Musings from Brian J. Noggle

I bought this book in May 2008, when I was young and life was good. Little did I know I would be reading it in the hellscape of 2024 almost sixteen years later. Did I say, “hellscape”? Damned autocorrect! I started typing “2024 Winter Reading Challenge.”

Originally, I’d planned to use this book in the Historical Fiction Outside the U.S. category as it was slightly historical fiction when it was published in 1928. Set in World War I France, it tells the story of a group of school boys who enlisted in the German army together and who end up on the front lines in France. The first-person main character, Paul, has a bit of a poetic soul, and one can imagine him keeping this as sort of a diary although the book doesn’t mention that–but I seem to remember that the 1979 television movie adaptation had John Boy writing in a little book (but I could be mistaken, as I saw that film in school while it, the adaptation, was fairly new).

The book details how the group goes through training with a sadistic leader, and then they go off to the front. The book details the conditions on the front, in the trenches, and how the soldiers lived. It zeroes in on a couple of incidents: A charge over the top; Paul’s month-long liberty, when he visits his home and family a changed man; Paul’s presence on a reconnaisance which traps him in a shell hole when an attack comes, leading to his stabbing a French soldier and watching him die; an interlude where the group guards a supply depot in an evacuated village and get to live well until the French advance; Paul’s trip with a comrade to a hospital after they’re wounded, and then finally the return to the front, where the group dies one-by-one until Paul dies right before the armistice.

So the book kind of blends themes from The Red Badge of Courage along with Night Thoughts of a Classical Physicist. Anti-war with insights into German deprivations during the war.

Paul demonstrates enough admiration and affiliation with an older soldier to likely have kept students in homoeroticism theme papers for decades, but not enough to slot the book into the LGBTQ+ Character category, so I’ll put this into Made Into A Movie/TV Show, although ever the pedantic, I feel like I’m cheating because this has not been adapted into a movie, but it has been made thrice into films or a television movie. None of which I have seen in over thirty years.

This, of course, was the first book I read for the 2024 Winter Reading Challenge. Although I could try to slot it into the Western Setting category, it is a Western, albeit one set in the thirties and actually northeast of here. So, no, definitely Published in 2023, and perhaps the first book that I’ve read from 2023. Perhaps the last, although I will likely pick up other works by local authors published last year. So perhaps I should not be melodramatic.

Like previous books, this book picks up immediately after the events in Murder at Morse Mill. The same scene. The bad guy from an even more previous novel has interrupted Christmas dinner with revenge on his mind. As he holds a knife to Chet Harbinson’s daughter’s neck, her boyfriend, whom the bad doctor coshed outside, comes in and kills the intruder with an Indian war axe but loses consciousness from the coshing. Uh, spoiler alert for Murder at Morse Mill there. Chet and his family try to load the boy up into his truck to take him to St. Louis in a blizzard for medical care. They cannot, but the German man who owns the mill comes by with his stronger truck and takes him.

So Chet is wracked with self-doubt and worries that the doctor must have had an accomplice to help escape Leavenworth, where he was incarcerated. So he’s a wreck when a working man laboring for a mean cattle rancher dies one night–well, it’s murder, as the book shows us whodunit: the ne’er-do-well son of the rancher who wants the property promised to the working man and his family to give to a mob-connected man to settle gambling debts. The mob man wants it to build a slaughterhouse he can use to launder mob money. When someone kills the ne’er-do-well son, Harbison and his deputies try to find out who–and the laborer’s son admits to the crime to protect his mother, whom he suspects did it.

The book has other subplots and series business, and it’s a pretty good read. I’m not fond of the book picking up immediately like it’s the next chapter of the last book, as sometimes time passes between reading books in the series (although I read this book but a month after the previous installment). It still takes a bit for the reader to get back into where the last book left off exactly. And, unfortunately, this book ends on a cliffhanger note. Actually, it’s not a cliffhanger–if you didn’t know there was a DUN DUN DUH! coming, you would just expect the book denoued.

I picked this book up from the free book cart at church; it has the name of our former pastor’s father in it, which probably means that this book has made it through two trips through the seminary before coming to rest on my read shelves. I picked the book up and started reading it before a service where my beautiful wife was early to warm up either her horn or her pipes, and it (the book, not her horn) never landed on my to-read shelves. Although it did take me a while to go through it as it was lost in the car or a bag for a couple of weeks, and later I left it at a different campus of the church after arriving early so my wife could practice with the choir before a cantata, and I stuck it under my chair (the newer campus does not have pews) and forgot it after the cantata. So that’s a nice story. Have you noticed I’ve stopped stuttering?

This book, one of a series, collects a number of essays/papers on the history of the Old Testament. It talks about how some of the stories match or mirror stories in other Mesopotamian cultures (such as the flood story appearing, for example, in the the epic of Gilgamesh). It talks about different kinds of Jewish literature, including poetry forms and wisdom literature. It talks about other books that do not appear in the official canon, but how they inform it a bit. They talk about the Septuagint (the translation of the Jewish canon into Greek) and how it influenced the Jewish canon itself (and the canon that would be part of the Christian bible).

The book is part history, part literary criticism (it talks a bit about how different types of literary criticism and interpretation have informed the canon) as well as part theological practice as it talks about both Jewish and Christian worship uses the various parts of the Old Testament.

So I ate it up, of course. I find this sort of material fascinating (see also On The History of the Bible: The Making of the New Testament Canon and On Lost Christianities: Christian Scriptures and the Battles over Authentication by Professor Bart D. Ehrman (2002)). Sometimes I almost wish I studied this rather than read it and forgot most of it soon after (although the same is probably true of things that I studied in college). Have I ever told you that I was almost a triple major in college, including theology with the English and Philosophy? No? I’d say it’s a long story, but it is not.

I picked up this book in Wisconsin last year in 2022. One would have thought I would have picked it up before now, but it was lying atop books double-stacked on a shelf and pushed back. I am pretty sure it resurfaced when I pulled out the books on Brett Favre and Danica Patrick which were in a similar position (if not actually stacked with this book).

The book is a product of its time: Nick at Nite was hitting its peak, perhaps as older people retreated from the encrassinating sitcoms of the 1990s. The author made appearances on the network starting in 1992 with “Why We Watch” segments and appears on the Bob and Tom Show. But he appears to be a real therapist and his Web site has material on other subjects. So make of it what you will. But one could not as easily find common cultural representations in television after that era as the explosion in cable (which made Nick at Nite possible) led to a diffusion and fragmenting (try not to imagine both metaphors at once, gentle reader, as it might cause you to need therapy) of characters and television shows so you might talk about Blossom and someone who watched Sister, Sister might not understand (although I pulled those examples of 1990s sitcoms out of the air and didn’t look it up, so it’s entirely possible that they aired consecutively on the same network, immediately demolishing the point I was trying to make, but you’ve probably learned by now that I write these book reports quickly, on-the-fly mostly, and sometimes a week or more after I read the book, but you’re not here for deep insight into the book, but my asides and parentheticals, ainna? Hello? Hello?). Friends aside, what might remain a touchstone for current and preceding generations? Come to think of it, are current generations watching television at all? So, yeah, not a book that would be written in 2013 much less 2023.

Amazon reviewers aren’t sure whether to take the book seriously or not, and I can see why. The book has a light tone to it, as it is a pop culture book, but it has just enough actual therapy-style talk to make you wonder if maybe it’s serious (the classification on the back cover is HUMOR/TELEVISION, so probably not too much). Its chapters include “Television and Self-Esteem: Herman Munster or Mary Richards”, “Television and Codependence: Lassie’s Disturbed Unconscious”, and “Television and Dysfunction: We Are All Jethro” (to name a few, that is, the first three past the introduction). Each describes some personal problems and then riffs a bit on them, framing them in the terms of shows that would appear on Nick at Nite (they probably extend whatever bits he might have done on the network). My boys are unlikely to know who Mary Richards and Jethro are. They might know Lassie. And although they probably do not know who Herman Munster is, they can sing Rob Zombie’s “Dragula.” But Rob Zombie, too, is an old man.

So I can see how the metaphors of the different characters might be useful in some sort of Jungian analysis, perhaps, as the myths and stories we tell ourselves or to which we gravitate reinforce the internal stories we live by. Which is how the book can look serious. But it constantly refers to tele-therapy institutes, papers, and research studies with outlandish addresses or locations to underscore that this is not to be taken seriously, and certainly people who cite these papers should not be made presidents of prestigious universities.

It’s not Make Room for TV (which I read 20 years ago–how long have I been doing this?)–but that’s good, as that serious scholarship was a slog. This book, though, carries the joke of teletherapy, the gag which probably worked in short doses on television and on the radio, too long. But it was built to capitalize on that one gag at that one moment in time, and it must have, since I am at least the third owner of this book as it appears to have two separate used bookstore prices inside the front cover–I presume someone bought it at full price and then turned it in for store credit–although the first sticker is for Half Price Books which today is a chain handling unsold leftovers from first-run book stores, so perhaps this copy was never sold at full price.

At any rate, I am enjoying idle speculation on the provenance of this book as well as nostalgia/speculation on the time when it was published than reading the book itself. So take that as you will.

I got this book at ABC Books at the first (I think) of the writers’ group group signings I went to in November 2022. I don’t mind telling you that those are the expensive book signings, as I buy one or more books from all of the authors present. Plus often other books. So I definitely prefer the single author signings.

This book has a healthy display at ABC Books, or has in the past–I’ve often seen it and thought about picking up a copy, and eventually I did. I thought it would be about the author’s dog or a novel about a dog, but it’s actually about a real dog who amazed parts of Missouri with his intellect. Not tricks; the owner would tell the dog to find the man with the red hair, and the dog would; the owner could spell out words in the request, and the dog seemingly understood; and if asked in French to go to the Ford automobile, the dog would. He was examined and tested by members of the University of Missouri staff, and they could not determine how he might be doing it. They never mention whether the dog could do it without the owner present, which would have certainly ruled out responding to cues from the owner, but perhaps they didn’t think of that, or perhaps that was the trick and not part of the legend.

Jim the Wonder Dog is still the pride of Marshall, Missouri, with a Web Site which includes a shop where you can buy this book, a museum, and a park with a statue of Jim.

It’s a short book–60 pages plus end matter including photos and references. To be honest, it kind of inspires me to write similar, short form popular history books on a single subject. Heaven knows when I wrote my piece for History magazine fifteen years ago (!), I thought I could mine the compendia that I read (or read) for tidbits, research them, write about them, and make a living at it. Of course, I was still thinking in print in those days–today, I would be thinking I would do short videos or podcasts on them and make a living at it, but somehow the video form seems cheap and easy and ultimately uninformative, but perhaps I’m just tangentally exposed to what my kids watch. Still, it might have inspired me to try my hand at it.

The book has copious sources listed for each chapter of the book, and it helped clear up something for me. I thought I had just read about Jim the Wonder Dog somewhere, and the probable source appeared: Rural Missouri magazine, which my electrical co-op sends to me every month, had two “recent” articles on him noted in this book: one in 2010 and one in 2014. So it’s possible I read one or both of those articles and thought I read them recently; it’s possible that I did read one of those articles recently because I pulled the old magazine out of the depths of the old magazine drawer (some of whose back issues arrived new around the turn of the century to my home in Casinoport or Old Trees before being moved to Nogglestead); it’s also possible that Rural Missouri, keeping with its schedule, published a more recent article on Jim the Wonder Dog which I read in a more timely fashion. Instead of speculating, I did a little research, and an article entitled Pawprints on Our Hearts indicates the magazine had a story on Jim the Wonder Dog in the May 2020 issue. So I could have read the articles when they first came out, in reprint, and recently.

So a nice little book. Suitable for young readers, but it’s not really a kids’ book. Or maybe it is and it’s just suitable for older readers, too, but that thinking leads to Harry Potter, which I am trying to avoid.

As you know, gentle reader, the year is winding down, and I tend to cut my annual reading list off the week after Christmas sometime. So I thought that this book, which I purchased in 2021, would make a fitting fin de siècle. However, I have previewed the 2024 Winter Reading Challenge, and it begins on January 2, so I might as well count the books that I finish before then as 2023. It will help pad my anemic total for the year if nothing else.

Long time readers will know I have been a big fan of Dave Barry since I seemingly stained a borrowed copy from Smurphy in high school. Although those keeping track would say, “If you’re such a big fan, Brian J., why haven’t you delved into his work since that audio book in 2020?” Maybe I’ll allude to that a bit by-and-by.

In my defense, I have also reviewed:

• Best. State. Ever. (in 2020).
• Insane City (in 2016).
• Dave Barry Does Japan (in 2011).
• Dave Barry Turns 40 (in 2011).
• Homes and Other Black Holes (in 2009).
• The Shepherd, The Angel, and Walter the Miracle Dog (in 2009).
• Dave Barry’s Only Travel Guide You’ll Ever Need (in 2009).
• Dave Barry’s Gift Guide to End All Gift Guides (in 2007).
• Big Trouble (in 2006).

Suffice to say, I’ve been a fan for a long time. Although I do not remember the last words my father spoke to me, I remember the last thing Barry’s father said to him (he, the father, wanted some oatmeal). So take it for a given that I’m a Dave Barry fan, okay?

Well, that’s a lot of pixel inches in self-defense. What of this book?

This book starts with a preface which abbreviates history in Dave Barry fashion (a longer treatment of American history appears in Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States, Smurphy’s book that I might have soiled with snack food when it was brand new) and then reprints Barry’s year-in-review columns/articles from 2000 to 2007 (skipping 2001, as the events of September were too recent for him to be funny). Read fifteen years on, the book astonished me both with “That was twenty years ago already?” (Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Kelly Clarkson wins American Idol in 2002, and so on) as well as “That was twenty years ago?” The latter stems from how many names from the headlines today appear in gags from the turn of the century. I counted 7 jokes about Donald Trump whose role on The Apprentice kept him in the cultural zeitgeist back then. But, like so often happens, I found 6 jokes about Joe Biden late, presumably based on his performance in the Senate when confirming Bush appointees in the latter’s second term. We have gags about Vladimir Putin and Robert Mueller, the iPhone, and other things as familiar today as they would have been when the jokes were fresh.

As I have mentioned (just recently–see above) that I am a Dave Barry fan from way back, I have to wonder how he “hits” with the younger generations. I mean, he spends the preface goofing on history, and I appreciated the jokes, but I wonder how much of an outlier I am because I was a bit of a nerd in school with a great degree of retention and speed of recall that led me to dominate the chapter-review Jeopardy!-style quizzes in the Western Civilization class that Smurphy and I shared. I know a lot of history that my boys do not and probably won’t ever. Plus I am not sure that the style of humor has wide appeal in 2023. Dave Barry actually retired as a regular columnist in 2004 (continuing to do his annual reviews and gift guides, though). That long ago.

I probably wonder about this every time I read a Dave Barry book, but he might well be the last American humorist with wide reach. I mean, I know that Roy Blount, Jr., is still churning out monthly columns and Doug Larsen is still working–or they were the last time I had subscriptions to magazines where they plied their trade–but Barry had reach, and eventually had a television show based on his life. Starring Harry Anderson, for crying out loud. I am not sure anyone could ever recreate that. Certainly not in print.

It looks as though Barry, like many other authors (Hiaasen, Pearson, and so on), turned to young adult books in the 21st century, which was a good business move as the YA market was just about the last refuge of big-selling books. It also means that I probably won’t find them at book sales since I don’t hit the children’s books sections (and the old, unsorted book sales for the Friends of the Christian County Library and Friends of the Clever Library seem to have gone by the wayside). But I still have plenty of other Barry titles to discover in the adult humor sections because he was pretty prolific in the 80s and 90s.