Book Report: So Far Gone

17. Jess Walter, So Far Gone (2025) (8/11/25)

I have read a few of Jess Walter's ten books—Beautiful Ruins, The Financial Lives of Poets, Over Tumbled Graves—and enjoyed them. This one was no exception.

It's the story of Rhys Kinnick, in his early sixties, who seven years ago, after punching his Christian nationalist son-in-law, Shane, at a family Thanksgiving get-together, moved to an isolated, run-down piece of property that was in the family, and went off-grid. Now, a woman shows up on his porch with two children, 8 and 13, whom it takes a moment for him to recognize: his grandchildren, Asher and Leah. That morning their mother, Rhys's daughter, Bethany, pointed Leah to a note tucked in a snowboot, then took off. The note directed their neighbor to bring the kids to Rhys. But Shane is still around, and he's none too happy about this—either his wife's taking off or the fact that she sent the kids to her father. Events ensue, which involve a militarized religious compound in Idaho known as the Rampart, a psychedelic music festival in British Columbia—as well as some philosophy and current events and lots of driving. The chapters are all titled some variation on "What Happened to . . .": first Kinnick himself; then Lucy, an old flame of his from the newspaper they both once worked at; Chuck, an ex-cop; Bethany, then Leah, then Asher each get a brief chapter; and Brian, a Native American friend of Rhys's (they manage to patch up an old rift). It's a clever way of weaving various stories and memories together as Kinnick sets about rescuing his family. 

At the center of the story, perhaps, is love, and how to stay present and true to the people you care about. In the end, Rhys (literally) limps back into his daughter's, and grandchildren's, lives—back into the world. 

I flagged a couple of passages, which don't give a sense of Walter's strong way with character, with dialogue, with quirky details. But they point to a philosophical underpinning that I appreciated.

How to explain self-exile? Part of it had been the fight with Shane. And Bethany's reaction. It symbolized the dark, sour turn the whole country had taken. As a journalist, as an American, as a rationalist, Kinnick had come to terms with the fact that 20 percent of his countrymen were greedy assholes. But then, in 2016, the greedy assholes joined with the idiot assholes and the paranoid assholes in what turned out to be an unbeatable constituency, Kinnick realizing that the asshole ceiling was much higher than he'd thought, perhaps half the country. Whatever the number, it was more than he could bear. Especially when they were in his own family.
     But, if he was being honest, it wasn't those people, his fellow Americans, many of whom had probably always been as distracted or as scared or as cynical as they revealed themselves to be by electing a ridiculous racist con man. No, they weren't really the problem. Most of them probably just wanted lower taxes, or liked bad television, or, like Shane, had fallen into the fake-Christian faux-conservative Nationalist cesspool; or maybe they were just burned-out and believed that corruption had rotted everything, that one party was as bad as the next; or maybe they really did long for some nonexistent past.
     Whatever their motivation, for Kinnick, it was all just part of a long sad cultural slide that he'd had the misfortune of witnessing firsthand (celebrity entertainment bleeding into government, cable TV eroding newspapers, information collapsing into a huge Internet-size black hole of bad ideas, bald-faced lies, and bullshit, until the literal worst person in American got elected president). There was inside of Kinnick an emptiness that felt like depression. [. . .]
     No, it was he who had failed, he who couldn't adjust, he who couldn't deal with this banal, brutal idiocracy, he who couldn't admit that this was the world now. And so . . . he'd stepped aside. Moved to the last sliver of land once owned by his wannabe sheep-rancher grandfather. But once he began withdrawing, erasing himself, he couldn't stop. Until now, when Kinnick saw that he'd been living entirely in his own head for a year now, and had inexplicably reached a place where he didn't even recognize his own grandchildren.

There's also a good disquisition on the evils of smartphones, but I'll just end with a "cold epiphany" Kinnick has in the final pages of the book (which his newly acquired phone reminds him of):

All cruelty springs from weakness. Seneca said that, along with: Ignorance is the cause of fear. Kinnick had always believed these adages to be true, but now [. . .] Rhys wondered if Seneca might have been a little silly to believe in the causal roots of evil. He wondered if cruelty and its bride, fear, didn't just exist spontaneously, forces as elemental and eternal as gravity.

But as a contrast to these forces, he also rediscovers love and devotion and begins to seek forgiveness and connection, even amidst the pain and struggle of living. 

41. Frivolity

This week we took a little break from Monterey County and headed south to our neighbor county of San Luis Obispo—a 44th anniversary getaway. The dog came too. We stayed in the seaside town of Cambria. And we geocached (which is what I mean by this post's title: geocaching is our frivolous pleasure). Here are some pictures I took.

