I finally read American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, which I bought sometime after Barbenheimer weekend, which feels like about a million years ago now, and reading it now, I kind of can’t help but wonder, what would Oppenheimer have thought of Oppenheimer? What would Oppenheimer have thought of Barbenheimer, for that matter? And I have no idea and have no idea how to even begin to generate an idea here. Other than to note, well, Barbie was introduced in 1959, which. I don’t know. There’s something.

I’m not going to pretend I gained deep insight from the book; there’s a lot of names, there’s a lot of manipulations and events, and I wasn’t reading in a strictly academic sense here, I wasn’t trying to keep all the threads straight. But it still made for an interesting read, if for nothing else than to see how much of the movie did come from the book, and what from the film might have involved a little bit of license-taking, that sort of thing.

The book was more a vibe check, for me, on Oppenheimer, on who really he was, a corrective against my more naive understanding of what he represented or did as part of the Manhattan Project. It’s easy to think, well, okay, father of the atom bomb, he must have done all the science, or whatever, and while he was certainly involved at that level, that wasn’t exactly what he was doing there; he was more a synthesist, by nature, and an administrator, by sheer force of will, a bit Samwise to the collective’s Frodo. (ed. note - bit of a stretch there, bub.)

The book also provides a clearly much more clear sense of his polymath nature—his philosophical ideals and his wide-ranging interests, and the like; wouldn’t it be nice to go read Proust and come out of it feeling like you’ve cured yourself of mental illness? (Apropos of nothing, maybe I’m actually finally going to read Proust in 2025? Maybe?)

It’s also…look, I know everything is terrible right now, and I know everything is about to become more terrible, but…has anything ever been good? Reading any kind of history I tend to walk away thinking: no, not really. I think maybe now we are reaching a point where it’s objectively possible to say things are about the worst they’ve ever been, but, I don’t know. I have so many gaps in my knowledge that I want to keep filling in, and maybe someday if the world lasts long enough I’ll have the opportunity to draw some conclusions, or to at least start. Maybe.

I don’t usually track or talk about what I read to the kids at night because honestly there’s only so many times I can read a fucking Dog Man book before I want to ka-shook my way through the roof and fart-chunk my way into an early grave but with my youngest on the verge of turning six he’s at least getting more interested in things with actual story, and my oldest is old enough now that I can finally pick books I want to read to him without me feeling like a truly horrible person, so things are looking up!

Like, I read the first two Wild Robot books to the younger kid recently and that actually went pretty well? He was into them, and I didn’t feel like I was going into a complete dissociative state the entire time, I could maybe actually tell you a little bit about what happens in those books. They're good; makes for a nice change of pace! I’m annoyed that he’s decided to put a hold on book three for the time being while we, you know, read books with poop jokes in them, though at least we’ve also got some Jenny books in there for good measure, so I guess it’s not all bad.

And then I’ve also started reading The Hobbit to them, and it’s going surprisingly well. I’m primarily targeting the older kid with it but the younger’s seemingly more along for the ride than I’d expected him to be; he actually got the answer to one of Gollum’s riddles the other night, oh my gosh. I’d considered it but I’m not getting full-throated with my voices or anything—I think any time I’ve tried to do true voice acting when I’m reading to the kids, the kids kindly tell me, to, like, not do that, while my wife laughs quietly from down the hall. Still, I feel like a remarkably better reader when I’m actually into what I’m reading and I sure hope my wife down the hall at least somewhat appreciates the situationally appropriate shifts of tone and pace in my oration.

This is all set up for going into The Lord of the Rings next, which is what I’ve really actually been wanting to do for a while. It’s been a surprisingly long time since I’ve seen the movies and I’ve only read the book once, shortly after the movies first came out, and I’m interested in reading the book with slightly less of the movie version arguing with the books in my head. I recently tried to do the audiobook while running and it was going okay, I liked it, but it’s so much, and I’m way more inclined to run to music most of the time, so it’s hard to make it stick; and as much as I know I could just of course read the book myself, there’s also so much else I want to read, it’s hard to justify or find the time for a reread of something of that magnitude.

All of which sets me up for a question that I clearly won’t need to answer for myself anytime soon, all things going well: what other good long big fantasy/sci-fi books would I actually enjoy reading to my kids, without having to skip over too much? I'm probably going to be reading books to them until they both can literally get into cars, turn them on, and drive away from me, so I should probably have some more options in my back pocket for when the time comes.

I’ve been going back and forth on this for a bit and at least for now I think it makes sense to stay more or less on-topic, so for my next not-really-a-book-club book club pick I’m going with Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy by Katherine Stewart. From the jacket copy, it sounds like it relates to the reporting I read about in Wild Faith by Talia Lavin while placing the subject in a different or more-broad scope in potentially interesting ways.

