Book Report: Year of the Monkey

22. Patti Smith, Year of the Monkey (2019) (11/14/26)

I must confess, when I started this short book of 16 essays and an epilogue (having never read Patti Smith before), I thought, eh, she only got this published because she's famous. It seemed to me just so much rambling stream-of-consciousness, infused with hallucinations and dreams, with talking signs, countless cups of coffee, random acquaintances spouting philosophy, an underlying thread of death. As I continued, though, I fell under her spell, and found myself giving way to this powerfully imaginative and observant and hopeful mind, such that by the end I was sorry to have to leave her. 

The premise, or conceit, is a year in Smith's life—the Chinese Year of the Monkey, though the book begins (the longest piece) just after her 69th birthday and a New Year's Eve concert at the Fillmore Theater in San Francisco. 2017. An old old friend has fallen ill, and she is haunted by his impending demise as she takes herself to Santa Cruz for some alone time at the Dream Inn, home of the talking sign. From there she wanders, hitchhiking to San Diego, flying home to New York or off to Europe, and she observes and ponders, basically, the meaning of it all—the cyclical nature of time, life and death, beginnings and endings, inherent mysteries, artistic representation, memory.  She meets people, they have rambling conversations; she visits her old creative companion Sam Shepard—who is also dying; she has visions and flashbacks. She takes b&w Polaroid photographs, which illustrate the book (and which I now know to be "iconic Smith"). 

Maria Popova, presenting the book in her Marginalian, says, "She moves through this world as a time-traveler, an eavesdropper, a vagrant, a vagabond in the land of literature and life. . . . She is nameless, fameless, a human mirror held up to the world." It's hard to sum the book up, but that does a decent job. 

Here's a quote from the epilogue, about Sam Shepard:

What will happen to him? I had asked myself, shuttling back and forth to Kentucky. When I first wrote these words, I didn't yet know, and one could fast-forward or move backwards but time has a way of still going, ticking away, new things one cannot alter, cannot get down fast enough. We used to laugh, me and Sam, about this disconnect: you write in time then time is gone and in trying to catch up you're writing a whole other book, like Pollock losing contact with a painting and making a whole other painting and losing the thread of both and in a rage kicking through glass walls. I can tell you this, the last time I saw Sam, his manuscript was all but done. It was there on the kitchen table like a small monolith, containing the uncontainable, a bright flicker that could not be extinguished. Why birds? wrote Sam. Why birds? echoed his sister. Their song wafted from a boom box partially buried in the sand. Why birds? cried the old man. And they flapped their wings, found then broke formation and eventually disappeared. What would happen to the writer?

Or, for a hint of the visionary, a long sentence that is quoted, all on its own, on the back cover:

There were bells tolling and wreaths tossed and women turning in circles and there were bees performing their life-cycle dance and there were great winds and swollen moons and pyramids crumbling and coyotes crying and the waves mounting and it all smelled like the end and the beginning of freedom. 

Or, clear-eyed:

This is what I know. Sam is dead. My brother is dead. My mother is dead. My father is dead. My husband is dead. My cat is dead. And my dog who was dead in 1957 is still dead. Yet still I keep thinking that something wonderful is about to happen. Maybe tomorrow. A tomorrow following a succession of tomorrows. 

In the end, I loved Year of the Monkey and look forward to reading Just Kids and M Train (both of which I have somewhere). And the book she mentions that Sam Shepard had just finished, shortly before his death, is Spy of the First Person, which I've ordered as a sort of companion piece to Monkey.

I've also hunted up a couple of New Yorker pieces by Smith, one, "My Buddy," about Sam, the other, "Things I've Seen," about her photography. This link lists other New Yorker pieces by her. 

As for her music? I have Horses. It's never appealed to me, because I listen to music for the music, not for the words, and I guess I don't appreciate the punk esthetic. I bet the words are good poetry, though. I might have to put the CD on, get the liner notes out, and pay attention. 

Book Report: The Wager

21. David Grann, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder (2023) (11/7/26)

After the fluff of The Portable Veblen, I needed something a bit grittier. Well, The Wager delivers—and how. It is, as its subtitle explains, about shipwreck, and yes mutiny, and there's at least one central murder, though over the two-year course of the main tale hundreds of men die, the victims of both a harsh environment—the far southern reaches of South America—and hubris, or would that be desperation? 

The bare bones outline: on August 23, 1740, a flotilla of British ships departs Plymouth, its goal to intercept Spanish treasure ships off the coast of Patagonia. The context here is the humorously named War of Jenkins' Ear, after a sailor who allegedly lost his ear to a Spanish attacker, thus spiraling the two nations into war. Six months later, the company arrive at Tierra del Fuego, a site of violent winds and seas. Several of the ships struggle on through; a couple turn back. One ship falls behind: the man-of-war HMS Wager. On May 14, 1741, the Wager approaches too close to shore and breaks up on the rocks of a desolate island at 47°40′ S. There are some 145 survivors, including Captain David Cheap and gunner John Bulkley, "the one an aristocratic officer, the other an intuitive leader," as the Guardian review puts it. (It is because of that review that I picked up this, for me, unlikely book.)

The meticulously researched account details the many months these castaways spent on the island: how they grappled with illness (scurvy and typhoid), how they scavenged for food and constructed shelters, how they split into rival bands—until finally, in October, one group, led by Bulkley, decided to take two of the remaining boats and head south and east, through the Drake Passage; and then, the next March, with the help of native navigators, the remaining few (after one failed attempt) found their way to an inhabited island, and ultimately north to Valparaíso. 

Both groups made it home. With stories to tell. And not only theirs, but Grann injects other storytellers as well: Herman Melville (who in 1840–43 sailed as a hand on a whaling ship from Connecticut to French Polynesia) and Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (based on the true story—one well known to the crew of the Wager—of marooned privateer Alexander Selkirk in 1704–9) are invoked, along with the poet Lord Byron (whose grandfather was a sixteen-year-old midshipman on the Wager) and Coleridge with his "Rime of the Ancient Mariner." The Guardian again: "Grann’s book is not about romance but truth. . . . It’s a story about the stories we tell ourselves—that empires and nations tell themselves—and how they shape us. His literary references suddenly come into focus and lift the book to become something greater than an adventure tale."

What's especially interesting, in the end, is the larger context: the sheer difficulty of circumnavigating Cape Horn (this was before longitude was tamed), the awfulness that was scurvy (“As the scourge invaded the sailors’ faces, some of them began to resemble the monsters of their imaginations. Their bloodshot eyes bulged. Their teeth fell out, as did their hair. . . . The cartilage that glued together their bodies seemed to be loosening"), the glorification of violence and colonialism, the workings of "honor" balanced against the desire to survive, the sheer loss of life (of the some 1,900 crew who started the round-the-world voyage that the Wager was part of, only about 200 made it home). All "for God and country." It makes you think twice about present-day belligerence and what is demanded of ordinary citizens. 

Grann, a journalist, also wrote The Lost City of Z (which I happen to own), about a 1925 quest for a "lost" settlement deep in the Amazon, and Killers of the Flower Moon, about the murder of sixty (or many more) Osage Indians in Oklahoma in the 1910s–1930s, subsequently made into a movie by Martin Scorsese. I can see more Grann in my future.

Book Report: The Portable Veblen

20. Elizabeth McKenzie, The Portable Veblen (2016) (11/1/26)

I picked this book up simply because of the V in the title—after nixing Garry Wills's Venice: Lion City—The Religion of Empire. I needed something light after my U book about invisible war. And yes, The Portable Veblen is certainly light—to a fault. I'm honestly surprised it received a National Book Award nomination. Not that it's bad. It's just so fluffy, what with conversations with squirrels and quirky characters, quirky families. Yes, there's a bit of industrial intrigue thrown in. But nothing goes anywhere—unless you count an appendix, where we learn how the girl (freelance translator Veblen, named for the anticapitalist economist who wrote The Theory of the Leisure Class) meets boy (medical inventor Paul) story works out. As the jacket explains the point of the book, it's "Where do our families end and we begin? How do we stay true to our ideals? And what is that animal really thinking?" The first two questions are addressed in the context of family dynamics—both Veblen and Paul have challenging families, to say the least—and business opportunities—Paul sees a chance at fame and fortune, but compromises must be made. As for the squirrel, no, we never learn what it is "really" thinking. 

I guess I'm glad I read this book. It was diverting, at least. And it ended with a letter written in Norwegian that I understood! Next time I get to V, though, I think I'll plan accordingly and be prepared to tackle the Lion City.

Two poems: Ada Limón and Michael Garrigan

Two poems I encountered this morning in my Kitty Petruccelli workshop that I want to return to. Ada Limón is well known to me, but I had not heard of Michael Garrigan. And with no further ado:

Ancestors

Ada Limón

I’ve come here from the rocks, the bonelike chert,
            obsidian, lava rock. I’ve come here from the trees—

chestnut, bay laurel, toyon, acacia, redwood, cedar,

one thousand oaks
            that bend with moss and old man’s beard.
I was born on a green couch on Carriger Road between
            the vineyards and the horse pasture.

I don’t remember what I first saw, the brick of light
            that unhinged me from the beginning. I don’t remember

my brother’s face, my mother, my father.

            Later, I remember leaves, through car windows,
through bedroom windows, through the classroom window,

the way they shaded and patterned the ground, all that
            power from roots. Imagine you must survive

without running? I’ve come from the lacing patterns of leaves,

            I do not know where else I belong.

Ode to the Ailanthus Growing Out of a Pile of Rubble at the Edge of Pennsy’s Supply Depot on Paxton Street in Harrisburg

Michael Garrigan

The highway is your mother— 
seed spun off wheels or maybe a roof 
& you were born in this ragged rubble pile
growing and reaching towards the constant concrete 
thrumming above you; somehow you find nutrients in the slag
heap along the roadside ditch in this forgotten corner of a railyard
in a forgotten part of a city that people only ever drive through, not to; 
but here you are, shading the cracked macadam and iced tea cans and our 
everyday plastics and here I am complaining about this cornered ecosystem 
and overdevelopment and how this city pollutes the river with raw sewage 
each time it rains and the air quality that’s so bad because of the traffic I am 
driving in and how all the invasive species are taking over our riverlands 
growing in our slashing and forgotten selfishness and as the light turns 
green I remember that some call you the tree-of-heaven and wrap you 
with broad clear tape that catches the larvae of the spotted lantern fly
—two unwanted disparaged species that have found each other—
while others just cut each of you they find down, trying to rid
this landscape of your seed, but perhaps what’s been planted 
and spread and found rootholds in this land is never 
easily removed and perhaps it shouldn’t be perhaps
each of us has a right to be where we found
ourselves, just waking up suddenly in life
sharing the same sound we are all born int
—a watery silence and then our own voice.

As Kitty pointed out, this poem is in the shape of a pregnant belly, and it works here on a laptop (thanks to a reduction in type size), but maybe not on a phone. In any case, yeah: pregnant belly. Fitting.

Hunting Hollow

The other day David and I went on yet another geocaching excursion with our friend Alastair, to Henry Coe State Park, starting at the Hunting Hollow entrance, coming out at the Coyote Creek entrance. We found 43 caches, hiked 13-plus miles. It was a beautiful day, and I took some pictures.

Silly little coincidences

This isn't even worth mentioning, but I find it remarkable enough that... I will. I mean, "remarkable" it's not. Just, oh, curious, interesting to me. Cute. It's twofold: two minor coincidences from this week. Both involving reading and television.

First, the reading: I am working on a proofread of a fun little book comprising short essays about life on a farm in southwestern Washington. That's one. Then yesterday I picked up the next book in my alphabetical reading challenge—though I'm fudging a bit, because the next letter is V and, search though I did through my vast collection, I couldn't find a V book that I really felt like reading (Venice: Lion City—The Religion of Empire by Garry Wills felt too heavy after my last book about invisible war, though it gets very good reviews). So I picked up The Portable Veblen (see the V?), a novel that gets mixed ratings. So far I'm finding it airy and light (it often gets described as "quirky"), which is about my current speed. We'll see.

Which brings me to TV. Last night we watched the first episode of the most recent season of The Great British Baking Show. The subject was cakes. For one of the cakes, the contestant added herbal flavorings, to wit: sticky willy and stinging nettles. Now, until two days ago, I would have had no idea what sticky willy is, but because of the book of farming essays, I recognized it immediately: it's Galium aparine, also known as cleavers or goosegrass. I recognized it partly because I had to look it up for the farming book, since at that point I'd never heard of it. Now it pops up twice within just a few days? How funny!

