My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult

My Sister’s Keeper got picked up to become a movie before I even knew it was a book. I’ve never read a Jodi Picoult novel, though her books are my girlfriend’s sister’s favorites. I didn’t know what to think of her; at times, I feel like she just writes a lot of romance novels.

But my opinion changes with my reading of Keeper, an finely crafted book about a family’s fight to save their daughter Kate from the leukemia she has suffered from through most of her life. Her sister, Anna, is a perfect donor match for Kate because she was biologically engineered to be one – all of Anna’s life has been devoted to giving lymphocytes or bone marrow to Kate, making her life just as hectic. Now, Kate’s kidneys are failing and she needs Anna to donate one, but Anna wants to be her own person. Told through each character’s own point of view, we are presented with the subsequent court battle over morals and ethics, of who and when has the right to their own medical choices, but also a mental battle of what is right for Kate.

Rarely in this novel is there a moment without emotion; Picoult’s words are crafted so delicately and precise that each character feels fresh and different as we switch between them. Humor, sadness, anger: all come together to blend into a scenario that is so unique and shocking that the dispute between the family feels close to home.

Reality, though, is always just a step away for Picoult’s book. The characters progress just as people would, growing with their experiences and being moved by those around them. People will find favorites to befriend here; it’s human nature, especially since these characters are so three-dimensional. But what stands out as a touch of unfortunate realism is the ending, which I will not divulge here. A bit coincidental, perhaps, but for those who know the ending of the story, the quick way in which the event happens is so much like life – life does not catch up with us, we catch up with life.

Emotionally moving and fantastically searing, My Sister’s Keeper is written with finesse and wit. Picoult always ends with an emotional line, some unforgettable. Her prose moves quickly while maintaining that psychic weight. We are carried along on a tide of writing, barely wondering about what’s coming next as we are so caught in the moment – almost as if Picoult meant us to be, mimicking how Anna and her family are ferried along by Kate’s sickness.

Wm. Paul Young’s The Shack spiritual but not life-changing

I’ve read a lot of blurbs and reviews about Wm. Paul Young’s The Shack – how it will make one religious or spiritual even if one isn’t a church-goer going into the novel, how it will give those who read it a new outlook on life – and I had dismissed them as fanatics trying to promote a book about religion just to get press coverage. But I decided to check it out anyway, because a good read is a good read no matter the subject matter or the hype that it gets.

After having a trek through the woods with The Shack’s main character, Mack, I’ve come to the conclusion that the book really is an overly hyped religious controversy. While it’s a good read, all of the praise about the novel’s ability to change opinions and viewpoints of religion are quite exaggerated and, I feel, are giving the book a more negative connotation than it deserves.

Young’s novel is very much a philosophical dialogue on religion and the current state of beliefs – it resembles some of Plato’s dialogues without taking on overly sophisticated speech or diction. In fact, The Shack reads like a common-man’s philosophy.

In the book, a man named Mack gets a letter from God, supposedly, to come to a shack out in the middle of the wilderness where his daughter had been taken a murdered a year or two before. Mack has still not come to grips with the emotional turmoil inside of him, and has been taken over by a Great Sadness, one which does not allow him to forgive or understand God’s actions. As Mack stays at the shack for a weekend, he is transported to a new world, one in which God, Jesus, and a deity named Sarayu are all helping Mack to understand his pain and to forgive those who have caused it, while also accepting God into his heart.

The first part of the novel is dedicated to meeting Mack and his haunting experience of his daughter’s kidnapping and subsequent death at the hands of a child killer. It’s a harrowing, visceral and taut sequence, rife with psychological drama from Mack which makes this part of the novel intense, if not exactly original.

But then we get to the sequences with God, Jesus, and Sarayu. The characters are likable enough, as they should be – they are, after all, the almighty God broken into three pieces to guide Mack. As Mack struggles through conversations with God about his ways and Mack’s own beliefs, there’s a lot of explanations about religious teachings that are quite interesting. One that stuck out was the fact that God doesn’t exactly like organized religion. This is where a lot of the religious criticism comes into play, as Young characterizes God as someone who doesn’t want to punish the sinners and he also doesn’t care if you pray to him. He plays a waiting game of letting the people of the world choose whether they want to let God into their hearts, which is more of what I think of when I imagine God.

The dialogues between God and Mack go on forever though, and there’s a lull in the middle of the book where there’s a lot of talking but not a lot of doing going on. It evens out towards the end, in a very transcendental moment where Mack finds his daughters body, but I felt that the middle portion of the novel was a tad flat.

And although the book is supposed to have an uplifting message (which it succeeds at), some parts feel a little too goody-goody for my tastes. Mack seems to like every person he comes in contact with, which is pretty unbelievable. All of the characters – well, minus the serial killer, of course – are instantly likable but they all feel really similar to each other.

But what about the spiritual nature of the book? It’s fascinating, it’s entertaining, but one has to remember that it’s still a fictional story about God, not a true biography of Him. It changed my stereotypical views of God and got me thinking in new directions about what Heaven and Hell and sin and sainthood mean in our man-made realities, but it didn’t change my spiritual beliefs or make me convert from my agnostic beliefs. I think that if one’s spiritual beliefs were swayed so easily by a fictional book, that person did not have very strong beliefs or opinions at all. The book is a great read, but it shouldn’t be so easily persuasive.

Don’t get my qualms about the book’s ability to bring about an epiphany wrong, though; it’s an emotional ride that’s at some points sad and at others absolutely mouth-crackingly happy, and its views of a higher being are insightful, well thought-out, and philosophical. But it’s not going to make the devoted worshipers happy because of its stand against religion, and it won’t make non-believers convert. But at least it’s not too preachy, and the religious aspect is not a turn-off like I expected it to be. No religious experience required here.

