Ole Man River

Always a good feeling to come across a book and a writer you like, but it’s made even better when you know there are other books by the same writer that you can follow through with. This was exactly my experience with Elise Blackwell and her 2007 novel, The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish. The book was recommended to me by a friend whose opinion I respect, and not long after our conversation the book landed in my mailbox.

Pretty much a habit for me to open a book and read the first paragraph, or first page, a way of helping determine where to put the book in my to-read stack. Ms Blackwell’s first paragraph in The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish was such that I reread it three or four times and then put the book on top of my stack. It’s what I call an opening you see only once every year or two in the course of daily reading.

“I am a man far removed from his origins—by miles, by years, and by more intangible measures. Every piece of wood, no matter how refined and sanded, is marked by the conditions where the tree was grown. The mix of nutrients in the soil and air, the shifts in temperature and humidity, high winds and lightning, the damage from insects and wood-boring birds, and cultivation—the human history of the land—leave their evidence. Who I am remains intimately gnarled with where I came from. And where I came from is the place making the news, the place in the line of fire, soon to be the eye of the storm. Though I’ve pruned from my speech all traces of accent, I’m from south of south. I am from Cypress Parish, Louisiana.”

On the eve of Hurricane Katrina, an elderly Louis Proby, recalls the great flood of his small Louisiana town in 1927, the year he crossed from boyhood to manhood. Louis is the son of Cypress Parish’s superintendent, William Proby, a man who after climbing the ranks in local logging finds himself forced by circumstance to compromise himself in deals with laborers as well as casinos in order to please the wealthy barons of power. A dutiful son, Louis is a reluctant witness to his father’s deals. The boy’s understanding of life is green, while at the same time his senses are blurred by first love for the French girl, Nanette Lançon. Louis is offered the job of driving lumber company official Charles Segrist to and from New Orleans, and thereby given entree into the posh but seedy clubs of New Orleans. Through Segrist his eyes are opened not only to prostitutes and hard drinking, but to back deals with Isleños bootleggers and plans to blow up a Cypress Parish levee, thus flooding the area in order to save New Orleans. He learns too that his father is not unaware of this plan that threatens the lives and homes of Cypress Parish residents. As an old man, Louis is still haunted by regrets from that year in his life, still trying to understand clearly and proving that the old adage, ‘hindsight is twenty-twenty’ is not always the case.

As I read the novel, one of the first questions that arose was the meaning of ‘unnatural’ in the title of the book. It takes a good part of the novel, but it becomes clear that the life and property of Cypress Parish were unnaturally sacrificed to protect business interests in New Orleans. We learn near the end that the loss of life and property brought on by dynamiting the levee was unnecessary in saving New Orleans. Exploding the levee prevented a natural, less costly outcome of the Mississippi River’s swollen threat of inundation. There were no blasted levees with Katrina seventy-eight years later, but the parallels are obvious.

The major character in the book could almost be called the Mississippi River. The story is heightened by the writer’s coloring of the mighty river, and what is almost an endowment of personality. The currents, the magnificent house-swallowing whirlpools, the muddy churning highlighted by colors you least expect, and the geography-shifting behavior of alluvial silt violently, magically thrusting newly created islands to the surface.

The young narrator Louis is a burgeoning naturalist who keeps journals on the natural setting he lives in. One of his favorite writers is Pliny the Elder, and Blackwell enriches her story by juxtaposing Pliny’s writings on the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD with the building ‘eruption’ of the Mississippi upon Cypress parish. It is skillful interweaving of natural histories, ancient and modern.

The boy Louis has a faulted character for which we have the greatest sympathy. He is a young man who takes pride in his understanding of the natural world, but in his youth possesses minimal and immaturely skewed understanding of why his father and others do the things they do. Blackwell has given her narrator a host of dichotomies to deal with—torn between city and country, art and science, family vs the girl he loves, home and the world outside, and finally past and future.

