OALA: Book Reviews

2009-03-01T07:07:00.000-08:00

PAUL HARVEY, 90

Broadcaster Delivered 'The Rest of the Story'

Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 1, 2009; Page C08

"Paul Harvey, 90, a Chicago-based radio broadcaster whose authoritative baritone voice and distinctive staccato delivery attracted millions of daily listeners for more than half a century, died Feb. 28 in Phoenix.

A spokesman for ABC Radio Networks told the Associated Press that Mr. Harvey died at his winter home, surrounded by family. No cause of death was immediately available.

Mr. Harvey was the voice of the American heartland, offering to millions his trademark greeting: "Hello Americans! This is Paul Harvey. Stand by! For news!"

For millions, Paul Harvey in the morning or at noon was as much a part of daily routine as morning coffee..."

article cont here http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/28/AR2009022802096.html?hpid=topnews

2007-02-23T10:47:00.000-08:00

Lost Souls

Fiction

Written by Dan Krajewski

Published by iUniverse Inc

ISBN 0-595-42012-5

$12.95 141 pages

ACCIDENTAL?

“Hell is other people.”

-No Exit, Jean Paul Sartre

Samuel Beckett, well know playwright (“Waiting for Godot, End Game) was also a novelist (Murphy, Watt). In Beckett’s post-modern experimental short novel Comment C’est (How It Is) His protagonist crawls through and endless expanse of mud while dragging a sack of food behind him. He soon catches up with a person crawling ahead of and attempts to torture him into speech. Soon the protagonist is left behind and is over come by the crawler behind him, a cyclic romp through purgatory. Beckett’s protagonist says, “My mistakes are my life.” In Daniel Krajewski’s novel Lost Souls, before the prologue Krajewski quotes from the alternative music band Radiohead’s song, There There(The Boney King Of Nowhere), “We are accidents waiting to happen.” Both Beckett’s and Radiohead’s quotes are common themes that run throughout the entirety of Krajewski’s short but meaty novel, from the very first sentence, “That pathetic coward.” to the last gasp of two words on the final page, “Truly lost.” Like Radiohead’s lyrics and Beckett’s protagonist there is a feeling of being buffeted by helplessness and a sense of hapless and hopeless futile driven predestination.

Lost Souls is written in the first person perspective of four main characters: (except the prologue, which is the first person perspective of the character Ally and the epilogue written in the first person perspective of the character Braska.) Ander, Catherine, Clive, and Razer. In a multi-first person driven narrative, novice writers tend to give each character the same ‘voice’. It becomes difficult for the reader to distinguish the different characters and causes tedious redundancies and diminished reader interest in the plot. Krajewski’s masterful writing creates a distinct and clear voice for each of his characters and enhances the reader relationship. One becomes caught up in the skillfully constructed vignettes of each character that read like a white hot rocket across the page.

Lost Souls is about what exactly the title implies, being lost, not metaphorically, but actually being lost in reality or maybe never fitting in reality to begin with; at least not what we of the normal world discern as reality. Krajewski’s populates his novel with lost souls like: Ander, a young man on the verge of manhood walks through life like haunted house that takes his ghosts and wraiths with him. His tenuous hold on reality is Lindsey, his girlfriend and victim to his Lovecraftian visions. Krajewski writes, “I catch a lightning-quick snap shot of something else shining behind her face. It was like a picture negative, or an x-ray. For an instant her mouth was open hideously wide, like and angler fish, or a cobra. She was all teeth…Tears slide down my eyes and drip onto Lindsey’s breasts…A thousand sorrows claim my heart. I hear it break, an audible muted thump. There is no love or beauty in the world. There is only misery and pathos…”

Clive is a telepath and petty crook with extraordinary powers. He is constantly bombarded by the thoughts of others, especially their deepest darkest sinful thoughts. He tells fortunes to scrape together the measly cash to sustain him-self on the road. His mind is so scattered and disjointed that he needs to focus on a book of art work to quiet the turmoil. Krajewski writes, “I think part of the reason I’m insane is because I never dream. I sleep and it’s like dying temporarily. There’s just a big void underneath my eyelids. Maybe it’s all these fuckers’ thoughts. They cannibalized all mine, and when I sleep there’s nothing left. Nothing. The abyss. Home.”

Razer is the oldest ‘lost soul’ in the youngest looking shell. She is a 150 year old vampire in the permanent guise of a six year old girl. She easily manipulates those around her, takes enough blood to survive and covers her tracks. Razer is similar to the character Claudia in Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, specifically the novels, An Interview With A Vampire and The Vampire, Lestat. Although both are portrayed arrogant and intelligent, where Claudia seems evil and resentful, Razer is more interested in her everyday survival and is more accepting to who and what she is. Krajewski writes, “This one crept up on me much faster. I returned to the hotel room at an hour before sunrise (knowing I had an hour because my skin began to crawl slightly)…Being who I am, it’s all in the blood. I can smell it so acutely on humans I can practically taste it, and I can tell everything about them from it. It’s as unique as a fingerprint or snowflake. I know by the scent whether it’s male or female, whether it’s young or old, even ethnicity is no secret to blood…It’s actually the emotional experiences and sins that taint the taste of blood. Stale, rank blood indicates a person devoid of virtue and piety. The sweetest blood always belongs to the innocent, the unspoiled. Blood does not ripen. It rots.”

Catherine has no special powers, but she is the keystone to Lost Souls. Her sadness is so extreme that she gave up everything, job, lover and hope. Hers’ is a life of mourning and emptiness to the point where she has slipped off coils of normalcy and has seeped beneath an underbelly of despair to the in-between-places where reality is thin and the true world is shown. Krajewski writes, “I can’t believe the sun rose this morning. I don’t understand how those people outside are walking around shopping and going to work. They should be home, crying like I am. Those kids shouldn’t be playing with water guns. They should be worrying about the future. Someone should tell them how miserable the world is. Someone should tell them how deep their unhappiness can run and what a lie everything they’ve been told is. They should be dead, and their parents should be crying at home.”

If Dean Koontz wrote Lost Souls, Razer, Catherine, Clive and Ander would gather together (usually with a dog) and have a fighting chance as we the readers see the author’s almost invisible hands like an omniscient god prod his creations in staged hackneyed play. Dan Krajewski’s virtuoso writing makes one forget one is reading a book. The pace is so fast and people are so diversified that the reader takes a bastardized road trip to the ultimate head on collision. After all, “We are accidents waiting to happen and our mistakes are our lives.”

-Lee Gooden 2-23-07

2006-11-03T08:56:00.000-08:00

Review of Alveraz Ricardez's book of poems HOT MUD POEMS
Body: Lee Gooden's Review of Alveraz Ricardez Hot Mud Poems

With the eye of a film-maker and a bibliophile, the beneficial influences of poets and other film makers are apparent in Alveraz Ricardez’s book of poems Hot Mud Poems. Specifically poets like Jack Kerouac, Richard Brautigan, Charles Bukowski and former poet Laureate, Billy Collins and film makers like Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, John Cassavetes, Sam Peckinpah and Robert Altman. Alveraz tips his ten gallon hat at twenty-first century pop-culture. He strikes his best Eastwood pose and removes the cast iron from beneath his serape exposing his heart to the world. Hot Mud Poems is the work of an artist that has no qualms about showing his sensitive underbelly, while still not afraid of being a man. Like Sam Shepard, actor, playwright, screenwriter, director, story writer and poet, Alveraz let’s his work do his talking for him. Alveraz, like Shepard is as comfortable in front of the camera as he is behind it. His poems show a poet’s sensibilities and sensitivities with the pragmatism and dictatorial control of a director.
His poem, ‘The Polar Bear Hunter”, contains the lyrical machismo of James Dickey’s latter works. “Turbans And Tacos”, is a self-deprecating way at laughing at America’s perpetual state of fear since 911. “Pull The Blinds” is powerful emotion carved into paper that reveals the dysfunctions from America’s heritage of sexual repression. “Garbage” is written with the same ‘balls to the wall’ energy as anything by Bukowski.
Hot Mud Poems is a welcome addition to the cannon of today’s post-post-modern male poets.

-Lee Gooden (revised) 11-02-06

2006-09-22T09:05:00.000-07:00

EXCERPT FROM IN THE FRAY MAGAZINE:

Cherry Blossoms In Twilight: Memories of a Japanese Girl
Written by, Yaeko Sugama Weldon and Linda E. Austin
Illustrated by, Yaeko Sugama
Publisher: Moonbridge Publications
Copyright © 2005 Linda E. Austin
84 pages of text
2 page appendix with two Japanese children’s songs
11 line pencil illustrations

Cherry Blossoms In Twilight: Memories of a Japanese Girl, written by Yaeko Sugama Weldon and her daughter Linda E. Austin is Published by Moonbridge Publications contains eighty-four pages of text, eleven pencil line drawings drawn by Weldon and a two page appendix consisting of two Japanese children’s songs, Shojogi (Song of the Tanuki) and Ame Ame (Rain, Rain). Cherry Blossoms in Twilight is a memoir of a woman who built her life on the words her father, the village shoemaker wrote in the back of her closet on her first day of school “Right, Straight, Honest and Cheerful.” These four principals Weldon continues to adhere to in the present and has passed the ideals onto her grandchildren
Weldon’s simple conversational style of writing has an awkwardness that does not detract from the story or the lyrical power of the prose. Instead, it adds to the story’s charm. It is a departure from slick glossy braggarts reminiscing about their ‘back-in-the-day’ achievements, exploits, and shenanigans. The simplicity of language lends a credibility to Weldon’s voice as if she is dictating her story in Japanese and broken English to her daughter Linda. There is a kindness that comes directly from her heart that shapes her words and exudes off the page. She has written her memories into a minute sized book that is a giant in feeling. Easily structured, anecdote to anecdote there is an underlined complexity built from the honesty of her emotions. She took joy in her life, throughout her childhood and as an adult. Exposed to brutal poverty, hardships, war, and failed relationships Weldon never loses her child-like wonder, “cheerfulness’ and belief in the good.
Her pencil line drawings are portraits of her past that come directly from experience. She has illustrated only chapters that deal with her childhood. Her last drawing illustrates the chapter called, World War II-The End of Childhood. The picture shows the rear silhouettes of young Yaeko and her father walking away into the distance towards the unknown. Here Weldon’s innocence ends and the density of World War II demands an increased gravitation and a harsher detailed picture that Weldon does not want to provide graphically. She realized that no artistic medium (except, maybe, the written word) regardless of intensity or color scheme can correctly represent the stark factuality and nightmarish vividness of being attacked by juggernaut killing machine as technologically superior as the United States of America’s Armed Forces. She writes, “We were young and had little fear. In the bomb shelter we would sing and some girls would dance. One day, as usual we ran to the bomb shelter. One of the girls ran back to the lunchroom to use the bathroom there. We told her not to go, but she said she had to. All of a sudden a war plane came down from the sky like a hawk to catch a rabbit. It made a terrible loud noise and shot her with its machine gun. She lay bleeding on the ground and we all started crying. She died at the hospital. She was just a young girl. After that we were just scared. No one sang songs anymore-we just listened for airplanes.” After this incident Weldon developed a hatred for Americans. Her father explained that her hatred was misplaced and unnecessary. Weldon writes, “I told my father I hated war and I hated the American military killing innocent civilian mothers and children. We did not ask for war. My father said to me, “‘Don’t hate anyone, it doesn’t do any good. They are only doing their duty. This is war.’”
Cherry Blossoms in Twilight is Weldon’s statement on the survival of the altruistic and humane during all the battles in life. One can only think of how pertinent her book and ideals are, “Right, Straight, Honest and Cheerful.” to today’s Afghanistan and Iraqi citizens and our military that get caught in the onrush of our so-called liberating foreign policies.

