Tag: book review

Chet Raymo, The Soul of the Night: An Astronomical Pilgrimage 

(1985, Cambridge, MA: Cowley, 1992), 209 pages, each chapter illustrated with a woodblock print.

This may go down as the best book I’ve read all year. Raymo describes himself as a “pilgrim of darkness.” The journey and the night sky seem to provide him with joy. I am not sure why it has taken me so long to discover this fellow pilgrim. A blogger friend suggested that I might like another of his books. When I looked him up, I saw this book and decided to read it first. After all, one of my favorite times to walk is at night. With a clear sky, it feels as if the stars accompany me on my travels. 

The Soul of the Night is a collection of twenty essays. In each, the author begins with an observation that leads him deeper into the subject. It may be something on earth (especially birds) that lead him skyward. Or it could be an astronomical sighting that leads him back to earth. In these essays, he draws on his experience as a professor of physics and astronomy. Weaving his scientific knowledge with a keen sense of observation, the author draws on his vast background of information. There’s mythology, the Bible, the natural world, world religions (especially Zen), and literature (especially poetry).

In these pages, we ponder the beauty of the stars and the night from our perspective as well as the perspective of our ancient ancestors. We learn of how legends became constellations and how what we see as a vast flat canvas is a universe that’s spreading apart at an astonishing rate. He tells of illustrating our galaxy by spreading a box of salt in a swirl on the floor. But before his students take too much comfort in how close the “stars” are, he reminds them that to be precise, it would require a dozen boxes of salt and the positioning of each grain of salt would have to be thousands of feet from each other and would require a plane larger than a cross section of the earth (101-2). A grain of salt every 1000 feet. It’s enough to bog the mind. He investigates the meaning of darkness. He explores the color of the stars (which we can barely make out with the necked eyes) as well as the color of the landscape. Quoting a friend, he notes that “walking in the woods in November is like walking in a black and white landscape.” He ponders the shadows of the earth and the moon and how they helped understand the distances between objects. There is so much within these pages. 

This is a delightful book that has given me much to ponder. I highly recommend it. 

Barbara Brown Taylor, Learning to Walk in the Dark 

(New York: HarperCollins, 2014), 200 pages

The title of this book intrigued me. I have long been a fan of Barbara Brown Taylor and have read most everything she’s published. An Altar in the World and When God is Silent are favorites. I have recommended and lent these two volumes to many people. In the 90s, I was blessed to spend a week with her and a small group at San Francisco Theological Seminary. I came to admire not only her careful use of language but also her love of the natural world. When I saw she’d written a book about darkness, I ordered it and immediately started reading, sitting aside other books that I was already reading.  

Taylor describes her book as a journal instead of a “how-to” manual. She begins with a phrase most of us who grew up in an age when kids played outside all day have heard: our mom’s calling us, saying, “Come inside now, it’s getting dark.” From an early age, we are taught to fear the dark. Darkness also becomes a metaphor for all that is bad, which is seen through the Jewish and Christian scriptures. Yet, as Taylor points out, the God of the Scriptures is responsible for the darkness, too, having separated day from night. And besides, there are many good things that happen at night in Scripture (44f). She also raises questions about our “full solar spirituality” which only focuses on the light, the pleasant, the sunny. Such spirituality sees everything as positive and upbeat, but such theologies fail to provide support when things fall apart. Quoting theologians and others who have written on darkness and what we might learn from such experiences, she sets off on her journey. Along the way, she ponders the idea of restaurants where one eats in the dark. As you are served, you are told where your food is at on your plate (93ff). She goes through a “blind exhibit” where she gets to experience what’s it like to move through the world without sight (96ff). She crawls through a cave in West Virginia. And she spends the night alone in a cabin in the woods, experiencing night in a new way (153ff). 

By exploring darkness, Taylor has an opportunity to explore an overlooked branch of theology that expresses what God isn’t, instead of what God is. There is an ancient root to this. Augustine, in the 4th Century, said, “If you have understood, what you have understood is not God” (144). She spends time with the writings of John of the Cross who believed “positive statements about God serve chiefly to fool people into believing that their half-baked images of God and their flawed ideas about how God acts are the Real Thing.”  By teaching what God is not, John attempts “to convince his readers that their images and ideas about ‘God’ are in fact obstacles between them and the Real Thing” (38).

The lunar cycle provides the structure for the book. She recalls the parallel between the three days separating the old (waning) moon and the new (waxing) moon to the death and resurrection of Jesus (108). At the end of Taylor’s journey, she experiences a moonrise, a new experience for her (166ff). I was shocked at this, perhaps because I grew up close to the ocean and have experienced many moonrises, especially in the fall of the year while surf fishing at night. Before the moon appears, there is a light on the distant horizon, and when it rises, it appears to be much larger than it does when overhead, and its rays seem to shimmer across the water as if they were directed at you. Taylor’s moonrise was moving enough that she decided to make a point to experience more such events. I also found myself wishing that she had experienced a night sleeping under the stars in the desert or high in the mountains, where you wake and gauge the time by how far the stars appear to have moved across the heavenly sphere.  

