The GABG November 2020 book was The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead.

from the Acknowledgements at the end of The Nickel Boys:

"This book is fiction and all the characters are my own, but it was inspired by the story of the Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida. I first heard of the place in the summer of 2014 and discovered Ben Montgomery’s exhaustive reporting in the Tampa Bay Times."

I think the author meant to credit the St. Petersburg Times. The full in-depth report may be found HERE.

also in the Acknowledgements is a reference to The Official White House Boys website which may be found HERE.

Reproduced below a small bit of the St. Petersburg Times report. ("Small" is right... reading it is way easier HERE.)

A Rumor of War

Not rumors, just facts.
When: Friday, December 27, 2019, 6-9pm
Where: Phil's comfortable and inviting home north of Ft Collins
Who: Clark, Charlie, John, Mike, Glenn, Doc, Phil, and Jeff
What: Sampling wine, craft beers and a well-stocked meat and cheese board followed by a hearty, delicious beef, carrot and potato stew, then topped off with a warm rice pudding.
Why: The Great Apes love to drink and eat before delving into the month's chosen book.

Lt. Philip Caputo was a Marine serving in Vietnam in 1965 and 1966. His memoir (published in 1977) is a story about war based on his experiences and observations while fulfilling his tour of duty.

Even though nearly all Apes appreciated and praised his well-honed journalistic style, A Rumor of War was variously described as honest, heart-felt, disturbing, frustrating, angering, sad, and sometimes too emotionally challenging. Some Apes did not want to revisit this war or era and proclaimed it "all too much." The in-country struggles of Caputo and his platoon in the never-ending hot, wet, dark and deadly conditions evoked strong emotions and memories around the table that carried us back to the late '60s and early '70s when all but too-young Potter had draft cards. These remembered experiences led to sharing emotional stories about how he missed serving a tour in Vietnam.

Using Caputo's memoir as the jumping off point, the highlight of the evening was the telling of personal stories. Remembrances of contemplating defection to Canada, earning student deferments or medical waivers, sheer luck and/or terror brought us all back to a complex time that many had not thought of recently.

While the Apes probably didn't learn anything new about soldiering, Vietnam, military and government inefficiency, war atrocities, etc.  Sadly has anything changed?? The experience of reading, discussing, then sharing personal stories linked us together and to the world fifty years ago.

Heller's River

The Apes gathered at The Forge for libations, fellowship, and a little literary colloquium.  We all liked Phil's pick!  An unusual conformity.

Heller's Dog Stars was a previous pick.  We liked Dog Stars, appreciating the prose, the story and its familiar Front Range references.  Heller's a Colorado guy.  Some local bias is present in the book group.

Heller does not disappoint in his story telling in The River.  The remoteness of the setting appeals to the outdoor sensibilities of the Apes.  A connection to the Natural World (my emphasis) is a common topic when the Apes gather; travel, angling, other blood sports, hiking, sailing, skiing interest the  membership.  While The River takes place in Northern Canada, the descriptions are apt to any number of western North American locations.  Whitewater rivers, camping, portaging, wildfires, murderous behaviors, death, loneliness, isolation, brotherhood, reconciliation, are all integral to The River.

Heller's tight prose makes The River feel sparse.  Heller writes what could be a screenplay. I would be surprised if it weren't optioned to Hollywood.

This writer was moved by the epilogue.  Jack makes a visit to Wynn's family in the remote mountainous ranch land common to the West.  To make amends, to seek forgiveness, to tell the story, to be welcomed back to that family.  Loss.  It permeates the species.  We think, think again and re-think our losses.  May you find comfort as you examine your past.

CONSPIRACY...Conspiracy...conspiracy

The Forge. Six Intrepid Apes. Wares quaffed. But, wait... There's more!

So now, Dear Reader, you have sampled the breathless cliff hanging vox populi style presented for your consideration by Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch's The First Conspiracy.  When conspiracy is in your title many leaps of faith are required to connect events that MAY be truly connected.  Or not.

Was General George Washington the target of a murderous plot in the months before the War for Independence?  Meltzer and Mensch certainly take us down that plot line.  During this pre-revolutionary era of saber rattling who is surprised that Washington might be a target of the foes of the independence movement?  This writer suggests Meltzer and Mensch want us to be shocked that palace intrigue existed even within this ethereal world.  But maybe the Apes were not the audience for Meltzer and Mensch.

