Ever since I started reading The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and his tragic quest to rid the world of mental illness by Jack el-Hai, I've been trying to decide which line from the Ramones' "Teenage Lobotomy" would be the title of this post. As el-Hai addresses in his prologue, "lobotomy" has kind of become a shorthand for stupidity. When it's considered seriously, of course, it has all sorts of negative connotations. So el-Hai's book is a valuable work, as it considers the man behind the treatment in the context of his times, and presents the tale of a flawed, driven man, both respected as an innovator and reviled as a cowboy among his peers.
Walter Freeman did not actually invent the procedure, but is credited with popularizing it in the US. He got the idea from a Portuguese colleague, and refined it several times, along with a partner. At this time (1920s and 1930s), there was nothing that could be done for mentally ill people. They were warehoused in institutions for decades. There is an excellent exhibit touring New York State of suitcases that had been found in the attic of a now-closed mental institution of this era. Using case records, they talked briefly about the people that packed them. Some of them spent 40 or more years in the institution.
No doctor in his (they were mostly "he's") right mind would choose, then, to specialize in mental illness. Freudian analysis was a relatively new idea and was just starting to take hold, but for the most part, it was a monumental, hopeless task, and the best they could hope for was that the mentally ill person would remain relatively physically healthy and not harm themselves or anyone else. That was a successful treatment. So when Freeman and his partner, neurosurgeon James Watts, developed the lobotomy, which provided hope, it was very warmly received.
The word "lobotomy" conjures up someone with no affect and little intelligence today, but as el-Hai points out, those were the failures. Those who were successfully lobotomized enjoyed a remission of debilitating symptoms. Some got well enough to hold a job and maintain personal relationships. With others, the only improvement seen was that they could be cared for at home instead of in an institution. But with the burgeoning population of asylums, this was no small thing.
The man himself is as interesting as the context of his times. Walter Freeman was a driven, intelligent father of six, and also a real showman. When he was a lecturer, he taught himself to make anatomical drawings on the chalkboard with both hands at once. He was so popular that, during the depths of the Depression, his students would bring dates to his class. He did not curb this tendency when demonstrating his technique. A refinement of his technique was called the "ice-pick lobotomy" because that was what Freeman used. He would go in through the eye with an icepick, and would often line up 20 or 25 pre-selected patients at a hospital and do them all in one day. He'd use a rubber mallet because it made a better show, even though there were special hammer that doctors used. This earned him a lot of disdain among his colleagues, and heightened the sense that he'd gone too far.
el-Hai's biography is extremely thorough. It passes the Maxwell Perkins test: I would absolutely know Walter Freeman if I met him on the street, as well as many of the other players in the story (Freeman left behind a great volume of material). It describes in great detail the mechanics of the procedure, and why Freeman and Watts felt it would be beneficial. It charts the rise and fall of the procedure, and makes a stunning claim of a possible re-emergence of psychosurgery as a treatment for mental illness. This made the book kind of difficult for me. I mentioned in my last that I haven't taken a bio class since I was old enough to drive. Someone with a strong background in biology would probably be able to write a much better review of it than I did.
But el-Hai refrains from making judgments, leaving this difficult task to the reader. Was lobotomy a boon to the field? There's no question that it was a brutal procedure that would go terribly wrong when it failed, but it brought about a vital change in thinking. It helped us to think of mental illness as treatable, as possibly a phase in someone's life rather than a permanent judgment. Maybe someone could get a mental illness, improve and close the chapter, just like when one breaks a leg. At times, Freeman doesn't seem to have much respect for his patients (such as when he parades them in front of his students in their pajamas) but he also kept in touch with many of them for decades, and devoted his last years to tracking down hard-to-find ones, driving thousands of miles to learn their fates.
Freeman lived long enough to see his work fade into obscurity, and that's a regrettable fate for such a driven, dedicated person. Whether the procedure deserved the gruesome reputation it's earned, though, remains an open question. Although it's not an easy read for someone without a medical background, I do recommend this book to anyone who's interested in mental illness. It definitely changed the way I thought about lobotomies.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Sunday, July 8, 2007
A stopgap apology
I don't really know how many of you out there in Blogland are reading faithfully. The site meter only expresses my readership in terms of a count. Do these people check in with me every day? Am I a part of your daily blog rounds, or are you just stopping by, perhaps via the "Bestest Blog Ever" or "Random Blog" buttons? I don't know, and unless you comment on this post (hint hint) I'll never know.
