Fred @ Woodinville Archive.

I bet you think that feminism and pacifism were invented in the 60s. Not so. I'm not exactly sure when they first appeared but I can give you an example of a very early appearance of both: Lysistrata, a Greek comedy written by Aristophanes and first performed in 411 B.C. That's right, B.C....as in 2,400 years ago. But don't be put off the antiquity or the "loftiness" of the play. Earthy, racy, provocative, and laugh-out-loud funny...Lysistrata is a complete hoot!

The play is set during the then-current war between Athens and Sparta, just after the disastrous loss of Sicily by the Athenians. The war was not going well for Athens and the growing sense of futility in it all provides the backdrop for this play. The main character, Lysistrata, comes up with a radical idea: if all women from both sides of the conflict agree to refrain from having sex with their husbands, then they will be forced by their sheer ardor to capitulate to the women's demand, which is an immediate end to all hostilities. Of course, Lysistrata has a little trouble convincing her compatriots of her plan...it seems they have desires of their own...but in the end they all take an oath (a scene that is hilarious), take over the Acropolis, and proceed to hold out on their warrior mates. As the men's frustration increases, so too does Lysistrata's determination, though she does have a tough time keeping her female co-conspirators in line. One of the most amusing scenes occurs near the end when Lysistrata has to intercept a number of women that are driven both to distraction and defection by their own impulses. But in the end...well, you'll have to read the play to find out.

There were a couple of things that really struck me about Lysistrata. First of all, the various translations of this play (and, presumably all of the ancient Greek plays) differ greatly in terms of language. I read two versions: one was a personal copy translated by Benjamin Bickley Rogers from 1955 and the other was a KCLS copy from 1991 translated by Nicholas Rudall. The gist of the material is the same in both versions but on a line-by-line basis they differed greatly. For laughs, some of my friends did a reading of a few pages from the play, using at least three different translations. Though there was great variation in the verbage used, the meaning and the humor came through all the same. Here's the moral: if you don't like one translation, try another.

Another interesting facet of Lysistrata is, well, it's steaminess. Believe-you-me, those Greeks weren't all contemplating the ideal plane and that comes through loud-and-clear in this play. There are numerous instances of double-entendres, course language, and sexual explicitness. Clearly, Aristophanes wasn't an elitist; he was obviously aiming his work at "the masses" and he succeeded gloriously, for I found myself able to relate to the general tenor of this play in a way that I could not with other "classic" works. In a word, Lysistrata is universal.

So if you're in the mood for some burlesque that really makes you think, don't be afraid to check out Lysistrata!

"Life here is a constant struggle, an endlessly repeated effort to tilt in one's favor the fragile, flimsy, and shaky balance between survival and extinction."

This sentence roughly encapsulates Ryszard Kapuscinski's assessment of the life of the average African in his fascinating book, The Shadow of the Sun. Kapuscinski was Poland's first-ever African correspondent, arriving in 1957 and returning many times over the next 40 years. During this time, his travels took him to virtually every corner of the African continent including Mauritania, Mali, Senegal, Nigeria, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Somalia, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, South Africa, and many other locations in between. Contemptuous of Europeans that sequestered themselves in affluent whites-only enclaves, Kapuscinski immersed himself in the real Africa, living in clay huts in the country and squalid tenements in the cities. What he saw was not pretty and the essays in this book make no effort to soften the blow. Everywhere he went he encountered scorching heat, disease, starvation, war, corruption, and the sort of utter destitution that is unimaginable to even the poorest member of a European or American society.

Yet for all this, The Shadow of the Sun is far from being an onerous, depressing read. Kapuscinski repeatedly focuses on the Africans' love of togetherness, the caretaking role of the clan, their quickness to laughter, their pervasive spirituality, and many other attributes that have enabled them to survive in an environment that is in so many ways harsh and unforgiving. But this book does not idealize Africans, just as it refrains from condemning Europeans or Americans. Yes, Kapuscinski gives a thorough account of the destructive effects of colonialism and the slave trade, but he also brings his journalistic skills to the fore in his detailed reports of oppression, brutality and mass-murder amongst Africans themselves in places like Liberia, Uganda and Rwanda. In short, his approach is objective and balanced. And beyond this, he clearly respected and felt compassion for the average African. Despite their hardships and their suffering and against all odds, they survive. 

