Apple’s iPad Is for Stories, Not for Books (iBooks: 2.0/10.0)

We’re stepping a bit out of the box here at The Literate Man today to bring you a review of book-related technology. Now, before my office is raided by a team of Apple goons, let me be clear that I love the Apple iPad. For those of us that enjoy stories as related by the more visual media—including the Internet, videos, television shows, and movies—it is nothing short of revolutionary. However, recognizing that The Literate Man is a blog for and about literature, the iPad’s performance as an e-reader leaves much to be desired. In fact, in terms of technology designed to present words on a page, it is not even in the same class as a Kindle or Sony eReader, leaving me to wonder how Apple can even market the e-reader potential of the device with a straight face. In short, the iPad is not the right choice for anyone that is serious about reading content (other than Internet content) on an electronic device.

A little bit of background: I am a traditionalist. As you will note from several of the posts here, I like nothing better than the smell and feel of an old, worn (preferably first run) copy of a work of classic literature. Nevertheless, I recognize convenience and have been reading books on electronic devices for more than ten years. I am dead serious when I tell you that I read not only War and Peace, but also Moby Dick and Anna Karenina, on an early version of the Palm Pilot. Fortunately for all of us, the technology has improved greatly. I have been using a Sony Pocket eReader for approximately six months now. And I do have problems with the Sony. It is simply maddening to attempt to read any type of work with footnotes—David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest just about drove me to the mental state of Hal Incandenza. But the Sony device is lightweight, the type is crisp and clear, and there is absolutely no problem reading in full sunlight. As such, I have continued to use the Sony with pleasure and, in fact, just finished Joyce’s The Dubliners, for which a review will be forthcoming.

As for the iPad, I picked it up about two weeks ago, more for the media-related functions than the iBooks application, which has been widely criticized. Still, I thought that I would probably use the iPad as an e-reader on occasion, and I looked forward to enjoying its innovations. But—and here’s the point—there are none, at least none that I find useful or even noteworthy. It is quite simply a portable computer screen with a white background upon which blurry black type is placed – it is, in short, a Word document. But that’s not all. I have used it to read in a variety of contexts now, and I have found every one difficult and troublesome. To begin with, the weight of the device prohibits you from holding it aloft like a book for any period of time. And, as previously mentioned, the text is anything but crisp, making the reader’s eyes tire after only a few minutes of reading and resulting in a pounding headache if one reads for any extended period of time. And, did you say that you like to read at the beach? Forget it. The device is a better mirror than an e-reader in direct sunlight.

There’s more, but I think the point is made. For me, the iPad is a wonderful media device (and I plan to use it heavily for such), but a complete failure as an e-reader.

Guerrero & Heart's Blood (Alan Clark) (8.2/10)

In 1511, Gonzalo Guerrero, a Spanish sailor, and Jeronimo de Aguilar, a Spanish priest, were among a party sailing from Panama to Santo Domingo, which was shipwrecked on a coral reef off the coast of Jamaica. After drifting for weeks, they washed ashore on the Yucatan peninsula and were taken captive by the local Maya. Several were sacrificed immediately and the rest were taken as slaves. As the only two survivors of this ordeal, Guerrero and de Aguilar took radically divergent paths: Guerrero went on to become a respected warrior and chieftain among the Maya, leading campaigns against his own people with the arrival of Cortez in 1519. De Aguilar, in contrast, remained a slave, denigrated and abused by his captors, until he was saved by Cortez and accompanied him as a translator on the conquistador’s march to distant Tenochtitlan.

It is a mystery to me that the story of Gonzalo Guerrero has never truly resonated with the American people. It contains all of the same elements that make movies like Gladiator and Avatar such blockbusters: an Old World warrior, a distrustful indigenous population, a slave to warrior to chief progression, a cross-cultural love story, and a tear-jerking tragedy full of outrageous injustice. I read an award-winning, fictionalized account entitled, Guerrero, by Eugenio Aguirre, some years back. The edition that I read was in Spanish, although I believe that I have seen reference to an English translation at some point. But even that well-written tale failed to capture the conflict in the mind and heart of Gonzalo Guerrero as has been accomplished in this short, independently-published work by Alan Clark. The first portion, “Guerrero,” is a play focused on the character of Gonzalo Guerrero in the period immediately preceding Cortez’s arrival. He is firmly-entrenched in Maya society, where he enjoys the respect of his chief, Nachancan, and the love of his Maya wife and children. Despite de Aguilar’s attempts to remind him of his Christian beliefs, he recognizes that it is his destiny to live and love among the Maya, to practice their customs, which he has come to understand and appreciate, and he is content to do so. Clark treats the many conflicting emotions of the great warrior with deftness and exhibits a distinct knowledge of and appreciation for Maya ritual.

