Category Archives: Reading Uncertainly

Reading Uncertainly? ‘And Yet . . . ‘ by Christopher Hitchens

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Here is yet another compendium of literate, acerbic, often hilarious, and thoroughly opinionated essays from Christopher Hitchens, the UK-expatriate who moved to Washington for freedom from monarchy and amusement.

He died in 2011 at the youthful age of 62 but these essays will long outlive him.

He dissects both people (Che Guevara, Edward Kennedy, George Orwell, Barack Obama, Gertrude Bell, Orhan Pamuk, Salman Rushdie, Ian Fleming, Edmund Wilson, and more) and places (Ohio, the Parthenon, Armenia, London, the South, and especially Washington).

His views and ideas always poke fingers into your mind.

Consider: (1) Turkey is “an army that has a country.” (2) “We live in a culture that’s saturated with the cult of personality and with attention to private life.” (3) “ . . . the great soap opera of our existence . . . .” (4) Leaders are “as much the prisoners of events as the masters of them.”

No holiday is exempt from his derision. Twice he lectures us against the celebration of Christmas. His favorite Protestant fundamentalist (Hitchens himself is an outspoken atheist) is Oliver Cromwell, who “banned the celebration of Christmas altogether.”

Hitchens also skewers himself, with three riotous chapters about his attempt toward self-improvement, readily acknowledging his three major flaws: smoking, drinking and gorging on fat food.

Yet he often sheds some new insight. He compliments Barack Obama’s rare qualities as, “…an apparently very deep internal equanimity, and an ability to employ irony at his own expense.”

Even while seeming certain, he acknowledges this, “… age of uncertainty which has now definitively become our age. It seems that there are no rules, golden or otherwise, even natural or otherwise, by which we can define our place in the universe or the cosmos.”

Do read these challenging essays, plus, if you are ambitious, try two of his earlier works, The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever, and god Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. That is correct, the word “god” is deliberately not capitalized.

Hitchen’s conclusion: “ …  internationalism is the highest form of patriotism.”

Editor’s Note: And Yet . . .’ by Christopher Hitchens was published by Simon & Schuster, New York in 2015.

Felix Kloman

About the Author: Felix Kloman is a sailor, rower, husband, father, grandfather, retired management consultant and, above all, a curious reader and writer. He’s explored how we as human beings and organizations respond to ever-present uncertainty in two books, ‘Mumpsimus Revisited’ (2005) and ‘The Fantods of Risk’ (2008). A 20-year resident of Lyme, Conn., he has recently moved to Peabody, Mass.
Felix now writes book reviews, mostly of non-fiction, a subject which explores our minds, our behavior, our politics and our history. But he does throw in a novel here and there.
For more than 50 years, he’s put together the 17 syllables that comprise haiku, the traditional Japanese poetry and, while living in Lyme, served as the self-appointed “poet laureate” of Ashlawn Farm Coffee.
His late wife, Ann, was also a writer, but of mystery novels, all of which begin in a village in midcoast Maine, strangely reminiscent of the town she and her husband visited every summer.

Reading Uncertainly? One Old Man Reads Another — Kloman Reviews Angell’s Latest

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What can I say? One old man reading another!

Roger Angell, the prolific editor and author from the pages of The New Yorker, begins by calling his latest book “a dog’s breakfast, because that’s what this book is. A mélange, a grab bag, a plate of hors d’oeuvres, a teenager’s closet, a bit of everything. A dog’s breakfast.”

Letters, essays from the magazine, the odd haiku, baseball memories – Angell paints an engaging “portrait of my brain at ninety-four.” And, best of all, he repeats a few of the immortal rhymed Christmas couplets started by Frank Sullivan in 1932 and that he continued from 1976 to 2012.

These annual odes to the known and the unknown inspired me to try my hand at a “Greetings, Friends” in 1954 for the Daily Princetonian and again in 1956 for my shipmates on the U.S.S. Zelima, a Navy refrigerator ship moored in Yokosuka, Japan, for the holidays. They were my last Christmas chanteys, deferring to far better poets.

And Angell gives us the perfect conclusion: his report on the fan-less Oriole-White Sox baseball game in Baltimore in April 2015: two teams playing at the soundless Camden Yards in the aftermath of that city’s disruptions.