But I know how it makes me feel when I visit one of my favorite blogs and find it unchanged from one day to the next, so I just wanted to pop in and say hi. I started a new job this week and it's been a big adjustment. My last job was very slow, at a very static place, and offered few opportunities for interacting with another human, even a co-worker. This job is the 180-degree opposite. It's been extremely hectic (I spent a grand total of 20 minutes at my desk on Friday), very social, and I've had to learn a whole bunch of new information very quickly. On top of this, I have to commute now, with actual traffic (my last job was about 4 miles away from home), so it's been an adjustment. On Friday, I fell asleep around 9PM and didn't wake up until nearly 11 on Saturday.
So what did I choose to read this week? Something mindless and fun, perhaps another piece of the Big Stone Gap series like I'd been planning? Or did I continue my colonial history theme (a theme which I learned to my chagrin that our illustrious president has also chosen for his summer reading. Well, I have heard good things about the American Girl series too!) No, I chose to read a book about the man who pioneered the lobotomy procedure in America. I certainly have learned a lot, but it's not been terribly easy for one who hasn't taken a biology class since she was legal to drive. (I might've taken an anatomy elective in high school, but they made you dissect a cat. And I mean MADE YOU: their position was that since it was an elective, you shouldn't take it if you didn't wish to cut up a cat. I sat that one out, thanks.)
At any rate, I hope to have a review of this book for you in the next couple of days. I've also dusted off my old library card and am excited about the chance to revisit the Buffalo and Erie County Library system, which was one of the best in the country at one point. It has fallen on hard times in recent years, and even closed several branches, so I'm eager to see how it's getting on.
But I know how it makes me feel when I visit one of my favorite blogs and find it unchanged from one day to the next, so I just wanted to pop in and say hi. I started a new job this week and it's been a big adjustment. My last job was very slow, at a very static place, and offered few opportunities for interacting with another human, even a co-worker. This job is the 180-degree opposite. It's been extremely hectic (I spent a grand total of 20 minutes at my desk on Friday), very social, and I've had to learn a whole bunch of new information very quickly. On top of this, I have to commute now, with actual traffic (my last job was about 4 miles away from home), so it's been an adjustment. On Friday, I fell asleep around 9PM and didn't wake up until nearly 11 on Saturday.
So what did I choose to read this week? Something mindless and fun, perhaps another piece of the Big Stone Gap series like I'd been planning? Or did I continue my colonial history theme (a theme which I learned to my chagrin that our illustrious president has also chosen for his summer reading. Well, I have heard good things about the American Girl series too!) No, I chose to read a book about the man who pioneered the lobotomy procedure in America. I certainly have learned a lot, but it's not been terribly easy for one who hasn't taken a biology class since she was legal to drive. (I might've taken an anatomy elective in high school, but they made you dissect a cat. And I mean MADE YOU: their position was that since it was an elective, you shouldn't take it if you didn't wish to cut up a cat. I sat that one out, thanks.)
At any rate, I hope to have a review of this book for you in the next couple of days. I've also dusted off my old library card and am excited about the chance to revisit the Buffalo and Erie County Library system, which was one of the best in the country at one point. It has fallen on hard times in recent years, and even closed several branches, so I'm eager to see how it's getting on.
Sunday, July 1, 2007
A Social Critic's Dream
In every women's studies class I took in college, the film Imitation of Life came up -- a remarkable achievement for a film that was over 40 years old at the time. I still haven't seen either version (there were two: one with Lana Turner and one with Claudette Colbert), but when I found the book the movies were based on, by Fannie Hurst, at a library used book sale, I snapped it up.
I finished it earlier today, and am curious to see the movie now, although the book wasn't all that great. The book tells the tale of Bea Pullman, to whom tragedy visited early and often. Bea grew up in Atlantic City, and the warmth of her nuclear family was shattered at 17, when her mother died. Her father decided that she should marry their lodger, Mr. Pullman, because it "wouldn't look right otherwise" (in the first of many holes in the story, since having lodgers was a common practice in their community). The marriage lasts about eight months before Mr. Pullman is killed in a railway accident, just long enough for Bea to get pregnant and for her father to have a debilitating stroke. Forced into supporting her family, she hits upon the idea of continuing to operate her late husband's maple-syrup sales business.
It is at this point that she meets Delilah, who she hires to take care of her baby and her father. Delilah's story mirrors Bea's: roughly the same age, widowed with a young daughter. The key difference, of course, is that Delilah is black. Delilah moves in, and their business takes off and becomes a national corporation. The two find material success, but (as is the point of the book, I guess) never happiness.