The second portion of Clark’s work, “Heart’s Blood,” is de Aguilar’s retrospective on his captivity and his relationship with Gonzalo Guerrero. While there is an understandable hatred of the Maya that had enslaved him, there is also a love of his companion, Guerrero, and a sadness that accompanies his departure from the Maya en route to join Cortez at the start of his expedition. De Aguilar’s reflection provides a suitable counterbalance to Guerrero’s stoicism and the book feels as if it comes full circle.

The book is not available publicly, but you may contact Alan Clark directly for a copy through his website at http://www.alanclarkart.com/index.php.

The Long River Home (Larry Smith) (8.5/10.0)

I love this novel. I love it not for what it is, but for what it represents. And what it represents is a continuation of the quintessential American storytelling tradition wherein family is intimately and irrevocably linked to the land that provides for its survival and it is the emotional drama of multiple generations of hardworking and hard-loving men and women that drives the story straight to the reader’s heart. It is the tradition first made popular by Mark Twain in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, then polished by John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden, and finally perfected by Norman Maclean in A River Runs Through It and Ken Kesey in Sometimes a Great Notion. It is, quite simply, the tradition to which The Literate Man is dedicated. And it is a tradition that is largely absent from the pages of Amazon and the bookshelves of Barnes & Noble, which are increasingly dedicated to the formulaic and the prurient.

The Long River Home follows four generations of the McCall family from 1861 through 1949 as they witness and experience the transformation of the Ohio River Valley from wilderness to agriculture to industrialization. Andrew McCall, solitary child of the Civil War and sometime bootlegger, is the patriarch of the family, and the wildness and wanderlust of his nature can be traced down the succeeding generations. Equally prominent in the family’s blood is the loyalty and stoicism brought by Andrew’s wife, Mariah, who manages to hold the family together even when events threaten to tear it apart. There is no unbelievable drama here—only the decisions, right and wrong, of the very human beings that inhabit the novel’s pages. But Smith treats them both fairly and subtly, and the reader comes away with the sense of having lived among the McCalls and having loved them in spite of, or perhaps because of, all of their flaws.

The Long River Home is not perfect. It is inconsistent at times, and the reader feels strangely closer to the historical characters than those that would be almost contemporaries. It is not in the same class as those classics mentioned above, though at times it does get within spitting distance of them. But it is a book that brings you into emotional contact with the characters that inhabit its pages and closer to an understanding of the human condition. And for that reason alone, it should be treasured.

The Second World War (Six-Volume Set) (Winston S. Churchill) (9.4/10)

Now this is a man’s work, and for more reasons than one. In six long and annotated volumes, Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill holds the reader’s attention masterfully through the years of blind pacificism and the rise of the Nazi menace in Germany (The Gathering Storm) through the blitzkrieg campaigns that brought all of Europe, and very nearly England, to its knees (Their Finest Hour) to the reluctant entrance of both Soviet Russia and the United States into the war (The Grand Alliance) and the gradual turning of the tide as the massive capabilities of all three were harnessed to overcome German war production (The Hinge of Fate) to the storming of the European continent and the discovery of German concentration camps (Triumph and Tragedy) to final victory over Nazi Germany by traditional warfare and imperial Japan by the reluctant use of atomic weapons (Closing the Ring).

Please understand, I am not generally a fan of military history or of war tales in general. And I am certainly not a fan of all of Churchill’s works (his four-volume work, A History of the English Speaking Peoples, has me begging for release only halfway through volume two). But this is quite simply the greatest story of the twentieth century, and this set of six volumes records the events through the eyes and ears and hands of one of its primary architects. Churchill is a fantastic storyteller here, though he does have a weakness for prolonged and verbose defense of his decisions in the moment. Nevertheless, the urgency of actual events moves the story along at a comfortable pace, and Churchill generously excerpts from his own correspondence and the archives of the British government’s to tell the tale.

Especially interesting is the tremendous correspondence that passed and the friendship that developed between Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt before America’s entrance into World War II. Even as the population of Great Britain was huddled underground in subway stations during the Battle of Britain, Churchill had faith that reason and right would win out in the hearts of the American people and he repeatedly expressed that faith to Roosevelt, while also pleading for increased military support under the Lend-Lease Act of 1941. Equally engaging is Churchill’s hot and cold relationship with Joseph Stalin, whom Churchill variously considered his closest ally and, by the end of the war, the embodiment of evil upon the earth. But the facts don’t lie, even in Churchill’s hands, and there can be no doubt that England and America would have very likely lost the war to the Axis powers if the Great Bear had not made its timely entrance and proceeded to sacrifice the greater share of its manhood for victory.

The Second World War is not for the feint-hearted. The reading of it is an enormous project to undertake. But the rewards are tangible not only in the beautiful prose which graces its pages, but also in the significance of the events that it relates. Overall, it is simply one of my favorite works.

