War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy

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War and Peace is one of the most famous works of literature and considered by many to be a masterpiece. Tolstoy, much like Shakespeare, seems to be searching for what it meant to be “Human” and alive on the planet.

This novel’s approach to those questions comes from examples found in history itself, of love, war, religion, family, class, economics and philosophy.

Tolstoy said of his writings in an article: “What is War and Peace? It is not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less an historical chronicle. War and Peace is what the author wished and was able to express in the form in which it is expressed.” (it is, what it is!)

Tolstoy presents us with the daily lives and activities of a large cast of characters across long stretches of time. His point is that these ordinary people are what makes the difference in the course of history rather than the impact of the few and powerful, like Alexander and Napoleon. His point of view tells us that the essence of history lies in the “activity of the general mass of people who take part in it.”  War and Peace presents the human activities, feelings, and sufferings of 160,000 Russians and French.

The lesson of this book is understanding that history comes from examining the details. Henry James referred to this novel as “a wonderful mass of life.” The critic, Strakhov, said, “What is the meaning of War and Peace? The meaning is expressed in these words of the author more clearly than anywhere else: ‘There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness, and truth.’

War and Peace by Russian author Leo Tolstoy first published in 1869 tells us of details of the events surrounding the French invasion of Russia, and the impact of the Napoleonic era on Tsarist society, as seen through the eyes of five Russian aristocratic families.

Reading it slowly helps as your read this most impressive books.

Quotes

“We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.” 

“Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women.” 

“The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.” 

“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.” 

“There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.” 

“The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope, light; the other is where she is not, and there is dejection and darkness.

“It's not given to people to judge what's right or wrong. People have eternally been mistaken and will be mistaken, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong.” 

tuesdays with Morrie, by Mitch Albom

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Mitch Albom spent each Tuesday with Morrie, his former professor, who was very ill with ALS.  He had lost track of his mentor and saw this as a second chance. This story resonates with many of us who has in our past someone who understood us when we were searching. Maybe it was a grandparent, a teacher, or just someone older who was wiser at the time.

Albom had taken his relationship with his favorite professor for granted since his collage days and when he learned of his terminal illness, he decided to visit him. The visits that followed helped Mitch see what really mattered. He found Morrie’s “belief in Humanity” as his most powerful lesson. He said that Morrie took nothing for granted and gave those who he spoke with his undivided attention. Morrie said that “Love is the only rational answer” and that was always clear from his communication.

The book starts out with the first chapter telling us by its title, “The Curriculum”, much of what the book tells us.  The chapter starts out: “The last class of my old professor’s life took place once a week in his house, by a window in the study where he could watch a small hibiscus plant shed its pink leaves. The class met on Tuesdays. It began after breakfast.  The subject was The Meaning of Life (see post on this). It was taught from experience.”

Albom said that “if Professor Morris Schwartz taught me anything at all, it was this: there is no such thing as “too late” in life. He was changing until the day he said good-bye.”   As the book winds up, we are told “the teaching goes on.”

Quotes

“Detachment doesn’t mean you don’t let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you fully. That’s how you are able to leave it.” 

“Maybe death is the great equalizer, the one big thing that can finally make strangers shed a tear for one another” 

My Secret Life on the McJob, by Jerry Newman →

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Jerry M. Newman, Ph.D., Professor at the University at Buffalo School of Management worked undercover, over a 14-month period, in seven fast food restaurants across the country, observing operations. He felt that fast food chains were the perfect petri dishes for undercover research, having high pressure, high volume, high turnover and a pecking order that was clear from the preparation table up to the store manager.

He worked at 6 franchise owned stores, including Burger King, Wendy’s, Arby’s, and one corporate owned McDonald.  His findings may have been different in independent owned stores and small regional chains. 

Newman’s book, "My Secret Life on the McJob: Lessons from Behind the Counter”, is characterized as a tell-all. The work force he studied really is different and the book opens our eyes to a different side of day to day work relationships.

