A Momentary Taste of Being

James Renner has produced a couple of books of nonfiction before this, his first novel.  His skill is evident and the novel--a result, at least partially of his own wide reading and his own interest in crime writing is stunning. For the first two thirds of the book we follow the story of David Neff, a writer for an indie newspaper, whose passion for the truth manifests in the investigation of a series of murders that had taken place several years previously in his native Northern Ohio.  (As a side note, it was a pleasure to read of towns and places that I know of but few have ever heard of--Ravenna, Canton, along with Akron, Kent, and Cleveland).  His researches lead directly to the trial of an additional perpetrator and may have indirectly precipitated his wife's death. With the exception of two very odd interludes that presage the third section of the novel, all of this is told in a very straightforward, if fun, time hopping sort of way, with the recounting of a...

Joanna Russ has left the SF world

from Rilke's Book of Hours   from "The Book of Pilgrimage" Rainer Maria Rilke tr. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy  Extinguish my eyes, I'll go on seeing you. Seal my ears, I'll go on hearing you. And without feet I can make my way to you, without a mouth I can swear your name. Break off my arms, I'll take hold of you with my heart as a hand. Stop my heart, and my brain will start to beat. And if you consume my brain with fire, I'll feel you burn in every drop of my blood. II, 7 The mystical strain of this poetry follows the common ground of a mysticism.  There is a mysterious and serious violence that seems to follow "And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force."  This seems to be the strain we are entertaining here. The violence of this poem suggests the violence of the love that will transport the individual. This love is transformative--"stop ...

from Rilke's Book of Hours from "The Book of Pilgrimage" Rainer Maria Rilke Tr. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy So God, you are the one who comes after. It is sons who inherit, while fathers die. Sons stand and bloom. You are the heir. II, 9 I don't even know where to start with this.  The logic is so alien and yet so right that reading this opens many doors.  In what way, precisely is God the heir?  What is it that he inherits?  How is it that He comes after.  And yet-- "I am the alpha and omega,  the beginning and the end, the first and the last."  So not only is He father, but He is also the last, the one to whom all things must come. As I said, there is a logic here that makes the poem like a little puzzle box, fascinating, mysterious, and worth the time to think about carefully.

Part of a poem that really struck me: from Rilke's Book of Hours from "The Book of Pilgrimage" Rainer Maria Rilke Tr. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy . . .  This is what the things can teach us: to fall patiently to trust our heaviness. Even a bird has to do that before he can fly. II, 16

from Rilke's Book of Hours from "The Book of a Monastic Life" Rainer Maria Rilke Tr. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy I come from the soaring in which I lost myself. I wa song, and the refrain which is God is still roaring in my ears. Now I am still and plain: no more words. To the others I was like a wind: I made them shake. I'd gone very far, as far as the angels, and high, where light things into nothing. But deep in the darkness is God. I, 50 Whether it is Rilke himself, or Rilke through translators, he exactly captures some sense of what St. John of the Cross describes in the via negativa .  In the darkness, one finds God.  It is only by not seeking and not possessing that we find and we have.  It makes no sense.  Unless you've been there.

The unfortunate closing of Borders across the country has led to momentary benefit for me in straightened  circumstances.  Wandering in, I came across a book of poetry I didn't even know I wanted at a much reduced price.  The example will clearly indicate why this was a good thing. from Rilke's Book of Hours   from "The Book of a Monastic Life" Rainer Maria Rilke tr. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy   Because someone once dared to want you, I know that we, too, may want you. When gold is in the mountain and we've ravaged the depths until we've given up digging, it will be brought forth into day by the river that mines the silences of stone. Even when we don't desire it, God is ripening. I.16 Gorgeous in its expression of the mystical desire for God and in the subtle understanding of God's preparation of the individual for same.

From the American Fantastic Tales collection: Jane Rice, "The Refugee" I am not familiar with Ms. Rice's work, and as I am a true admirer of most Dark Fantasy/Horror stories, this lack provokes me.  Though not extremely.

I posted a list a couple of days ago that had on it Patrick Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind as one of the 10 best SF of the decade.  This review seems to bear that out.   (For some values of SF)

Pastime

James Reeves--"Leaving Town"

Celebrating? Sax Rohmer I'm not sure celebrate is exactly the word for encountering Mr. Rohmer's opus--if you can screen out the bigotry, the books do make for some occasionally entertaining reading.  And I suspect that without them Mr. Bond would not be amongst us. Without Mr. Rohmer and Mr. Boothby, it is highly likely that SPECTRE would be a mere spectre of itself.

The same beautiful writing that graces his previous book, The Rest is Noise , and his New Yorker columns is  present here.  Unfortunately, there is something missing that the previous book has and which causes it to be compelling while this book is not so much so.  There was a unity of theme, a cohesion of thought and purpose that made even the less interesting portions of The Rest is Noise compelling. There I could wade through the effusive evocations of the work of Karlheinz Stockhausen and other classical composers for whom I have little enough love even if I recognize that there was something innovative there.  Here, when I'm exposed to far too much prose extolling the virtues of Bjork or Radiohead, I know that it isn't going anywhere, that the passages I'm reading about people or groups in whom  I have little to no interest end only at whatever conclusion the article achieves.  There is no further purpose in the writing--there is no clear or cohere...

I somehow missed these before: Kim Stanley Robinson Red Mars I Red Mars II The Dispossessed Ursula K. Leguin Compared with Ayn Rand's Anthem .  To be honest, I did not notice the similarity before and I've always loved this book above other highly touted Leguin.  So I'll have to pay more attention.  Am I secretly imbibing at Ayn's well--if so it must stop.

A review of The Crying Tree with a mention of two books by Michael Cox.

California from the Robinson point of view. While I don't recall the details, I do remember reading and enjoying enormously The Wild Shore when it first came out.

"Humbug still walks our land on stilts" Amusing short poem.

Paul Among the People is subtitled The Apostle Reinterpreted and Reimagined in His Own Time , and, as a fairly orthodox Catholic, I approached it with a little frisson, wondering what in the world I might encounter in this reinterpretation by a Classical Scholar and Urban Quaker.  I can report to any who care, the concern was needless. While some of Ms. Ruden's own feelings and ideas bleed through--she remains resolutely on task--interpreting Paul in his own time. What exactly does that mean?  Well, I think many of us have a great many misconceptions about "the Glory that was Greece, the Grandeur that was Rome."  Even today, in the face of relentless historical reinterpretation, there is about the ancients a kind of veil of romanticism under which most of the worst scars and deformities are hidden.  Ms. Ruden helps to remind us of what life was really like during the time period. She juxtaposes "problematic" portions of Paul's letters against classical ...

Charles Reznikoff's Holocaust reviewed You can sample Holocaust here.

William Howard Russell gives us a view of Charleston after Sumter.