FICTION – Page 16 – REVIEWS AND VIEWS OF LIFE

SUDAN’S RELEVANCE

Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough

(Blog:awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

What Is the What

By: Dave Eggers

Narrated by Dion Graham

As Ronald Reagan famously said in his successful campaign against Jimmy Carter, “There you go again”.

Dave Eggers writes another book about a tragic human event. However, Eggers avoids character controversy like that which followed “Zeitoun”, a story about the Katrina disaster.

Eggers classifies “What Is the What” as a novel, without any claim to source-vetted facts or the integrity of its primary character.

SUDAN IN THE WORLD

“What Is the What” is about Sudan and its 20th century genocidal history. This is a story of the complex religious, ethnic, and moral conflict that exists in Sudan and in all nations peopled by extremes of wealth and poverty.

“What Is the What” is a tautology exemplified by a story of one who has something, knows it, and another that has nothing, and knows not why.

Valentino Achak Deng, the hero of Eggar’s story, tells of his father. Achak’s father explains the story of “What is the What”.

God offers man a choice of cows or something called the What. God asks, “Do you want the cows or the What?

But, man asks, “What is the What”? God says, “The What is for you to decide.”

Achak’s father explains that with cows a man has something; he learns how to care for something; becomes a good caretaker of a life-sustaining something, but a man who has no cows has nothing, learns nothing about caring; and only becomes a taker of other’s something.

By mixing truth with fiction, Eggers cleverly reveals the story of Sudan’s “lost boys”, refugees from the murderous regime of President Al-Bashir in Sudan. At every turn, Achak is faced with hard choices.

Omar Al-Bashir is deposed in April 2019 after almost 30 years in power.

Omar Al-Bashir, a Muslim Sudanese military leader who becomes President, releases dogs of war by condoning the rape and pillage of indigenous Sudanese by Muslim extremists. It is partly a religious war of Muslims against Christians but, more fundamentally, it is about greed.

Greed is engendered by oil reserves found in southern Sudan in 1978. Bashir strikes a match that ignites a guerrilla war. Eggers reveals the consequence of that war in the story of Achak, one of thousands of lost boys that fled Sudan when their parents were robbed, raped, and murdered. Bashir’s intent was to rid Sudan of an ethnic minority that held lands in southern Sudan.

Eggers cleverly begins his story with Achak being robbed in Atlanta, Georgia. But, this is America; not Sudan.

Robbers knock on Achak’s door with a request to use his telephone. Achak is pistol whipped, tied, and trapped in his apartment while his and his roommate’s goods are stolen.

There is much to be taken from the apartment. The robbers leave a young boy to guard Achak while they leave to get a larger vehicle to remove the stolen goods.

Achak identifies with the young boy. Achak recalls his life in Sudan and his escape to America; i.e.the land of the free; the land of opportunity. Achak sees the young boy as himself, victimized by life’s circumstances, hardened by poverty, and mired in the “What” (the takers of other’s something).

Eggers continues to juxtapose the consequence of poverty and powerlessness in Atlanta with Achak’s experience in Sudan. Achak’s roommate returns to the apartment to find Achak tied and gagged in an emptied apartment. He releases Achak.

They call the police to report the robbery and assault. An officer arrives to investigate. The police officer listens, takes brief notes, offers no hope for the victims, and leaves; i.e., just another case of poor people being victimized by poor people.

The episode reminds one of the Sudanese government’s abandonment of the “lost boys”. They are citizens governed by leaders who look to rule-of-law for the rich, and powerful; not the poor and powerless. They are leaders of the “what” (takers of other’s something); rather than leaders of all citizens.

Achak has been injured in the robbery. He goes to a hospital emergency room for help. Achak waits for nine hours to be seen by a radiologist. He presumes it is because he has no insurance but it is really because he has no power.

He has enough money to pay for treatment but without insurance, this emergency room puts Achak on a “when we can get around to it” list. The doctor who can read the radiology film is not due for another three hours; presumably when his regular work day begins. Achak waits for eleven hours and finally decides to leave. It is 3:00 am and he has to be at work at 5:30 am.

As Achak waits for the doctor he remembers his experience in Sudan. When the Muslim extremists first attack his village, many boys of his village, and surrounding villages are orphaned. These orphans have nowhere to go. By plan or circumstance the lost boys are assembled by a leader who has the outward-appearing objective of protecting the children. The reality of the “what” (takers of other’s something) raises its head when the children are recruited by this leader for the “red army” of South Sudan (aka SPLA or Sudan People’s Liberation Army).

The reality of the “what” (takers of other’s something) raises its head when Sudanese children are recruited by this leader for the “red army” of South Sudan (aka SPLA or Sudan People’s Liberation Army).

These are boys of 8, 9, 10, 11 years of age. This army-of-recruits begins a march from South Sudan to Ethiopia, a journey of over 700 miles, gathering more orphans as they travel across Sudan. Along the way, they become food for lions, and crocodiles; they are reviled as outsiders by frightened villagers and, unbeknownst to Achak and many of the boys—they are meant to become seeds of a revolution to overthrow Al-Bashir’s repressive government. These children are to be educated and trained in Ethiopia to fight for the independence of South Sudan. They are led by leaders of the “what” (takers of other’s something).

The lost boys are victims of believers in the “what”. Achak and other Sudanese’ refugees walk, run, and swim a river to arrive in Kenya, hundreds of miles south of Ethiopia. Some Sudanese were shot by Ethiopians; some were eaten by crocodiles; some died from disease and starvation.

