Book Reviews: The Scythe, Saint Camber

The Scythe
by Balogun Ojetade

I am continuing my research into modern pulp, especially pulp that seeks to redress or rectify some of classic pulp's shortcomings around race and other hot button topics. So I read this book shortly after finishing the Black Pulp collection reviewed here. Anyway I enjoyed this book but not as much as the Black Pulp collection. The Scythe is a short novel, (novella?) that tells the story of the title character, a black doctor in 1921 Tulsa, Oklahoma. Well if you know your history you know that the 1920s saw the Harlem Renaissance and ever so slight halting black progress. However it was also very close to the nadir of American racism. White supremacy was unquestioned in almost every facet of American life. Many whites were only vaguely aware that some black people didn't care for this state of affairs. You can read about the so-called race riots of Tulsa here. I say so-called because a) it was actually a pogrom and b) unlike our modern conception of race riots it was actually whites running amok, killing, shooting, looting, robbing and raping. The interesting thing about the Tulsa attack, if anything can be considered "interesting" when detailing such an atrocity is that it showed that the strain of "do for self" black political thought, that is "run your own businesses", "don't beg for government assistance" and "hire and work for your own people" which was shared and promulgated by people as politically diverse as Marcus Garvey, Booker T. Washington, Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, Dr. Claude Anderson, Zora Neale Hurston and some modern black conservatives, had some very real limits and drawbacks. It's good to do for self and be self-sufficient whenever possible. But if racist whites decide that your success is a threat or intolerable insult and you must be literally beaten down into economic dependency or even eliminated, then what do you do? Unless you're ready, willing and able to meet fire with fire you will lose everything you hold dear. Economic success without political progress and the ability and willingness to defend yourself and your property is meaningless.

That concept of self-defense permeates the book, primarily expressed via the author's deep knowledge of martial arts. The titular hero is a black doctor named A.C. Jackson, who in keeping with his oath to serve all, regardless of race or status, is murdered during the Tulsa riots. This is no spoiler as it occurs in the first few pages. It's also no spoiler to reveal that the doctor is resurrected, well at least somewhat resurrected, by the spirit Ikukuklu, who is the scythe of the Grim Reaper or Death. Ikukulu is fascinated by how grimly humans cling on to life. He has decided that he would like to experience life for himself, at least for a while. So he offers to bring back Dr. Jackson from death as long as Ikukulu can hitch a ride. The side effect is that Dr. Jackson will have access to many of Ikukulu's abilities, which are extensive and of course paranormal. When Jackson comes back from the dead he starts calling himself The Scythe and of course seeks revenge on those who murdered him. But he doesn't stop there with his do-good actions. Jackson finds himself entangled in conspiracies that include the Klan, vampires, gangsters, ancient African gods and demons and a sexy Haitian femme fatale. This book was ok. I thought that it had a bit too much dialogue. There's very little in The Scythe that's not dialogue. There are some writers who tend to be all about setup and description and atmosphere. That's not an issue here. It's is a pulp novel so I wasn't expecting too much exposition or description but I think I wanted a little bit more. I wanted to feel the era of the twenties more than I did. The large print book is about 150 pages. You also get an additional origin short story of a character in The Scythe as well as some interesting author explanation of why he writes and how he understands his genre.





Saint Camber
by Katherine Kurtz

This is the second book in the Legends of Camber series. This series is a prequel to the Deryni Rising series. It was published after the Deryni Rising series although I read it first. I actually like this series better than the Deryni Rising series because the characters here were a little more, oh what's the word? I wouldn't say well rounded because that certainly wouldn't be the case. There's more of a sense of danger. Additionally I appreciated the various moral dilemmas. There's some serious questions on what makes a person good. If someone enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act asks if you are hiding any slaves what would you answer? Assuming that they are indeed hiding slaves, many "good" people would lie and say no with a clear conscience. That's a pretty easy question. But what if you're an undercover agent somewhere? To keep your cover and save the lives of your countrymen you must engage in activities that are unethical or illegal. How far can you go in breaking the rules before you're no better than whatever evil you're facing? To bring it back to the Fugitive Slave Act example you might well kill the racist law enforcer who discovered that you were hiding slaves in your home. After all he's an adult and signed up for his wicked job. But what if he brings his seven year old daughter along and she's the one who notices the hidden door in the kitchen? What then? Things may not be so clear cut. That's the place where Saint Camber spends most of its time. Just like George R.R.Martin did years later Kurtz brings us the story of what happens after the evil king is overthrown. As it turns out not everyone lives happily ever after.

As discussed in a review of the first book in this series, the Deryni are a race of humans who are visually indistinguishable from normal humans. However they have both inherent paranormal mental powers and a genetic affinity for externalized "magic" powers. They take these abilities for granted the same way a fish doesn't think about its gills. The Deryni are a significant minority. The evil Deryni King Imre ruled the Kingdom of Gwynedd until he was overthrown in a coup led by the powerful Deryni noble Camber of Culdi. Camber got involved in the revolution for both ideological (he's a patriot who hates bullies) and personal reasons (the Deryni King murdered his son). Camber found a scion of the previous human dynasty, a human priest named Cinhil, and placed him on the throne over the man's feeble objections.

Unfortunately Queen Ariella, the dead king's sister (and lover and mother of his child) escaped Camber and fled to a different kingdom, where augmented by her Deryni Gwynedd loyalists, renegade business interests, foreign relatives and mercenaries, she's preparing an invasion of Gwynedd.

To his chagrin Camber finds that humans in general and King Cinhil in particular are not exactly grateful that Deryni rebels overthrew the evil Deryni ruler and handed power back to a human regime. In fact they're not grateful at all. Cinhil profoundly resents Camber for pulling him from his previous career as an ascetic and celibate monk. Cinhil thinks that he's betrayed God by becoming king. Cinhil has little appreciation for the bigger picture or for doing the necessary to produce an heir.  If not quite a bigot Cinhil is well on his way to becoming one. The depressed king vacillates between bitter "why can't you make the decision and leave me alone"  and "oh you Deryni all think you're so f****** smart" moods. Other humans are starting to feel entitled as the newly empowered majority to request more concessions from Deryni. Some requests are more akin to demands. 
When the one Deryni whom Cinhil semi-tolerates is killed in the battle with Ariella, Camber has a choice to make, one which will determine the fate of the kingdoms, the Deryni and his own legacy. Unlike works by Abercrombie and Martin, Kurtz posits a world where religion and the church are extremely powerful. But it's not just religious temporal power which informs the world Kurtz has created. People actually believe in God. People try to do the right thing. Even people who make mistakes or commit evil acts attempt to justify them by appeals to God. Faith matters. So there's a realism here that is occasionally missing in other fantasy novels. Not everyone is a cynical self-interested scoundrel. Anyone remotely familiar with Christian (primarily Catholic) doctrine, ritual and organization will find all of that echoed in this book. Mass is both a religious and political event. There are orders of religious knights. My small print edition was around 375-400 pages.

