Surrender, New York by Caleb Carr

Photo: Hardcover front, from its Wikipedia page

Alternately good, and bad, well-written, and lazy, erudite, and at times pedantic, this book has got to be the most Jekyll-and-Hyde I've ever read. It really almost defies explanation. Some of the writing almost approaches The Alienist, but this book overall is nowhere near that great book, frustrating because it's the same author, and it's obvious that it could go there, but...

The book opens well enough, I guess, but it takes awhile for the crime to show itself. When it does, it's well-written and atmospheric. You won't think of a mobile home quite the same way again. One Goodreads reviewer hated it, but it's well-done. All of the crime scenes are well-written and thoroughly imagined--one of them perhaps a little too much so, involving a baby, a toilet, and a guy who gets shot 46 times. There's overkill there, and it isn't with the 46 shots. The ending is satisfying; in fact, it works better than it has any right to, but it's a case of been there and done that for me, the main character and one of the cops.

So that's all well and good. What wasn't:

--Normally long books don't bother me. I'm okay with long, leisurely strolls of a book, when it's okay that it sometimes takes circuitous paths. Some Stephen King books are like that. Lots of books 1850-1950 were like that. The Alienist and its sequel are a little like that, though they're tight and well-written a helluva lot more often than they're not. But this one is bloated solely because Caleb Carr falls in love, lazily, with his main character, his sidekick, a young boy who joins them, and a cheetah. (Yes.)  Fact is, with a little editing, the locker-room jiving between Dr. Jones and Dr. Li could've been tolerable. But there's no editing, from the publisher, the writer, or from the characters themselves--and they become sophomoric, boring and an absolute trial. Carr was maybe trying for a bit of 48 Hours-like dialogue here, but Jones and Li aren't Nolte and Murphy, and it's an eye-rolling mess. You don't like them together. You don't like how they talk. You wish they'd shut up and grow up and for God's sake shut up again. Curb some of their painful banter that Carr clearly enjoys and you lop off a good 50, 75 maybe 100 pages. After page 475 or so, I began skipping over it and just looking for the plot points.

--You'd think I was a prude when I say that the sheer number of f-bombs (and similar words) defies belief. I mean, there are hundreds of them, perhaps more, in this almost 600 page book. I'm not kidding when I guess that there's at least, on average, one per page. I'm guessing there are about 750 such bombs, and they're said by two doctors and a young kid. There are so many of them that I kept imagining Annie Wilkes's diatribe against lazy swearing in writing. Her speech perfectly fits this book. There are that many, and by God she may have been right. And I was incredibly happy to see that literally every review I read--from Michael Connelly's very favorable review in the New York Times, to other appreciative reviews, to some scathing Goodreads reviews--they all mention the sheer unbelievable number of obscenities. And we all wondered, How could Caleb Carr not hear them? How could he not notice how many there are, and how bad it is?

--The love interest for the almost 40-year old main character is beautiful, blonde--and 20. (Yes.) Need I say more? Carr's descriptions of their interactions and budding romance simply aren't believable.

--Kudos to bringing to the nation's attention the existence of "throwaway children," which in my job I've seen more often than I'd care to remember. But the (bloated, overlong) plot device of a governor, an Assistent D.A. and various other relevant law enforcement and political figures covering it up because they're afraid it'll make them look bad? It's been a problem since the 80s, and it's already made every state look bad. Simply not believable.

--Long, windy novels work when the narration is folksy and believable, or the characters are very likable. Neither is the case here. So it's not a long, leisurely walk. It's a stumble. When you agree to read a long tome, which Carr clearly likes to write, and that's fine, then you're readily sacrificing the time and you're willing to go along with a narrator, wherever he takes you, which you're aware could be all over the place. But, again, the plot has to be agreeably labyrinthine, which this isn't. Or it has to be agreeably written and smooth and light as a feather, which this isn't. Or the main character and his world have to be very likable, or at least very relatable--and they're not. Frankly, all of the reviewers I read agreed that Dr. Jones isn't all that agreeable a guy. This is bad because a) it makes it even more unbelievable that a beautiful 20-year old would fall for him so quickly, and b) because it's obvious that Jones is a stand-in for Carr himself, so in essence we're not agreeably relating to the author as a person. Makes you feel bad.

