VANISHED EMPIRES

Dedicated to classics and hits.

Wednesday, August 27, 2025

1,001 Novels: A Library of America Virginia

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America 
Virginia

  It took me just about seven months to make it through the 17 novels from Virginia in the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project.  September of 2024 through the middle of April, 2025.  It was the first of the "southern tier" of this particular chapter: Delaware, Maryland and Washington DC for the north, Virginia and North and South Carolina for the south.  I guess my favorite book was the one I'd already ready- House of Leaves (2000) by Mark Danielewski, which is also on the 1,001 Novels to Read Before You Die list.  Beyond House of Leaves there is Blacktop Wasteland, a great regional noir, and The Book of Numbers (1969) by Robert Deane Pharr, another book with an African-American author and an eye for the seedy underbelly of the tidewater region. 


Published 9/25/24
The Yellow Birds (2012)
by Kevin Powers
Richmond, Virginia
Virginia: 1/17

    Virginia is the most significant state hit I've tackled since I finished off New York and it's 100 books of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project.  This chapter has Delaware (3), Maryland (9), Washington DC (12) and North (20) and South Carolina (13).   Delaware and Maryland are both "minor" states and the rest are mid-range.  I have little personal experience in Virginia outside of the garden suburbs of Washington DC- which are just as likely to come up in the DC books as they are here.  As for the rest of Virginia... I drove through the state on my post-college drive back to the west coast, but didn't stop.  I've never been to Richmond, the location of The Yellow Birds, an Iraq war and its aftermath novel by Kevin Powers, and I've certainly never been to the rest of Virginia, so in that sense, I'm looking forward to learning some more about the state beyond what I know of its super racist history and purple state present. 
   
   The New York Times gave it a rave review in 2012.  It was a finalist for the National Book Award.  A movie version was released in 2017 with a cast that included Jenifer Aniston, Toni Collette and Jason Patric.  The movie version cost twelve million and made fifty thousand in theaters, which I think means that it essentially went unreleased.  It has a 44/37 split on Rotten Tomatoes.   The Amazon product page has 2000 reviews which is good but not great. 
 
 Michiko Kakutani, writing in the Times, called it "brilliantly observed and deeply affecting" and compared it to Tim O'Brien, specifically to his 1990 collection of short stories about the Vietnam War, The Things They Carried.  Thankfully, The Yellow Birds is not a collection of short stories.  It does track backwards and forwards in time in an attempt to find out what happened to Murph, a naive young soldier who Bartle, the protagonist and frequent narrator, swears to protect before they go off to fight in the first Iraq War.

   Powers intersperses the present- which is Bartle back in Richmond, living under a bridge by the river and bemoaning his PTSD with florid glimpses of the gritty, bloody scenes of the first Iraq War.  I'm a huge fan of reading about the horrors of war- the inevitable scene of field medics or the soldier himself trying to stuff his intestines back into his body after falling victim to an explosive is one of my personal favorites and of course it happens in this book.

     The secret at the center of The Yellow Birds left me a bit overwhelmed. In fact, I'm hard pressed to explain what Kakutani found so enchanting about the prose- maybe it was good timing on the part of Powers, publishing at the exact time when readers were looking for this particular perspective. In 2024 it's like, throw it on the horrors of the forever war pile.

Published 9/26/24
Manywhere (2022)
by Morgan Thomas
Jamestown, Virginia
Virginia: 2/17

   Manywhere is a collection of short stories, many featuring "genderqueer" protagonists, set all over the rural and semi-rural south.  Many, many diversity points scored between the different stories and their locations and their characters: Rural, socio-economic, LGBTQ etc.   One story is historical fiction about an immigrant who lived as a man for decades before revealing themselves as a biological woman.  Another is about a transman who buys a pregnancy bump from Amazon and wears it to work, where her co-workers aren't aware of her background.  Not all the stories are about "genderqueer" characters- one story involves a young woman living in rural Oklahoma who becomes a surrogate for another couple after having a child of her own.

  The language is haunting and poetic, it was a good Audiobook to pick because of the lyricism of the language.

Published 10/4/24
My Monticello (2021)
by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson
Charlottesville, Virginia
Virginia: 3/17

   My Monticello is a collection of a few short stories and the title novella about a near-future break down of authority/government as experienced by a young, Virginia-based African American woman and her white boyfriend and a cluster of neighbors who relocate to Monticello (Thomas Jeffersons' estate) where Da'Naisha muses over the impending end of the world, her pregnancy and the possibility that the father could either be her white boyfriend or black ex-boyfriend, both of whom are with her at Monticello.  She also is concerned about her Grandmother, who is also at Monticello and close to death.   Even taking into account that a novella is short by definition, not much happens here.  There is one trip outside (it goes badly) and a looming showdown with white supremacists that happens off page, after the end of the novella.