And there things would have rested, if not for the second coincidence—which I found too humorous to leave go unnoted. This one involved the show Veronica Mars, about a girl detective. She was in high school when the show got going, but this season (which originally aired in 2006—we are rewatching, again) she's enrolled in college and works in the college library. I'm impressed with how she has the locations of quite obscure subject matter right there in her bright little noggin—like when a fellow student comes in and asks for a book on the economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen. Wait, what? Veblen? Yes indeed, the author of The Theory of the Leisure Class himself, who coined the term "conspicuous consumption" and was a strong critic of capitalism. Given the class divide that Veronica Mars treats in its characters and situations, I enjoyed the wink.

Now I'm waiting for a third unlikely coincidence. If one arises, I'll be sure to add it here.

Next day:

Okay, this is an addendum rather than a new coincidence. Though it is inspired by the fact that while out hiking today—thirteen miles in Henry Coe State Park—while geocaching, my friend Alastair and I were relentlessly beset by sticky little seeds that glommed onto our pants. Stinking hedge parsley! David, in his brushed denim, was spared the aggravation, but A and I spent quite a lot of time picking the damn things off—only to be beset again! It was diabolical! In the midst of all this, I mentioned to Alastair—who's British—my cleavers/sticky willy story. And he knew exactly what I was talking about. Nothing new to him.

So I had to Google. And got this summary (which I just took a screenshot of, pardon my laziness).

Sticky willy isn't what we encountered at Henry Coe. But the coincidence of two plants (and probably more) that behave in the exact same manner? Diabolical! 

I'm still picking bits of hedge parsely off my pants and socks . . . 

Book Report: Uncertain Ground

19. Phil Klay, Uncertain Ground: Citizenship in an Age of Endless, Invisible War (2022) (10/21/26)

I have read and admired Phil Klay in the past: Redeployment (2014), a collection of short fiction about soldiers that won the National Book Award, and the sprawling novel of ideas Missionaries (2020), set in the chaos of drug cartel–riddled Colombia. So I was excited to stumble on this book, which is nonfiction: short op-eds and blog posts as well as longer essays. As he states in the introduction, “War remains a large part of who we are as Americans, with almost a sixth of our federal budget going to defense, keeping troops deployed in 800 military bases around the world and engaging in counterterror missions in 85 countries. And yet, thanks to a series of political and strategic choices, to the average American that’s mostly invisible.”

I trust Klay to try to make our wars, especially more recent ones, at least visible, if not completely understandable (which is surely not even possible), to us noncombatant Americans. As a former Marine himself, he doesn't go into policy and decisionmaking so much as he attempts to uncover the dilemmas and contradictions of actually serving in a war, or coming back home from a war, or losing comrades and living with their memory, or questioning the leadership or one's faith. I'm a little sorry this book is already four years old, so didn't get to cover Iran, or (ffs) Hegseth—about which I'm sure Klay has opinions. Though a quick search of the New York Times recently gets me what I want, to wit:

"Pete Hegseth's Bloodlust Doesn't Hide His Military Failures," from October 13, about Hegseth's desire for a livestream presentation of the Fort Hood shooter's execution (which now, thankfully—adultly—has been bagged)
"Trump Has Made a Fatal Miscalculation about Iran," from March 22
"What Trump Is Really Doing with His Boat Strikes," from December 5 of last year
"Security Breaches Can Be Fixed. People Without Honor Can't Be Trusted," from March 28, 2025
And more, which can be found on this page. 

So yes, Klay is our envoy from a place of sanity in an otherwise insane world. These 22 pieces, arranged under four headings—Soldiers, Citizens, Writing, and Faith—consist of very short takes (like the ones just listed, usually situation-specific) and—the ones I found most effective—longer musings about such topics as gun violence, starting with the evolution of such weaponry; the perspective-giving influence of religious faith (Klay is Catholic); and the invisibility of our "citizen soldiers," those Americans who have worn the uniform. In his fiction, Klay makes those individuals complexly real; in these essays, we get the moral bedrock of someone who takes their (and his own) service seriously. 

Now I'd like to do a more thorough Google search and see if Klay has posted any more of those longer essays. I appreciate knowing what, and how, he thinks.