Mitch Glaser. God’s Plan and Purposes for the Jewish People. Chosen People, 2019.

This short book summarizes four significant items in God’s plan for the Jews according to the Bible. Each is well supported and appears to borne out in history.

First, basing his argument on prophecies from Genesis, Exodus, and Deuteronomy, Glaser observes that God promised that the offspring of Abraham through Isaac would be set apart by Him. The people would illustrate God’s purpose and testify of Him to the rest of the world. Indeed, the survival of the Jewish people and their influence in spite of their history should be a sign that there is something different about them.

Second, mostly through promises given in Genesis, the purpose of the Jewish people was to live in the land of Israel. Even today, there have been more United Nations resolutions about Israel than any other country. It seems striking that such a small piece of real estate, relatively speaking, would even get such attention. This also perhaps points to the idea that the God of history is somehow behind this.

Third, Glaser writes that God has promised a king. He would rebuke the Israelites through Samuel for wanting a king like the other nations. God was supposed to be their king. But at the same time, he promised David that a descendant of his would rule forever. Jesus is both God and a descendant of David…hmm.

Fourth, the Jewish people were to have a mission. They were to be a “kingdom of priests” for the whole world, testifying of God and interceding on behalf of the world. We do read about a few people who did this, notably Solomon early in his reign and Jonah, though he was reluctant. One could argue that this really did not come to pass in any strong way until the coming of Jesus of Nazareth. His followers, at first almost exclusively Jews, began to tell non-Jews of their God and His Messiah.

Glaser then makes some interesting observations about how he sees the future of the Jewish people. It appears to be his hope that Jews will finally see themselves not simply as separated but as “missionaries” pointing the world to the God of the Bible.

God’s Plan and Purposes for the Jewish People is a short book, but it is packed with a lot of food for thought and, for those inclined, for prayer.

Jules Verne. Le Tour du Monde en Quatre-Vingts Jours [Around the World in Eighty Days]. 1873; Ebooks Libres et Gratuits, 18 March 2004.

It was time to get back into a little light French reading, so I chose another Jules Verne classic, Around the World in Eighty Days. This book is a lot of fun. Although there are serious moments in the story, the tone is much lighter than 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. There is no revenge, a very small amount of science fiction, and there are echoes, perhaps intentional, of some other French classics.

Very simply, the unemotional and very proper Englishman Phileas Fogg bets some members of his club twenty thousand pounds that he can circumnavigate the world in eighty days. This is in 1872. Along with his life savings and a newly hired French servant, Passepartout (literally “goes everywhere”), he begins his adventure. One similarity between this book and 20,000 Leagues is that both Arronax in that novel and Fogg in this one embark with a valet.

This is fun. We get some interesting experiences in the Red Sea after going through the newly constructed Suez Canal. The two men have some real challenges as they take an overland route through India. The railroad ends at a certain point in the interior of the subcontinent, so they end up hiring an elephant. This means even more adventures, including the entry of Mrs. Aouda, a British-educated, aristocratic young widow. As she joins the other two on the adventures, this reader could not help thinking of Haydée, the companion of the Count of the Monte Cristo.

Her story is sort of hard to believe but it makes for some real excitement. They sail from India to Hong Kong to Yokohama with adventures in each place. Passepartout provides some comic relief as he gets connected with a troupe of Japanese acrobats. We can tell that Mrs. Aouda appreciates Fogg, but he is so stereotypically British, stiff upper lip and all that, that we never know much of what he thinks of other people, only how to get around the world to win the bet.

They cross the United States mostly by train from San Francisco to New York. This is just a few years after the Golden Spike. They have problems with attacking Indians, a blizzard, and stampeding bison. We see Fogg going out of his way to help certain people in distress, even though these side adventures steer him away from his goal.

While crossing America, the one perhaps sci-fi element is a land sailboat, or more precisely, a sailsleigh. Clever. The final leg to Liverpool from New York gets desperate as well, but using the last of his savings, Fogg figures a way to get rerouted to try to win his bet.

If there are hints of The Count of Monte Cristo in Around the World in Eighty Days, there is a more direct comparison with Les Miserables. No, there are no revolutions. Fogg is an Englishman, after all. But a London police inspector named Fix is convinced that Fogg obtained his money by robbing a bank. Fix is the Javert of the novel, following Fogg until he can get authorization from London to arrest him. Fogg does not understand his real intention, so he helps him just as he helps others. Fix, though, manages always to rationalize away Fogg’s kindnesses as mere signs of what a “coquin” (all-around bad guy) Fogg really is.

While having a very different tone and very different kind of ending from 20,000 Leagues, the story is entertaining and satisfying in its own way. Readers should have fun with it.

