the Neanderthals have moved

The new social media . . . it's so easy, a Neanderthal can do it. As the NPS reawakens yet again, we've colonized a new space. We'll keep this blog page alive as an archive, but look for us now on Facebook . . . just search "Neanderthal Philosophical Society."

F A L L 2 0 0 9 (can I get a Hell yeah?!)

N E X T M E E T I N G
Monday, September 21
7:00
Steve Carvalho's House (incredible Asian oasis)
4210 Fairgreen Terrace NE, Marietta
BOOK: There is no book. We're meeting to catch up and pick a book. Come with suggestions.
Summer reading was Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier which is a great book. It really gets good the 2nd time you read it. Knock it out before Sept 21 and we'll have a short discussion.

See you there!

summer plans

We had a good Neanderthal meeting on Monday night to discuss Caputo's The Voyage. Following Lumpkin's last-minute suggestion for a location change, we met at the new Fado and sat upstairs on the new roof deck on a lovely late-spring evening. The usual suspects were Lumpkin, Parker, Mullen, and me, and we were joined for the first time by my friend and colleague Andy Delfino. He gets high marks for a) having actually read the book, and b) convincingly lecturing on Post-Modernism (Mullen gets high marks for pretending to be interested when what he really wanted to talk about was Lost).

Anyway, we've decided to make Fado our new meeting location. After all, unlike Fox and Hounds, they closed for renovations and you can actually tell they did something. Plus, it's evidently more convenient for the hinterland-dwelling Mullen. And the scenery is better. The view of the neighborhood from up there is nice, too.

In the interest of time, we went ahead and set a date and picked a book for June, bypassing the usual intermediate step of pretending to care what those who didn't attend might want. Our next book will be White Noise, by Don Delillo, and our next meeting date is Monday, June 23rd. We also decided that the Neanderthals would take a summer break over July and August and would kick off our eighth season in September with a weekend in the mountains (details TBA) to discuss Charles Frazier's Thirteen Moons. We'll iron out logistics about that one later . . . for now, though, White Noise, June 23rd at Fado.

EDIT: Hey, wonder if I'm related to this guy?

next meeting, May 19th

We've set Monday, May 19th, for the next mustering of the Neanderthal horde. We'll invade the new-and-imperceptibly-improved Fox and Hounds at our usual 7:00 time. The book this time around, by popular vote (or is it more like a caucus?), is Philip Caputo's cleverly named The Voyage. Happy reading! (Though I'm guessing you probably won't be as "happy" as you were while reading A Sport and a Pastime.)

new book choices

I'll leave it to Lumpy to report on last week's meeting, as I had to coach a soccer match and thus arrived late (but early enough to take part in the speculation on why his girlfriend read A Sport and a Pastime). Here, however, are the book choices for next month: The Voyage, by Philip Caputo; The Nonexistent Knight, by Italo Calvino; Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer; and Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut. The poll is open for a week . . . feel free to add your comments here and lobby for your preferred choice. We'll set a meeting date shortly for sometime in May.

what's on deck for the Neanderthals?

Let me first say that I'm sorry for the delay in posting after our last meeting--I've been inundated with the day-to-day of getting a new Varsity soccer season up and running. At any rate, we had a good meeting at the end of last month--Lumpkin, Enloe, Parker and me gathering to discuss All the King's Men. Unexpectedly, and rather inexplicably, Fox and Hounds was closed for cleaning and renovations ("who ever heard of a bar's closing for cleaning" mused Chip), so we all sauntered next door to The Big Easy, which was, in retrospect, a far more appropriate locale for discussing this particular novel.

I'll leave it for others to comment further about the book, except to offer this: while I luxuriated in the poetry of Robert Penn Warren's descriptions (a consensus opinion among us), I had trouble at times reconciling this voice as coming from a 1st person narrator--if I take a step back and think about it a little, I just can't see Jack Burden speaking or writing this way.