Book Reviews: Under the Dome, Black Pulp, No Hero

Under the Dome
by Stephen King

When you're one of the world's greatest writers sometimes even your older ideas are still golden compared to everyone else's. Under The Dome, as King explains, is an idea he had way back in the 70s if my memory of his author's note serves correctly. He published it a few years ago. I just recently got around to reading it a few weeks ago. A television miniseries has also been made from it. My understanding is that the TV series is quite different from the book.
As usual King has a tremendous and unerring capacity for creating believable characters who are mixes of love and hate, good and evil. He's quite the people observer. Many of his characters have ugly little resentments mixed with their moral constraints and beliefs. With a few exceptions most of the "good guys" also have some bad mixed in them, whether it be a woman preacher who's unsure if she still believes in God but KNOWS she has a holy terror of a temper or an Iraq war veteran who's a decent enough guy back home but turned a blind eye to some horrible things during the war. There's a specific shout out to Lord of the Flies. That whole Things fall Apart element suffuses the entire story. Some people are walking monsters. Others didn't recognize their neighbors' evil because the law hindered their ability to do harm or forced them to confine their malice to smaller or secret misdeeds. How would such people behave in an enclosed environment with no rules or responsibility? What would you do if money, logic or decency no longer matter but viciousness and brute strength are what count? I read this story in two parts: two softcover books that were each around 600-700 pages. Even by King standards this was quite a lift. It reminded me of his earlier sagas like The Stand or The Talisman (with Peter Straub). However I thought that there were way too many characters (King has gotten almost like George R.R. Martin in this regard). The story sagged in the middle somewhat. 

After thinking about it I still dislike the ending although the penultimate catastrophe was diabolical vintage King. I thought the book was well researched though a person with a physics/science background might find a few holes. There are some warnings, subtle and otherwise, about the dangers of bullying, of hurting people just because you can, of going along to get along, environmental degradation, and of the Bush-Cheney regime.

The book's title is accurate. An invisible dome descends over the town of Chester's Mill, Maine. The dome extends up into the sky and far beneath the ground. It's really a sphere. Planes and automobiles crash into it. A woodchuck is halved by it. Light (albeit refracted), other electromagnetic signals, and sound still pass through the dome but air does so only weakly. Water and other physical matter won't get through. Approaching the dome causes headaches. Near the dome Pacemakers explode. Children show precognition. Chester's Mill is completely cut off from the outside world. When the police chief Duke Perkins dies, the overly and overtly religious and power hungry Second Selectman and used car salesman Big Jim Rennie thinks that he should control the town, for its own good of course. The elder Rennie (he has a morally empty son named Junior) wields massive legal and illegal influence in Chester's Mill. Big Jim prefers to work through other people. He has a heart condition. He's utterly contemptuous of opposition. Just imagine Dick Cheney ruthlessly cementing his grip on Mayberry. Big Jim is much smarter, more corrupt and more cunning than people realize though even he doesn't know how dangerous his son is. 

Big Jim is opposed by a drifter named "Barbie", aka decorated former Army Captain Dale Barbara, and the town newspaper editor Julia Shumway, among others. When President Obama invokes emergency powers and puts Barbie in charge neither Rennie is pleased. Big Jim has been expanding the police force by hiring thugs eager to abuse people. He's also hoarding food and water. Murder is just a tool for him. But even while Big Jim plots, the town's smarter residents realize that the true danger is the slow oxygen depletion and rising temperature within the dome. Some citizens search for what created the dome while the military and scientists outside the dome try to break through. The book's signal theme is that evil is morally and physically blind. We all can do things that hurt others without thinking twice. We're not monsters like Rennie, his son and company but no one's hands are 100% clean. When you kill that trespassing spider or watch as that terrified cow in the slaughterhouse is shot through the head would an objective observer describe you as "evil"?  Certainly a cow or spider would. The objective observer might agree with that description if they were as far advanced beyond you as you are advanced beyond cows or spiders. Cows and spiders want to live too. This book has an extended visceral description of a rape and a few other threatened sexual assaults as well as numerous gruesome murders and deaths. A few loyal dogs die. So if that's not your cup of tea you know what to do. As mentioned I found the book longwinded. Stephen King definitely knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men (and women too for that matter). 




Black Pulp
edited by Hancock, Phillips and Minor

I've written before that I truly enjoy many vintage pulp stories, old time radio and film noir. When I recently purchased a new vehicle and associated satellite radio subscription I was delighted to listen to the old time radio station. The problem with many of those classic tales is that they were written when racism or to be more precise white supremacy was much more widely accepted. Although there were a few authors who ignored or downplayed this convention, many pulp writers took it for granted in their writing, while a sizable minority positively glorified in creating racist tales and subhuman black characters. It wasn't just black people stereotyped in these stories. Arab, Persian or Turkish characters were often swarthy, untrustworthy backstabbers. Italians were over emotional gangsters or operatic lotharios. Irish were honest if dim policemen or singing drunks. East Asian women were Dragon Ladies while East Asian men were fiendish yet effete Fu Manchu types. One good punch in the nose from our admirable Nordic/Celtic American hero and the Chinese villain usually folded up like a wet paper bag. Stretching the genre limitations even for his time, one of Robert E. Howard's created protagonists was (briefly) a slave ship captain. So it goes. Times have changed. It is now legal to write stories in which black characters exist, are not ignorant savages who worship a white person as a god, and can even be the story's hero or heroine instead of a loyal but slow-witted and dialect prone sidekick. So that is a good thing.

Black Pulp is a short story collection which features pulp or noir stories with black protagonists. This has been done before by such black genre authors as Chester Himes, Rudolph Fisher, Clarence Cooper, Donald Goines and others. Of course who cares who wrote a story. What ultimately counts is story quality. Well this collection is a mixed bag on that front but I am happy to say that there are more hits than misses. "Decimator Smith and the Fangs of the Fire Serpent"  by Gary Phillips is a pre WW2 noir concerning the titular character, a middleweight boxer, who must do some detective work when his sister is suddenly murdered by person or persons unknown. "Dillon and the Alchemist's Morning Coffee" by Derrick Feguson has a dashing black secret agent undercover in a North African country where an item of incredible power is up for auction. "Drums of the Ogbanje" by Mel Odom dips into Darkest Africa Robert E. Howard Solomon Kane territory to have an African anti-slavery crusader and his loyal Irish sidekick face off against a brutal Portuguese slaver and his African ally, a wizard of decidedly malign intent. 

Gary Phillips

In Joe Lansdale's "Six Finger Jack", a bounty hunter decides to try some assassin work. It doesn't end well. "Black Wolfe's Debt" by D. Alan Lewis is a classic detective tale featuring a babe walking into the hero's office and trouble following her. "Agnes Viridian and the Search for the Scales" by Kimberly Richardson, shows a smooth talking black woman private detective who operates in 1930s Memphis and gets entangled in an Indiana Jones type adventure. "The Lawman" by Ron Foriter is a fictionalized retelling of real life escapades of Old West Black Federal Marshal Bass Reeves. "Rocket Crockett and the Jade Dragon" by Christopher Chambers is a Korean War era story which features a black fighter pilot haunted by his older brother's lynching who has to manage racist commanding officers, Japanese war criminals, yakuza, legendary Korean relics and old girlfriends. "Jaguar and the Jungleland Boogie" by Michael Gonzales is a tongue in cheek story set in late 80s Harlem where a supervillain inspired by real life rap hater Stanley Crouch is out to destroy all Harlem rap clubs, rap musicians and any avant-garde jazz musicians who work with rappers. This collection is about 300 pages. The nice thing about short story collections is that something new is coming up soon if you don't like the current tale. Noted author Walter Mosley wrote the introduction. 

The afterword gives additional background information about the authors and their blogs, websites or twitter handles. Some stories are excerpts from series or selections from longer novels so I am interested to read more. There are entire universes for us to discover. I am always happy to find new ones.





