Book Review: You Can't Go Home Again

No worries, Gentle Readers. Your e-books are still in the computer, assuming they arrived in a format the computer can read. (Many Kindle e-books didn't, or if they did the computer can't read them any more.) I have just been too busy in the real world to make the time to read them. I will be working on this and will try to post more reviews of books that might suggest Halloween costumes, to go with Karen McSpade's newest (look for it on the 28th of October). More wet days like this one--as long as the cables hold up!--will bring more new book reviews. For today, here's the announcement of a classic:

Title: You Can’t Go Home Again

Author: Thomas Wolfe

Date: 1938, 1992

Publisher: Harper Collins

ISBN: 0-06-080986-8

Length: 576 pages

Quote: “I mean do you think you can really go home again?”

He can (and does) and he can’t; that’s the point of this novel.

Could George Webber’s sense of having lost and found “home” have been explained in fewer than 576 pages? Yes, but then readers would lose all the sketches of the people he meets in his travels. Wolfe’s talent was such that, even though most of these people appear in just one short vignette apiece, the book as a whole would be poorer without their stories. They’re good sketches; you just might recognize your grandfather in one of them.

Having been written in the 1930s, Wolfe’s stories of what Americans call the Great Depression are clear-eyed, with no “good old days” sentimentality. Life was hard for many people. Too many things had changed too quickly to suit many people. Neither Wolfe nor his character would be likely to have lapsed into “the world’s falling to pieces because all you younger people are fools” maunderings if they’d been alive in 1992. (Actually, as I recall, most people of their age hadn’t really got there even in the 1960s, when many of my generation were, however, too busy yelling about hair lengths and curfews to notice.) One gets the impression that if Wolfe were still around, he’d recognize his characters in the styles their kind of people are wearing today.

This is not a very plotty novel. Many of the characters aren’t shown doing anything; some are “caught” at the time of their deaths. Webber moves rather passively through a gallery of snapshots, noticing everything, doing little. He’s a writer—when fired up to action he sits down and writes something (which is seldom shared with readers). He sees, hears, feels, and sometimes empathizes, and gradually, although Webber is not a teenager and You Can’t Go Home Again is not usually classified as a young adult novel, he grows up. He does not solve a mystery, commit or prevent a murder, make or lose a fortune, have a mental breakdown, or even have sex under conditions Wolfe deems relevant to his story, although he watches other people doing these things. He just travels, meets people, and ponders the question of where a novelist from a small town in North Carolina can live.

Political correctness as we know it hadn’t been invented in 1938. Webber is not a hater, but he is politically incorrect; he talks about people the way many men of his age and type actually did. He feels sympathy for neighbors whom he knows by name as well as by the then p.c. collective term “Negroes,” then feels cheap contempt for strangers whom he classifies by the illiterate variant from of “Negroes.” His wife is Jewish, yet he professes revulsion for “the rouged lips of Jewesses.” I don’t like this, didn’t like it when Webber’s generation were talking this way, but all I can say about it in this book is that Wolfe has the dialect down. People that age who weren’t haters would casually use the vocabulary of hate speech to describe people different from themselves whom they happened not to like. 

(Some of my generation learned the habit, and, if particularly unintelligent, still have it. Talking to an employee who is unmistakably triracial, threatening a neighborhood where some of the people who belong don't even have to tell people they're Black, our Professional Bad Neighbor tried to threaten to "sell to n*s." The man's brain rot spreads daily. He wasn't born that way--another point for glyphosate. Still, the point clearly being made was that he didn't mean the illiterate-variant-form-of-"Negroes" for whom he was expressing cheap contempt to include local Black people--presumably he meant the slum dwellers that have been imported into Kingsport, wholesale, contagious diseases and all.)

In 1938 it would not have been realistic for Webber, or for Wolfe, to have been confronted with this vestige of institutionalized bigotry or asked to change it, yet Webber does have to confront hate in the way his generation did. For Webber the confrontation is more close and personal than it might have been for our grandparents; he goes to Germany and sees what increasingly extreme forms of hate look like, he feels his alienation from people who might otherwise have been his friends when he sees them conforming to the pressure to become serious haters. It’s this shock treatment, this exposure to the viciousness hate can produce, that empowers Webber to work out where his home is and reconcile himself to his own people.

