Too much love... or greed... at Mavericks Beach...

With the king high tide comes the king low tide, and unusual access to the tidepools at Mavericks Beach near Half Moon Bay. The authorities seem to have decided that this is the place where everyone can forage the sea's bounty. Pity the urchin, octopus, or crab who sticks their neck out. Nobody seems to eat the gorgeous anemones, which is good for them, but many are trodden upon. The atmosphere is festive if a bit too acquisitive, multi-ethnic, tending toward Asian immigrants, eager for the taste of home. Mussels enough for everyone, if you can pry them from their holdfasts. Wonderful in its way, but a reminder of how small and vulnerable our beautiful planet is.

Today’s economy is historically strong

Josh Bivens. Not that the swing voters will necessarily believe it.

"... in the end, he is a selfish child."

So says Chris Christie, of our once and sadly maybe future president. I work at a university and live in the Bay Area bubble, so I simply don't have conversations with many Trump supporters, but I do often wonder what I would say about why I think he is so appalling. Proto-fascist, racist, rapist, grifter... not to mention very bad on most policy issues I care about. But Chris says all you need to know to want to avoid another four years of Trump rule. 

In refusing to endorse Harris, Christie is either a coward or an opportunist who has deluded himself into thinking he has a future in the GOP. Nevertheless, I have always had a soft spot for him. In some parallel universe he might not make the worst president. In our universe he would have some very tough competition for that title.

Kris Kristofferson, RIP

Terrible singer, but he sure wrote plenty of great songs that plenty of great singers wanted to sing. Apologies to Johnny, Janis, and the rest, but this is the best. 

Late summer fiction potpourri

The Sellout
Paul Beatty

Beatty's nutty-serious ode to modern American Blackness in all its pain and contradictions doesn't so much rapidly veer between hilarity, cringe, bitterness, and rage as stick them all in a Vitamix and turn it on high. But for all that, there is love and tenderness too, and beauty and virtuosity in the writing. Amazing.

Creation Lake
Rachel Kushner

This got raves from Dwight Garner, and while I can't say it competes with The Sellout, for much of the novel it had me pretty well hooked. There are effectively two narrators: our protagonist, "Sadie," a corporate spy/ agent provocateur hired to take down some anarcho-eco-types who are making trouble for a big water project in the south of France; and one of their guiding mentors, a recluse who mostly lives in a cave and whose rambling emails (intercepted by Sadie) look to the Neanderthals for insights into how to live in a post-industrial, post-warming, post-sapiens world. All that is pretty entertaining stuff, and offers the kind of food for thought that would be just about perfect for a weed-enhanced conversation in your sophomore dorm room. But this is also a thriller, after all, and eventually you will want to find out which side wins, and especially whether the astute but sociopathic and mercenary Sadie turns out maybe to have a heart of gold, or at least a few second thoughts – or rather gets her comeuppance. No spoiler here, except to say that the novel completely fizzles out, as if Kushner had reached her page limit, or perhaps the weed was a little too potent. And again without giving away too much, Kushner lets Sadie off the moral hook in a most unsatisfactory manner. Irksome. 

All the Sinners Bleed
S.A. Cosby

I'm not big on crime novels featuring gruesome serial murders, but I'll make an exception for S.A. Cosby. This may be his best so far. 

Farewell, My Lovely
Raymond Chandler

A delightful yarn. No need to picture Bogart or Mitchum as Marlowe while you read, but you can if you want to. 

A Man Lay Dead
Ngaio Marsh

One of her first books, and my first novel by Marsh, one of the three grande dames of murder mysteries. I found the writing and the characterizations less dated than I had expected. I just might read another.

Carson Pass Country, late summer

I was up there last week for a couple of nights in Woods Lake Campground. It's among my favorite places. Carson Pass and its nearby lakes and meadows are at their best in midsummer, when the wildflower display is the best I know of in the Sierras. But late summer brings its own palette of warm colors and soft textures. And you still come across the occasional lupine, pussy-paw, or monkeyflower, taking advantage of one of the last remaining snow patches or moist seeps, hoping to attract a late-season pollinator and go to seed before the snows bury everything again.