One note. Although I have never seen it, I do recall seeing posters and clips from the 1956 film version of the story. They always include a hot air balloon. There are no hot air balloons in the novel.

The Ultimate Bird Lover. Edited by Marty Becker et al, HCI Books, 2010.

Many readers are familiar with the Chicken Soup for the Soul or Cup of Comfort book series. These cover many topics and consist of brief sketches, essays, and anecdotes on the specific topic of the book, e.g. A Cup of Comfort for Dog Lovers.

HCI Books is putting out a similar series entitled The Ultimate [fill in the blank] Lover series. This one is obviously about birds. Most entries are two or three page focused anecdotes. Many are about personal observations of birds in one’s yard or neighborhood. Two or three are about birding. A majority have to do with pet birds. They are amusing and could be of interest.

The three editors contribute some key chapters at the end which give advice on choosing and caring for bird pets and on bird conservation. Dr. Becker, for example, is a avian veterinarian. He works not only with pet birds but with birds in aviaries and zoos.

As Gordon Korman “complained” in No More Dead Dogs that dogs often die at the end of popular dog stories, so here some of the birds die, others fly off. That does provide a little tenderness if one does not feel exploited.

I am not sure if this would qualify as an ultimate book on birds. I personally would probably recommend Tales of a Low Rent Birder, The Feather Quest, or even The Big Year, but especially for those who are interested in both wild and captive birds, this can be a leisurely and pleasant read. It could provide good food for thought if you are thinking of getting a pet bird.

Bud Selig with Phil Rogers. For the Good of the Game. Morrow, 2019.

Fans of Major League Baseball would certainly get something out of For the Good of the Game, both for what it tells us and what it omits. The author served as the Commissioner of Major League Baseball (MLB) from 1990 until 2015. During this time organized sports of all kinds were struggling with the use and abuse of steroids and other performance enhancing drugs (PEDs). This is Selig’s story from that era.

For the Good of the Game does tell us how Allan “Bud” Selig, the son of a successful Milwaukee car dealer, became involved in baseball, first with the Milwaukee Braves, then a minor league team from Milwaukee, then the Brewers, and finally as the MLB Commissioner.

There are some interesting stories about dealing with the growth of television and the division into major and minor markets. The players’ union and some of the major markets (notably the Yankees) opposed any kind of revenue sharing program at first, but as the other top sports leagues adopted some kind of mutual arrangement, eventually even George Steinbrenner of the Yankees agreed to a luxury tax concept.

Selig also records the effects of free agency and how the clubs dealt with that. Selig presents himself as a realist but also noting that the major market clubs would have a real advantage. He also deflects some blame for the strike-shortened 1994 season. Indeed, we do note that until 1995 he was the acting commissioner, but he was officially chosen for the position with the acting dropped as 1995 began.

There are many personalities here. Back when Frank Torre was playing for the Braves, Selig’s family got to take care of Frank’s younger brother Joe, then a teenager, when he was in town. Through the car business he got to know many other players. He especially speaks highly of Hank Aaron who is still a personal friend.

Later with the Brewers, he tells a lot about the two main stars from that franchise, Robin Yount and Paul Molitor. He notes that Molitor had some problems with illicit drugs early in his career but repented and cleaned up. He would contrast that with others who never acknowledged a problem and never admitted to drug use or gambling even though the evidence was obvious. He seems especially annoyed at Barry Bonds. He also explains why he saw no reason to change the league’s ban of Pete Rose. In Rose’s case especially, he does note his skill as a player and manager.

There are many little details that baseball fans might pick up with some smiles or nods. For example, he tells of having a conversation with Ted Williams where Williams told him that Molitor’s swing was the closest he had seen to his own swing. Having watched both players on television, I would have to agree. At times I even thought there was something about Molitor that I could not quite put my finger on. That may have been it.

Selig expresses his long-time frustration with dealing with the players’ union on the issue of drugs and drug testing. For two decades the union leaders refused even to bring up the subject. As the book’s title would suggest, doesn’t it seem strange that the union leaders couldn’t see that testing and sanctions were for the good of the game? Finally, when it became clear that a signficant majority of players themselves wanted testing, the union gave in.

One observation from this reader is that Selig tells us that Marvin Miller, the hard-nosed president of the players’ union, had been a union representative for the United Steelworkers’ Union before he got connected to baseball. I was born in Pittsburgh and am old enough to remember the 1960 steel strike. Nearly every father of my schoolmates was out of work, but no one would compromise for a long time. In many cases the issues for this strike were living wages and job safety. Steelworkers themselves were hard-nosed and tough.

