Not easy to sentence a man to death, was their unvoiced remark. Who could speak of what it would do to your dreams?

The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer, first published in 1979

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary

The Executioner's Song is based on the actual life story of one man, Gary Gilmore, and the imprint he left on the world, for better and for worse. We follow Gary from his most recent release from incarceration, at which point he's around 35 years old, I think, and has decided after some correspondence with his cousin, Brenda, to move to Provo, Utah, to live near his extended family. Gary, who has been incarcerated for half of his life to this point, struggles to adjust to 'life on the outside', but does manage to get a few jobs, get to know his Uncle Vern and Aunt Ida, his cousins, and fall in love with a young woman named Nicole, who has two children from previous relationships/marriages. Gary and Nicole begin a tempestuous relationship, which is full of deep and meaningful love, but also full of twists, turns, ups, and downs, and not without its fair share of violence. When Gary and Nicole split (for I think the second time?) Gary goes off the rails, and murders two men in quick succession (a gas station attendant and a motel manager), both in armed robberies for smallish amounts of money. Gary is quickly suspected and then convicted of the crimes, and sentenced with the death penalty. 

The story has a kind of rebirth at this phase, as Gary becomes infamous and gains notoriety for a number of reasons, including but not limited to: his charisma, his intelligence, the fact that he doesn't seem all that crazy, and the fact that his sentence comes after a 10-year moratorium on capital punishment in America. Gary stolidly desires to die, at least in his public claims, and makes it widely known that he will take matters into his own hands if others attempt to intervene or stay his sentence. If life in prison or death are his options, he chooses death. He attempts suicide twice, once with Nicole, once on his own, but neither attempt is successful. After a national news circus and a wild series of short term stays and delays, Gary is executed by a five-man firing squad. The media hullabaloo dies down, to a degree, and Nicole is released from the mental hospital where she has been mandated to remain until Gary's death. Nicole ends up sharing her story with Larry Schiller, a producer and writer who has been capturing the story, and the novel wraps up by taking a brief zoomed out look at the family Gary has left behind.

Spoiler Over: Continue Here

Dear blobbists! 

   I won't say this is my penultimate post, because I'm sure I'll find new projects to blob about, but I will say that this is my penultimate book on the '101 and Beyond' list! I have never read any Norman Mailer books, and I knew nothing about this news story before I jumped into the novel. 

  I found this novel to be remarkable. It's a novel in the sense that it definitely weaves a narrative and tells a remarkably cohesive story, but it's also based on actual events, with a significant amount of actual content from that time (court transcripts, letters from Gary and others, published interviews) so it sits in a very intriguing fiction/journalistic space that I don't know that I've ever encountered before. I would like to read more Norman Mailer, because I think his real triumph in this work is that he makes his presence almost invisible, while masterfully crafting the tale. More on this in a bit. 

 I will also say that any book that deals with death, and specifically capital punishment and death row, is a book worth marinating on, as it's a complex and fraught element of our collective society. I was definitely reminded of A Lesson Before Dying, and my blob entry on that. 

 I came back and read Dave Eggers' intro after I finished the novel (why do they put those at the beginning? They ALWAYS HAVE SPOILERS) and was pleased to find that Dave Eggers explicitly tells you to go read the book and come back and read his intro (HE GETS IT). I also thought his reflections were really spot on and aligned with my feelings. Here are a few of those: 

On reading this story in the present, without the historical context of the moment - reading his story without knowing the outcome will only enhance the experience - it gives the book unimaginable tension and scope. It's true. I had no idea what would happen to Gary, or to Nicole, since we're now almost 50 years removed from these events.

Gilmore was the first person executed in the modern era of capital punishment in America (after a ten-year moratorium, reinstated in 1976). This is wild. I didn't know about the moratorium, and the firing squad feels very wild west to me, but I checked, and the most recent one was in 2010, actually. I also read an AP article that suggested they may be coming back, as there's a scarcity of lethal injection drugs and there's an argument by some that it's a more humane method. 

It reveals Gilmore to be likable, irritating, immature, violent, doomed - but always a three-dimensional human being capable of charming anyone he meets. Yes. This is the real meaty complexity of this novel.

Mailer has sublimated his own style - the prose is flat, unvarnished, plainspoken. I noticed this right away, not even having read what Norman Mailer's prose is normally like, and I think it's so artfully done.

Good god, it would be easier if this were not the case. If murderers were of a wholly different species, if they were beasts who we couldn't talk to, relate to, understand in any way, if they were incapable of love or light - it would be far easier. But this is not the case. They are almost always people precisely like ourselves, flawed and good and weak, capable of acts of courage and horrible mistakes. Again, yes. Writing a narrative of a murderer is complex, and messy, and fraught, and heavy, and of course we must and do also weigh in the impacts on the victims of the murderer and the ripple effects on their families, but I can see why this story captured national attention, and I think Normal Mailer really did it justice. 

The Cast of Characters

Here are some of the main characters we meet in the novel, all of whom were real people. Some of them may still be alive, but the internet is not proving terribly fruitful in revealing this, and they deserve their privacy anyway. 

Gary Gilmore, in and out of jail, really wants to be loved, intelligent, charismatic, and a murderer

• The more he was really in trouble, the more he'd look to get himself lost real fast.

• I don't feel that I have ever had a break from the law. When you are free, you can afford to be broke for a few days, and it doesn't matter, but if you are a fugitive you can't afford to be broke at all. 

• If he messed this life up, he'd do a better job in the next one. 'Why not a better job in this one?' Spencer thought. Chose not to say it.

• 'Brenda, I am not insensitive to being called insensitive.' Gary's relationship/frenemyship with his cousin Brenda was one of my favorite things about the novel. 

• It seems that I know evil more intimately than I know goodness.

• his lawyer: It was like dealing with a crazy pony who was off on a gallop at every wind. Then wouldn't move.

• I like it quiet. I would love an absence of sound so profound I could hear my blood. On the seventeenth of January I hope to hear my last harsh noise.

• Cline Campbell had seen Gary get angry once or twice before. He took on wrath in a different way than most people. Gilmore's anger, Campbell had long ago decided, came from very far inside. 

• 'Well, Vern, I want to show you. I've already shown you how I live' - he gave his most mocking smile - ' and I'd like to show you how I can die.' This line broke me.

Nicole Barrett, Gary's on-again, off-again girlfriend, mother to Sunny and Jeremy

• With her eyes closed, she had the odd feeling of an evil presence near her that came from Gary. She found it kind of half agreeable. Said to herself, Well, if he is the devil, maybe I want to get closer.

• To Pete Galovan: 'He's a hell of a lot more important to me than your life. If he don't get you, I will.'
• Nicole loved Gary enough to be willing to commit murder for him. It hurt Pete that no woman had ever loved him that much.

• She was never abusive to the kids, just didn't pay much attention.

• Nicole always received things you said very seriously. Even the most casual remark she would take all of the way into herself. It was as if she only trusted herself to give the right answer if she got all of what you laid on her.

• Nicole was not only getting ready to leave, but had, in fact, even gone up the hospital corridor one last time to pick up her street clothes, when a girl asked, 'How do you feel about Gary?' Nicole said, 'If he was alive, I'd do it all over again.' They turned her right around and put her back in the hospital.

Brenda Nicol, cousin to Gary, straight shooter, kind-hearted but no nonsense

• Brenda didn't want to hope too hard, but, God willing, Gary might come around the bend.

• 'You're probably going to be bent real out of shape with me. But Gary, it had to stop. You commit a murder Monday, and commit a murder Tuesday. I wasn't waiting for Wednesday to roll around.'

• Brenda was in misery. She came, and all the while she was testifying, Gary glared at her. He gave the Kerby look that made your blood clabber on the spot. If a look in somebody's eyes could kill you, then you had just been killed. Wiped you out like an electric shock.

When Gary tries to kill himself the first time: 

Brenda: How come you didn't take enough to do the job?  

Gary: Well, I might know one of my cousins would pick up on that. 

