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I look forward to hearing from you!
…[Camel] comes to a stop in front of a stock car. “Joe! Hey, Joe!”
A head appears in the doorway.
“I got a First of May here. Fresh from the crate. Think you can use him?”
The figure steps forward onto the ramp. He pushes up the brim of a battered hat with a hand missing three of its fingers. He scrutinizes me, shoots an oyster of dark brown tobacco juice out the side of his mouth, and goes back inside.
Camel pats my arm in a congratulatory fashion. “You’re in, kid.”
“I am?”
“Yep. Now go shovel some shit. I’ll catch up with you later.”
–Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, page 33
Jacob Jankowski was one week and his final exams away from being a vet. Then tragedy hits, claiming the lives of his parents, and revealing that they’d mortgaged everything to keep their only child enrolled in Cornell University. The weight and guilt of this bears down on young Jacob, and he just walks off from school… and keeps on walking. When he finally stops for the night, he decides to jump aboard a passing train, only to find he’s just joined the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth.
Vividly imaginitive and well-researched, Water for Elephantsby Sara Gruenis a compelling, character-driven tale with the feel of magic and wonder we feel as children going to the circus for the first time. It has a gritty realism to it and exposes the behind-the-scenes working and stratification of classes of the travelling circus. Bosses, freaks, an exotic menagerie, performers, clowns and dwarfs, working men and roustabouts… in that order. Everyone has a history, and a pervasive loneliness binds them all together.
I was enrapt by both the writing and the story in Water for Elephants. Gruen, a female writer, captures the male perspective amazingly well. The story takes place in two timelines: Young Jacob at 23 and joining the circus, and the elderly Jacob, who is either 91 or 93 (he can’t remember anymore), in an assisted living facility, dealing with the emotions of being left behind -by his kids and his deceased wife- in a place where there’s baby food to eat, your neighbor poops his pants, and your desires and opinions are discounted and ignored. I was carried along through the story, and it was over before I even knew it.
A nurse was sitting behind a desk in the opaque gloom of the hall. Swallowing his shame, Mr. Button approached her.
“Good-morning,” she remarked, looking up at him pleasantly.
“Good-morning. I -I am Mr. Button.”
At this a look of utter terror spread itself over the girl’s face. She rose to her feet and seemed about to fly from the hall, restraining herself only with the most apparent difficulty.
“I want to see my child,” said Mr. Button.
…Ranged around the walls were half a dozen white-enameled rolling cribs, each with a tag tied at the head.
“Well,” gasped Mr. Button, “which is mine?”
“There!” said the nurse.
Mr. Button’s eyes followed her pointing finger, and this is what he saw. Wrapped in a voluminous white blanket, and partially crammed into one of the cribs, there sat an old man apparently about seventy years of age. His sparse hair was almost white, and from his chin dripped a long smoke-colored beard, which waved absurdly back and forth, fanned by the breeze coming in at the window. He looked up at Mr. Button with dim, faded eyes in which lurked a puzzled question.
“Am I mad?” thundered Mr. Button, his terror resolving into rage. “Is this some ghastly hospital joke?”
“It doesn’t seem like a joke to us,” replied the nurse severely. “And I don’t know whether you’re mad or not – but that is most certainly your child.”
-“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, pages 3-4
Originally published in Collier’s, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” was inspired by a comment once made by Mark Twain.
Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of 80 and gradually approach 18.
Such was the beginning for the stories main character, Benjamin Button. Born as an elderly man, much to the chagrin of his socially and financially prominent family, his father initially intends to name his newborn “Methuselah” after the longest-living biblical patriarch who died at the age of 969 years of age.
Throughout the story, Benjamin lives a life that lacks, for the most part, acceptance. His father doesn’t accept him as a child and insists he wear short pants and play with toys, all the while the aged young Button would rather read the Encyclopedia Britannica and smoke Cuban cigars. At the age of 18 (though looking 50), Benjamin is run out of New Haven, Connecticut by a mob when he insists to the Yale registrar that he is indeed both a freshman and eighteen. As he grows younger and his wife grows older, she insists he stop being different and grow old like normal people, a sentiment later echoed by his own son.
