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A photo essay of the great depression in America:

Bud Fields and his family. Alabama. 1935 or 1936. Photographer: Walker Evans.

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Kathleen Maher’s review of Winged with Death has gone up on the NewCritics Site.

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Mario Orlando Hamlet Hardy Brenno Benedetti, Uruguayan writer, born 14 September 1920; died 17 May 2009: “When I’m buried/ don’t forget to put a Biro in my coffin.”

“But even that side of Kitt obscured the Kitt who was passionately devoted to and supported peace and civil rights causes. The clash with Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson at the celebrity women’s luncheon in January 1968 gave the first public hint of that.”

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William Calvin, author of Global Fever, attempting to answer John Brockman’s question, “What will change everything?”:

Climate will change our worldview. That each of us will die someday ranks up there with 2+2=4 as one of the great certainties of all time. But we are accustomed to think of our civilization as perpetual, despite all of the history and prehistory that tells us that societies are fragile. The junior-sized slices of society such as the church or the corporation, also assumed to outlive the participant, provide us with everyday reminders of bankruptcy. Climate change is starting to provide daily reminders, challenging us to devise ways to build in resiliency, an ability to bounce back when hit hard.

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In That Shakespeherian Rag, Steven W Beattie posts about the results of a survey which concludes that, “Almost half of Canadians could not name a single Canadian author unprompted.”
But I seriously wonder if the results would differ significantly in any other country. What do you think? Do you live in a stimulating literary culture?

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The top 100 books of all time, alphabetically by author, as determined from a vote by 100 noted writers from 54 countries as released by the Norwegian Book Clubs. Don Quixote was named as the top book in history but otherwise no ranking was provided.

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The Telegraph reports on a man whose home was full of rubbish which he navigated through an intricate network of tunnels. He died after losing his way in the labyrinth. Police called in a specialist team – equipped with breathing apparatus – to search the two-storey house. They discovered a confusing system of tunnels networking around the interior of the building, with Mr Stewart lying dead inside.

Last week we learned that Amazon.co.uk has bowed to pressure to stop selling a book by a former senior Irish Scientologist. The Complex: An Insider Exposes the Covert World of the Church of Scientology (Merlin Publishing, Dublin) describes John Duignan’s 21 years in the religion, not all of it a happy tale. According to Amazon, “Unfortunately, we have had to withdraw The Complex by John Duignan in the UK because we received a specific allegation that a passage in the book is defamatory regarding an individual named in the book”. Other bookshops are also thought to have been warned not to stock the book. And everyone who has ever encountered the Church of Scientology sighs and says, “Here we go again.”

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America – Bush ushers in Midnight Regulations:

Dozens of new rules have already been introduced which critics say will diminish worker safety, pollute the environment, promote gun use and curtail abortion rights. Many rules promote the interests of large industries, such as coal mining or energy, which have energetically supported Bush during his two terms as president. More are expected this week.

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SFGate reports on the 20 most trusted companies:
A report which is bizarre to say the least, being sad and funny at the same time. Neither Google or Microsoft are on the list while other omissions include Countrywide Financial, Bank of America and Weight Watchers.
The top ten, however, include American Express, IBM, eBay, Amazon and Apple, most of which I wouldn’t touch with a bargepole. (TimesOnline today report on Amazon, Britain’s most popular website for Christmas shopping, which is making its staff work seven days a week and threatening them with the sack if they take time off sick.)
Can’t understand why McDonalds and Starbucks didn’t make the list. Must be a mistake.

They were climbing uneven stone steps, some as high as Andrew’s knees – he had to crawl occasionally -inside what as far as he could make out was a roofless tower. His father called out, ‘Are ye all with me then, are ye all in for the climb?’ and some straggling voices answered him. Andrew got the impression that there was not such a crowd following as there had been on the street.

They climbed far up in the roundabout stairway and at last came out on a bare rock, a shelf, from which the land fell steeply away. The rain had ceased for the present.

‘Ah, there,’ said Andrew’s father. ‘Now where’s all the ones was tramping on our heels to get here?’

One of the men just reaching the top step said, ‘There’s two-three of them took off to have a look at the Meg.’

‘Engines of war,’ said Andrew’s father. ‘All they have eyes for is engines of war. Take care they don’t go and blow themselves up.’

‘Haven’t the heart for the stairs, more like,’ said another man who was panting. And the first one said cheerfully, ‘Scairt to get all the way up here, scairt they’re bound to fall off.’

A third man – and that was the lot – came staggering across the shelf as if he had in mind to mdo that very thing.

‘Where is it then?’ he hollered. ‘Are we up on Arthur’s seat?’

‘Ye are not,’ said Andrew’s father. ‘Look beyond you.’

The sun was out now, shining on the stone heap of houses and streets below them, and the churches whose spires did not reach to this height, and some little trees and fields, then a wide silvery stretch of water. And beyond that a pale green and grayish-blue land, part in sunlight and part in shadow, a land as light as mist, sucked into the sky.

‘So did I not tell you?’ Andrew’s father said. ‘America. It is only a little bit of it, though, only the shore. There is where every man is sitting in the midst of his own properties, and even the beggars is riding around in carriages.

‘Well the sea does not look so wide as I thought,’ said the man who had stopped staggering. ‘It does not look as if it would take you weeks to cross it.’

‘It is the effect of the height we’re on,’ said the man who stood beside Andrew’s father. ‘The height we’re on is making the width of it the less.’

‘It’s a fortunate day for the view,’ said Andrew’s father. ‘Many a day you could climb up here and see nothing but the fog.’

He turned and addressed Andrew.

‘So there you are my lad and you have looked over at America,’ he said. ‘God grant you one day you will see it closer up and for yourself.’

Alice Munro uses this series of linked stories to explore her ancestor’s lives in Scotland (Walter Scott and James Hogg were both part of the scene). She traces the family’s move to Canada, and mixes in her own life experience growing up in Ontario. She examines the way we tell stories to maintain our connections to the past, and how these stories sometimes disappear. She also, unashamedly, mixes fact with fiction, so thoroughly that by the end of the book we don’t know which is which.

It is difficult to pin down Alice Munro, and say, this is why she is so good. While you are reading her you know how good she is, and at the end of one of her stories you need to take a breath to regain some distance and equilibrium. But later, you realize you’ve lost her again, or she’s lost you, or . . . what has actually happened is that the moment has passed. Because her writing style somehow, impossibly, apes the world in which our thoughts and impressions perform their acrobatics. The quiescent mind wanders imaginatively, and Munro’s stories do the same thing. It’s not that they are about experiences unknown, just the opposite. They are about everyday people in everyday situations, but she uses language to stir at their superficialities until all that has been hidden comes rushing to the surface.

Twelve prominent Americans give their verdict on Bush’s cultural legacy.

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Art Nouveau - 6 rue du lac, Brussells

Fonk has a photograph of a wonderful art nouveau door. I’ve reproduced it here, but there are more on his Flickr page:

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“One major difference between love and hate appears to be in the fact that large parts of the cerebral cortex – associated with judgement and reasoning – become de-activated during love, whereas only a small area is deactivated in hate.” Steve Conner at The Independent.

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“It’s dog-eat-dog time, and the big dogs have the best lobbyists.” In The Guardian, five writers, Danit Brown, Hari Kunzru, Kevin Brockmeier, Harry Shearer, and Paul Maliszewski imagine what happens after the election.

This extract is taken from one of the earlier chapters, when she is still fifteen years old and being ‘brought along’ by one of her neighbours, Ray Kennedy:

The pleasantest experience Thea had that summer was a trip that she and her mother made to Denver in Ray Kennedy’s caboose. Mrs Kronborg had been looking forward to this rare excursion for a long while, but as Ray never knew at what hour his freight would leave Moonstone, it was difficult to arrange. The call-boy was as likely to summon him to start on his run at twelve o’clock midnight as at twelve o’clock noon. The first week in June started out with all the scheduled trains running on time, and a light freight business. Tuesday evening Ray, after consulting with the dispatcher, stopped at the Kronborgs’ front gate to tell Mrs Kronborg – who was helping Tillie water the flowers – that if she and Thea could be at the depot at eight o’clock the next morning, he thought he could promise them a pleasant ride and get them into Denver before nine o’clock in the evening. Mrs Kronborg told him cheerfully, across the fence, that she would ‘take him up on it,’ and Ray hurried back to the yards to scrub out his car.

The one complaint Ray’s brakemen had to make of him was that he was too fussy about his caboose. His former brakeman had asked to be transferred because, he said, ‘Kennedy was as fussy about his car as an old maid about her bird-cage.’ Joe Giddy, who was braking with Ray now, called him ‘the bride,’ because he kept the caboose and bunks so clean.

It was properly the brakeman’s business to keep the car clean, but when Ray got back to the depot, Giddy was nowhere to be found. Muttering that all his brakemen seemed to consider him ‘easy,’ Ray went down to his car alone. He built a fire in the stove and put water on to heat while he got into his overalls and jumper. Then he set to work with a scrubbing-brush and plenty of soap and ‘cleaner.’ He scrubbed the floor and seats, blackened the stove, put clean sheets on the bunks, and then began to demolish Giddy’s picture gallery. Ray found that his brakemen were likely to have what he termed ‘a taste for the nude in art,’ and Giddy was no exception. Ray took down half a dozen girls in tights and ballet skirts – premiums for cigarette coupons – and some racy calendars advertising saloons and sporting clubs, which had cost Giddy both time and trouble; he even removed Giddy’s particular pet, a naked girl lying on a couch with her knee carelessly poised in the air. Underneath the picture was printed the title, ‘The Odalisque.’ Giddy was under the happy delusion that this title meant something wicked – there was a wicked look about the consonants – but Ray, of course, had looked it up, and Giddy was indebted to the dictionary for the privilege of keeping his lady. If ‘odalisque’ had been what Ray called an objectionable word, he would have thrown the picture out in the first place. Ray even took down a picture of Mrs Langtry in evening dress, because it was entitled the ‘Jersey Lily,’ and because there was a small head of Edward VII, then Prince of Wales, in one corner. Albert Edward’s conduct was a popular subject of discussion among railroad men in those days, and as Ray pulled the tacks out of this lithograph he felt more indignant with the English than ever. He deposited all these pictures under the mattress of Giddy’s bunk, and stood admiring his clean car in the lamplight; the walls now exhibited only a wheatfield, advertising agricultural implements, a map of Colorado, and some pictures of race-horses and hunting dogs. At this moment Giddy, freshly shaved and shampooed, his shirt shining with the highest polish known to Chinese laundrymen, his straw hat tipped over his right eye, thrust his head in at the door.

‘What in hell -,’ he brought out furiously. His good humoured, sunburned face seemed fairly to swell with amazement and anger.

‘That’s all right, Giddy,’ Ray called in a conciliatory tone. ‘Nothing injured. I’ll put ‘em all up again as I found ‘em. Going to take some ladies down in the car tomorrow.’

Giddy scowled. He did not dispute the propriety of Ray’s measures, if there were to be ladies on board, but he felt injured. ‘I suppose you’ll expect me to behave like a Y.M.C.A. secretary,’ he growled. ‘I can’t do my work and serve tea at the same time.’

‘No need to have a tea-party,’ said Ray with determined cheerfulness. ‘Mrs Kronborg will bring the lunch, and it will be a darned good one.’

Giddy lounged against the car, holding his cigar between two thick fingers. ‘Then I guess she’ll get it,’ he observed knowingly. ‘I don’t think your musical friend is much on the grub-box. Has to keep her hands white to tickle the ivories.’ Giddy had nothing against Thea, but he felt cantankerous and wanted to get a rise out of Kennedy.

‘Every man to his own job,’ Ray replied agreeably, pulling his white shirt on over his head.
Giddy emitted smoke distainfully. ‘I suppose so. The man that gets her will have to wear an apron and bake the pancakes. Well, some men like to mess about the kitchen.’ He paused, but Ray was intent on getting into his clothes as quickly as possible. Giddy thought he could go a little further. ‘Of course, I don’t dispute your right to haul women in this car if you want to, but personally, so far as I’m concerned, I’d a good deal rather drink a can of tomatoes and do without the women and their lunch. I was never much enslaved to hard-boiled eggs, anyhow.’

‘You’ll eat ‘em tomorrow, all the same.’ Ray’s tone had a steely glitter as he jumped out of the car, and Giddy stood aside to let him pass. He knew that Kennedy’s next reply would be delivered by hand. He had once seen Ray beat up a nasty fellow for insulting a Mexican woman who helped about the grub-car in the work train, and his fists had worked like two steel hammers. Giddy wasn’t looking for trouble.

Thea Kronborg is blessed with a beautiful singing voice, but its quality and possibilities could easily be overlooked in the raw Colorado town in which she is born.

Song of the Lark follows the genesis of an artist and the quality of the writing is such that I found myself following her successes and failures with equal fervour and anticipation.