Did Miller really treat baseball no different from the steel industry? The 1990s were not like the 1930s or even the early sixties. The public perception was that the conflict was between millionaires and billionaires. This continued with Miller’s successor, Donald Fehr. He tells of Fehr mocking Selig about MLB losing money, “but we were losing money,” Selig claims.

Selig acknowledges that MLB has some unique challenges. The National Football League plays one game a week for four months. The NBA and NHL play a little more than a third of the games that MLB plays, and with many days off. Because it is the oldest and for a long time the most widely followed of the major sports, Selig was told and believes that baseball has been held to a higher standard than the other pro sports.

Selig notes that more fans now follow the NFL and the NBA (and probably even college basketball) than MLB. While he rightly credits Pete Rozelle for marketing savvy in the NFL, he never really addresses why interest in baseball has declined.

When I was teaching in the 1980s, students still talked about baseball more than other sports, except around playoff time. That was changing by the early nineties, especially with basketball: Larry Byrd, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and so on. I recall one summer day in the early nineties driving by a city playground. There was a baseball field and two basketball courts. There were a couple of games going on in the basketball courts and the baseball field was empty.

When I was kid in Pittsburgh, we lived near a similar playground. For us, the baseball field was far more active. I actually do not recall anyone every playing basketball on the basketball court. Sometimes we might play horse, but we mostly rode our bikes on it. What had happened in thirty years?

I still see that the biggest problem baseball has is attracting younger fans. Where did they miss it? Yes, owners and the players’ union were often at odds. Team owners themselves often were, too. Selig suggests that in 1990 MLB came close to falling apart. Frankly, though, kids do not pay a whole lot of attention to those things.

When I was a boy about half the games were still in the daytime. The World Series were day games. We would listen to games on the radio and discuss what was happening. On weekends there might be an afternoon game on television to watch. I have noticed this year that there are more day games because of the influenza restrictions. Of course, there are no fans in the parks, but maybe MLB should consider more day games in a season.

Yes, games also last longer nowadays. I recently watched a recording of game 7 of the 1960 World Series. The score was 10-9, there was a lot of action, a lot of runners on base, numerous pitching changes. The game lasted two hours and twenty minutes. Nowadays, no-hitters last longer than that. Rule 5.07(c) could be enforced.¹

I was disappointed that Selig never addressed any of these issues. However, for interesting details about the rising baseball salaries which led to the major vs. minor markets, and especially the steroids problem in the sport, For the Good of the Game is worth reading.

Although the book is presented as an autobiography and is Selig’s personal account of his experiences in baseball, because there are so many names and events recorded in the book, one could treat it more like a history book. For that reason, For the Good of the Game could use a good index, or at the very least titles and dates for the chapter headings.

Note
¹ Rule 5.07(c): When the bases are unoccupied, the pitcher shall deliver the ball to the batter within 12 seconds after he receives the ball. Each time the pitcher delays the game by violating this rule, the umpire shall call “Ball.” (35-36)
Official Baseball Rules. Office of the Commissioner of Baseball, 2019.

Jerry B. Jenkins with James S. MacDonald. I, Saul. Worthy, 2013.

Jerry Jenkins is a prolific author who struck it big with the Left Behind series. These novels were fun at first but soon became repetitive and formulaic. I, Saul has some of the same formulae, but it is original enough to move the reader.

The title suggests the Robert Graves classic I, Claudius, the novel presented as a memoir of the Roman emperor Claudius, a contemporary of St. Paul. Indeed, part of I, Saul consists of a cleverly imagined backstory to the apostle. I was expecting something like Sholem Asch’s The Apostle, a novelization of Paul’s life that would be hard to top. I, Saul, though, is really like neither one of those books.

The memoir of Saul of Tarsus (a.k.a. St. Paul) is interspersed with the the story of his final days in a prison in Rome. Inspired by II Timothy 4:11, we see Dr. Luke the evangelist (Lucanus in Latin) tending to the aging and infirm Paul. Although a Christian during Nero’s persecution, he is given permission to help Paul because he is a licensed physician and has also been ministering to the injured and sick victims of the great fire of Nero.

Every other chapter takes place in modern times. The modern portion is the more formulaic part of the novel. A struggling seminary teacher in Texas has a friend in Italy who has partnered with a man who has discovered the manuscript of Paul’s memoir. He sends brief text messages telling the young professor that he needs his help.

Professor Augustine “Augie” Knox is dealing with his emotionally distant father in hospice and trying to maintain a long-distance relationship with Sophia, a Greek woman whose family runs an antiquities business. She is a Christian believer and one who also knows something about ancient artifacts.

