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The Art of Fermentation

Author: Sandor Katz
Rating: 5/5
Last Read: September 2018
Who Should Read: Cooks, experimenters, and those interested in traditional food practices from around the world

Reading Deep Nutrition reinvigorated my interest in fermentation. I kept a sourdough starter alive for many years, but never branched out much beyond making my own bread. My starter died during one of my frequent trips to China while working at Apple, and I let the venture rest for a few years.

I searched around to find books about fermentation and came across the work of Sandor Katz. I started with The Art of Fermentation, his survey of fermentation techniques from around the world, rather than Wild Fermentation, his book of recipes.

If you are a creative cook or an experimentalist,The Art of Fermentation is definitely the place to start. Rather than provide recipes and proscriptions, Katz shares methods, guidelines, and inspiration. The central theme of the book is essentially, “you can’t go wrong” and “it’s all fine”. Got some mold on top of your vegetable ferment? Scrape it off, remove discolored layers, and keep going. Don’t like salty pickles? Scale it back. Ferment whatever vegetables you like. Mix and match flavors. Try new approaches and flavor combinations – the worst thing that could happen is some of your pickles are destined for the compost pile. Katz’s style is comforting and encouraging – it’s impossible to read the book without being inspired to start some fermentation experiments of your own.

Since reading The Art of Fermentation, we’ve been fermenting food on a regular basis. Every week I refresh two heirloom yogurt cultures (Bulgarian + Greek) and a cultured buttermilk. We have a beautiful German pickling crock on the counter which is kept full of Chinese pao cai. We finish breakfast and dinner with a small glass of beet kvass. I’ve always got a batch or two of sauerkraut in progress, along with other vegetable fermentation experiments: brussels sprouts, beet greens, carrot greens, cilantro stems, asparagus trimmings. My first batch of pickles for hot sauce is tucked away for the next three months. We have a home-style chili paste that tastes infinitely better than packaged pastes. Soon I’ll gather the courage to ferment my own fish sauce, which involves allowing whole fish with their organs intact to ferment and liquify over a few months.

The Art of Fermentation enabled me to be a more creative cook. And the best part of all is that it feels like I am always cooking while lovingly tending to my many projects.

“Between fresh and rotten, there is a creative space in which some of the most compelling flavors arise.”

Mind Map

I didn’t end up making the mind map as I normally would… But I did capture these notes.

My Highlights

This is one of the few physical books I’ve purchased in the past few years, so this is a smaller set of quotes than usual. The majority of the highlights below come from the introduction, as the rest of the book is focused on methods for fermentation.

“Is it possible that, rather than humans “discovering” alcohol and mastering its production, we evolved always already knowing it? Anthropologist Mikal John Ansvel (check name) points out that “all vertebrate species are equipped with a hepatic enzyme system with which to metabolize alcohol.” Many animals have been documented consuming alcohol in their natural habitats.

[Food storage] primarily consists of keeping foods dry but not too dry, cold but not too cold, and dark. But it is not easy, with limited technology, to create ideal conditions for storage.

What is fascinating about the concept of coevolution is the recognition that the processes of becoming are infinitely interconnected.

One of the most interesting points raised early on by Katz is that refrigeration can be viewed as a historical bubble:

  • Has been available for only a few generations
  • Predominantly available in affluent regions of the world with readily available electricity
  • Has powerfully distorted our perspectives on food perishability
  • We fear the absence of refrigeration
  • High energy requirements – will it remain affordable + highly available in years to come?

We must safeguard the living legacy of traditional food preservation techniques.

Benefits of acid food fermentation:

  1. Render food resistant to microbial spoilage + development of food toxins
  2. Make food less likely to transfer pathogenic organisms
  3. Generally preserve food b/w harvest + consumption
  4. Modify flavor + improve nutritional value

Traditional preservation:

  • Keep food in cool and dry spot
  • Actively dry (microbial activity is suspended w/o adequate water) using sun, and/or gentle heat or smoke, and/or salt
  • Fermentation

Botulism is primarily associated with canning – a new technique (19th century, developed in Napoleonic France).

Live cultures from lactic acid fermentation are only viable in foods kept @ < 115F/47C

Eat a variety of fermented foods, some with live cultures, and while you’re at it, eat a variety of plants. Make sure that at least some of the plants and bacteria are wild.

The range of plants and microbes under active cultivation is really quite limited. More different interactions – with varied phytochemical bacteria – and the compounds bacteria produce – stimulate us in functional ways. Diversity is its own reward.

“Between fresh and rotten, there is a creative space in which some of the most compelling flavors arise.”

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The Art of Fermentation: An In-Depth Exploration of Essential Concepts and Processes from around the World

By Sandor Ellix Katz

 

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The Fall

Author: Albert Camus
Rating: 4/5
Last Read: August 2018
Who Should Read: Anyone interested in The Mind, philosophy, psychology, or religion

I’ve read a few of Camus’s essays, but The Fall was my first major foray into his work.

The Fall is a short novel. The book is presented as a confessional monologue given by a lawyer to a compatriot in a bar. The lawyer, Jean-Baptiste Clamence, recounts the events of his life which led to his fall from a fully-absorbed and selfish love of life to one of dark depression and guilt. Clamence’s evolution in The Fall seems to purposefully mirror the themes presented in the book of Genesis, where man is kicked out of the garden of Eden and Wakes Up to a world of work, pain, and knowledge of evil.

How does Clamence’s Fall occur? While walking through Paris one night, Clamence fails to save a woman whom (he assumes) is pushed into in the river and drowns. His inaction that night drives him further and further into madness and guilt. Camus seems to emphasize a point frequently repeated by Jordan Peterson throughout his biblical lecture series: Nobody gets away with anything, ever.

Clamence’s self-judgment leads him down the road to an existential nightmare. He’s quite an interesting and disturbing character, especially for someone so introspective. He posits that we can never improve ourselves, because our own consciences will eternally condemn us as guilty. This is an amusing stance for a character who admits that he is morally bankrupt, but continues to act the same way that he did before “The Fall”. He seems to think that his admission of guilt and cowardice makes him noble, or at least no longer a hypocritical liar. Even after the self-torment, he says that given a second chance to save the woman, he knows that he would still fail to act.

It is this final admission of Clamence’s that leaves me the most disturbed – his attitude feels evil and sickening to me. Perhaps I find myself so disturbed because this attitude is more common than I would like to think.

If you are a student of the human condition, The Fall is a book for you. This novel is extremely philosophical and touches on many points which are still relevant in our society today. Perhaps the points discussed in the novel have always been relevant to humanity. I’m still chewing on many internal questions and uncomfortable Truths raised by this book.

This is so true that we rarely confide in those who are better than we. Rather, we are more inclined to flee their society. Most often, on the other hand, we confess to those who are like us and who share our weaknesses. Hence we don’t want to improve ourselves or be bettered, for we should first have to be judged in default. We merely wish to be pitied and encouraged in the course we have chosen. In short, we should like, at the same time, to cease being guilty and yet not to make the effort of cleansing ourselves. Not enough cynicism and not enough virtue.

My Highlights

I enjoyed my own nature to the fullest, and we all know that there lies happiness, although, to soothe one another mutually, we occasionally pretend to condemn such joys as selfishness.

I could readily understand why sermons, decisive preachings, and fire miracles took place on accessible heights. In my opinion no one meditated in cellars or prison cells (unless they were situated in a tower with a broad view); one just became moldy.

After all, living aloft is still the only way of being seen and hailed by the largest number.

Indeed, wasn’t that Eden, cher monsieur: no intermediary between life and me? Such was my life. I never had to learn how to live. In that regard, I already knew everything at birth. Some people’s problem is to protect themselves from men or at least to come to terms with them. In my case, the understanding was already established. Familiar when it was appropriate, silent when necessary, capable of a free and easy manner as readily as of dignity, I was always in harmony. Hence my popularity was great and my successes in society innumerable.

Yes, few creatures were more natural than I. I was altogether in harmony with life, fitting into it from top to bottom without rejecting any of its ironies, its grandeur, or its servitude. In particular the flesh, matter, the physical in short, which disconcerts or discourages so many men in love or in solitude, without enslaving me, brought me steady joys. I was made to have a body. Whence that harmony in me, that relaxed mastery that people felt, even to telling me sometimes that it helped them in life. Hence my company was in demand. Often, for instance, people thought they had met me before. Life, its creatures and its gifts, offered themselves to me, and I accepted such marks of homage with a kindly pride. To tell the truth, just from being so fully and simply a man, I looked upon myself as something of a superman.

Have you never suddenly needed understanding, help, friendship? Yes, of course. I have learned to be satisfied with understanding. It is found more readily and, besides, it’s not binding. “I beg you to believe in my sympathetic understanding” in the inner discourse always precedes immediately “and now, let’s turn to other matters.”

Friendship is less simple. It is long and hard to obtain, but when one has it there’s no getting rid of it; one simply has to cope with it. Don’t think for a minute that your friends will telephone you every evening, as they ought to, in order to find out if this doesn’t happen to be the evening when you are deciding to commit suicide, or simply whether you don’t need company, whether you are not in a mood to go out. No, don’t worry, they’ll ring up the evening you are not alone, when life is beautiful.

May heaven protect us, cher monsieur, from being set on a pedestal by our friends!

But it’s not easy, for friendship is absent-minded or at least unavailing. It is incapable of achieving what it wants. Maybe, after all, it doesn’t want it enough? Maybe we don’t love life enough? Have you noticed that death alone awakens our feelings? How we love the friends who have just left us? How we admire those of our teachers who have ceased to speak, their mouths filled with earth! Then the expression of admiration springs forth naturally, that admiration they were perhaps expecting from us all their lives.

But do you know why we are always more just and more generous toward the dead? The reason is simple. With them there is no obligation. They leave us free and we can take our time, fit the testimonial in between a cocktail party and a nice little mistress, in our spare time, in short. If they forced us to anything, it would be to remembering, and we have a short memory. No, it is the recently dead we love among our friends, the painful dead, our emotion, ourselves after all!

That’s the way man is, cher monsieur. He has two faces: he can’t love without self-love.

Death certainly has this affect on me:

Notice your neighbors if perchance a death takes place in the building. They were asleep in their little routine and suddenly, for example, the concierge dies. At once they awake, bestir themselves, get the details, commiserate. A newly dead man and the show begins at last. They need tragedy, don’t you know; it’s their little transcendence, their apéritif.

Camus isn’t pulling any punches, and he hits the nail on the head:

I knew a man who gave twenty years of his life to a scatterbrained woman, sacrificing everything to her, his friendships, his work, the very respectability of his life, and who one evening recognized that he had never loved her. He had been bored, that’s all, bored like most people. Hence he had made himself out of whole cloth a life full of complications and drama. Something must happen—and that explains most human commitments. Something must happen, even loveless slavery, even war or death. Hurray then for funerals!

