Ali Velshi's Grandfather Studied With Gandhi at Tolstoy Farm? Great New Book

Steve's Blog on Writing

Ali Velshi, the MSNBC anchor known for his agile mind and commitment to drawing out people of diverse views, has a new book out that asks us to do better when it comes to listening to people with whom we don’t necessarily agree.

Velshi, whose father was the youngest of Gandhi's students at Tolstoy Farm in South Africa, makes clear in this thought-provoking book that Gandhi was no saint and deserves to be seen that way. However, his ideas--and actions--inspired others, including Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis, and it's worth remembering that Gandhi himself was inspired by others.

"When it came to unifying his new ideas into a practical, strategic real-world campaign against injustice, Gandhi was profoundly influenced by the writings of three major thinkers," Velshi writes. "First was Henry David Thoreau, the American transcendentalist known for writing'Walden' and the essay 'Civil Disobedience.' Second was the English writer John Ruskin, whose essay 'Unto This Last' inspired Gandhi to promote equality regardless of race or nationality. Third, and perhaps most important, was the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, who in 1902 was nominated for both the Nobel Prize in literature and the Nobel Peace Prize."

That right there is a lot to consider, one example of why I think this searching, honest book will help people reset and rethink how to approach politics and political change. The tile is Small Acts of Courage: A Legacy of Endurance and the Fight for Democracy, and you can pick up a copy at Bookshop Santa Cruz.

—Steve Kettmann

WCR Residencies for 2024

We had to shuffle our schedule a little, so if you’re looking for a Weeklong Writing Residency at the Wellstone Center in the Redwoods in the Santa Cruz (CA) area this year, let us know. We’re especially interested in hearing from people who love the Library House, since we’ll probably have an opening or two there.

‘Trust’ Author Hernan Diaz and UCSC ‘Deep Read’ Program

Diaz is coming to UC Santa Cruz on May 19 to talk about his novel ‘Trust’ as part of UC Santa Cruz’ “Deep Read” program, which I explore—and applaud—in a cover story in the Santa Cruz weekly “Good Times.”

Excerpt: This year’s reading selection, “Trust,” checking in at more than 400 pages, might not be for everyone, but as someone who has been reviewing novels for quite a few years now, I’d confidently assert it’s a great novel—ambitious, packed with writing of precision and incantatory power.

Critics gushed over the clever four-part construction of the book, which builds and feeds on itself in surprising ways (not to give away too much). The first part is a novella by a fictional novelist, telling the story of an early-20th-century financier and his patron-of-the-arts wife; the second features sections of an incomplete autobiography in the voice of the financier whose life was appropriated for the novella; the third tells the story of the woman asked to ghost-write that autobiography; and the fourth consists of fragmentary diary entries from the patron-of-the-arts wife of the financier, the less said about this diary the better.

I freely admit that, for me at least, it felt a bit like a chore getting through the first couple hundred pages, in which, from my point of view, the larger-than-life financier is presented less like an actual person, the way one might expect a novelist to want to portray his characters, and more like a moving billboard meant to inspire hisses and catcalls from we the reader. (Capitalism! Bad! Boo!)

Diaz, tipping his hand in one interview, talked of reading “manspreading” memoirs from the likes of industrialists Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford for inspiration. (Diaz wants the reader to squirm through these sections, and in that sense I may have been his ideal reader, slogging through them stuck on a cross-country flight middle seat, wedged between two big dudes, one of whose “manspreading” was no wink-to-the-crowd cute metaphor.)

Finally, gloriously, by Book 3 beginning on page 193, we shift to “A Memoir, Remembered,” by Ida Partenza, and the story opens up in surprising ways and the clever structure starts to pay off in a way that moves beyond the underlying sense of being stuck inside an MFA proseminar on clever narrative techniques.

I loved the Ida character, right away, and I expect most readers join me on that. Scrapped for cash, living with her anarchist Italian-immigrant father, a typesetter, she applies for a job in a Wall Street office, with no idea what to expect. The next thing she knows she’s being handed an envelope containing ten crisp twenty-dollar bills: For her, at the time, an unimaginable fortune. (Her father and her paid twenty-five a month in rent, unpaid until the envelope arrived.)

“They were unused and clung to one another,” Ida (though actually Diaz) writes. “Wondering what the actual smell of money—rather than that of the multitude of hands that had touched it over the years—could be, I stuck my nose into the envelope. It smelled just like my father.

But beneath the ink there was also a forest-like scent. An undertone of damp soil and unknown weeds. As if the bills were the product of nature. … My father was right: money was a divine essence that could embody itself in any concrete manifestation.”

