Book 17

A Is for American: Letters and Other Characters in the Newly United States
Jill Lepore, Alfred A Knopf, NY, 2002, 241 pages.

I bought this book at the public library for 50 cents. Probably too uncategorize-able for readers to deal with, but it's cool. Lepore, an award-winning historian, writes a character sketch for each of seven men who tried to control American-ness through language, somehow or other. You have heard of Noah Webster's dictionary and Morse's code and Bell's telephone. You may have heard of Gallaudet, who championed sign language for the deaf. Lepore adds William Thornton and his "universal alphabet," Sequoyah, who invented a written Cherokee language, and Abd al-Rahman Ibrahima, an African Muslim who got himself and his family out of slavery by demonstrating his fluency in Arabic. These are some strange characters. Most were arguing about who should and shouldn't be "American," three were involved with deafness issues, three met with President John Quincy Adams. Weird combinations. Alexander Graham Bell, an immigrant, was vehemently anti-immigrant. Most of them were invested in using language to spread Christianity. If you read this book, you will certainly be thinking some new thoughts, so get set.

Book 16

The Art of the Icon
Nigel Cawthorne, Bounty Books, London, 1997, 2005, 96 pages. (ISBN 13 9780753712382)

I love religious icons, so this book leaped into my hands in the Art Museum bookstore. It's just beautiful and has some surprises. Originally, icons were deliberately styled to look the same to show that they were divinely inspired, not mere human creations. Thus, the concept of a prototype, first used to describe fourth-century icons. Early sets were used to "tell" Bible stories to illiterate churchgoers. In an important sense, these sacred pictures were almost like early cartoons or graphic novels. And people once believed icons could work miracles. They were carried into battles. But my favorite facts were all about Russian Prince Vladimir of Kiev. Listen to this:

"Vladimir began his reign in 980 with an orgy of paganism. He had taken numerous wives and had sacrificed thousands of his people to pagan gods. However, he then decided that religion would be good for his subjects, so he sent scouts to neighboring lands to find one. He was drawn to Islam because it promised the continuation of carnal pleasures after death, but its ban on alcohol discouraged him. It was impossible to live happily in Russia without strong drink, he said. ... In 988, Vladimir was baptized into the Orthodox faith. This was followed by the enforced baptism of all his subjects in the Dnieper River in 989."
 

Book 15

It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want to Be.
Paul Arden, Phaidon Press, London, NY, 2003, 128 pages.

The best advice I've read all year. A paperback book that you can read in an hour. Then you can start changing yourself for the better -- fast. Paul Arden is a famous ad man from England. (And his advice includes "Get out of advertising.") He's witty. He's practical. He's right.

Witty: "Energy. It's 75% of the job. If you haven't got it, be nice."

Practical: "Talent helps, but it won't take you as far as ambition."

Right: "To be original, seek your inspiration from unexpected sources."

On that last point: I found this snappy little book in the St. Louis Art Museum Gift Shop. (Phaidon Press is famous for beautiful design books. How this adman got in with the artists is a good example of creativity being unexpected -- well, OK, sneaky.)

Book 14

Love That Dog
Sharon Creech, Harper Trophy Books, 2001, 2008, 86 pages.

Recommended by one of my grad students, a teacher. A strange and charming little novel, designated for readers age 8-12, and designed to look like "modern" free verse. Every page is in over-size dark blue print, very pleasant-looking. The number of words per page ranges from 10-120. Easy, easy. The story is narrated entirely through personal free-verse notes written by Jack to his teacher, Miss Stretchberry, who keeps encouraging him to write more. The whole thing looks like cotton candy, but it also contains a wry commentary on modern poetry, starting with Jack's opening complaint that "I don't want to / because boys don't write poetry. // Girls do." -- quickly followed by Jack's announcement that "I don't understand / the poem about / the red wheelbarrow / and the white chickens / and why so much / depends upon / them." If Jack doesn't speak for thousands of readers in that sentence, I'll eat the page. Actually, I just realized that I'm presuming that thousands have even read William Carlos Williams' famous little poem. A sad fact is that any new book of poetry in the USA is a big bestseller if it can sell a print run of a mere 1,000 copies.  At the end, the book adds on seven more-or-less famous poems and a 13-page excerpt from the sequel, Hate That Cat.

Book 13

Cherokee Dragon: A Novel of the Real People
Robert J. Conley, St. Martin's Press, NY, 2000, 289 pages.

The novelist, author of more than 30 novels, is Cherokee and lives in Tahlequah, Okla. He subtitles the book, "A Novel of the Real People," and he's not kidding around. In fact, Cherokee Dragon is the 10th volume of the Real People series about the Cherokee nation, who have named themselves, so simply and grandiosely. Conley is the descendant of a minor character in the story, Richard Pearis, as explained in the 10-page Glossary of Cherokee terms and names. Pearis was a Tory trader in colonial North Carolina. Like a number of traders, he married into the Cherokees; later, he fled to the Bahamas after the American Revolution. The Glossary says, "He was the author's sixth great-grandfather." So this is old-style family history in one way: remembering Grandpa. In another way, it's the lion's version of history as described by Wendell Phillips in his Letter to Frederick Douglass, which Douglass used to open his autobiographical Narrative:

My Dear Friend, You remember the old fable of "The Man and the Lion," where the lion complained that he should not be so misrepresented "when the lions wrote history."

I am glad the time has come when the "lions write history."

This novel is definitely a lion's version. In yet another way, Cherokee Dragon is merely a novel, no more true than Cooper's novel, The Last of the Mohicans, or Mel Gibson's movie, The Patriot -- but I would bet on Conley's story over those other two. Basically, the story chronicles three generations of Cherokee chiefs, from 1737 to 1794. The central figure is a War Chief, Dragging Canoe, misnamed Cherokee Dragon by settlers. He is preceded by his diplomatic father, a Peace Chief, and followed by an admirer, one of the last Cherokee War Chiefs. The end is known from the beginning, just as surely as if the story had been named "Titanic." Dragging Canoe may be a tremendous warrior, but the Cherokees are a bit like a strong boat about to be swamped by an ocean of Atlantic settlers. The most powerful shock for me was that I temporarily began to think of the word Americans as synonymous with foreigners. This is not the story of the infamous Trail of Tears, but the story leading up to that ugly feature of U.S. history. The eventual story of Andrew Jackson and the Indians, one generation later, is not pleasant. The curious story of Sequoyah, the Cherokee chief who invented an entire Cherokee writing system, glancingly mentioned in the Afterword, deserves a good book of its own.