The Conquest of New Spain (Bernal Diaz del Castillo) (7.5/10)

Bernal Diaz del Castillo, a captain under the command of the conquistador, Hernan Cortez, presents a straightforward, if less than poetic, chronology of his adventures in the New World. Diaz was party to two failed expeditions from the Spanish beachhead on the island of Cuba to the Yucatan prior to the attempt of Cortez, and each was soundly defeated by Maya warriors at Cozumel and Champoton, respectively. Then, in March of 1519, Cortez mounted a larger expedition intending to establish trade with the Maya and perhaps establish a permanent settlement for Spain. Ambition and glory soon eclipse these plans as Cortez’s victories over small bands of Maya lead to gifts of gold and tales of the strength of far-off Montezuma lead to visions of conquest.

At bottom, Cortez is able to take advantage of a Maya civilization in disarray before the violent strength of the Aztecs and he deftly plays one group off against another and all against the Mexicans on his march toward Tenochtitlan. What stands out in stark detail throughout is the degree to which Cortez and his men relied upon their asserted “duty” to spread the word of God to the natives in order to justify their rape and pillage of two decidedly advanced (if not also violent) cultures.

Told in the style of a soldier, the account still makes for fascinating reading. Diaz is sometimes brutally honest (in admitting, for example, that the vast majority of Cortez’s soldiers joined his quest to bring native slaves back to their plantations on Cuba) and sometimes transparent (in repeatedly stating their intent to do God’s work in civilizing the natives, while raping and pillaging from morning until night), and he is always nauseatingly deferential to Cortez (who was supremely powerful in both Spain and New Spain at the time of the book’s publication), but the book remains a good read both for its historical significance and to remind us all that there were fully-functioning societies—no more barbarous than the nations of Europe—long before any white man set foot on what was known to them as the New World.

Salt: A World History (Mark Kurlansky) (9.0/10.0)

Who knew a book about a cooking condiment could be so exciting?


It’s hard to imagine a world where salt is more than just a food complement, but for most of human history no element on earth has played a more critical role in society’s evolution than sodium chloride. In the aptly named, Salt: A World History, author Mark Kurlansky paints a rich and fascinating portrait of salt’s pivotal role in shaping the world as we know it.

Gold? Diamonds? Oil? All are mere historical footnotes compared with the role salt has occupied over the past five millennia of the human journey. In fact, until quite recently, salt was the most valuable commodity on the planet. Wars were waged, civilizations collapsed, and empires rose and fell as people throughout the ages sought to acquire this once scarce mineral. Salt has since shed its glamour with only the poorest and most backward countries still in the salt mining business and damning medical evidence curtailing its consumption. But Kurlansky transports us to a time when salt was the cornerstone of life and the epitome of opulence.

Transcending both time and space this running historical narrative takes us from China in 5,000 BC to England in the 19th century as this swift-paced tale unfolds. From the key ingredient in early animal domestication and antiseptic in Egyptian times, to soldier pay in Roman times, to a food preservative during the European Age of Exploration, salt has been humanity’s companion and catalyst through the ages. It’s done more than just spice up our food, harden our arteries, and provided us with witty sayings (ever wonder where the expression “salt of the earth” came from?) and that long forgotten and intriguing past is compellingly revealed in this 449-page ode to NaCl.

Kurlansky has a rare talent for making the mundane fascinating (he’s also written mesmerizing biographical accounts of both the cod fish and the oyster) and his powers are at their greatest in this enthralling read. You’ll never look at a salt shaker the same way again.

The Comedians (Graham Greene) (9.1/10)

As the tragedy in Haiti continues to unfold, Graham Greene's treatment of the corruption and terror of the regime of Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier and the Tonton Macoute seems newly relevant.  Obviously, the government has changed, though one still hears the cries of corruption from every corner, and the secret police are no longer the primary source of fear for a population that now battles daily for its very survival.  But the core message of The Comedians remains a pointed criticism not only of Haiti's failings, but of our own as mere bystanders (i.e., comedians) in observing a society descend into utter chaos.

Greene is perhaps the most consistently successful writer in the English language when it comes to crafting characters that are hopelessly conflicted within themselves.  The Comedians is no exception.  The American hotelier, Mr. Brown, is a bit player in the revolutionary movement and is occassionally persecuted by the Tonton Macoute, but declines to ever dedicate himself to the cause, instead preferring to focus on his budding affair with Martha Pineda, the wife of a South American Ambassador.  Of course, ultimately the affair is a mere distraction (as are the Smiths' efforts to establish a vegetarian center in a country that is literally falling to pieces about them) and the larger events of Haiti pass them by as they eventually decide one by one to leave the country to its madness.

The counterpoint to the indifference of Brown and Smith is Major Jones, who ultimately dedicates himself to the cause entirely, though he has little actual experience in such affairs.  Greene does not paint him as a hero, however, as his ultimate sacrifice leads not to a new dawn in Haiti, but only to the loss of his life and the flight of his routed troops over the border to the Dominican Republic.  Ultimately, The Comedians is a masterpiece of do-gooder desire and shameful impotence, and the reader walks away as conflicted as the characters that inhabit the story.