Roger, Augie’s friend, received a cryptic note from a friend who apparently had the manuscript. Before Roger can follow through, someone murders his friend. When Sophia’s antiquities dealer father gets wind of this, he notes that such a manuscript could bring the finder millions, if not billions, of Euros.

A finder could not practically sell such a manuscript. One would probably break it up, as is often done with old Bibles, and sell the pages individually. Of course, Italian antiquities law states that any such find on Italian soil would not be sold at all but becomes property of the state for all to study.

At times the interludes with Augie, Roger, and Sophia seem like intrusions. Just as the Left Behind books had people traveling back and forth across Chicago ad infinitum, so it seems our modern protagonists are doing the same in Rome. As their story develops, however, we begin to get more interested in what is going on with them. The real meat of the story, though, is the Pauline memoir.

Some readers might recall the film Paul, Apostle of Christ that came out a couple of years ago. This has some similar sequences in the prison with Luke, though I have found nothing that says there was any connection between that film and this book.

This book is by Jerry Jenkins; therefore, there is a sequel [smile]. The memoir portion of I, Saul ends shortly after his conversion. We get a sense of the character of this intense and strict Pharisee who was also a Roman citizen. Jenkins handles this quite believably. Clearly, there is more of the memoir to follow.

While I, Saul works as a standalone novel, the epilogue concerning the modern characters opens the door for more action. Now, Jenkins milked the popularity of the Left Behind books to a repetitious extreme. Originally something like four to six books were planned. There ended up being sixteen plus at least another dozen or so spinoffs. Hopefully, in this case the sequel will end the series.

One interesting note. Augie Knox teaches at a small and struggling (fictional) seminary in Arlington, Texas. This is near both the largest Southern Baptist seminary which is in Fort Worth and a very influential dispensationalist seminary in Dallas. Jenkins himself worked for years for Moody Press in Illinois. Christianity Today would write of the powerful “Dallas-Moody Axis” and its influence on American theology and publishing. Jenkins seems to have a little fun with that idea. Arlington Seminary manages to barely survive, overshadowed by its two monstrous neighbors who are at one of the hubs of that axis.

Len Joy. Everyone Dies Famous. BQB, 2020.

No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.
                                       John Donne, Meditation 17

Everyone Dies Famous gets its title from an observation by one of its characters:

“This is a small town, Dancer. Everyone dies famous here.” (37)

So, yes, the story is basically a sketch of one day in the life of Maple Springs, Missouri, a small town in the foothills of the Ozarks. No one apparently dies in the story, but many of the characters are dealing with the deaths of people in the past. (I have to write “apparently” because of the element of possible magical realism symbolizing dying.)

Dancer Stonemason, 70, is still grieving over the death of his son Clayton. It is not entirely clear how Clayton died, but he was actually giving his father a new lease on life by getting him to help with his business of restoring and selling old jukeboxes. Now his other son, Jim, is selling Clayton’s property and seems to want to sell the business, too. Dancer, who wasted too much of his life seems to be losing the positive gains he has recently made.

Jim in his own way is also trying to come to terms with his brother’s death. But Jim has other concerns at the moment. His daughter and only child is getting married tomorrow, so everyone is planning for the big day. Jim operates a successful car dealership, and his best salesperson is his daughter Kayla. He has plans for opening a new dealership in town with Kayla as manager. But so many talented people leave town for better opportunities elsewhere. Will she stay?

We note that the dealership he wants to start is a Saturn dealer. Saturn cars were an interesting experiment on the part of General Motors, but we all know by 2020 that Saturns never caught on with most people.

Dancer himself almost made it to the major leagues. He is remembered in town for pitching a perfect game for the local minor league team. But after he found out about his wife’s affair (more on that later), it all went south.

We meet Wayne Mesirow, recently returned from a National Guard tour in Iraq. He also is dealing with loss. His wife, Anita, is divorcing him. He thinks her friend Trudy is behind it, but Anita has been going out with Ted Landis, much older but probably the richest man in town. He has already developed a shopping mall and is looking to turn Maple Springs into a casino resort.

Wayne, though, is also dealing with the loss of the guy who became his best friend in the service, Sonny Patel. Sonny’s father runs the local electronics store and is known as Madman Patel in his advertisements. Sonny did not die in combat but in a freak drowning accident in the Tigris River.

In the background on this day, July 18, 2003, are storm warnings. This becomes symbolic because it seems like everyone is headed into some kind of storm. There are the two free spirited ladies who refuse to sell their property to developer Landis. Landis himself is planning a big party on his casino steamboat featuring the Confederate Pirates, rock band that Wayne was on the verge of joining when he was called up by the Guard.

