28 October 2011

KillingFloorDieTryingTripwireRunningBlindEchoBurningWithoutFail

The frost is on the pumpkin. Dr Bronner’s 18-in-1 Pure Lavender Castile Soap Made with Organic Oils congeals white each morning, a sure sign that winter is approaching. The temperature edges below 40 degrees and the Myers Lemon has new purple buds. It’s fall, the nights are long, and it’s a good time to read scary books.

I don’t mean vampire scary or ghost in the woods scary. I mean Lee Child scary, books like Killing Floor and Die Trying, books where bullets fly and often hit things, loyalties are tested, and the hero always wins. Books like that. Books by a British TV writer turned New York thriller author.

When the sun shines there are things to do. When the sun goes down, around here it’s readin’ time.

Lee Child has a formula and he repeats it from book to book. There is a predictability to the mayhem, just as predictable as the Pachelbel Canon at a Mendocino wedding.

Hero Jack Reacher echoes John Wayne, down to his repeatedly stale, old-fashioned relationships with women. You know he’s going to survive. After all, he has to appear in another dozen books. But you still worry maybe this time his captivity, torture, mistreatment, misdirection, bullet wounds, chain whipping and so on will be his last. No, it won’t. He will survive.

You’d think these books would pall, that you’d stop midway and ask yourself: Don’t I have better things to do? Why am I wasting my time with these gory things? But you don’t stop, because Lee Child is a master of this kind of writing. You think ahead and try to guess what’s coming next. You spend serious moments pondering who is loyal and who bent.

These books are long – the first three in the series run more than 500 pages each – and I read each one in a burst of enthusiasm. I pretty much used every spare moment to find out how Jack Reacher would get out of the next situation, how he would dispense frontier justice, how he would say sayonora to the inevitable love interest.

At one point in Die Trying, which is the second Jack Reacher novel in a line that stretches to 17 so far, at one point I put the book down in despair. Oh not again – these bad guys are militia-nuts super-patriotically holed up in Montana with a roomfull of old dynamite and a warehouse full of guns and missiles? I care about this?

I sighed – I don’t care if they wear shiny black boots, I don’t care about their back story – I don’t want to spend time with these characters – I sighed, then dove back into the book and didn’t put it down until 2 in the morning. Die Trying and Killing Floor and Tripwire – they are that absorbing, that well done.

Lee Child readers don’t much care that the plots are hackneyed and the characters stiff. We enjoy the sudden squeeze of fickle fate, the surprise, the joy of puzzles that slowly resolve.

In anything approaching real life I would recoil from visions of heads exploding, ingenious tortures, quasi-military confrontations, all of that. In a Lee Child adventure the violence is there to entertain– the artificiality is what allows a weak-kneed pacifist such as me to stumble forward through the gore. The final confrontation feels like the final innings of a good  World Series game – one team wins and the other loses – burned to death in an exploding warehouse stuffed with dollar bills, say.

Jack Reacher hitch-hikes away from his latest adventure. He’s not seeking trouble, but trouble seeks him, book after book after book. Lee Child grabs you where it hurts and you’ll stay grabbled for at least a couple of days of intense reading.

And that’s a good thing, when the nights are long and the days are cold.



NOTES:

You don’t have to read these Jack Reacher novels in order, but it’s more fun that way. The first three:

Killing Floor by Lee Child. Penguin paperback $9.99. ISBN 9780515141429.

Die Trying by Lee Child. Penguin paperback $9.99. ISBN 9780515142242.

Tripwire by Lee Child. Penguin paperback $9.99. ISBN 9780515143072.

Lee Child has an extensive website. These three pages will tell you more than you need to know:
FAQ...   The Books...    About the Author... 

21 October 2011

Paul Revere's Pony Ponys Up

I want to thank everyone for pitching in during the pitching to help raise money for this community radio station. Thank you!

If you are hearing this on Sunday, between Celtic and This American, good morning, and the pledge drive is now in its final day. If you are hearing the repeat broadcast on Wednesday, good afternoon, and the pledge drive is a fond memory.

