Baron's Book Club...est January 1, 2023.

Share this page

Started reading The Bonfire Of The Vanities. I recently re-read The Right Stuff because I absolutely love the story of the early space program but I wasn’t a big fan of Tom Wolfe’s writing style and I’m running into the same issue with Bonfire. There’s just something about his style that keeps me from getting into a rhythm as I read.
 
jetsknicks1 said:
Started reading The Bonfire Of The Vanities. I recently re-read The Right Stuff because I absolutely love the story of the early space program but I wasn’t a big fan of Tom Wolfe’s writing style and I’m running into the same issue with Bonfire. There’s just something about his style that keeps me from getting into a rhythm as I read.
Click to expand...
I enjoyed The Right Stuff, and I was unable to get very far into Bonfire and eventually gave up on it after just a couple of chapters.

If you do finish Bonfire, come back and let us know whether it's one of those books that starts out as a slog but then gets better as it goes along, or is just something that never clicked for you.

I think Wolfe succeeds best with his non-fiction efforts, such as The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.
 
John Locke said:
Couple of books in this.

A writer friend and brother in philosophy who I met through my parents when we were defending property rights here in NH and beyond in the '90s.

The best of men.

Just now on Facebook.

Ken West

View attachment 14750

Conversation on a Park Bench
A memory from years ago on the Boston Common…

I'm fifteen years old.

Am walking past Park Street and towards Boylston Street.

A guy in a brown leather jacket says "Hello" as I walk by.

I say "Hello" back to him and keep walking.

"Can I bum a cigarette off you?" he asks

"Sorry, I don't smoke," I answer.

"Bad habit anyway," he says.

He's probably in his late twenties. Good looking. Trim. He is sitting in the sun on the bench with one leg crossed. Looks relaxed, non-threatening.

"Nice day, but a little cool," he says.

"Yes, it is."

"You in a hurry?"

"No… I'm just taking a walk," I tell him.

"Well, rest your bones a bit," he says, pointing at the empty side of the bench.

I'm leery of strangers on the Common, but he has a confident and intelligent voice.

"You like taking walks?" he asks.

"Been doing it since I was a kid," I say. "My mother worked right over on Boylston Street. She was a waitress. Brought me in with her and let me walk around Park Square. I've loved the city ever since."

"Yeah, it's quite a place alright," he says without much enthusiasm.

"Where did your mother work?"

"It was Mcmannus's Restaurant." It's no longer there. I used to count her tips at the end of the day."

"I think I remember it. Busy place. I bet she made a lot of tips."

"Yeah, she was a good waitress - the best," I say.

"So, what do you do when you're not walking?"

"I'm in High School."

"Bet that's a mixed bag of fish," he says. "I hated High School. How about you?"

"It's OK, I guess - but I don't really like it. I'll be glad when I'm out."

"What are you going to do then?" he asks.

"Not sure yet. I'd like to travel."

"Where to?"

"Across the country. I read a book "Travels with Charlie." Made me want to do the same thing," I said.

"Who wrote that?" he asks.

"John Steinbeck."

"Ever read The Grapes of Wrath?" he asks me.

"No, not yet. Is it good?"

"Probably the best book he wrote," says the guy. "You read that book and it opens your eyes. By the way, what's your name?"

Even though the guy seemed OK, I decided to give him a made-up name.

"I'm Tom Shaughnessy," I tell him.

He holds out his hand. "Glad to meet you Tom, I'm Dan O'Hearn. Funny, you don't look Irish."

"Just on my father's side," I say. "My mother's English and Scottish."

"Bet their fighting all the time," he says with a smile.

"Yeah, sort of. You think it's the Irish against the English?"

"Always has been," he says. "It's destiny, that's all. What's dominant in you, the Irish or the English?"

"To tell you the truth, half my brain is Irish, and the other half is English, and they keep contradicting each other. Would have been better to be one or the other."

"Don't worry about it," he says in a brotherly sort of way. "Let them fight it out, and just keep your feet on the ground and take one step at a time."

As if to change the subject, he asks, "Where's the first place you want to go when you get out of High School?"

"New York city," I say.

"Don't get me going on the Big Apple," he says. "That's one mean, nasty place."

"How come?" I ask.

"The cops hassle you… everyone walks too fast, always in a hurry… and everything costs too much."

"Well, I'd like to go anyway. Been there for a few weeks. My aunt lives in Hoboken, New Jersey. I took the 99-Bus into the city every day. Loved the library. So many places to walk. So much to see like the Empire State Building and Central Park. I really loved it."

