The Rope, by Nevada Barr

          First, I would like to thank my friend Chris Cox for loaning me The Rope, by Nevada Barr. Then, I must turn right around and apologize to her for the fact that my dog Marigold chewed off part of the binding. I didn't know Marigold was such a book hound.
          One of the reasons Chris Cox likes Nevada Barr's books (but not probably why Marigold likes them) is that many of them are set in stunning geological locations. One of her books explores Carlsbad Caverns. Another takes the reader into the bayou of Louisiana. Barr's heroine, Anna Pigeon, is a park ranger and she changes settings/parks with each book. Barr really brings these landscapes to life--and there's always a mystery for Pigeon to solve.
          The Rope is set in the Glen Canyon National Recreational Area, specifically at Lake Powell, a body of water formed by a huge dam that filled in some of the most arid, rugged and beautiful canyon land in North America. So, this lake doesn't really have a bottom in the usual sense. The land forms that you see above the lake's surface are the tops of massive rock formations that extend far below in twisting canyons. I almost described it as a moonscape, but truly this landscape is uniquely Earthian--the constant remodeling of the planet by water, wind, plate tectonics and the human species is what makes continued life possible on our homeworld.
          I've spent so much time describing the book's landscape because the action (physical, mental, spiritual) is embedded in the geology. The settings of Barr's books are not random, like the Crosby/Hope "Road" movies (series in which the plot stayed the same but the backdrops changed). Her characters react to and with the landscape as much as with each other.
          The Rope is a prequel of sorts. It takes readers back into Anna Pigeon's life to see how she came to be a park ranger. Pigeon has come to Glen Canyon to do summer work in the parks. She is fleeing a painful life event in New York City which the reader finds out about only gradually throughout the book. Her job is to safely collect and contain human waste around Lake Powell. She's part of a team that tries to educate boaters of the need to "pack it out," in addition to her duties with a shovel and five-gallon bucket. Lake Powell has oddly located landing spots, little beaches, rock outcroppings, navigable inlets that narrow as you go. Park visitors have an unfortunate tendency to poop where they are and then leave it behind. But (butt?) this work takes Anna out to many areas around the lake.

          The plot unfolds in a series of horrifying criminal acts--most of them directed at Pigeon, who is already clinging onto life by the fingernails psychologically. This is a prime example of a book where the heroine becomes the chief victim. And Pigeon's ordeals are truly grueling.
          Pigeon is nearly raped, thrown into a pit to starve to death next to a corpse, bashed on the head, defaced with a knife, dehydrated, poisoned, left to freeze to death, drowned, left dangling over a precipice, flung off a cliff, and even almost choked to death with a barbell. This is Pigeon's healing process and leaves her feeling much happier. Really? And, she finds salvation through a baby skunk (who does spray one of the prime suspects) and decides to become a park ranger. I just don't buy it. And I don't like it. I don't believe that rape and torture are healing experiences. I don't think it is admirable to require that kind of toughness from a heroine. It's not believable. But, it is a great way to take me through the landscapes of the park.

          Barr says that this book is about obsession (see link below). I felt like it was about battering a woman for thrills and then justifying it by a false conclusion. You know, dear reader, that this is just my opinion. It violates the fundamental rules of mystery novels--the hero/heroine is a catalyst, not part of the reaction. I don't like it when the male star of a book suffers unreasonably either, but it seems to be mostly female characters that get this treatment.
          I don't begrudge the time I spent with this book. But I also don't think it is one of Barr's best. Chris Cox? What do you think?
LINKS
Nevada Bar is interviewed by the Christian Science Monitor about The Rope at: http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2012/0209/Nevada-Barr-The-Rope-is-fueled-by-obsession
Learn more about Lake Powell and Glen Canyon at http://www.utah.com/lakepowell/ and http://www.utah.com/nationalsites/glen_canyon.htm

SIDEBAR: Simple Model of Lake Powell
Imagine standing a set of chess characters next to each other on the bottom of a bowl. Then pour in water until only the tops of the kings and queens show. Below the surface is a maze of chessmen of different heights and angles. That's a drastically simplified model of Lake Powell. Further, imagine that you are pouring something opaque, like milk, in the bowl instead of water. Now there are unseen mysteries below the surface.

Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins

Spoiler Alert: If you have not read Hunger Games yet, watch out for spoilers in this review. I'm doing my best to avoid them, and only revealing things that were foregone conclusions in the first book. Still, I do apologize if any of your reading experience is marred. Also, if you have read Catching Fire, the illustrations on this blog entry will be more meaningful.