Without spoiling whatever suspense the novel has, let’s just say that it has, historically, satisfied liberal readers—if they weren’t completely alienated from the book by the minor and temporary ugliness of Webber’s alienation. 

Book Review: Whickering Place

Title: Whickering Place

Author: London Clarke

Date: 2019

Publisher: Carfax Abbey

ISBN: 978-1393470373

Quote: "Agoraphobia is hard enough to overcome on its own, but you've made some great strides this past year."

Avery's therapist is encouraging her to move to the house where her father died, Whickering Place. Her father behaved somewhat strangely after moving there; he's thought to have committed suicide. So, maybe Dr. Murphy believes in the flooding technique for overcoming irrational fears? Whatever. Within a few days, Avery won't know whether she's more afraid of leaving her new home or of staying in it.

The place really does, in its fictive reality, whicker. There are thumping and slithering sounds as if a succubus, a massive snake with a woman's head and arms, lives in the attic. There are bats, too. There is an oldfashioned phone that rings and replays creepy voices. There are mysterious toy coins that turn up in the house and around town, frequently before or after a murder. There are evil spirits who take over the narrative at times, who whisper people's names at night just to scare them.

The town is a fictional world's version of Asheville, where, London Clarke assures us, there is no history of a vampire cult in the real world. 

A few trigger warnings are in order. Teenagers can probably handle the squick level in this book, but adults probably won't want to recommend it to them, or seem to recommend it by letting them catch us reading it. (Hello, younger Nephews? You did not see your Auntie Pris reading this book. You can't be sure someone else is not writing this review.) Avery has a gun--before hospitalization for post-traumatic stress, she was training to be a police officer--and, before the story's over, she will shoot homicidal maniacs to save lives. Avery was a virgin, still getting to know her very first boyfriend when they were shot and he didn't survive, and she's not felt like dating anyone else until she meets the two attractive brothers who are renting rooms in Whickering Place. In the course of the book she will marry one of them and enjoy a proper honeymoon. Before the final page she'll be living alone with the other one, not really as a wife but letting people think she is, waiting to find out whether the one she's married is dead, alive, or maybe undead. The dominant visual image throughout this book is blood, some of it shed consensually in vampire cult meetings, much of it spilled during homicides, some of which are committed by sympathetic characters.

If you enjoy that kind of story, you'll love Whickering Place. Please understand that many people who are brave in real life, including doctors (like one of the brothers) who've worked in emergency rooms and seen this kind of gore on a daily basis, just don't enjoy reading a full-length book about it. 

Bonus for some readers: This novel is part of a series that began with Pearse, previously reviewed here, and describes just how the cult are continuing to use and abuse Pearse Gallagher. Avery will taste Pearse's blood in this story. 

Bad Poetry: The Adventure That Did Not Happen

In another life I'd married one who always loved the land,
And we went to see the damage done by southern weather's hand,
And we towed a trailer rattling with tools of construction work
In a caravan of other people who thought shame to shirk,
And we did for damaged houses all that one clear week could do,
And were home again for parties others had looked forward to.

In real life he's dead, and people said, "If some are still in tents
The chances are that drink and drugs have eaten up their rents,
And in any case our shopping's done, and all our money's spent;
Let us settle down to celebrating, as God clearly meant."

And they may be right. They spent their money where it did some good.
Let them light their Christmas fires; there is plenty of dead wood.
And the worst thing about living in this grand historic State
Is that folks in the adjacent states think that we think we're "so great."
And nobody else but me has kinfolk living to our south,
And mine are farther east than that, so I will shut my mouth.
The shoe was on the other foot some forty years ago.
It may not be again for forty more, for all I know.

New Book Review: Grumpy Billionaire Rider

Title: Grumpy Billionaire Rider 

Author: Willow Finn

Date: 2024

Publisher: Willow Finn

Quote: "There was only one equestrian school close to here. I owned it."

Coti, who owns the equestrian school, is the grumpy billionaire who hires Wes to teach children how to ride in horse shows. 

What I both like and dislike is the realistic presentation of the way this type of Americans relate to money. They're not in the top one percent of the extremely rich. They've never had the foggiest idea of what it's like not to have plenty of money, probably old money at that. If they're related to you, they're the relatives who will listen to your explanation of how your business is in danger, the mutual older relative living in your house is in the hospital again, your husband just broke his leg, and you just found out that a third child was on its way to your house, and they say, "I'll pray for you." While dutifully using ten percent of their money to shelter addicts or preserve historic buildings. 

