Month: May 2026

Edward Abbey, The Fool’s Progress: An Honest Novel

 (1988, New York: Avon Books, 1990), 513 pages.  

This is my third time reading The Fool’s Progress, but it’s been 35 years since I last read it. I had felt it was Abbey’s best novel, but I am no longer sure. I do plan to reread The Monkey Wrench Gang. This time through The Fool’s Progress, I found myself repulsed by the narcissistic, misogynistic, xenophobic, and racist views of the protagonist, Henry Holyoak Lightcap. The harsh language, especially in the first 40 pages, turned me off. I almost quit, but glad I didn’t. The book, in my opinion, gets better and many of Henry’s extreme views seem to taper especially after his marriage to Claire.  Warning Spoilers: If you want to read this book, you might want to skip my review as it contains spoilers.

This novel is somewhat autobiographical. There are many parts of the novel which Abbey drew from his own life including military service at the end of World War 2, serving as a MP in post-war Italy, tramping around the country during a summer in high school, his time working seasonal jobs as a ranger and a fire lookout, and his relationship with a plethora of women. But it’s also fiction. After all, Abbey is from the coal country of Western Pennsylvania, not the coal country of West Virginia.

As the novel begins, Henry’s latest wife has left him. He goes into a rage and then decides to head across country, from his home in Arizona to Stump Creek, West Virginia.  He wants to see, one more time, his brother Will. Driving a dilapidated old truck with a dying dog riding shotgun, he heads across country. Henry mostly sticks to backroads. He stops along the way to see friends. To finance his trip, he sells a gun to one friend who is in the pawnshop business. But he’s also not above using his defunct credit card (in the days before the internet) to buy gas. And if that fails, he has another “gas credit card,” a long flexible rubber hose.  

As he travels, we learn more about Henry’s life and the country through which he drives. We sense his love for this country. Abbey often makes lists for his protagonist, of the trees, the flowers, the animals, music, books and authors, etc.  Henry is a lover of creation. About halfway through the book, Abbey begins to drop hints that the dog and the truck are not the only thing dying in this novel. But it’s only near the end that we learn of Henry’s serious illness. The end of the book leaves the reader wondering how much of what happens is real or is a vision in Henry’s mind as he dies. 

While Henry flunked at becoming an academic, he continues to read philosophy and poetry. His musical taste varies from “country” and “western” to classical. Henry also has a keen sense of vision of what goes on around him. We see bits of both of his parents in Henry. His mother, the Presbyterian organist, and his father, an agnostic anarchist. Henry carries on a debate with a deity he can’t seem to believe in. But also can’t cast away.  Henry could be modelled on Mark Twain. As Edgar Lee Masters said of Twain:: “he threw out the Bible, but it seemed to be attached to a rubber band and was likely to bounce back into his lap at any time.” 

Another character I found myself pondering in this story is Henry’s older brother, Will. Two years older, Will found himself fighting in Europe in the Second World War. When he came back to West Virginia, Will insisted on farming (and living) the old way. He shunned electricity and indoor plumbing and preferred to use horses for farming. I found myself comparing Will to the author Wendell Berry, who also prefer to live a simple farming life. Both Abbey and Berry studied under Wallace Stegner at Stanford University. 

The big change in the book comes with Henry meeting Claire. He’s a middle-aged seasonal ranger in Arches National Park and she is a 19-year-old music student. After Henry’s crazy courtship, they marry. In the story, both appear incredibly happy.

Then, a truck crash in the mountains, claims her life. While the grieving Henry recovers in the hospital, her monied family takes their newborn child. His mother-in-law protects the girl from Henry with an army of lawyers. Henry now lives knowing he has a daughter he will never see (except, perhaps, in dying visions).  This part of the book doesn’t seem to come from any real-life experiences of Abbey, but it does hint at his idealism. It also, too me, seems to draw his earlier novel, Black Sun. Love, for Abbey is fragile and can be easily lost. Often, he was to blame. At the death of Claire, I found myself wondering what would have happened if the two of them settled down as a family. In a way, her death was convenient for Abbey, an unconventional anarchist with a romantic streak. 

If you want to read this book, I encourage you to first read Desert Solitaire, which I reread last year. 

