Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver

Anyone who goes into a Barbara Kingsolver book without anticipating a meandering sermon in the context of sumptuous writing hasn’t read much Kingsolver. Since Flight Behavior has been detailed to death by reviewers, I don’t think it is a spoiler to say that this is the story of a young Appalachian mother who feels trapped in her back-woods community, her unexciting marriage, at the mercy of her in-laws, and floundering in the trials of motherhood. Then in a trek up the hill to a tryst, her feeble “flight” from reality, main character, Dellarobia (love the name), discovers a massive kaleidoscope of monarch butterflies completely covering a nearby canyon. 

Kingsolver certainly sets the stage for a good story, but in spite of her delicious writing, it just doesn’t seem to go anywhere. We don’t quite like Dellarobia; we don’t quite dislike her husband or mother-in-law.  Her prospective lovers never quite materialize, the conflict between the butterfly defenders and the loggers never quite comes to climax, Dellarobia never finds a smart solution to her situation. I just found myself peaking hill after hill to find nothing breathtaking on the other side.

Kingsolver grew up in Kentucky and has a graduate degree in Evolutionary Biology, so it is not surprising that she has written a number of books about rural life, rural people, and the perils of human impact on the environment, my favorites being Animal, Vegetable Miracle and Prodigal Summer. However, in spite of her stunning prose, she sometimes, especially in Flight Behavior, tends to portray country people as ignorant and backward, which is stereotyping, and she tends to use them as mouthpieces to talk down to readers, which is pretentious and condescending.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ll always read Barbara Kingsolver’s books because her writing is beautiful, her story lines are interesting, i. e. monarch butterflies migrating to Tennessee instead of central Mexico because of global warming, and she does a fab job of reading her own books (for those of us who frequent audio books), but I could love her more if not for the clichés and condescension.

In spite of this rather negative review, I’m going to recommend that you read Flight Behavior because Barbara Kingsolver simply doesn’t write a bad book. It is worth the read, it just won’t make your list of “best.”

By the way, the monarch butterfly issue isn’t fictional,there’s a pretty interesting article about that in Huffington Post.

One Hundred Things My Mother Taught Me A Million Times - Chapter 99

#99 “All you ever really have is your family.”

When I was in my 30’s,  a friend told me that she was suing her mom and sister over some property. I was dumbfounded. I couldn’t imagine a world in which I didn’t speak to my family except through an attorney. On the other hand, I’ll bet that if a non-family person filed a claim on that same piece of land, the mom and two sisters would stand together. I don’t think I ever heard my mom say “blood is thicker than water,” but it’s a lesson that we all learn eventually, and isn’t too far from mom’s #99. 

It was always sort of annoying when my mom insisted that me and my sisters and brother and their kids get together - an inconvenience to my very important life. But of course we all did it silently thinking, “Mom will probably die soon so we should just make her happy.” Little did we know that she would live to be 98, manipulating us over and over again into gutting our busy schedules to  spend a couple of days dodging screaming kids and arguing over who would clean the kitchen. Now those memories are some of my most treasured, and the love they cultivated for our ever-expanding family feels like the fabric of my worth.

In my undeniable predestination to become my mother, I too find myself pushing #99. I do everything but pay my kids to get together and it is worth every penny, and any guilt tripping and groveling I have to add. It’s not that my kids don’t want to get together, it’s just that their everyday lives are consumed by kids, school, work, bills, relationships, and occasionally, sleep.  What they may not realize now, but soon will, is that they are weaving the strongest net ever,  the net of love and protection; the last line of defense - the net of family.

So mom was right. All you ever really have is your family. Bind them to you to give them, and you, strength.

The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro

When I was 9 or 10 years old and my mom was attending graduate school at UT during the summer, we rode the bus from our rooming house one block off campus to hear Lyndon Baines Johnson speak at the Paramount Theater in downtown Austin. At the end of his speech, mom and I waited until the rush of people had cleared, and then we went up on the stage, and mom made a grand point of introducing me to Mr. Johnson. I remember with such clarity that this giant of a man, bent in half to gently hold and kiss my small, white-gloved hand. Indeed, that single moment in time triggered my life-long infatuation with LBJ.

You don’t have to have a memory of Lyndon Johnson kissing your hand to have an interest in him however. He inherited the Presidency in 1963 when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, was elected to the Presidency in 1964, and is credited for legislation that upheld civil rights, created public broadcasting, Medicare, Medicaid, and strengthened environmental protection, education and the “war on poverty.” He is also credited for escalating the horrific war in Vietnam, bringing about the “antiwar movement” that is so vivid in the memories of my young adulthood.

Robert Caro’s (pictured) most recent of three book about Johnson, The Passage of Power, is not just about Johnson, it is about Lyndon Johnson, John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, and how their lives so tragically and historically intertwined during the 1960’s.   The Passage of Power begins with Johnson’s disastrous hesitation in 1960 to mount his presidential campaign, resulting in his losing the nomination to John Kennedy. This was a catastrophe to Johnson who had wielded unharnessed power as the Senate Majority Leader for seven years, and whose life-long ambition was to be President of the United States. After a fascinating and intricate political dance between the Kennedy’s, LBJ, Sam Rayburn, John Connally and other formidable characters, Johnson was offered and accepted to run as Kennedy’s Vice Presidential teammate.

When asked why he would accept the no-power position as Kennedy’s VP, Johnson said, “Power is where power goes,” which is a powerful statement. But in fact, Johnson went from power magnate in the Senate, to being called “Rufus Cornpone” by the Kennedy staff.  Caro gives us a glimpse into the painful emasculation of Johnson, the quiet cunning of John Kennedy, and the viciousness of Bobby Kennedy.