Blood Meridian – or The Evening Redness in the West

By Cormac McCarthy

337 pages

Published in April 1985 by Random House

I’m writing this review two hours before we meet to discuss the book. At this point, I’ve read about half of it. Normally, I’d feel uncertain about commenting on a novel I’d only half read, but not in this case. I’m quite certain that what’s ahead for me is more of what I’ve already experienced.

There isn’t much of a plot to Blood Meridian. It’s more like a travelogue – taking the reader through the seven circles of Cormac McCarthy’s vision of hell. There are four or five principal characters, but none can be described as a protagonist – not even “the kid.”

There is no character development to speak of. No anagnorisis. No peripetia. No denouement. But there is the kid’s tragic journey through a bleak and brutal landscape, described in language that is verbally lush, syntactically challenging – and always poetic. In fact, I have come to think of this book more as a prose poem than a novel.

Blood Meridian follows the kid, a teenage orphan with a penchant for violence, as he gets hooked up with a series of even more violent people while seeking his fortune in the US/Mexico borderland in the middle of the 19th century.

Some of the plot and at least two of the characters are based on historical accounts. One of them is John Glanton, the leader of a gang of thieves and murderers that, among other atrocities, randomly massacred indigenous Americans and Mexicans in 1949 and 1950. Another is Judge Holden, a character one could reasonably suppose to be a hybrid of Ahab, Kurtz, and Mephistopheles, but who was, in fact, a real person.

If Blood Meridian is verbally a prose poem, it is visually an orgy of charred and bludgeoned human bodies, broken skulls, bloody scalps, raped women, and hung and dismembered babies. Instead of a plot, the reader is delivered a litany of human cruelty, betrayal, and evil. These actions continue, almost unbroken, for 337 pages. You can open the book to any page, put your finger on any sentence, and you will be within 20 words of something that is ugly and/or violent and/or terrifying.

But the prose… It is the reason you want to keep on reading.

Blood Meridian is a literary achievement. It is Heart of Darkness played out on the Western Frontier, spare in sentimentality and brimming with Peckinpah-level carnage.

I’m eager to discover what my fellow Mules will say about it. I know at least one of them put the book down without finishing it. But Harold Bloom himself put it down twice before reading it through a third time and declaring it a masterpiece.

As I said, I am about halfway through the book. And so far, I’m not sure I’d rate Blood Meridian as highly as Bloom did. (Not that he would have needed my confirmation.) But I am certain that I will finish it – because even if it fails as a novel in some ways, it succeeds magnificently in so many others.

Critical Reception  

* “Blood Meridian comes at the reader like a slap in the face, an affront that asks us to endure a vision of [hell]…. But while Cormac McCarthy’s fifth novel is hard to get through, it is harder to ignore. Any page of his work reveals his originality, a passionate voice given equally to ugliness and lyricism.”  (Caryn James, New York Times, April 28, 1985)

* “McCarthy’s style is a pastiche of bad Faulkner, and his vocabulary is apparently drawn from Jacobean tragedies and translations of Beowulf…. The narrative is littered with portentous phrases like ‘Gods years’ and ‘lies by God lies.’ These… pronouncements, after a while, become irksomely hollow and pretentious…. Blood Meridian is certainly bold and disturbing – but does that make it a masterpiece?”  (Allen Boyer, Detroit Free Press, March 24, 1985)

* “[Cormac McCarthy] is the writer all American writers have to measure themselves against.” (David Vann, The Guardian, Nov. 13, 2009)

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

By Neil deGrasse Tyson

244 pages

Published in 2017 by W.W. Norton & Co.

“I’m in a hurry,” I thought.

“Astrophysics? I’ve been trying to teach myself physics – Newtonian physics, relativity, quantum mechanics – for decades, with only marginal success. Maybe this book will give me another foothold on the subject. And maybe, as a bonus, I could develop an opinion about the Big Bang theory and black holes.”

I’m halfway through the book as I write this. I’m reading and listening to it, as I’ve become accustomed to doing. Professor Tyson himself does the reading. And he does a nice job of it. Warm, friendly, funny.

All the big issues are here: space, time, how the universe began, how we fit into it.

What I like about it: Pretty much everything so far. I especially like that the chapters are broken into small, digestible pieces.

What I don’t like about it: Despite his clarity, Tyson leaves me behind in almost every chapter. I’m getting the bigger points, but I’m still in the fog on the trickier stuff. If I’m going to really learn from this book, I’m probably going to have to read it more than once. But that’s a price I’m willing to pay.