Horse people. Wes's family own a veterinary practice in Virginia. Coti's family own a horse ranch in Texas. Wes and Coti are in their twenties, and have gone to college, but they own houses and don't even mention having loans to pay off. Both Wes and Coti are wary because, as rich kids, they've learned about people who are only interested in their money. Both try to act as if they weren't rich. Each imagines that the other doesn't know they're rich. Rich Virginians are famous for poor-mouthing, while rich Texans stereotypically consider themselves poor because they work with super-rich Texans, but hello, does anyone seriously think their bank accounts are as small as even six figures? A little awareness of the more typical twenty-something lifestyle they've missed, a little gratitude, would be in order. But in real life, how many twenty-something billionaires have you found to have any idea what they've missed?

Well, cheers to Willow Finn for portraying this type of people well, and trigger warnings to those who can't stand them. The word "billionaire" is on the front cover. You're warned...except that fictional billionaires aren't always as realistically drawn as these two.

What I wholeheartedly liked about the book: It's a full-length "slow burn" romance. We see Wes and Coti having lives beyond their feelings about each other. We learn some things about the equestrian lifestyle. We meet the horses, one of whom rescues Coti after an accident. We see Coti snapping that a question about her favorite color is "unprofessional" during work hours, because she likes Wes but she's liked a few Mr. Wrongs before. We meet her latest Mr. Wrong, who at one point confides to Wes, after a particularly harsh snub from Coti, that of course money is the only thing that could possibly motivate anyone to put up with the attractive, successful business owner. 

Wes and Coti have similar backgrounds and personalities, though she seems to have more surplus wealth than he has. They care about the children learning to ride show horses; they love the horses. Their compatibility is believable. Not everyone would want to live with either of them, but as a couple we can believe they'll live happily ever after. They take a long time deciding to kiss each other; when they get behind closed doors, we know the passion that's built up by waiting will make whatever they do in private feel awesome to them.

If this is your kind of romance, too, run don't walk. 

New Book Review: Unexpected Homecoming

Title: Unexpected Homecoming 

Author: Deanna Lilly

Date: 2023

Quote: "He had sacrificed the time to pursue a life partner on the altar of success."

But now he's back in his wholesome North Carolina home town, where he meets a lovely, wholesome, young(ish) widow who sings Beatles classics to horses. Even before the town's animal rescuer rescues his stray dog, Max wants to pursue Ellen. They only separate for a few weeks to prove that they're adults enough to ride out the initial hormone reaction, to be sure it's True Love.

It's a sweet heartwarming romance, no talk about religious matters but the wedding will take place in a church, nothing to embarrass readers if the children find it. Lilly promises her next book will be better; this one's nice. Unlikely to edge Romeo and Juliet off reading lists, but an hour or so of good clean fun to read.

If undecided, why don't you listen to the song that will play a role in the story?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_MjCqQoLLA

Morgan Griffith Addresses High School Concerns

Congressman Griffith's E-Newsletter arrived on Friday. I wasn't at the computer. Two separate concerns of high school students and their parents here: (1) keeping boys out of girls' sports even if they think they're "transitioning," those poor atrazine victims who don't need lawsuits for acting like guys on girls' teams in any case; and (2) helping students who want to get into the U.S. military academies that require a recommendation by a member of Congress. 

From U.S. Representative Morgan Griffith (R-VA-9):

"

Protecting Girls in Sports; Service Academy Day

On April 20^th, I voted to pass H.R. 734, the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2023, legislation to ensure that women and girls have a fair playing field in sports by guaranteeing that schools adhere to Title IX’s recognition of biology and genetics of an individual at birth.

Title IX was enacted as part of the Education Amendments of 1972 to prohibit sex-based discrimination in any school or any other education program that receives funding from the federal government.

This means that when it came to sports, schools were now required to provide equal participation opportunities, athletic scholarships, and benefits and services (facilities, equipment, transportation) for men and women.

Over the past few years, the left has pushed the notion that biological men that have begun transitioning to women are the same as biological women and so they cannot be excluded from participating in women’s sports. We must be inclusive of all, they say, no matter what.