While “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” is an interesting story, it is dated in it’s language and cultural sense. A fifty-year-old college freshman would be commended today, rather than mocked. In a world with the Internet and Paparazzi lurking behind every bush, waiting to snap a picture of the social elite, when those same pictures are discussed for weeks and speculations are made on national television, blogs and by comedians and late-night talk show host as to whether they’ve had work done, are suffering from an eating disorder or are doing crack, the global nature of our “community” would render it impossible to notice Button’s de-aging process.
And I won’t even go into the physiological impossibility for a woman of average height, 5′ 4″ to give birth to a 5’8″ baby. She wouldn’t have even been able to carry the baby to term. And this same baby is born with the ability to talk intelligently, to know the difference between milk and steak, and to walk home from the hospital? OKAY… so this story requires an incredible amount of “willingness to suspend belief”.
But, most of all…. This is a short story that I very much wish had been fleshed out into a novel. It leaves out so much detail and is over so quickly. I was able to read it in about an hour, as it was only 26 pages, and I judged a cartwheel contest in that hour, as well.
It is important to remember that “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” was written by Fitzgerald in the early 20s. I thought about one of my favorite television series from my childhood, Mork and Mindy, the movie Jack and, of course, the recent film version of the short story starring Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt.
Not only did Fitzgerald take his inspiration for the story, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” from Mark Twain, but the writing style also had a Twain-esque feel to it, which was probably one of the things that helped me get through it. All in all, I’d say, if ya got the book lying around, read it… it’s short enough not to be a punishment… but don’t go out of your way to find a copy. I can now watch the movie, guilt-free, and I’m betting the movie is better than the book, which feels more like a concept for a novel than a completed work. I give “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” 3 1/2 out of 5 stars.
Trailer for the movie version of “The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons”… And I would definitely HAVE TO SAY that the movie is about as much “based” on Fitzgerald’s story as the story was “based” on Twain’s quote. From what I’ve seen in the trailer, I’d have to say that it bears little resemblance to the short story, but it looks a lot more magical than the written story was.
Miscellaneous: This book was first published in 1953, and has since won the National Book Award and the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award. The copy I have is a 50th anniversary edition, and has an interview with Bradbury in the back of the book.
“With schools turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word ‘intellectual,’ of course, became the swear word it deserved to be. You always dread the unfamiliar. Surely you remember the boy in your own school class who was exceptionally ‘bright,’ did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like so many leaden idols, hating him. And wasn’t it this bright boy you selected for beatings and tortures after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man’s mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? Me? I won’t stomach them for a minute. And so when houses were finally fireproofed completely, all over the world… there was no longer need of firemen for the old purposes. They were given the new job, as custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior: official censors, judges, and executors. That’s you, Montag, and that’s me…. You must understand that our civilization is so vast that we can’t have our minorities upset and stirred. Ask yourself, What do we want in this country, above all? People want to be happy, isn’t that right? Haven’t you heard it all your life? I want to be happy, people say. Well, aren’t they? Don’t we keep them moving, don’t we give them fun? That’s all we live for, isn’t it? For pleasure, for titillation? And you must admit our culture provides plenty of these…. Colored people don’t like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Burn it. Someone’s written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book. Serenity, Montag. Peace, Montag. Take your fight outside…. Burn all, burn everything. Fire is bright and fire is clean.”
–Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, pages 58-60 (emphasis added)
In the first line of Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Guy Montag tells us, “It was a pleasure to burn.” Guy is a fireman who loves setting fires and watching things undergo change via the flames. He aims his firehose and sprays the kerosene over the contents of a house and lights the match. A permanent smile is plastered to his face from the hundreds and hundreds of fires he’s set over the ten years he has spent in service to his city. Life for Montag is good and makes sense.