The roar of George Plimpton’s Paper Lion

I had to write an extended book review for my Sports Lit class on Paper Lion, George Plimpton’s account of his experiences on the Detroit Lions football team during the preseason of 1963. This is not a normal book review, but an extended one with summary, author bio, critical reception, etc. It is much longer than most reviews, but since I was planning on reviewing Paper Lion here anyway, I decided to post this. Enjoy.

Football is a sport that many know and love, but few of its followers have actually experienced the drives and dedication it takes to play the game. Instead, most fans are happy with sitting back and watching the game with food and a beverage, rather than enduring the grueling conditions, intricate plays, and rigid scheduling that football players must work into their lives. It takes a certain mindset to want to play a game in which injuries are bound to occur and where no play is ever considered “mastered,” or where anything can go wrong simply because of timing. In this regard, it might seem as though football players are a masochistic bunch, almost enjoying the pain and suffering that they are forced to undergo for the game.

However, one ordinary sports reporter decided to put aside fears of physical contact and embarrassment to join a football team. This man was George Plimpton, a writer for Sports Illustrated, Esquire, and author of a variety of sports-related books. Plimpton was determined to join a football team for one season and understand the game from a player’s perspective, rather than an audience member. Plimpton’s goal was to uncover the truth about a football team and its players – not just what the game of football was and how to play it, but also who the players that make up the game really were and why they were so interested in the game. After his encounters in football, he wrote the novel Paper Lion, one that is widely considered an important asset to sports literature.

George Plimpton was born March 18, 1927 in New York City to Francis Plimpton and Pauline Ames. He attended Harvard University until 1945, where, at 18, he joined the Army to fight in World War II. After his time in the Army, he went back to Harvard to finish his degree, and then attended both Cambridge University and King’s College for two more degrees. He became editor of The Paris Review in 1953, which helped him progress to various other magazines such as Horizons and Sports Illustrated.

At Sports Illustrated, Plimpton began writing pieces that required him to join in on various sports. Plimpton was interested in putting himself in different situations; the research and writing that Paper Lion consists of were not the only times that Plimpton put himself in the shoes of a player. Before his stint as a football player, Plimpton took up the pitcher’s position in a baseball event where he pitched to the National League, which became the book Out of My League. He also went on to write more participatory sports books, a golfing book called The Bogey Man, Open Net (a hockey book), and Shadow Box, which focused on boxing.

While Plimpton’s first foray into participation in professional sports focused more on enduring the sport as a whole, Paper Lion is more a look at the culture of football in general. In the book, Plimpton is invited to join the Detroit Lions football team in its 1963 season. To get the overall feel for the game, Plimpton wants to learn the spot of quarterback, since much of the game centers around this position. Although he only stays on with the team through its preseason training, Paper Lion does provide a hilarious account of Plimpton’s struggle at quarterback in an exhibition game.

Plimpton has much trouble being accepted at any football league, and writes that many teams are wary of accepting a journalist who might divulge their secrets to the public. However, Plimpton writes in his foreword to the 2003 edition of the book that he did not “peek into closets or put his feet up onto the nearest sofa.” Instead, Plimpton reports what he feels are both an important aspect of the game and the real story of who the players are.

Throughout the course of preseason training, Plimpton is forced to learn football maneuver as well as how to fit in with the team and take notes relevant to his book. Plimpton writes of the hardship that this meant; rookies are treated as “little brothers” to the veteran team members, who force Plimpton and others to sing their college anthems, play pranks on them, and force them to undergo other normal rites of passage. Practices are grueling and embarrassing, especially for a man who has had little to no experience playing regulation football. Even the players tend to view him as a joke, laughing at his size and ability.

Plimpton tries to keep his personal motive a secret, although most of the players pick up on the fact that he is not a real football player. Over time, Plimpton makes friends with some of the team members on the squad, becoming involved with both their personal and football lives.

One of the first members that Plimpton writes about is the head coach of the Lions, George Wilson. Plimpton describes him as a “wide-shouldered” and “deeply-tanned” man who is more than just his bulky appearance. Plimpton has a tendency to get right to the heart of a man with his intelligent and detailed descriptions of personality, and George Wilson is outlined as being a very gentle, free-spirited man with his players. At one point, Plimpton writes of how there are two different ways of coaching: either to be very strict as to what the players can and cannot do, or to be lenient with them and to allow them to do what they want, but with guidelines. Wilson is the latter of these two, and his players respect and respond well to it. Even Plimpton, with his short time on the team, comes to regard Wilson with some sort of respect. When Wilson is forced to make team cuts the day after a scrimmage, he does so while during a team meeting, having a teammate act as a harbinger of sorts who motions them out of the room, the rookies then dispatched by Wilson. Plimpton at first comments that Wilson’s method seems a bit cruel, and then recants, wondering if there can ever be an easy way to dash a man’s dream. Wilson is every bit a player’s coach, and even treats Plimpton as such during his time on the team. Without Wilson, Paper Lion might never have been written.

But most of Plimpton’s time on the team is not spent with Wilson; instead, he is lodged with the players, both rookie and veteran. One of the things that Plimpton writes about most is his association with the players, both about football and team stories. Part of being on a team like the Lions is the fact that each player has his own perspectives on the game of football and stories that have been picked up from experiences on the team. In his attempts to gain perspective on how to play football, he talks to the players about their strategies.

Plimpton meets Night Train Lane, a defensive back veteran on the Lions team, as a way to get a feel for what he might face in a scrimmage situation that he has to play. First, Plimpton asks about Lane’s life and how he got into football, just as curious about the player as he is about the game. Lane gives tips on styles and where to look to understand the player. What is interesting about Plimpton’s notes here is that he did not just focus on his position at quarterback, but tried to uncover details about all of the different positions on the field.

Other players also help Plimpton out in his quest at understanding the game. Harley Sewell, a guard, tried to cheer Plimpton up after he had a devastating time as quarterback in a big scrimmage game. Sewell is portrayed as a man who will not take no for an answer, almost as if his job is to make Plimpton feel better. He brings up the fact that many people have bad games, as if he is a father reassuring his son. Plimpton bonds with the rookies as well, especially a young player named Lucien Reeberg, who actually asks Plimpton what he thinks of his ball playing. After cuts have been made, Plimpton is even asked to host and create a rookie show, where the rookies get to release their stresses and have fun for a night of parodying and partying.

