Author Mark Munger (Cloquet River Press)

I always love to read what inspires other writers past and present, how they write, where their ideas come from, and so forth. I am not an English major. I do not possess an MFA in Creative Writing. I am a self-taught author who relies upon years of reading great and not-so-great novels and short fiction, personal experiences, and the words of genius that I do not possess to teach me how to tell my stories. In the past, I’ve read books on these topics by Stephen King, Anne Dillard, Anne Lamont, and a host of other well-known writers. Because Eudora Welty is one of my favorite short story writers, when I came across this title, I knew I needed to read it. I ordered my copy from Zenith Bookstore and over the course of a couple of days spent on my front porch, a place any writer from the South would likely love, I dove in.

This is really more of a memoir than it is a “how to” script on fiction writing. That said, there’s great value for any would be writer in studying Welty’s personal history as told by the author. I was one of those folks who tried, as a young writer (junior high, high school, and college) to spin yarns out of whole cloth; meaning, by complete fabrication and invention. Of plot. Of character. And yes, even of place. Hemingway’s writing was the first place I understood, in my late twenties, that fiction writing is not fabrication of story without reference to the writer’s own experiences, encounters, and life. Welty takes that principle, fiction writer as synthesizer and collector, and explains, in curt and easy to understand terms, how every fiction writer worth his or her salt borrows from life to create stories that compel and resonate. She intersperses her own life story with the invented lives and characters and settings that permeate her fictional work and does so in a way that is both expository and entertaining.

As stated in the headline, at 104 ages of nicely posited prose, I’d give this thin read five stars but for one flaw: It’s far too short!

4 and 1/2 stars out of 5.

Peace

Mark

I had never read Flaubert before I picked up this novel. I know that’s shocking, coming from someone who thinks himself as a writer at the crossroads between genre fiction (historical, mystery, thriller, et al) and high-brow literary fiction. I was challenged to examine Flaubert by literary critic, James Wood, in his classic How Fiction Works. Wood is a Flaubert aficionado and heaps praise upon Gustave as a master of realism; in fact, perhaps the inventor of that lineage of literary fiction. I stumbled upon Wood’s book and though it took a bit of time to get geared up, I finally picked up Flaubert’s classic and dug in. Here’s my take.

Madame Bovary is a difficult protagonist to like. Perhaps it’s the age she lived in and the archaic customs of her time; perhaps that’s authorial intent; perhaps that’s due to my own personal sympathies for her long-suffering husband. Though we spend much time with Emma, the daughter of a French landowner and farmer, it is Charles we meet first, in the very first chapter, and he is immediately cast as a dullard. Charles could easily be cast as the villain in this tale; one of a widower who snaps up an energetic, beautiful, somewhat distant young woman to be his second wife. But that’s not the husband’s role in Flaubert’s immorality play. I’d say morality but the author spends little time exploring the psychological and religious aspects of Madame’s engaging in serial affairs. Rather, our attention is focused almost solely upon the female protagonist’s insatiable romanticism and her attempts to conceal her financial and sexual deviance from her husband. That Charles loves Emma throughout all her deceptions, lies, and inattention to his needs, wants, and desires is a given and leads one to postulate, given all Madame’s comings and goings, that Charles is about as smart as a box of rocks. Flaubert certainly draws us into the affairs and opens our eyes to the aloofness of Rodolphe (Emma’s first lover) and the emotional ineptitude of Léon (her second conquest), and gives the reader an interesting stable of surrounding characters, both familial and townspeople, from which the story made detailed and complete. And yet …

The title of this piece telegraphs that something, in my view, is lacking in this novel to make it the classic, the five-star-read, Mr. Wood advances in his thesis. That “something”, to me, is multifaceted.

First, Flaubert wastes precious words, paragraphs, and pages on drivel; by which I mean, long-winded speeches given by dignitaries and characters at various intervals during the story. Whenever I encountered such stuffy narrative or dialogue, I found myself either skimming or simply skipping ahead. Sure, I get that in any novel, backstory and other diversions from the main action and plot are needed to flesh out a tale. But much like Ayd Rand’s insertion of John Galt’s speech in Atlas Shrugged, Flaubert’s attempts to educate the reader through such oral presentations by minor characters simply wastes a reader’s time and tries a reader’s patience.