No Hero
by Jonathan Wood

Maybe I just wasn't in the mood for this book. I may read it again to see if I change my mind. But I just didn't see this as anything that was super special. This was first in a trilogy but the ending gives the impression that each story will be complete in and of itself. This is yet another British story of urban fantasy. The hero is suddenly drawn into a world in which he finds out that monsters are real and there really are things that go bump in the night. At this point it would almost be more interesting if something from a more fantastical world was drawn into our world, in which magic does not work and the rules of physics apply. At its best this book reminded me of the Simon Pegg movie Hot Fuzz, at its worst this was sorta of a low rent Big Trouble in Little China takeoff. Arthur Wallace is a British police detective and Kurt Russell fanatic. Although he rarely has the opportunity to boot people in the head, fire off massive amounts of ammunition, show off huge biceps or save the girl, he is nevertheless a pretty good detective. He even has an "interesting" relationship with his primary female subordinate, one that could possibly go "live" if he wasn't a stickler for rules around harassment and workplace romances. Arthur and his team have been assigned to find out who is leaving dead, usually decapitated, bodies all over Oxford. They apparently have a serial killer running loose.

Via deduction and research Arthur predicts the time and place of the next murder. He shows up just in time to see an impossibly fast and inhumanly strong woman leap in the air and cleave apart a man's head with what looks like a Claymore sword. But if that's not odd enough, it's when Arthur sees tentacles and eggs spray from what should be a human head, that he realizes that his understanding of reality is incomplete. Arthur was the only one to see the tentacles and was unable to stop the woman from fleeing the scene.

Afterwards Arthur is forcibly recruited into MI-37, a supersecret British organization designed to deal with "special" threats to humanity in general and the UK in particular. The director of MI-37, one Felicity Shaw, is looking for talent. Unfortunately because supernatural threats can't easily be monetized or explained to the public MI-37 is short on funding. REALLY short. It was difficult for Felicity to hire Arthur because her bosses are talking of shutting down her organization. Along with the thoroughly confused Arthur, Felicity only has three other employees:

• Clyde, a nebbishy researcher, unwitting comedian and powerful magician who talks too much to hide his nervousness, social ineptness and his increasing romantic attraction to:
• Tabitha, an acerbic researcher, computer expert and undercover operator who doesn't mind showing her generalized annoyance to most people including:
• Kayla, a Scottish woman and team muscle, who has somehow gained inhuman strength, speed and healing abilities. She's the one that Arthur saw. She doesn't like many other people and has a special disdain for Arthur, thinking him both incompetent and stupid. She's upset when Felicity explains she's putting Arthur in charge. Kayla's default response to Arthur is "F*** off!".

There is an other dimensional Lovecraftian threat called the Feeders who wish to enter and consume our reality. Currently they are unable to do so but have sent across their spawn, known as the Progeny. The Progeny infect/possess humans. They seek to open our reality to the Feeders. MI-37 tries to prevent this. Kayla is an expert Progeny killer. The balance of the book involves Arthur learning how to lead a team where everyone is more talented than he is, thinking of telling his previous friends what happened, seeing if Felicity likes him in a non-platonic way, and trying to do what old Jack Burton would do when the earth quakes and the poison arrows fall from the sky. This was a decent read I guess but nothing that hasn't been done before in the Repairman Jack or Harry Dresden series. YMMV. Arthur is too often severely self-deprecating, so much so that sometimes you find yourself agreeing with Kayla's or Tabitha's poor assessments of him. I did like the book's realism insofar as subject matter experts often can dislike the clueless project managers tasked to oversee their work. And upper management types often lack patience for middle/lower management drones ordered to get up to speed yesterday on projects they knew nothing about before the status meeting ten minutes ago.

Book Reviews: The Spook Who Sat by The Door

The Spook Who Sat By The Door
by Sam Greenlee

Sam Greenlee just passed away a few months ago. Sam Greenlee was an American writer who had a long career as both a military officer and overseas agent for the United States Information Agency, which worked worldwide to dispense propaganda and news favorable to U.S. interests. Greenlee witnessed (was involved in?) the 1958 Iraqi revolution. Greenlee was also a member of the Alpha Kappa Psi fraternity. He was among the first black employees for the USIA. He later apparently came to regret some of his work. Although the book "The Spook Who Sat by The Door" was not exactly autobiographical, as Greenlee was never a CIA agent, nor did he start any revolutions as far as we know, it definitely drew on and was inspired by his work experiences. The book's attacks on racism are far exceeded by a deeper disdain for black integrationists, in particular those who were petit bourgeois/middle class. Greenlee's writing drips with contempt for people who would rather go along to get along or mouth empty words about tolerance rather than stand up and take control over their own lives. The book's title is a double pun as spook is both a racial slur and a nickname for a spy. The phrase also refers to the corporate practice of hiring black people in visible positions so that a company can market itself as an equal opportunity employer. Often, however, such token hires are never afforded access to real power or promotion opportunities. The book's protagonist, Dan Freeman, is an Army veteran who takes advantage of an affirmative action program designed to produce the country's first black CIA agent.

The CIA created this program because a cynical liberal senator, concerned that his black support is dropping, verbally attacked the CIA in open committee hearings for not having any black agents.

The white General who runs the CIA is confident that no black recruit will pass the necessary physical, stress or intelligence tests. The recruits are, except for Freeman, middle class men whose primary interests are making the cover of Jet or Ebony magazine as the "first black CIA agent", making money, and chasing women, not necessarily in that order. They are generally soft, class obsessed and arrogant. They shun Freeman, who didn't go to the best school (he's a Michigan State grad) or join a fraternity. The white instructors are all hostile. Nevertheless when the dust settles, Freeman is the only man who passed. With one notable exception (his demolishing of a racist martial arts instructor), Freeman has built an aw shucks facade that is impervious to all but the most dedicated investigation. He finds that people generally see what they expect to see. And they don't expect much from him.

Freeman stays undercover. He becomes an apparently apolitical drone who's seemingly happy to spend his time copying materials and doing other simplistic demeaning work at the CIA before he leaves to work at a government funded outreach program for Chicago's disaffected youth. Most of the program employees don't care about the youth. For most people, working with underprivileged youth is something that is done to salve guilty consciences, pad resumes for future jobs, do Ph.D coursework or make money. But Freeman has other ideas. A former teen gang member himself, he reaches out to the Cobra gang. He has plans for them, plans of freedom and revolution for all black people in America. Freeman learned more than people thought he did in the CIA. Representing the two paths that Freeman could take are two women with whom he's close. There is Joy, his would be fiancee and self-made middle class striver who thinks that militants are dangerous and unrealistic. Joy wants to marry someone materially ambitious. There is a prostitute whom Freeman calls his Dahomey Queen. He exposes her to Afrocentric music and literature and tells her that she's beautiful despite her intensely West African facial features and skin tone. Although he doesn't share his real plans with either woman, Freeman finds that women can read him easier than he thinks. 

This is not a great book. Outside of Freeman, the characters are pretty flat. But it is quick reading. People who are very close to me were almost killed in the Detroit 1967 riot. So the description of the rioting in the book was if nothing else, intriguing. The lingo is dated. But the theme isn't. Anyone who has ever bit their tongue to keep a job they hate or undergone short term unpleasantness for long term goals will recognize Freeman's struggle. The book has a lot to say about how oppression warps human beings. As Freeman scoffs in a moment of openness (paraphrasing) "The oppression creates the conditions and then they use the conditions to justify the oppression!". That is a true statement and one which I will certainly use in the future.