Brenda: I think you're being a selfish lover. You wanted to stay awake long enough to find out if she was really dead, then you wouldn't have to worry she'd take another lover.  

Gary: I am jealous. This was crazy. I really thought Gary and Nicole were just ready to die, but Brenda is very astute, and she sees right through Gary's plots and ploys. I love that about Brenda.

Vern and Ida Damico, aunt and uncle to Gary, parents of Brenda, brother-in-law and sister to Bessie

• Vern was having to make a lot of decisions about people before he knew how much to trust them. That was not what he called comfortable. 

Bessie Gilmore, Gary's mother, mother to Gaylen, Mikal, and one more son, sister to Ida

• She had the washed-out, unhealthy look of someone who was in a great deal of pain and rarely saw fresh air.

• 'His nightmare will be over, but mine will never be.'

Gary and Nicole, the love story, which, as you can read, is more than a little all over the place

• 'Hey, there's a place in the darkness. You know what I mean? I think I met you there. I knew you there.' The connectedness and interest in afterlives that Nicole and Gary operate with is fascinating. 

• But when she looked at Gary, she didn't just see his face and the way he looked, it was more like Nicole felt in the right place for the first time.

• All she wanted was more hours with him. I don't think I've ever felt this way about anyone. It must be exhilarating, and also kind of terrifying?

• For a day and a night everything was better than if they had never been apart. It was as if somebody had hidden sparklers inside her heart in that place where she had expected to find nothing.

• Nicole, to a family member: Gary is crazy. We might end up dead.

• Gary, to Nicole, from jail: 'Nicole - is my love not enough to suffice for even one small lifetime - my love for you can it not be enough? Do you have to give your body, your self? Your love to other men? Am I not enough?'

My Thoughts and Reflections

Why write about a murderer?

I liked Dave Eggers' take on this: murderers are fully human, too, and there is beauty to their lives, and joy in their days, and love, and music, and even aspirations of bliss or least peace. The terrible, exasperating thing about humans is how goodness and gentleness, and utter depravity and disregard for human life, can be contained within the same person, and in terrifyingly close proximity.

By the time Gilmore commits the murders in The Executioner's Song, Mailer has already done a terrible thing: he's made us care about the man. This is so well put. 

On taking up space

One thing I found a bit odd about my copy of the book, which came in at 1109 pages, was that it has a lot of extra spaces. Each paragraph is granted a kind of double spacing, which makes the whole book much longer. I imagine it was done for a particular effect, maybe a kind of 'start/stop' reading experience, but I was also struck by this wondering: would anyone OTHER than a super famous white man be permitted to take literally take up extra space in this way? Food for thought.

On painting Easter eggs

I liked this scene, because it reminded me of an actual Easter egg dyeing memory with my own cousins. Johnny is Brenda's husband, btw.

After a while, Johnny and Gary began to giggle together. They were still painting eggs, but instead of saying, 'Cristie, I love you,', or 'Keep it up, Nick,' they were printing stuff like 'Fuck the Easter Bunny.' Brenda exclaimed, 'You can't hide those.'

  'Well', said Gary with a big grin, 'guess we got to eat 'em.' He and Johnny had a feast of mislabeled hard-boiled eggs. I had to giggle at this. My cousins were writing in invisible crayons things like "Jonathan is a girl" one year. ;0)

On death

I imagine a great part of what made this story so captivating at the time (and continues to captivate today) is that we still know nothing about death. 

How long a journey is death? Is it instantaneous? Does it take minutes, hours, weeks? What dies first - the body of course - but then does the personality slowly dissolve? Are there different levels of death - some darker and heavier than others, some brighter and lighter, some more and some less material? These are some of Gary's reflections in a letter to Nicole.

The 'pro' argument, in favor of killing Gary

• If you can't rehabilitate somebody in twelve years, can you expect to ever rehabilitate them at all? 

• If he's ever free again, nobody who ever comes in contact with him is going to be safe, if they happen to have something that he happens to want. 

• What then is the point at this time of allowing him to continue to live?

The 'con' argument, in favor of shifting Gary's sentence to life in prison

• Why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong? This feels like a very compelling argument to me.

• By now, everybody was liking Gary. Even the people that didn't like him, liked him. Everybody was starting to think, What are we killing Gilmore fore? What's the death going to accomplish?

• How could you love a guy because he wanted to wear a crazy hat? There are much longer and more devoted sections arguing against the death penalty for incredibly valid and thoughtful reasons, but I also wanted to capture the fact that even those people who were helping Gary to attempt to bring about his own execution were deeply saddened when it actually came to be.

The 'Gary' argument, on whether he should be killed

• 'Now, don't I have the right to die? Can't I accept my punishment?'

• You don't interfere with somebody's life. You let people meet their own fate. 

On prison life

• The first time that Grace went into the prison itself, she was overcome with the power of the echoes.

• Gary: 'I was hopin' it would stay quiet in here for a while. But it never does.'

• I'm not saying its right to break the law. I'm not talkin about that - but these prisons as they exist are wrong. 

• If he had to stay in prison, he wanted to die. But if he could get outside, that was another game.

I won't go into this further here, but our prison industrial complex in America is so completely and totally screwed up, and Gary at least has the benefit of being a white man throughout his experience in prison, which surely gave him any number of privileges over the Black and brown men who were and are incarcerated today. 

On psychiatrists

• All them doctors are weird. You ever met a psychiatrist who had all his marbles? I'm with you on this one, Gary.

On a problem Humbert Humbert would well understand

Of all the possible reasons and prying into Gary's psyche as to why he murdered the two men, Max Jensen and Benny Bushnell, I found this argument (while of course deeply disturbing) to be the most compelling:

Could it be said that Gilmore's love for Nicole oft depended on how childlike she could seem? Yes. What if Gilmore, so soon as he was deprived of Nicole, so soon as he had to live a week without her, began to feel impulses that were wholly unacceptable? What if his unendurable tension (of which he had given testimony to every psychiatrist who would listen) had had something to do with little urges? Nothing might have been more intolerable to Gilmore's idea of himself. Why, the man would have done anything, even murder, before he'd commit that other kind of transgression. There's more exploration of this possibility in other parts of the novel, and while it could definitely also stem from his own trauma, I found it plausible.

Referents and Reverberations, or books this book reminded me of

(1) Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig

Gary and his Mustang - Now, he didn't seem to show any initiative. It was more like he was offended there was something wrong with the car. What he couldn't recognize was that these malfunctions might be due to his inability to drive knowledgeably. This line reminded me of John and his endless desire not to learn more about his motorcycle, but just have it run well. ;)

(2) L'Étranger, Albert Camus

I was reminded of this book often as I read the various people (doctors, journalists, cops) trying to understand why Gary Gilmore did what he did. Here are some of his lines:

• I don't feel too responsible. It was as thought I had to do it.
• It just seemed like it was the next move in a motion that was happening.
• I sometimes feel I have to do things and seems like there's no other chance or choice.

(3) My Antonia, Willa Cather

Gilmore had a way of looking into his eyes that made Nielsen shift inside. It was as if the man was staring all the way to the bottom of your worth. This line reminded me of how Jim describes Antonia's father, Mr. Shimerda, looking at him.

Words or Ideas That Were New to Me

gobbets - a piece or lump of flesh, food, or other matter

orange sunshine - a brand of LSD

picayune - petty; worthless

procurer - a person who obtains a woman as a prostitute for another person

Prolixin - Prolixin (fluphenazine) is a phenothiazine, also called a neuroleptic, used to treat symptoms of a certain type of mental/mood condition (schizophrenia). The brand name Prolixin is discontinued and this medication is available in generic form only. This was the other argument/explanation of Gary's actions that resonated with me. Here are a few lines about this: 

• Woods wasn't at all certain that the Prolixin hadn't done a real damage to Gary's psyche. Whole fields of the soul could be defoliated and never leave a trace. Yet how did you convince a Jury? The medicine had been accepted by a generation of psychiatrists.