Katniss's Mockingjay pin

The second book in the Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins, picks up right where the first book, Hunger Games, leaves off. Katniss is back home after her ordeal with the Hunger Games. She has much to ponder...love, family, self, betrayal, loyalty, the future, the past, the rebellion (if there is one), and what her participation in the Games has done to those she loves--Mom, Prim, Peeta, Haymitch, the people of District 12, and Gale--especially Gale. Her token, the mockingjay, has become popular in the Capitol as a memento of the Games, but in the outlying districts it is associated with resistance against the government. So, Katniss is required to keep wearing it to keep the Capitol happy and is also punished for it. These types of double-binds fill this book and give it a claustrophobic quality.


Horror is introduced in the character of the Nazi-like Thread, who takes over the security forces in District 12 and starts to actually enforce the rules coming from the Capitol. It seems that his actions wreak the worst havoc on people connected to Katniss. Her guilt is immense, but everything she tries to make things better makes things worse. As a Games veteran, she is pretty much trapped. She fought in the games because it would make things better at home, but nothing is better.


The first half of this book involves the victory tour of Katniss and Peeta. (OK, sorry, this is a major spoiler if you haven't read the first book.) The Hunger Games take place every two years. In the off years, the victors tour the twelve districts to keep it fresh in the minds of the people that the central government can snatch their children and put them to death in the arena any time it wants to. During the tour, Katniss and Peeta learn to see their own district with new eyes--especially its isolation and sparse population. They also see first-hand evidence of repression and resistance and begin to question whether or not they have a duty that transcends devotion to family and district, to self, and to each other--a duty to all of the people of Panem, a duty to speak out, to lead. They are lightning rods for the resistance whether they like it or not...and maybe it's the right place to be.

When the second half of the book takes us back to the arena--I won't reveal how--it is almost a relief. Yeah, for about 10 seconds. The way the combatants psych out the features of the arena and its hazards is fascinating. Katniss and Peeta have allies in this Games (called the Quarter Quell) this time--but everybody but one must die. Katniss hates allies; the more you rely on them, the more likely you are to die at their hands, she thinks. The Games are as gruesome as ever, with lightning, tidal waves, floods, and other tortures recurring regularly. It seems that the only lesson Katniss really learns is the various forms that can be taken by sacrifice.


So, the bleak vision of Hunger Games continues in Catching Fire. What saves the books is the fierce affection I developed for Katniss (and Haymitch, but not so much Peeta or Gale). What happens to her has become deeply important to me. The author has drawn Katniss wonderfully. She is someone I would like to know. And, I realize, I do know Katniss...I've met her at Sojourners where I work. She's the annoyingly feisty girl who came to us after her home broke up and she took pills to cope. She's the dull-eyed boy who has seen way too much violence and hunger. I see her every day.


I would like to search E-Bay for a magic wand that really works, an undo spell for the unloved and unlovable, a hug that heals. And this is why this book is important. The ordeals my youth undergo are not as dramatic as those Katniss faces, but they feel the same. There is the same hopelessness, the same feeling of No Way Out. Metaphorically, the book is a parallel to everyone's life. There is much pain in living. I feel the pain of not being able to help much. Respect and courtesy and knowing that I do not know everything is about all I can offer. It never feels like enough. In that sense, my journey and Katniss's are the same.


The third book (called Mockingjay, I think) will arrive in the mail soon. I can't wait to find out what happens. 


Sidebar: The Fallacy of Helping
In most therapy/support groups, there is a rule against helping through advice-giving--a rule people fight and fight to defeat. Advice can be a form of psychic violence. Now that I'm sort of mature (in my fifties!), I have started to be able to actually act on people's advice to me, to accept it. But I'm never happy about it and my first instinct is always to RESIST. Alas.


I work at an agency that helps children and young adults whose lives have gone off-track (sometimes from birth). Ideally, we help most by empowering, but I am constantly aware of the fact that help is often applied in such a way that it becomes as much a problem as the problem we're trying to help. To stand back and have faith that unconditional acceptance will eventually have a curative effect, that takes more discipline than most of us have. We have such a desire to intervene, to correct, to control. How to make help not a trap is a constant question for me.

Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins

I just finished reading Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, a few minutes before sitting down to write. First thought: Hunger Games reads hard and fast. By hard, I don't mean "difficult to comprehend." I mean that the blows just keep coming as thick and fast as the pages keep turning.


Collins pulls us into a post-apocalyptic world in which order is maintained through a cruel parody of the Olympics--the Hunger Games. The games demonstrate the power of the central government of Panem over the provinces. All residents of the country are forced to watch as 24 contestants--two from each district (or state) battle to the death in an arena as rigged against all of them as they are against each other.


