Seven Books I Read This Summer

Friends know that prison rules seriously limit the number of books that I can possess at any given time. There's only so much room in these cells and the footlocker that stows my stuff, so a DOC-imposed limit isn't a terrible impediment. But occasionally I'm caught off guard, such as when leisure time's been at a premium, with a full compliment of books on hand when an order of several more unexpectedly arrives. To keep my property numbers in line, I then have to hurriedly send an equal number out. People I know usually ask first, "How's your book situation?" Strangers surprise me.

One such person is Veronica S., a person with whom I've never had any contact, who follows this blog and my case, and who has several times surprised me at random with orders of books from my Amazon wish list. The titles are obviously ones that I chose, but she seems to pick rather deftly, as if she knew what I was most in the mood to read at the moment. They delight and occupy me in the best way, but they also transport my mind from this place. When she — when anyone sends me a book, they're sending a fragment of freedom. It means so much.

Dexter Palmer's novel The Dream of Perpetual Motion was one of the latest books that Veronica sent. It's sort of a steampunk revision of The Tempest, (yes, there's an airship), and while it had moments of literary beauty, Palmer seemed incapable of resisting a bit of goofball humor here and there that, for me, blunted the mood of this otherwise fine alternate-reality fantasy.

Comparatively, Girl in Landscape engrossed me utterly. The third Jonathan Lethem novel I've read in a year, it's part parable, part coming-of-age story, part sci-fi, part Western — and it's every little bit as compelling as the last excellent Lethem novel I read, As She Climbed Across the Table. Both are highly recommended.

And then there was the hard-bitten tech-noir of William Gibson, the father of cyberpunk, who kind of returned to his roots in 2014 with the fast-paced The Peripheral. Gibson never did time travel before, and, technically, he doesn't do it here, either. The conceits at work here are quantum entanglement, the transmission of data streams to alternate timelines, and very, very rich hobbyists who get a kick out of playing god with those timelines by manipulating their financial markets and media. The fascinating concept, riveting plot, and trademark Gibsonian grit made a great, geeky alternative to summertime fun in the sun.

The Civil War provides a backdrop for no other fantasy books that I know of. Chris Adrian, however, used it to great effect in Gob's Grief: A Novel, — part alternate history, part magical realism — about an optimistic young doctor's quest to resurrect his long-dead twin brother. The book's so large, so historical, so richly textured, so beautiful. That this was Adrian's first novel is nothing short of stunning.

Neil Gaiman's The Sandman Omnibus Volume Two was a gift to me from the delightful Emily C., and equal in excellence to the previous volume. I adore Gaiman's graphic novels about Dream of the Endless and the people — well, not always people, but beings whose worlds brush against his realm of unconscious fantasy. Gods and demons, eyeless nightmares and ravens who used to be men, retired superheroines and creatures of folklore walk the pages of these tales. Rereading them for the first time in twenty-two years was such a treat. Thank you again, Emily.

I wanted to feel my way around before I signed up for the prison's Buddhist services in July. To that end, I borrowed Buddhism, a 1961 history and what's-what compilation of scholarly works edited by Richard A. Gard. As introductions go, I could definitely have done worse, but what struck me most was how much history 2,500 years includes. This book doesn't scratch the surface.

Several other books then came from Punker Bee, who follows @FreeByronCase on Instagram. For Read a Book Day, 6 September, I started and finished Jean-Christophe Valtat's English-language debut, 03 (translated by Mitzi Angel). A brief sprawl of a novel, it tracks a teenage boy's profound thoughts about the dark-eyed developmentally disabled girl across the street, while both wait for morning buses — his to high school, hers to a special-education academy. He calls what he feels for her love, and so he yearns for her notice, narrating, "[M]y own existence, hard enough for me to maintain with any robustness to myself, was, for those dark eyes — black as the inside of closed fists, reflecting less the outside world than the abandoned interior of a skull — a thing she never recognized but saw as a hazy blip on the landscape of those school mornings, an unremarkable little figure standing in front of the already shabby backdrop, a simple outgrowth, barely organic, of the bus shelter I leaned up against, my hands in my pockets, brain blowing on my eyes as though they were embers, trying to make my 'passion' seem that much more notable, more incandescent, but failing to send it over to the other side, across the cold magma frozen into tarmac by the organized disaster called society." It's that kind of book, and I loved it.

So, to my three book benefactors, thank you, thank you, thank you! You made my summer something supremely special. I'm looking forward to this coming season of change, when I dive into the rest of those novels that Punker Bee sent.

