Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

by Gregory Maguire
519 pages; ; Harper; 1995

Counter to what I expected, this is far more than a novelty book. It has well-drawn characters with strong identities, whose thoughts and feelings ring true. As a fantasy novel, it's a surprisingly detailed world of its own. But the author takes it well beyond fantasy. He has some important points to make.

He's telling us that many things in life are not clear-cut. Maguire's Oz is a world where everyone is flawed in some way, and what appears to be wicked may be otherwise.

Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, is not wicked, and she insists that she's not a witch either. She's well-intentioned, but handicapped by her green skin and sharp features, she inadvertently creates her own self-fulfilling prophecies. Glinda (the good witch) enters the story as a shallow rich girl, preoccupied with her appearance and social standing. But in the end, she's a benign sorceress with power beyond either of the so-called wicked witches.

The Wizard articulates these themes in one of the most memorable scenes. Quoting from the Oziad, the hero tale of ancient Oz: "It looks the same... but it is not. It looks as they expect, but it is not."

Maguire makes all these points with clever ties back to the original L. Frank Baum novel -- quite an accomplishment.

Aladdin's Cave

“…the human kingdom, beneath the floor of the comparatively neat little dwelling that we call our consciousness, goes down into unsuspected Aladdin caves. There not only jewels but also dangerous jinn abide: the inconvenient or resisted psychological powers that we have not thought or dared to integrate into our lives.

"These are dangerous because they threaten the fabric of security into which we build ourselves and our family. But they are fiendishly fascinating too. For they carry the keys that open the whole realm of the desired and feared discovery of the self."

from The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

BOOKS READ: 2008

It's a night of bitter cold and snow in western Pennsylvania. It's also New Year's Eve, a fitting time to post my list of books read in 2008.

First, the two most memorable books of the year:

No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith

Fawn M. Brodie, 499 pages, Vintage Books, 1995

A biography of the Mormon leader. The account of his early life is particularly damaging. Just one example: as a young man, Smith was an avid treasure hunter, making use of a "peep stone." Peeping through his magic stone (it had a hole bored in it), the Prophet could detect treasures buried underground. One fine day, he found golden tablets. As for his womanizing .... how did the Mormon church survive this charlatanry?

Playing Off the Rail: A Pool Hustler's Journey

David McCumber, 367 pages, Perennial, 2002

This appears to be a very realistic account of what it's like to be a professional pool player. Interestingly, most of the work is done in shabby venues in run-down parts of town, not at all like the glitzy casino matches I like to watch on TV. My favorite part is a chance encounter with Swedish pool champion Ewa Mataya Laurance. I hope she hasn't lost her TV deal with ESPN.

Now, for my complete list:

[Genre: F = fiction, N = non-fiction]

January

Rankin, Ian - Fleshmarket Alley (F )

Dunsany, Alfred Lord - The Charwoman’s Shadow (F)

February
Dolin, Eric Jay - Leviathan (N): this history of whaling made me feel sorry for the whales.

Rankin, Ian - Knots and Crosses (F)

March

King, Stephen - Blaze (F): why do I keep reading this stuff?

Goddard, Robert - In Pale Battalions (F)

April

Bill O’Reilly - Who’s Looking Out for You? (N)

Traditional - Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight (F): the Simon Armitage translation. For a useful background piece on Gawaine, visit the University of Rochester's Camelot Project.

Furst, Alan - Dark Star (F): well-written account of a man drawn into espionage in World War II. I seem to recall reading this at at Nemacolin during a trip with Nancy and Megan.

May

McDermid, Val - The Grave Tattoo (F): disappointing.

July
Brodie, Fawn M. - No Man Knows My History (N): see above.

Michell, John - Eccentric Lives and Peculiar Notions (N)

August

Barker, Clive - The Damnation Game (F): here again, I can't remember what it was about.