- 9-22-06 LEE GOODEN, PULSE DVD/BOOK REVIEWER FOR IN THE FRAY ONLINE MAGAZINE

2006-09-12T10:28:00.000-07:00

Check me out!

2006-09-11T22:04:00.000-07:00

The Official Guide to Office Wellness
By,William R. Vitanyi Jr.
Publisher: Bayla Publishing
Copyright © 2006 William R. Vitanyi Jr
Category: Humor
ISBN: 978-0-97856-002-7
ISBN: 0-9785600-2-7
108 Pages $17.95 available in hardcover October 2006

The Official Guide to Office Wellness by William R. Vitanyi Jr. has a disclaimer in the beginning of the book that states, “This book is a spoof. Do not actually use this book as part of an exercise program, real or imagined.” There should also be a disclaimer that reads, “Do not read this book if you’re prone to heart attacks from too much laughter, or if you have a weak bladder.”
In this fast paced world of uploading, upgrading, downloading, downsizing and networking, hardware, software, macromedia and micromanagement, conference calls, faxes and emails along the super information highway, we’re just too busy to exercise. Although we’re so busy our physical activity levels are at an all-time high level of being low. The human animal is such a contradiction of terms. A base primal part of us recognizes this when we laugh at movies like Office Space, the hit sit-com The Office and read Sally Forth and Dilbert comic strips. We’re really laughing at the absurdity of an animal wired to be a semi-naked polygamous hunter-gatherer dressed in restrictive garments and stuck in a cubicle with technology that is secretly sentient and hates us.
Vitanyi has taken photographs of people in offices and cubicles emulating different animal positions that a Sufi-Swami contortionist would have difficulty performing. Each exercise has three titles which describe: 1.Which ailment the exercise is supposed to alleviate, 2.Which animal is used as a model, 3.The Latin name of the animal and exercise. Beneath the titles is a photograph of a person (men and women) performing the exercise and beneath the photo is a brief humorous caption about the exercise. For example, page 31 is called the, 1. Glaciation Disorder. 2.Emperor Penguin Heel Stance 3. Salvelinus alpinus. The caption reads, “A frigid office environment quickly depletes enthusiasm, while the reason for interpersonal distance can vary, it almost always causes work place tension. Do not succumb to this pernicious force. Instead, when confronted by a frosty co-worker, immediately assume the Emperor Penguin Heel Stance. This noble artic survivor shows us that even the harshest climate can be endured. In anticipation of potential icy behavior, wear colors of the penguin and firmly brace your heels. Foot angle will vary by season.”
Vitanyi says that the best way to ‘do’ these exercises is to visualize doing them. The best and funniest way is to think about somebody else doing them, or even funnier watch somebody trying to do them. Vitanyi includes the photos for visual aids. The imagining he leaves to the readers.

-Lee Gooden 9-10-06

2006-09-06T21:02:00.000-07:00

Something in Common
Written by, J.R. Lindermuth
J.R. Lindermuth ©2006
Published by Whiskey Creek Press
223Pages

Remember Angela Lansbury as Jessica Fletcher, mystery writer/amateur sleuth on the television show, Murder She Wrote? She made all of the highly trained professional law enforcement officers look like idiots by solving the crime. Luckily for her though the dumb Cabot Maine local-yokel Tom Bosley looking sheriff and his minions always seemed to come bursting in, guns drawn at the last minute, right before it looked like Fletcher was about to get a cap busted in her mousy little head. She was stupid enough to confront the bad guy and give a play-play commentary of the murder and the murderer’s mistakes without (What every cop knows he or she should have) back-up. Somebody shoot the old biddy already. Murder She Wrote aside, for some reason popular culture portrays average everyday officers of the law as half blind troglodytes afraid of facts and distracted by shiny objects. J.R. Lindermuth’s novel Something in Common is a much needed departure from that trend.
Something in Common begins on a non-portentous Saturday night in the rural town of Swatara Creek Pennslvania . A local woman Mrs. Taylor encounters on her front porch (actually her cat Tom-Tom does the preliminary encountering) an unknown woman’s severed head. Aaron Brubaker Swatara Creek Chief of police unofficially recruits the former Chief of police, retired Dan ‘Sticks’ Hetrick. Hetrick is shrewd and observant, a home town Columbo.
Lindermuth writes, “His eyes began their own examination of the body and, precision machine that it was, his mind shut down the emotional focus…and switched to another gear, compartmentalizing what he observed, sifting it logically in a manner that had become second nature through experience.”
Like a whittling and chambray shirt wearing Sherlock Holmes Sticks gleans the clues and cuts through the suspects, until two more people are killed and he has a final confrontation with a remorseless killer.
Lindermuth allows the reader to think they are smarter than the author. He opens the book with a murder and the reader thinks, ‘Yup, been there done that…Oh no, not the cat bit, lame, lame, lame.’ Then he introduces who you think is the hero, Chief Brubaker, only to find that he is more concerned about the P.R aspect of the murder. Finally, we meet the real hero Hetrick. He has a complicated relationship with Brubaker and they are at odds because Hetrick wants to redeem himself. ‘Okay, we’ve seen this before too.’
Suddenly, Lindermuth is introducing character after character, including the new young handsome pastor Jeffery Bascom, mail-order-bride to be Linda Krang and local nut-case eccentric artist George Oxenreider. All of these characters serve more than one specific function in Lindermuth’s narrative. His expert plotting proves how dumb we really are as readers. Each time, we get fished-in the hook spears right through our gray matter and he seems to attempt to pull us out of the water of our ignorance. We flail and swim blindly sinking the hook further into our gills. We exclaim “I know who did it! He did it! No, she did it! Um, no wait, ah, they did it! Heck, somebody did it!” We’re sucked into a maelstrom, a vortex, a whirlpool of false leads and clues. Like Dante had Virgil to guide him down into the inferno, Lindermuth gives us Sticks Hetrick to show the way.

-Lee Gooden 9-5-06

2006-09-06T20:59:00.000-07:00

The Embroidered Corpse
(A Fun Yarn, Pun Definitely Intended)

Anthony Burgess claimed that as soon as he received a book to review he would climb into bed and stay there until he finished reading it and then jump out and write his 800-1000 word review. He said that he had to review books this way because he was prone to forget and have to read the book again if too much time had passed between the initial reading and writing of the review. Imagine Burgess trying to curl up in bed with a good e-book, sharing his sheets, pillows, blankets and cats with a computer keyboard monitor, tower and mouse. Some would argue that he’d be able to read the book on an
ipod, e-Book Reader/Viewer, or a small laptop. I don’t think he would have liked that. He probably would have said that something organic was lost in the translation. I agree. There is something about the glare of the screen and wavering images that makes a computer inferior to a book. After all, an image of a letter on a screen is intangible, a ghost-in-the-machine. A book has substance, it lives and breathes.
The Embroidered Corpse, by Brian Kavanaugh published by Bewrite Books 2006 (previously published in Australia by Jacobyte Books 2002) was sent to me on a pdf file. I hate them. So I immediately went to my nearest Staples office supply and copy center and ran off hard copy, printed on both sides of the paper to save me money. I sat on the couch during a humid Sunday night; the oscillating fan soothed my sweaty body and cooled my heated brain. I began to read The Embroidered Corpse. My wife and my eldest child came into the living room, turned on the television to the Disney channel and cranked the power switch of the fan up high. Pages of The Embroidered Corpse flew through space like confetti on Mardi gras. Frustrated, I gathered the manuscript pages and put them in my in-tray, where I promptly forgot them. A few days later after finishing another assignment I read the Embroidered Corpse straight through in one sitting.
The Embroidered Corpse begins when Australian native Belinda Lawrence, with the assistance of her friend and business partner Hazel Whitby accidentally comes into possession of a piece of tapestry that might be the final missing piece of the Bayeux Tapestry and the solution to an ancient puzzle. Suddenly, everyone seems interested in her piece of tapestry. The bodies pile up. Belinda attempts to find answers and looks for a connection between her fragment of tapestry and the murder of an antique dealer from whose shop she had first observed the tapestry fragment. Later, her local Vicar is killed. She had inquired from him the history of the Bayeux Tapestry. Hazel, and Belinda’s boy-friend Mark, at first consider Belinda is daft, thinking that she is being pursued by an order of murderous monks. They further resent Belinda having them running all over the English countryside chasing down clues to the actual meaning and authenticity of her piece of tapestry. A series of events occur that can’t be called coincidences; including Hazel’s mysterious disappearance, Mark begins to believe Belinda may have been right all along.
Before I discuss the Embroidered Corpse further I need to get something off my chest. Dan Brown is a predictable writer when it comes to plot lines and a bad example for other writers to follow. Yeah, I know Dan Brown and his novel The Da Vinci Code has nothing to do with The Embroidered Corpse. And I know that The Da Vinci Code is a monstrosity of best seller that has stayed at the top of The New York Times Best Seller List since the second coming of the Bush Dynasty. There are some similarities between The Da Vinci Code and The Embroidered Corpse. I want to mention three, the rest I’ll leave to the reader to discover for their pleasure. First, both Dan Brown and Brian Kavanaugh are great researchers. Their novels provide history lessons that make the reader curious about the past. (If as a reader you don’t find yourself googling and researching the Holy Grail or Bayeux Tapestry, then you’re probably curiosity-challenged.) The second similarity is how aptly they were able to blend history with fiction to make a compelling mystery. Anthony Burgess recognized the novelistic potential of Brown’s subject way back when he reviewed the book, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln. Burgess writes, “It is typical of my unregenerable soul that I can only see this as a marvelous theme for a novel. The third similarity is how they reverted to otiose writing to create two clichéd and predictable villains, Brown’s Sir Leigh Teabing and Kavanaugh’s Sir Gerald Taylor. Both are men of academia, obsessed and transparent characters and give a villainous ‘Goodbye Mr. Bond speech.’ For some reason, when a villain has the hero or heroine in his or her grasp they suddenly suffer from a case of pleonasm and over-explain their motives on how they will accomplish their dastardly deeds. This of course allows our hero or heroine extra-time to make a daring escape and save the day and allows the novelist to write a sequel. Brown has a prequel, Angels and Demons. One can only hope that Kavanaugh has one in the works. I’d like to see what Belinda, Mark and Hazel are doing in the future.

OALA Reviews
-Lee Gooden 8-27-06

2006-08-29T22:26:00.000-07:00

2006-08-16T09:59:00.001-07:00

THE SECRETS OF MEDICAL DECISION MAKING: HOW TO AVOID BECOMING A VICTIM OF THE HEALTH CARE MACHINE
By Oleg I. Reznic, M.D.

“Primum Non Nocere”

House, E.R. and Grays Anatomy are not realistic portrayals of the American medical system. According to Dr. Resnik physicians are so afraid of litigation that any deviation from pre-set protocols to treat the patient as an individual and not the so-called disease is unusual. Doctors like Greg House, John Carter would be immediately dismissed and find it impossible to acquire mal-practice insurance. It is chilling to think that the media inspired idea of the omnipotent good-hearted doctor like Marcus Welby or reassuring throaty voiced Dr. Kelly Bracket from Emergency is so false.
When sickness strikes us or a loved one, we expect that in this technological twenty-first century age of marvels that just like our cars or appliances that have ‘crapped the bed’:
A. We can be fixed with some kind of medication or therapy.
Or
B. Our parts can be removed and replaced and we can continue our lives already in progress and unabated
Doctor Reznik has pried our heads from the sand, removed our rose-colored glasses and has cut off our source of pap from the glass teat. He has taught us to advocate for ourselves and ask questions, even while the insurance and pharmaceutical behemoths perpetuate the myth that an American homeostasis of mental and physical health is only one more pill, test or procedure away.