The book is not out yet, it’s scheduled for publication on February 18. I’ll be pre-ordering a copy shortly and plan to read it soon after it lands on my porch; once I get a sense of how it’s going to go I’ll update with a better idea of when I’ll have my post up about it. Like with the Lavin book I really don’t have any special insight into whether this is going to be a good book or not; it’s the on-topic book that skated across my line of sight at just the right moment, though, so I’m interested to dig in. And while I haven’t read Stewart before she clearly has been writing about this subject for a while now so if nothing else I feel like we’re in good hands here.

As a reminder—these not-a-book-club picks are intended to give you the occasional heads up about books I’m planning to post about, in case you want to read along at home and not worry about spoilers. Though I guess that will make more sense if I do a novel for one of these entries. (Which I do intend to do. I think. Eventually. It would be fun to read something fun with y’all!) It’s also meant to let you chat with me about these books, by whatever means you want, ahead of, during, or after me posting about these books.

…

Anyways, I have to believe reading books and talking about books still matters, yes? So I’d like to keep doing the former every day and the latter at least slightly more often. Cool? Cool.

Just before all this happened I read a little book called Dune by Frank Herbert. It was alright! Funny story, I only just read Dune for the first time recently. (Or at least I’d thought it was recently until I looked it up in my reading log and found it was actually six years ago, oops, yikes. Time: rude.) I hadn’t really cared for it much at the time; I remember feeling like the whole thing felt like one long string of Paul whining about how he’s going to do a terrible purpose someday. It kind of annoyed me and I wondered if I’d just missed the boat by coming to the book later in life instead of when I was a whiny little brat myself and I kind of just didn’t really get it, I guess.

But I also know it’s, you know, Dune; it’s a whole thing. Maybe it was the wrong book at the wrong time. It happens! Since then I’ve seen not one not two but three whole Dune movies, one of which was by David Lynch and had a weird happy ending, two of which could have been thirty minutes shorter if you’d cut out all the parts where Timothée Chalamet looked at the camera thinking about how he’s going to do a terrible purpose someday, and all that gave me a better sense of the basic structure of the story, and so I finally gave the book another shot and, and yeah, it’s alright? I certainly had more fun with the book this time through, not that I think the story is particularly emphasizing fun; there just isn’t as much “it really puts the whoa in sandwhoarms” for me as I think maybe I’m supposed to take away from it. (Ed. note: “Darby.”) But I did enjoy myself more knowing how things fit together and what to expect and also really there isn’t nearly as much of the terrible purpose whining as I’d remembered there being, it not really kicking in until the latter half of the book, which I think was kind of the more-dull half of the book anyway, so I guess I can understand why it maybe annoyed me so much when it did happen my first time through. For as much as the book is about these Fremen getting ready to rise up and run riot I’m not sure the book makes them as interesting as I expect them to be? Or, to put it another way, I was more interested in watching the houses and factions of the galaxy all being really bored and causing trouble for themselves because they had nothing better to do, like late-stage capitalist entities crumbling upon themselves because what the hell else are you going to do, I guess?

Or am I still not getting it? I’m probably still not getting it. (Subtitle of my memoir.)

This time through I made the wise choice to roll straight from Dune into Dune Messiah which I had come to understand makes the supposed meaning of Dune a bit more crystal clear and I’m both glad I did and also how the heck are you going to make that a whole movie? I thought I had an idea about what the second book was going to be like but then it kind of zigged on me from Paul being like “I’m gonna be a bad boy someday” to Paul being like “I’ve sure been a bad boy." (And also “Pretty weird my dead friend is a meat puppet now.” Weird.) It’s all so much…smaller, somehow? And yet I’m actually cautiously optimistic for the third movie because my wife and I have been working our way around through Denis Villeneuve’s pre-Arrival movies (which, by the way, I didn’t know he directed Sicario, what, now I have to go see that one, too) and I’m kind of thinking Messiah could be the most Villeneuve-y movie, the most like those early movies—smaller, personal, contained. Something. I don’t know, this ain’t a movie blog, I just show up for the laser beams and the fight scenes, hashtag the one friend, am I right. (Podcast joke. Sorry.)

Anyways, yeah, I generally like Dune now, but I’m not a true head, I suppose. I’ve checked the price on that Lego ornithopter set; I’ve promptly closed the tab. And I guess you already didn’t need to tell me twice that faith-based-leaders ain’t great. But. Maybe thirty-six years from now when Chalamet actually finally looks 12 years older than he does now (I cut a lot of bad jokes from this post about him being pretty, you’re welcome) and we get the third movie I’ll revisit it all again and that time’ll be the charm, who knows. I’m also on the fence about whether I need to read the rest of the original series; I’m curious but also deeply distractable.

