Moonglow by Michael Chabon

Source of book: Audiobook from the library

 

I can’t even remember precisely how this book got on my list - I have some going back 11 years, many recommended by writers I like, or by NPR or LitHub. Anyway, it was on the list, had an audiobook that I didn’t have to wait for, and sounded at least interesting. I used it during commutes and house calls the last month or so. 

 I’m not even sure what to call the genre of this book. It is officially fiction (and it is certainly at least somewhat fictional), but it contains a certain amount of true story. Only, nobody but the author seems to know what is and is not made up. 

 

The basic idea is that Chabon spent the last weeks of his grandfather’s life listening to his life story. Grandpa was usually reticent and private, but the painkillers loosened his tongue, and he told quite the tale to his grandson the writer. That much, I believe, is actually true. The story that Chabon put in the book, however, is, by his own admission, partly true, and partly, well, embellished. Just how much? I have no idea. 

 

I am reminded of a particular short story I read as a kid - it was part of my Collier’s Young Folks Shelf of Books, which I devoured at a certain age, and have shared with my kids since. The story was called “Embellishment,” by Jacob Abbott. And apparently it is in the public domain and online, so you can read it if you like. Here is, perhaps, the key quote:

 

“Shall I tell the story to you just as it was,” asked Beechnut, “as a sober matter of fact, or shall I embellish it a little?”

“I don’t know what you mean by embellishing it,” said Madeline.

“Why, not telling exactly what is true,” said Beechnut, “but inventing something to add to it, to make it interesting.”

“I want to have it true,” said Madeline, “and interesting, too.”

“But sometimes,” replied Beechnut, “interesting things don’t happen, and in such cases, if we should only relate what actually does happen, the story would be likely to be dull.”

“I think you had better embellish the story a little,” said Phonny—”just a little, you know.”

“I don’t think I can do that very well,” replied Beechnut. “If I attempt to relate the actual facts, I depend simply on my memory, and I can confine myself to what my memory teaches; but if I undertake to follow my invention, I must go wherever it leads me.”

 

As in the story, this book presumably follows the basic life facts of Chabon’s grandfather, who served in World War Two, came back and married a Belgian war refugee and adopted her daughter, who was Chabon’s mother. One might even presume that said grandfather (who isn’t named in the book, interestingly) was indeed part of the secret corps trying to find scientists and information on rocketry as Europe was liberated. 

 

From there on, I have no idea what is fact and what is fiction. 

 

The story, in any event, is actually a lot of fun. I was drawn into it pretty immediately, and enjoyed the ride all the way to the end. The characters are well drawn and memorable. Grandpa is crusty and often non-communicative, and when he does talk, he is cynical and cantankerous. Grandma suffers from complex mental illness, probably exacerbated by the trauma of the war, but also by a hormonal imbalance and the stress of keeping her former life a secret. (Near the end of the book, we get a hint of what actually happened to her before and during the war, from notes from her psychiatrist.) The two of them form a bonded pair, both damaged, both with their own issues, but nevertheless devoted to each other. 

 

The story itself is told in a decidedly non-linear manner, which actually makes a lot of sense in this book, because Grandpa tells a rambling story that jumps around a lot. So, it starts out with the time he tried to strangle his boss, after being laid off so the company could hire Alger Hiss, but then it goes to that time he and an army buddy showed they could blow up a bridge (using an explosive that made noise and smoke but wouldn’t do actual damage), which is how he ended up on the secret corps. And then, the story is about how he met his wife, then chasing down a snake in Florida near the end of his life, then his travels in Europe looking for Werner von Braun, then about Uncle Rey and…well, there is a LOT in this book. I can’t even begin to summarize this sprawling narrative. 

 

But despite all the messiness, the craziness, and the requirement of a certain amount of suspension of disbelief, the story is fun and compelling. 

 

Grandpa is fascinated by rockets and the moon, which is where the title comes from. Unable to go himself, he builds model rockets for hobbyists, but also for NASA. An item that becomes a focal point of the story ends up being a model moon base that he builds out of pieces from model cars and aircraft, and whatever else he can find - including the lid to a coffee cup. Like the model, the book itself is lovingly crafted from a hodgepodge of elements and incidents and ideas. 

 

In addition to “Embellishment,” I was also reminded a bit of Deacon King Kong, at least in the way that violence and even homicide are mentioned with a flippant and humorous attitude. The books are quite different in other ways, but the whole “and then the prison bully got blown up” thing had a similar vibe. Likewise, the sex is generally played for laughs rather than pathos, which some reviewers seem to dislike. I personally was okay with the irreverent and breezy style. Nobody is going to think this book is telling you it is okay to strangle your boss, or plant explosives that just happen to go off in the next prison cell. Despite its plausible underpinnings, this is neither a serious story nor intended to be particularly realistic. It’s…embellishment. 

 

For that matter, even when the story veered into implausibility and silliness, the characters made up for any plot flaws. They seem real and sympathetic, like people you know or at least have met.  

 

Since I was driving, mostly around town, I was unable to remember any specific quotes, but I will note that there are a lot of great lines throughout, both humorous and pointed. 

 

The audiobook was narrated by George Newbern, who I really liked. He did the various accents - including regional Jewish accents - quite well, and it was never difficult to tell the characters apart, even during the rapid-fire exchanges between Chabon and Grandpa. I’ll also give credit to Blackstone Publishing for doing a better than average job on the compression. The book was at the same basic volume throughout, and thus easy to listen to while driving. 

 

The Wild Swans at Coole by W. B. Yeats

Source of book: I own this.

 

Back in 2013, I read and wrote about selections from three early collections of poems by Yeats. Back then, I had a paperback volume with selected poems, plus a few of the plays. Since then, my wife found a hardback complete poems, which is what I read from this time. It turns out that this book is number one of fourteen volumes (!) of Yeats’ collected works. That includes letters and articles and a bunch of crazy stuff. I had no idea. 

 In any case, I decided to read The Wild Swans at Coole for a kind of random reason. It was before Halloween, and my youngest kid walked in. I randomly flipped through a bit, and found a poem about a cat (see below) and read it to her. So I figured I might as well read the whole collection. 

 

The Wild Swans at Coole is from 1919, essentially in the middle period of Yeats’ career. However, the writing didn’t change that much, in my view, as the same sense of melancholy and age continued, as did the poems making reference to Irish stories and events. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, of course. I did rather enjoy reading these poems. 

 

A few particularly stood out. Let’s start with the title poem.

 

“The Wild Swans at Coole”

 

The trees are in their autumn beauty,

The woodland paths are dry,

Under the October twilight the water

Mirrors a still sky;

Upon the brimming water among the stones

Are nine-and-fifty swans.

 

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me

Since I first made my count;

I saw, before I had well finished,

All suddenly mount

And scatter wheeling in great broken rings

Upon their clamorous wings.

 

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,

And now my heart is sore.

All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,

The first time on this shore,

The bell-beat of their wings above my head,

Trod with a lighter tread.

 

Unwearied still, lover by lover,

They paddle in the cold

Companionable streams or climb the air;

Their hearts have not grown old;

Passion or conquest, wander where they will,

Attend upon them still.

 

But now they drift on the still water,

Mysterious, beautiful;

Among what rushes will they build,

By what lake's edge or pool

Delight men's eyes when I awake some day

To find they have flown away?

 

I’m a sucker for a good nature lyric, and this one qualifies. There is also the characteristic nostalgia and melancholy so characteristic of Yeats’ poetry. 

 

Even as a young man, Yeats seems to have been haunted by aging and the brevity of life. Here is another poem on that theme. 

 

“The Living Beauty”

 

I'll say and maybe dream I have drawn content—

Seeing that time has frozen up the blood,

The wick of youth being burned and the oil spent—

From beauty that is cast out of a mould

In bronze, or that in dazzling marble appears,

Appears, but when we have gone is gone again,

Being more indifferent to our solitude

Than 'twere an apparition. O heart, we are old,

The living beauty is for younger men,

We cannot pay its tribute of wild tears.