Throughout the course of the book, Plimpton makes the reader feel as if the Lions team is a welcoming group of men all attracted to the same activity. Each player has his own biases and likes and dislikes, but when they live together as a team, they drop their previous feelings to accomplish the one goal of football that they all agree on: winning. This emphasizes the important role that communication plays down on the field itself. Joe Shmidt and Wayne Walker, both linebackers, talk of the importance of knowing the teammate and how they will respond in game situations. “The big thing is knowing the guy’s with you,” Walker says, “so that if he does something separate you can compensate, and cover for him.” Paper Lion’s message is clear here – one player does not make a team. In essence, it is every player that makes or breaks the team, which is made even more apparent during Plimpton’s failure at the scrimmage; the team realizes that even if Plimpton is a very small part of the team, it is still important that morale stays high.

Plimpton progresses through the season steadily with few problems, making time for both practice and work. However, as time gets closer and closer to the scrimmage where Plimpton has to actually participate in team play, he talks of the stresses of the game. It is not just the rookies who get stressed. Alex Karras, as player who is suspended the season that Plimpton stays with the team, would always get physically sick before a game. There is a story told about a rookie quarterback who forgot what he was doing and punted a ball on a first down while on the field. Plimpton writes that the stresses of the game are normal, probably because of how much knowledge and thought must go into every football play made.

As Plimpton makes his way to the end of the preseason, he finds that football is not his forte. In the scrimmage, he calls five plays, hilariously being knocked down by his own teammate, falling on his own accord, almost relinquishing a fumble, overthrowing a pass, and having his play already read before he even attempts it. Plimpton also tries to get into an exhibition game against the Cleveland Browns, but to no avail, as the coach will not allow it. Discouraged by his lack of football skills, Plimpton leaves the Detroit team early, his accomplishments minimal but his knowledge better from his experiences.

Throughout Plimpton’s book, he gives his opinions on the state of football. But what is most interesting about Plimpton’s experiences is how he shows the team’s bondage into one cohesive whole. Written football games can fail because the author lacks the skills to showcase both the finesse and the tension of the game. Plimpton, however, manages to include both of these because he puts himself in the situations, rather than watching from the sidelines. Paper Lion could have just as easily been another run-of-the-mill journalistic piece on a specific football team, covering the wins, losses, and statistics of the team. In this case, though, Plimpton’s sociological experiment provides the reader with insight into both human emotion and the sport of football, which is of course more interesting to both sports fans and non-sports fans alike. There is something about Plimpton’s ability to recall vivid details that draws the reader to his descriptions; his ability to recount stories with the original humor and emotion makes the reader feel as if they are participating right alongside these old football players, even if the events did happen forty years ago.

The book also shows the plight that football players go through that the general public might not understand unless actually subjected to the game. Plimpton partly undergoes this experiment to see what a football player actually has to go through to play the game, and in fact hears many stories that give him the sense that the job the players work at is not all money and fame. At one point, Plimpton writes that during the exhibition game against the Browns, players deposited their valuables with a coach, and he received “a substantial pile of teeth.” Humility is one of the big emotions that Plimpton finds is an important concept in football. The game must always have some sort of humiliation – either you humiliate your opponent or he humiliates you. The winner is the one who wants to humiliate the other player more. Bruce Maher, a defensive halfback, tells Plimpton that “it’s probably [the other player’s] mistake that’s made you look good.” There is always some sort of embarrassment on the field, and it is part of what makes up the game of football.

What Plimpton seems to take home most from his time at Detroit is not the fun or the friendships that he has made, or the fact that he is now somewhat addicted to the Lions, but the extreme conditions that the players face, the prides and embarrassments, and the pain that the football players hate and love at the same time. Plimpton puts it better than any other words can say in his epilogue, referring to inhuman screams that he heard coming from the players on the football field: “I remembered from my last day with the team when I walked up from the practice field – the long bleat from the players being whistled together by the coaches, almost one of sorrow.” It is that drive to play a game that is not exactly pure fun that Plimpton goes into the book not understanding, and when he ends his time with the team, it is still elusive to him. But that does not make his experiences moot – instead, he has told the stories of the players, and given them a voice. He may have even succeeded in giving others a drive to play the game.

The worth of Paper Lion is immeasurable. Plimpton provides his audience with rich detail that simply could not have been written about by any sports magazine. His infiltration of football is both courageous and telling of his spirit. Plimpton may make friends in the book, but it feels like they are the audience’s friends as well, and when it is told that Lucien Reeberg soon dies after the events in the book, one feels the loss as if he knew Reeberg himself. It is Plimpton’s writing, and his ability to tell a story, that sucks the reader in. But another reason why Paper Lion has so much worth is the fact that the reader can draw from the book what they want to. There are a lot of football criticisms thrown around throughout the course of the book, and sports fans and players alike can gain tips and insight into the game, just as Plimpton does. The human condition, though, is the more important factor in the book, one that Plimpton takes away from the experience more than the football, and Plimpton’s words help paint a picture of a football player’s psyche. From high emotions to the limits of a human being, Paper Lion speaks to our culture itself. The acts of the football players – the pranks, the humor, the (at times) rowdy behavior – are all things that the public has stereotyped, yet Plimpton shows that the players do it for a different reason. They are not the stupid humans the public believes they are; they must be smart and physically sound to play their game. Their emotions get the best of them at times like any other individual, and in most regards, they are still just working men. Plimpton brings out the football player’s bravery and individuality, though, which makes his book stand out from the rest as one of the more telling aspects of the sport.

