It was a quiet neighborhood; townhouses filled with college students, young working couples, a few multigenerational families, and Ralph Granby. It wasn’t by design, his being the oldest person in Silverton Plaza. It was a coincidence, or maybe inevitable. His grandson and granddaughter had occupied the two-bedroom townhouse for six years, courtesy of Ralph’s son, John, and his wife, Karen. Ralph moved in when the grandkids graduated, as caretaker. He appreciated having a nice place to live and it was interesting being around college students. At 78, he felt old being around so many kids, but not as old as he’d felt in the retirement community where he’d lived for eight years.

Ralph didn’t smoke in the house, so he spent a lot of time on the patio. He liked being outside and not bothered by other people. He’d never been left alone in Country Life Retirement Center. Some lonely old guy or, worse, a nosy old broad, always wanted to talk about their pains or family. Memories. Ralph didn’t think about the past. He was trying to live in the present.

Ralph had a pretty good idea of what was going on in Silverton Plaza. He’d already met most of the dog walkers. But the three-bedroom townhouse across the retention pond from his patio puzzled him.

Two new SUVs that appeared at the same time caught his attention. He hadn’t seen a moving van or trailer. A woman in her early thirties, another ten years older, appeared with four children, all under ten, and walked their small dog around the pond. They responded curtly when Ralph greeted them. He always said hello. Didn’t want to seem like a curmudgeon. They came and went every day as if taking the children to school, maybe going to work, a Saturday outing with all of them packed into one SUV. They stayed a week. Nothing unusual about their behavior. But Ralph couldn’t help but wonder if they were sleeping on the floor. Maybe the house was a furnished lease.

One morning the two women packed some bundles in the SUVs. No suitcases that Ralph saw, but then he wasn’t watching continuously. This wasn’t a stakeout. He went in to make a cup of coffee. When he returned to the patio, they were gone. They didn’t come back, which seemed strange to Ralph.

Convinced that the transients’ lives were as mundane as anyone else’s, Ralph let his imagination transform the townhouse into a safehouse run by the Federal Marshall Service. In this fantasy, the two women were actually the wife and niece of an accountant testifying against the leader of an international crime syndicate.

A couple days later, a fat guy arrived in a beat-up sedan and unloaded a lot of cleaning supplies, including a vacuum cleaner. He was there all day. Took bags of trash to the dumpster, repacked his car, left. A Federal agent in disguise, doing some cleaning while checking for listening devices, collecting physical evidence.

Ralph invited John and Karen over for lunch on Sundays every few weeks, to demonstrate that he was getting around fine; and he liked talking to them, hearing how things were going now that their children had moved to other cities to begin careers. He knew what an empty nest felt like. He had moved to Tallahassee to be with the only family he had left; returning to the nest as it were. John and Karen always accepted his invitations.

John got another grilled pork chop and some green beans as he said, “What’s up at Silverton Plaza? These college kids driving you crazy yet?” They always joked about Ralph being surrounded by young people, knowing he actually enjoyed it.

“There are more families moving in, young people, some with babies. I think this place is turning into a regular community.”

“No troublemakers, I hope,” Karen interjected. “This place is close enough to the low-income housing that I worry about drug dealers. You haven’t heard any gun shots, have you? Police cars in the middle of the night?”

Ralph shook his head. “No, nothing like that. Just that damned train all day long. You’d think it wouldn’t be so loud a mile away.”

“Does it keep you up?” John asked.

“No. It’s just so loud that I can’t hear myself think. I don’t know how these kids can study with that all the time…but, you know, I noticed something curious last week.” They listened with interest as he told about the two women and children.

“Well, they don’t sound too threatening,” Karen said.

John added, “They must know the owner and were passing through, or maybe waiting for a deal to close. Like you and Mom did when I was in high school. We stayed in a friend’s house for two weeks.”

They agreed that was probably the case. John and Karen cleaned up the table while Ralph went to the patio for a smoke. A red SUV was parked in front of the townhouse. Three black men got out, without luggage, and unlocked the front door. They were all sizes and ages. Ralph assumed they’d gone out for lunch. Must have arrived while he was eating.

John joined him on the patio with a beer, an extra for Ralph.

“Another car just pulled in,” Ralph said, opening the can. He summarized what he’d seen while John studied the brick façade of the townhouse. “You don’t suppose it’s a government safe house, do you?”

“Maybe. But I’d put my money on an Airbnb rental. They’re not only for vacations. The renters must be getting a better deal than a motel.” He shook his head and added, “I don’t see how the owner’s making any money, though. Leasing would bring in a steady stream of income. Maybe they’ll be back from an extended trip and can’t tie it up for six months or more.”

John and Karen took the leftovers with them when they left; that was the deal: Ralph only ate heavy meals in restaurants or with the family. They had expressed concern about how thin he’d become, until he assured them that his physician approved of his weight loss and saw nothing in his blood results indicating any problems. In fact, Ralph was healthier than John, who had high cholesterol.

The three African American men stayed a couple of days, leaving together in the morning, returning in the afternoon. Ralph was convinced that John was right. It was an Airbnb rental. Still, it was possible that they were undercover agents laying low, waiting for their next assignment.