• Gary had never done anything cruel to her, certainly not, but she had seen something awful come into him after his Prolixin treatments, a personality change so drastic that Grace could honestly say she didn't know the man named Gary Gilmore who existed after taking it. It was as if something obscene had come into his mind. The next time Grace saw him, he was on Prolixin. Looked as if he had left his body, and come back in the hulk of a stranger.

• The prison took him off Prolixin, and the symptoms went away, but he was a different man to Grace. There was something in him now she did not trust. His talk turned shabby. His view was nasty. It was as if they were on different islands. 

Sounds Pretty intense, and maybe like something we should just casually administer to convicts without their consent. 

Lines I Particularly Liked

• It was one more unhappiness at the bottom of things. 

• It was like the air was being eaten by the nervousness he felt. 

• There was an unheard sound in the air like everybody was waiting for a scream.

• Brenda had been walking around all evening with a sense of disaster.

• She was left in the hall of the court with the world rocketing around her. Outside, in the summer light, the horseflies were mean as insanity itself.

• Pain was a boring conversationalist who never stopped, just found new topics.

Well blobbists, I'll leave you here with a poem from Nicole that I liked, that she wrote in one of her letters to Gary: 

For lost is my mind

Silent by dawn

Loves away stolen

And hurting is Long

So ask me no questions

Sing me no songs 

Follow me nowhere

im already gone

I'm already gone myself, that is, I'm off to Africa to meet Kunta Kinte in Roots and wrap up this second 100 books. See you on the flip side! 

We'd never have got through if I hadn't been so strong.

My Antonia by Willa Cather, first published in 1918

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary

My Antonia is a story of adolescence, wildness, and coming of age in America. It begins in Black Hawk, Nebraska, with two young children being transported to the midwestern frontier for the first time in their lives, under totally different circumstance. Jim Burden, our narrator, is being sent west from his home state of Virginia to live with his grandparents in Nebraska, as his parents have both died. He is ten years old. Antonia (ann-toh-NEE-ah) Shimerda, fourteen, is traveling to Nebraska with her family, the latest stop on their immigration journey from then Bohemia. 

Jim and Antonia's lives become intertwined as neighboring families on the frontier, and Jim's family helps the Shimerdas to tackle the unforgiving land and learn to survive. Jim is the only child in his home with his grandparents, but makes good friends with the family's two hired hands, Otto Fuchs and Jake Marpole. Antonia is one of four, two older brothers (Ambrosch, Marek) and a younger sister (Julia). They are living in a rather uninhabitable and inhospitable place because a local Bohemian, Krajiek swindled them into purchasing it. 

The bulk of the book takes place during this time of Jim and Antonia's lives, and is full of adventures and occasional tragedies. Mr. Shimerda struggles to adjust, not having wanted to leave his homeland, and eventually takes his own life. This turns Antonia into a second field hand to help manage the farm with Ambrosch, who is surly and generally unlikable. Jim eventually moves to 'town', the nearby small town of Black Hawk, with his grandparents, and Antonia is later sent to town to work as a nanny of sorts. 

Antonia and Jim have a sort of lifelong 'will-they, won't they', but ultimately their journeys part. He goes off to college in the Northeast, and she makes a poor choice of man and he strands her with a baby. Thankfully, when Jim finally comes back to visit her later in life, she has found a wonderful second man and married him, Anton, and they have many lovely children together. They are happily managing a farm of their own, not far from where Jim and Antonia grew up. 

Spoiler Over: Continue Here

Dear blobbists, 

 We are down to the last three books! Can you believe? I can hardly believe it, though the second list has taken far longer than the first. ;)

 In any case, let's dig in. I LOVED this book. So heads up, this entry is on the long side. I will definitely name that there are some racist/icky parts that come up in passing, and some inappropriate/hurtful characterizations of Black people, but I will also allow that Willa Cather was a product of her time. Not to excuse, but perhaps to contextualize. 

 That said, this book was, in a word, nostalgic. I think because so much of it is Antonia and Jim romping and roving and enjoying a large stretch of land, which made me think of our family farm, Rosehaven, and how this loomed so large in my mother's childhood, as well as the earliest years of mine. Again, I think it's important to recognize that the land in this book was not wholly uninhabited, and likely was in the possession of indigenous people before the story begins, but the West was inhabited and occupied in this way. 

  At first, I thought it was weird that Willa Cather wrote as Jim, a man, but her female characters really sing throughout the book, and it became clear that Jim was, in many ways, a kind of foil for her female heroines. I also read up more on Cather herself, and learned that she lived with a woman for most of her life, and went by William for a period, so perhaps there's more to writing as Jim in that way as well. 

  If you haven't read this book, I would recommend it. It's a really striking story, it's not terribly long, but its prose is intensely rich in a way that I'm not sure I've experienced before. Onwards to my thoughts!

The Cast of Characters

Let's get to know some of them, shall we? 

Otto Fuchs, the Burdens' hired man, a sort of 'jack-of-all-trades'

Otto and Jake were very good companions for Jim, almost like big brothers, and I was glad he had them and wasn't just always the only child with his grandparents. 

• He wore a sombrero hat, with a wide leather band and a bright buckle, and the ends of his mustache were twisted up stiffly, like little horns. He looked lively and ferocious, I thought, and as if he had a history. I think Cather's descriptions are so wonderfully distinct. 

• On why the Shimerdas may not like him: Bohemians has a natural distrust of Austrians.

• Fuchs had been a cowboy, a stage-driver, a bartender, a miner; had wandered all over that great Western country and done hard work everywhere, though, as grandmother said, he had nothing to show for it.

Grandfather (Josiah) Burden, a man of few words, but powerful words 

Jim's grandparents are just LOVELY people. I know that they represent settlers, and that history is complicated, but they are just such delightful humans. I think we should all be so lucky as to have grandparents like the Burdens.

• Grandfather's eyes were not at all like those of an old man; they were bright blue, and had a fresh, frosty sparkle. 

• Because he talked so little, his words had a peculiar force; they were not worn dull from constant use.

Grandmother (Emmaline) Burden, confident and kind woman of the frontier

Jim's grandmother was one of my favorite characters, and while I'm sure men are capable of writing women well, I think Cather really succeeds at painting portraits of a variety of different types of women from this period in such a classy and thoughtful way.

• I had almost forgotten that I had a grandmother, when she came out, her sunbonnet on her head, a grain-sack in her hand, and asked me if I did not want to go to the garden with her to dig potatoes for dinner. Grandmother called my attention to a stout hickory cane, tipped with copper, which hung by a leather thong from her belt. This, she said, was her rattlesnake cane. This is when I first fell in love with Grandmother. I mean, she has her own rattlesnake cane. How cool is that? 

• A body never knows what traits poverty might bring out in 'em. Grandmother is so endlessly kind and forgiving toward the Shimerdas, even though Mrs. Shimerda is often mean, and petty, and expects a lot of support without offering much in return. I loved this line, because she's so right! Who knows what traits poverty might bring out in all of us? 

• When the Norwegians refuse to allow Mr. Shimerda to be buried in their graveyard - Grandmother was indignant. 'If these foreigners are so clannish, Mr. Bushy, we'll have to have an American graveyard that will be more liberal-minded. I'll get right after Josiah to start one in the spring. If anything was to happen to me, I don't want the Norwegians holding inquisitions over me to see whether I'm good enough to be laid amongst 'em. I loved that Grandmother was so welcoming, and so insistent that Mr. Shimerda be offered a decent resting place.

Mr. Shimerda, Antonia's sweet and thoughtful father

• He wanted us to know that they were not beggars in the old country; he made good wages, and his family were respected there. There were so many immigration narratives that are still so true today, and this is one example. I constantly saw students of mine in Manchester whose parents were doctors, scientists, professors in their own country, but were only able to find jobs as custodians or hourly workers here. I think it's interesting tracing some of these immigrant narratives back a century. 

• When his deep-seeing eyes rested on me, I felt as if he were looking far ahead into the future for me, down the road I would have to travel. Though Mr. Shimerda speaks almost no English, Jim feels like Mr. Shimerda sees straight into his soul, and I found this so interesting.

