Beyond Band of Brothers

Were Richard Winters around to take my advice I’d try to tell him to get himself a better ghost writer--Sebastian Junger, for example. This one makes a lot of grammatical mistakes the editor seems to have been little better at catching and writes like a newspaper reporter. In the second place this present memoir adds little to what has already been published in Ambrose’ Band of Brothers and David Kenyon’s even better Parachute Infantry upon which the former seems largely based. Ironic that Kenyon’s book was unpublishable until Tom Hanks and Company made the mini-series. The present tome was written 60 years too late in reaction to the previously noted publications.

Somehow I managed to miss the fact that the same production team did a similar project on the war in the Pacific. Must check that out.

One thing an 80-something vet does feel free to write about is the number of friendly-fire deaths that occurred even during WW#2. Modern weapons and targeting technology makes hand to hand combat less frequent. Snipers can shoot miles, artillery hundreds, cruise missiles frightening distances, bombs can be dropped from 5 miles up, lasers can target from space. When you consider that NASA mis-programmed to miss Mars by 500,000 miles with a 10-billion dollar rocket the fact that unplanned targets get hit is not surprising.

If Winters wrote this memoir to ‘set the record straight’ then the one thing he does do is show how the writing of a good movie script serves to conflate characters, alter the order of events, and make selective use of the facts. A book tells you what happened, a movie shows you what happened. In the end, of course, as Winters points out the facts of the matter are those seen by the writer from his vantage point and each individual will have a different version of any one engagement.

Ysabel

Ysabel by Guy Gabriel Kay is a reality meets fantasy kind of tale. Reality is 15-year-old Ned from Westmount in Provence with his father  who is on a photo-shoot with three assistants. Intersecting is a two-thousand five hundred year old feud between two men over a woman. When the kid gets in over his head his Aunt and Uncle from England show up and he invokes a child’s prerogative and decides, “I want my Mommy”. Mommy was in Darfur with Doctors Without Borders and he’s glad for a valid excuse to remove her from harm’s way. Throw in a girl Ned’s age. On the fantasy side meet Celtic invaders and Romans, Druidic rituals, and an ancient massacre of 200,000 Celts. Throw in French Cafés, ancient ruins, wild boars, enchanted wolves, and shape-shifting owls. If you can buy into all that then you have at base a story of a young man’s coming of age.

The Viceroy of Ouidah

The Viceroy of Ouidah

 

                    by Bruce Chatwin

 

Little seems to have changed in Africa or Brazil in 200 years.

 

Two lines in this 100-page tome stand out:

 

“War is for taking heads, not selling them attached to bodies.”

 

“But Blacks believe the Devil is White.”

 

Chatwin writes his own ‘Heart of Darkness’.

Clay's Way

Clay’s Way by Blair Mastbaum is set in Hawaii. Guide books would have you believe that Hawaiians are a racially tolerant society. These would be written by the same demographers who once termed Oakville the richest community in Canada ignoring majority who live at or below the poverty line. Just last week I was reminded of how much this has become the case when someone panhandled me in the parking lot of an upper class suburban mall. A thing that is common place on the streets of Toronto but unknown until recent years on the streets of Oakville.

 

To Native Hawaiians there can never be forgiveness for the Haoles who invaded their islands and destroyed their culture and way of life deposing their king. Knowing your place is important and enclaves tend to be uni-racial in nature. Attempting to crash a surfing break will make you quickly learn that surfers jealously guard their bits of ocean.

 

As in 1941 today the military is a major presence in the Hawaiian Islands. Their bases are everywhere as must be men in uniform throughout the islands. The dollars and jobs they bring may be welcome but competition for the attention of island females cannot be.

 

Sixteen-year-old Sam is a pain in the ass to his parents and his friends alike. He is not a kid I’d want to meet or have dealings with. He smokes, drinks, tokes and will do whatever drugs he can get his hands on. He skate boards but by his own admittance will never do it well. He does not surf but he dabbles in martial arts and otherwise spends his time hanging with his buddies and beating off. Did I mention he’s gay and he writes Haikus.

 

Much of the book is devoted to his infatuation, nay obsession with nineteen-year-old Clay who embodies the ideals he aspires to. Where Sam’s parents are white Clay’s are Portuguese. Sam possesses an aura, a swagger, a persona Sam would love to emulate. However Sam lacks the body, the years, the self-possession, the machismo, the skills to pull any of it off. Clay is somehow flattered by Sam’s devotion and allows him to play along until the point where Sam becomes a nuisance and an utter embarrassment. There’s being a free spirit and being aware of when to play it cool; Sam never knows when to stop. The end comes with Clay giving Sam a black eye in front of his surfing buddies to recoup his rep.

 

 

Fire

Giving this book the title, “Fire”, is an advertising ploy on the part of its publishers. Only the first two essays of this series, all published first elsewhere, are about Wildfire; the remaining 168 of its 224 pages deal with wide-ranging topics around the world, mainly involving war in all its gory manifestations. The term ‘adrenalin junkie’ seems to have been coined to describe Junger. His book-cover photos reveal an ultra fit wiry frame and a square-jawed face with piercing eyes. Another term once used to describe the author of Source of the Nile, Christopher Ondaatje, would be alpha male. The term fits.

 

Whether the average reader is interested in the science of fire is debatable but it’s sprinkled liberally in these 56 pages. No one could accuse Sebastian Junger of being simply a voyeur though his assignments manage to take him to the world’s least desirable vacation spots. One has to be just a little bit suicidal to jump out of a perfectly good aircraft but to do so into a potentially life-threatening wildfire would seem doubly so. Having read Junger’s War one would come to the conclusion that the man lives for danger. To willingly go to the places he has been and get so close to the action one must either be crazy or value life so little that throwing it away for the sake of a story makes sense. His photographic partner Chris Etherington died reporting on the situation in Libya making Restrepo his final opus.

Alone in the Wilderness

Alone in the Wilderness

                    By Hap Gilliland

 

is set to begin with in Billings, Montana. I’m happy to say that I spent several days in Billings camped beside the Yellowstone River. Flint Red Coyote is a Native American Cheyenne fresh off the Rez attempting to cope with the cultural and social dislocation caused by the move to a big city school. He is fortunate in the friends he picks; Jose, a Mexican-American lad he knew in past years and Tobey a brilliant girl with a mix of Native American and Finnish in her background. His third friend is Roger, a local boy whose grudging respect he wins.

 

The decision to spend three months roughing it alone in the Beartooth Wilderness is occasioned by the rough and tumble of classroom life but challenges Flint in ways he couldn’t originally conceive. Whereas Flint is concerned with learning survival skills that will keep him housed, warmed, and fed in the wilderness his Grandfather Wolf Runner is more concerned with his spiritual and mental preparedness. If  you’ve met the average teen who gets antsy if separated from their i-Pod and texting device you know what I mean. Grown men have been driven mad by solitary confinement, three months alone in the wilderness for a teenager is a life sentence.

 

While Flint collects clothing, a Tipi, dried food, bow and arrows, a sled and builds his stamina by jogging and stair-running Grandfather prescribes prayer and spiritual preparation to teach Flint determination/courage/fortitude, self-confidence. Just before his departure Grandfather sets up a sweat lodge ceremony and recommends that when Flint is ready he should go on a Vision Quest, an “Indian” rite of passage that involves fasting, hallucinatory plants, leading to a dream state in which one is visited by an animal guiding spirit.

 

Flint spends his three months in the wilderness, climbs Montana’s highest peak, finds his totem during a vision quest: a night hawk, survives a blizzard without food, successfully hunts deer with bow and arrow, and after all that ends up rescuing one of his friends who gets turned around coming to bring him home.

Looking For It

Looking For It

                    Michael Thomas Ford

 

This being an author I admire I’m going to examine the mechanics of writing. The fact that he writes gay literary fiction is unimportant, good writing is good writing.

 

How does one introduce the principal characters. Does one jump into the story and introduce them on the fly or take time to describe each in detail. What is important for the reader to know—their physical appearance, their professions, their living arrangements, and in gay lit their sexual preferences, are they out or still closeted. When dialogue is involved do you use he said/she said, “quotation marks”, —dashes, none at all. Whose point of view is the story told from.

 

In the present case a brief chapter is devoted to each main character or character grouping.

 

Mike Monaghan—is bartender at the Engine Room, one of three gay bars in the Cold Falls area.

 

John Ellison is a high school chemistry teacher. Russell Harding is his live-in lover and manages a Department Store.

 

Pete Thayer is a closeted, (to himself), mechanic who likes head without any foreplay, the rougher the better.

 

Simon Bird is a senior who recently lost his life’s partner.

 

Father Thomas Dunn is an Anglican Priest who chose the church over his childhood gay crush. Joseph died of aids but Thomas still cherishes his memory and keeps his picture blaming himself for his friend’s death.

 

Stephen Darby is an accountant who works from his home next door to his parents and his married brother beside them. He engages in online fantasies as bringing someone home is impossible and being out for the night would involve painful explanations.

 

Sometimes it doesn’t pay to look too closely at a text. In Chapter 5 the pot roast is nearly done and pie turned out well but a few pages later the host carries a cake into the dining room.

 

This book involves more gay sex than any of the others I’ve read and it shows up early on in the story. Ford is among a group of gay authors who write literary fiction. This is not bad writing to stimulate someone’s sexual fantasies. However I believe it time he moved beyond writing boy meets girl, or in this case boy meets boy, novels and found themes involving mature lasting relationships. Surely there is more to life than the struggle to come out to oneself and the world. The gay community needs literary role models that involve more than one-night-stands leading to happily ever after scenarios. Life is not a fairy tale—pun not intended.

back Roads

back roads by Tawni O’Dell

Eighteen-year-old Harley got a crash course in adult responsibilities. His best friend went off to university without saying goodbye bringing him to the conclusion that their friendship had been based on propinquity and convenience. His Mother goes to jail for shooting his abusive Father and overnight he becomes a Legal Adult with three dependants--all girls, a social worker, and a state-provided therapist. Working two dead-end jobs is one thing but being the object of constant attention because your dirty laundry is being aired on the National News at 11 is quite another. Dealing with a pubescent female is any parent’s nightmare but how does a teenage ‘father’ cope? What can he say when his 12-year-old sister announces she thinks she just got her first period?

Where most teens wouldn’t think twice about replacing the toilet paper Harley has to figure out where Mum stored the supplies. Where is the cupcake pan to bake for his little sister’s school? Where are the spare lightbulbs stored? As role model Harley had a father who expressed all emotions with violence, even happiness occasioned backslapping and arm punching, an excuse to get drunk and destructive. If as his Mother’s eldest and only son he had an Oedipal complex Harley now can’t bear the thought of visiting her in prison though he has to drive his sisters there and wait. Opening the door to his parent’s room is akin to visiting his Father’s grave. Out of necessity he does drive his Father’s truck and wear his Father’s camo jacket. It is quite another matter to deal with the loss of Satellite TV which like so many other things in their reduced circumstance they can no longer afford. Since they aren’t on welfare they lack medical coverage.

Women are a mystery to most men, Harley has four to deal with three of whom are his responsibility. What should a father do when he discovers his 16-year-old daughter making out on the living room couch at 2:30 AM in the morning? Harley incinerates the couch, given his choices the least destructive means of dealing with his anger. Harley is not immediately a likeable character--it takes some time to warm up to him, but a young man deprived of his youth by circumstance deserves our sympathy, our pity would be rightly thrown back in our faces.

There are three parties to any family history of child abuse: the abusing parent, the abused child or children, and the parent and/or other adults in their lives that were aware of the situation and took no measures to put a stop to it. Add America’s gun culture and the potential for violence is obvious and it Harley who reaps the whirlwind. The horror of the trauma that completes this story will haunt my dreams for some time to come--this is not a book for young people or anyone with a delicate constitution.

