Category Archives: Library

A Canticle for Leibowitz

Posted on May 20, 2010 | Comments Off on A Canticle for Leibowitz

Powerful book, this, despite the irony that fifty years after it was first published, nothing remotely close to its apocalyptic vision of nuclear holocaust has yet occurred or even seems likely. Not even with the Iranian push for nukes.

There is another irony about this classic SciFi tale (which is only really SciFi at the end and then space opera not hard science) and that’s the lengthy and inspired Catholic discussion about how even people dying in pain should not offend G-d by taking their own lives. Then, Googling, I discover that the author, Walter Miller Jr., killed himself.

Nevertheless, his book is a wonderful read, thoughtful and challenging, from beginning to end. With plenty left to chew over (see his chin-choppers poem below) long after the last few paragraphs are done with. I love the fact that it takes place in Texas, with Texarkana, Pecos and Laredo in starring roles. Think I can see why he did not write a second one until forty years later and it never equaled the first. The lit crits must have smothered him with love. Then, being a World War II combat vet, he had PTSD guilt to deal with, also. R.I.P.

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Posted in Library, Obituaries, Science/Engineering, Scribbles, Space

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Time’s last laugh

Posted on May 19, 2010 | Comments Off on Time’s last laugh
We are the centuries.

We are the chin-choppers and the golly whoppers,
and soon we shall discuss the amputation of your head.

We are your singing garbage men, Sir and Madam,
And we march in cadence behind you,
chanting rhymes that some think odd.

Wir, as they say in the old country,
marschieren weiter wenn alles in Scherben fallt.

We have your Eoliths, and your Mesoliths and your Neoliths.
We have your Babylons and your Pompeiis, your Caesars and your
chromium-plated (vital ingredient-impregnated) artifacts.

We have your bloody hatchets and your Hiroshimas.

We march in spite of Hell, we do-—
Atrophy, Entropy, and Proteus Vulgaris,
telling bawdy jokes about a farm girl name of Eve
and a slick traveling salesman called Lucifer.

We bury your dead, and their reputations.

We bury you.

We are the centuries.

Be born then, gasp wind, screech at the surgeon’s slap, seek manhood, taste a little of godhood, feel pain, give birth,struggle a little while, succumb:

(Dying, leave quietly by the rear exit, please.)

Generation, regeneration, again, again, as in a ritual, with blood-stained vestments and nail-torn hands, children of Merlin, chasing a gleam.

Children, too, of Eve, forever building Edens—and kicking them apart in berserk fury because somehow it isn’t the same.

(AGH! AGH! AGH!—an idiot screams his mindless anguish amid the rubble. But quickly! let it be inundated by the choir, chanting Alleluias at ninety decibels.)

Hear then, the last Canticle of the Brethren of the Order of Leibowitz, as sung by the century that swallowed its name.

LUCIFER IS FALLEN.

Walter Miller Jr.
“A Canticle for Leibowitz”

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Posted in Library, Scribbles

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Knoxville 1863

Posted on May 17, 2010 | Comments Off on Knoxville 1863

I’ve been fortunate in already having received two good reviews of my new historical Civil War battle novel.

Claude Cooper, a retired Army colonel and a former professor of military science at Appalachian State University, had this to say about the novel at Amazon: “Other writers and historians have touched on this battle, but I’m not aware of any who have addressed it in this depth. For that reason, and because it is well written, I believe that this is an important novel that will be appreciated by civil war buffs and enjoyed by anyone.”

Jim Miller, whose Civil War Notebook is a popular site with war buffs, concluded: “Mr. Stanley has certainly done his homework; his novel rests on a solid foundation of historical facts. It is well written & a joy to read.”

See the entirety of their comments here at the novel’s Amazon page.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Civil War, Library

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Moment to moment

Posted on May 16, 2010 | Comments Off on Moment to moment

Confluence of events here. Mrs. C., whose best friend is dying, was distraught last night about how the friend and others she relies on are all older than she and so she will have to face their deaths. Probably so, I said, and paraphrased Accuweather’s Joe Bastardi’s tag line (“Enjoy the weather, it’s the only weather you’ve got”) as: “Enjoy the moment, it’s the only moment you’ve got.”