Critical Reception 

* “Tyson is a master of streamlining and simplification… taking mind-bogglingly complex ideas, stripping them down to their nuts and bolts, padding them with colorful allegories and dorky jokes, and making them accessible to the layperson.” (Salon)

* “Tyson manifests science brilliantly… [his] insights are valuable for any leader, teacher, scientist, or educator.” (Forbes)

*  “The book is not quite astrophysics for dummies; while it is simplified, it is not simple. It is more a collection of the best and most thrilling moments; astrophysics’ greatest hits.” (The Guardian)

* “DeGrasse Tyson has a talent for making very complicated concepts seem simple, and the amount of content squeezed into one short volume is impressive. He certainly knows his stuff. It takes no time at all to romp through a chapter as the book is written with humour and his descriptions verge on the poetic.” (Chemistry World)

Talent Is Overrated

By Geoff Colvin

228 pages

Originally published in 2008

If I were to list the 100 best non-fiction books I’ve ever read, Talent Is Overrated would not be included. Not because it’s a bad book, but because it presents an argument about achievement and personal excellence that I was already quite familiar with.

In fact, I developed a nearly identical thesis in postings I wrote for Early to Rise more than 20 years ago. But there’s been a lot more research into the subject since then. And in Talent Is Overrated, Geoff Colvin does a good job of summing it all up. Which is to say, if you have ever wondered why some people develop mastery in certain areas while most lag far behind, this is a book I would recommend.

In the fall of 2000, I was thinking about skill development – what it takes to get better at complex skills, such as writing or playing chess or competing in martial arts – and wondering (perhaps because I was frustrated by my own pace of learning) why some people develop faster and farther than others.

There were quite a few interesting studies that I could have looked at. Instead, I did what I often did back then: I allowed myself to believe that my own experience was more than enough to answer my own questions.

I did some retroactive calculations on how long it took me to learn how to speak passable French, to write a successful sales letter, and to earn my black belt in Jiu Jitsu. And I measured the time in hours…

To begin the process of improving yourself, you must accept the fact that you are less than you want to be. As beginners in practicing a skill, we are almost all incompetent. If you aren’t humble enough to acknowledge that, you will resist taking the baby steps you need to take to eventually rise to a level of competence and then mastery.

In addition to humility, you need persistence, the willingness to put in the hours it takes to achieve whatever level of skill you are aspiring to. Based on my experience, it takes about 1,000 hours of practice to become competent in a complex skill, and 5,000 hours to achieve mastery. (With a teacher to guide you, maybe less.)

But practice doesn’t mean simply repeating a skill over and over again. It means doing it with awareness and attention. If all you are doing is going through the motions, your chances of improving are small.

When I wrote this 20 years ago, I believed I was introducing a brand-new idea into the marketplace of such ideas. In fact, as I said, that field of inquiry had already been studied at some length. And there was a Swedish psychologist, Anders Ericsson, that had come to a conclusion that was similar to mine. (He postulated 10,000 hours for “world class mastery,” a somewhat higher standard than I had in mind.)

Geoff Colvin serves up the same idea in Talent Is Overrated – but with a slightly different timespan, lots of additional backup, and some interesting thoughts and speculations. His prose is clean, his examples are entertaining, and the argument overall is convincing.

Here are a few nuggets I highlighted as I read:

* “Many people not only fail to become outstandingly good at what they do, no matter how many years they spend doing it, they frequently don’t even get any better than they were when they started.”

* “Being good at whatever we want to do is among the deepest sources of fulfillment we will ever know.”

* “IQ is a decent predictor of performance on an unfamiliar task, but once a person has been at a job for a few years, IQ predicts little or nothing about performance.”

* “In math, science, musical composition, swimming, X-ray diagnosis, tennis, literature – no one, not even the most “talented” performers, became great without at least 10 years of very hard preparation.”

“Deliberate practice,” Colvin says, is the key to achieving world-class performance. And he points out that this is usually done with a teacher’s help. (“Anyone who thinks they’ve outgrown the benefits of a teacher’s help should at least question that view.”)

“The great performers isolate remarkably specific aspects of what they do and focus on just those things until they are improved,” he says, “then it’s on to the next aspect. Only by choosing activities in the learning zone can one make progress. That’s the location of skills and abilities that are just out of reach…. Identifying the learning zone, which is not simple, and then forcing oneself to stay continually in it as it changes, which is even harder – these are the first and most important characteristics of deliberate practice.”