Life became less easy for me: when the body is sad the heart languishes.

Humans need slaves (or at least domination), Clamence says:

I am well aware that one can’t get along without domineering or being served. Every man needs slaves as he needs fresh air. Commanding is breathing—you agree with me? And even the most destitute manage to breathe. The lowest man in the social scale still has his wife or his child. If he’s unmarried, a dog. The essential thing, after all, is being able to get angry with someone who has no right to talk back.

Still happening:

Power, on the other hand, settles everything. It took time, but we finally realized that. For instance, you must have noticed that our old Europe at last philosophizes in the right way. We no longer say as in simple times: “This is the way I think. What are your objections?” We have become lucid. For the dialogue we have substituted the communiqué: “This is the truth,” we say. “You can discuss it as much as you want; we aren’t interested. But in a few years there’ll be the police who will show you we are right.”

To me, this seems to be how the rich currently think of the masses:

Just between us, slavery, preferably with a smile, is inevitable then. But we must not admit it. Isn’t it better that whoever cannot do without having slaves should call them free men? For the principle to begin with, and, secondly, not to drive them to despair. We owe them that compensation, don’t we? In that way, they will continue to smile and we shall maintain our good conscience.

I have to admit it humbly, mon cher compatriote, I was always bursting with vanity. I, I, I is the refrain of my whole life, which could be heard in everything I said. I could never talk without boasting, especially if I did so with that shattering discretion that was my specialty. It is quite true that I always lived free and powerful. I simply felt released in regard to all for the excellent reason that I recognized no equals. I always considered myself more intelligent than everyone else, as I’ve told you, but also more sensitive and more skillful, a crack shot, an incomparable driver, a better lover. Even in the fields in which it was easy for me to verify my inferiority—like tennis, for instance, in which I was but a passable partner—it was hard for me not to think that, with a little time for practice, I would surpass the best players. I admitted only superiorities in me and this explained my good will and serenity. When I was concerned with others, I was so out of pure condescension, in utter freedom, and all the credit went to me: my self-esteem would go up a degree.

By gradual degrees I saw more clearly, I learned a little of what I knew. Until then I had always been aided by an extraordinary ability to forget. I used to forget everything, beginning with my resolutions. Fundamentally, nothing mattered.

Thus I progressed on the surface of life, in the realm of words as it were, never in reality. All those books barely read, those friends barely loved, those cities barely visited, those women barely possessed! I went through the gestures out of boredom or absent-mindedness. Then came human beings; they wanted to cling, but there was nothing to cling to, and that was unfortunate—for them. As for me, I forgot. I never remembered anything but myself.

As I passed, the idiot greeted me with a “poor dope” that I still recall. A totally insignificant story, in your opinion? Probably. Still it took me some time to forget it, and that’s what counts.

I am guilty of this – the monkey mind at play.

As an afterthought I clearly saw what I should have done. I saw myself felling d’Artagnan with a good hook to the jaw, getting back into my car, pursuing the monkey who had struck me, overtaking him, jamming his machine against the curb, taking him aside, and giving him the licking he had fully deserved. With a few variants, I ran off this little film a hundred times in my imagination. But it was too late, and for several days I chewed a bitter resentment.

Is this how my own anger serves me – simply wanting to dominate and have others listen?

I had dreamed—this was now clear—of being a complete man who managed to make himself respected in his person as well as in his profession. Half Cerdan, half de Gaulle, if you will. In short, I wanted to dominate in all things. This is why I assumed the manner, made a particular point of displaying my physical skill rather than my intellectual gifts. But after having been struck in public without reacting, it was no longer possible for me to cherish that fine picture of myself. If I had been the friend of truth and intelligence I claimed to be, what would that episode have mattered to me? It was already forgotten by those who had witnessed it. I’d have barely accused myself of having got angry over nothing and also, having got angry, of not having managed to face up to the consequences of my anger, for want of presence of mind. Instead of that, I was eager to get my revenge, to strike and conquer. As if my true desire were not to be the most intelligent or most generous creature on earth, but only to beat anyone I wanted, to be the stronger, in short, and in the most elementary way.

The truth is that every intelligent man, as you know, dreams of being a gangster and of ruling over society by force alone.

What does it matter, after all, if by humiliating one’s mind one succeeds in dominating everyone?

Everyone has a shadow. Is yours properly integrated, or do you let it run free?

When I was threatened, I became not only a judge in turn but even more: an irascible master who wanted, regardless of all laws, to strike down the offender and get him on his knees. After that, mon cher compatriote, it is very hard to continue seriously believing one has a vocation for justice and is the predestined defender of the widow and orphan.

You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.

Of course, true love is exceptional—two or three times a century, more or less. The rest of the time there is vanity or boredom.

The mind’s scheming, exposed by Camus:

I had principles, to be sure, such as that the wife of a friend is sacred. But I simply ceased quite sincerely, a few days before, to feel any friendship for the husband.

Our feminine friends have in common with Bonaparte the belief that they can succeed where everyone else has failed.

How many people must this way:

I was never concerned with the major problems except in the intervals between my little excesses.

In short, for me to live happily it was essential for the creatures I chose not to live at all. They must receive their life, sporadically, only at my bidding.

How do I know I have no friends? It’s very easy: I discovered it the day I thought of killing myself to play a trick on them, to punish them, in a way. But punish whom? Some would be surprised, and no one would feel punished. I realized I had no friends. Besides, even if I had had, I shouldn’t be any better off. If I had been able to commit suicide and then see their reaction, why, then the game would have been worth the candle. But the earth is dark, cher ami, the coffin thick, and the shroud opaque.

Men are never convinced of your reasons, of your sincerity, of the seriousness of your sufferings, except by your death. So long as you are alive, your case is doubtful; you have a right only to their skepticism.

In order to cease being a doubtful case, one has to cease being, that’s all.

You think you are dying to punish your wife and actually you are freeing her. It’s better not to see that.

So what’s the good of dying intentionally, of sacrificing yourself to the idea you want people to have of you? Once you are dead, they will take advantage of it to attribute idiotic or vulgar motives to your action. Martyrs, cher ami, must choose between being forgotten, mocked, or made use of. As for being understood—never!

I’m not saying to avoid punishment, for punishment without judgment is bearable. It has a name, besides, that guarantees our innocence: it is called misfortune.

Today we are always ready to judge as we are to fornicate. With this difference, that there are no inadequacies to fear. If you doubt this, just listen to the table conversation during August in those summer hotels where our charitable fellow citizens take the boredom cure. If you still hesitate to conclude, read the writings of our great men of the moment. Or else observe your own family and you will be edified. Mon cher ami, let’s not give them any pretext, no matter how small, for judging us! Otherwise, we’ll be left in shreds.

In short, the moment I grasped that there was something to judge in me, I realized that there was in them an irresistible vocation for judgment.

Your successes and happiness are forgiven you only if you generously consent to share them. But to be happy it is essential not to be too concerned with others. Consequently, there is no escape. Happy and judged, or absolved and wretched.

As for me, the injustice was even greater: I was condemned for past successes.

People hasten to judge in order not to be judged themselves. What do you expect? The idea that comes most naturally to man, as if from his very nature, is the idea of his innocence.

We are all exceptional cases. We all want to appeal against something! Each of us insists on being innocent at all cost, even if he has to accuse the whole human race and heaven itself.

You won’t delight a man by complimenting him on the efforts by which he has become intelligent or generous. On the other hand, he will beam if you admire his natural generosity. Inversely, if you tell a criminal that his crime is not due to his nature or his character but to unfortunate circumstances, he will be extravagantly grateful to you.

But those rascals want grace, that is irresponsibility, and they shamelessly allege the justifications of nature or the excuses of circumstances, even if they are contradictory. The essential thing is that they should be innocent, that their virtues, by grace of birth, should not be questioned and that their misdeeds, born of a momentary misfortune, should never be more than provisional.

As I told you, it’s a matter of dodging judgment. Since it is hard to dodge it, tricky to get one’s nature simultaneously admired and excused, they all strive to be rich. Why? Did you ever ask yourself? For power, of course. But especially because wealth shields from immediate judgment, takes you out of the subway crowd to enclose you in a chromium-plated automobile, isolates you in huge protected lawns, Pullmans, first-class cabins. Wealth, cher ami, is not quite acquittal, but reprieve, and that’s always worth taking.

Above all, don’t believe your friends when they ask you to be sincere with them. They merely hope you will encourage them in the good opinion they have of themselves by providing them with the additional assurance they will find in your promise of sincerity. How could sincerity be a condition of friendship? A liking for truth at any cost is a passion that spares nothing and that nothing resists. It’s a vice, at times a comfort, or a selfishness. Therefore, if you are in that situation, don’t hesitate: promise to tell the truth and then lie as best you can. You will satisfy their hidden desire and doubly prove your affection.

This is so true that we rarely confide in those who are better than we. Rather, we are more inclined to flee their society. Most often, on the other hand, we confess to those who are like us and who share our weaknesses. Hence we don’t want to improve ourselves or be bettered, for we should first have to be judged in default. We merely wish to be pitied and encouraged in the course we have chosen. In short, we should like, at the same time, to cease being guilty and yet not to make the effort of cleansing ourselves. Not enough cynicism and not enough virtue.

Don’t smile; that truth is not so basic as it seems. What we call basic truths are simply the ones we discover after all the others.

However that may be, after prolonged research on myself, I brought out the fundamental duplicity of the human being. Then I realized, as a result of delving in my memory, that modesty helped me to shine, humility to conquer, and virtue to oppress. I used to wage war by peaceful means and eventually used to achieve, through disinterested means, everything I desired.

For instance, I never complained that my birthday was overlooked; people were even surprised, with a touch of admiration, by my discretion on this subject. But the reason for my disinterestedness was even more discreet: I longed to be forgotten in order to be able to complain to myself. Several days before the famous date (which I knew very well) I was on the alert, eager to let nothing slip that might arouse the attention and memory of those on whose lapse I was counting (didn’t I once go so far as to contemplate falsifying a friend’s calendar?). Once my solitude was thoroughly proved, I could surrender to the charms of a virile self-pity.

I have never been really able to believe that human affairs were serious matters. I had no idea where the serious might lie, except that it was not in all this I saw around me—which seemed to me merely an amusing game, or tiresome. There are really efforts and convictions I have never been able to understand. I always looked with amazement, and a certain suspicion, on those strange creatures who died for money, fell into despair over the loss of a “position,” or sacrificed themselves with a high and mighty manner for the prosperity of their family. I could better understand that friend who had made up his mind to stop smoking and through sheer will power had succeeded. One morning he opened the paper, read that the first H-bomb had been exploded, learned about its wonderful effects, and hastened to a tobacco shop.