Mrs. Shimerda, Antonia's salty mother

• She was a conceited, boastful old thing, and even misfortune could not humble her. 

• She seemed to think that my elders withheld helpful information, and that from me she might get valuable secrets. I thought it was cute that Mrs. Shimerda tried to quiz Jim on their plowing and planting plans, in case Grandfather was not telling her all the crucial details. I mean, practically, she was clearly right to be suspicious, since Krajiek was such a swindler!

• She took a coffee-cake which she wanted to keep warm for supper, and wrapped it in a quilt stuffed with feathers. I have seen her put even a roast goose in this quilt to keep it hot. When the neighbors were there building the new house, they saw her do this, and the story got abroad that the Shimerdas kept their food in their featherbeds. I love this so much. I have never thought to wrap a coffee cake in a quilt, but what a great way to keep it warm for later! 

Ambrosch Shimerda, Tony's oldest brother, a real sourpuss

Ambrosch is basically THE WORST, but Antonia has nothing but love and respect for him, which I suppose is how one should feel about an older brother, but still. He keeps all her earnings for the LONGEST time, and he makes her work in the field without any thought to the education she's losing, and to add insult to injury, he's just in a TERRIBLE mood for the entire book. Thankfully, we find out at the end that he has married a wife who happily bosses him around and who has straightened him up a bit. Here's an example of his actions, when Antonia gives birth to her baby and her man has abandoned her:

'After I'd dressed the baby, I took it out to show it to Ambrosch. He was muttering behind the stove and wouldn't look at it.'

'You'd better put it out in the rain-barrel', he says. 

'Now, see here, Ambrosch', says I, 'there's a law in this land, don't forget that. I stand here a witness that this baby has come into the world sound and strong, and I intend to keep an eye on what befalls it.' I pride myself I cowed him. This was another Excellent female character, Mrs. Steavens, a widow who comes to rent and live on Jim's family's land after they move to Black Hawk. I was also really continuously struck but how collectively reliant people are on each other in the frontier. In the present day, we aren't often obligated or required or even called to assist in each other's birthing of children, or saving a family whose crops rotted or failed from starvation by sharing stores of food, and there's something very beautiful about this, as the Shimerdas clearly would not have survived without the Burdens.  

Antonia Shimerda, aka Tony, a powerful force and a woman to be reckoned with

• Antonia had opinions about everything, and she was soon able to make them known. 

• Antonia had the most trusting, responsive eyes in the world; love and credulousness seemed to look out of them with open faces.

• 'Oh Jimmy,' she sobbed', 'what you think for my lovely papa!' It seemed to me that I could feel her heart breaking as she clung to me.

• I ain't got time to learn. I can work like mans now. Antonia is so quick to take up the mantle for her family and make sure her family can continue to keep the farm. I found this really admirable.

• School is all right for little boys. I help make this land one good farm. This idea of Antonia farming the land and working out as a laborer initially is also an interesting example of how women don't have access to or the opportunity to do certain careers or occupations, but when a man falls absent for any reason, the opportunity/the ability to do such a career opens up. Which in Antonia's case initially seems kind of tragic, as she's losing out on her education, but later seems like a real gift, as she has incredible comfort with the frontier life and caretaking of the land, which comes in clutch when she and her city husband have to make their own farm to support their family.

• 'Oh, better I like to work out-of-doors than in a house!' she used to sing joyfully. 'I not care that your grandmother say it makes me like a man. I like to be like a man. I love this about Antonia. Definitely also interesting in terms of Cather's own gender/sexuality, whatever that may have been. 

• Her voice had a peculiarly engaging quality; it was deep, a little husky, and one always heard the breath vibrating behind it. Everything she said seemed to come right out of her heart. Antonia definitely became one of my favorite literary characters. It also made me realize that I don't think we have many examples of white settlers highlighting immigrant narratives, especially from this time, so it feels like it was forward thinking for its time.

Jim Burden, our protagonist and narrator, an all-around good boy

• I looked forward to any new crisis with delight. I thought it was cute that because Jim felt safe in his life, for the most part, and lacked siblings or other children on the regular, crises were a thing of excitement for him. 

• The more our house was like a country hotel, the better I liked it. Again, I think Jim felt really lonely at times. I wonder if Cather saw herself in Jim, as I know she had a somewhat similar trajectory of her own. 

• After supper I used to catch up my cap, stick my hands in my pockets, and dive through the willow hedge as if witches were after me. I love this line. 

• Antonia, to Jim: 'Lena does! If she's up to any of her nonsense with you, I'll scratch her eyes out!' You're not going to sit around here and whittle store-boxes and tell stories all your life. You are going away to school and make something of yourself.' There's definitely an interesting narrative around the idea that Jim needs to 'make something' of himself, and he's sort of held up as the pride of the town in this way. 

• 'I don't care what they say about me, but if it hurts you, that settles it. I won't go to the Firemen's Hall again.' Jim, like I said, really is a very good boy. Sometimes he's a bit proud or jealous with Antonia, and he can be a bit silly around girls, but when push comes to shove, he behaves honorably. This line is from an exchange with his grandmother, where he's been sneaking out to go to dances at night, and his grandmother's upset when she finds out because it's hurting his grandfather's reputation.

Lena Lingard, dressmaker, independent woman, friend to many

My favorite three characters in the book were probably Grandmother, Antonia, and Lena Lingard. Lena is also a recent immigrant, and she comes into the picture as part of Antonia's friend group of immigrant working women in Black Hawk. Jim spends a lot of time with this group, and later a lot of time with Lena when they end up in Lincoln, Nebraska at the same time. 

• 'I don't want to marry Nick, or any other man,' Lena murmured. 'I've seen a good deal of married life, and I don't care for it. I want to be so I can help my mother and the children at home, and not have to ask lief of anybody.' YES. Again, now that I know Cather did not marry a man and lived with a woman, this line may have a different meaning, but in any case, I LOVE that we're seeing an example of a woman who just comfortably flat out says in the early 1900s, marriage? Nah. Pass. It reminded me of how my friend sent me a meme about spinsters, which of course now has a rather negative connotation, and the quotes from early spinsters were all about how excited they were to be independent women who could Earn their Living from their spinning. So yeah, maybe I'm a spinster! Proud of it!

• I liked to watch a play with Lena; everything was wonderful to her, and everything was true. It was like going to revival meetings with someone who was always being converted. She handed her feelings over to the actors with a kind of fatalistic resignation. Lena is a lovely, passionate creature.

I love this later exchange between Lena and Jim, when he's sort of tossing around the idea of proposing to her himself: 

Lena: 'Why, I'm not going to marry anybody. Didn't you know that?'

Jim: 'What makes you say that?'

Lena: 'Well, it's mainly because I don't want a husband. Men are all right for friends, but as soon as you marry them they turn into cranky old fathers, even the wild ones. They begin to tell you what's sensible and what's foolish, and want you to stick at home all the time. I prefer to be foolish when I feel like it, and be accountable to nobody.'

Jim: 'But you'll be lonesome. You'll get tired of this sort of life, and you'll want a family.'

Lena: 'Not me. I like to be lonesome.'

I love this exchange SO MUCH. Who knows, maybe I'll end up with a husband some day, but I LOVE being foolish when I feel like it, and being accountable to nobody. And I like to be lonesome sometimes, too! Lena feels like a representation of ME in literature, which is so exciting to see. 

The Nebraska Prairie, the scenery, the backdrop, but really the star of the novel

One of the things I found most striking about this book was the way that the Nebraska plain was depicted. I will name that I don't have the most positive ideas about Nebraska, and assume it is rather flat and dull, but this book really sings its praises in the most lovely way.

• Everywhere, as far as the eye could reach, there was nothing but rough, shaggy, red grass,  most of it as tall as I. 

• As I looked about me I felt that the grass was the country, as the water is the sea. The red of the grass made all the great prairie the color of wineskins, or of certain seaweeds when they are first washed up. And there was so much motion in it; the whole country seemed, somehow, to be running. This is such an exquisite line. So vivid.

