New Year Letter by W. H. Auden

Source of book: I own this

 

This long poem, in the form of a letter to a friend (Elizabeth Mayer), is a fascinating musing on the time it was written (1940, at the beginning of World War Two), and on the relationship of art, life, and politics. In a very real sense, it fits our own time - the rise of Facism and racial hatred, a flood of propaganda and lies, a left that lacks a real message or coherent vision, and all too many people content to live without thinking. 

 

I also must say that I am a bit of a kindred spirit to Auden. I too am conservative by temperament, but find myself accused of being a leftist because I oppose fascism, and support working for the common good of all. We perhaps differ due to nationality - we Americans don’t really support the British class system, whatever our obsession with the British royalty. There is no real movement for a hereditary system of titles here. We prefer to worship celebrities. 

W. H. Auden in 1940 

But I digress. The poem is a long ramble in a lot of ways, a venting of feelings. Auden describes his imposter syndrome, his debt to a whole gallery of past greats, his feeling that the world has come unmoored not merely from order and stability, but from truth and goodness itself. (Me too, W. H…) 

 

The entire work is written in rhymed couplets, with a loose iambic tetrameter. Reading it aloud can become a bit sing-song, but Auden is definitely working in an old tradition with the form. At 44 pages, it is not short, but it also flows quickly. It is divided into three sections, and I read each one in a single sitting. 

 

Throughout, there is a lot of name dropping, from Buxtehude to Rilke. These are in small caps each time, almost like a hyperlink of the internet era. At least that’s how it felt to me. 

 

There really is a lot of food for thought in the poem. I won’t even attempt to summarize it, but I will quote a few passages that I particularly loved. There are many more. While the poem doesn’t seem to have much written about it by professionals, many of us amateur bloggers have written about it, and quoted passages that spoke to us. 

 

Here is the opening: 

 

Under the familiar weight

Of winger, conscience and the State,

In loose formations of good cheer,

Love, language, loneliness and fear,

Towards the habits of next year,

Along the streets the people flow,

Singing or sighing as then go:

Exalte, piano, or in doubt,

All our reflections turn about 

A common meditative norm, 

Retrenchment, Sacrifice, Reform.

 

And this passage, which feels so relevant. In a very real way, MAGA is a shriek of existential terror, a failure to accept mortality, to accept reality, to accept that others exist as equally true humans to ourselves. 

 

How hard it is to set aside

Terror, concupiscence and pride,

Learn who and where and how we are,

The children of a modest star,

Frail, backward, clinging to the granite

Skirts of a sensible old planet,

Our placid and suburban nurse

In SITTER’S swelling universe,

 How hard to stretch imagination

To live according to our station.

For we aqree all insulted by

The mere suggestion that we die

Each moment and that each great I

Is but a process in a process

Within a field that never closes;

As proper people find it strange 

That we are changed by what we change,

That no event can happen twice

And that no two existences

Can every be alike; we’d rather

Be perfect copies of our father,

Prefer our idees fixes to be

True of a fixed Reality. 

 

There is a brief line that made me laugh a bit, as it actually is true. 

 

If she will look as if she were

A fascinated listener,

Since men will pay large sums to whores

For telling them they are not bores.

 

I also liked this passage, which cuts to the heart of the fundamentalist and fascist ideologies, while also rejecting full relativism. (Again, conservative by temperament, but humanist by ideology.)

 

For, if dualities exist,

What happens to the god? If there

Are any cultures anywhere

With other values than his own, 

How can it possibly be shown

That his are not subjective or

That all life is a state of war?

While, if the monist view be right,

How is it possible to fight?

If love has been annihilated

There’s only hate left to be hated. 

To say two different things at once,

To wage offensives on two frogs,

And yet to show complete conviction,

Requires the purpler kinds of diction

And none appreciate as he

Polysyllabic oratory.

All vague  idealistic art

That coddles the uneasy heart

Is up his alley, and his pigeon

The woozier species of religion,

Even a novel, play or song,

If loud, lugubrious and long;

He knows the bored will not unmask him

But that he’s lost if someone ask him

To come the hell in off the links

And say exactly what he thinks.

To win support of any kind

He has to hold before the mind

Amorphous shadows it can hate…

 

This one is also good:

 

Hell is the being of the lie

That we become if we deny

The laws of consciousness and claim

Becoming and Being are the same,

Being in time, and man discrete

In will, yet free and self-complete;

Its fire the pain to which we go

If we refused to suffer, though

The one unnecessary grief

Is the vain craving for relief,

When to the suffering we could bear

We add intolerable fear,

Absconding from remembrance, mocked

By our own partial senses, locked

Each in a stale uniqueness, lie

Time-conscious for eternity.

 

I also liked this passage:

 

Now in that fully alienated land,

An earth made common by the means

Of hunger, money, and machines,

Where each determined nature must

Regard that nature as a trust

That, being chosen, he must choose,

Determined to become of use;

For we are conscripts to our age

Simply by being born; we wage

The war we are, and may not die,

With POLYCARP’S despairing cry,

Desert or become ill: but how

To be the patriots of the Now? 

Here all, by rights, are volunteers,

And anyone who interferes 

With how another wills to fight

Must base his action, not on right,

But on the power to compel; 

Only the “Idiot” can tell

For which state office he should run,

Only the Many make the One. 

 

Hunger, money, and machines…

 

And how about the uselessness of war? And of tribalism and hate?

 

Whatever nonsense we believe,

Whomever we can still deceive,

Whatever language angers us,

Whoever seems the poisonous

Old dragon to be killed if men 

Are ever to be rich again,

We know no fuss or pain or lying

Can stop the moribund from dying.