On the way home, I stopped at Chaw'Se and Black Chasm Cavern, both near cute as a button Volcano, CA. Don't miss either one. 

Reading roundup

Catching up...

The Sound and the Fury
Light in August
William Faulkner

The only Faulkner novel I remember having actually read before now was As I Lay Dying– not an easy read, but a good bit easier than these challenging books on challenging subjects. To me, The Sound and the Fury holds up better as a coherent novel... but Light in August is stunning too, and should be read by anyone interested in race and racism in America. Not woke, but deeply insightful. Absalom, Absalom! is up next.

The Singularity
Dino Buzzati

A psychological sci-fi novella first published in 1960, it is entertaining and prescient in its fashion. Nice translation by Anne Milano Appel. 

Going Zero
Anthony McCarten

This near-future paranoid thriller "ripped from the headlines" got some good reviews, but is contrived and rather underwhelmingly written. Barely adequate for a long plane ride. 

Indigenous Continent
Pekka Hämäläinen

The subtitle is The Epic Contest for North America, and that is a good description of this survey of the military and political history of the centuries-long struggle between Native Americans and the colonial powers. Hämäläinen has a lot of ground to cover, both temporally and geographically, and at times his writing becomes schematic. But overall the narrative is dramatic and well told. His take is that a sequence of major tribal confederations were in control of much of the continent up until their final defeats in the nineteenth century, and that their successes had to do with features of their political systems as well as their shrewd ability to play off the European and U.S. powers against each other. Disease, trade, and horses all played major roles, as did women tribal leaders. Remarkable, if tragic and appalling.

Can Music Be Perfect? Vol. 107

No, of course not. These two hours of jamming at Emmet's place are far from perfect... but you really only need moments of perfection, no? And those are in abundance here, especially with Rudresh in the house. His composition "Chillin'," starting at about minute 49, brings out the best in Emmet and company. And his Carnatic intro to "In A Sentimental Mood" (c. 1:42) sounds so natural, you could almost believe that the Duke had Kadri Gopalnath in mind when he wrote it.

On another planet

"Immigration reform now!" would be a sign I could stomach. This, not so much. Source: NYT.

Bill Viola, RIP

Strangely moving work...

The Innocents

I Do Not Know What It Is I Am Like

Even specialer!

Oklahoma’s State Superintendent Requires Public Schools to Teach the Bible (NYT)

Though, truth be told, I wish someone had forced me to read it when I was in school...

Louisiana Requires All Public Classrooms to Display Ten Commandments

Louisiana Requires All Public Classrooms to Display Ten Commandments

The Dud Avocado

Elaine Dundy's first novel was published in the year I was born (1958). The NYRB Classics reissue features a rather risqué cover (by their standards) that might have caught your eye in your favorite bookstore. It is a very good book, a coming-of-age dramedy narrated in the first person by our hero, Sally Jay Gorce, who tells of her misadventures as a curious young American woman in Paris in the 1950s. To describe it as "proto-feminist" would be too strong, but the book is matter-of-fact and sympathetic about the inequities, double standards, and serious hazards a sexually active and free-willed young woman might face in Paris at that time, or in any city at any time. The plot is great, Sally Jay is great, and the prose has a way with vernacular that will sometimes whack you upside the head... the sure sign of a great writer: 

... some pretty fancy women came by, and yet I couldn't figure out what he specifically liked about them. Variety seemed to be the only rule. There was something impersonal in the way he treated them. I could see he didn't love any of them, that he didn't even particularly like them; he—I don't know what he them'd. 

"I don't know what he them'd." Whack!

Litmus test

Hey Republican / MAGA! Do you repudiate the Colorado GOP's "God Hates Flags"? How about what David French and family have endured? If not, no more civility... we are finished. Feel free to ask me where I draw the line on my side. Maybe I'm just as bigoted and mean-spirited as you are. I think not.

Lovely lovely clintonia

Wing

Reading roundup

Spring slowdown... moving into summer. 