And so you might be wondering why I rated it 3 out of 5, which means I liked it. I suppose I would've given it 2 1/2, if I could have, and maybe even 2, but overall the promise of it, and of Carr's potential, kept me going, until I couldn't take Jones and Li anymore and I started skimming. I have to admit that I just read the last 125 pages to see who done it, and to see what happens to Ambyr, to be honest with you. Lucas, too, I suppose, though he was too precocious for me. The last half feels like maybe it was mailed in, though the resolution is written much better than the 100 or so pages before it.

So don't be looking for Carr's earlier, better works, like The Alienist, because you won't find it here. Though this was light years better than the one previous to this, an incredibly long, convoluted, badly-written mess about a forgotten culture in the middle of the German forest, and really one of the more clear Did Not Finish I've ever had. That one wasn't a book to be put aside lightly--it was to be thrown with great force. (Apologies to Dorothy Parker.) Anyway, here's to hoping that Carr goes back to the beginning, and really analyzes why Lazlo's books worked, and his latest hasn't.

All (as of 10/16) of Trump's Bullying and Biased Quotes in One Place and with Links

Photo: Trump (left) and Alec Baldwin (right) from this MSN article about Trump dissing Baldwin.

Each of the following examples has a link to a page that has the YouTube video appropriate to each item. This is from a list from an article outlining The Washington Post's closing statement about Donald Trump's candidacy. The comments, of course, are mine. But click the link to see the YouTube videos. Seeing Trump mimic and mock a physically disabled reporter really has to be seen to be believed.

1. "When you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the -----. You can do anything." October 2016

That's the infamous Access Hollywood tape. He called it "locker room talk," but as I've blogged before, it isn't. It's sexual assault talk. The laughter you hear in the tape is Billy Bush, formerly of NBC. He's getting a $10 million buyout from the network--which means that NBC would rather give him $10 million for free, than to have him work for them and earn it. If a network distances itself from Billy Bush, who only laughed and egged Trump on, shouldn't America distance itself from Trump, for free, simply by voting for somebody else?

By the way, having been in plenty of locker rooms--both as a former ballplayer and as an older guy--I can tell you with 1000% certainty that A) that isn't locker room talk, and B) guys who talk like that also think like that, and they do so all the time, not just in locker rooms.

2. "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best...They're bringing crime. They're rapists." June 16, 2015

If you believe this, you're as racist as Trump is. I don't know how else to say it. Besides bias, this shows a shocking lack of historical perspective. From the 1920s to the end of WW2, millions of European immigrants came to this country. Italians, Germans, French...millions. Assuming all of the Mexicans were criminals is like assuming all of the Italians were mafia figures or mobmen wannabes. They weren't. My grandfather wasn't. Your ancestors most likely weren't, either. Were a few of them? Of course. Trump's ancestors gave birth to someone who sexually assaulted women and somehow slithered his way around tax fraud--both federal crimes. So who's the criminal now?

And do you want a President who will obviously be biased towards Mexicans, women and plenty of other demographics? Do you want a biased President at all, towards anyone? If you do, vote Trump.

3. "I like people that weren't captured." July 18, 2015

This is Trump talking about John McCain, who was a prisoner-of-war for a number of years--and a popular figure in his own party. This is unforgivable. I didn't vote for McCain (Palin also had something to do with that), but I had no problem with him as a person--with what little I knew about him. He won points with me for telling a woman at his rally that Obama was not a terrorist, that he was a decent family man with whom he had political disagreements. That's class. Trump wouldn't have done that. He instigates such falsehoods and then blows them up. But you don't slander an American war veteran, especially one who was tortured for his country for many years. The lack of respect shown here proves he will have the same lack of respect for anybody. As we have seen...

By the way, Trump evaded the draft five times. And I like people who don't criticize war veterans for being captured.

4. "You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her, whatever." August 7, 2015.

This was the first warning shot before his full-front verbal assault on women. (The physical assaults apparently started over 30 years ago.) But, yeah, a candidate for President mocked a woman's period, and the entire world heard it. A woman he thought was against him. A foe. He didn't respond with a logical argument, or stats about something relevant, or even a witty comeback. Nope. Like a four year-old, he went right for the lowest denominator. I grew up with a mother and two sisters, and I can tell you I would've gotten my block knocked off if I'd ever disrespected a woman like that. This was the first hint for some of his complete disregard (and fear) of women in general.

5. "Thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down." November 21, 2015.