Not surprisingly…

It is hard work.

It does not feel like fun.

Critical Reviews 

A few of the comments posted by readers on the GoodReads website:

* “One of, if not THE best book I read this year. Some of this book supported theories I’ve read in other books… yet Colvin presented the ideas backed with more research. This book reinforced my beliefs on the benefits of coaching. Colvin also pointed out specific ways to apply this knowledge to business.”

* “This book is overrated. After meandering for several chapters through what does NOT lead to high performance, Colvin finally gets around to arguing that the secret is ‘deliberate practice.’”

* “There are numerous good points about this book: good information based on solid scientific research; pretty good writing (not master level but close); cogent argument, and so on. That being said, this book leaves several threads hanging.”

Click here to watch a promotional video for the book by the author.

A Sport and a Pastime

by James Salter

204 pages

Originally published in 1967

Paperback published in 2006 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

A Sport and a Pastime – another Mules Book Club selection – is a short novel. Just 200-something pages. I bought an old paperback copy that I read in bed, and an audio version that I listened to while driving.

I enjoy consuming a book this way. It’s efficient, and it’s multidimensional. Sometimes, when the reader is especially good, I prefer the audiobook. Other times, when I like the voice in my head better than the reader’s, I favor the print. In this case, although the reader did a good job with the dialog, I was less than happy with his reading of the many poetic passages. I wanted him to savor them. He chewed them up.

A Sport and a Pastime is considered by most critics to be a modern classic. And its author, James Salter, has been canonized among America’s great late-20th century novelists, along with Philip Roth, John Updike, and Norman Mailer. When the book was recommended, I thought, “Well, another book I’ve read before.” With the opening paragraph, I realized I hadn’t. And that I was in for a treat:

September. It seems these luminous days will never end. The city, which was almost empty during August, now is filling up again. It is being replenished. The restaurants are all reopening, the shops. People are coming back from the country, the sea, from trips on roads all jammed with cars. The station is very crowded. There are children, dogs, families with old pieces of luggage bound by straps. I make my way among them. It’s like being in a tunnel. Finally I emerge onto the brilliance of the quai, beneath a roof of glass panels which seems to magnify the light.

The Story

A Sport and a Pastime is the story of a summer romance between Philip Dean, an American middle-class college dropout, and Anne-Marie, a French girl. It is told by a highly intelligent, highly self-conscious, and ultimately unreliable narrator (who is unnamed).

The plot – well, it doesn’t have a plot. Unless you think this is a plot… Chapter One: Wake, walk, talk, eat, drink, fuck. Chapter Two: Wake, fuck, eat, walk, go to the movies, drink, fuck. Other chapters: The same, but in a slightly different order.

If that sounds like a condemnation, it’s not. Not entirely. For many good reasons, A Sport and a Pastime deserves its literary status. Salter’s prose is engaging and seductive. The dialog is natural and efficient. The sex scenes are not (as many critics have said) pornographic, but erotic. Erotic in a sparse and almost clinical way. And that renders them believable – which, one realizes in reading them, is a significant literary accomplishment.

Lacking the typical arc of a conventional plot, the narrative gets its forward motion by the elegance of the prose and the mystery of the narrator. He presents himself as a friend of Dean, the protagonist. But he admits to his unreliability from the very first chapter and continues to remind the reader that the narration, though it flows like a memoir, is entirely a product of fiction. In fact, I had the notion that Dean and the narrator were one. Dean being the imagined Alpha of the narrator, or – perhaps more interestingly – the narrator being the imagined Nick Carraway to the author’s actual self.

Critical Reception

A Sport and a Pastime is, as I said, considered a modern classic. But only I and one other Mule felt it deserved that reputation. The rest panned it severely. Most didn’t even finish it. “It’s like Dick and Jane Have Sex,” one said. “Sixteen times in sixteen chapters.”

I was shocked. Most of the time, there is general agreement about the books we read. But A Sport and a Pastime may be the least-liked book we’ve read since we began meeting 10 years ago. Hell, sophomoric, pseudo-literary novels like The Kite Runner, The Underground Railroad, and Where the Crawdads Sing got better reviews.

Reynolds Price, in The New York Times Book Review, wrote: “Of living novelists, none has produced a novel I admire more than A Sport and a Pastime… it’s as nearly perfect as any American fiction I know.”

