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| Our cherry tree. Not on Cherry-Tree Lane, though. |
Here are the first lines of the books I
finished reading in April. My selections
this month all seemed to contain some form of gaslighting, a vicious psychological
manipulation in which the perpetrator tries to get the victim to question reality. And family features prominently, in one form or another.
Book 1
The handsome dining room of the Hotel Wessex,
with its gilded plaster shields and the mural depicting the Green Mountains,
had been reserved for the Ladies’ Night Dinner of the Fort Beulah Rotary Club.
Book 2
If you want to find Cherry-Tree Lane all you
have to do is ask the policeman at the crossroads.
Book 3
I’m standing on the red railway car that sits
abandoned next to the barn. The wind soars, whipping my hair across my face and
pushing a chill down the open neck of my shirt.
Book 4
This report is submitted to the Attorney
General pursuant to 28 C.F.R. § 600.8(c), which states that, "[a]t the
conclusion of the Special Counsel 's work, he ... shall provide the Attorney
General a confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions
[the Special Counsel] reached."
Book 5
The villagers of Little Hangleton still
called it “the Riddle House,” even though it had been many years since the
Riddle family had lived there.
The titles and authors revealed:
Book 1
It Can’t Happen Here, by
Sinclair Lewis. © 1935. In which “the Right Honorable Mr. Senator Berzelius Windrip” snatches the
Democratic Party nomination from FDR, and comes to power as POTUS. This fascist comes from the left, but to get
to power employs gaslighting, anti-Semitism, and racism just the same as any fascist does. Such tyranny hasn’t happened here on a
national scale (yet) for white people.
But can it?
Here’s Lewis’ description of Berzelius ‘Buzz’
Windrip:
The Senator
was vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily detected, and in his “ideas”
almost idiotic, while his celebrated piety was that of a traveling salesman for
church furniture, and his yet more celebrated humor the sly cynicism of a
country store. …
Certainly
there was nothing exhilarating in the actual words of his speeches, nor
anything convincing in his philosophy. His political platforms were only wings
of a windmill. …
[He] would
coldly and almost contemptuously jab his crowds with figures and facts—figures
and facts that were inescapable even when, as often happened, they were
entirely incorrect. …
he bellowed
his anger like Jeremiah cursing Jerusalem, or like a sick cow mourning its
kidnaped young. …
He grinned
and knee-patted and back-slapped; and few of his visitors, once they had talked
with him, failed to look upon him as their Little Father and to support him
forever. . .. The few who did fail, most of them newspapermen, disliked the
smell of him more than before they had met him. . .. Even they, by the unusual spiritedness
and color of their attacks upon him, kept his name alive in every column. …
By contrast, here’s Windrip’s Republican
opponent running for President:
Walt
Trowbridge conducted his campaign as placidly as though he were certain to win. … The conspicuous fault of the Jeffersonian
Party, like the personal fault of Senator Trowbridge, was that it represented
integrity and reason, in a year when the electorate hungered for frisky
emotions…
Book 2
Mary Poppins, by P.L.
Travers. © 1934.
I read this (again) because we watched
“Saving Mr. Banks” on Netflix which gave me a new perspective on this childhood
favorite. My reaction, as a child, to
the Mary Poppins movie was kind of the same as the author’s: Mary Poppins was supposed to be much more
stern than Julie Andrews portrayed her.
It must be said that in the book Mary Poppins is a gaslighter, telling
the children they didn’t see what they saw.
Book 3
Educated by Tara Westover. © 2018. Memoir.
Everyone has raved about this
book, but I found it difficult to take.
This book has a Class A gaslighter in it. I read it for book club, but then was not
able to attend book club. It’s a good
book-club book - there’s a lot here to discuss.
Book 4
Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016
Presidential Election, by Special Counsel Robert S.
Mueller, III. Washington, D.C. March 2019
A.k.a. The Mueller Report
I think I have never read a written work with
so many footnotes (2,375, an average of 6 per page of text). My main conclusion
is that Mueller is a wimp and that the Trump Campaign and Administration, i.e.
the Trump Family, has zero regard for US democracy. This time the gaslighting is done by the
POTUS to his own staff. For more on the
Mueller report, see my Mueller Report Haiku.
Book 5
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (#4 in the series). Not my favorite Harry
Potter book, the first time around. Nor
this second time. It reads like a movie
script, with very little character development, I felt. This one gets distinctly bloodier than the
earlier books in the series.
3 comments:
So far I've left Educated at the book store.
I recall reading Mary Poppins and she seemed less likeable in the book than in the movie. But I'd not thought of her as a gaslighter. Hm.
Where on earth did you dig up that first title? Crazy!
This is really cool, but the Goblet of Fire is my favourite in the series (I've only read the series once, a long time ago, so I can't defend this, it's just what I remember thinking at the time) and I'm experiencing the irrational sorrow I always feel when someone I like doesn't like a book I like. Now I'm also upset that I've used the word 'like' so many times.
I loved the Mary Poppins books as a kid and now I'm wondering why I never read them to my kids when they were younger.
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