Musings from Brian J. Noggle

Sometime on or after seeing my aunt Mary on a recent trip to Wisconsin (How recent? Ten years ago), I learned that she spent time in India as a girl (her parents were missionaries?). I thought that was interesting, and I did some Internet stalking (I’m not close enough to most of my paternal family to, you know, just ask about it), and I spotted this book on Amazon and ordered it (in 2019). So it’s been sitting on my to-read shelves for six years for a moment just like this, where I would be still trying to work up the gumption to jump back into the C.S. Lewis Space trilogy.

I was not sure whether this book was by my aunt or not. The Amazon page for it is not helpful. My aunt and other family members never mentioned it. And as I got into it, I realized: No. Not my aunt, so not a close relation but probably somewhere in the distant chain (probably not as close as my rich cousin who died).

So: This book is a story of her faith journey told through journal entries and connective writing. Ms. Noggle had a tough life. She was orphaned early, raised by a grandmother until the grandmother, too, died when Ms. Noggle was fifteen. She was raped by a carnie in her youth. Her brother died in Vietnam. She had a lot of distrust and anger in her, but she eventually found her way back to (the Catholic) church. But even though she started going to church and praying in her 20s, she still had ups and downs in her relationship with God (and Jesus), especially when her close sister dies in the 1980s from breast cancer.

It would be oversimple to say that the book is but a litany of hardships interleavened with letters (to God, to therapists), journal entries, and prayers, although that is the basic structure of it. But it’s a strangely compelling account, a testament and testimony, about the ups and downs of faith in hard times. And even with the ups and downs, she makes progress to a better and stronger faith through the book. I expected her to become a nun at the end of the book, but that wasn’t the case.

The self-published book is 208 pages, but the text is double-spaced throughout and prayers and letters are indented, so it’s really far shorter than that. A quick read and inspirational in its way.

But, yeah, not my aunt.

I mentioned that I was reading a book by Yogi Berra, and not one I’d read before (well, I searched my blog, and I’ve only read When You Come To A Fork In The Road, Take It and The Yogi Book). I liked them well enough that I bought this book at ABC Books in 2023 for $5.95. Baseball books are right above the martial arts section (when ABC Books even has a martial arts section–it sells out quickly even when I’m not buying them all).

Both of those books came out a decade later than this book, which came out when Berra was still coaching (not managing) the Houston Astros or shortly thereafter, which means parts of the book might have been written whilst he was still coaching and parts after. Still, it does impact the scope and flavor of the book, which is almost an oral history from Berra about his years playing (almost 19) and managing/coaching (almost 25 after his playing days). So it reads a little as a transcription of a stream of consciousness with history and life lessons kinda bound up and then grouped into chapters which have topical titles that are only tangentally related to what Yogi talks about in each. And the chapters are broken by “Other Voices” which is, again, fairly unstructured reminisciences about Berra by other baseball people–with, sometimes, as much stage information about where the reminisciencer was when talking to the unnamed interviewer (Tom Horton, probably) or how difficult it was for the interviewer to get a couple quotes about Berra from the other figure. Berra repeats a couple of bits/facts and drops the name Milton Friedman because he had dinner with him once (which is recounted at the beginning of the “Milton Friedman” chapter)–apparently he was very proud of their conversation. Was that the mythical parenthetical with parentheses followed by a parenthetical with an em-dash? You betcha! Bask in it, gentle reader. Bask in it.

So: This is a mid book in his career. He had a couple in the early 1960s as his playing days were winding down. This book as his coaching/managing days were winding down. And then around the turn of the century and beyond, his later books which are more enjoyable as they’re structured better.

If I see the other books in the wild, I’ll pick them up. Because he was an interesting figure: A native St. Louisian, a participant of the D-Day invasion at Normandy, a winning ball player, a winning coach, and a public figure who was probably misunderestimated for much of it (but appreciated as a scamp in his dotage).

Not long after we saw Herb Alpert in concert last month, I asked my beautiful wife what trumpeter living or dead she would like to see or have seen in concert (Wynton Marsalis was her answer, and as he’s still touring with the Jazz at the Lincoln Center Orchestra, we might have the chance to see him sometime–preferably if they bring Ashley Pezzotti along as a vocalist–oh, and my answer to the question is Maynard Ferguson). So as I read this book, I asked her what baseball players she has met or would like to meet. She hasn’t met a baseball player although she was quite the Tigers fan in the early 1980s. I think the only one I’ve seen in person officially was Pete Vukovich, the Brewers pitcher, who has at a table at some convention I attended in my college years (although we did see Willie McGee at the box office of a movie theater once, but we didn’t bother him as he was trying to pick a film to watch). She really didn’t have an answer to someone she would like to see or meet, and I guess my choice would be either Berra or Ozzie Smith (who’s still around, so you never know).

At any rate, I will definitely keep my eye out for the Berra books I am missing, although I bet it will be hard to find the early books in the wild without ordering them. And is it so weird that I think I can hear his voice? Or maybe I’m hearing George Burns voice and thinking it was Yogi Berra.

No, it’s his voice. Probably cemented by the AFLAC commercials.

I picked up this book in a bundle of chapbooks in April 2024. These little chapbooks, especially the non-poetry ones, have to fit in a certain place in my reading schedule: Mostly, when I finish a book with a couple of hours before bed and when I don’t want to dive back into the growing stack of my incompletely read books beside the chair. As it happens, this week I had just such an opening after finishing National Lampoon’s Jokes Jokes Jokes.

This story–it is a short story in a single volume, saddle-stitched–originally appeared in The New England Magazine in January 1892. The fact that it has been reprinted in 2018 indicates that it has some value to professors somewhere, and apparently, according to my research (reading Wikipedia) indicates it’s “is regarded as an important early work of American feminist literature for its illustration of the attitudes towards the mental and physical health of women in the 19th century. It is also lauded as an excellent work of horror fiction.”

Re-eee-ally.

I mean, it is a horror story: A doctor takes his wife to a quiet home for three months because she’s exhibiting some, I dunno, depression, and she’s in a big old house with him and someone to help, and she stays in a large room on the top floor that looks kind of like a nursery but with some scarring and damage. The room has the eponymous yellow wallpaper, which disturbs the woman further. Although they tell her she’s doing better, she feels more lethargic as the story goes on, and she starts seeing people in the gardens below and a woman trapped in the wallpaper, and as they are readying to depart, she embraces her madness.

There you go: Embracing madness as female empowerment.

My research (reading Wikipedia) indicates that this story might be a little autobiographical (presumably without the embracing madness part), and that the author was speaking against “The Rest Cure” which I guess what they did when well-to-do women in the late 19th century showed some of the less florid mental illnesses (meloncholy, lethargy, and so on). So the author was probably dinging something near to her heart and very contemporary, and somehow that has spoken to over a hundred years’ worth of feminists.

Not a half bad period horror piece. Not as almost inaccessible as Lovecraft. More akin to Poe. Or Algernon Blackwood (whose collection I abandoned and will likely not pick up again). So if you’re into that sort of thing, I guess this is a book for you. Or source material for a college paper on women’s mental health in literature or something.

I guess you can expect to see me find other books that “fall into” this evening reading gap as I’m only at 54 books for the year, and it’s almost September.

I bought this book this spring, which meant it was piled high on my existing office bookshelves until I put it on the single unread shelf on my new office bookshelf. And when it comes to dodge reading the increasing pile of meh or long (and sometimes meh) books beside my reading chair, I have recently turned to this shelf for my next book since it’s right there and it’s not an overwhelming selection.

At any rate, you might recall, gentle reader, that I’m a sucker for National Lampoon-badged movies such as Dirty Movie, Adam and Eve, and Holiday Reunion, and Black Ball (some more than others). I might have had a subscription to the magazine in the late 1980s, but I was less impressed with it.

This, though, was a bit of a breath of fresh air.

It’s grouped by the, what, butt of the jokes? Women, Men, Cats, various nationalities, and so on. It’s got its share of dirty jokes, Dirty Johnny jokes, and things that play upon old stereotypes (but are funny if you replace Polack with Cletus–as a matter of fact, one of the longer chapters is Rednecks). And, to emphasize their versatility, a couple of jokes are actually repeated in different chapters with the nouns changed.

Basically, it’s Dirty Movie in its original form.

Not all of the jokes are dirty or offensive; several of my favorite talking dog jokes make an appearance (and I’ve seen them in Readers Digest as well). But for the most part, not something you’re going to drop into your speech in the 21st century, even if you’re speaking to a Fraternal Order Of of some sort.

So I was amused with it in places and had a couple of chuckles. Because I’m probably every ist in the book except resist, and I grew up on The Official Frank O. Pinion Dirty Joke Book, Blazing Saddles, and my own father’s crude at times sense of humor. So I was not offended. Your mileage may vary. But if you are offended, you’re probably not the type to be reading books anyway.

The back matter of the book lists a large number of National Lampoon Books titles, which I will pick up if I can. And the very last page is a promo for a movie coming out in 2007: National Lampoon’s Bagboy. Bloody heck, I might have to order that.

How timely is this book even today? After I wrote up this post, Baldilocks shared one of the jokes from the Asians chapter on Facebook:

When I bought this book in 2018, I mentioned that my beautiful wife loved the books. To prove her point, she recently re-read this book (not this copy, which is mine, but her copy which is a well-re-read hardback). So when I was looking for another “short” book to read in between chapters of C.S. Lewis’s Perelandria (which has been very, very slow to start), I settled upon this paperback which has images from the Matt Damon movie on the cover. Judging by the uncracked binding, this book was not read and re-read by its original owner. I also mentioned when I bought the book that I had listened to one of the original books on audiocassettes back when I was commuting a lot to Columbia, Missouri, and back. But I was not familiar with the way the book began, so I think it might have been The Bourne Supremacy.

So: Well, this certainly is the longest Executioner book I’ve ever read.

This is the first of the Bourne series, and it starts with an unnamed man get thrown into the Mediterranean Sea just before a boat explodes. He is recovered by fishermen and is nursed back to health by an alcoholic doctor. But he has amnesia and does not know who he is. The doctor finds a piece of microfilm on him that gives him a way to access money from a Swiss bank. When he’s feeling well enough, he goes to Zurich to claim the money and finds that some people want to kill him. He hooks up with a Canadian economist who helps him, and his memory comes back in plot-helpful fits and starts. He might be a killer named Cain! He might be Carlos, the most notorious assassin in Europe! He might not even be named Jason Bourne! Set pieces, he plays cat and mouse with Carlos’s employees, and then suddenly a black ops organization in the United States government wants to pull him in, and the book pivots to him running from them, and….

Well, meh.

I mean, it’s awful damn wordy. We get pages of different players talking to each other to lay out plot points or to speculate on plot point to somehow build tension through gasbaggery. I complained about the same thing in Shōgun. And then we get the protagonist wigging out when memories and sensations coming flooding back. A bit overused and overdramatic.

I mean, it’s a long book, but the writing is not especially deep with description or characterization, although modern thrillers I’ve read like Lee Child tend to be thicker writing but not any more real depth to it, just words. Somewhere there’s a sweet spot, and I probably don’t write that way myself. Probably because the same voice critical of these books is critical of my writing while I’m writing. “How’s that next novel coming?” you might ask. It is not, thanks.

But I read one of my mother-in-law’s favorite books this year (A Tale of Two Cities), and I slagged on it. Now I’m slagging on one of my wife’s favorite books. Maybe I just don’t have anything nice to say about anything. But that’s what bloggers are, ainna?