2006-08-16T09:56:00.000-07:00

Dead On is Dead On
First and foremost I’ve got to get this out of my system, “Wow!” I’ve got some other choice interjections but this is a rated G review and my expletives will be censored into some symbols, “@#$%%^@!” Dead On by Ann Kelly published by iUniverse 2004 at $24.95 is 196 pages of pure guilt-ridden instant gratification. I could have read Dead On in one sitting, in fact that would have been my preference, but much resented life interfered with my reading and I had to put the book aside for a day. Everyone around me, friends and family not excluded had to listen to my grumblings about the rude “readerious interruptus”.
Dead On is a mystery in a mystery within a mystery. Ann Yang, a medical examiner finds herself stuck in all three. Yang’s investigation of a murder scene in Doylestown Pennsylvania reveals what she suspects to be the act of a serial killer. A ruthless murderer that uses Civil War coat buttons placed beneath the victim’s tongue as a calling card. “Union infantry. Genuine article.” At the same time, Yang finds during the renovations of her house an old diary that belonged to a former occupant and maybe the key to a hundred year old mystery. Newly divorced and gun shy of relationships, Yang begins to have feelings for Mark, the carpenter that is working on her house, but will not give in to them because of the “trauma” involved with being a medical examiner. She attempts to alleviate these deterrents by attending therapy sessions of hypnosis and past-life regressions. Soon, Yang is convinced that the killer, the diary and her past are somehow connected.
Dead On is a quick read, but packed like a novel twice its size. Kelly’s chapters are short but hit with a large wallop. While some authors fawn and preen their vocabulary and stamina as a wordsmith by writing forty page chapters made of lengthy passages of purple prose describing each tiny filament on the leg hairs of a tsetse fly. Ann Kelly’s writing is sparse and at the same time lyrical. She keeps the reader riveted, their mind’s racing; continually second guessing themselves in a delicious tension that is almost palpable enough to eat with the mouth as well as their devouring eyes. Her descriptions just about burn the page with action interrelated with ideas; especially the entries of a journal that her protagonist Ann Yang has discovered:
April 14, 1902
I don’t bother her in school. It’s not that I’m ashamed of myself. It’s just not the thing to do. I have no desire to step into the shallow pool; I’ve grown accustomed to the reckless, deep walls of my own poisoned well.
What a glorious Saturday. I found myself on the trolley today, heading to Willow Grove Park. I was surprised when she sat down next to me, alone, not saying a word. Eventually we reached Philadelphia. I enjoyed her nearness; I was excited by the proud way people stared at her. Soon we were north of Philadelphia in a crowd of well-dressed ladies and men departing the trolleys, descending the stairs, and walking through the tunnels that had been dug under Easton Road. There’s an inscription above the door to one of the two tunnels:
For myriad souls this is the shrine-The temple of the art divine.
Ann Yang is like Kathy Reichs’ heroine Forensic Anthropologist Temperance Brennan and James Patterson’s Abnormal Psychologist and Forensic Psychologist hero Alex Cross (Kelly even makes a playful salute to Patterson by having Yang describe her retired FBI profiler friend Tony Cole as resembling the actor Morgan Freeman. Freeman played Alex Cross in the movie adaptations of Patterson’s novels Kiss the Girls and Along Comes a Spider.) Some differences between Yang and Brennan are not subtle. Brennan does not carry a Glock strapped to her ankle and she is not Chinese. The subtleties are more interesting: Yang is more fallible than Brennan, but she understands her needs and appetites better than Brennan. Like an ascetic, Yang denies herself any pleasure almost as if she is punishing herself for her poor decisions in the past. Unlike an ascetic she eventually gives into her needs and passion, which makes her likeable and thus the reader can emphasize and identify with Yang’s emotions more than Brennan’s intellect. Yang and Alex Cross have similar traits possessing an animalistic tenacity, a primal determination to not only solve the case, but also to bring a permanent closure. Yang doesn’t have Cross’s pretentiousness and her vulnerability lends humanity to an inhumane situation and that creates hope.
-Lee Gooden 8-15-06

2006-06-15T19:29:00.000-07:00

Everyman
By Philip Roth

Sequestering himself in his writing studio and sticking to a strict regime of diet, exercise and work, Philip Roth has regularly turned out award winning literature. In 1997 he won the Pulitzer Prize for the novel American Pastoral. In 1998, he received the National Medal of Arts and Letters at the White House. In 2002 he was given the American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal. Roth has won the National Book Award, the PEN/ Faulkner Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award twice. In 2004 he published a disturbing, yet reflective novel of revisionist history, The Plot Against America for which he was given the Society of American Historians’ prize for “the outstanding historical novel on an American theme for 2003-2004”. The Plot Against America was named a Best Book of the Year by the New York Times Book Review, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Boston Globe, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Los Angeles Times Book Review, the Washington Post Book World, Time, Newsweek and many other periodicals.
Roth’s latest addition to his impressive body of work is the short, but artistically accomplished novel, Everyman. Available sometime in May, Everyman is published by Houghton Mifflin Company 2006 at $24.00. It is Roth’s 27th book and the fifth book he has written in the 21 century. Everyman, a novel about aging and death originated when Roth attended his friend and fellow writer, Saul Bellow’s funeral and is a response to Bellow’s last book, Ravelstein. At 73 years old Roth understands all too well the deterioration of the body caused by aging. Because of back problems Roth writes while standing at a lectern. He tries to stay in peak physical condition to maintain the long hours that are demanded by his work.
Roth begins his novel at his nameless main character Everyman’s funeral. A circle of friends, family and colleagues gather around to pay their final respects or celebrate his death. Roth writes, “Of course, when anyone dies, though many were grief-stricken, others remained unperturbed, or found themselves relieved, or, for reasons good or bad, were genuinely pleased.” Roth cleverly crafted this subtle expositional funeral scene where we are introduced to the Everyman character through the feelings, thoughts and eyes of those who knew him best. Then effortlessly, Roth slides the reader into a type of vignette segue of the Everyman’s thoughts right before he passes on, and with more sneaky expositional material that is vital to the story, Roth flashbacks to the Everyman’s youthful experiences with death. The first time, he stumbles across a body that has washed up on a beach, and the second, while he’s in the hospital waiting for a hernia operation a boy in the hospital bed next to him dies. Roth writes, “Looking across at the other bed, he saw that it was stripped of its bedding. Noting could have been clearer to him what had happened than the sight of the bare mattress ticking and the uncovered pillows piled in the middle of the empty bed…Memorable enough that he was in the hospital that young, but even more memorable that he had registered a death.”
The novel progresses chronologically from that point. We follow Everyman through occupational successes, marriage, children, accolades, triumphs, deaths, sadness, sickness, mistresses and infidelities, divorce, another marriage and another child. John Lennon said that life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. Meanwhile, Roth shows us that mortality is in the wings, like light breath upon the neck and shoulders, needling whispers of pain and doubt slowly chip away pieces of being. At the same time these inklings are creating a false sense of comfort and inspiring thoughts of living forever. Two completely different, contradictory themes can occupy the same mind at the same time, forming a paradox where experiences stored in short term memory and long term memory are nullified. The aliveness and deadness are forgotten because humanity is too stupefied and too busy just trying to exist day by day in a fugue. Everyman’s daughter Nancy repeats to him his life’s maxim, ““There’s no remaking reality,”” she told him. ““Just take it as it comes. Hold your ground and take it as it comes.”” As a comfort zone is reached within existence mortality releases its full wrath upon Everyman, and as such, that which is life is over.
Some readers maybe tempted to think that the Everyman is an aged Alexander Portnoy, from Roth’s 1969 novel, Portnoy’s Complaint or even Philip Roth himself. This isn’t so. Roth took the title Everyman from the 15 century medieval morality play of the same name that dramatizes the moral melee of a Christian individual’s path to redemption. The character Death summons the Everyman to inform him that his life has reached its end. Everyman seeks the companionship from those around him to accompany him on his final journey, of course, his false friends: his casual companions, his kin, and his wealth refuse to go with him. So he relies upon himself, his Good Deeds, his Strength, his Beauty, his Intelligence, and his Knowledge. These allow him to pay-off his accountability, but only his Good deeds follow him into the afterlife.
Roth applies the idea of accountability from the Everyman morality play to his Everyman character. Using the Everyman morality play as an example each character in Roth’s novel, Everyman’s brother Howie, Everyman’s two sons, Randy and Lonny, his daughter Nancy, his parents and his three ex-wives serves a dual purpose besides interacting with the Everyman, they’re also symbolic. Everyman’s occupation, dream of becoming an artist, his mistresses, friends, wealth and business achievements Roth shows are all finite like the characters in the Everyman morality play when the reaper comes calling. Everyman loses the strength of his body, his mind is helpless and useless, beauty is a distraction but insignificant and his talent as an artist can not save him. But then, Roth departs from the Everyman morality play. Roth’s accountability for his Everyman is not in a Christian sense of good versus evil, right or wrong, nor uses the idea of heaven as an incentive to seek redemption. God and religion do not figurer into the Everyman’s equation. Roth writes, “Religion was a lie that he had recognized early in life, and he found all religions offensive, considered their superstitious folderol meaningless, childish, couldn’t stand the complete unadultness--the baby talk and the righteousness and the sheep, the avid believers. No hocus-pocus about death and God, or obsolete fantasies of heaven for him. There was only our bodies, born to live and die on terms decided by the bodies that had lived and died before us. If he could be said to have located a philosophical niche for himself, that was it--he’d come upon it early and intuitively and however elemental, that was the whole of it.”
Roth’s Everyman’s accountability is the outcome of exercising free-will. Does he take responsibility for his actions? Roth doesn’t judge, accuse or try to make an ethical example of his Everyman. Neither does he allow rationalization to become Everyman’s ‘get-out-of-jail-free-card’. After his first infidelity and becoming estranged from his two sons, Everyman continues to give into the urges of his body and repeats his cycle of marriages, mistresses and divorces. He no longer apologizes or gives explanations to anyone, including his adult sons. Roth writes, “Randy and Lonny were the source of his deepest guilt, but he could not explain his behavior to them…It was inexplicable to him-the excitement they could seriously persist in deriving from his denunciation…was their steadfast posture of unforgivingness any more forgivable? Or any less harmful in its effect? He was one of the millions of American men who were party to divorce that broke up a family…nor could they ever understand that he had lost the same family they did.”
Everyman is not for everyone. Philip Roth is a keen observer of reality and even keener at reducing humanity down to its essence, physicality without the governor of intellect, or fear of damning an immortal soul. Roth writes about the human animal. Some might take umbrage or even a moral outrage at his representations. Everyman is brutally honest, ‘there’s no remaking reality we live, and we take it as it comes, we hold our ground and take it as it comes.’ And we die.

Lee Gooden 4-25-2006

2006-06-15T19:16:00.001-07:00

Sacred Work: Planned Parenthood and Its Clergy Alliances (Rutger University)
Written by Tom Davis

Reviewed by Lee Gooden

"When I am confronted with arguments against Birth Control, arguments that are as a rule presented by learned theologians or indefatigable statistician, the dim far off chorus of suffering and pain begins to resound anew in my ears. How academic, how anemically intellectual and how remote from throbbing, bleeding humanity all these prejudiced arguments sound, when one has been brought face to face with the reality of suffering!"
-Margaret Sanger, from Motherhood in Bondage 1928

1997, A Washington DC Planned Parenthood open the doors to a new clinic in an area church. After the opening, the Washington Post printed an article with the headline, ‘Unlikely Alliance for Planned Parenthood’ “The Washington Post was merely reflecting the popular understanding that the work of Planned Parenthood is opposed by all religious institutions.” writes Tom Davis, an ordained minister with the United Church of Christ and chair of the Clergy Advisory Board of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Davis, also, a chaplain emeritus and associate professor of religion at Skidmore College blows apart this myth in this rich tome on the history of Planned Parenthood and the organization's so-called unlikely partnership with the clergy. “An alliance between churches and synagogues, temples and Planned Parenthood has existed for over seventy years,” explains Davis, “Below public radar, mainline Protestant and Jewish Clergy in their alliance with Planned Parenthood, have played a major role in achieving respectability for birth control in a nation whose religious convictions always involve social and moral issues and never more than when the subject at hand involves women's sexuality.”
Sacred work involves the easing of suffering. The clergy recognized that Planned Parenthood performed sacred work by easing the suffering of women by providing other options than having unhealthy multiple births, raising children in poverty or seeking illegal and dangerous abortions. "In the biblical view, sacred work is love and in practical social realities, sacred work is justice,” writes Davis, continuing, “nowhere was injustice more clearly present than in the twentieth-century battle over contraception.” If women were given the right to choose whether they wanted to have children or not, would jeopardize the position of the status quo of men in power. “Since spiritual realities cannot be separated from social and political life,” reasons Davis, “the pursuit of the sacred work of justice takes clergy into the public arena. The realm of justice is a realm of hard, sometimes tragic choices. As Planned Parenthood and the clergy each tried to stand with women making those hard choices a bond was formed.”
Davis goes on to explain how Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood in 1913 searched for six months for information about birth control in the United States. Sanger had worked as a maternity nurse and saw the awful results of generations of women ignorant of birth control or any sex education. Davis writes. “She saw women having frequent illegal abortions, women overwhelmed by poverty and too many children, women dying because they had no knowledge of how to prevent one pregnancy after another.” Sanger was shocked to discover that even in the Library of Congress and some of the best libraries in the country she couldn’t find anything written about contraception. Sanger then went to Europe and learned about different types of contraception. When she returned home she published a magazine called The Woman Rebel and shared her finds with American women and traveled around the country giving speeches, she was immediately a target of the law and she knew she needed the aid of the clergy. In Cleveland Sanger made a speech in the First Unitarian Church. Later, the Unitarians supported her cause. "To their credit, a number of clergy joined Sanger in her urgency for the freedom to choose contraception,” writes Davis, “From the 1930s on, clergy support for Planned Parenthood grew steadily. In city after city, affiliates found that some clergy were more than willing to speak out publicly in defense of clinics. By the 1960s it was precisely the religious and moral authority of these supportive clergy that changed public opinion about birth control."
Davis continues with the history of the clergy's involvement with Planned Parenthood and discusses how the Roman Catholic Church made sure hospital funds were taken away when women were informed of different contraceptive techniques, let alone that contraception or even abortion was an option. The Vatican wanted to enforce a gag order that other clergy fought. Davis writes, "This issue remains alive as it was in 1952-53. The controversies that currently embroil Planned Parenthood and the women's movement involve government attempts to impose "gag rules" both internationally and domestically. These rules state that no government funding can go to clinics that inform a pregnant woman that abortion is one of her choices. That is forbidden speech. Those clergy who oppose gag rules invoke the right of freedom of speech."
Sacred Work is an epic on hope and human nature. One such as Margaret Sanger although secular in her beliefs understood that women needed to enlist the aid of the clergy and invoke their faith and belief that sacred work is justice and love. Sanger challenged the clergy to protect women from a male dominated society that demeans and subjugates women by taking away their reproductive rights. Davis has defined and set a standard for those that wish to do sacred work in the twenty-first century and beyond. Unfortunately today, this new era called the 21 century that was supposed to be cutting-edge and advanced is still grounded in an archaic ‘good old boy’ mentality and a value system that perpetuates the myth that our once grand ‘God fearing’ country is in on decline and rotting from the inside out like the Roman Empire or Sodom and Gomorrah. “This myth of a lost golden age is used by radio stations and legions of cable pundits to denigrate modern social conditions, often implying that feminism and the changed conditions of women’s lives are largely responsible for our plight.” When Bill Clinton was president he changed “twelve years of presidential antiabortion measures.” President Bush has a different agenda then his predecessor. Davis writes “In September 2003 the web site of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive choice reported that “the President privately told leaders of catholic charities that his proposed massive new faith-based initiative will help them promote opposition to a woman’s right to chose. Bush also promised the group he would immediately oppose abortion rights through ‘legislative initiatives…Beyond that, he said, ‘there’s a larger calling’ which he described as ‘changing the culture of the country.’”

When Roe v. Wade was passed by the Supreme Court it was a 7 to 2 decision, a landmark time in a woman’s right to choose. The 1992 Casey decision narrowed the margin of Roe 5 to 4. Samuel Alito, a newly appointed Supreme Court Justice wrote a paper earlier in his career that he wanted to overturn Roe v Wade. When our current Supreme court Chief Justice John Roberts was a Deputy Solicitor General in 1991 he co-authored a brief for the government in the case Rust v. Sullivan to overturn Roe v. Wade. He also questioned the right to privacy that was a 1965 Supreme Court decision Griswold v. Connecticut defeating a state law that the use of birth control–pills by married women was illegal. Many states in our country had laws on the books that made abortion illegal. The Roe v. Wade decision made these laws invalid. Some states like Indiana are all ready jumping on the band-wagon to try to take advantage of the more conservative leanings of the new Supreme Court to impose a stipulation to only abort when the ongoing pregnancy is a threat to the woman’s life or the chance that the woman might become profoundly impaired. Some states are trying to make it mandatory that a woman must view an ultrasound of the fetus and talk over with a counselor the pain it might feel during an abortion. As of February 11 2006, according to The Orlando Sentinel Florida has passed a law that a doctor must inform a minor girl’s parents before an abortion.
If Roe v. Wade is overturned will the last thirty-three years of a woman’s autonomy be buried similar to the way the Taliban enslaved Muslim women in Afghanistan who were former doctors, scientists, teachers and lawyer among many other professions? Will American women have to go back to the days of guilt over taking pleasure in sex and be humiliated by their friends and family for becoming ‘knocked up’? Will they seek back alley abortionists or pay exorbitant prices to physicians that perform secret abortions in private practices? Hopefully, there will always be somebody like Margaret Sanger and Tom Davis to continue their sacred work and do the right thing even when it is illegal. While being asked by the court in New York State not to violate Section 1142, a Penal code that made it a crime to give out birth control information, Margaret Sanger said, “I cannot promise to obey a law I don’t respect.”

2006-02-20T21:45:00.000-08:00

Review: Book offers scary tales of North Country ghosts
LEE GOODEN, For The Saratogian
03/18/2005

'Still More Haunted Northern New York' by Cheri Revai, North Country Books 2004 Nonfiction 109 pages $15.95

When the world is in turmoil, we tend to dwell more on the question of an afterlife rather than concentrate on the here-and-now. The here-and-now is scary stuff.

A prime example of our fascination with the afterlife is the demand for books about 'true-to-life' ghosts and the supernatural, like Cheri Revai's 'Still More Haunted Northern New York.'

The book is a follow-up to her other two popular and successful books about the spirits dwelling in areas of New York -- 'Haunted Northern New York' (2002) and 'More Haunted Northern New York' (2003).

There are more people now than ever before that have publicly claimed to have experienced some kind of haunting or believe in ghosts.

Revai writes, 'Because of increasing acceptance of paranormal phenomena, most people today no longer fear mockery for their beliefs in the supernatural. Indeed, ghost hunting has become the in-thing. As a result, paranormal investigation is a booming business.'

In 'Still More Haunted Northern New York,' Revai lists in the preface with an apt but corny title, 'Dying To Be Seen,' the different types of apparitional manifestations people have seen and or have captured in photographs and cites an anecdote for each. These include orbs, which are ... 'simply balls of spirit energy that move about unfettered and easily ... an orb is said to be the most basic form of a spirit presenting itself -- they (orbs) are to apparitions what embryos are to full-term infants -- the simple to the very complex.'

Next is what is called spirit mist, '... yet another form that spirit energy takes...it seems to be somewhere between the orb and the final apparitional form,' The final stage is an actual apparition,' Revai writes. 'An apparition is spirit energy that clearly takes on an animal or human form. It is the rarest and most exciting type of spirit energy to capture on film.'

Revai provides the reader with examples of these photographs in her book. Unfortunately, they are blurry black-and-white copies of scanned photos. Even with Revai helping out the reader with circles and arrows highlighting these supposed apparitions, it is hard to discern them from other images or if they are mistakes within the actual photographic process.

The 109 pages of Revai's book is a quick read, and she covers a lot of territory in northern New York -- Tupper Lake, Lacona and Evans Mills.

For example, Chapter 2, entitled 'Close Encounters With Orbs,' is a story that comes from Lake George: 'Rick Dalrymple has had several visitations by deceased loved ones since he was a child, so he knows what a spirit looks like ... he saw something he'd never seen before. Ghost lights, presumably: better known as orbs.'

Yes, Revai has written a book of ghost stories told to her by 'real people.' But, as in her previous books, the reader feels as if the stories are third- and fourth-hand information, like a secret whispered in someone's ear and then passed down a line of people until the message is garbled and lost in the translation.

Unlike contemporaries such as David Pitkin, who places the reader in the stories but retains a somewhat healthy skepticism, Revai seems to accept at face value the validity of her sources and their experiences.

If one can overlook Revai's over-eagerness to believe, her excessive use of exclamation points and is interested in learning about local haunts, then 'Still More Haunted Northern New York' is a book to buy and enjoy.

2006-02-20T21:44:00.000-08:00

'A Family Place' recalls heritage of Rensselaer woman
LEE GOODEN, For The Saratogian
03/25/2003

'A Family Place, A Hudson Family Farm, Three Centuries, Five Wars, One Family''

By Leila Philip

Penguin Books 2001

276 Pages

''What is the analytic process anyway, but that crude digging up of stones and pebbles, then the slow turning of memory or phrase over and over until it begins to gleam?'' Leila Philip writes in ''A Family Place.''

Philip's memoir follows her family's trials of maintaining an agrarian life on a small farm in Rensselaer in a modern, profit-motivated and technologically oriented corporate America.

Through exhaustive and intensive research into her family's history, Philip answers the age-old question, ''Who am I?''

By exhuming the past, she discovers the connective tissues of her and her family's relationship to the legacy of their land.

''A Family Place'' reads like a novel. The reader gets caught up in the seemingly effortless prose that is almost lyrical and musical.

Philip writes about a childhood memory of riding her horse: ''Peter, his mane flying, his eyes wild with delight, is galloping hard across the meadow. I am on his back crouched down, bareback, the pressure of my legs urging him on -- he smells sweet and salty, sweat beginning to dampen his copper hide. I will never fall because he will never let me. He is Pegasus, one wing dipping as he turns, racing through the clouds, each hoof beat, the steady rising pulse of my own childhood.''

The author's research spans three centuries of her heritage. Philip discovers that she is not so different from her father, or her father's father, in that they were willing to work hard and make sacrifices and reluctant changes to keep Talavera, their land, their home, alive.