Although the book may fail to teach us to walk in the dark, it does help us appreciate what we gain from the absence of light. Quoting Carl Jung, we’re reminded that “one does not become more enlightened by imaging figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” (86) There is much we might learn from the darkness and Taylor’s book is a beginning guide to help us see when the lights dim, and the shadows overtake us.  

I read and wrote this review in 2014.

In the past two months, I’ve read a dozen books, but haven’t published any reviews. While I don’t review every book, I am way behind.  Part of my reason for such much reading comes from my two weeks in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, when I had lots of time to immerse myself into books. Here’s three reviews: 

Roger Kahn, The Boys of Summer

(1971, revised in the 1990s, audio book 2009), 15 hours, 11 minutes. 

What a delightful book. I knew about this book for years, but recently decided to listen to it when driving back from Michigan. Kuhn drew me in with his memories of growing up in Brooklyn. At the age of 24, he started covering the Dodgers as a newspaper sports reporter. He worked with the team for just a few good years. They won the National League pennant but lost the World Series to the Yankees during Kahn’s tenure as a reporter (they’d later win the World Series and soon afterwards move to Los Angeles). 

After telling of his love for baseball (with a father who also loved the game and a mother who wanted him to immerse himself in poetry, music and the classics), he provides insights into the key players during his time with the Dodgers. This was the team that broke the “color barrier” with Jackie Robinson. At the point Kahn begins to cover the team, Roy Campanella and Joe Black, both African Americans, joined Robinson on the team. Sadly, these three greats had rather short major league careers as they had spent many years playing in the Negro Leagues. Many of the others (including some of the African Americans), had shortened careers due to serving in the military during World War II. 

The other players who consisted of the team’s core include Gil Hodges, Pee Wee Reese, Billy Cox, Duke Snider, Carl Furillo, Preacher Roe and Carl Erskine. While Kahn spends a lot of time with Robinson, I got the sense he especially appreciated the goodness of Pee Wee Reese, a southerner who befriend Robinson and who had a generally good attitude on life. 

This book was written in 1970, as Kahn looked up each player and interviewed them about their years in baseball and their life since retirement. It was noted that ball players often retire when their childhood friends are just beginning to build a life for themselves as they enter middle age. They all took different routes. There was a lot of sadness, too. Jackie Robinson’s son tragic death after having beat addiction and of Roy Campanella’s car accident that left him paralyzed at the end of his career are two examples. There were also failed attempts at business while others did well. I remember reading a biography of Campanella when I was probably in the 5th or 6th grade. It covered his accident, but I don’t remember anything about his terrible divorce in which his wife said he could no longer ‘satisfy’ her. But he did remarry and seemed to have a good life and certainly maintained a good outlook on life.

Kahn updated this book in the late 90s. At this time, many had died. Like Robinson, Kahn also lost a son to drugs. In the later addition, he draws upon Shakespearean themes (which would have made his mother proud) as he speaks of each generation needing to step aside for the next. He also noted his risk on this book. By the time he finished writing it, he was down to just over $200 in his checking account. Then, he immediately was offered of advances of $100,000, one for paperback rights and the other for a Book of the Month selection.

If you like baseball, you’ll enjoy this book.  Another book I enjoyed about the Dodgers in the 1950s, before moving to Los Angeles, is Doris Kearns Goodwin’s, Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir. 

Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

(1994, audible 2008) 15 hours 34 minutes

I have had this on my TBR pile for some time. I finally listened to the audible recording of the book, finishing it up on my drive to Michigan. It is a gem. The author illustrates the turmoil and changes coming to the Congo at the end of its colonial period. Kingsolver draws this picture by telling the story of the Price family from Georgia. Nathan Price, the father, moves his family (against the advice of his denomination) to the Congo in the waning years of the Eisenhower administration. He has visions of baptizing the natives in the river (which the natives know is filled with crocodiles and aren’t exactually interested in baptism). Humor seeps through the pages as Nathan attempts to learn the local language but missing some inflection points. Instead of saying “Jesus is the Beloved,” he shouts, “Jesus is the poisonwood tree.” He doesn’t find success. 

But this book isn’t really about religion or even though Nathan’s inability to understand African customs. In a way, he’s set up as a caricature of flawed missionary efforts. Ultimately, the book is about Africa and ways the West have attempted to deal with the continent. 