The red SUV left with the three men and was immediately replaced by a white sedan. The next morning, returning to the patio with a cup of coffee, Ralph had a front-row seat of what seemed like a reality TV show. The front door of the three-bedroom unit was open and a young black woman was standing behind the car. She was yelling something, her words drowned by the fountain’s cascade. The car backed up, threatening to run over her. She stepped out of the way, her fist pounding the windows. The distraught woman pulled out her smart phone and took a photo or maybe a video of the departing vehicle.

Her task complete, she reentered the open door, just before the sedan backed up at full speed. Ralph didn’t see what happened next because he went inside to make breakfast. He made a point of not spying on his neighbors.

The white sedan was gone all day. That afternoon, three children appeared on the front balcony, enjoying the view. The oldest kicked the balusters, dislodging one, which fell to the ground. The boy no more than nine or ten, slipped through the gap and climbed around on the outside of the balcony, hanging on the railing. Ralph was concerned because it was more than ten feet to the ground, probably not dangerous enough to intervene. The sedan returned at dusk and a tall, black man got out but didn’t go inside the townhouse. He wandered around by the pond, drinking from an aluminum can, maybe beer, maybe soda, until four children appeared, the youngest barely walking.

Ralph imagined the scenario: the young guy, tired of so many children and not wanting to take responsibility for their care, joined some friends for a few beers, maybe at a bar. His wife hadn’t been happy about that. This guy had to be a small-time drug dealer turned state’s evidence against a drug cartel.

They were gone the next day. The cleaning man who’d taken hours to clean the place before never showed up. Ralph wouldn’t want to rent a house that had been occupied by four children, the youngest in diapers, without being sanitized. Only an undercover operation would be so sloppy. They’d probably lose their permit if it really was an Airbnb rental.

Ralph watched with interest as another white sedan appeared, newer than the previous one. He couldn’t wait to see who it had brought. A young, Asian couple appeared the next evening with a toddler, her hair in two pigtails pointing up. The car remained two days, but the young family didn’t reappear. Ralph didn’t see them leave. This guy wasn’t a criminal. Probably a Chinese dissident from Hong Kong with a price on his head.

The same cleaning guy finally made an appearance, in a different vehicle. The battered, faded, reddish sedan had been replaced by a small SUV. He took a break at lunch time, maybe having a cigarette, and sat in the truck, door open. Ralph couldn’t see inside the vehicle. Pretty sloppy work, forgetting to use the same car. The Feds were asking for trouble.

The next day, a new SUV appeared in front of what Ralph was convinced was an Airbnb rental. The silver Nissan never moved, and no one came out. It sat for three days. They must have a cache of food in the house, he thought. By the third day, his curiosity was getting the best of him. All he’d learned was that the occupants were from Texas. Or at least their vehicle was. His patience was rewarded when his temporary neighbors appeared. A young, black couple in their mid-thirties, accompanied by identical twins, eleven-year-old girls, dressed the same, same hairstyle, same height. And a teenage boy. The children loaded suitcases in the back, the man piled two large bags of trash on the hood. They were a well-oiled machine. They stopped by the dumpster on their way out. This family was too cute to be real. Straight out of a Disney movie. He was either a geek in debt to mobsters, probably gambling losses, or the entire outfit was an undercover family. Maybe used in sting operations.

The cleaning guy didn’t come by…again…before the next visitor arrived.

Ralph was on the patio when a weather-beaten, green minivan pulled into a space in front of the rental. A young, white man got out first and went around the vehicle to open the passenger door. Ralph couldn’t see that side. After a couple of minutes, a young, black woman emerged with a baby and a toddler.

Jesus Christ, Ralph thought. There sure are a lot of children around these days.

The bearded guy followed, burdened by several suitcases. The man and woman seemed nervous. They looked around continuously as she got a key into the lock. His head popped out before the door closed, one last look. Ralph wished he’d seen the arrival of the previous guests.

The newcomers remained inside all day. Jim was on the patio having his last beer of the day when a visitor arrived. It was about time someone had a guest. Just sitting in a rented townhouse for days had to be boring, even with cable television and internet. Two black guys wearing jackets got out of the late-model black SUV, lit by the nearby streetlight, looking around the same way the current occupants had.

Ralph’s phone dinged, informing him of a WhatsApp text. It was a photo of a friend’s new seat covers, for his RV. They were bright red.

Ralph looked up when angry shouts erupted, threatening, indecipherable. One of the visitors threw his weight into the steel-sheathed door, splintering the wood jamb. Alarmed, feeling that this situation was worse than a child climbing on the balcony, Ralph unlocked his phone…

More angry shouts. Fear. Several shots shattered the stillness of the night.

Ralph had dialed 911 before the last echoes died against the brick, stucco, and vinyl of the townhouses.

“Where did she go?” I ask myself, straining to see over the creek bank.

I had fallen behind Cassie in the creek bed, carefully guiding my chestnut mare between boulders in the foot-deep water. Cassie had rushed onward, risking a broken fetlock. She always had to be first.

Finally reaching the steep embankment, I let my steed pick her own path through the scattered rocks and logs covering the slope, green branches and leaves evidence of recent high water. We clear the top, but Cassie isn’t in sight.  The trail disappears behind a sharp outcrop of dark stone I had seen from the creek. A waypoint on the map I’d studied.

I give Pioneer a free rein and she takes off like a rocket, slowing only to negotiate the sharp turn, hooves slipping on gravel. No sign of Cassie riding Chester, her surefooted but slow Palomino stallion.

Pine trees hug the trail, their whiplike branches slapping my face painfully; saplings on the stony trace hindering our advance. I duck, bob, weave, but Pioneer remains on course, the small woman on her back forgotten. An outcrop looms ahead, daring us to jump it. Pioneer accepts the earth’s challenge and we take flight, sailing over the obstacle.

A gentle turn marked by more black stone. Pioneer clears the crag at full speed. Cassie mounted on Chester not far ahead. Pioneer wants to catch them more than I do. I lean forward, eyes watching for danger on a trail we’ve never ridden before.

I risk a look into the rocky chasm only a few feet from Pioneer’s hooves. From my vantage point atop Pioneer, I see the trickle of a stream at the bottom. My gaze returns to Cassie, fifty yards ahead, glancing over her shoulder. Another rocky promontory. Cassie and Chester disappear behind it.

Pioneer puts on the brakes, pressing my boots into the stirrups. I’m confused as she warily rounds the jutting rock, as if expecting trouble. Chester is waiting expectantly. He neighs nervously, standing in front of a jumble of irregular black rock and soil, reins hanging from his bit.

I never read Walden. I probably never will because, from what I’ve heard, Thoreau didn’t write about real life, the struggle to survive against other creatures; hungry, cruel, desperate beings. Like us. Still, there is something to be learned from words, even when they reflect the author’s imagination rather than reality.

My wife wanted a townhouse, something on the university bus route near campus; a place where the kids could live while attending Louisiana State University. An investment. We looked at some run-down units and weren’t impressed. College housing was scarce in Baton Rouge back then, just five years ago, so we settled on a three-bedroom unit in a gated community. It needed some repairs. I was elected to move in six-months before the fall semester. There went my spring plans for traveling the country in my motorhome.

Our new townhouse’s patio faced the retention pond, the size of an Olympic pool, surrounded by a steep bank covered by weedy grass. A culvert connected the shallow reservoir to a labyrinth of ditches, canals, sloughs, creeks, bayous, lakes, and ultimately to the Gulf of Mexico. A fountain accented the pond, running twenty-four hours a day. The fountain burbled when I went to bed, its steady cascade lulling me to sleep. It became the central point of my existence, the fountain of life, youth, dreams, disappointments, a microcosm of life. My world was centered on the unceasing flow of recirculated water. I shared this fascination, this dependence on its life-renewing sustenance, with other living beings, and that’s what this story is about.

Of course, I watched from my patio, safely behind the fake wrought iron fence separating me from the pond. Prison bars to me. Zoo bars to the young neighbors walking their dogs past me as if on parade. The old guy.

The turtles living in my Walden Pond were the first to catch my eye. Their heads protruded from the water like the periscopes of submerged submarines, ready to strike. They clawed their way out of the primordial waters to sunbathe for hours. In the warm spring sun, they copulated, and reproduced. Despite the indifferent mothers’ negligence, haphazardly dropping their gestating young among the pine mulch beneath the sparse, small trees, baby turtles appeared. No bigger than my palm, their offspring struggled against gravity to join their parents in the sun.

One morning, sunrise only a distant hope, I noticed something glistening on the grass, dimly lit by a streetlight. At first, I thought it was trash discarded by my adolescent neighbors. I investigated more closely, abandoning the safety of my patio to venture into the wilderness, following the path I’d memorized between the piles of dog feces left by young, unsocialized neighbors.

All kinds of fish—trout, catfish, bass, crappie, croaker—come to visit the pond, perhaps even copulate in the murky water, leaving their offspring to fend for themselves, and to die. A large one, perhaps nine inches long, had lunged for an insect near the bank, a feeding behavior they exhibited in the morning and evening, often landing several feet from the water’s edge, flopping around until gravity pulled them back to the dark water. Again and again. Having accomplished this feat, the unfortunate gymnast and been caught in the jaws of a waiting snake. I watched in fascination from fifty feet away, standing in the parking lot where I could see clearly, as the snake struggled to keep from sliding into the water on the steep embankment. The fish was suffocating but desperately fighting, its silvery body writhing spasmodically, far too large for the jaw whose fangs had snagged it. The two of them fought for several minutes, the assassin undulating, seeking a firm hold on the damp grass. No ground was gained or lost when the snake, realizing the futility of its effort, released its victim and withdrew into the shadows. Its prey lay dead two feet from the water’s edge.

Back in my refuge on the patio, I watched in horror as one of the denizens of the deep climbed slowly out of the dark water and pulled the assassin’s victim into the stillness of the pond. The largest of the turtles, watching the battle from the water’s safety, had come to claim the reward for its patience.

I finally escaped, taking my motorhome for a cross-country trip. Alas, my freedom was not to be long-lived. Dental implant surgery tied me to the fountain and the pond as surely as a chain. There was more for me to witness, to endure, to wish I had never seen.

