Author: Mark

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Book Review: “Sophie’s Choice” is Oscar Bait

I read three other books between the day I began Sophie’s Choice and when I completed it. It was among the strangest books I’ve read: it had moments of pure drudgery, of self-indulgence, of compelling storytelling, of discomfort, of confusion, of literary triumph. When I reached the moment of the titular choice, all my struggles through the purple prose and plodding details felt worthwhile. But at that moment of completion, I had no words to describe my experience. Only a few months later did my feelings, and this post’s title, coalesce.

William Styron’s style in Sophie’s Choice is so over the top that, if considered as satire, it could be a true comedic masterpiece. The book reads as a fantasy version of Styron’s own youth: a self-absorbed aspiring writer in New York meets a beautiful Polish Catholic who spent time in a concentration camp during World War II, along with her bipolar, drug-addled boyfriend. Various tales of drinking, sexual fantasy, and flashbacks from characters other than our sole narrator are described in impossible detail.

The book is a beautiful slog. It’s the written version of a show recommended by a friend, with the caveat that after the first two seasons, it gets really good. It’s a writer throwing the dictionary and thesaurus and hypothetical notes from decades of therapy he never attended, empowered by the immense security provided to a middle-aged white man working on a novel in the 1980s. It’s fascinating and frustrating in the ideas it seems to put forth, its explicit detail, its erudite and overdone diction, and the surprising success of the overall story despite everything that could inspire a frustrated reader to put down the book and never return.

Sophie’s Choice is a book worth reading and studying both for its content and for its context. It’s the work of a writer who appears to write with intention, yet that intention is crafting their ideal opus to win an award rather than to say something from within.

I still don’t know whether I recommend this book, but it sure is one I’d love to take a class about, or listen to a panel of authors with a variety of backgrounds discuss it. I’ve since moved on to my usual stack of science fiction, but Sophie’s Choice was a worthwhile challenge that will stick with me.

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An 1859 Note on Citizenship

While reading through the Springfield Daily Republican to investigate early baseball games, I found an opinion piece discussing naturalized citizenship in the United States. This paragraph stuck with me in light of the current administration. The emphasis partway through is mine.

The truth is that Mr. Cass and his party have receded from the doctrine always hitherto held by our government. The right of voluntary expatriation has always been the American doctrine. It is the true doctrine, for if there is any universally acknowledged civil right it is the right of each human being to choose his place of residence on the globe. This right is as unlimited as is the corresponding duty of each man to submit to the government and laws under which he has placed himself. When a foreigner becomes a citizen he is not admitted to half citizenship, but is wholly a citizen, endowed with all the rights, subject to all the liabilities and entitled to all the protection of a native born citizen. The constitution and laws make no distinction between the two classes, with the single exception that the president of the United States must be native born.”

People have spent decades, centuries, sharing thoughts that remain salient for today. Additionally, no media is too poor to have good ideas, nor is any media too good to have poor ideas.

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Amherst Wallops Williams in Two Consecutive Years

While the modern iteration of Amherst College’s baseball team is approaching three decades of minimal success in NCAA Division III, its origins date back over 165 years. That’s before John Smoltz was regularly announcing how much he hates baseball on national baseball broadcasts, before Nolan Ryan demonstrated the thrilling force of old man strength, before the Shot Heard Round the World, before the Iron Horse, before the Red Sox were cursed or Mordecai Brown lost the end of his index finger.

The team began before rules were consistent.1A note on the genesis of this post: On a train ride back from the Newark airport I searched for “Baseball” in the Hartford Courant archives on Newspapers.com, set my sights anywhere starting in 1839, and sorted by oldest available reference. Since 1839 is apocryphally considered the year when Abner Doubleday established the modern game of baseball, it’s a useful starting point for the search. But it took several more decades before there was standardization. Starting at 11 in the morning on the “cool, clear, and bracing”2Springfield Daily Republican, July 2, 1859. day of July 1, 1859, Amherst faced Williams in the first recorded “Base Ball” game between two colleges.

Continue reading “Amherst Wallops Williams in Two Consecutive Years”
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    A note on the genesis of this post: On a train ride back from the Newark airport I searched for “Baseball” in the Hartford Courant archives on Newspapers.com, set my sights anywhere starting in 1839, and sorted by oldest available reference. Since 1839 is apocryphally considered the year when Abner Doubleday established the modern game of baseball, it’s a useful starting point for the search. But it took several more decades before there was standardization.
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Miscellany from September 2025

This has been a hectic month, and I need more time to finish some planned posts. So, I’ll fall back on that old crutch of using this blog as a limited journal of a few notable events.

Pizza

Erin and I participated in New Haven’s record-breaking pizza party. We were two of the proud 4,525 people who ate two (small) slices of pizza and drank eight ounces of water in the generous span of fifteen minutes. We then walked around and enjoyed the festival: I tried Sally’s for the first time, had a cannoli, drank some local beer, and received a promotional 10″ pizza box for the effort.

The Onion

I recently subscribed to the paper edition of The Onion. I still maintain my New Haven Register subscription, but considering recent events, supporting an independent comedy venture (that doubles surprisingly well as a base level of news literacy) is important. I’ve adored The Onion since early in high school and am happy to help keep it running.

Cooperstown

I visited Cooperstown this weekend to play baseball with a group of sandlot teams from Connecticut, New York, and New Hampshire. It was idyllic.

I also roamed around the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The exhibits were fantastic, full of details and displays and memorabilia. I was awed by the plaque gallery and enjoyed reading dozens of biographies spanning the last century.

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Satchel Paige Project

Mark Armour has worked on his Satchel Paige Project for a few years. It’s an amazing feat of historical research about one of the most enigmatic characters and players in baseball history. It’s worth looking through regardless of your overall interest in baseball.

If you’d like to hear a good conversation about the project, I suggest listening to episode 2352 of Effectively Wild, which is how I first learned about this work.