Musings from Brian J. Noggle

I got this book at ABC Books about a week ago, and I jumped right on it. I read it quickly because there’s not a lot of text to it, although perhaps more than in the actual Tao Te Ching.

The author is a Taoist Jungian psychoanalyst, so you can probably expect what you’re going to get: Presentation of Elvis as an archetypal Taoist king. The book consists of an introduction that stresses this, followed by 42 “chapters” (one for each year of Elvis’s life). Each chapter consists of a theme title page with an epigram, three or four quotes from the Tao Te Ching or other Taoist thinkers, three or four quotes from or about Elvis, and a couple paragraphs expounding on the theme. Themes include things like Knowledge and Wisdom, Home (Graceland), Innocence and Play, Work, and Success and Failure (see how important the serial comma is in that list, people?).

At any rate, it’s as much a book about Elvis as it is the Tao, really. Most of the bits of Taoism are taken out of their context, but after reading the Tao Te Ching, I can say they’re probably more appealing and understanding that way, without the next line that doesn’t really follow. That is, I read it more to see what Elvis said that the author of this book pulled out more than I read to see what the Taoist thinkers said.

I think the author tried a little too hard to tie the concepts together, and given the publication date (2002), I can’t help but wonder if he missed the sweet spot of capturing an audience with relevant knowledge of and appreciation of Elvis. Even my friend who used to be an Elvis impersonator is past that now, and he held on into the early part of the century (although living near to Branson, I know there is still some need and draw for them). And about the cover: Is that a yoga (Hindu) pose?

Which is not to say there aren’t lessons in the book: It introduced me to some Taoist thinkers beyond Lao Tzu, so it’s worthwhile in that regard, I suppose.

In other news, this book quotes the one book I have ever read on Elvis, Caught in a Trap by Rick Stanley. Although not as cool as when one philosophy book I read refers to another I’ve read, the cross-reference in my head is still somewhat cool.

This book is the second in a row from the Executioner series that has an intricate plot, but this one was a bit more intricate than the writer could handle.

In it, Bolan is in Las Vegas. As he’s making a probe of a hard site, a bunch of ninja come charging out of the house carrying a woman over their shoulder. It’s ninja from the Yakuza who have come to hit the a Las Vegas mob boss, and they’ve carried away a woman reporter he was interrogating. Before they can interrogate her themselves, Bolan steps in and rescues her. She’s writing a series on the mob for the local paper, and somebody wanted to silence her. Turns out that she’s the granddaughter of the old Jewish mob boss who was neutered by the mafia but who was kept on as a hotel manager. He goes way back with the paper’s publisher, and the grandfather has plans of his own to cut down the mafia with his own imported mercenaries. And there’s the Yakuza moving in.

So there’s a pretty intricate plot going on with several moving parts, people with their own agendas, and whatnot. The author cuts between some of the players to get their thoughts on their next move, so it’s a bit more complicated than the books told solely from Mack Bolan’s point of view.

Unfortunately, the complicated build up is solved, ultimately, in a couple of basic Gold Eagle paperback set piece shoot-em-ups that really diminish what was going on and end it a bit abruptly.

The plot could have been so much more, but in the end (the abruptish end), it’s 180 pages of what it is, not what it could be.

Still, it’s keeping the series interesting.

I have a bunch of Reagan-themed books in case my 1980s nostalgia kicks in. This book is one of them, and to be honest, I picked it because it’s pretty slim, and I needed a quick read amidst all the Eastern philosophy I’ve been reading of late.

Although the book proclaims to be examples of Reagan’s wit, it looks to be a quick means to capitalize on his recent election (given the publication date of 1981, it was rushed to press within months of his inauguration). So the actual wit in it is ill-considered. We get some one-liners from earlier in his political career and his governorship, but many of them fail to stand alone without the context. Some of them are not much more than “Aw, shut up.” (Reagan responds to some hecklers.)

Once we get into the presidency, though, we get fuller stories with paragraphs of setup before the wit, so they’re better. I’m not sure whether that’s because the wit was more recent or because the presidential papers are more complete. But they were better.

So it’s not like it’s laugh-out-loud funny. Or even amusing for the most part. But it does provide a bit of a reminder how tough a Republican political figure and elected official had even in the good old days of the 1960s or 1980s which lends itself to perspective on the present day’s troubles. Which is something the people of the present day often lack, perhaps by design.

(I guess my 80s nostalgia has flared from time to time already: see previous Reagania Remembering Reagan and Dear Americans: Letters from the Desk of Ronald Reagan.)

I picked up this book from the library not long after reading Tao Te Ching. I mean, why not? I’ve also read a couple books on Buddhism recently (Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Start Here Now, and Buddhism Through Christian Eyes) and Tao Te Ching. Why not touch on that other large Asian religion, Hinduism?

Like the Tao Te Ching, I think I might have read this book before, or at least parts of it. I did have a class on Eastern Philosophy, after all, which I denigrated at the time because Father Naus (not Nous because how cool would that have been) used to stand at the lectern, holding the texts, and saying “I don’t understand that, but maybe that’s the point.” Now that I’m a little older and have read more of them, I can understand his point of view and think maybe he’s right.

This book includes many but not all of the things called “Upanishad.” The book includes:

• Isha Upanishad
• Kena Upanishad
• Katha Upanishad
• Prashna Upanishad
• Mundaka Upanishad
• Mandukya Upanishad
• Taittiriya Upanishad
• Aitareya Upanishad
• Shevetashvatara Upanishad

It’s kind of like reading the psalms of Hinduism. The Vedas are earlier works, I remember from my class, and these are later poetical reflections on them that are also canonical.

At any rate, many of them talk about the basics of Hinduism, including the form of Brahman, the eternal, and the Atman (the bit of eternal incarnation that is the individual self) (I think). Some of them refer to the gods lower than Brahman, but you don’t get a cohesive Western style of narrative or lyric. Some of them have a bit of it, but mostly they’re designed to spur reflection and meditation.

Reading this, one cannot help but compare the impression of Hinduism to Buddhism that I got from the other things I’ve read. Both depend heavily upon meditation to get in touch with the inner self, with the Brahman/Buddha nature that is eternal and present within oneself; however, Buddhism is very much about renunciation (Buddha’s first four thoughts are that want creates suffering, so renounce wants), but Hinduism, at least in some of the Upanishads, is about celebrating the things you eat and whatnot. Although I guess that one often thinks of Hindu ascetics, so there must be some strains of Hindu thought that talk about renunciation. That stuff must come from other writings.

Although I delved into this book with some relish, by the time I got two thirds of the way through I was pretty fatigued with reading it. Partially, that stems from reading other speculative primary texts like the Tao Te Ching and this book on Ancient Near East primary texts I’ve worked on a bit. But cumulatively, I have to wonder how many more Eastern thought books I will get through before my current interest in them wanes. I predict…not many.

It seems to me that I knocked some of the non-Pendleton Executioner books recently in a book report on something else, but I can’t find it now. But I was pleased with this book because its plot differed from the simpler Bolan Invades A Hardsite plots that so many earlier, non-Pendleton books were.

In this book, Bolan gets himself thrown in jail to break out a small time crook targeted by the KGB for assassination. While inside, Bolan gets into some trouble with other inmates and gets a little help from his wheelchair-bound cellmate. A vigilante band called the Savannah Swingsaw breaks Bolan before Mack can execute his own escape plans. So Bolan has to break the targetted kid out before the assassins can get him. Once he does, he finds that the Savannah Swingsaw’s crimelord adversary has found them at last, so Bolan has to help them clean the crime syndicate up, too.

The plot, as I mentioned, was fresh and different, which made the book a better read than some of the other recent ones in the series, and I’m looking forward to picking up a couple more in the future. As in “reading the ones I have”–I have a pile enough left that I’m in no hurry to acquire more. Maybe someday.

I picked up this book after Perfect Dark was an answer to a question at a recent Geek-centric trivia night, and I did not know the answer. Of course, because I’m encountering this book as a book and not a video game, I probably won’t have it in the proper context should I ever be asked about the franchise again. On the other hand, it’s a book that I get to count towards my annual total.

I thought I recognized the author’s name. I thought perhaps he was one of the authors on the The Starcraft Archive, but I was mistaken. I remembered the name, vaguely, because he’s the comic book writer who last year said that Wonder Woman, canonically, is gay. Which is kinda overreach, if you ask me: If you’re just a small contributor to a canon, you don’t get to pronounce ex cathedra things that cover the canon which began before your birth and might well continue after your death. But I don’t tend to write in existing mythos because I’m a control freak.

At any rate, I guess this book is a prequel to the game series, but I’m less clear on the game mythos than I am on the modern DC mythos (this research notwithstanding). But as a standalone book, it’s all right. It’s set in a corporate future, the kind where the big corporations have replaced nations, have their own armies, and have re-written international law to the benefit of the corporations. One organization, the Carrington Institute, is working to expose wrongdoing among the corporations, and it has working for it a woman named Joanna Dark (of the game title). A young Mary Sue, she’s very good at fighting and shooting and whatnot.

So when one of the corporation’s CEO disappears, it triggers a race for his successor, and it comes down to a woman programmer-turned-executive and a doctor with a pharmaceutically enhanced henchman. The Carrington Institute prefers one over the other, and it looks to help her by finding a mysterious blackmailer who has information on the other candidate, who might have triggered a global pandemic.

There’s a lot of corporate intrigue going on, people not knowing what other peoples’ angles are, and so forth. Then there are some action set pieces which lack a certain amount of verisimilitude (people flipping up tables or ducking behind sofas in a firefight kinda thing).

But, as I said, it was okay.

And if you’re wondering, is there room in this other canon that the writer is working in for gay characters? Well, there is a moment where a woman touches another woman’s face tenderly, so all indicators point to yes. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But if you’re known more as an outspoken person than a writer, people are going to be more sensitive to your outspokenness than to your writing, and that’s not a good thing for your reputation as a writer qua writer.

So, how does it stack up on the scale of books from video games? Better than The Dig, not as good as HALO: First Strike and most of the aforementioned Starcraft Archive. There are probably more in the series, but I’m not sure I’ll run out to get them.