Gordon Korman. Ungifted. New York: Balzer and Bray, 2012. Print.

Gordon Korman has become my favorite Young Adult (YA) novelist. His protagonists are fairly typical young teens who find themselves in unusual situations. Son of the Mob is told by a kid who wants to lead a normal life when his father is a Mafia kingpin. Born to Rock is told by a somewhat low-key nerd who discovers his natural father is an aging rock musician who was a heavy-metal god in the eighties.

The protagonist of Ungifted is Donovan, a typically impulsive middle schooler who by an unusual coincidence ends up at his school district’s “gifted” school–except for the academic challenges, the school is a palatial reprieve from the run-down middle school he had attended. Donovan actually finds himself fitting in at the school because he sees things in a “normal” way–a perspective his sheltered and “well-lopsided” classmates miss.

His story is told my multiple narrators, adults and kids, and the varying points of view make for an entertaining mix.

The characters provide much of the fun: The bureaucratic superintendent whose goal is not to goof up, the snobby eight grader Abigail who is already trying to pad her college résumé, or the socially clueless Noah with the 200 I.Q. who sees himself trapped in the gifted school the same way Catch-22‘s Yossarian finds himself trapped in the army.

Without giving away too much of the hilarious but believable plot, Donovan figures out a way to keep the gifted kids from going to summer school because the district forgot to schedule their mandated sex education. At the same time he tries to keep investigators from the district’s insurance company at bay and pass classes in subjects that he does not even begin to understand.

Oh, a big fight breaks out at the gifted school’s first ever school dance, exotic uploads to YouTube gain many hits, and we are told of many other things that ring out “modern teen.” Korman milks the fish-out-of-water theme for another quick romp in the life of young teens.

One part of the story hit really close to home for this reviewer. Donovan’s 26-year-old sister had moved back home to have her baby because her soldier husband was stationed in an overseas war zone. As I was reading Ungifted, our 25-year-old daughter had moved back with us to have her baby (she turned 26 two weeks later) while her husband was working in a foreign country with marginal health care. Fortunately, he was not fighting any battles, so he could join her in time to be present at the birth of our first grandchild. 🙂

Owen Chase. The Wreck of the Whaleship Essex. Ed. Iola Haverstick and Betty Shepard. New York: Harcourt, 1999. Print.

This straightforward, unembellished tale of survival intensely records a tale not unlike that of the popular Unbroken or Skeletons on the Zahara.

The account was first published in 1822, less than a year after its author, the first mate of the Essex had returned to his home on Nantucket Island. The details are clearly fresh. While the actual sinking of the Essex only takes up a few pages, it is most unusual. A large sperm whale appears to deliberately attack the whaleship like a modern torpedo. The ship is beginning to break up when the whale, recovering from a brief stun after striking the ship, goes at it a second time for the final blow. In ten minutes the crew of twenty abandon ship and set out in the vessel’s three whaleboats.

Rationing hardtack and fresh water, eight of the men ultimately survive. They experience many of the mental and physical privations were read of in those other stories. The author gives credit to “a beneficent Creator, who had guided me through darkness, trouble, and death, once more to the bosom of my country and friends.” (88)

It did not take much more than an hour to read this book, and it was worth it. The afterword by the editors is an epilogue telling what happened to each of the survivors, but, perhaps more significantly, telling how Herman Melville while on the whaler Acushnet in the Pacific Ocean in 1841 met with Captain Chase’s son William who told him his father’s story and lent him a copy of this book. “‘The reading of this wondrous story,’ Melville noted, ‘upon the landless sea and close to the very latitude of the shipwreck had a surprising effect on me.'” (100)

And so we find the facts that helped inspire what it arguably the greatest American novel. And even if you felt like you had to slog through Moby Dick, The Wreck of the Whaleship Essex is a quick voyage with following seas all the way.

Thomas C. Foster. How to Read Literature Like a Professor. New York: Harper, 2003. Print.

How to Read Literature Like a Professor is a challenging but lighthearted look at literature by one of its lovers. The enthusiasm for the written word comes through. It has a light enough touch to admit that some interpretations of literature seem pretty far-fetched. To carry the idea farther, Foster would say that it depends on where you fetch the interpretation from.