And as recently as 2017, Sarah Hall, writing for The Guardian, had this to say: “Since its publication in 1967, during the decade of sexual revolution, A Sport and a Pastime has set the standard not only for eroticism in fiction, but for the principal organ of literature – the imagination. What appears at first to be a short, tragic novel about a love affair in France is in fact an ambitious, refractive inquiry into the nature and meaning of storytelling, and the reasons we are compelled to invent, in particular, romances. That such a feat occurs across a mere 200 pages is breathtaking, and though its narrative choreography seems simple, the novel is anything but minor.”

Note: If, after reading A Sport and a Pastime, you want to know more about James Salter, there’s a 54-minute documentary (available on Amazon Prime) that explains his “love affair” with France and his place in modern American fiction. It includes plenty of snippets of his writing, which will give you a feel for the terse beauty of his prose style.

You can watch the trailer here.

Do One Thing Different

By Bill O’Hanlon

224 pages

Originally published in 1999 by William Morrow and Company

A cop comes upon a drunk on his hands and knees at night under a streetlight.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“I’m looking for my keys,” the drunkard replies, slurring.

The cop decides to help him. After a few minutes, he looks up and asks: “Do you remember the last place you saw them?”

“Sure,” the sot replies, straightening up and pointing into the darkness across the street. “I dropped them over there.”

The cop laughs. “Then why the hell are we looking here?”

The drunkard gives him a condescending look. “Because the light is better.”

Explanations, Bill O’Hanlon says in Do One Thing Different, do not solve problems. They “often give us an illusion of help by enabling us to understand why we have a problem but not giving us any concrete ways to actually solve it.”

And that, he says, is why psychoanalysis and other forms of explanation-based therapies don’t work. Instead of solutions:

* They orient you toward what can’t be changed – the past or personality characteristics.

* They encourage you to view yourself as a victim – of your childhood, your biology, your family, or societal oppression.

* They sometimes create new problems you didn’t know you had.

Reading this book again more than 20 years after it was published, it struck me that O’Hanlon was on to something that was even back then a problem with American culture. As he put it:

“These systems of explanation lead to victim culture, in which people focus on the damage done to them in childhood or their current relationships. This results in a tendency to blame others and look outside ourselves for solutions – to turn to experts or self-help books and groups.”

One of the things I best remember from the Introduction to Psychology class I took in 1969 was that it took about 7 or 8 years for traumatized people treated with psychoanalysis to recover. That was the same rate at which traumatized people recovered with no treatment at all.

O’Hanlon recommends a different approach to treating psychological challenges and overcoming emotional debris: his take on cognitive behavioral therapy.

As you may know from previous essays, I’m a big fan of Viktor Frankl and cognitive behavioral therapy, existential therapy, and logotherapy. All of which is to say that, although Do One Thing Different may be a little simplistic, I enjoyed reading it a second time. (And I especially enjoyed reading my marginalia.)

Critical Reviews 

 * “One reason why I loved this book is that rather than giving specific solutions to specific problems, it hands us tools which we can use in any problem scenario.” (Avani Mehta)

* “Chock-full of interesting stories and examples that describe the subtleties and practicalities of the solution-oriented approach.” (Family Therapy Networker)

* “If you do one thing different, read this book! It is filled with practical, creative, effective, down-to-earth solutions to life’s challenging problems.” (Michele Weiner-Davis, author of Divorce Busting)

The Bomber Mafia

By Malcolm Gladwell

Published in 2021 by Allen Lane

This was The Mules’ book selection for July.

Malcolm Gladwell is one of my favorite non-fiction authors. His books are about ideas. Interesting, often contrary ideas that have an enduring impact on my thinking.

One example: The Tipping Point, which presents his theory on how trends take shape and sometimes take over. (I use this idea all the time when discussing marketing and product development with business colleagues.)

Another example: Blink, which explores the concept of “thin-slicing” and explains why spontaneous decisions are often better than carefully planned ones.

A third example: David & Goliath, which is about why being disadvantaged is often a blessing.

The Bomber Mafia is basically about the development of precision bombing during WWII.

The question that Gladwell sets out to answer: What if, instead of the traditional carpet bombing that kills hundreds of thousands of civilians, you could conduct a campaign of “precision bombing” that would take out key infrastructure and manufacturing targets and incapacitate your enemy? Would that be the way to go?