The story is told through Nathan’s wife, Oleanna, and his four daughters: Rachel, Adah, Leah, and Ruth May.  Each of the women are changed by Africa and each (except for the one who dies from a poisonous snake bite) finds a way to survive. As the Congo erupts into violence toward the end of Belgium rule, and as most non-African residents flee, Nathan is determined to stay when he feels he’s been placed. In the end, the girls discover bits and pieces of how their father became disconnected with reality and dies.

After the death of her youngest child, Oleanna decides to flee with her daughters and find a way back to America. Along the way, she loses her oldest daughter, Rachel, who runs off with a South African pilot. It turns he’s not just involved with ferrying people around and, as they suspected, illegally transporting diamonds. He’s also working for the CIA. Seeing him and his plane as her ticket out, she flees. She eventually leaves the pilot for an embassy official, and then him for a wealthy resort owner. Her last husband dies, leaving her with the property. Rich in an improvised land, she provides one insight into how Africa is viewed as she continues as a white “colonizer” who despises the natives.  

Leah, another daughter marries an African man whom she befriended. Idealist, she attempts to understand the culture and to help the people as she and her growing family struggle to survive. While she has a struggle, she is also American. As a result, her family can travel to the states for educational opportunities and vaccines. Adah returns to America with her mother and becomes a medical doctor who studies tropical viruses and diseases. The mother grows flowers. 

I liked how Kingsolver was able to use different characters to provide us with different points of view. However, I thought the Nathan character to be too unrealistic. It should be to the credit that the mission board who discouraged him becoming a missionary, for it was obvious he had no business being there. We learn a little of his backstory (a World War II wounded vet). It appears he a past to overcome and a need to prove himself. I found it strange that he often quoted from and even taught and preached from the Apocrypha, books which are not in the Protestant canon. I can’t imagine any Baptist Church allowing a minister to use these texts that are not within the (Protestant) Bible. 

Kingsolver story kept me engaged. I appreciated how she connected to the conflict at the end of the colonial period. In the last half of the book, she quickly covers then next thirty years which showed the conflicts and failures of the troubled continent.  A worthwhile read or listen.

Christiane Tietz, Karl Barth: A Life in Conflict

 Victoria J. Barnett, translator, (German edition 2019.  English edition: Oxford, UK: Oxford Press, 2021. 

I’m in a clergy group that reads theology and then gets together once a year to discuss the readings. This year, we’ve been reading Karl Barth. It’s been 30 years since I read Barth, reading his Commentary on Romans a few years after graduating from seminary. When I was a student in seminary, I had the sense that Barth’s influence on theology was beginning to wane. This didn’t bother me for I often found Barth so wordy that it took him forever to make a point. Yet, a review for this newly translated book convinced me to read it. 

Barth was Swiss, but found an early following in Germany, where he studied and became a distinguished professor of theology. In the years after World War 1, he broke with the 19^th Century liberal tradition and began to embark on a new direction of theology. This brought him attention around the world. Critical of human ability to understand God, he insisted that only God could speak for God (364). He placed high regard for Scripture. While Jesus Christ is the foundation of the church, the church access to God through Christ is from Scripture.  

Then came the rise of Nazism. Barth denounce the Nazis. He involved himself in the Confessing Church movement that challenged the mainstream church who either supported or remained quiet as the Nazis solidified their power. The book goes into detail about Barth’s role with the Barmen Declaration that declared that God alone is owned our allegiance. Early in the Nazi movement, pastors and professors in Germany had a “pledge allegiance” to Hitler. This offended Barth and he refused. His thoughts and actions led to his removal from Germany and his honorary doctoral degree being revoked (It was reinstated after the war). 

Returning home to Switzerland, he continued to keep an active role what was happening in Germany. For a former pacifist, he even joined the Swiss version of the National Guard and trained for a potential German invasion. At the end of the war, he sought to make peace with Germany and to help both the Jews and the Germans who suffered so much. He also strove to ease the conflict that existed between Eastern Europe and the West. I would be interested in reading more of his thoughts about how the church should conduct itself when under a hostile government as many of the Eastern Europe Churches found themselves as these countries came under communism control. Would Barth provide an insight into how the church might continue in a world that is more hostile to its mission? 

I knew Barth was Eurocentric. He certainly carried on a dialogue with European scholars but seemed to ignore American and even British theologians. In another book I have been recently given by Barth on 19^th Century Protestant Theology, he limits his survey to the continent. I suspect Barth’s Eurocentric focus has led to his decline in status as voices from theologians from around the world became more available. It wasn’t till after the war that he made it to the United States (where his son Marcus was teaching). Later in his life, his thoughts even influenced Catholic theology and Vatican II. 