In addition, despite Wood proclaiming this to be one of the first (or perhaps, the original novel) invoking realism, I found Madame herself, even with all her inner thoughts and emotions and musings revealed, to be a bit of a cardboard cutout. The early marital scenes between Emma and Charles devolve too quickly into loathing: Emma’s introduction to infidelity seems premature, forced, and untrue. Other than being a bit dull and unseeing, Charles doesn’t appear to be the sort of man to generate true animosity. Which leaves the reader surmising that all of the lust, all of the breaches of sanctimony, all of the turmoil caused by Emma’s fickle nature is based upon one fatal attribute: She is easily bored.

For its time, Madame Bovary brought to the forefront an aspect of contemporary French society (commonplace infidelity) that caused an uproar and, for the most part, introduced a writing style unique to literature. The plot is acceptably drawn; the settings lush and complete. The characters? Somewhat less satisfactory. But Wood is right: Flaubert is an author to be read when one is trying to craft fiction.

4 stars out of 5.

Peace.

Mark

When my pal Dave Michelson handed me Foote’s ginormous three volume study of America’s War Between the States, I was daunted by the task of reading 2,846 pages of history. History that at least, in part, I was aware of. But, as in all things that Dave has suggested over the fifty years of our friendship, I acquiesced and dug in. That was last summer, before Dave, his wife Lail, and six other couples joined René and I for a two-week cruise in the Mediterranean. Well, here we are in May and I finally finished the read! To the review.

Throughout the three volumes of this study, Foote makes his southern upbringing and outlook clear despite his attempts to conceal it. He reveals, though he tries not too, a personal affinity for the Confederacy and the right of secession. No that he applauds slavery and all of its ills. He acknowledges the institution’s evils and makes it clear that slavery, upon which the entirety of the Southern agrarian economy was based, had to go. But he spends much time inside the politics of Jeff Davis and his confederates (pun intended) trying to explain how the South didn’t begin the conflict in a vacuum, how Lincoln’s election triggered secession. That, of course, is indeed true. But Lincoln’s fairly modest anti-slavery stances before Ft. Sumter were, in my humble opinion, an excuse used by the radicals in the South to attempt the unthinkable; the dismemberment of the American experiment. And though Foote paints a fairly accurate and sympathetic portrait of Lincoln as a man and leader, his dissection of Davis’s and the South’s political motivations for firing the first shot ring hollow against the one and fundamental truth: Slavery, the mass bondage of an entire population of Africans brought here against their will, was and is a sin. A sin against man. A sin against God. Many times, as the author digressed into long-winded dissertations about the politics of the Confederacy, I simply skimmed over sections to get to the action.

That’s where Foote really shines. His depiction of the military leaders on both sides of the conflict, the details of their personalities and attributes and upbringings, when placed in the context of Bull Run and Shilo and Vicksburg and Gettysburg and the fall of Atlanta and all the rest is the reason to read this series. Foote is a master of describing skirmishes and battles, including much about Texas and the Wester Front left out in slimmer versions of the war’s history, and making it clear to the reader what transpired. The horrors. The casualties. The losses of loved ones. The genius of Lee and the steadfastness of Grant when finally, Lincoln makes him the overall commander of the Union forces. The dogged determination so men like Sherman and Sheridan and Forrest and Johnston to see their missions through. It’s all here in concise and precise detail.

His portrait of Lincoln’s last months as president, Lincoln’s travels to Richmond after the Army of Northern Virginia (Lee’s army) is dispatched, and the greatest president’s final days is all supremely wrought. His depiction of Jeff Davis’s attempted escape, incarceration, and ultimate release is equally well done. The last two hundred pages of the series was worth the slog that sometimes accompanied the earlier political digressions and personal stories, all of which added color to the page but didn’t necessarily move the narrative forward.

