Mysteries by Donald Westlake and Michael Chabon

Westlake, Donald. What's So Funny. NY: Warner Books, 2007.
Chabon, Michael. The Yiddish Policeman's Union. NY: Harper Collins, 2007.

Submitted by Mark Schneider

I'm a sucker for mystery novels. I find having a light read going is a good thing especially during the summer. Unfortunately, after you have read a number of mysteries, they can get a bit predictable, so it is nice to have a twist. That is why I have long been a fan of Tony Hillerman, but it seems cranking them out has become more of a business for him than a labor of love, and I have found his recent works lackluster at best. However, there are a couple of great novels I have read recently that nicely combine the twist with a good yarn.

What's So Funny by Donald Westlake puts the small time thief in the lead role. In one of his Dortmunder novels (and the only one I've read so far), Dortmunder is a talented criminal who just wants to make a [dis]honest living. He's got a heart, he's modest, he doesn't want to push his luck. He ends up getting drawn into some big time white collar crime as a tool of folks trying to right a decades old wrong involving misappropriated treasures from WWII. Dortmunder wants nothing to do with it, but he and his buddies end up having to be tools of the "good guys" or end up going to jail for their much more small-time misdeeds. Lots of interesting characters, and enough twists to keep you guessing.

Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union takes place in an alternative world where the survivors of the holocaust end up in a settlement in Alaska rather than the Holy Land (don't you remember the catastrophic collapse of the state of Israel in 1948?). Meyer Landsman is a troubled cop with a troubled life, and his best friend and fellow cop Berko Shemets is half Jew, half Tlingit. Prominent is an ultraorthodox sect that plays the role of the local Mafia. Chabon manages to combine the real and the imagined in such a skillful way that the reader is often left wondering: "did he make that up or is that real?" The novel tends to sputter out a little at the end, but even so, I found it the sort of novel I was sad to finish--I just wanted a little more.

Visit the Stewart Library to find books by Donald Westlake.
Both Burling Library and Stewart Library have Michael Chabon's books.

For the Yiddish Policeman's Union stroll over to the 1st floor Smith Memorial PS3553.H15 Y54 2007 at Burling Library.

One's Company

Holland, Barbara. One's Company: Reflections on Living Alone. Akadine Press, 1996.

Submitted by R. Stuhr

Holland considers all of the aspects of living alone and devotes a chapter to each one. Chapters cover the importance of food and its proper preparation, finding the right place to live, the importance of connecting with other people and making merriment part of your day-to-day life, surviving depression, keeping anxiety at bay, and finding appropriate work that suits you. She is practical as well, providing recipes for certain kinds of days, detailed instructions for changing a lock, advice on how to fix your own toilet, and a survey of hobbies and activities that can be used to stave off couchdom (my word) and television addiction.

Holland is a fantastic writer and I have been sharing different parts of the book with anyone who will listen as I've been reading it.

Sadly, the Akadine Press was part of the Common Reader which is no more. But you can find copies of this and other books by Barbara Holland at your favorite used book site.

West of Kabul, East of New York

Ansary, Tamim. West of Kabul, East of New York: An Afghan American Story. NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2002.

Submitted by R. Stuhr

In this memoir, Ansary tells the story of his childhood in Kabul, the son of an American woman and an Afghan father. Published before The Kite Runner became the run-away favorite book club read, Ansary shares his impressions of Afghanistan before the Soviet invasion and three decades and counting of devastating war. Ansary's father worked for the government, and his childhood was colored by this fact, which determined both how and where he and his family lived. At the age of 16, in the mid-sixties, Ansary moved with his family to the United States. His father eventually returned to Afghanistan to be with is extended family and to continue his government work. Ansary describes the different ways he and his siblings responded to their Afghan identity. During the late 1970s, Ansary travels throughout South and Central Asia and the Middle East coming as close to Afghanistan as possible with the thin justification of writing an article about his travels. Later, after his return, he attempts to navigate the intricate networks of the Afghan community in exile. Ansary writes with humor and humility. His book is enlightening and thoroughly enjoyable.

For Kite Runner fans, Ansary mentions Khaled Hosseini toward the end of his book, describing him as a "young Afghan doctor whose passion after work was writing--not ghazals, not quasidas, not even rubaiyat, but horror stories in the tradition of H.P. Lovecraft (p. 284).

Burling Library 2nd Floor E 184 .A23 A57 2002

I Don't Believe In Atheists

I Don't Believe In Atheists

Hedges, Chris. I Don't Believe In Atheists. NY: Free Press, 2008.

Reviewed By T. Hatch

Chris Hedges has produced another concise volume dealing with a contemporary moral issue. Hedges who can be described as a left of center philosophical skeptic has attacked head on what he sees as the squalid utopianism of the new or “fundamentalist” atheism of Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins.

It was quite recently that this writer heard the word atheist modified with the adjective fundamentalist. That was one afternoon on NPR and the speaker was coming from a right wing perspective. Perhaps, I thought, the speaker meant any atheist who had the temerity to publish was a fundamentalist. Hedges though is quite specific in defining what he sees as atheistic fundamentalism. “The belief that rational and quantifiable disciplines such as science can be used to perfect human society is no less absurd than a belief in magic, angels and divine intervention.”(p.13)

At no point in the book does Hedges attempt to make an argument that God actually exists. He argues that “Utopian dreams are always psychotic” and the culprits on the secular side of the ledger were Descartes, Hume, Locke, Voltaire, Kant, Diderot, Rousseau, and Thomas Paine. Accordingly, Utopian violence together with industrial and bureaucratic power culminate in totalitarianism. His argument in this respect is a little too direct and the net he casts is a little large. Rousseau is no more responsible for the horrors of Auschwitz than Augustine was for the Inquisition. He specifically cites the Atlantic slave trade as an example of this kind of terror produced by these aforementioned Enlightenment dilettantes. This act of inhumanity was well under way before “the age of reason.”

It is also interesting to note that Hedges repeatedly references Reinhold Niebuhr and contemporary British philosopher John Gray to make his case. There is coherence in this but he also is fond of employing Dostoevsky and Nietzsche to make the same series of points. Talk about a couple of legendary misanthropes!

Despite these inconsistencies, the hang-ups Hedges has with the Jacobins as the first totalitarians (as a technical point and still a stretch why not Napoleon?), his notion that all ethics begin with religion, and his (or my) semantical quibbling with the terms “sin” and “evil,” on balance, it is a solid argument. Indeed Utopian fundamentalists be they religiously or secularly inspired represent the same danger. In fact they can in some instances make common cause and come up with fetching schemes such as the “war on terror.”

A more felicitous title for Hedges' book might have been “Why All Utopians are D#$*%*B@#s (Especially Hitchens, Harris, and Dawkins).”