If you are reading this online you don’t have any idea what I’m talking about. And that’s OK.

I stayed home this week nursing a small stone that decided to descend from kidney to outside world. While screaming in pain (I exaggerate, but not much) I managed to finish an entire novel. I’m all better now, thank you.

Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere...

The Fort by Bernard Cornwell celebrates the Penobscot Expedition – a now-obscure battle that took place in 1779 during the American Revolutionary War. Told with the freedom of a novelist but closely following the facts, Cornwell’s The Fort is a refreshingly clear vision of events that over the years have been both simplified and patriotically glorified.

And I on the opposite shore will be
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm...

In a note on Heroic Myths Cornwell writes, “The Penobscot Expedition is a forgotten campaign of the American Revolution, and many people probably wish it would remain forgotten. For the Americans it was a disaster, though in the end it made no difference to the war’s outcome or to their eventual triumph, while for the British it was a victory that did nothing to avert their humiliating loss of the Thirteen Colonies.”

Basically, the Americans screwed up. Paul Revere was there, for example, and he did not do well.

... And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;

As an artillery officer in the Massachusetts Militia, Revere was “utterly ineffective...(as well as) consistently uncooperative, awkward and belligerent toward his comrades.”

It was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow who years later made Revere famous with the poem The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.

“And Americans have been hearing of the midnight ride ever since,” Cornwell notes, “mostly oblivious that the poem plays merry-hell with the true facts and ascribes to Revere the heroics of other men...”

In fact, of the several riders that famous night Paul Revere was the only rider who did not complete his mission.

Cornwell continues, “Before the poem was published Revere was remembered as a regional folk-hero, one among many who had been active in the patriot cause, but in 1861 he entered legend” due, in part, to Longfellow’s wish to rouse Northern patriotism at the start of the American Civil War.

For those who read The Fort, Revere’s reputation will never be the same. Some of his contemporaries “believed Revere’s behavior (at the battle) was disgraceful. Revere’s present reputation would have puzzled and, in many cases, disgusted his contemporaries.”

There are other, more important actors in this story, but throughout their adventure Paul Revere is the prime prima donna – at crucial moments in the battle he returns to his anchored ship for hot meals. Ordered to move cannons he delays or denies or questions the order. His gunners are inaccurate due in part to Revere’s inexperience and insouciance. Revere was a patriot, an excellent silversmith and successful businessman, but no soldier.

We’ll talk again next week. In the meantime, thanks for supporting this wonderful station.


NOTES:

The Fort by Bernard Cornwell. Harper paperback $14.99. ISBN 0062010875.


To “pony up” -- informal. to pay (money), as in settling an account: Next week you'll have to pony up the balance of the loan.  Origin: 1650–60; earlier powney < obsolete French poulenet, diminutive of poulain colt < Medieval Latin pullanus (Latin pull(us) foal + -anus -an); see -et
 — Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2011.

Good friend Adam Springwater sends this link about another midnight rider, perhaps more heroic...

The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882). Written April 19, 1860; first published in 1863 as part of Tales of a Wayside Inn:


Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, "If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal light,-
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country folk to be up and to arm."

Then he said "Good-night!" and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war;
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon like a prison bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.

Meanwhile, his friend through alley and street
Wanders and watches, with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers,
Marching down to their boats on the shore.

Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church,
By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the sombre rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade,-
By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town
And the moonlight flowing over all.

Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
In their night encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still
That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,
And seeming to whisper, "All is well!"
A moment only he feels the spell
Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread
Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay,-
A line of black that bends and floats
On the rising tide like a bridge of boats.

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse's side,
Now he gazed at the landscape far and near,
Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle girth;
But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry tower of the Old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns.

A hurry of hoofs in a village street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet;
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.
He has left the village and mounted the steep,
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
And under the alders that skirt its edge,
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.

It was twelve by the village clock
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock,
And the barking of the farmer's dog,
And felt the damp of the river fog,
That rises after the sun goes down.

It was one by the village clock,
When he galloped into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock
Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
And the meeting-house windows, black and bare,
Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
As if they already stood aghast
At the bloody work they would look upon.

It was two by the village clock,
When he came to the bridge in Concord town.
He heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning breeze
Blowing over the meadow brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket ball.

You know the rest. In the books you have read
How the British Regulars fired and fled,-
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farmyard wall,
Chasing the redcoats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.

So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,-
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo for evermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

13 October 2011

Time to Feed the Meter

Let me tell you about an unusual bookseller. His name is Charles Mysak, no relation, and he sells books in New York City from his parking spot on the corner of Columbus Avenue and 68th Street.

He snagged his spot more than a decade ago and he hasn't budged since. Mysak stores his inventory in a green ‘94 Honda Civic and he manages to feed the meter $36 a day – in quarters.

Which brings me to the current fund raising drive here on KZYX. Feed the meter. Hold on to your spot. Show your staying power, your dedication. Drop some quarters into the radio slot on a regular basis. Help keep us on the air.

Mysak was quoted in a radio interview: "I've been here for 11 years," he said. "Barnes & Noble is now closed. I'm the last resource for books (in the neighborhood). I'm here from 7 to 7 every day."

Just like this radio station. We are here every day and every night, pumping fresh, pollution-free information into your personal space whenever you want to listen. To be on the air we have to feed that meter every day, too. You can help with that.

So far during this fall pledge drive we've been pleading, joking, and otherwise encouraging you to make a move on your wallet and give us a call at (707) 895-2233 or pledge online at KZYX,ORG.

At this point maybe it's time to step back and consider why we go through this exercise two or more times a year. KZYX runs on a model first successfully used by the listener-supported Pacifica Foundation in the years following World War II. It worked then, and it works now.

Many people are astonished to discover a radio broadcast operation owned, administered and paid for by the listeners themselves. That is what Pacifica pioneered, and that's what we do here. It's truly democracy in action, and that always has been our goal -- to free radio from the almighty advertising dollar,  depending instead on the free will donations of people like you, listeners who find freedom of the airwaves important in their lives and important for their community.

KZYX has a different history from Pacifica - we're much younger, for one thing. KZYX took shape 20-plus years ago when community radio enthusiast Sean Donovan arrived here to beat the Mendocino bushes for the earliest supporters of Mendocino Public Radio.

On the KZYX web site you find this: "We are a hybrid of sorts... we are not just community radio (radio that encourages volunteer programmers and focuses almost singularly on locally relevant news and information) nor are we just public radio (professionally produced commercial-free radio). Instead we are a combination of the two: we feature some of the finest Public Radio programs available and we have over 100 local volunteer programmers."

That unusual combination sets this station apart from most others; certainly apart from Jefferson Public Radio to the north, which steers away from controversy, offers no local news and minimal local programming.

We have managed to create something here that is precious, and like many precious things, something fragile, too. We don't depend on grants, although national funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting helps. We pay the bills the same way you pay yours - by digging deep, asking for help when we really need it, and economizing everywhere. Feeding the meter before it expires.

The physical plant is difficult - components break down or need upgrading – and professionals from larger stations are sometimes amazed when they see how well we make do with aging equipment and a distinct lack of sleek offices to impress – who?

The hard working staff and volunteers make it work. We succeed because of you – a person who does care about community radio in general, and this station in particular.

Finally, let me repeat a story I’ve told before. I have a friend whose car radio car broke and she couldn’t afford to replace it.

She told me she is giving KZYX a generous donation even though she can’t hear us much. I don't know how to characterize that kind of generosity, but I sure know how to appreciate it.

Now is a very good time for you to add something to what you've already given. If you haven't joined and pledged yet, this is your moment. Let us hear from you. Feed the meter!

10 October 2011

Different books, different publishers, same jackets


I was struck by the similarities of these covers. The Fort was published in paperback in 2011 by HarperCollins; Imperium in 2006 By Arrow Books (a division of the Random House Group Limited, Great Britain).