Memorable names appear on almost every page: his step-father, E. B. (Andy) White, Harold Ross, John Updike, John McPhee, Saul Steinberg, Fiorello La Guardia, James Thurber, Chas. Addams, William Steig, Peter Arno, John Hersey, Vladimir Nabokov, all of whose stories, ideas, and cartoons remain engraved in our memories (at least if you are old enough!)

On aging: To his son on his birthday – “One always tries to weigh the meaning of these ten-year chunks, and the only answer is mortality.” Or: “the rule about age is never to think about it.”

On writing:  “Writing is a two-way process and the hard part isn’t just getting in touch with oneself but keeping in touch with that reader out there, whoever he or she is, on whom all this thought and art and maybe genius will devolve.”

On glee:  “ . . . us people over seventy-five keep surprising ourselves with happiness.”

On reference books: Angell still uses the Eleventh edition (1911) of the Encyclopedia Britannica, while I, some 12 years his junior, refer almost monthly to the Thirteenth.

Why is it that we derive so much pleasure from something written by an author near our own age? I do recall from a few years ago the advice to read a book when you are the same age as when the author wrote it. In this case, sound counsel!

This Old Man is a proper memory stimulant, just when I need it! I’m 88 … on to 94!

Editor’s Note: ‘This Old Man’ by Roger Angell is published by Doubleday, New York 2015.

Felix Kloman

About the Author: Felix Kloman is a sailor, rower, husband, father, grandfather, retired management consultant and, above all, a curious reader and writer. He’s explored how we as human beings and organizations respond to ever-present uncertainty in two books, ‘Mumpsimus Revisited’ (2005) and ‘The Fantods of Risk’ (2008). A 20-year resident of Lyme, Conn., he now writes book reviews, mostly of non-fiction, a subject which explores our minds, our behavior, our politics and our history. But he does throw in a novel here and there. For more than 50 years, he’s put together the 17 syllables that comprise haiku, the traditional Japanese poetry, and now serves as the self-appointed “poet laureate” of Ashlawn Farm Coffee, where he may be seen on Friday mornings.
His late wife, Ann, was also a writer, but of mystery novels, all of which begin in a village in midcoast Maine, strangely reminiscent of the town she and her husband visited every summer.

Reading Uncertainly? ‘American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence’ by Pauline Maier

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Have we over-sanctified the American past in the last 50 years? It may well be, argues Pauline Maier, a professor of history at MIT, in her now-classic analysis of the creation of our Declaration of Independence.

Three key documents epitomize the start of “these” United States: the Declaration, the Constitution, and its following initial amendments, the Bill of Rights. They are indeed worthwhile documents to study, but are they as perfect as we have been led to believe?

Professor Maier argues the Declaration was a product of “the grubby world of eighteenth-century politics,” with contributions from “a cast of thousands.” Its impetus came from a growing belief that monarchy and hereditary rule were “major constitutional errors.”

The simple distance from Great Britain had much to do with their dissatisfaction, too, coupled with insensitive colonial taxation.

She recalls the history that led to the Declaration. First came the English Declaration of Rights that permitted the nobility to restrain the monarch in 1689. But a short sequence of events in 1775 pushed the Continental Congress to action: the Battle of Lexington on April 18-19, 1775, the capture of Fort Ticonderoga by some out-of-control colonials on May 9, Bunker Hill on June 17, the British destruction of Falmouth (now Portland), Maine on Oct. 17, and a similar assault on Norfolk, Va., in January 1776.

By then many states had already declared their removal from English authority, creating enormous pressure on the delegates In Philadelphia during the spring, that pressure spurred the delegates to take joint action. Many state and local governments had already declared their “independence” by July 1776.

As Professor Maier notes, “ . . . the society that adopted Independence was national to a remarkable extent considering that before 1764 the North American colonies had no connection with each other except through Britain.” After 1764 they expressed their “sense of shared grievances.”

While the prime movers of the rushed Declaration in Philadelphia were indeed Thomas Jefferson and his designated “committee,” including John Adams, Roger Sherman, and Thomas Pickering, and, belatedly, Benjamin Franklin, the author argues that many others contributed to its phraseology through prior words and documents, and indeed the Congress altered the Committee’s draft afterwards, before it was published.

It is a fascinating story, especially in that the Declaration seems to have been largely disregarded after it initial acceptance, only to become sanctified when the Federalists and Republicans tussled with each other in the 1820s.

And only more recently have we tried to deify both the words and its creators.

Professor Maier carefully dissects words, phrases, and their contributors, creating a convincing thesis that the Declaration was the work of hundreds, not a few, and that, as a “peculiar document,” it hardly deserves its later sanctification.

She concludes: “The symbolism is all wrong; it suggests a tradition locked in a glorious but dead past, reinforces the passive instincts of an anti-political age, and undercuts the acknowledgement and exercise of public responsibilities essential to the survival of the republic and its ideals.”

By all means read the Declaration, but let’s move on and deal with the present using all that we now know.

It is not “scripture.”

Editor’s Note: ‘American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence,’ by Pauline Maier is published by Vintage Books, New York 1998.

Felix Kloman

About the Author: Felix Kloman is a sailor, rower, husband, father, grandfather, retired management consultant and, above all, a curious reader and writer. He’s explored how we as human beings and organizations respond to ever-present uncertainty in two books, ‘Mumpsimus Revisited’ (2005) and ‘The Fantods of Risk’ (2008). A 20-year resident of Lyme, Conn., he now writes book reviews, mostly of non-fiction, a subject which explores our minds, our behavior, our politics and our history. But he does throw in a novel here and there. For more than 50 years, he’s put together the 17 syllables that comprise haiku, the traditional Japanese poetry, and now serves as the self-appointed “poet laureate” of Ashlawn Farm Coffee, where he may be seen on Friday mornings.
His late wife, Ann, was also a writer, but of mystery novels, all of which begin in a village in midcoast Maine, strangely reminiscent of the town she and her husband visited every summer.

Reading Uncertainly? ‘The Survival of the Bark Canoe’ by John McPhee

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John McPhee, the ever-curious observer, listener, and recorder, has written and published some 30 books, exploring almost every facet of human existence. I’ve just re-read one of his earliest, and best, from 1975, an ode to, of all things, the canoe.

Attracted to the water at an early age, he confesses “the canoe … is the most beautifully simple of all vehicles.” So it is natural that he is attracted to Henri Vaillancourt, a New Hampshireman with Nova Scotian blood, a builder of birchbark canoes, for a mid-life story (McPhee was 44 when he wrote this book.)

McPhee introduces himself, establishes a connection and persuades Vaillancourt to join three of his friends for a lengthy excursion in the far north of Maine’s lakes and rivers. This is the story of that trip.

It begins with no-see-ums, those pestilent creatures that sneak through almost any screening. And as they paddle north, we learn almost everything there is to learn about bark canoes.

What is a wulegessis? It’s a “flap of bark that forms a deck over the bow (or the stern) and extends a short way down the sides of the canoe.” But this is an essential piece of knowledge if you are building your own birchbark canoe, assuming you have the time, energy, and patience!

McPhee recounts the conversations, frictions, stories and favorite words of this group (“bummer” is Henri’s normal), even while diverting to history: how the native Americans developed the “vehicle”, and the story of Thoreau’s similar trip to Maine a century earlier.

He lets the reader know that it is indeed possible to travel in a canoe from New York City to Alaska, and down the Yukon, to the Bering Sea (with, perhaps, a few portages …)

And we learn a few new word meanings: “to frog it” is to manhandle a canoe through shallow, rushing water, standing on its side. And how five men manage their “acute propinquity” during several weeks in the wilderness? Their “continued sense of motions, the clear possession of a course to follow, the sense of journey” bring them all closer together.” Plus the loons forever laughing at them …

The end? They finally reach the conclusion of their travel, disappointed that they have seen not one moose, predicted at their start. Then, as they are driving south, they are forced to the side of the dirt road to let a moose rush by, going north, pursued by a huge truck.

John McPhee is now 90. I eagerly await his next set of musings.

Editor’s Note: ‘The Survival of the Bark Canoe’ by John McPhee is published by Farrar, Straus, Giroux, New York, 1975.

Felix Kloman

About the Author: Felix Kloman is a sailor, rower, husband, father, grandfather, retired management consultant and, above all, a curious reader and writer. He’s explored how we as human beings and organizations respond to ever-present uncertainty in two books, ‘Mumpsimus Revisited’ (2005) and ‘The Fantods of Risk’ (2008). A 20-year resident of Lyme, Conn., he now writes book reviews, mostly of non-fiction, a subject which explores our minds, our behavior, our politics and our history. But he does throw in a novel here and there. For more than 50 years, he’s put together the 17 syllables that comprise haiku, the traditional Japanese poetry, and now serves as the self-appointed “poet laureate” of Ashlawn Farm Coffee, where he may be seen on Friday mornings.
His late wife, Ann, was also a writer, but of mystery novels, all of which begin in a village in midcoast Maine, strangely reminiscent of the town she and her husband visited every summer.

