God's Pocket (1983) by Pete Dexter

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

God's Pocket (1983)

by Pete Dexter

Devil's Pocket, South Philadelphia Pennsylvania 

Pennsylvania: 2/27

       Still finishing up the last chapter in print, but I'm on to the next chapter in Audiobook, and I actually enjoyed God's Pocket, which is about a South Philadelphia construction murder who is murdered on the job (deservedly so, many would say) and the consequences in its aftermath.  Pete Dexter is a newspaper columnist turned novelist, most known for winning the National Book Award in 1988 for his novel Paris Trout.  His last novel was published in 2009, and I'm guessing he is retired given his lack of recent publishing activity.   The most interesting aspect of this book for me is the character of the urban newspaper columnist- a role which had quite a run in the 20th century as an arbiter of urban intellectualism in many US cities but which has (sadly?) fallen by the wayside. 

      I thought God's Pocket would be a good Audiobook because of the working-class, Philadelphia accents, and I was not wrong.  At a little over six hours, it made for quick listen and it gave me the thought to go look up the 2014 movie, which starred Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

Mama Day by Gloria Naylor

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Mama Day (1988)

by Gloria Naylor

Willow Springs, South Carolina

South Carolina:  11/14

   Mama Day is an intergenerational family novel written from a variety of perspectives about an matriarchal African American clan that managed to obtain title to an island in between South Carolina and Georgia in the time before the United States was a country.  Every since, the clan has lived between and apart from the surrounding world creating a distinct African-American world that operates in the absence of white people. As is always the case, the use of multiple perspectives telling the same set of events once, twice and three times over slows down the pace of reading.   Particularly, the main plot line, about Ophelia AKA "Baby Girl" AKA "Coco" the scion of the imperial line of Days, and her relationship with George, a self-made orphan who has risen to be a co-owner of his own engineering firm in New York City, is told first by Ophelia then by George, or vice versa, for the entire length of the book.   As it turns out, despite interesting moments, neither character is particularly insightful about their situation, George having been raised without a family full stop and Ophelia having been raised in a matriarchy with literally no strong male role models.  

  Neither one of them has a clue, and that might have made for an interesting book, but after the couple head back to Ophelia's home island, the book bogs down in a magical-realist witchcraft plot that does no favors to any of the characters.  Mama Day was a swing and a miss for me, with some interesting moments- honestly, ANY African American characters who aren't totally poverty stricken are a welcome break from the usual tone of the titles selected by editor Susan Straight, and the scenes set in New York City, specifically the courtship between George and Coco, fit this bill.  However, the scenes that are set down in the South are tedious, and the idea that this whole book eventually boils down to (spoiler alert) Coco being voodoo hexed by a rival struck me as preposterous- and that's writing as a fan of magical realism, not to mention speculative fiction.

Disturbance (2020) by Phillipe Lançon

 Book Review

Disturbance (2020)

by Phillipe Lançon

  Phillipe Lançon is a French journalist who was injured during the Charlie Hebdo Islamicist shooting.  Basically, he had the lower half of his face shot off.  Disturbance details his recovery. I actually hadn't heard about Disturbance until I read Houellebecq's latest novel, Annihilation, which involves a similar kind of situation with a severe facial trauma.  Houellebecq's narrator/protagonist references Disturbance repeatedly and after finishing Annihilation it occurred to be that Disturbance might well be the better book and indeed, it was. 

   Lancon narrates his excruciating tale with the kind of sang-froid and aplomb that a reader expects from a member of the French intellectual class.  Yes, he had the lower half of his face shot off by an Islamicist angry about a cartoon but that won't stop him from thinking and philosophizing his was out of his situation- close to a year of surgery and rehabilitation often in circumstances of constant, excruciating discomfort.  A typical reader could only imagine, but thanks to Lancon, they do not have to. Rather, you get every detail- and Disturbance is not a short book- along with equally contemplative musings about the people around Lancon- his girlfriend, his ex, his family, the surgeon. 