Leila Philip is the winner of the 1990 PEN/Martha Albrand Special Citation for her memoir about her apprenticeship to a master potter in Japan, called, ''The Road Through Miyama.'' She teaches creative writing at Colgate University.

2006-02-20T21:43:00.000-08:00

Enjoy a journey through Lake George history
LEE GOODEN, For The Saratogian
06/17/2003

"Lake George Boats and Steamboats" by William Preston Gates (W.P. Gates Publishing Co.). 200 pages, 760 photographs. $26 softcover; $36 hardcover.

It is always a daunting task to review a large work of nonfiction. A reviewer must read a book cover to cover in a timely manner. Unlike fiction that is plot-driven, nonfiction can be dry and slow going.

This is not the case for William Preston Gates' book, "Lake George Boats and Steamboats."

Although Gates' new book is full of informative facts, figures and all sorts of statistics about every boat imaginable, it is also a fascinating journey into the history of Lake George.

Gates has also written the books "Turn-of-the-Century Scrapbook," "History of the Sagamore Hotel" and "Glens Falls and Sandy Hill."

All of his books are ongoing projects that have taken a lifetime of preparation that will continue when future generations of his family pick up the mantle of this legacy.

His and his family's collections of this area's memorabilia are so rich in history that Gates always has a project going.

"Lake George Boats and Steamboats" is an overview of boats that have been on Lake George, starting with the Elm Bark Canoe (GA-SNA or GA-O-WON) used by the Iroquois to Hall's Lyman. The Lyman burned in March 2002, but it will be restored in the future.

To have an idea of how thoroughly researched this book is, one only has to look at Gates' acknowledgement page, where he thanks more than 400 people and organizations.

"One cannot begin to do Gates' book justice without not just reading, but exploring its depths. Experiencing this book is like climbing aboard the Lac du Saint Sacrement, (the steamboat that Gates captains for Lake George Steamboat Company) and taking a guided tour that lets one relive history. Gates, also a retired teacher is knowledgeable in so many areas and has a love of life and learning that is contagious.

Gates shares his enthusiasm through his writing style, and the reader is transported back to a childhood full of wonder, such as in his description of the infamous Lake George Monster.

"In 1904, the one of the most famous practical jokes in Lake George history was played by Hauge's Harry Watrous on his best friend, Colonel William D'Alton Mann," he writes.

"... The two men had engaged themselves in a private contest to determine who was the best fisherman, several days later Colonel Mann pretended to catch a real trout which might have weighed 30 pounds if it hadn't been made of wood." "...Not to be out done...Watrous rigged the monster beneath the lake's surface on an elaborate pulley system which allowed the monster to appear and quickly disappear. Col Mann was so surprised when the monster appeared before him that he fell out of his boat."

"...During the summer of 2001, the monster once again made headlines. During a mock trial at the old Warren County Courthouse, it was decided that the monster would forever be shared by The Hague, Bolton Landing and Lake George Historical Societies."

There are more than 200 pages and 760 photographs in "Lake George Boats and Steamboats." Some of the photographs are from his family's private collection; others are representations drawn by his wife, Donnie, based on descriptions painstakingly researched by Gates. Several photos were sent to him by other boat and lake lovers

"Lake George Boats and Steamboats" is a masterpiece that documents more than 200 years of Lake George boating history.

2006-02-20T21:42:00.000-08:00

Bruchac's new children's book a lesson for us all
LEE GOODEN, For The Saratogian
10/07/2003

'The Warriors'

By Joseph Bruchac

Darby Creek Publishing

120 pages

The new novel by Joseph Bruchac of Greenfield is labeled as a children's book for ages 9 to 11, but children of all ages and adults can enjoy and learn from 'The Warriors.'

The story is about 12-year-old Jake Forrest, an Iroquois Indian and talented lacrosse player living on a reservation in the present day.

Jake's life changes dramatically when his mother, an attorney, takes a job in Washington, D.C. Reluctantly, Jake leaves the reservation and the only family and friends he has ever known to attend the Weltimore Academy, a prestigious boys' school.

The school is known for its emphasis on the game of lacrosse. Jake, a late entry, is a shoo-in to be a part of the team.

Even though he is made to feel welcome by his fellow students, and appears to fit in, deep down, Jake misses his home on the reservation. His academic standing and lacrosse playing are excellent at Weltimore, but he alienates himself from the others, although he seems well adjusted from his outside appearance.

When an act of violence terrifies and disheartens the school and surrounding community, Jake realizes that it's up to him to bring everyone together under a common purpose and teach the true meaning of lacrosse and what it means to be a warrior.

Bruchac's 'Warriors' is much more than a wonderfully entertaining coming-of-age story. It is current, with today's headlines as a backdrop, including mentions of 9/11/2001 and this past year's sniper shootings.

Those of us who were young children in the late '60s and '70s were exposed to the myth that Indians were savages.

When, as children, we played 'cowboys and Indians,' how many of us wanted to be the Indians? In the '80s, the Indians were looked upon as 'noble savages' who were misunderstood by the white man, and removed from their land to make room for the expansion of progress.

In the politically correct era of the '90s, the Indians were called Native Americans who were seen the true shepherds and stewards of the planet Earth.

They lived in peace and harmony with Mother Nature until the 'white devil' showed up and committed atrocities, driving Indians from their sacred lands into concentration camp-like reservations.

Bruchac cleverly illustrates common misconceptions by taking Jake and the reader out of the of the reservation into the Weltimore Academy, which is an international melting pot of diversity.

The academy is a metaphor for the world and how people, no matter where they come from, are basically the same.

2006-02-20T21:41:00.000-08:00

LEE GOODEN, For The Saratogian
10/21/2003

'Take The Bait.'

By S.W. Hubbard.

Susan Werlinich Pocket Books (division of Simon & Schuster).

325 pages.

It is always an exciting experience to read the first book of a new novelist -- especially if it is as well written as 'Take The Bait,' S. W. Hubbard's mystery novel.

'Take The Bait' is about the disappearance of Janelle Harvey, a teenage girl from the fictitious Adirondack mountain town Trout Run.

Janelle disappears while running an errand for her father on a half-mile stretch of road between her home and a Sunoco station. Immediately, the people are in an uproar about kidnappers, child predators and serial killers invading their innocent little town.

Enter new chief of police Frank Bennett, a widower cop from Kansas City. Bennett is wrestling with ghosts of past mistakes and trying to atone for them during this current case.

His investigation procedures are methodical, thorough and cold. No one is immune to his scrutiny, regardless of how intrusive or unpopular his techniques may be with the citizenry of Trout Run.

Bennett's digging exposes a harsh, dark reflection of Trout Run; in contrast with the cheery tourist-trap down-home atmosphere that the inhabitants wish to project.

'Take The Bait' feels as if Jessica Fletcher from 'Murder She Wrote' relocated from Maine to David Lynch's 'Twin Peaks.'

The book is a well-plotted mystery, and Hubbard drops false clues here and there as if the reader were Bennett struggling against time to find answers.

Bennett is an intelligent, complex hero living in a secretive township full of meaty characters, from the aristocratic Stevenson family to Pablo, the megalomaniac corrupt leader of a utopian cult.

Hubbard's narrative is easily accessible. She pulls no punches, though, and lets the reader have it from the very first paragraph with her realism:

'Make no mistake -- spring is not a season of unrestrained joy in the Adirondack Mountains. Too late for skiers and too early for hikers, spring brings financial grief to everyone who relies on the tourist trade. At best, it's muddy; at worst, the melting snow and rain push rivers and streams above their banks, uprooting trees and flooding low roads. The same warm weather that coaxes the leaves onto the trees also draws the blackflies out of their larval state.'

Hubbard delivers the knockout blow with the final sentence on the first page, that sets the pace for the rest of book:

'And Janelle Harvey, walking the half-mile between Al's Sunoco and her home, disappeared.'

Hubbard, an avid hiker and canoeist, has spent many happy hours exploring the High Peaks area of the Adirondacks, where her family built a vacation home on the banks of the West Branch of the Ausable river.

She has worked for more than 20 years as a marketing-promotions writer and lives in Morristown, N.J., with her husband, two children and a cat.

'Take The Bait' is S. W. Hubbard's first novel, and the start of a series of Adirondack mystery novels featuring police detective Frank Bennett.

2006-02-20T20:02:00.000-08:00

'One Doctor's War' a drafted surgeon's WWII story
LEE GOODEN, For The Saratogian
12/12/2003

'One Doctor's War'

By S.A. Horwitz

670 pages

Published by Xlibris

'One Doctor's War' is S.A. Horwitz's account of an era that redefined warfare, changed the socioeconomic and political standing of the world and challenged our conception of humanity.

The book comprises diary entries and letters documenting the minutiae of Horwitz's everyday life and inferences of his future. It provides descriptive details of a world gone mad, and puts the past into a perspective that is a harrowing reflection of today.

During a two-year internship rotation at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, Horwitz (or his alter ego Erich Hoffman) started a diary.

Beginning with his becoming a doctor in 1939, Horwitz recorded the events of World War II until his marriage on June 12, 1946.

When Horwitz first heard the rumors of war, he was more concerned about the war's effects on his future plans than about the global impact of world war.

Unlike other young men who were 'joining up,' Horwitz wanted nothing to do with war or the army, and had no intentions of volunteering, as evident in this passage from his book: 'I have but one life; I have no intention that it should come to an untimely end through a bullet, a bomb fragment, or any other man-made instrument of destruction. I have no intention of risking my life in a war between men. I shall refuse to go to war unless the chances of living would be less by not going ...'

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Horwitz knew everything would change. Following the American declaration of war on Japan, he expected to be drafted, and still he tried to live his life and follow a normal course by attempting to further his education as a physician and gain as much medical experience as he could, as quickly as possible.

After Horwitz writes about being drafted, basic training and his decision to be a flight surgeon, the 650 pages that follow show a man who could fall into the 'proverbial pile' and come out smelling like a rose.

While many veterans of World War II do not wish to discuss the war except with other veterans, Horwitz's tour of duty was more of an extended Club Med vacation. He admits that his luck seemed almost uncanny, from increasing his pocket money by playing poker, to maintaining a decent social life with the ladies and always managing to find culinary delights.

He easily adapted to his environment and caught on quickly on how to scrounge or 'requisition' supplies to create a comfortable, sometimes almost luxurious living space. Even the way Horwitz met his wife sounds like a Hugh Grant flick or the plot line of a romance novel.

That's not to say that Horowitz didn't have his share of hardships or tough decisions.

'One Doctor's War' is well written, entertaining and informative. The subtext of the book -- the state of the world before and during World War II -- is a disturbing picture cut from today's headlines.

However 'One Doctor's War' is not an accurate representation of most of the men and women who served and fought in World War II. As a reviewer, I can appreciate 'One Doctor's War' as a well-crafted book, but those readers who are veterans from any war might not share this appreciation, and might forget that even Horwitz was a cog in the war machine.

S.A. Horwitz is a Schenectady native. He now lives in Niskayuna.

2006-02-20T19:15:00.000-08:00

Last Seen in Saratoga' slow out of the gate
LEE GOODEN, For The Saratogian
09/10/2002

Book review

'Last Seen In Saratoga'' came out just in time for Saratoga's famous track season. One cannot help but think of a Dick Francis novel, or of the late Charles Bukowski, when considering books about horse racing.

Bukowski filled many pages with poems, stories and essays about his exploits at the track. He once said, ''Everybody has got a system, but it's only a system when it works.''