Because we live in the present, always. The past is beyond retrieval and the future never arrives. Or as John Stuart Mill put it in 1874 (found in Jack McDevitt’s space opera Seeker, which I’m reading at the moment, so to speak): “The past and the future are alike shrouded for us: We neither know the origin of anything which is, nor its final destination.” What a life. The only one we’ve got.

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Posted in Library, Mrs. Charm

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TEXAS: A Historical Atlas

Posted on May 14, 2010 | Comments Off on TEXAS: A Historical Atlas

What a book. The colorful new atlas, which aims to supplant a popular one published in 1990 by the same author, A. Ray Stephens, seems to have it all. It’s even prettier.

Step back a few decades, and you see the strengths in its graphical presentations, the data usually sorted by counties. The dwindling of farms, from their peak in 1900 to the present’s paucity. The dramatic rise in urban populations and extension of the railroads–including a photo of a train crossing the dramatic Pecos High Bridge, built in 1882. Major aquifers, native-plant regions, and location of the worst tornadoes. Go back farther and, well, how about the distribution of slaves in 1850 and again in 1861? A lot fewer than you might think.

There are weaknesses. The modern distribution of cattle, of all things, notably does not include (the fact is noted but the reason left unstated), the numbers of cows in the miles-long industrial feedlots of the Panhandle.

As Mrs. C. says: “Coffee-table books are supposed to be pretty and not controversial.” By that measure it’s not surprising that it’s less informative the closer it gets to its publication date. For one, illegal immigration from Mexico (the politically-correct phrase “undocumented workers” is used) is dismissed as merely “producing much rhetoric.” A few hundred thousand people a year swamping schools, emergency rooms and charities and increasing the danger on highways is more than rhetoric.

No, most of the strengths are in the past, with special maps and diagrams for Mexican Texas, the early explorers from 1519, the grants of the empresarios and major early roads, the Texas Revolution. The modern section is eclectic: mapping nuclear and coal-fired power plants, the lumber industry, distribution of major crops, colleges and universities, and ethnic and racial groups by county.

All-in-all, and despite the faults,  an invaluable reference work of which I was pleased to receive a review copy. One only wonders why it’s published by the University of Oklahoma Press.

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Posted in Library, Scribbles, South of the Border, Texana

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The Jade Owl

Posted on May 10, 2010 | Comments Off on The Jade Owl

This is a corker of a quest yarn. The author knows much about Chinese history and unspools it for the lucky reader in a tale of unlikely companions on a fantasy adventure with a supernatural chunk of  jade. The damn owl, as one of them repeatedly says, connects the travelers with the dead Chinese past, when it isn’t trying to destroy the living. From time to time it even hoots.

The humor is chuckle-worthy (my favorite: “He viewed the twenty-hour haul to China like a middle passage—voluntary bondage in the hull of a modern metallic slaver”) and, despite an occasional typo (the persistent grammatical confusion of past/passed also slows things down), the plot rocks along in can’t-wait-to-find-out-what-happens fashion.

Patterson’s vocabulary can be pretentious at times (people rarely walk, they saunter), even confusing when the words are obscure, but a good dictionary helps. Except for the words he makes up, but their meaning usually is clear. And this is only the beginning of a saga with sequels to come. Fly away on a long-distance hunt with The Jade Owl. You face little danger of grounding.

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Posted in Library, Scribbles

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Israel-bound

Posted on May 10, 2010 | Comments Off on Israel-bound

Well, it’s official. I have bought the airline tickets for my solo trip to Israel in the fall. Planning to spend about ten days with my good blog- and Skype-friend STG who has offered to show me around. I’m looking forward to the visit, though not the trip itself.

Indeed, it brings to mind these lines from The Jade Owl, a good adventure yarn I recently finished: “He viewed the twenty-hour haul to China like a middle passage—voluntary bondage in the hull of a modern metallic slaver.”

Just so. Fortunately, the flight to Israel (counting the in-country one to the East Coast first) is only thirteen hours. But the principal is the same. Meanwhile, I am collecting the necessary documents for my first passport since I was a college student in Germany back in the Dark Ages. Hope to have that done by July.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Israel, Library

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