Tag Archives: Gladiola Overdrive

A Tribute to Unknown

So many people have created stunning works of art, and we don’t know their names.  So many more people have created crap and because they are impossible to shame, everyone knows their names.  In terms of literature, some of the most interesting and inspiring works were written by history’s most prolific author:  Unknown. 

It’s Unknown who wrote the Old Testament, as it’s called by Christians.  Jews call it the Torah, which means Jesus Christ!  Quit coopting our stuff.  You do this all the time.  It’s also Unknown who wrote Pearl, Sundiata, El Cid, The Epic of Gilgamesh, Fifty Shades of Grey (The Geriatric Years), Beowulf, and many more works that put bone and flesh on the human condition.

We don’t need social media to inform us that Fame is fickle. We don’t need more grieving parents to remind us that Equity and Justice have never lived here. Time strips away everything we treasure, so it’s a blessing these works have survived in any form.  Even if the poets’ names are lost in the dank cellar of Antiquity’s library, their voices have survived . . . thus far.  Remember poor Sappho.  Her name survives but callous Time has denied us so much of her voice. 

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor – July 17, 2017

David Copperfield in Appalachia

What do Victorian London and 21st century Appalachia, during the height of the opioid crisis, have in common? Weird accents, obviously. Questionable fashion choices, no doubt. But according to Barbara Kingsolver, there’s much more, and she makes a convincing case in her 2023 Pulitzer winning novel, Demon Copperhead. There’s the complete disregard for people living in extreme poverty. There’s the refusal to acknowledge an economic system designed to keep them impoverished. And there’s the abandoned children who far outnumber the people capable of helping them. Those children are everywhere, and their circumstances are dire. Yet, somehow, this novel is about strength and resiliency. It has a heart and a funny bone – a rather small funny bone, but given the subject matter that also is an accomplishment.

The novel begins in the 1990s in Lee County, Virginia. If you go any further west, you’re in Kentucky or Tennessee. It’s the heart of Appalachia – remote, mountainous, and poor. Damon Fields was born between a coal camp and a settlement called Right Poor. His father died before he was born. It’s not an auspicious start, and it gets worse. His mother was an 18-years old single mom. She was also an addict, and a “kid born to the junkie is a junkie” as far as society is concerned.

When Damon’s red hair comes in, everyone calls him Demon Copperhead. This is a nod to the snake-handling Baptist preachers on his father’s side and to the copperhead snakes that infest the mountains. But Demon learns quickly the snakes that slither are far less dangerous than the snakes that walk. When his mother dies from an overdose, he is put in the cruel foster system where he is raised to be a “proud mule in a world that has scant use for mules.”

Eventually he is placed with an alcoholic high school football coach and his daughter, Angus, who perhaps is the person who cares most for him. Surprisingly Demon becomes a star high school football player. When he suffers a serious knee injury, the team doctor prescribes these little pain pills to “help” him. Within weeks Demon is addicted to opioids, like nearly every other child in Lee County. Angus wants to help, but “she is not in the business of throwing her life away so other people can stay shitfaced.”

Demon Copperhead is a thorough excoriation of how companies like Perdu Pharma cynically hooked nearly all of Appalachia on opioids – all while society looked the other way. Kingsolver sugarcoats nothing, and her portrayal of addiction’s ravages is searing. She won’t allow you to look the other way.

So the name Demon Copperhead reminds me a little of Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield. Is there any connection? Yes, but you get no points for that. In her acknowledgements, Kingsolver expresses gratitude to Charles Dickens for “writing David Copperfield, his impassioned critique of institutional poverty and its damaging effects on children in his society.” Aw, come on, I never get points for anything! OK. One pity point for you. Sweet.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

Schlitz and a Pack of Luckies

Dennis Lehane’s Small Mercies is aptly titled. Mercy in South Boston is as rare as a Yankee fan. Though published in 2023, the story is set in 1974 during school desegregation. “It was very hot in Boston that summer, and it seldom rained.” The white “Southie” community is virulently opposed to school busing, which will send their children to a different high school in September. Gasoline has been poured on the racial tensions. I hope no one strikes a match.

Well, hope moved out of South Boston long ago, so the match gets struck. A high school boy, who is black, turns up dead in a Southie train station. On the same night a white high school girl goes missing. The girl’s name is Jules. Her mother is Mary Pat, a rage-filled Southie woman who is not afraid to break a punk’s nose. The boy’s name is Auggie Williamson. His mother works with Mary Pat. What are the chances these two events are related? Exactly.