There is Madame Zelda, a young woman who is a tattoo artist and fortune teller. Jim’s wife Paula, a nurse, works for a doctor who is trying to get Jim to lose weight. Ted Landis has memories of his first wife who had an affair with Dancer’s wife, Dede. Dede would return, more or less, to Dancer, but Ted’s wife left Maple Springs for New Mexico and was never heard from again. Oh, and Anita’s friend Trudy had been engaged at one point to Clayton.

And we cannot forget Russell and Ozzie, the dogs.

Everyone Dies Famous is both tender and harsh. It also shows how perhaps times have changed. For example, Wayne discovers from Sonny’s family that Sonny was gay. Wayne had no idea. Now he begins to wonder whether he is gay because he was friends with a gay man in spite of being married and a father to two children. Back in the seventies if something similar happened, a seventies Wayne would have probably accepted who Sonny was, but would not have been tempted to think himself as being gay.

It seems like the reader almost needs to keep a family tree. Still, with affairs and drama in the past and big events and a tornado on the horizon, there is a lot of action. The small town drama and people looking for second chances reminded this reader of Empire Falls. The man vs. nature conflict from the storm had echoes of Sometimes a Great Notion. Dancer’s courage in a storm for what seems trivial reason suggests the climax of Giants in the Earth.

But the overall theme, emphasized in the final image of the story (which may or may not be magical realism) is John Donne’s famous observation: “No man is an island.” Oh, how we all affect so many people, even if all we are doing is taking a dog for a walk.

N.B. This is a novel with adult situations and some profane language. While not in the least pornographic, it would be rated R if it were a film.

Barbara Ross. Clammed Up. Kensington, 2013.

This mystery is set on the Maine coast, where, yes, shellfish, especially clams and lobsters, are harvested. Our narrator, Julia Snowden, is a native of the town of Busman’s Harbor. She worked for a number of years on Wall Street, but has returned home at the age of thirty to help the family’s struggling business, the Snowden Family Clambake.

A clambake, for the uninitiated, is a cookout, usually in a single large pot, of various shellfish, corn cobs, potatoes, spices, and eggs. Julia’s mother’s family owned a small offshore island with a large mansion, so the Snowden Family Clambakes not only have a meal, but a boat trip to a private island as well. Due in part to a slow economy and in part to mismanagement by Julia’s brother-in-law Sonny, the bank is on the verge of making the family sell off everything, including the family island.

For the very first clambake of the season in June, the Snowden Family Clambake is hosting a wedding party. The bride is a casual acquaintance of Julia’s from New York. During the picnic, Julia and one of her customers discover the body of the best man hanging inside the main entrance of the family mansion. No one has lived in the house for years, but they have kept up the place enough for the ambience. Julia even upgraded some electrical wiring in the spring so parties could have a place to spruce up before an event like a wedding.

That is the mystery. At first it appears that best man Ray Wilson got drunk and simply missed the boat to the island. The question becomes, then, not only who killed him (it is clearly not suicide as his shirt is blood-spattered) but how did he get to the island?

There is a deadline of sorts because the usurious banker who keeps texting Julia reminds her that the business plan calls for five off days all season. That would be the average for bad weather days. But before the week is out, they already had to close the island for four days because it was a crime scene. It is open for one day, but then the porch to the mansion burns, making it a crime scene once again, this time for arson.

There are a whole list of characters involved. Though the victim and the bridegroom were best friends from kindergarten, Ray was not especially popular. He had become an alcoholic, and it was pretty clear he had been drinking hard the night before the wedding.

One of the bridesmaids claims that the bride really loved Ray more than her fiancé. The local taxi driver, a guy that Julia has had a crush on since the seventh grade, took Ray back to his hotel, but Ray never returned to his hotel room. Julia’s sister Livvy (Sonny’s wife) has a good friend Sarah, a single mother schoolteacher who also seems to have a connection of some kind with Ray.

The caretakers on the island, a couple Julia has known all her life, claim that they heard or saw nothing the night before the murder. There is a small beach apart from the boat dock. It is feasible that someone could have brought Ray ashore from there. But why kill him and then hang him? Was it to send a message to someone?

As is so often the case with such mysteries, nearly everyone is a suspect, and things are not at all as they first seemed to Julia. Although Julia does become our crime solver, the police here are doing a good job in their investigation. Indeed, one of the policemen has carried the torch for Julia for years just as she carried one for the taxi driver.

And it is a small enough town that everyone knows everyone else—except for maybe Quentin, the scion of a prominent family who has done his best to be anonymous but manages to drop some hints to Julia about what is really going on. Gus, the proprietor of a popular eatery for locals, also overhears a lot.