Breakfast on Main Street

The beautiful coastline

A boardwalk walk

Tbere are many benches in Fiscalini Ranch Preserve—
and some of them (like this one) harbor geocaches

A fun cache at the amazing Cambria Nursery & Florists

One isn't usually invited to just go
opening random chests

Heading east on Hwy 46—beautiful California

One of a half dozen "Monster" caches
we found on our way home (there are
more than 60 altogether: we'll have to
come back!). This one was The Werewolf.

The clue to open the combination lock
was a shaggy dog—or rather, horse, monkey,
and bicycle—story. Super fun. And once
we got inside, we discovered the silver bullet
that would protect us from the werewolf.

Another in the Monster series: this one
a rather winsome jackalope, in the 
Paso Robles Public Library.

The Grim Reaper (the cache is tucked
into the upper upright)

Official Geocache

Though you wouldn't know it from the
signage...

Another chest!

As David signs the log

San Miguel Fire Station: the cache is
the "lantern" in the dalmatian's jaws

Finally, the cache unscrewed from the
bottom of the antenna

Here it is

And here's the view from the cache location

We had a fine time caching. We also got to have dinner with some good friends who live in Morro Bay. And it was just nice to have a change of scene. Win win win!

38. Nyckelharpa

(This post is out of order because I intended to write it several weeks ago but I got distracted.)

The other week we went to the Carmel Bach Festival to hear the program put together by violinist Edwin Huizinga, "Nordic Folklore." It featured (most prominently) Edwin, his Fire & Grace partner, Bill Coulter, on guitar, and a third player—let's call him Joy: Fire, Grace & Joy—Olov Johansson, on nyckelharpa. 

As the printed program describes it: 

The nyckelharpa, often called the "keyed fiddle," is a traditional Swedish instrument with a history that stretches back over 600 years. Its name comes from the Swedish words nyckel (key) and harpa (an old term for stringed instruments). Played with a short bow and operated by pressing keys that change the pitch of the strings, the nyckelharpa produces a haunting, resonant tone enriched by sympathetic strings that vibrate along with the melody—much like a viola d'amore or a Hardanger fiddle.

The earliest known image of the nyckelharpa appears in a 14th-century church carving in Gotland, Sweden, and written references begin to appear around the same time. Throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance, various forms of keyed fiddles were played in different parts of Europe. However, it was in Sweden—particularly in the Uppland region north of Stockholm—that the instrument evolved and survived into the modern era.

By the 17th century, the nyckelharpa had taken on a more recognizable form, but its popularity declined in the 18th and 19th centuries as new musical tastes and instruments took hold. It wasn't until the 20th century, through the efforts of folk musicians and instrument makers like August Bohlin and Eric Sahlström, that the nyckelharpa experienced a revival. Modern versions of the instrument—typically with 16 strings (3 melody, 1 drone, and 12 sympathetic)—are now used in a variety of musical styles, from Swedish folk to early music and contemporary classical compositions.

Today, the nyckelharpa is experiencing a true revival, both in Sweden and abroad. Among those who took up Salhström's mantle is Olov Johansson, considered by many to be the finest living practitioner of the nyckelharpa. 

Here are a few videos about and featuring the nyckelharpa. Starting with a basic introduction to the instrument:

And here the nyckelharpa and violin are compared:

Finally, here is Olov, playing a very short polska (polonaise) that he wrote (he loves polskas):

And as it turns out, I have known Olov's playing for years—with the Swedish folk group Väsen, of which I have several (of their 18) recordings. Here is a Tiny Desk Concert they performed a few years ago:

It was delightful to meet Olov in person, and to experience his Joy. 

Book Report: I See You've Called in Dead

16. John Kenney, I See You've Called in Dead (2025) (8/2/25)

After the last book—which continues to stick with me, so perhaps I liked it better than I thought (if "like" is the operative word)—I needed something light. A FB friend, in her daily status post, had mentioned this book, said it was delightful. Sold!

It's the story of a lost-his-way obituary writer who accidentally one drunken night publishes a mock obit—for himself: "Bud Stanley, forty-four, former Mr. Universe, failed porn star, and mediocre obituary writer, is dead." His employer, the largest wire service news organization in the world, is not amused.  