While I have not read other biographies of Barth, what I suspect makes this book stand out is the access Tietz had to personal papers and letters between Barth, his wife Nelly, and Charlotte von Kirschbaum. Kirschbaum served as Barth’s secretary, but they developed a 40-year relationship (“Notgemeinschaft” was the term they used to describe this relationship). Of course, this put great strain on his marriage, his family, and his teaching. This conflict peaked in the early 30s, as Barth was consumed with the rise of Nazism. While Tietz covers this factually, I found myself playing “psychologist” and wondering how the stress of the world may have led to this relationship which seems to cast a shadow on the remaining decades of Barth’s work. Yet, would Barth had been able to complete his massive “Church Dogmatics” without her aid? 

I would recommend this book to those interested in 20^th Century Theology. 

Aaron McAlexander, Greasy Bend: Ode to a Mountain Road (Stonebridge Press, 2016), 224 pages, a few black and white photographs.

Highway 58 cuts across Southern Virginia, from Cumberland Gap (Along the Tennessee/Kentucky border) to the Tidewater. The highway crosses swamps, fields of peanuts and tobacco, old industrial towns like Danville and Martinsville, then climbs the Blue Ridge and the Grayson Highlands before it enters Kentucky. Highway 58 used to be the Main Street in Meadows of Dan, near the Blue Ridge summit, where the author grew up. Just to the east, near “Lover’s Leap,” were several especially dangerous hairpin curves. When the fog rolled in, these curves were even more deadly. Each had a name: Midkiff Curve, Green Martin Curve, Greasy Bend, the Bob Fain Curve, and the Harley Hopkin Curve. McAlexander tells of accidents that occurred along this stretch. Today, there are still curves and steep drop-offs, but the road has been improved and modified so that it’s not as dangerous as before. 

Using this ribbon of highway as a backdrop, McAlexander tells of stories of growing up in the 40s and 50s along Highway 58. Many of these stories are of himself, but there are other legendry stories of outlaws and bootleggers that fill the pages of this book. We learn of country stores, AM radio stations that brought farm reports every morning, raising and inseminating dairy cattle, cutting hay, the secrets of good cornbread, and the reliability of the old Ford 8N tractors. 

Today, many of these stories are only known when they’re on paper, the rest of such stories are as lost as are the towns that Highway 58 now bypass (even Meadows of Dan is bypassed, with the four lane running just north of town). This book is a delight to read. I kept it on my nightstand, reading a story each evening before bed. 

I only have one bone to pick with McAlexander. He cited on the back cover that US 58 at 508 miles in length, is the longest US highway in a single state. Being from North Carolina, I immediately became suspicious. I knew it wasn’t as long as US 64 is between Manteo and Murphy (that’s 545 miles in length). US 64 in North Carolina is the same mileage as US 1 is in Florida, which runs to Key West. I got to thinking about other long roads. US 90, from El Paso to Orange Texas is 774 miles in length. But the longest I found (and I stuck to roads I’ve driven at least a portion of) is US 101, which runs along the Pacific Coast with 801 miles of asphalt in California. 

This is the 3^rd book by McAlexander that I’ve read since moving to SW Virginia. I’ve also reviewed Shine on Mayberry Moon and The Last One Leaving Mayberry. Each book is a treat! 

Some photos I’ve recently taken (all within a mile of US 58)

 

Four book reviews: The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses, That Time of the Year: A Minnesota Life, and It Can’t Happen Here.

Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North.

(2013, Audible, 2014), 14 hours 59 minutes

What a complex book. At times I loved it and other times I wondered what I was doing immersing myself within these words. The Narrow Road to the Deep North, a title taken from Basho, a famous Japanese haiku poet from the 17^th Century, centers on the life of Dorrigo Evans. An Australian physician and surgeon, Evans reads the great literature of the world and serves in the Army. Captured on Java by the Japanese early in the Second World War, he and his fellow prisoners are sent to Western Thailand to build a railroad to Burma. While the story of the war unifies the novel, this is not just a book about war. Dorrigo carries with him a dark secret, but one of hope. Just prior to the war, he had an affair with Amy, his uncle’s young wife. Her memory haunts him in the jungles of Thailand and even after the war as he continues his career in medicine and begins his own family. 

Evans is a complicated character who is thrown into a horrible situation. As the highest-ranking officer among the POWs, he must make decisions to meet the Japanese quota of daily workers along his section of the railroad. These are life and death decisions, but he has no control. All the men are starving and disease prone. At one point, he must pick men for a march into the jungle to another camp. He makes the decision by picking out those with the best shoes. He fights with the Japanese for better food and medical supplies and rest for his men. He establishes a rough surgical hospital. He is tormented when he cannot save a man’s life because he lacks medicines and equipment. Yet, he is loved by the POWs and performs remarkably well despite the situation.