Stevens has the beginning of a system -- ''Last Seen In Saratoga'' almost works. We'll have to wait until the next book to see if there's a payoff.

'''Last Seen In Saratoga' is a glimpse into the lives of four senior citizens who find friendship in each other's company. Harry, a widower, and his pal, Mike, a divorcŽ, both love betting on the horses. They invite their new lady friends to join them for a fun holiday at the races in Saratoga,'' reads a blurb at the front of the book.

The book is 15 short chapters of ''glimpses'' leading up to four longer chapters about horse racing.

Because of these ''glimpses,'' it is difficult to develop empathy for the characters. Stevens touches on a subject here or lights on a subject there.

The reader is just beginning to get a sense of Harry, and suddenly Harry is steering his car into a local strip mall. What happened to his wife? What's up with those daffodils? Why did Harry go to a strip mall?

Aside from his incorrect punctuation, grammatical and syntactical errors, Stevens has no follow-through.

For example, of the political differences between the main characters, Harry and Mike, Stevens writes: ''Their political views sometimes clashed fiercely over heated controversies like whether Bill Clinton was the worst or the best of our presidents.''

What does that mean?

In another example of these ''glimpses,'' Harry is in his kitchen when his mind wanders. Stevens writes:

''Was D-Day really 54 years ago.'' (A question should end with a question mark.) ''He was only eighteen then, when he stood on the deck of the Navy LST 515 in the English Channel with the ship's crew and listened intently to the captain as he opened and read the message from General Dwight Eisenhower. 'You are about to embark on a great crusade...' The words that followed prefaced the most dramatic event in wartime history -- OPERATION OVERLORD, the Normandy Invasion.

''Harry was one of the hundreds of Navy Hospital Corpsmen, a unit known as Foxy 29, assigned to these bulky amphibious ships, affectionately known as Large Slow Targets.

''About 200 of these ships carrying troops and vehicles would join the many other ships in an attack on Normandy. After their precious cargo was unloaded onto the beaches, the Foxy 29 medical teams gathered the thousands of wounded soldiers from the beaches -- administered first aid as they sailed back to the refuge of a southern England port.

''Harry remembered the frightened look in the eyes of the many wounded American paratroopers taken aboard his ship off Utah Beach that hectic day. The horrors those guys saw during the early hours of fighting must have been awesome!

''The coffee pot was now boiling furiously and starting to boil over. Harry turned to the stove and shut the electric off.

''The drive west on the Long Island Expressway toward Belmont Park was a hazardous adventure. The traffic was heavy and fast.''

What happened here? Stevens had created a descriptive passage about the Normandy Invasion. But he seems to run out of steam and strips gears in the reader's mind. He grinds from one transition where Harry's coffee is boiling over, to another sudden transition to a drive on the Long Island Expressway.

Perhaps he should have ended with a chapter break to give the reader a chance to mentally mull over the excellent writing about Normandy before the abrupt and painful shift.

Stevens' development of Marge and Lillian is even less effective. Granted, Harry, Mike, Marge and Lillian are senior citizens, and they seem to possess a fulfillment in life that younger readers might not understand. Still, Stevens only skims the surface of these women. A woman is much more than a foil for a man.

For instance, Harry has spent the night at Marge's. In the morning, she yells up the stairs to him:

''Harry, toss down your socks and underwear and I will speed wash and dry 'em for you. There's a new toothbrush and a bag of disposable razors in the bathroom. You will find aspirin there, too. And hurry, the bacon is in the pan and your country breakfast will be ready in 15 minutes.''

How convenient. How provincial.

''Last Seen In Saratoga'' concludes with an opportunity for Stevens to re-introduce his characters at a later time -- a good plan, because one cannot help but wonder what comes next in the lives of Harry, Mike, Marge, and Lillian. Stevens hints that they might be heading off to Atlantic City and beyond.

''Last Seen In Saratoga'' is a step for Stevens to become a better writer. Some parts are excellent; others very are weak.

Readers should take into consideration that this is the author's first novel. A writer writes, and if Stevens is a writer, he will keep writing, regardless of anyone's opinion.

©The Saratogian 2006

2006-02-20T19:13:00.001-08:00

Book review: 'Adirondack Heist'
LEE GOODEN, For The Saratogian
10/08/2002

''Adirondack Heist,'' by Saratoga Springs author Jeff Kelly, is a fast-paced, almost cinematic book, full of historical, geographical and present-day references to upstate New York. It is the sequel to Kelly's first book ''21 Mine,'' in which Kelly's protagonist Wallace Klocks was introduced. ''Heist'' contains enough expositional material to make it unnecessary to have read ''Mine'' to enjoy ''Heist.'' However, the previous book it should be read because it is the start of Kelly's excellent body of work.

''Adirondack Heist'' begins as Klocks, an escaped convict from upstate New York, leaves his refuge in Florida and re-examines his life and personal credo. Kelly writes:

''For one year, Wallace Klocks remained anonymous. That was his plan and so far he had succeeded. But you know what? He missed upstate New York ... Klocks missed his notorious reputation ... Klocks liked to picture himself as a man of action -- a man who built a life on what he did, not what he said.''

In Klocks, Kelly has created a character similar to hard-boiled, hard-fisted and testosterone-driven crime fictional noir men like Lawrence Block's Matthew Scudder, Robert B. Parker's Boston private eye Spenser, Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer and Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade.

Hammer, Spade, Scudder and Spenser are heroes that have no qualms about crossing the line of the law to achieve a noble cause.

Klocks is an anti-hero who doesn't care about the law, and his high intelligence contrasts with his rough male veneer. He wants to become a renowned art thief. And, as with Block's gentleman burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr, Klocks's taste, skills and mind make him a formidable thief, capable of stealing a Rodin sculpture from Crown Point.

The resemblance to Block's Rhodenbarr ends at tastes and intelligence. Where Rhodenbarr might be squeamish at physical confrontation, Klocks wouldn't have a problem with hurting, torturing or even killing, as long as the ends justified the means.

''Adirondack Heist'' is for readers who enjoy a good action story that reads like a movie in the tradition of films like ''Oceans Eleven,'' David Mamet's film ''Heist'' and Michael Mann's ''Heat.''

Klocks is a character that the average man would love to emulate, and let his darker side out for one day -- a chance to drive fast cars, meet beautiful women and take what he wants, living one day at a time and thumbing his nose at the law.

©The Saratogian 2006

2006-02-20T19:10:00.000-08:00

Review: 'Kat Mandu' book enters brave new world of holistic confusion
LEE GOODEN, For The Saratogian
10/15/2002

The first things one notices about this book, besides the big black letters in the title ''Kat Mandu,'' is the medium-sized black ''Ha-Ha's.''

There are seven of them on the book's spine. There are seven more ''Ha's'' in small green letters at obtuse angles, followed by more exclamation points, on the book's cover.

Carla Gandy of Saratoga Springs wants us to believe that these ''Ha's'' are nothing more than abbreviations for Holistic Advertising. Any reader that sees the letters H and A next to each other will obviously think of laughter. Gandy bids us to not only laugh, but to laugh loudly.

Once past the cover, the book opens to this interesting beginning:

''Kat sat. In silence. There was an air of Taoist peacefulness in her office. The quiet, however, belied her inner turmoil -- should she or shouldn't she have a second cup of coffee?''

''Kat Mandu'' is about Cooper James, a young traveler in her early 20s who, after a round-the-world journey, lands in the New Age Mecca of Maui. She becomes a nanny to three children whose father is a tyrant guru named Georgiou. He owns ''The Wailea Center for Healing of the Western Hemisphere Except For Costa Rica Which Has Already Been Healed. ''

Through an extraordinary number of coincidences, acts of faith, esoteric influences and through trial and error, Cooper leaves the job she hates, changes her name to Kat Mandu and starts her own center -- The Holistic Advertising Agency.

Kat Mandu's Holistic Advertising Agency is Gandy's homage to the late author Douglas Adams' bodies of work, the ''Dirk Gently Holistic Detective Agency'' series and ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' series.

Kat Mandu has passages where a reader might groan out loud at the corniness. It also has moments where one might snort, chuckle and belly laugh, especially when Kat first consults her channeling cat Cleo, discusses coffee ground readings, performs Uno Card tarot readings, and explores the uselessness of questionnaires. The story is amusing, and Kat is a wonderful foil for some of the oddities practiced in the name of the New Age movement.

Sometimes, though, it is difficult to tell if Gandy is entertaining or preaching. First the reader feels like they are reading something funny. Then, suddenly, Gandy takes herself too seriously and she sounds like Robert M. Pirisig's ''Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.''

She has excellent insight on the inner workings of the human psyche, but Gandy needs to find a balance. Is she writing satire, an autobiography, or a self-help book?

2006-02-20T19:09:00.000-08:00

LEE GOODEN, For The Saratogian
11/05/2002

''Ghosts of the Northeast''

(Aurora Publications,

Salem N.Y., 396 pages)

by David Pitkin.

''Haunted Northern

New York''

(North Country Books,

129 pages)

by Cheri Revai.

''Do you believe in ghosts?''

This question is asked around campfires and during casual conversations at the dinner table.

Many people believe in ghosts, and their stories have been recorded and documented by writers like David Pitkin, in his books ''Saratoga County Ghosts'' and ''Ghosts of the Northeast,'' and Cheri Revai, in her book ''Haunted Northern New York.''

Pitkin's ghosts

In the preface of ''Ghosts of the Northeast,'' Pitkin states:

''In researching 'Saratoga County Ghosts' in 1998, I discovered over 120 ghost stories in a single county. Up to that time I believed as so many others do, that haunted houses are rare, but now I know that it's a rare house that hasn't been visited by spirits at least once.''

People from all walks of life have had experiences with ghosts. One such example Pitkin cites is the Barbers of Granville.

Pitkin quotes Reese Barber: ''I glanced up to see a man's face at the window -- he had a long face and a mustache with twirled ends.'' Barber recognized the face from an old book of photos that were part of the memorabilia of their house. ''In the book we found him, an ancestor who'd once lived there!''

''Ghosts of the Northeast'' is 369 pages of real people whose stories are divided into 20 easily accessible chapters with titles like Haunted Houses, Military Ghosts, Ghosts on Stage, Public Service Ghosts, Health & Medicinal Spirits, Haunted Things and Animal Ghosts.

In addition to his ghost books, Pitkin has written a book about personal numerology called ''Spiritual Numerology: Caring for Number One.''

He is working on a novel with a ''current events theme, and a strong metaphysical side that is set in the Adirondacks,'' Pitkin said. It is about ''a man who is dissatisfied with his life and societal emphasis on worldly and material things, and searches within himself for true meaning.''

Revai's hauntings

Revai's book ''Haunted Northern New York'' is a less ambitious book in quantity but not in quality.

She states in her introduction: ''We have met ghosts sometimes up close and personal, sometimes so obscurely as to make us question our own judgment -- yet some people are still skeptical and aren't sure what they believe.''

In ''Haunted Northern New York,'' Revai lets the reader hear the ''old stories.'' She rewrites the majority of the accounts into her own narrative voice. This does not let readers feel as if they are ''sharing'' the experience, but rather, as if they are being retold a retold story by Revai.

''The middleman'' takes away the power and believability of the original story.

Except for this weakness, ''Haunted Northern New York'' is an entertaining, thought-provoking and sometimes spooky book.

For example, this excerpt from ''Grandma and her Dog,'' is the story of Fran, a Louisville woman:

''Fran was taking a break from spring cleaning to sit down and write the obituary -- deep in thought about her deceased mother, she jumped when the bottle of Windex on the desk in front of her sprayed the window all by itself right before her eyes. Needless to say, Fran was flabbergasted.''

