We qualify

People who are strangers to liquor are incapable of talking about literature.

- Mo Yan

Murakami, Once Again

For the second time in almost 6 years, we are repeating an author. Richard has picked: 

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage: A novel

Empire of the Summer Moon

D'oh!  Once again my own plans are thwarted by domestic requirements, so I'll have to miss this meeting as well.

I loved/loathed this book - I didn't really want to pick it up again each time, but once I started I was always hooked.

Here are a few things that I learned/relearned/better understood:

• The Comanches were just as savage & torturous towards their captives as I've always read.
• I didn't realize that they treated other Indian captives with the same brutality, as did all of the Plains Indians.
• They expected the same treatment themselves, which is one thing that made them such badass to-the-death warriors in battle.
• The typical "whites taking over Indian land with the noble Indian fighting to save his way of life" storyline is not wrong, but one-sided.  The Comanches had actually done exactly the same thing, taking land & killing Indians who lived there in order to fulfill their own version of Manifest Destiny.  
• So this was actually more a story about a collision of two forces with similar agendas and no understanding of each other.
• It's also intriguing as a clash between cultural & technological eras, Stone Age Man vs the Industrial Age.
• I didn't realize how much of this played out so nearby in Texas, in places that I've lived & visited, or that Austin was right on the border of Comancheria.

My own maternal grandmother's family moved to Brown County in a covered wagon in 1869 - I didn't realize that the location & time of that move was so dangerous.  They fit the stereotype, being Scots-Irish.  I love his description, to paraphrase, "they feared God so much that they didn't have any fear left for anything else".   Not sure that really applies to that branch of my family, but it's a great quote.

Overall, I think the author did a good job of playing up the horrific parts that attract & keep an audience, while actually being relatively balanced in his viewpoint.

Nathan

Invite to Gwynne taping this Tuesday Feb 10

Please join KLRU's Overheard with Evan Smith for an interview with S.C. Gwynne.

Date: Tuesday, February 10
Time: 10:30am (Doors open at 10am)
Location: KLRU's Studio 6A (map)
RSVP: The event is free but an RSVP is required. Please complete the form to the left to RSVP.

S. C. Gwynne is a best-selling author and journalist, whose most recent book Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson is a finalist for the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award. His 2010 book, Empire of the Summer Moon, was a New York Times best-seller and a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. It won the Texas Book Award and the Oklahoma Book Award. His other titles are Selling Moneyand Outlaw Bank. For the last 14 years Gwynne has written for Texas Monthlymagazine.

We hope you’ll be there as Overheard with Evan Smith continues a fifth season of interviews featuring engaging conversations with fascinating people. The show airs on PBS stations nationally and presents a wide range of thoughtmakers and tastemakers from the fields of politics, journalism, business, arts, sports and more. Please join us and be part of the studio audience at this taping with S.C. Gwynne. And don't forget you can watch past episodes anytime at klru.org/overheard.

RFB?