Rant Recommendations: Books
Four Books that Make—and Help—You Think
I’m always on the lookout for a good story. In an entertainment world brimming with what’s now called “content,” you’d think good narrative would be easy to find.
Well, not really.
There’s a lot of crap and semi-crap content out there. Especially when it comes to movies and streaming series. I know because I watch a good deal of them. Stuff that’s passably engaging and okay to put-up with—but it’s also formulaic and therefore predictable. You know, stuff that’s not really making an impact on you. Not in a good way. Stuff that’s the narrative equivalent of junk food. (As I watch this stuff I tell myself, Well, at least I’m studying culture...)
So, as an act of Rant public service, every once in a while I’ll offer some suggestions for stories I’ve come across recently that did make an impact on me. In a good way. In a non-junk food way. And my measure for this positive impact is simple.
Did I wake up the next morning still thinking about it?
If so, I judge that piece to be some high-quality narrative nourishment. A story that sticks to your ribs. That has something to say. And that just might be something—if you haven’t already come across it—you’d want to taste-test for yourself.
Of course, you might decide that some of my recommendations are crap. Equally, I’m sure I’ll be overlooking other worthy narratives that I haven’t come across yet.
In either case, please be a good Rant citizen and share your own story recommendations in the Comment box below! Let’s get some chatter going, folks! Be a Ranter, not just a Rantee!!!
In short, I make no claim that my endorsements will be fool-proof or exhaustive. They will just be some invigorating stuff that I’ve enjoyed in the past year or so. Moreover, for simplicity, these occasional “Rant Recommendations” will come in three categories: books, movies, streaming series.
As for today’s suggestions, here are two novels and two works of non-fiction I’ve just finished reading that really got the brain churning.
Novels
I will admit that I don’t consume a lot of contemporary fiction. For the most part, I find it disappointing. Very nicely written but not really saying much of genuine interest to me. I say this because I find most fiction nowadays to be hyper-focused inward. At the individual and at individual woes. More often than not, that individual is an upper-middle-class angsty type undergoing private, woe-is-me, upper-middle-class tribulations depicted in methodical MFA prose stylings.
That is, nice metaphors but little else.
I much prefer to read fiction that focuses outward. At an Us, not at a Me. Thankfully, there are, of course, many novels that do focus outward. That concentrate on Our larger social situation. I’m very happy to say that I’ve come across two such terrific, bigger-social-picture novels published this year.
James by Percival Everett
This novel just won the Pulitzer Prize—which sometimes means it’s actually a really good novel. In this case, it is indeed.
This book is flat-out great.
Everett’s novel is not just a retelling of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. James is a re-viewpointing of Twain’s masterpiece. That is, James is a story told by Twain’s character of Jim, the runaway slave who is accompanied by Huck as the pair attempt to raft down the Mississippi River to obtain their separate kinds of freedom.
Yet—and this is most important to say—James’s narrative is in no way a slavish (pun very much intended) imitation or reflection of Huck’s story. Quite the contrary.
Everett works in partnership with Twain to unmask the downright stupidity and outright atrocity of racism and slavery in America.
The story told is wholly James’s. And James’s alone. And while I recommend that you re-read (or read) Adventures of Huckleberry Finn before reading James, just to get a feel for the impressive collaboration and invention Everett puts into his novel, what is accomplished in this piece of fiction is an even deeper study of American racial violence than what Twain himself was capable of carrying out.
Yes. Everett’s book is that good.
James also has the most satisfying ending—and even the best final word—that I’ve ever come across in a novel.
Just read it.
You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrigue (translated by Natasha Wimmer)
If James is one of the best novels I’ve ever read—and I’ve read and taught a lot of good novels—I can honestly say that You Dreamed of Empires is THE BEST NOVEL I’VE EVER READ.
No small statement here, and not one that I make casually.
Enrigue tells—nay, mind-bogglingly imagines—the first couple of days in early November 1519 when the conquistador Hernán Cortés makes first contact with the Aztec emperor Moctezuma in his capital city of Tenochtitlan (today’s Mexico City). The prose world created in this novel has the intricacy, the gravity, the ribald absurdity, and—to my mind most notably—the ruthless polity of novels written by Gabriel García Márquez.
Yet, unlike Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude or The Autumn of the Patriarch, Enrigue’s You Dreamed of Empires does not use magical realism as a storytelling device. Instead, we are charismatically made to witness the utter trainwreck of real-world cultures, social configurations, cosmologies, languages, and wills-to-power colliding head-on.
And you can’t look away.
I was blown out of the water by this novel—and I didn’t even see it coming.
Non-Fiction
I much prefer to read non-fiction these days. I find works of non-fiction more interesting, more informative, and thereby more useful to me in my attempt to maneuver reasonably intelligently through the world. While I could list many fine non-fiction works I’ve read recently, I’ll describe just two books here that have left a particular mark on my thinking.