When it rains in southern Louisiana, it rains, a lot. The pond fills up and is replenished with life. Immigrants arrive, eager for a bounty of food in the paradise they have stumbled across, lost. When the bayous, canals, and culverts dry up, the fish can’t return to their home waters. They are left confused and hungry, finding the pond to have no sustenance, they are easy prey for adolescent humans. Fishing is a popular form of torture, not that different from the snake’s method. Barbed hooks of steel sink into the soft flesh of hungry fish, snaring them like the fangs of a garden snake. Catch and release is the anthem of these would-be anglers because torture is more enjoyable when inflicted slowly. Keep the victim alive.

One hot summer, I watched the same hungry fish caught repeatedly by several fishermen; I couldn’t hold my tongue, when a young boy caught the fish who had been tortured at least a dozen times before, by college students with expensive fishing gear. I told the boy that the fish were like pets. He looked at me skeptically, retreated with his pole and hook, and returned fifteen minutes later. He ignored me, and I ignored him.

He had been told the truth by his parents: “It’s a stupid fish and you can do anything you want to it.” At least that’s what I think he was told…maybe his loving father added, “Fuck that old man It ain’t his fuck’n pond.”

Every pond in southern Louisiana is visited by migrating birds, perhaps drawn by ubiquitous fountains shimmering in the sun. They stopped by for a quick snack, sometimes a filling meal, feeding on the smaller fish relaxing naively in the shallows. First came a young egret, delighted to have a private fishing preserve. The young bird feasted, only being harassed occasionally by an older competitor, but the youngling was persistent. Every day, morning and evening, it would drop by to enjoy the fountain with me; until a blue heron, with long legs, a sharp beak, and a bad attitude challenged it for use of the pond.

The newcomer wasn’t going to share its bounty with anyone, so it threatened the smaller egret until it left. My new companion was an experienced angler and soon depleted the pond of small fish, moving on to a new feeding ground. Another world to conquer.

High overhead, flights of geese and ducks flew in formation, not stopping at the pond, heading for the open wetlands a few miles from our house. The pond wasn’t worth the effort of landing and retaking flight. No energy to waste on exploration. In the spring and summer, squadrons of young hawks circled, learning how to kill from the air. The mockingbirds stopped singing and playing during these displays of aerial prowess.

Migrant bluebirds, cardinals, and other colorful species visited me now and then. They never stayed, not being interested in the pond. Too flighty to be drawn by the allure of something so permanent, so eternal as the fountain.

Clumps of water grass appeared in the same spots every summer, as if following a design dictated by nature. Four floating islands, barely anchored to the soft bottom, spread until the landscape maintenance crew removed them at the end of summer. The fish loved the grass for the insects it attracted. They leapt through it in a feeding frenzy. I imagine the mosquitos loved it too, for shielding their larvae from the incessant pounding of the fountain. One of the patches would drift around like a barge broken loose from its mooring, gently joining the others, circumnavigating the pond as the wind changed direction, always pressed to the edge by the fountain’s force.

No story of life on a pond would be complete without mentioning the year-round inhabitants hiding in the grass and trees. There are no real trees; only large shrubs trimmed to look like trees. Too open for nesting, the mockingbirds and sparrows chose the thick foliage of the bushes scattered around the neighborhood. But they came to play, flirt, dance, and copulate in front of my patio, perhaps because of the small trees that dumped flowers, berries, leaves, and pollen on my patio and in my face. Maybe they were showing off.

Where there are flowers, there are hummingbirds and bees. One warm spring day, I was having lunch when something hit my arm hard enough to spill food from my utensil. A strangely shaped, very-large bug was lying on the patio next to met, out of focus. It buzzed, shook itself, and flew to my prison bars, shaking rhythmically. Curious, I donned my reading glasses and took a closer look. The apparition was actually two large bees copulating. I didn’t know bees did it like that. They did it for a while, so I lost interest, my curiosity satisfied.

I must mention my closest companions on Walden pond. Small lizards, adults less than six inches long, are always with me during the warm months. I learned a lot about them, like that the males are bright green and expand white air sacks under their throats as sexual and threatening displays. The females are dark green but the same size. I know which is which because they like to have sex right in front of me, on my prison bars, but they don’t copulate in the rapid manner of the bees. They don’t seem to copulate at all but remain frozen in a close embrace for a long time. I don’t know how long because I get bored. The young lizards join me at the table, climbing, hunting for spiders, sometimes getting on me by mistake. They’re cute.

One spring day, after a heavy rain, the water level in the web of waterways honeycombing southern Louisiana rose higher than usual, allowing a monster to enter the pond, the water’s rippled surface disturbed by its progress. A stubby nose at its prow, two beady eyes following, the mass of its body submerged, the otter fed on the newly arrived fish. It cavorted, diving and whirling, its submerged movement marked by air bubbles breaking the water surface. Within five minutes, occasionally coming up for air, it left as silently as it had arrived. Sated no doubt on any fish it had found in the murky depths.

I’ll never forget the year of extreme weather, which I won’t blame on global warming because that winter was cold as hell. The summer was marked by a biblical deluge, not a tropical storm or hurricane, that flooded Baton Rouge but left my patio high and dry. The pond swelled to the top of the embankment, five feet above normal water level, but the fountain never stopped cascading. Indomitable. Eternal.