Newman said: “My research strongly suggests that recognition for a job well done by the store manager was found to be a highly valued as a reward by employees, but the store managers were not authorized to give bonuses and raises were often 10 to 20 cents an hour. The most helpful reward an employee could receive from the store manager was to be given more work hours a week.  (When your only work reward is to work more then something is wrong with the basic work & pay model)

Newman said: In three of my jobs I spent the first day watching training DVD’s and he was critical of that process of training saying it was boring. The segment on hand washing was typical, showing an employee spending 10 minutes on hand washing with the heavy focus on the process rather than the why.  It would have been interesting to have feedback on whether the employees really did wash their hands.   

Newman said most of the stores had significant numbers of employees from minority groups and most stores didn’t practice racial discrimination, but they didn’t practice “inclusion” either. (Isn’t inclusion a tool of discrimination?) Individual differences just didn’t work well in stores that have a one size fits all layout and procedure manual.  

Some racial problems were the result of the managers work assignments when one group consistently got undesirable assignments. The conclusion that the fast food industry strives for diversity in its work force just assumes the motive is doing what is right and ignores the reality of why it may be driven by “what will work and what won’t.”

The book presents an employee view of a challenging work environment and can be of value in finding ways to motivate and create a positive work environment. The overall conclusion was that morale and motivation in these types of stores was mostly the result of the store manager. Small adjustments by the store manager in management style resulted in positive changes and big differences. (Doesn’t this suggest too much on the store managers shoulders ?) Some stores were great, and they had great managers. Some were not great at all.

(The book left me wondering how a white collage professor in these type of stores really got the real feel of the environment, but he seems to believe he did?)

Running Blind, A Jack Reacher Novel, by Lee Child →

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Reacher starts out helping a restaurant owner in New York avoid the extortion tactics of a local gangs. What he did comes to the attention to the FBI, but they have another important crime to solve

Retired from the Army and living alone, Amy Callan and Lieutenant Caroline Cook are found dead in their own home, in baths filled with Army-issue camouflage paint and with their bodies completely unmarked.

The FBI’s psychological profile expert is convinced, and has convinced her coworkers, that Jack Reacher had motive and was guilty of killing Amy and Caroline. It seems like an astounding conclusion at first, but she has facts that the FBI help her make work. When it is finally clear that he didn’t do it, the FBI frames and threatens him into helping them.

What have these women have in common, and why is someone out to do them harm, is where Reacher starts when he agrees to help, but he indeed seems to be, as the book title suggests, “Running Blind”?  

This is book #4 in Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series and Jack is trying to decide what to do with house he inherited and a young woman he has loved since childhood from book #3. Either of these books could stand alone and hold your interest but the resolution to these questions is welcomed in this book.

The plot twists and turns with his search for the killer but this book stands out from the 15 others I have read before reading and reviewing this book. The puzzle of who the killer is and how it was done is fascinating.

 True to form for a Lee Child plot and a book you will not want to put down, of course.

The Pilgrim’s Regress, by C.S. Lewis →

The Pilgrim's Regress is a book of allegorical fiction by C. S. Lewis. This style of writing uses symbolic figures, events and actions to convey complex meanings. An allegorical figure is a character that is an important person in the story and represents abstract meanings or ideas.

The novel was Lewis’s first work published by after his conversion and is a record of his own search for meaning and spiritual satisfaction—a search that eventually led him to Christianity.

His fictional plot, much like the 17th century novel Pilgrim Progress by John Bunyan’s novel, was also searching the current days philosophical landscape through a search for the Island, or destination, of his desire. The difference in the politics, ideologies, and principles of the early 20th century as seen by Lewis showed the modern phoniness, and hypocrisy of the Christian church, Communism, Fascism, and other movements.

His search represented by pilgrim John was to an enchanting island which created in him an intense longing and desire. His search lead to meeting such people as Mr. Enlightenment, Media Halfways, Mr. Mammon, Mother Kirk, Mr. Sensible, and Mr. Humanist and through such cities as Thrill and Eschropolis as well as the Valley of Humiliation.

