Recent readings …

I’ve been off work for the past few weeks, which has given me plenty of time to sit in front of the fire and read. A few of the highlights:

• “Minor Characters,” by Joyce Johnson. I’ve read Kerouac’s “On the Road” twice. When I was 18, it was a mind-blowing experience, exposing unlimited vistas and infinite possibilities. But when I re-read it at 40, it was very different. His writing wavered between beautiful bop stream of consciousness and flacid sentences that sprawled limply across the page, often going nowhere. Maybe rewriting isn’t such a bad thing? But mostly, I was appalled by how women were portrayed in the book. They were disposable decorations and temporary diversions. When I heard about Johnson’s book, I ordered it immediately. She was Kerouac’s lover for several years and brings a specifically feminine view of the Beat movement. She’s not bitter. And she’s a very good writer. But she also does a good job of putting women’s role in perspective. A really telling passage is when she’s discussing John Clellon Holmes’ seminal beat novel “Go.” In a preface to a later edition, he explains that each of the male characters in the novel correspond to specific, real people. But the women are “amalgams of several people.” Then Johnson notes: “He can’t quite remember them — they were mere anonymous passengers on the big Greyhound bus of experience. Lacking centers, how could the burn with the fever that infected his young men? What they did, I guess, was fill up seats.” If you’re at all interested in the Beats, Johnson’s book is a must-read.

• “The Plot Against America,” Philip Roth. This one was really creepy. It’s an alternative history, ostensibly, but it’s really chasing something much deeper. It’s an examination of how easily the majority can drift toward tyranny, and what it’s like to be the “other” in society. Roth wonders what would have happened if FDR hadn’t won re-election a third time. Instead, Charles Lindbergh, somewhat anti-Semitic and isolationist, wins and manages to keep the U.S. out of the Second World War. My one disappointment was toward the end, when Roth chooses to drop in a chapter that quickly details all the historical events that transpire before finishing the main thread of the story. I think he might have been trying to undercut the impact of the alternative history and emphasize the human toll of being the “other” in a repressive society, but it felt too expository and interrupted the flow. Still a book that’s worth reading, and some of the contemporary parallels are downright disturbing.

• “Brother Man,” Roger Mais. This is set in Jamaica in the ’50s. Haven’t finished it yet, but it’s an interesting look at the Ras Tafari movement, stripping away the dope smoking caricature that Rastafarianism has become and looking at the roots of the movement through the eyes of Brother Man. Haven’t finished it yet, but so far it’s a great look at Jamaica in the ’50s.