To answer that question, he focuses on the opposing views of the two very different military leaders assigned to the war in the Pacific: Curtis LeMay and Haywood Hansell. LeMay as the pragmatist in charge of the brutal firebombing of Japan that killed more innocents than the two atomic bombs that followed. Hansell as an advocate for fewer civilian casualties through precision bombing.

But since it is a Malcolm Gladwell book, there is more going on than that. The Bomber Mafia is also about the technology and psychology of military conflict. It is about the morality of war and warfare. Plus (what was most intriguing to me), it is about the capacity of smart people to ignore facts – big, obvious, in-your-face facts – when you are committed to an idea.

What I Liked 

Malcolm Gladwell is a great storyteller. And, as a collection of stories, The Bomber Mafia is ripe with wonderful characters (in addition to LeMay and Hansell) and vignettes. The Dutch genius that invents a homemade, precision-bombing computer. The band of nerdy officers of the Air Force Tactical Squad in central Alabama. The pyromaniacal chemists at Harvard.
And here is Gladwell’s stunning description of a B-17 bomber being attacked on a run over Germany:

“One 20-millimeter cannon shell penetrated the right side of the airplane and exploded beneath the pilot, cutting one of the gunners in the leg. A second shell hit the radio compartment, cutting the legs of the radio operator off at the knees. He bled to death. A third hit the bombardier in the head and shoulder. A fourth shell hit the cockpit, taking out the plane’s hydraulic system. A fifth severed the rudder cables. A sixth hit the number 3 engine, setting it on fire. This was all in one plane. The pilot kept flying.”

What I Did Not Like 

When Gladwell leaps to provide superlative assessments or draws broad lessons of history from isolated incidents, he makes me wary.

He argues, for example, that Curtis LeMay’s savage firebombing campaign was a success because (combined with the atomic bombs) it shortened the war. Had the war gone on longer, he suggests, millions of Japanese could have died of starvation. And he waves away any and all lingering questions of wartime atrocity by quoting a secondhand anecdote about a “senior Japanese historian” who once “thanked” an American historian for the firebombing because it prevented a land invasion.

Critical Reviews 

* “Gripping… Gladwell is a wonderful storyteller… in [his] deft hands, the Air Force generals of World War II come back to life… I enjoyed this short book thoroughly, and would have been happy if it had been twice as long.” (Thomas E. Ricks, New York Times Book Review)

* “A thought-provoking, accessible account of how people respond to difficult choices in difficult times… Gladwell’s easy conversational style works well… and his admiration for the Bomber Mafia shines through. His portraits of individuals are compelling.” (Diana Preston, Washington Post)

* “Truly compelling… written in New York Times bestseller Malcolm Gladwell’s characteristic approachable, story-telling style.” (Zibby Owens, Good Morning America)

Interesting Facts 

* The book began as an audiobook, which is obvious because of its conversational style.

* After World War II, the 20 years of foundational work by the Bomber Mafia resulted in the separation of the United States Air Force from the Army.

* The Bomber Mafia’s strategic doctrine, changed by war and experience, helped shape the mission of the new Air Force and its Strategic Air Command.

Virginia Woolf: Her Last Letter 

When people say that suicide is a selfish act, I think, “No, thinking that suicide is a selfish act is what is selfish.”

There is only one reason that people kill themselves: The pain of living has become unbearable.

We can all, to some degree, recognize the fearful thoughts and anguished feelings of others. But it is the height of arrogance to presume that we can experience the intensity of them.

By the time she was 22, Virginia Woolf had suffered two “nervous breakdowns.” They were brought on, some believe, by the deaths of her mother, her half-sister, and her father, all within a few years.

But depression is not a dark mantle that can be tossed aside after the precipitating event passes. It is more like the shadow of a monster that stalks silently behind you, ready to gobble you up if you slow your pace, even for a minute.

Woolf struggled with depression throughout her life. In March of 1941, she attempted but failed to drown herself. Several days later, she was “successful.”

She left her husband, Leonard, this note:

Dearest,

I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can’t concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can’t fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can’t even write this properly. I can’t read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that – everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer.

I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been.

V.

(Source: Letters of Note)

The Beginning of the Best Thing That Ever Happened 

By Alexander Green

Journalists labor around the clock to deliver a distorted picture of the United States.

Their relentless drumbeat of negativity has convinced millions that we are a shameful and fatally flawed nation.

In a recent poll, Gallup found that only 42% of Americans are “extremely proud” to live in this country, a record low.

