#29: The Man Who Invented Florida -- Randy Wayne White

The first of White's 'Doc Ford' books that I've read: I picked it up mostly because the plot revolves around the possible discovery of the Fountain of Youth in Mango, a small coastal town in Florida.

Ford is a marine biologist who thinks he might be on the verge of discovering a solution to turbidity, the murkiness of the once-clear Florida waters. Meanwhile, his Uncle Tucker claims to have discovered a well of healing water on his land. Apparently his gelding has regrown its testicles, and -- after Tuck smuggles a hefty dose of the water into a local rest home -- his Native American friend Joseph also experiences a new lease of life, one that takes him out of the rest home and back to his old haunts in the Everglades.

All would be simpler if three incomers (an environmental consultant, a surveyor and a TV personality) hadn't gone missing in the area. White gradually reveals their fate (and their unexpected resilience) in a masterful and amusing way. En route, there's the issue of who owns the land where the Fountain founts; whether the State will succeed in expanding the Everglades National Park; and whether the average tourist would be more appreciative of Fountain water if it were cherry-flavoured rather than sulphurous.

It was sunset, the pearly after-time, and the sky over Sanibel Island was wind-streaked with cantaloupe orange, purple swirls of cloud. Beyond the docks, mangroves settled charcoal black, blurring into smoky hedges as light drained from the bay. The lights of the marina bloomed on, and out of the closing darkness came the squawk of night herons hunting crabs on the mudflats and the mountain-stream sound of tidal current dragging past the pilings of Ford's house.

White has an excellent eye for landscape and detail: the mosquito-ridden swamps, the mazy creeks and islands, the suddenness of a squall on open water. He's also good on the historical aspects; the Calusa nation that may or may not have had its capital in Mango (there are Indian mounds on a lot of the islands), the early Hispanic explorations of the area, and Joseph's murky genetic background.

There's a deeper philosophical thread, too, about scams and self-promotion, Disney and the National Enquirer, ecology and environment and the power of the dollar.

The Man Who Invented Florida covers similar territory to Hiaasen's eco-thrillers, but it's different in tone: more reflective and less headlong, and rather more character-driven. Ford, Tuck, Ford's hippie friend Tomlinson and the rejuvenated Joseph Egret are all solid, three-dimensional and fascinating characters, and the backstory between Ford and his uncle, though only hinted, is dark enough to make me eager to read more in the series.

#28: Cat Confidential -- Vicky Halls

Subtitled 'The Book Your Cat Would Want You to Read', or in my case 'The Book Your Cat Would Want To Sit On When You're Trying to Read'.

A friend's been recommending this for ages -- she found it helped her understand Oscar's many problems. (Oscar, as in Wilde, is a rescue cat and has mellowed considerably from Psycho Kitty.) I finally caved and read it, and was amazed and amused; what's more, I did learn quite a bit from the book.

Cat Confidential is a series of case studies in feline psychology by 'cat counsellor' Vicky Halls, who provides therapy for cats with problems and their owners. The book is well-written and very readable, packed with weird and fascinating characters. And that's just the cat-owners ... One thing I did learn from this was that there are some very odd people out there (actually, I think I knew this already) and that I have a long way to go before I achieve the zen state of Crazy Cat-Lady.

I like the way Vicky Halls writes: suitably self-deprecating, as when she's describing the onslaught of a 'ferocious' kitten. It's a perfect illustration of hubris: 'oh, sweet little -- aaaargh!!!" Ruefully, she admits to having framed the bloodstained notebook page as a reminder not to underestimate her clients.

Halls doesn't regard cats as 'small people in fur coats', but she does convey the complexity of the feline psyche: fierce, solitary furry predators forced to be cuddly and affectionate objects of devotion. No wonder cats are screwed up, especially when their owners aren't entirely sane. And some of the cat-owners described in this book go to extreme lengths because of their cats. I have learnt what to do about cats that masturbate*, and how to prevent some truly revolting forms of attention-seeking behaviour. This is information I hope I shall never need.

More prosaically (am so grateful that my cats are relatively normal, and elderly too!) I've worked out why S&S wouldn't drink out of the water bowl next to their food (cats in the wild aren't used to finding food and drink in the same place: a bowl of water in the bedroom has fixed this problem) and why Sam's so much happier now there's an extra litter tray with newspaper. I am reassured to read that the average cat is more than a match for the average fox (though this has also been demonstrated to me lately by Shiva).

The author has an excellent website. And there are two other books, Cat Detective and Cat Counsellor.

*Tesco carrier bags. Actually, mine are already scared of these ...

#27: Scandal Takes a Holiday -- Lindsay Davis

A novel that has it all: Romans! Pirates! Heiresses! Murder! and Scandal!

Falco and family head to the seaside -- Ostia -- where 'Infamia', a gossip columnist, has gone missing. Falco, true to form, uncovers a number of other criminal activities: corruption, murder, ransoming and traffic in stolen goods. Though piracy has been thoroughly quashed a century before by Pompey, it's beginning to look as though some of the pirates didn't really notice ...

It depends on how you look at it. Let us land and beat up the locals: you are a pirate; I am a heroic warrior with expansionist pretensions on behalf of my city-state. Goes back at least to Athens ... Piracy was the fast alternative to diplomacy.

Or, to put it another way, pirates are a filthy rash that will always reappear.

Davis is entertaining on Roman history (I'm not sure whether to believe her potted history of the term 'columnist', but I'm pretty convinced by Pirates of the Mediterranean) and as deft with characterisation as ever. I think I'd have enjoyed this novel more if I'd kept up with the series: I flagged somewhere around Last Act in Palmyra, feeling that the later volumes didn't have the freshness or edge of the first few, and as a result I've probably missed a lot of the undercurrents in Falco's family politics. And I have no idea what Petro's up to.

Enjoyable, though, and inclines me to dig out a few of the older ones and submerge myself in gossipy sociable dangerous human Ancient Rome.

#26: 100 Great Short Short Science Fiction Stories -- Isaac Asimov (ed.)

I had fond memories of a couple of stories in this book, so was pleased to track down a copy. It's perfect for dipping into -- the longest stories are only three or four pages, and some are much shorter. (Contents listed here.)

Rereading, though, I find the editorial one-liners that introduce each story rather lame and occasionally irritating. (Karen Anderson's delightful 'Landscape with Sphinxes', one of the stories I remembered exceptionally well, is introduced simply 'And then there were none' - which doesn't seem to have much at all to do with the content.)

This anthology was published in 1978, but some of the stories date back to the 1950s, and before: real Golden Age stuff, with all that that implies: occasionally bland or clunky prose; extravagant and now discredited predictions for the future; reliance on a punning punchline; and a healthy dose of sexism. (Even when they aren't human, females are mysterious and unpredictable, and over-emotional, and flirtatious ...)

Asimov's introduction clearly stuck when I first read it:

In the short story, there can be no subplots; there is no time for philosophy; what description and character delineation there is must be accomplished with concision ...in the short short story, everything is eliminated but the point. The short short story reduces itself ot the point alone and presents that to you like a bare needle fired from a blowgun; a needle that can tickle or sting and leave its effect buried within you for a long time.

There are stories I wouldn't bother reading twice, because they rely (like a joke) on a punchline, and when you know it the story's purpose is complete. There are others that are masterful capsules of what-if; Stephen Goldin's 'Stubborn', in which a stubborn fellow gets what he deserves, for instance, or Frederik Pohl's 'The Deadly Mission of Phineas Snodgrass', an alt-history classic. And there are stories that are gems, so tightly packed that there might be a whole novel in there -- the aforementioned Karen Anderson story, for instance. (This is one reason I write short fiction from time to time -- to get the idea out and into some shape, rather than expanding and filling up my head.)

A good antidote to the current trend for long and wordy novels ...

#25: Shooting Elvis: Confessions of an Accidental Terrorist -- Robert Eversz

"I don't have any experience writing things down. I like to take photographs. That's how I see things." That's the opening line, and it's deceptive, like so much in this novel.

Mary Anne Baker, the narrator of Shooting Elvis, is an all-American girl: matching lipstick and nail-polish, blue-collar family, difficult relationship with her father, working as a photographer at a Baby Photo Studio, having an off-again-on-again relationship with Wrex who -- with his leather jacket, tattoos and piercings -- knows 'how to accessorise danger'.

Then Wrex asks her to drop off a parcel at LAX, and everything changes.

Mary Anne Baker, responsible for blowing up a major international airport, is no more. She's become Nina Zero, post-punk bohemian chick, one step ahead of the law and trying desperately to find out what the hell is going on, and what's so important about the heavy black suitcase she's acquired. (A stolen artwork is involved, though the piece in question is never named -- there are plenty of hints though.)

Nina falls in with Cass, an artist and scriptwriter, whose interest in her is not wholly altruistic. "If I bring you in I'll get first shot at the script, maybe get a chance to direct... It's what all the really interesting criminals are doing now. Television movies."

The novel's about role-playing, reinventing yourself, acting ("we think we can get Madonna to play you") and art. Nina's voice comes across very clearly despite that disclaimer at the beginning: bad grammar, Valley-girl idiom, honest and wry. And her reinvention isn't skin-deep: only once she's come to terms with who she was can she face up to who she is.

The novel was written in 1996: it seems like another era, a pre-9/11 world, where blowing up an airport is -- well, not quite a minor offense, but more akin to a Hollywood movie than a news report.

#24: Ghost Riders: Travels with American Nomads -- Richard Grant

To be sitting in a New York bar and fall prey to a sudden urge to go to Texas, Montana or Mexico, and be able to leave in the morning without a care -- this was my idea of freedom, my definition of success in life.(p.90)

Ghost Riders is an exploration of various forms of nomadism in modern America -- retirees in motorhomes, cowboys, tramps, rail-riders, reenactors, hippies -- and the history of wanderlust from the earliest Spanish explorations to the author's own desire to flee commitment and his sedentary lifestyle. Like many of the best travel books, it interweaves history, anecdote, biography and reflection.

And like many of the non-fiction books I read, it's taken me a while, dipping in for a page or reading several chapters in a day. I started reading this on the plane to California last November ...

"In London I would not have reacted to a relationship breakup by walking out to the highway and raising my thumb," confesses the author in the first few pages. "These restless, roaming urges [were] something that happened to me in America, something that happened to a persistent minority of all Europeans who crossed the Atlantic. ... If you dig down to the roots of American wanderlust, it is a process of going native, of Europeans being conquered by America -- by the immensity of its geography and the nomadic cultures they found here."

The urge has been there for centuries. Cabeza de Vaca, author of Adventures in the Unknown Interior, experienced an 'odyssey of transformation' in the early 16th century.

Its themes -- the epic, searching journey towards the sunset, spiritual transformation in the wilderness, the hope of building a new and better world -- seem characteristically American because, in a way, Cabeza de Vaca had become an American by the time he wrote it. He had been through an odyssey that was not possible in Europe. (p.44)

American nomadism has different parameters, different roots, to anything in Eurasian experience. It's not about leaving and coming back. It's not even about travel, for as Grant points out, "When travel becomes constant, it alters its meaning, at least in sedentary languages. It is no longer a trip away from somewhere. In a sense nomads never leave." He examines the American nomad, the lone horseman, in literature -- both fiction and (auto)biography -- and finds a key difference.

Unlike Odysseus, or all those medieval knights-errant, Leatherstocking [the hero of novels by James Fenimore Cooper] did not return and reunite with his family and community after his long, questing journey. At the end of the story -- an old man now, still unmarried and quite possibly a virgin -- Leatherstocking rides off again 'to seek a final refuge against society in the broad and tenantless plains of the west'.(p.166)

The tenantless plains are an integral part of the myth. Grant refers to 'riding out for the biggest blank spaces left on the map', and talks to men who, returning from one directionless trek on horseback, are already planning the next. "America is basically going down the toilet as far as I'm concerned," [one cowboy] says. "But in the West, at least, you can still make a trip like that, if you carry a pair of fence-cutters and take a few chances with the game laws. Where else in the world could you do it? Most countries won't even let you carry a gun." (p.171)

The mythology of America crops up in unexpected places. Here's Grant, being shown an earth intaglio of a horse which might date from a Spanish expedition of 1540. The intaglio's origins are expounded by a government archaeologist who happens to be a Mormon:

Mormonism is a fundamentalist faith, and its sacred text, the Book of Mormon, states that America at the time of Christ was populated by two lost tribes of Israel, who possessed horses, sheep, goats, pigs, oxen, elephants, wheeled chariots and metal swords -- none of which have turned up in the archaeological record. .. Mormonism is perhaps the most awkward of all the world's religions for an archaeologist to believe in. (p76-7)

"Americans tell me," says Grant, "that it's a European tendency to look for the broad historical perspective behind a contemporary phenomenon." Which is what he's trying to do throughout: put things in a historical context, identify trends and tribes and types. (There's an intriguing thread of impalement legends, from a Spanish horseman impaled on his own lance to a stretch of I95 in Florida where three drivers, in three separate incidents, were pinned to their cars by unsecured metal rods flying free from other vehicles.)

I found the chapters on the interaction of Indians and Europeans -- from the earliest contact to the Gold Rush of the mid-19th century, Indians versus Argonauts in a war of few battles that halved the population of the Cheyenne and Comanche nations -- especially fascinating, as they resonate with some other recent reading (The Tenderness of Wolves; The Last Witchfinder; The Unredeemed Captive).

On the Muskingum River in 1764 a captive exchange took place ... The Indian prisoners ran back to their tribe with signs of great joy. The white captives had to be bound hand and foot, kicking and screaming, and forcibly dragged back to the emissaries of civilisation. Later, many of them escaped from their rescuers and went back to live with the Indians. (p.125)

A lot of the nomads Grant meets, from cowboys to mountain men, claim Indian heritage (as an excuse or explanation?) Apparently the number of Americans claiming Cherokee blood is demographically impossible. And those nomads who are Indian, or part-Indian, reject 'civilised' sedentary life for pragmatic reasons:

"Indians become alcoholics for the same reason they become diabetics: we're not physiologically equipped to deal with booze or junk food. .. It was the same with all those other diseases the Europeans brought us ... How long does it take you to get over a cold? Two weeks max, right? For us it's thirty to sixty days, and the purer the blood, the longer it takes." (p.185)

Then there's the modern Americans trying to recreate a splendid myth of peaceful nomadism. Grant (despite covert hippie tendencies revealed by his desire to die in the desert and "get picked clean by ants, and then to enter the bodies of ant-eating lizards and lizard-eating birds and coyotes, while my bones crumble into the soil and nourish a cactus or a juniper tree .. [that's] enough immortality for me") has little sympathy for the Rainbow Nation:

"I'm losing patience with hippies. I'm tired of being welcomed home a hundred times a day, tired of uninvited aura readings, tired of fakelore and the idea that vibes alone can change the world, and love is all you need. In my Babylon mind I'm more impressed by the practical workings of the Rainbow Gathering... They have succeeded in creating a functioning anarchist utopia." (p.228)

At least their form of anarchism works. Grant talks to hobos on mile-long freight trains and draws his own conclusions about the FTRA, or Freight Train Riders Association. The FTRA get a bad press for having been infiltrated by white supremacists, gangs and serial killers, but from Grant's investigations (and those of SF author Lucius Shepard, who rode the rails for a while and drew on his experiences to write Two Trains Running) the problems stem from a 'general breakdown in hobo society, the kind of anarchy that gives anarchy a bad name'.

There's a certain mournful emptiness to my mental images of American railways, but apparently there was a 'hot new craze' in the Nineties: "riding the rails with cellphones, GPS finders, down parkas, three-hundred-dollar tents, four-hundred-dollar sleeping-bags, and uploading your latest adventures to the yuppie hobo websites from laptop computers." (p.275)

When Grant confides to a much-travelled German lapis dealer -- encountered in a bar at Quartzite, Arizona (host to an annual event that's the largest American gathering of nomads) -- that he's going to write about snowbirds and RVs, he is mocked: "'These are not the true nomads! Take away their social security and the RV rolls to a halt. They are not truly free.'"

Grant's counter-arguments: "They have no fixed abode. They move with the seasons, there are probably a million of them, maybe three million. .. .. he and I are better described as travellers. True nomads exist within tightly knit groups. They are not necessarily looking for adventure. They follow a reliable, predictable migration pattern, which best ensures survival and does not cross oceans in search of new experiences." (p.297)

"The standard explanation of American restlessness," writes Grant, "is all about the prospect of getting rich ... The horizontal, geographical mobility of Americans, I have read in half a dozen books starting with Alexis de Tocqueville, is motivated by the hope of rising vertically in terms of wealth and social status." The RV community (predominantly female, simply because of the difference in life expectancy for men and women) is almost entirely made up of people who've spent their working life paying off the mortgage, raising a family and accumulating consumer goods -- but who then sell the house, buy a classier version of a VW camper van with the proceeds, and set off to where the weather's better (or at least different).

I found the sociology of the RV community fascinating: it's the sort of nomadism I can most easily imagine myself embracing in later life, travelling around in my own motorised 'home' with plenty of comforts. (Though perhaps not in the company of some of the people Grant meets.) Not least because, from Grant's account, it's one of the safest options for a woman alone and happy -- determined -- to stay that way.

The book finishes on an unexpected and wryly humorous note:

At this point in the narrative I am supposed to wander off into the sunset ... instead, I find myself pulled in the opposite direction, east towards Tucson, the comforts of home and the woman I love, which have also become necessary to my happiness.
In closing, I would like to thank the federal government and the hard-working agents of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Fear of deportation overcame deeper fears and prejudices and led to a wedding that should have taken place years ago." (p.308)

Richard Grant is clear-eyed and unromantic about nomadism, whether his own or that of the wanderers whose tales he hears. His prose is evocative without being overly poetic: despite the lack of a colour photo insert, I feel as though I've seen these places. And it's been a long strange trip.

#23: Gifts -- Ursula Le Guin

A fantasy novel about what one has and how one uses it: about story-telling and truth, and how one creates and shapes one's world.

Orrec possesses his family's Gift: undoing, the power to unmake, to destroy, simply by looking at a thing. His father can break a bowl by looking at it; blacken a willow wand; kill a rat. And Orrec's Gift is a powerful one, too powerful for safety. He blindfolds himself and lives in darkness rather than unwittingly destroy something he loves, as his ancestor Caddard Strong-Eye killed his wife.

His friend Gry also rejects her heritage, her Gift: she will not call animals to the hunt.

To see that your life's a story while you're in the middle of living it may be a help to living it well. It's unwise, though, to think you know how it's going to go, or how it's going to end. That's to be known only when it's over.

Orrec's mother Melle is a Lowlander, without a Gift: only the Uplanders have Gifts, one per family. Yet she does have a talent, and that's story-telling. After visiting the Drum holding so that Orrec can be introduced to a marriageable girl, Melle falls sick. Her story-telling 'carried [them] out of the dark and the cold and the dreary boredom of being useless': and Melle begins to write down the stories she tells her son, teaching him to tell them too.

In the end it's Gry who, picking through the stories, begins to understand the nature of the Gifts: that they can be used 'forward as well as backward', for good as well as harm. Orrec is feared for his blindfold, for his destructive potential: he's on his way to becoming a living weapon. Gry , and Orrec's dog Coaly, and the arrival of Emmon (a thief and vagabond from the Lowlands) help him to learn the other aspects of his Gift -- and to discover the truth behind what his father has told him about the Caspro gift.

Le Guin's prose is lucid and simple and spare. There's seldom poetry, and no need for it because of the clarity of description.

I believed the story as I told it to myself, but not when it was over... I told it to myself so often that I wore it out, and then I had no story to tell at all.