His personal life before and after the war was a mess and continues this way after the war. While he marries and provides well for his family, he is distant. He feels inadequate and guilty. He drowns his pain in numerous affairs. But, when his family is threatened by a fire in the bush, he arises to the occasion. His wife and children are amazed at this. For the first time, the children see his compassion, as well as the risks he takes to save his family. 

The story isn’t just about Dorrigo. We are given mini biographies of others who were at the POW camps. Some died there and their ghost remain with Dorrigo and his fellow survivors. Others live on, but their lives have all be affected by the terrible treatment they received as POWs. We also learn about some of the camps guards and Japanese officials during the war and afterwards. 

One of the cruelest guards is a Korean, the “Goanna.” Extremely brutal and sadistic in his treatment of prisoners, he is hanged for war crimes. Yet, I felt sorry for him. He was not Japanese. He joined the Japanese army (Japan had annexed Korea in the early 20^th Century) for the money. But Koreans were always seen as second-class citizens and instead of being in the real army, they were assigned duty as guards and such. His sister, lured also by money and the promise to help wounded soldiers, became a “Comfort Woman,” essentially a prostitute for the Japanese army. He bore the burden of learning what she had become. He also felt he was just doing his duty for a promise of 50 yen a month (A yen must have been worth a lot more back then!).  

Major Nakamura was the camp’s commander. He returns to Japan and hides his identity at first. He finds a job working with the Japanese blood bank. Years later, Nakamura has a conversation with a Japanese doctor who tells of the medical experiences he conducted on American POWs. The doctor confides that they did their duty and are safe as the allied armies want to put the war behind them. The doctor suggests that only the foolish and those from Korea and Taiwan were punished for war crimes. 

Flanagan shows the complexity of individuals, who can be compassionate and cruel, capable of appreciation of beauty and able to create what is ugly. Evans shows great compassion and leadership during the war and not so much before or afterwards. For Nakamura, it’s the opposite. He’s savage in the war and mellows afterwards. Not only do we see this through the characters but also through literature (both Western and Japanese). I am going to think about this book for some time to come!

I recommend this book with a warning. The descriptions of the POW experience are very realistic. Parts of the book read like a horror tale. Furthermore, at times, when discussing Evan’s relationships with women, I found myself thinking I could use a little description. Some of these parts seem like I was reading an “adult” romance novel. But when blended, this book left me pondering the human condition.

I listened to the unabridged version of this book on Audible.  I have been on the Burma-Thai railroad and to a few of the many huge cemeteries from those who died there: British, Australian, New Zealanders, Dutch, and Indian. These plots remain a sobering place. 

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses

 (2003, Audible release 2018). Read by the author.  7 hours 46 minutes

I found this a delightful book that opened windows of understandings for often overlooked plants. Mosses are some of the simplest plants but are also very complex and important for the wellbeing of our planet. Drawing from her experience as a scientist, who studies moss, as well as her Native American heritage, Kimmerer weaves stories of her family and heritage into the larger story of moss. I enjoyed listening to her lyrical style of composition and since listening to this book, I have been looking at moss everywhere, on shady ground, rocks, on trees, and on rotting wood. I need to purchase and reread this book in print to capture all the names of the types of moss. The book is essentially a natural history of moss. In telling the story of moss, the plant becomes a metaphor for our lives.

“But the world is still unpredictable and still we survive by the grace of chance and the strength of our choices.” (at the end of chapter 12). 

Garrison Keillor, That Time of the Year: A Minnesota Life

 (New York: Arcade Publishing, 2020), 360 pages including a few photos. 

I received this book as a Christmas present and thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Having listened to Keillor and the Prairie Home Companion since the 80s, much of the book felt like I was visiting old friends whom I’d met over the radio. This book gives us insight into Keillor’s life and the decisions that led him into radio and to becoming a well-known author. Throughout the book, one has the feeling that Keillor feels blessed with the ability to have done what he did through a radio show. He is gracious in giving thanks to those who have helped him along the way, from teachers and aunts, parents and friends, and to those in the business. He also writes graciously about those who performed on the show and the friends he made along the way. I was shocked to learn he had become friends of Michigan’s author, Jim Harrison. Harrison, best known from his novella that became the movie Legends of the Fall, listened to Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion and the two began a correspondence. Keillor ends the book with a beautiful “sermon” on Psalm 100, which he summarizes as “In other words, lighten up. It isn’t about you. Improve the Hour.” 

I am sure there are parts of the book in which Keillor avoided topics and left things out (this is a memoir and not a autobiography, after all). However, he acknowledges the pain he caused to this first wife and the situation which led to him being removed from Public Radio during the rise of the “Me, Too” movement. With the latter, Keillor avoids making his accuser out to be evil, while maintaining his general innocence. He agreed that some of what he said to the woman may have been taken the wrong way but insists there was never anything to their email exchanges that rose to the level of the complaints. His bitterness is at how quickly Minnesota Public Radio decided that he was expendable. 

