After Visiting Friends by Michael Hainey

One morning, when Michael Hainey was six years old, he learned that his father, Robert Hainey, an assistant copy desk chief of the Chicago Sun-Times, sometime during the night had died from a heart attack. For some reason, Michael felt that the story about how his father had died did not add up, and during work on a high school term paper – when he had to visit the main library in downtown Chicago – he looked up his father’s obituaries.
And behold: they did not add up.

Chicago Today claimed that the newspaperman had died “as he walked” in the 3900 block of North Pine Grove after he had “just left the home of a friend.” But in the Chicago Daily News it was reported that Robert Hainey had died “while visiting friends.” Furthermore, Michael learned that his father had not died from a heart attack but from a stroke, and that he had been taken to a hospital on the city’s North Side, “Not exactly the closest hospital for two cops to take a man they find lying on the streets downtown.” The time of death was also curious: 5.07 a.m. Which meant that Michael’s uncle, a newspaperman also, was at the Hainey house less than two hours after his younger brother’s death. And why was it his uncle who broke the news anyway? So what was going on here?

After Visiting Friends is “a son’s story” about the shadow cast by the father’s last night and death. But the book is larger than that. It is an investigation of a family and of times gone by, and it is a report on journalism then and now.
Like so many trades, journalism has its own code of honor, and this code turns out to be a major obstacle when Michael Hainey tries to understand what happened that April night in 1970. Journalists, who claim to constantly strive to reveal the truth, conceal it with the words, I don’t know anything about that night.

But the information is still out there and others want to help, and one of them tells the writer: “you will defeat your enemy with the one weapon that you have inside you that he cannot touch and that he trembles before – truth.”
Does this sound mysterious? If so, it’s not surprising. For After Visiting Friends is – in addition to everything else it is – a real life mystery.”

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Comet in Moominland by Tove Jansson

It is easy to think of Tove Jansson’s Moomin books as cozy as they, well, are cozy: the silent winters, the strange summers, the roaring sea, the dense forests, a life lived close to nature, and the snug dwelling of the Moomin family.

The Moomins look somewhat like mighty hippopotamuses, and the family itself (and their home) is as inviting as can be. The family’s approach to life is bohemian, and their abode is constantly visited by creatures who drop in to enjoy Moominmamma’s cooking and the useful items that can be found in her handbag. It is unknown how Moominpappa makes a living but between writing his memoirs and sudden whims, he stays busy.  In short, the Moomin books offer a comfy, domestic bliss that some readers yearn for.

But disaster on a great scale is prevalent in Jansson’s Moomin stories. Just listen to some of the titles of her novels: The Moomins and the Great Flood, Moominsummer Madness, and Comet in Moominland.

Artists of Tove Jansson’s stature have the ability to transcend their historic context, but it is obvious that the Soviet attack on Finland in November 1939 affected the author deeply. She was 25 years old and still living at home when large parts of Europe (and eventually the world) descended into the abyss of war. In her first Moomin novel, a flood threatens the land, and in Comet in Moominland, written during World War II but published in 1946, a red comet may be on its way to destroy the Moomin valley – in fact, the end of the entire world might be near.

The tale has Biblical, apocalyptic elements, and panic is in the air as the creatures of the valley attempt to cope with the events and find sanctuary. The mood is tense and the heat of the comet dries out the sea; the family and their friends flee to a cave where they embrace each other when the comet is close – united they face death.

The Moomin books are considered books for children. The characters are whimsical, complex, and funny, and the humor, adventures, depth and strong narratives of the novels have attracted young readers for decades. However, like so many great children’s books, the Moomin novels can also be read by an older audience.  There is something for almost all ages in these books.

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Evolution of the Word : the New Testament in the Order the Books Were Written by Marcus J. Borg

Once upon a time, before Christianity existed, there was the Way. And the followers of the Way followed the teachings of Jesus, a prophet from Nazareth. Archeological work on Nazareth suggests that it was a village with no wealth whatsoever, and early written accounts indicate that Jesus was a “tekton” (Mark 6:3), a word normally translated “carpenter,” although it can refer to anyone who works with his hands. In other words, Jesus and his family owned no land; they were poor.