You remember the remark: “Woe to you when all men speak well of you!” Ah, the one who said that spoke words of wisdom!

Then it was that the thought of death burst into my daily life. I would measure the years separating me from my end. I would look for examples of men of my age who were already dead. And I was tormented by the thought that I might not have time to accomplish my task. What task? I had no idea. Frankly, was what I was doing worth continuing?

You see, it is not enough to accuse yourself in order to clear yourself; otherwise, I’d be as innocent as a lamb. One must accuse oneself in a certain way, which it took me considerable time to perfect.

The greater the threat to the feeling in which I had hoped to find calm, the more I demanded that feeling of my partner.

I tried accordingly to give up women, in a certain way, and to live in a state of chastity. After all, their friendship ought to satisfy me. But this was tantamount to giving up gambling. Without desire, women bored me beyond all expectation, and obviously I bored them too. No more gambling and no more theater—I was probably in the realm of truth. But truth, cher ami, is a colossal bore.

Despairing of love and of chastity, I at last bethought myself of debauchery, a substitute for love, which quiets the laughter, restores silence, and above all, confers immortality.

One plays at being immortal and after a few weeks one doesn’t even know whether or not one can hang on till the next day.

There is nothing frenzied about debauchery, contrary to what is thought. It is but a long sleep.

Physical jealousy is a result of the imagination at the same time that it is a self-judgment.

Believe me, religions are on the wrong track the moment they moralize and fulminate commandments. God is not needed to create guilt or to punish. Our fellow men suffice, aided by ourselves.

Hell is a real place, and I see people living there every day:

I’ll tell you a big secret, mon cher. Don’t wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day.

Say, do you know why he was crucified—the one you are perhaps thinking of at this moment? Well, there were heaps of reasons for that. There are always reasons for murdering a man. On the contrary, it is impossible to justify his living. That’s why crime always finds lawyers, and innocence only rarely. But, beside the reasons that have been very well explained to us for the past two thousand years, there was a major one for that terrible agony, and I don’t know why it has been so carefully hidden. The real reason is that he knew he was not altogether innocent. If he did not bear the weight of the crime he was accused of, he had committed others—even though he didn’t know which ones.

There was a time when I didn’t at any minute have the slightest idea how I could reach the next one. Yes, one can wage war in this world, ape love, torture one’s fellow man, or merely say evil of one’s neighbor while knitting. But, in certain cases, carrying on, merely continuing, is superhuman.

In solitude and when fatigued, one is after all inclined to take oneself for a prophet.

You see, a person I knew used to divide human beings into three categories: those who prefer having nothing to hide rather than being obliged to lie, those who prefer lying to having nothing to hide, and finally those who like both lying and the hidden.

I didn’t know that freedom is not a reward or a decoration that is celebrated with champagne. Nor yet a gift, a box of dainties designed to make you lick your chops. Oh, no! It’s a chore, on the contrary, and a long-distance race, quite solitary and very exhausting. No champagne, no friends raising their glasses as they look at you affectionately. Alone in a forbidding room, alone in the prisoner’s box before the judges, and alone to decide in face of oneself or in the face of others’ judgment. At the end of all freedom is a court sentence; that’s why freedom is too heavy to bear, especially when you’re down with a fever, or are distressed, or love nobody.

Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful. Hence one must choose a master, God being out of style.

However, I have a superiority in that I know it and this gives me the right to speak. You see the advantage, I am sure. The more I accuse myself, the more I have a right to judge you. Even better, I provoke you into judging yourself, and this relieves me of that much of the burden. Ah, mon cher, we are odd, wretched creatures, and if we merely look back over our lives, there’s no lack of occasions to amaze and horrify ourselves.

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The Fall

By Albert Camus

 

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Timeless Laws of Software Development

This article was originally posted on Embedded Artistry.

I am always seeking the wisdom and insights of those who have spent decades working in software development. The experiences of those who came before us is a rich source of wisdom, information, and techniques.

Only a few problems in our field are truly new. Most of the solutions we seek have been written about time-and-time-again over the past 50 years. Rather than continually seeking new technology as the panacea to our problems, we should focus ourselves on applying the tried and tested basic principles of our field.

Given my point of view, it’s no surprise that I was immediately drawn to a book titled Timeless Laws of Software Development.

The author, Jerry Fitzpatrick, is a software instructor and consultant who has worked in a variety of industries: biomedical, fitness, oil and gas, telecommunications, and manufacturing. Even more impressive for someone writing about the Timeless Laws of Software Development, Jerry was originally an electrical engineer. He worked with Bob Martin and James Grenning at Teradyne, where he developed the hardware for Teradyne’s early voice response system.

Jerry has spent his career dealing with the same problems we are currently dealing with. It would be criminal not to steal and apply his hard-earned knowledge.

I recommend this invaluable book equally to developers, team leads, architects, and project managers.

Table of Contents:

  1. Structure of the Book
  2. The Timeless Laws
  3. What I Learned
  4. Selected Quotes
  5. Buy the Book

Structure of the Book

The book is short, weighing in at a total of 180 pages, including the appendices, glossary, and index. Do not be fooled by its small stature, for there is much wisdom packed into these pages.

Jerry opens with an introductory chapter and dedicates an entire chapter to each of his six Timeless Laws (discussed below). Each law is broken down into sub-axioms, paired with examples, and annotated with quotes and primary sources.

Aside from the always-useful glossary and index, Jerry ends the book with three appendices, each valuable in its own right:

  • “About Software Metrics”, which covers metrics including lines of code, cyclomatic complexity, software size, and Jerry’s own “ABC” metric
  • “Exploring Old Problems”, which covers symptoms of the software crisis, the cost to develop software, project factors and struggles, software maintenance costs, superhuman developers, and software renovation.
  • “Redesigning a Procedure”, where Jerry walks readers through a real-life refactoring exercise

“Exploring Old Problems” was an exemplary chapter. I highly recommended it to project managers and team leads.

My only real critique of the book is that the information is not partitioned in a way that makes it easily accessible to different roles – project managers may miss valuable lessons while glossing over programming details. Don’t give in to the temptation to skip: each chapter has valuable advice no matter your role.

The Timeless Laws

Jerry proposes six Timeless Laws of software development:

  1. Plan before implementing
  2. Keep the program small
  3. Write clearly
  4. Prevent bugs
  5. Make the program robust
  6. Prevent excess coupling

At first glance, these six laws are so broadly stated that the natural reaction is, “Duh”. Where the book shines is in the breakdown of these laws into sub-axioms and methods for achieving the intent of the law.

Breakdown of the Timeless Laws

  1. Plan before implementing
    1. Understand the requirements
    2. Reconcile conflicting requirements
    3. Check the feasibility of key requirements
    4. Convert assumptions to requirements
    5. Create a development plan
  2. Keep the program small
    1. Limit project features
    2. Avoid complicated designs
    3. Avoid needless concurrency
    4. Avoid repetition
    5. Avoid unnecessary code
    6. Minimize error logging
    7. Buy, don’t build
    8. Strive for Reuse
  3. Write clearly
    1. Use names that denote purpose
    2. Use clear expressions
    3. Improve readability using whitespace
    4. Use suitable comments
    5. Use symmetry
    6. Postpone optimization
    7. Improve what you have written
  4. Prevent bugs
    1. Pace yourself
    2. Don’t tolerate build warnings
    3. Manage Program Inputs
    4. Avoid using primitive types for physical quantities
    5. Reduce conditional logic
    6. Validity checks
    7. Context and polymorphism
    8. Compare floating point values correctly
  5. Make the program robust
    1. Don’t let bugs accumulate
    2. Use assertions to expose bugs
    3. Design by contract
    4. Simplify exception handling
    5. Use automated testing
    6. Invite improvements
  6. Prevent excess coupling
    1. Discussion of coupling
    2. Flexibility
    3. Decoupling
    4. Abstractions (functional, data, OO)
    5. Use black boxes
    6. Prefer cohesive abstractions
    7. Minimize scope
    8. Create barriers to coupling
    9. Use atomic initialization
    10. Prefer immutable instances

What I Learned

I’ve regularly referred to this book over the past year. My hard-copy is dog-eared and many pages are covered in notes, circles, and arrows.

I’ve incorporated many aspects of the book into my development process. I’ve created checklists that I use for design reviews and code reviews, helping to ensure that I catch problems as early as possible. I’ve created additional documentation for my projects, as well as templates to facilitate ease of reuse.

Even experienced developers and teams can benefit from a review of this book. Some of the concepts may be familiar to you, but we all benefit from a refresher. There is also the chance that you will find one valuable gem to improve your practice, and isn’t that worth the small price of a book?

The odds are high that you’ll find more than one knowledge gem while reading Timeless Laws.

Here are some of the lessons I took away from the book:

  1. Create a development plan
  2. Avoid the “what if” game
  3. Logging is harmful
  4. Defensive programming is harmful
  5. Utilize symmetry in interface design

Create a Development Plan

We are all familiar with the lack of documentation for software projects. I’m repeatedly stunned by teams which provide no written guidance or setup instructions for new members. Jerry points out the importance of maintaining documentation:

Documentation is the only way to transfer knowledge without describing things in person.

One such method that I pulled from the book is the idea of the “Development Plan”. The plan serves as a guide for developers working on the project. The plan describes the development tools, project, goals, and priorities.

As with all documentation, start simple and grow the development plan as new information becomes available or required. Rather than having a large document, it’s easy to break the it up into smaller, standalone files. Having separate documents will help developers easily find the information they need. The development plan should be kept within the repository so developers can easily find and update it.

Topics to cover in your development plan include:

  • List of development priorities
  • Code organization
  • How to set up the development environment
  • Minimum requirements for hardware, OS, compute power, etc.
  • Glossary of project terms
  • Uniform strategy for bug prevention, detection, and repair
  • Uniform strategy for program robustness
  • Coding style guidelines (if applicable)
  • Programming languages to be used, and where they are used
  • Tools to be used for source control, builds, integration, testing, and deployment
  • High-level organization: projects, components, file locations, and naming conventions
  • High-level logical architecture: major sub-systems and frameworks

Development plans are most useful for new team members, since they can refer to the document and become productive without taking much time from other developers. However, your entire team will benefit from having a uniform set of guidelines that can be easily located and referenced.

Avoid the “What If” Game

Many of us, myself included, are guilty of participating in the “what if” game. The “what if” game is prevalent among developers, especially when new ideas are proposed. The easiest way to shoot a hole in a new idea is to ask a “what if” question: “This architecture looks ok, but what if we need to support 100,000,000 connections at once?”