So if you're in the mood for an insightful look into the reality of African life, check out Ryszard Kapuscinski's The Shadow of the Sun!

When I was a kid in Phoenix circa 1972, I used to love Saturdays because I would always watch "John Wayne Theater" at 2:00 P.M. I've seen dozens of his movies over the years, spanning "'Neath Arizona Skies" from 1934 to "The Shootist" in 1976. I used to love the simplicity of those westerns; you always knew who the good guys were and who the bad guys were and you could always count on some good fights and lots of action. One of his movies that I managed to miss was "Hondo", a western from 1953 starring John Wayne and Geraldine Page. I've since placed a hold on that one but in the meantime I've done something even better: I just finished the book upon which it's based, Hondo by Louis L'Amour.

Hondo Lane is an army dispatch rider during an Apache uprising in southeastern Arizona. Riding alone except for his trusty canine companion, he comes across an isolated ranch owned by a beautiful woman, Angie Lowe, and her young son, Johnny, both of whom were long ago abandoned by her husband, who's presumed to be dead. Hondo and the woman share a kiss but he leaves without her in order to deliver his dispatch to the army commander. This mission accomplished, he decides to return to the ranch to protect Angie and Johnny from harm. But things start to go awry: a cavalry column from the fort is massacred; Hondo himself is captured and tortured by the Apache; Angie is pressured by the stern but noble chief Vittoro to take an Indian brave as her husband in return for her safety; and, worst of all, Angie's no-good husband Ed Lowe turns up alive and well and full of ill-intent for Hondo Lane.

All the archetypal pieces are present in this quintessential western tale: a tough but honest hero; a beautiful but chaste heroine; a cowardly and despicable villain; brutal but honorable Indians; brave but naive cavalry officers; lots of fights and battles; lots of austerely beautiful landscape; even a wild but loyal dog. Yet as formulaic as all of that sounds, I found Hondo to be a throughly enjoyable read, due chiefly to the well-constructed story, well-delineated characters, and L'Amour's fluid writing style. Of course, little in the book strikes me as terribly realistic. From what I've read, life on the frontier was a whole lot more complicated than a battle between hero and villain, cavalry and Indians, right and wrong...though, to his credit, the author added touches of depth to a number of characters in this book. Still, it's a fairly idealized account that perpetuates the myth, rather than the truth, of the Old West. 

Yet myths have a habit of being comforting and Hondo is definitely a feel-good read, just as most of the old John Wayne westerns were feel-good movies. So if you're looking for an action-packed excursion into the heart of American Mythology written by a master of the idiom, then you better listen and I mean listen good, pilgrim: check out Louis L'Amour's Hondo!

I have a thing for Ancient Rome. It was so vast, so powerful, so long-lasting, and in so many ways is still with us....just think of our legal codes, all of the Romance languages (French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian), and all of the ruins throughout Europe, western Asia and North Africa. It's all around us and yet it's been gone for fifteen hundred years, too; like all things, it ran its course and eventually came to an end. History books have often cited barbarian incursions as one of the catalysts for the dissolution of the Roman Empire and the best-known of these barbarians was the ultimate bad-guy, Attila the Hun. The End of Empire: Attila the Hun & the Fall of Rome by Christopher Kelly is a well-researched and engaging book that explores the role of the Huns as a primary cause behind the ultimate dissolution of Eternal Rome.

Far from being another dry historical textbook, The End of Empire is a fun and fascinating read. It focuses on the last century of the western Roman Empire, roughly 376 to 476 A.D. A lot happened in that hundred years and the sheer number of players in this book can be a bit confusing. Still, the focus of The End of Empire is on a relatively small number of figures: Attila, Roman emperor Theodosius II, Roman general Flavius Aetius, and Roman ambassadors Maximinus and Priscus. The center of this book is the depiction of a diplomatic mission in 449 A.D. in which Maximinus and Priscus were sent to the Hungarian Plain in order to meet with Attila. They discovered that Hun society was fairly advanced and that Attila, far from being a brute, was ambitious, cunning, politically astute, and a loving father as well. Romans saw themselves as the pinnacle of human civilization and Roman historians, most of whom had never met a barbarian, portrayed the Huns as little more than animals, uncivilized in every way. First-hand knowledge contradicted that view.

Indeed, the great revelation of The End of Empire is that it's not always clear who was the greater barbarian, the Huns or the Romans. Attila's sometime-ally and sometime-nemesis Flavius Aetius was also cunning and politically savvy but he was equally known for his ruthlessness and divided loyalties. Theodosius II, along with most other late-period Roman emperors, is portrayed as being largely ineffectual. The general impression is that the rot had set into Roman society, particularly in the west, and that it could no longer defend itself against a seemingly endless stream of invaders of whom the Huns were the most dangerous and most feared. And a huge part of what made them so fearsome was the powerful figure of Attila himself.

Full of maps, illustrations, high drama and surprising conclusions, Christopher Kelly's The End of Empire is a refreshing take on a subject that has preoccupied students of history since 476 A.D. Check it out!  

The Road by Cormac McCarthy is a story of the survival, if not the triumph, of the best part of human nature at a time when the worst part of human nature predominates. Though dark and at times shattering in its emotional impact, this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is at the same time lyrical, uplifting and ultimately optimistic in its viewpoint.

The story is set in a post-Apocalyptic, near-future America where ash constantly falls from the sky and everything is dead save a few scattered people. Most of these have descended into a state of marauding savagery marked by theft, enslavement, murder and cannibalism. There are some, though, that have retained some sense of morality and compassion and the chief exemplars of this are the unnamed Man and his unnamed young Son. They wander the devastated landscape with their possesions piled into a shopping cart, searching abandoned towns and isolated homes for canned food and any other items that might help them survive. But their wanderings are not without purpose: the man is gradually leading his son down "the road" to the sea, though what they hope to find there is never explicitly articulated. As they make their way towards the coast, they cross paths with a number of marauders and these encounters are always tense and frequently horrifying.

The power of this book lies in its ability to evoke incredibly complex emotions and reactions in the reader and this is due to the author's mastery of language. Cormac McCarthy has the amazing ability to make even the most dire experiences sound like poetry. Here's an example: "He'd had this feeling before, beyond the numbness and dull despair. The world shrinking down around a raw core of parsible entities. The names of things slowly following those things into oblivion. Colors. The names of birds. Things to eat. Finally the names of things one believed to be true. More fragile than he would have thought. How much was gone already? The sacred idiom shorn of its referents and so of its reality. Drawing down like something trying to preserve heat. In time to wink out forever."

Yet despite the bleak reality of their existence, the dominant emotion expressed in The Road is love...specifically, the love of a father for his child...and with this comes hope, the key to survival. All of this is expressed in dialogue which, unlike the prose, is simple and to the point, yet powerful in its ability to encapsulate the feelings and implications beneath the words: "This is what the good guys do. They keep trying. They don't give up." The man is so patient, so reassuring, so outwardly together even when he's inwardly despairing, that he imparts the will to survive and to thrive within the boy as well as himself. Both he and the boy "carry the fire."

The Road is soon to be released as a movie starring Viggo Mortenson, Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce, and Robert Duvall. I know I'm going to see it. Maybe I'll even like it; I loved the film version of McCarthy's other latter-day masterpiece, No Country For Old Men. But there's no substitute for a good book and a healthy imagination. So do yourself a favor: before you buy the movie tickets, check out and read a copy of The Road. You won't be sorry! 

I think I'm becoming addicted to Michael Connelly. First, I read Echo Park about a year and a half ago and was surprised how much I liked it. Then, just a couple of weeks ago, I was looking for a book-on-tape and came across The Closers, which I promptly checked out. I finished it last night and I have to say that I was sorry to see it come to an end. The Closers is a fascinating and realistic portrayal of a seasoned cop using years of experience, intuition, deductive reasoning, technological breakthroughs and (at times) blind luck to solve a long-cold murder case.

In this 11th installment in the bestselling Harry Bosch series, Detective Bosch is reinstated after three years of retirement (during which time he worked as a private eye) and is assigned to the LAPD Open-Unsolved Unit, where he is paired with former partner Kiz Rider. His first case is the 17-year-old unsolved murder of Rebecca Verloren, a 16-year-old girl of mixed race that in 1988 was abducted from her bedroom, executed at point blank range, dragged up a hill and dumped in the foliage. As Bosch and Rider familiarize themselves with the details of the initial investigation, they find several discrepencies and a complete stonewalling of the racial implications of the case. Since 1988, however, DNA testing has become available and through this method tissue from the murder weapon is traced to a white-supremacist who lived near the victim. As they follow this new lead, it also becomes apparent that Bosch's old nemesis, Deputy Chief Irving, had a shadowy involvement in the initial investigation and sought to keep certain volatile aspects of the case from become known.