 Lewis's allegory enabled the author to confirm, using fantasy, his belief in Christianity.

see Literary Favorite Section for more about C.S. Lewis and also links to all the books reviewed on this site by him. click here

Quotes

“Be sure it is not for nothing that the Landlord has knit our hearts so closely to time and place – to one friend rather than another and one shire more than all the land.” 

“The great art of life is to moderate our passions. Objects of affection are like other belongings. We must love them enough to enrich our lives while we have them, not enough to impoverish our lives when they

“What does not satisfy when we find it, was not the thing we were desiring.” 

“There is no excess of goodness. You cannot go too far in the right direction.” 

Kill Me If You Can by James Patterson & Marshall Karp →

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My own purpose in reading “Kill Me If You Can” was to have a reading experience with James Patterson since I had not read one of his books before. I didn’t pay enough attention to notice right off that the book is a Patterson-Karp collaboration which means I am not sure what I really got.

The plot holds your attention and the story is a fast read. It starts out with an attempted assassination by a hit man known as the Ghost in New York City’s Grand Central Station. The Ghost, considered the world’s best assassin, killed his target but the diamonds were stashed somewhere first and not recovered.

Matthew Bannon is a local art student and he appears to just find the diamonds in an open locker and walk away with them. He takes them home and tells his art professor girlfriend they have tickets to Paris. The extravagant getaway finds itself the focus of two different hired killers with instructions for find Bannon and kill him. The Ghost is expected to redeem himself and find Bannon but now a women assassin has been added to the chase.

Martha Krall is beautiful, intelligent and she is deadly. She resents the Ghost’s involvement and is jealous of his reputation so she was especially happy to learn that besides Bannon she would get a bonus if she also killed the Ghost.

Does Steven King, Dean Koontz or Lee Child have a lot to worry about in being ranked against James Paterson for writing? I am not saying he isn’t a great writer and he has an impressive record, but he is not in the top three on this list nor would I say he is officially number four either.

See Review of Along Came A Spider by James Patterson

https://connectedeventsmatter.com/blog/2019/4/30/along-came-a-spider-by-james-patterson

See more about James Patterson in BJ’s Favorite Author Section

Down The Long Hills, by Louis L'Amour →

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It was early in the morning and 3-year-old Betty Sue had left camp following 7-year-old Hardy, who had gone out early to look for his stallion, Big Red, who he had failed to tie up the night before and was missing.

After they had left camp Comanches came, attacked their camp and killed Betty Sue’s mother and father as well as everyone in the camp.  I was a quick raid made to take the horses and anything else of value, including food and weapons.

Hardy thought he had heard a scream and he left Betty Sue and returned to camp, but no one was left alive.  The only thing he found of value were a few cans of food and he took them back to where Betty Sue was.  They were alone and winter was coming soon, the only thing they could do was to try to find someone, somewhere, who could help and to try to go further West.

Big Red had come back but without a saddle all Hardy could do was lift Betty Sue to ride and they started out on the trail going West. Hardy had a knife and the few cans of food. They had nothing else but the cloths on their backs. O yes, Hardy had what he had learned in his young life from his father who was a long way from the camp and was not coming back soon.  Hardy knew that eventually he would return and that he would look for them if they could survive.

Along the trail west they were followed by Indians who wanted Big Red, and savage outlaws who also wanted the very impressive horse. The weather and the wild animals were also threats.

L’Amour makes us feel we are inside the story, he makes us care that Hardy and Betty Sue survive. We are pulled into the their struggle and it is like we are on the trail moving across Wyoming towards the Wind River Range, the South Pass, Beaver Creek and the landmarks that are still there today.

Quotes

“Hardy had learned in a hard school, where the tests are given by savage Indians, by bitter cold, by hunger. These were tests where the result was not just a bad mark if one failed. The result was a starved or frozen body somewhere, forgotten in the wilderness.” 

See more on Louis L’Amour in Literary Favorite section Plus Links to his books reviewed

A Wanted Man, A Jack Reacher Novel, by Lee Child

“Wanted Man”, book 17 in the Jack Reacher series, starts out with Reacher standing on an eastbound interstate ramp late at night looking for a ride back to Virginia. He had been interested in a women’s voice on the phone in a prior book and wanted to go see what she looked like.