Then, in 1991, Ethiopia’s government changes. The lost boys, a part of an estimated 20,000 Sudanese’ refugees, are forcibly ejected by the new government.

The Sudanese’ refugees arrive in Kakuma, Kenya. Achak says Kakuma is a Swahili word for “nowhere”. In 1992, it becomes home to an estimated 138,000 refugees who fled from several different warring African nations. The SPLA remains a part of the refugee camp but their recruiting activity is mitigated in this new environment. The camp is somewhat better organized but meals are limited to one per day with disease and wild animals as ever-present dangers. Education classes are supported by Kenya, Japan, and the United Nations to help refugees manage themselves and escape their past.

Achak survives these ordeals and reflects on his unhappiness in Atlanta, Georgia. Achak clearly acknowledges how much better living in America is than living in Africa. However, Achak makes the wry suggestion that Sudanese settlement in America changed his countrymen from abusers to killers of their women.

He suggests Sudanese killing of their women is because of freedom. He explains freedom exercised by women in America is missing in Sudan. In Sudan, Sudanese women would not think of doing something contrary to wishes of their husbands. Achak infers Sudanese women adapt to freedom while Sudanese men feel emasculated. The emasculation leads to deadly force in Sudanese families; a deadly force that includes murder of wives or girlfriends and suicide by male companions.

Eggers successfully and artistically reveals the tragedy of Sudan. Cultural and religious conflict in the world and American freedom are called into question. The cultural belief of parts of the Middle East, Africa, and America drive Achak from nation to nation. Achak, despite misgivings, appears to love America. But, American democracy is no utopia. Achak realizes no system of government is perfect. His ambition is to educate himself and his home country. Achak realizes education is the key to a life well lived.

What is the What? Ironically, it is more than cows; it is education that combats cultural ignorance and celebrates freedom and equal opportunity for all.

Eggers story implies America needs to re-think its policy on immigration. We are a nation of immigrants. Achak’s story highlights what is wrong with America and other parts of the world. But it also shows the “what” (“the ‘what’ that is for you to decide”) can be made better because it is more than cows.

LOS ANGELES REDUX

Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough

(Blog:awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

All Involved: A Novel

Written by: Ryan Gattis

Narrated by: Anthony Rey Perez, Marisol Ramirez, Jim Cooper, Adam Lazarre-White, James Chen

RYAN GATTIS (AUTHOR)

Ryan Gattis’s novel, “All Involved”, tells of the Los Angeles riots in 1992. It illustrates a cause for broken trust between minorities and the police. It is the story of public safety departments struggling with criminality, poverty, addiction, and discrimination.

STACEY KOON (L.A. POLICE SERGEANT)

Four Los Angeles Police officers inflict a beat-down on Rodney King while arresting him after a high-speed chase. Sergeant Stacey Koon, the commanding officer at the scene is said to have tazed King twice.

Koon argues the tazing is effective but suggests King is “dusted”; i.e. meaning hyped by PCP. The four involved officers are white. Rodney King is black. King is handcuffed and dragged to the side of the road to wait for an ambulance. There is no clearer example of how difficult it is–to be Black in America.

Officer Koon’s drug use comment is resurrected by officer Derek Chauvin in the restraint of George Floyd in 2020. Is drug use justification for beating or killing a human being?

RODNEY KING (APPEARANCE 3 DAYS AFTER BEATING 3.6.92–KING DIES IN JUNE 2012 @ 47 YEARS OF AGE) There is no clearer example of how difficult it is to be Black in America.

All four officers are indicted for “excessive force”. After acquittal by the State, six days of rioting begin. It is April 29, 1992. In the end, four police officers, Stacey Koon, and Officer Laurence Powell are convicted by a Federal court. Each serves two years in prison. Theodore Briseno and Timothy Wind, the other accused, are acquitted. Gattis does not dwell on the King’ beat down but infers it is the primer for society’s explosion in South Central Los Angeles.

In the end, four police officers, Stacey Koon, and Officer Laurence Powell are convicted by a Federal court. Each serves two years in prison. Theodore Briseno and Timothy Wind, the other accused, are acquitted.

RODNEY KING RIOT - SOUTH CENTRAL LOS ANGELES

Gattis’s novel looks at L.A’s riots through the eyes of minority communities living in the poorest parts of South Central Los Angeles. His story begins with the brutal murder of an innocent Latino by a Latin gang. The murder occurs just after the State’s acquittal of the four officers. Gattis infers the murder occurs because it could be disguised by the Angeleno’ riots.

The murder introduces a cast of characters that will scare most reader/listeners. Sadly, Gattis’s book will also energize gun-toting vigilantes, reinforce socioeconomic prejudices, and encourage right-wing pundits to argue socialism is ruining America. Fundamentally, Gattis’s novel exhibits the appalling consequence of America’s neglect of the poor.

One may argue there is no justification for rioting in America but current events and past history suggest otherwise. From the days of the American Revolution to the murder of a 32-year-old woman in Charlottesville, North Carolina by James Fields Jr. in 2017, rule-of-law has been violated by both moral and miscreant Americans.

Every riot is justified and vilified in measures equal to the power and prestige of prevailing interests. Victims of riots range from rule-of-law enforcement agencies to all socioeconomic levels of American society. However, the powerless, disrespected, and poor are recycled as perennial victims in every riot.

Those who protect the general public suffer at the time of riot but, as peace is restored, the poor return to a life of quiet desperation and crime that is largely contained and hidden from public view.

GANGS IN SOUTH CENTRAL LOS ANGELES (Money, power, and prestige are important to all human beings. However, the ways of making money in poor communities are often illegal because, like Willie Sutton said about banks–robbing, murder for hire, extortion, and drug trafficking are where the money is. Gangs proliferate in poor communities.)

Human self-interest is at the heart of what is good and bad in societies based on rule of law. The rich and middle class are served by rule of law while the poor are often left to fend for themselves. What Gattis shows in his story is that citizen’ self-interest in poor communities is the same as the general public’ but it takes a different form.

Money, power, and prestige are important to all human beings. However, the ways of making money in poor communities are often illegal because, like Willie Sutton said about banks–robbing, murder for hire, extortion, prostitution, and drug trafficking are where the money is. Gangs proliferate in poor communities. They have their own rule of law because the general public’s rule of law does not equally protect the poor.

If the poor cannot find a job, they sell their bodies or their loyalty. Turning tricks for money buys food, clothing, and housing–the necessities of life. Being a gang member or leader becomes the primary ladder for success of the poor.

The stress of being poor is a cycle of illegal selling and buying. With the use of one’s body or drugs, the poor escape the mind-numbing reality of being poor in America; i.e. at least until they run out of money, are murdered, or die from the pestilences of life. American police and fire departments treat the poor less equally because the problems of the poor are increasingly unmanageable.

The stress of being poor is a cycle of illegal selling and buying. With the sale of one’s body or the trafficking of drugs, the poor are employed in ways that satisfy the human desire for money, power, and prestige.

Gattis’s novel posits a solution. He suggests an American gang of corrections officers to threaten poor community gang leaders with murder and mayhem if they choose to persist in their murderous control of poor communities. One has to ask oneself–how can vigilantism cure the problem? The victims of this mentality are decent police and fire department operations that have sworn to protect life and property in the jurisdictions of all citizens of the United States.

Police and fire departments are caught in the middle of a war that cannot be won.

The solution for America does not lie in public safety departments being drawn down to the level of gangs but to raise gangs to the level of good citizens by genuinely educating and providing equal opportunity for all.

The map for poverty’s elimination is a destination at the end of a long road. The road to a police state, a gang-like sanction of government enforcers, is a short cut to Democratic’ Armageddon. Gattis tells a story that exposes poverty’s sharp edges and democracy’s vulnerabilities.

WOMEN

Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough

(Blog:awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

Written by: Elena Ferrante

Narration by: Hillary Huber

ELENA FERRANTE (A writer who chose to be anonymous until she was revealed by the press to be the author of the Elena Greco/Lila trilogy.)

“Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay” reflects on the difference between women “doing” and women “thinking”.

“Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay” is the last book of four by an author known by the pseudonym Elena Ferrante. It is a book about Italy in the 1960s and 70s. As in the United States, this is a time of social upheaval. Student revolution and class warfare headline Italian media.

In Italy, neo-fascists and communist parties compete for Parliamentary seats at opposite ends of the political spectrum. A neo-fascist’ party presses to capitalize on economic prosperity of the 50s while communist sympathizers rail against economic disparity between owners and workers.

Ferrante’s story is about a young female author, Elena Greco, who has written a book about coming of age in this era of Italian upheaval. To men, Elena reveals insight to an erotic chasm between the sexes. To women, she offers insight to inequality of the sexes.

Elena reveals how life is a struggle for all women; i.e. those who escape poverty, as well as those who remain mired in it.

Sadly, Ferrante ends her book in bewilderment. Her hero, Elena Greco, appears to surrender to a world tainted by male domination. To add to that bewilderment, her counter-culture maven named Lila, succumbs to the sterile belief that self-interest is all that matters in life.

The author reflects on how formal and street-wise education in Italy impacts social change. Elena Greco, Ferrante’s protagonist, is a lower class Italian that rises to fame and fortune by being the first in her family to graduate from college. She is a writer. She is a thinker. Her first book is published to wide acclaim for its depiction of a girl growing into a woman. She is struggling to find her way through middle life by writing a second book. She has a tumultuous relationship with her mother who secretly admires her daughter’s accomplishment and ability. She becomes engaged and marries a rising college professor but grows to resent his intellectual beliefs and dominating self-interest.

WOMEN ON THEIR OWN (Ferrante creates a less conventional character named Lila.)

Lila, who comes from the same neighborhood as Elena but escapes poverty by marrying a relatively successful merchant, whom she later divorces. The divorce can be explained in different ways and for different reasons but the immediate consequence is Lila’s return to poverty. She did not pursue a formal education but is educated by the street. She is a doer. She is tough, insightful, and independent.

Lila has two children, a daughter who stays with her former husband, and another, a boy, that she is pregnant with when she divorces. She, like Elena, has a tumultuous relationship with her mother. The relationship appears irreconcilable because her mother believes her a whore who left a husband that gave her security and extended family respectability.

To survive, Lila breaks with her extended family, goes to work in a sausage factory, and lives with a male friend to reduce living expenses. Partly out of necessity, Lila leaves her boy with neighbors when working but also resents the un-shared burden of motherhood.

Elena and Lila are friends from childhood but their paths to adulthood diverge. As adults, their lives periodically intersect to crystallize differences between revolutionaries that think, and revolutionaries that do.

Lila is a pioneer; a woman ahead of her time, “a doer”.

Elena becomes part of the intelligentsia–those who think, while Lila is street educated–those who do. In their journey through life, one sees Elena using her intelligence to parse the difference between love, sex, success, and failure. With knowledge as a thinker, Elena pursues independence.