Polostan (2024) by Neal Stephenson

 Audiobook Review

Polostan (2024)

by Neal Stephenson

   Neal Stephenson is probably my favorite author of popular/genre fiction.  He doesn't aspire to literary fiction status, but he is a genuinely inventive writer of  popular fiction, whether it be in his science fiction past or his thriller/dystopia/historical fiction present.   The thing about Neal Stephenson novels is that the reader is never bored by the ideas or the action, even when his books extend to lengths well beyond what is standard in the book industry.  Cryptonomicon, his representative on the 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die list, has a 40 hour plus length Audiobook edition.   Unfortunately, someone has gotten wise at his publisher because Polostan arrives as a clearly marked "Volume 1" of something called the "Bomb Light" cycle.   I'm assuming that the entire cycle is centered on the protagonist of Polostan: Dawn Rae Bjornsen, a plucky with a capital p early 20th century Communist/Anarchist of mixed Russian/American ancestry.  

   This book essentially sets up her backstory:  An early childhood in post-Revolutionary Russia, girlhood in America with her Russian-agent Dad during the Great Depression and then back to Russia after a series of adventures as a young woman.  The "present" of volume 1 finds her held captive by Russian intelligence as they evaluate her potential use as an agent.  Polostan uses a series of flashbacks as Dawn is vetted by the predecessor of the KGB.   Even knowing this going in, I wasn't angry, since it is, indeed, a chore to take on a thousand page novel, as is usually the case with Stephenson.  

  It's hard not to consider the impact of English writer of speculative fiction China Miéville, who is well known for introducing Marxist-Leninist/Communist/Anarchist themes into his speculative fiction, on Stephenson's choice of theme.  Stephenson is firmly in spy/espionage/thriller territory here, there isn't a single whiff of science-fiction in this book.  A reader might be advised to wait for whatever film/tv edition this series generates before reading the book.

The Origins of the Irish (2013) by J.P. Mallory

 Book Review

The Origins of the Irish (2013)

by J.P. Mallory

  I was in Ireland over the break and finally, on my third visit, made it to somewhere outside of Dublin (Cork and Belfast).  That got me thinking about the origins of the Irish people.  It's an interesting subject largely because of the status of the Irish language as one of the linguistic fringes of the Indo-European family of languages, which covers pretty much every language between India (Hindu) to Ireland that isn't Arabic.  Most laypeople could tell you that the ancient Irish were "the Celts," but as Mallory, a Professor in linguistics with a specialization in the roots of Indo-European languages, frequently opines, "the Celts" don't really mean anything in scholarly terms. 

   Historical genetics has also taken a huge leap in the years since The Origins of the Irish- Mallory mentions this in two post-scripts to the revised version which was published in 2017, but even since then advances have been made.  Mallory, who spent his professional life at Queen's University in Belfast, marshals the archeological evidence in chapters that make up most of the book.  After archeology he turns to genetics, then "self-reported" evidence from the Irish themselves before wrapping up with linguistic evidence.  

   He reports that archeologists pinpoint a transition between the mesolithic (stone age/hunters and gatherers) and neolithic (farming) populations, that tracks with changes found across Europe.  Specifically, that a population flowed from Anatolia through Southern Europe and Spain up to Ireland, and that this population genetically displaced the previous population.  This second group also began to build monumental architecture (think Stonehenge) and introduced prestige burials to the area.  Mallory observes that this group is genetically significant to Ireland but that the time horizon doesn't match up with any evidence supporting the language of Irish, so it is unlikely that the neolithic immigrants were "Irish" in that sense.

    Rather, Mallory posits an introduction of the Irish language to the growth of "hill-forts" which are also found in parts of central Europe during early Celtic migration periods.  He also argues that burials and objects found that are linked to horses and chariots are likely to support the introduction of the Irish language, probably from Scotland or the area surrounding the Isle of Man.  He concludes that the introduction of the Irish language is not linked to any genetic shift in the population, but either represents a linguistic shift brought about by a new elite or by a group that was genetically similar to the earlier, non-Irish speaking population.