The great thing about The Closers is its complete lack of melodrama. Connelly saves the adrenalin for the last portion of the novel, and even then it's far from overblown. The main body of the book is procedural in its approach: we follow two detectives as they follow every lead, use every appropriate resource, deal with interdepartmental politics, generate paperwork, coordinate with the justice system, and perform all of the other tasks and jump through all of the other hoops that real detectives encounter in real police departments. They make mistakes and have breakthroughs and none of it seems phony or contrived. Character development, though part of the story, is understated and generally relegated to tantalizing glimpses into the character and pasts of several of the major players. Of course, much is implicit, based on the fact that this is the 11th entry in the series. Still, the story is about the case and, as such, it's handled in a very professional manner...never dry, always engaging...and this says a lot about Michael Connelly's abilities as a writer.

So if you tend to prefer "Law and Order" over "24", then definitely check out The Closers!

'Keep it like it was..."

This is the underlying principle beneath Edward Abbey's best-known work, The Monkey Wrench Gang. This rollicking novel, which was the inspiration for the real-life environmental radicals Earth First!, follows four misfits as they fight to protect the beautiful desert southwest from developers by perpetrating acts of "ecotage" (or "ecoterrorism," depending on who you talk to) such as pulling up survey stakes, trashing bulldozers, and blowing up bridges. Whatever feelings you may have about their strategy or their actions, its hard not to get caught up in the humor and the excitement of this farcical adventure.

The story revolves around four very different characters. Doc Sarvis, the cigar-chomping money man, is a middle-aged Albuquerque surgeon who's given to chainsawing billboards. His beautiful assistant and lover, young Bonnie Abbzug, is an independent-minded hippie that lives in a geodesic dome and accompanies Doc on his nighttime raids. Joseph "Seldom Seen" Smith is a jack-Mormon that smokes, drinks, has three wives, and would like nothing better than to see Glen Canyon Dam blown to smithereens. And George Washington Hayduke, loosely based on Abbey's best friend Doug Peacock, is a misanthropic, foul-mouthed, beer drinking, armed-to-the-teeth Vietnam vet that is happiest when he's blowing something up. The tie that binds these diametrically-opposed characters is their shared love of desert wilderness, their dismay at its destruction, and their overriding need to do something about it. Once they encounter one another on a river rafting trip, they form a partnership that leads them to increasingly bold acts of sabotage, increasingly hostile reactions from their victims, and a gripping final showdown. 

Edward Abbey's writing style is quirky, funny, highly literate yet also full of salty language and low-brow humor. But the defining element in his style is his lyrical, poetic descriptions of the slickrock landscape of the Four Corners region of the U.S. He really loved this part of the world and it shows in this and all of his works. But The Monkey Wrench Gang may not be for everyone. The only female character is a sexpot and minorities are either ignored or disparaged. Furthermore, there is a certain uncomfortable inconsistancy between, on the one hand, Hayduke's need to destroy an earth mover to save the environment while, on the other hand, he gleefully tosses his hundreds of spent beer cans onto the side of the road. And finally there's the whole sabotage thing; while I too have a special love for the redrock country, I am definitely not in agreement with the philosophy or methods articulated in this book, even if "no one gets hurt."

But you know what? None of that prevented me from enjoying the story, which was told with great panache. In fact, I like a work that riles me up a bit because it helps me clarify my own thoughts and feelings. And I have to admit that I ended up rooting for them, despite our philosophical differences, and that's a testament to Edward Abbey's writing style and sense of conviction.

So if you're looking for a rousing story that ruffles some feathers, check out The Monkey Wrench Gang!   

Looking for a spellbinding read? Then by all means check out The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger. You're probably saying to yourself, "Yeah, yeah...I already saw the movie and know how it ends, so what's the point of reading the book?" Ah, here's the catch: the movie is a largely fictionalized story based on the skeletal facts presented as only one facet of a book that features so much more. While the movie The Perfect Storm was certainly well done, the book is every bit as exciting yet also features a great deal more information, insight, and drama...and it's all true. 

