Two Books: From Sublime to Ridiculous

Two Writers, National Humanities Awards, 2014

You already know who the ridiculous is. So let’s start with the sublime.

I was in the library the other day at the “New/Non-Fiction/14 Days Only” section.

On a lower shelf, I spotted a book of essays by Annie Dillard, “The Abundance: Narrative Essays Old and New.” Somehow, I had gotten to be this old without ever reading anything by Dillard, so I picked up the book, and opened it in the middle, to a chapter entitled “The Weasel”

“The weasel is wild. Who knows what he thinks? He sleeps in his underground den, his tail draped over his nose. Sometimes he lives in his den for two days without leaving.”

Needless to say, I checked it out. 

The weasel essay, six pages long, includes a 60-second encounter in the woods when Dillard and a weasel locked eyes. The essay also includes the tale of an eagle that tried to carry off a weasel, and got more than it expected.

The essay become an exhortation to grab life – whatever life is – with your jaws, and not let go.

That is pretty much what Dillard does in her writing, and in her life, by her own testimony. In one section, "An American Childhood,” previously published, she races through her family and her church and her boyfriends and her life. 

Required reading for teen-agers.

I was knocked out by the two final essays.

One was about sand, and geology, and the Jesuit priest-paleontologist, Teilhard de Chardin, and love. 

The final chapter by Dillard, a convert to Catholicism, was alternating segments about what she called the modern "hootenany" Mass and doomed polar explorers who went off unprepared. It ends with a fantasy of the two themes overlapping.

I am now a fan of Annie Dillard, maybe even a groupie.

               *                 *             *
The second book continues the furry, feral theme, considering the muskrat Donald Trump carries around on his head and in his head.  

The book is “The Making of Donald Trump,” by Pulitzer-Prize-winning David Cay Johnston, seen often on the Web and the tube, warning us, “The Trumpites are coming! The Trumpites are coming!” The book hit No. 15 on the Times best-seller list last week.

Johnston is an investigative reporter, one of the best, and has been on the scent of Trump and the muskrat for decades.

He has put together verifiable details of the way Trump does business – the Polish immigrants who tore down a landmark building at nights, without safety precautions or attention to artwork; the vendors who got stiffed by Trump, the garish casinos in Trump’s name without his having any knowledge of how gambling works, the threats, the suits, the welching, and the lies about women he never dated.

Johnston’s book should be read – but won’t be -- by the fact-averse minority that considers Trump the great white hope.

Weasels sí, muskrat head no.