Anyway, what's next for us? In keeping with the roughly bimonthly schedule we've adopted since reconstituting, looks like we should plan our next meeting for late March or thereabouts--we'll work out a date soon to suit the schedules of our regulars. The book choices we agreed upon putting up to a vote are as follows: On the Road, by Jack Kerouac; A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess; A Sport and a Pastime, by James Salter; Resistance, Rebellion, and Death: Essays, by Albert Camus; and White Noise, by Don DeLillo. I should mention that all of these works are nice and short . . . probably a welcome change after Crime and Punishment and All The King's Men. Weigh in by the end of this week!

suggestions for upcoming books?

With our (rescheduled) January meeting a few days away, perhaps we should start throwing out suggestions for future reads; what would you like the Neanderthals to tackle next month (and beyond)?

I'll fire the first shot . . . I'd be interested in reading On The Road or A Clockwork Orange.

Any strong requests or recommendations?

Lumpy on "Why you should read All The King's Men"

I finally made time to put down a few thoughts regarding All The King's Men. If you have read about it, you know that it is about Governor Willie Stark. However, it is really about Stark's Assistant, Jack Burden, and how Burden gets along in Stark's world.

Penn Warren's gift is, like Nabakov, the sound and feel of language. His other gift, and just as extraordinary, is his ability to describe the indescribable...finding words for feelings, places, and people that we all struggle to communicate about. See if you can find better descriptions for rural farmland, childhood innocence/growing up, adult struggles with priorities, and more. These physical descriptions make the characters vivid to the point that you think Warren must have really known these people. In turn, we realize we know someone with each and every trait.

These achievements are why the book appears on every "TOP 100 Novels" list Here's a brief synopsis of the scenes or parts of the book:

1. OPENING: Incredible language describing Governor Stark returning to his North Louisiana town and home on a press tour to get photos for promotion.
2. FLASHBACK TO EARLY WILLIE: How Jack Burden met The Boss and how the Boss became a dynamic politician, and rose through the system to become Governor. Great scenes in here about a return to Burden's hometown to see The Judge. You get little bits and pieces of Jack's childhood with Adam and Anne Stanton (and a Perfect Summer), but not the full, engaging story that comes later. Those childhood/falling in love scenes are some of the best reading I've ever done.
3. CASS MASTERN: Burden's research project for his History PhD.
   Burden's research into his Judge Irwin, his family friend (and later we find out...way more), where Burden finds Irwin's checkered past for the Boss to leverage.
4. Burden's trip West to ponder bad news. This section has the Perfect Summer flashback mentioned earlier. Brilliant writing.
   Burden's return to Louisiana, the trip home to burn the Judge that goes wrong.
5. The end. The conclusion.

Happy Reading!!

Michael

interesting read from Neanderthal emeritus

Here's an interesting read from Neanderthal emeritus Rich Eustace about the whole Golden Compass controversy. Thought I'd pass it along, the current Catholic convulsion having generated a little conversation prior to our screening of No Country the other night.

No Country movie discussion--put yer two cents in here!

Funny piece in this week's New Yorker by Nora Ephron about the movie. Thanks to my colleague and Neanderthal invitee Andy Delfino for passing this one along. So, have you seen it yet? What did you think?

EDIT, DECEMBER 13th . . . Lumpy, Peter, Chris, and I saw the movie together last night, and the email discussion has been flying around all day. Here's the conversation with only nominal editing . . .

Enloe
Looks like we're not the only ones confused by the scene with Bell and Chigurh in the hotel - from wikipedia -

'Bell arrives in El Paso moments too late: Moss is dead (along with some of the Mexican hitmen who killed him). Bell later returns to the crime scene and finds the lock blown out by Chigurh's cattle gun. We see Chigurh hiding behind the door of the hotel room, but when Bell enters he finds no-one and the bathroom window is locked from the inside (it is unclear whether Chigurh is hiding behind the door, unchecked by Bell, or whether Bell is imagining Chigurh, who is in fact no longer present). Bell then sees that the vent cover has been removed with a coin and realizes the money is gone.'