Jesus was baptized by John, an apocalypticist who taught, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.” (Luke 3:11.) This is a teaching that Jesus repeated over and over again in various ways. He warned people against storing up treasures on earth and insisted on a moral lifestyle guided by love for God and fellow human beings. His teachings were designed to urge people to behave in appropriate ways so that when the Son of Man arrived they would be embraced by the kingdom of God. Those who give food to the hungry are entitled to the kingdom, as are those who give drink to the thirsty, welcome strangers, give clothes to the naked, and visit the sick and the prisoners. (Matthew 25:34-36.)
His teachings were dangerous to the rulers of the country. So they had him arrested, tortured, and killed.

However, they did not know who they were up against and the traditions about Jesus lived on: they consisted of his deeds, his striking short sayings called aphorisms, and short stories called parables. But over time, the radical Way of Jesus became a movement that adapted to the Roman world order.
An obvious example is the movement’s changing views on slaves. In one of the oldest documents, Paul’s letter to Philemon, a Jesus follower and slave owner, Paul says about Philemon’s runaway slave Onesimus, “Have him back forever, no longer as a slave, but more than a slave, a beloved brother.” (15-16.) But by the time of the letter to the Ephesians, “a generation or so after Paul’s death,” it is stated, “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling.” (6:5.)

In Evolution of the Word, Marcus J. Borg shows the changes the movement went through, by arranging the texts of the New Testament in chronological order (as opposed to traditional canonical order). In addition to this, Borg writes an introduction to every document of the New Testament, and each text is put in its historical context. The result is a compilation of texts that shows how the Way eventually became Christianity.

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Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Fyodor Dostoyevsky is one of the most influential authors the world has ever known.  Few novels have reached the lasting popularity of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Crime and Punishment isn’t popular because it is near-impossible to read – it is popular because it instantly pulls the readers into the dark, sweaty, and paranoid vision of its world and then possesses its audience till the last sentence.
When Dostoyevsky began work on the book his circumstances were dire. After the author had gambled away his assets he was unable to pay bills and eat decently. The despair of his situation found its way into the novel and an actual double murder that he read about helped shape this suspenseful, idea driven novel.
But he was not met by much enthusiasm when he tried to sell his story. Eventually the author managed to find a publisher – a magazine, owned by his sworn enemy – and then work began on not one but two novels: Crime and Punishment and The Gambler. It was an enormous challenge, and if Dostoyevsky was on fire the heat is felt in Crime and Punishment when Rodian Raskolnikov feverishly stumbles through the streets of St. Petersburg, haunted by his deeds and – eventually, on some level – his longing for redemption.
For the former student Raskolnikov has killed a pawnbroker and her half-sister, and he thinks that the crime won’t matter in the great scheme of things if he uses the money to do good. But Raskolnikov’s true motivation is ideological – he simply believes that some humans stand above the established moral principles of society, and that anything is allowed if it’s in pursuit of a higher purpose.
But to think and to do are two different things, and the blood Raskolnikov has shed begins to haunt him. However, Raskolnikov is not troubled by the crime per se; no, instead he’s troubled by the fact that he is troubled by it – that he turns out to be an ordinary man and not a man who can ignore society’s moral code. Roughly 17 years later, Friedrich Nietzsche would find a name for the kind of man Raskolnikov wanted to be: der Übermensch – the Superman.
And as Raskolnikov’s world view crumbles, he begins to long for punishment, not noticing that he’s in the midst of it.
Then something unexpected happens, and her name is Sonya, a young woman with deep literary roots. Her story goes all the way back to Rahab of the book of Joshua, a woman who makes it possible for the tribe of Israel to enter the Promised Land. Much like Rahab, Sonya shows the path to a new kind of life.

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Chango’s Beads and Two-Tone Shoes by William Kennedy

Robert Kennedy has been shot in Los Angeles, California, and Albany, New York, is about to enter a long night of arson, mayhem, and violence.