Foote’s work here is laudatory despite the Southern winds whistling through its pages. It’s one of those rare histories written, not by the winners, but by a descendent of the losing side. It is worthy, despite its attitude and somewhat biased bent, of reading by anyone interested in the possible disintegration of our Republic.

Thanks, Dave, for getting me to read this!

Volume 3 is the best of the lot: 5 stars. As an overall review, I’d give the three-book set a rating of 4 and 1/2 stars.

Peace.

Mark

I read Spiegelman’s first installment of his graphic novel about the Holocaust a month or so ago on the plane back from Key West. I immediately ordered the second part of the story. I am glad I did.

The artwork is tremendously moving despite this story being told through cartoons. Maybe that’s too simplistic: the entirety of this story is truly one of the first bestselling graphic novels of all time so labeling the work “cartoons” doesn’t capture the breadth and depth of the story or the depictions of Spiegelman’s struggles with his Jewish heritage, his parents’ captivity at Auschwitz, his mother’s suicide, his ghost brother’s murder in the camps, and the complex relationship the author had with his father.

Read together, the two volumes constituting Maus bring us into the most intimate of discussions between the author and his father and other members of his family with respect to his father’s zany, near stereotypical Jewish fetishism regarding plenty, money, saving, scarcity, and the like. When the last chapter is behind them, readers seventy to eighty years removed from the events depicted in this work will undoubtedly understand and appreciate the ugliness and horror of Nazi Germany conveyed through graphic artwork depicting the murdering of mice by cats in a manner that transcends time.

Stunning. Something every middle school and high school civics class should be required to dive into, analyze, and appreciate.

5 stars out of 5.

Peace.

Mark

This is a book I picked up in Key West, mostly because it was written by Ms. Toews, a Canadian writer of Mennonite heritage I have read before. Her novel, A Complicated Kindness, is very good. In an act of personal kindness (pun intended) she actually took a look at the early stages of my novel, Pigs, a Trial Lawyer’s Story when she was the writer in residence at the Winnipeg Public Library and I was a member of the Manitoba Writers Guild. She made some helpful suggestions, which made the book better, and for that, I have always been grateful. Now to the headline.

No. This is not a masterpiece, nor a feminist manifesto, nor anything close. I admire the author’s attempt to use a new, or at least, fresh for her writing style, approach to telling a story. But while the premise of the story (based upon true events where Mennonite men drugged their wives, sisters, cousins, and children to have sex with them) could have been the basis for a big, bold, blockbuster tale of feminine strength, courage, and perseverance, the structure of Ms. Toew’s storytelling, casting it as reportage from the pen of a male sympathizer and being nearly entirely dialogue-driven, simply failed to grab hold and maintain my interest. This is a slender book, less than 220 pages, the sort of thing I’d hoped to be a fast read. Instead, because of the book’s writing style and the plot composition, I spent the better part of a month struggling to finish the story.

Maybe it’s the fact I’m male. Maybe it’s the fact I have writerly envy. Maybe I am a dullard and don’t appreciate art. Those things may all be true. But all I can say is that this novel did not suit my tastes, did not compel my emotions to rise and fall, and really did very little to interest me in the characters, topic, or religion behind the reality of what happened.

2 stars out of 5. But you be the judge if you wish …

Peace.

Mark

My friend Dave gave me Foote’s trilogy about a year ago and told me I had to read it. I always do what Dave says and so, here I am, having finished the second mammoth tome in Foote’s epistle of the war that still, in many ways, defines America.

As with the first volume, this second offering in the set is chock full of memorable scenes, speeches, maps, observations, and details regarding the battles fought to preserve the Union. And as indicated in my first review of this series, Foote’s goal is an admirable one, much like my goal in writing Mr. Environment: The Willard Munger Story a biography of my conservationist uncle. Both works tend to be a bit long for the casual, recreational reader but with purpose: For in both works one can find essentially everything one needs to know about the topics!