A few quotes: 

“Satire is perishable like lettuce.” 

“I wanted to have a long retirement and disappear into the sunset and outlive everyone qualified to give my eulogy.” 

Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here

 (1935, Audible 2016), 14 hours 28 minutes. 

I read this book in college or just afterwards, but decided to listen to it again (which I mostly did while driving or walking). The book begins at a civic function in a small town in Vermont in the run up to the 1936 election. While the book moves from character to character, the unifying stream is about a Vermont newspaper editor, Doremus Jessup. Written before the election of 1936, the book creates an alternative to history. FDR doesn’t even win his party’s nomination in 1936. Instead, a rogue candidate, Buzz Windrip, rises to power on the promise of giving everyone $6000 a year. He also has an army of supporters who, soon after taking over as President, goes into action. Quickly, the country descends into fascism.  Jessup, who had always played it safe as a newspaper editor, writes an editorial that gets him into trouble. He becomes politically involved with an underground movement. Arrested, Jessup finds himself in a concentration camp. After his escape, he makes his way to Canada to join exiled Americans working for an overthrow of the government. 

Surprisingly, although of a serious yet fictional subject matter, there is a lot of humor in this book. These words drip with satire. 

This book was written during the era of Huey Long and at the time of the rise of fascism in Europe. While dated, there is much to ponder. Demagogues are dangerous. This would be a good book for America to reread. 

I’m catching up on some recent reading…

Tilar J. Mazzero, The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It. 

(Harpers Business, 2009), 264 pages. 

Late last year, I listened to the author’s “Great Courses” lectures on “Creative Nonfiction.” She often used examples of her own writing including this book. I was curious as to how she took what little personal knowledge is available about Clicquot and turn it into a book that remained “true” to the available facts. Mazzero uses a lot of qualifying words to suggest what her subject might have done or said. While this sometimes became annoying, I enjoyed the book. And I don’t particularly like champagne! 

The Widow Clicquot (Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin) was born into a wealthy French industrial family. He father had created a textile empire. At boarding school when the French revolutionary began, a family seamstress risked her life to rescue the young woman. Afterwards, during a time when the Catholic Church in France was frowned upon, she was married in a secret wedding to the son of another wealthy French industrialist. The marriage had benefits both, as both families were primarily involved in textiles. However, as was common among those whose fortunes were rising in France, they also had wineries. Her husband, Franciois Clicquot, decided that he would make his fortune in the champagne. During this period, champagne was just coming into its own and gaining popularity in England and in Russia.  

When she was 27, she found herself widowed with a child. She would never remarry. For years, she struggled to build the dream she and her husband held for their champagne business. At first, it seemed that every year created another setback. Sometimes it was the weather, other times it was global politics. Napoleon’s warmongering meant that France’s ports were often blockaded. Russia had been a hot market for champagne until Napoleon invaded. This led to an interesting story as one of her agents who were procuring orders barely escaped Russia with his life as he was seen possible spy.

After years of setback, champagne became more popular after the Napoleonic wars. As foreign forces pushed Napoleon back, they occupied the champagne region and fell in love with the drink.  Then she creates the “riddling table”, a new way to produce champagne, which took out some of the guess work and allowed for more streamlined production. She had racks built that held the cork opening down. The bottles were turned, drawing the dead yeast toward the opening, where they could be discarded and the bottled topped off with fresh champagne. This secret allowed her company to outproduce the other wineries producing champagne. Her wealth continued to grow.  By the middle of the 19^th Century, her bottles of champagne became known as “the Widow,” a reference that is often found in 19^th Century literature, when characters order champagne. 

I learned much from this book. Not only does the reader learn about with widow and her company, but also the history of champagne. Mazzero debunks the popular story that it was Dom Perignon who popularized the drink as “drinking the stars.” The book tells the story of the risks Barbe-Nicole and her business partners took to build their empire. Insight into 19^th Century trade, along with the development of trademarks and marking augment Barbe-Nichole’s story. However, due to the limited about of personal resources, many of Mazzero’s insights into Barbe-Nicole’s life is by inference and cannot be factually proven. 

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Cormac McCarthy,  Suttree

 (1979). Audible 20 hours and 22 minutes. 

I had a love/hate relationship with this book which I listened to on Audible. There isn’t really a plot, unless the plot is that everyone dies. But that’s not exactly true, just many of the secondary characters die.

However, the writing is mostly beautiful, with a few gross or raunchy scenes. McCarthy is a master storyteller and his descriptions brings places and people alive. This novel is a collection of vignettes from Sutrree’s life. Through his eyes we learn what life was like on skid row in Knoxville, Tennessee in the early 1950s. 