In Lila, one sees an equal intelligence that deals daily with being a woman, a worker, and mother in a man’s world; doing what is necessary to win independence. Lila sees potential in the technology industry and capitalizes on its growth. She eventually starts her own company.

Both heroines seem to break free to become independent human beings. Elena achieves freedom as a consequence of thinking; while Lila achieves freedom as a consequence of doing. Both bear the consequence of their independence.

In the end, a listener becomes bewildered by Elena’s view of freedom because it seems constrained by how a man views women rather than how women view themselves. It seems, to a believer in equality of the sexes, that Elena Ferrante abandons her “female independence and equality” theme.

Ferrante’s main character–Elena Greco, in her second book, ironically writes about man’s creation of woman; i.e. an odd assessment for one who wrote a first book that infers women are independent and equal to men.

In the beginning, Ferrante shows women are the sun, around which men revolve. In Ferrante’s second and last book of the trilogy, a cloud appears between the sun and its planets. Independence and equality become something else.

CHILD ABUSE

Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough

(Blog:awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

A Little Life: A Novel

A Little Life

Written by: Hanya Yanagihara

Narration by: Oliver Wyman

HANYA YANAGIHARA (AUTHOR,WRITER,JOURNALIST) — HANYA YANAGIHARA (AUTHOR, WRITER, JOURNALIST)

“A Little Life” is about the difference between coping and overcoming. Hanya Yanagihara writes of a boy growing to manhood. Though the story is about a boy, it is a universal and gender-less story about child abuse.

Yanagihara draws one into a story like John Irving lures one into “A Prayer for Owen Meany”. One feels captured in a quicksand of feeling and thought about an enigmatic character. Yanagihara creates Jude, an extraordinarily handsome and intelligent man who secretly mutilates unseen parts of his body. The story drags a listener’s thoughts into a dark place. Why is this extraordinary person cutting himself with razor blades? The reader turns a page; the listener listens to the next paragraph; needing to know the answer. Yanagihara slowly develops a backstory that explains something about human nature and why one chooses to punish themselves.

Jude is an abused child, raised in an orphanage run by priests. At 8 years of age, Jude is pimped out by a pedophile, a felon who parades as a priest. His name is Father Luke. This false man-of-God kidnaps Jude and pimps him out as a prostitute while making him believe he loves him and protects him from harm.

CHILD ABUSE STATISTICS — Yanagihara’s story drags a listener’s thoughts into a dark place. Why is this extraordinary person cutting himself with razor blades?

Yanagihara’s horrific story is revealed in flashbacks as Jude grows into a successful career as a lawyer. One begins to feel this is a story about many lost boys and girls abused by adults. It is an abuse founded on betrayal of purported guardians’ trust, and exploitative adult motives. But Yanagihara offers more.

Most children suffer from remembrance of things past. Every life copes with intentional, unintentional, true, and false hurts from childhood. Yanagihara fictionalizes a person’s life story to show how extreme those hurts can be. She offers slender hope that someone will cast a line that will rescue them from their sinking despair. The slenderness of hope is inferred by the extra-ordinariness of her main character.

A criticism of “A Little Life” is that the story is too long. It offers revelation but its insight is too long in the making. A most over-used phrase in “A Little Life” is “I am sorry”, a refrain that becomes cloying by the end of the story.

COPING WITH LIFE — Yanagihara suggests there is a chasm between coping and overcoming life’s hardships.

Yanagihara suggests there is a chasm between coping and overcoming life’s hardships. Yanagihara infers most of life is coping with hardship rather than overcoming real or imagined hurt. Friends, lovers, psychiatrists, and physicians can help one cope with real and imagined hurts; but true overcoming lies in the mind of the traumatized.

What Yanagihara makes blindingly clear is the ugly truth of pedophilia and how sex-trafficking scars children for life. This is a story that needs to be told and understood, but not in so many words. For that criticism of the author, “I am sorry”. CHILD ABDUCTION

MURDER MYSTERY

Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough

(Blog:awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Dissolution

dissolution

By C.J. Sansom

Narrated by Steven Crossley

: C.J. SANSOM (ENGLISH AUTHOR)

“Dissolution” is a good murder mystery.

This is the first of a series of historical novels about a physically impaired Royal Commissioner/attorney that investigates crimes in the time of Henry the VIII. The listener is introduced to Matthew Shardlake.

Shardlake is commissioned by Oliver Cromwell to investigate the murder of a fellow Commissioner. Sansom creates the feel and smell of early 16^th century life in a Sussex monastery, 50 miles from London. More interestingly, he reveals a version of Oliver Cromwell and the great upheaval of Roman Catholics at the time of Anne Boleyn’s beheading and King Henry the VIII’s rapacious hunger for Papist wealth. Sansom writes about social change in the 1530s. He reveals how that change muddies truth and justice, and exposes good and evil.

“Dissolution” is about Oliver Cromwell’s execution of King Henry’s orders to dissolve the Roman Catholic archdiocese and replace them with an Anglican Catholic hierarchy, responsible to the King of England rather than to the Pope of Rome. Henry the VIII’s purported goal is to reform the Catholic region in England but the underlying objective is to confiscate Roman Catholic assets to increase the Royal treasury.

King Henry capitalizes on the general population’s disgust with wealth and corruption in the local Archdiocese. The King commands Cromwell to send investigators (Royal Commissioners) to surrounding monasteries to search for legal means to dissolve their existence. One of these investigators is murdered; i.e. his head is lopped off in a monastery’ kitchen. Possible motives for the murder are fear of monastery dissolution, religious difference, sexual exploitation, and/or financial greed.