O'Dell, Tawni - Sister Mine (F): Worth reading for the Western Pennsylvania setting, but it lacks something compared to her first novel, Back Roads. It's about a woman (closely resembling the author) and her sister. It's also about a coal mine. Thus, the title. The author lives in State College, PA. Maybe I'll run into her this weekend; we'll be there for my birthday.

McCumber, David - Playing Off the Rail - A Pool Hustler's Journey (N): see above.

September
(read all three on a cruise to Bermuda)

Rankin, Ian - Hide and Seek (F)

Golden, Christopher - Straight On 'til Morning (F): The first half was one of the best reading experiences of the year, even though a key plot element owes a huge debt to the film The Lost Boys. It takes a marked turn for the worse in the second half, crossing the line into fantasy and near-silliness.

Cain, James M. - Double Indemnity (F): excellent. I'll have to read The Postman Always Rings Twice soon.

November

LeCarre, John - The Mission Song (F)

Malory, Sir Thomas - Le Morte D'Arthur vol. 2 (F): I bought this in a mall in Houston in the mid-1980s after seeing the film Excalibur. It took a few years, but now I've finished both volumes. One of those rare books that motivated me to get out a pencil and mark my favorite passages.

Groff, Lauren - The Monsters of Templeton (F)

Messud, Claire - The Emperor's Children (F): perhaps the best fiction I read this year.

All in all, a pretty good reading year. Here's to health and peace of mind in the new year. Prospero ano nuevo.

Neon Knights

Years ago, I heard a song on the radio that I couldn’t get out of my brain. I didn’t know the name of the band or the name of the song. All I could remember was two lines:
Ride out, protectors of the realm
Captains at the helm...

My search for that song became a decades-long quest, strewn with false trails and dead ends. I asked several friends if they knew the source of these lines. I also bought two Rush albums in a vain effort to locate that song. It was all in vain.

Now, purely by chance, my odyssey of more than 20 years is ended.

I heard Ronnie James Dio sing those words at the Pittsburgh Post Gazette Pavilion Saturday night. The song is Neon Knights by Black Sabbath, from the Heaven & Hell album. It was their encore tune Saturday night! See below for the complete verse, with the lines above in context:

Cry out to legions of the brave
Time again to save us from the jackals of the street
Ride out, protectors of the realm
Captains at the helm, sail across the sea of lights
Circles and rings, dragons and kings
Weaving a charm and a spell
Blessed by the night, holy and bright
Called by the toll of the bell
Bloodied angels fast descending
Moving on a never-bending light

Encounter with KK

The Metal Masters tour rolled through Pittsburgh last Saturday night. That’s what brought my brother and I to the Pittsburgh Airport Marriott before the show. For a full account, laid out better than I could hope to achieve, follow this link:

http://haggisbuffet.blogspot.com/2008/08/encounter-with-kk.html

The Storm Lord by Tanith Lee

The Storm Lord by Tanith Lee
Genre: Fantasy

A number of people in this book earn the designation "Storm Lord", raising the knotty issue of exactly who Lee is referring to in the title.

Ashne'e, the lowland priestess (or Amber Witch)is forced to submit to the passions of the aging Storm Lord. This union is blessed with issue: Raldnor, the central character in the book. He's a fairly conventional man of action not unlike Conan The Barbarian. It's unusual for Lee to base a book around such a run-of-the-mill character, but the story itself is fine, with plenty of Lee's imaginative touches and her usual polished writing.

The passage that stayed with me occurs while Raldnor is still a wandering adventurer (or freebooter). He has an encounter with a prostitute, who excitedly exclaims: "You're indefatigable, a Storm Lord--" A hooker who flatters her client by calling him a Storm Lord? Raldnor proves her right by actually becoming the Storm Lord in due course.

Back Roads

by Tawni O'Dell
405 pp. Signet Books, January 2001

When I lived in Florida, I used to daydream about moving to a small town up north. I envisioned a quiet place with no traffic, a town people lived in their entire lives, so unlike south Florida. I pictured this imaginary place in the autumn, with an iron-gray sky and leaves on the ground, and the sort of Halloween I knew as a child.