Suttree lives on a dilapidated houseboat and makes a meager living by fishing for catfish in the river. But there is something that separates Suttree from the rest of those who are down on their luck. For one, we catch a glimpse of his past. Through the story told, we learn he attended a Catholic school and latter college. He had also once been married and had a child. But for some reason he walks away from it all. He seems to enjoy the life down by the riverfront, even though he does get away at times and into the mountains. 

Those down and out in Knoxville look to Suttree for advice. Suttree takes on the role as their protector, as he tries to steer people the right way. His advice is generally good, such as discouraging Gene Harrogate from attempting to break out from the workhouse (a chain gang prison farm), telling him if he did, he’d be caught and would spend the rest of his life in and out of prison.  He befriends all: prostitutes, blacks, homosexuals, alcoholics, and drug addicts. 

While many of the characters are short-lived in their encounters with Suttree, Gene Harrogate keeps reappearing throughout the book. Even at the end, we learn he’s in prison for three to five years. Harrogate and Suttree first meets in the workhouse. We don’t really learn what Suttree did, but Harrogate is there for copulating with many watermelons, ruining a farmer’s crop. He’s always trying to find a way to “make it.” When the health department puts out a call for any found dead bats in town, promising a dollar a bat to check for rabies, Harrogate masters a way to wipe out a bat colony. However, once they learn the bats died by other means, they don’t pay him for the bats. Learning of the tunnels through the city, he concocts a plan to blow up the city’s vault. While much of Knoxville believe they’ve experienced a small earthquake, Suttree knows better and goes underground to find a wounded and stunned Hargrove stinking from the sewer lines that ruptured in his failed attempt to blow the vault.  

Suttree has two “romantic” encounters in the book. One is with a teenager daughter to his “freshwater mussel” partner. The mussel shells are sold to be manufactured into buttons (something I recently learned from the writings of Alice Outwater is a reason for the decline of freshwater mussels). She dies in a rockslide. The next is a prostitute. The two of them live it up for a short while, but then she has a breakdown and leaves. 

One of the more interesting vignettes is of Suttree and a black friend visiting an old Geechee witch. She puts him under a spell which creates a horrific vision. He has a similar horrific vision toward the end of the book when he has typhoid fever. I was expecting he was going to die, supporting the plot idea that “everyone dies.” However, he recovers and leaves town.  Hargrove, at the time, is in prison. 

Warning, if you read this book, there are rough spots, which one should expect when writing about those living on the margin of society. McCarthy shows that he can master the grotesque as well as Flannery O’Conner. 

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Julie Salamon, Ramban’s Ladder: A Meditation on Generosity and Why It Is Necessary to Give

 (New York: Worksman Publishing, 2003), 183 pages. 

Maimonides, a Jewish philosopher and physician during the Middle Ages, also known as Rambam, created a ladder of charity. Each of the eight rungs on the ladder represented a step toward more compassionate response to those in need. The bottom rung is the one who gives reluctantly and in a begrudging manner. Next would be the person who gives just a little, not enough, but in a friendly manner. Then there is one who gives when asked, then before being asked, then giving without knowing who the gift is for, then giving anonymously, then giving whether neither the one in need nor the giver knows one another. The highest run on the ladder is the one who helps lift the needy out of poverty by helping them start a business, giving them a job, or going in partnership with them. 

Salamon, in this book, goes through each step. With numerous examples, many from her own life (such as avoiding beggars along the New York Streets, then befriending one…), she illustrates each step. 

I recommend this book for those interested in becoming more generous. It would be an especially helpful book for someone speaking about generosity as she provides so many stories for illustration.

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Karen Cecil Smith, Orlean Puckett, 1844-1939: The Life of a Mountain Midwife

 (Boone, NC: Parkway Publishing, 2003), 166 pages. 

As I’ve been doing since I moved here last October, this another book that I read in my attempts to learn this new area I find myself ministering. A little over a mile north of Bluemont Presbyterian Church, along the Blueridge Parkway, there is a cabin with a historical marker about a famous midwife in these parks, Orlean Puckett. However, the cabin belonged her sister-in-law, Betty Puckett. Orlean’s larger home was torn down after the Park Service refused to allow her to live in it until her death. She died shortly after having to move and the parkway was open for traffic through southwest Virginia.   

There is a lot that is not known about Orlean. Even her birthyear is in question (some records said 1839). Before the Civil War, she married John Puckett. He would serve in the Confederate Army, but like many, he deserted and lived in the Virginia mountains for the rest of the war. There seems to be some question as if the two of them got along or if there was abuse. He did drink a lot, but Smith makes the case that two loved each other. Orlean had 24 babies. All but one died either in womb or shortly after birth. The one surviving, her firstborn, lived a few years. It is now thought she suffered from Rh Hemolytic disease, which was unknown at the time. While some may have thought the children died from mistreatment, it seems unlikely many felt that way since so many women on the mountain would employ her as a midwife. 

After taking on the role of midwife, for 49 years helped deliver over a thousand children. She would travel by foot or horse, all over the mountains, in all kinds of weather. She served as a midwife until just before she died.

Smith overcomes the lack of direct knowledge about much of Orlean’s life by providing a background into mountain ways of life, the history of midwifery, and the development of the Blue Ridge Parkway. There are also interesting tidbits of folklore used by midwives. At times, the story seems a bit disjointed, but I found it interesting.  The book draws heavily on oral interviews, of which Smith quotes from extensively.

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Fifteen years ago, I read Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue by Paul Woodruff. Since then, I’ve read it several times and have spent considerable energy thinking about virtues. Perhaps this itch drew me to this book. In this age when truth seems so elusive, we need to have a conversation about virtue and how to ground society in that which is good.  

In her Introduction, Peterson writes about growing up in an evangelical Christian home in the later part of the 20^th Century. As a teenager, she watched as church leaders lambasted President Clinton as unfit for office. As a child, she was nurtured with stories of virtue collected by William Bennett. Later, she served a missionary stint in Southeast Asia. But she began questioning what she had been taught. The watershed moment was the election of Donald Trump and the flipflop of evangelical leaders who accepted or willingly forgave Trump’s behavior. She began to question if those who claimed to be virtuous in the 90s were only doing so as a way to “preserve power and keep everyone in place.” This soul-searching led Peterson to “reimage” a world built on Biblical virtues.  And, it appears, her faith has become stronger and grounded more firmly in the Biblical tradition.

What a virtuous world might look like:

Lament

Where Goodness Still Grows is Peterson’s attempt to outline what a virtuous world might look like. She explores nine spheres, as she tells her own story as well as digging deep into the Biblical story and the story of others. Lament is the first area explored. Having been steeped in “praise services,” lament becomes a useful tool for crying out to God for what is wrong in our world.

Kindness

The second area explore is kindness. She breaks apart the word that has evolved from an Old English concept of maintaining one’s position along the economic ladder. This leads her to come to an uncomfortable understanding about how her parents and grandparent’s “kindness” provided her with a status not enjoyed by many within minority groups. Her Biblical understanding of kindness requires her to see God’s image in everyone and may possibly require a redistribution wealth. 

Hospitality

Peterson explores includes hospitality, where she questions how evangelicals can be so against immigration. 

Purity and Modesty

She challenges the evangelical church’s link to purity and modesty only to sexuality. She finds no support for this within scripture. the Bible ties purity to the Temple. Modesty is often about not flaunting wealth. By linking modesty to how women dress, is to miss the Biblical view and also to create a low standard for men who need to have women dress themselves in a modest manner to keep their “animal instincts’ in check. 

Authenticity

Peterson recalls her desire to be authentic. Within the church she grew up in, praying spontaneously was viewed as authentic. Rote prayers were inauthentic. As she matured (and later found a home within the Episcopal Church), she understood a different view of authenticity. Writing about authenticity, she comes back to the evangelical support of Trump. She believes his ability to be spontaneous and having fresh ideas drew evangelicals. Instead, Peterson ties Biblical authenticity to being a disciple of Christ, clothed with the virtues of Colossians 3:12. However, this does not mean that one can’t be authentic if one isn’t a believer.God’s image allows us the ability to be authentic. At the end of the chapter, she makes the case that spontaneity shouldn’t be tied to authenticity within the church. “Authentic Christians” practice daily the role given. We are sinners, “saved by and growing in grace.” 

Love and Hope

Another areas Peterson explores is love. She finds love often contradicted in evangelism training that tended, in her experience, to objectify others. Another area is discernment. We cannot logically prove everything. There must be room for mystery. Finally, she investigates hope through an extended metaphor of raising chickens, which gives her a whole new understanding on Jesus’ lament on how he’d like to be a mother hen and protect Jerusalem under his wings. As a mother, this image is powerful for Peterson. Her chickens and other “homesteading” projects helps her understand our humanity. There is hope in being “gathered like children under a mother’s wing.”

My recommendation

In her introduction, Peterson suggests that her work isn’t the “definitive answer about virtue.” But she hopes it will raise questions. This she does. Peterson also leaves those of us who have never brought into a more simplistic view of the world as presented by fundamentalist Christianity with a little more hope. Hopefully, her book will encourage Christians to think about truth and what God wants for our world. If you read this book, I’m curious as to your take on it.

Reviews of other good books on similar topics:

Arthur C. Brooks, Love Your Enemies
John Kasich, It’s Up to Us
P. M. Forni, The Civility Solution: What to Do When People are Rude