The Wildfire Season

Andrew Pyper’s Wildfire Season interweaves 5 distinct storylines. There is the college-aged Miles whose job as a forest fire fighter blows up in his face killing a younger co-worker and scarring him physically and emotionally so that he runs away from his girlfriend of some years without even leaving a note behind. Six years later Miles is fire boss in a remote Yukon community and his girlfriend shows up with the daughter he wasn’t aware existed. His neighbour Margot is out hunting a grizzly as guide to a 70-year-old millionaire executive who wants to bag a ‘Boone and Crockett Grizzly’. There is the story of the Mother Grizzly and her two yearling cubs. And finally the wildfire--was it set by a firestarter? Miles and his four-man crew are sent out to extinguish that fire but it explodes overnight from a 5 acre smoker to a 500 acre firestorm that has already claimed at least one life and threatens an entire town.

The opening chapters seem awkward but once the stories gain momentum the reader is carried along like the fire that erupts at its core. A book with so many changes in point of view and timelines, real and imagined, demands a lot of its reader. There is no time to stop and daydream when a fire is racing toward you like the ‘Kid’ in this story. Whether it’s a grizzly that is tracking you or a firestorm there is no motive or emotion involved, just a force of nature. The overarching story here is that of the central character, the fire but Miles is the genuine hero. After leading the surviving members of the hunting party to safety through the middle of the fire and learning that his girlfriend and daughter are trapped in its path he charges back through the middle of that fire and leads them back out against all odds--the firestorm, a maniac with a rifle, and a marauding grizzly. To climb a mountain range and walk twenty miles through fire may seem foolhardy, to do so twice more super-human.

Kit's Law

Newfoundland has produced a parcel of young writers. The move from storyteller to written page seemingly a short distance. Alas most of them seem to need to leave home to embark on their trade. Nostalgia it seems is best engaged in from a distance. Donna Morrisey cunningly evokes the claustrophobia of outport life where outside males are brought in to keep bloodlines clean. There are few secrets in a small closed community, the sense of being under constant scrutiny can become oppressive. And it’s the secrets kept from one that can serve to cause the greatest heartache.

“It ain’t fair.
“No it isn’t. And the fault is ours for expecting it to be so.

“No! I’m done listenin’. I’ve been listenin’ to others all m life. And fightin’! Fightin’ to hold onto what’s mine. And thankin’ everybody for lettin’ me do so. Well, I’m tired of smilin’ for your blessin’s, all the time smilin’, feelin’ grateful but never proud. I want to live my own life, as I see fit.”

Charity may be good for the soul of the giver but exacts a burden upon the needy. Outport life is primal and complicated in its simplicity.

The Naming of the Dead

Murder mysteries are not normally a genre I embrace and I’m not normally a follower of the best-seller list but I’ve always been willing to read anything that’s well-written. The Scottish writer Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus Series broke onto the literary scene three decades ago and has since stretched to nearly 20 volumes and a few spin-offs. Not only well-written and unabashedly set in the Edinburgh section of Scotland but also redolent of local colour, locations, language, and most particularly its smoky back-room bars; its protagonist, John Rebus, is a heavy-smoking, alcoholic detective so obsessed with his work he has no life outside it. His lifestyle and diet would lead one to believe that most Scots do not live long enough to burden society with supporting their retirement years. In his memoir Rebus’s Scotland, Rankin admits that in the flesh he would probably not get along well with his fictional creation, a sentiment I would share. Working with him would be trying and being his boss, a nightmare. John Hannah portrayed him in a TV Movie version of some of the books and I found him so insufferable I couldn’t watch.

 

Stuck in Oakville I have beguiled my time with my library which I’ve found to contain all the volumes I have yet to read and the one named above is the pen-ultimate opus. Regrettably I have read these books as they became available this side of the pond which is unfortunate because although each book is self-contained, the principal characters age with the story in chronological order. The trade-paperback version I am reading has been given the first-class treatment accorded only best-selling authors: pages of glowing reviews up front, chapter headings given the full-page treatment with slip sheets following, page breaks after each chapter, a large eminently readable font, and heavy quality vellum.

 

Last summer Toronto was held hostage by the circus that is a G-8/G-20 summit and the present novel sees Edinburgh gripped by a similar fate. I said at the time that a remote Arctic Lodge or island seemed a better venue and note that one wag in the novel suggested using a decommissioned oil platform out in the middle of the North Sea. Rebus’ diet tends to fatty takeaway, Chinese, and Indian Curry washed down with copious pints of IPA and Scotch Whisky. His choice in pop music figures strongly throughout the series. Six foot two, over-weight, and bristling at incoming laws against public smoking; a loner who has never been part of any team; the man antagonises his superiors but gets results in spite of or because of his unorthodox methods.

 

Rankin’s style is to have the reader follow the clues along with his detectives. The reader is given no insights that are not available to the people in his storyline. As in real life not every plot is given a satisfying ending and often the reader is left at the end of the tale wondering what just happened to him. Rarely are plotlines tied up in neat bundles for us. Not all crimes are solved. People commit crime and those who would enforce the law are as fallible and those they hunt. Crime sells media and its dissemination makes the public uneasy; police services exist to give people a sense of security, or so writes Rankin. As Scott Turow would have it justice is what can be proven in a court of law. The investigation of crime it would seem is no less arbitrary. When it comes to law, government, and those in power and authority the lines between morality, right and wrong, and justice seem to become blurred. As Rebus approaches retirement his level of cynicism and sarcasm grow, however ever a bull in the china cabinet he is not to be deterred once a mystery strikes his fancy and will worry it like a dog its bone even when saner minds would back down.

 

Success comes with its costs. When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle tired of coming up with new challenges for Sherlock Holmes he finally attempted the ruse of having him killed off to discourage his public. In Exit Music Rankin has Rebus retire. All the same having DS Clarke bring young street cop Todd Goodyear into the fold adds new zest to the mix, he’s even given a tasty back story; leaving the door open for a new round of adventures should the author so wish. Never trust a mystery writer until the last twist on the last page, so much for my insights.