• Trees were so rare in that country, and they had to make such a hard fight to grow, that we used to feel anxious about them, and visit them as if they were persons. <3

• All those fall afternoons were the same, but I never got used to them. As far as we could see, the miles of copper-red grass were drenched in sunlight that was stronger and fiercer than at any other time of the day. The blond cornfields were red gold, the haystacks turned rosy and threw long shadows. The whole prairie was like the bush that burned with fire and was not consumed. That hour always had the exultation of victory, of triumphant ending, like a hero's death - heroes who died young and gloriously. It was a sudden transfiguration, a lifting-up of day. Isn't this just stunning? I spent almost two hours writing down the lines for this blog because there was so much underlining all over my copy. 

My thoughts, in a jumble

On the smells of home

• As I entered the kitchen, I sniffed a pleasant smell of gingerbread baking. When Jim first enters his grandparents' home, he smells gingerbread, which I loved because gingerbread smells like home to me too, especially in the fall. What does home smell like to you, reader? 

On hearing a different language for the first time

• I pricked up my ears, for it was positively the first time I had ever heard a foreign tongue. This happens when young Jim first hears the Bohemian language being spoken. It made me wonder when was the first time I heard a foreign language? I think probably very young, as I know my mother spoke French to me as a baby. It was really interesting to think about when this happens for any child, and for Jim to experience it for the first time at ten years old.

On immigration

Like I said earlier, I think there were a lot of places and spaces in this book where Cather was really quite forward-thinking and liberal in her view of immigration, which I found refreshing. Here's an example: 

Jim, reflecting: I thought the attitude of the town people towards these girls very stupid. If I told my schoolmates that Lena Lingard's grandfather was a clergyman, and much respected in Norway, they looked at me blankly. What did it matter? All foreigners were ignorant people who couldn't speak English. There was not a man in Black Hawk who had the intelligence or cultivation, much less the personal distinction, of Antonia's father. Yet people saw no difference between her and the three Marys; they were all Bohemians, all 'hired girls'. I mean, yes, there's a little bit of an over-valuation of education here, but I appreciate that Jim is trying to point out a pervasive stereotype that is unfortunately still rampant today. 

On reading with a smile on my face

I literally wrote in the back of my copy that I 'read this book with a smile on my face', because I found myself pausing and smiling and reading and smiling some more. Here's a line that made me smile:

At supper the men ate like vikings, and the chocolate cake, which I had hoped would linger on until tomorrow in a mutilated condition, disappeared on the second round. 

On Jim and Antonia

I think something that really sets this book apart is the fact that Jim and Antonia don't get together. They never even do more than kiss once, I think but there's a deep intensity to their relationship. Here are some of my favorite moments between them:

• Before we left, Peter put ripe cucumbers into a sack for Mrs. Shimerda and gave us a lard-pail full of milk to cook them in. I had never heard of cooking cucumbers, but Antonia assured me they were very good. We had to walk the pony all the way home to keep from spilling the milk. 

• Up there the stars grew magnificently bright. Though we had come from such different parts of the world, in both of us there was some dusky superstition that those shining groups have their influence upon what is and what is not to be. 

• We burrowed down in the straw and curled up close together, watching the angry red die out of the west and the stars begin to shine in the clear, windy sky. 

• 'Do you know, Antonia, since I've been away, I think of you more often than anyone else in this part of the world. I'd have liked to have you for a sweetheart, or a wife, or my mother or my sister - anything that a woman can be to a man. The idea of you is a part of my mind; you influence my likes and dislikes, all my tastes, hundreds of times when I don't realize it. You really are a part of me.'

And when they see each other much later in life

• When I told her I had no children, she seemed embarrassed. 'Oh, ain't that too bad! Maybe you could take one of my bad ones, now? That Leo; he's the worst of all'. She leaned toward me with a smile. "And I love him the best,' she whispered. lol. I love this so much.

• When Antonia proudly says that Jim can have a bed to sleep on when he visits, as two of the boys tend to sleep in the haymow: I told her I would like to sleep in the haymow, with the boys. This made love Jim more than any line in the book, I think.

On happiness

As some of my long time readers know, my grandmother was a great champion of this blob (and was, in fact, the reason for me calling it a blob occasionally ;)) and I read Thanatopsis at her funeral. This line reminded me of the end of that poem in a lovely way.

When Jim sits in the garden as a boy: Nothing happened. I did not expect anything to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is the sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.

Willa Cather can write my seasons

I've said in other blobs that I like various writers for the way they write particular things, like weather, or jokes, or descriptions, or dialogue. Murasaki Shikibu is one of my all-time favorite depicters of the seasons, but she can share writing my seasons with Willa Cather. 

Winter: When the smoky clouds hung low in the west and the red sun went down behind them, leaving a pink flush on the snowy roofs and the blue drifts, then the wind sprang up afresh, with a kind of bitter song, as if it said: 'This is reality, whether you like it or not. All those frivolities of summer, the light and the shadow, the living mask of green that trembled over everything, they were lies, and this is what was underneath. This is the truth.' It was as if we were being punished for the loveliness of summer.

When the dancing tent comes to town

There's a really interesting trajectory of all prairie/frontier life, to small town life, and then eventually at the end, back to the prairie. I loved when a traveling group came to town and there were nightly dances:

At last there was something to do in those long, empty summer evenings, when the married people sat like images on their front porches, and the boys and girls tramped and tramped the board sidewalks - northward to the edge of the open prairie, south to the depot, then back again to the post-office, the ice-cream parlor, the butcher shop. Now there was a place where the girls could wear their new dresses, and where one could laugh aloud without being reproved by the ensuing silence. That silence seemed to ooze out of the ground, to hang under the foliage of the black maple trees with the bats and shadows. Now it was broken by lighthearted sounds. 

On social options, and slim pickings

As someone who grew up in a small town myself, I empathized with Jim when he was weighing his options after the dance hall was taken off the table: 

One could hang about the drugstore; and listen to the old men who sat there every evening, talking politics and telling raw stories. One could go to the cigar factory and chat with the old German who raised canaries for sale, and look at his stuffed birds. But whatever you began with him, the talk went back to taxidermy. These were the distractions I had to choose from. There were no other lights burning downtown after nine o'clock. Lol. Whatever you began, the talk went back to taxidermy.

Referents and Reverberations

There were honestly so many of these, I barely even know where to begin. I'll do my best to capture the ones I think are the most salient. 

• I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith

It was pleasant there in the kitchen. The sun shone into my bath-water through the west half-window, and a big Maltese cat came up and rubbed himself against the tub, watching me curiously. While I scrubbed, my grandmother busied herself in the dining-room until I called anxiously, 'Grandmother, I'm afraid the cakes are burning!' Then she came laughing, waving her apron before her as if she were shooing chickens. This scene with Jim taking a bath in the kitchen immediately made me think of Cassandra, and the opening scenes of I Capture the Castle. 

• The Yearling, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

On grandmother's response to a hare-brained scheme: My plan must have seemed very foolish to her, but she was often large-minded about humoring the desires of other people. She asked Peter to wait a moment, and when she came back from the kitchen she brought a bag of sandwiches and donuts for us. This reminded me of the father in The Yearling, and how he's always more willing to allow for some romping with his son than the mother.

• The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck, As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner

Otto - We was snowed in then, like we are now, and I happened to be the only man in camp that could make a coffin for him. It's a handy thing to know, when you knock about like I've done. This scene where Otto makes Mr. Shimerda's coffin because they're snowed in reminded me of how they keep the coffin nearby in The Good Earth, and the scenes where you can hear the coffin being constructed in As I Lay Dying. I was also reminded of The Good Earth when Antonia works the fields well into her various pregnancies.

• Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott

We decided to have a country Christmas, without any help from town. I had wanted to get some picture books for Yulka and Antonia; even Yulka was able to read a little now. Grandmother took me into the ice-cold storeroom, where she had some bolts of gingham and sheeting. She cut squares of cotton cloth and we sewed them together into a book. We bound it between pasteboard, which I covered with brilliant calico, representing scenes from a circus. For two days I sat at the dining-room table, pasting this book full of pictures for Yulka... Fuchs got out the old candle-moulds and made tallow candles. Grandmother hunted up her fancy cake-cutters and baked gingerbread men and roosters, which we decorated with burnt sugar and red cinnamon drops.

When I got to the pond, I could see that Jake was bringing in a little cedar tree across his pommel. He used to help my father cut Christmas trees for me in Virginia, and he had not forgotten how much I liked them. 

We hung the tree with the gingerbread animals, strings of popcorn, and bits of candle which Fuchs had fitted into pasteboard sockets. 

After Otto adds his paper figures - Our tree became the talking tree of the fairy tale; legends and stories nestled like birds in its branches. Grandmother said it reminded her of the Tree of Knowledge. We put sheets of cotton wool under it for a snow-field, and Jake's pocket-mirror for a frozen lake. This is just about the sweetest depiction of Christmas that I have ever read, and it reminded me of the Marches and how they celebrate Christmas even when they're broke, and how they still make space to share with their neighbors who are even less fortunate.

• The Tale of Genji, by Murasaki Shikibu

On writing as Jim Burden - My own story was never written, but the following narrative is Jim's manuscript, substantially as he brought it to me. Like I said, this was initially off-putting to me, as it reminded me of how The Tale of Genji is entirely about Genji, who is by and large, a Terrible human being. But I think the knowledge of how Cather may have identified and the fact that Jim is a really lovely human being made me more ok with it in this case.

I was also reminded of Genji in Cather's seasons. Here's spring:

When spring came, after that hard winter, one could not get enough of the nimble air. Every morning I wakened with a fresh consciousness that winter was over. There were none of the signs of spring for which I was used to watching in Virginia, no budding woods or blowing gardens. There was only - spring itself; the throb of it, the light restlessness, the vital essence of it everywhere: in the sky, in the swift clouds, in the pale sunshine, and in the warm, high wind - rising suddenly, sinking suddenly, impulsive and playful like a big puppy that pawed you and then lay down to be petted. If I had been tossed down blindfold on that red prairie, I should have known that it was spring. So stunning. 

• Winesburg, Ohio, by Sherwood Anderson

When boys and girls are growing up, life can't stand still, not even in the quietest of country towns; and they have to grow up, whether they will or no. Many parts of this novel, especially the sections in Black Hawk and Lincoln, reminded me of Winesburg, Ohio, and the warmth I felt reading that novel.

• Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery

Anna wanted to make elderblow wine - Again, there were many elements of this novel that reminded me pleasantly of Anne of Green Gables, but when one of the young women wants to make a plant wine, it reminded me of the raspberry cordial scene between Anne and Diana. 

• The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Lena, to Jim: 'Come and see me sometimes when you're lonesome. But maybe you have all the friends you want. Have you?' She turned her soft cheek to me. 'Have you?' she whispered teasingly in my ear. For some reason, Lena's sort of dangerous, tempting relationship with Jim reminded me of Daisy, and how smitten and helpless Jay is around her.

These didn't have specific parts that reminded me of them, but gave off similar vibes: 

• Lord of the Rings
• Middlesex
• Candide
• (TV Shows) Yellowstone, Alone

Words or things that were new to me

bole -  the main stem of a tree; usually covered with bark; the bole is usually the part that is commercially useful for lumber

drove (noun; as in, of wolves) - a herd or flock of animals being driven in a body.

kolaches - a kolach, or kolaches in the plural; from the Czech and Slovak koláč is a type of sweet pastry that holds a portion of fruit surrounded by puffy yeast dough. Common filling flavors include tvaroh, fruit jam, poppy seeds, or povidla

lariat pin - lariat - a rope used for tethering grazing horses, etc.; lariat-pin - a peg fixing a lariat to the ground so the animal is restricted to that area

quinsy - inflammation of the throat, especially an abscess in the region of the tonsils

schottische - a slow polka

Lines I Particularly Liked

• The dust and heat, the burning wind, reminded us of many things. I loved this line, and it reminded me for some reason of this Lewis Carroll line: The time has come,' the Walrus said, To talk of many things: Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax — Of cabbages — and kings.

• If we never arrived anywhere, it did not matter. This reminded me of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. 

• I buttoned up my jacket and raced my shadow home.

• Misfortune seemed to settle like an evil bird on the roof of the log house, and to flap its wings there, warning human beings away.

• It seemed as if we could hear the corn growing in the night.

• I felt the old pull of the earth, the solemn magic that comes out of those fields at nightfall.

Well, blobbists, I'll leave you with four of my favorite bits: 

(1) I wanted to walk straight on through the red grass and over the edge of the world, which could not be very far away. 

(2) We sat looking off across the country, watching the sun go down. The curly grass about us was on fire now. The bark of the oaks turned red as copper. There was a shimmer of gold on the brown river. Out in the stream the sandbars glittered like glass, and the light trembled in the willow thickets as if little flames were leaping among them. The breeze sank to stillness. In the ravine a ringdove mourned plaintively, and somewhere off in the bushes an owl hooted. The girls sat listless, leaning against each other. The long fingers of the sun touched their foreheads.

(3) She asked me whether I'd learned to like big cities. 'I'd always be miserable in a city. I'd die of lonesomeness. I like to be here I know every stack and tree, and where all the ground is friendly. I can't wait to move to the country. I feel like Antonia, who's in her short-lived city/town phase, just itching to get back to the homestead life.

(4) This was the road over which Antonia and I came on that night when we got off the train at Black Hawk and were bedded down in the straw, wondering children, being taken we knew not whither. I had only to close my eyes to hear the rumbling of the wagons in the dark, and to be again overcome by that obliterating strangeness. The feelings of that night were so near that I could reach out and touch them with my hand. I had the sense of coming home to myself, and of having found out what a little circle man's experience is.

I'll leave you with those beautiful lines, and hope that you get to occasionally enjoy the experience of coming home to yourself, reader, and that home smells like whatever you want it to smell like. Maybe it's gingerbread! I'm off to celebrate Mother's Day weekend with my dear and lovely mother, and I'll see you on the other side of The Executioner's Song. 

Keep safe! Good night!

Sometimes it's a little better to travel than to arrive.

 Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig, first published in 1974

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is about a mental and physical journey. It follows an unnamed father and his teenage son, Chris, on a cross-country motorcycle trip, in what is perhaps the late sixties, early seventies. The narrator has experienced a sort of break in personality/psychotic break, and refers to his previous self as 'Phaedrus'. The pair is joined initially by John and Sylvia Sutherland, friends of the narrator, but eventually they peel off and it's just Chris and his father. 

As the pair journeys west, the narrator regales us with his 'Chautauqua', or his sort of treatise on values and such. We continue to dig deeper into his history and what happened before his break, and we learn that Chris, too, has been showing signs of mental health issues. Father and son make their way rather begrudgingly across the long expanses of the western United States, eventually landing on the Pacific Coast and making their way down to San Francisco. Things come to a head when it seems like perhaps the father is getting lost in a kind of depressive episode, but there's a moment of clarity and Phaedrus/the narrator seem to merge, and it looks like there might just be some happy trails ahead.

Spoiler Over: Continue Here

Well hello, dear blobbists!

  This book was an interesting nut to crack. In some ways, I truly despised it. The middle Chautauqua section gets to a place that is, imo, somewhere between a fever dream and a collection of straight up nonsense. But the parts where we learn about Phaedrus and the discussion of lessons in how to embrace understanding machines and technology were interesting to me. On the whole, I would not classify it as a novel, though I do think it has earned a cult classic spot. I don't regret having read it, but if you're not a hard core philosophy nut/somewhat masochistic with a glutton for punishment, I'd probably skip this one. 