Each book has the same ALL CAPS descriptor at the top, author name in red, same contrasty silhouette illustration style; although Cornwell's title appears gold (he sells more copies, so he gets the gold) both titles appear ALL CAPS, with a summary phrase at the bottom. 

US book this year; UK book five years ago. Someone is stealing someone else's cover art. Or the same artist is stealing from herself. Or there is a formula for best selling historical fiction paperbacks and these two books follow that lead. Whatever the explanation, it's a bit disconcerting.

I'd love to hear from anyone who might explain this more believably...

06 October 2011

In the Deadly Game of Power, One Man Will Risk It All

You can look at the novel Imperium two ways – the way the publisher sees it, “In the deadly game of power, one man will risk it all” – or the way it feels when you read the book – Marcus Tullius Cicero of Rome was a good guy who had an interesting career.

In the Senate of republican Rome Cicero got off some punchy lines. He destroyed his opponents in court with nothing more than documents and shrewd speeches. Very little in the way of knives and blood in this particular deadly game of power.

This is a good historical novel, crammed with real incidents and actual intrigues, informed by a careful study of Cicero’s own words and deeds. Some readers will not find this particularly exciting. For gripping courtroom drama you might better turn to writers such as John Grisham.

Author Robert Harris specializes in novels set in ancient Rome – we enjoyed Pompeii a few years ago, following an aqueduct engineer as he puzzled out why water is not flowing along the enormous Aqua Augusta. Something’s wrong on the slopes of Mt Vesuvius – it smells like sulfur – and in the deadly game of power, one man will risk it all.

A substantial part of this story takes place in ancient Sicily, and no doubt that’s why I discovered a discarded copy of Imperium in a hotel in Taormina last week, just in time to help kill ten slow hours flying home. Under other circumstances – such as being able to stand up, walk around, stretch – I may not have mustered the patience to read this book.

We seem to be flying over some frozen section of northern Canada and already I’m on page 321 and I can’t feel my feet any more. Deep vein thrombosis is setting in...

Imperium can also be read as a bruising critique of our own times, from the perils of democracy to the response to terrorists. The story is told as a memoir written by Cicero’s amanuensis – a slave named M. Tullius Tiro,  who actually existed, and who was indispensable to Cicero’s success. Always at his side, able to record the great man’s utterances on small wax tablets using a shorthand he invented, Tiro recalls “at first this was exciting, then astonishing, then arduous, and finally extremely dangerous... I witnessed his private meetings and carried his secret messages. I took down his speeches, his letters and his literary works, even his poetry – such an outpouring of words...”

Imperium appears to be as true to what we know of Roman history as any novel could be. The people are real, the events are real, the decisions are final – no, wait, that’s Judge Judy – and the author has to invent very little.

Cicero, while personally ambitious, was consistently honest and dedicated to democratic principles, against great odds. That kind of person was enormously rare in Rome, as he would be today in Washington DC. Considering the powers arrayed against him – the wealth of Crassus, the cunning of Pompey, the ridicule of the aristocrats, the conspiracies of Julius Caesar – Cicero emerges as a people’s hero, someone to admire and emulate.

Because Cicero was an orator, not a soldier, Harris has a problem here – not enough blood and guts for some readers. With grace and cunning based on unceasing hard work, Cicero managed to counter the misdeeds of corrupt officials and in court convict even the most powerfully connected criminals.

Harris is brave to tell the kind of story that could easily cost him his popular audience. The fact that his novels have been consistent international best sellers speaks well for modern readers.

NOTES:

Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome by Robert Harris. Pocket Books paperback $15.
ISBN 0743498666.

The sequel to Imperium is Conspirata: A Novel of Ancient Rome by Robert Harris.
Pocket Books paperback $16. ISBN 0743266110   EAN: 9780743266116

Pompeii by Robert Harris. Random House Trade paperback $15. ISBN 0812974611.

"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly. But the traitor moves among those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not traitor, he speaks in the accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their garments, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared." - Cicero, 42 B.C.