Short chapters build a foundation of the arts for us: Shakespeare, the Bible, Greek and Roman mythology, and folk tales. He unveils the mystery of symbols for most readers. And he kindles the desire in the reader to check out at least some of the works he mentions, or perhaps take another look.

Some themes may make some readers uncomfortable, but the book shows that if those themes are handled intelligently, the works can be worth reading. Some works about politics are hamhanded propaganda. Some works dealing with sex are pornography. But worked into a great story, such things add significance to what is going on. And some things like seasons, roads, and rivers have a universal relevance. It is good to be reminded of those things.

I have been teaching English for most of my adult life. I admit I was not unfamiliar with many of his interpretations. A week before reading How to Read Literature Like a Professor, a student asked if nationalism was an element of romanticism, how was Poe nationalistic? I explained how “The Fall of the House of Usher” illustrated the decadence of Eurasian aristocratic systems. There was my explanation almost word for word in Foster’s book. Still, reading the book made me want to read or re-read some works he mentions. I have already read The Good Soldier from Gutenberg.org after Prof. Foster’s discussion.

Without going into great detail about the book, the author is excited about reading, and that excitement is contagious. Sure, the book may help you figure out your English teacher better, but it can let you see things and make connections that will add to your knowledge and your enjoyment–not just of literature but of life itself.

Rud Istvan. Gaia’s Limits: Earth’s Capacity for Mankind. Houston TX: Strategic Book Publishing, 2012. E-book.

Gaia’s Limits is a very thorough discussion of environmental sustainability. I also appreciated the introduction where the author actually explains what sustainability is or means. He writes there is a “fog around sustainability,” and I think that is because no one defines it. Or if they do, it means that the government needs to take over everything. About twenty years ago I recall reading some professor who said that now that the Soviet Union has fallen, Marxists will have to use the environmental movement to achieve their goals.

While Istvan is primarily a businessman and venture capitalist, it is easy to note his knowledge of geology and chemistry. Indeed, most of his business success has been due to his knowledge of chemical engineering. While Gaia’s Limits is somewhat technical, it is still clear and readable. For example, he uses a couple of humorous Mark Twain quotations to make some points. He also includes a great quotation from Richard Feynman, who could be called the Mark Twain of modern physics.

One thing that threw me were the references to Gaia. Istvan states in the introduction that he uses the term in the manner of James Lovelock. You can read Lovelock’s introduction to his Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth free from Amazon. Lovelock emphasizes that he is a scientist, not a new-age guru, and that he uses the term for convenience to speak of the entire earth as a biosphere. If you accept that premise, then Istvan’s approach is simply one of convenience. Lovelock explains it as a figure of speech not a revival of Greek religion. (Though I have to admit, I have since read the complete Lovelock book and I can perfectly understand why critics have slapped Lovelock with the guru label.) While Gaia’s Limits says it is using the term Gaia the way Lovelock does, in our culture today that is not the way most people would interpret it.

Overall, the book was balanced and effective. Certainly no Al Gore—If you listen to the 1992 United States Vice-Presidential debates, we should have been wiped out ten years ago. But neither is it as sanguine as Julian Simon. It has support that is hard to disprove. Istvan writes that by 2050 the world’s population of 9.2 billion will reach a point of unsustainability from lack of fresh water and landmass to grow enough food. His case appears reasonable without being alarmist.

Interestingly, about a week after I finish Gaia’ Limits, I received my September 2012 issue of Wired magazine. Its cover story, “Apocalypse Not,” was an attempt to calm down “doomsayers.” The Wired article uses basically the same statistics to hypothesize that the world’s population will level out at around 9 billion in 2050 and will be sustainable. Clearly, we will have to wait and see. (By the way, for what it is worth, Sir Isaac Newton applied his mathematical knowledge to Bible prophecy as well as gravitational attraction, and believed the Bible prophesied the end of the world around 2060. I just throw that in for a fun fact to feed on…)

This has nothing to do with the book’s premise, but I thought the UN population graph was interesting. (I did locate it on the Internet, too, as the author promised). It resembles a hyperbola, except population does not have zero asymptotes or fractional people. Looking more closely, in the historical period the graph is linear more or less till about 1800, as the text notes. Then either the slope becomes steeper or the growth becomes exponential. I suppose it is also possible that the earlier growth was exponential, too, but at a much smaller rate. Anyway, it looks like a sloping line, and then as you go back in time it changes to either a hyperbola or a line parallel to the base line. If you extend the line so that it keeps it downward slope, which seems far more likely according to a uniformitarian theory of a steady rate of growth, the line crosses the base line around 3000 B.C.—interesting point for zero population.