Cahokia Jazz
Francis Spufford

Spufford tries very hard to keep a lot of balls in the air in this alternate history-cum-police procedural. He nearly succeeds.

Same Bed Different Dreams
Ed Park

A novel-within-a-novel-within-a-novel modernist mashup, where everything is connected to everything else and organized around a tour of modern Korean history. In this case, confirming the old cliché, truth is often stranger than fiction, as you discover if you keep Wikipedia near at hand. It is a book that demands steady focus and– given the need to keep flipping back and forth to name-check– should be read in hard copy rather than on a Kindle (alas). I may grab a copy at the library and try again. 

Skeletons in the Closet
Jean-Patrick Manchette

A briskly humorous private eye story, with some of the flavor of The Maltese Falcon, but more graphic violence and a good dose of profanity. Our hero Eugene Tarpon is hardly a straight arrow, but he has a moral compass, and that, naturally, gets him into deep trouble. An enjoyable romp. 

The Hunter
Tana French

The sequel to The Searcher is just about as good as the first installment. The characters– including both the appealing if flawed heroes as well as the collectivity of the townsfolk of little Ardnakelty– are well drawn and continue to grow into their roles, and the suspense builds slowly but steadily. If the plot is a bit Baroque and the ending overly dramatic for my tastes... well, your mileage may vary. And for sure I'll be back to find out what's next for Cal, Trey, Lena, and their not-always-to-be-trusted neighbors.  

The Peacock and the Sparrow
I.S. Berry

Dumb spy gets what's coming. Meh.

Bill Walton, RIP

When I was in grad school at Stanford, Bill Walton had started Stanford Law School (he never finished). There was a rumor going around that he was going to be on a team of lawyers for the three-on-three intramural basketball tournament, so a few of us decided we had better field our own team of Econ PhD students, if only for the opportunity to step onto the hardwood in the presence of greatness. I can't recall if we actually did enter, but for sure we never got far enough to play against Mister W, if indeed he was on a team (I think not). I played a lot of pickup hoops as a youngster, so I would have been able to appreciate getting my ass kicked by this absolute beast of an athlete... even if his feet and ankles were already pretty shaky at that point. I like to think he would have been kind to us. Anyway, it would have been something.

Seas of Downingia

Downingia pulchella, that is, a flower found in California's vernal pools... the perfect mix of gorgeous and cute as a button. The deep blue-violet is the standard color, but obviously various other morphs co-occur. Downingia also have a heady sweet aroma that wafts up from the fields. 

In the background you can see the encroaching distribution centers of Fremont. Thankfully this little patch is preserved as part of the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge. It's sensitive habitat generally closed to the public... but you can sign up for an occasional guided walk with specialists from the Refuge. Humans are excluded, but cattle can be seen grazing there, carefully managed to munch on the European grasses that otherwise would overwhelm the native forbs that used to thrive in these marginal lands.

My wife did it...

I'm not sure what it is, but whatever it is is her fault.... stare decisis, please refer to Sam Alito, op. cit.

Dabney Coleman, RIP

I had kinda forgotten all about him until seeing the obit, but I do remember Buffalo Bill very fondly.

In a 2010 interview with New York magazine, Mr. Coleman reflected with pleasure on the gallery of rapscallions he had played over the years.

“It’s fun playing those roles,” he said. “You get to do outlandish things; things that you want to do, probably, in real life, but you just don’t because you’re a civilized human being.”

Now we have a candidate for president who lacks that basic filter. I wish it were a sit-com rather than real life. 

Helen Vendler on reading poems

RIP. As a reader of novels and poetry, I find this exactly right: 

I don’t believe that poems are written to be heard, or as Mill said, to be overheard; nor are poems addressed to their reader. I believe that poems are a score for performance by the reader, and that you become the speaking voice. You don’t read or overhear the voice in the poem, you are the voice in the poem. You stand behind the words and speak them as your own—so that it is a very different form of reading from what you might do in a novel where a character is telling the story, where the speaking voice is usurped by a fictional person to whom you listen as the novel unfolds.