He smiled. "Yeah, if you've got the cash, it's good. Speaking of which, do you have a dollar you can spare?"

I was surprised. The guy didn't look like he needed money. I thought he just wanted to shoot the breeze with me.

“What do you need a dollar for?"

He seemed surprised by my question. "For Wine," he said, as if it should have been obvious. "I'm a wino."

I gave him a dollar, said my goodbyes and headed for Boylston Street, over to where my mother used to work.

Later, I realized that it was one of the best conversations I ever had with a stranger. I liked the guy. He had some sort or charisma… and it was hard to believe that he was just a wino looking for a buck.
Click to expand...

Not that it much matters, just think it's kind of cool way of putting it and very cool thing to do.

To Ken:

"I'm the strangest of strangers.

No need to be leery, I'm only dangerous if you're looking to hurt something or someone I love.

A park bench on the Common sounds like a wonderful environment to have a conversation.

When the weather gets warm and you're back up north let me know, I'd love to meet up on a park bench on the Common and share a conversation.

And I won't ask you for a buck. A buck doesn't buy much booze these days. :)"

Plans have been made for the spring. :)
 
Strangely, I am slow getting into a book that has me excited more than anything recent. It is Entangled Life, by Merlin Sheldrake, subtitled How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures. I remain tremendously excited. I have pointed out here before that I am an avid reader of Lay science books. I will persist and it will click.

There have been many books and much science added to our base in the last several years, exploring the incredible size, range and importance of endless Fungi Networks and what they mean to life.

We say Fungi and we think of mushroom soup or magic mushrooms. But as WS Journal says in a review of the book, they are ". . . only fruiting bodies, analogous to apples on an underground tree."

I don't begin to know anywhere near enough to explain it much further. There are several scientific and mathematical minds here that could surely assist me with that task. But my readings of all kinds of notes and reviews leave me comfortable in saying that when I am done I will have come to understand that life in this world is stunningly more complex and wonderful than we ever imagined.

It is a book so very highly and globally praised that I can't imagine we could possibly end up disappointed.

And I repeat, I am psyched.


Cheers, BostonTim
 
BostonTim said:
I don't begin to know anywhere near enough to explain it much further.
Click to expand...
And that's OK.

Here's a quote I read recently: "We know an incredible amount. I know only a little bit."

I don't mind knowing only a little bit, because one of the little bits I know is that together, we know a lot.
 
TipRoast said:
I enjoyed The Right Stuff, and I was unable to get very far into Bonfire and eventually gave up on it after just a couple of chapters.

If you do finish Bonfire, come back and let us know whether it's one of those books that starts out as a slog but then gets better as it goes along, or is just something that never clicked for you.

I think Wolfe succeeds best with his non-fiction efforts, such as The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.
Click to expand...
I’m a bit more than halfway thru and it is getting better, mainly because he’s actually into the story now. Seems like he spent the first third of the book setting up all the characters, which was way too long.
 
jetsknicks1 said:
I’m a bit more than halfway thru and it is getting better, mainly because he’s actually into the story now. Seems like he spent the first third of the book setting up all the characters, which was way too long.
Click to expand...
i like wolfe's fiction but it can be ponderous and some of his phrasing can be repetitive. "a Man in Full"might be my fave.
 
HSanders said:
i like wolfe's fiction but it can be ponderous and some of his phrasing can be repetitive. "a Man in Full"might be my fave.
Click to expand...

I loved The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and The Right Stuff, although neither was fiction, but never liked Bonfire all that much. I think his stuff fit into
the unofficial niche of "books to read while stoned", especially that first one. I can't say exactly why, but his prose seemed to me to view the world though a
drug-hazed lens. I was big into "counterculture favorites" at one phase of my life and Wolfe seemed to fit in with all that. It's almost like he wrote for
an audience with different brain waves than the mainstream, so he had to throw a lot of bright, shiny objects into the mix to keep the pages turning.

Looking back, it seemed like drug culture was almost like Oprah's Book List. People would get together, pass a joint and talk about which books were
"cool" (which meant approved) and I was influenced to read stuff like Kerouac, Vonnegut and a few others through being exposed to that lifestyle. Now I see it
as just part of growing up in the 70s, but I still have a soft spot in my heart when I get reminded of those books,
 
Hawg73 said:
I loved The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and The Right Stuff, although neither was fiction, but never liked Bonfire all that much. I think his stuff fit into
the unofficial niche of "books to read while stoned", especially that first one. I can't say exactly why, but his prose seemed to me to view the world though a
drug-hazed lens. I was big into "counterculture favorites" at one phase of my life and Wolfe seemed to fit in with all that. It's almost like he wrote for
an audience with different brain waves than the mainstream, so he had to throw a lot of bright, shiny objects into the mix to keep the pages turning.