  While I'm no stranger to the drama of women being pregnant under difficult circumstances- seemingly about 15% of the entire literary output of English language literature in any given time period, it seemed strange to center a novella on that subject and end it before she gives birth.  

Published 10/14/24
The House Girl (2013)
by Tara Conklin
Lyndhurst, Virginia
Virginia: 4/17

    One observation I would make about Virginia and North Carolina is this theme of enslaved people being sold from the relatively benign environments of the upper South to the harsher, crueler world of the cotton belt:  Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.  The plantation economy of places like Lyndhurst, Virginia is one of perpetual, inevitable decline as the soil failed from primitive 17th and 18th century farming techniques.  Instead, you had these small plantations owned by families who owned multiple properties or leased land to others, or made their money from a profession or trade.  The slaves in these environments were an asset of the estate that could be sold off in times of economic distress to places that needed man and woman power.

   The House Girl is two inter-related stories, one about Lina, a contemporary attorney working at a white-shoe law firm, she lives in Brooklyn with her artist Father and a mother who "died" under mysterious circumstances.  She is recruited by a partner at her firm to work on an unusual case undertaken at the behest of an African-American defense contractor, a lawsuit for reparations for slavery.  She is tasked with finding the so-called, "Lead Plaintiff," a lineal descendent of an enslaved individual who can serve as the face of the lawsuit.

  This story intersects with that of Josephine, the "house girl" of the title and an 18th century slave who works as the lady-in-waiting for her dying mistress on a swampy, run-down Virginia plantation.  The House Girl is a good pick for the 1,001 Novels project on a couple of levels.  First, with over 7000 Amazon reviews it is a certified hit by the standards of literary fiction (though this isn't quite that).  Second, Lyndhurst is the farthest east location for a Virginia title save two books set near the Cumberland Gap (that's a thing, right?), and the gloomy, gothic plantation where Josephine lives is very evocative of the time and place. 

  Published 10/24/24
A Stolen Life (1999)
by Jane Louise Curry
Shirley Plantation, Virginia
Virginia: 5/17


    The Shirley Plantation where A Stolen Life- which is a Newberry Prize winning Children's book, is set at the southern edge of an arc of territory that encompasses all of the books from Delaware, Maryland and Washington DC, and all but six of the titles from Virginia.  There's a clear dividing line between this territory, which is basically the watershed of the Chesapeake Bay, and the rest of the area of Chapter 4:  western Virginia and all of North and South Carolina.  The defining characteristics of these books is their proximity to water and status as "old" parts of the United States, with a history that reaches back to the colonial era.  

    That brings us to A Stolen Life, about a young girl who is kidnapped (or "spirited" in the quasi-whimsical language of the time) away from her home in coastal Scotland and sold as an indentured servant in still-wild colonial Virginia.   If I have my history correct, the father of the protagonist is a rebellious Jacobite, and the reason for her kidnapping is tied up in her families decision to have her dress as a boy to avoid the wrath of the English king (for complicated reasons).  Thus, the spiriters take her for a boy when they grab her off the Scottish coast.

    A Stolen Life is a children's book, so her adventures in the new world, which include being kidnapped by Cherokees are decidedly PG but I enjoyed the rare depiction of life in colonial era Virginia.  

Published 10/23/24
Mattaponi Queen (2010)
by Belle Boggs
Mattaponi Reservation, Virginia
Virginia:  6/16

I love the Native American books in the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America list. I thought I had a pretty good grasp on the different types of tribes out there but this was the first representation of the first peoples of Virginia, AKA the "Pocahontas" tribe that interacted with Captain John Smith.  They were and are a tribe of Algonquin speaking people who were members of the Powahatan chiefdom.  They have a rich and complex history but Mattaponi Queen doesn't really get into it, except to the occasional reference to a character who is absent because she left to act in Hollywood because she looked "just like" Pocahontas or another character musing about what a disappointment the real Pocahontas would have been to her family when she left for England in colonial times.