The First Conspiracy concludes with about fifty pages of Notes, Cast of Characters(?), an index, and bibliography.  The researchers compiled an impressive, though undoubtedly select,  compendium of pre-revolutionary "stuff".  As with many conspiracy theories, the devil is in the details.  Meltzer and Mensch take details and interpret as they see fit.  To write this book.  To option the screenplay?  So, maybe.  And Life Guard Thomas Hickey was executed for Treason.

In the 240+ years since these events, why write The First Conspiracy now?  Who are Meltzer and Mensch?  Sources variously describe the authors works with words such as "thriller novelist,  TV content creator, comic book author", and the like.  There is nothing inherently wrong or misguided in these adjectives and maybe The First Conspiracy is truly groundbreaking work.  Maybe.  Meltzer's IMDB entry could be telling.  Look it up if you want. When will The First Conspiracy be available for our viewing pleasure on a streaming service as a docudrama? Maybe I'll consider Meltzer and Mensch's "Cast of Characters (in order of appearance)" on pages 363-364.  Maybe.

Dear Readers we have weighed in on The First Conspiracy.  The Apes discussion was spirited and The First Conspiracy was a foundation for tangential topics.  Washington's ascent, John Jay (he would be at least as interesting as GW), the sight of more than 200 British warships arriving in New York Harbor, it was a time when authorities with dubious legitimacy would arrest and detain citizens, how does one create a fighting force/policing entity/government/revenue stream from nothing?

We admitted we didn't know everything.  The Apes were content.

Add more?

I'm back, I think, Maybe,
Doc

Hyde and Say Nothing

Gentle Readers, I've been remiss.  Hope you will forgive the wee hiatus.

The Great Apes Book Group continues to read, meet, drink, eat, cuss, discuss, and revel in each other's company.  July featured a double-header.  Earlier this month a few of us met at The Forge to knock-about The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson's examination of  descent to madness.  Stevenson's 1886 short novel falling between between Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) and Bram Stocker's Dracula (1897) takes place in an era in a fog shrouded London that we have become all too familiar with.

Let's consider this era with repressive Victorian mores, the developing compounding-pharmaceutical industry, general medical advances, emerging psychology as a (pseudo?) behavioral science, British mediums conducting seances to communicate with the dead, Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, Jack the Ripper, conflicts in Africa, Afghanistan, Asia, industrial expansion-what we might call steampunk today.  How did these experiences frame Stevenson's work?

Maybe these references speak to transformative/transactional periods.  Man's search for meaning and understanding is perpetual. Man's articulation of relative satisfaction/dissatisfaction with self is a bit more elusive.  The American Founding Fathers must have felt that "Happiness" and it's pursuit was important.  It's enumerated in our Declaration, probably thanks to Thomas Jefferson.  Is Stevenson questioning what a person is willing to do to achieve happiness?  Is Hyde's evil the opposite of happiness?  Jekyll must be incomplete, dissatisfied with who he is.  He "creates" Hyde to complete (?) him? He searches for happiness and learns all to quickly that his alternate self, rather than leading to satisfaction, possesses a darkness.  Jekyll invited Hyde in.  Jekyll lacked what Hyde had.








For our second offering in July the Apes met at Doc's for a bit of a meal share and drinks on the patio to discuss Say Nothing, A True story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, Patrick Radden Keefe.

Such and interesting read.  This writer picked Say Nothing.  Some time ago I heard a brief mention of The Belfast Project at Boston College.  It intrigued me then and I promptly forgot about it.  Say Nothing is mentioned on literary lists.  The Troubles have interested me.  I've been to Northern Ireland.  Lots of boxes were checked for me with Say Nothing.

The title, Say Nothing, refers to the vow of silence/denial members of the Irish Republican Army swore to obey. The Belfast Project was a secret cache of recorded interviews housed in a library archive at Boston College.  IRA members spoke believing their words would no be published until after the death(s) of (all?) of the participants.  Their words were used in the hunt for perceived criminal violations.  The police authority in NI were successful in subpoena-ing at least some of the transcripts/recordings in 2011 and arrested Sinn Fein's Adams in 2013 on suspicion of murder in the disappearance of Jean McConville, a young widow and mother of 10 children in 1972.  She was suspected of giving aid and comfort to the British during an uptick in violence in Belfast.

It seems Keefe rang the bell of McConville's murder/execution again and again.  Whether she was an innocent or collaborator will never be clear.  Fewer than 20 individuals were "disappeared" by suspected IRA actions.  When the Peace Agreement was signed in the late 1990's, the process reconciliation was not satisfactorily addressed.