 

Auden doesn’t spare modern soulless capitalism either. 

 

Out of the noise and horror, the

Opinions of artillery,

The barracks chatter and the yell

Of charging cavalry, the smell

Of poor opponents roasting, out

Of LUTHER’S faith and MONTAIGNE’S doubt,

The epidemic of translations,

The Councils and the navigation,

The confiscations and the suits,

The scholars’ scurrilous disputes

Over the freedom of the Will

And right of Princes to do ill,

Emerged a new Anthropos, an

Empiric Economic Man,

The urban, prudent, and inventive,

Profit his rational incentive

And Work his whole exercitus,

The individual let loose

To guard himself, at liberty 

To starve or be forgotten, free

To feel in splendid isolation

Or drive himself about creation

In the closed cab of Occupation. 

 

Free to starve - that’s pretty much the libertarian ethos, if you think about it. 

 

This next bit seems to apply to a certain Orange Narcissist:

 

He never won complete support;

However many votes he bought,

He could not silence all the cliques,

And no miraculous techniques 

Could sterilize all discontent

Or dazzle it into assent,

But at the very noon and arch

Of his immense triumphal march

Stood prophets pelting him with curses

And sermons and satiric verses…

 

I’ll end with this passage, an indictment of those who mistake good intentions for actual action.  

 

But wishes are not horses, this

Annus is not mirabilis;

Day breaks upon the world we know

Of war and wastefulness and woe; 

Ashamed civilians come to grief

In brotherhoods without belief,

Whose good intentions cannot cure

The actual evils they endure,

Nor smooth their practical career,

Nor bring the far horizon near. 

 

This problem is not really a left or right issue, but an ideology issue. It is the belief that good intentions plus an ideology is all you need to solve problems. In reality, problems are messy and difficult to solve, because they involve messy humans and human systems. Easy, pretty answers don’t fix things. And neither do good intentions. (Not that evil intentions are better, of course.) I feel that one reason my parents are unable to see the damage they have caused to me and other members of my birth family is this very thing: they had good intentions (or at least believe they had…I’m not so sure in some cases) so they cannot see the actual results of their choices as consequences.

 

There are so many other lines I could have featured. The poem is best seen as a conversation, an attempt to make sense of a senseless world, fallen into violence and hate and a war that should never have happened. Auden was a thoughtful writer, and his humble and introspective wrestling with the sorrow of existence truly resonates today. 

 

Passing by Nella Larsen

Source of book: Audiobook from the library, but I also own this. 

 

I probably should note at the outset that I realized that I cannot possibly discuss this book without giving spoilers, so I will start with a short summary of the idea, and then let the reader determine whether to proceed, or to read the book first. 

 

This classic of the Harlem Renaissance is about the practice of “passing” - light skinned African Americans who hid their black heritage and “passed” as white in society. This was more of a phenomenon back in the Jim Crow era than it is now, for obvious reasons. 

 

The protagonist, Irene, grew up with Clare, another light-skinned (and blonde haired) black girl, although they were not close friends. Later, she runs into Clare randomly, and realizes that she is “passing,” having married a rich white man who has no idea Clare is black. 

 

Clare feels isolated, with no one who shares her background to talk to, so she worms her way into Irene’s life, with eventually tragic results. 

 

This quick summary should suffice to say what the book is about, at least on the surface. But there is a lot more going on. Issues of colorism, class, gender, and sexuality are all barely below or at the surface. Complicated relationships, such as that between Clare and Irene, but also Irene and her husband Brian, are also crucial to the story, and in fact are every bit as interesting as the racial theme. 

 

It is these additional themes, and social complexity that elevate this book above a simple morality tale of “passing is bad and will end badly.” That, and Larsen’s excellent, taut writing. This is a relatively short book, and is a great example of writing that has everything necessary, and nothing that is not. Every detail matters, and every detail will eventually explain something else. 

 

My teens and I listened to this one on our recent camping trip, and my 17 year old in particular loved it. 

 

Nella Larsen was an interesting character. She was born to a Danish immigrant mother and an African American father. Her mother later remarried another Danish immigrant and had a second daughter. Nella therefore grew up black in a white family, isolated both from her peers at school and her greater African American community. This sense of alienation and lack of belonging informs Larsen’s fiction. 

 

Eventually, Larsen became a nurse, rising to a career as a public health nurse in New York City. After a period as a librarian, she returned to nursing until her death in her 70s. She only wrote a pair of novels and a handful of short stories, never relying on her writing to support herself. 

 

Larsen was married for a while to Elmer Imes, only the second African American to earn a doctorate degree in physics - he had quite the storied career. Unfortunately, his affair with a white woman ended the marriage. Larsen never remarried. 

 

All of these personal experiences make their way into her writing one way or another. 

 

Back to the book itself. As I noted, the book is a lot more complex than a simple morality tale. All of the characters are conflicted, complicated, and flawed. 

 

During their childhood, Irene and her family looked down on Clare. After all, her father was a janitor - and white - and also a notorious drunk and abuser who dies in a brawl. Irene’s family is part of the new black middle class in Chicago. 

 

This issue of class continues through the book. After Clare is raised by her white aunts (and treated like a servant), she elopes with her rich husband, Jack, and lives a wealthy lifestyle. She hasn’t forgotten her roots, however, which is apparent in the way that Irene - now married to a doctor - treats her dark-skinned servant Zulena compared to the ease in which Clare converses with her as an equal. 