Foote is a good writer who, from time to time, could have used a better editor in terms of run-on sentence structure and the reporting of minutiae that most readers, except for academics scrutinizing this trilogy, could live without and still get the gist of what the Civil War was and what it means for present day America. There are two major themes that emerge from this series. First, that the North had a series of inept commanders in the East, charged with facing off with Lee, who continually failed to seize the day and deal the Army of Virginia the death knell that may well have ended the war a year or perhaps two before Appomattox. Only when Grant takes Vicksburg, after slogging around in the swamps of Mississippi for the greater part of a year to find a way to conduct a siege, and then follows that victory up with the saving of Chattanooga, does President Lincoln finally find the man he needs to face Lee and bring the war to an end. The second theme Foote weaves into the story is the that resentment and defiance which caused the South to secede, if one listens to present day political discourse, remains omnipresent in our politics more than a century after Lee’s surrender. Nothing has really changed other than the replacing of a D besides the names of politicians with an R. Lincoln’s party in the Deep South is no longer his party: It is the antithesis of who and what he was at the end of his life in terms of unity and equality.

Like the trauma experienced by Native Americans due to genocide and removal policies, there can be no question that the devastation unleashed on the South when Grant turned over the Western theater of the war to Sherman, whose slash and burn tactics brought the breadbaskets of the South to their collective knees, still leaves a bitter taste in the mouths of some Southerners. The difference? The South attempted to sever the Union, thereby beginning the conflict. The native tribes? They were simply trying to exist in ancestral lands Europeans deemed “up for grabs”. There is no equivalency between the two and yet, in many ways, both strands of our past continue to haunt us as a nation.

4 stars out of 5.

Peace

Mark

Three very different reads, for sure! Let’s start with Hemingway’s last novel, published for the first time in 1970 by the Hemingway Trust a decade after the master storyteller’s death.

Islands in the Stream

I’ve read all of Papa’s novels and this one, well, despite my appreciation for his other works, blew me away. Like much of Hemingway’s prose, this lyrical tale is chock full of scenes drawn from the author’s life. The underlying plot, whereby Thomas Hudson and his ragtag crew chase down U-boat survivors in Hudson’s personal fishing boat, is drawn from Hemingway’s own experiences in and around Cuba during WW II. Like any Hemingway novel, there is plenty of machismo: Hard drinking, chasing women, blue water fishing, and the rough and tumble of male ego are all on full display. But there is one crucial difference between this novel and say, Across the River and Into the Trees or The Garden of Eden and that is in Islands, much of Hemingway’s misogyny and disrespect towards women is replaced by a more adult, fully matured, kind appreciation for the opposite sex. Even though the protagonist and his two divorced wives have somewhat rocky histories, Hudson doesn’t trash talk Hudson’s prior partners nor belittle them to the extent that was done in some other Hemingway novels. And the women portrayed in the story also are not held to some idealistic pedestal of virtue, as in For Whom the Bell Tolls or A Farewell to Arms.

The plot, involving Hemingway and his crew chasing down survivors of a Nazi U-boat sunk in the Gulf of Mexico, is tightly drawn yet literary. The magic of the master’s voice, his ability to write a concise tale that moves swiftly and compels the reader to turn page after page is present despite the book being published well after the author’s death. A masterpiece even when shelved next to The Old Man and the Sea.

5 stars out of 5.

Men Without Women

Many of my favorite Hemingway short stories are his oldest. I’ve read some of the tales contained in this 1927-issued collection before, including the Nick Adams themed pieces “The Killers” and “Ten Indians.” And I’ve also read “The Undefeated” and “Fifty Grand” previously. Still, re-reading these stories reminded me, especially reconsidering Hemingway’s oblique look at abortion (“Hills Like Elephants”) and his marvelous rumination on age and athletics (“The Undefeated”), of just how unique and eye-opening Papa’s autobiographical and curt yet eloquent style remains. That’s especially true when reading Hem’s short fiction in sunny Key West on a lounge chair next to the sparkling Atlantic with a gentle sea breeze rustling the pages. Not every tale here is a gem; but there’s enough beauty and angst and turmoil and grit in this collection to keep the faith.