Breaking Clean

Judy Blunt’s Breaking Clean begins with the neighbour boy squatting over a bottle of whiskey with her Father on the front porch while they negotiate for her hand in marriage. With land and cattle at his disposal he is accounted a good catch despite being 12 years her senior. Her side of the bargain would be to birth and rear his sons, keep house, tend the home garden, and attend to his needs. The fact that she might have had other aspirations like a college education did not enter the negotiations. When the marriage started falling apart 12 years later the husband when asked how often he’d told his wife he loved her stated on the day he married her, he never took it back. Clearly the two had differing expectations. It is instructive that all three of her children chose to remain with their Mother.

What follows is an all-too-familiar story of her Montana Prairie Homesteading childhood. Large families in cramped shacks with outdoor plumbing, one-room schools, howling winter blizzards, spring prairie grass fires, mud in spring and fall, summer droughts, hoppers and the privations of mind, body, and spirit. Told from the perspective of a woman capable of breaking a horse, riding the range, and slinging bales of hay with the best of them she balks at the inequity of being consigned to the sole preserve of women’s work.

A world where women’s names occupied equal status on ranch deeds but all important decisions were made by husbands. The lesson is learned early when younger brothers get to do men’s work and older sisters women’s. Biology plays girls an ugly trick and this one spends an entire year attempting to conceal her budding breasts even attempting to lance them like the cow’s cankers she helped her father treat.

Once the book leaves the ranch and descends into feminist manifesto it loses some of its appeal. Barely into her teens the author learns that no matter what her contribution to the family farm it will be her brothers who get to take it over, daughters have no rights. When, at 18, she marries a man nearly twice her age she discovers that although the farm and ranch house have been turned over to her husband, her father-in-law still expects to manage the day-to-day operation of the family business. Her contribution is the management of the home, the house garden, the children, and the preparation of daily meals for her family, the hired hands who live in the bunkhouse, and even her father-in-law. She is expected to keep her nose out of the running of the farm--the hired hands do not take orders from her, and she cannot write cheques on the family business account. Worse, her mother-in-law arrives daily to rearrange the dishes and pots and pans in her cupboards and oversees her grocery bills with disdain.

Dealing with a critically ill child and managing a home when roads can be impassable for months at a time due to mud and snow drifts further isolates a woman beyond the reality of living 50 miles from the nearest small town and 30 from the nearest community, almost as far from the nearest neighbour. If you had any notions of the romantic nature of homesteading on the prairies this book will take the micky out of them.

The Land of the Painted Caves

Being Jean Auel’s sixth in the Children of Earth Series it finds our heroine heavily involved in her training as a medicine women and preoccupied with raising her infant child. Who knew that prehistoric society was so matriarchal or at least egalitarian. We repeated read stanzas from the Great Earth Mother Creation Myth. Seems it was a woman who gave birth to the world and created a mate for herself that appears to be the sun. When she got around to creating people it was a woman who was first created and a man came later to provide her with a mate. As much as the Biblical account of creation shows a chauvinistic bias that has served to put women in their place this account acknowledges women’s role as nurturers and caregivers seeing a female as the agent of creation.

A large part of the novel is taken up with visits to caves and descriptions of the cave paintings in them. The action jumps 4 years in the second section of the book. Ayla is still supported by her six-foot-six-inch blonde companion with the brilliant blue eyes and charismatic appearance. She gets her call as a medicine women and the remainder of the book is taken up with her initiation into the fold at a summer meeting. Somehow this opus lacks the appeal of some of the earlier novels, certain sections seeming to drag on and on.

Breaking Clean

Judy Blunt’s Breaking Clean begins with the neighbour boy squatting over a bottle of whisky with her Father on the front porch while they negotiate for her hand in marriage. With land and cattle at his disposal he is accounted a good catch despite being 12 years her senior. Her side of the bargain would be to birth and rear his sons, keep house, tend the home garden, and attend to his needs. The fact that she might have had other aspirations like a college education did not enter the negotiations. When the marriage started falling apart 12 years later the husband when asked how often he’d told his wife he loved her stated on the day he married her, he never took it back. Clearly the two had differing expectations.

What follows is an all-too-familiar story of her Montana Prairie Homesteading childhood. Large families in cramped shacks with outdoor plumbing, one-room schools, howling winter blizzards, spring prairie grass fires, mud in spring and fall, summer droughts, hoppers and the privations of mind, body, and spirit. Told from the perspective of a woman capable of breaking a horse, riding the range, and slinging bales of hay with the best of them she balks at the inequity of being consigned to the sole preserve of women’s work.

A world where women’s names occupied equal status on ranch deeds but all important decisions were made by husbands. The lesson is learned early when younger brothers get to do men’s work and older sisters women’s. Biology plays girls an ugly trick and this one spends an entire year attempting to conceal her budding breasts even attempting to lance them like the cow’s cankers she helped her father treat.

Once the book leaves the ranch and descends into feminist manifesto it loses some of its appeal. Barely into her teens the author learns that no matter what her contribution to the family farm it will be her brothers who get to take it over, daughters have no rights. When, at 18, she marries a man nearly twice her age she discovers that although the farm and ranch house have been turned over to her husband, her father-in-law still expects to manage the day-to-day operation of the family business. Her contribution is the management of the home, the house garden, the children, and the preparation of daily meals for her family, the hired hands who live in the bunkhouse, and even her father-in-law. She is expected to keep her nose out of the running of the farm--the hired hands do not take orders from her, and she cannot write cheques on the family business account. Worse, her mother-in-law arrives daily to rearrange the dishes and pots and pans in her cupboards and oversees her grocery bills with disdain.