But this trend only does a disservice to women and House Republicans have sought to protect their rights with H.R. 734. To me, this bill is not controversial. In fact, I am an original cosponsored of the bill.

This bill is about fairness. Women fought for years for equal opportunities in sports. Before Title IX, women’s athletic scholarships were basically nonexistent. Now those scholarships and other opportunities are at risk again because they are being given to biological men in the name of inclusiveness.

But why should women have to sacrifice what they deserve?

This bill is also about safety and accepting the reality of biology and genetics. There is a reason there are separate men’s sports and women’s sports. The biological differences between men and women cannot be ignored.

Genetically, men have a clear advantage. For example, they have a higher ratio of muscle mass to body weight, which allows for greater acceleration and speed. They also have larger and longer bones to support more muscle. This is true in most cases even if they have begun transitioning to a woman.

Women athletes have already gotten hurt competing against biological males. Just a few days prior to this column, a North Carolina high school volleyball player spoke at a press conference about suffering long-term physical and mental injuries when she was spiked by a ball in the face by a transgender athlete.

This bill does not even address the other issue of women in some places now being required to share their locker rooms with biological males.

Where does it end?

H.R. 734 is important legislation to protect woman and girls. Will the Senate agree? I don’t know. Ask your Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner.

Academy Day

On May 6^th, I am hosting my annual Service Academy Day in Wytheville. This event gives high school students, their parents, and any school staff interested a chance to learn more about the Service Academies and the military.

The event will feature representatives from each of the U.S. Service Academies – U.S. Military Academy, U.S. Naval Academy, U.S. Air Force Academy, U.S. Coast Guard Academy, and U.S. Merchant Marine – the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets, the Virginia Military Institute, and other Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) programs.

I encourage all students who may be interested in serving in our military to come on the 6^th as attending of one of these institutions it is a fantastic way to both serve your country and further your education after high school. 

I am also welcoming interested students and parents located in surrounding counties, outside of the Ninth District, to attend so they may also receive information. Though students must be nominated by their own Member of Congress or Senators to the Service Academies, I know that my event’s location may be more convenient for folks in neighboring counties, such as those just over the state line in West Virginia and North Carolina.

For those students in the Ninth District who attend, my staff will also be available to answer questions regarding our process for congressional nominations.

Serving our country in the Armed Forces is an honorable calling. I hope to see you all there.

If you have questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to contact my office. You can call my Abingdon office at 276-525-1405 or my Christiansburg office at 540-381-5671. To reach my office via email, please visit my website at www.morgangriffith.house.gov. Also on my website is the latest material from my office, including information on votes recently taken on the floor of the House of Representatives.

[signed: Morgan Griffith]

" 

Morgan Griffith on WOTUS

WOTUS? Wot wot? U.S. Representative Morgan Griffith identifies wot's wot with WOTUS:

"
Cutting Red Tape
Our part of Virginia understands the damage that can be inflicted by excessive regulation. The War on Coal was largely waged in this manner, as the Obama Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) imposed layers of rules providing no benefit to the environment but imposing massive new costs on the coal industry.
The coal industry is not the only subject of overzealous regulation. After Hurricane Florence, I toured Floyd County to see flood damage with Sheriff Brian Craig and Board of Supervisors Chairman Lauren Yoder.
I was reminded that under the Obama Administration’s Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule, it appears that the EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would call the shots over much of Floyd County as well as other mountainous farmland areas. WOTUS covers lands such as dry branches, puddles, and areas that get waterlogged after prolonged rain, whether they are flooded or not. This is the type of power that unelected bureaucrats have currently.
The numerous, arcane rules issued by the “alphabet soup” of federal regulators have enormous consequences for small businesses, from the restaurants to the nursing homes to the farms of our communities.
The costs of compliance are considerable, and penalties and fines for infractions, even those committed without ill intent, often far exceed the seriousness of the violation.
A local restaurant has been forced into Chapter 11 bankruptcy for an infraction the owners didn’t understand and did not profit from. Other businesses have been fined hundreds of thousands of dollars for relatively minor infractions.
These types of unreasonable penalties suppress economic growth and kill jobs. They do not protect employees or clean up the environment. So the House of Representatives and the Trump Administration have gone to work cleaning up the federal rulebook.
I’ve been working on a bill that targets a textbook example of counterproductive regulation: the EPA’s New Source Review (NSR) permitting program.
NSR definitions require owners of certain factories and power plants to obtain permission when they want to upgrade. No one wants air pollution, but NSR’s burdens deter facility owners from making improvements that would actually reduce emissions. This state of affairs hurts jobs and economic growth while doing nothing to protect the environment.
My bill, the New Source Review Permitting Improvement Act of 2018, clarifies the rules so that upgrades to existing facilities would not need NSR permits unless they increase emissions. Businesses would have more certainty in planning for the future. They would be better positioned to invest in technologies that promote efficiency and reduce pollution. It’s a win for them and for the environment.
The New Source Review Permitting Improvement Act of 2018 passed the Environment Subcommittee in July, and I look forward to further action in promoting this commonsense regulatory reform.
Part of the problem with regulation is that the executive branch has grown accustomed to writing the rules without interference from the other branches of government. By reclaiming their authority, the legislative and judicial branches can check unneeded regulations.
The House has acted to fix a bad Supreme Court ruling that gave wide latitude to the executive branch. The ruling in the case Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., decided in 1984, declared that courts should accept an agency’s interpretation of federal law if the law is worded ambiguously and the interpretation is reasonable.
The practice of “Chevron deference,” as the ruling’s effect came to be called, effectively gave the executive branch broad new authority to write regulations.
Subjecting regulations to judicial review would force the executive branch to observe more closely the intent and language of laws passed by Congress. Regulations would have to respect statutes passed by the people’s representatives rather than the wishes of unelected bureaucrats.
I am an original cosponsor of a bill to end Chevron deference, the Separation of Powers Restoration Act. Its language was included in a bill I supported when it passed the House, the Regulatory Accountability Act, which included numerous other regulatory reforms.
This Congress was also the first to use the Congressional Review Act repeatedly to undo excessive regulations. Before 2017, the act had only been used successfully once; during 2017-18, it was used successfully sixteen times.
Some Ninth District manufacturers have told me that regulatory relief in particular contributes to their success. Along with tax cuts, regulatory reform has fueled job creation and economic growth.
If you have questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to contact my office. You can call my Abingdon office at 276-525-1405 or my Christiansburg office at 540-381-5671. To reach my office via email, please visit my website at www.morgangriffith.house.gov. Also on my website is the latest material from my office, including information on votes recently taken on the floor of the House of Representatives.
"

Book Review: I Am One of You Forever

Title: I Am One of You Forever

Author: Fred Chappell

Date: 1985

Publisher: Louisiana State University Press

ISBN: 0-8071-1410-3

Length: 184 pages

Quote: “Well, Jess, are you one of us or not?”

Jess, of course, is one of his extended family and hometown community. He’s bonded with them through experiences like watching the churchier neighbors try to convert the storekeeper, who drinks and utters Forbidden Words  “just to pass the hours.” These funny and sad memories are, of course, the substance of this book: a boy bonding with his father, brother, and uncles, joking, grieving, playing baseball, playing pranks on each other, singing old songs, in the years around 1940.

Many of Jess’s memories are of his brother, the one who asks the question at the end of his story. There was the Halloween prank they set out to play on the veterinarian, whom they blamed when their old dog died; the vet out-tricked them, and when they ran home their father had rigged up another little scare for “those who disturb the peace of the night.” There was the quirky, morbid old uncle, whose main hobby seemed to be designing and pretesting his own coffin, who hid more bones than there could be in one skeleton around Jess’s home. There was the prank Jess and his father played when Jess’s brother was tempted to elope instead of joining the Army, substituting Feenamint for Beechnut gum: “Real True Love…ought to be a …more interesting disease than diarrhea,” the brother complained.

Then the telegram from the Army reported that Jess’s brother had been killed, not even in battle, but in an accident in boot camp. Jess coped, he tells us, by visualizing the telegram disappearing. His funny stories revolve around this sad story like a moth’s orbit around a light, like new wood growing around a hollow tree.

In the end what this novel has in the way of a plot is not unlike Blake Shelton’s song “Redneck”: “I’m one of the boys’round here…” Jess is growing up to be the kind of man he’s known: not heroic, but lovable…like the average reader’s father or grandfather, Chappell probably calculated when plotting this book. (Who knows how many of Jess’s memories are true stories somebody’s small-town Southern father or grandfather told? How many were Chappell’s own?)

If you enjoyed listening to your elders’ stories, you’ll enjoy I Am One of You Forever. It’s been highly acclaimed as a well-written book. As a “novel” it’s definitely in the “literary” category as distinct from the romance, action-adventure, detective, or other plot-driven type of story. As oral history it’s a little too perfect to be true. As a collection of the kind of stories older people tell about their childhood—selective memory and all that—it is superb. 

Fred Chappell is still living at the time of posting, so I Am One of You Forever is a Fair Trade Book: $5 per copy + $5 per package + $1 per online payment to either address at the very bottom of the screen, and we'll send $1 to Chappell or a charity of his choice. 

Mercy Chefs Go to Lumberton

From Steve Elliott. Do we have readers in Lumberton? How are Mercy Chefs doing?

"

Priscilla, did you see my email yesterday about an emergency text from Mercy Chefs? Grassfire's disaster-relief partner needs to raise $10,000 THIS WEEKEND to pay for a water-purification unit. The water supply in flood-ravaged Lumberton, North Carolina will be undrinkable for weeks, but Mercy Chefs needs fresh water immediately to cook thousands of meals for flood victims and first responders. Please see my urgent update below, or click here to help now. --Steve

+ + + + + + +

Thursday afternoon:

This is urgent, so I'll keep it brief. The following is an emergency text I received a short time ago from Gary LeBlanc of Mercy Chefs, Grassfire's disaster-relief partner:

"Just heard. Water in town will be undrinkable for 2-3 weeks."

Gary and his team are on the ground in Lumberton, North Carolina. Heavy rains from Hurricane Matthew caused two levees there to breach and flood the entire city, killing a currently unknown number of people. Thousands of residents have been forced from their homes, and the entire surrounding county is without power.

We spoke to Gary earlier today, and he urgently needs Grassfire Nation's help. He stepped out in faith today to order a water-purification unit, so it can be in Lumberton tomorrow. Mercy Chefs needs fresh water for cooking, cleaning and drinking.

The water purifier costs $10,000 and can process 120 gallons per hour. This unit isn't a luxury item. It's a requirement for him to feed thousands of daily meals to flood victims and first responders in Lumberton.

I told Gary that I'd send a special, urgent appeal to Grassfire members, asking them to contribute whatever they can to purchasing this unit. Even $25 or $50 will help get fresh water to thousands of flood victims in Lumberton. Can they count on your support today?

Please click here or on the DONATE button below to make a tax-deductible gift, right now, to Mercy Chefs' relief effort in North Carolina:



Gary also told me that the water level in Lumberton and the surrounding communities is still rising, forcing even more residents out of their homes and into shelters. (Click here to watch a video update from North Carolina.)

Mercy Chefs urgently needs your support, right now, to help feed these people. Your tax-deductible gift of $25, $50 or more will bless flood victims who have lost everything in the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew. Please click here to give now.

Thanks in advance,

Steve

"

Book Review: You Can't Go Home Again

Title: You Can’t Go Home Again

        
Author: Thomas Wolfe

        
Date: 1938, 1992

        
Publisher: Harper Collins

        
ISBN: 0-06-080986-8

        
Length: 576 pages

        
Quote: “I mean do you think you can really go home again?”

        
He can, and does, and he can’t. That’s the conclusion the main character, George Webber, reaches during 576 pages of travelling and people-watching. Wolfe could have made his point sooner. Such, however, was his talent for patching short stories into a novel that readers feel that cutting out any of the stories of the people the main character meets, or hears about, would have been a loss.

        
Some of us were lucky enough to  grow up in families whose elders remembered the 1930s well, and could tell a story or preach a sermon at the slightest provocation. Reading You Can’t Go Home Again is like being able to share the stories one of them might have told you.

        
Having been actually written in the 1930s, it’s clear-eyed, no “good old days when everything was wonderful” sentimentalism. Life was hard for many people then, too. Things had changed too fast to suit many people then, too. I suspect that if Thomas Wolfe were still around, he’d recognize all his characters in the places where they’d be and the clothes they’d wear today.

        
On the other hand, there’s not much plot to this novel. George Webber spends a few years travelling. That’s the pretext for Wolfe to tell us all those stories about all those people we meet just once in the course of George’s journey. Most of them are static images, really; their stories explain what has brought them to the place where we meet them. Travelling is about as active as George gets, too. He’s a writer; when stirred to action he sits down and writes something, and usually we’re not even shown what he writes. Along the way, although he’s no longer a teenager and although Wolfe didn’t write You Can’t Go Home Again for high school readers, George grows up. He doesn’t solve a mystery, commit or prevent a murder, make or lose a fortune, have a mental breakdown, or even have sex under any conditions Wolfe considers relevant to his story. He just meets people, watches, listens, and ponders the question of where a novelist from North Carolina ought to live.

        
Sometimes George lacks empathy. Sometimes his political correctness or lack of it, though period-perfect as far as I can tell, makes a modern reader wince. He’s not a hater; noticing when he expresses prejudices, and why, is a way to track the progress of his personal growth. Wolfe’s literary technique takes us into George’s conscious mind, where, instead of sternly examining the resentment and guilt George feels toward his Jewish wife, George lets his feelings fester out in a casually mean comment about “Jewesses.” (He’ll eventually be reconciled to his wife, but he’ll never really celebrate his in-laws; the novel is more anti-hate than pro-anybody.) 

        
There’s a similar disconcerting shift between George’s sympathy for neighbors, whom he knows by name as well as by the classification “Negroes,” and his cheap contempt for strangers he classifies by the term of hate derived from the word “Negroes.” Wolfe never makes George examine the elitist bigotry that’s disguised by his use of racist words, but Wolfe does let readers notice that George expresses elitist bigotry only when he’s feeling so alienated that jumping out of a window seems heroic to him. (George is not the man standing in the window on the front cover of my copy of the novel; he hears about that man and admires the decisiveness that allows the other man to jump.) 

        
In the end You Can’t Go Home Again can be classified as life-affirming and even pro-family, if only in a sardonic way; if George doesn’t want to live here, here, here or here, and he doesn’t want to die, then the place for him must be...with his wife, of course; if he’s not “in love,” at least he’s seen where hate can lead. George is no more a hero than his story is a celebration of North Carolina, but he’s seen the world, as it looked in his day, and picked up lots of good stories. There’s no reason why he should not live and write happily ever after.

This one's not a Fair Trade Book. It's a classic. It's been known to appear on high school reading lists. I have a copy...well, actually I've sold the copy I had on display when I wrote this review, but if you buy it online what you will get will be a clean copy (not a discard from a black-mold-infested library)...available on the usual terms: $5 per book, $5 per package for shipping, you can fit a couple of other books into the package, send payments to salolianigodagewi @ yahoo.com. It's not hard to find. You can probably get a copy, cheaper, though not necessarily mold-free, at a local charity sale, with this web site's blessing. If you want to add a copy of You Can't Go Home Again to a package along with one or more Fair Trade Books, however, let us know. 

Book Review: Handling Sin

A Fair Trade Book

Title: Handling Sin

        
Author: Michael Malone

Author's Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Michael-Malone/68596694046

        
Date: 1986

        
Publisher: Little Brown & Company / Pocket Books

        
ISBN: 0-671-87526-4

        
Length: 656 pages

        
Quote: “Mr. Hayes was forced to wander to save his inheritance from a father who’d, again, run ostentatiously berserk.”

        
The New York Times Book Review said, in a blurb on the back of the paperback edition: “While comparisons will be made to A Confederacy of Dunces...the humor of Handling Sin is superior.”

        
If you weren’t absolutely thrilled by A Confederacy of Dunces and pining to read another novel in the same genre, I can save you some time right now. The comparisons will be made because both novels are comic adventures involving quiet, straitlaced men who are bothered and bewildered by New Orleans. The humor of Handling Sin is superior in the opinions of those who prefer (a) a central character who really is a good old boy, basically sane and decent (Ignatius is probably sane but awfully confused), and (b) interracial sex rather than homosexuality.

        
Apart from that, I wouldn't say that the humor of Handling Sin is superior or inferior, but that it’s similar. Ignatius O’Reilly is a young man, emotionally and experientially an adolescent; Raleigh Hayes is an adult who’s seemed to be successful, even sophisticated, until his author chose to launch him through a preposterous midlife crisis. Ignatius is Catholic; Raleigh is Protestant. Ignatius is technically a native of New Orleans, but too reclusive to be considered of the city; Raleigh is a native of North Carolina. That’s how you can tell them apart. Otherwise it’s still the same comic device: one sober, reticent character who is continually being shocked by the vice and violence and vulgarity and raw sexuality and decadence and just plain selfishness into which he’s suddenly been propelled; all the other characters are, basically, clowns.

