Sunday Sundries, 270

1. HBOTW [Human Beings of the Week]: Michelle Cozens and her son, Sam, who, apparently having read my blog post yesterday about gloom in the sky, drew a large chalk sun on our front walk--without our noticing until we got a message from her husband, Chris. There were tears on Church Street when we saw it.

2. I finished three books this week (nearly four), but I figured I'd better save one for next week!); don't be impressed: I'm house-bound!

     - The first, via Kindle, is the latest Jack Reacher novel, Blue Moon, by Lee Child. This one begins as Reacher exits a bus in an unnamed medium-sized city to help a fellow passenger, also debussed, an elderly man about to be mugged. And off we go ...

We learn that the city is split in half, controlled on one side by a Unkranian mob, on the other by an Albanian one. Reacher, of course, gets caught up with both of them, and before all is over, he has rounded up some allies (a young woman, who provides several services), some former military guys (there's some inter-branch banter among them), has engaged in major firefights with both sides. As many dead as in a John Wick film.

Oh, and atop all is a creepo the Ukranians are protecting fiercely--a guy who creates and shares fake news (and porn, too) all over the Internet. (Divide us; conquer us.) Let's guess what happens to him!

     - The second was a 1997 novel by Ian McEwan, Enduring Love. (As I've mentioned here before, I'm reading all the McEwan novels that I've not read before.)

This one begins with a horrible accident. A man and his lover are having a rural picnic and they see a hot-air balloon in trouble. He and some others rush for it, but the wind is too fierce and although they manage to save the father and son in the basket (the son at first soars off--but all is well), one of the men helping out, who, like the others, is holding onto the mooring rope, is swept up into the air and, letting go too late, falls to his death.

And off we go. Our narrator (the guy on the picnic--he's a noted science writer) is ravaged by grief (he had let go of the rope), and this creates cracks in his relationship with his lover (who's a professor doing research on Keats and Fanny Brawne). Another young man who was trying to help is clearly deranged and believes our narrator is in love with him. And commences stalking him.

Things grow ever more serious and tense until practically the final pages.

Once again, McEwan shows that few writers equal him in his understanding of the human heart and mind.

     - Finally, I finished a short novel by Claude McKay (1889-1948), a writer closely tied to the Harlem Renaissance (1920s). This novel, Romance in Marseille (he Americanized the spelling of Marseilles), which McKay worked on in the 1930s, was never published, though versions of it have lain in two major library collections. It was not a "discovery," this manuscript; scholars have long known about it. But now ... it's published for the first time. (A fine Introduction explains all of this.)

The novel focuses on Lafala, a young black man hanging out on the wharves at Marseille. He's from western Africa, has very little money, but is popular there, loves to dance, and is on the prowl for love.

Dumped and betrayed by a young woman named Aslima, he stows away in a ship, is caught, is confined in a bitterly cold space, and, as a result, ends up losing both legs.

But a lawyer helps him extract a significant settlement from the shipping company (the lawyer turns out to be not so generous), and he returns to Marseille, bucks up, and his popularity returns.

Aslima checks him out again.

And off we go on a romance (is it?), a scam (is it?), a decision to return to Africa (does he?).

McKay fills the book with a wide variety of characters--gay ones (men and women), pimps, lawyers, true friends, false ones, drunks, bartenders, people with a social conscience (!).

But throughout we see a strength in Lafala, a strength that, in the end, serves him well.

I enjoyed this novel--though it could have benefited from some editing in McKay's life (only mild editorial alterations in this edition). Example: Halfway through we meet a character we easily could have met earlier--and I'm sure McKay could/would have fixed that, had he pursued publication.

3. Okay, Confession Time: I streamed Dodgeball this week. Confession Time 2: I've seen it multiple times. (Link to some video.)

Need I say that Joyce did not join me?

4. Confession #3: I'm now streaming The Other Guys for the second time since our incarceration. (Need I say that Joyce ...?) (Link to some video.)

5. I'm a complicated guy.

6. Joyce and I, together, are streaming some shows for about an hour just before Lights Out, including Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Detectorists, The Black Adder, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Blood, Waking the Dead. We like to end the night with some stand-up--and doing so has shown me how tired I am of jokes about sex and body parts. C'mon, folks--do something original!

7. Last Word--a word I liked this week from one of my online word-of-the-day providers ...

     - from wordsmith.org

Hippocrene (HIP-uh-kreen, -kree-nee)

noun: Poetic or literary inspiration.

ETYMOLOGY: In Greek mythology, Hippocrene was a spring on Mt. Helicon and was created by a stroke of Pegasus’s hoof. From Greek hippos (horse) + krene (fountain, spring). Ultimately from the Indo-European root ekwo- (horse), which also gave us equestrian, equitant, hippodrome, and hippology. Earliest documented use: 1598.

USAGE: “But, instead of merely serving as bistros for coffee and cake connoisseurs, these cafés also serve as a Hippocrene of sorts for writers to brew up inspiration.”

Nida Sayed; Riverside Rendezvous; The Times of India (New Delhi); Jun 14, 2015.