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Published in 2013, Kimmerer’s book is not new, but it’s recently been made new to me. In fact, as I write this, I just finished reading Braiding Sweetgrass last night. It was recommended to me—urged upon me, really—by my wife and daughters. Strong, brilliant women all. I’m not sure, but perhaps this book has a reputation for being a “woman’s book,” meaning something men won’t find interesting. If so, well, that’s just more evidence of how pig-headed men can be.
The subtitle of the book is “Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.” That sums up nicely the basic ingredients of Kimmerer’s work. What’s remarkable about Braiding Sweetgrass, though, is how perceptively and convincingly Kimmerer weaves together these three ingredients.
As an accomplished Professor of Botany and as a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Kimmerer bridges two distinct thought-systems regarding life on earth. However, in this collection of essays, Kimmerer does not use “civilized” western science—as one might expect—to lend a touch of credibility to “primitive” Native-American beliefs.
Just the reverse.
In starkly factual terms, Kimmerer demonstrates the short-sightedness of a good deal of western science. More to the point, she explores how the Enlightenment assumptions behind that science, coupled with the acquisitive individualism of capitalism, has brought devastation to our planet.
Specifically, the invasive species of European culture that was brought to America regards the plant and animal world as dead objects solely to be procured and exploited in the name of perpetual economic growth. As the climate crisis worsens, however, it becomes increasingly obvious, as Kimmerer shows, that the knowledge and practices of indigenous American peoples are far superior.
How?
Because such people—like so many other so-called “primitive” societies worldwide—understand that we live in a co-animate world that requires not our mastery of it, but our humble participation in it. Kimmerer sets out a science for such give-and-take. A reciprocal approach of our tending and being tended by the land.
Thus, Braiding Sweetgrass is, in fact, a scientific treatise. But one asserting, compellingly, that Indigenous Wisdom is not mere folklore or superstition. It is improved science. And urgently necessary knowledge.
Blood and Thunder: The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West by Hampton Sides
This book is NOT what you might think at first. It is NOT a glorification of the American West. It is NOT a celebratory biography of an “American Hero.” It is NOT a story of wondrous Manifest Destiny and the gritty explorers and pioneers who bravely “settled” a wild frontier.
No. This book contains none of that colonizer flimflam. This book strips it bare.
Blood and Thunder is a skillful contextualizing of an iconic American figure—Kit Carson—into the complex, brutal, multi-cultural mayhem that existed west of the Mississippi River during his lifetime (1809-1868). The author, Hampton Sides, specializes in such contextualization. His books hover somewhere between meticulous academic History and entertaining Beach Read.
The epitome, perhaps, of instruction and delight.
Sides painstakingly researches and provides thoroughgoing accounts of his subject matter. But his prose is altogether straightforward, readable, and unencumbered by footnotes or academic jargon. As a result, and if you’re at all interested in learning a great deal about really interesting stuff, books by Hampton Sides are hard to put down.
I found Blood and Thunder impossible to put down.
Except for the name Kit Carson, I’ll wager you know little to nothing about the man. That was how I went into this book. I’d of course heard of Kit Carson as some kind of famous Mountain Man and Indian Fighter. But, beyond that, I had no clue about his actual life or his larger cultural circumstances.
And holy shit. What an amazing life and what a staggering set of larger cultural circumstances.
You can explore all the stunning details for yourself. All I’ll say here is that I’ve never learned more about the history of the American West than from reading this book. What an unholy mosh-pit of political ambition, nation-building, cultural stupidity, genocide, bareknuckle land-grab, and jingoistic propaganda. (Not unlike our social moment today.)
I say again: holy shit.
And in the midst of all this turmoil—often as a key player—is the paradoxically remarkable and ordinary person of Kit Carson.
An illiterate wayfarer from Kentucky who wound up speaking several indigenous languages; marrying Native-American and Mexican women; living the majority of his life in the Spanish-speaking culture of New Mexico; fighting both alongside and against various indigenous tribes; becoming a pulp fiction hero back East; serving in the U.S. Army during the Mexican-American War, the Civil War, and the Navajo Wars; and, maybe most famously, being the primary frontier guide for the exploration and mapping of the Oregon Trail.
Yep, that Oregon Trail—likely the single-most brazen stratagem for western expansionism in U.S. history.
HAPPY READING!!!
COMING IN TWO WEEKS: some Movie recommendations!
AND DON’T FORGET...
Read some provocative fiction. Check out and subscribe to my other Substack newsletter, 2084 Quartet at:
While you’re at it, read some provocative social commentary. Check out and subscribe to this absolute Substack gem as well:
