Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History by Dan Flores
My rating: 5 of 5 stars A Fascinating, Appalling, Comical, Triumphant Book Dan Flores’ Coyote America: A Natural and a Supernatural History (2016) is a mostly fascinating and often devastating or funny account of the most impressive all-American canine predator the coyote. The fascinating parts concern the unique survivability, intelligence, problem solving ability, and individuality of the coyote. The devastating parts depict the excessive ongoing 100+ year “ideological” attempts by ranchers and the US government to eradicate the animal by any means necessary (including trapping, shooting, dynamiting, poisoning, and chemical and biological warfare). The funny parts happen when Flores recounts contemporary real life coyote stories or retells Native American Old Man Coyote stories. The core of Flores’ book is that the adaptable and intelligent critters resemble us (“coyote history mirrors human history enough that” they become our alter egos) and that they are uniquely American animals that symbolize America as its avatars. His book begins by introducing the coyote and its interesting nature and history. It then provides chapters covering the Native American view of and history with the coyote (including creating the oldest deity in North America, Old Man Coyote), the changing impressions of the Europeans and explorers and naturalists of the new USA of coyotes from neutral and or positive to negative, the origins and development of the “war on wild things” undertaken by the USA from the 19th century till now, the rise of the bio-centric ecological movement in the 1960s, the colonization of cities across America by coyotes, and the ways in which coyotes are natural agents of healthy hybridization. The book ends with a neat epilogue covering “coyote consciousness” or “coyote-ism” (based on using intelligence and wits to survive, on exulting in sheer aliveness, on recognizing our shortcomings with rueful chagrin, on seeing ourselves with truth) in American popular culture (including the Warner Brothers’ Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner cartoons) and highbrow literature (including the work of poets like Gary Snyder). Before reading this book, I hadn’t known any of the following: that a coyote female can bear anywhere from two to nineteen pups in a litter, depending on the overall population of coyotes in her area, which is one reason why despite (or because of?) killing hundreds of thousands of coyotes per year, the government and ranching interests have never succeeded in reducing their overall population; that coyotes have colonized every US state (including major metropolises) apart from Hawaii; that they’ve long been living in human cities (at least as far back as the Aztecs); that today every American lives within one mile of at least one coyote; that they can live alone or in groups; that whether you say the name of the animal with three syllables or two denotes whether you like them or hate them; that Mark Twain helped start the negative image of coyotes (sickly, sneaking, ravenous, cowardly, contemptible) while Walt Disney helped popularize the positive image of them (intelligent, interesting, persecuted); that Chuck Jones’ Wile E. Coyote became a parody of the American over-reliance on quick technological fixes; and more. Elijah Alexander is a capable, professional, clear reader. I liked his reading of Jack Vance’s Planet of Adventure. And he’s fine here, but slightly succumbs to what some listening readers (like me) might find a distracting and unnecessary attempt to imbue French, Spanish, German, or British, historical figures quoted by Flores with various accents. At one point he even assumes a stage voice for President Nixon that sounds nothing like the guy. If I have a criticism of the book it is that although Flores does plenty with the Native American view of coyotes and of Old Man Coyote and plenty with the development of the persecution of the animal and with the coyote's growing support in recent decades, I’d have liked even more real life coyote stories, more accounts of their biology and ways of life and antics and families and pup rearing and solo and group hunting and so on. Flores wholly succeeds in convincing this reader (admittedly already a lover of wolves and wild things) that the government and ranching interests should stop waging an amoral and useless war against the coyote, that instead the coyote should be celebrated as a uniquely successful wild predator who doubles as an avatar of America and of humanity. I love the last sentence of his book about the true national anthem of America: yipping coyote song that’s been heard on the continent for half a million years. Anyone who likes wild animals and nature and has an open mind should enjoy and learn from this book; anyone who thinks coyotes (pronounced with two syllables) are pests worthy only of total extermination should probably avoid it. View all my reviews
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Silence by Shūsaku Endō