 The stories aren't all about Native American characters- both African American and White residents are represented, and this had the first story I can remember where I wasn't sure what race a character was until I really thought about it.  It's a rural milieu, so the stories in this volume resemble the stories from other run down, economically morose parts of the United States:  Health issues, poverty, a desire to escape coupled with an inability to do so- they all get ample space.  The dwarf river boat of the title doesn't appear till the end as part of a story about the owner and his desire to sell the boat and restore it at the same time.   

Published 11/1/24
The Book of Numbers (1969)
by Robert Deane Pharr
Richmond, Virginia
Virginia: 7/17

   I've got 10 titles to go for Virginia and I'm out of Audiobooks.  I actually had to buy a copy of The Book of Numbers, a lost classic by African-American author Robert Deane Pharr.  Like many of the lesser-known classics of post World War II African American literature, The Book of Numbers has some shocking language and behavior as judged by the standards of bourgeois white America.  Pharr writes about a fictional city based on Richmond Virginia and about the denizens of "the block," the only African American urban area in Virginia.  Once again, it's worth observing that in 1806 Virginia passed a law that required freed slaves to leave Virginia within 48 hours, and that undoubtably had an impact in reducing the native population of free African Americans until after the Civil War.  

  The main focus of The Book of Numbers is an African American racketeer named Dave and his mentor-sidekick Blueboy.  They blow into town with a bankroll funded by the insurance money Dave received from the deaths of his parents and proceed to start Richmond's first numbers racket.   I didn't know much about numbers before I started 1,001 Novels: A Library of America, but The Book of Numbers isn't the first or second book to use the numbers racket in its plot.  Pharr is very detailed about the ins and outs of the racket- one memorable chapter involves Blueboy and Dave trying to locate a printer who will print the triplicate pads required to run a numbers game.  This was also the first mention of how the numbers were generated- Dave would use the first three winners of horse races at various tracks around the country. 

  The language is very earth- tons of N-words and frank discussions of sexuality that still seem pretty racy.   There's also a cool blaxploitation era movie that you can watch on youtube.  The Book of Numbers was a real stand-out for me in this chapter  of the 1,001 Novels project.
   
Published 11/11/24
The Kitchen House (2010)
by Katherine Grissom
Tidewater, Virginia
Virginia: 8/17

   The Kitchen House by Katherine Grissom resides squarely in the "white lady book club" category.  It has a cover quote from Alice Walker(!) comparing it to The Help and my paperback copy had one of those complicated, multi-flap covers that only come with "Recommended by Jenna" stickers added or the like. Grissom blends the stories of a white child who is brought to a Virginia plantation with the story of her African-American counter-part, Belle, slightly older and way wiser in the troubling ways of pre-emancipation Virginia.  To whit, the ability of any white man to force himself on any black woman with legal impunity, and indeed, the ability to sell his own child should the mood or need arise.

  This dynamic is at the heart of Grissom's tale, and perhaps it is why an author like Alice Walker would agree to blurb the book jacket of a white author telling a story involving narrators of both races.  Here, the dramatic tension is maintained by the white Irish servant girl's very naivete about such matters.   Compared to other characters in the same circumstances, her ignorance often seemed comical but I suppose that is book-club land for you. 

Published 11/13/24
Big Stone Gap (2001)
by Adriana Trigiani
Big Stone Gap, Virginia
Virginia: 9/17

  Finally, a book from this part of the country that wasn't narrated by a sad, abused white girl or her African-American counterpart.  My overwhelming impression of the entire 1,001 Novels: A Library of America is that of the perspective of an adolescent or pre-adolescent woman living on the margins of American society.  Which is fine, but it's hard to distinguish the perspectives from each other since every protagonist has almost the exact same background: limited/poor education, extremely limited geographical horizons and challenging family.

   Big Stone Gap, on the other hand, has an interesting and relatively sophisticated narrator- Ave Maria, the 30 something "town spinster" of Big Stone Gap, which guards the entrance to the Appalachians.  She runs the town pharmacy, which she inherited from her Dad and she has recently buried her Mother, who died after a long illness.  Her mother, an Italian immigrant, throws Ave's well ordered world into chaos when she reveals, after her death, that the man Ave thought was her biological father is not, and that instead her mom emigrated to the US from Italy after getting knocked up by a married man in her Italian village.

   This startling revelation sets off a chain of activity and provides most of the plot.  Generally speaking, Big Stone Gap is Hallmark movie/rom-com territory but I actually enjoyed listening to Audiobook Ave Maria and hearing about her life.  Some of Ave's tropes made me roll my eyes- like her insistence that she was the town spinster in her mid 30's, and her refusal to see the love that has eluded her has, in fact, been in front of her the whole time, but those are the rules of the rom-com/Hallmark movie.  I also enjoyed listening to her country accent- the Audiobook was narrated by the Author, so that was a treat. I wouldn't recommend this book but I didn't mind listening to it as part of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project.

Published 11/14/24
Black Mountain Breakdown (1980)
by Lee Smith
Black Mountain, Virginia
Virginia: 10/17

  Geographically speaking, Black Mountain Breakdown is just down the road from the last book, Big Stone Gap, and the two books combined are the only representatives from far western Virginia.   Unlike the last book, Black Mountain Breakdown is another book which epitomizes the preferred POV of editor Susan Straight:  Adolescent girl protagonist character, can't get her act together for reasons which are hard to understand, spends her life between periods of normalcy where a man takes care of her and longer periods where she is neither barely functional or actually institutionalized.  Crystal Spengler is the lady in question and maybe the best thing I have to say about this book is that the writing style was sophisticated/modernist enough to give me trouble in actually comprehending the book.   Only the last portion, where Crystal becomes the wife of a rising Virginia politician, really stuck in my memory.  Published in 1980, Black Mountain Breakdown still belongs to the gauzy/hazy era of mental health where people were afflicted with nameless maladies and institutionalized for reasons that had more to do with the judgments of the people around them than any desire to help the sufferer get better. 

Published 12/12/24
House of Leaves (2000)
by Mark Danielewski
Rappahannock, Virginia
Virginia 11/17

  Hard pass on the idea of re-reading this 800 pager.  It's the first cross-over book in this chapter between the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project and the 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die list. 



Published 5/1/18
House of Leaves (2000)
by Mark Danielewski


   Like Donnie Darko or Infinite JestHouse of Leaves is a love it or hate it proposition, an 800+ page book containing a half dozen different narrative voices, typefaces, page layouts and the most footnotes in a novel I've ever seen outside of the aforementioned Infinite Jest, which, now that I think about it, used end-notes, not footnotes.   The two major narratives in House of Leaves are about a purported documentary film about a house that contains infinite space inside of it AND a story, told in the footnotes, of a late 20th century LA hipster type who discovers the manuscript about the documentary film in the bedsit of a Bukoswski like deceased hobo.

  I was astonished- astonished- to learn for the first time of this book via the 1001 Books project. Not because I particularly liked it or anything like that, but just that it very much seems like something someone I know would have read or told me about.  It may be simply that it was published at a time- I was in law school in 2001- when I wasn't really tracking on new books.   The copy I read- a 2nd edition, is the cleaned up, big budget version that includes not only the novel but a companion piece, called The Whalestoe Letters, which are letters written by the institutionalized mother of the LA hipster type who authors one of the two major narratives in the book.

  At times, the "infinite house" at the center of House of Leaves, and the explorations within, seem to comment on the eccentricities of post-modern criticism: People wandering around in an infinite darkness, unable to derive any specific meaning from their experience.   Such postmodern fuckery was hardly novel in 2000, when House of Leaves was published, but Danielewski brings a certain counter-cultural swagger that obviously appealed to the readers who made it such a cult hit. 

Published 1/6/25
The Tidewater Tales (1987)
by John Barth
Cheaspeake Bay, Virginia
Virginia: 12/17

  AND I'M BACK!!!!

   This 600 page plus BEHEMOTH of a novel took me over a month to complete.  It really had me thinking about the novel as an artform and the various ways audiences and publishers collaborate to fix the form of a novel.  It also reminded me of the discourse surrounding Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace and whether it might be the worst book ever.  Frankly it is hard to imagine the literary world where this book was launched.  It's about a waspish couple who take their sail boat around the Chesapeake Bay for a couple weeks.  It is loosely structured around the idea of Scheherazade  and 1,001 Nights but it was so tedious trying to really figure what was happening I felt content to just drift along.  There was a lot about the female partner's prior marriage to a would-be Maryland politician.  There were several chapters detailing the travel of various named sperm on a race to fertilize the egg of the female half of the couple on the boat.  There is a sub-plot about the death of a probably CIA operative in the Chesapeake Bay and plenty about the family history of the couple.

    It's a very waspy affair and in that sense it's a welcome break from the middle and working class perspectives of most of the books in this chapter.  Something I took for granted before I started this project was the idea that literary fiction is written from the perspective of literary PEOPLE, now I understand this whole world both of proletarian and middle class fiction where the characters don't give a hoot about books let alone literary culture.  