In Southie “you’re either a fighter or a runner. And runners always run out of road.” Mary Pat is most certainly a fighter. When Jules doesn’t come home after 24 hours, Mary Pat knows going to the police is pointless. She goes to the Butler crew, a criminal gang that offers “protection” to the Southie neighborhood, instead. The Butler crew, however, isn’t all that interested in figuring out what happened to Jules. That’s when Mary Pat takes matters into her own hands, and absolutely everyone better watch out. There is “something both irretrievably broken and wholly unbreakable [living] at the core” of her. She’s the kind of vigilante who would make Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson say hey, Mary Pat, you’re kinda freaking us out. Have you thought of anger management classes?

Lehane tells an engrossing, fast-paced story using a thesaurus devoid of pretty words. Vile racial epithets abound, but the brutal language is appropriate given the subject matter, time, and place. We aren’t reading about Disneyland. Southie is a small world, but it’s not a kids’ ride. “In Southie, most kids came out of the womb clutching a Schlitz and a pack of Luckies.”

While racial divisions are the paramount problem here, Lehane doesn’t ignore the economic divide. “We all know that the only law and the only god is money. If you have enough of it, you don’t have to suffer consequences and you don’t have to suffer for your ideals, you just foist them on someone else and feel good about the nobility of your intentions.” The private schools will remain segregated, as will the schools in the wealthy suburbs.

Hypocrisy and corruption are everywhere in Boston. Yet, somehow, Mary Pat believed Southie was exempt. “You know, we always say we stand for things here. We might not have much, but we have the neighborhood. We got a code. We watch out for one another . . . What a crock of shit.” When the truth finally smacks her in the face, Mary Pat hits back. Hard.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

TRUST No One – Except Billionaires. You Can TRUST Them

For economic reasons, you should buy Hernan Diaz’s TRUST. It’s four stories for the price of one. For enjoyment reasons, you should also read it.

The novel, which won Diaz the 2023 Pulitzer Prize, asks one question: Who is Mildred Bevel? Four related stories offer answers, but Mildred is different in each. So which one do you trust?

Bonds, the first story, is written by Harold Vanner, a novelist who may have been a friend with benefits. But Vanner obfuscates, because Bonds is about Benjamin and Helen Rask – fictional characters based upon Andrew and Mildred Bevel. In Vanner’s account, Benjamin Rask is a brilliant, amoral Wall Street financier in the early 1900s, and Helen is a kind and generous arts patron who has serious psychological issues.

The second story, My Life, is dictated by Andrew Bevel. He wants to tell his story because a “vicious circle has taken hold of our able-bodied men: they increasingly rely on the government to alleviate the misery created by that same government, not realizing that this dependency only perpetuates their sorry state of affairs.” Mind you, this is during the Great Depression and Andrew is stupendously rich, but the only person he pities is himself. If you have confused him with Andy Rand, Ayn Rand’s dickhead brother, you are forgiven.

Andrew is also offended by Vanner’s portrait of Mildred (disguised as Helen). But mostly, Andrew is outraged by Vanner’s description of him (disguised as Benjamin). He wants to correct the record in an outrageously self-serving and mean-spirited way. To Andrew, Mildred is a saintly woman who dabbled in music and philanthropy. She is no master of the financial universe like him.

The third story is A Memoir, Remembered by Ida Partenza. Ida writes this in 1981 after the Bevels are dead. She’d been hired decades earlier by Andrew to transcribe his memoir (the rebuttal to Vanner) and improve upon it – a euphemism for make shit up.

She sees through Andrew’s self-aggrandizement and makes some informed judgments about Mildred. Her goal is to turn Mildred’s “tenuous ghost into a tangible human being”, but all she has to work with is Mildred’s mostly empty notebooks, Andrew’s self-absorbed account from 50 years earlier, and Vanner’s novel. To Ida, Mildred was a “thoughtful, disciplined philanthropist.”

Finally, in the last installment, Futures, we hear Mildred’s voice. She sees herself quite differently. It’s a refreshing perspective, but is it true?

TRUST succeeds on several levels. It’s absorbing historical fiction. It’s also a brutal examination of how immense wealth enables the super-rich and powerful to “align and distort” reality to their liking. In that sense, it’s not historical at all.