As readers, we all like a good story with richly layered characters. Most of us also look for a style or prose that stands apart from the bland narrative of too many ‘bestsellers’ touted by booksellers and celebrity reviewers. Elise Blackwell writes in an elegant, yet natural style that propels her story, enlivens her characters, and yet at the same time stops her reader on occasion with a need to reread a particularly well-wrought passage of plain unadorned beauty. Briefly said, the woman can write. Like those on Pliny the Elder, the interludes of history about the leprosy hospital in Carville, Louisiana are shimmering in Ms Blackwell’s hand.

As one who grew up in Louisiana, I am drawn to stories about the state, with all its mistakes and foibles and crooked politicians. The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish however is a story I would encourage any book lover to read, with a guarantee that the chances of disappointment are slim.

I Dream of Rivers

Poet, novelist, playwright, short story writer, essayist and columnist, Langston Hughes, was unfortunately for me, a long time coming to my attention. The name was familiar, as was his great stature as a spokesman for the African American, but I did not begin reading his work until six or seven years ago. It didn’t take me long to realize that Langston Hughes was a spokesman for much, much more than the people of his own race.

Born in Joplin, Missouri in 1902, Langston Hughes spent a year at Columbia University before hopping a tramp steamer for West Africa and Europe. As a crew member on the ship, he traveled up and down the coast of West Africa for six months, and then settled in Paris for some time. Back in the US, and after earning a degree at Lincoln University, he moved to Harlem in New York City where he remained until his death in 1967.

He lived in New York during the period of years known as the Harlem Renaissance, spread across the decade of the 1920s. This was a time and a movement that ultimately redefined how America and the world viewed African Americans. In short, the Harlem Renaissance created a new black identity. One concern of the poet at this time was racial pride and the creation of what could be called purely African American poetry. Jazz was an important part of Harlem culture during those years and Hughes sought to adapt that musical genre to his poetry. He used the syncopated rhythms and repetitive phrases common to blues music and jazz. From his work and the work of other black writers of the time emerged what came to called jazz poetry.

The following five poems are not necessarily what one might call classic examples of jazz poetry, but rather a representative selection of poems over a span of twenty-six years in the work of Langston Hughes.

I Dream a World

I dream a world where man

No other man will scorn,

Where love will bless the earth

And peace its paths adorn.

I dream a world where all

Will know sweet freedom’s way,

Where greed no longer saps the soul

Nor avarice blights our day.

A world I dream where black or white,

Whatever race you be,

Will share the bounties of the earth

And every man is free,

Where wretchedness will hang its head

And joy, like a pearl,

Attends the needs of all mankind—

Of such I dream, my world!

(February 1945)

Birth

Oh, fields of wonder

Out of which

Stars are born,

And moon and sun

And me as well,

Like stroke

Of lightning

In the night

Some mark

To make

Some word

To tell.

(May 1947)

Blues on a Box

Play your guitar, boy,

Till yesterday’s

Black cat

Runs out tomorrow’s

Back door

And evil old

Hard luck

Ain’t no more!

(February 1947)

Feet o’ Jesus

At the feet o’ Jesus,

Sorrow like a sea.

Lordy, let yo’ mercy

Come driftin’ down on me.

At the feet o’ Jesus

At yo’ feet I stand.

O, ma little Jesus,

Please reach out yo’ hand.

(October 1926)

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I danced in the Nile when I was old
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

(June 1921)

Five poems from: The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes

Steeped in Orchid

I never win anything. When I got word the other day from my friend Julie at Whatever that I won her Wancher ink giveaway, I figured something went wacky with the stars and planets. Maybe the moon is in the seventh house, as the flower children used to say. Such a rare phenomenon, I almost emailed Julie to say she’d better have Vanna White spin the wheel again just to be sure.

The ink arrived today, and I’ve been playing with it for the past couple of hours, testing it, comparing it to similar inks, and generally getting my hands so messy it looks like I’ve been squishing grapes in my hands. The ink is from a seller in Tokyo who makes (at least for now) only five colors: Matcha Green, Asuka Brown, Tenmoku Black, Imari Blue, and the one I have here, Ebine Violet. Believe it or not, he sells a 50cc bottle for $3.50.

The ‘violet’ in the ink Wancher has named Violet Ebine tôyôran was inspired by the purple of the Calanthe orchid. Let me include a brief of the explanation found on the Wancher ebay site:

‘This purple is the color of the Japanese tôyôran, which is ‘Calanthe orchid’ in English. In Japan the orchid has a long history dating back to the Edo Period (1600-1867). Orchids were loved by the rich nobles of the time, and the plants were often covered by a gold or silver net for protection. Flower viewers were required to cover their mouths with paper so as not to breathe on the orchids.’

Personally, I like very much the orchid-like beauty of this Wancher Violet Ebine. From first glimpse I recognized it as an ink I would go back to again and again. The only thing is, color and shade wise, there is not really anything to call completely individual about the color. In no time at all I pulled five other colors from my ink shelves that bear a close resemblance. But in saying that I intend no criticism. These days, it is quite difficult for even the top ink makers to come out with a color that is totally individual. Just too many out there, from Diamine, Noodlers, Private Reserve and J Herbin, to expect that one of them will release a never before seen color of ink. Subtlety, nuance and a hint of native color are what we can expect in the ink market of today. And of course, an ink that behaves well in more than one pen, on more than one kind of paper.

At first look, I thought the Wancher Violet Ebine resembled Private Reserve’s Plum. A little longer look and I thought of PR’s Arabian Rose. So, I decided to line up five inks beside the Violet Ebine. As it happens, all five are close enough to fool even the likes of Brian Goulet. The six inks in the photos here are from top to bottom:

(1) Private Reserve Plum

(2) Private Reserve Arabian Rose

(3) Diamine Syrah

(4) Wancher Violet Ebine tôran

(5) Iroshizuku Yama-budo

(6) Iroshizuku Tsutsuji

I call the Violet Ebine beautiful, but amidst such close similarity we have to consider performance. The best way to get a well-rounded feel for the ink was to try it in three different fountain pens, on three different kinds of paper. So that’s what I did.

(A) Montblanc Meisterstück Doué on Life Noble Note cream paper—The pen moved smoothly across the page, laying down wet, but unshaded lines of ink. Noticed right off that nib creep is a problem with this ink, in this pen. On this first test, I found the Violet Ebine comparatively fast drying.

(B) Pelikano Junior on Clairefontaine 90g paper in a Rhodia Webbie—The pen and ink both move well together on this paper. However, shading is almost non-existant. The flow of ink is good and not so wet on this thicker, richer paper. Drying time not quite as fast as the first trial.

(C) Waterman Carène on white Clairefontaine Triomphe stationery—Again almost no shading, and once more a case of nib creep. Drying time is the slowest on this paper. The Carène flows smoothly with this ink, wet, but not so much as on the Noble Note paper.

I might hesitate to say that the Wancher ink is performance wise in the same category as big name inks like J Herbin and Montblanc, or Diamine and Pilot Iroshizuku, but this Violet Ebine tôran from Wancher is not at all a bad or inferior ink. I rather like it and expect it will have its share of use in my fountain pens. If you’re partial to purple, or near purple inks, this one might be for you.

And thanks, Julie.

Beachtown

Had an errand to run in beachtown today, and since it was around one o'clock, decided to stop for lunch at one of the landmark restaurants on Flagler Avenue. Flagler is a narrow sandy street with a starting point at just about the easternmost point of Florida, almost as though the street rises up out of the Atlantic surf. Not a long street, it runs due west for no more than half a mile from ocean to Intercoastal Waterway. It is a quaint, picturesque street pleasant to stroll along, lined with all the shops you would expect in a beachtown. Bars, restaurants, surf shop, bike shop, souvenir and pottery shops, ice cream stand, a couple of art stores, and small versions of post office, hair salon and greenery shop. Traffic is rarely so heavy that sightseers and locals can’t wander freely from side to side, and those cars, motorcycles and skateboarders you see are all cruising at about five miles per hour. Several places on Flagler deserve a repeat visit now and then; I wrote last July about The Breakers and their super hamburgers. Another Flagler restaurant I visit about once a month is Clancy’s Cantina, an attractive and terra cotta cool spot for Mexican food. The soft tacos are terrific. Flagler also has one particular art and framing store popular with locals and visitors, Anthony Bell Creations. There must be at least five things hanging on my walls framed by Anthony Bell.

But about lunch… One of the oldest structures on Flagler Avenue is a bar and restaurant called The Flagler Tavern. The restaurant was originally a private beachhouse built in 1906. I’m not sure when the owner sold it, but it became a restaurant called The Red Rooster. Twelve years ago the present owner took it over and changed the name to The Flagler Tavern. I’ve eaten lunch there many times, mostly because I enjoy sitting on the raised veranda that overlooks the street. There was a time several years back when it had a different feel to it, and I was likely in those days to go more often than now. These days it has what feels like a different air, and more often than not I end up mumbling to myself about this or that downslide.

Before any complaints, it is only fair to say that the menu has a couple of excellent choices, one of them being the burgers. I’ve heard one or two people say that the Flagler Tavern burger is better than a burger at The Breakers. It would never occur to me to make such a comparison. I disagree with that opinion, but at the same time don’t hesitate to say that The Flagler Tavern does indeed make a good hamburger. I had a hefty bacon cheeseburger with lettuce tomato and fries today that was darn good. They also offer a tasty pasta salad that a friend of mine orders every time.

The thing is, more and more in the past year or two, service had gotten sloppy, and the crowd out on the veranda full-of-beer rowdy. Here is a line I scribbled in my journal while there today…

‘The place gets worse month by month. Sitting on the veranda overlooking Flagler Avenue, surrounded by loud, cigarette puffing people comparing their failed marriages. Just in front of my nose is mustard and ketchup, each in a plastic bottle thick with grime and street dust and encrusted with last week’s drips and dribbles.’ Before starting in on your burger—and probably a very good one—remember to wipe off the tabletop and the silverware.

For anyone who likes the loud energy, The Flagler Tavern often has live music, and my guess is the place is jumpin’ on those nights.

Another Side of Patrick O’Brian

Patrick O’Brian, the author best known for his roman fleuve series of novels featuring Captain Jack Aubrey and Dr Stephen Maturin, enjoyed for the last years of his life, a financial success that had eluded him for many years. It was only in the 1990s that American fervor for the Aubrey-Maturin series brought him lasting financial security. Long before he began writing the Aubrey-Maturin books in 1970, O’Brian struggled to get his work published. A first collection of his stories was published in 1950 under the title, The Last Pool. One story in that early collection is a work that included a good amount of autobiography. Like American writer, J.D. Salinger, O’Brian fiercely guarded his private life, but in this early story, the setting, as well as conditions in the protagonist’s life are reflections of the writer’s own experiences. The story is called, “The Happy Despatch.”

It is an emotionally charged work, a very dark story characteristic of O’Brian’s situation throughout the 1940s, and it paints a vivd picture of Man’s hopelessness against the forces of Nature. The two main characters are what anyone would deem a masterpiece of characterization, and telegraph a skill that would emerge full bloom twenty years later in the Aubrey-Maturin books. The main character is a failed man of upper class origins named Woolen. The name itself is a hint at his character, at his sheep-like personality. O’Brian says it this way: ‘He was an incongruous figure, with his mild, sheep-like face and bowed, apologetic shoulders…’ I particularly like his description, ‘incongruous figure,’ an elegant expression portraying awkward and inharmonious.

The other character is Woolen’s wife, ‘a deathless shrew…Her face was a disagreeable purple and flour lay thick upon it; her body, of ponderous bulk, was covered with a deep layer of pale grey fat. She did not wash: she had many disgusting personal habits…wrapped in a mauve thing, on her creaking couch, with a malevolent blur in place of a mind.’

Let no one say that Patrick O’Brian could not put flesh and life’s blood into his characters.

“The Happy Despatch” is about the man, Woolen, someone constantly bullied and taken advantage of. Making nothing of an army career, he proceeds to fail in business, his savings stolen by the man who took him into partnership. Desperate, out of alternatives and along with his horrible wife, he goes to a remote farming village in Wales to try his hand at farming. Spurned by neighbors, turned away by all, his feeble attempts to earn money at farming are doomed by his lack of know how. The single joy in his life is the one day a week he spends fishing in the highlands.

While fishing one afternoon, a day that brings a splendid catch of trout, he makes a life changing discovery there in a high valley. Near his fishing spot is an ancient mound of mysterious origins, around which the river flows, The current suddenly dislodges a large stone at a point near the mound, and before the fisherman’s eyes a huge cache of buried golden coins cascades out onto the riverbank. Recovering from shock, Woolen stuffs his pockets with gold and hides the rest until able to return. Out of breath and overburdened, he heads across the valley toward a town on the other side of the pass, a place he knows will exchange the gold for currency. Tired and disoriented, his mind a flurry of emotions, he fails to note the danger of his pathway over the mountain pass. Suddenly a misstep sends him falling into a deep chasm. O’Brian ends his story with this line: ‘But in the pass he met the keeper of the hoard.’

For those fans of Patrick O’Brian’s long series of Aubrey-Maturin novels who might not be familiar with his early writing, try The Rendezvous and Other Stories.

The AL-Star Lineup

No question, I love my Lamy fountain pens. I’ve been using a Safari since December of last year, and a 2000 since March of this year. Both pens have brought nothing but complete satisfaction and continued admiration for Lamy design and engineering. True, I am not the biggest fan of steel nibs, but I’ve adjusted to my Lamy nibs over the course of using them. I have great respect for designers Wolfgang Fabian (Safari) and Gert Müller (2000), and am also a big fan of the Bauhaus principles of functionalism and simplicity.

The spotlight here is on what some call the upscale Safari, the pen introduced by Lamy in 1997, the AL-Star. Anyone looking at the AL-Star will see immediately that it bears close resemblance to the hugely successful Lamy Safari. The AL-Star was in fact designed by the same Wolfgang Fabian of Lamy fame. But he has made two noticeable shifts in the AL-Star design, perhaps both in the hope of giving the pen a high-tech look and feel. Side by side, the AL-Star is bigger than the Safari, but not in length, and not in weight. It’s the diameter that is bigger, and a close look at the caps end-on makes clear the difference in size. The other shift comes in the material. Unlike the Safari, which is crafted in plastic, the AL-Star is lightweight durable aluminum. I have the polished matte aluminum model, but it also comes in five other colors: coffee, blue, graphite, green and ocean blue. As for the shift to durable lightweight aluminum, Lamy indicated that they hoped to link the AL-Star with the prestige of high-tech industry. I would say they succeeded in that. Certainly, the designer has achieved the look and feel of high-tech. Despite the almost 100 year history of Bauhaus design as envisioned by Walter Gropius, the Lamy design looks as fresh as tomorrow’s bread.

Consider the ergonomic design of the AL-Star’s grip. Unlike the upper body, the grip is made of smoky-transparent plastic and ends in sculpted finger pads. The pen is amazingly comfortable in the hand, and at the same time provides grip-guidance for young, inexperienced users. Here again they succeeded, if we are to believe the Lamy label, which calls it “The most successful young person’s pen on the market.”