Then a series of events occur that rocks his world. He meets Clarisse McClellen, who is “seventeen and crazy” as she says. She’s been labeled “anti-social” for asking “why?” instead of “how?” and for wanting to connect to people instead of merely co-existing with them. She likes to go on hikes and collect butterflies, and is forced to see a psychiatrist for such odd behaviours. Clarisse’s innocent questions and simple, romantic views on life awakens some long-comotosed awareness in Montag’ssoul. With the question, “Are you happy?” Guy is forced to re-evaluate himself and the world around him. His wife attempts suicide, then goes on pretending it had happened and, in fact, refusing to believe Guy.
The crisis moment for Montag happens when he’s at a house to burn and the older woman chooses to set herself on fire with her books, rather than leaving them. He is forced to question whether it is morally right to destroy something of such value that people are willing to die for them. And if such an act is wrong, what can he, MUST he, do about it?
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradburywill have to go on my top 10 list… just not sure which book to bump for it. First off, I love dystopic books, it’s probably my favorite genre. My definition of Dytopia is: Someone’s Utopia is another’s HELL. Second, Fahrenheit 451 speaks to the time it was written, but also has something to say to future generations of readers. It’s a cautionary tale of a possible future, barely imaginable when he wrote it nearly 60 years ago, and frighteningly close to life today. And as I read this, I couldn’t help but feel we did not listen to the warning.
For instance, when Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451, wallscreen and battery operated televisions weren’t around. Black and white television itself was in its infancy, but the love of Mrs. Montag’s life is her parlor wallscreens that allow her to be surrounded by her “family”, virtually live and in color. A device allows the people on the shows to insert her name and even look like they’re saying it. A device called a Seashell is worn in the ear, and allows a person to hear music, without disturbing those around them, and Mildred Montagwears hers so often that she’s become a proficient lip-reader. I immediately thought of MP3 players… Sam wears hers so much that she had a meltdown the other day when I told her she couldn’t take it to church with her.
Truly, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury was prophetic. The society found in within the pages of the book bear a lot of similarities with our culture today. Disconnected from one another, they/we go about with our devices in our ears (Seashell, MP3 player, cell phone, etc) and no longer take the time for conversations with our neighbors and others we meet in passing, and if we do happen to “chat,” it’s shallower than a pie pan.
They/we are so afraid of offending others that the thought police (Firemen or Political Correctness) have made it socially unacceptable, and in some cases criminal, to express ourselves, even monitoring our own self-talk. Free speech? HA! Congress is doing everything they can to eliminate that little inconvenience.
They/we are so obsessed with instant gratification that they/we no longer want to take the time to think about what they/we read, to let it distill in our souls. So books are flatter and more “pastepudding,” as Bradbury calls it, and the average person is no longer able to read and comprehend a newspaper article… not that they actually have the patience to read a whole one, just the headline and first paragraph, then onto the funnies (and even they are getting too long). Supermarket tabloids, Harlequin romance novels, car and sports magazines are the only books found in some homes, and to be “intelligent” is to be reviled.
I don’t say this often, if I’ve ever said it at all, but Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is a MUST READ. It should be taught in schools and read every year. Oddly enough, this book was actually challenged as part of a school curriculum… A parent wanted to ban a book that is a warning against book banning! How ironic.
Obviously, I give Fahrenheit 4515 out of 5 stars. READ IT!
When my daughter announced her class was taking a field trip, I involuntarily shrieked “No!” but then had to realize that it was doubtful the kindergarten classes were going to prison or the dookie factory.
Indeed, it was the zoo. This would be safe and fun, I thought. Animals frolicking – what could go wrong?
Well, for starters, the baboon, who was frankly obsessed with amorous activities that didn’t require a partner.
“What’s he doing?” a few of the kids asked.
My husband, who was the only man who had come along to chaperone, decided he would deal with this question, and deal with it he did.
“That’s just the traditional baboon way of waving hello,” he said, sounding remarkably poised and knowledgeable.
“Oh,” a little boy in the class said. “Should we wave back?”
“Oh, God no.”
Next up: the “desert habitat” where an ancient camel proceeded to amuse the children by leaning down to eat his own shit. Without even moving his legs, the giraffe savored every bite as if it were the Christmas ham.
“Oooh, icky gross! I think I’m gonna hurl!”