(Interviewed in Paris Review)

Reading roundup

Sabbatical... Good time to get some reading done... 

In Ascension
Martin MacInnes

This 500-pager is at its best at the beginning, as we learn about the protagonist-biologist Leigh and her troubled childhood; and in the approach to the somewhat freaky and ambiguous ending. I love alien contact plots, and this book has one... sort of... but the central 2/3 of the novel wastes way too many pages on hard sci fi and algae farming.

Homelessness Is a Housing Problem
Gregg Colburn and Clayton Page Aldern

Yes, it is... the title may qualify for the biggest "duh!" of all time. But as the authors note, the discourse around homelessness has often centered on the individual economic and behavioral traits associated with being unhoused, as well as debates over policy priorities, such as transitional shelter vs. permanent housing, "housing first," vs. services, tough on crime vs. liberal drug and vagrancy laws, etc. Colburn and Aldern make a simple but essential point: Individuals who are more vulnerable– whether due to poverty, mental illness, substance abuse, or other traits– are more likely to be "selected" into homelessness in any given community, but the size of the homelessness problem is a function of conditions in that community's rental housing market. One can think in terms of a bell-shaped distribution of vulnerability across individuals, with the cost of housing determining the vulnerability cutoff between being housed and unhoused, and therefore the size of the homeless "tail."

The book relies on fairly simpleminded statistical evidence: essentially a series of bivariate scatter plots of the rate of homelessness (as measure by point-in-time surveys) against various potential determinants (such as poverty rates), in a cross-section of cities or regions. Chapter by chapter, they dismiss most of the standard accounts until they get to rents and housing supply. The economist in me wanted to see a big multivariate regression table at the end, estimating a "horse race" between the various potential determinants simultaneously, and they claim in the text to have done this, with no substantive change in the findings. I believe them, but it would be nice if they could share their data somewhere. Then, if I assign this book in a class, I could have the students replicate and tweak the analysis. 

The book's core recommendations flow from the findings: Basically, build more affordable housing. Of course, it's easy to say that, but they do offer some good discussions of the practical politics and political economy of housing development. They particularly advocate subsidized increases in housing supply at the low end of the rental market, although their cross-city comparisons seem to affirm that a more elastic overall supply of market-rate housing might do the trick. So: More money to help the most vulnerable in our communities! But also... Build baby build!

The Niagara River
Kay Ryan

Very short, very clever poems. At her best, her internal rhymes, para-rhymes, and wordplay bring both delight and epiphany. At times, they veer over the line into precious. But late at night just before I turn out the light, almost the whole lot hit the spot.

Piano women

Earthwise Productions is a labor of love run by local Palo Alto impresario Mark Weiss. Mr. Weiss has fantastic connections in the jazz and indie music world, but rather limited marketing skills. Or maybe there is not an audience for first-rate, sometimes edgy improvisers in sleepy, tech-y Palo Alto. 

Last Friday's show at the Mitchell Park Community Center was a case in point. An audience of– generously– 20 listened to two sets: Marta Sanchez on solo prepared piano, and the piano-clarinet duo of Myra Melford and Ben Goldberg.

Sanchez was performing a multi-day mini-residency with Earthwise, apparently preparing for a recording of the pieces she was performing. I knew of Sanchez as the pianist in David Murray's current quartet. Murray is the best jazz musician alive (sez me!), and he has very good taste in pianists (e.g., the late great Don Pullen), so I was definitely looking forward to Sanchez. Well, she is clearly talented, but the solo pieces came off a bit noodly, and the prepared piano was not really prepared enough: the hardware under the hood seemed mostly to have the effect of distorting the tuning of a few notes toward the middle of the keyboard, and adding some weak buzzes up top. I was not sure what the point of it was, really. 

Myra Melford I have heard many times, and she is simply one of the great jazz pianists of her generation. The set with Goldberg, who is an excellent player but a bit reserved for my tastes, was fine, but over-composed. Need I say that my favorite piece of the evening allowed Myra to stretch out, banging and whipping at the keyboard with the knuckled glissando that she learned, I believe, from none other than the aforementioned Don Pullen?

Keep up the good work, Mark; and all you Palo Altans, get your asses out to support live music!

Richard Serra, RIP

His sculptures seem like the work of natural forces while at the same time being intensely human. NYT obit.

Cats and birds

This blog post by Maximilian Auffhammer about how much people (de)value the view of a wind turbine from their house mentions another oft-heard critique of these big windmills, namely that they kill birds. Which they do: roughly 250,000 birds per year, according to an estimate from about ten years ago. More turbines today, so probably more dead birds. Sad! The same source puts the number of birds killed annually by cats in the United States at... hmm... 2.5 billion, or 10,000 times the number killed by windmills.

How is that possible... 2.5 billion?! Let's do a back-of-the-envelope calculation. There are an estimated 60 million pet cats, and perhaps 50 million feral cats in the United States. Many of the pet cats are outdoor cats, eagerly prowling the neighborhood picking off songbirds just for the fun of it. But let's stick to the feral cats. My lazy, inert indoor cats consume about 5 ounces of cat food per day each– pure meat and calories. A typical junco, the abundant, smallish sparrow that is the most common bird in my suburban neighborhood, weighs about 0.67 ounces, and some of that is feather and bone. But anyway, let's round up to a somewhat more substantial bird, 1 ounce of meat apiece. Assuming an active feral cat needs as much meat as my inert cats, that's 5 birds per day. For the U.S. feral cat population, that comes to 5 x 365 x 50 million = 91 billion songbirds per year. Of course, they will eat some mice and rats and garbage instead of birds, and some will be fed by well-intentioned human enemies of songbirds. But 2.5 billion seems utterly plausible. Out of a total bird population of... 10 billion? Busy, hungry, cruel, destructive kitties!

The N'Gustro Affair, by Jean-Patrick Manchette

I feel a little guilty confessing how much I loved this high-energy piece of toxic political cynicism, Manchette's first novel (1971). I found it un-put-downable, with its very clever narrative structure driving the action forward, and its manic, profane humor. Politically incorrect, no doubt, but Manchette is an equal-opportunity hater, and the intermittently brutal and fascistic (and ever-opportunistic) protagonist and narrator Henri Butron definitely gets what's coming to him. The novel is based loosely on a true story of post-colonial shenanigans, as explained in Gary Indiana's insightful introduction. Translated in all its gloriously hard-boiled and colorful prose stylings by Donald Nicholson-Smith. An entertainment on the level of, say, Scorcese's Goodfellas. Enjoy!

Nice and damp at Hidden Villa

Along the Long Bunny Loop Trail... Hericium coralloides (coral tooth fungus) with some other stuff; Schizophyllum commune; and Toxicodendron diversilobum (look but don't touch!).

Reading roundup

Some good ones... one not so good... 

My Ántonia
Willa Cather

Fine story-telling, beautifully written. It is simultaneously two coming-of age stories – of the main characters, and of the frontier prairie society they inhabit and build. Cather's admiration for the immigrant farm girls who move into town and grow into strong and remarkably independent American women is evident, even if the most willful of them all, Ántonia herself, is the one who through unfortunate circumstances returns to the farm, devoting her life to bearing and raising an enormous brood of future farmers.

The Ruined Map
Kobo Abe

Abe's excellent 1967 novel is a noir in full-on existential mode. Our narrator is a private detective hired to find a woman's husband, who left one day and never returned. Hubby seems to have been messed up in something criminal, possibly involving his brother-in-law, but the clues, such as they are, lead in various directions with no real resolution. All angst and atmosphere, the book features moments of humor as well, such as when the detective describes in great detail his special method for examining a photograph through binoculars to discern the inner thoughts and feelings of its subject. The translation, which reads flawlessly, is by E. Dale Saunders. 

The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport
Samit Basu

I quite enjoyed Basu's debut, The City Inside, a plausible near-future romp in post-Modi India. His follow-up, a more distant-future riff on the Aladdin story, has its moments, but bogs down trying to describe a bizarre and ultimately unconvincing mash-up of AI bots, modified humans, and mysterious aliens. Of course, be careful what you wish for! 

The Less Dead
Denise Mina

Another reliably well-written and entertaining thriller with a conscience from Mina, this time featuring a sympathetic portrayal of sex workers.  

The Selected Poems of Po Chü-I
Translated by David Hinton

Po Chü-I (Bai Juyi) was a Tang poet born in 772, not long after the deaths of the great generation of Tang masters: Du Fu, Li Bai, and Wang Wei. I have enjoyed reading Po enormously, in this exquisite translation by David Hinton. Many of the poems are contemplative, reflecting Po's interest in Taoism and Zen Buddhism. But his social commentary could really bite...

Songs of Ch’in-chou
7. Light and Sleek

Riding proud in the streets, parading 
horses that glisten, lighting the dust... 

When I ask who such figures could be, 
people say they're imperial favorites: 

vermillion sashes— they're ministers; 
and purple ribbons— maybe generals. 

On horses passing like drifting clouds 
they swagger their way to an army feast, 

to those nine wines filling cup and jar 
and eight dainties of water and land. 

After sweet Tung-t'ing Lake oranges 
and mince-fish from a lake of heaven, 

they've eaten to their hearts content, 
and happily drunk, their spirits swell. 

There's drought south of the Yangtze: 
In Ch’ü-chou, people are eating people.

A poem for our times

For Kenneth and Miriam Patchen 

Al Young

Here 

I am cutting you 

these fresh healthy flowers 

from my sick bed 

where I toss with nickel illuminations. 

Time is a fever 

that burns in the pores 

consuming everything the mind creates. 

I send you 

this cool arrangement of dream blossoms 

these tender stems & shiny leaves 

while I shiver 

& detect in your own eyes 

of gentle remove 

a similar disgust with what has come 

to our fat cancerous land 

of the sensual circus 

& the disembodied broadcast wave, 

swallowing in sorrow 

to hear the old hatred 

& uncover selfishness 

rumbling back up from the bosoms of men 

out into the good open air. 

May these new flowers 

from the forest of my heart 

bring you a breath of the joy 

men must believe they are going to recover 

by moving again & again 

against one another. 

From The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems of the San Francisco Bay Watershed (Sixteen Rivers Press 2010)

Reading roundup

Happy New Year! 

Chain-Gang All-Stars
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

A thrilling read from start to finish, this near-future dystopia is Hunger Games for grown-ups, with plenty of racial justice politics thrown in. The plot, in which the masses of incarcerated are invited to participate in gladiatorial battles to the death for the slavering live and video mass audience, seems close enough to reality that it does not really shock. And presumably that is Adjei-Brenyah's point. The main characters are appealing and well-drawn, even if some of the parallel plots are underdeveloped. Occasional informational footnotes are well intended but seem gratuitous to me. 

I can't say I thought the novel was good enough to make the NYT Top 10 list, which it did, but then again I have not read much of the competition, so perhaps I should withhold judgment. The ending is satisfying and abrupt, and leaves enough hanging that a sequel seems inevitable... perhaps after a movie adaptation, which would probably be a blockbuster and would render its viewers as complicitous in the spectacle and the atrocity as the book does its readers.

Every Day is Mother's Day
Hilary Mantel

This was Mantel's first novel– a nasty piece of dark comedy, in the mode of Muriel Spark. Indeed, one of the main characters is a mentally challenged young woman named Muriel, perhaps in homage. Mantel was already very good, but not yet at the top of her game compared with triumphs like Fludd, let alone the Wolf Hall trilogy. Read this one when you are in the mood for some misanthropy.  

The New Animals
Pip Adam

Set in the fashion scene of Auckland, NZ, The New Animals meanders through a few hours in the lives of its not very interesting characters before taking a rather bizarre and unexpected turn in its last quarter. I'm not sure what to make of it, but I am pretty certain that I will not re-read it to figure it out. Your mileage may vary!

Would You Pay $1,800 for a Facial?

What makes you think I haven't, huh?