 

Another poem I particularly loved was this one, with its metaphor of the hawk as a representation of the caged mind, expected to perform for dullards and knaves. 

 

“The Hawk”

 

'Call down the hawk from the air;

Let him be hooded or caged

Till the yellow eye has grown mild,

For larder and spit are bare,

The old cook enraged,

The scullion gone wild.'

 

'I will not be clapped in a hood,

Nor a cage, nor alight upon wrist,

Now I have learnt to be proud

Hovering over the wood

In the broken mist

Or tumbling cloud.'

 

'What tumbling cloud did you cleave,

Yellow-eyed hawk of the mind,

Last evening? that I, who had sat

Dumbfounded before a knave,

Should give to my friend

A pretense of wit.'

 

The final poem that I wanted to quote was “The Cat and the Moon.” There are several poems about the moon in this collection, with quite different themes and ideas. But, as a cat lover, this one was simply outstanding to me. My kid liked it too. 

 

“The Cat and the Moon”

 

The cat went here and there
And the moon spun round like a top,
And the nearest kin of the moon,
The creeping cat, looked up.
Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon,
For, wander and wail as he would,
The pure cold light in the sky
Troubled his animal blood.
Minnaloushe runs in the grass
Lifting his delicate feet.
Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?
When two close kindred meet,
What better than call a dance?
Maybe the moon may learn,
Tired of that courtly fashion,
A new dance turn.
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
From moonlit place to place,
The sacred moon overhead
Has taken a new phase.

Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils
Will pass from change to change,
And that from round to crescent,
From crescent to round they range?
 Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
 Alone, important and wise,
 And lifts to the changing moon
 His changing eyes. 

 

There does seem to be a particular connection that cats have to the moon. Even our indoor cat has changes in her demeanor after dark depending on the phase of the moon. And the outdoor (“barnyard”) cats, well, they lift to the changing moon their changing eyes. 

 

I’m thinking I probably shouldn’t go eight years before I read more Yeats this next time. I quite enjoyed the experience. 

 

A Dream Called Home by Reyna Grande

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

 

This was this month’s selection for our “Literary Lush” book club. One of the things I enjoy about this club is that I end up reading interesting books that I never would have discovered on my own. While we don’t do this every year, sometimes we join the “One Book One Bakersfield” project put on by our local library. Some years, the selections have been great, while others have been pretty meh. The fun thing is that they usually get the author to come and lecture (or, in the time of Covid, put on a virtual meeting) to discuss the book. This year, my wife and I were able to stream the audio while we were driving back from a quick getaway. 

 

The three previous One Book One Bakersfield selections I have read are:

 Broad Band by Clare Evans

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer

The Big Thirst by Charles Fishman

 

***

 

I wasn’t familiar with Reyna Grande before reading this book, but apparently she has written a few novels. This book is a memoir, although it really is part two of a memoir, with the first being The Distance Between Us. Grande alludes to the facts in the first part quite a bit, so you can at least get an idea of her early life. This book picks up right after she has graduated from Pomona Community College, and transferred to UC Santa Cruz. From there, she gets her MFA, finds a job teaching in Los Angeles, has a kid, and eventually meets the love of her life and gets her first book published. 

 

In some ways, this is the less interesting part of her story. In the first part, she was born in Mexico, her father left for the US to make money to build a house, but her mother ended up joining him, she lived with her abusive grandmother, then later with her other, not-so-abusive grandmother, before being smuggle across the border at age 8, living with her father and his abusive new wife (mom having abandoned the family to marry another guy), and manage to get through high school with help from a teacher. Whew. And she was also, obviously undocumented, at least until the amnesty bill in 1986 (remember when Republicans were pro-immigrant?) It sounds like quite the story, and she mentions most of that in various places in the book. The second half is interesting, with some good moments, but as we discussed in the club, Grande doesn’t really bring out any emotional resonance in the story. 

