Wallace Books

This is a well written book and provides both a depth and breadth of understanding into the development of indian boarding schools established in the 1800s.

This was a pretty good book about American Indians and the whole boarding school experience. David Adams really brought the experience to life. The only downside to this book is that I think he tried to cover too much. He covered a great span of time and the book was pretty long and got a little slow at times.

I read this for a class and enjoyed it very much. It is one of the best I have read for Native Studies. There are many facts and other pieces of information that I had not found in other books.

This all too true account of the reeducation process which American government officials euphemistically had Indian children go through is very chilling. It is maddening to believe there were people in Washington who actually considered such treatment of kids to be 'good policy'.

While reading through this book, I was gennuinely driven to tears. The tactics which were used on the kids were what was 'savage'. Ethnocentrism and racism kept the United States government and its representatives from seeing the Indians as a civilized and advanced society.

The primary and secondary sources which David Wallace Adams cites emphasize that the 'pupils' were not naive and passive victims of these abuses. Predating the American Indian Movement of the 1960's and 1970's, they resisted the 'education' which these schools were trying to shove down their own throats.

This book was recommended to me by my academic advisor, as it is considered an important and influential treatise on the subject of Native American education. David Wallace Adams, in his groundbreaking book, "Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928," shows how the case for education was made. First, Euro-Americans believed that the older generation of Indians was incapable of becoming civilized and were too attached to their old ways to change. The youthfulness of Indian children meant they could still be saved.

Secondly, education quickened the process of cultural evolution from savagism to civilization. Isolating the children, many felt, would help to reduce the influence of their tribes and their traditional cultures. Lastly, education helped prepare the Indians for self-sufficiency.

I really enjoy this book as it is extremely well written. Adams, unlike some historians, did not use too many jargons and his writing is easy to understand. Adams also provided background information for readers who are not proficient in this subject matter. In addition, "Education for Extinction" was heavily researched and well-documented.

I read a review of this book, and was hoping that it would be a little more in-depth. The daily thoughts are OK, but the prayers aren't as in-depth as I thought they'd be. This book reminds me more of a specialized Upper Room. It's not terrible by any means, just not what I was hoping for.

"Living Loved" is Peter Wallace's best book to date. It is honest, down-to-earth, thought provoking and challenging.

I have studied the Bible (and other texts) for years - and have never been a fan of traditional "devotional" books. That is, until I encountered Wallace's. Of the five of his books I've read - this is the best.

"Living Loved" is based on the gospel of John. Each "lesson" contains a biblical text, Peter's insights and a prayer.

The biblical texts are quoted from "The Message" - a translation which is both accurate - and yet speaks to the reader in everyday terms that are difficult to ignore. Peter then shares stories - often his own experiences or those of his friends. He then suggests the practical implications of the text - what might happen if we were to take it seriously.

Peter then closes each lesson with a prayer. Often, it is a very different prayer than I would have chosen - because Peter doesn't let me get away with something "wishy-washy". Rather, his prayer speaks directly to the core message of the scriptures and their specific challenge and implications to my life.

I was given Living Loved as a present from a dear friend for my 50th birthday. It is a powerful, beautiful and soulful book that I return to often.

Vice President of the Atlanta, Georgia Alliance for Christian Media Peter Wallace presents Living Loved: Knowing Jesus as the Lover of Your Soul, a heartfelt tour of Jesus' overflowing love as seen in the scripture of the New Testament. Offering in-depth reflection upon Jesus' words, emphasizing on the glory of knowing, experiencing, and sharing His love, Living Loved quite literally lives up to its title. "When we live in his love, experience it as real, and let it overflow our hearts and spread to others, there can be no doubt that we too are disciples that Jesus loves."

Peter Wallace probably knows more about great preaching, these days, than anyone else in America, because he works with many of our greatest preachers in producing the weekly Day1 radio broadcasts -- and in developing the Day1 web site, as well.

What he has learned is that the most important spiritual messages are sincere, interwoven with compelling stories and directly address the daily lives of ordinary men and women -- folks like you and me.

Peter begins the book by admitting that this 90-day journey through lessons from the gospel of John -- with Peter's reflections on the nature of love -- were the direct result of an especially painful period in his own life. What was that painful period? It doesn't really matter. What matters is that most of us hit periods like this in our own lives.

I've read hundreds of spiritual books over the past couple of decades and have an eagle's eye for false assumptions and spiritual bravado that says more about the writer's pride than our needs as readers. And, so, it is high praise from me to say: There is not a single false note in this book.

The daily readings are short -- but there's great strength here that builds through the weeks we spend with Peter and his meditations on what it means to love -- and what it mean to let God love us. That may be the toughest section of his book for many of us. And, then, he carries us forward in the final third of the book to the calling we all have to share God's love with others.

The extensive background presented for the cities and the schools may get tedious to the casual reader, but for anyone involved with the schools and their football programs, it is a wonderful read. I was delighted to find a complete replay of the game. Wallace's description of De La Salle and its program is very accurate, and shows the effort he put into understanding everything about it. I enjoyed the insight into Poly and its program; since Wallace is a Poly grad, I'm sure his description there is even more accurate. It is also enlightening to see the bigger picture, the way competition with St. Louis of Hawaii and with Mater Dei helped to shape the events. I was there for most of it, and he's right on. Bravo.

One Great Game is an interesting chronicle for those who like high school football. The analysis of the longest winning streak in history in any sport would be enough in itself. Indeed the game account seems less important than discourse on social and economic differences between the featured schools and their students. Though the writing is ponderous at times, I learned a lot about the nature of high schools in other states - for instance most of the perennial powerhouse football teams are from private schools. The character sketches of players and coaches is good, but I still would like to know how to pronounce Bob Ladouceur's name. Cover notes on the book say it is "an engaging cultural history about twenty-first-century American life." I submit it is, instead, a cultural narrative about life in California. Where else would you find players, when gunshots erupt in the neighborhood, react by citing the type weapon being fired, then resume practice as if nothing unusual happened. Going in, I expected the story would convince me that California high school football is the best played anywhere in the U.S. Despite the author's conviction that California has not just the best but probably the second- and maybe third-best teams anywhere any given year, I came away figuring teams from my state and others would fare well playing the Golden State schools. Had there been more interstate games, I doubt The Streak would have happened. I give the book 3 stars because I consider it about midway between the most and least enjoyable books I've read. Oh yes, if you're buying it, suggest you get the September 2005 edition that includes epilogue and afterword rounding out the story.

Don Wallace did an excellent job profiling the stark differences between De La Salle and Long Beach Poly, creating much more interest in the game and it's outcome. Whether you are a fan of DLS or Poly, you couldn't help but come away with a greater appreciation of the other school. Yes, it was One Great Game, and it was One Great Book.