  
Published 1/15/25
Black Thunder (1936)
by Arna Bontemps
Richmond, Virginia
Virginia: 13/17

  Black Thunder scores high marks in several categories. First, it was written before 1980.  Second, the author is an interesting dude (African American, lived in Los Angeles).  Third, it has an interesting subject, a historical slave revolt in Virginia in the very early 19th century (1800).  Understanding what actually happened in the South before the Civil War requires reading about slave revolts because of the fierce impact they had on the wild imaginations of white elites in the South, and the way that fear was then translated into a very heavy handed legal regime.  It might sound absurd to talk about more or less cruel forms of slavery, but the American South was, in fact, quite cruel relative to other slave systems, with slavery being hereditary and with strict limits being placed on uplifting slaves (It was illegal to teach slaves to read in South Carolina) as well as limits being placed on the ability of non-slave blacks to remain in slave states (Freed slaves had to leave Virginia within 48 hours of freedom.)

   I wish there were more picks like this in the 1,001 Novels project.  If I was involved in any revision I would add more older titles and remove more of the recent titles. 

Published 1/17/25
The Ice at the Bottom of the World (1990)
by Mark Richard
Franklin, Virginia
Virginia: 14/17

   This collection of short-stories won the Faulkner/Pen AWARD in 1990.  He published one other collection of short-stories, one novel and one work of non-fiction.  As the Penguin product page makes clear, you can file Richard under "southern gothic," comparing him to Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor.  I didn't have to read the product page to get that vibe- it comes through on every page.  When I read an author with a career trajectory like Mark Richard:  early short story collection wins a prize, a debut novel that doesn't sell and then...nothing...I'm always interested in the question of "what happened?"  Here, the combination of reading his short story collection and a description of his first and only novel, Fishboy, gives me a good idea of what happened.  His first novel didn't sell, and there was nothing about the way it didn't sell to inspire a big publisher to give him another shot, and Richard, for whatever reasons either couldn't or wouldn't take a step backwards.  His Wikipedia page fills in the rest- he moved to Los Angeles and started writing and producing both network and prestige series television.  There you have it. 

Published 1/24/25
A Country of Strangers (1989)
by Susan Richards Shreve
Elm Grove, Virginia
Virginia: 15/17

     Set in then-rural Virginia outside of Washington DC, A Country of Strangers is a work of historical fiction (World War II) about the intertwined fates of two families, one African-American and the other white.  Like many of the less succesful titles on the 1,001 Novels list (I had to buy a copy because the Los Angeles Public Library doesn't have one), A Country of Strangers has some interesting moments and take the notion of "place" seriously, but wasn't compelling as an overall work.   Author Shreve hints at some interesting subjects- the idea of an interracial, extra-martial affair between the Danish immigrant wife of the white couple and the husband of the African American family, but doesn't take it far enough to create real interest in the reader.   The plot line involving a pregnant 13 year old from a cadet branch of the African American family sparks interest but the character herself, named Prudential after the insurance company, does not. 

Published 2/17/25
Blacktop Wasteland (2020)
by S.A. Crosby
153 Main St, Mathews, Virginia
Virginia: 16/17

   I have been trying to finish Blacktop Wasteland, S.A. Crosby's excellent crime-caper book, since it was published in 2020, but it hits so close to my professional life that I couldn't bear it.  Even within the constraints of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project, Blacktop Wasteland was a struggle.  I checked it out twice as an Audiobook and once as an Ebook before I finally finished a hardback copy from the public library. It was only a struggle because the characters are so richly drawn, particularly the protagonist, that it was impossible for me not to empathize with them to the point where reading/listening to the book was painful.   

Published 4/14/25
Horse People (2013)
by Cary Holladay 
Rapidan, Virginia
Virginia: 17/17

   Finally closing out the Virginia sub-chapter of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project with Horse People, the impressively obscure novel-in-the-form-of-a-short-story-collection that I had to buy off Amazon because the Los Angeles Public Library system does not own a copy, and there is no Ebook, and there is no Audiobook.   Despite the title, the book isn't about "Horse People" in the sense that I understand that term which is "rich people who don't have to work and spend all their time and energy riding horses and talking about them."  Rather, the central figures seem to be a succession of what you might call the Viriginia version of poor white people, followed over generations, with the addition of a wealthier white woman who is more in line with what I expected from the use of that term. 