He waited exactly 93 minutes before a car stopped containing two men and a woman. It turns out that the men, Alan King and Don McQueen, are kidnappers and the women, Karen Delfuens, is actually a hostage and terrified waitress whose car they have hijacked.

The kidnappers were running from the scene where they had murdered a man at an abandoned pump station in the middle of nowhere, a crime to which several Federal agencies were quickly reacting to. Julia Sorenson, an F.B.I. special agent from Omaha was called in to investigate the potential interstate crime when the kidnapping is learned about.

The kidnapping leads Sorenson to Reacher. She is as smart and methodical, as he is, and he convinces her that whatever is unfolding, he and she should be on the same side.

The trail leads, eventually, to a secret fortified bunker and Reacher must break in to get to the real bad guys.  The plot changes direction from a simple kidnapping and again Child, the master of plot, holds our interest to the end.

See the Lee Child Page for more thoughts on this author and for links to all the books reviewed on this site.

Quotes

“I don't want to put the world to rights... I just don't like people who put the world to wrongs.” 

“Reacher said, "So here's the thing Brett. Either you take your hand off my chest, or I'll take it off your wrist.” 

“Hope for the best, plan for the worst.” 

“Never forgive, never forget. Do it once and do it right. You reap what you sow. Plans go to hell as soon as the first shot is fired. Protect and serve. Never off duty.” 

“No, I'm a man with a rule. People leave me alone, I leave them alone. If they don't, I don't

Old Friend From Far Away, The Practice of Writing Memoir, by Natalie Goldberg

Natalie Goldberg said of her book “Old Friend From Far Away”: “The experience I’ve had with writing this book has deepened over the months. Continually accessing my own storehouse of memories, I’ve found that the things usually lost in the busyness of day to day life have instead become part of my life now, enriching me tremendously. The practice itself has become the end, the reason for doing it.”

The book offers new perspective on memoir suggesting that it doesn’t have to be confined to one place, or series of events, but can be organized around themes in your life, challenges you have faced, and recurring patterns. Rather than teaching how to write a memoir it shows how to recover your memory through the practice of writing.

Goldberg tells us that to “write memoir, we must first know how to remember. Through timed, associative, and meditative exercises, the book guides you to the attentive state of thought in which you discover and open forgotten doors of memory.”  

She uses writing to explain how we can learn to connect with our senses in order to find the detail and truth in our memories.  We not only learn to find the truth but how to free ourselves from our past and change the way we think of ourselves and our lives. Thirty plus years ago her book “Writing Down The Bones” sold over one million copies and broke ground writing about with its view of writing as a Zen practice and this book still holds that view.

This is not a how to book but a book about who we are that is well worth reading.

click here to link to review of Writing Down The Bones, by Natalie Goldberg

Quotes

“Too often we take notes on writing, we think about writing but never do it. I want you to walk into the heart of the storm, written words dripping off hair, eyelids, hanging from hands.” 

“The things that make you a functional citizen in society - manners, discretion, cordiality - don't necessarily make you a good writer. Writing needs raw truth, wants your suffering and darkness on the table, revels in a cutting mind that takes no prisoners...” 

“It is our hope that writing releases us. Instead maybe it deepens the echo. We call out to our past and the call comes back. We are alone--and not alone.” 

The Iliad, by Homer

Ilion is the ancient name for the city of Troy. So literally, the Iliad means ''poem of Troy.'' The book Illiad was written by Homer in about 750BC and is the story of the Trojan war and nine years after it started the Greek army conquers Chryse, a town allied with Troy, and capture two beautiful maidens. One of the maidens is then claimed by Achilles as his own and the other is claimed by Agamemnon. The father of one of the women is the daughter of Briseis who a priest serving the god Apollo. A very large ransom is offered for the women but refused, so the Trojans pray to Apollo and ask him to send a plague on the Achaean camp.