Malcolm Guite, The Word in the Wilderness: A Poem a Day for Lent and Easter 

(Norwich, UK: Canterbury Press, 2014), 192 pages. 

Every day through Lent to Easter (and the week after), Guite provides a poem along with a couple pages of reflection. The style is like a later book of poems he collected for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany..  Guite wrote many, maybe half, of the poems. Other authors include George Herbert, John Donne, W. B. Yeats, S. T. Coleridge, Dante, Czeslaw Milosz, John Davies, G. M. Hopkins, among others. The commentary links the reader to scripture and theological understandings behind the poetry.  The commentary also provides insights into the style of poetry. I enjoyed these readings and recommend them for anyone looking to grow deeper in poetry and the meaning of Lent and Easter. 

Eric Goodman with Kaveh Zamanian, Mother of Bourbon: The Greatest Whiskey Story Never Told 

(New York: Post Hill Press, 2025), 298 pages

Mary Murphy married John Dowling when she was just 14 and he nineteen years her senior. Mary’s parents made the arrangements. John was a successful cooper (maker of barrels) and was beginning to invest in Kentucky’s infant bourbon business. Mary, who had finished the third grade, worked at her father’s store.  Both were children of Irish immigrants who had moved to America to escape the potato famine. In the pre-Civil War years, America wasn’t friendly to Irish Catholics.  

It shocked Mary, at first, that she didn’t have a say in the marriage. She also didn’t like the idea of moving away from her family but consented. In n time Mary and John become partners in an expanding whiskey industry.  Their main distillery was Waterfill and Frazier, but they also own part of a distillery with John’s brothers.  And their family began to grow.

John Dowling died in 1903. Upon his death, Mary inherits the business, but soon it’s in threatened. The bank refused to supply the credit and suggested they sell the business. Also, the broker for the business quit. Mary quickly reorganized, takes her business to another bank. She also found another broker, Henrich Hiensohn, a German Catholic who continued to work with Mary until prohibition. 

After the war (World War 1), the Midwest experienced the second rise of the Kul Klux Klan. This group not only went after African Americans, of which Mary was suspect as she employed and treated them fairly, but also Catholics.  Mary reached out to a relative of one of her employees whose son was lynched. Prior to the Klan’s rise, Mary’s namesake (Mary Bond, who had married a Protestant) became a prominent leader within women in Kentucky who attempted to get revisionist books on the Civil War into the school system. Mary and her daughter fell out, but with the rise of the Klan, her daughter admitted to being wrong. The Klan activity also played into Probation as many distillers were Catholic. 

Prohibition presented another challenge. Not being granted a medical exemption, Waterfill and Frazier ceased operations.  Working with Hiensohn, they sold most of their barrels before prohibition. She also had many barrels moved into the basement of her large home, paying taxes on the liquor before prohibition took effect so that it was legal. But this didn’t stop their troubles. After a few years, Mary’s youngest son, Emmett, came back from school at Harvard. He loved to party. He also, unknown to his mother, sold some bottled whiskey to a man in town who was a known for selling illegal liquor. The revenuers raided the family home one night and everyone who living there arrested. They were all released on a $5000 per person bond. 

Much of the book centers on the trials which took place. The book was hrown at the family, with charges not just of bootlegging but conspiracy. The first trial ended in a mistrial, with 10 jurors voting for conviction and two for acquittal. The second trial resulted in a conviction which was appealed but overruled. At this time, the sisters were fined $100. Mary Dowling’s received a fine of $10,000. But most troubling was her two boys living at home, Johnny and Emmett, who received a prison sentence. 

Mary certainly felt the revenue agents took advantage of her. While it later came out that Emmett had sold a few bottles of liquor, this didn’t rise to a conspiracy, nor did it involve the entire family. Everything had been done legally in her eyes. Furthermore, not only had the government confiscated her liquor, but the warehouse where they stored it burned. Rumors circulated that government agents sold the liquor. The fire covered their tracks. She couldn’t help but to feel that they were after her because she was a successful woman and Catholic. 

During this time, she decided to get back into the liquor business by setting up operations in Juarez, Mexico, across from El Paso. She could legally make liquor there.