Dealing with a critically ill child and managing a home when roads can be impassable for months at a time due to mud and snow drifts further isolates a woman beyond the reality of living 50 miles from the nearest small town and 30 from the nearest community, almost as far from the nearest neighbour. If you had any notions of the romantic nature of homesteading on the prairies this book will take the micky out of them.

Big Stone Gap

The first in Adriana Trigiani’s trilogy, Big Stone Gap like its mates runs to 305 pages in paperback. Aspiring authors are told to write what they know, well guess what, there really is a place named Big Stone Gap and there really was a book entitled Trail of the Lone Pine by John Fox which became a movie and is enacted each summer on an outdoor stage in town by amateurs. If the characters she writes about are as real as everything else in this book one can only hope she’s still welcome around town. And in an insular small town no one keeps secrets anyway.

Trigiani captures the language and spirit of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and echoes its turns of phrase and world outlook. Of an exceptionally good-looking man it is said, he makes Levi’s sing. A malevolent gossip’s lips are like two tightly packed firecrackers waiting for a match. The local gospel preacher plays snake charmer at revival meetings picking up rattlers.

As book one closes the story enters the present century rather dramatically. The narrator discovers her best buddy won’t marry her because he’s gay. She ends her spinsterhood at 36 by marrying a mountain coal miner with whom she went to school. What ensues is about what one would expect from an independent business woman whose values collide with a traditional male ego. Where book one was chatty Big Cherry Holler is gossipy. The storyline descends into soap opera, but then the author does write for TV.

Two thirds of the way through book 2 I lost interest as the book became a full-fledged romance dime novel.

The Hungry Ocean

The Hungry Ocean
by Linda Greenlaw

For anyone who doesn’t know Greenlaw was the female swordboat captain played by Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio in the movie The Perfect Storm who made the impassioned plea by radio-phone to Billy Tyne to get out of the region just south of Sable Island because he was sailing into hell. She has been in the news most recently due to her court appearance in St John’s Newfoundland because, as she explained it, her 40-mile long-line was pulled into Canada’s 200-mile limit by a boat that crossed it and dragged it there. She was found guilty and heavily fined; an experience she’d obviously like to put behind her. It was in the wake of the publicity that followed upon the movie and the novelty attached to her being a female captain and a successful one that she wrote and published this book in 1999.

Fishing is not an exact science else, as Greenlaw writes, it would be called catching. In my native Nova Scotia it has been said that a good sea captain could “smell” his way into harbour even in fog so dense he couldn’t see past his nose. In the days of sail good fishing boat captains had a sense of where the fish were, in much the same way a water-witcher finds an underground spring on dry land. Certainly their knowledge of the sea and their observation of bait fish and seabird activity gave them clues but they possessed an instinctual ability to find the best plot of ocean to set their long lines. Today nylon mono-filament has replaced twisted hemp fibre and navigational beacons have made finding that line again easier but the principle of bait attracting fish to a hook hasn’t changed. You can’t fish if the fish aren’t there and the sea remains a harsh mistress.

Anyone who has ridiculed the weatherman in the Maritimes can understand the limitations of modern science when it comes to ocean currents, hurricanes, and weather. Superstitions tend to attach themselves to that which is unknowable and uncontrollable. When it comes to the sea and fishing few endeavours in life attract more superstitions. Therefore a woman aboard a fishing boat, forget that she’s captain, goes way beyond novelty.

Fishing by lunar cycle reminds me of neighbours at home in Lunenburg County who planted their potatoes by the full of the moon. Modern fishing boats may be marvels of technology and science but successful boat captains still use their instincts and intuition alongside all that fancy equipment. Greenlaw attempts, without overwhelming her reader with too much detail, to explain both sides of her trade. In an appendix she outlines the costs involved in one voyage along with the crew dispensations. But she does not own the boat she commands hence the capital costs involved are not explained; her figures do not include value of the boat, depreciation, and maintenance.

Parachute Infantry

That an artist was before his time has become cliché. A young reporter volunteered for the parachute infantry in 1941 so that he might write a book about the experience. Although he survived the war he did not survive the book editors who deemed his account of the daily grind of infantry life too boring to interest their readers. When he died under mysterious circumstances in 1965 his book remained unpublished. Thirty years later the producers of the mini-series Band of Brothers found his memoir filled with the perfect kind of minutia needed to flesh out their episodes. If you’ve read Ambrose' book or watched the movies when you read this book you will see where whole plot lines and scripts were lifted directly. Unfortunately the author was no longer around to collect his royalties.

When Supreme commander Eisenhower invaded Fortress Europe on D-Day he had so many troops he had to figure out how to deploy them so that they wouldn’t get in one another’s way. The Allies won by sheer dint of numbers, not necessarily by superior strategy. Just how true this was Webster makes clear. Differences in battle strategy, the chain of command, and latitude for independent action in the field made for frustrations when various groups needed to co-ordinate their actions. He matter of factly describes instances of friendly fire and forced marches in aid of troops that didn’t need it. He spares no ones feelings including his own in describing the foibles and failings of leaders and men alike. He frankly admits that self-preservation inspired his policy of always doing what was expected of him but never volunteering under any circumstances.

One way or another through wounds and recovery he manages to miss most of his unit’s major battles. He remains an observer and at all times an unwilling participant; freely admitting to never being on time and always looking for ways to be absent when it hit the fan. He even manages to get out on points before the rest of his company win their reprieve on the War in Asia being ended at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the end he does best what he set out to do in the first place; document the reality of being a ‘grunt’ in the American Army. To receive orders you know will get you killed, to perform useless tasks, to have your life saved due to an officer’s incompetence, to spend hours and days in tedious boredom waiting, to do make-work projects.... Throughout he manages to make it all sound interesting.

Hondo

Hondo by Louis L’Amour is a Historical, Western Romance set in the 1800’s in the desert region of the Colorado Rockies. Like so many of L’Amour’s books it was made into a movie in 1953 starring John Wayne filmed in Utah. I was moved to download and read this Bantam Book after finding about twenty of his novels on display at the Travel Bureau in Mancos just east of the author’s ranch in Hesperus. If I’d known I’d forgotten that these novels generally contain a love interest.

L’Amour vividly evokes the desert landscape through which I’ve been driving for the past few weeks. He is also familiar with horses, their anatomy, their health issues, and their quirks. He understands desert survival skills, tracking, hunting, fishing, and living off the land. He has also researched Ute, Apache, and Anasazi oral traditions, lifestyles, and warfare. His attention to detail rings true and gives a sense of authenticity to his writing. Calling it great literature may be a stretch but it makes an easy read and evokes a sense of pioneer life and at nearly 100 books one has much to enjoy.

As Hondo has been employed by the military fun is made of West Point graduates sent out to command platoons in Indian Country. Little has changed over the centuries as Sebastian Junger makes similar comments about West Point Lieutenants in Afghanistan. If you’ve seen the movie you know that there much is made of the bond that develops between the 6-year-old son of the abandoned ranch wife and the gruff despatch rider who happens upon their isolated valley; in the book this relationship is only implied and much more attention is paid to life at the fort and on patrol for the cavalrymen who attempt to put down an Indian uprising.

The Morcyth Saga

The Morcyth Saga by Brian S. Pratt is essentially a single book in seven instalments the first of which was offered free on Barnes and Noble's Nook System, the concept of getting one hooked so the remaining books in the series be bought having worked in my case though I went to another source for the remaining 6. The books are essentially one long Dungeons and Dragons role-playing session that runs for several years in the life of it's central character James, a youthful mage. Whereas the first two books begin well by the third it starts to stretch belief that one person could possibly get himself involved in that many scrapes and escape each essentially unscathed. The characterizations and interpersonal relationships are well-taken and the books certainly don't lack for action-adventure.

Though I realize not everyone is as fanatical about grammar as I one would expect that someone who reached his twenties in the nineties uses a word processor to write. Why then would even a simple word-processor not have caught the spelling errors, the incomplete sentences, and dangling participles and run-on sentences. It seems obvious that editors no longer do much editing.

Full Circle

Full Circle by Michael Thomas Ford is the story of two childhood friends who grow up experimenting with gay sex before they can even give their exploration of each other’s bodies a name. While one has a predeliction to play the field the other, who narrates the tale, tends toward more monogamous relationships and feels betrayed when others stray. In telling the story of these lives Ford lays out the history of the gay movement, the Vietnam War, and the scourge that AIDS becomes in the gay community.

With its insights into the dynamics of family life, boyhood relationships, the high school and college experience, growing maturity and self-awareness, military life, this book rises above the level of most gay literature to become in part a sociological and psychological examination of modern society. Beginning with a phone call in the middle of the night in the present day, the narrator takes us back to the story of his grandparents and parents, his birth, and his life to the point where the phone rings. As impressed as I was with the first two-thirds of the book I began to get incredulous at the idea that one person could have been involved in the lives of so many important historic personages and as struck as I was with the aptness of the first half of the book the author seems to have run out of steam at some point along the line and the eventual closing chapters seem truncated and incomplete.

North and South

North and South, Love and War, Heaven and Hell

These are the names of a three-book trilogy by John Jakes which form the basis for a three-part mini-series for TV shot in the early 1980ies. The storyline begins 140 years previous when fate creates a union between the families of a northern industrialist and a southern plantation owner. In comparing the two treatments one is struck by the fact that a movie shows what happened through action and dialogue while a novel explains the action through dialogue and commentary. Whereas the novels can tell us about the great conflicts that occurred the movies were dependent to a large degree on a huge cadre of Civil War re-enactors and the good graces of National Historic Sites Committees. Throughout there is a co-mingling of actual historic figures and the fictional characters of the novels.

Each family is held together by a strong and steadfast matriarch who holds her family together while supporting her husband and reluctantly taking over the running of the family business with the premature death of their husbands. Both patriarchs are successful businessmen who though set in their conservative ways mean the best for the men and women who work under them. When we see the comparison between the working and living conditions of the slaves on a southern cotton plantation and the men who work in a northern ironworks we are at pains to decide if there is any difference.

The families are united by the chance meeting of a son of each on their way to Westpoint as much to broaden their horizons and learn new ways of doing things as to become soldiers. The two become fast and life-long friends despite their cultural, philosophical and sociological differences. While at the Point these two make the fateful acquaintance of an upper classman in the person of Elkanah Bent, the bastard son of a Senator who while giving him every economic and physical advantage has left him a resentful, spite-filled malcontent who will continue to shadow both men’s futures.

Orry Main played by Patrick Swaze is the southerner who betrays his background as a slave owner the second he opens his mouth. His oldest sister Ashton is a petulant scheming Southern Belle devoid of any moral fibre who shows her true nature in our first meeting when as a young child she crushes a bird’s egg and smears it on her sister’s pinnafore rather than return it to its nest. That younger sister Brett from that first encounter displays a kindly thoughful nature that looks always first for the best in people. In later chapters we meet a younger cousin Charles, the black sheep of the family. As he is leaving for the Point Orry has a fateful meeting with Madelaine Fabray which leads to love at first sight although Fabray’s Father engineers her marriage to Justin LaMotte owner of the neighbouring plantation whose methods epitomize all that was worst in the slave-owning tradition. Rounding out this group is Salem Jones, the Main’s overseeer whose iron discipline is distinguished by the fact that he relishes cruelty and displays it by whipping the brother of the slave he is sleeping with when he shows resentment.

George Hazard is the scion of the Hazard Ironworks in LeHigh Station Pennsylvania. His older brother Stanley is first in line to take over the family business but has a weak personality and is overly influenced by a scheming wife who will do anything to get ahead. Their older sister Virgilia is a fanatical abolitionist obsessed with doing anything possible to advance the cause. Their younger brother Billy later continues the family tradition by joining Westpoint in concert with Charlie Main.