Showering in Prison Just Got a Little Less Luxurious

You've seen movies where prisoners stand naked, elbow to elbow, and soap up in a large steamy room lined with showerheads. Rooms like these are the source of that old "joke" about dropping the soap. Many old-timey hoosegows still employ that shower-with-a-shank model, but the Prison Rape Elimination Act that George W. Bush signed into law aimed to eliminate such dicey settings. Prisons being built today don't have shower rooms like this. The Missouri DOC's response to PREA includes policy mandating shower doors and curtains — all to the benefit of guys like me, who don't care for showering with one eye open and our backs to the wall.

At Crossroads (which is now temporarily closed), and here at ERDCC, each prisoner bathes in an individual stall. The cinder block walls go all the way up. There's a modicum of privacy, thanks to a thick gray vinyl curtain. Creepy peepers will still walk too close and peep over — it's what the so-called shower sharks do — but at least my bare white ass isn't exposed to the entire wing. I can push the button and close my eyes and let the cares of the day wash down through the big brass Smith Company drain grate.

Yes, I can push the button, for there are no knobs for turning the shower on or off, nor for adjusting the water temperature. There's only that single stainless steel button, and the water that flows when you press it is whatever temperature it happens to be. You won't know for sure until you're under the stream. It stays on for a predetermined period, thanks to an electronic timer. However long you need to soap up and rinse your face — it's about half a minute shorter than that. Then, like a game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey While Streams of Watery Soap Sting Your Eyes (everyone's favorite!), you blindly poke around for that damn button.

This was how it was for the longest time, and still I looked forward to showering, to the feeling of washing away the day's vicissitudes, and to those warm minutes of quasi-solitude. Last week, though, my daily respite took a hit. As part of a big-time money-saving plan, ERDCC maintenance workers just installed delays on all of the showers. Now, when my blind button-hunts end, I've got to wait twenty seconds before pressing it does any good. Standing there, soapy, blind, and shivering, I can mash that button all I want, but there'll be no more water until it's time.

I'm enjoying my showers a lot less than I used to. On the bright side, what water I get is warm more often than not. There's also no limit on how many times I can press the button to get clean. Not yet, anyway.

Prison Politics Aren't What You Think They Are

A general public sense exists of people in prison being ignorant of goings-on in the wider world. I get this all the time, friends asking if I've heard of a particular well-known app, if I'm informed about the scandal du jour, or if I understand a certain new slang term. Sure, there's a lot that I miss by being locked up, but I have my own TV, subscriptions to numerous magazines, and a diverse social circle. I probably stay better informed than the average prisoner.

Until my 2001 arrest, I was very politically engaged. I had followed the latest presidential election very closely, attended political demonstrations, took fervent interest in civic matters, and frequently discussed local, national, and world politics with passion. (For context: my best friend went on to master in political science at Berkeley, and my ex-roommate became the administrator of a Planned Parenthood clinic.) Finding myself in prison didn't diminish my enthusiasm. I still listened to news on the radio, watched the twenty-four-hour channels in my cell, and conversed about policy and law with anyone willing to engage me on political matters. The lead-up to the 2016 presidential election changed everything.

Maybe it was a matter of feeling disenfranchised and so far outside of the system. Maybe it was turning forty and realizing that (to paraphrase Emerson) the crack of doom heard around the country was nothing but the noise of a pop gun. Maybe it was a lack of patience with the infantile puling and name-calling of the candidates. I turned off my TV with disgust one day and swore off all politics. When I realized that you can't, in this country, follow any news without getting at least a little of the slime of something political splattered on you, I gave up news media altogether. My news blackout enters its fourth year next month.

That big social circle I mentioned includes some who are very keen on politics. I don't have any problem voicing displeasure when they bring up a subject I studiously refuse to engage with them on. By and large, they respect my boundaries without complaint. However, in prison, it's said that there are no secrets. People talk. And as hard as I try, a guy can't help overhearing things.

Ours are highly politicized times. I have no scientific basis for what I'm about to say, but there might well be more people in prison who take an interest in politics, per capita, than there are in the free world. Arguments spring up around me throughout the day, and I can't go a week without hearing mention of either the president's staggering inhumanity or his greatness of character. "Democrats!" one will spit. "Republicans!" another will growl. Asked where I stand on the issues of the day, I resort to my stock reply, "I heard that the price of tomatoes has fluctuated again." If pressed for an answer, I ask my inquisitor who he'll be voting for in the next senate race — a practice that, more often than not, shames him into adopting another, less fraught subject.

Again quite unscientifically, it seems to me that the average prisoner here in Missouri leans Republican or identifies as a very conservative Independent. Those inclined to a Democratic perspective tend to be so more out of obligation, due to labor union ties, than because of progressive values. As far as apolitical prisoners are concerned, they tend to like the promises of Donald Trump quite a lot — particularly his anti-immigration stance — although none of his fans seem capable of enumerating any specific decisions or actions of note that the president has actually taken.

I hear this hasn't been a good year for tomatoes.