  I'd never heard of the author before- she's published nine books, all but one on a small or university press (this book was published by the University of Louisiana press, and her most lasting relationship is with the University of Ohio press) but it looks like she mostly works in the area of short stories. I didn't love the Viriginia chapter- Virginia didn't have the Kook factor of North Carolina and South Carolina, and I didn't relate to the locations like I did in Washington DC and Maryland.  Bye Virginia- doubt I will be back!

Monday, August 25, 2025

Gone With the Wind(1936) by Margaret Mitchell

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America
Gone With the Wind (1936)
by Margaret Mitchell
Clayton County, Georgia
Georgia: 15/26

  I read Gone With the Wind back in 2015. I considered listening to an Audiobook version but decided against it. 



Published 1/30/15
Gone with the Wind (1936)
by Margaret Mitchell


   Gone with the Wind is a brick, first of all.  The hard back version I checked out from the San Diego Public Library was full 8.5 x 11 dimensions and close to a thousand pages.  A thousand pages! Gone with the Wind is both a top ten novel and film in terms of popularity for those art forms. Gone with the Wind was the first and only novel that Margaret Mitchell wrote. In 2015, more people are familiar with the 1939 film but the book has sold 30 million copies.  It's the second most popular novel behind the Bible with American audiences.

  Make no mistake- Gone with the Wind is racist as HELL.  It is UNBELIEVABLE how virulently racist Gone with the Wind is.  Annnddd.... even though Gone with the Wind is written about the 19th century, it was published in 1936 and everyone LOVED it.  I don't know that GwtW is defensible in the way that Uncle Tom's Cabin- a book written during the 19th century by an ardent abolitionist.

  In terms of literary antecedents, Scarlett O'Hara most resembles Becky Sharp from Vanity Fair.  The amount of literary merit one accords to GwtW is likely to tie closely to ones opinion about the literary merit of Vanity Fair.  If you haven't read Vanity Fair, you should probably read that book before you read this book.

Friday, August 22, 2025

Silver Sparrow (2011) by Tayari Jones

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America
Silver Sparrow (2011)
by Tayari Jones
Atlanta, Georgia
Georgia: 14/26

  Tayari Jones had a breakout hit in 2018 with her novel, An American Marriage, which was an Oprah's book club selection, a sales hit and a literary prize award winner.  I read it when it was released- a good example of a book that I would only read based on the attention of people like Oprah and the Prize Committee's, i.e. not a subject matter (race based injustice in the criminal justice system in the south) that I would seek out given my day job as a criminal defense attorney.   But I did read it, and I thought it was a well-written book.   Susan Straight, editor of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America did not select An American Marriage to represent Jones, but rather picked her third novel, Silver Sparrow, about the experience of two children growing up with a bigamist father.  

   I know Jones is a good writer, so I wasn't dreading Silver Sparrow the way I might have been, in light of the number of novels in the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project that stick to the viewpoint of pre-adolsecent children who are stuck in a shitty living situation and never go anywhere or do anything while getting abused by their family members.  No one gets physically or sexually abused here, but the psychic scars of both families are front and center.  

   Like many of the novels that deal exclusively with family issues, I was left wondering why people bother with having kids and relationships if it is just going to bring them misery.  I know the answer: because every human being thinks things will work out for THEM.  Here, the Mom of the side family is particularly vexing as she copes with a situation that she walked into with eyes wide open.   Girl, I wanted to scream, don't do it.  

Thursday, August 21, 2025

Appalache Red (1978) by Raymond Andrews

 1,001 Novels:  A Library of America
Appalache Red (1978) 
by Raymond Andrews
Muskhogean County, Georgia
Georgia (13/26)

     This is the half-way point for the Georgia chapter of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project.  Currently I'm reading around the south of Georgia.  Muskhogean county is closer to Tallahassee, Florida than Atlanta by hundreds of miles.   This southern part of Georgia contains peach and pecan trees and swamps as well.  I enjoyed Appalache Red, the first of a four-part series about the goings-on in this part of Georgia.  It's more about the town than the eponymous Red, a Caucasian looking, African-American Entrepeneur who manages to turn a humble black-owned diner into a sprawling sin-embracing bar and casino.   I like the novels from the south that don't sugar-coat the cruelty and violence of this part of the world, and Red fits that bill, with plenty of rough talk and triggering behavior that probably explains why this book, and the author, are mostly forgotten today.  It even says that it won an award: The James Baldwin Prize, that the internet says doesn't even exist.