My rating: 5 of 5 stars “And like the sea God was silent.” Shusaku Endo’s Silence (1966; translated by William Johnston 1969) is a compact, grueling novel. It explores the nature of faith and love in a persecuted Christian context, as Portuguese missionary Father Rodrigues sneaks into a 17th-century Japan that has become intensely intolerant of Catholicism, Christianity, and missionaries. Rodrigues’ goal is twofold, to find out what happened to his revered teacher, Father Ferreira, who is rumored to have apostatized and gone Japanese, and to nurture the seed of Christianity planted in Japan by earlier missionaries before it can completely wither away. The most moving and absorbing parts of the novel concern a weak and servile outcast apostate Japanese fisherman called Kichijiro (Father Rodrigues’ personal Judas), Rodrigues’ intense struggle to reconcile God’s love with His deafening silence in the face of such terrible exploitation and persecution of humble Japanese peasants, and his even more intense struggle to decide whether apostatizing would be an act of love and self-sacrifice consonant with Jesus’ compassion or an act of selfish weakness and betrayal. Endo does not give clear and final answers to such fraught questions. But through its depiction of earthy, kind, steadfast Christian peasants who would be tortured and die rather than step or spit on an image of Mary or Jesus, his novel does debunk the Japanese authorities’ official view that Japan is a unique country where Christianity cannot grow. Endo writes many vivid details of life in 17th century Japan: feudal system, crime and punishment, religious festivals, food, names, international trade, etc. He writes a sublime moment when Father Rodrigues, fleeing pursuit in the mountains all alone and deprived of food and water, happens at one point to look up and see the face of Kichijiro with the beloved face of his imaginary ideal Christ transposed over the unshaven, yellow-toothed, degraded face of his betrayer. Even I, an atheist with no great love for Christianity or missionary work, found the novel absorbing and moving. It reads like a Christian Heart of Darkness, with Rodrigues as Marlow and Ferreira as Kurtz. Did Ferreira really apostatize? Is he still alive? Will Rodrigues ever meet him? If so, what will come of the encounter? Endo’s novel must challenge Christian readers with some uncomfortable questions even as it reaffirms their faith. This audiobook edition (well read by David Holt) begins with a compact and interesting foreword by Martin Scorsese in which he explains the novel’s twenty-year appeal for him, especially in its assertion that faith and questioning go hand in hand and in its focus on the role of Judas (but you should probably read this after finishing the novel, as it may contain spoilers!). Endo’s introduction then establishes the historical context of the novel. The novel is then mostly told from Rodrigues’ journal-letters to his superiors back home, till near the end it dramatically changes to a third person point of view, and concludes with an appendix of Dutch and Japanese official log entries, some of which in context pack revelatory emotional punches. Silence is recommended for people interested in feudal Japan, missionary history, and matters of faith. View all my reviews
Devils by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
My rating: 4 of 5 stars Revolutionaries, Scholars, Scoundrels, and Nihilists Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Devils (1871-72; translation by Michael R. Katz 1992) depicts the end of the absurd and moving 20+ year platonic romance between Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky and Varvara Petrovna Stavrogina in the context of the possession of their provincial town by foreign radical ideas and homegrown atheist nihilists. The novel explores how dangerous ideas and words and writing can be (they can possess people); how revolutionary groups form and recruit and bind (possess) members and manipulate (possess) the masses into violent action; how fickle, foolish, mean, and malleable is public opinion; how defensive and inferiority complex ridden Russia was (especially vis-à-vis European culture); and how multiply motived, contradictory, and complex the human heart and mind are. It asserts the need for common human decency as a balm for if not a protection from abuse and exploitation. And for some kind of spiritual faith and moral purpose: “the last word is universal forgiveness.” The novel powerfully reminds one that all too often charismatic and intelligent people who begin utopian revolutions are ultimately in it for power, and that, as one character muses at one point, “Convictions and human feeling—it seems they’re two different things,” with the latter superior to the former, despite the fact that politically driven people often lose sight of that. Dostoevsky anticipates and describes Stalin and Hitler. The novel has many great points. Like the following: --Fascinating characters (often morbidly so), like Stepan Trofimovich, the delusional, self-centered, spoiled, ineffectual scholar, and his amoral, manipulative, and destructive son Pyotr; Nikolai Vsevolodovich Stavrogin, the sane nihilistic rake, and his wealthy