Books and Ideas (43)

I read for ideas. Here are some of the ideas I have found in books.

Best American Essays of the [20th] Century. Editors: Oates and Atwan.

Edward Hoagland. “Heaven and Nature.” 1988. Reflections on committing suicide.

Stephen Jay Gould. “The Creation Myths of Cooperstown.” 1989. The author believes that people prefer “creation myths” to the reality that most phenomena evolve. Baseball is an example. It was not started by Abner Doubleday, a man who didn’t “know a baseball from a kumquat.” It evolved from primitive stick-and-ball games played by working people even before America became a British colony.

Gerald Early. “Life with Daughters: Watching the Miss America Pageant.” 1990. An African-American man watches the Miss America Pageant with his daughter. Confronts the unspoken belief that white women are the image of the perfect American woman.

John Updike. “The Disposable Rocket.” 1993. The author reflects on the male body and in the process contrasts it with the female’s. The man’s role in reproduction is like the rockets that propel the space capsule into space then fall away into the ocean. An interesting metaphor.

Saul Bellow. “Graven Images.” 1997. The author reflects on the process of being photographed. He thinks that photographers try to help the public see you as you really are, as opposed to how you want to be viewed. When you are being photographed as a public figure, the battle is on between the “photographee” and the photographer for how you will be immortalized in public. The photographer tries to reduce the public figure to the confines of a paper or a frame that makes the public figure look like everyone else.

The end of “Books and Ideas.” To be continued at another time.