Say yes to books

 On the first day of my editing class at Loyola University Maryland, I asked the students to provide some basic information--class year, hometown, phone number where you can be reached. (I once woke a student with a call in early afternoon to inform that the final examination had started fifteen minutes previously. She showed up and passed.) And, out of idle curiosity, I asked them to give the title of the most recent book they had read that was not assigned in a class. The results were seldom inspiring. 

I have been out of the classroom for seven years, and today I would probably be advised that that last question is irrelevant. No one reads. The schools, after all, have been emphasizing STEM to the exclusion of all other subjects, teaching to state-administered tests rather than exploring texts. The universities, reduced to sports facilities with attached trade schools, are eliminating humanities courses and whole departments. And we are barraged with articles informing us that the era of reading is over. 

I have been an omnivorous reader since childhood. When I worked at newspapers I read a lot of murder mysteries, because they were easy to get through at night after a day of editing (and showed disagreeable people meeting violent death). The leisure of five years of retirement has opened the possibility of engaging more challenging stuff. 

In previous posts I have occasionally mentioned books that I have read and enjoyed, always wondering if doing so was merely showing off what a great reader I am. No more of that. Now that the era of reading is over, I take writing about books I've read to be an act of defiance. 

So, in the hospital being treated for a violent attack of vertigo, I was able to finish reading Emily Wilson's translation of The Iliad. I liked that she chose iambic pentameter, which feels right for English, and made for straightforward reading. I thought the narrative powerful. Some of the word choices struck me as prosaic, but I have no Greek and therefore no authority. I chose to read straight through to get the effect, rather than consult her formidable apparatus of notes, but when I occasionally looked at a note, her choices looked reasonable. 

One of April's books was Ian McEwan's What We Can Know, a sophisticated look at our time from the perspective of a post-apocalyptic future, combined with a witty perspective on literary research. This month I got hold of The Keeper, the third in Tana French's Irish mysteries, following The Searcher and The Hunter. All three are solidly plotted works, with characters who have depth and  showing a literate command of the language. Carl Hiaasen's Fever Beach entertained, but I sensed somewhat less oomph than in previous novels. Right-wing nuts may be a challenge even to his imagination. 

Nancy Isenberg's White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America appealed because I am from Appalachia and have long been accustomed to the looks I get when I say that I am from Kentucky. What I had not realized is how much of the early settlers of the United States were "waste people"--vagrants, drunks, prostitutes, bankrupts, all manner of people whom the English upper classes explicitly labeled as useless and determined to expel. The larger recognition is how much our current society is built on the assumption that there are whole categories of people who are worthless or at best marginally exploitable. 

David Stuttard's Hubris: Pericles, the Parthenon, and the Invention of Athens describes how the Parthenon was built, in the context of the political situation in which Athens presented itself as the foremost of the Greek city states. Its combination of art history and political context is deftly managed. 

And Stephen Budiansky's Oliver Wendell Holmes: A Life in War, Law, and Ideas presented a rounded picture of Holmes's life, but I found it a little thin on the Supreme Court opinions that are the basis of his fame. So I'll look next for a biography heavier on the law than the life. 

If you are a reader--and it is only that as a reader you are following these dispatches--I urge you not only to continue reading but to proclaim what you have read that you found useful or gratifying. Stand against the tide. 

In which our hero comes to feel his age

 Note to the reader: This post is entirely personal; you may well choose to skip it. Subsequent posts will return to issues of grammar, usage, editing, and journalism.

A year ago, traveling with my wife, her sibs, and their spouses through Central Europe, I put in 18,000 steps or more a day in Budapest, Vienna, and Prague, enjoying the pilsner and feeling no ill effects. Later in the summer, my annual physical indicated that I was in fine health for a septuagenarian. 

This year, as I turned seventy-five, everything went awry at once. 

My urologist, after years of recording steadily climbing PSA numbers, identified cancer in my prostate, of a variety likely to become aggressive. An MRI indicated that the cancer had not spread, and in February a surgeon removed the prostate. A follow-up PSA test three weeks later indicated nothing, and a further PSA test at the beginning of July registered 0.04, which my surgeon says amounts to zero. Out of the wilderness. 

But pain in my right knee, which an orthopedist diagnosed as an arthritis flareup, grew steadily worse, to a point at which I could barely limp to the end of the block and back. Further testing, including an MRI, indicated necrotic bone tissue in my right hip. A surgeon recommended replacing the hip, and surgery was accordingly scheduled. 

But in late June, as the date of the surgery approached, I experienced a severe attack of vertigo. Rising from bed at 8:00, I felt the room circling rapidly around me and staggered to the bathroom. Unable to sit up, I lay on the floor waiting for the vertigo to pass. Five hours later, when it had not, my wife called for an ambulance. Hospitalized for ten days, I received physical and occupational therapy and was released to go home. 

One of the therapists at Good Samaritan Hospital clapped goggles over my eyes to record eye movements. She concluded that the little calcium carbonate crystals had not gone astray in the inner ear but that the problem was with my eyes. Accordingly, after release I saw a specialist at Johns Hopkins' Neuro-Visual and Vestibular Disorders Center. He had a couple of technicians put the goggles on me and smartly jerk my head about. The conclusion from the recording: inflammation of a nerve in my right eye. The vertigo should pass in time, with certain exercises and therapies helpful. 

I am now at home, able to maneuver with a cane instead of a walker, but the dizziness, though reduced, has not passed, and hip surgery is indefinitely delayed until the vertigo has passed completely and the risk of a fall is reduced. 

In addition to my wobbly gait, the pain in my right leg enhancing the effect of the dizziness, my vision has limited how long I can read before the text starts to blur--though I was able to finish reading Emily Wilson's translation of The Iliad while in the hospital. (Three hours of therapy a day leave twenty-one hours of leisure.) And in addition to drafting this post I am cautiously signing on to copy edit the occasional story at The Banner. 

By the time my next annual physical rolls around I expect to be, cancer-free and smoothly mobile on a new hip, in decent shape for a man of my age.

A thought for the Fourth

 Let us acknowledge things about our national anthem. "The Star-Spangled Banner" is mediocre verse set to the tune of an old drinking song that is difficult to sing. Its author, Francis Scott Key, does not have a clean record on the slavery issue (though should we apply our virtues retroactively, who would 'scape whipping?). The third verse is not happy about British efforts to enlist enslaved people in the battles of the War of 1812. Let's admit that it is problematic. 

Now let me offer a modest defense. We're going to read out that third verse, because no one pays any attention to it. Patriotic Americans sing only the first verse, and there lie the grounds for a defense. When you sing only the first verse, it is not a triumphant anthem like the "Marseillaise." It ends instead with a question. Will that banner continue to fly over the land of the free and the home of the brave? In short, will we continue to live up to our founding principles? Are we up to the struggle to uphold and expand freedom? How are we going at the job? 

So here in Baltimore, home of the Orioles, continue to shout that "O!" Nothing amiss in a little local pride. But don't forget that you are singing a question that is not easy or comfortable to answer. 

And for the Fourth,. to see what can be done with that anthem, take a listen to Dudley Buck's "Festival Overture on the American National Air."