The “what if” game is adversarial and can occur because:

  • Humans have a natural resistance to change
  • Some people enjoy showing off their knowledge
  • Some people enjoy being adversarial
  • The dissenter dislikes the person who proposed the idea
  • The dissenter does not want to take on additional work

“What if” questions are difficult to refute, as they are often irrational. We should always account for realistic possibilities, but objections should be considered only if the person can explain why the proposal is disruptive now or is going to be disruptive in the future.

Aside from keeping conversations focused on realistic possibilities, we can mitigate the ability to ask “what if” with clear and well-defined requirements.

Logging is Harmful

I have been a long-time proponent of error logging, and I’ve written many embedded logging libraries over the past decade.

While I initially was skeptical of Fitzpatrick’s attitude toward error logging, I started paying closer attention to the log files I was working with as well as the use of logging in my own code. I noticed the points that Jerry highlighted: my code was cluttered, logs were increasingly useless, and it was always a struggle to remove outdated logging statements.

You can read more about my thoughts on error logging in my article: The Dark Side of Error Logging.

Defensive Programming is Harmful

Somewhere along the way in my career, the idea of defensive programming was drilled into me. Many of my old libraries and programs are layered with unnecessary conditional statements and error-code returns. These checks contribute to code bloat, since they are often repeated at multiple levels in the stack.

Jerry points out that in conventional product design, designs are based on working parts, not defective ones. As such, designing our software systems based on the assumption that all modules are potentially defective leads us down the path of over-engineering.

Trust lies at the heart of defensive programming. If no module can be trusted, then defensive programming is imperative. If all modules can be trusted, then defensive programming is irrelevant.

Like conventional products, software should be based on working parts, not defective ones. Modules should be presumed to work until proven otherwise. This is not to say that we don’t do any form of checking: inputs from outside of the program need to be validated.

Assertions and contracts should be used to enforce preconditions and postconditions. Creating hard failure points helps us to catch bugs as quickly as possible. Modules inside of the system should be trusted to do their job and to enforce their own requirements.

Since I’ve transitioned toward the design-by-contract style, my code is much smaller and easier to read.

Utilize Symmetry in Interface Design

Using symmetry in interface design is one of those points that seemed obvious on the surface. Upon further inspection, I found I regularly violated symmetry rules in my interfaces.

Symmetry helps us to manage the complexity of our programs and reduce the amount of knowledge we need to keep in mind at once. Since we have existing associations with naming pairs, we can easily predict function names without needing to look them up.

Universal naming pairs should be used in public interfaces whenever possible:

  • on/off
  • start/stop
  • enable/disable
  • up/down
  • left/right
  • get/set
  • empty/full
  • push/pop
  • create/destroy

Our APIs should also be written in a consistent manner:

  • Motor::Start() / Motor::Stop()
  • motor_start() / motor_stop()
  • StartMotor() / StopMotor()

Avoid creating (and fix!) inconsistent APIs:

  • Motor::Start() / Motor::disable()
  • startMotor / stop_motor
  • start_motor / Stop_motor

Naming symmetry may be obvious, but where I am most guilty is in parameter order symmetry. Our procedures should utilize the same parameter ordering rules whenever possible.

For example, consider the C standard library functions defined in string.h. In all but one procedure (strlen), the first parameter is the destination string, and the second parameter is the source string. The parameter order also matches the normal assignment order semantics (dest = src).

The standard library isn’t the holy grail of symmetry, however. The stdio.h header showcases some bad symmetry by changing the location of the FILE pointer:

int fprintf ( FILE * stream, const char * format, ... );
int fscanf ( FILE * stream, const char * format, ... );

// Better design: FILE is first!
int fputs ( const char * str, FILE * stream );
char * fgets ( char * str, int num, FILE * stream );

Keeping symmetry in mind will improve the interfaces we create.

Selected Quotes

I pulled hundreds of quotes from this book, and you will be seeing many of them pop up on our Twitter Feed over the next year. A small selection of my highlights are included below.

Any quotes without attribution come directly from Jerry.

Intentionally hiding a bug is the greatest sin a developer can commit.

Failure is de rigueur in our industry. Odds are, you’re working on a project that will fail right now.
— Jeff Atwood, How to Stop Sucking and Be Awesome

Writing specs is like flossing: everybody agrees that it’s a good thing, but nobody does.
— Joel Spolsky

Documentation is the only way to transfer knowledge without describing things in person.

Robustness must be a goal and up front priority.

Disorder is the natural state of all things. Software tends to get larger and more complicated unless the developers push back and make it smaller and simpler. If the developers don’t push back, the battle against growth is lost by default.

YAGNI (You ain’t gonna need it):
Always implement things when you actually need them, never when you just foresee that you need them. The best way to implement code quickly is to implement less of it. The best way to have fewer bugs is to implement less code.

— Ron Jeffries

Most developers write code that reflects their immediate thoughts, but never return to make it smaller or clearer.

The answer is to clear our heads of clutter. Clear thinking becomes clear writing; one can’t exist without the other.
— William Zinsser

Plan for tomorrow but implement only for today.

Code that expresses its purpose clearly – without surprises – is easier to understand and less likely to contain bugs.

Most developers realize that excess coupling is harmful but they don’t resist it aggressively enough. Believe me: if you don’t manage coupling, coupling will manage you.

Few people realize how badly they write.
— William Zinsser

To help prevent bugs, concurrency should only be used when needed. When it is needed, the design and implementation should be handled carefully.

Sometimes problems are poorly understood until a solution is implemented and found lacking. For this reason, it’s often best to implement a basic solution before attempting a more complete and complicated one. Adequate solution are usually less costly than optimal ones.

I’ve worked with many developers who didn’t seem to grasp the incredible speed at which program instructions execute. They worried about things that would have a tiny effect on performance or efficiency. They should have been worried about bug prevention and better-written code.

Most sponsors would rather have a stable program delivered on-time than a slightly faster and more efficient program delivered late.

It’s better to implement features directly and clearly, then optimize any that affect users negatively.

Efficiency and performance are only problems if the requirements haven’t been met. Optimization usually reduces source code clarity, so it isn’t justified for small gains in efficiency or performance. Our first priorities should be correctness, clarity, and modest flexibility.

Implementation is necessarily incremental, but a good architecture is usually holistic. It requires a thorough understanding of all requirements.

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Timeless Laws of Software Development

By Jerry Fitzpatrick

 

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Deep Nutrition

Author: Catherine Shanahan
Rating: 10/10
Last Read: July 2018

Deep Nutrition is a book which explains the negative effects that our modern diets are having on our bodies. Dr. Shanahan provides background and reasoning for the traditional “human diet”, which is as close as we can get to the way our great-great-great grandparents ate. She explains why the traditional diet is essential and walks through the damage that vegetable oils and sugars are causing. She also discusses the modern diet’s impact on fetal/childhood development and modern diseases.

Much of the book is dedicated to the link between our nutrition and our health, as well as making the argument that the modern diet of highly processed foods is harming us and destroying our genetic momentum. The book also contains recipes, meal planning guides, and a FAQ section to help you transition as easily as possible.

We completely changed our eating habits as a result of reading Deep Nutrition, and we have never felt better. We’ve replaced all of our cooking oils and condiments, reduced our carb intake to < 50g on most days, started fermenting food, improved the quality of our food purchases, and started eating in a more nose-to-tail style. We’ve also found ourselves less interested in eating out at restaurants, especially since most of them use cheap and highly processed cooking oils (canola, cottonseed, soy, corn, safflower, etc.).

I can’t deny it. We are believers.

My Highlights

I am still working on processing our book highlights. We thought this book was so important that we needed to share our recommendation right away.

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Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food

By Catherine Shanahan M.D.

 

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The Martian

Author: Andy Weir
Rating: 7/10
Last Read: October 2015

The Martian is a relatively well-known book about an astronaut who is abandoned on Mars after his companions thought he was dead. He tries to stay alive and establish contact with Earth, hoping they can figure out how to get him back home. The novel is told from the point of view of multiple characters, but focuses primarily on the astronaut and his struggle to live.

I enjoyed The Martian and thought it was a decent sci-fi novel. The book is clearly targeted at engineers, so the details and explanations and jokes are perhaps nerdier than other sci-fi novels.

My Highlights

Chuck shrugged. “Never occurred to us. We never thought someone would be on Mars without an MAV.”
“I mean, come on!” Morris said. “What are the odds?”
Chuck turned to him. “One in three, based on empirical data. That’s pretty bad if you think about it.”

“How’d I do today?” Venkat asked.
“Eeeh,” Annie said, putting her phone away. “You shouldn’t say things like ‘bring him home alive.’ It reminds people he might die.”
“Think they’re going to forget that?”
“You asked my opinion. Don’t like it? Go fuck yourself.”
“You’re such a delicate flower, Annie. How’d you end up NASA’s director of media relations?”
“Beats the fuck out of me,” Annie said.

Irene carefully formed her answer before speaking. “When facing death, people want to be heard. They don’t want to die alone. He might just want the MAV radio so he can talk to another soul before he dies.”

“Jesus, what a complicated process,” Venkat said.
“Try updating a Linux server sometime,” Jack said.
After a moment of silence, Tim said, “You know he was telling a joke, right? That was supposed to be funny.”
“Oh,” said Venkat. “I’m a physics guy, not a computer guy.”
“He’s not funny to computer guys, either.”

I started the day with some nothin’ tea. Nothin’ tea is easy to make. First, get some hot water, then add nothin’. I experimented with potato skin tea a few weeks ago. The less said about that the better.

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The Martian

By Andy Weir

 

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The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge

Author: Michael Punke
Rating: 8/10
Last Read: March 2018

I purchased The Revenant a few months ago and experienced a few false starts with it. For some reason, I was never able to make it past the first few pages before deciding to pick another book. During this past attempt, I ended up being engrossed in the book and finished it in two sittings.

The Revenant is set in the 1820s and takes place in the expanding western frontier. The book is based on the life of Hugh Glass, a fur trapper who was mauled by a grizzly and abandoned to die by his companions. He makes his way 200-300 miles back to the nearest settlement to restock so he can get revenge on his former companions who abandoned him to die. Along the way he faces death due to injuries, illness, starvation, predators, and hostile Native Americans.

I recommend The Revenant for those who love the wilderness. It’s also a great read for students of the human soul, as revenge is an interesting and powerful motivation for accomplishing crazy feats. Not a great selection for pre-bed reading, however – there are intense scenes throughout the book.

He vowed to survive, if for no other reason than to visit vengeance on the men who betrayed him.

My Highlights

God had placed him in a garden of infinite bounty, a Land of Goshen in which any man could prosper if only he had the courage and the fortitude to try. Ashley’s weaknesses, which he confessed forthrightly, were simply barriers to be overcome by some creative combination of his strengths. Ashley expected setbacks, but he would not tolerate failure.

In truth, Glass had developed significant doubts about the captain. Misfortune seemed to hang on him like day-before smoke.

I’m glad I don’t have to worry about enemies when I make a fire:

They bled the game, gathered wood, and set two or three small fires in narrow, rectangular pits. Smaller fires produced less smoke than a single conflagration, while also offering more surface for smoking meat and more sources of heat. If enemies did spot them at night, more fires gave the illusion of more men.

He knew that leadership required him to make tough decisions for the good of the brigade. He knew that the frontier respected—required—independence and self-sufficiency above all else. There were no entitlements west of St. Louis. Yet the fierce individuals who comprised his frontier community were bound together by the tight weave of collective responsibility. Though no law was written, there was a crude rule of law, adherence to a covenant that transcended their selfish interests. It was biblical in its depth, and its importance grew with each step into wilderness. When the need arose, a man extended a helping hand to his friends, to his partners, to strangers. In so doing, each knew that his own survival might one day depend upon the reaching grasp of another.

The utility of his code seemed diminished as the captain struggled to apply it to Glass. Haven’t I done my best for him? Tending his wounds, portaging him, waiting respectfully so that he might at least have a civilized burial. Through Henry’s decisions, they had subordinated their collective needs to the needs of one man. It was the right thing to do, but it could not be sustained. Not here.

The human soul can be dark:

Wasn’t that why he was there in the clearing—to salve his wounded pride? Not to take care of another man, but to take care of himself? Wasn’t he just like Fitzgerald, profiting from another man’s misfortune? Say what you would about Fitzgerald, at least he was honest about why he stayed.

The boy came to believe that going west was more than just a fancy for someplace new. He came to see it as a part of his soul, a missing piece that could only be made whole on some far-off mountain or plain.

There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.

Once focused, it was clear that the eyes stared back with complete lucidity, clear that Glass, like Bridger, had calculated the full meaning of the Indians on the river. Every pore in Bridger’s body seemed to pound with the intensity of the moment, yet to Bridger it seemed that Glass’s eyes conveyed a serene calmness. Understanding? Forgiveness? Or is that just what I want to believe? As the boy stared at Glass, guilt seized him like clenched fangs. What does Glass think? What will the captain think?

The human/snake relationship has always been an interesting one:

Glass wanted to roll away, but there was something inevitable about the way the snake moved. Some part of Glass remembered an admonishment to hold still in the presence of a snake. He froze, as much from hypnosis as from choice. The snake moved to within a few feet of his face and stopped. Glass stared, trying to mimic the serpent’s unblinking stare. He was no match. The snake’s black eyes were as unforgiving as the plague. He watched, mesmerized, as the snake wrapped itself slowly into a perfect coil, its entire body made for the sole purpose of launching forward in attack.

He would crawl until his body could support a crutch. If he only made three miles a day, so be it. Better to have those three miles behind him than ahead. Besides, moving would increase his odds of finding food.

At thirty-six, Glass no longer considered himself a young man. And unlike young men, Glass did not consider himself as someone with nothing to lose. His decision to go west was not rash or forced, but as fully deliberate as any choice in his life. At the same time, he could not explain or articulate his reasons. It was something that he felt more than understood.

In the last moments of daylight he examined the rattles at the tip of the tail. There were ten, one added in each year of the snake’s life. Glass had never seen a snake with ten rattles. A long time, ten years. Glass thought about the snake, surviving, thriving for a decade on the strength of its brutal attributes. And then a single mistake, a moment of exposure in an environment without tolerance, dead and devoured almost before its blood ceased to pump. He cut the rattles from the remains of the snake and fingered them like a rosary. After a while he dropped them into his possibles bag. When he looked at them, he wanted to remember.

The frustrating necessity of delay was like water on the hot iron of his determination—hardening it, making it unmalleable. He vowed to survive, if for no other reason than to visit vengeance on the men who betrayed him.

Still, he thought, there was no luck at all in standing still.

Glass came to visualize his strength as the sand in an hourglass. Minute by minute he felt his vitality ebbing away. Like an hourglass, he knew, a moment would arrive when the last grain of sand would tumble down the aperture, leaving the upper chamber void.

He resolved to stop earlier the next day. Perhaps dig pits in two locations. The thought of slower progress irritated him. How long could he avoid Arikara on the banks of the well-traveled Grand? Don’t do that. Don’t look too far ahead. The goal each day is tomorrow morning.

The wolf waits patiently for a mistake and then strikes. How often do you wait for the right moment before leaping into action?

A hundred yards downstream from Glass, a pack of eight wolves also watched the great bull and the outliers he guarded. The alpha male sat on his haunches near a clump of sage. All afternoon he had waited patiently for the moment that just arrived, the moment when a gap emerged between the outliers and the rest of the herd. A gap. A fatal weakness. The big wolf raised himself suddenly to all fours.

It wasn’t until the wolves began to move that their lethal strength became obvious. The strength was not derivative of muscularity or grace. Rather it flowed from a single-minded intelligence that made their movements deliberate, relentless. The individual animals converged into a lethal unit, cohering in the collective strength of the pack.

The white wolf crouched, poised, it seemed, to attack again. But suddenly the wolf with one ear turned and ran after the pack. The white wolf stopped to contemplate the changing odds. He knew well his place in the pack: Others led and he followed. Others picked out the game to be killed, he helped to run it down. Others ate first, he contented himself with the remainder. The wolf had never seen an animal like the one that appeared today, but he understood precisely where it fit in the pecking order. Another clap of thunder erupted overhead, and the rain began to pour down. The white wolf took one last look at the buffalo, the man, and the smoking sage, then he turned and loped after the others.

The notion of burial had always struck him as stifling and cold. He liked the Indian way better, setting the bodies up high, as if passing them to the heavens.

The Indian accomplished effortlessly what Glass was compelled to pretend—an air of complete confidence. His name was Yellow Horse. He was tall, over six feet, with square shoulders and perfect posture that accentuated a powerful neck and chest. In his tightly braided hair he wore three eagle feathers, notched to signify enemies killed in battle. Two decorative bands ran down the doeskin tunic on his chest. Glass noticed the intricacy of the work, hundreds of interwoven porcupine quills dyed brilliantly in vermillion and indigo.

Lies tend to compound:

“We buried him deep … covered him with enough rock to keep him protected. Truth is, Captain, I wanted to get moving right away—but Bridger said we ought to make a cross for the grave.” Bridger looked up, horrified at this last bit of embellishment. Twenty admiring faces stared back at him, a few nodding in solemn approval. God—not respect! What he had craved was now his, and it was more than he could bear. Whatever the consequences, he had to purge the awful burden of their lie—his lie. He felt Fitzgerald’s icy stare from the corner of his eye. I don’t care. He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could find the right words, Captain Henry said, “I knew you’d pull your weight, Bridger.” More approving nods from the men of the brigade. What have I done? He cast his eyes to the ground.

He felt disdain and even shame for the filthy Indians who camped around the fort, prostituting their wives and daughters for the next drink of whiskey. There was something to fear in an evil that could make men leave their old lives behind and live in such disgrace.

Beyond Fort Brazeau’s effect on the resident Indians, other aspects of the post left him profoundly disquieted. He marveled at the intricacy and quality of the goods produced by the whites, from their guns and axes to their fine cloth and needles. Yet he also felt a lurking trepidation about a people who could make such things, harnessing powers that he did not understand. And what about the stories of the whites’ great villages in the East, villages with people as numerous as the buffalo. He doubted these stories could be true, though each year the trickle of traders increased.

Standing to greet another, a sign of respect:

Yellow Horse stood when Glass walked into the camp, a low fire illuminating their faces.

Again, standing to greet:

Dominique rose, shook Glass’s hand and said, “Enchanté.”

My kit doesn’t look anything like this:

They returned to the cabin and Glass picked out the rest of his supplies. He chose a .53 pistol to complement the rifle. A ball mold, lead, powder, and flints. A tomahawk and a large skinning knife. A thick leather belt to hold his weapons. Two red cotton shirts to wear beneath the doeskin tunic. A large Hudson’s Bay capote. A wool cap and mittens. Five pounds of salt and three pigtails of tobacco. Needle and thread. Cordage. To carry his newfound bounty, he picked a fringed leather possibles bag with intricate quill beading. He noticed that the voyageurs all wore small sacks at the waist for their pipe and tobacco. He took one of those too, a handy spot for his new flint and steel.

Kiowa laughed too, then said: “With all due respect, mon ami, your face tells a story by itself—but we’d like to hear the particulars.

Kiowa understood early in his career that his trade dealt not only in goods, but also in information. People came to his trading post not just for the things they could buy, but also for the things they could learn.

Glass shook his head again, more firmly this time. “I have my own affairs to attend.” m
“Bit of a silly venture, isn’t it? For a man of your skills? Traipsing across Louisiana in the dead of winter. Chase down your betrayers in the spring, if you’re still inclined.”
The warmth of the earlier conversation seemed to drain from the room, as if a door had been opened on a frigid winter day. Glass’s eyes flashed and Kiowa regretted immediately his comment. “It’s not an issue on which I asked your counsel.”
“No, monsieur. No, it was not.”

The colder weather settled into Glass’s wounds the way a storm creeps its way up a mountain valley.

With the exception of Charbonneau, who was gloomy as January rain, the voyageurs approached each waking moment with an infallibly cloudless optimism. They laughed at the slimmest opportunity. They showed little tolerance for silence, filling the day with unceasing and passionate discussion of women, water, and wild Indians. They fired constant insults back and forth. Indeed, to pass up an opportunity for a good joke was viewed as a character flaw, a sign of weakness. Glass wished he understood more French, if only for the entertainment value of following the banter that kept them all so jolly.

In the rare moments when conversation lagged, someone would break out in zestful song, an instant cue for the others to join in. What they lacked in musical ability, they compensated in unbridled enthusiasm. All in all, thought Glass, an agreeable way of life.

Like many of the things he encountered each day, Professeur was confused by what happened next. He felt an odd sensation and looked down to find the shaft of an arrow protruding from his stomach. For a moment he wondered if La Vierge had played some kind of joke. Then a second arrow appeared, then a third. Professeur stared in horrified fascination at the feathers on the slender shafts. Suddenly he could not feel his legs and he realized he was falling backward. He heard his body make heavy contact with the frozen ground. In the brief moments before he died, he wondered, Why doesn’t it hurt?