Paper Lion was received quite well by the critics. W.C. Heinz, a sportswriter, is quoted as saying it is “the best book of football I’ve ever read.” Book Week reviewed it with a similar quote. Eliot Fremont Smith from The New York Times said that it is “a tale to gladden the envious heart of any ‘average weekend athlete.’” The book was eventually made into a film in 1968, which was received with the same amount of praise. It starred Alan Alda as Plimpton, and the Lions team played themselves.

Plimpton’s book is one that must be recommended. There is so much depth to the book that it cannot be expressed in just one review, or acknowledged in just one read-through of the book. Paper Lion is unusually detailed, and speaks to an individual rather than the masses. There is something that will get to the heart of every reader, no matter how different they are. Plimpton is able to meld football into a critique of society, and that is where his book really succeeds – instead of an outsider’s view of the game, the audience is brought right down on the field, deleting that gap between fan and player.

The slums (and boxing) – Fat City by Leonard Gardner

No, this book is not about a city of fat people. And though it does have a bit to do with boxing, it is moreso focused on the lives of the boxers and the city that they live in. Leonard Gardner takes the sport of boxing and melds it with character dilemma to deliver an engaging, but not necessarily entertaining, experience.

Fat City tells the story of a man named Billy Tully, an ex-boxer who hit his peak earlier in his career and is now careening downhill fast. He’s a drunkard, confused about women, and barely scrapes by, being intoxicated most of the time anyway. He lives in Stockton, and when he visits the local YMCA to try to get back in shape, he meets a young man named Ernie Munger, a guy working out but not really attempting to be anything more than a now-and-then boxer. Tully convinces Munger to go to a gym that he had once trained at, the Lido Gym where a man named Ruben Luna works, and finally Munger takes him up on his offer. From here on out, Fat City deals with loss in boxing, loss of the self, and the inability to overcome the dark pasts that are mingled with the city’s slummy life.

First off, Gardner does a great job of painting a vivid picture of a town that no one would ever want to live in. Financial depressions abound here; most people are getting up in the early morning darkness to get on buses, picking onions or shaking nuts out of trees, for a meager pay. Alcoholism reigns supreme; our protagonist Billy Tully is one of them, and he hangs out with some less than commendable fellows, like his girlfriend Oma.

Gardner’s ability to write simple, meaningless conversations that actually have some deeper significance is an envious feeling to writers. He manages to make dialogue feel extremely real, as if what the characters are saying is just endless chatter – when in reality, the dialogue is what pushes the plot of the story ahead.

As for an engaging plot, there really isn’t one. Gardner doesn’t stray too long on any one subject, instead jumping back and forth from different characters’ viewpoints to give the reader a sense that all of the characters they are reading about are turning endlessly in circles, lost amongst themselves, trying to find something that can carry them to their dreams but instead falling for the same old problems that got them stuck in their ruts. In a way, Fat City seems pretty hopeless, and towards the end, when a solid conclusion is not presented to us, it feels as though we have begun to fall into this pattern as well.

But while Fat City provides a very appealing look at humanity’s desperation, the bulk of the story was really not that entertaining. Granted, there are some very interesting descriptions and some activities that one may never really have heard of (cutting the stalks off of onions, for instance). For the most part though, the story lingered too much, not really getting anywhere and losing my interest. I do have to say that the last few pages are some really powerful stuff, though.

Gardner’s story is an interesting perspective, but not one that really held my interest for too long. It was hard to get into the story itself, and just when I felt like I had, the writing switched perspectives and I was then thrown back out of it. Fat City is a concise 200 pages, but it is jampacked with detail; yet all of that goes to the wayside if the book fails to suck the reader into its world, and that’s exactly where Fat City got the TKO from me.

Southern comfort and baseball – The Dixie Association by Donald Hays

The Dixie Association is Donald Hays’ fictional account of a released prisoner who plays baseball for a minor league team in the South called the Arkansas Reds. This man is Hog Durham, who goes by no other name. After getting out of jail, the coach of the Reds, Lefty (who is known as the town communist to the religious fanatics), picks up Hog because of his batting and fielding skills. The Reds need players, and Lefty has a tendency to recruit less-than-perfect baseballers. Hog readily joins, as his friend Julius Common Deer plays for the same team, and soon finds himself immersed in the world of hits and runs, RBIs and double plays. Along the way, however, there comes to be a little trouble with Hog’s parole officer, where a man named Ratoplan comes along and blackmails Hog to send one of his fellow ballplayers back to Miami. When Hog refuses, Ratoplan digs through his past to try and stick Hog with a robbery that he had never been arrested for. All this, and Hog still has to try and be the hero in a game where the Reds are pitted against the Selma Americans for the championship.

Hays gets to the bottom of his characters. The Southern talk is great and humorous, but not to the point where it could be annoying. Most of the characters have some depth to them, whether it be Hog’s own views on marriage and love or another team member’s struggle with human interaction. The one thing that does hinder the novel a little is that there are many characters to remember, causing the reader to have to go back and look at who each person was and their relevance to the novel. A few times, it was hard to distinguish the difference between Ratoplan and a lawyer with a similar name.

The plot wavers a bit between tense conflict and more comedic baseball action, which felt just about right. Sometimes the conflict of Hog’s re-conviction disappears and reappears, though, and it makes one think whether or not it was actually so important to the novel at hand. It is hard to tell which plot line should be focused on more – Hog’s new love interest and his ability to continue playing baseball, or the recurring blackmail and worry of being sent back to jail. It was only here that felt like there was a confliction of where the plot was headed, which was not necessarily a bad thing, but one which seemed like it could be ironed out a little better.

However, when Hays writes about baseball, he delivers fast pitch after fast pitch. He does not stop and give all of the statistical analyses of the games, nor a play-by-play approach. Only during the crucial innings does he resort to this, giving the reader more of a skim through of the game than unneeded slow-motion replays.

Hays’ voice is also very strong. From the first line of the book, there was some sort of pleasant connection of words that made it enjoyable to keep reading. Maybe it was Hays’ sense of humor; maybe it was also the fact that he did a great job of giving voice to Hog. Either way, Hays’ writing makes it hard to put The Dixie Association down.

Yet the novel is rather long for what it has to say. Some aspects of the book were too drawn out, like Hog’s extended bout with the police and the problems he faces with Ratoplan. It makes sense that this would be a big dilemma, but it is just too long and frankly, loses steam in the last fourth of the book.

The Dixie Association does have some serious themes going on. Tackling organized religion is always a tough subject, and though Hays does argue against it to some extent, he has limited himself to a point where it does not seem like a diatribe. In fact, one could even say that Hays gives some pretty valid points about joining a religious sect. Some other themes it touches upon include changes in individuals and if they should be judged for their past sins, the plight of an aging baseball player, and a discussion on individuals’ need to get away from society’s evils to just enjoy a bit of living. Some get a little more focus than others, but even those that are just touched upon seem an important critique.

The voice of the South has been spoken by Hays through Hog Durham, and if one is looking for a good Southern culture novel or a good baseball book, turn to The Dixie Association. It has an ample helping of both, and even after 20 years, the book still speaks to the masses.

Taking a trip to Canada – Canoeing with the Cree by Eric Sevareid

Eric Sevareid once took a journey, one which most normal individuals wouldn’t even dream up. For his buddy, Walter Port, and him, the dangers and terrors of an outdoors adventure were just what they were looking for. Canoeing with the Cree lets us in on that adventure, a non-fiction account with Sevareid giving a narrative of their encounters with not only the treacherousness of the wild but the coming of age of two boys living on their own, sharing their lives with the Cree Indians, and having to survive each other.

Sevareid begins his book immediately, starting in on Walter Port’s plan of taking a 2250-mile canoe ride from Minneapolis to the Hudson Bay in Canada. Instead of giving a vivid description of Port and Sevareid, we are thrown right into the preparations needed to start the journey. At first, I felt a little disappointed that we didn’t get a chance to meet our two protagonists. But throughout Sevareid’s depiction of their journey, we are presented with different qualities of both Port and Sevareid. Instead of throwing character traits at the audience all at once, Sevareid lets the situations that happen to them explain their personalities. At one point, a minor disappointment during the journey prompts a fight between the two; the length of time that they had spent together had brought about layers of animosity that came to a head. I felt like this was an important and vital decision by Sevareid – choosing to let he and his friend be fleshed out by their actions gives an added depth to how their surroundings influenced their lives.

Sevareid has a real knack for providing detailed imagery of the environment. He takes more time to describe the beautiful landscape and the rivers themselves. I liked this a lot, and I thought it showed how much of an appreciation Sevareid gained for the beauty of our lands. One of the most touching parts I found in the account was Sevareid’s description of saving animals stuck in the mud of a river. Sevareid talks of hunting animals for food, but when it comes to suffering wildlife, Sevareid and Port show quite an endearing quality in their rescue. They only kill what is necessary and appreciate the life of an animal.

The duo’s appreciation of the Cree Indians is also apparent through Sevareid’s writing. Sevareid makes it known that if it weren’t for the Cree’s help, Port and Sevareid would have died in the unforgiving climes. It is interesting how Sevareid depicts the Indians, a good cultural study from someone who does not have the same background. He gives them a strong compliment; their ability to perform in an environment that can very easily break a man is impressive.

As for those who are not accustomed to boating or canoeing, I found it a little hard at times to understand what Sevareid was explaining at certain points. I have never been canoeing, so I know very little lingo when it comes to portaging or even the techniques of rowing. That is by far no fault of the author, for Sevareid did not set out to make a book that caters to the inexperienced canoeing individual. It is just helpful to know going into the book that one may need to do a little research on the vocabulary of canoeing and boating, so that one can get the full gist of what Sevareid is making note of.

While at times Canoeing with the Cree can seem a little stale in activity, Sevareid has put together a comprensive account of his travels to the Hudson Bay. Through all of this, he has learned what it is like to really live alone, without the busyness of the city. When all is said and done, it seems Sevareid is glad to have both accomplished the trip and had it over. It must have been both rewarding and nerve-wracking, but Sevareid and Port accomplished a real adventure. While two teens have since done the same journey as Port and Sevareid, (not discounting their own tenacity and bravery) it would seem as though they had it a bit easier than the original travelers. One must admire the fact that Sevareid and Port stuck with their dream, focusing on the positive aspect of what an educational experience the voyage could be rather than the tragedies that could befall them. Sevareid and Port took the trip for the fun of the experience, rather than the recognition that most people strive for now, and with Sevareid’s book so modestly accounting the journey, commendation is in order.

It’s on BC

The Congo and chaos: King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild

Know anything about the history of the Congo? King Leopold’s Ghost is Adam Hochschild’s attempt at recreating the events of Belgium’s takeover of the Congo in Africa in the late 1800s. Of course, this involves Belgium’s ruler, King Leopold II, who wanted Belgium to have its own colony, as countries moved towards the practice of imperialism. Since Belgium was small, Leopold II figured that if he was able to obtain the Congo territory, he would be a major contender and rake in a lot of money. Hochschild details not only Leopold, but the entire history of the period, including the major players involved in the takeover and subsequent reforming of the Congo.

One of the things that strikes the reader is the fact that Hochschild has compiled an incredible fountain of resources for this book. Fashioning a rough estimate of the story by using available resources, Hochschild has attempted to make King Leopold’s Ghost as fact-filled as possible, and succeeded heartily. The book, although only around 300 pages, is a plentiful trough of information on the subject. Whether it be people, places, deaths, or events, Hochschild has delved deep into the heart of the matter here and written a heavy, resourceful historical portrayal.

It would be commendable for Hochschild just to point out what happened in this era and leave it at that. But he goes further, presenting his own analysis on Leopold, his reign of evil over the Congo, and the reform groups that were established to rid Africa of the ruler. Hochschild makes reference to where good things went bad, where Leopold or the reformers made errors, where sources were destroyed. It makes the book all the more interesting, rather than dry, “just-the-facts” approach.

