The Plague Year

It ended at a Walgreens in the Upper West Side, a Saturday afternoon, the nicest day to date of New York City's 2021, 63 degrees, the sidewalks something like what they'd once been: teeming.

In front of me in line were a young Asian woman, a middle-aged white woman, and a young Black woman. Behind me was an Asian man with a baby in a stroller.

We handed our paperwork through plexiglass shields to the pharmacist's assistant and took a seat and waited.

A Russian woman came out and called us one-by-one into a make-shift room constructed next to the pharmacy. The Black woman went in first. When she came out, I said, "Congratulations," and she smiled with relief and said, "Thank you." That's when I started to cry.

Next, the Asian woman went in. Her little daughter — five years old?— stood next to her and watched her get the injection and asked if it hurt. Her husband took a picture just as she said, "Not at all."

Then me:

It was one of those rare moments in my life when my body aligned with my feelings. Humble, disbelieving gratitude. I see now that I gripped the arm getting the shot as if it were some kind of lifeline.

The Russian woman told me go sit down where I'd been and wait for fifteen minutes to be sure I had no reaction.

Well, I had a reaction. I cried like a baby. I thought of the hundreds of scientists — more — who had raced to develop these vaccines, and I thought of the hundreds of thousands of volunteers who had allowed their bodies to test them, and I thought of the hundreds of thousands of dead — in this country alone —for whom they came to late. I thought of the tens of millions who had been hospitalized, and the millions yet to die or be hospitalized, because, unlike me, they didn't get to sit on this Saturday afternoon in a drugstore in the Upper West Side to be saved.

And I thought about the long, terrible year we'd been through. And how it was over, for me. Yet not close to over for so many millions, most of them poorer than me, darker than me, and, frankly, more deserving than me, because they or the people they loved had given and lost so much more than I had, a year in which I'd lost practically nothing but for the convenience of in-person work and the luxury of walking through the world without wearing a life-saving mask.

Nevertheless, I was right to get the shot when I could. Like those in line both before me and after me, we were doing our part to end the reign of the virus and return our lives to ourselves. Yes, inevitably, some new plague will "rouse up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city.” But getting up from my chair and walking out of Walgreens, into New York City's early spring sunlight, I recognized without effort the strange, timeless joy that brought an end to my weeping. The Greeks, from what I understand, called it hope.

The Best Books I Read in 2020

It's not enough to say that I read these books: I survived them. Survival was, even while reading, the year's ambition.

In no particular order:

• Hurricane Season, by Fernanda Melchor
• Die, My Love, by Ariana Harwicz
• Cleanness, by Garth Greenwell
• Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, by Elaine Pagels
• Strength to Love, by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Trump, by Alain Badiou
• Freud and Man's Soul, by Bruno Bettelheim
• The Stoic Challenge, by William B. Irvine
• The Art of War, by Sun Tzu, as translated by Michael Nylan
• Beowulf, as translated by Maria Dahvana Headley
• Self-Portrait in Black and White, by Thomas Chatterton Williams
• The Fat Years, by Chan Koonchung
• They Will Drown in Their Mothers' Tears, by Johannes Anyuru
• Ghost Image, by Hervé Guibert
• Dostoyevsky Reads Hegel in Siberia and Bursts into Tears, by László F. Földényi
• Like Flies from Afar, by K. Ferrari
• Everything Flows, by Vassily Grossman
• Fracture, by Andrés Neuman

Of those I re-read, The Plague, by Albert Camus, was the most felicitous.

Of those I added to my library, Dirt Road Epiphanies, by David Treanor, was the most sacred.

Finally: How Fascism Works, by Jason Stanley, terrified me with its unnerving urgency. The hour is upon us. Read this book.

The Cosmic Kite: Diego Maradona, RIP

On June 22, 1986, I learned, in less than ten seconds, to love soccer.

My whole life, imitating my father, I'd hated the sport, mocked it, refused to play it. I called it ping-pong on a football field, an exercise in futility, without elegance — a game for masochists bereft of imagination.

But — some context — in May of that year, I'd been assigned by my church to complete a two-year Christian mission in the Province of Buenos Aires. Upon learning that soccer was a religion in Argentina, I decided to give the sport, by way of the World Cup, a chance. I was determined to claim Argentina as mine — my segunda patria.  I'd read that their star, Diego Maradona, might be the best player in the world, and I made it a point to watch all of their matches.

On that June afternoon, Argentina began its quarterfinal contest with England. Beyond its importance in the tournament, the match was Argentina's chance to exact a measure of revenge for 1982's Falklands War. (Or to suffer further humiliation.) I was sitting on my parents' bed, in Woodland Hills, Utah, watching the match on their bedroom television, my father having requisitioned the bigger, better, family room TV for, as he would have put it, a sport worth watching.

First, in the 51st minute, came the "Hand of God" goal. Which I knew I should disapprove of but couldn't. Its cleverness — its comic genius — was, in a word, Shakespearean.

Then, a mere four minutes later, with the soccer universe still trying to find its equilibrium, came the earthquake, the cyclone, the bolt of lightning, in the diminutive figure — 5' 5'' in boots — of Diego Armando Maradona.

I was speechless. I fell back on the bed and held my face. What I'd witnessed — and I'd spent much of my short life watching sports — seemed impossible.

Not amazing. Not spectacular or extraordinary or marvelous. Impossible.

Merely watching the highlight, which lifts the moment from its context, fails to capture that impossibility. Of course, in Utah, I'd heard the shellshocked commentary of the English commentator, whose flattened tone conveyed its own kind of disbelief. But Victor Hugo Morales' reaction communicates how the world, including England, reacted to what Maradona had done. That does not happen. That was not possible.

Soon, I raced downstairs and tried to explain what I'd seen, and how the channel had to be changed, because maybe they would show a replay, and you have to see it to believe it. And even then you won't believe it!

My awe — an inadequate word for what I was feeling — was met with little more than bored indifference.

No matter. Argentina went on to win the match and, soon thereafter, the World Cup, and over the next two years, traversing the Argentine pampa, I had the honor of catching Maradona highlights in the homes of Argentinian friends. Despite the fact that he was playing in Italy, all of his matches — all of his miracles — were broadcast in Argentina. They watched with reverence and glee. He was theirs. He was doing that, for them, in the world.

Now, soccer — fútbol — is the only sport I watch with any degree of diligence, up early on Saturday and Sunday mornings to catch Premier League matches on NBC. My favorite team changes yearly, depending upon the rosters of the team. I go for the teams that have an American — this year, Pulisic at Chelsea — or for the team with the most, or best, Argentine players. Of course, I always have an eye on Barcelona and Lionel Messi, Diego's inimitable progeny.

And I owe this passion to Argentina, mi segunda patria, and to one man, el "barrilete cósmico," Diego Maradona.

Victor Hugo Morales, in that immortal moment, asked a question the world is asking today, upon hearing of Diego's passing, with wonder and gratitude: ¿De qué planeta viniste?

Es para llorar.

Some Thoughts on the Covid Pandemic

Most people missed this article from The Lancet on the prevalence of Covid antibodies in the U.S. population. I would have missed it myself, in all likelihood, but for one of my students.

Some quick numbers summarize its content:

According to the article — for those who aren't familiar with The Lancet, it's widely regarded as the world's top medical journal — at the end of July, 9% of the U.S. adult population had Covid antibodies. Meaning they had come into contact with the virus.

At that time, approximately 150,000 Americans had died of Covid-19.

These two numbers let us do some straightforward math. I'm going to round these numbers to keep this simple.

Let's assume — reasonably — that if 9% of adults had encountered the virus, that same number of the total population, more or less, had encountered the virus.

9% of 330,000,000 = 29,700,000.

That's far more than the number of confirmed cases at the end of July, needless to say.

Of those 29,700,000, 150,000 had died.

150,000,000 of 29,700,000 = .005

So Covid's death rate (again, rounding) is likely around one half of 1% — five times influenza's death rate.

In other words, Covid's death rate (.005) relative to influenza (.001) appears to match the difference that Donald Trump communicated to Bob Woodward when they spoke about the virus on February 7. He said, "This is more deadly. This is five per- you know, this is five percent versus one percent and less than one percent. You know? So, this is deadly stuff." He correctly noted that Covid-19 is five times more deadly than the flu — but his percentages were off.

So, for simplicity's sake — noting, too, that treatments are improving — let's turn that 9% of the population into 10%. Therefore: we reasonably estimate that for every 10% of the population that gets infected with the virus, about 150,000 people will die.

Again, this is essentially what we saw over the first half of 2020, and what we are still, almost certainly, seeing today.

It would follow, then, that if every American encountered the virus, 1.5 million of us would die — more Americans than have died in all of our wars combined.

That won't happen, however, thanks to "herd immunity," which begins to kick in when around 70% of the a population has been infected. Infection rates would then decrease dramatically; the virus, even with no vaccine, would never reach every American.

Nonetheless, with a 70% infection rate, approaching herd immunity, 1,050,000 Americans would die.

That, in short, is the number we're trying to avoid: one million Americans dead.

Back to the present. As of today, the number killed by the virus amounts to 100 Pearl Harbors, 80 September 11s, two WWIs. By the time Donald Trump leaves office, the total dead will have approached, if not surpassed, the number of Americans who died in WWII.

The virus is an invading enemy, killing Americans at an unprecedented pace. To defeat this enemy, we must mobilize as a nation and agree to make difficult sacrifices. If we refuse, basic epidemiological math tells us that over 1 million Americans will die, many of them avoidably.

In the past, when our country has faced a similar horror — a national catastrophe and many Americans dead — it has asked us to sacrifice our children to eliminate that threat.

I live a few miles from Golden Gate National Cemetery:

There are 137,000 American soldiers buried in that cemetery. That is the history of this country's response to a mortal danger. That is the kind of sacrifice our country has, in the past, asked of us.

In 2020, the nation — local, state, and federal government — is not asking me to sacrifice my sons to fight this lethal threat.

It is asking me to socially distance, avoid large gatherings, and wear a mask. It is asking all of us to endure a period of economic and psychological hardship — in many cases, great hardship. But, let's not forget: our sons and daughters stay home. The nation is not asking us to risk sending our children to an early grave to fight off a threat to American lives. 

In short, the sacrifices that we're being asked to make today in response to a national threat is not comparable to the sacrifices of earlier generations.

Yet many of my fellow Americans are reacting with disheartening outrage when called upon to sacrifice for the common good. Their response does not compare favorably the responses of our fellow Americans to earlier crises.

A vaccine is coming. Until then: socially distance, avoid large gatherings, wear a mask. If the government authorities that we elected, after listening to experts in epidemiology, ask use to stay home, stay home. Doing so will likely save over 500,000 American lives — four Golden Gate National Cemeteries of Americans.

Prior generations sacrificed far more. It's our turn to be patriots.

The Trump Years

I'm at my computer, playing a video game. My face immobile. Fingers clicking the keyboard. For weeks. Months.

Spanish Fork, Utah. My brother Ryan is at the wheel. I'm beside him; in the back seat are my sister Kim, and Aaron, my youngest brother, the one I know least and for whom I feel impatient awe.

We've loaded golf clubs into the back of Ryan's truck; we leave Kim's house, waving at the kids, who are playing in the front yard. William, Aaron's three-year-old, catches sight of us leaving and panics, screaming. He chases the truck, running down the sidewalk after us, crying — terrified.

Ryan stops; Aaron descends and takes sobbing William into his arms and speaks to him reassuringly and disappears into Kim's home, where he deposits William into his mother's arms.

Sahar and I are at a stoplight. This is in quiet Belmont, a mile from home. An old truck pulls up next to us — an '90s Ford, a beauty. I glance at the driver. He is staring — glaring — at us. I look away. Soon, Sahar, who is in the driver's seat, says, "That guy is staring at us." I tell her, "Ignore him." She says, "It's the bumper sticker." And I remember the old "Feel the Bern" sticker that remains on her bumper. "Just ignore him," I say. "Why should I have to ignore him?" she asks. So I look at him and wave. He continues to stare — not at me, whom he disregards, but at Sahar. Until the light changes and he roars away.

Sahar says, "You didn't do enough."

I'm going through my Missionary Journal. And remember being interviewed for a local public access TV station in General Belgrano, in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. July, 1988. The interviewer, who appeared to be something of a local celebrity, asks me, "Who will win the American election?" I'm taken off guard — we were supposed to be talking about my then-beloved religion — and respond by naming my preferred candidate. "Bush, I believe," I say. He shakes his head. "No. Your country is ready for something new."

After the interview, when he shakes my hand, he says, "Always remember, when you vote for your president, you are voting for all of us. The entire world suffers more or suffers less according to your vote."

26 women. One of them, I had met. She was the younger sister of my neighbor in Salt Lake City. He attacked her at a beauty pageant, when she was 21 years old. 

I decide to teach Journey Into the Past, by Stefan Zweig. When I introduce the book, I tell my students something about Zweig's life. "Ultimately," I say, "with the rise of fascism in Germany, when it became obvious to Zweig that his country was lost, he left for Brazil with his wife, Lotte Altmann. They were there for two years before they took their own lives. They left a note saying that they couldn't overcome the despair they felt at what had become of their country."

My students are surprised — embarrassed — to see that I'm crying.

Stupidly, I imagine that if I read all the books, or the right book, peaceful sleep will return, peace of mind will return — I will have unlocked the mystery of what was happening to my country and to people I love. I'll be able to say, "Ok. This is what's happening." Escape From Freedom. On Tyranny. Beautiful Country Burn Again. The Plague. How Fascism Works. How Democracies Die. The Origins of Totalitarianism. I Shall Bear Witness.

Eventually I stop reading. The sleeplessness persists. TV is easier. "The Sopranos." "Schitt's Creek." "The Bachelorette."

On Mother's Day, 2020, I insult much of my family by questioning their decision to meet at a park near their Utah homes.

At some point I tell them — text messaging — that by my birthday, August 2, there will be over 140,000 dead Americans as a result of the virus.

This claim is met with great skepticism.

From that point forward, we no longer speak of Covid.

But as the summer passes, I become obsessed with my prediction. Looking at my phone, following the trajectory of the pandemic, I find myself, to my great shame, wanting more people to die so that I'll be right.

But the virus doesn't care what I want. It merely does its work. On my birthday, there are 146,000 Americans dead. I tell Lincoln, "I told them! Three months in advance, I told them!" Lincoln nods his head sadly.

At work, a new language has developed for consolation, camaraderie. "This chaos." "This circus." "This shit-show." We all know — we imagine that every person in the world must know — what "this" is.

8 minutes and 46 seconds.

Reports that the Amazon is in flames.

I text Sam, "Impressed by how well the NBA bubble has worked."

Finally, after months, we are able to dine indoors again, and we go to Vivace.

A woman at the end of the bar, distressingly tan, slams down her hands. "Trump 2020!" This goes on for a while.

Finally, Sahar says, "Would you mind keeping it down? We're trying to enjoy our dinner."

"Majority rules," the man next to her says. The tan woman says, "This is a bar, we can say whatever we want."

The bartender says, "Actually, this is a restaurant."

"It's not worth it," I tell Sahar, and I watch the World Series on the wall's TV.

The woman is getting louder. Eventually, yes, I turn to look at her. She points at me, says, "Look at him. He eats like a faggot."

A special thanks to:

All for Nothing, by Walter Kempowski.

DAMN, by Kendrick Lamar.

INRI, by Raúl Zurita.

Fetch the Bolt Cutters, by Fiona Apple.

"This Extraordinary Being"

Everything Flows, by Vassily Grossman.

Jorge and David and I are on Zoom, arguing about colonialism, the roots of white supremacy. I hang up on them, my dearest friends.

Often, I sleep through the afternoon. Upon waking, I need a drink but do not drink. I ride my indoor bicycle. I think, Maybe there will be good news, and I put on the news. Soon, I'm back on my bed, staring at the ceiling. I think, I should write something. I should be recording this — what is happening. You see it happening. All those years of reading, which you believed in, which you thought would prepare you to see it. And now you do see it, and you're on your bed, staring at the ceiling.

It's the eve of the election. I have voted. I will change no one's mind. No one will change my mind. But before this ends — before tomorrow, and the inevitable chaos, circus, shit-show — I finally say, too late: I saw it. I bear witness.

The Best Books I Read in 2019

In no particular order:

• INRI, by Raúl Zurita
• Lessons in Stoicism, by John Sellars
• Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, by Olga Tokarczuk
• The Poem Is You, by Stephanie Burt
• The Uninhabitable Earth, by David Wallace-Wells
• Discourse on Colonialism, by Aimé Césaire
• Voronezh Notebooks, by Osip Mandelstam
• Answer to Job, by Carl Jung
• The World Goes On, by László Krasznahorkai
• No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference, by Greta Thunberg
• An Untouched House, Willem Frederik Hermans
• The Empire and the Five Kings, by Bernard Henri-Lévy
• Washington's Farewell, by John Avlon
• This Land Is Our Land, by Jedediah Purdy
• Latest Readings, by Clive James
• Learning to Die in the Anthropocene, by Roy Scranton
• Of Gods and Minds, by James W. Heisig
• The Reactionary Mind, by Corey Robin
• My Sister, the Serial Killer, by Oyinkan Braithwaite
• This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom, by Martin Hägglund
• The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• One Long River of Song, by Brian Doyle
• I Am God, by Giacomo Sartori
• The Ends of the World, by Peter Brannen (audiobook)
• 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, by Yuval Noah Harari
• The Unnamable Present, by Roberto Calasso

The American West

The drive south on I-5 alleviated by an audiobook, Peter Brannen's The Ends of the World —

Until Santa Monica, where Lincoln walked me to Elephante. We ordered Saturday afternoon drinks and looked from the rooftop bar upon the green Pacific. There was no wind; the sunlight was its usual LA golden weirdness; the celebrities around us — aspiring celebrities — laughed with each other, looking up from their phones, with predatory enthusiasm.

I left LA late Sunday. Much of the drive to Arizona was done in darkness, but for the headlights of a 100 mile traffic jam that extended, as I saw it, from LA to Palm Springs. Through the car's speakers The Ends of the World now detailed with awestruck lyricism the Late-Permian mass extinction, when life on earth came within a whisker of expiring.

*

Three days later, in Wellton, east of Yuma, my father's wife, Micha, awoke with a terrible toothache and a swollen left cheek. She called her Mexican dentist. He couldn't see her for a week, he explained, overwhelmed as he was by the rush of American retirees come south for the winter. He prescribed some antibiotics, and we headed for the Mexican border.

Just north of San Luis, we paid $6 to park in an enormous chain-linked lot, among dozens of SUVs and Winnebagos and pickup trucks. I hadn't thought to come to Arizona with my passport, so I stood next to a foot ramp that led to the border and watched my stricken father — his back's flesh reassembled by 125 sutures: surgery for skin cancer — and his stricken sweetheart walk slowly into Mexico.

For 30 minutes I was on the phone with my friend Brad, who lives in Harlem. I told him, among other things, about the dozens of elderly Americans I was watching flow in and out of Mexico. They left the United States more or less emptyhanded — walked, limped, rolled in their wheelchairs — and returned carrying large purple bags of prescription drugs. The majority of them, I observed, appeared to have had their bodies ravaged, over the years, like my father, by America's diet. Some wore patriotic T-shirts or hats, and looking across the parking lot I saw a few trucks and Winnebagos flying American flags.

*

On Thursday night, Dad recommended that I return home via Highway 395, which runs along the eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevadas. I contacted Sam in Chico and asked if it would be a good time for me to visit: 395 to Reno, then west on I-80, over Donner Pass, and north, through Yuba City, to Chico. Alas, he told me, as gently as possible: this being a three-day weekend — thanks to Veteran's Day — he needed, for the moment, some time with his friends.

The next morning, by the time I left Wellton, my little Miata's roof down, the Sonora Desert's air was November-harmless hot and the white-blue sky limitless, without clouds.

Heading west on I-8, I saw, on the other side of the freeway's high fence, a man, a woman, and two children sitting in the sand. Border Patrol officers stood at a distance, beside their green vehicles. I had for a moment the impression that they were all floating on the dunes, wind-caressed, cresting.

By afternoon, now well into California, west of Death Valley, it had become clear that I'd left Arizona too late: the Sierras, finally coming into view, were blocking the sunlight that would have permitted me to see their steep, youthful eastern-slope handsomeness. In shadow they towered, darkening. Soon, the air's high mountain cold forced me to put up my car's roof. I missed the view, I thought — the point of this detour. The world, but for the sky's mist of stars, had gone dark.

*

I stayed the night in Carson City, which my dad had long spoken of as lovely — his favorite city in all of Nevada. I found it full of strip malls, franchises, probably much changed from the town he'd known.

The next morning, the car's roof again down, I took Highway 88 west over the Sierras. Vast granite slopes, scooped by glaciers, cradling pines and high meadows, loomed on all sides, a dazzling, unlikely white. The light thickened as I westered. Leisurely retirees in their Winnebagos, of the same generation that I'd watched filing into Mexico, moved aside to let me pass. The mountains kept coming. The light clean, cleaning, endless sun, pristine —

Stopped now and then along the highway's edge, folks photographed little blue lakes or scanned a plateau's meadow for big horn sheep or black bears. The sky's enormity made smallness comforting. The earth, so old, I'd learned — life — survived, weathering.

Soon: descent, the Central Valley, civilization, and the dazed sensation one sometimes feels after what used to be called a religious experience.

We Are Heartbroken

I imagine that one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, that they will be forced to deal with pain.

— James Baldwin, "Notes of a Native Son"

There I was again this morning, like so many of my fellow Americans: yelling at the television. I happened to be watching CNN, but the channel doesn't matter — what matters is the yelling. By which I mean, if James Baldwin is correct: what matters is the pain.

If only for myself, I want to try to understand that pain. Because it's more than pain, really; it's heartbreak. I am, I have realized, heartbroken.

The source of my heartbreak might date back to November 4, 2008 — the night of Obama's election. I was at Half Moon Bay Brewery, watching, with many dozens of others, including my young sons, the election results. And just after the polls closed in California, Wolf Blitzer formally announced what had become, as the evening passed, increasingly obvious: "Barack Obama, 47 years old, will become the President-elect of the United States."

The next day, I spoke to my mother, a lifelong Republican, about Obama's election. She told me, "I have to admit, when they walked out onto that stage in Chicago, the family, him with his wife and their girls, I wept. It was an incredible sight."

Like so many Americans, the image of that family compelled her — allowed her — to see her country differently. Dr. King had said, "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'" The "one day" that Dr. King had dreamed of, my mother might have thought, had finally arrived. And that possibility could certainly move any American — not just my mother — to tears.

Which brings me back to my pain: the beauty of that moment — the sense of wonder and pride that so many of us, including my Republican mother, felt at that moment — now tastes, for many of us, like ash in our mouths.

So we yell at the television. And rage at beloved family members and friends. We ask, How can this be happening?  That beauty — where has it gone? What have you — we — become?

Of course, after these many months, we have become our rage. And we have watched rage beget rage; and slowly, inexorably, we have, many of us, become lesser versions of ourselves: enraged, deafened, disgusted, in despair.

But the rage is not the point. The pain is the point. So I am trying to think through my rage, to my pain. The pain has nothing — or little — to do, I believe, with a lost election. Lost elections happen all the time. The pain has to do with who we elected. Who we elected forces us to acknowledge: We are not who we thought we were; we are, instead, that.

So we are in mourning, and our grief has turned into anger, as it often does, because we have lost something beautiful: the America, so wholeheartedly yearned for, that we saw on November 4, 2008, when the Obama family walked onto that Chicago stage and told us: This is who we — Americans — are.

To those of you who have felt my anger, or to whom I have directed my anger, even if only through the television: I ask for your patience. Daily, it seems, I pass through the stages of grief: denial; anger; bargaining; depression. I am not yet to acceptance; I do not accept that this is who we are. Of course it is who we are. Yet I do not accept it; I rage at the thought, which is to say, I weep at the thought. I am heartbroken by the thought. And sometimes, I'm sorry to say, I give in to despair.

I suppose some Americans had the same reaction to Obama's election. They thought, That is not who we are. I must confess, I don't know how to respond to such thinking, which might be a failure of my imagination. The beauty of that moment remains, to my mind, incontrovertible. Not least because my Republican mother saw it, too, and I have learned from long experience that when it comes to matters of beauty and decency, my mother can be unreservedly trusted.

In any case, I reassure myself, now and then, with the belief that this moment will pass, that we will remember ourselves, that the pain — and with it, the rage — will pass. Until then, when you witness my anger, try to see past it, to my pain. I will try to do the same with you. The pain — the heartbreak — is what really matters, what we must deal with, if we hope to look at each other — at ourselves — with wonder and pride again.

In Memory of Francois Camoin

The MFA program in San Diego was a disappointment. I called my undergraduate mentor, Darrell Spencer, to talk to him about the University of Utah's writing program, where Darrell had gotten his PhD. Darrell said, "I'll call Francois."

A few days later, Francois invited me to his home. "Bring some stories," he said. "The more, the better."

I brought five or six pieces — not enough, I quickly perceived — and watched with alarm as he dismissed them, one-by-one, out-of-hand: "It's a good thing you got out of San Diego," he said, dropping them onto his coffee table.

The last story he lingered over. It was the oldest work I'd brought with me, written at BYU for Darrell's class. "This," Francois said, tapping a page. "Work on this, don't ruin it, and submit this. This is writing."

I took his advice and a couple months later learned that I'd been accepted into the U's fiction program.

Immediately, his became the voice that most mattered to me — a voice I hear to this day: when I write, when I read, when I teach. His almost imperceptibly gentle hand guided me through my doctoral program; at crucial moments, he said incredibly kind things to me about my work, about my thinking — although I could always tell (bemusement being one of Francois' default modes) that he found me charmingly odd, an incurably Mormon American boy, or American Mormon boy, who by some absurdity of fate had read more than he should have and was now living through the consequences.

Over time, along with a couple of my dearest friends, he gave me the moral courage to try to reinvent myself — a struggle for reinvention that continues to this day, I suppose.

Some specific memories:

Breakfast with him at the Village Inn, where he liked to go because he could smoke with his coffee, a story of mine between us, soon-to-be-ignored, so that we could talk about photography.

A fiction workshop during my second year, when, in near-despair at the banality of our peer editing, he went on one of his glorious rants, blaming our banality on the fact that we were holding class in the Language Arts building. He then decided, clearly on-the-spot — "so that maybe you'll start to think like artists instead of academics" — that from that week forward, until the end of the semester, all of us were to go on Saturday mornings to the art studios on the top floor of the Fine Arts building, to practice figure drawing: "With luck, you might learn how to see, how to pay attention. Until that happens, we're wasting our time."

The liberating discovery that much of his personal library was made up of pulp fiction. When, once, I asked him why, he said, "Because the authors aren't trying to sound like English butlers."

The morning when, walking with me to class, he learned that I did my work on a Windows machine. "Of course you do," he said. "Because you're a Protestant. Umberto Eco wrote about that."
     With my next student loan I bought my first Mac.

When he said in a fiction workshop: "I don't want your epiphanies to happen in Tuscany. I want them to happen at a 7-Eleven in Nebraska."

And, for me, most importantly: What he said to me just after telling me that I'd passed my exams. Today, if I could, I would tell him: Francois, I've become something of a ruin, which you no-doubt would have found interesting, possibly inevitable, but I've never forgotten what you said to me then — it has carried me through many dark hours. And regardless of what becomes of me, I won't forget your bemused generosity, or your passion or your art. You changed my life, or gave me the strength to change it — which is, in the end, the same thing.

He sometimes warned me to be careful of certainty, but of this I'm certain: when I say that he changed my life, when I say that I'll never forget him, I speak not just for myself but for decades of students and friends.

Mary Oliver, RIP

Below, in honor of her passing, a poem she wrote that once spoke for me.

A Pretty Song

From the complications of loving you
I think there is no end or return.
No answer, no coming out of it.

Which is the only way to love, isn’t it?
This isn’t a playground, this is
earth, our heaven, for a while.

Therefore I have given precedence
to all my sudden, sullen, dark moods
that hold you in the center of my world.

And I say to my body: grow thinner still.
And I say to my fingers, type me a pretty song,
And I say to my heart: rave on.

– Mary Oliver, Thirst

The Best Books I Read in 2018

In no particular order:

• Anatheism, by Richard Kearney
• Battling to the End, by René Girard
• New Poets of Native Nations, edited by Heid E. Erdrich
• Songs of Kabir, translated by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra
• Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, by Neil DeGrasse Tyson
• Feel Free, by Zadie Smith
• Shyness and Dignity, by Dag Solstad
• It All Adds Up, by Saul Bellow
• The Way of the World, by Nicolas Bouvier
• All for Nothing, by Walter Kempowski
• Swansong 1945, by Walter Kempowski
• Why They Can't Write, by John Warner
• Monsters, by Karen Brennan
• Half-Earth, by E. O. Wilson
• The Kingdom, by Emmanuel Carrère
• Why Orwell Matters, by Christopher Hitchens
• Why I Write, by George Orwell
• The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis
• Selected Exaggerations, by Peter Sloterdijk
• Reclaiming Conversation, by Sherry Turkle
• On Murder, Mourning, and Melancholia, by Sigmund Freud
• Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson
• Bitter Green, by Martin Corless-Smith
• The Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Love as Human Freedom, by Paul A. Kottman
• American Sonnets for my Past and Future Assassin, by Terrance Hayes
• Building a Better Teacher, by Elizabeth Green
• The Art of Loving, by Erich Fromm
• No Name in the Street, by James Baldwin
• The One by Whom Scandal Comes, by René Girard

Theory of the Novel, by Guido Mazzoni

The collapse of Socratic metaphysics, of theology — the death of God, or the gods — and science's dismantling of the concept of the soul have deprived ethics of any claim to absolute truth.

The novel has replaced ethics with aesthetics as the principal justification for life and the source of transcendent meaning in the world. It returned meaning to life by positing, as an absolute value, the aesthetic value of each life in its unfolding. Our lives, according to the novel, are not meaningful to the extent that they are good or evil but because of their particularity (by which we mean freedom): however contingently, we live, desire, fail, triumph, survive, in our own little ways, in the broader chaos that followed from the death of God (a chaos, of course, that had always been there, but hidden from view by the gods we had made to disguise it).

By the gods' collapse we are returned to life: the novel has mapped our return and recorded our efforts to live alone, in the Real. Those efforts, to the extent that they are free, are beautiful: the novel presupposes that they are beautiful or it would not exist.

All for Nothing, by Walter Kempowski

I bought All for Nothing out of habit some months ago: it had received exuberant reviews in the New Yorker, in The Guardian; and I still like to think of myself as someone who buys novels that receive exuberant reviews.

But upon buying it, even before buying it, I undoubtedly thought, Why bother, Eric? You'll never read it.

After all, there are, in my bedroom, in my living room, high stacks of novels I've bought and not read. The thought of reading them fills me with dread. I've done so much reading over the years! a lifetime of reading. I can't bear it any longer, this more-of-the-same.

But for some reason, back in July, I picked up All for Nothing. And — a small wonder — I didn't, after a few pages, set it aside. I was taken by its fragmentary structure, by its innovative use of free indirect discourse, by its wry humor, by its author's eye for the right — but not too right (if there is such a thing) — detail.

I read it on a flight to New York, and spoke glowingly of it to my friend there, and I read a bit more of it upon returning home. And then I got to Chapter 12, which is called "The Offensive," and I stopped reading.

The novel concerns itself with the Russian Army's assault on East Prussia during the final weeks of World War II. That assault begins on page 174 of a 343-page book: so, at the book's midpoint. The first half of the book focuses on the daily — mostly inconsequential — rituals of a single German household in Mitkau, not far from Konigsberg. We get to know the occupants of the household, with their various idiosyncrasies, small dreams, schemes, pleasures and secrets. And we know, as they proceed with their small lives, what's coming: unimaginable horror.

I wasn't equipped, in early August, to witness the horror. So I stopped reading when the Russian offensive began.

But yesterday, feeling, for reasons I can't explain, stronger than usual, I picked up the book, and over the last 24 hours I finished it.

Now, this afternoon, I've decided to begin to recuperate — "to regain," "to take back" — myself (my self) by writing this note: All for Nothing is an absolute masterpiece, one of the best novels I've ever read, a joy, devastating, and a clear-eyed affirmation, despite all, of life and the world's beauty. It will be read, I hope, for as long as novels are read.

I don't know yet if passing judgement on the book in this fashion will help me recuperate from what it has done to me. Probably, it occurs to me, I shouldn't want to recuperate. After all, when I was a boy, and strong, I read to be changed forever. Reading should still, I hope, have that kind of power, if one can — will — let it.

Sam Treanor, 2017-2018

The Best Books I Read in 2017

In a mildly particular order:

• Compass, by Matias Énard
• Agamemnon's Daughter, by Ismail Kadare
• Escape from Freedom, by Erich Fromm
• Theory of the Novel, by Guido Mazzoni
• Love as Human Freedom, by Paul A. Kottman
• In a Lonely Place, by Dorothy B. Hughes
• Dark Ecology, by Timothy Morton
• Almost No Memory, by Lydia Davis
• The Blind Owl, by Sadegh Hedayat
• Men We Reaped, by Jesmyn Ward
• Kingdom Cons, by Yuri Herrera
• The Last Wolf, by Laszlo Krasznahorkai
• Translation as Transhumance, by Mireille Gansel
• Exit West, by Mohsin Hamid
• The Moth Snowstorm: Nature and Joy, by Michael McCarthy
• On Tyranny, by Timothy Snyder
• Perfect Wave, by Dave Hickey
• Lives Other Than My Own, by Emmanuel Carrère
• Like Death, by Guy de Maupassant
• Satchmo: The Genius of Louis Armstrong, by Gary Giddins

Joyous applause and a special mention for two extraordinary new translations:

• The Odyssey, as translated by Emily Wilson
• The Golden Ass, as translated by Sarah Ruden

TFTD

But you have in [in The Deerslayer] the myth of the essential white America. All the other stuff, the love, the democracy, the floundering into lust, is a sort of by-play. The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.

— D.H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature

What Kind of Country Elects Donald Trump?

A country that has transformed its primary and secondary schools into dreary exercises in standardized test-taking.

A country that has transformed its colleges and universities from schools of rhetoric, science, and the arts into job training centers that leave new trainees with no guarantee of employment and often with crushing debt.

A country whose most recognizable heroic role models come from comic books written for newly pubescent males.

A country that eats, as its primary diet, addictive fake food, and, as a consequence, has tens of millions of citizens who are chronically ill.

A country that regularly advertises and airs human cage-fighting on its major television channels, during primetime family programming.

A country that enjoys, as its definitive leisure-time entertainment, a grandiose art-form that regularly propagandizes fascist values—the glories of violence and militarism; the sexiness of centralized corporate-nationalist power; the moral goodness of physical beauty—and that regularly stylizes, to its delight, images of its own apocalypse.

A country that has re-labelled decency, civility, and kindness as "political correctness."

A country that has been erotically dulled by the newly ubiquitous presence of joyless, loveless pornography.

A country that claims as its favorite sport a brain-destroying gladiatorial battle, run by a multi-billion dollar corporation, in massive arenas, between drug-enhanced, heavily-armored, faceless members of its poverty class.

A country that no longer turns to professional journalists for news and information but relies upon a single corporation's personalized "newsfeed," which has been specifically designed to reinforce the particular beliefs of each reader.

A country that refuses to see a commonly-organized, commonly-shared defense against illness and accident as a social good.

A country that uses science to create vast wealth, extraordinary luxury, and unprecedentedly long lifespans, while openly and unapologetically dismissing the most important scientific discovery in its history: that its lifestyle is rapidly destroying the global ecosystem.

A country that represents 4.4% of the world's population yet incarcerates 22% of its prisoners—and that, as a matter of legal practice, regularly executes some of those prisoners.

A country in which its college-aged population spends, on average, eight hours a day looking at a cellphone screen.

And, lastly, ironically, a country that rejects, for the only political office beholden to the general population, the actual vote of the general population, and relies instead upon a Constitutional gimmick put in place at its founding to secure the support of those citizens at the time who practiced human slavery.

Donald Trump Has Changed My Life

Because of Donald Trump, I must now re-think everything I teach about effective argument.

Old Lesson: Avoid ad hominem attacks. Insulting your opponents does not disprove their claims.

New Lesson: Insult, early and often, your opponents' appearance, gender, real or perceived disabilities, religion, and economic status. Ad hominem attacks effectively shift your audience's focus toward that aspect of your opponents' physical or social selves that are most vulnerable to prejudice or mockery, allowing you to draw your audience's attention away from the force of their argument.

Old Lesson: Be specific. Avoid generalizations and vague phrasing. Logical arguments are most effective when they're focused and coherent.

New Lesson: Specificity is your enemy. It exposes you to the difficult process of actually having to prove what you say. Vague generalizations permit your audience to hear what they want to hear in your speech, without the distractions of evidence, examples, or countervailing facts.

Old Lesson: Stick to the facts. Don't make obviously or easily debunked claims.

New Lesson: Lie whenever you'd like. Arguments built upon fabrications, distortions, and uninformed speculation save you the time you would otherwise spend researching your topic. More importantly, audiences find a willingness to baldly lie fascinating. They are likely to view an unapologetic liar as a courageous leader, practicing a kind of honesty that a person who is determined to be honest fails to comprehend.

Old Lesson: When proven wrong, acknowledge your error and correct it.

New Lesson: Never retreat from any position you've taken, regardless of its validity. Do no apologize for your error: embrace it, declaim it with even greater conviction. If your opponent continues to expose your error, revisit the earlier lesson on ad hominem attacks.

Old Lesson: Support your claims with evidence from credible sources.

New Lesson: Your claims should be, as far as you're concerned, self-evidently true. The need for evidence in support of a claim delegitimizes the claim. After all, you are making the claim, aren't you?

Obama's Second Term, Success or Failure?

Days after President Obama was re-elected, my dismayed cousin, a vocal conservative, posted a request—I've copied much of it here—on his Facebook Timeline.

Just an open letter to all my friends and family who voted for president O'Bama. From here on out I am asking just a little favor. I would like to know how I am suppose to measure his successes.... You create the criteria and then stick by it. YOU tell me what success is in O'Bama's presidency so that I can measure it.... How will you have me measure it? Starting ...NOW. Oh... and by the way...not opinions... source each "success" with an article that supports your statement that he has succeeded in the categories that you have previously defined.

Earlier this week, I remembered that I'd responded to his appeal. I couldn't recall what I'd written, however; so, out of curiosity, I looked up my response, to see if, in fact, the president, whom I have come to regard as an extraordinary success, had met my criteria for success as I'd set it forth on that particular day. A year remains in his presidency, of course, and history makes clear that anything can happen, just about. Nevertheless, below I've pasted what I wrote, formatted here as an organized checklist, with my evaluation of his performance. I have provided links for the sources in support of my evaluation, as my cousin requested.

Measurement 1

By the end of Obama's second term, I would like Romney's effective tax rate to be at least as high as mine. I don't think that millionaires should be paying lower effective tax rates than the middle class, as they often do now. I would like to see a simpler, more progressive tax code. Under Eisenhower, a Republican, the maximum marginal tax rate was a staggering 91% (yet Obama is called a socialist). Under Nixon it was 70%. Under Reagan it was 50%. Under Clinton it was 39%. Obama wants to return us to Clinton. That seems, at a minimum, eminently reasonable.

Outcome: Taxes are still lower than they should be for the wealthiest Americans, but they have gone up, and Romney's effective tax rate is now, in all likelihood, at least as high as mine. Therefore, Success.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/31/upshot/thanks-obama-highest-earners-tax-rates-rose-sharply-in-2013.html

Measurement 2

I would like human-driven climate change, which is a scientific fact, to be addressed with the seriousness it deserves in our national political conversation. I would like to see a carbon tax in order to fund renewable energy technologies going forward. It's nonsensical to base the future of one's civilization on a nonrenewable, rapidly deleting resource. (I'm not confident this will happen, I confess. About half the country thinks of science the way I think of Zeus.)