Looking back, it seemed like drug culture was almost like Oprah's Book List. People would get together, pass a joint and talk about which books were
"cool" (which meant approved) and I was influenced to read stuff like Kerouac, Vonnegut and a few others through being exposed to that lifestyle. Now I see it
as just part of growing up in the 70s, but I still have a soft spot in my heart when I get reminded of those books,
Click to expand...

I would suggest that Kerouac, Vonnegut, Dylan Thomas, Aldus Huxley and a few others are not insignificant. I find a good deal of their thinking to be troubling but is not without value.

The spot in your heart, whether it be for personal reasons or anything else is well earned.

Much like music that often serves as a bookmark and reminder of parts of our lives, whether we agree with the message or not, and my God, I rarely do, they carry great significance for more reasons than one. And only one is because they illuminated a single moment in time, in full clarity of a moment in out personal history.

Authors, poets, musicians and artists no matter how young have a gift of insight and great depth of feeling of the world around them, and the best of them deliver, with the greatest impact, the soul of those moments in time they've lived, which ought never be forgotten.
 
Hawg73 said:
The Devil in the White City was a tremendous read, although Holmes was one of the most disturbing characters you
will ever read about. Those that are squeamish should just skip this book because he was truly evil and diabolical. Your
heart will ache for the unspeakable horrors he inflicted on his innocent victims. Strap yourself in.

What I found most surprising about the book was the concurrent story of the Chicago World's Fair and how amazing that
event was. I had never heard of it and ended up wishing I could have seen it myself or that there were at least more
photos or films (very little survived) that could have helped to really grasp the brilliance and enormity of it. Larson's lyrical
descriptions of the whole thing were like the brush strokes of a master.

Erik Larson is one hell of a writer. He is a human time machine. It's one of the better books I've ever read.

I understand that Hulu is supposed to be filming a series of it but it won't be released until 2024.
Click to expand...
fyi...recently finished this book. wow,it was super cool. i am starting another of his:Thunderstruck
thank you for bringing Larson to my attention!
 
HSanders said:
fyi...recently finished this book. wow,it was super cool. i am starting another of his:Thunderstruck
thank you for bringing Larson to my attention!
Click to expand...

You're very welcome. It's always nice when you recommend a book and somebody really likes it. :beer:

I recommended a recent release called "The Wager" by David Grann to my book club last month and everybody
thought it was tremendous, which it was. Think "Master and Commander" crossed with "Lord of the Flies" and a true story
by another author who takes historical events and make you feel like you are there with tireless research and
pure narrative talent. Some of my past recommendations showed me that my tastes are a bit radical for that group, but I like
what I like and tend towards the dark and eclectic stuff that you won't find on the shelf at Wal-Mart.

Incidentally, White City was supposed to be a Scorcese/DiCaprio collaboration series on Hulu which has hit some snags, but Leo has
already bought the rights to "Wager" in record time. However, Grann's "Flowers of the Killing Moon" (fascinating read) was completed
(directed by Scorcese and starring DeNiro and DiCaprio) and is supposed to be released soon. I'm looking forward to that one and
sincerely hope they don't fuck it up.

I'm really disappointed that White City is being shopped because I really wanted to see what they did with that 1893 World's Fair, but
I'll just have to wait.
 
This year I made it a point of taking up reading again.

So far so good.

I'm currently reading 48 Laws of Power—it's solid so far, but it's taking me a bit of effort getting through it.

My favorite books this year:

The Psychology of Money
The Creative Act
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
 
If you're a big fan of getting information via text and reading physical books, then this article may interest you:


Here's a brief excerpt:

If the author of the text gains my trust by demonstrating intelligence and skill—a sense of humor also helps—I sink into a kind of reverie, in which I begin almost semiconsciously to fill in gaps in the text, using my own experiences to extrapolate a complex inner or external landscape from a brief description of a character’s perceptions or dress. In doing so, I become a kind of co-author of the text I am reading, which means that in some sense the book I am reading will always be unique to me.
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
TipRoast said:
If you're a big fan of getting information via text and reading physical books, then this article may interest you:


Here's a brief excerpt:
Click to expand...

That's the key beauty of the written story. It becomes ours, we own it as we immerse ourselves in the pieces world with our experiential imagination.

In a similar fashion my dad was hugely disappointed when his childhood idol, The Lone Ranger left from radio to TV. The experience was someone else's, not at all what he envisiond sitting in front of the radio.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top