Leadership of the monastery suggests the perpetrator came from outside but evidence mounts to suggest that the likely villain or villains are within the monastery rather than without. That is the context in which C.J. Sansom places Commissioner Shardlake.

Shardlake’s character is more 21^st century than 16^th. Though he believes in God, he suspects religion as a dissembler of truth; i.e. he believes in the word of God but sees that God’s word is distorted by man. Shardlake, believes in the King’s plan to reform the church but becomes aware of Cromwell’s lies and deceit and begins to question Royal motive.

Shardlake shows himself to be a humanist that abhors physical punishment and abjures unfair treatment of women. His hunchbacked description and reported relationship with Oliver Cromwell reminds one of a conflicted human choosing to overcome adversity by educating himself, rationalizing human frailty, and believing that ends sometimes justify means. In the course of Shardlake’s investigation, the truths of his internal conflicts are revealed as he solves the murder.

What makes Sansom’s book more than a murder mystery is historical integrity and its larger human context. The story reveals the Machiavellian reasons for dissolution of the Roman Catholic Church in England. The Roman Catholic Church was not then, nor is it now, entirely good or entirely evil. As in all social change, dissolution of any human system of government, any kind of organization, throws both good and evil into the street; what remains is still a balance of good and evil but in a different human organizational form. Only the future and history reveal whether social change is better or worse. Evil does not disappear because it is a part of human nature, regardless of social change.

Listeners may be satisfied with “Dissolution” as a mystery, historical novel, or social commentary.

INSTITUTIONAL FAILURE

Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough

(Blog:awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Fourth of July Creek: A Novel

By Smith Henderson

Narrated by MacLeod Andrews, Jenna Lamia

SMITH HENDERSON (Author, Screenwriter)

On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 the least trustworthy, a random audience survey marks trust in government as 1. Therein lies the fear of government intervention in the ideals of capitalism. It strikes at the heart of today’s public concern over economic stimulus, the environment, voting rights, equality of opportunity, police reform, and freedom.

Smith Henderson’s Fourth of July Creek is about broken lives and institutional failure. After two chapters, a listener wonders, “Is this America”? Henderson vivifies a part of America conditioned by high divorce rates, sexual exploitation, substance abuse, and institutional apathy.

In Henderson’s story Pete Snow is a divorced, alcoholic social worker. Snow works in child welfare services, covering a large area of Montana. Snow makes a point of saying he is not a cop whenever he is investigating a home with children that are suspected of being neglected.

Snow is a character that sees the worst side of human nature; i.e. like a cop, Snow is exposed to a world of human’ degradation that fills and empties his life.

Though Snow is careful to distance himself from police, he is mired in the same dark side of humanity.

Henderson’s point is human apathy grows in some social service jobs because government lacks oversight and public accountability. The public feels the job is getting done because there is an institution to serve the need. Henderson’s story implies the public is apathetic. The public becomes apathetic because government has a department to do the job. The public might trust but does not verify. (Even more likely, the public is consumed by their own needs and wants and ignores social services that do not directly affect them.)

DONALD TRUMP (REPUBLICAN NOMINEE FOR PRESIDENT OF THE U.S. 2016)

Fourth of July Creek infers that Presidents make no difference when it comes to broken lives of abandoned and abused children. However, Trump has shown (often in a negative light) that Presidents do make a difference.

Over 400 immigrant children remain separated from their families because of Trump’s enforcement of a flawed immigration policy.

Henderson’s story shows that child welfare services, like many public service jobs, attract employees with good intention who succumb to apathy and routine. The job becomes a paycheck rather than a calling. It is not that an employee is necessarily bad or incompetent but public service goals are often not humanly achievable within strict use of institutional rules. Institutional rules are made by people who often only preserve institutions. The institution survives whether or not it solves human problems.

The story begins with the case of a single mother, a teenage son, and a pre-school daughter. The mother and son are brawling with each other. A cop is at the scene when Snow arrives. Snow is a case worker for the family. The mother is a drug addict. She cannot manage her son for reasons greater than her drug habit. The solution is to remove the son from the family to live with a relative but the relative does not want the boy.

Snow finds a foster family that takes the boy but the boy ultimately runs away after the foster family decides he is too ungovernable.

The boy is caught. He is placed in something like a reform school. He is institutionalized. The boy is abandoned.

In the boy’s mind, Snow betrayed him. Snow is remorseful but has no realistic alternative. He cannot find the boy’s mother. She has moved on. Even if she had not moved on, Snow finds that the boy’s mother had sexualized her relationship with the son and could not be any part of the boy’s life. Divorce, sexuality, substance abuse, and institutionalized apathy swallow this American boy’s life.

This sexually abused son is only a small part of Henderson’s story. The main story revolves around family dysfunction in America. Child abuse is bred by single parent families, sexual exploitation, substance abuse, and ineffectual public service institutions. Several families, including Snow’s own family, are battered by divorce, sexual depredation, drug and alcohol abuse, and unavailable or ineffectual public services.

A deranged woman is married to a man who loves her deeply. The husband is unable to comprehend or deal with her psychosis. The husband enables his wife by isolating her and their family in the wilderness. The children are raised like animals in the forest. A myth about the family is created by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the FBI, and DEA. The ATF begins a covert operation to investigate the family. In the course of the investigation, the husband is betrayed by an undercover ATF agent and becomes a conspiracy-of-government’ believer.

