I was reading through a few of my previous posts about the 2016 election a little while ago. I had to shake my head at how much I still had to go through, back in May of last year; there were still six months to go before the dust settled.
Settle, however, it did. And about 100 days into the Trump Era, I am a great deal less worried about our chief executive now than I was last spring. He so far seems to be pursuing a fairly centrist agenda that only seems extreme to progressive extremists. But then, anything a hair to the right of Hillary would count as extreme from such a point of view, so it's understandable that Trump would appear like the second coming of Hitler. I didn't vote for him, but I broadly support what he's done so far.
The biggest upshot of these first 100 days is that I realized I love the Senators from Kentucky. Rand Paul is both principled, fiery, and practical; he's that rare idealist who actually wants to get things done. Mitch McConnell is one of my favorite people: from start to finish he is a tactician of the highest order, and he managed to steer Neil Gorsuch squarely and smoothly onto the Supreme Court. What a time to live in KY!
In one of my earlier post attempts that didn't make it to the publish, I was talking about one of my favorite authors, Gene Wolfe. I may go back to that one at some point, but it made me want to talk about a new author and a new book that I just read- or rather, just listened to.
Truck driving provides an obvious opportunity to enjoy the invention of audiobooks. My trainer had a few before I joined up, and we bought a few more in the first two weeks. I purchased a book called "Indigo Slam" by Robert Crais which I really liked, but which, due to us finishing every other option, we listened to at least five times in seven days. So! Taking advantage of a mournfully short visit to my family, I packed in a dozen new books to listen to.
One of them, picked up at the library, was "In Cold Blood," by Truman Capote. I'd always heard that it was beautiful, but I wasn't prepared for how lyrical and haunting it proved to be. It tells the story of "a multiple murder, and what came of it." The Clutter family of four, upstanding citizens, is murdered by two men who don't know them for the sake of ten thousand dollars that don't actually exist. The book is excellent in that it fleshes out every character and explores every angle of the crime and the conflict that followed with truly beautiful language. The Clutters are detailed in their purity and goodness; the murderers are painted in all their folly, pain, loss, suffering, ruthlessness, and lack of love. The book shows, but refuses to "tell:" it never takes the seat of judgment, never condemns the murderers. It lets the events condemn. Nor does it try to exonerate the men; it simply provides the story of how they came to do what they did.
I reflected that "In Cold Blood" accomplished, with less madness and fewer pages, what "The Brothers Karamazov" ultimately failed to do. It presented a world in which the idea that "everything is permitted" is beginning to boil up into the lives of ordinary people, caused by the abuse, absence, or negligence of parents, and showed the effect of such a mentality on the lives of everyone concerned. Perry Smith and Dick Hickock unknowingly hold the same philosophy as Smerdyakov, but they, unlike him, are presented as victims who became predators. Capote, unlike Dostoyevsky, writes about human wickedness as it is, as both caused and uncaused; he is not employed in making caricatures, but in portraiture.
I'm sure this counts as literary heresy, but I firmly believe that Truman Capote is a better author than Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
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