His awe of the mountains grew in the days that followed, as the Yellowstone River led him nearer and nearer. Their great mass was a marker, a benchmark fixed against time itself. Others might feel disquiet at the notion of something so much larger than themselves. But for Glass, there was a sense of sacrament that flowed from the mountains like a font, an immortality that made his quotidian pains seem inconsequential. And so he walked, day after day, toward the mountains at the end of the plain.

Henry was a failure at many things, but he understood the power of incentives.

Stunned silence filled the room as the men struggled to comprehend the vision before them. Unlike the others, Bridger understood instantly. In his mind he had seen this vision before. His guilt swelled up, churning like a paddle wheel in his stomach. He wanted desperately to flee. How do you escape something that comes from inside? The revenant, he knew, searched for him.

Glass reached down and removed the small pouch that Pig wore around his throat. He dumped the contents onto the ground. A flint and steel tumbled out, along with several musket balls, patches—and a delicate pewter bracelet. It struck Glass as an odd possession for the giant man. What story connected the dainty trinket to Pig? A dead mother? A sweetheart left behind? They would never know, and the finality of the mystery filled Glass with melancholy thoughts of his own souvenirs.

I also dislike someone who complains about problems but offers no solutions:

Glass shot an irritated glance at Red, who had an uncanny knack for spotting problems and an utter inability for crafting solutions. That said, he was probably right. The few creeks they’d passed had been small. Any Indians in the area would hug tight to the Platte, directly in their path. But what choice do we have?

Kiowa said, “I’m sorry that you never had a proper rendezvous with Fitzgerald. But you should have figured out by now that things aren’t always so tidy.”
They stood there for a while, with no sound but the flapping of the flag. “It’s not that simple, Kiowa.”
“Of course it’s not simple. Who said it was simple? But you know what? Lots of loose ends don’t ever get tied up. Play the hand you’re dealt. Move on.”

Glass said nothing more. Kiowa too was silent for a long time. Finally he said quietly, “Il n’est pire sourd que celui qui ne veut pas entendre. Do you know what that means?”
Glass shook his head.
“It means there are none so deaf as those that will not hear. Why did you come to the frontier?” demanded Kiowa. “To track down a common thief? To revel in a moment’s revenge? I thought there was more to you than that.”

He stood there on the high rampart for a long time that night, listening to the Missouri and staring at the stars. He wondered at the source of the waters, of the mighty Big Horns whose tops he had seen but never touched. He wondered at the stars and the heavens, comforted by their vastness against his own small place in the world. Finally he climbed down from the ramparts and went inside, quickly finding the sleep that had eluded him before.

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The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge

By Michael Punke

 

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Zorba the Greek

Author: Nikos Kazantzakis and Peter Bien
Rating: 10/10
Last Read: September 2017

Zorba the Greek sat on my reading list for many years. It came highly recommended from sources I trusted, but I never quite took the bait. I went into the book knowing nothing about it, other than hearing from Rozi that it was a wonderful read and that Zorba presents a most interesting character.

I love this book and cannot recommend it enough. It is very similar in theme to Herman Hesse’s Narcissus and Goldmund, but I find the characters much more interesting and lovable.

If you need some fiction that will move your spirit, Zorba the Greek is for you. Even if you think you don’t need moving function, read the book anyway. You won’t regret it.

Look, I was passing through a small village one day. An old fogey ninety years old was planting an almond tree. ‘Hey, grandpa,’ I say to him, ‘are you really planting an almond tree?’ And he, all bent over as he was, he turns and says to me, ‘My boy, I act as though I’m never going to die.’ I answered him in my turn, ‘I act as though I’m going to die at any moment.’ Which of the two of us was right, Boss?”

My Highlights

Zorba taught me to love life and not to fear death.

“Forgive me for saying this, Boss, but you are a pen pusher. You poor creep, you had the chance of a lifetime to see a beautiful green stone, and you didn’t see it. By God, sometimes when I have no work to do, I sit down and ask myself, ‘Is there a hell or isn’t there?’ But yesterday, when I received your letter, I said to myself, ‘There sure is a hell for certain pen pushers!’

To prolong one’s parting from a beloved friend is poison. To leave with a knife stroke is better, for it allows one to return to humanity’s natural climate: solitude.

“Emotion?” he inquired, attempting to smile.
“Yes,” I calmly replied.
“Why? Didn’t we agree? Haven’t we agreed for years now? The Japanese you love, how do they say it? Fudōoshin. Equanimity; imperturbability; one’s features an unmoving, smiling mask. Whatever happens behind the mask is one’s own business.”

How was it that I, who loved life so much, had been involved with paper and ink for so many years?

“Why! Why!” he said disdainfully. “Good God, can’t anyone do something without asking why? Just like that! Because you feel like it! So take me as a cook, let’s say. I make amazing soup.”

“Are you married?”
“I’m human, am I not? To be human means to be blind. I fell face-first into the same pothole that those before me fell into. I got married, went to the dogs, down the steep slope. I became middle class, built a home, produced children. Nothing but trouble! But thank God for the santouri.”

Where was some brain to get to the bottom of things? Accurate, honorable thoughts require tranquility, old age, a mouth full of false teeth. When you’ve got dentures it’s easy to say, ‘For shame, boys, no biting!’ But when you’ve got all thirty-two of your own teeth . . . A man in his youth is a wild animal, a ferocious beast who eats other men!”

Consequently, are so many murders and dirty tricks required in this world for people to gain freedom? Because, if I sat here and ticked off for you what outrages we committed and what murders, it would make your hair stand on end. Yet what was the result? Freedom! God, instead of hurling his thunderbolt to incinerate us, gives us freedom. I don’t understand anything.”

“Look here, what I’m telling you is that this world is a mystery and every human being is a great brute—a great brute and a great god.

“Yes, that’s what freedom means,” I was thinking. “To have a passion, to amass golden pounds, and suddenly to conquer your passion and throw away everything you possess—toss it into the air. Or to free yourself from one passion by obeying another that is higher. But isn’t that just a different form of slavery: sacrificing yourself for an idea, for your nationality, your God? Or could it be that the higher one’s master stands, the rope tying one to slavery is lengthened by the same amount? In that case, if we jump and frolic in a much wider domain, we die without ever discovering its boundaries. Is that what freedom means?”

I felt that this Cretan scene resembled good prose: well-worked, reticent, liberated from superfluous wealth, strong, restrained, formulating the essence by the simplest of means, refusing to play games, not deigning to employ tricks or grandiloquence, but saying what it wants to say with virile simplicity.

“You’re not hungry!” exclaimed Zorba, slapping his thigh. “But you haven’t eaten anything since morning. The body, too, has a soul. Take pity on it; give it something to eat, Boss. Give it something to eat; it’s our donkey, you know. If you don’t feed your donkey, it will abandon you halfway to your destination.”

Look, I was passing through a small village one day. An old fogey ninety years old was planting an almond tree. ‘Hey, grandpa,’ I say to him, ‘are you really planting an almond tree?’ And he, all bent over as he was, he turns and says to me, ‘My boy, I act as though I’m never going to die.’ I answered him in my turn, ‘I act as though I’m going to die at any moment.’ Which of the two of us was right, Boss?”

Those two paths are equally uplifting and rugged; both can lead to the summit. To act as though death does not exist and to act with death in mind at every moment—perhaps both paths are the same.

One thing at a time in proper order. Right now we’ve got pilaf in front of us; let our minds be pilaf. Tomorrow we’ll have lignite in front of us, so let our minds, then, be lignite. No half measures—understand?”

The entire world—earth, water, thoughts, people—was flowing toward a distant sea, and Zorba was flowing happily with it, offering no resistance, asking no questions.

Youth is fierce and inhuman because it doesn’t understand.

Workers fear a hard boss, respect him, and do good work for him; they take control of a soft boss as though he were a horse meant for them to saddle and mount, and they start loafing. Understand?”

Angered, I dug in my heels: “You have no faith, then, in human nature?”
“Don’t get angry, Boss. I have no faith in anything. If I believed in human nature, I would believe in God as well, also in the Devil. It’s a big problem. Things get all mixed up, Boss, and cause me trouble.”

“Human beings are brutes!” he shouted angrily, banging his staff on the stones. “Great big brutes. The likes of you doesn’t know this; everything came to you too easily. But ask me. Brutes, I’m telling you. If you treat them badly, they respect and dread you; if you treat them well, they cause your ruin. Keep your distance, Boss. Don’t embolden people, don’t tell them that we are all one and the same, all have the same rights, because immediately they’ll trample your rights, snatch away your bread, and leave you to croak from hunger. Keep your distance, Boss, for your own good!”

“I believe in nothing and no one, only in Zorba. Not because Zorba is better than others, not at all—no, not at all! He, too, is a brute. But I believe in Zorba because he is the only person I have under my power, the only one I know. All the others are ghosts. I see him with my eyes, hear him with my ears, digest him with my guts. All the others, I tell you, are ghosts. When I die, everything dies; the entire Zorba-world hits rock bottom.”

“Remember what we were saying the other day, Boss? Apparently you wanted to enlighten the masses, to open their eyes. All right, go and open Uncle Anagnostis’s eyes for him. Did you notice how his wife stood there cringing and awaiting orders? Well, Your Highness, how about going now and teaching them something about women, that they have the same rights as men and that it’s truly a mean thing to eat a piece of a hog’s flesh with the hog, alive, bellowing in front of you, and that it’s hugely stupid to be tickled because God has everything while you’re starving! What will that miserable abomination, Uncle Anagnostis, profit from all this enlightening gobbledygook of yours? You’ll only cause him a mess of trouble. And what will Mrs. Anagnosti profit? Arguments will start; the hen will yearn to become the rooster, and the couple will do nothing but fight each other and suck dry each other’s blood. Let people stay placid, Boss; don’t open their eyes. If you do open them, you know what they will see: their malice and cold unsociability. So, leave their eyes closed; that way they can keep on dreaming!”

Are they going to see new forms of darkness? Let them stay where they were, with their former habits. Can’t you realize that they’ve done well enough until now? They manage—manage quite nicely. They give birth to children, have grandchildren, God makes them deaf or blind and they shout ‘Glory be to God!’ They’re at home with misfortune. So leave them where they are and shut your trap.”

I was happy; I knew that I was happy. We sense happiness with difficulty while experiencing it. Only when it has passed and we look back do we suddenly comprehend, sometimes with astonishment, how happy we have been. I, however, on this Cretan shore, was experiencing happiness while being simultaneously aware of my happiness.

“What can you expect from women? To have children by whoever happens to be available. What can you expect from men? To fall into the trap. No time to fiddle-faddle about any of that, Boss.”

“I’ve got some gray hair, Boss, and my teeth are working loose; I don’t have time to spare. You’re young. You can be patient; I can’t. As I get older I become wilder, by God. Why do people sit there and keep telling me that old age tames a person, makes him lose his zest, stretch out his neck when he sees death and say, ‘Slaughter me, please, dear agha, so that I may become a saint’? As for me, as I get older I become wilder. I don’t quit. I want to eat up the whole wide world.”

Once again I assured myself that happiness is something simple and self-restrained—a glass of wine, a chestnut, a paltry brazier, the sea’s rumble, nothing else. The only requirement for one to sense that all this is happiness is to possess a heart that is also simple and self-restrained.

Confucius says: “Many seek a happiness higher than the human being; others seek one lower. But happiness is the same height as the human being.”

“Life is trouble; death isn’t,” Zorba continued. “Do you know the definition of being alive? To undo your belt and look for trouble.”

“There are none so deaf as those who refuse to hear!”

“What’s going on, Zorba?”
“Nothing. Haven’t a single idea. I ran into a priest early this morning. Get going!”
“If there’s some danger, wouldn’t it be shameful for me to leave?”
“Yes,” Zorba answered.
“Would you leave?”
“No.”
“Well, then?”
“I have different standards for Zorba than I have for other people,” he stated with annoyance. “But since you understand that it would be shameful to leave, do not leave. Stay.”

I feel this way when I am interrupted:

He had work to do; he did not condescend to converse. “Don’t talk to me when I’m working,” he said to me one evening; “I might break in two.”
“Break in two, Zorba?” I replied. “Why?”
“There you go asking ‘Why?’ again, like a small child,” he said. “How could I explain this to you? I give myself over to my work; I stretch from toenail to scalp, extend myself to overcome the stone or coal I’m wrestling with—or the santouri. If you touch me all of a sudden, if you talk to me and make me turn, I might break in two—but how could you understand!”

The world is simple, Boss—how many times do I need to tell you that? Don’t make it complicated.

What I understood deeply on that day was this: to hasten eternal rules is a mortal sin. One’s duty is confidently to follow nature’s everlasting rhythm.

Great visionaries and poets see everything in the same way—for the first time.

They see a new world before them each morning. No, they do not see this new world; they create it.

It wasn’t my destiny that brought me here (a person does whatever he wishes) but I who brought my destiny here and who worked like a dog and still works.

Dear teacher, I hope that you receive this letter of mine, which perhaps will be my last. No one knows. I have no faith in the mystical forces that supposedly protect us humans. I believe in the blind power that strikes to the right and left without malice or purpose, and that kills whoever happens to be near it.

I believe that you will understand from my letter what an unfortunate man I am. It’s only when I am with you and I talk to you that I have some hope of being relieved of my hypochondria, because Your Excellency is just like me, only you don’t know this. You, too, have a devil inside you but you still don’t know his name and because you don’t know his name, you suffocate. Baptize him, Boss, and you’ll find relief.

It’s true that you are still young, Boss, but you’ve read the wisdom of old and have become, if you’ll excuse my saying so, a bit old yourself.

I stared at her with goggle eyes. “You’re not going? Why? Don’t you want to?”
“I want to go if you come, too. If you don’t come, I don’t want to go.”
“But why? Aren’t you a free human being?”
“No, I’m not.”
“Don’t you want to be free?”
“No.”
What can I say to you, Boss? I felt I was going to have a fit. “You don’t want to be free?” I shouted. “No, I don’t! I don’t! I don’t!” Boss, I’m writing you from Lola’s room, on her paper. Pay attention, please. I believe that a human being is a person who wants to be free. Women don’t want to be free. So are women human beings? Please answer me at once.

“Good God, people are wild beasts,” Zorba said suddenly, aroused by so much singing. “Boss, abandon your books! Aren’t you ashamed? People are wild beasts, and wild beasts do not read books.”

“Don’t say those words, Uncle Anagnostis. You scare a person to death.”
“Bah, never fear. Who listens to my words? And if a few do listen, who believes them? Consider: was there ever a more fortunate person? I had fields, vineyards, olive groves, and a two-story house. I was a respected man of property. My wife turned out fine—obedient, gave birth only to sons, never lifted her eyes to look me in the face. And my children also turned out well. I have no complaints. I made grandchildren, too. What more could I want? I’ve put down deep roots. Yet if I were to be born again, I’d tie a stone around my neck, like Pavlis, and fall into the sea. Life is really harsh; even the most fortunate life is harsh, blast it!”

“You are young,” he said to me, smiling. “Don’t listen to old folks. If everyone listened to the aged, they’d all be quickly ruined. If a widow happens to cross your path, pounce on her! Get married, have children, don’t hesitate. Troubles are made especially for fine young stalwarts.”

The voice of those cranes, echoing once again within me, was the terrible forewarning that this life is unique for each human being, that no other life exists, that we may enjoy it, enjoy it here, that it passes quickly, and that no other opportunity will be given us in the whole of eternity.

one’s mind vows to conquer its own degradation and weakness, to conquer laziness and great futile hopes in order to catch full hold of every split second that is departing forever.

“What’s your favorite dish, granddad?”
“Everything, everything, my son. It’s a great sin to say that this food is good, that food not good.”
“Why? Can’t we choose?”
“No, we really cannot.”
“Why?”
“Because there are people who are hungry.” I fell silent out of shame. My heart had never been able to achieve such nobility and compassion.

“What are ten or fifteen years?” asserted the abbess, sternly. “You fail to consider eternity?” I did not speak. I knew that eternity is each moment that passes.

Earth engenders children and feasts on them, engenders children anew, feasts on them anew—a perfect circle.

As a small child, I was in danger of falling into the well; when I grew older I was in danger of falling into the word “eternity” and also into quite a few other words: “love,” “hope,” “fatherland,” “God.” It seemed to me that I kept escaping year by year, making progress. But I was not making progress. I was merely changing one word for another and calling that liberation. Most recently, for two entire years, I had been suspended above the word “Buddha.”

Since the day I dyed my hair I’ve become another person. You may wonder, but I myself believe it, believe that I have black hair. You see, people easily forget what’s not to their advantage. And, by God, my strength increased. Lola, she, too, understood. That stitch I had in my side—here, remember it?—that’s gone, too. Unbelievable!

The great ascetic, gathering his disciples around him, cries out: “Woe to whoever does not have within him the source of happiness! Woe to whoever wishes to please others! Woe to whoever does not sense that this life and the other life are the same!”

“You laugh, Boss, and can continue if you wish. But that’s how people liberate themselves. Listen to me: they liberate themselves by being rakes, not monks.” And you: how will you get free of the Devil if you don’t become Devil and a half?”

“This is my second theory: Every idea that has real influence also has real substance. It exists. It is not a bodiless phantom wandering in the air. It has a veritable body—eyes, mouth, feet, belly. It is a man or a woman and pursues either men or women. That’s why the Gospel says, ‘The Word became flesh.’

Eternity exists even in one’s ephemeral life, but it is very difficult for us to find it on our own. Ephemeral concerns mislead us. Only very few people, the most select, manage to experience eternity in this ephemeral life. The others would be lost if God had not felt pity for them on this account and sent them religion, which enables the multitude to experience eternity.”

“Zorba, why don’t you write something that explains to us all the world’s mysteries?”
“Why don’t I? Obviously because I live all the mysteries you mention and don’t have time. Sometimes it’s people in general, sometimes women, sometimes wine, sometimes the santouri, so I don’t have a moment to grab hold of that blathering dame, the pen. So the world falls into the hands of pen pushers. Those who live the mysteries lack time and those who don’t lack time don’t live the mysteries. Got it?”

Zorba, satisfied, rubbed his hands together. “This was a good day, Boss,” he said. “You’ll ask me what ‘good’ means. It means ‘full.’

“Saved from my country, saved from priests, saved from money. No more sifting. I’m increasingly finished with sifting things out; I’m simplifying. How can I express it to you? I am freeing myself, becoming a human being.”

Well, I’ve really learned something. Now I look at people and say, ‘This one is a good person, that one a bad person. It doesn’t matter whether he’s a Bulgarian or a Greek. To me they’re both the same. The only thing I ask now is whether he’s good or bad. And the older I get, yes, by the bread I eat, it seems to me that I’ll begin not to ask that either. Bah, who cares if they’re good or bad? I pity them all. When I see someone, my guts split apart even if I pretend not to give a damn. Look here, I say: this poor devil eats, drinks, loves, fears, has his God and his Devil; he, too, will kick the bucket and be laid out dead as a doornail underground to be eaten by worms. Poor miserable devil! We’re brothers, all of us. Food for worms!

‘My country,’ you keep telling me. You ought to listen to me, not to the twaddle your papers say. As long as countries exist, the human being will remain a beast, a ferocious beast. But I escaped, glory be to God, escaped. What about you?”

He once said to me, “Half-finished jobs, conversations, sins, and virtues are what have brought the world to its present mess. Reach the end, everyone! Strike; win the fight! God detests the half-Devil more than the Devil-in-chief.”

I eat larger, more delicious portions, and they don’t all become manure. Something remains, something is saved, turning into merriment, dance, song, or a slight argument. That something is what I call resurrection.”

“Damn it, my friend, Christ is risen! Oh, if only I was as young as you! Women and wine galore, sea and work galore! Full blast no matter what! Work on full blast. Wine, sex, all on full blast. No fear of God; no fear of the Devil. That’s the meaning of youth and strength.”

I don’t know how to tell you all of this to make you understand, but in my opinion none of it has any meaning.

He jumped up; his eyes misted with tears. “I can’t stay, Boss,” he said. “I’ve got to walk, to go up and down the mountain two or three times tonight, to tire myself out, so my mind can settle down. Hey you, you widow, I feel I’m going to burst if I don’t chant a dirge for you!”

Zorba went out into the yard. He was overcome by weeping, ashamed to be seen in front of women. I remember one day he said to me, “I’m not ashamed of crying in front of men. I’m a man; we’re all the same tribe and it’s not shameful for us. But in front of women we always need to appear brave. Why? Because if we started weeping in our turn, what would happen to those poor creatures? It would be the end of everything.”

turned to me again. “I want you to tell me where we come from and where we are going. You’ve been wasting away for so many years with your black magic and must have squeezed the sap out of ten or eleven thousand pounds of paper. So, what juice did you find?” Zorba’s voice was so agonized that his breath broke.

“I look down at death continually,” he said at last. “I look at it and am not afraid. Never, however, do I say, ‘I like it.’ No, I do not like it, not at all. I am free, am I not?

“Boss,” he said, as though wishing to justify himself, “every sorrow breaks my heart in two. But that organ of a thousand wounds heals immediately and the wound does not show. I am full of healed wounds; that is why I bear up.”

