Nuts & Mutton

Stumbled on this site by multi-media artist, Nina Katchadourian, today. I can’t wait to try it, the next time I have a month or two to spare.

Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization by Nicholson Baker.

Riveting.

From “I Don’t Believe in Atheists” by Chris Hedges:

The greatest danger that besets us does not come from believers or atheists; it comes from those who, under the guise of religion, science or reason, imagine that we can free ourselves from the limitations of human nature and perfect the human species. Those who insist we are morally advancing as a species are deluding themselves. There is little in science or history to support this idea. Human individuals can make moral advances, as can human societies, but they also make moral reverses. Our personal and collective histories are not linear. We alternate between periods of light and periods of darkness. We can move forward materially, but we do not move forward morally. The belief in collective moral advancement ignores the inherent flaws in human nature as well as the tragic reality of human history. Whether it comes in secular or religious form, this belief is magical thinking. The secular version of this myth peddles fables no less fantastic, and no less delusional, than those preached from church pulpits. The battle under way in America is not a battle between religion and science; it is a battle between religious and secular fundamentalists. It is a battle between two groups intoxicated with the utopian and magical belief that humankind can master its destiny. This is one of the most pervasive forms of self-delusion, as Marcel Proust understood, but it has disastrous consequences. It encourages us to ignore reality.

Also see his opening comments in a debate last year with Sam Harris.

IMHO, Hedges’ previous book, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, gives him a fair amount of credibility in this seemingly never-ending and increasingly raucous debate.

. . . when you can wait to trash the movie? This is the film that some Catholic organizations don’t want you to see. Interesting that the book has been on the shelves since 1995, but only now are the soi disant moral guardians waking up to its perfidy. Maybe they are riled by the fact that the villainess ~ played by that other well-known skinny blonde, Nicole Kidman ~ is named Coulter?

Rumour hath it that the movie has been bowdlerized by the producers, who removed much of author Philip Pullman’s anti-clerical sentiment. Even so, I can hardly wait to see the film, which looks amazing, but I know that it will be no match for the book, which is the first in the “His Dark Materials” trilogy. While any books that get Bill Donohue’s panties in a bunch have got to be worth reading, these books are among the best I have ever read. And my son and step-daughters loved them too, which probably means they are damned to eternal flames! Comparisons to the Harry Potter series abound, but they can seriously only be made by those who have not read any of the Pullman books.

Philip Pullman has also written a series of books set in Victorian times, about the adventures of Sally Lockhart, who sets out to find the truth behind her father’s death. Nothing at all like HDM, but still beautifully written yarns that any adolescent will love. They are being adapted by the Beeb, with Billie Piper (hated her in Dr Who!) playing Sally.

The First Husband and I spent five days over Easter in New York City, travelling there with some friends who are quite familiar with the city. My one and only experience of the Big Apple was some 15-20 years ago, when No. 1 Son and I stayed with friends in Connecticut, and spent a couple of afternoons and evenings strolling around Manhattan.

During this trip, we travelled by subway on several occasions and also went to the Top of the Rock, the elevator ride to the top of the Rockefeller Building. Both experiences were immeasurably heightened by the fact that I was reading Colum McCann’s amazing book during our infrequent down times in the hotel.

One of the protagonists, Nathan Walker, belongs to a team of “sandhogs,” the workers who are digging the subway tunnel under the East River in 1916. He is one of four “muckers,” men who go to the furthest reaches of the tunnel, out beyond the metal shield that holds the mud back in the event of an accident. It’s their job to shovel the mud and load it on carriages that are pulled out by draught horses, so that the shield can be pushed further into the tunnel. On the day the book opens, there is a spectacular accident. It’s based on an historical incident, the Great Blowout of 1916, when a blowout in the tunnel caused some sandhogs to be sucked right through the hole and out into the East River, on a geyser four storeys high. In McCann’s narrative, three of the sandhogs survive, while the fourth is trapped inside the walls of the tunnel.

Another of the protagonists, Nathan’s mixed-race grandson, born in 1964, becomes a beam walker, working on the skyscrapers. It’s his job to step out into space, onto a ball on the end of a crane jib line, which carries him across to a column, where he wraps his legs around the column and waits for the crane to bring him a beam, which he knocks into place. Then he and the co-worker who had done the same job at the other end of the beam, walk across the beam to the middle, where the headache ball, as they call it, picks them up again and carries them down to the decking several storeys below, where the other workers are.

One of the sub-themes in the books is the unbelievable racism of those times. I know that racism is far from dead in the USA, but it’s nothing by comparison with then, when black people were treated like animals. Immersed as I was in the events taking place in McCann’s book, there was a certain sweet irony to noticing an African-American woman on the subway, one evening, reading one of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency books by Alexander McCall Smith.

Long time no blog. Instead of reading and writing, I’ve been cataloguing my books, which was one New Year resolution I was determined to fulfil. It’s going well; four rooms finished, and only one and a half to go. It’s not exactly the Dewey system. All I’m trying to do is locate books because I’m so fed up of thinking I have a book, and then not knowing where to find it. Number Two Stepdaughter listed most of them by hand over a couple of summers, and I’ve been entering them in an Excel spreadsheet whenever the humour was on me. But this January I knuckled down, finished entering the titles, author, and location in the spreadsheet, and got myself some labels and protectors from an online library store.

What an intellectual wanker I was in my youth! I have stuff written by and about de Chardin, Castaneda, Marcus Aurelius, Cellini, Plato. I have tons of existential crap, nestling cheek by jowl with business how-to manuals, self-help tomes, and books of poetry. I have no memory of reading any of them, but that doesn’t mean anything, since I usually can’t remember books within weeks of finishing them. Which may be why I have duplicate and triplicate copies of several books. Would you believe SIX copies of Emma, three of Mansfield Park, two of Marketing Warfare?

In my defense, I do not have a single Tom Clancy, Robert Ludlum, or Jeffrey Archer. I may have been a wanker, but my taste was impeccable!

. . . is what I call a reading list.