Winter brought snow, a rarity in southern Louisiana. The first snowfall was two inches, the world bright white, reminding me of why I didn’t live in northern latitudes. The beauty didn’t last because my young neighbors appeared to construct snowmen. All they accomplished was destroying the luster, creating an urban landscape of tracks and mounds of snow. Bare, dormant, grass and dirt. The second snowfall was less, not worth the effort of ruining. After the shock of snow, another surprise arrived; a cold front brought arctic air to the Gulf Coast, and the surface of the pond froze. The fountain never stopped flowing, however, the only open water near its base. I worried about the turtles.

When I returned for the last time, the world had changed ominously. The fountain no longer ran all day and all night; someone had installed a timer, so it shut down at ten p.m. and turned on at seven a.m., destroying the eternal harmony of the pond, upsetting the balance of nature.

The silence in the morning was golden, except for the wail of a train horn in the distance and the noisy air conditioners turning on constantly. Having discovered quiet, I began to hate the fountain that had centered my life. I fled upstairs to escape its roar. There was no respite, so I started getting up earlier and earlier; a couple of hours of silence.

The turtles must have felt the same. Like me, they had grown accustomed to a few hours of silence and the return of the cascading water in the morning was no longer acceptable. They were also unhappy with other changes that had occurred because of the eternal fountain. The unceasing ripples had worked on the soft bank too long and the land capitulated, accepting defeat, and eroded. Now, instead of a gentle slope surrounding the water, they faced a scarp more than six inches in height before they could reach the warmth of the sun. Their world in turmoil, the denizens of the deep began migrating, not through the culvert that led indirectly to the ocean, but instead over land, across the cement parking lot. Their destination was the drainage ditch at the edge of the subdivision. I think the emigres made it because I didn’t see any squashed turtle shells. A few remained to wait for another dead fish to scavenge.

There is a peculiar kind of duck that is common along the Gulf coast: individuals who don’t want to fly north for the summer make their permanent home in ditches that are seldom dry. Dogs and cats don’t bother them, they reproduce and multiply, get fat on the bounty supplied by a warm climate and lots of rain.

Late this last summer, one of these ditch ducks was sitting on the grass next to the pond when I went to the patio to begin my morning ritual of drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and wondering when I would escape the fountain. To see a ditch duck in the pond was a rather surprising thing because they grow very fat and don’t fly, choosing to waddle everywhere. I don’t think it walked past the front gate or got through the fence enclosing the neighborhood. It remained three days, shuffling around, occasionally fleeing to the safety of the pond to escape a curious dog, flapping its wings futilely, fishing. It seemed to be on vacation.

The third morning after its arrival, the visitor shuffled to the parking lot, began flapping its wings furiously, stumbling forward, leaping in small bounds, and finally got off the ground. I watched in wonder as the strong wings fought to lift the corpulent body into the air. I grimaced in sympathy, directing my willpower to assist. It had less than six feet of altitude when it disappeared behind the building. It must have made it because I haven’t seen it since.

The egret and the blue heron had worked out an arrangement to share the meager provender of the pond. The egret dropped by during the day whereas the larger, bad-tempered waterfowl took the morning and evening shifts.

With the fountain silenced in the morning, the heron began perching on it, maybe to sleep. I don’t know because the gushing water didn’t cease until after I went to bed. Perhaps the bird waited in the shadows for the fountain to rest. At any rate, the silent predator was always present when I went outside at five a.m. A ghost.

In the dark, it searched the murky water, dove in sometimes, fishing from its pedestal. I wondered if it could tell time because it always disappeared before seven a.m., when the fountain roared into life.

This morning, there it was as usual, getting its breakfast, watching for danger. After dumping a stream of green goo on the grass, it retook its perch on the fountain. I checked the time on my phone: six-fifty-one. Six-fifty-two…

I waited. The fountain waited. The bird didn’t budge.

Six-fifty-nine.

The fountain waited silently, preparing to spring its trap on the unsuspecting interloper, who had no business standing on it, taking advantage of its vulnerability.

Seven a.m.

I laughed along with the fountain when it burst into life, tossing the startled bird in the air.

The kids graduated college and, like the migrating birds, set off to begin new lives. I’ll be leaving soon as well, joining my wife on the other side of the world, my departure delayed by more home repairs.

I won’t miss the fountain, but I’ll always remember the time we spent together. It seemed like an eternity. I guess that every moment is a small piece of eternity, however, so let’s just say I spent an eternity with that fountain on my Walden pond.

I’ll let Henry David Thoreau finish the story:

“I learned this, at least…that if one…endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will…pass an invisible boundary…live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex…If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost…Now put the foundations under them.” (Walden, 323- 324)

I found a web page that recommended several Spanish-language books for intermediate readers, so I ordered a couple. This is the first book from the list. If this is for intermediate readers, I can’t imagine what is suggested for advanced readers. It is written in some kind of avant garde style that no student should be exposed to.

The first chapter is one paragraph that goes on for five pages. Sentences run up to half-a-page. It is a stream-of-consciousness journey with the first-person narrator, who questions every single thing that happens to him. He gives some family history in his rambling thoughts. Flashbacks appear without warning in the middle of sentences. His life slowly unfolds in this piecemeal and unstructured manner. 

I can summarize the plot easily, because nothing happens. He gets married, goes on a honeymoon, moves into a new apartment, visits a friend in New York (he lives in Spain, but I don’t remember which city), returns home and learns a terrible secret about his father. All the action is in his mind, his doubts and worries consuming his every waking moment.

The devil is in the details, and so is the interesting parts of this book. The author does a good job taking the reader into every mundane corner of the protagonist’s mind, unearthing questions we ask ourselves every day without thinking. All of it is captured for examination in remarkably well constructed flights of imagination. The self-deprecating humor is perfectly done, especially the way the narrator’s occupation as a translator is analyzed. I laughed several times at the depictions of the world of international diplomacy. Very good. The same sharp wit is turned on politics and everyday activities.

This would be difficult to translate to English, so much would be lost, but if it’s available, I’d recommend it to anyone looking for a simple but complex story about a man stumbling through life as a successful professional. 

I also recommend it to someone who reads Spanish, but not to a “intermediate” reader like me. 

This book is easy and difficult to review. First, I want to say that it took eight years to write; started in 1953 and published in 1961, it became a bestseller in 1962, then a movie of the same name in 1970. I mention how long it took to write because the book reads as if it had several authors, who shared notes but had different writing styles. The first writer wrote enigmatically, with references to events not presented; the second discovered the beauty of metaphors, filling mundane scenes with dashing clouds, spitting oceans, and other sophomoric phrases; the third author forgot about metaphors, moving on to run-on sentences with prepositions spitting from the typewriter like confetti.

Amid all of this jumble, Heller wraps up most of the complicated threads he started at the beginning. Of course, many of them had nothing to do with the anti-war theme of the story. And they are wrapped up as if he was going down a checklist.

The plot involves the men who flew in medium bombers (B-25s) over Italy in the later stages of WW II. This was dangerous because they had to fly low to hit tactical targets, rather than the famous B-17 flights over Germany. Instead of fighters, they deal with antiaircraft guns, which apparently were very accurate, and losses among the characters in the book are high. The story doesn’t gloss over the violence in the air. The central theme is that everyone, not just the aircrews, in the bomb wing is crazy. Detailed biographies of unimportant characters are given along with insight into the entire staff, right up to the general in charge of the air group.

The long writing period may partly explain the inexplicable insertion of flashbacks (actually jumps back and forth in the story line), which usually occur in mid-sentence on unrelated topics. It was very confusing because it was the standard, not the exception. Back and forth, back and forth… Dizzying.

The mixture of comic-book characters and situations, black humor, overshadowed by a sense of hopelessness by the main character, Captain John Yossarian, is irregular, adding to the confusion. The resulting jumble can be explained as intentional but I think it was the result of poor writing, albeit with good notes. The story really is remarkably consistent in its own way. Critics call stories like this “satires” and “scathing” and other ad-hoc adjectives that never occurred to the author. I note that in the preface, Joseph Heller makes no such claims of deep hatred of war, but simply that it took a long time to write and became a big success. Timing is everything.

I guess I have to say something in conclusion.  I can’t recommend Catch-22 for casual reading. I read this book as part of my reading comprehension program, and it was a good choice. However, if you like complex stories that come together like a mystery (albeit without a purpose), it isn’t that bad. The reviewers either liked it or hated it. It’s that kind of book.

As a bonus, I have a few words to say about the movie version of Catch-22, released in 1970. I just read a summary of its reception and it’s obvious that the screenplay by Buck Henry wasn’t appreciated for its greatest accomplishment. Working with the director, Mike Nichols, he turned a jumbled mess into a coherent movie, which incorporated every major scene from the book. The movie explained a lot that didn’t make sense when read word-by-word. Some of the more-ridiculous antics from the book are omitted, but not many. As a spoiler, if you recall the famous scene with Yossarian rowing away at the end in a yellow life raft. Never happened. The author settled down and gave the book a reasonable ending (maybe the fourth version of Joseph Heller?).

Jumbled, confusing book but a good movie.

Nona opened the mailbox, found it empty except for a letter from DMV addressed to her husband. She certainly wasn’t going to pay the license renewal for Leonard’s truck. If he wanted to drive that beat-up pickup, he’d have to do register it himself. He’d been gone for close to six months, without a letter. No phone calls. Not even a personal message or text. Nothing. Finally out of the scorching August heat, she was tempted to throw the letter in the trashcan on the front porch. She unlocked the door and entered the house, dropped her bag and Leonard’s mail on the table in the foyer, and fell on the sofa to give her tired feet a rest, after eight hours behind the cash register at Walmart.

She heard a sound at the back of the house and, suddenly alert, jumped up, her aching feet forgotten. Slipping into the kitchen, searching the drawers for Leonard’s revolver, finding it under the fancy napkins. Holding it in front of her, she crept into the hall to confront the burglar. Following the sounds of someone scrabbling around in the laundry room, she caught a man with his back towards her.

“Don’t move or I’ll shoot!”

Hands went up and the short, stocky man slowly turned to face her. “Hello Nona. How’ve you been?”

“Look what the cat drug in,” she said, lowering the gun.

Leonard turned back to his task and, starting the machine, took the revolver from Nona’s hand. “You know this isn’t loaded.”

She followed him to the kitchen and sat down at the table. Leonard got a beer from the refrigerator and joined her. She hadn’t bought any beer. Didn’t drink. “What’s going on, Leonard?”

He shrugged. “I’ve got a month until the next job, in Ecuador.”

“Why didn’t you call?”

He shrugged. “You knew where I was. I knew you were okay because of your Facebook posts. What was there to talk about? I kept up with the kids too. They’re fine.”

“You could have died. I wouldn’t have known.”

“Peeshaw.  The company wouldn’t have kept depositing my paychecks in our bank account if I’d died. They’re too greedy. And I think they would have gotten around to sending you a letter. Eventually.”

Nona was fed up with Leonard’s nonchalant attitude about their marriage. He’d been doing this for almost twenty years. Leaving her to raise their two children by herself, showing up between jobs, never on holidays or birthdays. “I can’t live like this anymore. You either stay put or I want a divorce.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why can’t you live like this anymore? Our house is paid off and we’ve got close to four-hundred-thousand dollars in our retirement account. I don’t want to live on social security when I retire. If it still exists.”

He didn’t get it. “I have to make it to retirement, Leonard. I lay awake at night, wondering if you’re dead or shacked up with some Mexican girl, with another family, whatever. I don’t want to live like this.”

He shrugged. “Don’t make sense to me, Nona. The hard part’s over, the kids grown up and gone to college. All paid for by my job. No college loans. They’ll have the same clean slate we did when we got married. Why do you want to ruin it all now?”

It drove Nona crazy, Leonard’s indifference to her feelings. He had become an asshole. “You didn’t answer my question?”

“Which one?”

“Have you been shacking up with women? I mean ever.”

“Why would I do that? I’m married in case you didn’t notice. I’ve been working twelve hours a day, seven days a week to make a good life for us, a good retirement. I’m tired after work. Always have been.”

It bothered Nona that mentioning divorce hadn’t gotten a rise from him. Only a question she couldn’t answer. She wanted to hate him for the years left alone with the children, nothing to do, making excuses at church where everybody thought Leonard was a derelict. She looked around the kitchen, feeling at home, having friends and family, a husband, a good life. Why she couldn’t answer any of his stupid questions?

“Are you going to stay home from now on? You can get a local job making almost as much as you do now. It costs a lot to live in a foreign country. I read about it.”

“Peeshaw!” He finished his beer, got another from the refrigerator, sat down, opened it and said, “Ain’t no job pays what I’m making. Not in the U.S. You know full what I spend, Nona. Two-hundred a month in Mexico. That’s what it costs to live in a decent room and eat good meals. Can’t even own a car for that here. Can’t you leave well enough alone?”

She wanted an answer, not a question. “Well?”

“Well what?”

Frustration drove Nona to her feet, made her put her hands on her hips, gave her a sudden headache. “Do you want a divorce, or do you want to move back home?”

“Why not?”

I read this book as part of my political philosophy reading, so this review is not a commentary on Islam, which uses The Koran as its sacred scripture. First, let me say that the Penguin Classics version was recommended as the best translation, and it is very good. It is written in prose with excellent grammar and punctuation (I wish mine were as good as the translator’s) and is very easy to read. It also has brief footnotes for some vague references in the text. I got the impression that the footnotes were taken from early non-Koranic documents that were contemporaneous with the Koran. There is also a nice introduction that explains how The Koran was written about twenty years after Muhammad introduced the first chapter, which was to be recited after the oral tradition of the Arabs. Unfortunately, the chapters are not arranged in chronological order but from longest to shortest, although there are a few that are out of order.

It is apparent that the chapters were meant to be orally transmitted. Many of the paragraphs contain (or end with) phrases like, “In God let the trusting put their trust,” as if they’re intended as memory aids. Furthermore, the chapters are repetitive and most of the content is presented in the first chapter (32 pages), and then repeated selectively in subsequent shorter chapters.  The text explicitly states that the words were given to Muhammad by God, so the text is written as if by God; however, the third person (both singular and plural) tense is used almost exclusively. The translator did a good job with the dialogue, however, so it’s easy to understand who’s talking most of the time.

This book belongs on a political philosophy reading list because it is obvious (at least to me) that it was intended as an exhortation to political action. It could be treated as a primer on how to motivate a group of people to unite and improve their political situation. The first objective, which is a recurring theme, is to fit The Koran into the lineage of the Torah and Gospel, thus legitimizing it as a continuation of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Stories from the Torah (first five books of Old Testament) are told from a unique perspective that would be understood by the original audience. A second objective is to delegitimize other religions, which is done by pointing out doctrinal errors made by the Jews and Christians and the egregious misunderstanding of the idolatrous Arabs (who apparently had a pantheon of gods). A third political objective is to use a carrot-and-stick approach: a heaven filled with physical pleasures is promised to true believers; while eternal fire (and many other explicitly described tortures) is promised to those who don’t believe that The Koran was given to Muhammad by God (the angel Gabriel was God’s intermediary) and do as Muhammad instructs. These three political objectives are woven into a convincing narrative that doesn’t demand perfect behavior (God is compassionate and forgiving), but only belief.

The explicit message of The Koran is peaceful. For example, believers are exhorted to be patient and tolerant of unbelievers and not argue with them, after sharing the warnings contained within The Koran because the unbelievers will pay for their misdeeds on the day of judgement; however, it sends a mixed message. There is one reference to cutting off the heads of unbelievers; and several battles are referred to (but not described) between the Muslims and the unbelievers (the people who lived in Mecca exiled Muhammad and then fought several battles with the Muslims). It is easy to imagine how a strong political leader (like Muhammad) could convince his followers that they were the “hand of God.” In fact, there are many references to who can legitimately avoid joining battle and who cannot. These “rules of engagement” address the fourth objective of The Koran – to show what must be done to achieve the overall goal of uniting the Arabs under one political authority. That the narrative spans twenty years, by which time the Muslims had already established control over (and forcibly converted) the population of Mecca, indicates that The Koran is a political guide for future generations to follow rather than simply a spiritual record of the origins of Islam.

The Koran is a masterpiece of political philosophy that has proven itself as a practical guide to unifying disparate peoples across great distances. In the space of twenty years, Muhammad transformed the Arabian Peninsula into a unified territory and, after his death, the Arabs created an Islamic empire that stretched from Spain to India and transformed the world. There aren’t very many political philosophies that can make that claim. For example, Islam rose from a small sect of believers following a madman (from The Koran) to reach its golden age (during the Abbasid Caliphate) in less than two centuries, whereas Christianity required three centuries just to be accepted within the Roman Empire and another four centuries to convert Europeans to its beliefs. I mention this only to illustrate the effectiveness of The Koran as a political tool, whereas older scriptures like the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Gospel had to be seriously compromised to serve political purposes (e.g. the Crusades).

I will finish this review with a personal observation. While I was reading The Koran I felt myself enthralled by the tempo of the text as it interwove exhortations to believe, threats (and promises) of the resurrection, and the carefully retold biblical stories I was familiar with from my childhood. This book is a remarkable merging of what I see as a powerful group indoctrination technique (The Koran was and still is shared orally in public spaces) and a simple and fair (for its day) code of personal conduct.

This is a powerful book with a very spiritual message, but I can’t recommend it unless you want to get a sense of what it means to be a Muslim.

First, the mundane stuff; this book is written in a crisp style reminiscent of a walk down memory lane years after events, but it isn’t a very pleasant stroll – more like a drunken stagger. Numerous grammatical errors (like missing verbs, etc.) can be distracting but it is easy to read.

This review is short because the book is more like a novella than a novel. In fact, it seems that the author wrote the most memorable part (I can believe that from the story) first, so this is the middle portion of the entire story. I remained curious but I wasn’t turning pages as fast as I could either, nor was I dreading my daily reading. It isn’t humorous but the tongue-in-cheek writing style and the bizarre situations the protagonist finds himself in do elicit a chuckle now and then. I don’t know if it’s autobiographical or not and I don’t care. It is a fictional story.

At any rate, one of my complaints is that the author either assumes that (or doesn’t care if) the reader is familiar with how mail is processed and distributed. These details figure prominently throughout the book but there is no description of what they are; including the places where the character worked, the equipment he used, how he got around. Nothing, until a focus on “schemes” used to sort mail (before machines took over that mundane task), and that was brief.

I did feel that I understood the central character to some degree through the many experiences he had during the eleven or twelve-year period covered in the story. The story line is somewhat episodic, mostly centered on romantic relationships, but succeeds with very few words to convey the sense of desperation and meaninglessness of his career and life. The author managed to take a mundane person with no outstanding personal qualities and show that he was just like the rest of us (albeit with a passion for drinking too much and horse tracks). One key element was missing, however; I really didn’t learn what made Henry Chinaski tick, even after I’d finished the book. He was simply rehashing every day (and every year) over and over. Maybe that’s explained in one of the other two books.

I won’t be reading the rest of the story but, if you find Post Office laying around and don’t have to buy a copy and wait for it to arrive, it’s worth a read.

This is the latest in my Spanish reading. The English translation is “The Things We Lost in the Fire.” This is a collection of short stories by an Argentinian author. My first comment is that Spanish in Argentina drops a lot more pronouns than what I’ve read before. I had to read the entire sentence and glean every hint from word endings to know who was doing what to whom. And lots of slang that Google Translate only guessed about half the time. I’ve been listening to an audio lecture series on language and I’m beginning to suspect that written fictional Spanish follows spoken language standards rather than the written (i.e., formal) style. It’s a free for all.

The stories are all set in Argentina in the last thirty or so years, focusing on the seamier side of life for average Argentinians rather than criminals – people struggling with day-to-day life in a nation with extreme income inequality and entire cities of homeless people. There’s also some black magic and gruesome child abuse. The characters are all seriously disturbed but not enough to be institutionalized and the stories are thus real downers (especially when read carefully to try and understand them). I would add that none of the stories have endings; the reader is left hanging with no conclusion –  like the cliffhanger season finale of a popular TV show. The depiction of what people are thinking and dealing with on a daily basis is very well portrayed, however, especially when read in the native language of the region. Every story left me with a combination of sympathy and disgust for the plight of any rational person who might find themselves living under the circumstances portrayed in this book.

In general, I don’t like stories like those contained in this book, but I didn’t read it for entertainment. This is a gritty, realistic depiction of life in a developing country where frustration, superstition, inequality, and death are daily events. Just don’t read it if you want some kind of closure.