Dispatches from Vilnius

I bought the Rabbit Angstrom a few years back but still haven't gotten around to reading it.  I have mixed feelings about Updike after reading In the Beauty of the Lilies and Gertrude and Claudius .  I liked his prequel to Hamlet better.  Rich in language and story telling, it was what enticed me to buy Rabbit omnibus, which he is best known for. Adam Begley is the latest to tackle Updike .  There are few writers who have left such an indelible print on American literature, but reviews have been mixed.  Harold Bloom called him "a minor writer with a major style," and other critics have bemoaned Updike's obsession with sex and its consequences.   Begley apparently steers away from literary criticism and focuses on the writer himself, giving us a lavish biography replete with many anecdotes like a dinner conversation with Philip Roth that went sour over the Vietnam War. Updike tended to shun politics but found himself a tool of the US State department, which

It would seem that the boys at Fox have thin skin.  First, Bill O'Reilly apparently told Gabriel Sherman to "drop dead, man!" at a little soire held by the Hollywood Reporter at the Four Seasons Hotel in New York, leading Sherman to offer his account of the evening .  Of course, it goes a long to plugging his own book on Roger Ailes, The Loudest Voice in the Room , which seems to have set Big Bill and everyone else at Fox off.  O'Reilly hulked over the diminutive Sherman to the point the young writer thought Bill might take him out. But, this is nothing compared to the verbal fist-a-cuffs we have seen between O'Reilly and Stephen Colbert in recent weeks, as "Papa Bear" got notably upset over Colbert mocking the auction of his notes from the Super Bowl interview with President Obama.  Then came an unflattering segment on Bill's tough stance opposing equal pay for women .   Colbert has long adopted a conservative persona that he has said

"Shoeless Joe" Jackson in 1919 World Series It never ceases to amaze me how films garner a certain dignity over time.  It was 25 years ago when Field of Dreams came out.  Kevin Costner was America's golden boy fresh off the highly successful film, Bull Durham , a much better baseball movie.  But, it was this "shaggy doggerel" of a story which was nominated for Best Picture of 1989.  Fortunately, it didn't win, but Costner found his mark the following year in  Dances with Wolves , in which he traded the corn fields of Iowa for the Dakota plains. I guess everyone loves a redemption story.  In this case, Ray Kinsella (Costner) has a dream in which he is compelled to build a baseball field for the infamous Chicago "Black Sox" who threw the 1919 World Series.  Of course, everyone thinks Kinsella is crazy but his wife sticks by him as he plows over the corn field and starts building his ball park, all because the voice in his head told him, &quo

I'm reminded of the line, " Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies above, don't fence me in ," as Greg Abbott tries to carry the stick of Cliven Bundy  over a faux battle for 140 acres of land along the Oklahoma-Texas border. Apparently, Wendy is gaining some ground in the Texas governor's race , although she is still 12 points behind.  I guess this is too close for " Wheels ."  Why else would Abbott make hay over what could best be described as silt and cottonwood trees along the Red River?  Of course, the conservative hell hounds at Breitbart Texas have blown the " land grab " up to 90,000 acres along a 116 mile stretch of the river, evoking the cattle call of Bundy. The dispute goes back to 1986 but the bad guys are "Obama's BLM," because naturally everything that is bad in this world can be directly linked to our current POTUS.  Abbott is hoping that he can rally Texans around the Gonzales flag of 1835.

I was thinking of a banner that would better reflect this blog and came up with The Independent American Reader .  Initially I was thinking of something mineralogical as I sometimes like to think of myself more as an armchair geologist than historian, picking away at the layers of news media with the hope of uncovering some interesting vein, or negotiating the rough currents like my favorite geologist John Wesley Powell.  But, I thought that was getting a little too metaphorical and went with a more straightforward title.  The American Reader had already been taken. This blog was originally intended as a reading group for American history, but I post more and more on contemporary news stories, films, music and other items to hopefully draw more persons into this blog.  I greatly appreciate all those who do check it out, but would love to see more feedback.  The posts are open for comments.  If you are not a Blogger subscriber, your comments will appear as anonymous, so you can

I guess if we needed any further proof that the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer, Capital by Thomas Picketty is it.  Judging by the reactions to the book , Picketty offers a very sober and disturbing portrait of wealth and democracy. As Paul Krugman and other economists have long argued, we have drifted into a new " Gilded Age ," where the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few exceeds economic growth therefor leading to a greater consolidation of wealth, which only further stagnates the economy.  Picketty, a French economist, provides a method of research to bolster this argument, charting the distribution of wealth back to the late 18th century, with particular focus on early 20th century Britain and America, which Krugman refers to. Picketty offers hard numbers which are hard to refute, but what critics do dispute is Picketty's belief that the only way to restore balance is to institute a Global Wealth Tax , especially given tha

Do we live in a post-racial society?  Matt Bai seems to think so, writing a   long piece  (at least by Yahoo! standards) on why the Democrats are making too much about race.  He tries to break the country down demographically, lumping Americans into three "cohorts," or generations, with the baby boomers being the most racially sensitive. Therefor, we can excuse Eric Holder, Nancy Pelosi and Steve Israel for speaking out on racism. Matt falls into the Gen X group, which in his view remains "a minefield of racial tensions to be explored and negotiated."  A group that more or less rallied around Obama hoping that his election would usher in a post-racial society only to be left somewhat chagrined that things are more or less still the same. The third group is Gen Y, or the Millennials as they have recently been dubbed, who according to Matt seem to think race is no big deal and have accepted things more or less as they are. That's all well and good exce

Bundy's cattle Nevada ranchers are proclaiming they "Won the West," after the Bureau of Land Management and National Park Service backed down in a malingering dispute with local ranchers over grazing rights on federal lands. Back in 1989 the desert tortoise was put on the endangered species list, and in order to accommodate this indigenous animal of the region the BLM and NPS restricted grazing lands, which greatly reduced the amount of land Cliven Bundy  could graze his cattle on.  The tortoise is a symbol of Nevada and is protected by the state as well. Since 1993, Cliven has brazenly refused to heed the new grazing restrictions and also refused to pay his monthly fees, approximately $1.35 per head of cattle per month.  As a result he now owes over $1 million in back fees, penalties, fines and interest.  It seems Cliven had no problem paying his fees before then, which is significantly cheaper than providing hay for his herd. Snipers provided cover for p

The Republican Party isn't sexist.  It's the "Party of Susan B. Anthony " according to Marsha Blackburn , who noted that the first woman to vote was a Republican.  Try to vote, anyway, as Anthony was subsequently indicted by an all-male grand jury and ultimately found guilty of the infraction and forced to pay a fine for illegally voting in the 1872 Presidential election, presumably casting her vote for U.S. Grant. Ms. Blackburn doesn't mention any names.  She sufficiently blurs the edges of her references, like singling out that the first female member of Congress was a Republican ( Jeanette Rankin } who actually served before universal women's suffrage, as Montana allowed women to vote and represent the state prior to 1919.  I guess for Marsha, it is only firsts that matter. The Push for the 19th amendment After the Nineteenth amendment was passed during Wilson's administration , which she conveniently doesn't reference, the first 8 out

It's sad when the Republicans take Kathleen Sebelius' resignation as a " victory ."  From what I understand the Secretary of Health and Human Services was ready to leave at the end of the first term but stayed for the launch of the insurance exchanges.  As a result, she became the prime target for the Republican "oversight committee," which held her personally accountable for the "failed" launch of the exchanges.  To Sebelius' credit, she gutted out the launch, but was given a less than heroic endorsement for her efforts to resolve the website debacle.  It seemed the Obama administration had already tendered her resignation behind closed doors. "Obamacare" has been a work in progress from day one, withstanding blistering attacks from all sides.  The Republican House voted no less than 50 times to repeal the historic act, and has voted to defund it in all the budgets it has presented.  Four years later, there appears to be no si

You would think book banning was a thing of the past, but unfortunately there are an alarming number of books that are " challenged " each year.  The latest is Sherman Alexie's book, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian .  Apparently, Alexie had the temerity to reference sex and masturbation in a book that chronicles the life of a 14-year old native American growing up on the Spokane reservation in eastern Washington and his subsequent transfer to a public school where he is the only Indian other than the mascot.  Alexie is a wonderful comic, as witnessed in his book Smoke Signals , which was made into a movie in 1998.  But, it seems kids in Meridian Idaho school district will no longer have easy access to this particular book. Students tried to appeal the decision by presenting a petition with 350 signatures but the school board voted 2-1 to hold up the decision after numerous parental complaints.  The book has since been in great demand in Meridian, un

Hank Aaron certainly doesn't shy away from controversy , comparing the continued assault on Obama by Republicans to the KKK raiding parties.  The only difference in his mind is "now they have neckties and starched shirts."  Probably wore them under their capes as well.  The "true home run king" went onto say that he has kept the many ugly letters he received when he broke Babe Ruth's record 40 years ago, and that we have a long way to go to improve race relations in this country. As an example, Jim DeMint apparently believes the federal government had little role in the emancipation of slaves .  He does credit Lincoln for playing a part in it, although holds up the "Great Emancipator" as the first Republican president, as if to say these are values the GOP stands by today.  He seems to forget that the amendments abolishing slavery and expanding voting rights were added after the Civil War, not before.  He also downplays Southern plantation o

from Whispered Lineage It was nice to read that Gary Snyder is still alive and well in American Smoke .  Ian Sinclair tracked him down at his 100-acre woods in Northern California, Kitkitdizze , which he originally bought with Alan Ginsberg and Dick Baker.  The name was derived from the Miwok word for bear clover, found in abundance in that part of the woods.  The retreat serves as a sanctuary for writers, poets, naturalists and other sympathetic souls who share Snyder's love for nature. He never really considered himself one of the beats, even if Kerouac immortalized him as Japhy Ryder in The Dharma Bums .  Snyder considers this a piece of "fabulilsm" as the climb up the "Matterhorn" was real but Kerouac turned into something larger than it actually was.  It is probably my favorite of Kerouac's books, beginning in the foothills behind Berkley, where Snyder was teaching at the time, and extending inland to the higher peaks. He was also great fri

There was a time when Shakespeare was standard reading.  When I was clearing out my grandmother's storage bin a few years back I came across an 8-volume leather-bound edition of Shakespeare's complete plays for actors.  It dated from 1895.  Recently, I had the volumes restored, as a couple of the backs were broken.  An heirloom I can pass along if only my kids took as much interest in Shakespeare as I did.  Maybe in the future they will develop an appreciation for the bard. Library of America has released its latest anthology, Shakespeare in America , which is loaded with anecdotes like Longstreet commenting on U.S. Grant's portrayal of Desdemona, while the troops were biding time during the Mexican War.  It seemed everyone was doing Shakespeare, as William Grimes notes in his NY Times review of the book. Shakespeare had a profound influence on writers like Melville, who apparently rewrote Moby-Dick after reading Shakespeare for the first time, recasting his ch

We saw the Senate "nuclear option" last year when Harry Reid wiped out Republicans' continued attempts to filibuster presidential nominations, which had held up an estimated 600 appointees over the last five years.  However, the GOP has long had its ace in the hole in Chief Justice Roberts, who joined his conservative justices in striking down the limit on campaign contributions, paving the way for money to once again flow freely in elections. It's not like it really held back conservative campaign contributors.  Sheldon Adelson pumped an estimated $93 million into Republican campaigns in 2012, $30 million into Mitt Romney's campaign alone.  And, we all know about the tentacle reaches of the Koch Bros, who use PAC's like Americans for Prosperity to funnel money to a wide variety of campaigns, including their ongoing assault of "Obamacare." The McCutcheon decision is particularly unsettling, as some states have had more stringent campaign f

It seems that George Bush has graduated from dogs to portraits of world leaders.  I have to admit his painting of Vladimir Putin is pretty good, but not sure whether he is quite ready to take his one-man show on the road.  You can view it at his Presidential Library in Dallas. Meanwhile Donald Rumsfeld has been given the Errol Morris treatment, a full length documentary in which I assume Morris was hoping to get out of Rummy what he got out of McNamara some years back in Fog of War . Instead, it sounds like a very unapologetic Rumsfeld offering up his explanation of The Unknown Known .   You do get the sense that Rumsfeld has studied The Art of War and has a pretty good head for this sort of thing, but for him it is largely about tactics, and he sized up Morris pretty quickly and never let his interlocutor get the better of him. If Rumsfeld wasn't comfortable with George Bush as President he never showed it.  By this stage in his political career he seemed to accept his

When you type in Millennial these days it is no longer a religious fundamentalist who believes the End Times are upon is, but also the generation born after 1980, who has essentially grown up in the new Millennium.  It seems they shed their previous moniker Generation Y. This must be a demographic nightmare as so many of these religious fundamentalists identify themselves as Millennials or Millenialists.  The media picked up on the former term in reference to the Gen Y'ers, which "Obamacare" so desperately needed to support its health insurance exchanges.  I suppose you can be both, but according to statistics, the New Millennials don't identify themselves very strongly with religion. It seems the only thing these two demographic groups have in common is a shared passion for The Walking Dead .  There are no end of interpretations for the meaning of the zombies in this highly popular television series that imagines a post-apocalyptic future in which human be

After all the hemming and hawing we heard these past 6 months, "Obamacare" delivers on its goal of 7 million subscribers putting conservatives in their biggest tizzy fit since Obama was re-elected in 2012.  "How can that be?"  many ask, refusing to accept the numbers, or babbling that less than half of those who signed up will pay the premiums, even though initial reports show 85 per cent of subscribers meeting their initial payments. The scariest thing for Republicans is that the federally sponsored health insurance program might actually work.  It has a sufficient "pool" to keep rates down.  Obama's big push to lure young Americans not covered on their parents' plan (the age was increased to 26) seems to have yielded a great number of new subscribers.  His appearance on Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis was priceless.  His popularity among the youngest demographic of voters remains high, and this was the ideal medium to reach them