Interestingly, Mexico didn’t allow its grain to be distilled. Mary had grain shipped in from the United States. Waterfill and Frazier used 50% corn with a mix of rye and barley.  She found a Mexican partner who provided the land and hired local workers. She hired a descendant of Jim Beam to oversee the running of her distillery.  While she went into prohibition financially well off, she made another fortune with Waterfill and Frazier, SA. This distillery did a large business around the border where bars which were filled with Americans (especially soldiers from Fort Bliss). She also allowed those running the business to sell booze to bootleggers who would bribe the border guards to transport the liquor to sell to speak-easies in the America. 

The employees of the Mexican distillery gave Mary Dowling the title, “Mother of Bourbon.”  That distillery continued to operate until 1984, but after Mary and Emmett’s death, the family ignored its operation.  Oddly enough, the American government had a hand in its demise as it outlawed the sale of bourbon made outside the United States. 

After prohibition took effect, Mary continued to experience sadness. Ida, a daughter who didn’t marry until she was almost 40, died. Then, the next year, John and Emmett died way too young, the same year in which Mary Dowling died.  

I enjoyed this book. The story flowed smoothly. Woven into the last half of the story was a rosary given to Mary by her liquor wholesaler,. Late in their business partnership, he expressed romantic interests. Mary wasn’t interested. The authors used the rosary beads to link to Mary’s own sorrows with her children. This nice touch displayed the importance of Mary’s faith. However, I found myself wondering if it happened or was it just a detail made up by the authors. While Mary Dowling was a real woman who achieved and endured much, with the book being a novel instead of non-fiction, I know the authors had to create a framework and dialogue to make the story more readable.  

I have now read three books by Goodman. In 2019, I read a baseball novel, Days of Awe. In 2020, I read his novel, based on his wife’s parents, Cuppy and Stew.

wBruce M. Metzger, Breaking the Code: Understanding the Book of Revelation 

(Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1993), 144 pages. 

I first read this book in early 2004, when I last taught a class on the book of Revelation. Metzger, an outstanding Biblical Scholar from Princeton, spent part of my last year in seminary on Sabbatical at Pittsburgh. I got to know him a bit during this time as his apartment was next to mine.

Metzger approach is strictly Biblical. He shows how much of Revelation was written in response to was happening within the Roman Empire in the second half of the first century. Even the number of the beast (666) works out to a title of Nero.  A variant number (616) found in some ancient manuscripts matched a variation in Nero’s title.  I used this book as the base for my class, but also drew on a more detailed commentary by Robert Mounce along with Eugene Peterson’s literary commentary, Reversed Thunder: The Revelation of John and the Poetic Imaginaton. 

Alan Gurney, Compass: A Story of Exploration and Innovation

 (New Yor: W. W. Norton, 2004), 320 pages including index, notes, and bibliography.  

I’ve used and felt myself competent with a compass ever since my grandparents gave me one for my 11^th birthday, when I was old enough to join the Boy Scouts. Taking the compass for granted, I had no idea one could write a history of the compass that stretched out to 272 pages of text! Gurney manages to do this by primarily focusing on the use of the compass by the British Royal Navy and commercial ships. I knew that even in the ancient world, it was known that a suspended lodestone was known to point north/south. But I was shocked that it was only recently (last 150 years) that the compass as we know it was perfected. 

The original compass was a dry one, often suspending a thin piece of metal that had been magnetized so that if was free to move and point to the north. Below the pointer, a papers stock which could be moved to correct the heading. This “dry compass” was the main compass of British mariners until early in the 20^th Century. Such a compass had a difficult during rough weather or on a ship firing canons broadside.  This led to use of compasses with the lodestone floating on water (or alcohol). Another problem discussed is magnetic deviation. Interestingly, at one time, sailors hoped that correcting the deviation could help them know their latitude. Later problems arouse as ships used more iron in their construction. Earlier, such problems were noticed as the housing of the compass might use nails which affected the needle.  When the who ship was iron, the problem magnified. 

While this book primarily focuses on the British use of the compass, toward the end the author acknowledges the American Navy to be ahead of the British in the late 19^th Century. American adopted the floating compass for its navy 30 years before Britain. Through this book, we learn of the various individuals whose work with compasses to increase their efficiency.  While there were interesting parts of this book, I realize it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. The book is only about the role of the compass while on water, nothing about its use on land as in orientating. A good companion to this book is Dava Sobel’s, Longitude, which I read in 2017.