 

Irene isn’t all that thrilled about Clare’s reappearance in her life. She is a disrupting force, a threat to Irene’s security. And security is what Irene craves most. That’s why she has married well, and keeps her husband well in line. That way she and her two sons have the security and stability she wants most. 

 

Clare, in contrast, perhaps because she grew up with a more difficult childhood, takes risks. She gets what she wants, as Irene puts it. But she feels isolated in white society. After all, she can tell no one about her childhood, her background, her history. It is all small talk and white lies. 

 

No surprise, then, that she seeks out Irene. Despite the class differences, they do have a lot in common. Irene too “passes” from time to time - she looks vaguely “Spanish” or “Gypsy,” and is thus able to dine in segregated establishments. She never actively conceals her blackness; she merely omits to say anything and lets others draw conclusions. 

 

Physically, Clare is able to pass well. The blond hair, the pale skin, and her endless self-confidence carry her through. 

 

There are weird cracks, however. Jack calls her “nig,” a joke about the fact that she has gotten darker over time. He is a raging and vicious racist, however, and he expresses his bigotry loudly and often. The scene where he rattles on about how much he hates n-----rs in front of his wife, Irene, and another friend who is passing, is horrifying and painful. 

 

There is an interesting subtext to this, though. Is he perhaps turned on by the fantasy that Clare is black? Certainly this has been a phenomenon since, well, forever. Both the exoticism of the foreign, and the forbidden crossing of the color line under slavery and Jim Crow. White men have always, it seems, been drawn to black women. 

 

Once Clare comes back into Irene’s life to stay, at great risk to Clare’s safety, I might add, new complications arise. 

 

Where to even start with this one. There is a lot of sexual tension, but it isn’t what Irene thinks it is. This book was written in 1929, so nothing is explicit. But. It is definitely there. 

 

Brian hates being a doctor - it is implied he went to medical school due to family pressure. He hates living in America, ostensibly because of the bigotry. 

 

To further complicate things, Irene and Brian’s marriage seems loveless - and sexless. Irene mentions at one point that she couldn’t think of Brian as anything more than her husband and the father of her children. (And her source of security.) They have separate rooms, and never, in the course of the book, seem to have any sexual connection. 

 

This is in contrast to how Irene talks about Clare, constantly focusing on her beauty, the details of her skin, face, figure, and more. Seriously, the language used is about as erotic as it can be without becoming explicit. It is never said outright, but Irene is both crushing hard on Clare even while jealous of her and in deep denial of her feelings. Her sexual attraction is buried deep and converted to irritation at Clare for coming back into her life. And into paranoia that Clare is having an affair with Brian. 

 

Where does Brian want to go? Well, he wants to go to Brazil. And sure, maybe Brazil is less bigoted - and racially mixed. But at the time the book was written, “going to Brazil” was also a veiled reference to homosexuality - Brazil was seen as more tolerant of LGBTQ people at the time. An analogue from my own era would be “moving to San Francisco.” So, yeah, complicated. 

 

The tragic ending is left ambiguous. What really happened in that split second? Was it suicide? Was it murder, and if so, who did it? Or was it simply, as the police decide, a tragic accident? 

 

Also left unexplored - the book ends with the death - are the feelings of the characters. It is implied that Jack is both furious at discovering his wife is black, and also still drawn to her. Irene seems to feel guilt about Clare’s death, but presumably is also relieved that her marriage to Brian is safe, at least for the time being. Either had a potential motive for murder. 

 

And what was Clare thinking? Did she decide to take her own life once her cover was blown? Or did she faint? We will never know. 

 

In some ways, this book seems a bit of an anachronism. Outside of the MAGA-verse, interracial marriages and relationships are commonplace and widely accepted. Nationwide in the United States, 1 in 12 marriages are interracial or interethnic. For new marriages, in 2019 nearly 1 in 5 was. Here in my home state of California, the rate is even higher - about 1 in 4 - and rising. For my kids’ generation, I swear there are more interracial relationships than that. 

 

As a fascinating coincidence, our next-site neighbors on our list night of camping included grandpa and grandma in a family - he was black, she was white - and the grandkids were climbing all over him. It’s just…normal. At least outside of the MAGA-verse, where segregation seems to be the goal and the fantasy. Sigh. 

 

For the majority of us Americans - 94% supposedly (although curious if Trump Era 2.0 has changed that) interracial marriage is something we approve of. After all, these are friends - and indeed family for many of us now. 

 

In an integrated society, there is no need to “pass.” That is the future I and so many others desire for our world.

 

I definitely recommend this book. It is far from formulaic, and has so many layers of complexity and humanity, and is well crafted. 

 

Our audiobook was narrated by Robin Miles, who is a regular audiobook reader across genres. I have nothing but good to say about her job here. Everything was professional, evocative, and transparent. I’m sure there are other versions out there, but this one was worth recommending. 

 

Company by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth (Empty Space 2025)

My wife and I have been collecting Sondheims the last few years. Company is one that she has seen - in a gender-swapped version in New York several years ago - but I had not. As is all too often the case, I played music from this musical years before I actually saw a production. (Ah, the life of a musician. I played “Marry Me A Little” at a wedding.) 

 

Over the years, local theater has put on a few of the less popular Sondheims - Assassins, Sunday in the Park with George - in addition to the usual warhorses. For others, we have had to travel to the big city. I’ll put the links for all my Sondheim reviews at the end of this post. 

