FROM A PAPER DOLL TO BALLS

Continuing this month’s survey of Books Read, here are a few more entries:

• Robert B. Parker: Paper Doll. By quoting Emerson and placing the scene of the crime “right in Louisburg Square” in Boston’s Beacon Hill, both on Page 2, Parker had my full attention. A delightful read, and fast – despite my usual distaste for genre writing of any kind. A fine tonic after Moore’s laborious scaffolding, especially.
• James P. Carse: The Religious Case Against Belief. A perplexing argument that belief relates to belief systems that actually inhibit the sense of wonder that is at the heart of religion. He sees religion more as long-term culture, each one filled with varied and evolving responses. In addition, open-ended poetry is at the heart of religion, unlike belief, which has answers even before any question is raised. His discussion on Page 65 leads me to the Forbidden Fruit as the first law. The freedom to violate it leads us to trial-and-error knowledge. Without that opening, we would have a static – rather than dynamic – state of existence. The New Adam, in effect, would be returned to a state of wonder and awe, rather than a confining “belief system.” The full freedom of relationship, in other words, rather than subservience.
• Michael Ray Taylor: Cave Passages: Roaming the Underground Wilderness. An obvious companion to The Mole People and my Southern Indiana experiences. Makes me realize that no matter how fascinated I am by karst formations perceived from above ground, I have no desire for the cold, clammy, and downright wet – and often claustrophobic, jagged, and muddy – conditions underground.
• Wilmer A. Cooper: Growing Up Plain: The Journey of a Public Friend. Rooted in places and people I’ve known, this account provides a candid dimension of the difficulties placed upon children growing up in Ohio Wilburite families in the years when the one-room schoolhouses were being closed down. A good counterpoint to the rosier versions told by William Taber. One bonus is in the appendices, which include John Brady’s history and two OYM Disciplines.
• Stephen D. Edington: The Beat Face of God: The Beat Generation Writers as Spirit Guides. Here a Unitarian minister in Nashua really stretches to make his all-too-shallow case. Not only does he repeat himself, but he seems to be ignorant of many key incidents in the lives of these players. Apart from Snyder and Whalen, and perhaps activists like Ferlinghetti, hedonism could be seen to be the operating principle, rather than religious quest.
• Lester C. Thurow: The Zero Sum Society. Another critique of conventional economics, this one was first published in 1980, which leaves it in a curious situation. Since it is addressed to a series of political stalemates preventing long-term economic reform, much of his analysis feels dated, especially the concerns about inflation or income security. (These days, we’re looking at the possibility of real deflation and negotiated pay cuts.) On the other hand, the failure to solve these problems back then have led us, in part, into the disastrous situation the Obama Administration is now facing. He sees energy reform as the central problem. Thurow’s argument, of course, is the question of which segment of society will most bear the brunt (and the economic costs) of any change.
• Richard Adams: Watership Down. The British rabbit novel I was supposed to read my senior year of college. So rabbits talk? And one of their favorite sayings is that a cloud doesn’t like to be alone? Disturbing.
• Patricia Foster, ed.:  Minding the Body: Women Writers on Body and Soul. In contrast to Minding the Light, this collection puts the focus on the corporeal – perhaps quite fitting for someone recovering from surgery! Actually, a remarkable collection. I can’t imagine men writing about our bodies and our varied struggles with them – including issues of being overweight or skinny, illness (especially cancer), or aging.
• Nanci Kincaid: Balls. A fast-moving 396-page novel from the viewpoint of the women in the shadows of football, especially Dixie, who becomes the wife of Mac, the central coach in the story. Humorous and quite disturbing as it looks at the disintegration of marriage and the male obsession with success.