The Cast of Characters, small though it be

NOT-Phaedrus

If you've followed my blob much, you'll know that I am NOT a fan of unnamed narrators. I suppose it was critical that the narrator not have a name because he was really more of a half entity than a whole new self, but I still find it confusing and annoying. I ended up calling the narrator NOT-Phaedrus. It reminded me of YBN in Proust. Here are some lines that I think capture NOT-Phaedrus well. 

• On visiting where Phaedrus used to teach: In this place he is the reality and I am the ghost.

• If you'll excuse me I'll just talk Chautauqua now, until the loneliness goes away. No, no thank you. I'd rather not.

• He [Phaedrus] was true to what he believed right to the end. That's the difference between us, and Chris knows it. And that's the reason why sometimes I feel he's the reality and I'm the ghost.

So as you can see, he's a bit on the unhinged side of things. He also honestly just felt like a real jerk to me for most of the book, and reminded me of my own male parental unit, of whom I am not a great fan.

Phaedrus

• The world now, according to Phaedrus, was composed of three things: mind, matter, and Quality. There's a lot of this philosophy jibberjabber. 

• And so he just did not care how he sounded to others. It was a totally fanatic thing. He lived in a solitary universe of discourse in those days. No one understood him. And the more people showed how they failed to understand him and disliked what they did understand, the more fanatic and unlikable he became. Oh GoOOd. That sounds like a real recipe for success.

• He had no time for or interest in other people's Great Books. He was there solely to write a Great Book of his own. As someone who's been reading a lot of great books, and written one or two of her own, I think it's sort of critical that you are humble enough to experience the writing of others, not so that you can put it on a pedestal, but so you can enrich your lived experience.

There were also some trippy parts about Phaedrus where he definitely starts behaving in a way that is highly erratic and he gets admitted to a mental institution. I understood that, but in the 'reader's guide' at the end of my book, the author talks about how Phaedrus got electroconvulsive shock treatments, which was surprising to me, because I 100% missed it, however it was written. It reminded me of how I missed the rape in Tess of the D'Urbervilles and then ended up very surprised she was somehow pregnant. 

Chris

I felt SO bad for Chris throughout this book. I mean, I think that we're supposed to understand that the narrator, who is a loosely autobiographical version of Pirsig himself, wanted to try to connect with Chris and help him understand what was happening as he started to experience mental illness. But mostly he is SO mean to him and doesn't let him be a kid much and then in the end they kind of agree that not-Phaedrus/Phaedrus never went insane in the first place, and then they're like, now things will be fine! And I was like, UM, why would we think that would be the case? I'm definitely anti-shock therapy as it was delivered then, but I feel like deciding that they're both just A-OK and rocking with it doesn't feel like a win to me.

• He's trying to relate to me and is afraid he never will.

• He can't seem to care whether he's popular with anyone else. He just wants to be popular with me. Not healthy at all, everything considered. At least NOT-Phaedrus seems to recognize that this is problematic. I also found it very strange that there are vague references to a wife and another child, but the narrator seems very detached from these.

My Thoughts, in No Special Order

On really seeing the world

I was on board with the beginning of the book, especially when the Sutherlands were around and there was much less 'Chautauqua'-ing.

• You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other.

• We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with emphasis on 'good' rather than 'time' and when you make that shift in emphasis the whole approach changes. I like this line.

On Chautauquas

I always thought that a Chautauqua was a town with a thriving culture, but the internet seems to define it as follows: 

Chautauqua - an adult education and social movement in the United States that peaked in popularity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Chautauqua assemblies expanded and spread throughout rural America until the mid-1920s. Named after Chautauqua, a county in New York State, where such an institution was first set up.

NOT-Phaedrus seems to think of it more like an oration or a monograph.

• What is in mind is a sort of Chautauqua - that's the only name I can think of for it - like the traveling tent-show Chautauquas that used to move across America, this America, the one that we are now in, an old-time series of popular talks intended to edify and entertain, improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer.

• I suppose if I were a novelist rather than a Chautauqua orator I'd try to 'develop the characters' of John and Sylvia and Chris with action-packed scenes that would also reveal 'inner meanings' of Zen and maybe Art and maybe even Motorcycle Maintenance. That would be quite a novel, but for some reason I don't feel quite up to it. They're friends, not characters, and as Sylvia herself once said, 'I don't like being an object!' So a lot of things we know about one another I'm simply not going into. Nothing bad, but not really relevant to the Chautauqua. That's the way it should be with friends. This seems like a good policy around friendship, but it's where he really started to lose me as a reader. Turns out I'm not that into Chautauquas.

• When you've got a Chautauqua in your head, it's extremely hard not to inflict it on innocent people. Oh, but maybe you should TRY!

• I want to talk now about trust traps and muscle traps and then stop this Chautauqua for today. (my margin note: OR MAYBE FOREVER?)

On being a rather s**tty parent

Excuse my French here, but there's really just no other word for it. Here are some of the times when I really started to hate the narrator:

Later on Chris shouts to hear his echo, and throws rocks down to see where they fall. He's starting to get almost cocky, so I step up the equilibrium to where I breathe at a good swift rate, about one-and-a-half times our former speed. This sobers him somewhat and we keep on climbing. What an asshole, I thought.

Chris: I just hate this. 

Father: 'Well, what can we do, Chris?'...'We just have to keep going until we find out what's wrong or find out why we don't know what's wrong. Don't you see that?' HM...

• 'Don't cry, Chris. Crying is just for children.' NO IT'S NOT. THAT'S THE DUMBEST THING I'VE EVER HEARD.

• Using Nell as his Chris replacement/continuation - OK, so I'm blurring the lines a bit here, but if you give me a reader's guide to a pretty autobiographical novel, I'm going to draw some connections. Pirsig reveals in an epilogue/reader's guide that ten years have passed, and Chris has died. In fact, real life Chris was murdered. He was held up by some dudes and it got violent. So at first, I felt bad for Pirsig, because to lose a child seems like it would be unspeakably painful, and to lose one to violence is a whole other kind of pain. But then, just when I was starting to feel for the guy, he mentions that he remarried and he and his new lady got pregnant, and were planning to terminate the pregnancy, but then decided that this child was really a continuation of Chris's life pattern in the form of a girl named Nell. And I am a little woo woo meself, but I don't think anyone should be brought into the world to continue anyone else's life pattern. Let Nell be Nell! Period! End of sentence!

On not eating any fruits or vegetables for....?

Here is an incomplete list of the things they eat on the trip: hot cakes, sausages, steaks, beer, burgers, eggs, malted milks. Since they do essentially NO physical movement, I found myself wondering if either of them were having any kind of regular bowel movements, and also wondering how many days precisely had passed since they ate anything resembling a fruit or a vegetable. 

On the foolishness of quick assumptions and a need for serenity

OK, so like I said, I DID like the bits about fixing things, and the way Pirsig described his self-acquired understanding of motorcycle maintenance. Here's a line I liked: If you don't have [serenity] when you start and maintain it while you're working you're likely to build your personal problems right into the machine itself.

On classic vs. romantic modes

We are not going to get all the way into Pirsig's coocoo cachoo (sp?) philosophy rant, but I'm sharing a section so I can also illustrate Pirsig's rampant sexism:

The romantic mode is primarily inspirational, imaginative, creative, intuitive. Feelings rather than facts predominate. 'Art' when it is opposed to 'Science' is often romantic. It does not proceed by reason or by laws. It proceeds by feeling, intuition and esthetic conscience. In the northern European cultures the romantic mode is usually associated with femininity, but this is certainly not a necessary association. 

  The classic mode, by contrast, proceeds by reason and by laws - which are themselves underlying forms of thought and behavior. In the European cultures it is primarily a masculine mode and the fields of science, law, and medicine are unattractive to women largely for this reason. Although motorcycle riding is romantic, motorcycle maintenance is purely classic. The dirt, the grease, the mastery of underlying form required all give it such a negative romantic appeal that women never go near it. OH REALLY? I imagine there are plenty of women who enjoy motorcycle maintenance, and I know several women personally as well as millions of women generally who would have something to say about their place in the science, law, and medical fields. 