“New road, new plans. I’ve stopped remembering bygones, stopped seeking future prospects. What matters to me is whatever is happening right now, at this very moment. I ask myself, ‘What are you doing now, Zorba?’ ‘I’m sleeping.’ ‘All right, sleep well!’ ‘What are you doing now, Zorba?’ ‘I’m working.’ ‘All right, work well!’ ‘What are you doing now, Zorba?’ ‘I’m embracing a woman.’ ‘All right, embrace her well!’ Forget all the rest. Nothing else exists in the world except you and that woman. Shake a leg!”

“I believe, Zorba, but can be wrong, that human beings are of three kinds: those whose purpose, as they say, is to live their own lives—to eat, drink, kiss, grow rich, become famous; next are those whose purpose is to live not their own lives but the life of humanity as a whole, since they feel that all human beings are one and the same in their struggle to enlighten, to love, and benefit others; finally there are those whose purpose is to live the life of the entire universe, since all people, animals, vegetables, and stars are one and the same, one essence engaged in the same struggle—namely, to transubstantiate matter into spirit.”

“That’s difficult, Boss, very difficult. What’s needed in this instance is folly. Do you hear? Folly! You need to go the whole hog. But you’ve got intelligence, and that will eat you up. Intelligence is a grocer. It keeps accounts, writes ‘I gave this amount, got that amount, this amount the loss, that amount the gain.’ Intelligence is a good manager, you know, never putting everything on the line, always holding something back. It doesn’t break the string, oh no! That louse holds it tightly in its hands; if the string slips away, intelligence is finished, done for, the bum! But tell me, for as long as it fails to break the string, what solid basis does life have? Chamomile, diluted chamomile. What’s needed to turn the world upside down is rum!”

“You understand, and that’s what will eat you up! If you did not understand, you would be happy. What do you lack? You’re young, you have money, intelligence, you’re healthy, a fine person—you lack nothing. Nothing, blast it! Just one thing, as we said: folly. And when that’s missing, Boss—”

Little did Yorgis know that he would eventually become the protagonist of one of the greatest novels of world literature, and his character would become an ecumenical figure that set a new literary archetype: the Lover of Life, the authentic, primordial, all-embracing Dancer, a man renowned for his robust exuberance, his vigor and vitality.

With this freshness of heart, he had “a bravery to mock his very own soul, as though he possessed in him a power superior than the soul.”

But Kazantzakis takes this idea further; he proposes that even if Sisyphus succeeds in pushing the rock all the way to the top of the hill, he would then seek a higher hill, start a new ascent, for the ascent itself is the enlightenment. It is the pushing, the sweat, the struggle that transubstantiates flesh into spirit, darkness into light, mud, blood, desires, and visions into enlightenment.

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Zorba the Greek

By Nikos Kazantzakis

 

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Gone Girl

Author: Gillian Flynn
Rating: 8/10
Last Read: January 2015

I read Gone Girl after watching the movie, which was probably a mistake. The book was very similar to the movie, so the plot twists were already spoiled. However, that’s not to say the book was ruined – the book was still a very enjoyable read. I certainly felt frustrated by the situation of the two main characters, so the book gets bonus points for evoking real feelings from me.

Watch out for those crazy relationships, folks! And perhaps don’t read this one right before bed…

My Highlights

There’s something disturbing about recalling a warm memory and feeling utterly cold.

But there’s no app for a bourbon buzz on a warm day in a cool, dark bar. The world will always want a drink.

Give me a man with a little fight in him, a man who calls me on my bullshit. (But who also kind of likes my bullshit.)

It’s a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless Automat of characters.

Shawna said. “I mentioned it to Detective Boney, but I get the feeling she doesn’t like me very much.”
“Why do you say that?”
I already knew what she was going to say, the mantra of all attractive women. “Women don’t like me all that much.”

I was embarrassed, I snarled at her, she snapped at me, and … the usual. I should add, in Amy’s defense, that she’d asked me twice if I wanted to talk, if I was sure I wanted to do this. I sometimes leave out details like that. It’s more convenient for me. In truth, I wanted her to read my mind so I didn’t have to stoop to the womanly art of articulation. I was sometimes as guilty of playing the figure-me-out game as Amy was. I’ve left that bit of information out too.

My mother had always told her kids: If you’re about to do something, and you want to know if it’s a bad idea, imagine seeing it printed in the paper for all the world to see.

Love makes you want to be a better man—right, right. But maybe love, real love, also gives you permission to just be the man you are.

I could feel her girl-brain buzzing, turning Amy’s disappearance into a frothy, scandalous romance, ignoring any reality that didn’t suit the narrative.

“And, I mean, it’s fun to be hero for a while, be the white knight, but it doesn’t really work for long. I couldn’t make her be happy. She didn’t want to be happy. So I thought if she started taking charge of a few practical things—”

I’d always heard the phrase: At forty, a man wears the face he’s earned. Bolt’s fortyish face was well tended, almost wrinkle-free, pleasantly plump with ego. Here was a confident man, the best in his field, a man who liked his life.

That whore, he picked that little whore over me. He killed my soul, which should be a crime. Actually, it is a crime. According to me, at least.

He was inspecting the neighborhood, eyeing the cars in the driveways, assessing the houses. He reminded me of the Elliotts, in a way—examining and analyzing at all times. A brain with no off switch.

If it’s not good TV, believe me, it’s not for a jury. We’d go with more of an O.J. thing. A simple story line: The cops are incompetent and out to get you, it’s all circumstantial, if the glove doesn’t fit, blah blah, blah.”

“Blah blah blah, that gives me a lot of confidence,” I said.
Tanner flashed a smile. “Juries love me, Nick. I’m one of them.”
“You’re the opposite of one of them, Tanner.”
“Reverse that: They’d like to think they’re one of me.”

This one always makes me chuckle:

We just need to sustain it. Nick doesn’t have it down perfect. This morning he was stroking my hair and asking what else he could do for me, and I said: “My gosh, Nick, why are you so wonderful to me?”
He was supposed to say: You deserve it. I love you. But he said, “Because I feel sorry for you.”
“Why?”
“Because every morning you have to wake up and be you.”

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Gone Girl

By Gillian Flynn

 

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A Hunger Artist

Author: Franz Kafka
Rating: 8/10
Last Read: 7/2017

Kafka certainly is a strange one. A Hunger Artist is a short story about a man who travels from town to town while putting on fasting displays. The hunger artist becomes famous, though he remains eternally unhappy and dissatisfied. Eventually the masses lose interest in fasting feats and hunger artists. He manages to perform one last fasting feat as a circus act.

If you’re looking for an interesting short story with an interesting ending, check out A Hunger Artist.

My Highlights

It was, however, merely a formality, introduced to reassure the masses, for those who understood knew well enough that during the period of fasting the hunger artist would never, under any circumstances, have eaten the slightest thing, not even if compelled by force. The honour of his art forbade it. Naturally, none of the watchers understood that.

For, in fact, no one was in a position to spend time watching the hunger artist every day and night, so no one could know, on the basis of his own observation, whether this was a case of truly uninterrupted, flawless fasting. The hunger artist himself was the only one who could know that and, at the same time, the only spectator capable of being completely satisfied with his own fasting. But the reason he was never satisfied was something different. Perhaps it was not fasting at all which made him so very emaciated that many people, to their own regret, had to stay away from his performance, because they couldn’t bear to look at him. For he was also so skeletal out of dissatisfaction with himself, because he alone knew something that even initiates didn’t know — how easy it was to fast. It was the easiest thing in the world. About this he did not remain silent, but people did not believe him.

But this dissatisfaction kept gnawing at his insides all the time and never yet — and this one had to say to his credit — had he left the cage of his own free will after any period of fasting.

And he looked up into the eyes of these women, apparently so friendly but in reality so cruel, and shook his excessively heavy head on his feeble neck.

Then a toast was proposed to the public, which was supposedly whispered to the impresario by the hunger artist, the orchestra confirmed everything with a great fanfare, people dispersed, and no one had the right to be dissatisfied with the event, no one except the hunger artist — he was always the only one.

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A Hunger Artist

By Franz Kafka

 

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Old Man’s War

Author: John Scalzi
Rating: 8/10
Last Read: 12/2014

Old Man’s War is an excellent science fiction novel with some thought provoking aspects to it. The novel is set in man’s future, where we have expanded to the stars. The interesting twist of the book is that the Colonial Defense Force (CDF) recruits soldiers from the elderly population: 65 and up. Although they are not sure why old farts are wanted, they eventually find their minds transferred into genetically engineered super-soldier bodies. Their new lease on life comes at the cost of serving in the CDF’s ongoing wars, however.

The overall concept is interesting, and I certainly haven’t read another sci-fi book with this particular theme. I highly recommend Old Man’s War for sci-fi lovers.

P.S.: The first book is the best in the trilogy, but I also enjoyed the two novels that follow Old Man’s War.

My Highlights

Kathy’s marker has her name (Katherine Rebecca Perry), her dates, and the words: BELOVED WIFE AND MOTHER. I read those words over and over every time I visit. I can’t help it; they are four words that so inadequately and so perfectly sum up a life. The phrase tells you nothing about her, about how she met each day or how she worked, about what her interests were or where she liked to travel. You’d never know what her favorite color was, or how she liked to wear her hair, or how she voted, or what her sense of humor was. You’d know nothing about her except that she was loved. And she was. She’d think that was enough.

For as much as I hate the cemetery, I’ve been grateful it’s here, too. I miss my wife. It’s easier to miss her at a cemetery, where she’s never been anything but dead, than to miss her in all the places where she was alive.

The problem with aging is not that it’s one damn thing after another—it’s every damn thing, all at once, all the time.

“I didn’t mind getting old when I was young, either,” I said. “It’s the being old now that’s getting to me.”

“What is the weak point of the human body?” Ruiz asked as he circled around our platoon. “It’s not the heart, or the brain, or the feet, or anywhere you think it is. I’ll tell you what it is. It’s the blood, and that’s bad news because your blood is everywhere in your body. It carries oxygen, but it also carries disease. When you’re wounded, blood clots, but often not fast enough to keep you from dying of blood loss. Although when it comes down to it, what everyone really dies of is oxygen deprivation—from blood being unavailable because it’s spewed out on the fucking ground where it doesn’t do you a goddamned bit of good.

“What is it like when you lose someone you love?” Jane asked.
“You die, too,” I said. “And you wait around for your body to catch up.”

“Is that what you’re doing now?” Jane said. “Waiting for your body to catch up, I mean.”
“No, not anymore,” I said. “You eventually get to live again. You just live a different life, is all.”

“I’m not insane, sir,” I said. “I have a finely calibrated sense of acceptable risk.”

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Old Man’s War

By John Scalzi