 

Some of that was the writing style, which is both somewhat simple, and a little flat. The simplicity I attribute at least in part to her intended audience, which is fellow immigrants. A straightforward telling, without the difficulty of more advanced writing, would likely be more accessible to the average first-generation immigrant. You know, the ones who didn’t go get a creative writing degree. Grande seems very concerned as she describes her life that stories like hers be told, so that people like her and her family (and she is the only one with higher education) can see themselves represented. I have no quibble with her writing how she feels will best connect with her audience. 

 

(For a totally different approach, but a similar refusal to cater to a white, monolingual audience, check out America Is Not The Heart by Elaine Castillo.)

 

I would say that in general, I found the passages about her family more interesting than those about school or writing. I felt her frustration with her younger sibling, who she tried to take in, but who eventually ran off with her boyfriend while in high school. I found the way her mother tried to start a perpetual garage sale on her front lawn quite amusing - yes, people did that in the neighborhood I grew up in. And yes, her mother was/is insufferably entitled. I also liked the scenes involving her husband when they were dating, from his accidental eating of a Thai chili, to his remarkable good behavior when visiting her family in Mexico. If you didn’t already know he was a nice guy, you would have known it from how he was a good sport throughout. He appears to have gotten that from his parents, who come across as thoroughly decent sorts who truly embraced their Minnesotan son marrying a Mexican-American immigrant. Not all in-laws are that accepting, to say the least. 

 

On the other hand, before meeting him, my goodness was Grande horrible in her choice of men. Gah! The whole time I was thinking, “No. No. Don’t do it. Don’t even think about hooking up with him.” And of course she did. At least she got a good guy in the end. 

 

Just a few quotes that I liked:

 

When I was seven years old, my father left my mother for my stepmother, and she was never the same. She didn’t want to be a mother to us anymore. It was as if when my father divorced her, she in turn divorced her children. 

 

 You can also get a feel for the language of the book in that quote. 

 

Grande ends up rejecting religion altogether by her 20s, and I think she makes a good case for why. She can’t actually tell her grandmother, though. 

 

What would she say if I told her that I rejected any religion that made me feel devalued as a woman, or which pressed upon me the belief that being poor was a good thing, or that all the misery in my life was God’s will and I should shut up and not complain? 

 

Although I have not left religion completely, I have left organized religion, and for these reasons. (And some others…) 

 

One final mention. In 1986, the Republican administration and congress passed the last true immigration reform we have had. (Let it sink in that we have been unable to make changes for the last 35 years, despite vast changes in geopolitics and an explosion of refugees around the world. Thus are racist politics in the US of A.) 

 

In practice, what this means is that immigrants of my age (like Grande) had opportunities that today’s Dreamers do not have. One of the most devastating realizations of the last few years is how many in my extended family (to say nothing of people at our former church) genuinely think that we should deport 12 million people. In any other context, we would call that ethnic cleansing. But I have found that I do not actually share moral values with many people from my earlier life. (Including family.) We cannot even agree that ethnic cleansing is a bad thing, or that people like Grande who came here as children should not be evicted or marginalized. This is not mere politics. It goes to the core of moral values. 

 

I guess in summary, I found the story interesting, the writing a bit bland, but definitely a worthwhile read. I also agree with Grande that these stories need to be told. Her story is the story of America too, after all. 

 

A White Man's Guide to White Male Writers of the Western Canon by Dana Schwartz

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

 

This book was mentioned by a couple of friends in an online discussion, and I decided to pick it up for a light and humorous read. And it fit that category. Also, literary nerdiness, which any reader of this blog knows is my thing. 

 

The book grew out of Dana Schwartz’ spoof twitter account “GuyInYourMFA,” which one suspects isn’t so much spoofed as stolen from the chauvinist male MFA sorts she put up with over the years. The book itself gives a litany of major male authors from Shakespeare to “The Jonathans,” from a perspective that manages to show adoration, navel gazing, and an utter lack of self-awareness. Which is exactly the point. And yes, it is a heck of a lot of fun. 

 

With a few exceptions, quoting it would be beside the point, so best left to a brief description and a recommendation. Each author has a few sections, from a “biography” which is usually a few fun facts, especially any bad relationships the author had with women who didn’t recognize his genius; to a list of key works, summed up in a delightfully snarky (and often completely misunderstood) way. There are also “sound like a pedant” boxes, with tips for how to ruin any dinner party you attend, and tips for being a pro writer.

 

There are some great zingers to share. Let’s start at the top. 

 

Welcome to The White Man’s Guide to White Male Writers of the Western Canon. I’m happy you’re here. Or at least I would be happy if I didn’t maintain an air of disaffected ironic detachment at all times. 

 

Or, the first “Tip”: 

 

If anyone asks if you want to discuss “Bartleby the Scrivener,” by Herman Melville, just smile slyly and say, “I would prefer not to.” 

 

Which is both funny, and also you know the sort who would say that…

 

Goethe, naturally, is part of the canon, and he gets some good snark. Here is the description of his poem “Marionbad Elegy”: 

 

Goethe spent the summer in the town of Marienbad, where he fell in love with a seventeen-year-old girl named Ulrike von Levetzow. He asked her to marry him, and the girl declined. It might have had something to do with the fact that Goethe was then seventy-three years old. Goethe, heartbroken, composed what many critics consider his finest work, a poem of devastating and utter heartbreak, which is exactly what one would feel when you’re seventy-three years old and a teenager doesn’t want to marry you. 

 

Byron gets some good snark. Which is, to be fair, like shooting a fish in a barrel. 

 

Ugh, what is it with women? All day long, yap yap yap. It’s like, “Byron, please stop cheating on me.” “Byron, could you please actually stay with me after you ask me to leave my husband for you?” “Byron, hey, this is your friend, it’s pretty weird how you’re sleeping with your half sister.” Ugh. 

 

And:

 

“Mad, bad, and dangerous to know” is about as good of a reputation as a White Male Writer can have. Lean the hell into it. 

 

Another great line is regarding Tolstoy. 

 

But Tolstoy’s eyes were really opened when he took a gap year traveled abroad, read Victor Hugo, saw an execution in Paris, and all in all witnessed the gritty human truths that only reveal themselves to white twenty-something boys who come from insane wealth when they go to Europe for the first time. 

 

Of course, there is also Fitzgerald:

 

One of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century, he embodied the “Lost Generation” of the 1920s - drinking heavily, writing novels and for magazines, marrying a woman you can’t save, and having your work woefully misinterpreted by high school students. 

 

For John Updike, there is a section entitled “How to Write a Female Character,” which ends with this one:

 

3. Give her a character arc.

    Just kidding. 

 

And, this cartoon. (The illustrations are by Jason Katzenstein.) 

 

Speaking of illustrations: which of the Jonathan’s are you talking about? 

 

There are two final lines from the Afterword. The first fits with a real-life story. First, here is the line:

 

Never assume a woman has ever read anything in her entire life. Just explain it to her. It’ll save her the embarrassment of having to ask. 

 

Okay, so there is this middle-aged dude who used to haunt all the homeschool groups here in Bakersfield. He’s a total piece of work, from his foot-high “Trump” stickers on his vehicle to his open pushing of white supremacist propaganda. Which is why my wife was able to get him banned from the online forums she follows. In addition, because of course, he is an unsufferable chauvinist. Several years back, when his kid and one of mine were in a local kids’ wind band, he saw my wife reading a book, and said something to the effect of, “Have you ever read a book that big before?” She didn’t reply, but just gave him a certain look. 

 

And ever after, we refer to him as “Tiny Books.” 

 

The final one is, um, a bit too familiar for comfort:

 

If you don’t know how to critique a piece someone else has written, repeat after me: “The ending just didn’t feel earned.” 

 

I haven’t read through the 1000+ posts I have written, but I swear I said that about a book or two. Oh well, I guess I am a white guy, even if I don’t have my MFA…

Thirteen Ways of Looking by Colum McCann

Source of book: Borrowed from the library.

 

I have previously read and reviewed two Colum McCann books, Let the Great World Spin, and Trans Atlantic. This book was good, but I didn’t find it as compelling as the other two, perhaps because of the subject matter, or because as a novella plus three short stories, it felt somewhat disconnected in subject matter. Again, it was good, but the other two were outstanding. 

 

Two thirds of the book is taken up by the title story, which is novella length, but feels like an extended short story. The title comes from Wallace Stevens’ poem, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” which is one of my favorites of his. Each of the thirteen stanzas is given at the start of its own chapter. 

 

The basic plot of the novella is the last day in the life of an elderly retired judge, Peter Mendelssohn. At first, I did a double take, because he sounds very similar to a character in Let the Great World Spin. I wondered if it was the same person. On further examination, they are different people, but with some similarities. There are two basic ideas in the book, the most dramatic being that Mendelssohn is murdered at the end of the day. The second is that, since most of the story is told from Mendelssohn’s own perspective, we see his own frustration with growing old and frail and forgetful. 

 

My feeling about the novella is that the murder didn’t always mesh well with the rest of the story, at least in tone. Although, I suppose, there is nothing implausible about that odd juxtaposition in real life. McCann’s writing is so good that the seams don’t show that much, but they still feel there. At its best, though, his language and empathy are amazing. 

 

A couple of quotes stood out, although I could have chosen many more. 

 

The years don’t so much arrive, they gatecrash, they breeze through the door and leave their devastation, all the empty crockery, the broken veins, sunken eyelids, aching gums, but who is he to complain, he’s had plenty of years to get used to it, and he was hardly a handsome Harry in the first place, and anyway he got the girl, he bowled her over, he won her heart, snagged her, yes I was born in the middle of my first great love.

 

The part of the seam between the two elements of the story that works the best is his ongoing simile between the art of poetry and the art of detection. Both are a journey of discovery, yet guided by craft and skill. Here is one of those crossover moments.

 

Poets, like detectives, know the truth is laborious: it doesn’t occur by accident, rather it is chiseled and worked into being, the product of time and distance and graft. The poet must be open to the possibility that she has to go a long way before a word rises, or a sentence holds, or a rhythm opens, and even then nothing is assured, not even the words that have staked their original claim or meaning. Sometimes it happens at the most unexpected moment, and the poet has to enter the mystery, rebuild the poem from there. 

 

Perhaps because McCann understands poetry so well he is able to write such poetic prose. 

 

I also liked this quip by Mendelssohn:

 

“Give life long enough and it will solve all your problems, even the problem of being alive.”

 

I was surprised to find I had written down so little from this book, and realized that it was because I was just immersed in the story, and didn’t want to interrupt the flow. 

 

Overall, I thought this story, standing alone, was quite good. The short stories were very different from each other and from the novella. 

 

The first one is “What time is it now, where you are?” My main complaint with this one was the cloyingly post-modern device of being about the writing of a short story, a story for New Years, and about a mother and soldier calling home from Afghanistan. Not a bad story, and it is hard to begrudge McCann a little room to experiment. Just not exactly my thing. 

 

The second short story is “Sh’khol,” a rather harrowing story of a mother’s horror when her 13-year-old son slips out to swim in the ocean, and disappears. To make things worse, he is deaf and has difficultly communicating. (This is why we are never sure whether he is also autistic or otherwise cognitively disabled.) The “what ifs?” dominate the story, the recriminations, the regrets, the horror of loss. McCann is in many ways at his best in stories like this, which reminded me of situations in both of his other books, where there are no good answers. They invite true empathy: just sitting with the characters and being there as they suffer without cure. 

 

The final story is “Treaty.” In a total departure from the others, it is about an elderly nun, who nearly four decades previously was kidnapped, raped, and imprisoned by right-wing militia members while living in South America. Fast forward to the present, and she sees her rapist on television, now negotiating a ceasefire on behalf of a leftist group. She travels from Texas to London, ostensibly to visit her brother, but really to find and confront him, which she does. The most powerful moment in the story is when he finally acknowledges who he is and that he knows her - and also gives an indication that he hasn’t changed in any positive way. 

 

The best line from this story is the description of the protagonist stepping out of the London Tube after falling asleep on a piano bench. 

 

Outside the light pours down hard and clear and yellow. 

 

All of these are thought-provoking stories, well written and unusual. While I liked the other two books a bit better, this one is good in its own right, and confirms my opinion of McCann as one of my favorite contemporary authors. 

 

Falling by Garrett Soden

 

Source of book: I own this.

 

This was a book I watched for used, because our library system didn’t carry it, for some reason or another. This seems strange, because it seems the sort of book that people would like to read, and well in line with other pop sci cultural things they carry plenty of.

 

Anyway, the book’s subtitle is “How Our Greatest Fear Became Our Greatest Thrill.” So, as one might imagine, the book is about humans taking the fear of falling and making it into a something we do for fun. 

 

[Note: this is the hardback version. The paperback is entitled Defying Gravity.]

 

The book is laid out in an interesting way, with a semi-chronological approach, but also with some chapters discussing more than one topic. In the chronological sense, it starts with the indigenous bungee jumps, first parachuting and acrobatics that included ballistic components, then goes through roller coasters, mountain climbing, wirewalking, and pretty much every sort of “gravity” sport or stunt that has captured the human imagination over the last several hundred years. Since it was written in 2001, it isn’t exactly up to date - Tony Hawk gets more play than Shawn White, for example. (Not that Hawk isn’t a central figure, but that the book ends before the Olympics essential start poaching the various X Games sports.) 

 

The penultimate chapters are interesting because they explore primate evolution and how our experiences as tree-dwellers that eventually made it to land formed our brains in a way that we both fear falling and yet find falling thrilling in its own way. 

 

Soden tells plenty of great stories along the way, stories of the men and women who pushed the boundaries, and how they won popular acclaim and fame. He also looks at the way that our very language incorporates “fall” to mean so many things, including ideas with moral and spiritual significance. This ties in as well to why for every person who engaged in gravity play, there was another who condemned it as immoral. 

 

It’s a fun book, well written and researched, full of information but never boring. 

 

There are some fun passages worth mentioning. As I noted above, the objections to extreme risk weren’t so much the “be careful or you’ll hurt yourself” kind - these were indeed said, but it seemed to be the successful stunts that drew the most ire. Sam Patch, early high diver, was told that he had “incensed God,” to cite just one example.

 

Puritanic condemnation, however, did nothing to counteract the growing popularity of gravity stunts. Quite the opposite. Instead, then as now, those who dared were given an image that increased their appeal. 

 

The image of the gravity hero, though, wouldn’t go away. Instead, that image - a rebel who rises from the masses to confront nature on behalf of the common man - became a powerful and enduring archetype. Since its inception in the eighteenth century, it has shaped the view of virtually every gravity challenger since. It is with us today, updated in our cynical age as antiheroism and embodied in rebellious skateboarders, pot-smoking Olympic snowboarders, and outlaw BASE jumpers. It is with us in nearly every portrayal of an extreme athlete we see. 

 

One of the incidents that I was unaware of was just how brutally the first missionaries to Hawaii suppressed surfing. Unsurprisingly, these missionaries were Calvinists (and of German descent), and looked askance at something both fun and clearly indigenous. 

 

In 1838, W. R. S. Ruschenberger wrote that the missionaries “state these sports to be expressly against the laws of God, and by a succession of reasoning, which may be readily traced, impress upon the minds of the chiefs and others the idea that all who practice them secure themselves the displeasure of offended heaven.”