Clammed Up is a complicated mystery that will keep the reader guessing. It might not be a bad idea to keep a list of characters. It is fun.

The main character is a single woman around thirty, so this has a potential for being chick lit, but it is not—at least not until the very last page.

Clammed Up also has a few distinctive recipes. The clam chowder is authentic. The rhubarb coffee cake sounds like it is worth trying. I had to chuckle over the variety of names that New Englanders give to a certain blueberry dessert similar to an apple crisp: blueberry duff, blueberry grunt, blueberry slump, blueberry crunch, blueberry crisp, or blueberry dump. My Vermont mother called it blueberry buckle, but it basically the same dessert.

Ernest Hemingway. A Moveable Feast. Scribner’s, 1964.

A Moveable Feast tells in vignettes about Hemingway’s life in Paris and France (mostly) from 1921 to 1926 when he lived among and associated with English and American expatriates. He focuses on his interactions with other writers and artists, but we also learn a lot about him and his work.

It sounds like he and his first wife Hadley were really in love, and for the most part describes this time as a happy time in his life in spite of some of the financial pressures. In his case, it may have been better for him to be away from the United States because of various family problems including his father’s suicide.

He describes Gertrude Stein in humorous and respectful detail. They were friends, and Hemingway apparently helped her get some things published and did some proofreading for her. Though she was known even at the time for her female lovers, she complained that most homosexuals were perverts. She and Hemingway had some frank discussions about this. He credits her, as others have, for coining the term une génération perdue (a lost generation) for the aimless postwar artists.

Hemingway admired Ezra Pound. He called Pound a saint. He was selfless in helping people financially and in their artistic and literary careers. Now Hemingway finished writing this in 1960, so there is an undertone that Pound should have been more respected by other writers and even the U. S. government. Hemingway spends virtually no time on anyone’s political views, except a bit on one Austrian fascist. Pound’s views were a non-issue in the twenties.

Ezra was the most generous writer I have ever known and the most disinterested. He helped poets, painters, sculptors, and prose writers that he believed in and would help anyone whether he believed in them or not if they were in trouble. (110)

For example, Hemingway describes an effort led by Pound to subsidize T. S. Eliot so he could quit his banking job and write full time.

He speaks of meeting Ford Madox Ford, who for some unclear reason made Hemingway uncomfortable. It may have been his disdain for Americans. Hemingway speaks highly of James Joyce (he influenced everyone), but other than casually mentioning seeing him in restaurants and taverns, does provide any detailed observatioins though other sources say they would sometimes go drinking together.

Hemingway’s account of F. Scott Fitzgerald is very moving. He could observe even back then Fitzgerald’s tendency toward alcoholism. He first read The Great Gatsby when Fitzgerald told him it had been published. He called it a work of genius. He said that Fitzgerald had written four novels, two of which were really good. Besides Gatsby, we are left to guess what the other one was. (This reviewer prefers The Beautiful and Damned.) He believes The Last Tycoon would have been great if Fitzgerald had been able to complete it.

He disagreed with Fitzgerald about writing short stories. Fitzgerald told him that often he would write a story and then revise it the way that The Saturday Evening Post or another magazine that paid well would like it. Hemingway called this a sellout (he used a stronger term), but he understood Fitzgerald’s need for money. He mentions that he did like his story “The Rich Boy.” That is the story by “Julian” in “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” that says “the rich are different.”

In “Snows of Kilimanjaro” we are told that Julian’s admiration of the rich was one of the things that “wrecked” him. In A Moveable Feast Hemingway believes that a certain rich woman, namely Scott’s wife Zelda, helped to wreck him. She taunted him about various things, and Hemingway believed she was jealous of his success.

Hemingway noted after he first became friendly with Fitzgerald:

He had many good, good friends, more than anyone I knew. But I enlisted as one more, whether I could be of any use to him or not. If he could write a book as fine as The Great Gatsby I was sure he could write an even better one. I did not know Zelda yet, and so I did not know the terrible odds that were against him. (176)

He noted that she would smile when Scott was drunk or distracted because then he would not be able to write. He shared with Hemingway one of Zelda’s most pointed and cruel insults to him. Hemingway tried to convince him it was not true. “You’re perfectly fine,” he told him.

“But why would she say it?” [Fitzgerald asked]
“To put you out of business. That is the oldest way in the world to put you out of business.” (190)

We noted in a review of a book about the Fitzgeralds that one of Scott’s friends wrote that all Scott’s women are based on Zelda. Fitzgerald himself noted that at least one of his female characters was inspired by Keats’ “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”—the beautiful lady without pity. Hemingway makes it sound like Zelda falls into that category.