From there the story doesn't really do much, except meander through New York City with, mostly, Bud's landlord, a paraplegic named Tim, and Clara, a woman he encounters at his ex-mother-in-law's funeral and whom he starts meeting at other funerals, of strangers. He has conversations with his boss, Howard, and a young neighbor boy, Leo. And he waits for word on whether he will be fired—and if so, what then? He's hardly employable.

It's a bit of sentimental fluff, really—but it was just what I needed. Nothing heavy; on the contrary, Kenney (who writes regularly for the New Yorker's "Shouts & Murmurs" humor column) is very funny and gives the self-deprecating Bud some great lines. The other characters are mostly foils, helping Bud to find the joy in life again. (Clara, perhaps, especially: yes, they fall in love—though at the end of the book she's off to Bhutan for a year; still, you know they'll come together again. Love is love.)

The passages I flagged, though, weren't the funny bits, but the "Life is a gift" bits of wisdom. Schmaltzy, maybe. But no less important for all that. I flagged six. I'll just go ahead and quote them here, though I'll start with a one-liner, the last thing I flagged: "How many days do you experience something for the first time?" The occasion being a helicopter ride that Bud has gifted to Tim. "We banked right over the Bronx, over Yankee Stadium, to the East River. The city small and quiet below. We should be required to take flight from time to time, to see anew, to see how small and fragile we are."

But let's go back to the beginning—straight to the set-up for Bud's disaster:

I took down a bottle of sixteen-year-old Lagavulin from a shelf in the kitchen. My boss, Howard, gave it to me at our company Christmas party a few years ago.
     On occasion—a damp, cold evening, the house too quiet—I pour myself a glass, give it a gentle swirl, inhale the heady, fiery aroma, and imagine my ancestors in Ireland a long time ago, in a cottage, by a peat fire, rough hands, so tired, so much labor, wondering, perhaps, if there was something else out there, a better life, if they had the courage to find it, knowing they would, that they had to, that they owed it to themselves and their family, afraid, excited, eternally hopeful, dreaming of possibility for their children, their children's children, for me, this person sitting here now. Surely that was worth a toast.
     I sat on the couch with my computer and got lost, aimlessly clicking through cnn.com and tmz.com, nytimes.com. YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, the algorithms knowing my tastes, pulling me in deeper, mindlessly following every new link. A Nick Drake video, a Stephen Fry talk, a Fry & Laurie skit, The Two Ronnies' "Fork Handles" skit, great catches in baseball, vintage wristwatches, yoga women of Malibu, Bill Maher, news anchor bloopers, a garbage truck that bursts into flames, Norman Mailer drunk on The Dick Cavett Show, squirrels dancing.
     The videos—half watch, click, half watch, skip ad, click—alternatingly intrigued and annoyed me, engaged me, sucked life from me. It was after eleven. Go to sleep, Bud. But Bud wasn't listening. Bud had pushed past tired into numbness, the brain buzz of too little sleep, the mistake of topping off his drink. What's the worst that could happen?

See, nothing deep here, but also something most of us can perhaps identify with. Not these specific details, perhaps, but our bad habit of seeking to escape, to entertain ourselves to death, to avoid what's right in front of us. Next up: a bit about Howard and their relationship:

Something happened after his wife's death, me being there, that drive to the hospital. I saw behind a door normally closed to others, these things in our personal lives that coworkers never know about. How well do we know a colleague? The ebb and flow of workdays, weeks, years. We might notice a new suit, a haircut, a bit of weight put on. We talk of work, a bit about life, we have drinks at office parties. But something changed in a way I couldn't quite explain. We had inched closer. How can you not, standing in the doorway of a hospital room as this man I had known for so long—this man I barely knew at all—wailed and sobbed over the body of his dead wife?
     I wondered how I could ever put that in an obituary. 

And here Bud and Howard meet up after the disastrous obit:

"The world changed," Howard said to his glass. "Broke in a way. I see things, read things, watch things, and I think . . . I don't understand that. The inanity, the vulgarity, the cruelty." He turned to look at me. "Is it just me, getting older?"
     "I think something has changed."
     "Something fundamental, perhaps. And so we retreat. Sure, we do our jobs, provide for our families. But then we seek cover. I subscribe to a channel on YouTube called Relaxing Mowing. It's speeded-up footage of people mowing their lawns, trimming their hedges. The world made clean and perfect. They put classical music over it. If someone described that to me five months ago, I would say that person was insane. Now, I love it. I watch these in bed at night. I watch videos of Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse dancing. The elegance and grace. Where has that gone? Now we have twerking."