Katniss becomes the contestant (or tribute) from District 12, a coal-mining region that resembles the Appalachians--hilly and green, fertile. But the mining people of the district--Katniss's people--are starving. Katniss and her friend Gale dare to go outside the fence to find food to feed their families. I will not tell you how Katniss comes to be one of the tributes from her district, but I will tell you that it made me gasp. Katniss is joined by the boy tribute, Peeta, who is a towny in District 12.


Katniss and Peeta (and I, as a reader) are then swept up in the games--a gruesome contest of wit, strength, cunning, and survival. Again, I am not going into detail here. However, my gasp at Katniss's selection ceremony was repeated over and over as certain scenes crystallized into some of the most poignant moments I have ever read. You may need kleenex, but keep in mind that this is the first book of a trilogy. Knowing that someone is going to survive helped me keep going through some pretty grim events.

The hero couple from the movie Logan's
Run (that's Michael York on the left).

A recurrent theme in this book is exactly how much rebellion against the Capitol of Panem will be tolerated--and whether Katniss and her associates can stay within these boundaries. As the characters mature, will they make the choice to live in the wild? Will they become fighters for freedom? Katniss, Gale, and Peeta have demonstrated in this book that they have the skills to do so. This theme places Hunger Games solidly in the tradition of 1984, Logan's Run, and numerous other science fiction and fantasy stories in which a sterile or controlled environment is breached or escaped and heroes seek their own fortunes. Even my favorite movie, Jeremiah Johnson, is a form of this story.


The idea of the winner-take-all games is also not new--but it is done so well here that it does not feel at all stale or derivative. Cheers to Collins.

Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss in the
movie of Hunger Games, 2012

My next issue is whether Katniss's journey is a hero journey--a quest. She is invited to step out of her milieu, she is cast into an underworld of a kind, she acquires tools, allies, mentors, and emerges victorious. But this is only phase 1 of Katniss's journey. She doesn't reach adult understanding in this book, especially with regard to her relationship with Peeta. At the end of this book she is on the cusp of adulthood, on the edge of self-determination. She has not yet transformed.


I thank Collins for writing such a good female character--one who is brave, strong, smart, and skilled without being unrealistic. Katniss is not a super-hero. She even has braids like Pippi Longstocking, my gold standard for heroines. However, Katniss doesn't have to be comic to be strong, a hayseed to be smart. I am in love with her and want to adopt her as my daughter and nurture her courage and help her grow up and out into a wide, wide world. Our world needs girls like this and people to nurture them.


I can guarantee that I'll be reading Catching Fire, the second book in the trilogy, tomorrow.


Sidebar: Pippi Longstocking

Pippie Longstocking, from the books by Astrid Lindgren, was my favorite girl character from my childhood reading. She was strong, smart, funny, skilled. She could live on her own. She could walk the ridgepole! (Which I admired even though I didn't know what a ridgepole was.) She walked where her path took her, exposing humbug and hoohaw, sticking up for the weak, daring whatever there was to dare. In exchange, she was ugly, awkwad, and ridiculed. It was worth it to her, I think, if Pippi could be seen as having an inner life.


Not for me the Laura Ingalls Wilders or Rebeccas of Sunnybrooks. My life has been one long ridgepole, and I'll walk it awkwardly, but straight and sure!






Sidebar: Logan's Run
When I was a freshman at Ohio State in 1978, I would go over to West Campus (since dismantled) early each morning and study in one of the classrooms. As the height of modernity, there was a TV monitor in that room and every morning it would show Logan's Run, a movie I had already seen a few times. All quarter long, I took in Logan's Run along with Psych 100, Biology, and Classics. It's difficult to say which had a longer-lasting impact.

The fatal dot from Logan's Run

Michael York plays Logan, who gradually becomes aware that the treasured ceremony of passing over into a different world is really a ritualized method of population control--there are no old people in Logan's world. When an implant glows in your palm, it's your time. Logan decides to escape--that's his "run." One of the most poignant scenes is when he (and his of course scantily clad female companion) see an old person for the first time. I developed a great love for this B-movie-so-good-it-gets-an-A over the course of that quarter. I never knew why it repeated morning after morning. If you know, please get in touch with me.

Ben-Hur, by Lew Wallace

This is the 1925 Ben-Hur.

Ben-Hur, by Lew Wallace (1880) is an odd duck of a book to be on my Eager Readers list, or so it seemed before I read it. But, it truly is a great story, told with currency and urgency and authenticity. I felt like I was right there with Ben-Hur in Jerusalem, in Antioch, in the stands at the chariot race. All in all, it was masterful story telling. And, it made no bones about being a Christian story, so it could be taken on its own terms. The book Ben-Hur is more concise than the movie, tighter, with less melodrama. Ben-Hur is much younger than the Heston portrayal. The main action is Ben-Hur’s vengeance and quest for his family. Everything is presented in that context.

Judah Ben-Hur is a young Jewish prince living in Jerusalem who is wrongly accused of an attack on a Roman official. His punishment is to row in the Roman galleys as a slave; his family and fortune are busted up. His childhood friend, Messala, is in league with the barely wounded procurator to steal everything the Ben-Hur family ever had. In a magnificent battle scene, Ben-Hur rescues a Roman general and is thereby rescued himself from slavery. He gains wealth and status from this adopted father.

Heston in Ben-Hur 1959, rowing in the galleys

Still, he cannot rest. He must find out what happened to his mother and sister. This quest ennobles Ben-Hur and is a story arc equal to and as important as Ben-Hur’s connection with “the Nazarene,” as they call the imminent Christ.

The story of Jesus is the second story arc. The reader travels with the Wise Men as they find and worship the Christ child. The two arcs are parallel—finding Jesus is sort of like finding your lost family, in the terms of this book; both are ways to find that elusive ideal called Home. And the one journey being concrete while the other is spiritual works very nicely. Ben-Hur and the remaining wise man (Balthasar) are present at the crucifixion, during which Ben-Hur is profoundly changed (and Balthasar is taken directly into heaven with Jesus). This transformation then enables Ben-Hur's earthly happiness, as it makes him acceptable to his childhood love, Miriam. The teachings of Jesus also erase the class differences between them and they are portrayed as living "happily ever after."

The portrayal of the Jewish struggle against Roman domination is a primary theme. Ben-Hur and his friends want a worldly king with armies and power. The desire to overthrow Rome is noble and necessary. They are courageous in their fight for freedom. But the Jews are also presented as having Jesus’s blood on them—they betrayed him to the Romans when he wasn’t the earthly king they wanted. Wallace curses all Jews for all time for betraying Jesus, an accusation that I do not find justified.

The book is a good read, interesting, engaging. Several sequences are riveting—the battle scene during which Ben-Hur escapes the galleys, the chariot race, the transformation of Ben-Hur’s mother and sister. I held my breath through the chariot race, even though I knew exactly how it turned out. I was impressed by how detailed it was—I really felt like I was there. And I wept with Mother and Tirzah as they were healed.

The 1959 film never showed Jesus' face--you
came to know him by the expression on Ben-
Hur's face--a wonderful film-making decision.

And, the story of Jesus is much stronger when seen through the eyes of Ben-Hur than it is when presented directly. Ben-Hur filters it and represents us in skepticism, wonder, and, finally, faith. What a masterful idea Wallace had to write the book in this way.

So, this book was great stuff. I remember liking it when I read it decades ago. And it has held up well. It’s a story of adventure, revenge, redemption, and love. And, it’s a story about an adult emerging from the turmoil of of a child's point of view. I highly recommend it.

Sidebar: Ben-Hur and the Hero Journey

This diagram is based on the work of Joseph Campbell.

If you've followed my blog, you know that tracing the role of the hero quest in the literature I'm reading is an underlying theme. I watch out for it because it is specified by Joseph Campbell (one of my personal heroes) as found in the stories and literature of almost every culture. How does a person grow up? The hero quest stories present the journey for us, demonstrating the pitfalls, dangers, diversions, and the great rewards of taking the path to enlightenment/full adulthood. Ben-Hur loses himself--his name and home are stripped from  him. He doesn't even own himself, as a galley slave. The book presents his struggle to find himself--by finding his courage, his cause, his family, his salvation. He acquires tools and gifts that he uses to complete his quest. What video game could want more? Christian game designers, what are you waiting for? This hero journey is ripe for the picking.

Sidebar: Lew Wallace

I love this quote by Lew Wallace--it's my dream, too. I found it at http://thinkexist.com/quotes/lew_wallace/.

"I know what I should love to do--to build a study; to write, and to think of nothing else. I want to bury myself in a den of books. I want to saturate myself with the elements of which they are made, and breathe their atmosphere until I am of it. Not a bookworm, being which is to give off no utterances; but a man in the world of writing--one with a pen that shall stop men to listen to it, whether they wish to or not."

The following link presents a brief history of Wallace's military career. He was a man of action as well as a writer. (I don't know why I don't think those things go together!): 

http://www.civilwarhome.com/wallacebio.htm