Both Pitkin and Revai have written books that encourage us, as Pitkin has said, ''to go against the grain of our great institutions, religion and the education system that teach us to look beyond ourselves for answers. We should be seeking and finding our answers within ourselves.''

©The Saratogian 2006

2006-02-20T18:54:00.000-08:00

Low End

By Harry G. Pellegrin

Published by Bedside Books

332 pages $22 Trade paperback

'Low End' is a mystery that Harry Pellegrin's protagonist Gary Morrissey solves between 1988 and 1989. It is similar to other mystery crime noir characters written in the first person, like Robert B. Parker's Spencer, Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe and Lawrence Block's Mathew Scudder.

Pellegrin sets the story in the late '80s New York City rock 'n'roll scene with believability. His knowledge of blues and rock is undisputed. He mentions the late great guitarist Rory Gallagher, who was not only one of the world's greatest guitarists, but also a fan of detective and crime fiction.

The novel begins with a cleverly paced prologue describing the murder of Morrissey's friend and former bass player and band mate Devon. As a present day Morrissey reminisces about Devon, Pellegrin sends the reader back to 1988.

In 1988 Morrissey is a rock 'n' roll blues guitarist and a recent divorcee who lives in a hot sticky apartment in the South [Yonkers]. His day job consists of repairing copy machines.

He drives a [Fiat 124S Spider] and seems relatively happy going day to day from beer to beer, paycheck to paycheck and gig to gig until a friend and band mate named Captain Marty, from their defunct band Air Raid, informs Morrissey that their mutual friend and bassist Devon has died and was possibly murdered.

Captain Marty asks Morrissey to investigate because he thinks Morrissey would be good at getting the answers.

Morrissey follows clues and discovers that everything is not what it seems. He is led to a gripping cat-and-mouse ending with a remorseless killer.

'Low End' is crafted like a song. It is a crime novel narrated in the first person with the typical wise cracks and testosterone-fueled bravado, and a mystery that one can sink their teeth into. But it is also a spiritual journey.

There are many writers who try too hard to emulate the masters, like Hammett, Chandler, MacDonald, Spillane and McBain. So cumbersome are their efforts, that they lose their own voices. But Pellegrin's protagonist has a voice of the street and a hardened cynical edge, softened with a good heart.

But readers will trust Morrissey only so far, because we know that with enough rope he will hang himself. Morrissey is like a mouth sore that we just can't help but touch. We know it's going to hurt but we don't care. Pellegrin, like God, sits in the back seat while his creation takes over.

I look forward to the further adventures of Morrissey and anything else Harry G. Pellegrin writes. He has written for periodicals like Soundboard: The Journal of the Guitar Foundation of America, The Horse: Backstreet Choppers. He lives with his wife and two daughters in rural upstate New York.

©The Saratogian 2004

Pellegrin's latest novel and sequel Deep End is currently being shopped around to different publishers.

2005-10-19T20:05:00.001-07:00

Sandy Hill

A Novel, by Ed Putnam

Authorhouse 2004

148 pages $15.00

"I am in this book, but Dan Perkins is not me. He resembles me and thinks like me sometimes, but he is not me, I didn't even know him at the beginning of writing this book, but I came to know him well and like him a lot by the time I had finished." Ed Putnam wrote in the introduction to his novel Sandy Hill

"It's hard to forget a place that molds you, shapes you, and casts you like a pot is baked in a kiln." Dan Perkins thinks while sitting on a park bench in the middle of his hometown of Sandy Hill. He has returned for his 45th high school reunion. He asks himself the question everyone asks, when they come back to the place of their childhood "God, what happened to this place?"

When one asks that question, are we asking what happen to ourselves? We no longer recognize or can identify who we were. We have memories, askew and somewhat obtuse at best from our youthful interpretations, but not an accurate representation. Putnam tries to answer this question by flashing back to the last vestiges of Dan's emotional innocence, to where he had been known as Danny during August 1950, a less than idyllic time where young Danny discovers a deep running sorrow that leaves a lifetime gulf between his family members. Putnam handles this short scene and the other coming of age scenes set in the 1950's with aplomb and skill like Bob Greene's memoir Be True To Your School and Tobias Wolff's memoir This Boy's Life. For example, "Danny climbed up on the front porch and sat for a few minutes in the wooden swing suspended from the ceiling. He loved to swing. Sometimes on hot summer evenings he and Aunt Martha would sit there together while she stripped peas or snipped the ends off string beans...Danny would help himself to a bean now and then, but mostly he just liked the feeling of sitting there swinging gently..."

Putnam claims that Sandy Hill is a work of fiction not a memoir. Sandy Hill shows some similarities to James Agee magnificent novel A Death in the Family and Stephen King's mastery in his novella The Body from his book of novellas Different Seasons. Putnam is able to capture seemingly authentic observations and realistically portrayed confusion within the youthful eyes of Danny and show a revelation through present day Dan. The next few lines that completes the above quoted passage demonstrates these mature observations, "...Aunt Martha had lived briefly in Louisiana before her husband had left her, and she liked to talk about her life there. They had a maid by the name of Lizzie, who did all the cooking and cleaning for them. It made Danny sad to think that Aunt Martha was now doing the same thing for his family, and he wondered if she ever though about that."

However, Putnam is not consistent with his writing specifically when he goes on an expositional tangent and tries to squeeze in thirty years of back story in only a few pages. He makes the mistake of "telling" the story instead of "showing". Sandy Hill would have been a better novel if Putnam had allowed himself the space and time to make it longer than its curt 148 pages. Also, some of the dialogue is unrealistic. The major problem with Sandy Hill is that the reader becomes frustrated with Putnam because there are parts that are so good that one cannot help but to devour the book. He writes with such passion and insight in sections, specifically two scenes that parallels and complements each other very well. One scene takes place during Dan's High School career that endangers his reputation and might follow him for life, and the other scene occurs in the present where his career as a School Administrator and his place as a citizen in his community is in jeopardy. Sandy Hill is written so well in parts that the bad writing stands out in areas and detracts, distracts and disappoints the reader. Putnam has written a decent novel that could have been a great novel

One can't help but look forward to Mr. Putnam's next book and wish that Sandy Hill will be revisited in the future

Ed Putnam lives with his wife of 38 years, Doreen, in Skaneateles in the Finger Lakes district of upstate New York. Putnam is a retired Episcopal Priest who has written for numerous journals and magazines and has a book on preaching which is in the process of being edited for publication and a new novel coming out.

Lee Gooden 11-24-2004

2005-10-19T20:05:00.000-07:00

The Wrath of Grapes: A Complete Hangover Cookbook & Guide to the Art of Creative Suffering

By Patrick Meanor

XOXOX PRESS 2004

$10.00 127 pages

With the holidays upon us and the stress and tension they bring many of us will imbibe of alcoholic spirits to celebrate and take the edge off. Too much imbibing, though, could lead to a hangover. The hangover is a word that fills the heart with angst, dread and guilt, while the brain moans over and over like a mantra, "Oh God, never again, never again, never again..."

Whether one is down on their luck quaffing boiler-makers in some back alley seedy dive, or playing quarters and having ice cube tray races while dressed in bed sheets at a ‘come as your favorite ancient decadent Roman’ dorm party, or sipping champagne while rubbing shoulders and hobnobbing with the paparazzi in the lofty spires of the Trump Tower; or just partaking in a fifth or sixth (who can keep count?) Perfect Manhattans while watching an I Love Lucy Marathon in the comfort of one’s own home; the hangover is a great global-socioeconomic equalizer.

Patrick Meanor’s book the Wrath of Grapes is a wonderful foil for the literary and artistic person’s hangover. Calling Wrath a cookbook is misleading as well as limiting, because it is so much more. Meanor writes: "We use the term "cookbook" as it applies not only to an activity that takes place in the kitchen of your home but, more importantly, as a psychological, mental, and spiritual "kitchen" in which the imagination does the cooking...Since the imagination is, obviously, a kitchen in which we "cook up" ideas, schemes, plans, and remedies for both "physical and metaphysical" hangovers, we are employing the word "cookbook"...And since present day "consumption" comprises not just food and drink but also media of diverse kinds, we offer gentle guidance in choices of music, literature and televised spectacle---imaginative "food"--to ameliorate the effects of overindulgence of other substances."

Wraths compact but packed 127 pages, begin with a cleverly annotated Table of contents of the books seven humorously titled chapters. The seven chapters are: Chapter 1: The Wrath of Grapes--Morning Dread and what NOT to do, Chapter 2: More Wrath—What TO Do, Chapter 3: The Media—Distracted from Distraction by Distraction, Chapter 4: From Muse—Sick to Music, Chapter 5: The Reading Readiness Test, Chapter 6: Exorcise with Exercise—Imaginative Calisthenics and Chapter 7: The Saint Lawrence Memorial Recipe—Stations of the Course. Meanor creates amusing plays on words and book titles, for example The Wrath of Grapes is obviously a play on the title of John Steinbeck’s famous novel The Grapes of Wrath. Some of his other "plays on words" are not so obvious and would escape most non-literary people. For example, a subtitle in chapter one called: Caring for the Mind: Don’t Speak Memory! Or, Looking for Mr. Lobotomy. This title is hilarious, but what makes it even funnier is that it is a play on the memoir Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov, which is also full of word play and puns.

Meanor uses The Wrath of Grapes as a subtle platform to share his knowledge and express his opinions about the arts and includes some mouth-watering recipes and suggested foods to soothe the hangover divided up into the following categories, B&S-Beverages and Soups, MP&E-Meats Poultry and Eggs, F&S-Fish and Shellfish, V&S-Vegetables and Salads, F-Fruits, and D-Desserts. An example in the D category, "Peach cobbler or peach pie with plenty of sugar. You might pour some rich cream over it and a dash of cinnamon." Wrath instructs on how to combine the culinary with a film, some excellent music or a good book to create a kind of homeostasis for the hangover afflicted. Meanor states in Chapter 7., "Those of you familiar with traditional cookbooks will notice that ours includes limited number of offerings and few specific directions or measurements. We truly believe that the simpler the directions the better, because most victims are in no shape to choose from among the many offerings or engage in measuring activities...Or selective recipes require minimum of action, thought, analysis, or measurements. Just do it!"

PatricK Meanor, Ph.D is a Distinguished Teaching Professor of English at the State University of New York, College of Oneonta where he has taught for thirty years. Dr. Meanor has edited or co-edited five volumes of the Dictionary of Literary of Literary Biography Series: American Short Story Writers Since WWll (Gale Press). He has written two books: John Cheever Revisited (1995:Twane—Macmillian) and Bruce Chatwin (1997: Twane—Simon&Schuster). He is presently writing a book on British satirist, Will Self.

Lee Gooden 12-27-2004

2005-10-19T19:54:00.000-07:00

Here is the original copy of a review before it was hacked exstensively by an editor. I rolled with the punches and received monetary compensation.

In Fond Remembrance of Me: A Memoir of Myth and Uncommon Friendship in the Arctic

By Howard Norman

North Point Press

(c) 2005 by Howard Norman

166 pages $21.00

Non-fiction/memoir

Currently available as of February 28th 2005

"What good is intelligence if you cannot discover a useful melancholy?"

-Ryunosuke Akutagawa

Howard Norman writes, in his new book, In Fond Remembrance of Me: A Memoir of Myth and Uncommon Friendship in the Arctic. "Memory is more a séance than anything replete with desire to resurrect original presences and attendant emotions."

