Death of A Pig by E B White

EB White will always be known as the author of Charlotte's Web. He was many other things however. He was the step father of the great New Yorker editor and sportswriter Roger Angell. He had a great connection with our very own state of Maine and often wrote about the farm in the Blue Hill area that his family maintained.

White wrote and edited for The New Yorker himself for many years and his collection of short stories and essays called One Man's Meat is a classic that I have sampled but will soon be reading in full.

Like singers who could sing the phone-book White could write about any subject of your choosing and turn a phrase to make your head spin. Today I happened upon this short story of White's called Death of A Pig. The mark of a great writer is you can see that title and think " How on Earth can I be interested in a story with a title like that?" In the case of an E B White story you would be wrong. White can make you interested, can make you feel as if you are there on the farm in Maine witnessing the very death of his very pig.

It all starts out simply enough. White would like to join many of his year round neighbors and buy a pig in the spring, fatten it all summer and then with a planned execution enjoy bacon and ham all winter. Things do not go according to plan as one summer morning White travels to his converted ice house/pigpen and finds his pig in gastrointestinal distress. Over the course of the story we learn about exactly when White feels his experiment in pig raising going over the cliff, how his dog Fred enjoys playing bad cop to his good, the joy of party lines, and how one helps a constipated pig.

As I said only White can write about a pig who can't poop and make it entertaining enough to be grandest story you will read this month.

To have a gift to write, like EB White, me thinks I would not sleep at night. As you can tell E B White I am not.

The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker

I usually check Amazon for new books and books about to be published. Having done so I was familiar with this book when I saw it at the library last week. Knowing that the main character was a twelve year old girl I picked it up for either my daughter or wife to try.

As these things happen though, I found myself tired of the LBJ biography I am reading, a great book but did Caro have to write them so long, needing a break from David Copperfield, and caught up on The New Yorker, so I picked this up and read the synopsis on the book jacket.

Turns out this book has a bit of an end of the world plotline and I have a hard time resisting those so I picked it up. Ten pages in I was hooked.

The book opens quickly, " the news broke on a Saturday." Somehow, inexplicably, over a couple of days the revolutions of the Earth that create night and day have slowed. Day and night are now taking longer, that is the Earth's spinning is slowing. Julia and her parents are in shock, her Father a physician says that everything will be fine, while her Mother a drama teacher is less sure. Some people react with fear, hoarding food, and proclaiming the end of the world. Julia's friend Hanna, her best friend, leaves with her large family to go to Utah to await the end that is near.

The end does not appear to be near though. The days and nights keep expanding. Soon up to 30 hours. No one knows how long a day will be. This creates problems with clocks which become useless the periods of light and dark soon do not match any prescribed expectations.

Finally as the days continue to stretch the President and Congress say that people should and that the government and businesses will continue to operate on a 24 hour day. This means that people will at times go to bed in the light and go to school and work in the dark.

More is at stake however. As the days lengthen to 30 and 40 hours the issue of food becomes an issue. The wheat point is passed, a point where wheat can no longer be grown. Unbeknownst to me crops need sunlight on the rhythm they expect, twenty hours of sunlight does not make up for the same in darkness.

Some people refuse clock time and insist the body can change it's circadian rhythms. They succeed for awhile but they become outcasts, people do not trust them, they when it is light at the " prescribed night time" are out and about while everyone sleeps.

For those not like me, and who need more than this angle the story also tells the tale of Julia. A normal, geeky, twelve year old girl who is still struggling with junior high, boys, her parents, a secret she knows about her father and the lady down the street, the ever expanding list of people in her life who have disappeared as the days lengthen, her mother's gravity sickness and her grandfather's conspiracy theories.

There is a great deal of story in this book of less than 300 pages. Not a book I would ever presume to read but a very good book. The praise it is receiving is well earned.

Now it's back to LBJ.

The Proxy Marriage by Maile Meloy

This short story appeared in The New Yorker just two weeks ago. As I am always behind in all of my reading material I just read this last night. I almost always have a favorable impression of the fiction entries in the magazine, often some of our best contemporary writers are amongst the authors.

I believe that Maile Meloy might be a relatively new author. I am not sure of this fact. In anycase this short story, dealing with the issue of proxy marriage is a true winner.

I was not aware, as I am sure most people are not, that proxy marriages, or marriages where one party cannot be present and has a stand in are allowed in many states. This story centers on something even more rare, double proxy marriage where both parties are not present. This is only legal in Montana.

The story features a young man and a young woman. The girl the daughter of a widower lawyer in town is named, appropriately enough, Bridey. She is an attractive popular young woman who is the object of the affection of a young man in town who is not as popular. A musician, a pianist they meet while doing theater arts, she dances as well.

Over the course of their high school years, then college they are the proxy groom and bride for tens of couples. Bridey's father, being a lawyer, becomes known for helping arrange these marriages, often for those in the military. What starts as exciting becomes, for the young man, a chore. His feelings for her grow deeper. As their lives push them beyond Montana and college, to her efforts at performing in New York City to his becoming a composer they still, here and there, communicate, maintain their friendship, and apparently this will always be an unrequited or even on the part of Bridey an unknown love.

In the end the relationship reaches a turning point. The story is like many you have read, it is just the back story of the proxy weddings that adds a depth and spin you have not often seen. I found myself when finished with it thinking that this would make a great movie. Being a short story it might need to be fleshed out but this has all the makings of a story that has mass appeal. Not sickly sweet like those awful Sparks books but a story which you could see some top line actresses and actors in.

We shall see if that comes to pass, I am not usually a romantic story reader but this is a story you should seek out and read. Very well done.

Politico Books: The Right Fights Back and Inside The Circus

I am a big fan of the Politico website. Each morning I read the Politico Playbook and consider a must read site daily. Between that and the Daily Notes entries on The New Yorker website, as well as the previously discussed Real Clear Politics I get my morning fixes early in the day.

Politico has launched a projected series of four instant books. Rather than wait until the year after an election to publish a book with the inside details on an election they plan to issue every couple of months a book outlining the election and the players involved.

The Right Fights Back told of the beginning stages of the campaign while Inside the Circus took us right up through the Wisconsin primary. So these books are current.

For me, however, they were not worth a great deal. Now I realize that most people do not follow politics that closely and certainly do not read the sites I read daily. That said these books are for political junkies. The target audience for these books would be people who do keep up with news, and therefore most of the information in these books is repetitious.

Now they only cost $2.99 each so if any information is gleamed at all it is worthwhile. The formatting however is poor, there are no chapters. It is really just a series of notes and paragraphs.

Politico has really done nothing with these books to expand their audience.

Love the site, but i will have no plans to read the next two books in the series.