Book Reviews-Pym, The Beauty of Trees

Pym
by Mat Johnson

Just. Get. This. Book. Now. Seriously. Temporarily stop reading this review and carry yourself over to Amazon or Barnes and Noble or your local library and arrange to have this book sent to you, downloaded to your reading device, or ready for you to pick up somewhere. This is the best book I've read so far this year. It's also FUNNIER than hell.

Although some of the humor in the book may be most deeply appreciated by those who are Edgar Allan Poe experts or academics (tenured or not) or scientists, or people suffering from unrequited love or those rare birds who are all of those things I truly believe that you will find this book hilarious no matter your race, ethnicity, work experience, age, gender, sexuality, blah, blah. It's freaking funny and that's it. It's UNIVERSALLY applicable to the human condition. I am very very very happy that I crossed this book off my "to read" list. I am definitely going to find more work by Mat Johnson to enjoy. I may start with his graphic novel Incognegro which I'm pretty sure I have laying around the home somewhere.  It was a gift from my brother who is a comic book fanatic. It's amazing that entire worlds lay at your fingertips. All you have to do is reach over and pick them up. Pym is so complex and so simple at the same time that after you finish you ask yourself why didn't I think of that?

This book is both parody and satire that touches on slavery, racism, American race relations, inter and intra-racial personal interactions, academia, art, and most especially Edgar Allan Poe's only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. It had been decades since I had read this work of Poe's. I remembered nothing about it. And according to both Mat Johnson and his in-universe stand-in I didn't miss much. Poe's work was a hastily written and poorly designed pulp novel about a mysterious journey to Antarctica, a racial mutiny, encounters with savages/pseudo-humans so black their teeth were black and a final meeting with a larger than life mysterious white figure. Having reread it after reading Pym, I can say that Poe's work was internally inconsistent and somewhat racist (though that was of the times). It did however inspire similar works by Jules Verne, H.P. Lovecraft's At The Mountains of Madness and most fortuitously Pym. So that's a good thing.

Much like Erasure, this book very much brings to mind such writers as Vonnegut, Heller and Twain. I've rarely read satire done so well and created from such seemingly disparate elements.
So what's it about you ask? Well Chris Jaynes, professor of African American literature has just been denied tenure and thus been effectively fired from his campus teaching position. He was the only black male professor at the university. He thought that if he were denied tenure he would shoot up the place or suicide bomb the faculty cafeteria but instead he mostly got drunk and cried. His department committee recommended tenure but the University President overrode that decision. At semester's end Chris decides to confront the President and "...show him how we do where I'm from, go straight Philly on him, and I knew all about that business because although I had never actually punched someone in the face before, as a child myself I had been on the receiving end of that act several times and was a quick study".

The meeting with the President doesn't go as Chris would like. In fact it goes bad from the start. Both Chris and the President are embarrassed when Chris barges in and catches his boss, a proud Jewish man, listening to Wagner. Chris is angered more when the President explains to him that Chris was hired only to teach black literature and be on the diversity committee and NOT to examine general American literature or expound on whiteness motifs in Poe's work. The President doesn't think Chris is smart or experienced enough to branch out and even if he were, that's not what the President wants. Chris doesn't think that just being on a "cover your a$$" and ultimately powerless diversity committee makes any sense. Later, in the bar running across his triumphant and dismissive black replacement, an angry hip hop theorist, Chris catches a beatdown. Even though it was in rhythm though it should not be confused with the downbeat. That is, as Chris explains, a completely different type of beating.

Fortunately however Chris has some good luck when he discovers a narrative by Dirk Peters, the "half-breed" companion of Pym in Poe's novel. Now believing that Poe's novel might have been based on truth, Chris decides to put together an all black Antarctic expedition to see if there really is a black nation out there that escaped colonialism or if some albino giants really do exist. To join him on this quest he brings along:

• Booker Jaynes: Chris' much older cousin, a hardcore black nationalist, civil rights activist and deep sea/salvage diver. Having lost faith in most black people post 1967 or so Booker is bossy, bitter and quite paranoid. He remains "blacker than thou". He has a dog named White Folks. 
• Jeffree and Carlton Carter: Sewage department workers and engineers, conspiracy theorists, web hosters, photographers, adventurers. They are also gay. Very openly so.
• Angela and Nathaniel Lathan: Angela is Chris' former girlfriend and has remained the great lost love of his life. Upon hearing that she had divorced, Chris invited her on the journey with the hopes of the obvious. Angela said yes but neglected to mention that she had remarried. This causes some mixed emotions on Chris' part, to say the least, particularly when Angela expresses hope that Chris and her husband Nathaniel will be friends. Nathaniel is an attorney and far more financially successful than Chris.
• Garth Frierson: Chris' childhood friend and someone who helped him move. Garth is an overweight unemployed everyman bus driver from Detroit with a passion for Little Debbie snack cakes and the artwork of Thomas Karvel (an obvious parody of Thomas Kinkade). Garth is convinced that Karvel lives in Antarctica. Garth does not appreciate everyone pointing out that his devotion to Karvel's work is a bit strange considering that Karvel never puts any black people or signifier of "blackness" in his art. He also doesn't appreciate anyone trying to steal his sugary snacks, of which he has prudently brought hundreds.

These people all reach Antarctica and discover that indeed some of Poe's novel was true. They also get enslaved. How they deal with this misfortune is the source of (pardon the pun) some of the book's blackest humor. Did I mention this book was funny? Virtually everything is skewered by Johnson's wit, whether it's black people claiming they're Native American while trying to push their naps underneath a do rag, or a white person seeing Chris, who could pass for white under certain conditions, and immediately assuming that he is white and thus obviously in charge of the group. At one point a half starving delirious member of the party launches into a longwinded doctoral dissertation on the evils of racism and the cannibalistic greediness at the heart of Eurocentric culture. His companion, who's in a very bad mood and had been silently ignoring the speaker for the past three days, punctures this heartfelt soliloquy by snidely asking "Are you saying hip-hop is any better?" When the person must answer in the negative, his companion sagely nods and goes back to ignoring him.

This book can be understood and enjoyed on multiple levels, from the satirical metafiction that it is to a simple rollicking good time. What I am trying to say is again, just read this book. It's written in first person, which normally I'm not fond of but that narrative device is perfect for this story. It combines humor with some very serious, even painful investigations into reality. 





The Beauty of Trees
by Michael Jordan

No it's not by THAT Michael Jordan. Have you ever read The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion and other books by J.R.R. Tolkien? One thing that shines through very brightly is that the author had a love for flora, especially trees. In Tolkien's creations, the best people take trees very seriously. It's the reflowering of a long dead tree that signals the return of the rightful king while the destruction of trees in the Shire herald the end of innocence and the arrival of evil, industrialization and some hard adult moral choices. Tolkien was a romantic at heart so it's no surprise that trees held such a special place in his heart. I think this book would likely be Tolkien approved. I grew up with elms and apple trees around my home. Unfortunately back in the day we lost our elm tree to Dutch elm disease, that cursed plague. Detroit has a lot more greenery than you would imagine while Michigan in particular is well known for apple and cherry trees. If I ever had real money not only would I have a gothic/baroque/art deco home made of stone I would also make sure to locate it next to and around a variety of different trees. This book lists 100 of the world's best known trees and depicts them in all their magnificent full color glory. It gives their various Latin names and descriptions of their histories, quirks, range in which they are found and the role they've played in the environment or human history. Some of these trees have immense cultural significance. Unfortunately cultural significance can by definition be quite specific as we see in Zimbabwe where there is a movement to eliminate "foreign" trees, that is trees brought from Europe. Many trees which we've come to think of as native to one land actually were brought over from other places long ago.

When you think about it it's amazing that you can have a living organism that can survive for hundreds or even thousands of years. It's even more amazing that trees provide much of the air we breathe, food and shelter for animals and other plants we need, and prevent soil erosion. Yet we often seem hellbent on destroying as many trees as we can. Trees represent a bridge between past and future as some grow so slowly that the planter may never see the full growth in his or her lifetime. They are something for the benefit of the next generation and all those thereafter.

It's fall now and Michigan is undergoing its normal beautiful transformation. After buying and reading this book I find myself more curious about the trees I see in my own backyard or in the remnants of forests that still abut my subdivision. I'm right on the border between city and country and this book makes me more interested in the country. To be honest I didn't find all of these trees beautiful. I thought the baobab was just ugly and the southern live oak, while gorgeous, brings up for me too many unpleasant antebellum associations. Still, each of these trees is special in their own way. If you are at all interested in the natural world, this coffee table book with glossy photographs is something you will want to have.

Alder

Red Flowering Gum

Redwood

Southern Live Oak

Rhododendron

Book Reviews-Erasure, Hell to Pay, Tough Luck

Erasure
by Percival Everett

This book is by turns funny, sad, hilarious and sobering. It is reminiscent of Vonnegut in many aspects. Very mordant. I bought Erasure at a going out of business book sale. I had heard good things about this author and his wife, the author Danzy Senna. I couldn't find her work but picked this up, one of Everett's older novels. Well I'm glad I finally read the book. I may never finish my reading list before I shuffle off this mortal coil but it's a good thing that I was able to cross this story off my "to read" list. It's a satire of among other things, ghetto lit. It also sends up the arrogance of many writers and their total divorce from real life concerns.

WEB DuBois wrote of "double consciousness".

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

You shouldn't judge yourself using metrics that weren't designed for you. To use a different paraphrasing of a hoary joke, if you tell a credulous turtle that it is a failure if it can't outrun a cheetah, that turtle may accept its inferiority. If faulty beliefs become widely accepted, then for all intents and purposes they are real. Then it is a brave man or woman indeed who can reject the perceived reality for the actual reality. And yes that is a reference to Plato's Allegory of the Cave, which along with double consciousness provides a critical theme in this story.

Thelonious Ellison (for obvious reasons everyone calls him Monk) is an African-American novelist. He has had little success not just because he's black but because he's chosen to write intricate dense novels. His novels are novels about writing, retellings of Greek myths, parodies of French poststructurialists,  investigations into reality. They are literary works, not popular ones. But Monk is being true to himself. He wasn't born to a single mother. He didn't grow up on welfare and hearing gunshots. He doesn't have multiple children by multiple women. He graduated from Harvard summa cum laude. His grandfather, father, brother and sister were/are all doctors. He prefers woodworking and fly fishing to basketball and football. White book reviewers snidely tell him that his work has nothing to do with the black experience right before praising performance artists who pose as lawn jockeys on politician's lawns.
Monk is having a midlife crisis. His father's suicide seven years prior is increasingly on his mind. His unpleasant brother Bill is coming out of the closet (and undergoing a divorce). His sister Lisa needs help with their mother who is showing signs of Alzheimers. Lisa runs a women's health clinic and is in constant danger. Publishers have rejected all of Monk's recent novels. His agent is hinting that it might be time to part ways. Monk can't even find energy or interest to have sex with an angry groupie/even less popular writer at a conference he's headlining.

But Monk doesn't hit bottom until after having applied for and received the cold shoulder about a low paid English lecturer position, he reads fawning reviews about and sees a television interview with the author of the bestselling novel We's Lives in Da Ghetto, Juanita Mae Jenkins. The college educated Jenkins has never lived in the ghetto. The book allegedly comes from her memories of a brief childhood visit to some Harlem relatives. Nonetheless her book has become the definitive tome on black American life. The heroine is Sharonda F'rinda Johnson. She lives "the typical black life ". She is fifteen and pregnant with her third child by a third father. She lives with her mentally deficient brother Junebug and her drug addict mother. Junebug is a basketball player who is killed in a driveby when bullets pierce his autographed Michael Jordan basketball...

"Yo Sharonda, where you be goin in a hurry likes dat?" D'onna ax me when she seed me comin out da house.

"Ain't none you biznis. But iffan you gots to know, I'se goin to the pharmcy"

"The pharmcy? What fo?" she ax.

"You know", I says.

"Naw", she say. "Hell naw. Girl you be pregnant again?"

"Mights be"

A thinly disguised Oprah character tells Jenkins that this is really good writing. When Monk sees this he screams. Angered and frustrated beyond human understanding, Monk writes a parody response to Jenkins' book. He titles it My Pafology. He uses the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh and submits it to his agent. My Pafology is so crude and SO FAR over the top that no one in their right mind could miss that it's a (very angry) parody of black pathology porn and racist expectations of the "real" black experience. However things go awry. The agent sells the novel for a sizable amount of money, enough to allow Monk to take care of his mother in her last days. A Hollywood producer wants to meet the mysterious Mr. Leigh. The producer's attractive assistant wouldn't mind (ahem) "getting to know" the apparently virile Mr. Leigh. NOBODY understands that this was a parody. Monk must decide how far to take this and if in his attempt to send up racist stereotypes he's actually helping to perpetuate them. Excellent book and very very funny. It reminded me of the movie Hollywood Shuffle and Dave Chappelle's experiences.






Hell to Pay
by George Pelecanos

With a few missteps this could have been just the sort of book that Everett is railing against. I don't think it got there but it came close a few times. Certainly some people (Ishamel Reed anyone?) might think that it had. Pelecanos also had a parallel career as a writer and producer for The Wire, which is what made me pick up this book. I'm not a huge fan of dialect in my reading. It always feels as if the author is making fun of the people he's created. That wasn't the intent here by any means, I don't think but everyone has different sensibilities. You'd have to read the book for yourself and/or be familiar with the vernacular and tones of inner city Washington black youth circa 2002 or so to make that call. Decide for yourself I always say.

Anyway this book continues the story (I have not read the previous books in the series) of salt and pepper private investigator team Derek Strange (black) and his associate Terry Quinn (white). Both men are former cops. They aren't quite tough guys any more. Strange rarely carries a gun. Quinn does on occasion but likes to settle things peacefully if he can but with his fists if he must. They also volunteer as football coaches for the neighborhood youth. This gives them, mostly Strange as Quinn's race sets him apart, the opportunity to dispense some wisdom, straighten a few hard cases out, and provide a male role model to those boys who lack one. This is very very important to Strange.

Strange and Quinn met each other under difficult circumstances but found that they have a lot in common, especially a taste for old school music and style. They're analog in a digital world. They're dinosaurs and they know it. But this doesn't stop them from doing or trying to do the right thing. This last is an ongoing issue for Strange as despite being in love with his girlfriend (and employee) Janine, he occasionally gets his physical needs met in Asian massage parlors. This bothers him a great deal. A major subplot is if he will find the strength to stop and the decency to be honest with Janine.

