Silver's Reviews

My thanks to Elizabeth for citing "The Ropewalk" as one of her favorite books of 2012.

http://silversolara.blogspot.com/2012/12/my-favorite-books-of-2012.html

The End of Indian Summer

The Drummond Diaries 10/23/72 How crisp the air is at this time of year. The day was cool and golden with the last leaves of the year scurrying across the road like errant autumn nut gatherers. Everything is laying in and lying fallow for the upcoming winter.

Odd that the willows hold out for as long as they do.

But the walk after school was a  refreshing feast for the senses. Great splashes of gold on withered gray limbs, stone walls snaking away into the forest. A wisp of the familiar on the air. And my soul somehow still very far away.

Cosmic Exceptions

The Drummond Diaires, 10/9/72 - The way some people carry on about their "specialness," one would think that some sort of cosmic cherry-picking device is at work in the loftier social realms, rather than the simple coin-toss of luck, circumstance, and means. If one life can be judged a "mistake," then without the cherry-picker, all lives can be so judged. But there are no cosmic exceptions, except where, once again, fate and means make that claim possible. But if one life is deemed valuable, then all possess the same potential value. If one life is "entitled" to reach out for the dangling threads of the happiness rushing past him, then all are so entitled. If one life sees he must take the course that falls to him to the exclusion of all else, then maybe all lives have to do the same thing.

On the most elemental level of reasoning, it becomes an inescapable conclusion that all must do the same thing. That some win and some lose is once again simply a manifestation of the die roll of luck, circumstance, and means. Every week someone wins the lottery; that makes him lucky, not special. Every other conclusion is a fabrication concocted by the cherry-picker.

The Drummond Diaries

The Drummond Diaries 10/9/72 - On Back to Nature & Aggression: It wasn't civilization and free market business that caused man to be aggressive; these things were caused BY man's aggression. There is an inverted reasoning among the various denominations of social utopians that would have us believing in some implausible world of the past where simple nature folk tended cattle and fished in the shade all day. Then along comes an evil called "society" that forces its will on the surprised inhabitants, who then become aggressive and try to shake off this burden. In this scenario, "society" becomes an abstraction, a sloganeer's selling point, and they make that abstraction sound like some Grendel-like horror stalking the fens of the human mind in search of fears to prey on.

But it was man himself who placed that load on his own shoulders in an attempt to control those very aggressions that, unchecked, threatened to destroy him. The story is an old one, and modern society is simply a new backdrop for this latest rerun of a misunderstood idea. That man is still incapable of controlling his primal desires is simply more evidence of the fact that he has not matured, and maybe never will.

Nevertheless, this seedling of an idea persists, almost like a permanently imbedded collective memory. The "Garden of Eden" story. Avalon. Isle of the Blessed. The catalog of places that never were seems endless.

The Drummond Diaries, Sept '72: Right vs. Wrong - In a society that has lost its values, "wrong" is no longer a concept but simply an expedient. By inference, "right" also has no place on any sort of value scale and cannot oppose "wrong" on any moral or ethical grounds; it is either no longer recognized, or is measured against some other standard. If it is no longer recognized, then to speak of "doing what's right," even if intended to prevent furthering a perceived wrong, is simply a functional myth, or maybe a functional expedient. And the problem with expedients is that they are not immovable baselines; they are conditioned by circumstance and politics. Nazi Germany was proof enough of that. 

So where does that leave a society that has lost its values? In a valueless society, is an act simply an act, devoid of meaning, like a stone in the woods falling on a colony of ants and killing them? Is economic expediency the only metric left? Or how about utilitarianism? "What is useful is right." Does anyone but me see the lightless tunnel at the end of that policy?

Therein lies the danger for a society that no longer has any values, or that doesn't recognize itself any more.

The Drummond Diaries - 9/23/72: Liberal vs Conservative - If one's opinion reflects that of a conservative, we call him a conservative; if that of a liberal, we call him a liberal. But notice the effect: thinking in terms of binomial, linear, and opposing ideas is in effect admitting an inability to understand one's position in its entirety. Issues and attitudes are never so monochrome; they are tangled by the long, spiral web of personal and societal history. But when one's thinking is simplified the issue is made "clear." We don't notice that it is also denigrated and defeated before it is ever comes into focus. Thusly does each side fulfill the expectations of the other while remaining oblivious to the underlying reasons.

Writer's Digest Review of "The Ropewalk"

This is an ambitious and inspiring book, written by a philosopher-poet. The writer is clearly interested in the line between rational and irrational, primal and urban, male and female. It reminds me of Henry James at times and of William Faulkner at times, as well as Lewis Thomas and Sir Thomas Browne. There are sentences in here that are absolute poetry. The mysterious child, Sonya, certainly alludes to The Turn of the Screw, as well as Rousseau’s wild child. I am also impressed by the uncertainty of the narrator, and at times thought that the narrator might be that interesting fictional device, the unreliable narrator. The novel shows amazing potential.

Judge, Writers Digest Self Published Book Awards