 

Sigh. If one were to cite a central practice of white “christians,” it would be that they view everything not-white as somehow demonic. In my own childhood, my parents (particularly my mom) decided to follow after charlatans who taught that music with “African” roots was of the devil. I’ve talked about that elsewhere on this blog. But also, break dancing, kachinas, the voodoo magic in The Princess and the Frog (which was apparently better than the European magic in older Disney movies), and, indeed, as I look at the subculture as an outsider now, there is a pattern.

 

Every cultural practice of indigenous peoples was looked on as witchcraft, as a false religion. Which in turn fits with the idea that white culture is God’s favorite - indeed, the only one he finds acceptable. 

 

In the case of surfing, it meant that the sport practically disappeared for a while. Until white people took it up; then it was cool. 

 

One of these men was George Freeth, who in addition to surfing, rescued boats of fishermen - swimming out to do so. He also invented the lifeguard buoy, brought water polo to the US, and laid the groundwork for the surfing craze that would sweep the nation in a few decades. But, alas, he died in the 1919 influenza epidemic, and never saw it. 

 

I found the chapters on neuroscience and evolution to be particularly fascinating. Longtime readers of this blog might remember The Gap by Thomas Suddendorf. That book looked at what separates humans from animals. In this book, some of the similarities and the events that led to the differences are explored in more detail. 

 

In particular, Soden looks at why a ground-bound animal would have two conflicting instincts: one designed to protect us from gravity, and the other urging us to play with it. The answer seems to lie in the fact that we were arboreal in part even after we learned to walk upright. (The book goes into far more detail than I can here. It’s a good read.) 

 

Not only that, but our arboreal experience likely led to specific brain adaptations. 

 

Looked at this way, many of our cherished intellectual abilities are just a fantastic side effect of trying not to fall out of a tree. 

 

Not that everyone agrees that this was a good thing, of course. 

 

This in turn ties into the chapter on rock climbing, and the way that someone who is truly skilled at something can enter an altered state of consciousness - what is sometimes termed the “flow,” or “The Zone.” The book has a great description of this. 

 

Csikszentmihalyi coined the term “flow” to describe the state, and defines it as having eight components: the activity involved is challenging and can be accomplished through skill; it requires complete attention; it has clear goals; it provides immediate feedback; it shuts out all thoughts except those of the moment; it provides a feeling of control; it dissolves inhibiting self-consciousness; and finally, it causes time to seem to expand or contract. “In our studies,” Csikszentmihalyi writes, “we found that every flow activity…had this in common: It provided a sense of discovery, a creative feeling of transporting the person into a new reality. It pushed the person to higher levels of performance, and led to previously undreamed-of-states of consciousness.”

 

I am by no means athletic, but I have experienced this in another situation: when I make music. Particularly as part of a challenging concert, where timing is everything, and there is some risk of messing up, I have felt that expanded consciousness, where time flows at a different rate even as the music stays the same. 

 

One final bit warrants mention. The chapter on how our languages seem to universally use “falling” in a metaphorical sense is quite fascinating. Clearly, like religion and ethics and indeed language itself, there is something inherent in humanity that finds falling to represent so much more than its denotative meaning. The ending of this chapter is too long to quote, but Soden quotes Claude Levi-Strauss (the anthropologist, not the jeans) regarding the mythology of “The Fall.” In the evolutionary sense, our descent from the trees meant not just a change, but a need to confront food scarcity and dangerous predators. In that sense, it was a loss of innocence. 

 

For many years, I have regarded the accounts of the Creation and the Fall in Genesis as metaphorical (it’s blindingly obvious, once you step away from the literalist approach even a tiny bit), so I love all of the different ideas about how that metaphor may have come about - it is in practically every mythology in some form or another. Whether you see it as a metaphor for the switch to agriculture, or for the descent from the trees - or something else entirely - these ways of looking at it never grow old. 

 

I had a lot of fun reading this book, and definitely recommend it.