There is a sense among many that we are no longer an exceptional nation, that the country is in decline and the American Dream is over.

Today I’m going to offer an antidote to this poisonous perspective by sharing what radio broadcaster Paul Harvey used to call “the rest of the story.”

Consider the basic facts:

* Americans have never been richer. The Federal Reserve reported that US households added $13.5 trillion in wealth last year, the biggest increase in three decades.

* The stock market and home prices have hit new records. And Americans of all stripes have paid off credit card debt, saved more and refinanced into cheaper mortgages.

* Our homes are more expansive. (The average American living under the poverty line lives in a bigger home than the average European.) According to the Census Bureau, the median square footage of a new single-family home sold in 2020 was 2,333 square feet. That’s 53% larger than the median home built in 1973.

* Our standard of living has never been higher. Look at all the laborsaving devices, the huge variety of goods and services available, and the luxuries – from Ultra HD TVs to Starbucks’ lattes to high-thread-count sheets – that permeate your existence.

* Educational attainment has never been greater. Eighty-nine percent of Americans have a high school diploma. Sixty-one percent have some college. Forty-five percent have an associate or bachelor’s degree. (For comparison purposes, in 1952 only 6.4% of Americans had completed college.)

* The essentials of life – food, clothing and shelter – (in inflation-adjusted terms) have never been more affordable.

* Computers, laptops, tablets and smartphones – which are revolutionizing our lives – have never been cheaper or more powerful.

* We enjoy more leisure than ever before. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the average American workweek is 34.9 hours.

* Statistics show that divorce rates, domestic abuse, teenage pregnancies and abortions are all down.

* All forms of pollution – including greenhouse gases – are in decline.

* We are the world leader in technological innovation. The telephone, the television, the airplane and the internet were all invented here. So were blood transfusions, heart transplants and countless vaccines.

* If we are no different from other Western democracies, why were transformative companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Twitter, Netflix, Snapchat, Instagram, PayPal, Tesla, Uber and Airbnb – to name just a few – all founded here?

* Consider, too, what American firms – like Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson – are doing to lead the fight against the global pandemic.

* Since 1950, approximately half of all Nobel Prizes awarded in the science fields have gone to Americans.

* Our space probes and orbiting telescopes explore and explain the cosmos. We put astronauts on the moon over half a century ago. And recent launches by SpaceX and Blue Origin demonstrate the technological prowess of our private sector.

* Americans are just 4.3% of the world’s population, yet we create nearly 30% of its annual wealth.

* Our economy is No. 1 by a huge margin. It is larger than Nos. 2 and 3 – China and Japan – combined.

* The US dollar is the world’s reserve currency.

* The American military – the primary defender of the free world – has never been stronger.

* American agriculture is the envy of the world. Our farmers now grow five times as much corn as they did in the 1930s – on 20% less land. The yield per acre has grown sixfold in the past 70 years.

* For decades, experts warned us that we had to end “our addiction to foreign oil.” Yet thanks to new technologies we are not just one of the world’s largest energy producers but a net exporter.

* The US also leads the world in science, engineering, medicine, entertainment and the arts.

* No nation attracts more immigrants, more students or more foreign investment capital.

* And Americans are the most charitable people on Earth, both in the aggregate and per capita. The Giving USA Foundation reported that US charitable donations hit a record $471.4 billion in 2020.

Despite our many blessings, polls show that Americans are less optimistic about the future today than in 1942, when we were in the fight of our lives against Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito.

Maybe we need a humorist to wake us up. As Dave Barry notes…

My mom, like my dad, and millions of other members of the Greatest Generation, had to contend with real adversity: the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, hunger, poverty, disease, World War II, extremely low-fi 78 rpm records and telephones that – incredible as it sounds today – could not even shoot video.

Your ancestors a few generations removed would view your life today as the realization of some utopia, a golden age.

We should celebrate our exceptional past as well.

Fireworks [fill the skies on July 4] because our nation’s founding was revolutionary – not in the sense of replacing one set of rulers with another but in placing political authority in the hands of the people.

Our Declaration of Independence is a timeless statement of inherent rights, the true purposes of government and the limits of political authority.

Our core beliefs are enshrined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights, the longest-serving foundation of liberty in history.

Our nation’s growth and prosperity have been extraordinary. How did our small republican experiment transform and dominate global culture and society?

Geography played a big role. Buffered by two oceans and a rugged frontier, we had plenty of cheap land and vast natural resources. (But then so did countries like Russia and Brazil.)

Entrepreneurs were given free license to innovate and create. Profit was never something to apologize for. Rather it was viewed as proof that businesses offered customers something more valuable than the money they traded.

We have opened our arms to tens of millions of immigrants who dreamed of a better life and helped to build this country.

We still take in more immigrants annually than any other country in the world. In the process, we have developed an astounding capacity for tolerance.

Racial tensions flared last year with the unconscionable killing of George Floyd.

But the mainstream media’s metanarrative – that we are a racist, sexist and homophobic nation –  is unfounded.

Polls show that the vast majority of Americans today favor gay rights, interracial marriage and economic equality.

No other majority-white country in the world has elected a one-term – much less a two-term –  Black president.

The average woman in the US makes less than the average man, true. But that is not de facto evidence of discrimination.

Studies reveal that after accounting for vocation, specialization, education, experience and hours worked, the difference between what men and women earn is negligible.

It is against federal law to pay a woman less than a man – or a Black person less than a white person – for the same work. (And we have no shortage of tort attorneys.)

As Gerard Baker of The Wall Street Journal writes…

Polling has consistently shown that, if they could, by overwhelming margins people from all over the world would choose to come here. Blacks from Africa, Latinos from Central and South America and Asians from Kamchatka to Kerala are yearning to live in the country we are told is defined by white privilege, xenophobia and ruthless oppression of minorities… What kind of enduring appeal must a country have, what kind of values must it convey to the world that it can so easily supersede the strenuous efforts of its own [media] to defame it?

I’m not suggesting that other nations don’t have proud histories, unique traditions or beautiful cultures.

I’m delighted when I get a chance to visit South Africa, Japan or Argentina, not to mention Paris or Rome. There’s a lot to love about day-to-day life in other countries.

However, people around the world don’t talk about the French Dream or the Chinese Dream. Only one nation is universally recognized as The Land of Opportunity.

That’s because America cultivates, celebrates and rewards the habits that make men and women successful.

Anyone with ambition and grit can move up the economic ladder. Everyone has a chance to improve his or her lot, regardless of circumstances.

As JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon noted in a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece…

 America’s future has never been brighter. The US has the best universities, hospitals and businesses on the planet, and our people are the most entrepreneurial and innovative in the world, from the factory floor to the executive suite. We have by far the widest, deepest and most transparent capital markets, and a citizenry with an unparalleled work ethic and “can do” attitude.

American ingenuity, technology and capital markets have created dramatic improvements in communications, transportation, manufacturing, computing, retailing, food production, construction, healthcare, finance, pharmaceuticals, robotics, sensors, artificial intelligence, genetics, 3D printing and dozens of other industries.

These have benefited citizens not just here but all over the world.

Yes, the pandemic delivered a once-in-a-century setback. But it wasn’t a knockout punch.

Our amazingly resilient economy is already leading the global recovery.

The notion that America is an exceptional nation is not, as some would argue, just a crude strain of patriotism.

Our country embodies timeless ideals, an optimistic attitude and an enthusiastic endorsement of the pursuit of happiness.

Americans today are living longer, richer, freer lives than any people at any time in history.

Yes, we made mistakes along the way and face no shortage of problems and challenges today.

But this [year] Americans should celebrate the 245th anniversary of the beginning of the best thing that ever happened.

The Winter of Our Discontent

By John Steinbeck

292 pages

Published in 1961 by The Viking Press

Reissued in 2008 by Penguin Classics

The Plot: Ethan Allen Hawley, a former member of Long Island’s Great Gatsby class, works in a grocery store that his father lost, along with the rest of the family fortune, leaving his children to fend for themselves among America’s working class.

On the surface, Ethan maintains an air of equanimity and good humor. But he is understandably piqued when his wife and children are resentful of their social status and financial limitations. He’s even more disturbed when they seem to devalue the virtues of honesty and integrity that he sees imbedded in his family name.

As the plot unfolds, Ethan’s grasp on his sense of status and his self-respect weaken by degrees. Eventually, he takes revenge against his fate by becoming everything he inveighs against.

There are plenty of connections here to Shakespeare’s Richard III. So, Ethan is Gloucester. His physical stature is long and lean, but his social stature has been diminished due to losing the family store. He is reduced to clerking for it, with all the associated humiliations. He is proud. He is envious. And he acts ruthlessly to recapture his standing.