The book is full of details like this, of wisdom like this, of regret but also hope. Tim, too, is full of wisdom, earned from being in a wheelchair—a bit heavyhanded, okay, but still. Here, at their first meeting, when Bud comes to interview for an apartment to let in Tim's brownstone, Tim has just asked Bud if he's ever sat with someone as they died. Yeah, not your typical first encounter, and also heavyhanded, but still.

"It's quite something. Especially if they're ready . . . if  . . . if they lived. Do you know what I mean?"
     "Totally," I lied. "Sorry. I lied. I'm not sure I understand."
     He laughed. "I don't really know what I mean either. I guess I mean this. That at the end—and I've had the privilege to be in the room with a few people now, my parents, two friends—I think, and it's just a guess, but I think we let go of everything ad the true nature of experience falls over us. This . . . miracle that is existence. Which we layer with so much. With anxiety and fear and greed and smallness and what's next and hurry up and I've got a meeting and all the . . . stuff . . . that gets in the way. I'm not saying we should all go live like a monk. I'm saying that if you haven't lived the life you want, if you haven't loved life, then at the end, I think a deep and very sad regret comes over you. And if you have, if you've lived well . . . friends and family and . . . if you've lived . . . then just as true is the peace you feel. I've seen it. Does this make any sense or do I sound mad?"

No, not mad at all. And finally, here Tim and Bud are at the Frick Collection, looking at one of their two Vermeers, Officer and Laughing Girl. "Why is the girl laughing?" Tim asks. Bud says:

"It's a nervous laugh. He just made a bad joke, said something embarrassing."
     "Like what?"
     "He just showed her how he could burp the alphabet."
     "You don't deserve Vermeer. Look at the painting. Pretend you're not you. Let the picture speak to you. It wants to speak to you. It's speaking to you across hundreds of years. This is its power. It's trying to tell you something, a universal thing, a thing that has no boundary in time. Why is the girl laughing?"
     I stared at the painting. I waited. It seemed too obvious.
     "Because she's happy?" I said.
     Tim turned to me and smiled. "Yes."
     "That's it?"
     "What else is there?"

40. Another day

Another Friday, and another session with my English-learning friend. Today we worked on a dozen simple fill-in-the-blank exercises. Well, "simple" if you happen to already speak the language. One involved the words cope cop cup. The sentence: The _______ couldn't _______ with the bug he saw in his _______. I mean, if you speak English already, it's a no-brainer. But the more we worked on these sentences, the harder even I started to find them. 

So I was delighted when one of the fill-in words was am. There is only one context you will ever use am. I AM. Dammit. I am.

The last exercise included the word pen, which at first glance you would think would mean pluma, but in the case of this sentence, which also include pet and pep—a pet with too much pep needing to be put in a . . . —did not. I am a language person—I've studied, what, ten or more languages—and so I'm sure that if I were met with an exercise like this in any of those, I'd figure it out: it's a puzzle, a game. But my friend is not a language person. This is hard, it's challenging. And it's serious: she wants to stay in this country. She needs to speak the language.

But then she started laughing. She was having fun. It wasn't the sentences that she was finding fun, but our interaction, I think. Our connection, our friendship. As we parted she gave me a big hug. And out in the parking lot, she gave me an avocado. What more does a teacher need?

As I drove to our meeting, I noticed the parking lot near the local Russian Orthodox church filled with cars. As I drove home, I saw a hundred or more people spilling out onto the lawn, including a half dozen white-bearded men dressed in bright green chasubles wearing full-on crowns. All I find from googling is this: Престольный Праздник / Встреча Митрополита Николая: Parish Feast Day / Meeting Metropolitan Nikolai. This has nothing to do with my life, really, except that I noticed it: it's a part of the life of some of my neighbors, and that's meaningful. It was beautiful to see this crowd, and those bearded, crowned men in green.

In the afternoon, David and I headed to one of our favorite dog-walk spots, Carmel Meadows. We stopped awhile to watch the pelicans flomping their wings in the lagoon. (I took a short video, but it won't post, so here's a still shot.) The dog walks are getting shorter, but Milo, at almost 15, is still game. 

The way home ended up taking three times as long as it could/should have, but I'll spare the details. Road work; rush hour. Whatever. We got home.

And then had a lovely dinner at a new-to-us restaurant in the not-at-all-chic nextdoor town of Seaside, but the restaurant, Maligne, has made its way into the Michelin Guide, so we figured it was worth a try—and yeah. It was terrific. Halibut with corn and shishito peppers for me, pork belly and fancy rice for David, and a luscious peach and plum cobbler for dessert. The occasion: our 44th anniversary. 