Like the Safari, the AL-Star measures 5.5 inches capped, and at 6.7 inches posted, is slightly longer than the Safari. The nib on the AL-Star is black chromium-plated stainless steel. It comes in extra fine, fine, medium and broad. The cap does not screw on, but clicks into place, and posted maintains a strong airtight seal. The top of the cap has cross-shaped slots cut into a black plastic disc, almost like a Phillips-head screw. I inserted a dime and turned it, but nothing happened. The clip is a repeat of the Safari design, black painted spring brass wire in the distinctive broad upturned design. The pen takes either cartridge or converter and the barrel has an ink window, which I find somewhat hard to read in terms of ink level.

Overall, the AL-Star is a tough and rugged design, with young users in mind, and only slightly expensive for a start up pen. It lists for about $40, but a better price is available from several dealers. I call the pen slightly expensive because the best priced start up pen in my opinion, is the Pelikano Junior for about $10-12.

Performance wise, the AL-Star is okay, but I am more comfortable with a medium nib, and feel the scratchiness of a fine steel nib a little bothersome. My other Lamy pens are medium and the feeling is smoother, more comfortable, providing a better flow of ink. Writing with a full cartridge I still get the feeling that the ink is low. Little wetness to the fine nib on an AL-Star. Unless you have a real bond with fine nibs, I recommend a medium. Hard for me to imagine what the AL-Star extra fine nib must be like.

Considered all around, I have to echo other opinions and say that the Lamy AL-Star represents good design, good engineering and strong manufacture. Great pen for a high school student.

Look here for earlier reviews of the Lamy Safari 1, Safari 2 and Lamy 2000.

A Gift of Soup

Searching around the kitchen pantry, thinking about lunch and not finding much there, I check the refrigerator. Nothing down below, but in the freezer I find a large container of bean soup. Frozen solid but I have an appliance for that, and the big hunk of frozen bean soup looks like just the thing. It’s soup someone gave me a month or so ago that until now has been lost behind popsicles and pork chops.

Some time later, after turning the soup for a spell on its magic defrosting rack, the appliance signals that the beans are jumpin’. Soup’s on. The crunch of an onion roll is good complement, so I toast one up. I’ve eaten this same soup before and the surprising fragrance rising hot off it is familiar. By surprising I only mean that it is close to gamy, maybe something like pheasant or quail. On the other hand, I am fairly certain neither of these two birds found their way into B’s soup. Whatever it is, the fragrance stirs my appetite.

I have paper and pen at hand thinking I will jot some notes on the taste, but I am hard pushed to distinguish the flavors in this soup. In some dishes the names of ingredients come to mind, but this one defeats me. White beans, ham hocks, sausage… There my certainty ends. Whatever the remaining combination of ingredients might be is hard to say. The soup is rich and full of country flavors, very close to Louisiana cooking. The fact that B, who made this soup comes from Louisiana might have something to do with it. She cooks a lot, and it all started when she was a little girl in Baton Rouge, cooking beside her mama. But the bean soup, wherever she learned it, wherever the recipe traveled from, the bean soup is a fine gift from a good cook.

Without knowing specific ingredients my sense of description is confused. Bean soup with ham is probably a familiar taste to many, so think of B’s soup as starting from there and building to a rich stew-like thickness, chunky with ham and sausage, a hint of Louisiana air tying the flavors together. Not everyone will choose to, but I ladle the soup over a spoonful or two of steamed white rice. The onion roll too, is a tasty extra. I’m comfortable with a glass of iced coffee this time, but a glass of Wal-Mart’s Oak Leaf sauvignon blanc would be a good match with a hearty bean soup like this one.

Sorry B if I have confused your recipe through the failure of my dull tongue to interpret the seasonings. I’m usually better, but this one addled my taste buds. When you make the soup again, if there are leftovers… What do you think? Any chance you’ll be in the neighborhood?

Greatest thanks and love to the person who teaches me about food and cooking—Beverly.