The Book Club September 13, 2018

Copyright © 2018                               John F. Oyler 

September 13, 2018

The Book Club 

When I endeavor to consider my numerous blessings, my love of reading never fails to pop up near the top of the list. I suspect it is partly genetic but certainly the nurturing environment of our home when my brother and I were growing up was a major contributor.

Eighteen years ago my neighbor, Larry Kennedy, asked me if I would be interested in participating in a book review club. His wife, Marie, belonged to one, made up of her friends, and was getting a lot of pleasure from it. 

I immediately agreed and soon found myself heavily involved with six other late middle aged gentlemen who shared my love of reading. One was a neighbor and close friend, Mickey McDermott. The other four were friends of Larry -- Don Cusack, John Gallagher, Charlie O’Hanlon, and Wilson Todd – each of whom soon became close friends of mine.

O’Hanlon had to leave the group when he became involved full-time with the launching of a new company; the other four have all passed away. Their places have been taken with other equally passionate readers and we find ourselves today back with a full complement of seven.

At this point our ages range from the late fifties to the early nineties. In addition to retired private investigator Kennedy and engineer Oyler we have a doctor, Norm Cohen; an investment counsellor, Art McAuley; two attorneys, Howard Alex and Gary Davis; and a retired chemistry teacher, Hugh Carr. This is an impressive of group of highly intelligent, highly educated men whom I am proud to claim as “best friends”.

Most of these men consider themselves liberals. I consider myself an objective moderate, a classification most people would claim for themselves. They consider me a reactionary right winger, someone to be tolerated if he keeps his mouth shut. We did have such a person for a few meetings, a surgeon who lives in our neighborhood. He made the mistake of disagreeing with several liberal statements and was quickly advised his presence was not welcome in our group.

We meet monthly to discuss a book we have all just finished reading. Our July selection was Tom Wolfe’s most successful novel, “Bonfire of the Vanities”. Wolfe died recently and we realized the club had not read any of his works, so we picked it as a suitable candidate for review.

Although most of the group liked the book, I did not enjoy it. Wolfe was a prominent journalist and non-fiction writer who decided that he wanted to be remembered as the twentieth century’s Charles Dickens, the chronicler of society as it existed at a certain time and place.

Wolfe’s time was the 1980s; his place, New York City. If his depiction was accurate, New York in 1984 was even more frightening than Oceana in Orwell’s classic “1984”. All the characters are power-mad, sex-obsessed, and border line corrupt. Bronx is a borough where a respectable person cannot get out of his car without having his life ruined. 

The book is very skillfully crafted, but I have no interest in spending my valuable reading time trying to cope with depravity. In addition, I was thrown off because of its rhythm. Wolfe wrote it as a serial for “Rolling Stone”; each episode ends with a teaser much like the serials we used to watch at the “Old Show”.

Prior to that we read in succession three classics – “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, “East of Eden”, and “David Copperfield”. Each was selected because the younger members of the club had never read them. I was happy to reread them. Recently I have realized that I can get a lot more out of a book when I am not focusing on about how it will turn out.

“For Whom the Bell Tolls” is a fine example. Although the movie and previous readings of the book have made every twist and turn of the plot familiar to me, this time through it gave me a real appreciation of Ernest Hemingway’s talent as a wordsmith. I do wish he had made a better effort to describe the bridge that Roberto Jordan blew up; his minimal description didn’t match the steel deck arch bridge Gary Cooper demolished in the film.

Being a card-carrying cartographer I need a map to illustrate every book I read; this one was no exception. I printed out a Google Maps satellite view of the mountain range northwest of Madrid and attempted to find each location mentioned in the book. Even though the story is hypothetical I think I know precisely where the hypothetical bridge that was hypothetically blown up was located.

“East of Eden” is a remarkable masterpiece. When my daughter Sara was in high school she and I had a heated disagreement regarding the greatest American novelist; she stubbornly insisted John Steinbeck was superior to William Faulkner! Each time I read something by Steinbeck I email Sara and apologize for questioning her judgment. My “futures to do list” includes a return visit to the Steinbeck Museum in Salinas, easily the best museum dedicated to one person that I have seen.

The book club has read more books by Charles Dickens than by any other author. “David Copperfield”, fictionally autobiographical, is acknowledged to be his best novel. Rereading it, I was continually pleased to find memorable incidents and descriptions that I had skimmed over before. Dickens’ description of the storm at Yarmouth is so realistic that it made me shudder. 

We also occasionally read contemporary novels – this year it was “Golden Hill” by Francis Spufford and “A Gentleman in Moscow” by Amor Towles. The setting of “Golden Hill” – Manhattan in 1746 – guaranteed I would like it; its plot and characters made it even more enjoyable. 

An unexpected stranger arrives in Manhattan with a promissory note for one thousand pounds and no explanation of his mission. His adventures trying to convert it into useable currency in this pre-Revolutionary War environment, the cast of memorable characters he meets, and the mystery of his mission combine to provide a great reading experience.

The protagonist of “A Gentleman in Moscow” is a disenfranchised aristocrat banished by a Bolshevik tribunal to decades of house arrest in Moscow’s grand Metropol Hotel. The story of his retaining his own sense of honor and elegance despite his situation, the absurdity of the boorish Communists trying to produce their own version of style, and the remarkable group of people whom he encounters during this period results in a book that everyone in the club enjoyed.

“A Gentleman in Moscow” has retained its status as a best seller; this week it was first on the New York Times list for novels. Amazon has it at  #101; “Golden Hill”, at # 27, 387. This week, “Bridgeville” by John F. Oyler is #2,590,329 on the Amazon list. So much for fifteen minutes of fame!

We only read one non-fiction book this year, David Oshinsky’s “Bellevue”. It is the story of the evolution of Manhattan’s first almshouse in 1738 into the most famous public hospital in the world. It also is the story of the evolution of medicine in this country from quackery to science, the story of the transition of Manhattan into the world’s greatest city, and the story of society’s ever-changing attitudes toward mental health.

As I read this book, I attempted to parallel its story with what was happening in this area at the same time. In 1804 Pittsburgh established its first “poor house”. By 1893 it had begun to handle mental health patients at its location in Homestead. At that point it was decided that a bigger site was required; a location within a bend of Chartiers Creek in South Fayette was selected and named Marshalsea, after the London debtors’ prison where Charles Dickens’ father was imprisoned. It eventually morphed into Mayview State Hospital, a venue where medical experimentation paralleled that occurring at Bellevue.

August was my turn to be host, so I decided to do something totally different, to tackle “The Tale of the Heike”. This is a book I have tried to read unsuccessfully in the past. It is a true epic, the story of the Genpei War in Japan (1180 AD to 1185 AD). Following that war, blind minstrels travelled throughout Japan chanting hundreds of episodes that, compiled into one master document, comprise an epic that rivals “The Iliad”.

Last Spring my daughter, Elizabeth, taught a course dealing with the study of “The Tale of the Heike” at the University. Their semester project was the development of a website providing “a resource for reading and teaching Japan’s Epic of the Genpei War”, based on a recent translation by Royall Tyler. Using this resource, I realized I could actually read the work, for the very first time. By reading the summary of each episode before tackling the actual text and by referring to other resources – characters, maps, etc. – I was able to understand what I was reading.

We provided each of the Book Club members with a copy of Tyler’s translation, access to the website, and the assignment of studying (a different) two of the twelve books (chapters) that make up the work. At our meeting we then each reported on our assigned section, eventually telling the whole story. My fellow book club members were good sports and we not only completed the tale, but also found considerable common ground to discuss. It was the two hundred and first book we have read.

This was a very rewarding experience for me; I will never know for sure what my colleagues got from it. The epic may be read as an exciting war story; or as the story of a master politician manipulating everyone, including his own family, to gain control of a nation; or as the story of two families fighting for control; or as the story of the overthrow of a cultured, genteel society by a group of barbaric warriors; or (my favorite) as the story of one woman’s pilgrimage through the six Buddhist realms of reincarnation and her ultimately being escorted to the Pure Land by Amida.

 The real value of our association together is the diversity of interests which we share objectively. None of us interpret things identically; it is very instructive to learn the nuances that are important to each of us. It is obvious that I must list my fraternal bonds with the rest of the Book Club right below my love of reading the next time I count my blessings.