We sure do hope to make it to 50. We'll see!

Finished the evening watching Tampopo. Delightful. 

What more can one ask of a day?  

 

39. Two and a half Instagram six-packs

Catching up here since my last IG post in May. I don't actually curate my Instagram feed. I just occasionally look at IG, then think, maybe it's time to post something. And I scroll back through my photos, find a shot or two, and there: posted. So, here: a recap of the latest posts.

My desk, my pens. A California buckeye blossom. Luna.
A wolf eel model. A Salinas mural. Milo.

A frog in Ontario. The view from our niece Jess's farm,
also in Ontario. July 4 on Monterey Bay. The cats.
The day we paid off our mortgage, huzzah! woohoo!
Luna again (the REAL tiger).

David and our friend Alastair, geocaching in Los Gatos.
David and a lovely little gopher snake.
Our nephew Aaron flinging the frisbee in Ontario.

A snapshot (or fifteen) of my life. So totally random it's silly. But silly is good. What would we do without silly?

Book Report: Night Watch

15. Jayne Anne Phillips, Night Watch (2023) (7/29/25)

That this book won the Pulitzer Prize surprises me—though maybe it just underscores the fact that the Pulitzer isn't a prize I should follow.* 

Why does it surprise me? Because the book is something of a mess. It begins in 1874 with a trio of characters arriving at a "lunatic asylum," introduces a few more, and then abruptly, on page 45, shifts scene and time, going back ten years and introducing several new characters—staying in those stories for another eighty pages. Wait, what happened to the asylum? What are we supposed to pay attention to here? When we finally return to 1874 (and ultimately 1883, in an epilogue), the story's threads gradually begin to weave together, though some remain dangling even at the end, and the climax, where (almost) all secrets are revealed, is breathtakingly abrupt.  

And the writing. Sometimes I enjoyed its lyricism, the rendering of habits of speech, but it often was just too much. Like this, which ends part IV:

He will leave here when time affords and feel no anguish but absence. A blank pulsing thud of heartbeat is the only key he possesses, and it fits no lock. But he's intensely relieved. He thinks of a kite, struggling along the ground, suddenly catching the wind, with the string let out very quickly. He can hear the whistle of air and feel a sensation of buoyancy, as though he gains height over raucous green hills that resound with pleas of mercy.

Huh? Especially toward the end of the book—when I started seeking out published reviews  (am I the only one who doesn't get what's going on?)—the gush of language was just too much. 

But what, you ask, is this book about? It takes place in West Virginia during and after the Civil War. The initial trio, a man, woman, and 12-year-old girl, are seen arriving at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum (which still exists as a National Historic Landmark, complete with ghost tours), and part I all takes place there as we learn about the asylum, its function, its personnel. The woman, Liza—now known as Miss Janet—and the girl, Liza's daughter but now known as her nurse, Liza Connolly, settle in, and Miss Janet begins to regain her strength. In part II we follow several characters, the grandmotherly Dearbhla, whose story takes us into her past, where we learn about Eliza and the boy Eliza fell in love with; the "Sharpshooter," who has taken the Union side and whom we see fighting in the war and getting gravely wounded, losing all memory of who he is; the backstory of the man in the initial trio, and how he entered the others' lives; and more. Part III brings us back to the asylum, as the story—all those threads—plays out. Or perhaps I should say, weave together. It's difficult to describe just what the plot is. The feeling I'm left with is more of having been smothered—or perhaps getting clobbered in the head and left for dead, like the Sharpshooter.

The chief physician of the asylum was a real person, and Phillips occasionally inserts a photo of the place that seems to be the basis for a surrounding description, and I appreciated that concreteness. 

All that said, there were some quite lovely passages, and the rather gothic nature of the story—a bad guy who is very bad, many potentially good actors who nevertheless remain ineffective, hidden gardens and stolen baubles, a fire and bloody murder, and in the last few pages, an interesting reveal—does draw you along. I guess I'm glad I read it. I also guess I wish it hadn't tried so hard.

*As opposed to what—the National Book Award (for which Night Watch was long-listed)? National Book Critics Circle Award? Booker Prize? Should I even care about book awards? Do they represent quality? I tend to think so, but as with so many awards, politics probably enters in as much as worthiness (not politics as in Washington politics, but... playing favorites, making up for past slights, celebrating the underdog, or diversity, etc.). (Here is a piece titled "Did the Pulitzer Prize Make a Mistake with Night Watch? A Pulitzer Prize Deep Dive," which addresses some of these issues.)