 

While I have friends who are not Sondheim fans (to each their own, I guess…), his musicals appeal to musicians and poets. His scores are always top notch, with music that enhances the storytelling. His lyrics are fantastically witty and unexpected and emotionally resonant. The stories he chooses to tell are so varied, with no musical like an other. I mean, just look at the list of eight I have seen.

 

Company is in some ways an “anti-musical.” It defies the conventional plot. There is no couple that meets cute, goes through misunderstandings, and eventually ends up with a happy wedding. 

 

Instead, we get….Bobby. Yep, just Bobby. Just single, unattached, uncommitted Bobby. 

 

But also, the Bobby that has lots of friends, the Bobby everyone loves and confides in, the Bobby that, well, everyone would like to have as part of their friend group. 

 

And this is the paradox, and the subversive message of the musical. The five married couples are each dysfunctional in their own ways, although, as my wife noted, they all love each other - even the ones that get divorced. 

 

Are they happier than Bobby? Probably not, although they are as happy (and unhappy) as any other ordinary human couples tend to be. 

 

Just like Bobby is both as happy and unhappy, contented and discontented, as any normal human being. Would he prefer to be married? Maybe. It’s complicated. Does he prefer to be single? Maybe. It’s complicated. 

 

But what isn’t complicated is that he has friends. He’s not really lonely in that sense. Really, if you think about it (and I say this as a happily married man with a spouse of 24 years), as good as a good marriage is, we all still need friends. 

 

(Side note: even if I were inclined to cheat, it would never be with a friend. Friends are too valuable to risk.) 

 

The musical doesn’t really have a linear plot, but is a series of vignettes, each featuring one of the couples, with Bobby in the middle, observing and responding to the drama. 

 

It seems to me that there are a number of ways to envision this musical. It can certainly be played as a cynical expose of marriage and relationships. Taken the one way, it can be a bitter screed against the very idea of human happiness and connection. 

 

But it can also be seen as a gentle satire of relationships, a realistic look at the compromises and adaptations necessary to live with another person, to build a life together. And also as a paean to friendships, every bit as messy as romance, as filled with compromise and adaptation, but also with genuine connection and life lived together. 

 

The Empty Space leaned toward that second vision, with a less cynical and more generous and affectionate look at all of its characters. 

 

There were a lot of the usual local actors and singers - friends of mine included. From Karin Harmon in the iconic role of Joanne, to Liz B. Williams as the ditzy April. 

 (back row): David (Jake Wattenbarger), Jenny (Abigail Clippinger), Harry (Chris Bradford), Sarah (Elizabeth Heckathorn - we saw Victoria Olmos as the understudy), Amy (Bri Deras), Paul (Dillon Nunamaker), Susan (Julie Verrell), Peter (Adrian Francies), Joanne (Karin Harmon), Larry (Steve Evans)

(front row): Kathy (Natalie McGee), April (Liz B. Williams), Marta (Kelsey Morrow) 

 

A few special call outs are in order. Bri Deras was sensational in the “patter” aria, “Getting Married Today” - one of the more difficult musical moments. Karin Harmon as Joanne was perfect in the role. 

 Joanne (Karin Harmon)

Overall, the singing was excellent - as good as The Empty Space has ever been. Related to this was the perfect sound balance. Unlike larger theaters, The Empty Space does not mic its singers, and has no room for an orchestra. This means that singers have to project, and the sound engineer has to keep the backing track audible but not overpowering. This production was perfect. I never lost the lyrics, even though different singers had different volume levels. 

 

Finally, I have to mention Bobby. A combination of schedule and personal preference led me to choose the night when Shawn Rader played Bobby. He is officially the understudy, and only got the one night. But, wow. I have loved him in everything, including Sondheim, and he did not disappoint. The entire show was a clinic in physical acting, as Bobby has to silently comment on the drama between the other characters. 

 

And also, “Marry Me A Little” and “Being Alive” were so good. His singing was subtle and reflective. Despite letting his voice drop to a near whisper, he still projected the lyrics. As a musician, I was impressed. Bakersfield is fortunate to have many talented and dedicated thespians, and Rader is one of the best. 

 Bobby (Shawn Rader)

I thoroughly enjoyed this show, and was impressed by the high quality in every facet. The intimate venue added to the pleasure. 

 

Somebody hold me too close

Somebody hurt me too deep

Somebody sit in my chair

And ruin my sleep

And make me aware

Of being alive, being alive

 

Somebody need me too much

Somebody know me too well

Somebody pull me up short

And put me through hell

And give me support

For being alive

Make me alive

Make me alive

 

Make me confused

Mock me with praise

Let me be used

Vary my days

But alone is alone, not alive

 

Somebody crowd me with love

Somebody force me to care

Somebody make me come through

I'll always be there

As frightened as you

To help us survive

Being alive, being alive

Being alive!

 

Unfortunately, I caught the end of the run, and was unable to write before the show closed. So, you won’t be able to see this if you didn’t already. 

 

However, The Empty Space (and other local theaters) have other great shows coming up, and I recommend seeing them if you can. 

 

***

 

The Sondheim list:

 

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (Ovation Theater)

Assassins (The Empty Space)

A Little Night Music (Pasadena Playhouse)

Merrily We Roll Along (Broadway)

Pacific Overtures (East West Theater)

Sunday in the Park with George (Ovation Theater)

Sweeney Todd (Broadway)

 

After the Dance by Edwidge Dandicat

Source of book: Audiobook from the library

 

I actually have had another Dandicat book on my list, but this one came up as available on audiobook when I needed a title. 

 

Edwidge Dandicat is a Haitian-born American author who considers herself both Haitian and American - both places are home. While best known for novels and short stories, this particular book of hers is non-fiction. It is all about Carnival at Jacmel, a world-renowned event that, ironically, the author was not allowed to attend as a child. Her fundamentalist uncle impressed upon her that Carnival gave one demons. Yeah, the whole shebang that I got all too often as a child from my mother, the fear of demons lurking in anything seen as too exuberant, too little straight laced. And, if one is honest, anything rooted in a pagan past involving people with brown skin. (After all, no one ever got demons from a Christmas tree, right?) 

 

The book centers on her return to Jacmel for Carnival as an adult. She talks with the organizers, explores side quests in the area, and discusses literature and history as well as her own experiences. The various masks and character types are analyzed, along with the mythology and roots of the celebration. It’s a pretty fun book. 

 

Dandicat talks about the history of Haiti, from the first successful rebellion of the enslaved, through the various coups and dictatorships. She also mentions authors such as Rene Depestre and his fascinating zombie novel, Hadriana In All My Dreams, which I loved. 

 

Because I listened to it on audiobook over the course of a couple weeks, I don’t have notes. I will say I enjoyed the colorful descriptions of the traditional characters, the history, and the literature. 

 

I wasn’t as thrilled about the audiobook, however. Much of this is due to the fact that the author narrated it. Not all authors should read their books, and I think Dandicat is one of those. 

 

First, her reading was slow and plodding. I almost never increase the speed on audiobooks, but I had to go at +10% just to keep the book from dragging. 

 

Second, I am going to go out on a limb and say that English is not her first spoken language. (French is the official language of Haiti.) It isn’t that Dandicat doesn’t command English well - in print, her writing is fluid and fluent. The problem is that, like homeschoolers like me, she often mispronounces words because she presumably learned them from reading, not speaking. It was enough words to be distracting. 

 

On the plus side, her pronunciation of Haitian names and places is delicious. Her storytelling was good too, but it felt like she was laboring over reading the script at times, which detracted from that feeling of a personal story. Reading aloud isn’t everyone’s strength, and I feel in this case that it would have been better had the author had someone else do the reading. 

 

That said, this is a fascinating book, and definitely worth picking up. World culture is something that all of us, in a globalized world, would do well to learn. Haiti has been all too often denigrated as backwards and dark, and was even blamed (unfairly) for the AIDS epidemic. This glosses over the way the white world punished Haiti for its slave rebellion and self-seized freedom, and the way the United States has propped up brutal dictators in that country while withholding the resources that would have enabled it to become more self-sufficient. It’s a sad story in and of itself - but not really recounted in this book, per se. The book is more about the rich culture and history of a place and people who are underrated. 

 

 

 

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

 

This was our book club selection this month for the Literary Lush Book Club. I didn’t specifically have this one on my list, but it did make the Pulitzer finalist list back in 2011. The book was nominated by my wife. 

 

Swamplandia! is a bit of a difficult book to completely classify. It is kind of Southern Gothic in mood and in the grotesque and malevolent characters. But it isn’t about the Southern aristocracy. Rather the opposite, as it deals with low class white characters, mostly. It is definitely high quality writing, but also feels more accessible than much of modern literary fiction. It is a coming of age story - two of them, really. And it is also about the trauma of the loss of a parent. And it is also seriously funny in many places. 

 

It also does have a scene where a 12 year old girl is raped, so be warned if that will be an issue for you. (It’s not particularly graphic, it isn’t long, it is a key moment in the plot, and the victim is able to assert herself afterward in a positive way.)

 

Swamplandia! is the title, but it is also the name of the fifth-rate amusement park/tourist trap in the Ten Thousand Islands area of the western Florida coast run by the family at the center of the book. The exclamation point is important in both names.

 

The park centers around alligators, with the highlight being the high dive into an alligator pit performed by the mother, Hilola Bigtree. Running this place has been a generational effort, since the patriarch got scammed into buying worthless land back in the day. He created a pretendian back story, complete with a “museum” of family artifacts, and a whole mythology of primordial gator wrestling.  

 

Problems arise, however, when Grandpa Sawtooth gets dementia and has to be placed in a facility. And then Hilola dies of cancer, leaving “The Chief,” the father of the family, and his three children, to manage a park that suddenly has no main event and eventually no customers. 

 

The Chief leaves for the mainland, ostensibly for “business,” leaving the children to fend for themselves amid a mountain of debts and boredom. 

 

First, the oldest, Kiwi, leaves and goes to work for low wages at the competing park, The World of Darkness - a thoroughly tacky Hell-based experience. Then, the middle child, Osceola, has a mental break, decides she is in love with a ghost from a dredge accident back during the Depression, and elopes with him. 

 

This leaves twelve-year-old Ava all alone, until she meets with the mysterious Bird Man, who convinces her to set off with him for the gates of the underworld to look for Osceola. 

 

Thereafter, there are two main threads. Kiwi’s experience working and trying to get his high school diploma is social satire and humor, although with an edge of ambivalence, as Kiwi feels guilt for leaving yet also loves being independent. 

 

The other thread is Ava’s journey through the islands of the mangroves searching for her sister. 

 

Because the writing is excellent, the book draws you into the world completely. Even though things feel a bit exaggerated and over the top, they really aren't, for the most part. The tacky tourist traps of this sort used to be an American phenomenon, particularly along well-traveled routes like the old Route 66 here in the western US. There are ghost parks all over the country, particularly east of the Mississippi, and rotting roadside “attractions” out west. 

