Promises Promises

“I can’t pretend that what I think is wrong can be made right.” That’s not an original line but taken from the song, Promises, Promises.  Still it describes precisely how I feel about the books I read in 2012, a thumbs down. I was asked to get back to you on the books I bought in October and I’ve added one that I received as a Xmas present. So now for the drum roll…  

Rules of Civility has a promising title, a glowing cover and being enthralled by the 1930’s I expected to be swept off my feet by a novel about the young and reckless in New York.  The major problem I had was this—its main character and narrator, Katey Kontent, is supposed to be from Brooklyn, of a blue collar family. Her voice, on the other hand, is that of a young man from outside New York, a Midwesterner—dull but well-read. There is no real woman whatsoever in Katey. It turns out to be her wild and wacky friend Eve who is from the Midwest. 

Eve, for reasons unknown, ignores her parents or treats them abominably; runs away from friends and lovers; drinks too much; passes out almost dead on a regular basis; and is rude and generally unlikable. She is in a terrible car accident early on in the book, but she was rude and unlikable before that. Then there is Tinker, who appears to be a blue blood, but is not, though he might have been. There is some sort of triangle among the three, though you never get any idea why they like each other. Is it Chemistry? They keep running away, but always happening upon each other again.  And speaking of chance encounters —Katey Kontent never meets anyone of any significance whom she does not bump into again at a crucial moment.  Very trite indeed. You would think New York were a village.

Many pages are filled with detailed descriptions of activities not essential to building plot or character, like building paper airplanes or shooting different types of guns. But lots of pages are filled. Also, everyone in the book drops quotes from famous authors with alarming frequency. And everyone has a hidden talent! Singing, playing an instrument, building those very elaborate paper airplanes—it must be difficult for an author to write about a time period with which he has had no real experience, and though there are some nice physical descriptions of the city in Rules of Civility, the book overall feels contrived. 

As one of the very few who have not read J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books I thought I’d be an unbiased reading candidate for The Casual Vacancy. I was quickly drawn into the story and the characters have traits of those that we can identify with—they feel like people we know.  It’s a disturbing character study.  There are no traditional protagonists or antagonists, just people going through life. Rowling explores the various ways that people become cruel, angry, or jaded with each main character showing a different form of cruelty and a different reason for it. How we get hurt by others pain and anger. How we can take pleasure tormenting each other, how many of us become so wrapped up in our own little dramas that we become blind to others suffering, or choose to look away; how we prey upon those weaker than ourselves, and how when we do nothing the consequences can be devastating.

This isn't an easy book to read, but it is a well written descriptive book, just not for everyone.  Some of the issues in this book may be considered depressing and won’t appeal to everyone’s humor. It’s dry British humor, combining comedy with social commentary that you’ll either love or hate. 

I expected so much more from a book that was five years in the making. I did not feel this book measured up to that expectation. J.K. Rowling previously said that she would not want to talk to anyone who did not cry at the end of this book. I’m sorry to disappoint her, but not a single tear did I shed. Instead, I pondered over the human race and pessimism—the darker view on life and felt vacant. 

Garrison Keillor’s Good Poems for Hard Times opens with an amazing introduction but then drifts into cynicism. Still it depicts what is already taking place. "You lie in a hotel bed at night, remote in hand and surf a hundred channels of television. . . and you can drift for hours among the flotsam and you will never see anything that shows that you're in Knoxville or Seattle or Santa Fe or Chicago and nobody will ever speak to you as straightforwardly and clearly as poetry does."

He opines that America is in hard times now with "the levels of power firmly in the hands of a cadre of Christian pirates and bullies whose cynicism is stunning," with the perversion of religion, a tax system that favors the rich, while newspapers decline and the censor abounds. He fears for a future when America has "no binding traditions," when the public cannot name senators and most acquire their political knowledge through television and their "only public life at Wal-Mart."

Keillor is democratic in his choice of writers. There are verses are about the rubber meeting the road. The subject matter of these poems is diverse, from 1977 Toyotas and spiral notebooks to baseball, which is not to say that many of the selections are not varied.

Among the poets included, are the ones we read in English Literature anthologies: Auden, Robert Burns, E. E. Cummings, Emily Dickinson, Donne, Frost, Hardy, Keats, Shakespeare, Whitman et al. Also included are modern names— Wendell Berry, Charles Bukowski (whom I dislike immensely), Raymond Carver, Billy Collins, Rita Dove, Donald Hall, Mary Oliver— and a host of poets I had never heard of before.

Although this book makes poetry accessible, it wasn’t something I found impressive.  The modern poets did not uplift or touch my soul in anyway.  Many poems were mediocre and some were bad. Very few were good and I wondered how these modern ordinary poems were published and found their way alongside the profound poets of the past.