Istvan suggests people have to begin to consider new scientific paradigms when considering sustainability, and they may not be popular any more than the Copernican hypothesis was. Copernicus himself was a monk who was not concerned about “the self-ordained center of God’s universe.” There actually were some ancient Greeks who believed the earth went around the sun. Plato’s Timaeus suggested it as a possibility, though Plato did not appear to embrace the idea. But Aristotle ruled. Galileo’s problem with the academics was that his ideas opposed Aristotle’s. Luther correctly noted in his day that the church respected Aristotle more than the Bible.

Thinking of earth’s capacity to handle mankind’s depredations, perhaps China is the future. Compared to North America it is an environmental basket case: foul air, foul water, eroded land. And they go on building and building. The earth has definitely changed there. Even the hypothetical “world dictator,” as Gaia’s Limits mentions, could do little. Like Canute or Xerxes punishing the sea…

But when I think of these things, I cannot help thinking of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem “God’s Grandeur” which notes that “all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil” and yet

For all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things…
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and ah! bright wings.

Chang-Rae Lee. Native Speaker. New York: Riverhead Books, 1995. Print.

This book was recommend to me by a fellow English teacher whom I respect a lot. I also heard Mr. Lee speak recently and, frankly, I thought I could identify with him. Yes, part of his story is that of a second generation Korean immigrant (which I am not), but a lot of Lee’s personal story, especially his education and some of his writing experiences (NOT writing success, certainly) were things I could identify with. His story and his book are far more American than they are Korean. Also the school where I teach has a good number of Korean students, with a few Korean-Americans as well, so I thought I could learn a few things from the book.

Native Speaker is very well-written: sensitive, attentive to detail, and wildly plotted. It is, in effect, a Great Gatsby for recent immigrants. The last chapter deliberately echoes Gatsby with a reference to “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” and the style of the last few paragraphs. In the long run, Native Speaker is more upbeat than Gatsby. While Gatsby’s narrator suggests it is nearly futile to row against the tide, Native Speaker’s narrator describes his wife’s ESL speech therapy at the very end: “I hear her speaking a dozen lovely and native languages, calling all the difficult names of who we are.” (324) Yes, whatever else you think about the United States, America sometimes seems like the Book of Revelation’s description of heaven: “After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues…”(7:9)

The book is also Gatsby-like in that in that the main character is making a living in a questionable manner. He is not exactly Mafia, but he is a political spy whose job is to bring ruin into the lives of popular politicians who threaten the establishment. Unlike Jay Gatsby, he does get out of the business, but like Gatsby, he pays a price.

Like The Great Gatsby, Native Speaker is about the American Dream, but the disjunction with recent immigrants who have not assimilated instead of a Midwestern farm boy trying to make it in the big bad city. How does one “assimilate” into the American Dream? The narrator’s father does succeed by hard work and by keeping his Korean prejudices and customs. He is very distant and stoic, but he “makes it,” though at an emotional price that makes his son Henry Park feel robbed.

The elder Mr. Park is contrasted with John Kwang, a Korean politician, who is very effective at befriending and getting support from many of the nationalities in his New York City district. However, he is brought down because of a Korean custom (or two) that come across as illegal in America. He succeeds in part because of some of the traditions he keeps, but those same traditions bring him down. Though a politically successful American politician, he has not learned enough to sing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” and flow gently down the American mainstream, either.

Henry Park, like Nick Carraway in Gatsby, also comes across as slightly detached. But that detachment makes his narrative sound reliable, and everywhere in the story he sees this crazy, lively promise called America.

Thorleif Boman. Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek. Trans. Jules L. Moreau. New York: Norton, 1960.

Thorleif Boman’s Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek is a fascinating and even inspiring book. Lots of thoughts were running through my mind after reading it.

Boman does accept some of the “oral tradition” stuff about the Pentateuch and Isaiah (JEDP and two Isaiahs), but you almost can’t write about the Bible in Europe without mentioning such things. This is odd in a way–the analysis of real oral tradition was done thoroughly beginning in the 1930s with Milman Parry and his student Albert Lord. (See Lord’s The Singer of Tales.) It seems that no theologians know about this, so they keep passing on bad information to the next generation. Still, Boman’s analysis of the two Biblical languages is fascinating.