This book's importance cannot be diminished.  There are some faults here.  I'm less than satisfied with Keefe's lack of balance.  He smugly mentions in the last few pages that a reader can look for Loyalist atrocities elsewhere. I feel manipulated.  The more I read Say Nothing, the angrier I got.  Angry at the IRA and Gerry Adams, but then I expanded my Venn diagrams and the cognitive dissonance of the missing Unionist actions took hold.  "Wait a minute.", I thought.

In 2019 and beyond, what players in The Troubles be held accountable?  How will that happen?  Will memories from 50 years ago be the primary source of testimony?  Will hearsay evidence from the Boston College tapes be admissible?

Some Apes, this writer chief among them, is troubled by an inability to determine who "the bad guys" are.  What constitutes war?  Must war be reserved strictly for "The State" to declare?  Is the individual ever justified in acting against oppression?

War is not healthy for children and other living things.

Hannah's Lament

When you read Wendell Berry there are so few surprises.  I think that's what endears gentle Berry devotees to keep coming back to him.  The Apes read Jayber Crow some years ago.  Characters and places flowed between Jayber Crow and Hannah Coulter.

The Apes enjoyed reading Hannah Coulter.  Berry's prose is comforting, much like the clothes you've worn again and again, and returning to an era where time and place almost seem to stand still.  Yet, that's not quite right, as families grow, death looms, properties are abandoned, absentee owners creep in.  So, change is ever present.  Maybe it's the mores, the backbone of a place, that entrench.

Berry employs a female narrator.  Hannah Coulter is a tough woman who loses a newly minted husband to World War II and is left to raise their daughter.  Hannah could have spent the rest of her days as the widowed spinster living with her in-laws raising her daughter, but that wouldn't make it as interesting.  Hannah marries again, moves to the adjacent property and we are off and running.  This reviewer appreciates the attempt to write from a woman's perspective and while Berry can elucidate the issues of rural women of this era, he misses the nuances.  Hannah has many masculine characteristics, and maybe in this part of Kentucky gender roles becomes something different?  Work is work, whether done by man, woman, child.

The costs of war are great, old men send young men to die,  young lives are extinguished and are mourned.  If Berry's views aren't anti-war, I would be surprised.  Let's see who else might weigh in.

We Searched

The Apes appreciated Alan Le May's The Searchers for what it was.  Source material for the John Ford directed film of the same name.  While Ford spotlights John Wayne and the Monument Valley with an interesting interpretation, the novel's a journey from Martin Pauley's eyes.  Martin and Amos spend years chasing a Comanche raiding party.  The reader is unsure whether Amos plans to rescue or kill little Debbie (not the cupcake).  I hope more broad perspectives will weigh in.  I have a deadline.

There There...

Tommy Orange did not put a comma between theres in his title.  This scribe thought an error occurred. I was thinking of soothing words offered up by a kindly grandmothering type.  Nope.  Turns out Gertrude Stein is credited with uttering something like, "...She took us to see her granddaughter who was teaching in the Dominican convent in San Raphael, we went across the bay on a ferry, that had not changed but Goat Island might just as well not have been there, anyway what was the use of my having come from Oakland it was not natural to have come from there yes write about it if I like or anything if I like but not there, there is no there there." 



Here is reputed to be the border between Oakland and Berkeley.  There is a there there now.

The Apes met to discuss There There.  Much hype on the national stage preceded the Apes picking Tommy Orange's debut novel.  There There is short-listed for all manner of accolades.  This story has many layers and while its edges have some roughness Orange writes of what he knows, I guess.  An Urban Indian's life doesn't have much voice.  We might have to hide our heads as we utter Sherman Alexie's name.  He presented an experience of modern Native Americans that speaks of, at least tangentially, some Indigenous people's interaction in Northwestern cities.  We may be able to take away from each author a wisp of Native life.

I'm glad to have read There There and believe Orange has potential to be some kind of voice, if not for Indigenous peoples then perhaps for drawing attention to what nuclear family is, poverty, gun violence, drug/alcohol abuse, economic disparity, hopelessness, cultural insensitivities.  Orange tries to tackle a lot.

Here is a message from Opal...
"She shuffles her music and it lands on Smokey Robinson's "The Tracks of My Tears."  This song gives her a strange mix of sad and happy.  Plus it's upbeat.  That's what she loves about Motown, the way it asks you to carry sadness and heartbreak but dance while doing so."