RUBY RIDGE (RANDY WEAVER, SURVIVOR)

Snow comes across one of the husband’s sons and begins a case file on the family. Snow becomes a friend of the son and eventually the husband. This journey to friendship and understanding reveals a part of Henderson’s theme about American extremism and how it germinates and grows.

Henderson frames a story that captures American government failure. The book can be listened to as a cautionary tale, a call to action, or just a well written tale of travail. It is no wonder that government trust is at such a low ebb. The events of January 6, 2021 are a reflection of loss of trust in American government.

At the very least, one comes away with the feeling of how lucky they are to have NOT lived the life of one of Henderson’s characters. MacLeod Andrews’ and Jenna Lamia’s narration add to the drama of Henderson’s expertly written fiction.

In spite of Henderson’s heart breaking story, America remains among the best places in the world to live. In retrospect, only a small number of U.S. Presidents have managed to restore trust in government. In 2021, a new President has an opportunity to restore that trust.

ADDICTION

Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough

(Blog:awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Infinite Jest

By David Foster Wallace

Narrated by Sean Pratt

Great credit is deserved by the publisher and editor of “Infinite Jest”. It is unlikely that most publishers would stick with “Infinite Jest’s” stream-of-consciousness journey. It is too long. As one of Wallace’s characters observes, the explanation has “too many words”. “Infinite Jest” is disjointed and comes together late in its narrative. “Infinite Jest” takes fortitude to complete. It is an excruciating story of a closely examined life. The author is testing the reader to see if he/she would rather escape than stick with David Foster Wallace’s examined life.

David Foster Wallace frustrates and fascinates readers with several extraordinary but flawed human beings. The main character in Wallace’s book is Hal Incandenza. But every created character is a part of who David Foster Wallace is or wants to be. Wallace’s self-absorption, destructive behavior, and vulnerability seep from every ink-stained page; from every enunciated sentence. His “Infinite Jest” becomes real and complete with his wasted suicide at age 46.

DRUG ADDICT — “Infinite Jest” is about addiction. It argues that modern civilization is jaded by plenty, i.e., movies, sex, drugs, and other distracting entertainments are so plentiful that escape from the trials of life becomes the purpose of life.

“Infinite Jest” is about addiction. “Infinite Jest” argues that modern civilization is jaded by plenty, i.e., movies, sex, drugs, and other distracting entertainments are so plentiful that escape from the trials of life becomes the purpose of life. Human success is redefined. Escape from conflict replaces drive for money, power, and prestige. Obsessive/compulsive behavior focuses on immediate gratification.

Hal Incandenza’s father, named “Himself” in Wallace’s book, creates a movie that has the seductive and destructive characteristics of an addictive drug. The movie becomes a secret weapon of destruction that stimulates the pleasure foci of the brain that destroys human interest in anything other than its replay. The jest is that pleasures, though ephemeral, are pursued without end and at any cost (including dismemberment and death). The pleasure of a watched movie leads to self-destruction.

the attention merchants — Wallace’s book suggests a movie (media in general) has the seductive and destructive characteristics of an addictive drug.

In real life, Wallace achieves fame and financial stability with his writing. Retrospectively, “the jest” is that Wallace’s literary achievement is not enough to sustain his life because continued life demands work rather than Wallace’s chosen escape from reality. He lives the life and dies the death of his characters in “Infinite Jest”.

Wallace’s main character, Hal Incandenza, is a self-destructive, amateur, world-class tennis player in “Infinite Jest”. (Wallace was a competitive tennis player in real life.) Himself, Hal’s overachieving and failed-athlete father, is a wildly successful inventor and optics expert. Hal has two brothers. One is Mario, a middle son of the Incandenza family that reminds one of Dostoevsky’s main characters in “The Idiot”. The second is Hal’s older brother who is a star punter for a professional football team. All of the Incandenza characters are aspects of an examined life of David Foster Wallace.

Himself (Hal’s nicknamed father) makes a movie entertainment with a beautiful young woman who is half his age who disastrously couples with Hal’s older brother Orin. The beautiful young woman is so beautiful that she bargains with Himself to offer her naked image in his film in return for Himself’s abandonment of drugs. An irony of the bargain is that the beautiful young woman is a drug addict herself (another jest). Himself chooses to commit suicide by sticking his head into a microwave. Himself finds it easier to avoid rather than challenge the stresses of life.

Wallace implies in today’s culture; it is easier to avoid rather than challenge the stresses of life.

Playing competitive tennis, writing a book, or making a movie is not as easy as hitting the re-play button for a movie, snorting a line of cocaine, sniffing a bong, or offing oneself. There is prescient insight here that resonates with today’s growing escapist drug use.

Mario, the younger brother of Hal, is a mentally challenged, strangely insightful, angelic character that reflects an altruistic aspect of life. One wonders if that is a part of what David Foster Wallace wishes himself to be. Competing, writing, and movie making require thinking, working, creating, with all its pains, disappointments, failures, and ephemeral successes. As an addict, the experience of drugs, alcohol, sex, gaming, etc. are great pleasures in the beginning, faltering pleasures in the middle, and killers in the end; at least it became so for David Foster Wallace.

CDC WONDER Data for Website_02-04-15.pptx — Increasing drug use and overdosing statistics suggests Wallace knew what he was writing about.

“Infinite Jest” is a brilliant piece of work. However, it is David Foster Wallace’s view of life. It is sad that Wallace ends his life because the meaning of life is trivialized by his suicide.

If brilliant minds like Wallace conclude that suicide is a preferred end to life’s journey than perfecting humanity is a delusion. If society is addicted to entertainment, then Wallace infers suicide is a harbinger of the future. Are we all becoming addicts? Increasing drug use and overdosing statistics suggest Wallace knew what he was writing about.

