Book Report: The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

You may have heard of this one, and you've probably already read multiple thinkpieces about the newfound relevance of The Handmaid's Tale (book and/or TV show) in the age of Trump. So I won't re-tread over that same ground. I'd like to write a few words about how Atwood has crafted this stark dystopia by enacting only governmental changes.

There's been no ecological disaster or nuclear holocaust, and there was no gradual political transition from the '80s current day in which the book was written to the misogynist hellscape in which it was set. The physical world is the same as it ever was, but the Gileadan (sp?) takeover, economically and horrifically described in flashback, was incredibly effective in brutalizing half of the population. One day you're a young mother trying to do the best for your young family, and a short period later you're being chased through the woods with your daughter as bullet zip past and your husband is probably killed elsewhere. Atwood does an excellent job of sowing doubt in Offred's character's mind about every man's motivations, even her ostensibly decent husband, who is shown to be somewhat controlling given the opportunity. It's harrowing throughout, but not any more so than the first couple of episodes of the show, which are nonstop brutal.

Book Report: The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem

I've been making a conscious effort over the past couple of years to read books by authors who are not white males. It's been very worthwhile for me to read perspectives about life that come from people who don't look like me. And while that approach hasn't been foolproof, it's for the most part protected me from reading whiny, masturbatory crap like The Fortress of Solitude.

As a person who spent a lot of years feeling sorry for himself because he wasn't treated nicely by a lot of his peers in middle and high school, I can relate to Lethem's stand-in in this autobiographical novel, Dylan Ebdus, who spends a really large portion of this 500+ page book complaining about being beat by black kids as a white kid growing up in Brooklyn. However, it's become abundantly clear to me as I've grown into adulthood that most people were (or think they were) bullied when they were kids. And, like a poker bad-beat story or a tough fantasy sports loss, it's pretty boring to hear about another fairly-privileged person talk about how rough they had it as a child. When it's set against the crushing poverty that surrounds Ebdus, though, it's really tough to corral enough sympathy to stick with the story.

The first half of the book takes Ebdus from his early-'70s toddler-hood through high school, raised solo by a taciturn father who condescends to make money painting pulp novel covers while working on his interminable passion project: a hand-painted avant-garde animated film. Ebdus' mother skipped town when he was 5 or 6 to join a commune and occasionally sends cryptic shellfish-punned postcards to her son, but is never seen nor heard from again.

Dylan spends most of his time alternately worshiping and disregarding his neighbor and sometimes best friend Mingus Rude, mixed-race son of Marvin Gaye stand-in Barrett Rude, Jr. Mingus is so much cooler than Dylan it's unclear why they ever spend any time together, but let's just roll with it. When Mingus is avoiding Dylan, he hangs out with even less cool white kid Arthur Lomb. Dylan and Mingus even trade handjobs once in a while, I guess so that no one accused the book of being homophobic? Oh, and there's a ring that grants the wearer superpowers, but why would you want to make that more than a tangential plot point?

The second part of the book opens with Ebdus as an insufferably self-absorbed 30-something freelance music journalist (picture John Cusack's character in High Fidelity after the credits roll, but with more coke) pitching a movie about a black convict band to a Hollywood studio exec. If you were hoping Lethem would spare us the details of how we got there, you will be sorely disappointed. Did he also feel alienated at his fancy Vermont college before getting kicked out after a semester for dealing coke? You better believe it. Do he and his black girlfriend make each other miserable? Oh yes. Does he go to the trouble of making any of the non-white characters fully human or with any redeeming qualities? Nope. Does he leave his superpower ring on the shelf for more than a decade before using it for one final, tossed-off hurrah? Grrrrrrr, yes. I hate-read the last 200 pages of this book, and I'm so glad that I don't have to spend any more time in the presence of any of these characters.

Book Report: The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin

The Left Hand of Darkness has been recommended to me by multiple people over the years, so when I came home with a copy after the book exchange at the most recent Boneshaker Books volunteer party, I didn't have any excuse to not read it. And after all that buildup: it's fine. I know that any Le Guin fan who stumbles upon this will want to fight me, but I'm pretty lukewarm about the book. And after reading The Dispossessed a couple of years ago and having a similar experience, I'm comfortable saying that she's just not for me.

The book is set on the planet of Gethen, an icy world which is visited by Genly, an emissary from the earth-like Terra on behalf of the Ekumen. Genly is trying to convince Gethen to join the Ekumen, something of a United Federation of Planets. Genly and the residents of Gethen are all recognizably human, but Gethenians are androgynous and only have sex during the few days a month when they're in kemmer, when they can take on male or female characteristics in order to procreate. Any Gethenian can be a father, and any Gethenian can be a mother. They consider Genly, who is male, a pervert because he is capable of having sex throughout the month.

The book is a political drama for the first half or two-thirds, sort of like a novella-length version of the Star Wars prequels, except with considerably better-quality writing. Then, for the last part, it's a man (ok, well, one of the participants is androgynous)-vs.-nature adventure story on the frozen glacier between the countries of Karhide and Orgoreyn.

I could go into considerably more detail with the plot description; there's a lot here. Both the setting and the culture are richly imagined, and I feel somewhat guilty that it left me cold (not unlike Gethen, amirite?) when I've met so many people who have had a much more meaningful interaction with Le Guin's work. However, I didn't connect with any of the characters here, and I really couldn't care less about the internal political machinations surrounding Genly's proposal, which took up a significant portion of the book. If there were significant metaphors here for life on earth, I completely overlooked them. Once Genly takes to the ice, fleeing for his life with an initially reluctant companion, it was more exciting than politics, but I wasn't emotionally invested enough in the characters to really get sucked into the adventure.

Book Report: Black Moses by Alain Mabanckou

I've been trying to read more, and I think that it would help me to retain what I read a little more and have some record of what I read if I make a blog entry about each title, no matter how brief or insipid. So, I'm going to give it a shot.

Black Moses is set primarily in an orphanage in the People's Republic of the Congo in the 1970s. Moses was left there by his mother in his infancy, and he's picked on by the older kids. The orphanage undergoes a transition from indoctrinating their wards with Catholicism to indoctrinating their wards with Communism as the political winds shift over a period of years. Moses has an opportunity to run away with his former bullies in early adolescence, and does so. He ends up working as an errand boy in a brothel in Pointe-Noire, working his way up to a more prominent position, and then abruptly having a breakdown after the political winds shift again and the brothel is bulldozed.

The storyline is interesting and engaging, but I had a hard time understanding the individual characters, among which Moses is the only constant presence. Moses especially is an enigma, lurching from weakling to rising ghetto boss to pathetic drunk over the course of a few pages. Maybe that's intentional, contributing to the general sense of unease that surrounds the book's plot? I'll give Mabanckou the benefit of the doubt.

On the Shores of the Øresund and Elbe: A Copenhagen/Hamburg Vacation

Part One: Copenhagen

(Author's note: I took a bunch of Boomerang videos on the trip, and I had to embed them in the blog as videos. They won't auto-start, so click them to view; they're all about 4 seconds long, so they shouldn't take too long to load.) 

A few months ago, a flight alert popped up for $420 round trip flights on Delta from Minneapolis to Copenhagen, Denmark. Since neither of us had ever been there, and it offered easy access to visit my brother, Tom, and his family in Hamburg, Germany, on the same trip, it was a no-brainer.

Tom described Denmark as the "land of made-up vowels," and other than the title of this entry, it will not be alphabetically correct. I hope that this doesn't detract too much from your reading experience.

Sunday, October 8

We flew out of MSP in the direction of Amsterdam at 7:45 p.m. All went well, and we even slept for a few hours on the overnight flight.

Monday, October 9

We arrived at Copenhagen airport in early afternoon, and took the train to Copenhagen Central Station and a bus to our lodging, the Little Guesthouse, in the Vesterbro neighborhood about a mile west of central Copenhagen. It was a great place to stay; we had a second-floor bedroom in a three-story house, and shared a bathroom and kitchen with the other guestroom.

We dropped off our bags, and based on a recommendation from half of the husband and wife innkeeper team, Jens, we walked to dinner at the WestMarket, a collection of street food-type booths in a common space. We had some ramen and a beer, and then had another pint at Fermentoren on our way back to the hotel.

Fermentoren had Big Lebowski stencil quotes covering the walls in their men's room:

We were pretty wiped out by that point (spoiler alert: this will be a recurring theme), so we crashed.

Tuesday, October 10

Our first stop was Christiansborg Palace, which had a free elevator to a tower which offered a panoramic view of the city.

From there, we walked to Nyhavn, which is an old merchants' neighborhood with brightly colored row houses.

We paid through the nose for lunch, so we tried to make up for it by taking advantage of free admission on Tuesdays at Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, a classical art museum, where we viewed their collection of Roman sculpture, which included this bust of Jimmy Carter, I'm pretty sure.

We hit up the Netto supermarket down the street for dinner fixings and called it a night.

Wednesday, October 11

We took a day trip to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, located in Humlebaek, a picturesque northern suburb of Copenhagen right along the Oresund, which separates Denmark from Sweden. The train took 30-40 minutes from Central Station.

Molly was most excited about the Marina Abramovich exhibition, which did not disappoint. We both got the opportunity to uncomfortably walk between two completely nude models, which was a first for me. In all seriousness, though, it was great.

There was also a permanent exhibition by Yayoi Kusama of mirrors and lights, which was super trippy.

The museum's setting was almost as awesome as the art within:

Molly even found a place to get her senior picture taken: 

On the trip back, we stopped at the Klampenborg station to check out Dyrehaven, a nature preserve featuring huge herds of deer.

We found a large group just steps from the entrance, including an immense buck and an albino doe.

A quick aside: I traveled to rural Mexico this summer for work, and it was a real bummer of a trip for multiple reasons which I won't bore you with here if I haven't already. A slightly redeeming quality that I was able to purchase Havana Club Rum, which isn't available in the U.S., and I got to feel like Cool Exotic Traveler Guy Who Can Acquire Obscure Items. You can imagine my elation, then, when every 7-Eleven in Denmark carried it, and every train station was covered in ads for it:

At least their mezcal selection was for shit.

Also, it's good to be a 12-year-old boy when traveling:

After the train ride back to the city, we stopped for dinner at War Pigs, a beer and BBQ joint which is a collaboration between Munster, Indiana's own Three Floyds and the Mikkeller Bar of Copenhagen. It was wonderful, and they had plenty of sauces.

Thursday, October 12

Since I'm an early riser, I headed out for solo walks from the hotel most mornings. The guesthouse was just east of the Ny Carlsberg Brewery (Ny is Danish for New, but this brewery is over 100 years old). Based on what Jens told us, Carlsberg has moved their brewing to Eastern Europe, so this facility is just for tours and offices now. The area around and within the brewery appears to be in the process of being converted into condos. /shrug emoji

This is the Elephant Gate, which has some, um, interesting iconography:

We took a stroll to the Norrebro neighborhood, with our first stop at Assistens Cemetery, the final resting place of Soren Kierkegaard and Hans Christian Andersen, among others.

We walked pasted Rosenborg Castle on the way back.

And then we stumbled upon the rarest of creatures, a reasonably priced place to have a beer in Copenhagen! I present to you, The Log Lady, where you can drink a bottle of $5 Danish beer in the presence of extremely laid-back hipsters and look at centerfolds posted on the bathroom wall:

 After a discouraging bus ride (it seems like Copenhagen buses don't necessarily follow a set route for a given route number, which isn't a fantastic feature), we grabbed Thai takeout on the way back to the hotel.

Friday, October 13

We rented a couple of beat-up Dutch-style three-speeds from the hotel and explored Copenhagen by bike. First stop was Freetown Christiania, a part-hippie, part-punk settlement south of central Copenhagen where your square rules don't apply, maaannnn.

We cruised past the Little Mermaid statue and picked up a slice of pizza for lunch in Osterbro (one had peas on it!), followed by a visit to the Botanical Garden at the University of Copenhagen.

We followed that up with dinner at Paperoen, a former paper warehouse on the harbor which had been converted into another large room filled with street-food stalls. We enjoyed some fish and chips and checked out an outdoor crowdsourced Yoko Ono art exhibit at the adjacent Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center.

Saturday, October 14

With a half-day left in Copenhagen before our departure for Germany, we took a canal boat tour, which was lovely and informative. 

We stumbled upon a cafe for lunch, and walked around a little more before arriving at Central Station again to catch our train out of town.

The train was pretty crazy in that, midway through the five-hour journey, it drove onto a ferry and floated from Denmark to Germany for 45 minutes. We had to get off the train during its time on the ferry, and the interior of the boat was like an airport food court, with a full-sized duty-free store and everything. We did, however, get to spend some time on the top deck. Overall, the experience was well worth the price of admission. 