Social critics could not dream up a better character than Delilah in discussing stereotypes of black women. She is one through and through. She knows her place (we know this because she tells Bea over and over again that she knows her place). She puts the needs of Bea's daughter before her own. She works hard, but declines all earthly rewards, even though Bea offers again and again. Even when the company is raking in millions of dollars, she won't even accept a raise from her original salary. Her rewards, as she says over and over, will come in the afterlife.
Delilah's saintliness is rewarded by her own daughter disowning her. This is another aspect of the movie that the social critics love, although it's played down in the book (the story truly belongs to Bea). The back of the book promises that Delilah's daughter "turns bad, runs away from home, passes for white and breaks her mother's heart." The last two, definitely. But she doesn't "run", she's sent away for tutoring and elects not to return. She becomes a librarian and marries a white man who is a mining engineer, hardly anyone's definition of "turning bad", now or in 1933.
I guess the title of the book refers to Bea's life (although with the minimal returns Delilah got for her work, it could also refer to hers). Although Bea has an acquaintance who is both a successful businesswoman and attractive, Bea does not keep herself up. She has no true friends and does not attend social functions. When she does finally fall in love, it takes her weeks to make her awkward pass at the man in question, who rebuffs her. But at the same time, it's hard to see what choice Bea had. As a teenager, she'd always intended to marry and have children as social norms dictated. The alternative was thrust upon her by circumstance, and as the book noted repeatedly, success has its own momentum. Once she got started, she couldn't really stop. But you're not encouraged to admire Bea's hard work, or her ingenuity. You're supposed to feel sorry for this wealthy, successful woman, because she does not have a husband.
I would never go so far as to say I regret reading a book, but I wouldn't really recommend this one. It probably filmed very well (and I suspect they made substantial changes which made the story better). As it is, the book is very slow-moving, with the tale of Bea not really cranking up until around page 70 or so (in a 280-page book). It's also not terribly well-written. I suspect it was sort of the Valley of the Dolls of its day, and it hasn't aged terribly well. I like the idea behind the project, of reissuing long-out-of-print books that classic films were based on. But in this case, this rare case, the movie is probably better.
I finished it earlier today, and am curious to see the movie now, although the book wasn't all that great. The book tells the tale of Bea Pullman, to whom tragedy visited early and often. Bea grew up in Atlantic City, and the warmth of her nuclear family was shattered at 17, when her mother died. Her father decided that she should marry their lodger, Mr. Pullman, because it "wouldn't look right otherwise" (in the first of many holes in the story, since having lodgers was a common practice in their community). The marriage lasts about eight months before Mr. Pullman is killed in a railway accident, just long enough for Bea to get pregnant and for her father to have a debilitating stroke. Forced into supporting her family, she hits upon the idea of continuing to operate her late husband's maple-syrup sales business.
It is at this point that she meets Delilah, who she hires to take care of her baby and her father. Delilah's story mirrors Bea's: roughly the same age, widowed with a young daughter. The key difference, of course, is that Delilah is black. Delilah moves in, and their business takes off and becomes a national corporation. The two find material success, but (as is the point of the book, I guess) never happiness.
Social critics could not dream up a better character than Delilah in discussing stereotypes of black women. She is one through and through. She knows her place (we know this because she tells Bea over and over again that she knows her place). She puts the needs of Bea's daughter before her own. She works hard, but declines all earthly rewards, even though Bea offers again and again. Even when the company is raking in millions of dollars, she won't even accept a raise from her original salary. Her rewards, as she says over and over, will come in the afterlife.
Delilah's saintliness is rewarded by her own daughter disowning her. This is another aspect of the movie that the social critics love, although it's played down in the book (the story truly belongs to Bea). The back of the book promises that Delilah's daughter "turns bad, runs away from home, passes for white and breaks her mother's heart." The last two, definitely. But she doesn't "run", she's sent away for tutoring and elects not to return. She becomes a librarian and marries a white man who is a mining engineer, hardly anyone's definition of "turning bad", now or in 1933.
I guess the title of the book refers to Bea's life (although with the minimal returns Delilah got for her work, it could also refer to hers). Although Bea has an acquaintance who is both a successful businesswoman and attractive, Bea does not keep herself up. She has no true friends and does not attend social functions. When she does finally fall in love, it takes her weeks to make her awkward pass at the man in question, who rebuffs her. But at the same time, it's hard to see what choice Bea had. As a teenager, she'd always intended to marry and have children as social norms dictated. The alternative was thrust upon her by circumstance, and as the book noted repeatedly, success has its own momentum. Once she got started, she couldn't really stop. But you're not encouraged to admire Bea's hard work, or her ingenuity. You're supposed to feel sorry for this wealthy, successful woman, because she does not have a husband.
I would never go so far as to say I regret reading a book, but I wouldn't really recommend this one. It probably filmed very well (and I suspect they made substantial changes which made the story better). As it is, the book is very slow-moving, with the tale of Bea not really cranking up until around page 70 or so (in a 280-page book). It's also not terribly well-written. I suspect it was sort of the Valley of the Dolls of its day, and it hasn't aged terribly well. I like the idea behind the project, of reissuing long-out-of-print books that classic films were based on. But in this case, this rare case, the movie is probably better.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
A Reverse Inspiration
Some folks, whether they're as well-known as Thomas Jefferson, or as (relatively) obscure as your 11th grade English teacher, inspire you to do thing through their ingenuity, compassion, nobility of spirit, or strength. Then, there are the "reverse inspirations," people who make you go, "Well, shit, if she can do that, I can DEFINITELY do that too." Tonight I got reverse inspiration in Barnes and Noble from a source I never would've guess: Pamela Anderson.
Did you know that this woman has not one, but two novels out? The first one is called Star. Before I even took it off the shelf, I said to myself, "I bet the main character is named Star." I was right. It apparently chronicles the meteoric rise of a small-town girl into an international celebrity and sex symbol. In case anyone's questioning where she might have gotten the idea for that book, the next book is called Star Struck. If any of you have taken my advice and read the Motley Crue autobiography The Dirt, you'll know that Tommy Lee spent a few months in jail for hitting her while they were married. And just by reading the dust jacket, this book is so clearly about the two of them that you wonder why she bothered to change the names.
I have never liked Pamela Anderson. I've always thought she was more scary-looking than sexy. To her credit, she has tried to do some good with her celebrity, through her work with PETA and all, but I still always see her as vapid. Perhaps it has something to do with the quality of her "work": Baywatch was about the height of it. Then she was on two really shitty shows, V.I.P( stands for "Vallery Irons Protection)and Stacked, where she worked in a bookstore (it's a double entendre! Get it? How clever!) There was a shitty movie, Barb Wire (where she played a woman named...wait for it..Barb Wire. Pam likes to keep it simple.) Since I'm not a man, I never really paid her much attention.
But my curiousity is piqued with these books. I'm not proud to admit that I spent a good half hour looking at the books and those are what sticks out. I'm a little afraid, actually, of what it might say about me. At least I didn't buy them (not like I'd be the only one; the first was apparently a best-seller). But it may get to the point where I can't take it anymore and just have to give them a go, like I did with Citizen Girl. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if Star and Star Struck are significantly better than Citizen Girl.
Did you know that this woman has not one, but two novels out? The first one is called Star. Before I even took it off the shelf, I said to myself, "I bet the main character is named Star." I was right. It apparently chronicles the meteoric rise of a small-town girl into an international celebrity and sex symbol. In case anyone's questioning where she might have gotten the idea for that book, the next book is called Star Struck. If any of you have taken my advice and read the Motley Crue autobiography The Dirt, you'll know that Tommy Lee spent a few months in jail for hitting her while they were married. And just by reading the dust jacket, this book is so clearly about the two of them that you wonder why she bothered to change the names.
I have never liked Pamela Anderson. I've always thought she was more scary-looking than sexy. To her credit, she has tried to do some good with her celebrity, through her work with PETA and all, but I still always see her as vapid. Perhaps it has something to do with the quality of her "work": Baywatch was about the height of it. Then she was on two really shitty shows, V.I.P( stands for "Vallery Irons Protection)and Stacked, where she worked in a bookstore (it's a double entendre! Get it? How clever!) There was a shitty movie, Barb Wire (where she played a woman named...wait for it..Barb Wire. Pam likes to keep it simple.) Since I'm not a man, I never really paid her much attention.
But my curiousity is piqued with these books. I'm not proud to admit that I spent a good half hour looking at the books and those are what sticks out. I'm a little afraid, actually, of what it might say about me. At least I didn't buy them (not like I'd be the only one; the first was apparently a best-seller). But it may get to the point where I can't take it anymore and just have to give them a go, like I did with Citizen Girl. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if Star and Star Struck are significantly better than Citizen Girl.
Monday, June 25, 2007
Secrets
All of us have secrets...some are pretty mundane, and others are life-altering. Tawni O'Dell's main characters trend towards the second (well, a book about an adult who stole a necklace from her best friend in second grade does not hold much appeal for anyone, does it?). Her character's secrets would be described by others as "shocking", but the thing about shock is that it wears off. It's to O'Dell's credit that she doesn't build towards a shocker ending. Instead, she sprinkles liberal hints about the nature of the secret throughout the book. As you're observing the main character, and hearing his or her thoughts (O'Dell writes in the first person), you start to suspect it, so when the narrator finally levels with the reader about the secret, you feel like you've known it all along, because you've come to know the main character and understand what he or she has been living with.
Coal Run is set in the same Western PA mining town as Sister Mine, and the narrator of Coal Run even makes an appearance in Sister Mine. They don't really hinge on each other, they just exist in the same reality. But still, I wish I'd read them in order so I could look for the characters from Coal Run.
It's the story of Ivan Zoschenko, who lost his father at an early age to an explosion in the coal mine, as did half of his peers. He was a gifted football player and had just inked a deal with the Chicago Bears when a serious injury (non-football related, but it's part of the plot of the book) ended his career. After an eight-year absence, he's returned to Coal Run as a deputy sheriff. The book is set during one eventful week, where he attends the funeral of his mother's best friend, gets auctioned off in a hospital charity event (dinner with him, anyway), is reunited with his much-changed childhood idol, and prepares for the release of a violent felon.
The characters in this book, as in all of her books, are really what makes the story. Ivan's sister Jolene, is a waitress with high spirits, three boys by three different men, and a former pageant queen who competed because she loved the crowns. Dr. Ed is a 70-year-old pediatrician who feels so strongly about the welfare of his charges that he makes house calls and vaccinates children for free, by force if he has to. Zo Craig is dead by the time the book opens, but manages to direct events and help her former friends and neighbors from beyond the grave.
Of the three books, this is where you'll find the most even mixture of comedy and tragedy. In Coal Run, tragedy scars the landscape. Over 100 men were killed in the mine that day, and their widows and children lived in the shadow of it until mine fires made the town unliveable and everyone was moved out and the houses bulldozed. There is also a great deal of personal tragedy. As with O'Dell's other books, domestic violence, alcoholism, maiming injuries, abandonment, and early death are the fabric of the lives of the people of Coal Run, and Ivan is coping from the fallout of an incident that shocked even them. There's also the loss of potential. Ivan is the most glaringly obvious example, but Jolene was stripped of her Miss Pennsylvania title when she became pregnant. Ivan's boyhood hero Val lost his leg in Vietnam. Ivan's former teammate also had the potential to turn pro, but turned his back on it for the same kind of life his father and grandfather had led, working the mines in Coal Run.
But there's also a lot of humor. Ivan's job takes him out to bust up a fight over ownership of a picnic table: one of the combatants had bought it, but a storm blew it into the creek and it washed up on the property of the other combatant. His sister defuses a potentially violent situation by taking off her dress; it distracts the man just long enough for Ivan to knock him out. Like the rest of O'Dell's work, it's an excellent read. But I feel a little sad now. This is all there is, for now. Sister Mine just came out, so we'll probably have to wait another couple of years for a new one from O'Dell. It will be worth it, though.
Coal Run is set in the same Western PA mining town as Sister Mine, and the narrator of Coal Run even makes an appearance in Sister Mine. They don't really hinge on each other, they just exist in the same reality. But still, I wish I'd read them in order so I could look for the characters from Coal Run.
It's the story of Ivan Zoschenko, who lost his father at an early age to an explosion in the coal mine, as did half of his peers. He was a gifted football player and had just inked a deal with the Chicago Bears when a serious injury (non-football related, but it's part of the plot of the book) ended his career. After an eight-year absence, he's returned to Coal Run as a deputy sheriff. The book is set during one eventful week, where he attends the funeral of his mother's best friend, gets auctioned off in a hospital charity event (dinner with him, anyway), is reunited with his much-changed childhood idol, and prepares for the release of a violent felon.
The characters in this book, as in all of her books, are really what makes the story. Ivan's sister Jolene, is a waitress with high spirits, three boys by three different men, and a former pageant queen who competed because she loved the crowns. Dr. Ed is a 70-year-old pediatrician who feels so strongly about the welfare of his charges that he makes house calls and vaccinates children for free, by force if he has to. Zo Craig is dead by the time the book opens, but manages to direct events and help her former friends and neighbors from beyond the grave.
Of the three books, this is where you'll find the most even mixture of comedy and tragedy. In Coal Run, tragedy scars the landscape. Over 100 men were killed in the mine that day, and their widows and children lived in the shadow of it until mine fires made the town unliveable and everyone was moved out and the houses bulldozed. There is also a great deal of personal tragedy. As with O'Dell's other books, domestic violence, alcoholism, maiming injuries, abandonment, and early death are the fabric of the lives of the people of Coal Run, and Ivan is coping from the fallout of an incident that shocked even them. There's also the loss of potential. Ivan is the most glaringly obvious example, but Jolene was stripped of her Miss Pennsylvania title when she became pregnant. Ivan's boyhood hero Val lost his leg in Vietnam. Ivan's former teammate also had the potential to turn pro, but turned his back on it for the same kind of life his father and grandfather had led, working the mines in Coal Run.
But there's also a lot of humor. Ivan's job takes him out to bust up a fight over ownership of a picnic table: one of the combatants had bought it, but a storm blew it into the creek and it washed up on the property of the other combatant. His sister defuses a potentially violent situation by taking off her dress; it distracts the man just long enough for Ivan to knock him out. Like the rest of O'Dell's work, it's an excellent read. But I feel a little sad now. This is all there is, for now. Sister Mine just came out, so we'll probably have to wait another couple of years for a new one from O'Dell. It will be worth it, though.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Returning to Modern America...with a vengeance
I took a bit of a break from my colonial history thing to read one of Tawni O'Dell's other books. I have both her previous books out from the library. The one that I didn't leave in the car was her first novel, Back Roads.
The dust jacket and the review on the book will tell you that it's funny. I will tell you that whoever wrote that is seriously fucked in the head. Unlike Sister Mine, which deals with many of the same serious themes, there is very little humor in this book. I think it's primarily due to the age of the protagonists, and distance from their catastrophes: Shae-Lynn was 40, and had managed to overcome her difficult childhood and teenage years to become a relatively successful adult. Harley is only 20. His mother is in in prison for having shot and killed his abusive father, leaving him to raise his three younger sisters: Amber, 16; Misty, 12; and Jody, who's only 6. All this happened a little over two years before the book started, and now he works two shitty jobs, he attends therapy sessions, and since his friends are all in college, he does little else.
He also has an intensity and anger that Shae-Lynn did not have. The book opens with him in a police station, accused of murder, and works backwards. As you get to know Harley, you're not surprised. He does have a lot to be pissed about, for sure, but he also seems pissed off about things that have little to do with his home life. Women, for instance. There's a scene where he goes to visit his mother in prison and almost gets himself kicked out for yelling at a ten-year old girl about using birth control and how she's going to get pregnant as a teenager if she's not careful. Other people, in general, piss Harley off. He gets in several fights during the book, some of them physical. He doesn't get much out of his therapy sessions, and frequently visualizes violent acts: "I...imagined picking up the empty pan and swinging it with all my night, catching Jody in the head first, knocking her off her chair, and then hitting Misty and watching her spit up bloody macaroni and cheese..."
There is also little redemption at the end of the book. Unlike Sister Mine, things don't generally end up working out and resolving themselves, which I guess is realistic. But this one doesn't leave you feeling good. That's not to say that it isn't a good book. O'Dell once again takes you into a world that most people don't really care to read about: a world of dirty houses with burned-out couches on the front lawn, where women and children get beat up by the man of the house, where teenaged girls run wild, adults work at dead-end, ball-breaking jobs, high school graduation rates are low, and the people who shop at Wal-Mart are considered upper-middle-class. Her characters, and their hopes and dreams, are all vivid, and all treated respectfully.
Many people make fun of the real-life counterparts to O'Dell's characters, and most of them just prefer to pretend they don't exist. But they're a lot more representative of America than the characters in a novel by, say, Jennifer Weiner or Candace Bushnell. I've spent the past two years living and working in an area that's only marginally better than the coal towns of Western PA, and I'm glad this perspective is getting represented in modern literature.
The dust jacket and the review on the book will tell you that it's funny. I will tell you that whoever wrote that is seriously fucked in the head. Unlike Sister Mine, which deals with many of the same serious themes, there is very little humor in this book. I think it's primarily due to the age of the protagonists, and distance from their catastrophes: Shae-Lynn was 40, and had managed to overcome her difficult childhood and teenage years to become a relatively successful adult. Harley is only 20. His mother is in in prison for having shot and killed his abusive father, leaving him to raise his three younger sisters: Amber, 16; Misty, 12; and Jody, who's only 6. All this happened a little over two years before the book started, and now he works two shitty jobs, he attends therapy sessions, and since his friends are all in college, he does little else.
He also has an intensity and anger that Shae-Lynn did not have. The book opens with him in a police station, accused of murder, and works backwards. As you get to know Harley, you're not surprised. He does have a lot to be pissed about, for sure, but he also seems pissed off about things that have little to do with his home life. Women, for instance. There's a scene where he goes to visit his mother in prison and almost gets himself kicked out for yelling at a ten-year old girl about using birth control and how she's going to get pregnant as a teenager if she's not careful. Other people, in general, piss Harley off. He gets in several fights during the book, some of them physical. He doesn't get much out of his therapy sessions, and frequently visualizes violent acts: "I...imagined picking up the empty pan and swinging it with all my night, catching Jody in the head first, knocking her off her chair, and then hitting Misty and watching her spit up bloody macaroni and cheese..."
There is also little redemption at the end of the book. Unlike Sister Mine, things don't generally end up working out and resolving themselves, which I guess is realistic. But this one doesn't leave you feeling good. That's not to say that it isn't a good book. O'Dell once again takes you into a world that most people don't really care to read about: a world of dirty houses with burned-out couches on the front lawn, where women and children get beat up by the man of the house, where teenaged girls run wild, adults work at dead-end, ball-breaking jobs, high school graduation rates are low, and the people who shop at Wal-Mart are considered upper-middle-class. Her characters, and their hopes and dreams, are all vivid, and all treated respectfully.
Many people make fun of the real-life counterparts to O'Dell's characters, and most of them just prefer to pretend they don't exist. But they're a lot more representative of America than the characters in a novel by, say, Jennifer Weiner or Candace Bushnell. I've spent the past two years living and working in an area that's only marginally better than the coal towns of Western PA, and I'm glad this perspective is getting represented in modern literature.
The Code of the Brethren
Does anyone remember that phrase from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise: "The Code of the Brethren, set down by Morgan and Bartholomew?" The book I've just finished, Empire of Blue Water by Stephan Talty, is about the real-life career of the "Morgan" of that phrase: Captain Henry Morgan 1635-1688.
One beautiful thing about my Colonial Reading Thing is that it's helped me to see the broader connections. When they referenced trouble between the English and the Dutch heating up, I know of the trouble they're talking about. When Morgan came to the Caribbean, the English were about 9 years away from taking New Amsterdam. You can also see many of the trends and currents swirling about the story of the pirates in the Caribbean: how the old-world thinking, mired in religion, tradition and superstition, was about to be exploded by a more humanistic, individualistic worldview.
In this book, the old worldview was quite literally, exploded, over and over again by the democratic scallywag army Morgan raised, "made up of trash tossed out of a half a dozen European countries". In my beloved Pirates movie franchise, the pirates are depicted as mercenaries and enemies of all. In Empire, Talty shows how the British crown used them as a weapon: there was a razor-thin distinction between "pirates" and "privateers." The latter (of which Morgan was the best-known) had official commissions from the Crown to pillage and plunder strategic Spanish locations. The Spanish, in contrast, were mired in their old ways. Talty talks of ships that crossed the Atlantic bearing nothing but pages and pages of records and orders. It took a very long time for anything to happen in Spain, and the Spanish were terribly overextended. They did not have a counterpart to the privateer system; in fact, it would've been anathema to their whole way of thinking, in which God was at the center of everything, not the individual.
There are many delectable characters in this book. There's the melancholy King Phillip IV of Spain, who, overwhelmed by problems he couldn't solve, spent hours staring into his own tomb. Mary Carleton, the notorious whore who had impersonated a German princess down on her luck back in England, and her cohorts, with the delectable names of No-Conscience Nan, Buttock-de-Clink Jenny and Salt-Beef Peg. The terrifying, bloodthirsty psychopathic French pirate L'Ollonais. And Morgan himself, the cunning, brave Welshman who proved to be a natural leader and considered himself not an outlaw but a British patriot.
I will confess again: I am a huge fan of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. I love Jack Sparrow, and would marry him if he were real, even though I know he wouldn't make a very good husband. I also like the ride, too, and was interested to see historical correlations to several details in both: the mayor in the well (when towns had advance notice of pirate raids, wells were popular hiding places for valuables); the pirate wallowing with the pigs (livestock and provisions were as highly prized as swag); Elizabeth's reluctance to reveal herself as the governor's daughter in the first film (pirates often kidnapped citizens and held them for ransom, as a way to get valuables that had been hidden). There were real Gallows Points to warn pirates of what they were in for, just like the one Captain Jack Sparrow saluted as his boat was sinking on the way to Port Royale. Tortuga was not only a real place, but it seems as though it was accurately depicted in the first film. Pirates really did have a superstition that banned women from their ships, although the real-life pirates made a few notable exceptions, too.
The book was relatively entertaining, and although I have few doubts of its historic accuracy, it's clear from the bibliography that it's not presenting anything new, unlike Shorto's book. Talty seems to have leaned mostly on secondary sources, some going all the way back to the early 20th century. He lists only ten primary sources, and all of those are previously published documents. He also used a device that further separates this book from more scholarly works: he creates a fictional character. His fictional character is a "typical" pirate that would have sailed with Morgan. Initially, I thought his invention (named Roderick) was just an example, but Roderick is with is throughout the entire book, past the death of the Captain. Anyone reading this book should be aware, then, that it's more history-as-entertainment than scholarly work. That's not necessarily a bad thing: given the upsurge in interest in pirates, it's an enjoyable, easily digestible way to start, but it is just a starting place. If you already have some knowledge of Morgan's career or the pirates in the Caribbean, this book is not likely to add much, though.
One beautiful thing about my Colonial Reading Thing is that it's helped me to see the broader connections. When they referenced trouble between the English and the Dutch heating up, I know of the trouble they're talking about. When Morgan came to the Caribbean, the English were about 9 years away from taking New Amsterdam. You can also see many of the trends and currents swirling about the story of the pirates in the Caribbean: how the old-world thinking, mired in religion, tradition and superstition, was about to be exploded by a more humanistic, individualistic worldview.
In this book, the old worldview was quite literally, exploded, over and over again by the democratic scallywag army Morgan raised, "made up of trash tossed out of a half a dozen European countries". In my beloved Pirates movie franchise, the pirates are depicted as mercenaries and enemies of all. In Empire, Talty shows how the British crown used them as a weapon: there was a razor-thin distinction between "pirates" and "privateers." The latter (of which Morgan was the best-known) had official commissions from the Crown to pillage and plunder strategic Spanish locations. The Spanish, in contrast, were mired in their old ways. Talty talks of ships that crossed the Atlantic bearing nothing but pages and pages of records and orders. It took a very long time for anything to happen in Spain, and the Spanish were terribly overextended. They did not have a counterpart to the privateer system; in fact, it would've been anathema to their whole way of thinking, in which God was at the center of everything, not the individual.
There are many delectable characters in this book. There's the melancholy King Phillip IV of Spain, who, overwhelmed by problems he couldn't solve, spent hours staring into his own tomb. Mary Carleton, the notorious whore who had impersonated a German princess down on her luck back in England, and her cohorts, with the delectable names of No-Conscience Nan, Buttock-de-Clink Jenny and Salt-Beef Peg. The terrifying, bloodthirsty psychopathic French pirate L'Ollonais. And Morgan himself, the cunning, brave Welshman who proved to be a natural leader and considered himself not an outlaw but a British patriot.
I will confess again: I am a huge fan of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. I love Jack Sparrow, and would marry him if he were real, even though I know he wouldn't make a very good husband. I also like the ride, too, and was interested to see historical correlations to several details in both: the mayor in the well (when towns had advance notice of pirate raids, wells were popular hiding places for valuables); the pirate wallowing with the pigs (livestock and provisions were as highly prized as swag); Elizabeth's reluctance to reveal herself as the governor's daughter in the first film (pirates often kidnapped citizens and held them for ransom, as a way to get valuables that had been hidden). There were real Gallows Points to warn pirates of what they were in for, just like the one Captain Jack Sparrow saluted as his boat was sinking on the way to Port Royale. Tortuga was not only a real place, but it seems as though it was accurately depicted in the first film. Pirates really did have a superstition that banned women from their ships, although the real-life pirates made a few notable exceptions, too.
The book was relatively entertaining, and although I have few doubts of its historic accuracy, it's clear from the bibliography that it's not presenting anything new, unlike Shorto's book. Talty seems to have leaned mostly on secondary sources, some going all the way back to the early 20th century. He lists only ten primary sources, and all of those are previously published documents. He also used a device that further separates this book from more scholarly works: he creates a fictional character. His fictional character is a "typical" pirate that would have sailed with Morgan. Initially, I thought his invention (named Roderick) was just an example, but Roderick is with is throughout the entire book, past the death of the Captain. Anyone reading this book should be aware, then, that it's more history-as-entertainment than scholarly work. That's not necessarily a bad thing: given the upsurge in interest in pirates, it's an enjoyable, easily digestible way to start, but it is just a starting place. If you already have some knowledge of Morgan's career or the pirates in the Caribbean, this book is not likely to add much, though.
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