Feldman's Faves: November 21, 2022

GOOD MORNING EVERYONE

Last week was HUGE in my house. My youngest daughter got her Taylor Swift tickets (thank G-d….) and her G1 license (aka learning permit). For those of you who have been through the “child learning to drive experience” already you know that as a parent taking your child driving in the early stages and remaining calm throughout is nothing short of Herculean and a classic example of how not all heroes wear capes….So far so good, but I definitely find myself crying on the inside from time to time.

I forgot to mention last week that our recruit was a HUGE success and to thank all of you who were involved in making it happen. We are a special place to work and I think the law students that want to come here understand this very well.

No theme this week, just interesting stuff.

THE PASSENGER By: Cormac McCarthy – As much as the literary world was excited for Ian McEwan’s latest novel, 89 year old Cormac McCarthy’s first novel (actually two) in 16 years is a monumental event in the world of books – his last book, the Pulitzer Prize winning, The Road is a modern classic. I’m not going to lie – reading this book and working through it was a bit of a challenge for me to put it mildly. The story, characters and themes take time to unfold in a very non-linear manner and patience is required in order to “get it” (assuming I actually did). McCarthy’s style is not easy to digest and I found myself re-reading many pages over and over again. As one reviewer explains, “The Passenger, is out now, and while it has that traditional McCarthy style (spare prose, few commas and adjectives, scant apostrophes, and no quotation marks to tell you who’s talking), it is nothing if not original. It’s difficult to summarize the plot, but the protagonist is a guy with a great name, Bobby Western. The novel begins in Mississippi in 1980 as Bobby, working as a salvage diver, sits on a Coast Guard boat about to explore the wreckage of a plane crash below the surface. We learn there’s a passenger from the manifest whose body is not on board and the black box is missing. But this is definitely not a mystery novel. If you turn the pages hoping for answers, you won’t find them. What you will find are deep discussions about quantum mechanics, God, the atomic bomb, who killed JFK, and of course, love. We learn Bobby’s younger sister, Alicia, was a child mathematics prodigy, who while studying for her doctorate at the University of Chicago years ago, committed herself to a mental hospital named Stella Maris in Wisconsinbefore killing herself. (“Stella Maris” is also the name of the companion novel to be published on Dec. 6.) We learn their father and mother both worked on the Manhattan Project, Dad as one of the scientists with Oppenheimer as they watched the first mushroom cloud fill the sky in the New Mexico desert. Oh, and we learn the siblings loved each other. Incestuously? Unclear. But it certainly haunts them both. Alicia is a diagnosed schizophrenic, visited by various “chimeras.” She dubs the ringleader the “Thalidomide Kid.” He’s small in stature and with flippers instead of hands. She merits her own chapters, all in italics, during which she converses with those hallucinations. If that all sounds like a lot, you’re right. This is not an easy beach read. It’s difficult to follow at times, in part because the secondary characters are barely introduced. Someone is looking for Bobby — because of the plane crash? Because of his parentage? — and he avoids detection by wandering through the South talking philosophy and cars and nuclear annihilation with people from his past and present as we stitch together his story. Reading “Stella Maris” later this year will help some. Taking the form of transcripts between Alicia and her doctor, it’s formatted as a series of interviews with the patient, set eight years before the events of “The Passenger.” But Alicia is not just any patient. Like her brother, she thinks deeply about everything and shares it all with Dr. Robert Cohen. The only thing she won’t delve into too deeply? Bobby.” I now feel compelled to read Stella Maris when it comes out in the hope that I might understand WTF McCarthy is trying to say here- but no promises that I actually will. Stay tuned. Here is a good review from the NYT – https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/19/books/review/cormac-mccarthy-passenger.html

Meditative Story - Day of the Dead meditation: a celebration of life – In an earlier chapter of my life I spent a lot of time in Mexico. In particular, I worked and lived in Mexico, City and absolutely loved it there. The people are so warm, the food is incredible and the traditions are just beautiful. There is no time more special every year than the Day of the Dead. You would think it should be a difficult and morbid experience but rather it is an opportunity to face and consider death and mortality and also to appreciate life and the important people that are in your life and have been in your life. It is really healthy and healing to be so in tune and up front with this difficult issue. The Mexican people have tapped into something that is really special in how they handle it, which this episode of Meditative Story explores. Here is an excerpt from the PODCAST itself, “On the Mexican holiday Día de Muertos, or Day of the Dead, we allow ourselves space for our memories and our grief about those we’ve lost — as well as for joy, and even humor, around the continuity between life and death. While many cultures try to tiptoe around death, the rituals of Día de Muertos ask us to look clearly at it, recognize death’s place in our lives, and honor both its everyday-ness and its mystery.”: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/meditative-story/id1472106563?i=1000584070387

Thank you for your ongoing engagement and participation.

And remember to stay safe, stay healthy and to docket daily.

Jon