This was Trump saying that he somehow saw thousands of Muslims in a New Jersey city cheering on 9/11 as the buildings fell. This is a scary lie, because it says he believes that somehow every Muslim in America knew that the attack was on. (Similar to how racists used to think that every black person had a mysterious method of communication with every other black person during the Civil War and during slavery.) They didn't. And not every 9/11 attacker was Muslim. And blaming all Muslims for 9/11 is like blaming every Christian for each of The Crusades. Not logical. But worse, it's hate-mongering. And it's teaching that hate and bigotry are okay. And it's teaching that facts are irrelevant. The lunatic fringe will think, speak and believe lunacy, but the rest of America shouldn't.

Do we want a President who thinks these things? Do we want a President who Hates close to that red button?

When Plague Strikes: Blame and Bias

 

Photos: Pieter Bruegel's "The Triumph of Death," and an AIDS victim, from this link: http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/photos/plague/#/plague-painting_3338_600x450.jpg

This book is an excellent primer for anyone interested in plagues.  I read this to research The Gravediggers, and while it didn't teach me anything new (except exact names and dates), it does put many of my novel's themes in the same place for ease when I'm writing.

Essentially it focuses on the social, political and historical aftermath of the plague outbreaks.  I like that it groups AIDS together with the Black Death, as my novel does, and that it connects the social biases at the times as well.  My novel does that, too, but it's nice to get reinforcement of your ideas.

When the plagues hit, nobody understood them, and so many prevailed upon the bias of the time to find scapegoats.  But, really, if allowed to hate and maim, certain people will be happy to do so, regardless of the circumstances surrounding their actions.  And so:

From the chapter "Looking for Scapegoats" re: the Black Death:

"In 1213, Pope Innocent III decreed that both sexes, from age seven or eight, had to wear circular badges of yellow felt that identified them as Jews..."  The book then draws the parallel between those badges and the ones forced upon the Jews by the Nazis almost 600 years later.

"According to the rumors, the Jews were polluting the wells in the Christian communities with poisons imported from Moorish Spain and the Far East.  If Christians drank water from the wells...they would be infected with the plague and die..."

"...the rumors led to eleven Jews being put on trial in September 1348.  They were charged with having poisoned the wells in a small south German town.  After hours of painful torture, the eleven confessed to the deed and said they had received the poison from a rabbi in Spain...

"...In January 1349, the two hundred Jewish residents of Basel, Switzerland, were herded into a wooden building on an island in the Rhine River and burned alive..." (Giblin 36-7).

There's much more, but you get the idea.  (I don't know why I was surprised by Switzerland's involvement, considering its history of neutrality, but I was.)

Though the Native Americans were not blamed for causing smallpox, colonists and Europeans were quick to use it against them.  The most infamous was Sir Jeffrey Amherst, commander-in-chief of British forces in North America, who was unwise enough to put it in writing.  This was sent to a colonel:

"Could it not be contrived to send the smallpox among these...tribes of Indians?  We must on this occasion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them."  The colonel's response: "I will try to [infect] the Indians with some blankets that may fall in their hands..."  Amherst's enthusiastic response: "You will do well to try to infect the Indians by means of blankets...as well as to try every other method that can serve to extirpate this execrable race" (Giblin 86-7).

The British and the colonists were so happy with the results that Amherst, Massachusetts was named in his honor.

Those of my generation remember the bias against homosexuals when AIDS made its appearance here in the early-to-mid-80s.  I do specifically remember (unfortunately) some diatribes by Pat Buchanan and Jerry Falwell.  So, too, apparently, did this book's author:

"The conservative columnist Patrick J. Buchanan wrote, 'The poor homosexuals--they have declared war on nature, and now nature is exacting an awful retribution.'...

"In a statement that sounded remarkably similar to some made by clergymen at the time of the Black Death and during early smallpox epidemics, the Rev. Jerry Falwell said: 'When you violate moral, health, and hygiene laws, you reap the whirlwind.  You cannot shake your fist in God's face and get away with it."

And it hasn't always been just the clergy, or the conservative.  Haters will hate, if just given a cause to hate about:

"Wielding baseball bats, the youths rampaged through a public park frequented by gays.  They shouted 'diseased queers' and 'plague-carrying faggots' as they beat up every man unlucky enough to be in their path.  After his arrest, one of the attackers tried to defend his actions.  'If we don't kill these fags, they'll kill us with their f---[ing] AIDS disease,' he said" (Giblin 135-6).

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

What will the next plague be?  And who'll be blamed and persecuted for it then?

My guess: Ebola.  Who'll be prejudiced against for it?  We'll see.  Hopefully not brown-eyed little Frenchmen, but who knows?