But the final act is ambiguous. The story ends before Ethan takes the final, tragic action. And that is what makes it a tragedy in the modern sense.

In these ways and several others (pointed out below), The Winter of Our Discontent is a classic modern American tragedy.

What I liked about it: The development of the principal theme – that all humans, even (or perhaps especially) those of us that view ourselves as honest and decent and ethical, are subject to moral corruption. And that the erosion of character comes from many places: society at large, the culture of our family, and most of all our own hubris.

I liked, too, the classical Greek idea that these moral weaknesses can be passed down from one generation to the next. You see it here with Ethan’s son.

It has been years since I last read Steinbeck, so I had forgotten, but was happily reminded of, the simple, lyric strength of his dialog. Steinbeck has his characters speaking in starts and partial phrases – like people do in real life. But what they say is meaningful and often musical. That gives the reading of the book a second level of pleasure.

And finally, I was also happily surprised by the content of the dialog on economics – particularly between Ethan and his boss. It was not the sort of simple leftist screed I was expecting from a famed lefty like Steinbeck. It was actually nuanced and complex and truer to life.

What I didn’t like so much: I was a little disturbed by the experimentation with the narration. The book is broken into two parts. Each starts with third-person narration and then switches to first-person. There is even a chapter written in the voice of Ethan’s wife’s friend, and, in Chapter 11, the use of an omniscient narrator. This didn’t spoil the book for me, but it was a distraction.

What I didn’t understand: Ethan treats his wife with equal doses of affection and condescension. And she responds as a good and subservient wife should: with acceptance or, at best, gentle resistance. Did Steinbeck not realize how this diminished the character of Ethan? How it made him less sympathetic? I’d like to think he did – that he saw this character flaw as just another symptom of Ethan’s unmerited sense of pride and victimhood. But I’m not sure. The Winter of Our Discontent was written in the 1950s. It could have been meant to endear Ethan to the reader.

 My overall judgement: This is a very good book for many reasons, especially because Steinbeck had the ambition of writing a modern tragedy – with all the important Aristotelean elements, but in a modern (circa 1950) context.

Contemporary Praise 

“In this brief presentation it is not possible to dwell at any length on individual works which Steinbeck later produced. If at times the critics have seemed to note certain signs of flagging powers, of repetitions that might point to a decrease in vitality, Steinbeck belied their fears most emphatically with The Winter of Our Discontent. … Here he attained the same standard which he set in The Grapes of Wrath. Again he holds his position as an independent expounder of the truth with an unbiased instinct for what is genuinely American, be it good or bad.” (Anders Osterling, Secretary of the Swedish Academy that awards the Nobel Prize for Literature)

“John Steinbeck returns to the high standards of The Grapes of Wrath and to the social themes that made his early work so impressive, and so powerful.”  (Saul Bellow)

State of Play (2009) on Netflix

Directed by Kevin MacDonald

Starring Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, Helen Mirren, Rachel McAdams, Jeff Daniels, and Robin Wright Penn

Netflix served it up to me. And with a cast like that, how bad could it be?

It was actually pretty good. It delivered on all the points you’d expect from a movie of this ilk: likeable characters, a fast-forward plot, big stakes, big ideas. The acting was good. The production was solid. Nothing to complain about. Fun. And thought-provoking – at least for me.

What I was most intrigued by was the characterization of the media, represented by The Washington Globe (standing in for The Washington Post).

Russell Crowe is the old-fashioned, unkempt, whiskey-drinking, old-school reporter, and Rachel McAdams is the newspaper’s social media blogger, who is more interested in getting clicks than getting the facts right.

You have the expected conflict between them, as well as between the Crowe character and Ben Affleck, a rising pol that was once Crowe’s friend.

The movie deals with several issues – corporate crime, political corruption, and, most of all, the inevitable degradation of the press due to the nature of social media. This last may be one of the most important stories of my lifetime. State of Playdidn’t exactly plumb the depths of this topic, but it did a good job of presenting it as real.

Although the movie was made in 2008 and released in 2009, the themes are just as poignant today.

You can watch the trailer here.

Critical Reviews 

* “A taut, well-acted political thriller, State of Play overcomes some unsubtle plot twists with an intelligent script and swift direction.” (Rotten Tomatoes)

* “A smart, ingenious thriller.” (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times)

* “It’s not as exceptional as its source, but the changes implemented mostly enhance rather than harm the story.” (Philip Kemp, Total film)