Cross Town Thoughts
Global warming? Balmy February in New York. Rowboats on the Lake. 
Bannon’s economic nationalism. Dismantling administrative state. Trump golfing with Els and McIlroy. The new abnormal.
Books are still normal. Just finished a good one. The Honeymoon, Dinitia Smith. A novel about literary icon George Eliot’s life and last honeymoon. Which was a doozy. See review here. Oscars. Ho-hum. This year.
“He was spurred on by the conviction that the world needed his immediate presence.” -Cervantes
Tilting at every windmill. Chasing larger-than-life glory. In gilded armor, Don is saddled up and ready to ride into Washington, D.C. The knight-errant has zig-zagged through life to become El-Jefe-in-Chief. El Hidalgo Trumpo de Queens makes it to the top of the peak. From his White House Castillo with loyal little Sancho Penza in tow they’ll take on foes from far and wide. Will it be Aldonza Melania or Dulcinea Ivanka by his side. ¿¡Viva!? o ¿¡Cuidado!?
GOOD
Sold 20-year Western Massachusetts home
New apartment in The City
Side Trek . NYC
BAD
Petulant Adolescent President- elect
Lumping people into monolithic groups
Elite media bubble & bias
Election’s coarse discourse
TTSD – Traumatic Trump Stress Disorder
Whatever the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election, there will be a deep collective sigh of sadness. For the loss of comity and civility in politics, journalism, society as a whole.
The Republican Establishment will have to find a way to acknowledge and address the anger of Trump’s supporters. J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy is the most glaring glimpse into generations of cultural and economic suffering in rural America. The country has reached a true tipping point.
Democrats have also left a large swath of its voters in the lurch. Clinton’s coronation was baked into the entire primary process cake with Bernie Sanders’ followers remaining disgruntled and disaffected. Big money interests will endure.
Either way the scales stay unbalanced. We’re left with a lament.
In a poignant and important memoir, J.D. Vance tells the story of his Appalachian white working-class life in the context of this year’s angry crude political mood. Futility is the focus in a tale of the generational subculture of poverty made worse by addiction and abuse. 
Like Glass Castle and Blood Bones & Butter, Hillbilly Elegy portrays individual triumph over family dysfunction beyond belief. In Vance’s case he makes the miraculous climb to become a Marine, Ohio State grad, Yale Law scholar. Even with all of that, he cannot escape his roots. They remain current in his struggle to overcome bouts of ire at the bleak prospects left to the kin, classmates and community he left behind. Add drug epidemic to the scene as in every small town America today. It puts into sharp focus the reasons for this election year’s desperate yearning for change.
Bad seeds dominate Netflix Happy Valley’s second season. Families in crisis tinged with pure evil and violence in rural Yorkshire, England. Addiction plays its part as well. Repeat the theme with Ray Donovan’s clan. It’s always about family matters.
Burning Down the House. No. Not Speaker of the House Paul Ryan’s Donald Trump dilemma.
A new novel by Jane Mendelsohn. Her work combines David Byrne’s classic Talking Heads songs with Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre in a new Broadway musical. Sounds cool. Right? Too bad it’s a minor aside to the main plot. What? Yup. Never a clear connection to the story of anti sex-trafficking causes. I don’t mind a political agenda. Just don’t pose it as a fictional work. Other that that. The cover attracted me to the depiction of the San Remo on the Upper West Side. Problem was. Everyone in the book lives either in the Village or on the Upper East Side. Calling all editors. Anyway. Liked the cover. Love David Byrne.
Starbucks on every corner.
Adam Driver disintegrates Hannah. Solo.
Trump-Palin v. Hillary-Warren.
MadMen returns. Season 8.
Manhattan view.
Great new novels. City on Fire not yet.
SuperBowl. Anybody but the Pats.
Freshest fish.
Little Blue Corvette. Wish I’d kept my 1963 baby blue split-window fast-back Stingray with the Hurst stick shift. The one Seinfeld and Obama had coffee and comedy in. Would’ve been a lucrative bet.
Steampunk is a subgenre of fiction, in a Victorian setting, using components of steam powered machinery to bend time and place. Until I read the reviews of The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, I’d never heard of it. Despite a lack of context of the literary genre, I loved this novel. Clockworks attract my fascination. Mori, a former Japanese Samurai turned watchmaker in Knightsbridge, London came to life. His relationship with Thaniel, a boring clerk, was real and endearing. His world of future telling and incendiary events captivates. An Oxford physicist shakes the fantastical octopus. Well done debut by Natasha Pulley. Great read.
Teflon Don. Wrong again. Can we really have a petulant adolescent as President? Entertain on.
Photo by G. Levine: RiverCulture Sculpture. Turners Falls, Massachusetts.
Let’s face it. Modern communication replaces relationships with remote if well chosen words. Texting. E-Mailing. Most of us now live an epistolary life. Rarely face-to-face encounters. Letters of the days of old. But quicker. Frequency. Check. Intimacy. Blank. That said. Written immediacy of connection counter balances distance. Most of the time. Better than Emoticons and Instagram. Words still matter.
Jonathan Galassi’s Muse. Ludic novel in the spirit of St. Aubyn’s Lost for Words. Satire. Pastiche. Love for words. Great read.
Game of Thrones season finale. Spoilers-ish. Cersei, Jaime, Stannis get their what for. Khaleesi encounters her original peeps. Jon Snow will soon be playing tennis with Andy Samberg. Arya gives as well as she gets. Tyrion rules. Sort of. Snippets of humanity between beheadings.
Hillary v. Jeb. Is that all there is? Probably so. In the meantime, off to vacay.
Check out 2015 book reviews for summer reading consideration:
The Green Road, Anne Enright.
The Wonder Garden, Lauren Acampora.
The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother and Me, Sofka Zinovieff.
At the Water’s Edge, Sarah Gruen.
Ruby, Cynthia Bond.
All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr.
The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins.
The Magician’s Lie, Greer Macallister.
Boston Girl, Anita Diamant.
The Devil You Know, Elisabeth de Mariaffi.
Side Trek . NYC 