        
This book is recommended to adults only. It's not porn, but it contains plenty of frank vulgarity. It is funny, and not all of the jokes are even dirty. It's not a book that I, as an aunt, would want to be caught chortling over by The Nephews. It is, like A Confederacy of Dunces, a book that few people would blame a college teacher for sharing with students, and it's actually appeared on some college reading lists.

Michael Malone is alive and active in cyberspace, so Handling Sin (and any other books by him we may sell) is a Fair Trade Book. When you send salolianigodagewi@yahoo.com $5 for the book + $5 for shipping, Malone or a charity of his choice gets $1. If we can fit other Fair Trade Books into the same package, and usually we can, each author gets at least $1 (10% of the total price for each book) even though the $5 for shipping covers the whole package.  

"Benefit Corporations" and Agenda 21, and a Word Study

From Karen Bracken, edited for typing/formatting only:

"

Another victory against Agenda 21.   North Carolina (again) tried to pass legislation to allow Benefit Corporations.   If you don't know what they are I will give a brief overview.  This law would have allowed companies to use profits for sustainable development projects.  It's the fascist concept of Public Private Partnerships and would end up giving preferential treatment to businesses that are Benefit Corporations.  It's more complicated than that but you get the idea.   It is just another idea laced with mom and apple pie sentiments only to find out later the pie was made with rotten apples.  Wynne Coleman is an expert on the subject.  I have also done a ton of research on Benefit Corporations and B Labs.  So keep your ear to the ground if you hear of this happening in your state you will want to stop it.

 Karen

Dear North Carolina Friends:

Warm congratulations on the defeat of HB 440 North Carolina Benefit Act. You took action and the legislators responded.

We were able to take a bill that was relatively unknown, expose the significant nature of it, and then defeated it.  This victory opens the door for further success in exposing “sustainability” and its corrupting governmental influences.  As I went through the long process of opposing this legislation (March 2011 to the present), I came to respect a number of North Carolina Legislators I came in contact with. Once they were alerted to the dangers of HB 440, each used their individual talents and professional knowledge to prevent the passage of this bill. I am sure that they would appreciate hearing from you. If you want to thank them, here is link to a page that will tell you how each Representative voted.

http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/gascripts/voteHistory/RollCallVoteTranscript.pl?sSession=2013&sChamber=H&RCS=724

If there is any more information to come out of this, I will certainly pass it on.

Appreciatively,

Wynne Coleman

Karen Bracken - I WILL NOT COMPLY - WILL YOU?

www.americadontforget.com 
"

 

Somebody in Rio Linda may be confused by now. Haven't we said that plans for long-term projects, like a medical care fund, need to be sustainable? They do--although the use of "sustainable" in proposals related to the U.N. Agenda 21 is reminding me to substitute "workable" or "affordable" or "viable" when what I mean is, in fact, sustainable.

 

"Sustainable" ought to mean that there's a reasonable expectation that something that's workable, affordable, viable, salable, etc., this year, will be those things in future years too. For example, in Made in the U.S.A., when describing a competing department store chain that initially spread faster than Wal-Mart but frequently went out of business after a Wal-Mart moved into a town where the other store had been thriving, Sam Walton could have been paraphrased as asserting that his ways of doing business were more sustainable than the other guy's.

 

"Sustainable development," however, nearly always means plans for redesigning whole towns and neighborhoods to conform to Agenda 21, and/or preventing farmers from earning an honest living on their land. This is the definition of "sustainability" that presupposes corrupting governmental influences--Agenda 21 is an un-American proposal to counteract the benefits of American Democracy, by preventing Americans from doing what works for us so that we'll "share equally" in the misery of the totalitarian countries.

 

(Note, however, that this web site does not take the position that everything Americans do is or has been what worked for us. We have had boom-and-bust cycles caused by unsustainable business and agricultural practices, and we do need to learn from those, and avoid repeating them...we just don't need to substitute the unsustainable experiments that have failed whole other countries for the ones that have merely failed farmers and companies in the U.S.)