With Zeus supporting the Trojans and Achilles refusing to fight, the Achaeans suffer great losses. Without Achilles help, the Achaeans fight on relying on Diomedes another great warrior, but they make no progress and are pushed back to their ships. Before long they are fighting the Trojans just to save their ships from fire and the end of their struggle seems close.

Patroclus convinces Achilles to let him wear his armor to fool the Trojans and to take his place in battle, wearing his armor. Patroclus presence on the battlefield in the armor helps the Achaeans push the Trojans away from the ships and back to the city walls but this ploy soon fails. Apollo knocks Patroclus’s armor to the ground, and Hector slays him.

Patroclus’s body is brought back and when Achilles learns that Hector has killed Patroclus his is filled with rage and agrees to rejoin the battle. The god Hephaestus agrees to make a new suit of armor for Achilles and he rides into the battle.

Hector has left his men outside the walls of Troy not expecting Achilles to rejoin the battle. When the Trojan army see Achilles coming toward, they run in fear back behind the city walls. Achilles kills every Trojan in his path and then confronts Hector at the walls of Troy. At first Hector runs but then with the help of the goddess Athena he is finally tricked to stop running and must fight Achilles. The battle is intense, but Hector killed and then his body is tied to Achilles chariot and dragged across the battlefield for days.

It takes an intervention from the gods to get Achilles to agree that Hector deserves a proper burial. Zeus sends the god Hermes to escort King Priam, Hector’s father and the ruler of Troy, into the Achaean camp to ask for the burial. Priam pleads with Achilles to take pity on a father and return Hector’s body. Deeply moved, Achilles finally agrees and returns Hector’s body to the Trojans. Both sides agree to a temporary truce, and Hector receives a hero’s funeral.

 The story presented in the Iliad only covers a few weeks in the final year of the Trojan war which lasted over 10 years. Homer is considered the author of"The Iliad"  but it is clearly dependent on an older oral tradition and may well have been the collective inheritance of many singer-poets over a long period of time. These singer-poets may have each brought more stories of the role of the gods in the plot?

Quotes

“Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.” 

“Let me not then die ingloriously and without a struggle, but let me first do some great thing that shall be told among men hereafter.” 

“Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men. Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth, now the living timber bursts with the new buds and spring comes round again. And so with men: as one generation comes to life, another dies away.” 

“We men are wretched things.”

Personal, A Jack Reacher Novel, by Lee Child

They find Reacher by running a small ad in the Army Times and he sees it and calls. The ad was simply 5 words center page in a boxed column printed in bold type: “Reacher call Rick Shoemaker.” The very senior Army officer who thought of this approach refers to him “Sherlock Homeless.”

It is an international assassination plot involving a sniper that Reacher had sent to prison over 16 years ago that beckons his service, but it does seem like a coincidence. He is paired up with another officer named Casey Nice (“Nice by name, nice by nature”).

The plot complicates itself, of course, when it seems clear that there are 4 possible snipers involved in the assassination plot and the world leaders are at risk in a coming summit in London. This pulls in security from around the world, but Casey Nice and Reacher just strike out on their own, of course. The do talk with some of their security counterparts and the see that they are all like the CIA, or the DGSE, or MI6 in Britain. Reacher adds, “But we’re all still KGB really. Old wine, new bottles.” 

The plot may suggest a predictable read but as usual Child is the master of plot and this story is one that will capture your interest.

Quotes from this Novel

“No one talked, but they all said plenty.” 

“But we’re all still KGB really. Old wine, new bottles.”

“SVR,” he said, which meant Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki, which was their foreign intelligence service. Like the CIA, or the DGSE, or MI6 in Britain. Then he said, “But we’re all still KGB really. Old wine, new bottles.” 

Reacher tells us:“Socratic, they call it in college. All kinds of back and forth, designed to elicit truths implicitly known by all rational beings.”