“It’s just nature,” said one of the kids, trying to comfort my husband.
–Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank by Celia Rivenbark, pages 53-54
I first heard about Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank by Celia Rivenbark on the April Books Brought Home Library Thing thread (the discussion starts going around message 174). It created quite a stir, as everyone passed around their “bad parents and monstrous children” horror stories. With the conversations circulating, as well as it’s hilarious-but-shocking title, I knew I wanted to read this book. So I clicked on over to BookMooch, entered the title in the search bar, and voila! mooched the only copy available.
When it arrived in the mail on Saturday, I cracked open the book and just glanced at the title of the first chapter: There’s Always Tomorrow(land): “If You Really Loved Me, You’d Buy Me Pal Mickey”. The chapter’s about Celia planning and taking her family to Disney World. Before I realized it, I was at the end of the chapter, ripped envelope still in my lap, and bladder barely holding its ground after all the laughter. The whole book is like that, and you just about have to tear the book from your hands to put it down to make dinner, sleep or even go to the bathroom (okay, I admit it… Celia went there, too).
With the charm of a Southern Belle, and a snarky, sarcastic wit, Miss Celia expresses all that it is to be a mother/wife/career woman/person with the sense God gave a goose in this day and age. She tells of her experience trying to buy size 7 clothes for her six-year-old, and only finding outfits that’d make a Vegas showgirl feel naked. Later, she points out that grown women in character-embossed clothes need to grow up, which points out the Topsy-turvy nature of the American culture today: Children dressing like sexually mature adults and grown-ups dressing like school kids at play.
Each chapter’s title both encompasses its contents, while being surprising and tongue-in-cheek. A few examples of this are:
Yo Yo Yo! Where Can a Sista Get a Cowgirl Outfit?: Holidays Make This Mama Wanna Get in Your Grille
Weary Mom to Uppity Teens: At Least I Know Where the Continent of Chile Is
Field Trip, Fornification, and a Shit-Eating Giraffe: Who Says School Can’t Be Fun?
Montel’s Smoking Weed: (But Will He Share With Sylvia the Psychic?)
Reality Bites: Super Skanks Lewinsky and Hilton Are Fun to Watch, but Those 100-Pound Toddlers Rule!
The Butcher’s Great, the Baker’s Suffering: But How Is the Anti-Carb Frenzy Affecting the Candlestick Maker?
The Paradoxical Male: Smart Enough to Find “Me Time,” but Dumb Enough to Get Stuck Buying the Tampons
If It Ain’t On eBay, It Ain’t Worth Having: (Whoa! Is That Willie Nelson’s Face in Your Grits?)
Politicians Serve Up McValues: (With Extra Cheese on the Side)
Amidst the humor and anecdotes, Rivenbark manages to slip in facts and evidence that support her position, but you’re too busy laughing and enjoying her company to realize “Hey, there’s serious journalism going on here!”
I enjoyed Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank by Celia Rivenbarkimmensely, and am going to buy a new copy from Amazon and have it shipped to my mom for Mother’s Day (don’t tell her, or you’ll ruin the surprise!). All the way through, I could just hear my mom’s voice in Rivenbark, and I know she’ll enjoy it as much as I did. While the book won’t stay with me as far as remembering specifics, the feeling of fun and laughter will live on, and I’m sure that when I re-read this review a year from now, I’ll remember specifics in the chapters mention, and laugh again. For the joy it’s given me and will give to my mom and myself in the future, I give Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank by Celia Rivenbark4 iout of 5 Krispy Kreme donuts 😀
Tainted by Brooke Morgan
The Triumph of Deborah by Eva Etzioni-Halevy
Strange But True America: Weird Tales from All 50 States by John Hafnor
Red Letters by Tom Davis
Dragon House by John Shors
Book reviews, entertaining and humorous posts, as well as memes and giveaways, In the Shadow of Mt. TBR is a fun and informative place to relax in the shade!