APARTHEID

Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough

(Blog:awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Cry, the Beloved Country

By Alan Paton

Narrated by Michael York

ALAN PATON (1903-1988, SOUTH AFRICAN AUTHOR) “Cry, the Beloved Country” is less brutal than Wright’s “Native Son” or Morrison’s “Beloved” but it strikes at the heart of apartheid and the insidious nature of discrimination and slavery.

In reading “Cry, the Beloved Country”, one should remember it was published in 1948. Alan Paton’s book updates Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”. It is less brutal than Wright’s “Native Son” or Morrison’s “Beloved” but it strikes at the heart of apartheid and the insidious nature of discrimination and slavery.

Paton was a South African white man who lived the life he wrote about. Paton, among other things, managed a black reform school in South Africa in the early 40s. One is reminded, in some ways, of Nelson Mandela’s life in Paton’s main character, Stephen Kumalo. In other ways, Mandela moves way beyond Kumalo.

Contrary to one’s belief about Mandela, Kumalo is like Uncle Tom in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s book. He is a good man; a wise man, but he fails to understand the terrible truths of discrimination and its insidious effect on society–both on the discriminated and the discriminator. One doubts that Mandela ever had any misunderstanding of discrimination’s effect on society.

One can argue Kumalo deserves the pejorative meaning of a modern “Uncle Tom” definition. But Paton makes the reader or listener walk in Kumalo’s shoes. Maybe Kumalo is “a black man considered to be excessively obedient or servile”; on the other hand, Kumalo is a hero—the best of what human beings can be in the circumstance of history. Therein lays a comparison with Mandela and his decision to invite a suppressive white government into his administration. The goal of Paton, his character Kumalo, and Mandela was to preserve a beloved country.

The execution of Kumalo’s son, the prostitution of his sister, the corruption of his brother are consequent behaviors of discrimination; Kumalo sees but fails to act because he is seduced by faith and constrained by white suppression.

SOUTH AFRICAN APARTHIED — Apartheid (Discrimination is shown by Paton to be a complex evil.)

Life is full of compromise; full of good and evil. The fictional Kumalo and real Mandela did the best they could in the circumstance of their lives; which seems better than can be said of 99% of the human race.

“Cry, the Beloved Country” begs the question of what is right by inferring much of South Africa’s suppression was driven by white’ fear. More succinctly, discrimination is shown by Paton to be a complex evil.

Paton creates characters with a growing white understanding of the damage caused by discrimination while subtly injecting a more militant black movement. Again, one is reminded of Mandela’s early life which led to imprisonment.

“Cry the Beloved Country” gives one some sense of what life must have been like for Nelson Mandela.

PEELED ONION

Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough

(Blog:awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

The Human Stain

By Phillip Roth

Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris

PHILLIP ROTH (WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION, MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE AND MORE)

Figuratively, Phillip Roth skins an onion in his book, The Human Stain. He exposes the invidious nature of discrimination and truth’s distortion in a story about a college professor’s life.

In an ironic Buddhist’ way, Roth’s writing stings the eyes of wisdom and the material world; i.e. The Human Stain offers a nuanced explanation of human nature.

Roth exposes layers of who we are by recounting President Clinton’s contretemps with Monica Lewinski; stories of a “free” but tainted press, the many forms of discrimination, and incidents of sexual exploitation. Each peel of the onion reveals a stinging criticism of human beings and the material world.

Roth’s story is about Coleman Silk, a tenured professor, nearing the end of his career at a small university. He is seventy-one years old. His career is ended in disgrace. The disgrace is caused by the use of words, taken out of context, and given dishonest meaning by others.

Today appears no different from yesterday. Humans lie through conscious and subconscious selection of facts. People looking at the same event view that event differently. Each person creates their own story based on their life experience.

Silk resigns from the university. His wife dies. In general, he blames the world; more specifically the press and university, for his wife’s death. He has an affair with a 35-year-old woman; they die in a mysterious accident that is inaccurately reported by newspapers reporting rumor and colleague’ distortion rather than fact.

Phillip Roth implies objective truth is an oxymoron. Are good and evil in the world only defined by society’s acceptance? Is the same true for morality and amorality?

That is the basic outline of The Human Stain but Roth peels layers of life off twentieth century history with fictional characters who illustrate and argue that stains are an inevitable consequence of living any life. His hero, Silk, tells a white lie near the beginning of adulthood and is pilloried for a Black accusation near the end of his life. Roth’s story infers every lie leaves a stain and every human being is a liar.

PTSD -The veteran husband, now ex-husband, is stained as a soldier trained to kill by the military. He is expected to return from Vietnam as though the past is past. However, the past is never past; it lives in memory and acts on the future. It is his stain.

Silk’s lover, in Roth’s depiction, is a woman stained by abuse of a stepfather, and later in life, by a husband. The abused child, and wife, carries her stains and spirals down to a dark place filled with despair. The veteran husband, now ex-husband, is stained as a soldier trained to kill by the military. He is expected to return from Vietnam as though the past is past. However, the past is never past; it lives in memory and acts on the future. It is his stain. He is diagnosed with PTSD.

A colleague of Silk’s is stained by a failure to come to his aid when Silk is unjustly vilified by the University. Monica Lewinski’s stain is literal and figurative with a soiled dress and the public’s vilification. President Clinton’s stain is weakness of character, lying about an affair, cheating on a wife. Every human being in Roth’s story is stained by life and must choose to live with it or die from it.