• Also this happened: Sylvia is with Chris at a Laundromat doing the laundry for all of us. And I thought, NO, SYLVIA. DON'T DO THESE DIRTY MEN'S LAUNDRY. I also kept wondering - is your wife taking care of your other child? Making money? Taking care of your home? 

Out, out, damn typos

For a book that is basically a 400+ page ode to the importance of quality, I found it ironic that I found no fewer than NINE typos in my copy of the book. I understand Pirsig can't be held responsible for all elements of his book being published, especially in later editions, but I was still annoyed at the hypocrisy. I have listed them below as evidence.

• Page 139 - missing the letter "w" in "was"
• Page 293 - should be "knows" not "knews"
• Page 304 - should be "are" not "of"
• Page 306 - should be "soon" not "soo"
• Page 313 - should be "accidentally" not "accidently"
• Page 328 - should be "show", not "shown"
• Page 338 - should be "warn", not "warm"
• Page 394 - "in" and "it" order should be reversed
• Page 428 - "were" should be "where"

On gumption

I *did* learn a little something about gumption myself when I ended up unclogging my garbage disposal and learning how to take out the P-trap, and I appreciated Pirsig's references to it. 

• I like the word 'gumption' because it's so homely and so forlorn and so out of style it looks as if it needs a friend and isn't likely to reject anyone who comes along. It's an old Scottish word, once used a lot by pioneers, but which, like 'kin', seems to have all but dropped out of use. I like it also because it describes exactly what happens to someone who connects with Quality. He gets filled with gumption.

• On tackling a repair yourself: You're at a disadvantage the first time around and it may cost you a little more because of parts you accidentally damage, and it will almost undoubtedly take a lot more time, but the next time around you're way ahead of the specialist. You, with gumption, have learned the assembly the hard way and you've a whole set of good feelings about it that he's unlikely to have.

• Watch out for gumption desperation, in which you hurry up wildly in an effort to restore gumption by making up for lost time.  I definitely experienced some gumption desperation when I had taken the pipes off my garbage disposal and was covered in rotten broccoli and couldn't figure out how to get the pipes back together at 11 PM. Thankfully the passage of a day and a lot more gumption got me the rest of the way to a fixed disposal and drain. And I did have that whole set of good feelings :) 

The monkey trap

I liked this example, which he refers to as the monkey trap: 

The trap consists of a hollowed-out coconut chained to a stake. The coconut has some rice inside which can be grabbed through a small hole. The hole is big enough so that the monkey's hand can go in, but too small for his fist with rice in it to come out. The monkey reaches in and is suddenly trapped - by nothing more than his own value rigidity. He can't revalue the rice. He cannot see that freedom without rice is more valuable than capture with it. Value rigidity is a fascinating concept.

On the temperament of mechanics

The whole book seems to have a weird dichotomy wherein Pirsig is obviously intelligent and not blue collar, but has a deep reverence for men who work with their hands. I don't mean to say that these folks shouldn't be revered - I have tremendous respect and awe for them. But it kept ringing sort of false to me, like Pirsig was trying to come off a certain way rather than just be who he was. I liked this bit, though.

• On any mechanical repair job ego comes in for rough treatment. You're always being fooled, you're always making mistakes, and a mechanic who has a big ego to defend is at a terrific disadvantage. If you know enough mechanics to think of them as a group, and your observations coincide with mine, I think you'll agree that mechanics tend to be rather modest and quiet. There are exceptions, but generally if they're not modest quiet and modest at first, the work seems to make them that way. And skeptical. Attentive, but skeptical. But not egoistic. I liked this line because it reminded me of the only excellent mechanics I know, my Uncle Dave and my neighbor Mr. Light, and this definitely describes both of them to a T.

Some of my favorite gobbledygook sentences

I found some of my favorite nonsensical sentences so I could share them with you. Aren't you glad? ;)

• And now to give a fuller description of what this is I want now to turn his analytic approach back upon itself - to analyze analysis itself. MMM, yes... 

• We have in our minds an a priori motorcycle which has continuity in time and space and is capable of changing appearance as one moves one's head and is therefore not contradicted by the sense data one is receiving. Yes, of course, that a priori motorcycle...

• He had erected an imaginary entity, defined it as incapable of definition, told the students over their own protests that they knew what it was, and demonstrated this by a technique that was as confusing logically as the term itself.

• The very existence of subject and object themselves is deduced from the Quality event. of Course.

• The mystery of what is space and time may be made more understandable by this explanation, but now the burden of sustaining the order of the universe rests on 'facts.'

• Quality isn't just something you lay on top of subjects and objects like tinsel on a Christmas tree. Real Quality must be the source of the subjects and objects, the cone from which the tree must start. OBVIOUSLY!

• 'Substance' and 'substantive' really corresponded to 'object' and 'objectivity', which he'd rejected in order to arrive at a nondualistic concept of Quality. yes, good to reject that.

My Marginalia

This is a new section where I'm going to tell you what I thought of the book by sharing what I wrote in the margins. 

♡

lol

hm

THEY ARE?

THEY DON'T?

oh goody

HM!

?

hm

BARF

hm!

Can I?

?

hm

what an ASSHOLE

is that all you eat?

no, no thanks

OH GOODY

hm

it will?

they must be so dirty

do these exist?

have they eaten a vegetable in weeks?

UGH

On nostalgia for an imaginary past

Pirsig occasionally mentions the existence of Indigenous people, but by and large, he feels like a classic man from White dominant culture, only interested in seeing the nostalgic, picture-perfect America. 

In the secondary America we've been through, of back roads, and Chinaman's ditches, and Appaloosa horses, and sweeping mountain ranges, and meditative thoughts, and kids with pinecones and bumblebees and open sky above us mile after mile after mile, all through that, what was real, what was around us dominated. And so there wasn't much feeling of loneliness. (my notes - NO, just depression and crippling ennui) That's the way it must have been a hundred or two hundred years ago. Well, maybe, or maybe there were enslaved people all over it, and Indigenous people who were living here before we swindled and mass murdered them. But sure, yes, there were some nice mountains then, too, I'm sure.

Referents and Reverberations

• 1984, George Orwell

This line: But no one was listening at that time and they only thought him eccentric at first, then undesirable, then slightly mad, and then genuinely insane.

And this line: When you live in the shadow of insanity, the appearance of another mind that thinks and talks as yours does is something close to a blessed event.

Reminded me of this line, from 1984: Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one.

• The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath

This line, from NOT-Phaedrus: I survive mainly by pleasing others. You do that to get out. To get out you figure out what they want you to say and then you say it with as much skill and originality as possible and then, if they're convinced, you get out. If I hadn't turned on him [Phaedrus] I'd still be there. reminded me of the way Esther operates in parts of the The Bell Jar.

Lines I Particularly Liked

• Steel can be any shape you want if you are skilled enough, and any shape but the one you want if you are not.

• An experiment is never a failure solely because it fails to achieve predicted results. This is a great line.

• To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow.

• You can't live on just groovy emotions alone. OK? You might want to, but you can't!

• When you make the mistakes yourself, you at least get the benefit of some education.

Things That Were New to Me

chuckholes - a pit or hole produced by wear or weathering (especially in a road surface); synonym: pothole

duff - (North American; Scottish) decaying vegetable matter covering the ground under trees

koan - (OK, so technically this isn't new to me, but I think it's the first time I've seen it outside of the NYT spelling bee or crossword ;) ) a paradoxical anecdote or riddle, used in Zen Buddhism to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and to provoke enlightenment.

snort - a quick drink of liquor; a shot

Well, readers, I'm off to the last trio of books on my list. I'll leave you with this line that I liked:

We're nowhere that I'm familiar with, in country that I've never seen before, yet I don't feel a stranger in it.

I will say that I enjoyed learning that Pirsig had to face 121 rejections before his book was picked up and then become a national bestseller (why, I'm not TOTALLY sure, but still, good to persevere!). It made me feel like I can weather another hundred or so rejections when I ready to re-query my novels.  

Keep safe! Stay cool! Good night :)