • Leaf Storm (1955)
  • No One Writes to the Colonel (1961)
  • In Evil Hour (1962)
  • The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor (1970)
  • The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Erendira and Her Heartless Grandmother (1978)
  • Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981)
  • Love in the Time of Cholera (1985)
  • The General in His Labyrinth (1989)

Then, too, there were numerous short stories, which I will re-read in as many years as are left to me. Although we lost García Márquez in April of this year, his work will live forever.

 

Beat

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It All Started as Friendship...

It All Started as a Friendship…

The so-called beat generation actually started as a bunch of friends who liked to get together to talk, drink, smoke marijuana, and—perhaps—even have some casual sex along the way. The only difference between Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, John Clellon Holmes, and millions of other groups of rambunctious youngsters was that some of them had talent.

Last month, I read Kerouac’s Big Sur; and I am now reading John Clellon Holmes’s Go. The original beats would probably think of me as some sort of stick-in-the-mud, but I admire their all-out pursuit of freedom, even when it leads—as it did for many of them—to disorder and early sorrow. In Big Sur, Kerouac turns to drink the way that most people turn to inhaling oxygen. In Go, the action is frenetic and endless, especially once Hart Kennedy [Neal Cassady] joins them:

Ben’s connection had not showed; the sweet cologne fragrance of benzedrine about him and the discoloration of his lips suggested that there may have been no marijuana connection at all, but somehow that did not matter. Continuance was what concerned them, and where to go next. After a number of improbable ideas (places that would not be open, people who would not be up), they settled on a friend of Ben’s, who lived on One Hundred and Twenty-third Street and Amsterdam Avenue, who would “surely have liquor.” Although at another moment this would have seemed unlikely to them all, now they believed it with bland innocence as though all discord in the universe had been resolved by their harmony, which, in any case, did not depend on such details.

Below is a photo of Jack Kerouac with Allen Ginsberg, who was probably the most talented writer of the lot:

Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac

Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac

In the months to come, I plan to read more works by this unique “band of brothers” who had an outsize influence on the middle of the Twentieth Century, even if, as the movies and lurid paperbacks above show, it was mostly misinterpreted.

It’s Good To Be King

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An Ode to the Carnie Lifestyle

An Ode to the Carny Lifestyle

After a lifetime of hating Stephen King—not that I ever gave him much of a chance—I picked up Joyland chiefly because I thought the cover illustration by Glenn Orbik (above) was hot. It showed a scene that was not even in the book: a red-headed Erin Cook (a co-worker of the book’s hero) screaming in fear while casually wielding a Speed Graphic camera which, if she had ever made a regular practice of doing so, would have left her with a forearm like Popeye’s.

So, what did I think? Actually, I liked the book. Partly because I am drawn to the whole carny world after reading William Lindsay Gresham’s Nightmare Alley, and partly because I thought King exercised admirable restraint in crafting the novel. I wasn’t quite sure about the action scenes at the end, and there were a couple of connections I never quite understood, but I liked the tone of the whole thing.

Devin Jones is a twenty-one-year-old college student who spends a summer working for a North Carolina amusement park called Joyland. He is a man who has been discarded by his apathetic girlfriend Wendy, who, once she parts from him, consigns him to oblivion posthaste. He likes the carny lifestyle, makes friends easily, discovers he has a talent for entertaining “zamps” (small children), and doesn’t object to some of the less desirable tasks around the midway.

He is drawn by the mystery of a young woman named Linda Gray who had been killed by an unknown assailant in the scary funhouse. In fact, he drops out of college and hangs on into the fall, when the only work is preparing the park for the next summer. During that time, he makes the acquaintance of a young mother with a severely disabled son—one who can foretell the future. You can bet this figures in the plot. Devin finally loses his virginity—to Annie Ross, the mother—and becomes a favorite of her son.