Book 3 is constructed from the vantage of many years later, looking back after Ida has gone on to a long career as a writer, and her importance to the book springs not only from her role as ghost-writer for the industrialist, trying but failing to persuade him to present his late wife, by then dead of cancer, in something like three dimensions, a brilliant force of nature with an agile mind and sublime taste in music and the arts. Instead, the wife of this narrative is reduced down to almost nothing, barely a person at all. But Ida herself finds an actual diary, kept by the actual wife, Mildred Bevel, snippets of which are presented in Book 4.

“I liked the form of the book, and I think I liked the experience of reading it: I read it blind,” Martin told me. “I didn’t pay much attention to any writing about the structure. I didn’t love it at first, it was kind of slow.

I liked the different pacing, and how it was sort of uncovered as you read. To me it was fun, reading almost like a detective looking for clues. It wouldn’t let you get immersed in it.”

It’s not too late to get involved with this group-reading project. Pick up the book at Bookshop Santa Cruz, or wherever, and read what you can before Diaz arrives. Sign up and follow online as the UCSC community shares different perspectives—including that of “Deep Read Scholars” Lori Kletzer of the economics department, Campus Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor, Madhavi Murty of Feminist Studies, and Dard Neuman of Music.

The project represents a rare opportunity for people in the community—and beyond—to work together, and I for one wish these organizers well in continuing to grow their following.

‘Before Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Brain Worm, There Was the Steroid Question’

My Washington Monthly piece on independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his steroid-fueled physique got a fair amount of attention.

Excerpt: For perspective on this presidential spoiler with a six-pack, I reached out to John Hoberman, a professor of Germanic studies at the University of Texas, the author of multiple books on sports, including Testosterone Dreams: Rejuvenation, Aphrodisia, Doping, one of my go-to sources over my 20 years of writing about steroids. “What Kennedy is doing, perhaps out of ignorance, is failing to mention that testosterone is the basic anabolic steroid,” Hoberman wearily explained. “The two terms [testosterone and steroids] refer to the same substance. Testosterone can also be modified to intensify either muscle-building or androgenic (male sex traits) effects. The claim that it’s not ‘steroids’ because a doctor has prescribed it is simply a lame alibi that is intended to gentrify the image of the anabolic steroid the doctor has given him. Kennedy wants the effects without the image problem anabolic steroid abuse has created, and he has enlisted the doctor as a kind of character reference for himself.”

Christine Pelosi, the daughter of the former House Speaker, has no steroid expertise, but I think she was spot on when she told me, “It is weird, a guy who is against all those vaccines, he clearly is putting something in his body that’s synthetic.” He was against better living through chemistry—until he was for it.

Democrats have watched Kennedy’s presidential bid with a mix of eye-rolling dismissal and gut-wrenching fear that he might tip a few closely fought states into Donald Trump’s column and send Mar-a-Lago Mussolini back to the White House. (Few Democrats have forgotten Ralph Nader’s 2000 presidential bid.) Moreover, Kennedy seems to hold greater animus toward President Joe Biden than the soon-to-be GOP nominee. The anti-vaxxer who wrote a national bestseller about why Anthony Fauci is an enemy of the people and thinks Ashkenazi Jews have some magical resistance to COVID makes little secret of his antipathy toward Biden and the Democratic Party that was his ancestral home.

Of course, RFK Jr. could take more votes from Trump than Biden. Steve Bannon, the oft-indicted Trump advisor and self-styled Leninist, wanted RFK in the race, and he got him. What if the Kennedy scion’s appeal, such as it is, is mostly more of an “own the libs” kind of thing? Seeing RFK Jr. as a juicer—the cheater, the narcissist, the crank who applauds Israel in Gaza but wants to cut off arms to Ukraine—helps us understand why, for example, at the Oakland, California, event where he revealed his vice-presidential pick, wealthy techster Nicole Shanahan, reporters found more Trump supporters than Biden ones.

I focus on the juicing because it matters: It’s admittedly a fine line between getting a little bump of T from your doctor, putting a little hop in the step, and going overboard to a testosterone boost. Baseball players mostly juiced because it made them feel good and, therefore, more confident. Former Yankee Jason Giambi, one of the few to come clean somewhat on juicing, used to have an elaborate spiel on how the key to hitting a baseball was to “Feel sexy!” going up to home plate.

Suppose Hoberman’s suspicions were correct, and RFK Jr. is abusing testosterone. That’s not a crime even were it true, but it’s worrisome nonetheless in a man who aspires to be president, a job where you do not want someone with a history of addiction screwing around with mood-altering substances. You don’t want roid rage to be an issue if, say, China invades Taiwan. The irony abounds. The guy who sees menacing actors behind tried-and-true vaccines has put himself on a dangerous path where, as he gets older, he’d likely have to hit the T even harder to get the same results. That’s just biology.