Zelda told Hemingway that she really liked Henry James. James wrote of the upper classes, e.g. the Sloper family in Washington Square. She could probably identify with his books because of who they were about. Of course, we could say the same thing about most of Fitzgerald’s work as well, though his perspective would be a little different from James’.

While the book is set nearly entirely in Paris and other parts of France, the last chapter takes place in Austria. Hemingway describes two winters he, his wife, and son spent skiing there. He tells us that he met some former ski troopers from the war and would play poker once or twice a week. This is echoed in one of the flashbacks in “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.”

In A Moveable Feast we learn of Hemingway’s interest in various sports besides the bull fighting, hunting, and fishing that he frequently wrote about. He learned some of the tricks about betting on horses and became a fan, and apologized for only writing one good story about that, “My Old Man.” He apologized for never writing about cycling, though he picked up an interest in that while in France.

We know from a couple stories that Hemingway liked boxing. He tells us that Pound insisted Hemingway teach him how to box. They practiced a number of times, but Hemingway said he did not learn too well. Once when he was sparring with Pound, Wyndham Lewis showed up. Hemingway had to pull some punches so that Pound did not look too bad.

As can be seen even from the quotations in this review, Hemingway’s style did not change much when he was writing nonfiction. A Moveable Feast gives us a distinctive and inside view of the Lost Generation in Europe in the twenties. It certainly gives us a sense of the tragedy of the Fitzgeralds and maybe even a hint of what would tear Europe apart again in less than twenty years.

Thomas à Kempis. The Imitation of Christ. Translated by William Benham, Project Gutenberg, Feb. 1999.

The Imitation of Christ is one of those classics that I finally got around to reading. Because of its provenance in the fifteenth century and its popularity among Catholics, it is sometimes said to be the second most widely read book in history next to the Bible. I have also read the same claim about Pilgrim’s Progress and Don Quixote. At any rate, it is up there.

Kempis was a monk, so there is a meditative flavor to the book, but I have known of many Protestants who have read it with blessing. Nearly all of what the book has to say applies to all Christ followers regardless of church affiliation.

The theme of The Imitation of Christ could be summed up in the following verses from the Bible:

Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble. Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time: Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you. Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: Whom resist stedfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world. (I Peter 5:5-9)

Most of the book is dedicated to a single idea: humility. Much of it has to do with self-examination. How sinful are we? How undeserving of God’s salvation?

Much of it is a warning about what the verse in Peter above calls “the world.” Resist temptation. Alas, many times we do not. This ties in with the humility because things we see and experience in this present world and present age do not last. As we say today, you can’t take it with you.

A number of years ago, we reviewed The Good Soldier. At one level it was a comparison and contrast between Protestantism and Catholicism. The main Protestant character suffered from heart problems, the main Catholic from mental health. What Ford in the novel was noting was simply that Protestants tend to look at their faith intellectually. If there is problem with them, it is a “heart problem”; they do not feel or experience the love of God. Catholics’ “mental illness,” is that they tend to look at faith emotionally and do not think about it as much.

The Imitation of Christ in that respect is very emotional. How do you feel? Don’t you feel guilty? Aren’t you humbled? Why are you attracted to things that are not going to last? In that sense, this book is a real gut check.

The format is something like a devotional book. Each chapter, perhaps each paragraph, could be read as a daily devotion to meditate upon. Its style is similar to that of one of the Biblical wisdom books such as Proverbs or Ecclesiastes. However, it is less practical or pragmatic than many of the Proverbs, because it turns the reader inward.

There are a few caveats. One of the rediscoveries of the Reformation was the righteousness of God. The Bible tells us that the believer is righteous, not because of his behavior but because of the work of Christ on the Cross and God’s free gift of salvation.

For he [God] hath made him [Jesus] to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. (II Corinthians 5:21, cf. Romans 4:3 and Genesis 15:6)

If we look at The Imitation of Christ on the emotional level, there appears to be a lack of relief. Jesus saves! We do not have to struggle for our salvation.

On the other hand, The Imitation of Christ nails it in another sense: The walk with Christ can be difficult. Kempis not only warns about different “worldly” temptations that most people understand are sinful and transient, but notes another serious temptation. Many times we are tempted to be silent about Jesus or to deny him. There are pressures in the world that look down on serious believers and try to get them off track and even persecute them. Even from the safety of his monastery, Kempis recognizes these things. He notes that not everyone has a calling to a religious ministry, for example.

Kempis speaks of “the uses of adversity.” Hard times can draw us closer to God. Shakespeare echoed this sentiment in As You Like It: “Sweet are the uses of adversity” (2.1.12). Similarly, like Shakespeare’s Duke quoted here, Pilgrim’s Progress echoes Kempis when it describes the Flatterer, “Grant me prudently to avoid the flatterer…for thus we go prudently on the way we have begun” (2.27.5).

This reviewer was struck by the number of times the author’s reminds us of his conversion. He assumes if the reader is interested in imitating Christ, he has had a conversion also. This sounds very evangelical and not sacramental at all. But if the translator’s preface is correct and Kempis was an Augustinian monk, that makes sense. Augustine, a saint in the Catholic Church, wrote his Confessions, which focus on his conversion to Christianity. Perhaps it is no coincidence that Luther was also an Augustinian. As Jesus said, “Ye must be born again” (John 3:7).

The last few sections focus on Communion. Here not only do we read about the Catholic doctrine of the priesthood, but meditations on Communion itself. As is even today a Catholic distinctive, the book elevates the Sacrament above the Bible (4.11.3). However, in another place he places them equally (4.11.5). Historically, the early reformer Wycliffe got in hot water because he taught that the priest’s job of teaching the Word was more important than sharing the sacraments.

At times I was reading this, I was asking myself, “How many different ways can a person be humble?” But other times I was inspired. Yes, we should draw close to God. We should seek Him. Even meditating on Jesus’ work on the Cross makes Communion more meaningful. Jill Shannon believes that Jesus is present at the Passover celebration even if the celebrants do not recognize Him. Perhaps, then, He is present in Communion as well, whether or not transubstantiation is involved.

That verse from Peter quoted earlier says “humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God.” James 4:10 tells us. “Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.” If we really put ourselves in the sight of God, we see Him as He is (at least a little bit) and that is very humbling. To paraphrase The Lion King, He is God and we’re not. The Imitation of Christ helps us put things in that perspective.

N.B. This free version from Gutenberg is an older translation. It seems to be deliberately done to imitate the King James or Douay Bibles. It is not difficult, but get used to the -th rather than -s at the end of verbs. There probably are more modern translations available.

Henry James. Washington Square. 1881, Edited by David Price et al, Project Gutenberg, 13 Jan. 2015.

When I introduce the concept of realism to my American Literature students, I tell them that Henry James is the anti-Jane Austen. Washington Square illustrates that. The novel is set among the upper classes of New York City in the middle of the nineteenth century.

Young Catherine Sloper, daughter of a highly esteemed medical doctor, lives in a nice house with her father and widowed aunt. In the story, her father and aunt are working at cross purposes.

The handsome but perhaps careless Morris Townsend has expressed an interest in Catherine. He is really her first suitor. She tends to be quiet and does not have the quality of charm that young men find appealing. The aunt, Mrs. Penniman, really likes Mr. Townsend. She sees herself as a kind of go-between or duenna—not unlike the nurse in Romeo and Juliet.

Dr. Sloper, on the other hand, mistrusts Townsend. He does some informal background checking and is persuaded that Morris Townsend is only interested in Catherine’s money. The courtship lasts for a few years: Neither Catherine nor Morris give up and Dr. Sloper does not give in. Is this going to be a romantic comedy?

If Jane Austen were writing it, Catherine would either discover some sordid truth about Morris and find a more suitable young man. Or, if Morris is sincere, then Dr. Sloper would eventually see the error of his ways.

Is Aunt Penniman a petty meddler or sincerely working on behalf of her niece? Or is she simply a superannuated romantic in an age of realism?

If Jane Austen were writing this, the aunt might be humorously mistaken as Emma was, a klutz when it comes to matchmaking but still aware enough to either change her mind or convert her brother the doctor.

None of these things happen. Henry James, not Jane Austen, wrote Washington Square. But this short novel is no tragedy, either. James has a comic streak, but it is rooted in irony. The reader sees this right from the beginning.

The first chapter is dedicated to a background sketch of Dr. Sloper. He sounds like a very competent physician. We have to admit, though, that such doctors sometimes think their scientific knowledge means that they are superior to others.

While he is portrayed as a caring doctor, popular with his patients, there is no question that he identifies with the upper classes. This introduction tells us that he finds himself in a situation like the doctor in the Tom Lehrer sketch who specializes in the diseases of the rich.

Subtle, perhaps sardonic. Not laugh-out-loud funny, but ironic. I would truly tell my students that Washington Square is very, very realistic—both in the literary sense and in the literal sense. One could say that it is like the lives of most people, not comic, not tragic, not heroic. It just is—because that is the way life is.

P.S. As I have done many times in the past, I read Washington Square because an excerpt from this short novel appeared for one of the questions in this year’s English Literature Advanced Placement exam. I bit. It was worth it.