Don Wallace's account of the first ever high school football championship game is frequently riveting, and always insightful. In the chapters leading up to the Game (An October 2001 matchup between #2 Long Beach Poly and #1 Concord De La Salle)Wallace proves himself more than able to juggle two disparate narratives, managing to track the players and football programs at these two perennial powerhouses while capturing the social dynamics of the towns in which they reside.

At first, the towns seem diametrically opposed: Concord is a predominantly white, upper middle class suburb; Long Beach is an ethnically diverse community replete with gang warfare and violence, as well as Wallace's alma mater.

But Wallace, it's clear, does not buy in to the American Dream vs American Nightmare pitch. Poly, it turns out, is an academic as well as a football powerhouse, a diamond circumscribed within the rough streets of Long Beach. And while the students at De La Salle may be economically priviliged in comparison to Poly's, they are also burdened by heavy expectations (A 116 game winning streak on the line)and must dedicate themselves completely to football.

One Great Game concludes with a vivid account of The Game itself, often digressing into a play by play account. It's during these moments that Wallace's intimate familiarity with the two teams, as well as the game of football, comes across best.

I highly recommend this book, not just to football fans, but to anybody with an interest in contemporary American society. You won't mistake One Great Game for a PHD thesis--its far too interesting and well worded--but you may find yourself admiring the poignancy Wallace discovers, or creates, from our best, quintessentially American sport.

This book chronicles the first-ever meeting between the #1 and #2-ranked high school football teams in America. In October of 2001, #1 Long Beach Poly, a Southern California powerhouse with a long, storied tradition, alma mater to a record 50 past and present NFL players, played host to #2 De La Salle, a Catholic all-boys school from the upper-class suburban town of Concord, CA, home of the nation's longest football (and perhaps all team sports) winning streak, which, before the Game, stands at an astounding 116 games.

Prior to this game, no #1 and #2 teams had ever met in head-to-head competition, which always beggared the question, "Who's REALLY #1?," since most, if not all of the USAToday's Top 25 high school teams would end up the season undefeated.

Long Beach is the "most diverse city in America," a sprawling city of 425,000 sandwiched between monstrous L.A. to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the south. It has a long and rich history, much of it less-than-sparkling, where waves of immigration, first of blacks, Hispanics, and Japanese in the early part of the 20th century, then of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Central Americans following upheavals in their respective homelands, made for a boiling brew of racial tension. Despite all this, Polytechnic High School, located in the decaying heart of downtown Long Beach, is a shining beacon for the whole community, not only as an athletic powerhouse, but as an academic springboard to prestigious colleges. in the 2001 season, the Poly Jackrabbits have perhaps their most talented team ever, with 5 players ranked among the 100 best high school players in the country.

Concord, California, is a wealthy, mostly white, upper-middle-class suburb in the East Bay Area, populated by the professional, educated types who toil in nearby San Francisco. De La Salle is an exclusive all-boys school where tuition is $7,200 per year. The De La Salle Spartans are coached by a living legend, Bob Ladouceur, who since 1979, has lost only 14 games in his entire career, and none since December of 1991.

The book takes two parallel stories, one of Poly, the other of De La Salle, focusing on the players, coaches, families, and overall atmosphere of each school and community, before intersecting them at the Game, which is described in bone-jarring play-by-play detail. You can almost imagine listening to the game on the radio, the play-by-play is so well-written.

The Game was billed as a sort of David vs. Goliath, with De La Salle playing the part of David, traditionally undersized but winning on the basis of suberb coaching and relentless conditioning, and Long Beach Poly playing Goliath, with massive offensive and defensive lines and Division I college talent populating every skill position. However, when reading about each program, the reader gets the impression that instead of David vs. Goliath, it's more like Godzilla vs. Mothra, two unstoppable juggernauts heading toward a climactic Battle Royale. And ultimately, that is exactly what it is - simply one of the finest battles between two programs of the highest caliber in the biggest game of their lives, and possibly the lives of many others.

I was very satisfied with this book. If you like football, sports in general, or just like a thrilling and consuming read, this book delivers.

The Palm at the End of the Mind is the book referenced by Harold Bloom in his great study: Wallace Stevens, The Poems of Our Climate. Bloom's book attempts a full commentary upon nearly all of Stevens' poetic canon, and might prove to be helpful to understanding this difficult poetry. Palm does contain works not found in his Collected Poems, and it seems to be much cheaper in used condition than when I bought it years ago. If you want to undertake this journey: get Palms and Bloom and good luck -- the journey is worthwhile.

I was totally ignorant of Wallace Stevens until I came to Yale and took Professor Harold Bloom's course "How to Read a Poem." American poetry, as I, a Chinese student of a non-English major, understood it, is Walt Whitman, T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. In contrast, Wallace Stevens's name was strange to most Chinese intellectuals till recently. Even in his native country his rise to a canonical status was not immediate. Eliot's The Waste Land and Stevens' Harmonium debuted around the same time, but the former took all the spotlight. A mysterious "X" recurs in some of Stevens's letters and poems. This "X" refers to no other than Eliot, which may reflect a degree of frustration on the part of Stevens. Not until his late years did Stevens slowly but surely receive the recognition he deserved. A lagging effect in cross-lingual translation and interpretation may explain Stevens's relative invisibility to the Chinese audience. In addition, Stevens, especially in his later years, was highly meditative and philosophical, at times difficult and obscure, which also affected his accessibility to foreign readers.

Professor Bloom's class first initiated me into the force and beauty of Stevens's poetry. What intrigues me is that Stevens lived a double life. He was an insurance lawyer in profession and a poet in private, and seemed to have no difficulty alternating between the two seemingly incompatible roles. Just like his work is so original that they defy any easy label, Stevens's life is so eccentric that he contradicts the stereotype of what a poet is supposed to be like. This is particularly astonishing in the eyes of the Chinese, for in our tradition commerce and poetry have very little in common. Chinese poets are easily associated with scholars, officials, hermits, monks, artists, but it is hard to think of any example of successful poet-businessmen.

I especially love "The Poems of Our Climate," a short piece written in 1938, when the poet was 59 years old. It was a number of years on from "The Idea of Order in the Key West." For Stevens, it was a central poem. Stevens's poetic odyssey spanning over half a century was punctuated by two puzzling breaks: in 1898-1900, Stevens, a Harvard student poet, contributed regularly to Harvard Advocate. After he left Cambridge for New York, his poetry writing stopped short. After a complete silence of seven years when Stevens was struggling with his business career, in 1907 he began to present love songs to his muse Elsie Moll, and his creative faculty seemed to return. In 1923, Stevens, at the age of 44, finally published his first volume of poems, Harmonium. The book's poor reception and its author's growing domestic and corporate responsibilities almost led him to abandon poetry again. For four years Stevens published little. Not until 1929 did Stevens resume poetry writing. Like the Irish poet W.B.Yeats and the Chinese poet Du Fu, the bulk of Stevens's best work was not done until his late years. Interestingly, these three literary lions unanimously fall in love with the fall season: Yeats admires the trees in their autumn beauty in "The Wild Swans at Coole"; Du Fu composed a cycle of regulated poems under the general title of "Autumn Meditations"; Stevens' last major poetic endeavor is no other than "The Auroras of Autumn." These pieces actually reflect the poets' "autumnal personality." As they are approaching that season of their life, their works become increasingly sophisticated, retrospective and sublime. The following lines from John Keats' "Ode to Autumn" might be particularly pertinent to their situations:

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,

"The Poems of Our Climate" was written in this "autumnal period" of the poet's life, thus belonging to the poetry of maturity. It is in three numbered sections. There is a break between each of the sections.

I
Clear water in a brilliant bowl,
Pink and white carnations. The light
In the room more like a snowy air,
Reflecting snow. A newly-fallen snow
At the end of winter when afternoons return.
Pink and white carnations - one desires
So much more than that. The day itself
Is simplified: a bowl of white,
Cold, a cold porcelain, low and round,
With nothing more than the carnations there.

Stevens's difficulty often lies in referentiality. The first section seems to have nothing to do with the title. There is no direct reference whatsoever to either "poems" or "our climate." Ostensibly the poet-persona is watching a Japanese flower arrangement. Stevens had a passion for oriental arts and philosophies. He was a close reader of Okakura Kakuzo (1862-1913), and his library was full of all kinds of books about Japanese flower arrangement. He was not only deeply read in this subject, but also had a habit of ordering fresh flowers from shops. The opening sentence introduces the image of flower arrangement by creating a pleasing word picture of balance, harmony and form. "Clear water" seems to be redundant, yet this rhetorical excess emphasizes the crystalline transparency of water. "Brilliant" etymologically means "to emit light, to reflect light," thus accentuating the shiny surface of the container. The combination of "pink and white carnations" brings a festival of inviting colors and textures that are traditionally associated with feminine innocence, charm and gentility. The origin of the word "carnation" in Latin confirms the connection between the flower and human flesh. Behind this image of sexual provocation is a male observer's voyeuristic and fetishistic desire. The first sentence sketches the key components of a flower arrangement (through three nouns: water, bowl and carnations), with an emphasis on their optical and chromatic effects in the eyes of a spectator (through four adjectives: clear, brilliant, pink and white), and thus anticipates the "light" in the following sentence. "[...]. The light / in the room more like a snowy air, / Reflecting snow" embraces and extends the aura around the flower arrangement: the interior light is not like snow falling, but rather like air reflecting fallen snow. The observer is so subtle that he cannot help but elaborating the snow image: during the winter the afternoons have been very brief; but now, with afternoons elongating, winter is near the end and somehow meets early spring, and a fresh snow lies immaculate on the ground, like a breathtaking artwork of Nature, which gives a pure, refreshing and ethereal tone to the air reflecting snow. This late-winter scene suggests that the observer, like "the snowman," wants "a mind of winter," but not a mind of deep winter. The light that gives luster to the flower arrangement, like the rainwater that glazes a red wheelbarrow (William Carlos Williams, "A Red Wheelbarrow"), works beautifully on both formal and metaphorical levels. It represents a natural light, but as part of an art world it also becomes an aesthetic light.

So far the language is very pictorial, in the manner of a still life. When Stevens portrays an object, he often builds a simple yet powerful image, omitting all insignificant details. Therefore, his image is at once concrete and abstract, familiar and unfamiliar, and appropriately distances itself from reality. In the first stanza of "The Poems of Our Climate," the image is very concrete and real: this is about a Japanese flower arrangement. Meanwhile, there is no extravagant description of the object, but a word picture almost in the style of a Chinese xieyi ("to convey the spirit") painting. It highlights the principal components of the flower arrangement (water, bowl and carnations), and throws away lesser details (such as the spatial disposition of flowers, the effect of foliage). The aesthetic atmosphere is not only created by the description of the object itself; it is also a product of the language. To use minimalism to achieve maximal effect - this is also the case for the language. The diction is basic English words, mostly monosyllabic and disyllabic. Stevens only suggests and expects the reader to complete the picture by himself.

"Pink and white carnations" recurs verbatim in line 6, implying that the observer moves his meditative eyes back to the core image. Then the poem abruptly takes another direction: "One desires / so much more than that." This jump from imagistic to argumentative language is visually strengthened with the use of a hyphen to connect a noun phrase and a full sentence. Meanwhile, "desire" corresponds to the etymological hint of carnation, and the whole question about desire will continue to inform the rest of the poem. "The day" is in opposition to whatever "in the room," designating the world external to the flower arrangement. Thus "[...] The day itself / is simplified" suggests that art reduces the outside world. "[...] a bowl of white, / Cold, a cold porcelain, low and round, / With nothing more than the carnations there." Once again, Stevens returns to visual imagery, but this is not a wanton repetition of the earlier lines, but rather a repetition with nuanced variations or a deliberate revision, as if the observer observes through a closer perspective. "Cold, a cold porcelain, low and round" introduces new details about the container and unmistakably echoes the "cold pastoral" in Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn." While "a bowl of white" seems a neutral description of what is seen, the "cold porcelain," just like Keats's cold urn, implies that this is a lifeless, artificial work. Although Stevens appreciates the aesthetic effect of the flower arrangement, subliminally he is not satisfied with its lifelessness and otherness to human world. He desires more: in the closure of the next stanza, he will repeat the word "more" thrice, where "more" becomes almost obsessive.

Now, get back to the title. How to justify "The Poems of Our Climate"? There are poets whose titles are throwaways, but not Stevens. Stevens cares a great deal about titles. His titles are always precise and integral to his poems. The first stanza seems to totally leave out the title, yet on a deeper level flower arrangement is a metaphor for poem writing. Metaphor is not an ordinary association of one object with another, but a figuration or trope which suggests the essence of one object by identifying it with certain qualities of another. Like Whitman, Stevens has an amazing command of figuration. For him, metaphor is a powerful means through which imagination imposes order on reality. "The Poems of Our Climate" opens with an objective description of clear water, brilliant bowl, pink and white carnations, and snowy light. As the poet is projecting his imaginary magic on those things, they will go through a metamorphosis and become metaphorical references to poetry writing, for both are the objects of formal arrangement, and both use delicate minimalism to achieve elaborate effect. Because this transfiguring act of mind is rooted in an objective world, the aura of duality shines through the images: they are at once flower arrangement and poetry writing. Indeed, what makes this poem "poetic" is the dynamic shifting back and forth between the real object and the metaphorical meanings it prompts.

II
Say even that this complete simplicity
Stripped one of all one's torments, concealed
The evilly compounded, vital I
And made it fresh in a world of white,
A world of clear water, brilliant-edged,
Still one would want more, one would need more,
More than a world of white and snowy scents.

Stevens desires "complete simplicity," but such "simplicity" is a trope for reduction and deprives him of the necessary pain and suffering in writing a poem. The capitalistic "I" is arresting, since Stevens always uses the impersonal "one" ("one" occurs four times in this stanza and six times in the whole poem), yet here he says "The evilly compounded, vital I." In "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction," "I" stands out again: "What am I to believe? ..." There is rhetorical power in the Stevensian "I," which is almost electrifying. It recalls Whitman's "real me" or "me myself" in "Song of Myself," for all these terms suggest a self that is one's consciousness but is a deeper and unknown part of one's consciousness. Stevens was very evasive about Whitman, one of his prime precursors. He never had anything good to say about Whitman in prose. Actually he blamed Whitman for Whitman's tramp persona. Yet, as Harold Bloom observes, "Whitman is a deeper and darker presence/absence in Stevens's work." Good poetry in any language always depends on allusiveness. This stanza echoes a couplet in "Song of Myself":

Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sun-rise would kill me,
If I could not now and always send sun-rise out of me ...

As self-contradictory as the Whitmanian "real me" or "me myself," the Stevensian "I" is both "evilly-compounded" and "vital" (this word is never negative). Bloom unravels the paradox by arguing that "The `Vital I' is compounded evilly only because it is compounded at all." In other words, Stevens is talking about a radical duality of self or even a plurality of selves, on which he will not give a stable judgment. "Vital" is also to find its compelling resonance in "the never-resting mind" in the succeeding stanza. A critic believes that Stevens's inward peering "I" also implies its externally seeing homophone "eye." I agree with this insightful reading, for the whole poem is built upon the act of looking and seeing. "Still one would want more, one would need more, / More than a world of white and snowy scents" builds a crescendo of "mores" and reinforces the theme of desire. Stevens was from New Jersey and in his native language "scents" allegedly sounds like "senses," so here he might be making another homonymic pun.

In this stanza, "a world of white" recurs once more. This time, it is the word "brilliant-edged" that unfolds new information. The edge is between what two sides? Japanese flower arrangement draws materials from nature; meanwhile, it is cut and placed by people. Thus, it is a product of setting art against nature, so is poetry. The edge makes clear the dichotomy of art vs. nature. Fundamentally, high literature, especially poetry, is a continuous tradition. This poem explores a single motif that emerges again and again in a succession of strong poets - the relation between art and nature. Stevens is concerned with creating some shape of order in the wilderness and chaos of reality. On the other hand, he refuses to transform and harmonize reality at the cost of making violent imposition upon it. Shelley, in "A Defense of Poetry," realizes that "even the greatest poetry will, through time, become nothing more than signs for classes of thought, loosing its poetic edge as a result." To find the finer edge of words, Stevens urges us to get rid of the illusion of things and get to the truth. In Stevens's own words, "the hum of thoughts evaded in the mind." ("Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction")

This stanza is syntactically distinguished from the other stanzas for a single sentence runs through all seven lines, creating an extended "suspension system." The effect is to have the completion of meaning constantly delayed, and to make the delay a means of defamiliarizing the process of conferring meanings. "Say even that," like "more like" in line 3, is an American idiom, meaning "granted that." It introduces a concessive clause and distantly echoes the adverb "still" five lines later. This pair of connectives frames the whole sentence or stanza. While in the first stanza, imagery is the dominant device and noun structures prevail, this stanza is characterized by strong statements and powerful verbs. "Stripped," "concealed," "made it fresh" are positioned either at the beginning or the end of lines, and in sequence they make a set of structural parallels. This compels us to recognize their weight in the meaning-making process.

III
There would still remain the never-resting mind,
So that one would want to escape, come back
To what had been so long composed.
The imperfect is our paradise.
Note that, in this bitterness, delight,
Since the imperfect is so hot in us,
Lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds.

If the last stanza closes with a litotes or an understatement in which one's desire is expressed by negating its opposite ("a world of white and snowy scents"), this stanza will directly address that keen desire of "the never-resting mind": "one would want to escape, come back / To what had been so long composed." Again and again in this poem, Stevens plays upon opposition and apposition. We have encountered "Stripped" and "concealed," "evilly-compounded" and "vital" before, and now the oxymoronic "escape" and "come back to" again force us to pause and think hard. "What had been so long composed" sounds like a Nietzschean cosmos, whose nut is hollow and lacking any purpose or unity. It also reminds us of the Shakespearean motto: "This is an art, which does mend nature, change it rather, but the art itself is nature" (Winter's Tale).

"The imperfect is our paradise" invites multiple readings as well. The first thing comes to mind is the famous biblical allusion. Since the fall, Adam and Eve had been expelled from the perfect Eden and living in the far-from-perfect earth. So, from the start human beings are destined to accept imperfection as our living paradise. This sentence also echoes the Robert Browning quote "A man's reach should exceed his grasp," suggesting that poetry writing is a tantalizing project. To achieve artistic perfection, one should attempt even those seemingly impossible things, despite all necessary pains and suffering. Moreover, "imperfect" in Latin means "unfinished." By brings back the etymological meaning of "imperfect," Stevens revisits the Whitmanian theme: "Nothing is final, he chants. No man shall see the end."

This imperfect world demands an imperfect language, that is to say "flawed words and stubborn sounds." The closing sentence starts with an imperative expression "Note that" and takes on the tone of an academic lecture. The shift of pronouns from "one" or "I" to "our" or "us" strengthens this sense of reaching out to others. As the poem moves towards closure, it is getting more and more disturbing, and the reader can feel a profound malaise on the part of the poet. Again, "bitterness" and "delight" are set in opposition, suggesting a puzzling psychic construction. "The imperfect is so hot in us" means the desire for imperfection is so fierce in us. "Hot" is used to contrast the earlier "cold" ("Cold, a cold porcelain"), and both words can apply respectively to their core meaning and extended meaning. "Lies" is an even more intriguing polyseme: delight tells us untruth in flawed words and stubborn sounds, and also consists in such words and sounds. In "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction," Stevens brings forward three fundamental functions of poetry: It Must Be Abstract; It Must Change; It Must Give Pleasure. So, he shares Shelley's view that joy is what poetry emanates from ("A Defense of Poetry"). Yet such a joy is achieved by flawed words and stubborn sounds, in other words, the stylistic eccentricity and strangeness in Stevens's word choice and his experiment with the musical quality of poetry.

Finally, in what sense do we know Stevens? Stevens is a poet of profound subjectivity. He is always working on wordplays, suggestions and subtlety. He is endless. We go down and down and down, and cannot reach the bottom, and would still want more and need more. He carries us so deep into nature and art and their intricate interplay.

Stevens is an uncommon writer in that much of his greatest work he produced late in his lifetime. Perhaps its depth, maturity, and beautiful language result in some part from this fact. His poetry is delightful to read and hear, wrought with powerful imagery and provocative questions about art, the world, and reality. I find myself reading certain poems regularly, over and over again.

The Palm at the End of the Mind is a great collection, though it includes little more than Stevens' selected works - nothing in the way of comments, direction, or information about particular poems nor about Stevens and his views.

If poets aren't interested in being understood, they will have to resign themselves to being read by no one except English Lit drones. There was a time when poetry was so popular in the USA that many daily newspapers had daily poems and the average worker with a grade school education could recite several great American poems by heart. That was also the time when poets wrote about things that people experienced and could relate to. I love Whitman. I have a Masters degree. I can read Spinoza and the Greek dramatists and poets with pleasure. I started this book because Stevens was said to be a great poet. After forcing myself through twenty of these poems I still had no idea what any of them were about. I might as well have been reading Icelandic for all I got out of them. Here's an example of how Stevens unnecessarily obscures his poetry: in one poem, he refers to "the halo-John." This phrase never occurred before Stevens used it. Its appearance stops the reader as abruptly as if he had driven into a brick wall. Who or what is "the halo-John"? The reader searches through the rest of the poem for clues. Ok, it is a religious poem so maybe he means St. John the Evangelist because saints have halos. But why not just say "St. John"? "The halo-John" doesn't add anything to the poem. In fact, it detracts as the reader has to stop reading the poem in order to do the equivalent of a crossword puzzle exercise in order to proceed further. If the reader isn't christian, he may be completely out of luck. Stevens doesn't just do this sort of thing once or twice; his poems are full of this sort of nonsense. If a poem needs a commentary in order to appreciate it, the poem is a failure because this sort of poet is incapable of speaking to the reader without an intermediary, a literary priest to offer sacrifices for the poor, ignorant layman who has insufficient piety and intelligence to approach the divine mysteries of poetry on his own. The reader has his revenge, though. Poetry is unread. Poetry becomes irrelevant. Poets must either scrap with each other for literary prizes that mean the difference between starvation and three steady meals a day or slog away at teaching jobs since no one will buy their work. My copy of this book of poetry will meet its end in the dumpster.

Wallace Stevens is one of those rare writers who had a golden touch with words -- musical words, spellbinding imagery, and no boundaries to keep anyone from enjoying it. "The Palm at the End of the Mind : Selected Poems and a Play" brings together many of his best works, starting early in his writing career and stretching through the years.

Over his lifetime, Stevens wrote several books of poetry, but his exquisite poems are best taken by themselves: the languid splendour of "Sunday Morning," the spare eloquence of "Man With A Blue Guitar," and the hymnlike grandeur of "Le Monocle De Mon Oncle." ("I know no magic trees, no balmy boughs,/No silver-ruddy, gold-vermilion fruits./But, after all, I know a tree that bears/A semblance to the thing I have in mind.")

This volume also contains his little-known one-act play, "Bowl, Cat and Broomstick." Like many of his non-poetic works, this play deals with the nature of poetry, and is in the form of a dialogue between three seventeenth-century characters. It's part parody, part analysis. And while it's a bit weird, it's certainly worth reading.

Wallace Stevens began publishing poetry at an importance time in writing history, when the older styles were falling away. But instead of ignoring one type of poetry in favor of another, he took the best of all kinds -- his verse combines Victorian opulance with the more modern free-form verse.

Though he isn't as well known as Yeats or Williams, Stevens' poetry is one of the few kinds that is both technically good and emotionally rich. His poetry can be whimsical ("Every time the bucks went clattering/Over Oklahoma/A firecat bristled in the way"), but it is also meditative and philosophical, even tackling the nature of reality.

If nothing else, Stevens' writing can be read just because it is exquisitely beautiful. He lavished details all over almost every poem he wrote; his style tends to be a bit on the ornate side -- Stevens freely uses the more exotic terms -- such as "opalescence," "pendentives" and "muleteers" -- wrapped up in complex verse, sometimes with a rhyme scheme and sometimes free-form.

"The Palm at the End of the Mind" is a wonderful collection of Wallace Stevens' most significant long poems, his underrated play, and his equally important smaller ones. A must-have.

Other reviewers have commented on the lack of detail in this book about Wallace's early and post-shooting life. This is valid but, as the title makes clear, not really the point. Carter's work is quite specifically examining the active part of Wallace's political life, and in this regard he does a stellar job of charting the rise of conservatism and Wallace's defining role in that rise, a subject all the more relevant as fundamentalism and "righteous anger" have made a comback in the start of the new century. For those with an interest in poli sci and/or the flipside of the cultural revolution of the 60's and 70's, this is an enlightening read.

Every year I teach this book for about 125 undergraduates in a course called "Race and American Politics from the New Deal to the New Right." Though it is a course that welcomes controversy, one thing that virtually all of my students agree upon is that this is a GREAT book. Carter, the dean of Southern historians, is a masterful storyteller with a matchless eye for detail and a balanced political judgment. He shows how Wallace, far from being just another Southern demogogue, opens the way to the transformation of American politics and the rise of a new conservatism whose wellsprings are the rage and fear of white Americans in the face of the civil rights revolutions of the 1950s and 1960s. It's a brilliant, absorbing book and every year when I read it again I am struck by the rich craft of Carter's prose and the deep thoughtfulness of his assessments.

In this book, Dan Carter provides a wonderfully insightful examination of a man who perhaps more than any other has defined the course of contemporary American politics. An ambitious man from the start, Carter shows how Wallace tapped the growing uneasiness of many voters towards the profound changes taking place in American society after World War II, using it to win the governorship of Alabama as a defender of segregation. Though Wallace ultimately failed in his subsequent quest for the presidency on a similar platform, his campaigns introduced themes and tactics that would become staples of postwar American politics. In this passionate yet objective account, Carter succeeds in helping the reader understand both the man and what his candidacies represented, as well as their lasting effects on the nation.

Since I read, on 7 Dec 1969, Professor Carter's masterful Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South I have since this book was published in 1995 wanted to read it. It tells well the story of George Wallace, four-times governor of Alabama, and his time, and is well footnoted with a good bibliography. It is disturbing that as recently as 1972 a blatantly racist message could resonate so powerfully not only in Alabama but in other states as well. A few years ago the ban on miscegenation which was in the Alabama Constitution was repealed by the people of Alabama (tho it had been inoperative by reason of a US Supreme Court ruling long before)and I found that encouraging, but one has to fear that many of the people who so raucously supported the bigoted and corrupt regime of Wallace as recently as 1972 may not have repented. Reading this book is as sobering as thinking about the fact that millions in Germany as recently as 1939 supported Nazidom.

This is an excellent study on the political career of George Wallace, the former Alabama Governor famed for his stand against integration in the early 1960's and his subsequent runs for the Presidency. Carter portrays Wallace as a complex individual, who seems to have been motivated from the start more by ambition than principle. The book gives an extremely well researched and readable account of Wallace's early life, his family, friendships and formative experiences. Carter attempts to show that Wallace early on became politically ambitious for the Alabama Governor's office and that he originally adopted the stance of a moderate (for the time) southern populist, going so far as to refuse to break away from the Democratic party in 1948 and supporting Truman over Strom Thurmond and the Dixiecrat party.

In the 1958 Alabama gubernatorial election Wallace was defeated by a more blatantly racist, segregationist opponent and vowed in a famed statement of racial epithet never to be the racial moderate in any future elections. True to his word he ran a 1962 campaign on the stance of continued defiance to federal government attempts to integrate Alabama schools and extend voting rights to the state's black population. Successfully elected, he made a national name for himself by his confrontations with the federal courts (including initially trying to defy or evade the court orders of man who had once been a good friend - Federal Judge Frank Johnson) and the Kennedy Justice Department. The book doesn't shy away from the resulting violence of some of Wallace's followers and the more extreme racist comments and actions of many of those who supported him in the 1960's. I think Carter makes a good case that by his disregard for federal law enforcement agencies and civil rights protesters that Wallace in some degree bore some of the responsibility for the actions of the more extreme and violent of those opposed to integration and expanded civil rights for black citizens.

Carter also provides great detail into minds of the inner circle of those men who managed Wallace's candidacy in his state and later national campaigns for President, including talented speechwriter but also violent racist Klansman Asa Carter (no relation to the author), who would later become famous as the author of the historical novel that inspired the Clint Eastwood movie "The Outlaw Josey Wales". Biographer Carter's premise is that by Wallace's strong showings in the presidential elections of 1968 and 1972 (before he was derailed by an assassination attempt) that Wallace succeeded in moving the national political debate to the right, especially in the area of social policies and politics. Carter has gone on record in other books and speeches as trying to link the Republican policies of welfare reform, re-examination of affirmative action policies and anti-crime legislation as being directly descended from Wallace's bigoted early campaigns. While I think he stretches the point I do think that some of Wallace's populist appeal did pave the way for successful Presidential campaigns of other southerners, such as Georgia's Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Arkansas' Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996. Carter sees Republican Ronald Reagan as more of a direct descendant of Wallace, but this reviewer sees it as a fact that most successful Presidential races since 1968 whether Republican or Democrat have taken Wallace's anti-Washington bureaucrat populist rhetoric and support for a stronger defense and lower taxes as being more important than his racial stances.

Of course Wallace himself moderated his racial stances through the succeeding years, until he was running as a populist with appeal to both blacks and whites in the 1980's and appealing for forgiveness to many of those he had wronged. Carter dutifully reports this later conversion, although he seems to question some of the sincerity behind the public conversion.

The book doesn't represent itself as a conventional biography as much as an examination of Wallace's life and the effects of his political campaigns on national and regional politics, and for that reason I can forgive what I see as a failure of the book to give as much detail and scrutiny to Wallace's life after 1972 as Carter gave the previous years. The book does a powerful job of conveying the reality of Lurleen Wallace's life and trials as George's wife as well as her fights with the cancer that finally killed her. Her stint as a successful stand in candidate for Governor in 1966 and her short term in office before her death is given a good overview. However I would have liked to have seen as much detail and information on Wallace's later family and personal life, including his other marriages and relationships with his children. I also would have been interested in finding out more about the Alabama political scene of the 1980's and 1990's and Wallace's lasting effect on those politics, but I can't argue with the fact that Carter has written a masterful portrait on both the man and his era and the waves he caused by his political campaigns. A definite 5 stars for this award winning (justly so, I might add) political biography.

I'm doing research on child prodigies for my newest book. The whole area of intellegence has always intrigued me, so this is painless research. More than that, this book, and the man it's about, William Sidis, is fascinating. And heartbreaking.

According to this book, William Sidis' IQ was estimated at 300. He was simply brilliant, going through gradeschool in three months and high school in 6 weeks. He took the entrance exam to Harvard at age nine and passed, but wasn't allowed entrance until age 11. And because of his gift he was hounded & ridiculed by the media from a young age until he basically went underground as an adult, hiding his genuis. It's very sad and will make you ashamed of what we sometimes do to one another. In this case, a great intellect and all his possible achievements were lost.

A fascinating, fascinating book.

This is definitely a good read.

Although I have just barely finished reading half of the book, I felt compelled to say something about it.

Sometimes it just pains my heart to see how the society, in a sense, failed the genius. It comes natural for "normal" people (people with such genes tend to have an edge in survival perspective in terms of natural selection) to deride and hurt (sometimes on purpose, sometimes unwittingly) a person who is superior in non-social matters but lacks adequate development in social matters. William James Sidis clearly fell victim in this category.

Also, this biography tells us that intelligence needs to be accompanied by wisdom to fulfill its due expectations.

Clearly W J Sidis is very intelligent (intelligent in some specific areas like maths and languages); but he does not seem to be very wise in a broader, higher sense; that is, his intelligence helps him see "trees" in a much clearer way than his fellow beings, but lack of wisdom fails him in seeing the "forest/wood", i.e. the BIG PICTURE. His own version of a constitution in a fictitious "perfect" (in his eyes) society (Hesperia), notwithstanding sophisticated in logical rules and bearing some other merits in terms of form, is naive and myopic in content.

In a way, he is very stubborn to have such notions as "The word art means very little to me" and "why will people waste so much energy on statuary, painting, drawing, etching and the like" (p. 109 of the book). Frankly, I fail to note similar traits in other accomplished prodigies like Stuart Mill, Wiener, Russell and Einstein. -- Lack of appreciation (and even contempt) for other forms of achievements in humanity will sooner or later limit a prodigy's success in one way or another because it denotes an unbalanced development among numerous dimensions of human nature.

As of the root of the Sidis "tragedy" (saying tragedy might be overstated), clearly the way his parents raised him contributed largely to the outcome. And the inappropriate amount of attention had been directed to him since his very early childhood, a fatal error in comparison to the shrewd way John Stuart Mill was brought up by his father...

I might have more to say when I finish the book.

This is the second time that I've been drawn to this unique book. Having just enough in common with Billy Sidis (membership in two high IQ societies and extreme introversion) I can recognise the "ring of truth" to this account. I know from first hand experience how this society, especially the public schools, go out of their way to haze and torture the gifted and the "different"- no matter how hard one tries to keep a low profile. Indeed, Sidis's motto, "The only perfect life is one lived in seclusion" is also my own, learned from hard experience.

As for William James Sidis himself, here was a person who lectured on 4th dimensional mathematics at Harvard at the age of 11. It was said that he probably spoke every language of mankind- and actually invented entirely new languages of his own. He wrote the first book on cosmology that ever theorised the existence of black holes. He was the first to see the correlation of the 11 year sunspot cycle on both climate and human behavior. He wrote some of the first "alternative histories" of the United States (rejecting official proganda.) He had absolute contempt for capitalism and corporations (he seems to have been incapable of telling lies or exploiting other people.) He recognised the fundamental contribution of Native Americans to mainstream American culture long before anyone else. He was absolutely convinced not only that extraterestrial intelligence existed, but that it had to exist. He wrote seriously of Atlantis while "serious" scholars scoffed at the idea. He totally rejected formal theology and religion- while having no doubt that a higher power existed...

One of the chapters of this book is entitled "Sidis an Avatar?" While William Sidis himself would have automatically and violently rejected such a claim, I personally wonder if it might have not been close to the truth....

You will become ga ga admiring the staggeringly stupendous intellect of super-precocious child prodigy William James Sidis in this excellent biography. He was an academic mega-genius whose social ineptitude in society is profoundly disturbing.
Sidis was named in honor of the famous Harvard University philosopher/psychologist William James. The last name of William James Sidis was a palindrome: it could be spelled the same forward as well as backwards. Similarly and ironically his mind was palindromic: in the realm of cerebralization and intellectual thought there may have been no greater a prodigious potential in the history of the world ( rivaling Aristotle, Leonardo da Vinci, Einstein, Plato, Socrates, etc. ). Tragically, the mind-boggling potential of Sidis was predominantly unfulfilled. Palindromic Sidis was a radical of socially aberrant behavior. He was a prodigy in reverse who revolted from the extravagant expectations thrust upon him. Consequently Sidis went from "great expectations" to "great expectorations". He was socially spit upon, chastised and shunned as an adult for his eccentrically bizarre behabior. He was the Ultima Thule of lost talent performing such menial jobs as being a janitor. He was a contradiction of intellectual and behavioral dyslexia. He was analogous to computer overload: akin to HAL in the classic sci-fi film "2001: A Space Odyssey": super spaced out and gone awry. When one is an extreme case of extreme cases they may very well beome a social basket case.
I can deeply empathize with William James Sidis because I have resided in the socially isolated stratosphere of extreme intellectual genius my entire life. I have been descibed as being "too brilliant for my own good". Intense social introversion and extreme hypersensitivity do not mutually commingle with the ultra-psychological stress imposed upon a genius when other individuals are too demanding, too scornful, too mocking and too unsympathetically impersonal.

I've read this book once and I always enjoy leafing through it. However, I am always saddened that so much that Mr. Sidis did was lost (for example his science fiction story). A group of us individuals have started compiling information on him and are in the process of getting his "The Animate and th Inanimate" online for all to peruse. One and all are invited to email to get more information. Good day. [Thanks also to the reviewer below for the recommendation for the book "Accidental Genius"]

Can you write a book on social and psychological aspects of the internet which is not outdated 10 years after publication? Patricia Wallace manages the impossible. Written before the turn of the century, the book carefully describes and draws conclusions on internet behaviour and interaction. The observation that the advances and changes of the last decade have little impact on the findings are supportive of their validity and strength.

It's also entertaining to read and accessible for the non-psychologist. Recommended.

I had to write an essay on aggression and the Internet, and picked up this book for research. I ended up reading a lot more than just one chapter! This is an informative read, written in a clear, engaging and approachable style. It builds off of existing psychology research and extends it into the virtual world. Yes, I think it's BEST to read this if you've already been exposed to the basics of psychology, but this book will not throw you off if you haven't, because of the author's approachable style and willingness to explain the psychological terminology.

Anyway, this book explores the psychology behind internet interactions, including the formation of net groups, aggression, loving and liking over the web, deviant behavior, why people look at porn, and more. It gives a solid, intro-to-intermediate look at all of these subjects. The only problem is that this book is slightly dated in this world of IM, chatrooms, and Warcraft. (It still talks about email listservs, which is something of the past.) So the reason I gave it 4 stars: the slight datedness of the book, and the very solid, but not completely in-depth, presentation of subject matter.

This is an informative and RELEVENT read for people with an interest in the Net. If you have already studied several years of psychology, you might wanna pick up the Oxford Handbook of Internet Psychology, which is more recent, and goes much more in-depth (but possibly too technical for anyone with no background in psychology, and quite expensive).

Wallace knows what she's talking about, and she puts it in very readable prose. I particularly like what she says about disinhibition on the 'Net.

This book came at a time when most books written about internet by social scientists, journalists etc., were either too focused on very incidental benefits of internet like the virtual communities, or starkly apolocalyptic in their analyses or chracterized by a Pollyanna utopianism. More speculative thinking that research and analysis chracterizes many books on the internet.

This one, based on a thorough grounding in social psychology and a comprehensive review of empirical literature on the subject, studies how behavior and thinking has got effected by the internet, how we behave offline and online, how going online effects us etc.

However, this is a book on the social psychology of the internet and not psychology proper. It's more about how we behave online etc., than about how internet alters cognition. Nevertheless, at the end of reading it, the reader feels a sense of having returned with a much deeper understanding than he or she could have achieved on his/her own.

Generally, the "The Psychology of the Internet" is a broad sweeping, albeit whirlwind, run through a wide gamut of psychological issues as they might--or might not--apply to the Internet. This is an important topic that could provide insight into how the Internet, as it becomes increasingly pervasive, will affect human relations. From my perspective, some of the more salient topics included the advantages and disadvantages of group interactions and the possibilities for conflict and resolution. Dr. Wallace provides a good analysis of some of the ways in which individual behavior changes on the Net and off. Additionally, the book covers a number of other topics, such as the psychology of "flaming," pornography, Internet addiction, altruism, and gender issues.

For those who are well read in the area of psychology on the Internet, there is a fair amount of rehashing of material that has been extensively covered elsewhere. For example, Dr. Sherry Turkle's 1995 "Life on the Screen," extensively discusses the fluidity of personalities on the web, the issues of anonymity, and the effects of computerized psychotherapy. Both Turkle's work, and the seminal work of Rheingold ("The Virtual Community"), have already extensively covered the peculiar nature of MUDs and Usenet, as well as the notorious cases of cyberrape on LambdaMOO and other cyberdeceptions. The book also relies heavily on the oft-cited studies of Amy Bruckman and Dr. Sara Kiesler.

In general, the topics that are presented appear to be well documented in a clear and accessible style with up-do-date information. Dr. Wallace has done an excellent job of presenting a full spectrum of psychological issues, although much of the discussion is on the state of research on the issue in general, with follow-on discussion as to how it would apply to the Internet. In the case of group dynamics, conversational norms, and readiness to express aggressive behavior, I found this quite interesting. In some other areas, it was what you would expect and consequently less thought provoking.

The beginning of the book is particularly strong, but it fades in the last two chapters into kind of a grab bag of Internet issues that, for my taste, have an only peripheral relevance to a discussion of psychology on the Internet. Overall, the book seems to be a good overview and does a superior job of summarizing the current state of research, albeit without providing much in the way of a conclusion.

Although I was intrigued with the basic premise for this story (a guy who's recently deceased finds himself participating in a discussion group in heaven devoted to "Last Words," and his life's story is told in reverse order), the main character himself is utterly unremarkable. He has very few redeeming qualities, led a trite and meaningless life, and I found myself not caring much about what his last words would have been if he'd had the chance to finish them (and as it turned out, the thought he was trying to express during his final moments was entirely in keeping with his character). He did do one good deed during his entire life, which was revealed near the end of the book (since it happened early in his childhood), but the remainder of his existence was, for the most part, less than ordinary.

If you're looking for an uplifting story about a much more worthy soul who knew what it meant to live fully and to completely love another human being, I would recommend "The Notebook," by Nicholas Sparks.

Daniel Wallace is one of the original writers I've discovered in the past year. He's one of the few willing to step outside the box and try something different.

"Ray in Reverse" is told in a reversed order--death begins, and childhood ends the book. It was immensely enjoyable and easy to read. I'm not sure what the significance of Ray's final words were, but I like the fact that you're allowed to think about it and come up with your own conclusions. I would reccomend this book to anyone and I'm looking forward to reading his first book.

Friends of mine recommended this book. Being an avid reader, I bought it. However, this book ranked very low on my reading list. In fact, I did not even finish this book (something, I almost never do). After forty pages, I put the book down. A day later, I picked it back up, hoping that I simply had not grasp the characters or the storyline. But after 90 pages, I simply put the book down for good. I suppose some will chastise me for not finishing the book, and others will comment that you cannot adequately review a book unless you actually finish it. However, this book simply did not appeal to me. I found the story bordering on depressing. And, I found little humor in a life so mundane. I suppose some people feel a connection to Ray (as did the people who recommended the book to me). However, my idea of a good book is one that educates, entertains and enlightens. I found none of this in Ray in Reverse. The book may chronicle real life but, as written, the book does little to demonstrate that real life is interesting. If you are considering this book, then think twice. Maybe it's for you, but it was not for me.

I read the reviews for this book and had to check it out for myself. I laughed a lot and thought a lot. What I found most intriguing was how well the author was able to really define where innocence ended and jadedness began in Ray's life...or is that jadedness ended and innocence began. It certainly gave me pause in looking at my own life.

All in all, it was an enjoyable read. I thought that the first chapter was absolutely hysterical. I didn't laugh that hard again until the very last line which was absolutely classic and probably portrays human nature,even at the end of our lives, more accurately than most of us would like to think.

Ray Williams, the deceased protagonist of Daniel Wallace's tragicomic second novel, finds himself in Heaven's "Last Words" discussion group. Embarrassed by his prosaic death (from cancer at age 50) and his inconclusive final utterance, "I wish," he initially fabricates a more bloody and dramatic ending and, unmasked, storms off in a huff. His life then passes before us in a series of vignettes, beginning with his slow dying while the backyard birds make nests of his discarded hair and ending with an innocent act of simple heroism at age 10.

Each chapter reveals an emotionally pivotal moment in Ray's life - his wife's infidelity and the near break-up of his marriage, the treehouse he built for his son and used himself as a drinking refuge, his sexual confusion, early relationships, one-night stands, childhood mysteries. The chapters are complete stories; some brief and poignant, some more complex, revealing harrowing secrets - jolting the reader and Ray too.

Williams' comic touch is sometimes gentle, even sad, other times prickly and nightmarish. In one incident Ray hits a dog with his car and rather than driving on, stops, finds the dog's address from its tag and visits the animal's owners, thereby embroiling himself in an ugly, absurd scene between a warring couple.

Ray is no angel. Often clueless, he is occasionally cruel, subject to the buffets of fate and capable of acts of spontaneous generosity. Wallace's ("Big Fish") rendering of him is sharp but empathetic, making his story compelling and real. The completeness of the vignettes sometimes leaves loose ends dangling, conveying the feeling that Ray has compartmentalized his life to avoid the mysteries of his own nature. The reverse structure reinforces this - showing how Ray got to where he ended up - not from a progression of events so much as the natural, halting, unknowable vicissitudes of one man's human nature.

My daughter was given this book as a school project. Thank goodness I read it first. I promptly returned it to the teacher refusing to let my 4th grade daughter read it. This book in the span of 16 chapters, has 3 deaths, 2 violent fights and what seems to be an unhappy abusive father in it. This book depressed me and would have upset my child. The book made a good point about courage and bravery but did so in the worse way.

Totally disgusting is about a cat named Mewkiss, a dog named Barkus, and another cat named Allergies. Mewkiss is afraid of rats until Allergies tells her a story about a cat named Mukiz. That builds up her courage to go find them. they go on many adventures and you'll have to read this book to find out about it.
I would recommend this book because it has good details and is a good adventure book. I like llamas.

Everbody should read this book it is exciting adventurous and scary. People who love animals would love this book. It's about a dog and a cat that try to eliminate these two rats that are trying to hurt their owners.