Long story short, Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy by Katherine Stewart is a good book, well reported and written, and is worth your attention; It’s a bracing read, a sobering read, a depressing read, that seeks to convince us that there is an actual, literal, present threat to our current political system and to provide a clear framework for understanding the context of our current crisis, while also beginning to provide some direction for us as to how we can begin to claw our way back out of it. This book is more interested in the economic, political, and social machinery which makes use of, and is made use of, by Christian nationalist adherents, making it strong complimentary reading alongside Wild Faith, which itself interrogated the toxic mix of belief and hypocrisy that said nationalists bring to the table, and the ramifications of that mix on those both inside and outside that particular worldview.

…Okay. That’s the beginning and end of the semi-well-written review-like portion of the post. Now here comes the rambling part where I’ve dumped some thoughts about this stuff and my hopes and despairs about it all but mostly oh gosh do I wish there was something concrete going on right now that I could point toward to show that the knowledge found in this book and others like it is catching, catchable, and that countermeasures are having, can continue to have, an effect; that learning more about this stuff and taking this stuff more seriously matters. (I know it does, I know it’s a long game, I just wish I knew what to point at to draw the line from “this matters…” to “…and here’s how,” if that makes sense.)

One of the things I was thinking about while I was reading the book was…reading the book. Specifically, why read books like this, right now, or ever. We know it’s a shit-show out there (right?). We’re seeing the results of the causes this book highlights, right now, and they are depressing. When you’re watching a couple billionaire heathen dunderheads bull-in-the-china-shop their way through the government, what good’s to be had from thinking about Christian nationalists? It doesn’t take much for me to know right now that there’s this “other side” right now that sucks so hard and is making everything suck for everybody else; why wallow in it, when I feel like I can do so little about it?

Aside from the fact that I’m trying to do what I can to just be a decent and well-informed person (it’s not much but it’s not nothing) there’s something—nice is absolutely the wrong word to use in this context, but…soothing? empowering? something…quote-unquote nice about reading a well-laid-out summary and argument about, waves hands wildly, all of this. Thinking a lot about how I consume information these days and the wormhole of sick coming through social media and news alerts, seeing a thousand disjointed crises every hour of every day, it’s good to step back and be reminded that there is a whole to this, a picture that can be drawn here, a way to frame this all into a narrative that is awful but at least understandable. Which doesn’t exactly translate to easy solutions, not by any means, but which does at least help establish some boundaries around the problem, makes direction and next steps and needs feel at least like there’s something for them to latch on to.

Which is not to say the book argues that we’re facing a monolithic opposition force—far from it; one of the key points the book argues is that there’s a weirdly big tent over on that other side, one that accommodates a strange variety of views, views which entwine both hypocrisy and true belief, highly strategic and educated strategizing with base wants and under-informed, selfish reactionary delusions. In looking toward the future, toward what “our side” needs to do to reverse the tides away from crumbling at the edges (or heart) of democracy, Stewart notes this as one of several areas of the opposition’s tactics that we can learn a thing or two from; how do we limit the fractures in our perspectives from giving way to the other side, here. (Glaring at disjointed, unaligned, limp-noodle Democratic leadership right now.)

And of course one of the things she also specifically dives into is the way there’s big money going into making big money into bigger money through all of this; that other side is disturbingly well funded, and is making effective use of its dollars, up and down the ladder (even if it’s ultimately going against their actual best interests). The way that money specifically funnels into causes that are directed toward getting people to do shit is eye opening.

I know that one of the hints she gives at the end of the book is to get involved at the local level and to work from the ground up to fix or defend what we have and want, and I know I am not good enough at that to be one to comment much, but seeing the way the other side is really directing forces in large part through its, yes, religious network to accomplish real-world things is…I don’t want to say disheartening, but, like, it’s disheartening. Do we really lack such unity or structure on our side? I would like to believe that things I do could move needles but I don’t know that we really have clear views of what those things we could do are or who has the reach and resources needed to help make us move those needles in the right direction.

Which is kind of to say that in my darkest moments I worry it’s a bit like climate change, a situation in which my paper straw isn’t actually doing a damn thing about anything, a situation in which major systematic change needs to happen at a global scale; in the political sphere I just don’t know that we can local politics our way out of this mess. Which is not for a second to say that we should not try to local politics our way out of this mess, because that sounds horrible and defeatist and I don’t want to be that guy, especially as a guy who knows he doesn’t do enough to really begin to comment. But I worry, and it’s my blog and I’m going to say this is a safe space for me to say what I worry about as I do what I can to figure this stuff out for myself. (And maybe sharing my worries is helpful, in some way, as I work to overcome them. I don’t know.) (And also to everyone who is doing more than I am, jeez, thank you, seriously.)

The last thing I want to touch on is the way Stewart really posits the whole situation we’re in as almost a sort of mass psychosis, if not literally actually a mass psychosis. It’s so easy to want to believe that there’s just this one monolithic side on the other side and it’s actively choosing something for itself but it’s kind of not that at all; it’s this divided big tent of people making lots of decisions in a general sort of concert of weird alignment with each other, and those decisions often don’t make sense; they’re not actually good decisions. (Obviously! Literally.) And this is one area that does give me some loose sense of hope, some glint of belief that maybe somewhere down the line some of that lifts, maybe some light creeps in and folks see that maybe steering around the black ice is actually better than gunning straight for it. I don’t have a lot of optimism here but it’s at least something, some quiet hope that maybe crazy isn’t permanent, maybe we’re not actually literally trying to end everything here. (Cue cheesy orchestral strings soundtrack? I don’t know.)

There’s plenty more to say here but I’m going to stop here for now. Check out the book. It’s worth it.

My oldest kid was born ten years ago (which is weird funny math because I’m only like four years older now and maybe he’s only like two years older and actually I haven’t aged a day I’m fine this is fine) and I’ve been reading aloud to him ever since.* For that reason I know it’s been about exactly ten years since I last started reading Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day, the first book I read to him after he was born, a book I’d read to myself a couple times already before that, and which I’ve been planning on reading again ever since, but which got lost in the shuffle of, you know, the last ten years (black hole, wormhole).

But it’s about to be May now again and I can’t resist the killer theme hook of revisiting one of my favorite books ever which I’ve never actually fully understood after exactly a decade in a month that makes for a great play-on-words in the title of it (I think this sentence parses and if it doesn’t please take it up with my editor, one Mister D. Y. Namite), and, so, I’ll be celebrating Against the Day Against the May (boom!).

Mostly I’ll be celebrating it by reading it. It’s a great book. It is fun to read. It is a joy. Joy is nice. I was going to do a lot more around it, daily postings, photography, cosplay, airships, but I didn’t plan very well, or at all, and airships are expensive, and, well, here we are. Just me and the book. Good times. Still, though, it will be a good celebration; even if I never mention it again, you’ll know it’s happening, and your life, for this, shall be enriched.

And, hey, that said, if you’re looking for something to do in the next month or so, feel free to single up all lines and cast off with me and the Chums of Chance as we double up our Iceland spar and start flying toward grace.

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* - We’re about 200 pages into The Lord of the Rings right now. I foregrounded the fact that “Strider” is my favorite character a while ago. The other night when we got to a bit where Strider was fighting off the Ringwraiths using a fiery piece of wood, my kid’s eyes lit up and he exclaimed, “Daddy, you’re right—Strider is really cool!” Where do I go to accept my best father of all time award?

Fun fact: I’ve read Swann’s Way, the first book of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, three times. I read it once, I don’t recall when, thinking I was going to read the whole series, but I didn’t. Then I read it again some other time and made it through the second book that time before I got lost again.

The third time, I read it out loud to my second son in the months following his birth. That was super cool and fun for me but eventually he decided he wanted more age-appropriate fare, weird.

Which is to say that I am not unfamiliar with a slow read of Proust. (Babies are captive audiences but easily distracted by things like “naps” and “pooping”.) But also when the #AContinuation25 folks decided to tackle Lost Time the slow way through I was both intrigued and also, like, really, didn’t I just literally read this book like months ago? Except my second son is well past six years old now and yeah SPEAKING OF LOST TIME, am I right?

Anyways, I don’t know that this style of reading is going to actually work for me—I am easily distracted by things like “naps” and, uh, well…”naps”—but I’m curious to see if maybe, just maybe, the long slow route is the one that will get me finally through to the end of the entire series. So I figure it’s worth a shot. Worse case scenario there’s always attempt five.

For bonus points (I am not sure who will be giving me the points but I will accept them when they do) I’m pairing the start of this read with Kate Briggs’s The Long Form, one of the novels (or the novel?) that kickstarted this group’s entire project. In hilariously ambitious timing, I’m taking both books with me this week on a family vacation with the two kids, so it’s unlikely I’m going to get off on the right foot, exactly, when most of my reading time is going to be pushed to the absolute margins of the day, when I’m most likely going to be wanting nothing more than to collapse into bed with a graphic novel on the iPad for like five minutes before I fall asleep, but. I’ve been curious about the Briggs book for a bit now so I am excited to finally give it a go here at some point.