( Note: Both Hemingway reads were purchased at the bookshop in Papa’s Key West home, the titles having the apparent approval of the dead author’s cats.)

4 stars out of 4.

Maus (I)

I made a mistake. I bought my first-ever graphic novel thinking that this was the entire story of mice being rounded up by cats as an allegoric rendition of the Holocaust. Turns out, I only bought the first half of Spiegelman’s classic at Books & Books at the Studios in Key West. Oh well. Reading Maus on the plane coming home, I was glad I’d finally decided to break a fast from comics that has lasted since I stopped reading Mad Magazine in my late teens. Wait: That’s not entirely true. I read the comics in the Duluth News Tribune on a daily basis. But beyond that, I’ve been away from graphic stories for nearly fifty years.

Spiegelman’s book isn’t just a chronicle of mice and cats, good and evil. There’s that, for sure. But it’s also the revelation of the author’s relationship with his father and step-mother: That subplot is negotiated by readers alongside Spiegelman’s unveiling of Hitler’s evil. The drawings are stark and in many ways, prescient of the Final Solution through intimation rather than direct depiction.

This is a book (including Maus II) that needs to be read by every middle school child in America given the present undercurrent of demonizing immigrants and The Other. A nicely drawn and told tale that I am forced to give a lesser rating only because, well, the whole story isn’t in this one volume!

4 stars out of 4. Would be 5, I am certain, if the entire tale was in this book.

Peace.

Mark

My friend, Kenny Hubert, finally got me intrigued enough in Sevareid’s meditation on youth, danger, and the far north for me to pick up a copy of Canoeing with the Cree last fall. Why was I inspired by my old friend to read an old book? Simply put, I was enthralled by Ken’s rendition of the trip that he and his brother-in-law Keith took replicating Sevareid’s epic northward paddle from Minnesota to Hudson Bay. I’d heard of Sevareid’s book, chronicling his journey from St. Paul to York Factory in a canvas and cedar strip canoe with a buddy (Sevareid was 17; his partner, Walter Port was 19), and had always wanted to read the narrative of that trip but never quite got around to it. When Ken related his version of his trip (which began in Keith’s hometown of Crookston and followed the Red Lake River south to its confluence with the Red River of the North-the river Sevareid and Port navigated to Winnipeg and beyond), it compelled me to locate a copy of Sevareid’s reportage. I found a used copy of the book but didn’t get around to reading Canoeing With the Cree until I was on vacation this winter. Here’s my take.

For anyone with wanderlust or a love of the out-of-doors or paddling, though it’s been said a million times, I’m certain, Canoeing with the Cree is a must read. Sure, as I’ll detail when reviewing the book’s anthesis, Canoeing with José, Sevareid’s journaling of a dangerous and arduous trek by water contains many pejorative references to Native American tribes, people, customs and the like. Modern commentators have criticized Sevareid-and rightly so-for his lack of cultural sensitivity when dealing with the scenes in the book involving his interactions with Native people; the very people who saved Sevareid and Port from injury, disaster, and death. But such objectionable references must be read in the context of Sevareid’s young age, his inexperience with indigenous people, and the times in which he lived. That said, the author does make it clear that he and Port would have never completed their journey, and likely would have perished, but for the kindness of strangers-white and non-white-met along the way. The criticisms of the book based upon today’s cultural sensitivity and knowledge of the travesties committed, both in the US and Canada, against the Sioux, Ojibwe, and Cree are spot on. But there remains, beneath that tarnish, a gem of a road story of two young men challenging themselves and nature.

As I relate below, when compared with a more recent reportage of a similar journey, Canoeing with the Cree loses a bit of its original luster. Sevareid’s prose is fairly simple and his themes and commentary seem dated. Still, this is an epic “buddy tale” that shouldn’t be missed just because some of its content isn’t politically correct.

4 stars out of 5.

Canoeing with José.