Hochschild does not skimp on the heavier parts of the story. In fact, he devotes a whole chapter to pointing out the major causes of deaths in the Congo. This is not to say that Hochschild is reveling in the torture and terror that Leopold’s regime inflicted on the Congolese; he is merely pointing out factual evidence that indicates how horrifying and terrible the Congo became under Leopold. The depth that Hochschild goes into on the chicotte, a whip-like device that was used to torture the Congolese, or the violence that is perpetrated on innocent citizens, are things that only the most twisted individuals could conceive of.

Hochschild makes good use of diary entries, journals, and other primary sources. Texts can get rather boring when much of what the reader has to say is already said in the sources that they quote. However, when Hochschild uses a quote, it is normally to present a direct view of the Congo from someone involved within. They work nicely to highlight certain emotions that the reader can only get from someone who experienced the time.

The book is also rich in character. Hochschild gives life to the people involved in the Congo, whether it be the monsters who inflicted pain and suffering or the people who worked to evict Leopold and his terrible soldiers. We meet so many people with so many different views, and it is hard not to like the reformers who tried to end the whole ordeal. Hochschild laments about his inability to find the voices of the actual suffering Congolese, but I think that Hochschild has given them a voice through his description and analysis of the times that works enough where we can forgive the missing facts.

When the book is finished, one finds a sense of relief: for one, that they did not live through this time period, either being a part of the Congo or knowing that this event was happening and having no power to stop it, and for another, that the story has been told. It is an important time in history, even if some do not want to remember it. It’s also a scary thing to learn about – all of this torture and suffering has been happening all along without people to stand up and condemn the wrongs, and probably still is today. Hochschild has presented this story of the Congo, both to illuminate the past and to give insight about the future. For every wronged culture, there has to be the brave and willing few who will risk their lives to abolish it, and if there is not, evil is free to reign on. I think Hochschild teaches all of us a lesson; we cannot stand idly by and let these immoralities continue. We must be strong enough, and knowledgeable enough, to protect what we know is right.

Bicycles and murder? I’m in! Dead Air: A Cycling Murder Mystery by Greg Moody

Dead Air: A Cycling Murder Mystery. If that tagline doesn’t grab your attention, the comic book-like cover most likely will. Mysteries are always fun, and when they’re paired with a situation that is not normal or likely, they become intriguing just because of the entertainment value alone. Dead Air doesn’t do too much to speed by the competition with wheels clicking, but it does provide some immediate gratification.

This book is Greg Moody’s fifth in the Cycling Murder Mystery series, although for those who haven’t read the other four, Moody gives enough background information for one to gain a sense of what happened in the other stories while not giving away too much. It’s probably best to begin from square one, but I found myself reading this book first and wasn’t too confused.

In Dead Air, Will Ross is a struggling widower after his wife was killed in a basketball bombing. Ross is now left with his child, Elena, as he attempts to overcome his lethargy, get back into the work force in the sports section at local television station TV6, and forget about the past. Elena is the one who has really lost the most - her mother but also her father, because Ross is hesitant to take on the job of father alone. Ross has his mother-in-law Rose to look after the baby while he gets on his feet, and he finally goes back to his job, where a new anchor is trying to take over his position. Ross also gets a call from the man who killed his wife, and so he promptly calls his good friend Detective Whiteside back into the case to get to the bottom of things. As all this is occurring, Ross is seduced by a manipulative reporter, Beth Freeman, who is working to get Ross fired from his job and pen an emotional (and faked) special on Ross’ detachment from his daughter. Ross’ friend Zorro, Clyde Zoromski, tries to warn him about Freeman’s bitchiness, but Ross doesn’t want a man to get between him and his sexual desires. All this and bombs, bombs, bombs.

Moody puts so many characters into his stories, and they each have their own distinct personality. This is a good thing, because with so many characters, it is sometimes hard to lose track of who they all are. When their personalities come up, though, it makes it easy to tell who they are. I remembered the characters more for how they acted than their actual names. There are some characters who are just plain likable – Zorro, for example, is a case of a character being more likable in a story than in real life. His attitude is one of negativity, which would probably make him annoying in reality, yet in the novel I wanted to see more of him. Ross, on the other hand, is a helpless bumbling mess, which almost makes sense since he is still full of sorrow from his life, but one would like to hope that a man would not be so enthralled with sex that he would drop all of his morals and wit for it. Ross makes mistakes that are incredibly tedious, being convinced of situations by words alone, that we can understand how he had never found his wife’s murderers.

Ross is not the only thing that seems unbelievable. The detectives are dumb – they can’t figure anything out for the life of them until the inexperienced figure it out for themselves. Ross was better off alone – the police keep getting in Ross’ way, actually, and by the time they figure out the mystery for themselves, it’s too late; everything has already been dealt with. Also, most events seem too coincidental. This just happens to happen which sets off this who happens to be there… Yadda yadda yadda it would be okay if it happened once or twice, but the book offers this up as an explanation again and again.

However, the story is intriguing and thrilling, page-ripping one could even say, once you tune out thoughts like, “How could they really not know!” or “How could he actually FALL for that?” It’s pretty suspenseful and the plot moves faster than Ross whipping down a mountain on his bike. At times, the plot can actually feel a bit muddled with so much happening at once, but it straightens itself out towards the end. The chapters are cut into scenes, too, so it’s easy to pick up and put down the book when needed. The narration shifts between all of the characters, which can get annoying because during any given scene we might be in two different character’s minds in the space of two sentences. The surprise towards the end isn’t a gigantic twist, and it can be seen coming, although Moody provides just enough distraction to keep us from knowing who the killer is early on.