By the end of The Human Stain, one is reminded of the biblical phrase, “he who is without sin can cast the first stone”. How ridiculous was it to impeach President Clinton? How stupid is it to believe returning from a war is like turning off a light? Roth’s story infers every lie, and we are all liars, leaves a stain; every human experience leaves an imprint, some of which are stains.

WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW

Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough

(Blog:awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

The Story of the Lost Child: The Neapolitan Novels, Book 4

Written by: Elena Ferrante

Narrated by: Hilliary Huber

ELENA FERRANTE (AN ANOYMOUS AUTHOR--PRESUMED TO BE A WOMAN) — ELENA FERRANTE (AN ANONYMOUS ITALIAN AUTHOR, PRESUMED TO BE A WOMAN.)

Mark Twain said, “Write what you know” but fails to warn of its consequence. Elena Ferrante completes Twain’s aphorism in “The Story of the Lost Child”. The consequence of “writing what you know” is to reveal who you are and what you think of your family, friends, lovers, and acquaintances. Often, that reveal is not flattering. To “write what you know” can be psychologically, morally, and financially damaging.

“The Story of the Lost Child” is a fourth book in Ferrante’s series about two poor women who achieve economic and social independence in Italy during the sixties, seventies, and eighties. Ferrante takes the story through modern-day Italy and the events of life that change the two main characters that are growing old.

Without doubt, the greatest heroine of Ferrante’s novels is Lila; a street educated woman with immense energy, intelligence, and a superior perception of reality. Lila is the sun around which others, both men and women, revolve. Through will and intelligence, Lila grasps the value of computers in the sixties and builds a company around its potential.

The second heroine, Elena Greco, is a college educated fiction writer. Though both women are equally successful in achieving independence, Elena is a recorder, more than actor, in life. Elena achieves independence through reaction. Lila makes things happen. Elena lets things happen. Lila chooses to stay in her neighborhood, and fights local Italian corruption that impedes her business. Elena writes about people in the neighborhood but leaves its environment; only to return to record rather than confront her community’s dysfunction.

As is evident to anyone who lives long enough, there are turning points in life. Ferrante reveals those turning points in Elena and Lila’s lives. Though Ferrante suggests more women than men read her books (which may be true), her characters’ journeys and life experience resonate with all human beings.

Men and women begat children that parents raise with varying degrees of attention. Children’s lives happen in an environment over which they have no control. What makes Ferrante’s stories universal is the truth of her observations.

Both men and women are capable of promiscuity. Both husbands and wives neglect their children; sometimes because of work or pleasure, and others because of overweening self-interest. Children live life in the moment and absorb all they see and feel through a prism of parental genetics. “The Story of the Lost Child” embarrassingly and truthfully reveals how human beings are foolishly misled by self-interest, and ephemeral pleasures.

Elena is married but falls in love with a former lover of Lila’s. He is a married man with children but says he will leave his wife for Elena. Elena, after divorcing her husband, finds her lover is a philandering liar. Elena is so consumed by love she agrees to an absurd two family relationship; i.e. allowing her lover to continue his marriage and their affair.

Lila had been involved with this guy and warns Elena of his character, but Elena chooses to ignore her friend’s warning until she finds him “stooping” the maid in their apartment bathroom.

Surprisingly, Elena accepts her lover’s sexual proclivity, in part because of her pregnancy. Elena continues the affair until it becomes clear she is merely one among many women in his sexual network.

Elena’s decision to leave her lover is complicated by the pregnancy. Her lover remains a part of her life because of the baby. The strength to leave her lover is bolstered by Lila’s counsel and support. Lila’s and Elena’s friendship enters a phase of reconciliation after many breaks in continuity between childhood and adulthood. They become allies in combating the corruption of their local community; i.e. Lila as a fighter, Elena as a recorder of nefarious acts.

parents and children — An underlying theme in Ferrante’s fourth Neapolitan Novel is the impact of parental life on children. Decent parents love their children but a parent’s love is within a context of a living and lived life.

An underlying theme in Ferrante’s fourth Neapolitan Novel is the impact of parental life on children. Children grow into their own lives but they are both genetically and environmentally affected by their parents.

Ferrante shows human beings are by nature self-absorbed. When adults become parents, they do not lose their own lives, their own experience, their own desires. Decent parents love their children but their love is within a context of a their own lived life.

The title of this fourth novel is “The Story of the Lost Child” because Lila loses her daughter. That loss is because of parental self-absorption. Both Lila and Elena are focused on getting ahead in life. Each’s self-absorption exhibits in different ways but both have an impact on their children’s lives. Lila’s and Elena’s self-absorption is not criminal neglect; i.e. both Lila and Elena lose their children. Lila’s self-absorption is in building a computer company and fighting corruption in her neighborhood. Elena’s self-absorption is in writing books, and living a life that feeds her literary imagination.

HUMAN FAULTS — Elena Ferrante, whoever she is, has written a story that lionizes women in some ways but humanizes and degrades them in others. Of course, all human beings are flawed; that is why “writing what you know” has consequences.

There is an obvious difference in their losses. The loss is physical (with no chance of redemption) in Lila’s case because her youngest child dies before adulthood. It is a relationship loss (with some chance of redemption) in Elena’s case. Elena’s children become estranged from the consequences of their mother’s lived life.

Elena Ferrante, whoever she is, has written a story that lionizes women in some ways but humanizes and degrades them in others. Of course, all human beings are flawed; that is why “writing what you know” has consequences.

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