IN CASE YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT

I normally like to keep the swearing out of this blog (a lot of you know what a challenge that is for me!) but the image and message going around the web below (and thanks to Robert Z. for hipping me to it) is too good not to share:

PAUL MURRAY'S SKIPPY DIES

I don't read as many novels as I used to. I prefer bios and memoirs and histories and poetry etc. And the novels I do read are mostly by writers I already dig and a new translation comes out (Roberto Bolano, Irene Nemirovsky et. al.) or I often reread novels I know well and still get pleasure from ( Joyce's PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN, Jack Kerouac's DESOLATION ANGELS etc.).

There are exceptions, new novels from friends or others who ask me to write a blurb or a post about them. And then there are novels that family or friends recommend or give me as gifts. Rarely do those capture my attention and satisfy me as much as they have those who recommended them.

But when my old friend Tom "Willy" Wilson sent me this novel—SKIPPY DIES by the young critically acclaimed writer Paul Murray—and I opened it and began reading, I felt a thrill of excitement and anticipation I hadn't felt in decades. As I wrote to him, it was like back when I was in my early twenties and married to my first wife, Lee, and not yet college educated (I was still in the service) but moving beyond my autodidact intuitive discovery of books and writers I dug to following the recommendations of  my wife and my new and first "intellectual" friends who turned me on to books that I would get lost in and be inspired by, like when my friend Roy Harvey turned me on to Rilke's THE NOTEBOOKS OF MALTA LAURIDS BRIGGE, another novel I continue to reread in various translations every few years and continue to find inspiration and satisfaction in.

SKIPPY DIES isn't an easy read, but the challenge is partly what excited me when I started reading the first few pages. And it demands a big commitment—it's 661 pages before you reach the end. But it's a compelling story, set in an Irish boys boarding school and environs with a large cast of characters. Some are more memorable than others, and some come across as more sketched and sketchy than others (or more representative of a type).

But there's enough original and real characters that I became engaged with their stories and wanted to know more. It took me a while to finish, but the past few days as I neared the end I became obsessive about it, staying up until almost three this morning reading until my eyes grew too tired and then finishing it a few hours when I woke up unexpectedly thinking about it and wanting to find out what happens!

But it's mostly the language and the narrative drive that captured me, reminding me, like I said, of novels Lee and I became engrossed in back in our twenties and beyond, not as original or seminal as Laurence Sterne's TRISTAM SHANDY or as lightweight as Donleavy's THE GINGER MAN, but maybe a marriage of some of the better qualities of each (and a few of the lesser qualities of the latter).

I have to say I enjoyed the process tremendously, and my old friend Tom was right, when he sent it to me and I reminded him I don't read novels much anymore, he told me he knew that but decided that it would be good for me to work that part of my brain again (only he said it more succinctly and clearly) and it was. If anyone's read it too, let me know what you thought, or if you do, what you think.

A FAVORITE QUOTE

I've probably posted this before, but it comes to mind now:

"Keep aiming
    for simplicity of thought
            unless, of course
you like over-abundance"

—Joanne Kyger

HMMMM...PS

So, as I'm sure you've seen, the birthers haven't given up despite the long-form certificate, and despite Obama being the one who got Bin Laden, the right is giving credit to everyone but him, Palin and many others leaving any mention of our president out when discussing Bin Laden's capture and death and instead crediting Bush Junior!

Oh, and in case you missed it, check this link out for a study done to mathematically figure out what percentage of TV pundits predictions turn out to be correct: Paul Krugman comes in first as the most correct. But the right will continue to dismiss his intellect and Nobel Prize winning economic explanations and predictions and recommendations. Too bad for us.

HMMMMM...

So, a couple of Reagan's biggest promises when he got elected president were that he'd shrink the federal government, lower taxes and balance the budget.

He only partially kept one of those promises, he lowered taxes for the wealthiest but for the rest of us no such luck (he actually ended up raising taxes several times over the eight years of his presidency), and he grew the federal government and the deficit to the highest it had been up until that time in history!

It was Clinton, the Democrat, who shrunk the federal government during his tenure as well as eliminated the deficit entirely, giving us the greatest surplus in history.