Dead Air does have its flaws, but it’s a fast and easy read for those looking for murder pulp. It’s not rich with character analyses, psychological drama, or metaphors, but it’s still a great read to be entertained, and a book doesn’t always need thick prose to mire in for it to be good. The most important thing about Dead Air is that it’s enjoyable and humorous, suspenseful and ironic, all at the same time, and one other thing – it almost makes you want to go ride a bike like Ross does, mile after mile… On second thought, maybe only one mile – Moody makes it seem as though those 50 mile bike rides are cake, but I have a feeling he’s exaggerating.

Eh I’m on BC

Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis and its cultural, educational relevance

In the spirit of my never-ending battle of finishing literary papers for my classes, I’ve decided to again post another one, this time on Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, mainly Book I. While this is categorized loosely as a graphic novel review, it’s not a traditional review and delves both into some recurring themes and relevance to cultural, and since this was for an education prepracticum, the ability to teach the book to classes. Sit back and enjoy, because it’s fairly long for a blog post, and please, let me know how you feel about the book, write-up, or anything at all.

Persepolis, written and drawn by Marjane Satrapi, is a graphic novel that deals with Satrapi’s childhood in Tehran, Iran during the early 1980s. Satrapi writes about both her dealings with the Islamic Revolution – where many Iranian people, including her parents, demonstrated against the Shah’s regime and his persecution against people with differing religious views – and the war between Iran and Iraq after the Islamic Revolution. She documents certain events from her life, including her own participation in demonstrations, her rebellion against the restrictions placed on her by the government, and the losses that she faces throughout the war, and ending with Satrapi leaving Iran for Germany without her parents. Persepolis contains many unique views, because Satrapi does not tell the reader her story, but instead shows them, alongside conversations that she had with her family and friends. Satrapi conveys her attitudes and beliefs of her culture, being one who lived in. She describes the encounters that she had during the turbulent times, which act as a new viewpoint to look at when thinking about Iran. By dividing her life into comic strip chapters, rather than just a long narrative, Satrapi has represented the important themes and events in her life in such a way that she follows a chronological order of situations that were very moving and important to who she is as a person. Some of the topics that Satrapi chooses to focus on deal with the enforcement of beliefs and religion, what it means to be a hero, the effects of being a martyr, the importance of one’s own views, the power of a nation and its demonstrations, the coming of age in a divided nation, and the effects of war on society. These are only some of the very deep themes that Satrapi presents in her memoirs. Satrapi’s graphic novel touches on many different academic areas; art, for one, because of Satrapi’s use of a comic style; English, as a study in literature; socio-cultural anthropology, because of Satrapi’s analysis of both her society and Iranian culture and religion; politics, as Satrapi discusses the government of Iran and its revolutions and wars; and also psychology, because Satrapi looks at both her own thoughts, wants, and needs but also those of the people around her.

What is very interesting about Satrapi’s story is her commentary on the traditions and beliefs of her culture. Satrapi does not leave out her nation’s traditions, no matter how extreme or different they are from American culture. It is important that she does this while also juxtaposing them with her own and her parents’ beliefs, because it shows that Satrapi does not necessarily believe that her country is right. She points out that even though her nation’s government enforces the laws of Iran, it does not mean that the people of the society believe in them. Satrapi makes mention of this in her introduction, which is a strong point – one for anyone judging a culture by its government to make note of. She states, “I believe that an entire nation should not be judged by the wrongdoings of a few extremists.” Even though Satrapi is writing about events that happened 20 years ago, her point is still relevant today, when many Americans blame all Iraqis for terrorist attacks. In the back of their minds, they realize that they are making a mistake to claim that all Iraqis believe in attacking America, but their emotions get the best of them. In the case of Persepolis, Satrapi uses her differing views on governing laws to point this fact out. For instance, Satrapi’s chapter “Kim Wilde” focuses on her parents’ smuggling rock music and posters across the border for Satrapi; here, the reader sees Satrapi and her parents rebelling against the law, but for a cause that they and many other Iranians believe in. Satrapi makes it a point to show how her family rebelled against society as well. In chapters like “The Letter” and “The Water Cell” depict non-violent protests, and the chapter “The Wine” shows a calm, controlled dance party with alcohol that was protesting both the illegal actions of partying and alcohol. Satrapi is sure to indicate that their protests were not violent, nor were they done for the sake of breaking the law. They were obviously done to express the people’s wants and needs, a right that Americans can relate to. It is important that Satrapi tells this from her point of view as well as the fundamentalists’, because it allows the reader to gauge their own reaction and create a perspective.

Satrapi also makes a deep impact from using both personal and regional history in how she treats death and destruction that happen all around her during the war. To Iran’s history and to people who did not know the war, everyone who died was a martyr for their country. But to Satrapi, who knew many people who were killed either protesting in the Iranian Revolution or who were forced to join in the fighting in the war with Iraq, the people who died will always be remembered because she lived through it and saw first-hand the tragedies that people were faced with. In the chapter “The Heroes,” Satrapi is told of the tortures that imprisoned protesters underwent, and even the death of someone her mother knew. In “The Sheep,” Satrapi’s uncle is taken prisoner and then executed. “The Passport” tells of her uncle Taher who died from a heart attack because he was delayed in receiving a passport for medical treatment. The tale that seems to hit hardest is “The Shabbat,” in which Satrapi’s friend is killed after a missile hits her house. All of these deaths are in the past and are probably not remembered by many, but to Satrapi, these were important deaths that she can never forget – she honors these people, and their memories, by presenting them in her book and telling their stories.

