An unusually rich and satisfying reading experience

Although the articles about the novel were positive and although it is set in Ohio, "the Buckeye State," and I grew up in Ohio, I wasn't sure I wanted to read any more 445-page novels. (Don't disparage the way I choose what to read or skip. It mostly works for me.)

Patrick Ryan's doorstop of a novel Buckeye arrives with high praise (but then, doesn't every novel?). He is author of two story collections and is editor-in-chief of One Story magazine. From short stories to a long novel is noteworthy in itself.

Buckeye's action all takes place in Ohio with the exception of an interval in the South Pacific during WWII.  Otherwise we're in an orphanage east of Columbus, in he fictional town of Bonhomie, and in Columbus, Toledo, and even Cedar Point.

While the action is not strictly chronological, it takes place from roughly the early 1930s to the 1970s and Ryan seamlessly weaves in news and cultural events as time markers and indicators how how American society and culture changed during the period. All this makes an unusually rich and satisfying reading experience.

We follow the lives of four main characters, all around the same age. and get to know well several others as well. Cal was born with one leg shorter than the other so he is ineligible for the WWII draft. Becky is able under certain conditions to hear the voices of the dead. Felix is gay, something he does not understand and, for years, ignores (homosexual activities are, after all, illegal). Infant Margaret is abandoned by her mother at an orphanage and although three families take her in none keep her so her closest relationship is with the orphanage director.

In one sense—and I believe the strength of the novel—none of these people are exceptional. They do not do great things. They do their best with who they are and what they know and what they feel. In another sense of course they are all extraordinary and their lives engaging and moving for 445 pages. Becky takes no compensation whatever when she uses her gift to help someone. She and Cal marry and have a son. Felix feels the pressure to be "normal." marries Margaret, and takes her to Bonhomie. He is drafted into the Navy, made an officer, and serves on a supply ship in the Pacific. He and Margaret have a son, Tom.

I am deliberately sketching the action lightly so that readers will find as much pleasure and surprise and anguish as I did in the characters' thoughts, actions, beliefs about themselves and reality. I cannot improve Ann Patchett's cover blurb,  Burkeye is "A glorious sweep of a novel."

A note readers

Foe several weeks now I have been reviewing—or commenting on—the books I read as I finish them. This only works as long as I finish. I do not believe it is fair to the reader to discuss a book you have not finished unless, of course, you have no intention of finishing it and discuss why.

At the moment, I am about halfway through two interesting if hefty books, Buckeye, a novel by Patrick Ryan (448 pages), and The Frenchmen, a history of mid-20th century philosophy by Emily Eakin (414 pages). I am also finishing the first draft of my own novel and editing an older manuscript.

All of which is to say I am not ready to review Ryan or Eakin. But as soon as I finish one or the other I will. 

Watch a trained police dog help solve crime

The Dog Who Knew too Much (2011) is Spencer Quinn's fourth Chet and Bernie mystery. For fans, there are 16 books in the series with Raiders of the Lost Bark due out next year.

Chet, who narrates, is a delightful companion to Bernie Little who, with Chet, is the Little Detective Agency in an unidentified western city but which sounds like Los Angeles. It's unidentified perhaps because Chet is a little shaky on place names. Chet is a dog.

My first reaction was, who wants to read a mystery narrated by a dog? But Chet is an extremely engaging character. And Quinn (the pen name of Peter Abrahams) has done a remarkable job of creating a convincing canine.

Chet was thrown out of K-9 school because of an unfortunate incident with a squirrel. His senses of smell and hearing are far superior to human, which comes in handy, He cannot count above two. He is fanatically loyal to Bernie who is the smartest human on the planet. In addition to place names, he is shaky on cause and effect. He pretty much lives in the present, taking events as they occur, spending little time in memory.

The Dog Who Knew too Much begins with a worried mother hiring Bernie to find her 12-year-old son who was supposed to be at a summer camp in what sounds like the Sierra Mountains. Chet and Bernie visit the camp and they are exploring an old mine with one of the locals who was with the boy on a sleep out when he disappeared. Chet and Bernie following the boy's scent become separated from their guide and he is murdered. 

Before the book ends, Bernie is locked up for the murder; Chet, restrained by collar and chain, is brought back to the city; Suzie, Bernie's girlfriend, a reporter, uncovers (with Chet's help) corruption in high places; and Chet, Bernie, and Suzie pre-empt the FBI's arrest of the malefactors. 

Except for my impatience with Bernie (signing a document without reading it for a guy he should know better than trust) and a question of how Chet managed to escape the collar, the book is a delightful romp.

It's an intellectural banquet

I am confident that Namwali Serpell's study of Toni Morrison's fiction, On Morrison, will not be the last written about the Nobel Prize winner's work. I am also confident that it will not be surpassed.

Serpell comes to it with an interesting history. She was born in Lusaka, Zambia. She has a B.A. from Yale and a PhD from Harvard, both for English literature. He debut novel, The Old Drift (2019), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. Her next two books, Stranger Faces (2020), critical essays, and The Furrows (2022), a novel, were both finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award. 

She is a tenured literature professor at Harvard and teaches a course on Morrison. With her racial, academic, and literary background Serpell can—and does—write about Morrison with unique authority.

She discusses in detail Morrison's first six novels—The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, Beloved,  and Jazz—and her single published short story—"Recitatif." The widely anthologized story is remarkable because Morrison removed all racial markers from the two female characters and readers have argued over which Black and which is white since. 

Because I recently read Sula, I was interested to read what Serpell said about it. She said a lot more than I did (or could) say. I think it would be useful and helpful to read each novel immediately after reading the chapter of Serpell's commentary. I can't imagine that many of us have read as widely or can read as deeply as Serpell. I believe such a program would be enormously rewarding intellectually.

Yet for all that,  On Morrison is not written in "academic" prose. It is clear and accessible. Serpell adds a touch of personality when talks about herself and her own writing when appropriate and always to indicate Morrison's influence on her. She's a fan although she never met her.  

On Morrison is not a biography; however Serpell sketches enough of her life to give context to the work. She discusses Morrison's last four novels and how they relate to the earlier books. She talks about Morrison's poetry (it's not very good, surprising in how lyric her prose often is) and her playwriting. It's an artistic life in full.

On Morrison is a book to keep and to reread. I've never read Tar Baby or Jazz, and before I do I will reread Serpell's discussion of them. An intellectual banquet.

Unexpected plrasures of learning Japanese

One time in my 60s I stopped in a Japanese coffee shop to have coffee and read my book or The Japan Times. When the proprietor served my coffee I told him, "Haizara ga iranai."—I don't need the ashtray—and he took it away.

Where had "ashtray"—haizara—been hiding in my subconscious? I have never smoked. I have never needed an ashtray. I have no recollection of learning the word. Why would I? I could not have seen it or used the word in 40 years. Because the incident was exceptional, I remembered it.

Recently I was reviewing color words—akairo, red; kiiro, yellow; aoiro, blue; etc.—and learned a new one, haiiro, gray.  Iro by itself means "color," so haiiro literally means "gray color." And, by extension, it can also mean "ash colored." 

When I read that, the penny dropped. I already knew that sara  or zara means "plete "or "dish." If the first half of haizara means "ash," the second half must mean "dish"—or, a dish for ashes. Or ashtray. Which is how the dictionary translates it.

Aside from the sharp pang of pleasure this insight gave me (no small thing), I now have a way to remember "gray." Who'da thought?