Reading Uncertainly? ‘Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science’ by Richard Dawkins

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“But I digress …”

Ostensibly a continuation of his autobiography, this engrossing and superbly entertaining ramble by Dr. Dawkins, the noted Oxford zoologist, biologist, and humanist, stretches your knowledge and imagination. Is it possible to read an autobiography that is self-acknowledged as a, “Series of flashbacks, divided into themes, punctuated by digressions and anecdotes,” without losing your place, your mind and your direction?

Certainly!

And oh, those digressions: evidence of a perambulating and ever-curious mind. He drops names in his stories, recollections, and diversions, and it is fascination to follow his mind as it rambles over memory’s landscape, “… flitting like a butterfly as the interest takes me.”

Dawkins warns the reader early in his writing with a poem:

What is Life, if full of stress
We have no freedom to digress?
But if the prospect you enrages
You’d better skip the next few pages!

Neither is he reluctant to throw in a pun, trying to bridge the gap between literature and science, as in, “Où sont les C. P. Snow’s d’antan?” (a corruption of the question of one of France’s most famous poets Francois Villon’s question, Mais où sont les neiges d’antan?, which translates into English as the well-known line, “But where are the snows of yester-year?” taken from Villon’s poem Ballade des dames du temps jadis, which, in turn, roughly translates as, “Ballad of the Ladies of Times Gone By.” C.P. Snow refers to Charles Percy Snow, who was an acclaimed English novelist and physical chemist.)

Charles Darwin and natural selection lie at the core of his studies: ”Natural selection is a miserly economist, invisibly counting the pennies, the nuances of cost and benefit too subtle for us, the observing scientists, to notice,” and “gene survival” is our dominant “utility.”

Dawkins is also known for his acerbic reactions to religious dogma and beliefs, a member of a writing group that includes Bertrand Russell, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris. His conclusion: “I have tried but consistently failed to find anything in theology to be serious about. Yet he is equally candid about the ever-present “limitations of science.”

I’ve read his The Selfish Gene, The God Delusion, and The Greatest Show on Earth, and fully intend to continue to be challenged as well as enlightened by his words. His penultimate chapter, some 120 pages, is a review of the themes from his 12 books:

  • Explaining the gene as a replicator and a vehicle
  • Extending the phenotype
  • Genes as a ‘gigantic colony of viruses,” both amicable and malevolent
  • Survival requires avoiding “being too risk-averse” and being “too laid-back.”
  • Using a “functional story” as a ‘powerful aid to memory.”
  • The sonar of bats (Might he have suspected the global arrival of a coronavirus?)
  • “Only changes have surprise value” and “information is a mathematically precise measure of ‘surprise’ “
  • The “power of cumulative natural selection”
  • A cooperative gene is most likely to survive.
  • The “meme” (pronounced like “cream”) is the “new soup of human culture.”
  • And religion: “We have taken on board a convention that religion is off-limits to criticism.,” something that Dawkins resists. We can and should teach about it but we should never indoctrinate children in any particular religious tradition.

Dr. Dawkins’ parting poem, which speaks volumes of the man and his mind, is:

Still time to gentle that good night.
Time to set the world alight.
Time, yet new rainbows to unweave,
Ere going on Eternity Leave.

Editor’s Note: ‘Brief Candle in the Dark’ by Richard Dawkins was published by HarperCollins, New York 2015.

Felix Kloman

About the Author: Felix Kloman is a sailor, rower, husband, father, grandfather, retired management consultant and, above all, a curious reader and writer. He’s explored how we as human beings and organizations respond to ever-present uncertainty in two books, ‘Mumpsimus Revisited’ (2005) and ‘The Fantods of Risk’ (2008).
A 20-year resident of Lyme, Conn., he now writes book reviews, mostly of non-fiction, a subject which explores our minds, our behavior, our politics and our history. But he does throw in a novel here and there.
For more than 50 years, he’s put together the 17 syllables that comprise haiku, the traditional Japanese poetry, and now serves as the self-appointed “poet laureate” of Ashlawn Farm Coffee, where he may be seen on Friday mornings.
His late wife, Ann, was also a writer, but of mystery novels, all of which begin in a village in midcoast Maine, strangely reminiscent of the town she and her husband visited every summer.