I bought Sevareid’s book at my favorite Bayfield, Wisconsin bookstore, Honest Dog Books (http://honestdogbooks.com/). Julie, one of the thoughtful owners, was the one who suggested, since I was going to read Canoeing with the Cree I should also pick up Canoeing with José. I followed her advice and I’m glad I did!

Jon Lurie, a Jewish guy with absolutely no wilderness canoeing credentials, befriends (maybe that’s too strong a term; theirs is a thorny and stormy relationship) José. The connection begins when Lurie is asked, because José is working as an intern on a a Native American newspaper, The Circle, to mentor the teenager whose ethnicity includes Puerto Rican and Lakota heritage. Things get off to a rocky start due to José’s reluctance to open up to Lurie about the trauma-both historic and personal-that has defined his young life. But, when Lurie suggests the two of them retrace Sevareid’s and Port’s journey as a means of spiritual cleansing and rejuvenation, José agrees.

It must be pointed out that the modern-day paddle up the Red River into Canada and beyond has several critical distinctions from the voyage Port and Sevareid embarked upon.

Lurie and José began their paddle on the Red River, choosing to begin their trip not in the Twin Cities as the original pair did but at Breckenridge, Minnesota, where the Otter Tail and Bois de Sioux Rivers converge to form the Red. This is significant, not in the literary sense but in the historic sense, because the first five chapters of Canoeing with the Cree detail Sevareid’s and Port’s miserable paddle up the Minnesota River and its connectors before arriving at Lurie’s point of departure. The original trip, as detailed in Sevareid’s book, took a full three weeks of work to complete; an additional three weeks of hardship that the modern-day team of canoeists avoided.

In addition, Sevareid and Port paddled, with minor exception, nearly the entire length of Lake Winnipeg, a distance of some 260 miles from north to south in a straight line. Of course, paddling a huge body of water in an eighteen-foot cedar and canvas canoe isn’t practicable; careful canoeists like Sevareid and Port meander from protected island to the shoreline, working their way gingerly northward, avoiding open water whenever possible. By way of contrast, Lurie and José transported their modern-day canoe by rental car to the north end of the lake, avoiding much of the consternation and danger that confronted and confounded the original journeymen.

Once the 21st century canoeists reached Norway House, they entered a series of rivers and lakes flowing north to Hudson Bay by way of the Hayes River system. According to both accounts, that’s the traditional route of the Cree and white trappers and adventurers seeking to paddle from Lake Winnipeg to York Factory. In 1930, when the boys made their trek, the Hayes was in the midst of drought. This required Sevareid and Port to change plans and head north by way of Gods River, a route rarely, if ever used, to reach Hudson Bay.

Canoeing with José is far less a story of wilderness survival and heroic exploits than Sevareid’s work.There is an element of that, to be sure, in Lurie’s account, especially given the relative lack of skills both he and José possess in regards to such an endeavor. But the guts of the newer tale is an introspection by Lurie and José juxtaposed against the history of white privilege and the shameful treatment of Native Americans and Indigenous Canadians. In many ways, this deep dive into history, a history that José feels in the every day stares of white folks he encounters in his hardscrabble life in the Twin Cities but has no real understanding of beyond intuition, is what makes Lurie’s work more compelling, more engaging, and ultimately, more compassionate than Sevareid’s. To be fair, Lurie was 34 and living in our contemporary world when he penned his book; Sevareid made his journey when he was 17 and published his story in 1935, when he was only 22 years old, writing at a time when there was little understanding amongst the majority white populations of the US and Canada of the cultural damage governmental policies had imposed upon the Indians of both nations. That having been said, Canoeing with José is the better written of the two in terms of overall style, language, story, and present day relevance.

One cannot discount the bravery, tenacity, and endurance exhibited by either pair but the later chronology is far more complex and detailed in its examination of what such journeys mean in the context of history and where we are today in terms of understanding that history. 5 stars out of 5. I’d suggest that book clubs and/or readers read both books, in sequence of publication.

Peace.

Mark