domineering mother Varvara Petrovna; and the earnest, ex-revolutionary student Ivan Pavlovich Shatov and his desperately self-willed friend Kirillov. --Great scenes, like Stepan learning that he’s supposed to marry a young former student of his; Pyotr behaving so innocently impudent and crafty in his first appearance; some feckless young people visiting a revered arbitrary hermit-priest; Pyotr revealing why he’s so invested in Nikolai; Nikolai confessing to a retired bishop; the Group of Five meeting for the first time; a literary fete going off the rails; the convict Fedka asserting his independence; and Stepan walking on the road in cavalry boots. . . --Keen and cynical wisdom about human nature vis-à-vis political schemers and dupes; revolutionaries and scoundrels; pseudo intellectuals and revered writers; aristocrats and peasants; atheists and Christians; Russia and Russians; public opinion and gossip. Just when it’s starting to feel sour and bleak, some fundamental love and belief almost redeems it (“Love is the crown of being”). --An interesting narrator: he’s trying to make sense of the events of the novel for which he was often a passive eye-witness, recounting them about three months after they occurred and a “Commission of Inquiry” began investigating what happened. He’s given to irony (e.g., “An enormous subversive organization of thirteen members”), though he tries to honestly reveal both his “reliable sources” and the limits of his “own best surmises” about events. Dostoevsky also, of course, writes great descriptions of people, like “In appearance Shatov closely resembled his convictions. He was clumsy, fair-haired, disheveled, short, broad-shouldered, thick-lipped, with very heavy, overhanging pale blond eyebrows, a furrowed brow, and an unfriendly, stubbornly downcast gaze that seemed ashamed of something.” He also writes many great lines on: --Love: “Even a louse can fall in love.” --Human nature: “The horror and vague feeling of personal danger, added to the thrilling effect of a night fire, produce in the spectator (not, of course, in those whose houses have gone up in flames) a certain shock to the system and as it were a challenge to the destructive instincts which, alas, lie buried within each and every soul, even that of the meekest and most domestic civil servant…” --America: “One has to be born in America, or at least live among them for many years, to become their equal.” --Revolutionaries: “Why is it that all these desperate socialists and communists are all so incredibly miserly and acquisitive and proprietarial?” --Religion: “The more impoverished an entire people is, the more stubbornly it dreams of reward in paradise.” Audiobook reader George Guidall excels at voicing the characters (especially Pyotr, Stepan, the convict Fedka, and Captain Lebyadkin), but it’s difficult to understand his French when Stepan speaks it (which he often does). Many of the characters’ three names are exotic enough and similar-sounding enough to cause confusion, as with Mavriky Nikolaevich and Nikolai Vsevolodovich. The narrator refers to Nikolai as Nikolai Vsevolodovich, Nikolai, Nikolai Stavrogin, or Stavrogin. All this is to say that it might be easier to read the physical novel than to listen to the audiobook. The book took me a LONG time to finish, and although the fault was mine because a trip interrupted my reading for three weeks, there are too many scenes with too much talking, and dealing with the book had already begun to feel like a not altogether pleasant chore even before that hiatus, and upon finishing it I felt freed from a kind of psychological bondage. If you are a fan of Dostoesvsky, this book would surely be worth your while, but if you are new to him, I’d recommend starting with Crime and Punishment or The Brothers Karamazov. View all my reviews |
Jefferson Peters
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by Sabaa Tahir
A Young Adult Epic Fantasy with Lots of Violence & Romance
Elias is an elite Martial soldier, Laia a naïve Scholar slave. As they alternate telling their stories (in trendy Young Adult first person, present tense narration), we soon rea...
"It must be due to some fault in ourselves"--
George Orwell's Animal Farm (1945) is an anti-totalitarian-communist allegory in which the exploited animals of the Manor Farm kick Farmer Jones out and set about running the farm. At first...
by Lu Xun
Perfect Stories of Life in Early 20th Century China
Chinese Classic Stories (1998) by Xun Lu is an excellent collection of seven short stories by perhaps the most important 20th century Chinese writer of fiction. Lu Xun (1881-1936) stu...
Fine Writing, Great Characters, Immersive World
The Surgeon's Mate (1980) is the 7th novel in Patrick O'Brian's addicting series of age of sail novels about the lives, loves, and careers of the British navy captain Jack Aubrey and the ...
An Overwritten, Oddly Compelling Gothic Father
Matthew Lewis' notorious and influential Gothic novel The Monk (1796) takes place during the heyday of the Spanish Inquisition. Ambrosio, the monk/friar/abbot/idol of Madrid, is nicknamed ...
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