Lumpkin
Chip Parker just pointed out that the door opens fully to the wall. Chigurh was not there. I now think Bell was imagining him.

Enloe
I don't know - the movie was pretty much straight narrative. It would be off kilter for them to toss in an imagination sequence out of the blue without warning or tipoff. I also would think it a cop out. Was the shower curtain closed in the bathroom?

ps - IIRC in the book Chigurh is in his car with the $ when bell pulls up. He waits in the car watching bell go up to the room and enter it. Bell realizes he just missed Chigurh and emerges and calls the local cops, who lock the lot down and search each car, but Chigurh has slipped out.

Kopp
It was a great movie. I have been talking with people here at work that have not read the book. Honestly, I would be interested to know what their reaction would be to the film version. They did such a good job with it I feel like they wrote it just for people who actually read the book. Shows what respect they have for the material. There were several times the movie could have been much more theatrical if they decided so. But they resisted that urge. Do you think you would have enjoyed it as much if you didn't read the book? I don't think I would have.

Parker
I really enjoyed it and did not read the book. Just one person though.

Lumpkin
Books/movies/books/movies…..

I have a positive attitude about both. A movie has never ruined a book for me. A few movies have made the story (book + movie) an all-around better experience. A million decisions go in to creating either and that creativity is what keeps me coming back for more. Lolita is a perfect example.

For No Country, the synergy between book and movie makes both more enjoyable. Some people find it gratuitous when the film maker "winks" at the audience by bringing an obvious aspect of the book into the movie (Peter Jackson did this in LOTR I. When the hobbits stumble over the embankment while fleeing the Nazgul, they land next to a patch of mushrooms and a chapter title from the book emerged from the dialogue). It doesn’t bother me terribly even if it takes my attention out of the "world" the movie is trying to create--as long as it’s not too blatant. It’s a film maker’s way of positively acknowledging some intelligence in the world.

Unfortunately, you have to experience one or the other first. Wouldn’t I be great if you could somehow separate them as completely different experiences and THEN enjoy that synergy?

Kopp
Step away from the bong Michael.

Just kidding, I agree.

Lumpkin
I know. I am a huge nerd.

Enloe
My take is more mundane. I'm glad I read the book so I knew when to duck and didn't get too depressed when that SOB killed Carla Jean.

Also--I don't think the Coen Bros made Chigurh an anti-hero, a-la H Lecter in Silence of the Lambs, but I think they painted him as almost superhuman. This struck me as silly in the book and equally silly in the film. Don't tell me evil is getting tougher and then expect me to believe evil is not bound by the laws of physics--if so it's always been tough.

And--spare me the killer as philosopher. The first coin flip scene with the gas station owner is chlling and perfectly staged. But the same bit with carla jean is lame.

Lumpkin
Killed Carla Jean? If you blink while Chigurh is checking his shoes for blood, you would not know if he killed her or not without reading the book. How do we know he killed her in the book?

She is played by Kelly MacDonald, by the way (hot hottie from Trainspotting).

Kopp
Just in. No Country nominated for best picture - golden globes

January's book choice and other news

Okay, the Neanderthals have spoken, and our book for January will be Robert Penn Warren's All The King's Men. No meeting date set as yet, but that should be soon in coming (EDIT: January 7th--be there!). There are also a couple of film versions available, including last year's Sean Penn vehicle, which received mixed reviews. Oh, and an unabridged audio recording, as well.

Next on the agenda, the rave reviews for No Country for Old Men don't lie: it is an astonishingly good film . . . very faithful to McCarthy's book, with a couple of notable omissions from the later chapters. I'd love to see it again and discuss afterwards if anyone's interested.

So I revisited Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors last month following our Dostoevsky discussion, and it was just as provocative and fun as I had remembered. Then, Googling around to see what others had to say about it, I came across this terrific blog/analysis about the film . . . the YouTube clips are well worth your time! Anyway, I left a brief comment and later heard back from the blog author, who himself is a member of an all-male book club, the Gentlemen's Literary Society. Interestingly, while they don't have a "No Oprah" policy, they have passed a "No books by Margaret Atwood" injunction. You'll notice that their name and logo aren't nearly as cool as ours, but then again, they are Canadian (I'm pretty sure) and they're working on it, so I won't give them any grief.

Anyway, I take it from the ClustrMap below that they've been snooping around in here (a giant Vancouver dot just appeared), so let me extend a warm welcome to our Northern brothers.

this week's meeting / choosing our next book

We had a good turnout on Monday evening, with newcomers Chip Parker and Hunt Jackson joining Chris Enloe, Michael Lumpkin, Steve Carvalho, and myself to contemplate a little Crime and Punishment. I think Enloe was the only one who made it through the entire book; I must confess (after interminable internal debate) that I resorted to listening to an audio recording (there, I feel better now . . . on the road to redemption). Unfortunately, my recording was abridged, so I'm determined to push on through to the end in print.

For those of you who weren't with us, I offer an interesting quote from midway through Part Three to chew on . . . this is the murderer Raskolnikov in conversation with inspector Porfiry Petrovich:

"In my opinion, if, as the result of certain combinations, Kepler's or Newton's discoveries could become known to people on no other way than by the sacrificing the lives of one, or ten, or a hundred or more people who were hindering the discovery, or standing as an obstacle in its path, then Newton would have the right, and it would even be his duty . . . to remove those ten or a hundred people, in order to make his discoveries known to all mankind."

Dostoevsky ultimately shoots down this line of thinking, Raskolnikov being unable to find any peace until he owns up to the error of his actions (his punishment being almost entirely internal). It was interesting to me that this conventionally moral conclusion made the book ultimately less challenging and enjoyable to me than a more modern treatment of the same subject matter might. I guess it's just too comforting to agree with Dostoevsky to be fun. I contrasted it with my recollections of the film Crimes and Misdemeanors, in which the protagonist finds inner peace only when he discards this internal struggle and decides that his crime is justified by the pain it has circumvented for those around him. Oh, by the way, someone mentioned Match Point as another Woody Allen film that reaches more or less the same conclusion . . . I Googled around and came across an analysis noting that Allen has Rhys Meyers' character reading Dostoevsky in an early scene. Looks like I'll have to see this film again sometime soon (oh twist my arm--Johansen has never looked hotter!).

At any rate, our next meeting, we decided, will be sometime in January, with a date TBA shortly (dependent on those Uber Group fellows' travel schedules). We decided Christmas is just too damn busy for everyone. We bandied about a number of possible titles and agreed in the end to put it to a vote (just like the olden days). So here are the possibilities: All The King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren; Hiroshima, by John Hersey; Thirteen Moons, by Charles Frazier; The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald; and The Trouble with Poetry, by Billy Collins. The poll will be open until the end of the week, so put in your two cents. If you are compelled to lobby for one of these choices, add a comment below!

saw a brilliant movie last night

Last night I managed to catch Once at Lefont Tara, and I can't recommend it highly enough. Mullen, Lumpy, and Fincham, you guys in particular--and anyone else who has music hardwired into his anatomy--absolutely MUST see this film.

I don't want to say too much about it, as it's difficult to categorize. The story of an Irish street musician who meets his muse in a Czech immigrant girl, Once is a musical that doesn't rely on a single Hollywood musical cliche. It's a melancholy love story that likewise avoids every love story cliche (take your wives and girlfriends and show them by comparison the irredeemable lameness of the typical chick flick). It's spare, understated, and haunting. I can't get it out of my head.

And sweet Jesus, the music! I was home a total of five minutes before I went on Amazon and ordered the soundtrack. (Those of you more in-the-know when it comes to music may be familiar with the male lead, Glen Hansard, frontman for the best-Irish-band-I'd-never-heard-of, The Frames.)

I don't know how long the movie has been in Atlanta (release date was way back in May but must have been limited) or how long it's likely to be around, so catch it quickly.

last night's meeting and about next month

Hey, it was great to see everyone last night--the Neanderthals are definitely BACK. We've already got our next meeting date and our next book selected--we'll meet on November 5th, and we'll be reading an inconsequential, trashy little mass-market beach book called Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (I dunno, I hear he's kind of the poor man's John Grisham).

At any rate, should be good stuff. Newcomer Chris Enloe made the book suggestion, and he says you can merely read the first 100 pages and have a great time with this novel, with more than enough fodder for conversation next month (after all, isn't Crime always more interesting and fun than Punishment?).

Note that there are a number of translations available. Chris' personally recommends the translation by Pevear and Volokhonsky, but then he also makes the sensible suggestion that you go to the bookstore and read the first several paragraphs in each translation they offer to find the one that works for you. I enjoyed P & V's translation of The Brothers Karamazov, but I'm also intrigued that there's a Norton Critical Editions version available for this one.

But back to last night . . . our discussion of No Country for Old Men has to rank up there with the one we had for Under the Banner of Heaven a few years back (minus the alleged threatened ass-kicking). We ranged from serious thematic questions about the nature of evil and the future of humanity to critical considerations of literary craft. We reminisced about the women in South America and discussed the depths/heights to which reality television has fallen/climbed. We admired the scenery. Mullen admitted that he cried at the end of Charlotte's Web. Recently.

Some of the better discussion-generating questions we had:

• Does McCarthy share Sheriff Bell's worldview that our society is sliding inexorably into decay, or do we make a mistake if we conflate the worldview of a fictional character with that of the author?
• Whether the opinion is Bell's or McCarthy's, do you agree with it?
• Why did Moss go back to the scene of the crime? To take the dying man a drink of water? To kill the only person who saw him there? To (rather hamfistedly) serve the needs of the author in advancing the plot? Is this action believable or a sour note in the narrative?
• Do you think more or less of McCarthy for writing such a relatively accessible book?
• If you were in Moss' shoes, would you take the money?

Feel free one and all to add your thoughts, particularly those of you who couldn't make it last night. Add a comment here, or--for those of you with authorship rights--start a new post if you like.

Reviewing our reading list

Kicking off a little conversation . . .

Looking back over the reading list, what titles would you designate in the following personal categories:

1) Best book we've read
2) Best discussion we've had (that you can remember)
3) Unmitigated rubbish, won't ever read again
4) Book you never got around to but really do mean to read at some point

Here are my choices:

1. The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien
2. Under the Banner of Heaven, Jon Krakauer
3. Anthem, Ayn Rand (the only one I banished from my bookshelf)
4. True History of the Kelly Gang, by Peter Carey

Your thoughts?

Return of the Neanderthal

After a moderate hiatus, it looks like the Neanderthals are coming back to life. We have a book to read, we have a date to meet, and we have a location to muster the horde. Hopefully, we'll have a particularly winsome waitress to convey the libations. Well done, Michael Lumpkin, for getting things moving again.

So I thought that we should give blogging a try in honor and support of the Neanderthal revival. Personally, I really should be a bit more blogosphere savvy for professional development reasons, and this is as good an excuse to get started as any. Hopefully it'll provide a place for us to continue our conversations. I ran into and paddled with Neanderthal-in-absentia Rich Eustis at the Ocoee this weekend, and he gave me the shove I needed to give this a try. For Brian Sullivan, Rich Eustis, John Mullen and others who now live way out of town, here's your opportunity to freely participate (though we'd obviously love to see you in person at the meetings).

Feel free to pass along any suggestions for how this ought to work. Welcome to the blogosphere, Neanderthals. It's so simple, a caveman can do it.

UPDATE: I've sent out invites to everyone on Lumpy's original email--the NPS faithful--to have authorship on this site. If you have something you want to throw out here for consideration, post away!