Two Book Reports - both about Iowa

THE WORLD STILL MELTING
By Robley Wilson

I met this Iowan author, and he signed my book. He was very learned and very charming. I even really enjoyed getting to know him. Too bad I wasn’t wild about the book.

The story is about three Iowa farm families, all affected by tragedy. Two of the wives in the families are best friends; the third wife has died of cancer. One son is a delinquent. One of the “bestest friends” wives is having an affair, even though she knows her husband is capable of violence, and blah blah blah…

The problem is that this book is basically a rural soap opera. The general moral is “God’s gonna git ya fer doin’ wrong…” Yeah, whatever. The plot is too chock full of chaos, drama, and mayhem to ever have happened in the real sleepy-town Iowa. I felt, after a while, I was reading a script for a Lifetime movie.

Where’s Markie Post when you need her?

I think the book would have been more effective it if had taken one singular event – the most shocking and interesting in the book – and followed it through in detail, paying attention to how this individual happening affected everyone’s lives. The affair and its sad aftermath would have worked beautifully for this. That way we wouldn’t have cluttered it up with juvenile violence, cancer, dementia, egocentrism, libel, horse breeding, lawsuits, and a hatred for the bank, the railroad, and Iowa’s ubiquitous bicyclers. (I kid you not; a section of this overwrought book is about bicyclers…)

I am from Iowa, so I believe I have a good sense of how an event, even a small one, can wreak catastrophe for several years in the lives of rural people. The book would have been more interesting if it would have appreciated the simplicity of the state it was written about, instead of going straight for the “Days of Our Lives” crowd.


POSTVILE
By Stephen Bloom

Sticking with our Iowa theme…

In the very real Iowa town of Postville (population well under 2000), some very real Orthodox Jews called Lubavichers have decided to open up a kosher slaughterhouse.

Sounds like a great idea! Iowa has all the well-raised cows and chickens and pigs (wait, these people don’t eat pork…) that a kosher slaughterhouse could wish for. What’s more, this business could bring the town back from the brink of financial doom.

But, as always, there are problems. Iowans are naturally reticent toward outsiders, to an extent. Then, after a time, Midwestern hospitality takes over for Iowa shyness and… Nothing. The Lubavichers are a very cloistered people. Their religion and culture demand that they stay separate from the goyem, whom they treat with varying degrees of indifference and downright rudeness. The Lubavicher lawns are ignored, they drive without license like possessed maniacs, they haggle over prices, and their wives and children will not speak to their neighbors. Finally, the locals get fed up and start a petition to annex the land the slaughterhouse is on and tax the Lubavichers, to gain some control over these stand-offish, fundamentalist transplants.

I was impressed that this book was written by a Jewish man who moved his family to Iowa for its outstanding education and peaceful small town life. Bloom takes a fair and honest aim at the judgmental Iowans, the inflexible Lubavichers, and himself. It’s this last part that makes the book so human, so readable.

I would suggest this book about a Midwestern culture clash to anyone. And after reading Postville (which was published in 2000), read up on what PETA thinks of the kosher slaughterhouse and where these Iowans (both natives and their Jewish transplants) stand today.