In the midst of this is the journalist Daniel Quinn who before the night is over will have filed news stories that will provoke and irritate his employer. Quinn has become a newspaper man as he wants to be a witness, and he “has a strong impulse to salvage history, which is so fragile, so prismatic, so easily twisted, so often lost and forgotten.”

Throughout the eventful and dangerous night Quinn encounters a long row of charismatic Albany citizens: alcoholics, criminals, bums, hacks, and activists who are so well portrayed that they could all be heroes of the tale. And William Kennedy makes this possible by not being judgmental and by not insisting that everyone has to be in a certain way – he shows humans in all their contradictory glory – and nobody, not even the hero, knows who will play the role of the hero before there is a need for one.

Roughly ten years before these events of 1968, Quinn has been in Cuba and witnessed another kind of violent turmoil as Fidel Castro and his soldiers revolt against the bloody oppression of the Batista regime. Like so many citizens of Albany, numerous Cubans yearn for change, but change may not always come in the desired shape. Castro will indeed grasp power in Cuba, but then the new government will feel the need to protect the revolution and before soon the country will – again – be governed by the few. Great upheavals of historic significance come and go. What William Kennedy does so exceptionally well is to show how humans respond and adjust to situations that may not be their choice.

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James Herriott’s Cat Stories

It is true, cats can be both fluffy and cute, but these creatures are also fierce, strong, lightning fast, and they have amazing survival skills and a toughness and tolerance for pain, starvation, and harsh weather conditions that few humans get anywhere near.

In other words, cats can be more like warrior-monks than decorative pillows for the bed. Also, they can be an author’s best friend.

A man who does cats justice is Alf Wight, the British veterinarian better known under his pen name, James Herriot.

Wight met his wife Joan in 1941, and “after years of listening to Alf relate the amusing tales of his days in the dales attending to animals, it was his wife that finally pushed him into putting pen to paper.” Wight bought a typewriter and each night, while watching television, he would type out a chapter. During one such session, he discovered his pen name: Birmingham City’s Jim Herriot – the footballer – caught the typing veterinarian’s attention, and from then on, he used the name James Herriot when his stories were published.

These tales can mainly be found in a series of books on veterinary life in the North Yorkshire farming community. In the U.S., his books were usually published in omnibus editions (All Things Bright and Beautiful, All Creatures Great and Small, All Things Wise and Wonderful), but also as they were originally published in the U.K. (The Lord God Made Them All, and Every Living Thing). They are captivating books – filled with a wide range of emotions and events – and stories about cats can be found throughout Herriot’s veterinary writings. But readers who want to read about cats only can focus on the compilation James Herriot’s Cat Stories.

In Herriot’s days as a young veterinarian, these animal healers’ main focus was on the big farm animals that were the financial backbone of the farm. But Herriot was ahead of his time in a way, as he took a keen interest in smaller animals, such as cats and dogs, and this interest may have helped ensure his books a long shelf life. And it helps that Herriot is such a strong writer and storyteller. He is never overly sentimental but he is compassionate, and both the animals and humans are multifaceted and complex. And the cats, well, they may not always love him back – in fact, his suspicious behavior can be quite off-putting to them – but no matter: James Herriot loves them anyway, and his love for the creatures and the country is felt on every page.

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Holy Bible, King James Version

In honor of the Grand Opening of our King James exhibit at Cameron Village tomorrow, we are re-posting this blog entry from last year.

In 1517, the German monk Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg, Saxony, and the Protestant Reformation was born. According to Luther, it was faith alone that would bring salvation and he believed that people of faith could commune directly with the Most High through prayer and by reading the Bible. The Roman church’s version of the Bible (Vulgate) was in Latin, which most churchgoers did not understand, and the reformers made it a priority to make the Bible accessible to everybody.

In the 1380s, Englishman John Wycliffe had argued that the Good Book should be made accessible to people in their own tongue, an undertaking that landed him in court, and led to laws making translating or even reading the Bible in the vernacular a capital transgression (laws under which Wycliffe’s own body was dug up and burnt), and even though Henry VIII had broken away from Rome, he was outraged by the ideas of Luther. It was in other words still dangerous to  engage in Bible translations when William Tyndale began his project in the early 1520s. Tyndale knew eight languages, notably Greek and Hebrew, which were virtually unknown in England at the time. He also had a strong sense for wonderful phrases and knew the Bible inside out. And, as he saw it, Henry VIII’s divorce of Katherine was not sanctioned by the Bible – a notion that he made public. And that was his death sentence.

But the work outlived the man. In 1604, King James decided that one uniform translation should be produced, and well over 80 percent of the King James Version’s New Testament was in fact the work of Tyndale.

The Bible translation was built on a spare and simple vocabulary, and it was a Bible to be read out and listened to. The King James Version’s impact on the English language and literature is simply awe-inspiring – it has, e.g., contributed 257 idioms to English, more than any other single source – but as in any translation, there are aspects of the sources that are not captured (a fact the translators of 1611 recognized).

The challenges that come with a Bible translation are enormous. For one thing, Jesus spoke Aramaic, but his words were saved in Greek. Furthermore, the Tyndale translation was based on a rendering by Dutchman Erasmus, who in his turn partly used a single twelfth century manuscript that is one of the worst manuscripts available. Erasmus also turned to the Latin Bible of the Roman church, and thus translated that text back into Greek, thereby creating some textual readings that cannot be found in any surviving Greek manuscripts.

But none of this devalues the poetic power of the King James Version. And as Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the head of the Anglican Communion, has pointed out, “a good translation will be an invitation to read again, and to probe, and reflect, and imagine with the text. Rather than letting me say: ‘Now I understand,’ it prompts the response: ‘Now the work begins.’ “

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Find out more about the King James exhibit.

Mission to Paris by Alan Furst

It’s the autumn of 1938. France is almost completely surrounded by fascist dictatorships and a Germany governed by NSDAP. The hounds of all-out war have not yet been unleashed, but Germany is waging political warfare against France. The Germans have allied themselves with French right-wingers who abhor and want to destroy democracy in the country, and who wish to replace it with an authoritarian government that will rid France of socialists, communists, and labor unions once and for all.

And now Frederic Stahl, a Hollywood star born in Vienna, Austria, with a Slovene father, sits in his Parisian hotel room. He’s in France to make a movie, loaned out by Warner Bros., and in the newspaper Le Matin he reads, “Hollywood Star Frederic Stahl Speaks Out for Rapprochement.” The quotes in the article are not inaccurate per se, but they are presented in a way that turns Stahl into something he is not. Forces he wants nothing to do with are using his name and public image to promote their ideas; they have him speak out against French re-armament and preparation for war.

Being a famous and important person from a powerful part of the world, people will listen to Stahl and perhaps even change their minds when they hear him share his opinions. He is an agent of sorts, an agent of influence. Stahl understands this and wants to do “something, anything, even a small thing,” to fight back, and he becomes part of an informal espionage service run out of the American embassy in Paris.

When the actor arrives in Berlin for a film festival, his worst fears are confirmed as Kristallnacht breaks out and destroys tens of thousands of Jewish lives – soon enough Frederic Stahl’s own life is in danger.

Like so many of Alan Furst’s heroes, Frederic Stahl is (to use a phrase from the novel) “a warm man in a cold world,” and in a time of fear and resignation he takes a stance for what he believes in – a world where dialogue and not violence shapes societies. Mission to Paris takes place just before World War II, but it has distinct contemporary resonance, and the novel asks the reader, “What do you want to do?”

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See previous blog posts of other Alan Furst titles, Red Gold and Dark Star.

The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick

When Patrick Peoples leaves a neural health facility in Baltimore, he believes that he has spent a few months there. In reality, he has been in the psychiatric ward for four years.

But reality and Pat do not really get along. So now, he is living in the basement of his parent’s home, being part of a movie directed by none other than God. And God will – naturally – provide an awe-inspiring and uplifting ending. Pat is convinced that this will include the end of “apart time,” and his reunification with Nikki, the woman he married… some time ago.

Now, Pat may not be completely sane, but the world at large isn’t entirely rational either. Pat’s friends are convinced that he has cursed the beloved Philadelphia Eagles when he stops watching their games; Eagles fans taunt former Philadelphia player Terrell Owens who might be in the midst of a severe depression; his friend Danny – who for a long time didn’t talk at all – speaks to the dices when they play Parcheesi; his therapist seems to recommend adultery; his father goes through serious mood swings – sometimes because of the way Eagles play, sometimes, well, who knows why? – and then there is Tiffany, a strange bird who follows him whenever and wherever he is running. Is she scouting him, or what?

While Pat is looking up at clouds, constantly finding silver linings, he is haunted by what he has lost and his archenemy, Kenny G, the musician, who has the ability to show up everywhere, and Pat’s road to recovery is filled with “episodes” and setbacks.  But when things go wrong, he insists that this is how movies work and just before the happy ending there will be complications.

Will Pat get to experience the end of “apart time” and then watch the credits of his movie roll after a feel-good ending? Read and find out.

The film version of this debut novel has just been nominated for several major Academy Awards.  Click here to find out which ones.

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Greatest Hits: Beowulf translated by Seamus Heaney

Join us the next five days and kick off the new year with the The Book-A-Day Blog’s most popular posts of 2012!

 

About halfway through the first millennium C.E., the Geats were conquered by the Swedes, and to this day, their old land is part of Sweden. According to tradition (in this case part legend, part history), the last or next to last king of the Geats was Beowulf, a warrior who (probably) had a Geat mother, whilst his father (possibly) was Swedish.

 

The epic of Beowulf takes place in Scandinavia. The language of the story (West Saxon and Anglian dialects) has as much in common with the contemporary Scandinavian languages as with present-day English. Despite these facts, Beowulf is considered to be a part of the vast body of work known as English literature, and the story of Beowulf is perhaps the most beautiful and surely the most famous of all surviving Old English texts.

 

The narrative consists of two main parts. The first relates Beowulf’s travels to the land of the Danes where he fights the man-eating monster Grendel and his lake-dwelling mother. It is a bloody affair. Beowulf follows the tracks of blood that Grendel’s mother leaves behind; he then dives to the bottom of the lake, kills the mother, and keeps Grendel’s head as a trophy. After these epic encounters, he returns to his own land where he eventually becomes king and rules wisely.

 

The second part of the story narrates the hero’s battle against a third foe – a fire-spewing dragon. Beyond this, the hero’s death awaits, and then – well known to the scribes of Beowulf – the invading Swedes and the end of Geatic independence. It is easy, then, to view Beowulf as a glorious memory of distant times, but the tale has much more to offer.

 

Beowulf is steeped in Norse myths, legends, and sagas (that is, historic accounts), and it provides a vivid picture of the life and value system of the Germanic tribes of the north. At the same time, the epic manages to blend all this with newly arrived Biblical elements (thus Grendel and his mother are descendants of Cain), and consequently Beowulf is a mix of the pagan past and the new Semitic times.

 

For a long, long time, Beowulf was considered inaccessible to the English-speaking world, as no decent, contemporary English version of the tale existed. Then (after spending decades with the poem) Nobel Prize winning poet Seamus Heaney decided to translate the text. His version is deeply influenced by the directness of the narrative (which strongly resembles the wonderful Icelandic sagas), and, as Heaney puts it, there is “an undiluted quality about the Beowulf poet’s sense of the world which gives his lines immense emotional credibility [with] the cadence and force of earned wisdom.”

 

Beowulf has been praised as a forerunner to J.R.R. Tolkien and the whole fantasy genre, but its value can first and foremost be found in the text itself – not as an inspiration for later story tellers, but as a classic and commanding tale that transcends time.

 

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