So, considering all the competing narratives, who was Mildred Bevel really? It all depends on who you trust. Me? I always trust the billionaires.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

Vanishing Act

Many things vanish in Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half, including an entire town in Louisiana. However, the plot revolves around twin sisters, Desiree and Stella Vignes, and how one of them (Stella) vanishes. Not through foul play but simply because she can. Actually they both vanish at first. One comes back after 14 years, but the other doesn’t. This is getting confusing. I better start over.

In Mallard, Louisiana, no one marries “dark”. The town’s founder was a freed slave who had a white father. He built a town for people like him – people “who would never be accepted as white but refused to be treated like Negroes.” After several generations the Mallard folks are light skinned. “But even here, where nobody married dark, you were still colored and that meant white men could kill you for refusing to die.” That’s what happened to the twins’ father. He was lynched when they were young children. They saw him dragged out of the house.

The story opens in 1968. The twins have been gone 14 years when Desiree walks into town pulling a 7 or 8 year old girl. The town is shocked because the child is not light skinned. She’s “midnight”. The twins had run away to New Orleans and found jobs, but then Stella realized how easy it was for her to pass as white. Soon after, she vanishes. Desiree eventually moves to Washington, D.C. and marries a physically-abusive man. They have a daughter, Jude. When Desiree concludes her husband is likely to kill her, she vanishes again – returning to Mallard with Jude.

Vanishing is not the same as escaping. “You can escape a town, but you cannot escape blood. Somehow, the Vignes twins believed themselves capable of both.” They were wrong.

Similarly, passing is not the same as being. “At first, passing seemed so simple . . . But she was young then. She hadn’t realized how long it takes to become somebody else, or how lonely it can be living in a world not meant for you.” The story spans several decades – from the 1950s to 1988, and eventually Stella does turn up. When she does, her past is waiting.

The story is an intriguing examination of what a person gives up when she decides to become someone else. Given the time’s overt racism, Stella’s highwire act has real risks. Which leaves the reader asking: considering everything she sacrifices, was “vanishing” worth it? It’s to Bennett’s credit that the reader struggles for an answer.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

Dead Lions: Worst Children’s Game Ever

Dead Lions is the second spy novel in Mick Herron’s Slough House series. The first one, Slow Horses, was a great romp about a small group of disgraced MI5 spies who get sent to Slough House. They’re given nothing to do, and the hope is they will simply quit. I thoroughly enjoyed Slow Horses, so I was prepared to be disappointed. You know, that sophomore slump thing. If you’ve seen the Indiana Jones movies, you understand. I didn’t need to worry. Dead Lions delivers though the ending is anti-climatic. The enemy’s ultimate goal doesn’t seem to justify the effort required. But it’s still a fun ride.

A middling spy from the Cold War era turns up dead on a bus near Oxford. Jackson Lamb, the head of Slough House, knew him from his Berlin days. He decides to investigate and finds the dead man’s cell phone hidden on the bus. An unsent message reads Cicadas, which refers to a myth about the Soviets planting undercover spies in England. These spies would fully assimilate and do nothing untoward for years or even decades until Moscow would finally give them an assignment that would devastate the country. Here’s the catch. MI5 long ago determined the Cicada program was a false flag. It only existed as a myth. But now there is this dead old spy on a bus. Slough House has a new assignment. And, remember, “When lions yawn, it doesn’t mean they’re tired. It means they’re waking up.”

Slow Horses and Dead Lions succeed because Jackson Lamb is a guilty pleasure. He’s a misanthrope who delights in denigrating . . . well, everyone. Lamb’s an HR nightmare. But he knows what he’s doing. “Lamb had done both field and desk, and he knew which had you gasping awake at the slightest noise in the dark. But he’d yet to meet a suit who didn’t think themselves a samurai.”

So is Lamb chasing a ghost or is the threat real? Well, here’s another animal reference for you. A black swan is a “totally unexpected event with a big impact. But one that seems predictable afterwards, with the benefit of hindsight.” Does that answer your question?

It was a “yes” or “no” question, so not really. But I have one more. Why call the novel Dead Lions? Several reasons, I suspect. The most explicit one is “Dead Lions” purports to be an English party game for children. “You have to pretend to be dead. Lie still. Do nothing.” At the game’s end, all hell breaks loose. Goodness, those English folks sure know how to have fun.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

White Noise: Always There, Just Like Death and Commercials

In White Noise Don DeLillo notes “All plots tend to move deathward.” I’m not sure if he is surprised by this, but he shouldn’t be. All life moves deathward. So how can plots do otherwise?

Let’s put that question aside and simply agree that DeLillo in White Noise is obsessed with death. But Gladiola, white noise is my favorite noise. How can it be linked to death? Sorry, my friend, white noise is always there in the background. Just like death. And Jack (the narrator) can’t stop thinking about death. Even when he’s thinking with his penis, his penis is thinking about death. He chairs the Hitler Studies Department at a small college on the hill. Why Hitler? “Some people are larger than life. Hitler is larger than death.”

Jack is married to Babette, and they have a blended family with a child from their own marriage but also children from several prior marriages. Babette is taking some kind of medication that she refuses to admit she’s taking. Like Jack, she is terrified by death. Even when she’s thinking with her vagina . . . well, you get it. “We (humans) are the highest form of life on earth and yet ineffably sad because we know what no other animal knows, that we must die.” When a train accident happens on the edge of town, a deadly toxic cloud gets released. Jack is exposed to the poison, and his fear of death becomes all-consuming. The novel explores the reckless ways Jack and Babette try and fail to manage this intense fear.

Published in 1984, the novel also skewers consumerism and our culture’s reliance on television – a precursor of the internet and social media. “When TV didn’t fill them with rage, it scared them half to death.” And it touches on inequality and inequity. During the toxic event, Jack thinks “These things happen to poor people who live in exposed areas. Society is set up in such a way that it’s the poor and uneducated who suffer the main impact of natural and man-made disasters.” The novel succeeds best when it is focused on these themes. But back to death.

The lengths Babette and Jack go to calm their fear are hard to relate to. When they wonder why no one else is overwhelmed by the fear as they are, Jack acknowledges that “Some people are better at repressing it than others.” He’s wrong. Everyone is better at repressing it. They become the poster children for repression and denial being the correct strategy. And that’s good news for me because I repress and deny everything. So I must be healthy as hell.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

Absurdistan: Love and Geopolitics

Gary Shteyngart’s Absurdistan is a geopolitical romp that ends on September 10, 2001. But the book was published in 2006 – so make no mistake – 9/11 hangs over the narrative like an ominous cloud. Don’t make this mistake either – though 9/11 was a tragedy and geopolitical catastrophe, the novel is a raunchy and satirical examination of life when you’re a geopolitical pawn. And we’re all geopolitical pawns.

As the narrator, Misha Borisovich Vainberg, tells us in the prologue, this is a “book about love. But it’s also a book about geography.” The story opens on June 15, 2001. Misha is 30 years old and the son of the 1238th richest man in Russia. That’s because his father is a kleptocrat.

During the 1990s Misha attended Accidental College in the mid-west. As a result he adores America and rap music. His rapper name is Snack Daddy, because he loves all the snacks that have turned him into a self-described “fatso”. Unfortunately, his father called him back to Russia, and he is stuck there because dad killed a politically connected Oklahoman in St. Petersburg. Now the U.S. won’t let Misha back.

Misha hates Russia and its corrupt transition from the Soviet Union – even though he has benefitted tremendously from that corruption. “These miscreants were our country’s rulers. To survive in their world, one has to wear many hats – perpetrator, victim, silent bystander.” He’s desperate to get back to his girlfriend in the Bronx – so desperate he travels to Absurdistan, where he has been promised a Belgian passport that will enable him to finally return to the U.S.

Absurdistan does not exist in the real world. I googled it. However, in the novel it is one of the Stans in the former Soviet Union. It consists of several ethnic groups, and they all hate each other. As soon as Misha shows up, civil war breaks out and the borders are closed. Each ethnic group wants to use Misha for its own political purposes, and Misha wants to use them to escape to the Bronx and his girlfriend. Sex, humor, and violence ensue.

Similar to Candide, Misha is a “holy fool” who is wrong about pretty much everything. Near the novel’s end he confesses, “I thought I was Different and had a Special Story to tell but I guess I’m not and I don’t.” Fortunately, he’s wrong about that as well.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

Victory City – Miracles at Work

Salman Rushdie knows how to tell an engaging story filled with humor and tragedy. He’s done so time and again, and Victory City is the latest addition to his catalogue.