The lives of these two families play out against the background of increasing tensions between the slave-owning Southern States and the industrial North. The flash point becomes the argument over whether new states will have the option of being slave-states and is ignited by the election of President Lincoln who opposes this measure. Secession and war ensues. In the end it is the South’s dependence on an agrarian economy and Its huing to the mantra of States Rights that leads to Its ultimate defeat. The South lacks the industrial base to produce arms and cannon and the refusal of individual states to surrender control of their militias to the central Confederate Government makes it difficult for Its Generals to provision or manoeuvrer Its armies. Indeed, since all Its railways are laid in a north and south pattern and each state uses its own gauge of tracks it is soon seen as easier to move goods by horse and waggon. As the last major war in history in which troops lined up on the field of battle and fired on one another this became a war of attrition in which millions died. With its ports blockaded by the North the South was totally dependent on Its own dwindling resources. Dramatically illustrated is the fact that this Civil War was a battle between brothers and friends. Many like the Southern General Robert E Lee were drawn into this fight by their loyalties to their heritage rather than their conviction for the rightness of the cause. Lee’s ride to the schoolhouse at Appomattox is a poignant display of honour and pride.

Before he could cement a reunion of North and South in the aftermath of this blood bath which would have been in the tradition of a Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, or Desmond Tutu, Lincoln was assassinated and more vindictive minds directed the reconstruction. In the South the economy ground to a halt as slaves granted their freedom left their former owners in droves but soon discovered they lacked the means to support themselves or the ability to find gainful employment. With the defeated Southern Army retreating home law and order ceased to exist in the South replaced by Northern Carpet Baggers and bands of resentful men like Salem Jones and like-minded landless malcontents who formed the Klu Klux Klan. The resentments caused by this painful reconstruction continue to plague the South to this very day.

The Things They Carried

Tim O’Brien’s memoir of his experience in Viet Nam begins with his dalliance with the idea of becoming a draft-dodger to Canada. So prevalent was this reaction to the draft that in the Initiation Week package I was given upon university registration in 1967 was a Guide to American Draft Dodgers To Canada. He utlimately served in Viet Nam and this series of loosely connected short stories details the experience of he and his fellow squad members.

The things they carried were not limited to the items on their persons and in their packs but extended to the psychological baggage they brought with them to Nam, the physical and mental scars they suffered in battle, and the trauma they brought back with them state-side. Call it post-traumatic stress disorder, battle-fatigue, Gulf-War Syndrome, shell shock.... the aftermath of war for the participants lingers long after the vets return. It is now posited that dealing with the needs of those vets wounded in body, mind, and spirit is likely to cost 3 times what it cost to wage the battle in the first place.

I read this book at least a month ago but it was still fresh in my mind when I read Junger’s War. The sense in which both books demonstrate how the experience of combat makes re-integration into normal society difficult if not almost impossible links these two books in my mind. Can we afford the price we pay for so injuring so many of our youth?

Breaking Dawn

This is book 4 of the series by Sephanie Meyers which began with the book Twilight in which Bella leaves a desert city in Arizona to come to rainy Forks in Washington State to live with her father the town sheriff. Although she has a childhood friend in the person of Jacob, son of her father’s hunting and fishing buddy from the La Push Reserve her world is shaken up by her introduction to the enigmatic Edward, who turns out to be a modern-day ‘vegetarian’ vampire--his family drink animal blood. Already popular with the teenage girl set the series went viral upon its adaptation for the screen with the chalky-faced Robert Pattison making fun of the sculpted-abbed Taylor Lautner’s lack of upper body attire.

Having driven through Forks and seen the old pickup truck parked outside the Chamber of Commerce I can attest to the fact that it exists as well as the reserve out at the coast. The town’s other claim to fame is as the jumping off spot for hikers bound for Mount Olympia and the rest of Olympic National Park. Only rabid Twilight fans and those who love rain need bother come. The place boasts 144 inches of yearly rainfall.

With book 4 Bella finally gets her vampire and her wish to be transformed as well despite the wishes of her werewolf buddy Jake. At nearly 800 pages this book is an undertaking for Twilight Fans only and has been split into a two-part movie.

WAR

Reading Sebastian Junger’s War not only transports one to Afghanistan but introduces one to vocabulary and thought processes alien to those outside the military. C-Wire, Bee Huts, and the concept of blousing. Blousing came up in Stephen Ambrose’s Band of Brothers in relation to airborne soldiers in training and the state of their pant legs. At the time I passed it over but this time I was moved to research the topic. Here’s a video demonstrating how it’s done:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY1Sb6KgVEY&NR=1

and yet another describing the process in relation to shirts:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeycYShS2MI

Blousing it seems refers to the process of folding clothing fabric so that it conforms to the wearer’s body, hence the name given to a tailored women’s shirt. If you watch the first video and note that the speeded up process takes nearly 7 minutes and the second takes two people to put on a shirt and pull up one’s pants one can only hope there is a practical application to justify all this effort. If the only purpose served is the brass’s idea of smart appearance then I can fully understand why troops in the field quickly abandon such wasted effort. As Arnold Epstein in Biloxi Blues would say, there’s my way and the military way.

Junger brings a scientific psychological analysis to the pursuit of War. After demonstrating the nature of troop comraderie in the face of brutal attacks he goes on to give historical and research-based context to courage, bravery and heroism in battle. He describes how brotherly love forms the basis for most acts of courage and bravery; how that sense of community is best fostered and the ideal numbers needed to form a cohesive group. He also demonstrates that battle fatigue and fear are not triggered by battle but by the underlying psychological make-up of the soldier himself and the life difficulties he is experiencing on the home front.

Modern warfare is fought as much in the arena of public opinion in situ as on the field of battle. If you can win the propaganda battle with the local population you’re likely to meet fewer of them at the end of a gun and outside insurgents are likely to be less welcome. Finally he highlights the cruel truth that the adrenalin rush of battle ill fits those who experience it for return to civilian life and the grinding bureaucracy it entails. Those who are most ill-suited to civilian life make the best soldiers. If you haven’t had the experience there’s no way of properly explaining it or the sensations that come back to those who have and make the attempt. Junger, who vicariously had the experience for us, makes the attempt.