As a reader, the graphics have a few different impacts on me. For one, I feel like the graphics are great visuals that accompany the reading. They really help to accompany the story and never detract from it, and it also allows for Satrapi to tell her memoirs differently. Instead of describing the people and places that she knew, she draws them, and her visuals represent the personality of the individual. In text-based literature, it is sometimes hard to get a feel for physical characteristics and expressions, and body language is important, especially in serious situations. Her visuals also offer both a lightening and heightening of emotion. At times, the cartoons can be rather humorous and detract from the tension. Satrapi uses this to her advantage, refraining from giving the reader an overbearing sense of dread. However, the drawings can also add horror and pain. In text, one might feel a little detached from death or destruction, but with Satrapi’s drawings, the reader is presented with a visual that almost makes the story real again. With this reality comes an attachment, and when Satrapi talks of death, the visuals punctuate her fear, anger, and grief, because they bring an added element to the events. An example that seemed extremely well done in this instance was in “The Dowry,” when Satrapi is leaving the country and her family is at the airport seeing her off. The last panel, of Satrapi looking through the glass as her father carries her fainting mother away, is so strong paired with the line, “It would have been better to just go.” Without the visual, Satrapi would have had to explain what was happening in text and then end with her last line, and by the time, the sequence would not seem to have the same emotional effect as it does drawn. Even though it is a cartoon, it still tears at the reader emotionally.

On the other hand, an argument one could make towards the graphics is that many people like to use their imagination to visualize what is going on in the story. Sometimes readers feel like seeing the story detracts from their own views, and they like the story more when they can imagine it for themselves. In a chapter like “Moscow,” some readers might like to create the story in their heads for themselves. Yet in Satrapi’s case, I feel like her aim was to make her story as true as possible to the real thing, and the ability of giving graphics to create the realism was something that she used to her advantage. Rather than have the audience misinterpret her meaning, she used the drawings as a way of explaining a culture that other cultures might have problems understanding.

A great way, I feel, to use Perspolis in a class lesson would be as a study in non-text-based literature. Many times, English classes tend to only focus on novels and poetry, and never really delve into other forms of writing such as memoirs, non-fiction essays, plays or scripts, and graphic novels. I think that it is important as an English teacher to represent the wide range of reading that is available, not focusing on just one form of literature where it seems like novels are the only relevant pieces of writing. Persepolis does both represent a memoir and a graphic novel.

I also believe that Persepolis could be used to present a different outlook on cultures. It could be used in English or history classes, looking at societies and showing differences between them. One could compare and contrast our culture to Iranian culture, showing students diversity.

Students may find it difficult, at first, to associate their beliefs and feelings with those the novel. They may require some hints from the teacher as to how the student can understand Satrapi’s encounters and relate it to their own. A good way to overcome this might be to provide some historical context on Iranian culture that is not a part of the book – research might be done on the customs of Iran, or one could look at the Iranian Revolution and the Iraq-Iran war and compare it to the war that America is fighting now with Iraq, or with America’s own revolution. To understand how and why Satrapi had drawn and written the book, students could do an activity where they were asked to take a situation from their own lives and put it into comic form. In this way, students would be able to use the same processes that Satrapi did when writing Persepolis. It may make her graphic novel easier to read and more engaging when the students understand the reasons and motives behind the novel. Another way for students to understand the book might be to have each student take a chapter of the book and analyze it for themes and important concepts, using the jigsaw method. Students could either present their findings the small groups, or they could each create a Powerpoint and present it to the entire class, building both their ability to understand text and visuals, but also helping their public speaking skills.

Satrapi’s book is very useful in the classroom because of its diversity and originality. Persepolis has a wide range of emotions and feelings that can create lively discussions in the classroom. It also spices up the classroom learning, creating a new and fresh reading that can provide relief from learning from text-based books.

Racing with Seabiscuit: An American Legend

Seabiscuit is not about a race horse. Laura Hillenbrand’s biography tells the story of more than just the horse itself - she also writes about the people who came together to form an element that is one of the greatest icons in sports history.

Seabiscuit tells the story of a four-point meeting of the minds. Hillenbrand starts out introducing the reader, in explicit fact-based detail, to each of the characters. First, there is Charles Howard, the owner of Seabiscuit, who was at first a major player in the rise of the automobile industry who then got into the adventurous hobby of horseracing. Hillenbrand makes it known from the beginning that her biography will not focus on just the horse, with so much detail put into the background of the characters. From there on, the audience then meets Seabiscuit’s trainer, Tom Smith, a calm, collected and utterly secretive cowboy. Only then is Seabiscuit actually presented, a knobby-kneed little horse who looks as though he can’t run. When Tom Smith sees him, however, he knows that he can work the horse into something amazing. Then along comes jockey Red Pollard, a man blind in one eye but still able to ride. These four persons come together to make up Team Seabiscuit, a force unleashed on the track. There are hardships; there are celebrations; there is death. Seabiscuit gives the reader all of this plus a history lesson.

Hillenbrand’s prose is very sharp. Her sentences don’t float around – instead, she says what she means and that is that. There are no long, frumpy sentences with boisterous language. Hillenbrand delivers quick, smart sentences that create the emotions that the history requires.

Hillenbrand also has an eye for penning likeability in characters. Most likely Hillenbrand reported the truth on each person’s personality, but still, she had to put it in a way where it would create an emotional attachment between character and reader, and Hillenbrand has done just that. Troubling scenes create tension inside the reader, because they actually feel for the people (even if they have been dead for 50 years.)

Anyone who knows about Seabiscuit probably knows his legacy. But that does not mean that Seabiscuit is a less exciting read. Hillenbrand puts the reader right in the shoes of the jockey, hinting at little images and descriptions that one might not know, or even understand if they are not a jockey themselves.

While the story of Seabiscuit is a great adventure, Hillenbrand’s second success is the fact that she teaches those of us who know nothing about horseracing a thing or two. She points out the trials of jockeys, the dangers of racing, and even subtly, the bad habits of betting. She brings to the surface how hard it is to lose, but also what one is faced with when they win.

In the end, we are sad to part with Pollard, Smith, Howard, and of course, Seabiscuit. But all along we knew we had to, as this legacy cannot keep going. The history has already been written, and so the reader has gone into the book knowing that the story must end. And Hillenbrand gives it to us straight – she doesn’t skimp on the details, no matter how depressing they are. When the end comes, we miss Seabiscuit – but so does the racing world, and in that, Hillenbrand succeeds again, in bringing the past to the present.

B –> C