Camus' strange translations

By Scott Beveridge

If ever there was a book that changed my perspective on life it was Albert Camus' "The Stranger."

It caught my eye on a roommate's bookshelf while I was down with the flu at college in 1979 for no other reasons than it having been thin and had the appearance of being really easy to read.

The novel first published in 1942 ended up being so fascinating that I finished it within the course of a day. At first, I was mortified that the title character, Meursault, was tried and executed in France in a murder for reasons that had more to do with his seemingly emotionless existence than the circumstances surrounding the revenge killing.

The author also had me romanticizing about wanting live out my life as an existentialist without having to conform and react to drama in the normal patterns accepted by society.

Little did I know then that this book was considered a classic by academia. That revelation would soon follow after I heard student after student at Indiana University of Pennsylvania complain about how much they hated the book.

Suddenly I felt as if I belonged to a secret society whose members understood that great literature was being ignored for no other reason than it having been required reading for a college class.

Years later, I decided to read the book again, only to find a much different modern translation, which was supposed to be closer to the words Camus originally penned in the book also known as "L’Étranger"

Meursault had suddenly been transformed from a likable character into a cold-blooded killer who, at the end, exhibited emotions that would have made a Roman Catholic priest cringe with pain.

Yet, I was able to forgive the earlier translator who had given America a sanitized version of the book. It still had enough of Camus in it then to reawaken in me a passion for reading that might have otherwise died with those damned, dull books I had to read that summer in a civics class.

Author finds Col. Fawcett's land of Z

By Scott Beveridge

True stories penned by journalists always seem to appeal to my reading tastes.

And no other such author has captured my imagination and adventurous spirit more than David Grann in his “The Lost City of Z.”

Grann uses the book to chronicle his obsession to trace the trail of British explorer Percy Fawcett, whose disappearance in the Amazon became one of the greatest mysteries of the 20^th century.

He immediately lured me into the story in the preface, a chapter in books that I usually tend to overlook for their snobbery prose.

But, Grann ended his book’s introduction with a story about his being mosquito bitten and hungry in the jungle, only to have been startled by shadowy figures among the bush. “What the hell am I doing here?” he asked himself.

There was no turning back from the pages of this National Bestseller.

They revealed that Fawcett was the inspiration for many of the jungle adventures featured in movies starring Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, as well as Harrison Ford. It appeared Fawcett even inspired many comic book, television and other characters whom appealed to children of my generation, too.

Fawcett, after surviving service in World War I, was a washed up explorer when he secured the funding and set off in 1925 with his son, Jack, and another companion in 1925 in search of a glittering gold city they believed had survived, unchanged in Brazilian jungle.

A number of wild-eyed theories about Fawcett's fate would follow, including one that he found an eternal underground utopia, while more than 100 people died in search of his party.

Grann, who admitted his physical limitations early on, still pushed forward in his attempts to solve the mystery despite reports before his trip that gunman had killed a 73-year-old nun in the territory he would soon visit.

The New Yorker staff writer believed he eventually found Z, and that Fawcett was on target when he apparently died at the hands of hostile Indians. Grann made an excellent case for his findings.

They are too fascinating to spoil here; take this excellent journey on your own. It's that good.

More inclusive histories, finally

By Scott Beveridge

Local historians are including the contributions and struggles of black people for the first time in the things they publish about their communities.

Record keepers in Washington, Pa., have been collecting the oral histories of older black people who lived during the Civil Rights Movement, including those about segregated movie theaters and swimming pools.

Until then, the black story had largely been overlooked there, unless told through the eyes of prosperous white people who helped escaped slaves seeking freedom on the Underground Railroad, said Tom Mainwaring, a professor at Washington & Jefferson College.

The folks in Donora, Pa., have followed suit.

The Donora Historical Society has included a number of photos of black people in a new book on the Washington County borough’s history in what probably is the first time an integrated story has been told there.

The photo that stands out, above, shows a dozen Boy Scouts in uniform posing outside their Baptist church in 1940 with their leader and troop and country flags at a time when the United States was poised to enter World War II.

The paperback photo album also includes a head shot of U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton, a black Donora native who served as a federal drug czar and also presided over the perjury trial of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, chief of staff to former Vice President Dick Cheney. Meanwhile, the book holds a portrait of Loretta Ross Jones, a black woman who has spent her life working to help improve the lives of troubled local children.

The book also shows off a fantastic collection of photographs that tell the story of how the town grew up around steel. It’s only because the society was fortunate to have inherited the remarkable collection of a professional photographer, Bruce Dreisbach, who spent most of his life in Donora after locating there in 1906.

The book is a project of Charles Stacey, a retired public school superintendent, and two other historical society members, Brian Charlton and David Lonich. It can be purchased at local retailers, online bookstores or through its publisher, Arcadia Publishing at www.arcadiapublishing.com

(The society will officially launch the book at 1 p.m. April 10, 2010, at the Donora Smog Museum, 595 McKean Ave.)

The founding fathers had faults, a great book reveals

By Scott Beveridge,

The book “Founding Brothers” is easy to put down after a few pages of dry, historic reading, academia style.

But, that should not come as criticism to its author, Joseph J. Ellis, who does a brilliant job in his national bestseller of analyzing and critically reviewing letters and documents that were left behind by the founders of the United States. His efforts won him a Pulitzer Prize for crying out loud.

For those reasons, this book first published 10 years ago will periodically find its way back into the hands of readers who are interested in the lives of such revolutionaries as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and James Madison.

Ellis peels off the layers of history that has placed these men on pedestals, as if they were mythical gods, to reveal them as real men with faults and political ambitions that sometimes blinded them from the better good of the young nation. They made silly predictions and bad judgments while also laying the foundations of a new nation, sometimes flying by the seats of their pants.

My generation was never taught in public school that Jefferson could have been a back-stabber who often undermined President John Adams when he served under him as vice president. Some of his behind-the-stage maneuverings involved Jefferson’s disagreement with Adams over the president’s support of a peace treaty with France, giving birth to bitter bipartisan politics would become their legacies.

The polarization is made clear in the book near its end when Adams, in his waning years, wrote to Jefferson about the public outrage over a decision during his presidency to send a peace delegation to France.

Angry mobs had surrounded Adams’ house over that decision, while he stated he was certain Jefferson was “fast asleep in philosophical Tranquility.”

“What think you of Terrorism, Mr. Jefferson?” Adams stated in the letter. “Both parties have excited artificial Terrors.”

His words sound familiar these days when President George Bush has faced accusations of embracing a “politics of fear” in wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, acts of terrorism in New York and Washington, D.C.

And all anyone has to do today is turn on CNN to get a steady diet of the ugly divisions that exist between Republicans, Democrats, teapartiers and independents over heath care reform, bailouts, big government and spending.

Tales from the Whiskey Rebellion

By Scott Beveridge

Some of the better stories are hidden between the lines of David Froman’s eyewitness account of the infamous Whiskey Rebellion in the late 18th century in southwestern Pennsylvania.

Told in his memoirs, “Sim Greene and Tom the Tinker’s Men,” they reveal wonderful tidbits about the pioneers who settled the Monongahela River valley.

Froman had no idea steel would someday become king there when he first laid his eyes upon the lush forests in his new home. Later, some of his companions would encounter killer pirates downriver on the Ohio River while they traded their goods. Meanwhile, the faithful in these backwoods gathered for endless hours at tent revivals to worship the Lord, while others set about to exploit the natural resources they were discovering.

This author penned the book in a flowery prose, beginning with his following a group over the Allegheny Mountains in 1788 so he could establish the first schoolhouse in Elizabeth, the only town between Brownsville and Pittsburgh that had an established a system of streets at the time.

“Away it stretched until in the misty distance it seemed to merge with some clouds lying low along the western horizon,” he wrote about his first glimpses of the rolling green hills of America’s early wild west. “Long we stood on this farthest rampart of the great Appalachian chain feasting our eyes and feeling the thrilling power of the landscape.”

His party reached its destination from Philadelphia, having witnessed the migration of pack squirrels, averted a mountain lion attack and survived a fast-sweeping forest fire by hugging close to a small stream. He obviously had a fascination for the main character, Sim Greene, a colorful hunter, trapper and Revolutionary War hero who seemed to play a minor role in the tax revolt that became the first major uprising against the United States.

While Froman admitted that rebellion of President George Washington’s tax on Monongahela rye whiskey to pay down debt from the American Revolutionary War was dead wrong, his book leads one to believe he kept his opinions to himself while it took place because he was a good friend of the rebels. Had he been brave enough to speak out against the movement when it was in full force, the anarchists would have surely tarred and feathered him rather than permit him to tag along to their meetings and demonstrations. They had drawn a bitter line between their ranks and those who supported the new government.

While historians have long argued over whether the notorious Tom the Tinker was an individual or the character represented a group of protestors, Froman identified him with certainty as John Hollcroft of the Finleyville area. The farmer sneaked under the cover of night to destroy the whiskey stills of those who submitted to the tax, or posted warnings about how he planned to retaliate against the tax collectors.

After the tax fight was quelled, the men of Elizabeth built from a wood a marvelous schooner capable of carrying 250 tons of local goods down the Mon to New Orleans. Of course the ship, the Monongahela Farmer, was christened with a bottle of local rye whiskey and it completed its maiden voyage.

Froman wrote the book on his deathbed, and requested it to be published 50 years after his death so not to embarrass the farmers who fought the tax or any of their immediate heirs.

In the end, he resurrected the legacy of a friend – Harold Harden - who fled Elizabeth under the threat of arrest by U.S. marshals for his alleged participation in a tax riot. A rumor followed Harden’s escape that he had joined up with the pirates who hid out in a place called Cave-in-Rock that contained the many skulls of their victims. But, Froman eventually reported that the pirate under suspicion back home was actually the man's long-lost twin brother. The good brother, alas, had become a devout minister.

That tale left me wondering if this book, while it was hard to put down after all these years, should have been classified in bold print as a piece of nonfiction.

Author steals your heart and leaves you hungry

It wouldn’t be a good idea to read “Stealing Buddha’s Dinner” on an empty stomach.

Author Bich Minh Nguyen uses food deliciously to set the stage for her memoirs of childhood adjustment as a tiny Vietnamese refugee living among a sea of tall, blue-eyed and blond white children in Grand Rapids, Mich.

While pondering whether she should keep practicing her Vietnamese or share her family traditions with her classmates, she took a bite from a sticky sweet rice cake and felt like an outcast. “It tasted like a secret long kept, old and familiar and unspeakable,” she noted in the 2007 book that is new in paperback form.

Her father married a Mexican immigrant, further complicating the tensions in her overcrowded home. She longed for her new mom to bake pies like the perfect mothers in television commercials for Duncan Hines products. But, hers baked overcooked blueberry pies in store-bought shells that no one ate.

A times, she recalled her childhood between bites of shrimp and pork spring rolls and sweet, juicy fruit pulled from the family altar to Buddha and ancestors. Other days, she reflected her struggles to become an American between trips to a Ponderosa steakhouse.

She won the battle in her first book, not only by coming to terms with her individuality but by delivering a wonderful story about a family’s survival of the painful Vietnam War era in a land of junk food.

This one's from the guy at the end of the bar

J.R. Moehringer can saddle up to a bar and rattle off some of the best stories. He’s had a lot of practice, too, by having grown up in Publicans, a well-oiled Long Island, NY, pub run by his Uncle Charlie.

Moehringer puts his life on the table in his bittersweet memoir, “The Tender Bar,” with the perfect blend of wit and humor.

It's an engaging look his taking wisdom from a bunch of drunkards and losers who are regulars at the bar.

I especially like the nicknames he give the characters, including "Wheelchair Eddie," who earned his by rolling his car and losing control of his legs.

Moehringer overcomes great odds while growing up fatherless and searching for male role models, even though many of his ended up begin gamblers and crooks who drowned their sorrows at Publicans.

Fore example, he lands a scholarship to Yale and a job at the New York Times while developing his own drinking problem.

And, he shows a great knack for putting to words the process of loosing his mind with every swig of gin.

Best of all, his book published in 2005 and available in paperback is 110 proof that a little guy can come out on top after starting life with a near-empty glass and ending up sober.

Moehringer explains this process best at start of Part II, “Measure for Measure,” with this quote from William Shakespeare:

“They say best men are molded out of faults,
And, for the most, become much more the better for being a little bad.”