AboutBooks

By Paul Schaefer

Review of Ghost on the Throne: The Death of Alexander the Great and the War for Crown and Empire, by James Romm. Alfred Knopf. October 2011 publication. Hardcover,  368 pages, $28.95.

The death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C. left an ancient world bereft of a leader with almost mythic power. The vacuum resulted in treachery, brutality, and bloodshed spread across three continents that in some ways compares to Homer’s Iliad. Heads

are lopped, bodies pile up and the vagaries of chance make it seem as if the gods are engaged in a tug of war. Alexander’s life story is often told, but very few readers know about the tumult that divided his empire after he died just before his thirty-third birthday.

It is a complicated story, but one that James Romm, the James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Classics at Bard College tells with such clarity that it becomes a thrilling tale for the general reader. Though written for the layman, Romm bases his facts on carefully researched evidence and then skillfully knits together this era from the bits and pieces of the ancient records that remain. When he occasionally makes assumptions where there is a lack of proof, he always warns the reader that there is no certainty but only the likelihood of a given event. He is a careful scholar, but at the same time a compelling writer who knows how to build suspense.

Romm has colorful characters to work with. The crafty Ptolemy, who founded a dynasty in Egypt that did not end until the suicide of his descendant the famous Cleopatra almost 300 years later, is matched by the aged general Antigonus One-Eye, who ends up ruling much of the Asian continent. But the surprise is that Eumenes—a small, wily Greek who began as Alexander’s secretary—emerges as the hero. If the book were to be scripted as a movie and it made into a DeMille-like epic, casting Eumenes  would call for a Toby McGuire rather than a Brad Pitt. Eumenes does not lack courage, but he does lack status in the Macedonian hierarchy because he was a Greek. While we think of Alexander as Greek, he was from a Macedonian royal family, and his crack troops and bodyguard of generals considered themselves Macedonians and far superior in courage and ability to the more civilized Greeks of Athens and Sparta. This handicap eventually brought Eumenes down, but not before he almost rose to the pinnacle of power.

Women played enormous roles during this period. Sometimes they were pawns, but incredibly valuable pawns because of their ability to produce children with royal bloodlines.  Other women like Olympias, the mother of Alexander, actually led an army facing another woman, Adea, who was married to Alexander’s half-wit half-brother. Both came to horrible ends but not before they schemed, cajoled and changed history in their grasp for power.  But what is truly remarkable about this book is the way Romm handles dozens of names, places and events that might easily confuse a reader who is not familiar with the period. He does it by writing short set pieces that narrate all the separate actions going on at different times around the empire and then arranging them in a logical order that allows the reader to understand the story as a whole.  If you are a history buff, a person who loves stories of adventure and war or simply someone who likes a good tale, buy this book and settle in for a page-turning read.  Ancient history has rarely been this entertaining.

by Rachel Cavell

Review of Lola, California by Edie Meidav. Farrar, Straus & Girous. Hardcover, 452 pages, $28.

Lola, California by Edie Meidav, writer in residence at Bard College, is unwieldy and brilliant. Meidav came to Bard in 2006 as the Bard Fiction Prize recipient for that year and this is her third novel, following The Far Field: A Novel of Ceylon (2001) and Crawl Space (2005).

Lola, California attempts nothing less than an encapsulation of the rapturous dystopia along the western coast of our nation; Part parody, part bildungsroman, the book strains at its seams as it attempts to distill the essence of California and navigates its characters through a world overflowing with choices but lacking any meaningful values with which to choose from among them.

Set between Berkeley and Los Angeles (“Ellay”), with forays to the seedier parts of the eastern seaboard, Lola recounts the tale of two girls, Lana and Rose—collectively “the Lolas”— as they trip, Lolita-like, into adulthood, through a vertiginous series of flash-backs whirling us between 1988 and 2008: “The girls have been stretching into the luxury of high-school summer between sophomore and junior years. . . When in the car’s mobile temple, they dedicate themselves to hedonism or exhibitionism, busy tanning their legs out the car window. . .” Maliciously grinning, Oz-like, over each page of this book is Lana’s father, Victor Mahler, an erstwhile professor at Berkeley with an ego larger than the State itself: “ . . . When in a motel they go giggling in polka-dot bikinis to soak up chlorine in a motel pool while Vic, on various shaded lounge chairs, wears reading glasses and peruses journals, rolling them up only to kill mosquitoes drawn to the tight cordons of his professor legs.”

“Professor legs” Mahler is a pompous fraud who has made a profession of amassing groupies and preaching a New Age-like brand of Promethean self-empowerment. Meidav conveys this with a sly wit. As Mahler intones to his disciples at one of his legendary Berkeley events: “This is not to say that, in the terms of the pop psychologist, you are condemned like a slave to serve your bliss, or that like some child despot you alone create your reality, but rather that endless hope remains for those of us who believe they have been locked into some dusty Freudian legerdemain…there is no time like the present to understand all the selves feasible in your own lifetime, not to mention the vestigial selves locked in your metaphysical DNA.”

Whether or not one comes to feel that Mahler’s out-sized narcissism in itself warrants the electric chair, Mahler has, in fact, committed an actual crime the nature of which is not revealed until the end of the book. He wastes away throughout the 430 pages of Lola, California at a maximum security prison somewhere east of “Ellay”.

Lana Mahler is the very embodiment of Mahler’s religion of indulgent entitlement. The choices she makes are at best foolish and puerile, and, at worst, are infected by the same chilling self-justification that fuels Mahler’s capital offense: If the only moral construct is the one given us by Mahler, we’re all, as Lana’s mother says of Lana, socio-paths in the making.

Together, the eponymous “Lolas” represent the many faces of their sur-name. Like California, Meidav’s world is not entirely vacuous and unprincipled – it is also gloriously, heartbreakingly, full of promise. In this, Meidav’s language is so evocative that it reaches off the page to stroke an unsettled soul. Describing Lana’s children, Meidav writes: “One held his hands as if still tickling the inside of the womb’s walls, a bent bird-wing, while the other’s neck strained against an invisible collar. For this long moment she held each before placing them down, patting them in, covering them with her fleece, hand steady on their bellies in a rush of pure atavism. Never had she been around anyone so young, anyone whose promise was still so much a question: you had to wonder how responsible the world would be towards such perfect creatures.”

One feels at times that Meidav believes herself consigned to death-row, writing as if her life depended upon it – memorializing in Lola, California every description, every moment, every thought, every theme – as if there wouldn’t be time or occasion for another book. But if Meidav’s crime is one of exuberant over-load this is perhaps the price she pays for carrying more of the world on her shoulders than anyone could hold. Let’s hope that Meidav’s sentence is commuted — that she has many more years to work through her extravagantly luminous prose, and continues to help us define and describe the world we live in with clarity and grace.

— Rachel Cavell, October 2011

by Cait Johnson

This article about Joy Gross’s new book—available from Epigraph Publishing in Rhinebeck—first appeared in the print edition of AboutTown.

The French epicure Brillat-Savarin said, “Tell me what you eat and I’ll tell you what you are.” If you’re wondering whether there’s any truth in this old adage, consider the case of Rhinebeck resident Joy Gross. She doesn’t take any medication. She hasn’t had any plastic surgery. And she is radiantly beautiful, as well as vivacious, fit, and supple: she recently went sky diving and she’s a regular at the local yoga studio. But here’s the real kicker: Joy Gross is 80-something. Okay, you may wonder, has she been tippling from some fountain of youth and health? Not exactly: Joy is living proof that a mostly-plant-based diet brings substantial health and beauty benefits right along with good taste and nutrition. Better yet, Joy has just come out with a new book—Joy’s Recipes for Living Younger . . . Longer! An Eighty-Something Beauty Reveals Her Secrets—so the rest of us can share the feast of good looks and good health.
Joy wasn’t always sold on the veget-arian thing. When her mother became a health-foodie and imposed the regimen on the entire family, the young Joy resorted to clever ruses to feed her addiction to sweets, like telling neighbors that her mother wanted to borrow a cup of sugar and then eating the contraband herself. But increasingly severe psoriasis was the blessing in disguise that eventually converted her: she found that when she avoided sugar and dairy and ate mostly plants, the cure was nearly miraculous.
Fast forward a few years. Joy, now a young mother, became the co-founder of the famous Pawling Health Manor (now the Hotel Belvedere, just south of Rhinebeck) where thousands of people, including stars like Miles Davis, Shelley Winters, and Charlie Mingus, came to get healthy. In over 30 years of the Manor’s operation, she saw first hand how her recipes improved clients’ appearance and overall wellbeing. Joy knows her science: the body has to work harder to process the typical American diet, which is highly acid-forming—and acid ages us and can lead to illness. When we eat clean, green, healthful food instead, we alkalize our acidic systems and our bodies have more energy to heal and rejuvenate.
But what if you’ve been a meat-and-potatoes type for years? No problem: it’s never too late to change what’s on your plate and reap the benefits. Far from being the kind of person who collars you on the street and pushes their philosophy down your throat, Joy is compassionate, as well as passionate, about her recipes for health and beauty, and advocates making changes as you can, being flexible, and practicing lots of self-forgiveness. Perfection is not the goal. Fortunately, eating like Joy is no hardship—her recipes are tasty and succulent, bursting with fresh seasonal produce.
So, the next time you look in the mirror and bemoan those visible signs of aging, consider making the gorgeous orange soup below. Then top off your meal with a colorful Five-Fruit Sundae instead of scarfing a candy bar. Your body—and your tastebuds—will thank you.

Joy’s Carrot Ginger Soup
INGREDIENTS
4 or 5 California carrots
1 Spanish onion
2 cups water
Vegetable seasoning to taste
1/2 cup unsweetened coconut milk
2 tbsp chopped fresh ginger root
Trim and slice the carrots.
Peel and slice the onion.
Place in a stainless steel pot with 2 cups water. Start on high heat and lower the temperature when steam rises. Cover. In 7 or 8 minutes the carrots should be tender.
Pour the soup into a blender. Add seasoning to taste.
Add 1/2 cup coconut milk and ginger, and blend on high, adding hot water as needed to get a smooth texture.
Serve piping hot.
Makes 4 servings.