Naomi Klein, Doppelganger *** 1/2

Naomi Klein is a journalist and author who writes books of cultural criticism on subjects such as climate change, globalization, and predatory capitalism. Naomi Wolf is a journalist and author who writes books of cultural criticism primarily about feminism. Due to their similar names, ages, and professions, the two Naomi's are frequently mistaken for each other. This confusion bothers Naomi Klein because "the Other Naomi" has become a prominent purveyor of conspiracy theories and frequent guest on Steve Bannon's podcast. People often attribute Wolf's problematic views to Klein.

In this book, Klein thinks about how she and Wolf ended up in such different places after similar early careers. Her investigation gets her thinking about what she calls "the Mirror World" where hard-right commentators ape the vocabulary and rhetoric of the left to diametrically opposed ends. She argues that our entire society has a doppelganger, a double that arises from the problems that we ignore or suppress.

Klein travels far afield, with chapters about COVID conspiracy theories, anti-vaccination crusades, anti-Semitism, climate change, capitalism, and colonialism. The common thread of right vs left discourse on these subjects is that the right favors individualistic explanations while the left favors systemic explanations; for example, manipulation by a shadowy cabal of billionaires vs manipulation by the capitalistic system. Her "hopeful" conclusion is appropriately leftist (i.e. systemic):

We live in a society that encourages and rewards the uncaring parts of ourselves... If we want more people to make better choices...we need better structures and systems.

Her idea reminded me of a book I read many years ago called Crimes of Obedience: Toward a Social Psychology of Authority and Responsibility. The authors of that book investigated situations where a person had to decide whether to obey authority that asked them to do bad things: the My Lai massacre, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and more mundane tasks at work. Like Klein, they concluded that we needed better systems to support making moral decisions.

Klein sometimes seems to get off track, but she made several arguments that I found compelling: that our doubles represent an irruption of issues we have suppressed, that conservatives and wellness advocates share concerns about purity and perfectability, that our visceral reaction to the Final Solution derives from a recognition of the (suppressed) fact that European colonizers treated native populations similarly, that we can adjust our institutions to promote the common good rather than ruthless advancement. She alternates between sounding naive and despairing, as befits a doppelganger.

Louise Erdrich, The Sentence ***

The Sentence has a modest amount of plot, but the pleasures of the book have little to do with the story. The narrator works at an independent bookstore in Minneapolis that is owned and staffed by Indigenous women––just like the real-life Birchbark Books owned by the author. I enjoyed the camaraderie among the staff and the descriptions of everyday customer interactions (including book recommendations!). 

On All Saints Day 2019, they learn that their most annoying customer has died but she continues to haunt the store. A few months later, COVID-19 strikes followed by the killing of George Floyd. The characters react to these events in ways that are subtly but unmistakably Indigenous. It's those shadings that give the story its meaning and interest.

David Hajdu, Lush Life ****

Lush Life is a biography of the composer, arranger, and pianist Billy Strayhorn. Strayhorn is best known for his collaboration with Duke Ellington. He wrote Ellington's signature piece "Take the 'A' Train" among other classics such as "Satin Doll, " "Chelsea Bridge," and "Lush Life." As impressive as his list of songs is, it severely understates his contributions. He co-wrote many pieces credited to Ellington alone and arranged nearly all of the Ellington Orchestra charts.

Strayhorn purposely kept himself out of the limelight because it enabled him to live his life as he wanted. He was gay, which would have been a problem if he was a public figure like Ellington. He was a bon vivant well respected and liked among musicians and the black cultural elite of the time. He died young, age 51, of esophageal cancer.

Hadju's main goal is to give Strayhorn the recognition that he deserves. The cult of Duke Ellington tends to efface Strayhorn's contributions lest they undermine the case for Ellington's genuis. Ellington himself  always acknowledged the depth of their partnership when asked, but didn't raise objections when a profile (or song copyright) neglected to mention Strayhorn.

Lush Life is an enjoyable and well-written biography. Hadju conveys the characters of Strayhorn and Ellington effectively without resorting to imaginative psychologizing. He chooses apt quotes from supporting characters, giving us a sense of their personalities too. He covers Strayhorn's many projects without bogging down in exhausting details about recording dates and set lists. 

For your listening pleasure, I recommend the CD released with this biography and Duke Ellington's tribute album ...And His Mother Called Him Bill.

Oakley Hall, Warlock *** 1/2

Warlock is a Western, named after the fictional town in which it takes place. In 1881, the town is just beyond the edge of civilization, a day's ride from the nearest sheriff and courthouse. The Apaches have been subdued, but gangs of cattle rustlers still wreak havoc. The chamber of commerce hires a famous gunslinger as marshal to keep the peace.

