June pick: Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon

For book club this month we read Blue Highways.  Only 3 of us could make it to the meeting so I hope more of you will be inspired to leave your comments on this blog.  We addressed these 5 questions:

1. 
   
   Did you like the book? If so, what was your favorite part of the book? If not, why not?
2. 
   
   In Tennessee, the author meets a man who says, “Satisfaction is doing what’s important to yourself. A man ought to honor other people, but he’s got to honor what he believes in too.” (p 31) What do you think of this philosophy?
3. 
   
   What problems observed by the author still exist today?
4. 
   
   William took his journey thirty years ago in 1978. How would his trip be different if he were to take it today?
5. 
   
   Do you think you would like to take a trip like William did? Explain. 
   
   
6. Discuss the roles of Walt Whitman and Black Elk to William and his journey.

Now I'll share what we talked about:

It was agreed that the idea of the book and the beginning of it intrigued everyone but as the story continued and no clear plot was evident a lot of us began to loose interest. For me, I only got through about the first 100 pages before skipping to the end to find out what the point of it all was, something I rarely ever do. A great point was made that each new chapter along William's journey was intended to portray a written snap shoot of what William was experiencing at that moment and not a building up of plot or story line. Had I thought of this earlier I may have continued reading more that I did.

Question 2.
“Satisfaction is doing what’s important to yourself. A man ought to honor other people, but he’s got to honor what he believes in too.” We all agreed it was a fine quote. A point was made that if I person feels that they have given up too much of their hopes or dreams or life ambitions that they are no longer happy and can't continue to make other people happy. We being mothers know this all too well and perhaps consistently sacrifice more of what we want for the betterment of our families.We agreed that there is give and take in everything.

Question 3 and 4 we thought we very similar. A point was made that the nature William saw being destroyed 30 years ago would look even more different today. We hoped that the green movement of the last 30 would have made some difference but weren't sure. I found it interesting that the American Army Corps of Engineers (?) who recruited at my high school touting the good they do to our land and how important preservation is actually had a history of making some areas worse that they tried to help (according to William, although I can't find the reference right now). Someone else pointed out that in Egypt damming the Nile proved worse than letting it occasionally overflow. With no new sediments being deposited the land below the dam was no longer fertile. Perhaps people meddle too much with nature. In trying to help we often make matters worse. This same idea was pointed out in the book Shantaram concerning the slums of India. (April's book)

Question 5, could you do what William did?  Pack up and leave everything and go see the world from the comforts of your caravan?  All of us being non native to Zurich we could relate to the idea of leaving everything behind (our home countries/cities) and the desire to see more of the world was a common thread between all of us all though not many of us could picture being happy with the life lead out of a camper trailer.  Marie mentioned the families from France that travel to different islands with their families as they live solely from their house boat.  Personally, I'd never considered the idea before.  I decided I liked and needed the idea of having a steady income right now but maybe when my husband and I retire we can travel the world more.

Question 6.  What did we think of the Walt Whitman quotes throughout the book?  Marie thought they weren't really that relevant and didn't really add any greater insight.  For me, the Whitman quotes added credibility to the author, if he was well read then maybe I should care a bit more about his story...  We agreed that none of us were poetry buffs and didn't find poetry all that intriguing any more as the beatniks once did.  Poetry today is showcased in the form of song.  Marie and Marusca both explained their love of a french singer who's lyrics were as inciting as the rhythms.  I asked if music was really a good medium for expressing the words one wants to convey.  I don't always notice the words of a lot of songs.  We decided some musicians were better than others in accomplishing this.  Tracy Chapman, Bob Marley, and Bob Dylan were among the group's English favorites.  Thinking about it, I decided Jack Johnson was my favorite artist for this very reason.  I enjoy his lyrics, I can clearly make them out, I agree with a lot of his ideas and his musical rhythms are fun to hear.


All in all, Blue Highways was not among my favorites but offered a chance to view literature in a new way.  I think I will enjoy it more the second time around when I'm ready for something that isn't my favorite "happily ever after" type novel.


What do you think?

The Villa In Italy by Elizabeth Edmondson

Loved it. It was a mystery without any violence. I couldn't have guessed how the author was going to tie all these characters in at the end. It was about 4 people being summoned by their lawyers to a villa in Italy in order to find out what a complete stranger left them in her will. Delia, an opera singer; George, an atom scientist; Majorie, an author of detective stories; and Lucius, a banker.

One quote stood out to me:
George, the scientist who helped discover and create the first atomic bomb that leveled Hiroshima and killed millions carried a heavy burden of guilt for his involvement. 'Science is to blame' he said quietly, 'Science and humanity, the unceasing desire of mankind to know more than is good for us as a species'. I found that interesting, can mankind know more than is good for us? The ability to blow up the entire earth, that's definitely not good for us to know. But with that knowledge has come nuclear power that generates energy for billions of people without having to use coal, although I'm all for natural renewable energy now. The scientist had a hard time realizing the technology they invented was now in the hands of government, elected officials, bureaucracy and thus fallible. Living in this day and age I never really had to worry about the world coming to an end with an atomic bomb although I suppose it still could.

I also loved all the classical references. It made me want to read Dante. I don't think I'd be as ambitious to care about the classic Greek and Pagen Gods who's stories were displayed within the Villa Dante through sculptures and fresco's. How would it be to spend a few weeks in a Villa like in this book? I couldn't even imagine.

Digging to America by Anne Tyler

Rarely do I finish a book and feel like tossing it across the room. It felt so completely plot-less to me. It ended and I was left with a "so what?" feeling. I wasn't a fan. I kept reading it because I related to Maryam, an expat in a foreign country. I began to wonder if I will always feel like she does, not American but no longer considering Iran home either. I see there are lots of discussion questions on the web about this book and maybe if I took the time to answer them I might get more out of the experience but I just didn't relate enough to any of the characters to care about their lives.

The Number One Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

This book was a fast read and a perfect break from how long Shantaram was. It takes place in Botswana, Africa and the lead character is a spunky woman named Mma Precious Ramoswe. Her also being a full sized, black woman with strong opinions of her own I couldn't help but think of the character from Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series, Lula. Precious though has quite a mind about her. How on earth someone could figure out the mysteries she did so easily? Am I that observant? Sadly, no, but entertaining to read none the less.

Shantaram-Part 5

"the cloak of the past is cut from patches of feeling, and sewn with rebus threads. Most of the time, the best we can do is wrap it around ourselves for comfort or drag it behind us as we struggle to go on. But every action and feeling and thought has its reason and significance: its beginning, and the part it plays in the end. Sometimes, we do see. Sometimes, we see the past so clearly, and read the legend of its parts with such acuity, that every stitch of time reveals it purpose, and a kind of message is enfolded in it. Nothing in any life, no matter how well or poorly lived, is wiser than failure or clearer than sorrow. And in the tiny precious wisdom that they give to us, even those dread and hated enemies, suffering and failure, have their reason and their right to be."

"Every human heartbeat, he'd said, is a universe of possibilities." "Every every human will has the power to transform its fate. I'd always thought that fate was something unchangeable: fixed for every one of us at birth, and as constant as the circuit of the stars. but I suddenly realised that life is stranger and more beautiful than that. The truth is that, no matter what kind of game you find yourself in, no matter how good or bad the luck, you can change your life completely with a single thought or a single act of love."

"For this is what we do. Put one foot forward and then the other. Lift our eyes to the snarl and the smile of the world once more. Think. Act. Feel. Add our little consequence to the tides of good and evil that flood and drain the world. Drag our shadowed crosses into the hope of another night. Push our brave hearts into the promise of a new day. With love: the passionate search for a truth other than our own. With longing: the pure ineffable yearning to be saved. For so long as fate keeps waiting, we live on. God forgive us. We live on."

Shantaram-Part 4

"The wrong thing, for the right reasons." "Every virtuous act is inspired by a dark secret. It mightn't be true of everyone, but it was true enough about me. The little good that I've done in the world has always dragged behind it a shadow of dark inspiration. what I do know now, and didn't know then is that, in the long run, motive matters more with good deeds than it does with bad. When all the guilt and shame for the bad we've done have run their course, it's the good we did that can save us. But then, when salvation speaks, the secrets we kept, and the motives we concealed, creep from their shadows. They cling to us, those dark motives for our good deeds. Redemption's climb is steepest if the good we did is soiled with secret shame."

"I envied Anand as he turned and walked with his back straight and his head high into the long, suffering years. I envied his peace and his courage and his perfect understanding of himself. Khaderbhai once said that if we envy someone for all the right reasons, we're half way to wisdom. I hope he wasn't right about that. I hope good envy takes you further than that, beause a lifetime has passed since that day, and I still envy Anand's calm communion with fate, and I long for it with all my flawed and striving heart."

"At first, when we truly love someone, our greatest fear is that the loved one will spot loving us. What we should fear and dread, of course, is that we won't stop loving them, even after they're dead and gone. For I still love you with the whole of my heart, Prabaker. I still love you. And sometimes, my friend, the love that I have, and can't give to you, crushes the breath from my chest. Sometimes, even now, my heart is drowning in a sorrow that has no stars without you, and no laughter, and no sleep."

"No love, is no life."

"Th universe began about fifteen billion years ago, in almost absolute simplicity, and it's been getting more and more complex ever since. This movement from the simple to the complex is built in to the web and weave of the universe, and it's called the tendency toward complexity. We're the products of this complexification, and so are the birds, and bees, and the trees, and the stars, and even the galaxies of stars. And if we were to get wiped out in a cosmic explosion, like an asteroid impact or something, some other expression of our level of complexity would emerge, because that's what the universe does. And this is likely to be going on all over the universe." " The final or ultimate complexity-the place where all this complexity if going-is what , or who, we might call God. And anything that promotes, enhances, or accelerates this movement toward God is good. Anything that inhibits, impedes ore prevents it is evil. And if we want to know if something is good or evil-something like war and killing and smuggling guns to mujaheddin guerrillas, for example-then we ask the questions: What if everyone did this thing? Would that help us, in the bit of the universe, to get there, or would it hold us back? And then we have a pretty good idea weather it's good or evil. But what's more important is we know why it's good or evil."
"What I have just told you is the relationship between consciousness and matter,'Khader proclaimed. This is a kind of test, and now you know it. This is a test that you should apply to everyman who tells you that he knows the meaning of life. Every guru you meet and every teacher, every prophet and every philosopher, should answer these two question for you: What is an objective, universally acceptable definition of good and evil? And, what is the relationship between consciousness and matter? If he cannot answer these two questions, as I have done, you know that he has not passed the test."

"There is a saying-When the student is ready, the teacher appears"

Shantaram-Part 3

"The world is run by one million evil men, ten million stupid men and a hundred million coward. The evil men are the power-the rich men, and the politicians, and the fanatics of religion-whose decisions rule the world, and set it on its course of greed and destruction. There are only one million of them, the truly evil men, the the whole world. The very rich and the very powerful, whose decisions rally count-they only number one million. the stupid men, who number ten million, are the soldiers and policemen who enforce the rule of the evil men. They are the standing armies of the twelve key countries, and the police forces of those and twenty more. In total, there are only ten million of them with any real power or consequence. They are often brave, I'm sure, but they are stupid, too, because they give their lives for governments and causes that use their flesh and blood as mere chess pieces. Those governments always betray them or let them down or abandon them, in the long run. Nations neglect no men more shamefully than the heroes of their wars." "And the hundred million cowards, they are the bureaucrats and paper shufflers and pen-pushers who permit the rule of the evil men, and look the other way. They are the head of this department, and the secretary of that committee, and the president of the other associations. They are managers, and officials, and mayors, and officers of the court. They always defend themselves by saying that they are just following orders, or just doing their job, and it's nothing personal, and if they don't do it, someone else surely will. They are the hundred million cowards who know what is going on, but say nothing, while they sign the paper that puts one man before a firing squad, or condemns one million men to the slower death of a famine.""This formula-the one million, the ten million, the hundred million-this is the real truth of all politics. Marx was wrong. It is not a question of classes, you see, because all the classes are in the hands of this tiny few. This set of numbers is the cause of empire and rebellion. This is the formula that has generated our civilisations for the last ten thousand years. This built the pyramids. This launched your Crusades. This put the world at war, and this formula has the power to impose the peace."

Joseph choosing to stay in prison and not accept help persuade anyone to his reasons for committing his crime.. "Joseph turned to look into my eyes. His face was fixed between a smile and a frown. His eyes were burning, and glistening beneath the tight brows of his frown, while his lips held a happy smile. He couldn't know it of coarse: but with that simple nod of his head, he had answered the question that had remained with me, as a dull ache of doubt, since the prison. Joseph was saved. That was the look simmering in his eyes as he nodded his head. It was the fever of salvation. That look, that frowning smile, combined shame and exultation because both are essential-shame gives exultation its purpose, and exultation gives shame its reward. We'd saved his as much by joining in his exultation as we had by witnessing his shame. And all of it depended upon our action, our interference in his life, because no man is saved without love. What characterises the human race more, Karla once asked me, cruelty or the capacity to feel shame for it? I'm lonelier and wiser now, and I know it isn't cruelty or shame that characterises the human race. It's forgiveness that makes us what we are. Without forgiveness, our species would've annihilated itself in endless retributions. Without forgiveness, there would be no history. Without that hope, there would be no art, for every work of art is in some way an act of forgiveness. Without that dream, there would be no love, for every act of love is in some way a promise to forgive. We live on because we can love, and we love because we can forgive."