Title: Water for Elephants
In the Shadow of Mt. TBR 
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Author: Ray Bradbury
Paperback: 191 pages
Date published: 1953
Publisher: Del Rey (div of Random House)
ISBN: 9780345342966
Miscellaneous: This book was first published in 1953, and has since won the National Book Award and the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award. The copy I have is a 50th anniversary edition, and has an interview with Bradbury in the back of the book.
–Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, pages 58-60 (emphasis added)
In the first line of Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Guy Montag tells us, “It was a pleasure to burn.” Guy is a fireman who loves setting fires and watching things undergo change via the flames. He aims his firehose and sprays the kerosene over the contents of a house and lights the match. A permanent smile is plastered to his face from the hundreds and hundreds of fires he’s set over the ten years he has spent in service to his city. Life for Montag is good and makes sense.
Then a series of events occur that rocks his world. He meets Clarisse McClellen, who is “seventeen and crazy” as she says. She’s been labeled “anti-social” for asking “why?” instead of “how?” and for wanting to connect to people instead of merely co-existing with them. She likes to go on hikes and collect butterflies, and is forced to see a psychiatrist for such odd behaviours. Clarisse’s innocent questions and simple, romantic views on life awakens some long-comotosed awareness in Montag’ssoul. With the question, “Are you happy?” Guy is forced to re-evaluate himself and the world around him. His wife attempts suicide, then goes on pretending it had happened and, in fact, refusing to believe Guy.
The crisis moment for Montag happens when he’s at a house to burn and the older woman chooses to set herself on fire with her books, rather than leaving them. He is forced to question whether it is morally right to destroy something of such value that people are willing to die for them. And if such an act is wrong, what can he, MUST he, do about it?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradburywill have to go on my top 10 list… just not sure which book to bump for it. First off, I love dystopic books, it’s probably my favorite genre. My definition of Dytopia is: Someone’s Utopia is another’s HELL. Second, Fahrenheit 451 speaks to the time it was written, but also has something to say to future generations of readers. It’s a cautionary tale of a possible future, barely imaginable when he wrote it nearly 60 years ago, and frighteningly close to life today. And as I read this, I couldn’t help but feel we did not listen to the warning.
For instance, when Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451, wallscreen and battery operated televisions weren’t around. Black and white television itself was in its infancy, but the love of Mrs. Montag’s life is her parlor wallscreens that allow her to be surrounded by her “family”, virtually live and in color. A device allows the people on the shows to insert her name and even look like they’re saying it. A device called a Seashell is worn in the ear, and allows a person to hear music, without disturbing those around them, and Mildred Montagwears hers so often that she’s become a proficient lip-reader. I immediately thought of MP3 players… Sam wears hers so much that she had a meltdown the other day when I told her she couldn’t take it to church with her.
Truly, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury was prophetic. The society found in within the pages of the book bear a lot of similarities with our culture today. Disconnected from one another, they/we go about with our devices in our ears (Seashell, MP3 player, cell phone, etc) and no longer take the time for conversations with our neighbors and others we meet in passing, and if we do happen to “chat,” it’s shallower than a pie pan.
They/we are so afraid of offending others that the thought police (Firemen or Political Correctness) have made it socially unacceptable, and in some cases criminal, to express ourselves, even monitoring our own self-talk. Free speech? HA! Congress is doing everything they can to eliminate that little inconvenience.
They/we are so obsessed with instant gratification that they/we no longer want to take the time to think about what they/we read, to let it distill in our souls. So books are flatter and more “pastepudding,” as Bradbury calls it, and the average person is no longer able to read and comprehend a newspaper article… not that they actually have the patience to read a whole one, just the headline and first paragraph, then onto the funnies (and even they are getting too long). Supermarket tabloids, Harlequin romance novels, car and sports magazines are the only books found in some homes, and to be “intelligent” is to be reviled.
I don’t say this often, if I’ve ever said it at all, but Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is a MUST READ. It should be taught in schools and read every year. Oddly enough, this book was actually challenged as part of a school curriculum… A parent wanted to ban a book that is a warning against book banning! How ironic.
Obviously, I give Fahrenheit 451 5 out of 5 stars. READ IT!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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