Stephen King

Stephen King

Finally, it all comes together for Devin. The killer is … someone Devin knows who calls him at home minutes after his discovery and lures him to the park, where King suddenly goes into overt mode. Perhaps one of the reasons I haven’t liked King all these years is that I thought he was too overt and not sufficiently psychological. But Joyland strikes a nice balance.

Also, I loved all the carny slang, which King took from this website. Maybe, I’ll read some more King: I always liked Kubrick’s film version of The Shining. Perhaps I’ll read that, or Dolores Claiborne, as suggested by my friend Lynette.

Strange Joy

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Be Afraid! Be Very Afraid!

Be Afraid! Be Very Afraid!

Every October, in honor of Halloween, I love to read classic horror stories. This last week, I read Hugh Lamb’s Dover collection of rare finds entitled A Bottomless Grave and Other Victorian Tales of Terror. Last year at this time, I read We Have Always Lived in the Castle, but this year I ventured on Shirley Jackson’s other famous novel, The Haunting of Hill House, which is equally spellbinding. (What I do not bother to read are the Stephen King and Dean Koontz type of novels that go in strictly for crude shocks.)

Usually, haunted house novels like to go in for crude effects. In contrast Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House is delicately nuanced. Does this haunted house really do any damage with all its noise and strange writing on the walls and apparent destruction of one lady’s wardrobe? Actually, it does only one thing: It recognizes in Eleanor Vance, a spinster who is one of the party investigating the house, a kindred spirit. And it wants her. Badly.

Shirley Jackson (1916-1965)

Shirley Jackson (1916-1965)

The real terror is not external, it resides within the human breast. Eleanor had spent her adult life as a nursemaid to her mother, who has died before the action of the story begins. She has, as the saying goes, no life of her own. The one line that keeps running through her mind during the course of the book is, “Journeys end in lovers meeting.”

For Shirley Jackson to see into the tortured heart of Eleanor Vance—and through all the flummery of haunted houses and planchettes—makes her one of the great writers of horror fiction. And this after Eleanor’s initial response to the house, which is one of horror and loathing. At the risk of giving the whole shooting match away, I will continue the quote that ends the last paragraph:

Journeys end in lovers meeting; I have spent an all but sleepless night, I have told lies and made a fool of myself, and the very air tastes like wine. I have been frightened half out of my foolish wits, but I have somehow earned this joy; I have been waiting for it for so long.

This book deserves on the same shelf with that other great psychological story of haunting, Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw.

Tarnmoor’s ABCs: Marcel Proust

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He Went As Far As One Could Go with a Cookie

           He Went About As Far As One Could Go with a Cookie

I was so very impressed by Czeslaw Milosz’s book Milosz’s ABC’s. There, in the form of a brief and alphabetically-ordered personal encyclopedia, was the story of the life of a Nobel Prize winning poet, of the people, places, and things that meant the most to him. Because his origins were so far away (Lithuania and Poland) and so long ago (1920s and 1930s), there were relatively few entries that resonated personally with me. Except it was sad to see so many fascinating people who, unknown today, died during the war under unknown circumstances.

My own ABCs consist of places I have loved (Iceland), things I feared (Earthquakes), writers I have admired (Chesterton, Balzac, and Borges); things associated with my past life (Cleveland and Dartmouth College), people who have influenced me (John F. Kennedy), and things I love to do (Automobiles and Books). This blog entry is my own humble attempt to imitate a writer whom I have read on and off for thirty years without having sated my curiosity. Consequently, over the months to come, you will see a number of postings under the heading “Tarnmoor’s ABCs” that will attempt to do for my life what Milosz accomplished for his. To see my other entries under this category, hit the tag below marked “ABCs”. I don’t guarantee that I will use up all 26 letters of the alphabet, but I’ll do my best. Today, we’re at the letter “M,” for Marcel Proust, whose In Search of Lost Time I am now reading for the third time.

There are many literary giants of the Twentieth Century—writers such as James Joyce, Fernando Pessoa, William Faulkner, Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Marquez, Graham Greene, G. K. Chesterton, Ryonosuke Akutagawa, Eugene O’Neill, Bertolt Brecht, Thomas Mann, Italo Svevo, Mikhail Bulgakov … the list stretches on and on. One who has had a particular role to play in my life is Marcel Proust. It seems I cannot let a year pass by without re-reading another installment of his massive In Search of Lost Time, which consists of seven full-sized novels:

  • Swann’s Way
  • In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (originally translated as Within a Budding Grove)
  • The Guermantes Way
  • Sodom and Gomorrah (originally translated as Cities of the Plain)
  • The Prisoner
  • The Fugitive (originally translated as The Sweet Cheat Gone)
  • Finding Time Again (originally translated as The Past Recaptured)

The first four volumes were completely edited by Proust during his lifetime. The last three received their final proofing from others (but are still great).

Quite frankly, it is not easy to read Proust. Some sentences seem to go on for pages. It requires intense concentration not to go astray, even within an individual paragraph. One old friend, who is a high school English teacher, abandoned Swann’s Way in the first section.

Why do I so highly regard a not-particularly-successful gay social climber whose world has so little in common with mine? For one thing, Proust writes about not so much memory as of the shimmering obsessions that monopolize so much of our attention yet, in the long run (the series spans decades), fall by the wayside as life goes on.

I have already had my fourth reading of Swann’s Way. When I return from Peru, I plan to re-read In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower for the third time. If God is good to me, there will be a fourth and—who knows—maybe even a fifth reading of the series in the time that remains to me.

“Don’t Read Books!”

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Chinese Scroll

Chinese Scroll

Don’t read books!
Don’t chant poems!
When you read books your eyeballs wither away,
leaving the bare sockets.
When you chant poems your heart leaks out slowly
with each word.
People say reading books is enjoyable.
People say chanting poems is fun.
But if your lips constantly make a sound
like an insect chirping in autumn,
you will only turn into a haggard old man.
And even if you don’t turn into a haggard old man,
it’s annoying for others to have to hear you.

It’s so much better
to close your eyes, sit in your study,
lower the curtains, sweep the floor,
burn incense.
It’s beautiful to listen to the wind,
listen to the rain,
take a walk when you feel energetic,
and when you’re tired go to sleep.

—Yang Wan-li (1127-1206), “Don’t Read Books!”

Television IS News?

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Look What’s Popping Up on TV News Websites?

Look What’s Popping Up on TV News Websites?

It was bound to happen sooner or later. Now that the same corporations that own television news also own popular television series.One can’t look at CNN.com or NBCNews.com without running into articles about the latest developments in “Man Men,” “Breaking Bad,” or even the dwindling “American Idol.” That never used to happen before. Even Salon.Com, which insofar as I know, is unaffiliated with any entertainment producers, is heavily interlarded with references to popular shows.

Since I have deliberately abandoned television programming over ten years ago, all these references in the news mean nothing to me. They end up as descriptions of cultural phenomena that are meaningless to me. In no case do I ever become interested enough to see what all the hoopla is about. I think the last time I tried was a few years ago when I rented the first season of “The Sopranos” from Netflix. I thought it was all right, but not good enough to maintain my interest.

Instead of television series, it would be interesting to see more news articles about books. That occasionally happens on Salon.Com, but almost never on the mainstream media websites. Oh, well, you can always come here and look at what I am reading. You are bound to encounter quite a few books. I have made a commitment to Goodreads.Com to read 106 books this year. So far, I am 16 books ahead on my goal. Maybe I should alert CNN?