The main plot of the movie and the centerpiece of the book are the same: in 1991, three separate storms converge off the coast of New England and create a horrifying maelstrom within which the Gloucester, Massachusetts fishing boat Andrea Gail battles for her life. However, the content of much of the movie is necessarily conjectural. The book, on the other hand, is consciously journalistic in its approach. Sebastian Junger always makes a clear distinction between general facts and what actually occured on the Andrea Gail. He assembles the known facts based on personal interviews with relevant individuals, radio transmissions from the Andrea Gail, and detailed information about Gloucester, the fishing industry, boat design, meteorology, wave dynamics, and human biology as it relates to extreme conditions. The author is always very careful to distinguish between what he knows for sure and that which is ultimately unknowable.

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk is provocative in the finest sense of that word: it is fascinating, disturbing, and really makes you think. Because of this, much ink has been spilled over this novel (and the subsequent movie, too), and I guess I'm going to spill a little more here. (Better ink than blood, right?) I'll warn you, though, that I'm still trying to make sense of what it all means. Perhaps that's the best testimonial I can give: the book sticks with you long after you've finished it. The novel's unnamed Narrator is a 30-ish, white, male, repressed insomniac that seeks out human warmth by attending support groups for potentially fatal illnesses that, by the way, he doesn't have.

His sense of order is turned upside down by two events. First, his support groups are crashed by beautiful, chain-smoking Marla Singer, who threatens to blow his cover with the real sufferers. Second, he meets Tyler Durden, a charismatic and anarchistic projectionist and waiter. Late one evening, Tyler asks The Narrator to hit him as hard as he can. The Narrator reluctantly consents. A fight ensues, and Fight Club is born. This secret society is attended by young, disaffected, father-deprived males who fight each other (shirtless, shoeless, and one fight at a time, please) in order to find inner freedom. As the author puts it, "You aren't alive anywhere like you're alive at fight club."

Soon, fight clubs spring up all over the country and Tyler Durden becomes a legendary figure among the members and, to The Narrator's chagrin, Marla Singer's lover as well. One morning, The Narrator tells Tyler that you "can build up a tolerance to fighting and maybe I need to move on the something bigger." So Tyler initiates Project Mayhem in order "to blast the world free from history" through terrorist acts of gradually escalating intensity.

Even though Fight Club is a sensational page-turner, I almost immediately got the feeling that I was reading something "important." Everything about this book is top-notch. The writing style is terse, witty and filled with symbolism; the main characters are portrayed with great (and sometimes horrifying) depth; the gritty urban-jungle setting is highly evocative; and the willfully disjointed plot features some jaw-dropping twists. But this book will not be for everyone. For one thing, it is exceedingly graphic in its depiction of violence at its most primal level. Furthermore, the only female character of note, Marla Singer, is a complete mess. Of course, so is everyone else in the book. Still, the inherent maleness of the subject matter may attract more male readers than female readers.

And then there's the question of message: what exactly is the author trying to say here? Does he glorify physical violence or is he really condemning it? Is it a book about masculinity or is it a critique of the sterile orderliness of civilization and a subsequent call for anarchy? Is it a book about the appeal of cults to broken members of society or merely a story about a profoundly fractured individual that starts something that he soon is unable to control? All of the above? None of the above? At this point, I'm not entirely sure. But the beauty of this book is that I am, almost involuntarily, trying to sort it all out.

Check out Fight Club and let me know what you think!

Being in The Woodinville Library Men's Book Club has led to some interesting discoveries for me. While we read a wide variety of material, we tend to come back to mysteries every three or four months. As a result, I'm starting to become far more familiar with a genre with which I previously had little experience or appreciation. I used to think that mysteries were more or less the same: someone gets murdered and someone else that's really smart figures out "who done it." Because that is more or less true, I've thought of mysteries as being highly formulaic and therefore predictable. What I was missing was a recognition and appreciation of what makes all of these mysteries distinctive: style. After all, thousands of sonatas have been written by thousands of composers over the centuries, but they're all unique works because of their individualized approach to the same basic formula...in a word, their style. Same goes for mysteries.