Outcome: The Paris Accord is an historic step forward. No carbon tax, however. Therefore, Partial Success.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/world/europe/climate-change-accord-paris.html

Measurement 3

I would like the private sector to continue to grow, as it did under Obama, and I would like the public sector to continue to shrink, as did under Obama—both trends representing a 180 degree change from trends under Bush. Obama-specific policies, after all, have increased the federal deficit less than any president's since Eisenhower—most of the spending under Obama first four years was driven by policies (like food stamps) put in place long before he arrived, in response to an economic crisis that he didn't create.

Outcome: Private sector jobs have grown dramatically under Obama, but public sector jobs have now begun to grow as well, very slightly. Therefore, Partial Success.

Source: http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2016/01/public-and-private-sector-payroll-jobs.html

Measurement 4

I would like see my brother's right to marry the person of his choosing to be recognized as constitutional right.

Outcome: Success.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/27/us/supreme-court-same-sex-marriage.html

Measurement 5

I would like to see national incarceration rates decline.

Outcome: Success.

Source: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/feb/23/eric-holder/federal-prison-population-drops-first-time-3-decad/

Measurement 6

At present 1% of the population owns 83% of all stocks. I would like to see that number go down. If it does, that would suggest that the middle class's economic power is expanding, which it hasn't done since Carter.

Outcome: The wealthiest Americans still own most stocks, but stock ownership has grown among middle-class Americans, slightly. Therefore, Partial Success.

Source: http://www.gallup.com/poll/182816/little-change-percentage-americans-invested-market.aspx

Measurement 7

I would like to see access to healthcare continue to expand. In this regard I follow Churchill, the 20th century's greatest conservative: healthcare is a national security issue and should be treated as such. The government is responsible for national security. Restricting that role to external enemies while disregarding internal enemies—which kill many more of us than external enemies—makes no sense. Your neighbor living or dying shouldn't be an opportunity for personal profit—it should be seen as a communal, moral responsibility.

Outcome: Success.

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/proportion-of-americans-without-health-insurance-dropped-in-2014/2015/09/16/60915d4c-5be5-11e5-9757-e49273f05f65_story.html

Measurement 8

I would like to see a fair, humane solution to immigration.

Outcome: Obama has used executive orders to mitigate the destructive effects of our inhumane immigration policies. But executive orders are not a long-term solution. Therefore, Partial Success.

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/11/19/your-complete-guide-to-obamas-immigration-order/

Measurement 9

I would like to see us pull back from our role as global police force and continue to expand our commitment to diplomacy. I would like to see defense spending decline. I believe that Eisenhower's warning about the military-industrial complex representing a direct threat to the health of our democracy has, sadly, gone unheeded.

Outcome: Obama has favored diplomacy over occupation and global policing, he has declined to enter into a large-scale ground war in the Middle East, and he has cut defense spending. Therefore, Success.

Source: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2015/dec/14/politifact-sheet-our-guide-to-military-spending-/

Measurement 10

I would like to see us continue to cut our nuclear arsenal.

Outcome: Fewer warheads, but a commitment to modernize our nuclear arsenal rather than radically cut it. Therefore, Partial Success.

Source: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/subjects/nuclear/

Measurement 11

I would like to see Obama include conservatives in his cabinet. I expect that one of them will be John Huntsman.

Outcome: Not the person I had in mind, and ultimately something of a failure, but Obama gave me what I asked for. Therefore, Success.

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/officials-obama-to-nominate-hagel-for-defense-brennan-for-cia/2013/01/07/22db7d4e-58c2-11e2-beee-6e38f5215402_story.html

Measurement 12

I would like to see Obama continue to behave with dignity and decency in the face of hysterical and baseless claims about his politics, his personal history, and his love for this country. I suspect that some of this hysteria is the product of racism, frankly.

Outcome: Success.

Source: The last seven years.

Measurement 13

Which leads me to my last wish: that the views of Obama and his supporters be treated as the reasonable consequence of intelligent people who want to see this country prosper. We are not Fox News's idea of us. I'm pretty sure that Republicans aren't MSNBC's idea of them. So I hope Romney's supporters proceed from the premise that Obama and his supporters are people of goodwill, with an idea of America that is optimistic, patriotic, and pragmatic. It's true that many of us aren't taking orders from Romney's God. But we respect your right to do that, and we appreciate your point of view, insofar as it doesn't mischaracterize who we are and what we stand for.

Outcome: Despite all of the above, Abject Failure.

Source: My cousin's Facebook Timeline.

In summary: Obama has achieved either Success or Partial Success in all twelve measurements.

In other words, I have, like tens of millions of other Americans, gotten what I voted for. Well done, Mr. President.

Patrick Willis

After Sammy's Pop Warner football team won the West Coast Championship — this would have been 2010 — the 49ers invited his team to appear on the field before one of their home games. It's hard to miss Sam's white hair:

During the pregame warm-ups, the boys lined up along the sideline to watch. Players for both teams came and went. Eventually the boys were escorted onto the field and introduced. Someone sang the National Anthem. The boys then marched in single file to the sideline, to be escorted from the field. Prior to their exit, one player — only one — came over and gave every one of them a high-five: Patrick Willis.

I don't watch football much anymore. Given what what it does to the players, it has lost much of its charm. But I used to love watching the game and always loved watching Patrick Willis. Since the day he arrived in San Francisco, he has been — was — the best player on the team. He is, as far as I'm concerned, the greatest middle linebacker of his generation.

And I've come to believe that there is a connection, however small, between his gesture that day — his thoughtfulness — and his greatness. How ironic, I thought then, that the best player on the team is the one who thought to come over and congratulate those little boys. But perhaps it's not ironic at all. Perhaps it's all of a piece. The same character, the same attention to detail, that made Patrick Willis football's best linebacker for nearly decade also made him pause to come shake my son's hand.