“Not More Foolish Than Any Other Love”

Books

Books

The love of books is really a commendable taste. Bibliophiles are often made fun of, and perhaps, after all, they do lend themselves to raillery. But we should rather envy them, I think, for having successfully filled their lives with an enduring and harmless pleasure. Detractors think to confound them by declaring they never read their books. But one of them had his answer pat: “And you, do you eat off your old china?” What more innocent hobby can a man pursue than sorting away books in a press? True, it is very like the game the children play at when they build sand castles on the seashore. They are mighty busy, but nothing comes of it; whatever they build will be thrown down in a very short time. No doubt it is the same with collections of books and pictures. But it is only the vicissitudes of existence and the shortness of human life that must be blamed. The tide sweeps away the sand castles, the auctioneer disperses the hoarded treasures. And yet, what better can we do than build sand castles at ten years old, and form collections at sixty? Nothing will remain in any case of all our work, and the love of old books is not more foolish than any other love.—Anatole France, The Garden of Epicurus

The Digital Divide

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With Every New Technology, There Is a Die-Off

With Every New Technology, There Is a Massive Die-Off

Little by little, I am becoming aware of a tendency in our culture to downplay everything that is before the Internet. Wikipedia and Google are so convenient that we tend to ignore older sources of knowledge. And now that libraries are trashing many of their old books and periodicals and replacing them with computers, there is a real danger that many of the old sources that used to pass for knowledge are slowly disappearing.

For example, I have many books that pre-date the ISBN code. When I read one of them, I have some difficulty describing the book to GoodReads.Com because the likelihood is that there is no reference to the edition I have. And when I try to sell the books on Half.Com (which is owned by eBay), I can’t enter the book because it lacks the ISBN code used to identify the edition. It’s actually keeping me from reading my essays by Sainte-Beuve or many of the hundreds of Oxford World Classics I own in hardbound. Ever since I got in the habit of reviewing everything I read, I tend to hesitate with some of my older editions. Just in front of me, for example,  is a 1926 Alfred A. Knopf edition of Arthur Machen’s The Canning Wonder. I could review the book on Goodreads only if I answer a questionnaire about the edition. If I wanted to sell it on Half.Com, I’d be out of luck.

Most at risk is the history of our civilization based on original archival materials that date back to the Middle Ages. Fortunately, the Europeans are willing to spend the money (in most cases) to protect their history. But what about the Americans? All it would take is for some idiot like Ted Cruz or Rand Paul to sniff at supporting libraries, and millions of words of our country’s history would go by the wayside.

But what about Google Books, you might ask? It is a noble effort, but only a small percentage of old books have been scanned. I collect the works of Sir Richard F. Burton (no relation to the actor). He’s not exactly a popular item, but he is one of the most exciting explorers and travelers of the Nineteenth Century. I can find Burton’s Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo, but only Volume I has been scanned. The same is true for his Exploration of the Highlands of Brazil. Oh, the books will still be around, but they will be fabulously expensive. (On the other hand, I have been able to find some Burton titles on Gutenberg.Com that I could never afford to buy in print—so the argument cuts both ways.)

 

“The Best Solitary Company in the World”

I Mean the Book

I Mean the Book

Here is the best solitary company in the world, and in this particular chiefly excelling any other, that in my study I am sure to converse with none but wise men; but abroad it is impossible for me to avoid the society of fools. What an advantage have I, by this good fellowship, that, besides the help which I receive from hence, in reference to my life after this life, I can enjoy the life of so many ages before I lived! — that I can be acquainted with the passages of three or four thousand years ago, as if they were the weekly occurrences! Here, without travelling so far as Endor, I can call up the ablest spirits of those times, the learnedest philosophers, the wisest counsellors, the greatest generals, and make them serviceable to me. I can make bold with the best jewels they have in their treasury, with the same freedom that the Israelites borrowed of the Egyptians, and, without suspicion of felony, make use of them as mine own. I can here, without trespassing, go into their vineyards and not only eat my fill of their grapes for my pleasure, but put up as much as I will in my vessel, and store it up for my profit and advantage.—William Waller, Divine Meditations: Meditation Upon the Contentment I Have in My Books and Study