What I’m Reading Now

— Underworld by Don DeLillo. Still. See the post below. grrrrr

— The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams … I have now reached the point where the correspondence between the two revolutionaries opens up again, after years of absence. Abigail’s letters to Jefferson at this time … holy crap. She takes him TO TASK. (The whole “faithfull are the wounds of a friend” thing … and then how she decides to ‘close’ the correspondence. She is DONE with him. And John Adams added a note at the bottom of her last letter to Jefferson: “This correspondence has occurred without my knowledge or suspicion. I have nothing to add at this time.” What is THAT about? It would take a couple more years of silence, and the intervention of Benjamin Rush, to get these 2 guys talking again.) It’s all so moving, so real to me. And I still have years to go, to get to 1826 when they both die. There’s so much still to learn about these two gentlemen.

— Inside the CIA: Revealing the Secrets of the World’s Most Powerful Spy Agency by Ronald Kessler. This is my commute book. My short commute book. It’s a fast read – each chapter is about 3 pages long – so I can get in a chapter a day on the bus. It’s pre-September 11, this book … so a lot of it strikes me as chillingly naive. But still, I do find it very interesting. Spies, and James Bond, and all that stuff.

— George Washington, A Life, by Willard Sterne Randall. In terms of the Founding Fathers, good old George is the one I know the least about. So I have plunged into this biography with gusto. I like Randall’s writing a lot, and read his books on Alexander Hamilton and on Thomas Jefferson. I believe he wrote another book on Benedict Arnold, which I’d like to read as well. George. Wow. What a FASCINATING individual. After hanging out in the lofty political philosophizing regions with Adams and Jefferson, this is quite a change. A man of few words, and of action. Right now, I’m reading of the battles in Philadelphia. I lived there for a couple of years, so it’s so interesting, so funny, to imagine all of that stuff occurring pretty much right where I lived. I lived out in Mt. Airy, in Germantown … and the place is SOAKED in American history. So that’s good stuff. I’m tearing through that book. It’s interesting: when I read the letters of John Adams or of Jefferson – their prose is so clear, so precise, so alive … that it is as though their old personalities come right up off the page. I am not finding that to be the case with Washington. His writing is muddy. I have to read some of his letters a couple of times to figure out his meaning. Here’s what I think: he used overly formal prose most of the time. He used byzantine grammatical structures, so it’s hard to get at the truth. EXCEPT when he was angry, frustrated. THEN it’s quite clear. And THEN his writing is even more clear than Adams or Jefferson, who pretty much kept a lid on their more volatile emotions. (You know … even though they’re pissed off, they still sign with “With esteem, your most humble servant, etc.) But George? When he’s pissed? His letters read like: “This situation, as it stands, is unacceptable.” Blunt, forthright, no bullshit. But most of his other letters, to me, are rather opaque. He is not writing in his own voice, but in a certain STYLE.

Just an interpretation there.

I love all the war stories though. I love the Polish guy (Tadeuz Kosalkdjsldkflkjsdflkj – i have no idea how to spell his name – Nobody did, apparently. So everyone just referred to him as “Kos”.) who basically came over to fight in the war, and he was an expert on how to build barricades in the water. He was basically hired to build up defenses along the Delaware, and figure out how to trap the British boats as they came along. He sounds a bit like a genius. Fascinating man.

So there’s THAT book.

And then I’ve been reading the Bible quite a bit. Just a little bit every day. I used to do that all the time, and got out of the habit. But I’ve been doing it again. I find it quite relaxing and enjoyable. My morning ritual. I read it chronologically, too. From Genesis on. I dig it.

I think those are all the book-balls I have in the air right now. The Howard Hughes biography will have to wait. I just can’t fit him in right now.