"Prisions are the temples where devils learn to prey. Every time we turn the key we twist the knife of fate, because every time we cage a man we close him in with hate."

Shantaram-Part 2

This book was just too big for one post so I'll break it up. Here's a few more of my favorite quotes:

"The truth is that there are no good men, or bad men,' he said. 'It is the deeds that have goodness or badness in them. There are good deeds, and bad deeds. Men are just men- it is what they do or refuse to do, that links them to good and evil. The truth is that an instant of real love, in the heart of anyone-the noblest man alive or the most wicked-has the whole purpose and process and meaning of life within the lotus-folds of its passion. The truth is that we are all, every one of us, every atom, every galaxy, and every particle of matter in the universe, moving toward God."

Here is a list of books the author made reference to. These are the books that Karla has devoured, consumed. 'She was unafraid to mark them, even to scar them, with her own comments and system of references.' I bet they are a very interesting read. Stendhal's The Charterhouse of Parma. Madame Bovary. Thomas Man and Schiller. Djuna Barnes and Virginia Woolf. Maldoror by Isidore Ducasse. Gogol's Dead Souls.

Another great quote: "Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope. Sometimes we cry with everything except tears. In the end that's all there is: love and its duty, sorrow and its truth. In the end that's all we have-to hold on tight until the dawn.

'What?' I asked irritably, although his smile was irresistible, and he knew it, and I was already smiling with him in my heart. 'A man...' he began, intoning the words with sacramental solemnity. 'Not again, Prabu.' '.... must love his bear,' he concluded, patting at his chest and wagging his head frantically. 'A man must love his bear'.

What is suffering?
"our suffering is our religion...our duty is to work, and to suffer"
"Suffering is a matter of choice. We do not have to suffer anything in this life, if we are strong enough to deny it. Suffering is a human weakness"
"And what of strength? Is it not true that some of our strength comes from suffering? That suffering hardship makes us stronger? That those of us who have never known a real hardship, and true suffering cannot have the same strength as other, who have suffered much?
"I still think it is is a matter of strength and weakness"
"I do agree there is an element of control that we have over suffering. I don't think you can deny that."
"Where do we get this control, and how?"
"I would say it is different for all of us, but that it happens when we grow up, when we mature. I think that it is a part of growing up, learning to control our suffering. I think that when we grow up, and learn that happiness is rare, and passes quickly, we become disillusioned and hurt. And how much we suffer is a mark of how much we have been hurt by this realisation. Suffering you see, is a kind of anger. We rage against the unfairness, the injustice of our sad and sorry lot. And this boiling resentment, you see, this anger, is what we call suffering. It is also what leads us to the hero cure, I might add."
"He believes that certain men are cursed with qualities, such as great courage, that make them commit desperate acts. He calls it the hero curse, the thing that compels them to lead other med to bloodshed and chaos. "
"Is there a difference, would you say, between suffering that we experience, and suffering that we cause for others? If there are at least 2 kinds of suffering they can hardly both be the anger that you spoke of"
"The burden of happiness can only be relieved by the balm of suffering. I think that happiness is a real thing, but it is what makes us crazy people. Happiness is a strange and powerful thing that makes us sick, and suffering is what cures us of it."
"You say that the Koran tells us how our sin and wrong-doing is the cause of our suffering. By living by right principles, according the the Koran, will banish suffering from the life of a good Muslim, and lead him to eternal bliss of heaven when life is at an end."
"I think that suffering is the way we test our love. Every act of suffering, no matter how small or agonisingly great, is a test of love in some way. Most of the time, suffering is also a test of our love for God. The Holy Koran tells us that all things in the Universe are related, one to another, and that even opposites are united in some way. I think that there are two points about suffering that we should remember, and they have to do with pleasure and pain. The first is this: that pain and suffering are connected but they are not the same thing. Pain can exist with out suffering, and it is also possible to suffer without feeling pain. Do you agree? The difference between them is this, I think: that what we learn from pain-for example, that fire burns and is dangerous-is always individual, for ourselves alone, but what we learn from suffering is what unites us as one human people. If we do not suffer with our pain, then we have not learned about anything but ourselves. Pain without suffering is like victory without struggle. We do not learn from it what makes us stronger or or closer to God. Suffering is exactly like happiness, but backwards. On is the mirror image of the other, and has no real meaning or existence without the other."
"the universe, as those of the Parsee faith see it, is a process of struggle between opposites-light and darkness, hot and cold, suffering and pleasure-and that nothing can exist without the existence of its opposite."
"Suffering of every kind, is always a matter of what we've lost. When we're young, we think that suffering is something that is done to us. When we get older-when the steel door slams shut, in one way or another-we know that real suffering is measured by what's taken away from us."

Shantaram by Gegory David Roberts-Part 1

At 933 pages this book was daunting at first, but by the end I could have kept reading more. This was a story that grew on me. At first I had to force myself to keep reading as I wondered what do I care about the life of this criminal who has escaped from prison and now living life in India? But it's India, foreign, exotic and completely unlike my own life and culture. The author pulled me in with the description of the smells and colors that someone newly arrived in India might experience. As the main character gets introduced to the people of Bombay and the food and life style the story became more endearing. There is so much to quote in this book I am finding it hard to narrow down. Here is a great picture of the Indian slums:

I began the long walk into the slum. There was an open latrine near the entrance, concealed by tall weeds, and screens made from reed mats. The smell was appalling and almost overpowering. It was like a physical element permeating the air, and it seemed that I could feel it settle on my skin in a thickening, slimy ooze. Gagging and swallowing back the impulse to vomit, I glanced at Prabaker. 'See Lin,' he said, 'See how the people live'. Once past the latrines and within the first lane of huts, however there were fitful guts of wind from a wide arc of seacoast that formed the furthermost edge of the slum. The air was hot and steamy, but the breeze dispersed the stink form the latrine. Smells of spices, cooking and incense predominated. Seen up close, the huts were pitiful structures made from scraps of plastic and cardboard, thin bamboo poles and the flat reed mats for walls. They were erected over bare earth. Patches of concrete and stonework showed in some places where the old floors and foundations of the original building, cleared from the site years before remain intact. As I walked along the narrow rag-and-plastic lanes of the slum, word spread that the foreigner was on his way. Their eyes were wide with surprise and excitement. They burst into fierce gusts of nervous laughter, and shouted to one another, and leaped into jerky, spontaneous dances as we approached. People came out of their huts to stand in every doorway. Dozens, and eventually hundreds, of people crowded into the side-lanes and the occasional gaps between the houses. They were simply staring at my fear. They were trying to understand what demons haunted my mind, causing me to dread so terribly the place they knew to be a sanctuary from fates far worse than slum life.

The slums begins to be the best place Lin has and ever will live because of the people. This is a good point to realize in my life. No matter the size of your dwelling, home it what you make of it and who you are surrounded by while in it. Lin begins serving his fellow neighbors by starting a small medical clinic- mostly treating rat bites, cuts and burns. It is through this service that he forms a close bond with his neighbors, making them like family. (Service brings closeness)

As Lin (the main character) is getting to know India he visits the Standing Babas. "Men who have taken a vow never to sit down, or lie down, ever again, for the rest of their lives. For the first five to ten years of that constant standing, their legs began to swell. Blood moved sluggishly in exhausted veins, and muscles thickened. Their legs became huge, bloated out of recognisable shape, and covered with purple varicose boils. Their toes squeezed out from thick, fleshy feet, like the toes of elephants. During the following years, their legs gradually became thinner, and thinner. Eventually, only bones remained, with a paint-thin veneer of skin and the termite trails of withered veins. Some of the Babas were compelled by something like the vocation that calls other, in other cultures, to become priests, rabbis, or imams. A larger number of them were older men preparing for death and the next level of incarnation. Not a few of the Standing Babas were business men with once successful lives. And there were criminals-thieves, murderers, major mafia figures and warlords. All seeking atonement from their suffering. Their faces were radiant with their excruciation. Sooner or later, in the torment of endlessly ascending pain, every man of them assumed a luminous, transcendent beatitude. Light, made from the agonies they suffered, streamed from their eyes, and I've never know a human source more brilliant than their tortured smiles."

This description intrigued me so I looked up more about the standing Babas online. Here is an interesting clip. I would have to say that their faces do not look radiant with their excruciation though. It's a novel, it sounds good, great really, I get it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojeR1fOKv_A