Twilight

Of course I’ve seen the movie so in some sense the book itself is spoiled, I want to read book 2 in the series before it comes out on DVD. What’s interesting is to read the descriptions of the characters and see who the producers came up with to play them in the motion picture version. As I’ve said before, I’ve actually been to Forks and Port Angeles so I have a sense of place for the locale.

The book evokes perfectly the teenage girl’s sense of awakening sexuality and pre-occupation with boys. With all those raging hormones and emotional upsets concentrating on anything else must be difficult. Bella’s lack of physical co-ordination inherited from her father, the police chief, is a source of embarrassment and humiliation.

What makes a male arrestingly handsome? Anthropologists have determined that the combination of features so perceived is rather average in nature but there has to be more than physical beauty to rivet attention. Call it charisma, the inner soul, or a person’s aura but somehow some people just seem to have ‘it’. The vampire aspect of the novel is as much a metaphor for teenage angst and danger here as it was in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Bella’s relationship with her Father who happens to be chief of police of a small town is a unique one. In many senses she Mothered her own divorced Mother being in many ways the more mature of the two. When she comes to Forks she assumes a similar relationship with her Father taking over the management of his household, cooking his meals and doing his shopping. The two do not have a close physical relationship as father and daughter and do not vocalize their feelings for one another. In fact they spend much of their days never seeing one another. But she arrives to find Charlie has a truck already available for her use and when there’s an ice storm she drives to school discovering that before he left for work her father put chains on her tires.

Great literature this may not be but it is very effective in evoking the experience and feelings of a female teen in a small town.

The Cabin--Hap Wilson

In The Cabin Hap Wilson combines a personal history of the Temagami region with autobiographical elements in telling the background of a cabin that holds special significance in his life. From the warts and all nature of his account one must assume that his parents are both dead as he spares no one including himself in the telling. It is made quite apparent from the first chapters that what drove him to seek a life of wilderness adventure was the baleful nature of that home-life. Anyone who has visited the Temagami area knows that he has written the book on the district as his guides are indispensable to a proper appreciation of the region.

Wilson’s writing style and turn of phrase are distinctly his own and take some getting used to; the vocabulary he uses belies any impression of his being an uneducated backwoods hick and has me reaching frequently for my online dictionary particularly in the first chapters. As he warms to the descriptions of his beloved wilderness the language and style tend to relax and we launch with him in his canoe as he explores the old growth forests, lakes, and river rapids and falls he so loves. One can almost hear the blackflies buzzing around our heads as he makes those rugged back-breaking portages and we get gooseflesh just thinking about dunking in near freezing water.

Wilson is more at home in the wilderness than he is in society. It was his work as a graphic artist and his knowledge of backwoods lore and canoe routes that helped earn his living. That someone as subversive by nature as he would find himself working for the provincial parks branch was an irony. One gets the feeling that he was hung out to dry by the environmental movement whose efforts to save the Temagami Wilderness he could not but support but which support alienated him from both his neighbours and his employers. Had it been feasible I expect he would gladly have moved into his cabin in the woods permanently; the idea of dragging a wife with two babies into that primitive environment in the dead of winter boggles the mind. We are not told if that wife left him as well but one can surmise.

It is in keeping with the overall impression the man gives, that there is little to be found about him on the web aside from sites promoting his books and a mention in IMDB as an advisor on the movie Grey Owl to Pierce Brosnan. His most important legacy and the one which has been his life-long obsession is the preservation of his beloved Temagami wilderness and wild areas like it.

Homeland

At nearly 1200 pages John Jakes Homeland is a wrist sprainer even in paperback. Set in Chicago of the 1800’s it follows the story of a young German lad who travels half way round the world to start a new life in the home of his uncle who owns a brewery. Although he has adopted America as his home Joseph Crown, his uncle, maintains strong old-world values and expects to be respected as the head and decision maker of his household. His loyal wife runs an orderly German household but has mixed feelings about her husband’s product and is beginning to entertain new feminist ideas. Their oldest son has unionist leanings and isn’t particularly enthusiastic about working his way up from the bottom in the family business. His younger siblings are even less inclined to follow the party line when it comes to their father’s wishes. Enter their cousin Paul who encounters prejudice at school and does not prosper there resulting in his being diverted to work in the family business. Like all Jakes works these fictional characters are worked into a backdrop of the rich and famous historical actors on the Chicago scene.

What is remarkable for a book published in 1998 is the fact that the language in the book is as Victorian as the period which it describes. When a young man sees a stunningly beautiful woman he doesn’t get a hard on, his body reacts. There may be scenes of war and bloodshed but it all seems rather bloodless. Men may be maimed and hospital conditions may be wretched but the descriptions seem rather antiseptic and undisturbing. Even in tropical heat with the wounded ravaged by land crabs the author barely breaks a sweat. We are told of heinous acts but it would seem we are not to be disturbed by them. And in keeping with the times, woman do not have menses, they have ‘that time of the month’. I suppose it’s all in keeping with the era in which the book is set, but it makes it seem like a book that was published at least a century ago.

Joseph Senior’s oppressive regime drives his son Joe to run away from home only to return after being crippled in a union picket bashing. Paul, the cousin, is banished and sets out on a career making news reels worldwide. Carl drops out or is expelled from College where his defiance of authority and preference for football over academics does not sit well and gravitates first to car racing and then barnstorming in a plane. Fritzi goes to New York to seek her fortune on stage but ends up in California where Hollywood is in its formative stages. Joseph Senior joins Teddy Roosevelt in the battle of San Juan Hill in Cuba to get away from his demons. All meet up with the cultural and social icons of the day often before they became famous. These outcomes are revealed in the sequel called American Dreams. Though published only two years after the first this book is entirely different in style and tone. Although it follows the lives of the next generation it does not flow seamlessly as a continuation of its precursor.