How many of us wish they can go back and have a second chance to explain to a departed loved one just how much they mean to us and the impact they have had on our lives? The opportunity to tell them with a clarity, wisdom and hindsight that comes with the passage of time their importance without a sense of immediacy or choking loss and maintain a bitter-sweet perspective even while nursing a pang of their memory within our chests. Howard Norman has accomplished this and more.

In 1977 Norman was hired by a museum to travel to Churchill Manitoba in the Canadian Arctic to translate into English Inuit "Noah stories" told by an Inuit elder named Mark Nuqac in which the biblical Noah and his family somehow became lost and stuck in the ice on an arc full of animals the Inuit had never seen but thought they might be edible. While in Churchill, Norman met Helen Tanizaki who was translating the "Noah Stories" into Japanese. As their friendship progressed he learned she was dying from cancer. ..."linguist, translator, diarist, prodigious writer of letters...I knew Helen in Churchill, Manitoba, in 1977 during September and October, the first week of November in Halifax, and in letters sent from Japan until her death in the summer of 1978...perhaps the most introspective person I've know...born in London and raised in Japan..."

While Norman was gathering together his various writings to be placed in a "Special Collections at Boston University he, "...discovered the loose leaf journals I kept during my stay in Churchill. I was surprised and pleased to find out how dedicated I was to these journals...the journals served as the basic for In Fond Remembrance of Me."

Seemingly a short and light book Remembrance is deceptively complex. It is a love story without the usual psycho sexual babble that complicates relationships between men and women and a coming of age story where Norman learns an unconditional love.

In Fond Remembrance of Me is a lyrical tapestry that Norman has woven together by looking back at his journals, memories, his translations of "Noah Stories" and his relationship with Helen Tanizaki through the eyes of acquired life experience. The "Noah Stories" somehow compliment and enhance his writing. A refined sadness and humor is balanced with wisdom, wit and intelligence that only hindsight could bring and create a "useful melancholy".

Howard Norman is the author of five novels, including The Haunting of L, The Bird Artist and Northern Lights. He lives with his family in Vermont and Washington, D.C.

2005-10-19T18:43:00.001-07:00

Here is a review before it was edited for a newspaper.

Steve Anderson’s first novel, Dark Sighted, is the story of Mole, a male Wampanoag Native American coming of age as a shaman in the 1620’s. Anderson writes, “Behind his back in whispers, they called him Dark Sighted. To his face they called him Mole “It seemed he could see better in the dark ‘without eyes’ than most people could see with eyes in the daylight…Mole had known...that he was going to journey that night; he always knew before hand. His body would stay where it was; it was his spirit that would travel.”

Mole’s spirit guides tell him that he shouldn’t kill another human being if he wants to continue to receive ‘Other-Worldly’ guidance. He learns to listen, understand and act upon his visions and astute powers of perception through a series of trials and adventures his wisdom and powers increase. He realizes that the ‘White People’ from across the ocean are not to be trusted and are about to descend upon his people in droves. He helps a fellow Wampanoag whom considers Mole his enemy exorcise a vengeful ghost and is given the new name Medicine Knife. He becomes a vital component in the leadership of his Wampanoag community.

Anderson has written a vivid account of a Wampanoag’s life during pressure from inevitable change that came to all Native American cultures. He writes in a description and dialogue between Wampanoag council member Samoset and the leader Tisquantum, “Samoset’s voice, without any flourishes, expressed genuine, quieting dread. ““Nothing will ever be the same again…”” ““Great changes are coming”” Mole heard the Antlered Warrior’s words echoed in that lodge… Samoset continued. ““This time the English are not here only for a short time to trade or fish or steal a few people. This time, they are here to stay. This time they…”” ““They have brought their women and children.”” Tisquantum finished Samoset’s statement… ““Yes, they have brought their women and children.”” Samoset said this as though he were pronouncing a death sentence.”

Teaching on a Navajo reservation for sixteen years Anderson’s knowledge of Native American culture and lore is unmistakable. He has the ability to make the reader think they were transported back in time to the 1620’s and given the opportunity to eavesdrop and in some cases interact with Mole and his people. Dark Sighted begins as a good yarn that is entertaining and informative that one could easily develop empathy for the characters and get caught in their story, all good traits for a first novel (in fact, all good traits for any novel). Unfortunately, the narrative is uneven. The first 150 pages or so, one is captivated by a well written story of a young shaman’s rite-of-passage and self-discovery during turbulent times of a changing world. The last 48 pages are written more like play-by play commentary full of unnecessary expositional material that doesn’t seem to fit with the rest of the novel. Anderson seems to run out of steam, as if completing the history of his main protagonist and exploring his thoughts and continue to place the reader in a fictional narrative is too daunting of a task. In the beginning of Dark Sighted the reader is immersed in a story with such well developed characters that one forgets one is learning history. In contrast, Anderson attempts to sum up another 50 -75 years in two short chapters. He bombards the reader with facts and personal opinions until his author intrusion is as blatant, abrupt and unforgivable as having a door slammed in one’s face. The flow of the narrative is disrupted and the character’s voices are stifled with what might be called ‘Storious Interruptus’

This reviewer hopes Anderson avoids this condition in his next novel.

Steve Anderson was born and raised in the Chicago area. His lifelong emotional involvement with Native American issues led him to become a teacher on the Navajo reservation for sixteen years. He now resides in upstate New York. Dark Sighted is his first novel.

-Lee Gooden 6-3-2005

2005-10-19T17:25:00.000-07:00

Here is a book review and interview that should have been published by one of my editors, but wasn't due to budget cuts and time restraints. So I'm blogging it.

Tyger, Tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
-excerpt from The Tyger, by William Blake

North, published by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc is Frederick Busch’s new novel that continues with Jack, a character first introduced in Busch’s 1997 best-seller Girls. In Girls Jack is a Viet Nam veteran and ex-lawman working as a security officer on an upstate New York College campus. He is enlisted by a local family to find their missing teenage daughter whose disappearance may be related to a series of missing girls.
North begins almost eight years after Girls. Jack is now working as security in a resort in North Carolina. Protecting the honor of a woman lawyer from New York City Jack has an altercation with Jason Arnold a gigolo that … “seems drunk or amped on coke or amphetamine. Someone that highly cranked is all energy and no mind…I swiveled my hips and drove my fist maybe six inches into the meat below where the ribs met above the stomach…all his motion stopped and then his mouth opened while his face went white. Then he caved in over his gut and went down into a ball on the floor…I noticed the lawyer was looking at me and not Jason Arnold. I noticed I was looking at her instead of him.”
The lawyer hires Jack to find her nephew, notorious for his gambling debt and unhealthy relations with unsavory characters, his last whereabouts known to be in upstate New York. Suddenly Jack finds himself back in upstate New York, full circle. Unresolved ghosts and demons of the past linger and keep him from attempting a thorough search. In true Jack fashion he bodily lumber and plods on with trying to solve the case and come to terms with his failure in finding Janice Tanner’s body, the missing girl from Girls, the dissolution of his marriage and his ex- wife’s suicide. Hardest of all Jack faces the Sisyphean boulder of the truth that crashes down onto him from the heights of denial about the real cause of his baby daughter’s death
Busch wrote the narrative of both Girls and North in the first person, a literary device used in noir detective and crime fiction by authors like Robert B. Parker, the creator of the Spencer series and Lawrence Block, writer of the Mathew Scudder novels. Busch’s writing transcends noir with both Girls and North because there is such an undercurrent of dread and hopelessness that affects and interferes with Jack’s natural inclination to do ‘good’. Busch’s skill makes North a heroic quest with the heavy psychology of Greek drama, the sparse and poetic prose of Hemingway and the relentless pace of a Koontz thriller. Jack’s voice is unique in that as a man of action he confesses he “struggles with words”. Even though his narration and inner dialogue are replete with insight and a lyricism describing the straight forward and colloquial, for example “The heat was heavy and full of diesel hanging like invisible grease on the lighter stink of burnt up leaded gasoline.” He seems unaware of the beauty of the language. Busch best shows Jack’s search for words when the character Sarah says to Jack, ““…I was in the library. Up in the stacks…It was when you were taking courses. You were improving yourself…you were standing in front of the shelves and you were looking. Just looking. You were taking books down and reading in them and putting them back on the shelf…You were…grazing. You were working the range. You were reading maybe just because there is so much there you could read at if you wanted to.””.
Jack is his own mystery, not only does he investigate and stake–out the surface of farm country in upstate New York, but reluctantly he becomes a spelunker, exploring the subterranean darkened depths of his haunted psyche. He mines and sifts pieces of memory and Strindberg-like dreamscapes. His angst is so palpable that Busch tries to ritually clean Jack within a pond, “I recalled how I had hung between the surface and the bottom of the pond the evening before and how long I might have stayed there if I didn’t need to breathe.” Jack is rooted in guilt and so grounded that he believes he must continue to dwell in his muck and mire and the spiritual cleansing is vitiated.
Busch has expertly crafted and re-crafted North is such smooth and seamless prose that readers forget they are reading so there isn’t a sense of the artist/writer/creator’s giddy hand manipulating his characters behind the scenes through thin rehashed plotlines. All 302 pages sing and shine with power, beauty and a cinematic driving story that it is book more worthy than the $24.95 listed price.

Lee Gooden 5-20-2005

AN INTERVIEW WITH FREDERICK BUSCH

I-First of all I want to say how much of an honor and a privilege it is to speak with you.

F.B.-Thank you

I- You’re welcome. When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

F.B-I’ve always wrote. I remember even at 7 and 8 years old writing poems and stories. But what I remember best was that my fourth grade teacher hated me…until I wrote a poem that made her and other people look at me differently. I liked that…I still do.

I-What are your influences, who do you like and read, classic and contemporary?

F.B-I love Charles Dickens, Herman Melville, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner and many others in the classics. Contemporary, I enjoy Alice Munro, Leslie Epstine, Howard Norman, especially his book, the Bird Artist, Reginald Mcknight, Adam Thorpe and many others.

I-Why did you write North? What made you go back to Jack as a subject of a book?

F.B-I wrote North because I missed writing in Jack’s voice and admired the hell out of him because he is a good man that tries to take responsibility for his actions and the actions of others regardless of the consequences. Through his Jack’s voice I made a good story. Jack is a good story.

I-Do you have a routine you follow as a writer or a specific place you write?

F.B.-I’ve been luck enough that I could quit working as a teacher and write full time. I write mostly in the mornings and my study is on the second floor of our renovated barn.

I-How do you start a novel?

F.B.-I start with a character first. A strong character is the core of my books, Jack, for example is man that works hard at being a good person. If I hadn’t fleshed him out and made him real to me and just started out with an idea and threw him in there in a ‘what-if’ situation he would be like a cardboard cut-out that I moved around on a board to suit my purpose. If he isn’t real to me, then he won’t be real to the reader.

I-When you write do you do a lot of drafts or does your prose easily flow?

F.B.-I don’t always get it right the first time around, but that’s all right because the art of writing is a craft that I practice full time and there is always revision, revision and revision. When I think I’ve got it down right, then I go through my work and look for connections and ongoing themes. I polish my writing and keep polishing it until I’m positive that it is my best. Of course, nobody is perfect.

I-Do you do a lot of research or do you just wing it?

F.B.-I research and research extensively.

I-Will there be anymore books about Jack?

F.B.-I don’t think so, right now I have a rough draft of a book of short stories ready to go and I’m writing a novel that takes place in Maine, which funny enough is where Jack was heading at the end of North.

I-Thank you Mr. Busch.

F.B.-You’re welcome.