Mead and a Mighty Read

The Long Ships is an brilliant saga, extremely entertaining, delightfully amoral, anachronistic and surprisingly funny for all its gore and death. Written in two parts in the 1940s by Frans G. Bengtsson, the book quickly became popular in Swedish literature. Reissued by the New York Review of Books in a translation from Michael Meyer, it is a 20th century classic, an adventure for the ages.

The book tells us tales of Red Orm, an imaginary Viking, and his exploits from roughly 980 AD – 1010 AD. The son of a chief, Orm is kidnapped as a youth from Skania (now southern Sweden). He becomes a slave in Andalusia, fights his way to freedom, and engages in all manner of adventure and conflict as he travels through much of Europe before making his way home. There are friendships, family drama, battles, losses, victories and love. Enough takes places for multiple seasons of a cable drama. While it may sound like any number of epics, The Long Ships is something special.

Bengtsson based his plot points on historical examples and the research shows. The goal, though, is not veracity or scholarship. Instead, the author wants to tell us stories grounded in care and literality. What makes the book work is how Bengtsson tells the story: think old-school prose with a soupcon of modern awareness. No internal dialogue graces the pages. The characters are clearly drawn and their actions – and words – speed the text. Wants and desires are clear. Everything is extraordinarily straightforward and direct. When a character is conflicted, their condition is spelled out. Our characters are pragmatic and relatable, even though they are living and struggling in a violent world. Bengtsson does not romanticize the Vikings. Life could be brutal. There’s a tremendous linear quality to the book, a trait that makes one yearn for straightforwardness in our day-to-day.

This is not to say that characters in The Long Ships do not engage with difficult questions. They often wrestle with all manner of problems and issues. The book is situated as the Vikings’ dominance shifted to something different – perhaps more civilized, as the Catholic Church would frame it? The theme of religion is frequently explored. Red Orm became Muslim simply to stay alive, and later he decides to become a Christian. They were, after all, sometimes luckier. Some characters convert and others do not, and there are multiple points of view about why to, or why not, to do so. Bengtsson very much appreciates the context that frames these themes. The Viking tradition of raiding, after all, is a less than moral activity. It is violent and awful. Our heroes are ne’er-do-wells, often blessed with a dry sense of humor. Males drive the action, yet female characters are central to the story. How do people live and make choices in such world? Bengtsson’s world gives us a sense of how some might be and act. While assessing its historical accuracy is best left to experts, for the reader, it rings as true.

The Long Ships stands out as engaging and epic as Tolkien without taking itself too seriously. It is a mighty good read. As Michael Chabon puts it in his introduction, the novel “stands ready . . . to bring lasting pleasure to every single human being on the face of the earth.”

David Potash

January 20, 2025 Reviews

With A Big Thanks to Libraries – 2024 Edition

Every book mentioned here is interesting. If it wasn’t worth it, I wouldn’t say anything about it – so “briefly noted” seems appropriate. More to the point, I find there to be so much interesting in reading and I’m especially thankful for libraries and librarians. They keep us all in good books. Visit one today and say hi to a librarian. I am so grateful for them and their recommendations.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*CK, by Mark Manson, is a short, snappy action-oriented book of basic philosophy and self-help. Drawing from common sense, the skeptics, and some thoughtful observations of human nature, Manson does, in fact, care quite a bit (regardless of the swearing). He urges readers to think hard about our values and live our lives according to them. Values are not wealth, popularity or external signs; they come from within. Moving beyond all the hype and posturing (Mason has a big online presence), this is a book of hope and optimism.

Jillian Lauren’s Some Girls: My Life in a Harem is neither titillating nor sexy, but it is very interesting. It is a memoir of discovery and exploitation. Lauren, briefly an NYU student from New Jersey, grew up in an abusive household. She doesn’t dwell on how toxic it was, but looking from the outside, it truly must have been awful. How does a smart ambitious young woman cope and/or deal with her demons? She started dancing/stripping as a teenager, moved into escort work, and took advantage of an opportunity to be a paid “guest” in a large group of women for royalty in Brunei. At that time, beautiful young women (actresses, dancers, models from around the world) were offered substantial money to live and attend “parties” with royalty. Chosen party-goers had the opportunity to sleep with royalty, and favored guests would stay for months on end, receiving expensive gifts. It was a most extraordinary experience, creepy as all get out, yet somehow normalized for those that found themselves within it. Lauren is extremely smart, too smart to be a victim or to not be aware of where she is and what was transpiring. Journaling through her time was a way to cope. It took two exits before Lauren re-arranged her life, all while in her early 20s, and returned to the US with lots of money. Judgments are easy; understanding is difficult. The book is about discovery, power, gender and sex. It is worth consideration particularly in the name of understanding.

Thanks to a friend I joined the “Free Britney” movement, wondering why this extraordinary talented and successful women was under the control of the state and her family. She struck me as immensely capable. Why wasn’t she allowed to make her own decisions? Reading Britney Spears’ memoir, The Woman in Me, the reasons for her exploitation became more clear. Above and beyond her amazing talent, Spears is (or now “was”) an extremely generous and trusting soul. Baked into her love of singing, dancing and entertaining is a desire to please. While exploitation of talent is baked into the communication industry, in Spears situation, the actions of her parents and sister were horrific. They used and manipulated her. With Spears’ children as her priority, she worked through many years of extraordinarily unjust external control, eventually retaking personal agency. She is a genuinely nice person who justifiably has rage. Yet she is not about anger or vengeance. It’s difficult to finish the book and not be a bigger fan of Britney is every sense of the world – mixed with outrage at what happened to her.

One of the scariest zombie horror novels I have ever read, Colson Whitehead’s Zone One is truly terrifying. Whitehead is a brilliant author who regularly explores different genres. In this 2011 best-seller, the post-apocalypse world is ravaged by zombies hungry for uninfected humans. Our hero, ironically named “Mark Spitz,” is a “sweeper,” charged with cleaning up what survivors hope are straggling zombies. It is brutal and violent work, yet the story unfolds with care and tenderness as the non-infected remember life before the contagion and try to make sense of their current situation. Whitehead stated that Asimov and King inspired the work. While one can see how Zone One might be read as genre fiction, Whitehead’s attention to detail, his beautiful prose, sets the book apart. Some sections I read aloud – they were that good. It is a haunting book, too, and I am grateful I did not encounter it during the Covid pandemic. Whitehead gets more than a few things right in his imaginative creation of a postlapsarian America. Frightening indeed!

Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art is a very interesting work of cultural criticism. Penned by Lauren Elkin, the book reads at times like one recursive narrative and at others like a series of reflections, a critic’s journal. The book emerged through the pandemic and Elkin’s pregnancy. Both, I think, shaped her thinking about herself, women, and the ways that art empowers, problematizes, constricts and reshapes ontological questions. What and who is, or is not, monstrous. Elkin is breathtakingly smart, and her prose threads seemingly disparate observations and references into something special. The book, though, is neither linear nor easily summarized. Rather, it creates an atmosphere, an ether through which cultural production and objects reveal themselves differently. Yes, I am still working to make sense of this very intriguing book and author.

Shahnaz Habib is a gifted writer, a raconteur and keen observer. In Airplane Mode: An Irreverent History of Travel, she displays her discursive talents. Chock full of references, the book is less a history than a selection of explorations. It is entertaining and diverting. I wish more of it would stick, but what remains most vivid is her prose and her perspective. It is a most personal book. Airplane Mode did remind me, from a phenomenological framing, of subject, voice and identity and their power. Sometimes the who, when and how of an account is as important and the account itself.

Under the heading of “Where were they when?” you might want to take a look at I Married Wyatt Earp: The Recollections of Josephine Sarah Marcus Earp. It’s an interesting read, but what makes it more of a puzzle is that it is difficult to determine what is real and what it fiction – on multiple levels. The book’s author, Glenn G. Boyer, purports that the contents were collected and edited by him. On that front, it is a straightforward first person history from Josephine, telling her story from adolescence through decades of marriage to the famous lawman. The gunfight at the OK Corral get attention, to be sure, but it is the balance of their lives together, their trips to Alaska, their never-ending hustling, that give the narrative flavor. While the book was published and republished by the University of Arizona Press, it is not academic, even with notes. Boyer provides his take on some of Josephine’s claims. Historians of the West looked more closely. Many determined that broad parts of the book were fabricated by Boyer. The press eventually distanced itself from the publication. True? False? Like the classic ending of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, the west is often much more myth than history. Read it with a grain of salt. Or possibly with a tablespoon and for entertainment’s sake.

Ginger Strand’s Inventing Niagara: Beauty, Power and Lies is a different sort of cultural history. Akin to long form journalism with the writer’s presence throughout, this book tackles a fascinating physical site whose history has been contested for centuries. Strand is intrigued by the recurring making and remaking of Niagara, its problematic value in culture over the years. She is drawn to it, embracing the beauty, power and, at times, crassness of it. Yet she is also angry at the inherent falseness in the area’s many misrepresentations. Add to it the exploitation of nature and many who lived in the area, and the best word to describe Niagara Falls is problematic. Remember, too, that the infamous Love Canal was a byproduct of the industrial production drawn to the site. Strand’s mixed emotions give the book a surprising stickiness but ultimate left this reader wanting greater clarity of focus. That might mean different books, but I see that is fine. The subject is worthy of being viewed from many different perspectives, just like visiting the falls themselves.

Ferdydurke, a comic novel by Witold Gombrowicz, is an absurdist exercise in creative nihilism. It has a plot – a 30 year old is turned into a schoolboy by an evil professor – only in the most generous of terms. One doesn’t read it for the story. Instead, the prose tangles and untangles, jumps and refuses to be tied down. It is a satire on psychedelics. More important than enjoyable, Ferdydurke was banned from its initial publication in Poland in 1937. Everyone found it objectionable. Not that it is obscene or political. Rather, the novel’s deep cynicism, its nihilism, poses threats to logical and traditional ways of thinking. It is radical in its bones. As such, the book represents an important literary step. All that said, it is not something one picks up as a simple read. I found it slow going and I’m confident that I missed the vast majority of references, asides and comic touches.

David Potash

January 2, 2025 Curiouser and Curiouser, Reviews

Shantyboats Aren’t On The Grid

Opening a book like Harlan Hubbard’s Shantyboat: A River Way of Life is akin to wandering into a new world. Eye-opening does not begin to cover it, for Hubbard’s book is an extraordinarily provocative exercise in doing and thinking differently. The book, and the Hubbards, truly caught me by surprise. The more that you learn about them, the more interesting they become.

Hubbard (1900 – 1988) was born in Kentucky. His mother moved him to New York City when he was a child, after the death of his father. He attended art school and after World War I, design school in Cincinnati. Hubbard and his mom returned to Kentucky, where he held a number of jobs while becoming increasingly critical of modern culture. In 1943 he married Anna Eikenhout (1902 – 1986), a librarian. Anna, an Ohio State honors graduate, spoke several languages and was an excellent pianist. Together the Hubbards did something that many of us talk about but very few ever achieve: fashion a life together on their own terms.

The couple built a shantyboat in Brent, Kentucky, on the banks of the Ohio River upstream from Cincinnati, in the fall of 1944. A shantyboat is a small, simple houseboat, something that can be put together and repaired easily by someone good with tools. It is a craft for drifting, not for speedy travel. The Hubbards moved into the rough structure, and nearby tent, almost immediately. It took about two years to make the craft ready for the water. They then floated down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, reaching New Orleans in 1950. Shantyboat is Harlan’s account of the trip, brightened with his illustrations. Published in 1953, the book became something of an underground classic. Hubbard followed up with several other books, as well as a lifetime of making art.

The book does not argue for organic living, avoiding capitalism or the dangers of working for another. It is not a treatise and nor does Harlan complain about modernity. Instead, it is a most direct and straightforward account of how the Hubbards went about their six-year journey. Hubbard explains how they put the boat together, the decisions they made about heating, storage, windows and all the other details that called for attention. If you have to find firewood to burn to stay warm, priorities change. Eating, not surprisingly, takes up much of the couple’s time, for they did not have much money and they did not want a lifestyle that required regular shopping. They grew vegetables, foraged, fished and traded, all with quiet good cheer. If they ever went hungry, it did not appear in the narrative. They always found a way and found ways, too, to help those they met along the way. The community of people they encountered, on and around the river, were supportive and welcoming.

Details give the book a tremendous tangible texture. I didn’t know that groundnuts would make a good alternative to potatoes, or various types of catching river fish. Shantytown is studded with hands-on experience and words of wisdom. Harlan could have given more maps, charts and diagrams. It is that interesting. He is a patient guide, too, for he is up front about learning from others. While it might seem to be a solitary way to live, there were always opportunities and reasons to interact with others.

The boat drifted, which meant there had to be constant attention to where and how the boat was situated. Paying attention to traffic on the river, who was going where and why, was essential. The Hubbards were far from the only people living along the river, either. They met many different characters, found places to stay for extended periods (helped with their farming), and they lived in community while somewhat apart from traditional society. Harlan painted, they wrote, they read, they made music and stayed very busy, with dogs, bees and an endless series of adventures.

One might be tempted to think of their journey as a way of leading a “simple” or “leisurely” life, but that would be far from the truth. Their day-to-day was very full and rich with experience. Who is to say it is better or worse than anyone else’s?

The couple returned to Kentucky and purchased land by the river. Their spot, Payne Hollow, grew over the years. It was a physical expression of the couple’s values and lifestyle. Payne Hollow was their home until their deaths. They had no electricity, no motors and no engines. The Hubbards had their own environmental commitments. Their food never came from a supermarket. A bicycle got them to a local town, when needed. They were quiet, enjoying what each day brought, and it was often visitors. In fact, they became minor celebrities in Kentucky. PBS did a show about them, and Harlan’s art was appreciated and purchased by many.

Shantyboat and the Hubbards are, in a word, inspirational.

David Potash

January 1, 2025 Reviews