First lines: September and October 2019 edition

In September I finished four books.  In October I only managed to finish two books, and one was a slim volume of poetry.  There was just too much else to read, too much in the news cycle to try to comprehend.  And a fair amount of canvassing and time spent managing some aspects of the life of elderly relatives.

At the synagogue, we recently finished this book, collectively: 

This photo only shows half of the torah scroll.

This is the tradition on Simchat Torah.  First we dance around joyously with the Torah scrolls (in their covers).  Then one of the Torah scrolls is unrolled all the way.  It goes across the entire sanctuary, and requires the participation of lots of people to hold it.  Then Rabbi reads the end of Deuteronomy, runs across the sanctuary to Genesis, and reads the beginning of the Torah.  Then he rolls it up so that it is set at the beginning again.   This process is joyful, but it also gives me an appreciation for the invention of the book (with pages) as opposed to a scroll.  

The first lines are 

When God began to create heaven and earth — the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water — God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.

Rabbi said that "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth..." is not a good translation.   The translation he prefers gives more of a feeling of continuity.

Here are the first lines of the books I finished in Sep and Oct, followed by the titles.

Book 1

The cross and the lynching tree are separated by nearly 2,000 years. One is the universal symbol of Christian faith; the other is the quintessential symbol of black oppression in America.

Book 2

Big Moccasin Gap

Gate City is more than four hundred miles from Arlington, down the long spine of mountains that marks Virginia’s western border. 

Book 3

I saw you once.  I saw you and you noticed me because you caught me looking at you, seeing you.  Back and forth, back and forth.  Good-looking women do that.  Lock eyes, then look one another up and down.

Book 4

My mother and I drove east across the flatlands, along the vast floor of an ancient sea. We had come to West Texas to spend Thanksgiving in the national park where my mother worked as a ranger during the years when I formed my first childhood memories—images of wooded canyons and stone mountains rising up from the earth, the sound of wind whipping across low desert hills, the warmth of the sun beating down upon endless scrublands.

Book 5 – full disclosure – did not finish this one

Chapter 1: Jojo

I like to think I know what death is. I like to think that it’s something I could look at straight.

Book 6

Ove is fifty-nine.

He drives a Saab.  He’s the kind of man who points at people he doesn’t like the look of, as if they were burglars and his forefinger a policeman’s flashlight. 

Book 7

To the Fig Tree on 9^th and Christian

Tumbling through the

city in my

mind without once

looking up

the racket in

the lugwork probably

rehearsing some

stupid thing I

said or did

some crime or

other the city they

say is a lonely

place until yes

the sound of sweeping

and a woman

yes with a

broom beneath

which you are now

too the canopy

of a fig its

arms pulling the

September sun to it

…

The titles and authors revealed:

Book 1

The Cross and the Lynching Tree, by James Cone. 

Theology.

Excerpts:

Until we can see the cross and the lynching tree together, until we can identify Christ with a “recrucified” black body hanging from a lynching tree, there can be no genuine understanding of Christian identity in America, and no deliverance from the brutal legacy of slavery and white supremacy.

What I studied in graduate school ignored white supremacy and black resistance against it, as if they had nothing to do with the Christian gospel and the discipline of theology. Silence on both white supremacy and the black struggle against racial segregation made me angry with a fiery rage that had to find expression. How could any theologian explain the meaning of Christian identity in America and fail to engage white supremacy, its primary negation?

Book 2

Born Fighting by Jim Webb. 

History of/apologetics for “Scots-Irish culture” in the United States.  Good writing; disagree completely with the thesis.  

I have to stop here and say that I was reading these two books (Born Fighting and The Cross and the Lynching Tree) at the same time, which was a great way to produce intellectual whiplash.  I hope to find time to tell you more about these books.  But there is an election in two days, and there’s too much to do.

Book 3

Lady in the Lake, by Laura Lippman.  © 2019. 

I did not like any of the characters.  Certainly did not like the main character, Maddie Schwartz – she was shallow and self-serving.  But the writing was good and after about 100 pages I settled in to enjoy the narrative style which alternated between 3rd person omniscient, and then first-person as told by a minor character in the preceding chapter.  The book takes place in Baltimore in 1966.  Ironically, the residential street I grew up on is mentioned!

Book 4

The Line Becomes a River, by Francisco Cantu.  © 2018. 

The author served as a border guard from 2008 to 2012.  He left that job to get an advanced degree.  This book gave me a lot to think about.  I recommend it.

Book 5

Sing, Unburied, Sing, by Jesmyn Ward.  © 2017.   Excellent writing, but I could not finish.  

Book 6

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman, translated by Henning Koch.  © 2014.   Funny and poignant.  We read it for book club.

Book 7

catalog of unabashed gratitude by Ross Gay.  © 2015 (University of Pittsburgh Press).  Poetry. 

This poet does not much believe in the period.  Each poem is pretty much one long run-on sentence, and this style propels the reader through each poem like the Niagara River rushing to its destiny at the falls.  That’s not necessarily bad, for poetry, but at first it was shocking to me.   It was nearly impossible to find a stopping place for my quote of the “first lines” above.

I do not claim to understand each poem, but I read this more as I read the book of Revelation (the Bible).  The reading technique is to just read the words and soak in the images and feelings.  Ross Gay’s poems in this volume include a lot of fruit and sweetness, and above all else, motion.