The story features all the archetypes of a Western: gunfighters, deputies, rustlers, miners, whores, business tycoons, frightened townsfolk. The action is based on historical events such as the gunfight at the OK Corral and the Lincoln County War. The author's purpose is to show how these legends form. 

The characters carefully consider their actions, balancing the demands of their conscience, their job responsibilities, social expectations, and their reputation in posterity. The town council orders the marshal to throw four troublemakers out of town, three men who robbed the stagecoach and a union organizer from the local mine. How can the marshal justify "posting" the three thieves but not the union man? He has been hired to enforce the will of the town council not the law (he is a marshal not a sheriff). If he enforces rules based on no higher authority than his conscience, is he any more than a tyrant?

The best and most distinctive aspect of Warlock is its careful consideration of its characters' ethical dilemmas. That's also what slows the story down between its big action sequences. There are longueurs before and after each major event, with each character evaluating the consequences.

One of the major events in the book is a strike at the Medusa mine. I don't feel like this plot thread got the full attention it deserved.

Sterling Hayden, Wanderer **** 1/2

Wanderer is not your typical actor's memoir. Only 40 of its 400 pages discuss the author's Hollywood career, and his tone is entirely scornful. Far more time is devoted to Hayden's sailing adventures. He worked as an AB seaman, a dory fisherman, foretopman on a racing crew, schooner captain, and owner of various decrepit ships. He commanded sailing vessels in the Mediterranean during World War II and cooperated with the House Un-American Affairs Committee in the 1950s. He also got married a few times, but he doesn't talk much about that. In 1959 he defied a court order and sailed to Tahiti with his young children.

The first time I read Wanderer I was most struck by how much commercial shipping was still under sail in the 1930s. This time I was entertained by how often Hayden made bold decisions to change his life, and how quickly he regretted each of those decisions.

The best thing about Wanderer is not the adventures but its self-reproachful protagonist. Sterling Hayden is a fascinating, frustrating, unpleasant character. It's unusual to encounter such a personality in an autobiography. As author and subject, Hayden recounts parts of his story in the first person, parts in the third person, with some second person sprinkled in. There is a dissertation to be written about how he chooses which episodes to narrate in which form.

My copy of Wanderer is a worn pocket-sized Bantam Books edition with a cover price of 85 cents. Reading it in this format added to my enjoyment.

Mark Haber, Reinhardt's Garden ***

The précis of Reinhardt's Garden seems almost AI generated to get me to buy the book. An obsessive protagonist wanders through South America jungles in search of a legendary prophet of melancholy philosophy; comparisons to Nabokov, Borges, Aira, Bernhard, and Werner Herzog; a compact 150 pages.

I enjoyed Jacov's theory that melancholy, "the unspoken and spiritual sadness of the soul, is transcendental, divine, and nothing a wise person should run from, but instead something to meet head on, to aspire to." His expressed his enthusiasm on the topic in language that reminded me of Schopenhauer, including his philosophy's ties to the First Noble Truth of Buddhism. I also appreciated how architecture of his intentionally baffling castle reflected his mind.

However, the narrative is serviceable at best. Surprisingly little time is spent in the South American rainforest, and the story of Jacov pursuing his obsession is more absurd than compelling. The vague echoes of other stories increased the uncanny feeling that I was reading a generated narrative.

David Grann, The Wager ****

The Wager is a non-fiction seafaring adventure tale. The title is the name of a British ship that wrecked on a desolate Patagonian island in 1741. A year later, a boatload of survivors arrived in Brazil, telling a story about the descent into anarchy on the island and their heroic escape. The following year, another group of survivors turned up in Chile with a somewhat different story. Who caused the shipwreck? Was there a mutiny? Did the captain commit murder? Perhaps the truth would come out at the court-martial proceedings for all of them.

The flap copy explains that the narrative has three distinct parts:

Grann's re-creation of the hidden world on a British warship rivals the work of Patrick O'Brian, his portrayal of the castaway's desperate straits stands up to the classics of survival writing such as The Endurance, and his account of the court-martial has the savvy of a Scott Turow thriller.

There is actually one further part of the story: the fate of the rest of the squadron of which Wager was a part. The book does not pay equal attention to each of these parts: the pre-shipwreck journey covers nearly half the pages, the court-martial just a single chapter. Grann's depiction of sailing on Wager is far more vivid than his accounts of the survivors' perilous journeys.

Grann tells the story in chronological order. I think he missed an opportunity to enhance the mystery and drama of his tale by interleaving chapters about the arrival of the survivors with flashback chapters about the disputed events on Wager Island. That's how Scott Turow would have done it,