Last year I found myself living out that fantasy – well, nearly -- when my career brought us to southwestern Pennsylvania. Now I never want to leave.

There’s so much about this area that I love. The natural beauty of the hills and farms would appeal to anyone. So would the view looking east, with the graceful curve of Route 30 down towards Latrobe and the heavily-wooded Allegheny Mountains in the distance. But I’m also fascinated by the old buildings in the blighted downtowns of Latrobe and Greensburg, and the mining patch communities you come across unexpectedly. The evidence of coal mining is all around, for those who know what to look for.

That’s what led me to Back Roads by Tawni O'Dell. It’s set in the rural western Pennsylvania area around Black Lick, which is a real town in Indiana County less than an hour from my home. I thought that reading it would be a good way to soak up some of the atmosphere of the region. But I got much more than I bargained for.

In Back Roads, 20-year-old Harley Altmyer’s mother is serving a life sentence in prison for shooting their father. That leaves Harley responsible for taking care of himself and his three sisters. There’s poverty and tension in the household. Harley himself lacks a mother, and he needs a girlfriend. That's why O'Dell gives him his first sexual encounter with a woman that meets both needs. She's an older woman and the mother of three. Just to underscore that point, she wears a nightgown that says “World’s Greatest Mom” in the big sex scene.

I thought the book would tell the story of their affair. Later, as I got further into it, I thought the plot would be built around revealing the truth about the shooting. O’Dell does all that. But she also takes it much further. This is a book about the deep and lasting effects of domestic violence and parental failure. As Harley puts it: “The problem with trying to forget about shit is that you can’t forget it. Time does not heal all wounds.”

Back Roads can be read and enjoyed just for its plot. But O’Dell also layers in deeper meaning and symbolism with some very skillful writing. Harley and his sisters suffer through a childhood filled with fear and physical abuse. Harley wears his father’s coat and hat, symbols of the legacy of violence that he inherited from his father and carries with him still. His teenage sister’s compulsive need for comfort and safety leads her to casual sex with the wrong men. Harley has to abandon his dog. He fears that the dog will spend the rest of his life thinking he’s a bad dog, unable to understand why the one person who was supposed to love him unconditionally turned his back on him.

Black Lick is a town named for salt licks that attract deer. But the salt is contaminated by coal deposits. The salt seeping up from underground may be killing them, like the secrets that Harley and his sisters have buried. In the end he has to confront his own self-deception.

I couldn’t understand why the book jacket blurbs described this book as humorous and hilarious. It’s about as bleak and tragic a story as I’ve read since Janet Fitch’s White Oleander, and the bleak, run-down mining community is a perfect setting. Back Roads actually affected me so strongly that I had to stop reading it at night. It got me so keyed up that I couldn’t sleep. Readers – especially men – shouldn’t be put off by the fact that this was an Oprah Book Club selection. It’s much more than a book aimed at pleasing women.

O’Dell’s second novel, Coal Run, was published in paperback earlier this year.

Links:

Review in The New York Times
Television interview
Author's website

The Trooper

My daughter brought her boyfriend home to visit for a couple of days. Mike is quiet and very respectful. He calls me Mr. K------. He just graduated from law school.

When Mike left, he gave me a gift: an Iron Maiden t-shirt! It’s the one with The Trooper image.



This could be the plot of a particularly twisted sitcom: girlfriend’s dad is a middle-aged metal fan. Boyfriend is a conservative young guy. Boyfriend's new job as a prosecutor with the Florida State Attorney's office entitles him to carry a badge and gun when he visits crime scenes. We see the handsome young man wandering befuddled through the CD Extreme music store, searching... searching everywhere for an Iron Maiden t-shirt. When presented with the gift t-shirt, Dad is delighted. He promises to wear it to Ozzfest, with the right sleeve rolled up to display his tattoo.

All of this is true.