 

Really, the only potentially unrealistic element is the supernatural. I mean, are the ghosts real? Does Osceola actually see and talk to them? Is the old laundry witch the ghost of the historical figure? The answers to these questions are unclear - the book leaves a lot of ambiguity, not least because the story is told mostly from Ava and Kiwi’s respective perspectives. Kiwi doesn’t believe in the supernatural. And Ava never does see or hear any ghosts, so she is skeptical. 

 

The ending isn’t exactly tragic - the beginning is really more so - but like any significant transition, it is painful. Life can never just go one the way it has. People die, children grow up, tourist tastes change, society moves on. 

 

There are some excellent lines in the book. In the passage on how the “Indian” heritage was created, The Chief explains why creating the legend was so important:

 

“Tradition is as important, kids, as promotional materials are expensive.”

 

And promotional billboards, with purple prose and puffery are the central promotion for Swamplandia!

 

Although there was not a drop of Seminole or Miccosukee blood in us, the Chief always costumed us in tribal apparel for the photographs he took. He said we were “our own Indians.” 

 

As the kids get older, however, they start to see through all of this, with even Ava, the kid who believes most in the park, realizing that her dad looks pretty silly in his fake regalia. 

 

As someone who works with seniors a lot in my legal practice, as well as nursing home and Medicaid issues, I did have to laugh a little at the description of the care home. 

 

The seniors got issued these pastel pajamas that made them look like Easter eggs in wheelchairs. If you went to visit, that’s what you saw: Easter eggs in these adult cribs, Easter eggs on toilets with guardrails. 

 

Don’t get me wrong here. I advocate for good care, and help people get it when they need it. And I do have a lot of respect for the many good people who care for our elders, often at criminally low wages. This was just a fun visual, and a bit of a gentle dig at the way institutions do things. 

 

The best satire comes in the Kiwi-narrated chapters. He finds himself - a sheltered homeschooled kid from a rather eccentric family - suddenly thrust into a strange world. A guy named Vijay takes him under his wing, not always in the most sensible way, but in ways that are quite funny. 

 

There are also the usual suspects, the sort of losers who tend to bully anyone who is different. One is described by Kiwi in his own mind. 

 

Oh my God, you are not even an original asshole! You are a plagiarist of assholes.

 

Yep, most assholes are. If they had imagination, they probably wouldn’t be assholes. 

 

Throughout the book, the author fills in the history of the area. The Everglades have long been targeted for draining and exploitation, yet they have resisted human control. From the sale of worthless land, to the dredging that never did open waterways, to the many attempts to create arable land in the swamp. 

 

In one case, trees were imported from Australia, and seeded throughout the swamp. The intent was that the trees would stabilize the soil, and eventually be cut down so crops could be planted. This failed spectacularly, with the new trees becoming an invasive weed, crowding out native plants, and making dense, impassible, unclearable miles of wasteland. 

 

The trees were a species of Melaleuca, which is something that my own family has a history with. There are lots of species, and the ones introduced to Florida were not the same as the “tea tree” ones that are the source of a particular oil claimed to have medicinal properties. Back in the 1990s, my late grandfather, who kind of dabbled in this and that - he was a real estate agent in his 60s and 70s as his most steady form of employment - sold tea tree oil through a MLM. My family went along with it, as it was a fairly harmless hobby, and it also gave the rest of the family a chance to subsidize income for my grandfather, who didn’t have much retirement savings. 

 

As a homeschool kid, I did find the approach to homeschooling in this book to be nuanced. On the one hand, the Bigtree kids lack contact with other kids - the geographical isolation is the main cause of that. However, they seem to get fairly good, if quirky, academic training. As Ava notes, there were gaps, but there were also things they learned that other kids did not. Grandpa Sawtooth taught them about the forgotten history, the black laborers left to die in a hurricane, the indigenous peoples forced off their lands, the marginalized communities that the government never bothered to help or even connect to the mainland. 

 

“Prejudice,” as defined by Sawtooth Bigtree, was a kind of prehistoric arithmetic - a “damn fool math” - in which some people counted and others did not. It meant white names on white headstones in the big cemetery on Cypress Point, and black and brown bodies buried in swamp water. 

 

This is a brilliant insight. The MAGA movement is at its heart a primal scream that “Those People Do Not Count!” As the official position of the State of Florida, as articulated by its attorney, “woke” is the belief that there is systemic injustice and the need to do something about it. For MAGA, this is unacceptable. They are either in denial that injustice exists, or, more typically, they not only do not give a fuck about injustice, they wish there was a lot more of it in their favor. 

 

Much of the book is the story of Ava, and her interior life is described throughout. I thought the author did a good job of making this interesting and relatable without making Ava into a full adult. She feels like a girl on the brink of womanhood, which she is. This line struck me as good:

 

Why was my mind feasting on the worst pictures? 

 

This is a very human tendency, right? Always imagine the most horrible possibility. It is tough to blame Ava, of course, at this point in the story. The worst has already happened. Her coming of age happens when she faces things, lets go of the past (through a somewhat symbolic act of giving up her pet baby alligator to save herself), and takes her own rescue into her own hands. 

 

Kiwi too starts to see things differently with experience. I thought this epiphany was a good one.

 

There was a story that travelled around the islands about a woman named Mama Weeds. A swamp witch. But now Kiwi saw that there were witches everywhere in the world. Witches lining up for free grocery bags of battered tuna cans and half-rotted carrots at the downtown Loomis Army of Mercy. At the bus station, witches telling spells to walls. Only the luckiest ones got to live inside stories. The rest were homeless, pushing carts like this one. They sank out of sight, like the European witches clutching their stones. 

 

I guess that is a good example of this book. It can be very funny, an engrossing story that draws you in, a horror show, a satire, a musing on life and society. And all of it a once. It’s a worthwhile book. 

The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington

Source of book: I own this

 

Quick trivia question: who are the four writers to have won the Pulitzer for fiction more than once? 

 

If you answered “William Faulkner,” or “John Updike,” good work. If you answered “Colson Whitehead,” congratulations - you know your modern literature. (And if you didn’t know that, go read some Whitehead already!) 

 

I would imagine, however, that most of us - me included - would have no idea that the fourth author was Newton Booth Tarkington. 

 

Unless you, like me, read Tarkington’s classics of children’s literature, the Penrod books, you may well have never heard of him. My wife, though, has read a whole bunch of his books, because she is unusual. 

 

The fact of the matter is that Tarkington had the opposite career arc of many great artists. During his lifetime, he was considered one of America’s greatest authors. He was celebrated, awarded, and beloved. 

 

And then, after his death, he fell into obscurity, and these days is rarely mentioned at all. 

 

So what happened? It isn’t entirely clear. One factor was probably simply changing tastes. Tarkington wrote more about the past than the present or future. Although he did satirize the upper classes, some modern critics claim that he didn’t really challenge the social structures of his time. It is also probable that two world wars changed the world so much that the American interest in pre-war society faded away, in a way it did not in, say, Great Britain. 

 

In any case, Tarkington had his moment, and then was largely forgotten. 

 

Tarkington lived a fascinating life, though, and I found his writing to be quite good. 

 

Born in 1869, Tarkington came from a wealthy, connected family. He was named after his uncle, Newton Booth, who was at the time the governor of California. He attended Princeton, although he missed graduation by one class. He hobnobbed with Woodrow Wilson and other young luminaries of the time. 

 

His family lost much of its wealth in the Panic of 1873, although they recovered enough to afford education, unlike the Ambersons of this book. Tarkington himself would eventually be elected to the Indiana legislature, act in his own plays, and have a string of best selling novels for both adults and children. 

 

And, as I noted, during his lifetime, he was a celebrated author, much loved and much purchased. 

 

The Magnificent Ambersons is technically the middle book of a trilogy about the family, although it is by far the best known. 

 

I found this book at a used book store during our most recent Utah Shakespeare Festival visit. I was surprised to find it in the edition I did. Back when I was a teen, I started collecting hardbacks from the Readers Digest World’s Best Reading series. Do not confuse these with the condensed books - these are middlebrow unabridged hardbacks that are durable and sit well in the hand, even if they are not the real fancy boxed set quality. I have nearly 100 of these, all purchased used, often from thrift stores, but had not seen a title I didn’t already own in years. This was published in 2005, which is pretty late in the series. 

 

The book deals with the slow, then rapid decline of a prominent Midwestern family. The Ambersons came by their money during the Panic, prospering where others lost money. But, as the generations went on, they squandered and spent their wealth, at the same time that their town (modeled on Indianapolis) grew and changed. 

 

As much as the decline of the Ambersons, the book is about what the author perceived as the decline of the city. From a beautiful small town centered around estates like the Amberson estate, the coming of the automobile led to suburban sprawl, pollution, and perhaps worst of all, lots of new and newly rich people (and immigrants) who all had no idea of taste or history and thus forgot all about the old rich like the Ambersons. 

 

Tarkington loathed the automobile - largely on environmental grounds, and he wasn’t exactly wrong, in retrospect. This is evident not merely in this book, but in his other writings. 

 

The pollution today is actually less than when the book was written, when coal-fired factories blackened houses and lungs throughout the Rust Belt. Tarkington definitely brings out this negative change of early 20th Century urban life. 

 

The central protagonist of the book, young Georgie Amberson Minafer, has to be one of the least likeable in literature. He is kind of an anti-hero, but rather than being actively bad, he is merely an entitled, spoiled, clueless rich fuck. At least until the end, when circumstances finally force him to grow up. 

 

My wife and I had the discussion about whether he is a narcissist, like the Dear Orange Leader, who similarly is who he is because of obscene wealth and privilege as a child. I tend to think that Georgie is not a narcissist, because while he is entitled, he doesn’t really need to be the center of the universe. And, he is able to become self-aware eventually, and can choose to live less selfishly, something narcissists are not really able to do. 

 

Georgie’s grandfather, a Union Major during the Civil War, is the one who established the family fortune, and built a magnificent mansion in the new town. His three children have taken different paths. George never married. Amelia married Sydney, but they are childless and have taken their share of the estate and moved to France. 

 

It was left to the gorgeous and charming Isabell to carry on the family name. 

 

She had the pick of two eligible young men. For a time, it seemed she would choose the ambitious and dashing Eugene Morgan, but after an episode where he drank too much and accidentally broke a string bass at a party, she dumped him and chose the boring but steady Wilber Minafer. 

 

Their child, Georgie, grew up with a largely absent and uninvolved father, and a smothering, spoiling mother. With predictable results. 

 

Later, as an adult, Georgie still hasn’t improved, and many who know the family secretly hope he gets his comeuppance. 

 

At this point, age and ill health start catching up with the older generations. Eugene Morgan’s wife dies, leaving him with the beautiful and sharp witted Lucy, who falls in love with Georgie. 

 

Wilber Minafer dies, leaving his business affairs in shambles. Isabell generously leaves the life insurance to Wilber’s spinster sister Fanny, who otherwise would have nothing. 