The story opens with the purported recent discovery of an epic poem written by Pampa Kampana in southern India during the 14th century. The narrator is a “spinner of yarns” who retells the story in “plainer language.” The epic begins with an unknown king losing a “no-name” battle. This unlucky king is beheaded by the opposing army. The women in the conquered city are even more unlucky. As tradition demands, these women commit suicide by walking into a bonfire. That’s what Pampa’s mother does – leaving the nine-year old an orphan who must now fend for herself.

After witnessing the mass suicide, Pampa makes a decision. “She would not sacrifice her body merely to follow dead men into the afterworld.” A goddess (also named Pampa) hears this and grants her a blessing that changes young Pampa’s life. She begins to speak with the majestic voice of a goddess and becomes a prophet and miracle worker.

The goddess tells Pampa “you will fight to make sure that no more women are ever burned in this fashion, and that men start considering women in new ways, and you will live just long enough to witness both your success and failure.” That takes 247 years. And sometimes a blessing can be a curse, because 247 years means she will see everyone she loves die.

A few years later Pampa gets hold of magic seeds, and from these seeds Bisnaga (meaning Victory City) grows. In Bisnaga women are free to work at any job they want. The arts are not frivolous. “They are essential to a society’s health and well-being.” But one person’s art is another person’s porn, and every action has a reaction. Each success is countered by religious extremism until the prophecy is finally fulfilled.

No surprises here – Rushdie has personal experience with religious extremism’s brutality, and concerns about religious extremism are as relevant today as ever. So the story is absorbing for that reason alone.

But this is Salman Rushdie, so the story is much more than a battle between feminism and religious patriarchies. It is also about the importance of stories, because even Pampa doesn’t live forever. People die and cities collapse into ruins, but some stories live on. “All that remains is this city of words. Words are the only victors.” But that assumes the stories survive – that books and women aren’t fuel for bonfires.

Remember, Pampa’s poem opens with a forgotten king and a no-name battle. His story did not survive time’s ravages. And it is only through chance that Pampa’s does – after 450 years of silence. According to our “spinner of yarns” the poem was only recently found in a clay pot among ancient ruins.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

Slow Horses: Immorality Play

Mick Herron’s Slow Horses is a feat. It’s an authentic spy thriller with a laugh track. Written in the third person, the voice is conversational, appealing, and mildly sarcastic. Here’s an example. “Most of us hold that some things only happen to other people. Many of us hold that one such thing is death.” But it takes more than an engaging tone to create a fast-paced, suspenseful story. Herron succeeds there too.

It’s the 2000s and Britain is a mess. Whoa, Gladiola, I assumed this book is fiction. Is Slow Horses nonfiction? I don’t know. Britain certainly is a mess, but I found the book in the fiction section of Book No Further – though, I agree, the story does have that “ripped from the headlines” feel. May I continue with my review? Of course, my apologies. I’m a hairy ass covered with boils.

A group of extreme British nationalists have kidnapped a young man. He might be Pakistani, but he’s not. He was born in Britain. He does, however, have an uncle who lives in Pakistan. That’s good enough for the kidnappers. They’re going to chop his head off in 48 hours. On the internet. MI5 is on the job. Will our friend keep his head? Odds are . . . no. Because the slow horses have inserted themselves.

Who are the slow horses? They’re MI5 agents who have been relegated to Sough House, because they’re incompetent, unlucky, alcoholic, and/or obnoxious like mustard gas. They’re really bored and desperate to prove they don’t belong in Slough House – though they do.

Jackson Lamb is in charge of Slough House. And, with Lamb, Herron has created one of the great characters in the genre. He’s a foul-smelling, misanthropic burnout from when the Cold War was hot. “When he was in the field, he had more to worry about than his expenses. Things like being caught, tortured and shot. He survived.” Don’t trifle with him.

Throughout the story, he spars with Diane Taverner (Lady Di). She’s formidable in her own right. “The Service has a long and honorable tradition of women dying behind enemy lines, but was less enthusiastic about placing them behind important desks.” Lady Di sits behind a very important desk. Don’t trifle with her either. She and Lamb are at each other’s throats, and it’s delightful to watch. But will their rivalry doom our soon to be headless friend?

Everyone says Herron is John le Carre’s successor, so there’s no need to mention that here. And Everyone is stupid. As great as le Carre was, he never could have written a spy thriller like this. His stories were morality plays, and humor was a cardinal sin. Herron doesn’t get riled up about human nature and its sorry state. In fact, the subject seems to make him laugh. Me too.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor