I Married Adventure by Osa Johnson

Kansas couple explores the world

Martin Johnson was a young man from Independence, Kansas, when Jack London hired him as a crew member on his yacht, the Snark, as detailed in Martin’s book Through the South Seas with Jack London (1913). London became ill and had to return to the U.S., but Johnson continued his journey and actually made it all the way around the world. After returning to Kansas, he married Osa Leighty from the equally small town of Chanute. Rather than settle down with his new bride, Martin was determined to continue his life of adventure. He invited Osa to share in his exotic exploits, and she was game for the challenge. The couple traveled the world and achieved fame for their wildlife photography, documentary filmmaking, and travel books. After Martin’s death, Osa published her autobiography I Married Adventure. It was the bestselling nonfiction book of 1940.

I Married Adventure recounts the couple’s youth and courtship in Kansas and details their subsequent adventures in the Solomon Islands, Borneo, and four trips to Africa, where they lived for a few years. Martin, the photography expert, bought the camera equipment and developed all the film. Osa was not just a passive passenger, however. She served as Martin’s right-hand woman. In addition to appearing on camera, Osa shot photos and film, shot dinner when necessary, drove a truck, managed staff, and entertained visiting dignitaries to camp like George Eastman of the Kodak company and the Duke and Duchess of York.

I admire Martin and Osa for their adventurous spirits, and I envy their travels. As a Kansan for most of my life, I also enjoyed the small-town-couple-make-it-big aspect of the story. The era in which the Johnsons traveled, however, wasn’t known for its ecological or ethnographical consciousness. The Johnsons hire 250 native porters to carry their supplies through hundreds of miles of wilderness, knowing full well that some of those porters are probably going to die along the way. If the porters aren’t moving fast enough, Martin whips them. When they reach their destination, they level swaths of forest to build a small, semi-permanent town, complete with decorative curtains and other frivolous amenities that some poor laborer had to schlep to the site. Osa brags about scattering invasive American flower seeds all over Africa. The couple have no qualms about shooting with guns the animals that they are shooting with cameras. Many anecdotes explain how the Johnsons would get as close as they could to the animals they were filming—lions, rhinos, water buffalo—until the animal would charge one spouse, and then the other would shoot the animal dead. Although the Johnsons occasionally traveled with zoologists from the American Museum of Natural History, Martin and Osa were photographers not scientists, not even amateur scientists. As a result, from this account by Osa you don’t really learn a whole lot about the animals or indigenous people that they encountered.

Although Osa clearly loved Martin, you don’t get much of a sense of his personality from this book, in which he comes across as something of a cipher. You almost get the impression that Osa really didn’t know him very well. That’s not a comment on their marriage, but rather a comment on her writing. This, however, was my grandparents’ generation, when people were more private and dignified when discussing their relationships. If spouses ever disagreed on anything, you wouldn’t hear it from Osa or my grandmother.

I don’t know about the rest of the world, but the Johnsons are still fondly remembered in their home state of Kansas. The Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum in Chanute is devoted to their lives, travels, and works. Reading this entertaining biography definitely makes we want to check it out.

The Time Stream by John Taine

Not really about time travel

Eric Temple Bell (1883–1960) was a Scottish-American mathematician who taught at the University of Washington and Caltech. He wrote science fiction novels under the pen name of John Taine. His novel The Time Stream was first serialized in 1931 issues of the pulp magazine Wonder Stories before being published in book form in 1946. I like vintage science fiction and had read a couple good comments recommending Taine. Of his work, I chose to read The Time Stream strictly for its title, because I like stories about time travel. I soon found out, however, that this novel isn’t so much about time travel.

The story opens in 1906. Eight men and one woman from varying backgrounds and walks of life become acquainted with each other in San Francisco. During one of their social gatherings, they discover that they have the ability to “enter the time stream” and ride it into the past, or maybe even into the future. At first, they’re not sure. How did they get this incredible power? Well, it turns out they’re not San Franciscans at all. They are actually the governing council of an ancient civilization named Eos, which exists on another planet with five man-made suns. These Eosians use the time stream to travel back and forth between two worlds. When they are on Earth, they often forget their existence on Eos, and vice versa (although they tend to remember when it’s convenient for the story). They seem to have bodies in both worlds. When they are occupying one, the other lies dormant in a deathlike suspended animation.

Eos is more technologically advanced than 20th-century Earth. The Eosians have unlocked the secrets of nature to learn amazing techniques for manipulating matter and energy. They have also developed a society based entirely on rational thought, allowing for no violence or love. Their rationalism extends to a prescribed breeding program for all inhabitants. The woman of the group, Cheryl, decides to defy this eugenics program by marrying a man for love. Some of the time travelers, however, have seen a future in which this love-mating causes an apocalyptic event leading to the destruction of Eos. The male council members try to persuade her from making this catastrophic choice.

It is often very difficult to tell what is going on in The Time Stream. Am I reading about the future or the past? Are we on Eos now, or Earth? Who remembers what from when? Even the eight time-traveling colleagues are difficult to tell apart. The problem is that Taine tells the story as if he’s written the novel for an audience of Eosians and just assumes that readers from Earth will know what’s going on in this strange world he’s created in his head. Although Taine/Bell himself may be a rational man of mathematics with likely some knowledge of how the universe works, he goes off into flights of fancy more fitting to the fantasy and horror fiction of William Hope Hodgson or Robert W. Chambers. If the laws of physics and logic as we know them operate in Eos, they’re barely recognizable. The most frustrating aspect of the book is that time travel is totally unnecessary to the story, as are all the Earth scenes. The plot is entirely about Eos and a coup and rebellion that takes place there. Why not just tell us that story and leave San Francisco out of it? Also, if the message of the book involves contrasting love with rationalism, for most of the novel Taine really seems to be writing in favor of eugenics.

Reading The Time Stream gives one the impression that the sci-fi pulps were so desperate for content that they would print just about anything. If John Taine has an esteemed reputation in science fiction history, it is certainly not due to this book, which is just a hot mess.

Being There by Jerzy Kosinski

The sagacity of a blank slate

Jerzy Kosinski was born and educated in Poland. As a young man he fled the communist regime in his native country and emigrated to America, where he became a successful novelist. He enjoyed great commercial success and critical acclaim in the late ‘60s and 1970s. He was even somewhat of a minor celebrity, making multiple appearances on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show and acting in a few feature films, most notably Warren Beatty’s Reds. Kosinski’s name is not so well-known nowadays, but many will recognize the title of his 1971 novel Being There because of the popular film adaptation starring Peter Sellers.

Being There is the story of Chance, a humble gardener who has led a very unique existence. Orphaned as a young boy, he was taken in by a wealthy lawyer referred to only as the Old Man. Chance has lived his whole life in the Old Man’s Manhattan mansion, working as his gardener. He receives no pay but is provided with food, shelter, and clothing. Though he’s probably in his thirties or forties at the time this novel takes place, Chance has never been outside the walls of the Old Man’s property. Everything he knows about the outside world he has learned through television. The garden and his television are all he needs to be content. Chance was never formally adopted by the Old Man, and there is in fact no record whatsoever of his existence. When the Old Man dies, therefore, the estate lawyers evict him from the premises, and Chance is forced to make his own way in the world. 

This is a comedic novel, the running joke being that no one Chance encounters in the outside world seems to recognize his childlike intelligence and lack of almost any life experiences. He falls in with wealthy and powerful people who misinterpret his every simple utterance about gardening as sage wisdom. Thus, with very little effort or intention on his part, Chance rises to great heights of political power, commercial success, and media celebrity.

Being There is a very short novel that barely qualifies as a novella. The edition I read was 142 pages, but I’ve never seen a trade paperback with so many blank pages and so much white space. The story is based on a very simple premise, and it sometimes reads like the same joke being told over and over again. Nevertheless, it is very cleverly done. Kosinski satirizes American political and media culture, and some scenes really do inspire laughter. Kosinski has said that he based the character of Chance on a real person, a guru of transcendental meditation. Polish critics, however, accused Kosinski of plagiarizing a previous Polish novel. I’m sure Being There was probably very unique and innovative at the time it was published. Over the past half century, however, we’ve seen many variations of this theme in film and television­—the childlike blank slate who is perceived as a savant. There are touches of Chance in Forrest Gump, Rain Man, and Woody Allen’s Zelig, for example, as well as many other comedic protagonists who suffer from amnesia or stereotypes of autism. I wouldn’t say those later productions necessarily copied Being There, but one’s accumulated familiarity with such plot lines renders Kosinski’s novel somewhat predictable.

Despite such predictability, overall I enjoyed Being There. It’s a quick and fun read. I doubt it is Kosinski’s most profound work of literature, but there are certainly depths of insightful social commentary beneath the simple storyline. After reading this, I definitely would like to check out more of Kosinski’s novels.

Drums & Demons: The Tragic Journey of Jim Gordon by Joel Selvin

Legendary talent, infamous crime

Joel Selvin is one of the best writers working today in the rock-and-roll history genre. I thoroughly enjoyed his book on Sly and the Family Stone. When I found out about Drums & Demons, Selvin’s 2024 biography of rock drummer Jim Gordon, I was excited by what seemed to me like the perfect pairing of an excellent biographer with a fascinating subject, both of whose work I admire. With Drums & Demons, Selvin does not disappoint.

Jim Gordon was one of the greatest drummers of the late 1960s and ‘70s. Most classic rock fans will probably recognize his name from the rosters of the bands Derek and the Dominos and Traffic, but Gordon was also a highly sought-after session man who played drums and percussion on thousands of recordings, many of them rock and pop classics including the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations,” Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain,” Eric Clapton’s “After Midnight,” John Lennon’s “Power to the People,” Steely Dan’s “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number,” and Kermit the Frog’s “Rainbow Connection.” Rolling Stone put Gordon at number 59 of their 2016 list of the 100 Greatest Drummers of All Time, and, quite frankly, he deserved better. In this book, however, Selvin maybe expends too much effort in persuading the reader that Gordon was the G.O.A.T. of drummers, and after a while the hyperbolic praise grows somewhat tiresome.

Unfortunately, Gordon is not only famous but also infamous. After lifelong troubles with schizophrenia, which went undiagnosed, Gordon became psychotic and murdered his mother in 1983. He spent the remaining 40 years of his life in a prison for the criminally insane, where he died at the age of 77. Drums & Demons is a gripping biography that comprehensively covers both the soaring heights of Gordon’s music career and the crashing depths of his mental health struggles and substance abuse. This isn’t a tabloid account that revels in the horror story of the crime and the misery of its victims. Selvin writes with compassion, a genuine care and admiration for Gordon, and a sensitivity towards mental health issues that is commendable.

As a fan of classic rock, including Gordon’s music, and someone who delights in the minutiae of rock-and-roll trivia, I enjoyed the career retrospective portion of the book immensely. I find the stories of these great rock session musicians really fascinating. I similarly enjoyed Julian Dawson’s biography of the legendary rock pianist Nicky Hopkins. It’s just really interesting to read about all the illustrious artists these session men played with and learn about all the classic recordings to which they contributed their stellar talents. Who knew that Gordon’s best friend in high school was Mike Post, the composer of many classic television theme songs like The Rockford Files (on which Gordon played drums) and Magnum, P.I.? Selvin includes much fascinating detail on Gordon and the musicians with which he worked, including the Everly Brothers, Clapton, George Harrison, Glenn Campbell, Harry Nilsson, Joan Baez, Frank Zappa, and more. Whether in the studio or on tour, Selvin provides an inside look at the music industry that makes you feel like a part of the band.

The latter half of the book, which chronicles Gordon’s downward slide into insanity, is riveting. You can’t help but be moved by this terrible tragedy. Selvin compiled much of this account from interviews with those who knew Gordon, and you can feel both the love and the fear they felt towards this troubled artist. Selvin clearly did prodigious research in the making of this biography, and he writes with an authoritative knowledge and a personal pathos that make this a memorable book well worth reading for any fan of classic rock music.

The Dancer at the Gai-Moulin by Georges Simenon

Guest-starring Maigret

Published in 1931, La Danseuse du Gai-Moulin is the tenth novel in George Simenon’s series of Inspector Maigret mystery novels. In English the novel has appeared as Maigret at the “Gai-Moulin” or The Dancer at the Gai-Moulin. The title references the name of a nightclub in Liège, Belgium, the city of Simenon’s birth, where this novel takes place. Even though Maigret works for the Paris police, his investigations sometimes lead him farther afield, jurisdiction be damned.

Two teenage boys are hanging out at the Gai-Moulin one evening. René Delfosse, 18 years of age, is the wealthy child of a factory owner and somewhat of a juvenile delinquent. Jean Chabot, 16, is a poor boy, generally well-intentioned, who has fallen in with the wrong kind of friend. Both of them are enamored with Adèle, a dancer at the Gai-Moulin. She is friendly towards them, but treats them like pets and doesn’t put out for them. On this particular evening, Adèle can’t spend too much time chatting with the boys because she has to pay attention to a real big spender. This stranger has a Turkish look about him, which results in him being frequently referred to as “the Turk,” whether accurate or not. Unbeknownst to Adèle, Delfosse and Chabot have not come to the Gai-Moulin merely to drink cocktails. Their intention is to rob the place. They hide in the basement until after closing, then enter the bar to empty the till. Before they can do so, however, they find the body of the Turk dead on the bar floor.

By now, you might be asking yourself, “What does all this have to do with Maigret?” The odd thing about this Maigret novel is that Maigret himself doesn’t even appear until halfway through the book. Even then, he largely confines himself to the sidelines while the Liège police do all of the leg work. The absence of the book’s star for much of the novel’s length seems an odd choice on the part of Simenon, but I guess when you write around 500 novels you can afford to experiment. This book kept calling to my mind Arthur Conan Doyle’s book The Valley of Fear, a Sherlock Holmes mystery in which Sherlock Holmes barely plays a supporting role. That Doyle book, in my opinion, was definitely a failed experiment, but this Maigret novel fares a little better with the absentee detective strategy. The final chapter of the novel, in which Maigret does his thing, is really very good as Simenon rolls out one of the more ingeniously intricate crime-solution plot webs in the series.

The notable absence of Maigret for much of the novel, while unexpected, does not ruin the book. I wouldn’t recommend this novel for Maigret newbies, because one learns almost nothing about the main character, but if you’re already a fan of the series then this mystery will not fail to satisfy. It’s not one of the best books in Simenon’s consistently high-quality series, but it’s better than many Maigret cases and far above average when compared to the novels of other 20th-century mystery writers.

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Nigeria at a crossroads

Nigerian author Chinua Achebe’s 1958 novel Things Fall Apart is likely the most widely read work of Black African literature among English-language readers worldwide (as opposed to white African writers like Algerian Albert Camus or South Africa’s J. M. Coetzee). Achebe wrote the novel in English, and it was published by Heinemann as the first novel in their African Writers Series, a series that would eventually encompass about 300 books. Things Fall Apart takes place in a rural village of the indigenous Igbo people (sometimes spelled Ibo), when Nigeria was a British colony (1914–1960).

Okonkwo lives in the village of Umuofia. Though he came from humble beginnings, through hard work, ambition, and physical strength, he has elevated himself to a position of high status within his clan. He lives with his family of three wives and several children in a mud brick-walled compound of several huts, where they raise crops and some livestock. To settle a conflict with a neighboring village, a boy from another clan is given to Umuofia as a hostage. The leaders of the Umuofia clan charge Okonkwo with the care of this boy, Ikemefuna, whom he raises as if the boy were his own son. In a twist worthy of a Greek tragedy, however, this act ends up setting in motion a chain reaction of karmic retribution that threatens Okonkwo’s downfall.

The second half of the novel deals with the encroachment of British culture into this isolated village. Christian missionaries and government bureaucrats arrive, a few of whom are white, the rest being Nigerians from outside the clan. Achebe describes how Christianity wedges its way into the Igbo people’s lives, garnering some earnest converts, while others cling to the traditional gods and customs. Okonkwo is firmly on the side of the old-schoolers who resist the influence of the whites. As depicted by Achebe, Igbo culture places high importance on a traditional conception of masculinity, and Okonkwo considers any man who deviates from the old ways to be “womanly.” In this clash between tradition and modernity, Achebe lets the reader see both sides of the argument. On the one hand, he clearly shows the iniquity and brutality of British colonialism in Nigeria. On the other hand, he implies that elements of Christianity offer a more compassionate alternative to some of the restrictive superstitions, prejudicial thinking, and more violent aspects of traditional Igbo culture. Achebe’s views on Nigerian independence are clear in this book, but his feelings towards the Christian church are not so clear cut.

In Things Fall Apart, Achebe gives readers a vivid look at traditional indigenous life in Nigeria. This contrasts with his fellow Nigerian author Wole Soyinka, winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, who writes mostly about urban intellectuals in Nigeria. Achebe grew up amid both Igbo and Christian traditions and went on to become a university professor and one of his nation’s leading man of letters. For most of the book, Achebe’s writing gives the reader a feeling of being a member of the Umuofia clan. The last few chapters on Christianity and imperialism, however, feel a little more like they were written from the perspective of a university professor looking at Igbo culture from the outside.

One main reason why I read the literature of foreign nations is in hopes of gaining an understanding of the lives, cultures, and perspectives of people from other parts of the world. Things Fall Apart is certainly satisfying in that regard. This isn’t just the Western literary tradition transplanted to an exotic locale. This is a quintessentially African work of literature and a very fine novel by any standard of world literature.  

The Wayward Bus by John Steinbeck

A memorable road trip

John Steinbeck, winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature, is one of America’s all-time literary greats, known for such highly acclaimed novels as The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, East of Eden, and Cannery Row. In any list of his major works or ranking of this top ten books, one title you are unlikely to see is his 1947 novel The Wayward Bus. Nevertheless, Steinbeck is one of those writers who is so good that even his minor works shine. The Wayward Bus may be an obscure and forgotten entry in his body of work, but I enjoyed it very much.

In the small crossroads town of Rebel Corners in the Salinas Valley of California, Juan Chicoy, a Mexican-American, and his wife Alice run a service station and diner for travelers. Juan also drives a passenger bus from Rebel Corners to San Juan de la Cruz, a connecting line between two Greyhound routes. As the story opens, Juan’s bus has broken down, and a handful of passengers have been stranded at Rebel Corners. Juan and Alice and their two employees, who all live at the site, have given up their bedrooms to these delayed travelers. As the sun rises, Juan and his young mechanic, Pimples Carson, repair the bus in order to get their fare-paying passengers back on the road. The weather reports are not good, with speculation that the San Ysidro River might flood, which would put everyone in an even more inconvenient or even dangerous situation. The passengers are itching to go, however, and Juan is tired of listening to their complaints, so he decides to risk it and get the journey underway.

What this book does really well is bring to life the gas-food-lodging culture and atmosphere of 1940s travel. Of course, I wouldn’t know what it was like to ride a long-distance bus in the ’40s, but I made my share of Greyhound trips in the ’80s and ’90s. This book vividly brings to mind that atmosphere of wanderlust and fatigue, the collection of characters you meet on such trips, and the seemingly random locations where the bus makes its periodic stops. Before the installment of the interstate highway system, road travel had a more rustic, anything-can-happen feel to it, which this book captures really well. Also, as one would expect from Steinbeck gives the landscape of California much consideration and describes it in vivid, loving detail.

The bus and highways and diner pie, however, merely serve as the backdrop for a story that is really about an assortment of human beings momentarily thrown together by their intersecting itineraries. It is the realism of the characters, their thoughts and behaviors, that really makes this a captivating read. The drama is heightened by the fact that in this bygone pre-internet age, an adventurous traveler could change his or her entire life by simply turning a different corner, not looking back, and deciding to be someone else. These are people the reader will recognize from their own lives, and Steinbeck is very insightful about what’s going on in their heads: what men want from women, what women want from men, how men see themselves through their work, how different personalities conflict with and influence one another. When a beautiful blonde woman, traveling alone, walks into the diner, the reactions of the other characters, man and woman alike, are realistic variations of lust, envy, hostility, and bumbling foolishness. A successful business man, traveling with his wife and daughter, brings a touch of the capitalist criticism of Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt. Steinbeck is also to be commended for treating Hispanic characters as real human beings rather than the common stereotypes of the time.

The Wayward Bus isn’t the kind of book that wins prizes or inspires critical plaudits. It’s not about starving farmers fighting for survival; it’s about middle-class Americans with prosaic problems, hopes, and desires that to them (and us) often feel like romantic, monumental crises. Steinbeck does a beautiful job of illustrating the crucial dramas in everyday lives, in a way that is as real as life itself yet as compelling as literature should be.