When Mrs. Curmudgeon's maternal grandfather died, I inherited a sizable chunk of his theological library, at which time I ceased from the incessant accumulation of books which is an endemic hazard to those in my line of work. Given that I now owned more than enough volumes I would never read, it seemed doubly ridiculous to buy more that I will never read. I still acquire books for my professional library, of course, but they have to meet the (strict-only-to-people-who-already-have-a-severe-bibliomania-problem) standard of being something I actually have plans to read. At least most of the time.
But then Mrs. Curmudgeon gifted me my first Kindle e-reader a few years ago, and I discovered Amazon's
Kindle Daily Deals, where books often go for only a couple dollars. As these volumes have the additional benefit of taking up literally no shelf space whatsoever, my borderline bibliokleptomania became resurgent, and now I've lost count of the digital books I own. (Nonetheless, I am sure that I will eventually read every last electronic page of that unabridged copy of Winston Churchill's
History of the English-Speaking Peoples.) One recent acquisition I actually did read is Ben H. Winter's
Underground Airlines.
In Winters's alternative timeline, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated en route to his inauguration, the
Crittenden Compromise was amended to the Constitution, and these United States remain a house divided into the twenty-first century. The main character is an escaped slave who has been turned by the U.S. Marshals Service into a fugitive slave catcher himself. Winters is an able hand at both character and plot: he had me so hooked that as soon as I finished
Underground Airlines, I took up his
The Last Policeman (that one I checked out from the library), which won an
Edgar Award.
The plot, and the true significance of the
macguffin which drives it, get at the dehumanization at the heart of American chattel slavery and interestingly explores the ways in which we still are working through its consequences in our own (real?) timeline. More important to me, however, the book drips with anger from every page. Outrage is the only proper and human response to America's peculiar institution and its racist legacy today.
Perhaps institutional racism continues not because we fail to love strongly enough, but because we aren't angry enough. Underground Airlines will help stoke your fury.
So no Christmas album recommendation this year, but thankfully I can give you a new Christmas song. Noisetrade's holiday mixtape for 2017 includes the Dollyrots' cover of Wham's Last Christmas. I graduated high school in the '80s, but only now have learned to love this song.