When Bush Junior was elected he promised a smaller federal government and a more humble USA in respect to the rest of the world, but after 9/11 he changed that to the biggest growth in the federal government since World War two, a more arrogant USA and started talking about "us and them" and promising to get Osama Bin Laden, but then let him get away and let Afghanistan descend into a much worse war than it was at first by ignoring it to concentrate on Iraq which had nothing to do with 9/11 but a lot to do with his wanting to show up his father who let Saddam Hussein off the hook in the first Iraq War, and Junior promised that second Iraq War would be successful and over quickly (and even declared it over just before it became the longest and one of the most costly wars in our history) (and let's not forget Bush/Cheney turning a surplus into the biggest deficit in our nation's history up until that time as well).

But it turned out to be the Democrat. President Obama, who actually took a more humble approach to the rest of the world, but humility with strength, and ended our military involvement in Iraq and "got" Bin Laden.

And though he hasn't kept every promise he made, Obama has kept most of them, including making health care available to pretty much everyone and eliminating insurance companies being able to not cover people with "pre-existing conditions" and enacted a new G.I. Bill for veterans, whereas under Bush/Cheney veterans had it worse than they've had it under almost any administration in our history, and the active troops themselves weren't getting the support they needed either (e.g. armor and armored Humvees, etc.) and stopped the use of water boarding and other forms of torture (though the treatment of Bradley Manning has been a black mark on his administration) and saved not just the USA but the world from another Great Depression, and cut taxes for all of us not just the wealthy and is trying to cut tax breaks for oil companies and other corporations (though he's too cozy with all those Goldman Sachs alumni and should fire the head of GE from any government post and make sure they pay taxes, etc.).

Over all, Obama, like Clinton, has kept more promises than Reagan or Bush/Cheney, including their own (R's & B/C's)! And nailing Bin Laden is just the latest. Give the man his due, Obama is well on the way to being what he said he would be as president, and what Reagan and Bush Junior promised they'd be as well, and much more.

But don't expect the right to give him his props, I already heard fatmouth Rush is claiming all kinds of nonsense about Obama jeopardizing the country etc.

[PS: And I listened to Rush's supposedly giving Obama credit for getting Bin Laden and what Rush is doing is being sarcastic, making the point that the media is supposedly claiming President Obama "single-handedly" (in Rush's term) came up with the plan and executed it etc. so he, Rush, pretends to give Obama credit for that but he actually is letting his listeners know that it was Bush's plan and the military who carried it out and Obama wasn't "the only one in the room" who came up with it, though that's what Rush says, sarcastically. But in fact Obama was given many different options and he went for this one that turned out to be successful, so hurray for Obama, non-sarcastically.]

[PPS: And I'm sure more details will come out and it won't be as smooth as it was first described plus there'll be some details that will have to be explained, like how could a helicopter land inside a fortified and supposedly well-guarded compound and no one on our side get hurt at all and no account of any guards being killed, just Bin Laden, his son, two couriers,  and a woman supposedly being used as "a shield" (the scene looked in photos a little too much like the scene of Chicago Black Panther Fred Hampton's assassination by Chicago cops while he was asleep in bed) but where was the guard with a rocket grenade launcher to take out the helicopter or at least some of the "Navy Seals" that pulled off the raid, I'm proud of the competence shown by our "troops" (I'm guessing some CIA were there too)  but wonder about some of the anomalies in the story so far.]

PS TO LAST POST

Here's the SNL comedian/writer at that press dinner with a few good ones:

PRESIDENT OBAMA TAKES A COMEDY BREAK

In case you didn't catch it (I did) ], here's the whole appearance of President Obama at the annual let's joke about the news dinner in DC. Thank God we have a president who not only has a sense of humor and can make fun of himself, but who's smart enough to write or hire writers capable of landing some of the zingers he does here at his opponents.

[PS: Thanks to my son Miles who posted this link in the comments section of the last post, but I thought it'd be great to give it its own post (and thanks Phillipa and others who sent me links to excerpts that can be found on YouTube).]