Basically, his book is saying that Hebrew thought is dynamic, most words are rooted in verbs, and there is always of sense of becoming and of history having scope. He shows that Hebrew thought and language is more time-oriented and active.

Greek thought, which is more typical of the West, is more static and spatial. Even the way Greeks viewed history–more analytically and less purposefully–is different. Understanding both streams of thought helps us understand both Testaments of the Bible, as well as something of our own language and cultural perspective.

In Hebrew even the verb to be, hayah, is dynamic. It has a passive voice! Do any Indo-European languages have a passive voice for to be? If I read the italics in my King James Bible correctly, when Hebrew merely means a “copula” or “equal sign,” there is no verb used. Russian does the same thing.

The significance of the verb to be is lost in Modern English, but in Old English (pre-1066) there were actually two verbs to be: bion and wesan. Bion (where we get be and been in today’s verb to be) means something more like “about to be” or “prone to be” or “becoming.” While wesan (source of am, are, was, were, and is) is more static, just the linking verb or copula. Wesan did not even have a past participle. Interestingly, too, in Old English become was more active, really be (in the old sense) plus come and is usually translated come or is coming when rendered in Modern English. One version of the Old English Lord’s prayer says, “Becume thine riche” for “Thy kingdom come.” (“Riche” is like the German Reich, meaning “kingdom”).

Hebrew descriptions are active. There are no real physical descriptions in the Old Testament (and few in the New) except for some minor details: Joseph “good looking,” Leah “weak-eyed,” David “ruddy,” Absalom’s hair’s weight, and Elisha bald. In each case those details are given only because they explain someone’s motivation: Potiphar’s wife trying to seduce Joseph, Rachel being favored over Leah, David being underestimated by his enemies because ruddy people look younger, Absalom’s hair because of the way he died, and Elisha because some juvenile delinquents were calling him “baldy.”

Description had to do with motivation and action. People today scratch their heads when they read the Song of Songs and the woman’s hair is compared to a flock of goats or her nose to a tower. Those are not physical descriptions, Boman tells us, but rather descriptions of actions and moral qualities. The hair suggests not so much physical beauty, but the actions and care given by a shepherdess. The tower suggests moral strength and purity.

The Hebrew view of history and character is personal and moral. Every God-fearing Israelite was caught up in history and saw himself or herself part of God’s directed plan.

Greek descriptions are more specific and physical, perceived with all the senses. So Athena is “gray-eyed” and the sea is “wine-dark” and Helen is “white-armed.” These physical qualities are objective and sensual.

The Greek sense of time also is secondary to the perception of space. Space is more important than time. It is the opposite from the Hebrew perspective. Time to the Greek is noted by movements. Time is linear, sometimes cyclic, but man is almost detached from it. The Greek sense sees man detached from the gods and therefore fatalistically detached from history.

Time to the Hebrew is based on rhythmic patterns, it is neither linear nor cyclic. Time is historical, and man is part of it, and God is behind it. Eternity is neither otherworldly (like the “immortals” on Olympus) nor infinite time (like John 3:16 “everlasting”), but unbounded time, le-olam. God is not only transcendent and immanent, but Boman calls Him transparent, revealing Himself through who He is by His deeds. The key deed, of course, in the Hebrew Scriptures is the Exodus.

Boman summarizes simply by saying in effect, Hebrew emphasizes psychology more, while Greek is more logical and visual.

As I was thinking about what Boman said, I am reminded that what he calls the Hebrew perspective was really the perspective of the American Puritans and many Americans (think of Abraham Lincoln’s speeches) until the early 20th century. The Puritans like John Winthrop and Pilgrims like William Bradford saw themselves as ordinary “middle class” people who were caught up in God’s plan for the nations, at least for the United Kingdom and North America. Bradford compared the Mayflower crossing to the Exodus. Winthrop said Boston would be “a city on a hill,” echoing the Beatitudes. Lincoln puzzled over God’s purposes in the American Civil War.

Perhaps we need to have a little more of that Hebrew perspective on history, that perhaps we are part of the Almighty’s plan, too. After all, our ancestors and founders were some of those Pilgrims and saints.