“We both sat there mute, as if we were in a no-talking competition and serious about winning. ” 

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, a novel, by Sherman Alexie

Author Sherman Alexie’s has brought us an important story and meaningful look at real life today. This is a great book for everyone

Arnold Spirit Jr. tells us about his life as an Indian on the Spokane Reservation.  He was born with excess spinal fluid on the brain which he survived but he was left with a lisp and a stutter. He was far-sighted in one eye and near-sighted in the other. He is considered a geek. The other kids have bullied him growing up.  

Everyone was poor on the reservations, but Arnold said of his parents: “My parents came from poor people who came from poor people who came from poor people, all the way back to the very first poor people.”

As a 14-year-old high school freshman rather than going outside where he was teased and beaten up, he spends a lot of time in his room drawing cartoons which illustrate much of this story. “I think the world is a series of broken dams and floods,” he says, “and my cartoons are tiny little lifeboats.”

A teacher at school is the cause of Arnold being suspended from the reservation school. The teacher goes to his home and gives him a piece of advice: He tells him to get out of the reservation school saying  that he can do better. “The only thing you kids are being taught is how to give up,” the teacher says. Arnold transfers to Reardan High, 22 miles away in a small town full of wealthy white kids.

He excels in the new school, getting good grades and doing well on the basketball team.  He is half in a white environment and still half on the reservation dealing with its everyday realities

The author* shows us what hope is and why it grows with encouragement and environment.  A great book.

• Sherman Alexie, a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, was born in 1966. He grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, Washington.

Quotes

“I grabbed my book and opened it up. I wanted to smell it. Heck, I wanted to kiss it. Yes, kiss it. That's right, I am a book kisser.  Maybe that's kind of perverted or maybe it's just romantic and highly intelligent.” 

“I used to think the world was broken down by tribes,' I said. 'By Black and White. By Indian and White. But I know this isn't true. The world is only broken into two tribes: the people who are assholes and the people who are not.” 

“Do you understand how amazing it is to hear that from an adult? Do you know how amazing it is to hear that from anybody? It's one of the simplest sentences in the world, just four words, but they're the four hugest words in the world when they're put together.
You can do it………….I can do it……………………………………Let's do it.”

No Middle Name, The Complete Collected Jack Reacher Short Stories, by Lee Child

Why Lee Child? See note at bottom of review

A collection of 12 stories with 2 from Reacher’s teenage years—especially good is the one in which 13-year-old Reacher finds himself an army brat newly arrived with his family in Okinawa faced with a neighborhood bully. That ends as expected but then he also saves his father and brother from problems and finds time and occasion to give a neighbor girl her first kiss. She asked how she did, and he told her it was a better kiss than the four other kisses he had previous experienced from 2 other girls.

For those who have not followed through so many books our hero is ex-Army. He is a ex-military policeman, 6 foot 5 inches in his socks, 220-250 lbs. an a 50-inch chest. Hair: dirty-blond. Eyes: ice-blue.  (This is Not Tom Cruise so erase that image if you have it)

The twelve stories include Too Much Time, Second Son, High Heat, Deep Down, Small Wars, James Penny’s New Identity, Everyone Talks, Not a Drill, Maybe They Have a Tradition, Guy Walks into a Bar, No Room at the Motel and The Picture of the Lonely Diner.

I like the complete longer novels, and I think Child’s skill in building up tension and anticipation is actually better suited for them, but these short stories were great.

See Literary Section re Lee Child and his work and links to all the books reviewed here. Click Here

Quotes

“Waste not, want not, make do and mend, don’t make an exhibition of yourself.” 

“I was in the 110th MP,” Reacher said. “I’m not scared of PTSD. PTSD is scared of me.” 

“Without breaking stride Reacher head-butted him full in the face. Left, right, bang. A perfect ten, for style and content, and power and precision.” 

See Lee Child Literary Section

See Literary Section for Lee Child and also see links to all his books. Click here

The Literary Section will show that I read a lot of Lee Child Books. I also read a lot of John Steinbeck, C.S. Lewis , Maya Angelou, Stepehen King and other books. I have to ask myself on occasions why do I keep reading these Jack Reacher novels? Well Stephen King can be explained in part because he is such a good writer, and I like his approach. Lee Child seems to be a master at plot. That is my excuse and I will stick with it.

James Baldwin, a biography, by David Leeming

Is James Baldwin an intellectual? See note at bottom of review

James Baldwin became a literary giant with his writings exploring racism, class distinction and sexual difference in America. He was best known for his books: Go Tell It on the Mountain, Giovanmi’s Room, Another Country, The Fire Next Time and The Evidence of Thing Not Seen.

“Blackness and whiteness do not matter,” was at the core message of James Baldwin confrontation of the black alienation in American society. He felt that race forced and shaped ever aspect of African-American life. His writings were accepted by the white community because of his view that racism hurt both sides. It not only softened their view but hardened some fellow black writers such as Langston Hughes who said: “Jimmy, I fear you are becoming a 'Negro' writer,”

Baldwin personalized the issue of race, transforming the issue of local conflict into one of individual conscience. He defended the arts saying they should not be reduced to tools of political writing. Baldwin’s approach resonated and led to his being the best known black writer of his times.

David Leeming was close to Baldwin and wrote the story of his life tying his thoughts and growth with the books and essays Baldwin was so well known for. Leeming is a professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Connecticut. He personal closeness allowed him to include and focus on Baldwin difficulty in accepting his homosexuality, his attempted suicide in Paris in 1956 and his relationship with his unloving stepfather.

The book did a good job of seeing the development of Baldwins life and how it was part of his various writings but left many questions on who Baldwin really was.

Quotes

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.” 

“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.” 

“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.” 

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

 “Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be” 

“I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”

“Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.”

Is James Baldwin an Intellectual?

James Baldwin approached race issues differently than most who spoke out in his time. He was out front on the idea that discriminating and hate hurt the haters as much, or even more , than the ones that were hated and discriminated against.

The question is does this insight really make him into a intellectual? Was his comments the result of intensive reasoning and deep thinking? Did he study our humanness, as Shakespeare did?

He did respond to conclusions about his own human condition but wouldn’t a better question have been “why do we hate others” rather than focusing on how we go about hate and why it hurts us?

Nobel Lectures from the Literature Laureates, 1986 to 2006

This book will be of interest to those with a deep interest in writing or reading. The acceptance lectures are from 21 Nobel Literature Laureates, from 21 different countries, considered among the greatest minds in the world of literature.

Bloomsbury Review wrote of this book when it was first published that it “gives us a glimpse into the experiences, memories, and most passionately held beliefs of the past quarter century.”

The first Nobel Prize for Literature was presented in 1901, six years after Alfred Nobel drew up his last will and testament. He stipulated that the Prize for Literature was to be presented to the person who had produced “the most outstanding work in an ideal direction, as determined by the Nobel academy in Stockholm Sweden. The award celebrates the work of a writer whose contribution to literature consistently transcends national boundaries to connect with the human condition,

The book is as different as those receiving, he awards are and the chapters shown on the contents page are listed below. Maybe not for everyone but it offers some deep thought.

Table Of Contents

My father's suitcase / Orhan Pamuk

Art, truth and politics / Harold Pinter

Sidelined / Elfriede Jelinek

He and his man / J.M. Coetzee

Heureka! / Imre Kertész

Two Worlds / V.S. Naipaul

The case for literature / Gao Xingjian

To be continued ... / Günter Grass

How characters became the masters and the author their apprentice / José Saramago

Contra jogulatores obloquentes (against jesters who defame and insult) / Dario Fo

The poet and the world / Wislawa Szymborska

Crediting poetry / Seamus Heaney

Japan, the ambiguous, and myself / Kenzaburo Oe

The bird is in your hands / Toni Morrison

The Antilles: fragments of epic memory / Derek Walcott

Writing and being / Nadine Gordimer

In search of the present / Octavio Paz

Eulogy to the fable / Camilo José Cela

Mankind's coming of age / Naguib Mahfouz

Aesthetics and language / Joseph Brodsky

This past must address its present / Wole Soyinka

Laureates, 1901 to 2006.