Civil Wars

Born in 1968, Laird Hunt grew up in Singapore, San Francisco, The Hague and London before moving to his grandmother’s farm in rural Indiana. He earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University, and also studied French literature at the Sorbonne. His reviews and essays have been published in national publications such as the New York Times, and his fiction has appeared in top literary magazines. He has had eight novels and a short story collection published. He has been awarded several literary honors including the National Book Award. I just finished Neverhome, published in 2014, winner of France’s Grand Prix de Littérature Américaine. It is the story of an Indiana farm girl who disguises herself as a man and goes off to fight in the Civil War, leaving her husband, whose eyesight is poor, behind. A sharpshooter, she becomes a fine soldier. It is an unpolished first-person account, a grim odyssey relentless in its depiction of the dark side of humanity. Although only 246 pages, it is not an easy read, as the protagonist has had no schooling. There is nothing in the narrative that defies credulity. The psychology of the woman is subtle, as her back story is revealed in pieces throughout the novel. Thankfully, the book is not an in-your-face lecture on feminism. 200 users at Amazon have rated Neverhome, forging to a consensus of four on a scale of five. I’ll go with three. I’ll hazard a guess as to the meaning of the title — mankind is lost. Given the daily news, it is not far from the truth, especially these days. Anyone squeamish about violence and turned off by bleak subject matter should pass. Laird is currently teaching at Brown University in Rhode Island. Married to poet Eleni Sikelianos, he is a father of a daughter. Facts from Wiki, photo from Google Images.

Par for the political course, headline from newsmax.com: “Democrats Now Running From ‘Defund the Police’ Talk.”

Also from NM: “‘Star Wars’ Actor Mark Hamill Raised Funds for 500 Drones to Ukraine.” May the force be with you, sir.

From NM, tax dollars at work: “Pentagon to Pay for Abortions.”

From NM: “Starbucks Closes More Than 20 Stores Nationwide Due to Safety Concerns.”

Remember when detractors claimed the change in Georgia’s voting laws was a threat to Democracy? So far early voting is setting records. Unfortunately, I don’t trust it.

The weather is spoiling me — another great day to do business curbside. My thanks to the men who donated a bag of books, mostly medical texts, which I hope will sell as well as in the past; and to the young cutie who pounced on a thin volume of Chekhov in the mother tongue; and to Nadine, who purchased The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath; and to the young woman who selected Avenue of Mysteries by John Irving; and to the elderly woman who took home two kids books and A Night at the Roxbury (1998) on DVD; and to Wolf, who chose Revenge, non-fiction by Laura Blumenfeld, A History of the American People by Paul Johnson, and The Essential Herodotus: Translation, Introduction, and Annotations by William A. Johnson.

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