Darrel down the road got a nice buck with a .243 Winchester. Freddie got one with her HHR. Darrel has a hunting license, F has a driver’s license. Used to be hunting meant, well, hunting. These days they come to you. Thank goodness, she wasn’t hurt, but the HHR, well, different story. November and December in Kansas are peak times for deer crowds. My own HHR is a bit retro. I love those laker wheel covers, but they won’t stay on. They skip down the road looking for a windshield to pock. So I don’t use them. Underneath are smoothies with baby moons. Also retro. And the shoebox Ford has spinners just like the one I had in high school. It stays in the garage during deer time.
Moving inside, the house is full of books, stacks everywhere. Fiction, poetry, literature, every subject and genre imaginable. I see A Field Guide To Mammals, a book on pens, another on Winsor McKay (Early Works). What compelled us to get those? We are both hungry readers, lookers, ingesters. The stairs need to be negotiated carefully so as not to topple stacks on every riser. Shelves are bowed with weight. Maybe we can sell them. If we can part with them.
I finished Richard Rhodes’ The Making of the Atomic Bomb, 866 pages. If you put it in a stout bag and waded into a crowd, swinging it, you’d take out dozens before you could be stopped. Don’t worry, I’m not going to review it, other than to say it’s well-researched and offers a satisfying bibliography and index. It won the National Book Award. Oh, and the National Book Critics Circle Award but be wary of anything critics do in a circle.
Tattered and tired at the end. The book was, too.
I read it partially because my stepfather worked on The Manhattan Project. I thought it might help me to understand him better; it didn’t. One cannot choose one’s parents, or one’s step-parents. Roof, three squares, can’t complain. Nor did I begrudge him that pastime, that major blasting device. It did serve to end an awful war. Why do politicians want war? No book explains that to my satisfaction.
I finished it. Don Rickles would say, “Whaddya want, a cookie?” My hand seized up into a useless claw innumerable times just holding the thing up in front of my face as it sent me off to dreamland at night. That benchpress volume was better than Ambien or Valium, probably.
I used to finish all books once started; it was, I suppose, a superstition. Good or bad, finish the sucker. Then, years ago, after three or four bad ones, I threw Hillbilly Elegy across the room. I don’t have enough time the rest of my life for this shit. All writers write bad stuff, even the greats. (Except for Thomas McGuane and Joan Didion. If they did, it never reached print.) But Jeezo Capeezo, don’t charge money for them.
Books to avoid in my opinion are anything by pundits, celebrities, past presidents, presidents’ wives, or anything about politics, except, of course, those wondrous fears and loathings by Hunter Thompson. (Only the names need be changed and those books are quite contemporary.) But so many thousand books are published every month that hundreds are quite good. Sadly, you have to waste time and money on ones that aren’t, to find them. And don’t depend on Pulitzer winners; half of those are incomprehensible. Edgar finalists can be pretty good; it’s how I discovered Nick Pizzolatto.
And speaking of good writing, here’s a rather awesome newsletter that’ll take you into the labyrinths where the minotaur and forbidden knowledge live. It’s by J. David Osborne, one of the world’s great thinkers: he’s a teacher, publisher, a prolific writer (By The Time We Leave Here We’ll Be Friends and many other strolls through fascinating horrifica), and philosopher. You will come away wiser.
Merry and Happy to you all. (Never seen chestnuts roasting on an open fire, though, could be a New York thing) May the New Year bring Covid relief and better times for all. Nugget: the very measures that may keep us safe from Covid, will probably help us avoid the common cold. Cool.
Here endeth the holiday offering. Your friend, g.