Wednesday, August 20, 2025

Unworthy Republic (2020) by Claudio Saunt

Audiobook Review
Unworthy Republic: 
The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory (2020)
by Claudio Saunt

        Unworthy Republic is a 2020 Bancroft Prize (US history) winner about the removal of Native American tribes from the Eastern half of the United States.   It is a sad, sordid history, not simply limited to the more-or-less well known "Trail of Tears" but including similar removals from the old Northwest (today's Ohio/Wisconsin/Michigan) and Florida.  

        In law school I learned about the legal back and forth- tribes desperately seeking relief from the Congress and the United States Supreme Court over a period of decades with limited/no success.  I know about the result- the presence of dozens of tribes in the eastern half of Oklahoma who had no historical ties to the area.  What I learned from this book were the voices of those involved- the leaders of civilized tribes who thought the Federal government would protect them.  The bureaucrats and adventurers who were tasked with implementing the removal.  The state authorities in places like Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina and Florida, who come off the worst of the bunch and the voices of Americans from outside the South and old Northwest, who often stood in opposition to these policies.

    What strikes me most about the events in Unworthy Republic is the blood-thirstyness of the local population in places like Georgia, where fear mongering and simple greed let to the greatest atrocities- a clear-cut case of ethnic cleansing if not genocide.  It's also hard not to link the events of Unworthy Republic with the large trends in American democracy during the same period, namely the rise of Andrew Jackson and enfranchisement of non-property holding Americans, making the dispossession of Native groups an attractive prospect for poor white Americans.

Friday, August 08, 2025

Hell at the Breech (2003) by Tom Franklin

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America
Hell at the Breech (2003)
by Tom Franklin
Mitcham Beat, Alabama
Alabama: 1/18

    I'd probably put Alabama on a list of Ten Least Interesting states, but maybe this experience will change my mind.  So far, I'd put Rhode Island and Delaware on that same list.   I had to stumble into the Alabama chapter because there are so few Audiobooks (that aren't sad POV's/coming of age books about poor women) in this chapter.  Hell at the Breech drew comparisons to Elmore Leonard, though I personally saw kinship with Cormac McCarthy's books from before he left Tennessee for the desert Southwest.  Hell at the Breech is a rare book on from this part of the country that doesn't feature any African American characters, this being a part of the country where African Americans were forced out after the Civil War.  Instead, the dynamic is poor white country-folk vs. wealthy town-folk, as illustrated by the eponymous gang of country "Night Riders," who go by Hell at the Breech

   The plot revolves not around violence against local African Americans (who apparently do not exist in this part of Alabama at the time of the novel, the 1890's) but rather traces a conflict between a local sharecropper turned general store owner and his animus against the town folk, as represented by the local Sheriff and his cousin, the Judge.   The major protagonists are Mack Burke, an orphan boy who works at the store of the magnificently named Tooch Bledsoe, leader of Hell at the Breech, and the sheriff, Billy Waite.

   Hell at the Breech was certainly a win for the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project.  I'm surprised no one made it into a movie.

Wednesday, August 06, 2025

Jubilee (1966) by Margaret Walker

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America
Jubilee (1966) 
by Margaret Walker
Lee County, Georgia
Georgia: 12/26

  Almost half-way through Georgia, and it has been a bit of a slog.   This is the last Audiobook- it's all reading hard copies of books without Audio options, YA titles and coming-of-age books from here on out.  Jubilee is sure to end up in my top five for this state simply because it wasn't written in the past decade from the perspective of an adolescent. Vyry is the iconic protagonist and frequent narrator, she is born a slave, and lives through the Civil War and aftermath as she tries to forge a destiny as a newly emancipated woman.  I thought the Ante-Bellum chapters were particularly interesting, and by that I mean "savage" because I simply can't get over the cruelty of the ante-bellum slavery system.  Of course, all American slavery was an abomination, but there were better or worse situation, and the late-period, plantation based cotton growing economy of the deep south was the worst of them all.

   The chapters on reconstruction are also interesting, giving the account of a newly freed African American family of some means, relatively speaking, and their struggle to simply exist in a world where they were surrounded by white supremacy. 

Wednesday, July 30, 2025

The Return (2016) by Hisham Matar

 100 Best Books of the 21st Century: New York Times
The Return (2016)
by Hisham Matar
#89

  Exploring the non-fiction selections on the New York Times recent 100 Best Books of the 21st Century has been a real pleasure and a good break from fiction.  The fiction portion, on the other hand, fills me with a vague dread mostly because the titles I haven't read on that part of the list represent conscious decisions rather than a lack of familiarity.   It's almost all domestic fiction and there is just only so much of that I can take in a given time period, which is currently filled by the prevalence of the same genre on the 1,001 Novels: A Library fo America list.   It took me awhile to make it to The Return, the non-fiction work by novelist Matar about his decades long quest to obtain closure regarding the whereabouts of his Dad, who was kidnapped out of Egypt by the Quaddaffi regime and held for years at a nightmarish Libyan prison.