 

With the Major in ill health, and the wealth of the Ambersons looking ever more questionable, Georgie and Isabell remain oblivious. 

 

What sparks the central conflict of the story is that Eugene has never stopped loving Isabell, and, a decent time after Wilber’s death, comes courting. 

 

Georgie is furious for reasons he cannot entirely articulate. But what he can speak out loud is that the town gossips are claiming that Isabell was cheating on Wilber with Eugene before she was a widow. This infuriates Georgie, and, of course, he makes everything worse and worse and worse with his foolish actions. 

 

From there, everything slowly, then rapidly goes to hell. I won’t spoil anything further if I can help it. 

 

As I noted, the writing is excellent throughout. The characters are believable, the descriptions evocative, and the story compelling. The satire of both old money and new money is spot on. The class obsessions we Americans claim not to have but in fact spend far too much time reinforcing are pointedly skewered.  It really is a shame that Tarkington fell out of fashion, because this was a quite enjoyable and interesting book. 

 

I wrote down some lines to share, of course. 

 

Shifting fashions of shape replaced aristocracy of texture: dressmakers, shoemakers, hatmakers, and tailors, increasing in cunning and in power, found means of making new clothes old. 

 

That’s gold right there. As one who still wears largely the same style as I did 25 years ago, I am with the author here. And also with this one, the antithesis of the McMansion style. 

 

At the beginning of the Ambersons’ great period most of the houses of the Midland town were of a pleasant architecture. They lacked style, but also lacked pretentiousness, and whatever does not pretend at all has style enough. 

 

One thing I was not at all expecting in this book was to run across what I had thought was a modern term. As with many books of this era, there are offensive racial terms that would have been in common use. For example, most of the book, the black staff are referred to as “darkies.” 

 

But there is one spot, during the first chapter, when the author describes the usual few servants the rich family had, he notes that a female servant was usually Irish or German or Scandinavian - a recently arrived immigrant. But in a few cases, the servant might be “a person of color.” How about that? 

 

Georgie, like all the Ambersons, fails to understand the changes of the times. In particular, he believes that automobiles are a fad that will soon fade away. He even tells Lucy Morgan that her father had better not waste his time making them in his factory. Fortunately for him, Eugene continues making them, and eventually becomes filthy rich as a result. 

 

There are a number of passages that illuminate Georgie’s character, and his inability to see any future different from the present. One of the most poignant is where he explains that he has zero intention of ever working for a living. He assumes he can and will be a gentleman of leisure. As he puts it, he has no intention of “doing anything.” He wants to “be something, not do something.” He sees himself as having family pride to uphold - “what it means to be an Amberson in this town.” 

 

Later, he would expound on this to Lucy. 

 

“I never have been able to see any occasion for a man’s going into trade, or being a lawyer, or any of those things if his position and family were such that he didn’t need to.”

 

I am reminded a lot of a modern version of this, the woman (and her family) who sees no need to have a career, because she will simply be a stay-at-home mom. Like Georgie, I have seen all too many who found out too late that they did not in fact have the position and family to avoid the need to support themselves. 

 

I also found a fun connection with another author of a similar era, Sinclair Lewis.

 

In his bitterness, George uttered a significant monosyllable.

 

Cue Elmer Gantry and the “nine Saxon physiological monosyllables.” 

 

Another one comes from Lucy, who is both in love with Georgie and frustrated at his immaturity. 

 

“He does anything he likes to, without any regard for what people think. Then why should he mind so furiously when the least little thing reflects upon him, or on anything or anybody connected with him?”

 

As her father tells her, “That’s one of the greatest puzzles of human vanity…” 

 

There is a line about Wilber’s lack of involvement in Georgie’s life that I also thought was perceptive and well written. 

 

It needed only the sight of that forever inert semblance of the quiet man who had been always so quiet a part of his son’s life - so quiet a part that George had seldom been consciously aware that his father was indeed a part of his life. 

 

Eugene would later note something else about Georgie, this time to Uncle George. 

 

Eugene laughed. “You need only three things to explain all that’s good and bad about Georgie.” 

“Three?”

“He’s Isabell’s only child. He’s an Amberson. He’s a boy.”

“Well, Mister Bones, of these three things which are the good ones and which are the bad ones.”

“All of them,” said Eugene. 

 

One of the most significant mistakes that Georgie makes is in how he chooses to deal with gossip. In this, he is a lot like the Orange Dear Leader in that he lashes out in an attempt to control and exert power and privilege. Which is, of course, the worst way to deal with gossip. As Uncle George tells him:

 

“Gossip is never fatal, Georgie, until it is denied. Gossip goes on about every human being alive and about all the dead that are alive enough to be remembered, and yet almost never does any harm until some defender makes a controversy. Gossip’s a nasty thing, but it’s sickly, and if people of good intentions will let it entirely alone, it will die, ninety-nine times out of a hundred.”

 

The last one that I noted was a line about psychics and spiritualists, which I think is pretty accurate. 

 

Mrs. Horner spoke of herself as a “psychic”; but otherwise she seemed oddly unpretentious and matter-of-fact; and Eugene had no doubt at all of her sincerity. He was sure that she was not an intentional fraud, and though he departed in a state of annoyance with himself, he came to the conclusion that if any credulity were played upon by Mrs. Horner’s exhibitions, it was her own.

 

As I said, I enjoyed the book, and think it was well written. It is a shame that Tarkington somehow fell into obscurity. One wonders if he had lived a generation earlier if he would still be widely read and discussed today. Maybe sometimes timing and luck make more difference than we think.