A trio of young drug dealers, Potter, Little and White decide that a man named Lorenzo Wilder who owes them money must be taught a permanent lesson about the dangers of not paying his debts. Meanwhile an interracial distaff detective duo, Karen Bagley and Sue Tracy, are looking to rescue a young girl from the notorious pimp Worldwide Wilson. They hire Strange and Quinn to help them. Quinn is quiet but he's not shy. He immediately starts making a play for Sue. They're both Irish Catholic and Quinn uses that as a pickup line. Smooth. But in a rescue attempt of the young prostitute, Wilson unmans Quinn in front of Tracy. Quinn can't be having that. He's looking for some payback. Lorenzo Wilder is the ne'er do well uncle of a boy on Strange's football team. But Potter, Little and White don't care who's around when they kill Wilder. And they don't know or care  to whom Wilder or his nephew are related. And they certainly don't realize who Strange is. These are all serious mistakes.

This is predominantly sad yet ultimately optimistic book. It was quick reading. Strange and Quinn are realistic in that the years are starting to catch up to them. They're not superheroes. They make mistakes and have blind spots. Pelecanos gives a better characterization of Strange. Quinn is not really a cipher; he's definitely the secondary character though. It's just under 400 pages and would be a decent book to read if you have to travel or spend time in a hospital lobby or something similar.





Tough Luck
by Jason Starr

This book is very similar to the previous Jason Starr book I reviewed here. So if you liked that one you will like this. It's only about 250 pages. I don't want to give spoilers but this is quite formulaic. I don't mean that in a bad way. I'm just saying that this book follows the time honored pattern of a guy who thinks he's got it under control and is a bit nicer than he should be, getting mixed up in a situation where he's not in control at all. In this book the protagonist is one Mickey Prada, a young man just on the verge of adulthood. He works at a Brooklyn seafood market and has decided to delay college for some time to help his sick and possibly dying father. He has a Jewish boss Harry who doesn't pay very much and messes with him all the time. He's good friends with his black co-worker Charlie, something that causes the Italian-American Mickey some issues with his tribalistic racist Italian-American buddies, Fillippo, Ralph and Chris. Despite the normal issues that any desperate young man might have, Mickey has been able to put some money away and is looking forward to going to college and getting in the pants of his new girlfriend, Rhonda...not necessarily in that order.

In his Brooklyn neighborhood, you can hardly avoid knowing people who know people. Mickey's no different. From time to time to supplement his income, Mickey will take bets for a bookie. He places these through an old family friend Artie. He's never had any problems as he keeps things low key. However a new customer named Angelo Santoro starts placing bets through Mickey. Angelo loses but refuses to pay. It seems that Angelo is a made man in the Mafia. Artie doesn't care about that and neither does Artie's boss. Artie starts to show his less than pleasant side to Mickey, insisting that Mickey is responsible for the losses. But Angelo won't take no for an answer when he stops by to place more bets. Are you ready to tell a mafiosi to go f*** himself? Because that's what would be necessary. On the other side of things ultimately Artie answers to people who are also connected. They have no patience in hearing Artie's explanations of Mickey's sob stories.

Mickey is in a hard place. He decides to go along on a caper that Fillippo and Chris have planned, so that he can pay Artie back. And you can probably guess how that caper turns out. This was a trade paperback of about 250 pages. It didn't take long to read however and felt real enough. The characters are not very deeply drawn but they don't have to be. It's the plot which moves this book.

Book Reviews-Fear of the Dark, Joyland

Fear of the Dark
by Walter Mosley

Often when people operate at a consistently excellent level for a long time other people come to expect that and take it for granted. So in order to impress they can't just do their normal great work. They must go above and beyond to get people to see them in a different light. I had a boss once who told me that in pretty much those exact words. Maybe she was telling the truth that day in my performance review and maybe she wasn't. All the same though there is something to be said for getting used to excellence. I was reminded of that reading both books listed here. If you are familiar with the authors these books aren't anything new. Of course if someone else had written them I'd be raving about the strong new voice and colorful characterizations. So it goes. For me it was like sinking into a favorite comfortable broken in chair. Good story telling makes me happy.

Fear of The Dark is the second (?) in the series featuring mid century Los Angeles reluctant amateur sleuth and bookstore owner Paris Minton and his buddy, the debonair, dashing and downright dangerous Fearless Jones. As usual Paris is minding his own business (technically that's not quite accurate as he is also trying to mind the business of Jessa, a Caucasian woman who likes black men and likes the short con) when he's pulled into a world of trouble.

Paris is in his bookstore when his shiftless cousin Ulysses stops by. He's in bad trouble. Except for his mother, no one likes Ulysses. He uses people. He lies. He always has a big plan that fails. He won't pay back favors or money. Everyone calls him Useless. The last time Paris saw Useless, Useless hid stolen gold in Paris' bathroom without Paris' consent. The suspicious Paris checked the bathroom. He found and moved the gold, right before some highly unpleasant encounters with the police and an angry gangster. He's upset to see Useless. Paris is not interested in the desperate Useless' invocation of blood ties or his impassioned plea that he really needs aid. Paris shuts the door in his cousin's face and moves on.

But he can't move on because Useless disappears. Paris doesn't care. But Useless' mother arrives on Paris' doorstep, looking for her son. She knows Paris saw him. She wants his help in finding Ulysses (she always uses her son's given name). Paris dare not say no to Three Hearts because not only has his aunt always been kind and loving to him but she is also believed to have the evil eye. People who upset or annoy her seem to come to bad ends. Paris is not overly credulous but he's not in a hurry, even in 1956 Los Angeles, to go up against Louisiana hoodoo.

So, needing backup, Paris calls Fearless, who is now body guarding bail bondsmen. This kicks off an adventure across the greater metropolitan Los Angeles area, one that is full of gangsters, tough talking dames, whores with hearts of gold, racist police, horny lawyers, insurance scams, blackmail, and commentary on race, class and gender relations. Paris is more aggressive than in the first book. Fearless remarks that he thinks that Paris is the tougher of the duo. Coming from Fearless that means a lot as Fearless maintains his street reputation as a stone cold killer and defender of the defenseless. Fearless' aura as a man not to be f***** with is never more clear than when Fearless and Paris ask a favor of Bubba Lateman, who also has a certain reputation. Bubba has heard about Fearless but seems unimpressed. He asks Fearless what Fearless would do if Bubba ordered his killer wolf-dog to rip out his throat. Fearless calmly replies that it was a beautiful dog but that if it jumped him he'd snap its neck like a chicken. And then he'd proceed to teach Bubba a lesson that he'd carry down into his coffin. After a tense moment Bubba starts to laugh. I loved that scene.

There's another point when Paris is reading alone in the park. Thinking that he must be up to something, being black and all, police stop by to harass, insult, and search him. Frustrated and confused that Paris is not a criminal and they can't legally prevent him from being where he is or doing what he's doing they try to bait him into physical confrontation. It was quite reminiscent of this scene from real life. Some things don't change.

As before there's plot complexity as many different people are involved in Useless' plans but it's very engaging writing and moves quickly. The book runs about 300 pages. Despite relative cowardice, Paris has no problem with the ladies. There are two different femme fatales and three to four other major women characters. Paris is involved with three of them.




Joyland
by Stephen King

In a happy accident as I was finishing Joyland last weekend I ran across this profile of Stephen King and his family, most of whom are also writers. You should read it if you're a King fan. Good stuff. Anyway Joyland is King's second(?) book for the Hard Case publishing house, which has made a niche for itself publishing crime novels, shoot-em ups, and revenge stories, either done in the style of the old pulp masters or actually written by some of the old pulp masters. The covers, as you can see, are often lurid and erotically charged. It's supposed to remind you of the dime store novels from the fifties and sixties.

Well Joyland could be described as a crime novel or detective novel if you like but it's is just as much a coming of age story, a story of a writer looking back at his life, a trip into nostalgia, a screed against the unfairness of this world where children die of cancer while Dick Cheney keeps on going strong, and of course a ghost story. King knows just which buttons to push and he does it so well that you forget that this is fiction. You get totally immersed into his world. Reading this book I almost felt compelled to simultaneously listen to Same Auld Lang Syne or American Pie. There was a very strong mix of wisdom, love, regret, nostalgia and hope mixed into this book, just like those songs, in my opinion.

The book jumps around in time but perhaps it's something that happens to us when we get older, as the narrator is. Some physics I've read suggests that time is only an illusion and that past, present and future are all one. Maybe that is the case. The narrator goes from present day describing the recent death of a close friend to detailing in present tense the day he met that friend in 1973.

It's 1973. Devin Jones is a college student, a virgin, who is madly in love with his classmate Wendy Keegan. However what's apparent to the reader immediately but unfortunately doesn't become apparent to Devin until much later is that Wendy has friend-zoned Devin. She doesn't mind messing around with Devin but certainly won't do THAT thing with him. As summer break approaches she stops spending time with Devin, is vague about her locations and has her roommate answer his phone calls. Eventually, once Devin's at his new summer job, while he's pretending not to know what it means that Wendy's roommates openly laugh at him when he calls or that Wendy never calls him, he gets a "Dear Devin" letter explaining what everyone already knew.

King writes:

"I never saw Wendy again...There wasn't even a final phone call filled with tears and accusations. That was on Tom Kennedy's advice and it was probably a good thing. Wendy might have been expecting such a call [from me], maybe even wished for it. If so she was disappointed. I hope she was. All these years later, with these old fevers and deliriums long in my past, I still hope she was. Love leaves scars."

Devin's new summer job is at Joyland, a North Carolina independent amusement park/carnival. Joyland is almost defiantly old school carnival. It is not corporate owned. It lacks modern rides and events. In fact it's a struggle each summer for Joyland to stay in the black financially. But Joyland does have loyalty from its workers. Against the odds Devin finds that not only does he like the work but that he's good at it, especially the draining and dangerous task of putting on a dog costume in hot southern summers and entertaining the kids.

But Joyland has secrets. A ride is supposedly haunted. A few Joyland employees have unusual abilities which the thoroughly skeptical Devin can't entirely ignore. But it's when Devin meets Annie and her chronically sick son Mike, that he's inspired to look further into the history of the Joyland ghost as well as a string of murders that have occurred across the southeast. Devin also makes friends with fellow college students and co-workers Erin Cook and Tom Kennedy. Sadly for Devin, the beautiful Erin only has eyes for Tom, but unlike Wendy, Erin is honest.

This is a very good book. There are no gross out scenes in it. Supernatural elements are very muted. I hate to keep going back to this as an example but once again this story reminds me of what I think of as King's masterpiece "The Last Rung On The Ladder". Joyland is not about things that go bump in the night. It's about the darkness in the human heart. Pick this one up. It's just under 300 pages.

Book Reviews-We Will Shoot Back, The Rise of The Fourth Reich, The Sundered Realm

We Will Shoot Back
by Akinyele Omowale Umoja

Some believe that the modern US Civil Rights Movement started with the Montgomery Bus Boycott, reached its zenith in the March on Washington and/or the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and died with the assassination of MLK. This story version normally shows black people and some supportive whites being beaten, insulted, spit on, shot at, and even killed all without even trying to protect themselves. The blacks are long suffering martyrs who look mutely to Washington D.C. for guidance and protection. Well. This book puts the lie to that fantasy.

While certainly MLK believed in non-violence as both a moral necessity and the only realistic tactical choice available to an outnumbered, mostly unarmed and incredibly despised minority, MLK's views never achieved 100% acceptance in the movement, even among people inclined to support him like many SCLC, SNCC, NAACP, and CORE members. Some people, even those who meant well, were under the incorrect impression that southern blacks were more comfortable with non-violence and turning the other cheek while those crazy blacks from the NOI or Panthers (usually from the North or West) were the ones supported defensive, retaliatory or pre-emptive violence. Some black movement participants had this viewpoint before they came south.

This simply wasn't the case. The Civil Rights movement needs to be understood as not just something that happened in the fifties and sixties in the South but rather as an ongoing struggle by black people throughout American history to claim their independence and constitutional rights. Several southern born and bred black men and black women simply did not believe in turning the other cheek. The fact that occasionally they HAD to did not mean they accepted it. Some simply didn't do so under any circumstances. Often such people were considered "crazy n******s" and wound up dead, imprisoned or in insane asylums. But it did not go unnoticed that white racists normally gave such people a wide berth. It's one thing to abuse people who won't fight back. It's something else to mess with people who have guns and will use them.

In some very real ways the Civil Rights movement (The author focuses on Mississippi and prefers the term "The Mississippi Freedom Movement") wasn't about individual black people deciding they had had enough but rather different people linking together to struggle. There were lots of different ways to fight for freedom, all of which could be extremely dangerous, especially in Mississippi. 

This book examines the struggle in post WW2 Mississippi, perhaps the place which most fiercely embodied the racist dedication to white supremacy and terror. It was black southerners, often WWI/WW2/Korean War veterans with long bitter experience of racism, who provided housing, transportation, and security for many civil rights workers. It was black men and women, who eschewing non-violence, armed themselves and occasionally engaged in shootouts with Klan nightriders, wounding and allegedly killing a few of them. It was black southerners operating under southern gun-friendly laws, who occasionally showed up armed at civil rights protests, just so police and other reactionary forces would be marginally less likely to resort to violence. Black southerners created formal and informal paramilitary forces to protect civil rights workers, enforce boycotts and keep an eye on any unfamiliar (i.e non civil rights workers) whites in black neighborhoods. This was an indigenous movement that was organized and run by Black Mississippi citizens with a history of resisting white racism. They converted more SNCC workers to their POV than the other way around. 

This was astounding stuff. There was American apartheid. Like apartheid elsewhere this system required, really demanded that black people accept their own inferiority. When black people stopped doing this and more importantly could not be made to do so, the system started to crumble. I was familiar with some stories but you would have to read the book or talk to someone who grew up under the Southern regime to understand how petty, cruel and arbitrary this all was. Are you black and wearing a suit during the week? You might have a problem. Contradict or disagree with a white person? Problem. Own your own land/business and thus don't work for white people? SERIOUS problem. Try to register to vote or actually vote? Look a white person in the eye or flirt with a white woman? Death was an immediate possibility.

This book shows that armed resistance was a small but crucial movement element. The knowledge (or often even the bluff) that there were black men with guns who didn't mind shooting back gave many black people the courage to march, agitate and engage in protest and boycotts. The Klan, associated groups and police suddenly discovered that their regularly scheduled night time shooting and bombing ventures into black communities were not cost free activities. The simple deterrent effect of being armed was a much bigger factor than actual shooting incidents, though the book details many of those. We Will Shoot Back explains the how the singular heroism of such men as C.O. Chinn, who upon hearing that a white man rudely told his mother to get him involved in menial labor went to the white man's house with a gun and politely advised him to stay the f*** out of Chinn family business, was reworked into a collective response to oppression.





The Rise of The Fourth Reich
by Jim Marrs

I try to be rational and find evidence for ideas before accepting them. Nevertheless I have a soft spot for some conspiracy theories, if only because so many things that most people once thought were outrageous and proof that the person who believed them had a leaky brain have since been proven true. Who would have believed that the US government would experiment on civilians and military personnel by deliberately exposing them to radiation or handing out LSD. But that's true. Who would have thought that the US government would make common cause with organized crime elements to eliminate Castro or destroy European political movements? But that happened as well. And do we really believe that an apolitical small time incompetent criminal murdered the leading civil rights personality of his generation and escaped overseas, after conveniently leaving behind "evidence" that he did it?  Or that a crazy Palestinian murdered a Presidential candidate even though the candidate was shot in the head from behind while the assailant was always in the front? And who would have imagined that the FBI would run programs of murder, surveillance, intimidation and blackmail designed to disrupt and destroy black political movements. But they did just that.

All the same I read this book skeptically. However as luck would have it I finished this just as the Snowden NSA revelations broke and otherwise liberal people (cough Joy Reid cough) fell over themselves to defend and praise the national security state. So that was ironic. Still, although this is a very interesting book, especially if you have a bent towards conspiracy theories, it ultimately can't sustain its argument.

The book starts with some facts which are not necessarily well known and then uses those to produce an overarching tale of conspiracy and secret history. For some these facts are enough to "prove" everything that comes afterwards. For me, even though I was definitely sympathetic to the argument, they weren't. For my money the author's thesis is strongest when he's sticking to what can be proved and making modest logical assertions based on those facts. But some later claims either can't be demonstrated to be true or could have a multitude of other causal factors which the author ignores or glides over.

The book's theme is that the West and most especially the United States may have defeated the Nazis militarily but that the Nazi virus was not specific to German heritage. The author argues that for reasons of self-interest, ideology, and shared hostility to real democracy the US leadership class has internalized many Nazi ideals about authoritarianism, class, race, and military primacy. I don't necessarily disagree with this. I just disagree that by the seventies any Nazis were required for this process. I also don't think, as the author holds, that the Nazis found the Templar (Solomon's) Treasure or had put together a workable low yield nuclear bomb which they used at Kursk.

Marrs provides excellent documented information about how several US corporations aided the Nazis before, during and after WW2. Some prominent US families, including most infamously the Bushes and the Dulles, had Nazi ties. There's some fascinating (and I think probably true) arguments that Rudolf Hess actually provided a legitimate peace offer from Hitler to the British Royal Family, which had Nazi sympathizers within. The author details the various US or Vatican programs which assisted Nazis in leaving Europe and resettling in the US or South America. The US space program would have looked very different without Nazi assistance. Some people will find it offensive but the book makes a valid argument that Stalin intended to invade the West and Hitler merely beat him to the punch.

The book is at its strongest when it sticks to wartime or immediately post-war actions. By the time it gets to the seventies and beyond the author has been reduced to arguing that the manner in which American society has grown (huge security state and military, low levels of dissent, lots of drugs, close connections between business and government) is congruent with how Nazis would have wanted things. This may or may not be true but it's certainly not akin to claiming, as the book does elsewhere that there are or by this time, were, secret societies, filled with former Nazis or sympathizers who sought to influence events to their liking.

Several Republican ethnic outreach coordinators were either linked to or were themselves former Nazis. Pat Buchanan used to make a hobby of defending these folks. This was an interesting book. After the early chapters the remainder is a critique of American political, drug, criminal, economic and social practices.





The Sundered Realm 
by Robert E. Vardeman and Victor Milan

My brother often teases me that there are many books I read as a kid that our parents probably wouldn't have let me read if they had known what was in them. Well I certainly wasn't going to tell my parents and with a few exceptions neither were my siblings or cousins. The Sundered Realm is definitely such a book. I recently reordered the entire War of Powers series and started re-reading. It was about as good as I remembered it to be. Certainly there are some things which haven't aged as well but generally I thought the story held up. There is also the hypothesis, which may be true, that my parents knew exactly what I was reading but had a strong belief in letting teens find their own way, within certain guidelines. Who can say.

This book is miles apart from the works of Tolkien, in which apparently sex is not a primary motivating factor or those of Martin where seemingly everybody who wins is evil. Probably the closest comparison is to Robert E. Howard. In this story the heroes are often good but don't mind cheating on occasion while the bad guys have reason to be bad. And everybody who still can, enjoys sex. This is a raunchy tale. This book is the first of a six book series. However all six books combined are roughly equivalent to just one of Martin's tomes. This is quick reading, though admittedly not at all near the quality of a Martin or a Stephen King. Motivations are quickly detailed. The world back history is outlined at the beginning of each book and via character revelations throughout the story. So yes this might be considered the literary equivalent of fast food but heck sometimes fast food hits the spot.

In a world with uneven seasons and where magic works, the dominant human realm is the Sky City. This is just what is sounds like, a city in the clouds that rotates around a fixed point in the ground. The humans who live here have access to advanced magic and technology. However they didn't create those things and don't know how to use all of them. The city was created by a race of evil lizard men who tried and failed to exterminate all of humanity. Eons ago, in a cataclysmic war involving demons and gods, humanity won and drove away much of the lizard men. However some humans took over the Sky City. They now view their fellow humans with much of the same contempt that the lizard men once did.They call such humans "groundlings".

Fost Longstrider is a low born "groundling". Women have reason to know that his last name doesn't just apply to his travel speed. Fost Longstrider is a courier and sometime warrior who is hired to deliver a vase/jug to a wizard. However when he reaches his destination he finds that the wizard is dead. Fost is then attacked by Sky City troops, whom he defeats and kills. It turns out the jug contains the spirit of the long since dead philosopher/magician Erimenes, who, when alive preached a pure asceticism and hatred of the body. So when he died, instead of transitioning to the next stage, his shade stayed on this plane. However in the 1400 years since his death, Erimenes has had a change of heart. He is now a hopeless horndog voyeur who thinks life is wasted on the living. He desperately craves to see sex and violence. And if none is forthcoming he'll try to stir some up. 

Erimenes knows the whereabouts of some VERY powerful magical amulets which is 1) why the dead wizard wanted him, 2) why the Sky City troops wanted him and 3) why Fost encounters a beautiful woman who tries to kill him and steal the jug. Their knockdown dragout fight turns into something equally vigorous but much more pleasurable. But in the morning the woman is gone, along with Erimenes' jug. The woman was Moriana, rightful heir to the Sky City throne, who needs Erimenes' knowledge to battle her older sister Synalon, usurper Queen of Sky City, and one EVIL albeit sexy woman. But Fost is not into one night stands unless he's the one doing the dumping. Anyway Fost's professional pride won't permit him to let anyone steal from him, even if he likes how she looks naked. He sets out after Moriana and runs into a buzzsaw of political and business intrigue, sorcerous sibling rivalry, war, torture, derring do, extremely dangerous adversaries, non-human plans for revenge, battle between gods and demons, and of course a vexing affection and perhaps ultimately even love for Moriana. This book was just over 200 pages and a fun read.