  This is the only non-fiction title on the 100 Best Books List to not have an Audiobook edition available via the library app so I read the hard copy on my Kindle.   The Return is both a coming-of-age book about the author, a family biography and a history for a place- Libya- that is poorly documented.  For example, this book was the first I'd heard of the Italo-Turkic war between the Italians and the Ottoman Turks before World War I.  It's important to Libya because it marks the beginning of the Italian colonial period.   Matar keeps the book moving along- 272 pages is sufficient to tell a story that could have been at least three separate books.  Not surprising that it was a Pulitzer Prize winner after it was released.

Tuesday, July 29, 2025

The Möbius Book (2025) by Catherine Lacey

 Audiobook Review
The Möbius Book (2025)
 by Catherine Lacey

  I loved The Biography of X, Catherine Lacey's 2023 combination of alternate history, downtown New York art scene report and LGBT character study.  I listened to the Audiobook, then had someone track down a hard copy in New York at a time when I couldn't find a copy here in LA, then read the hardcover, then told everyone that I loved it.  It wasn't quite enough to get me into her back catalog, but it was enough for me to check out her new work, The Möbius Book, which is billed as a combination memoir/fiction with a typographical stunt where the nonfiction is written in one direction, and then the fiction is written in the opposite direction.  Honestly, I would have bought a copy on my recent travels, but I couldn't find it anywhere.  Instead, I checked out the Audiobook from library.   Apologies to authorial intent.  

  It occurred to me, as it did to the reviewer in the New York Times, that Lacey might be playing a trick on the reader, as she is wont to do.  The Times wasn't the only review to make that point- a quick internet search revealed a feature from The Observer published in June which named her ex-husband, author Jesse Ball.  The memoir portion calls Ball "The Reason" and depicts a number of behaviors which, objectively speaking, border on the abusive.   I'm not talking in any criminal sense- the worst it gets is Ball/The Reason breaking things near the body of Lacey but it is disturbing stuff.   The fictional portion also deals with a woman, Edie, struggling with the end of a relationship, and her friend also dealing with the end of her lesbian marriage.  It all sounds pretty mundane, but Lacey is bonafide interesting author and I enjoyed the topic in spite of myself because of the wit and insightfulness Lacey brings to the table.  I think it is time to get into the back catalog.

 Also Happy Booker Longlist day!!!

Monday, July 28, 2025

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971) by Ernest J. Gaines

 1,001 Novels:  A Library of America
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971) 
by Ernest J. Gaines 
Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana 
Louisiana: 4/28

  It's true my progress on the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America has stalled out on two fronts- Pennsylvania, where Philly and the suburbs broke my heart with banality, and the deep south, where a lack of Audiobook options has sent me clambering back and forth between Georgia and Louisiana.  Compounding the situation is a general lack of interest in some of editor Susan Straight's favorite genres: sad coming-of-age stories and domestic fiction, generally.  Both genre's make a good fit for the criteria of the project, which seemingly dictates that a specific work be tied to a specific place- neither neglected/abused children in poverty nor housewives facing the same challenges go many places.   By the standards of the 1,001 Novels:  A Library of America, Miss Jane Pittman, the subject and narrator of her Autobiography, is well travelled.  Originally published in 1971, the Audiobook wasn't created for 25 years.  It was also hard not to think about the success of The Oldest Confederate Widow Tells All, which was published in 1989.  Surely Allan Gurganus, the author of The Oldest Confederate Widow Tells All was aware of this book when he wrote his book.

  The idea here is that Miss Jane Pittman lives a life that spans slavery to Civil War, born a slave, ending by marching for her rights in rural Louisiana.  In between, she lives a relatively privileged life, emerging out of the chaos of the Civil War to marry, survive her husband and settle down as a domestic servant who lives in the big house.  Along the way she sees plenty- mostly cruelty with some kindness sprinkled in.  Autobiography takes a hard right turn in the last third of the book to detail a doomed relationship between the white scion of the plantation and an "octoroon" schoolteacher from New Orleans before concluding during the Civil Rights era. 

  It makes for a great Audiobook because of the oral history format- Pittman recounting to an unseen scribe.

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