Tom picked us up at the Hamburg Central Station and treated us to the finest beers available:

Mr. Clou, that's my name, that name again is Mr. Clou:

Part Two: Hamburg

Sunday, October 15

Tom, his wife Sonja, and their two kids, Fiona and Anton, had been living in an apartment near the center of Hamburg, but they just bought a house and moved (only days before our visit) to a tiny village just outside of Ahrensburg, which is just outside the Hamburg city limits. 

I was expecting something akin to a standard U.S. inner-ring suburb, with strip malls and car-centric design, but this place was pretty gosh-darn idyllic. There were sidewalks and cycle-tracks everywhere, and lovely older brick homes. Tom is now a car owner again after a 15-odd year break, but their diesel Toyota Corolla wagon is extremely practical, with a third row of seats that avoided a reappearance of Truncle Joel when hauling four adults and two kids in car seats. 

I accompanied Tom and Fiona to the village bakery first thing in the morning to get some bread for breakfast. One thing Molly and I were struck by on the trip is how weak our bread game is. 

We spent a good part of the day at a playground about a mile from their house, which was on the grounds of the elementary school that Tom and Sonja's kids will eventually attend. There was an extremely awesome zipline:

There was also a spider-web-type jungle gym, a long slide, a climbing wall, some other climbing equipment, and a couple of outdoor ping-pong tables. It was a playground built with a lot less fear of being sued than most I've seen in the U.S. 

We checked out some horses in a pasture on the walk back to the house. 

While the kids took a nap, Tom and I biked to Ahrensburg to check out the Ahrensburg Castle, and old manor house with a double moat surrounding it. It was a nice ride, but we didn't feel the need to pay the entry fee to check out the interior.

In the evening, Sonja's parents biked over from their home just inside the Hamburg city limits and we had a barbecue. 

Monday, October 16

This was our city tourism day. Our group of six drove to the parking garage under the brand-new Elbphilharmonie. 

For you Twin Cities readers, the building was similar to the Guthrie Theater, in that it offers a huge performing-arts venue, but also a free escalator to a viewing platform for the general public. 

From there, we stopped for lunch along the HafenCity harbor at a perfectly pleasant restaurant, and then Tom and family went to a playground before heading back home. Here's Fiona with her apfelschorle, and Molly with her spritz:

Molly and I continued to the St. Pauli Elbtunnel, which passes underground from one side of the Elbe River to the other. It has car elevators in it so that it can be used for vehicular traffic, but mostly it's a pedestrian and bike tunnel. 

From there, we strolled to the St. Nikolai Memorial, which has to be in the running for most metal church in the world. It was mostly destroyed in the Gomorrah firebombing by Allied planes during WWII, but was not re-built as a memorial to the dead. It's a very powerful reminder of the awfulness of war. 

Our next stop was Hamburg's City Hall, the Rathaus, which we strolled past on our way to have a drink at ALEX on the shores of the smaller Alster lake. It's a strong testament to Hamburg's affordability that drinks at the absolutely most touristy place in town, on a picture-perfect day, were extremely reasonable: I had a Ehrdinger weissbier pint and Molly had an Aperol spritz, and the bill came to around 10 euros (~$12). Pictured: Molly in her happy place.

Our main goal for Hamburg tourism was to experience a Bavarian-style meal with ridiculous quantities of pork products, huge pints of beer, and tacky taxidermy covering the walls with an oompah band playing in the background. We were able to cover most, if not all, of those bases at Hofbrau Wirsthaus. 

Since we arrived at about 5 p.m. on a Monday, the number of fellow revelers was somewhat limited, but we still had a great time. 

We had a couple of entrees and a couple of gigantic beers, and the bill was 37 euros (~$45). A good time was had by all, and there was even some sort of Super Mario level in the park next door: 

We hoofed it over to the Central Station, where we ran into a protest for Kurdish Independence outside before catching a train to a description of my condition: Bad, Old, and Slow:

Tom picked us up at the train station in Ahrensburg, and we experienced a German supermarket on the way back to the house. 

Tuesday, October 17

We spent our last day in Germany hanging out around the house, raking leaves and helping with swingset construction. 

We flew back to Copenhagen in the early evening, and crashed at a hotel near the airport before catching our flight out of town Wednesday morning. 

A hearty thank you to Tom and Sonja for putting up with houseguests while their house was still full of unpacked boxes, and for being such excellent hosts. We love you both, and your children are a pleasure to spend time with. 

I'll leave you with a few random items that didn't seem to fit into the narrative, but I would feel bad if I didn't include: