Weekend Reading

Salman Rushdie : Midnight's Children

2012-01-14T12:17:00.000-08:00

So far, there have only been three books over the past ten years that I could not finish -- and this one is the third.

The second was "1001 Nights" -- and I haven't finished that one because there seems to be no point in reading its catalog of disconnected stories all at once - but rather, like a box of sweets, it seems better when consumed piecemeal at long intervals.

One such interval ended today, when having abandoned Rushdie, I picked up the story of Abu Muhammad "the sluggard" beginning in night #301. Like many other central characters in Scheherazade's stories, Abu reminded me so much of Rushdie's Saleem -- with the action centered around an utterly worthless narrator surrounded by fantastic events which often show him favor but over which he has no control.

But while Scheherazade's world is full of beauty, love, and wonder (as well as violence, hatred, and cruelty) --- Rushdie's world is just disgusting -- and after a few hundred pages, I had to ask myself, can I spend one more minute with this wretched character with the big, dripping nose, who's been swept up by a flow of events that resembles water going inexorably down a drain?

*********************

Or, to put it another way, some people will always find their world confusing and hopeless, regardless of time and place. What they have to say does not interest me, regardless of how clever and articulate they might be.

And regardless of how curious I am about their world - and I am quite curious about Muslim India and Pakistan.

There is more than a small chance that the most disastrous consequences of the 1947 Partition have yet to occur, and I've yet to find another novelist who addressed it as directly as Rushdie.

If only he had not withdrawn into such a personalized fantasy.

Arundhati Roy : The God of Small Things

2011-11-24T06:20:00.000-08:00

The state of Kerala, that sliver of lush plains on the south western coast of India is so over-teeming with life, it seems that humans are just one more outrageous species of large, carnivorous, tropical insect.

And this novel is just as whacky as this one about Kerala that I read last year.

The basic story is utterly banal: violence results from a single, middle-class mother having a fling with a young man from a much lower class. It's analogous to a sexual/racial conflict in the American south c. 1920.

And all of the characters are ugly, damaged, or both. They're all big insects that someone has stepped on and injured - made even more grotesque by the baby-talk, sing-song language that permeates this humid story like the tendrils of a fungus.

The narrator seems to be one of those bright adolescents, like Holden Caulfield, who can see right through all the phony adults as the self-serving creeps that they really are.

Which would make this stew too horrible to taste - except that the insights feel so crisp and real - like this wonderful description of a relationship that got off to a bad start:

"Rahel drifted into marriage like a passenger drifts towards an unoccupied chair in an airport lounge"

And this passage that gives the book its name:

"He didn't know that in some places, like the country that Rahel came from, various kinds of despair competed for primacy. And that personal despair could never be desperate enough. That something happened when personal turmoil by at the wayside shrine of the vast, violent, circling, driving, ridiculous, insane, unfeasible, public turmoil of a nation. That Big God howled like a hot wind, and demanded obeisance. Then Small God (cozy and contained, private and limited) came away cauterized, laughing numbly at his own temerity. Inured by the confirmation of his own in-consequence, he became resilient and truly indifferent. Nothing mattered much"

Is that how you spell a-l-i-e-n-a-t-i-o-n ?

Obviously, the author's got it herself, as you read about her passionately confused public life. This may remain her only work of fiction, something of a testimonial of how the world appears to her, who is also from a broken Syrian Christian family in Ayemenem, Kerala.

History House

The god of small things keeps things small by sucking everything into the vortex of memory. There's no such thing as moving on and benefiting from experience. In this story, the past is always present -- so indeed, the first chapter can only be comprehended after reading the last. Nobody gets out, nobody gets any better -- which, as the author says in an interview (found here ) was her greatest fear about the world in which she grew up.

R.K. Narayan : The Financial Expert

2011-10-25T05:29:00.000-07:00

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Spoiler alert: don't read these comments before reading the book.

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Because the denouement is so sudden and dramatic.

Narayan's autobiographical period is over, and this book is more like a fable, so we don't get as close to the central character, whom, indeed, Narayan despises.

Concerning that protagonist, Margayya, I was puzzled about that most important fact concerning any Hindu character, his caste, and this question was not answered until nearly the last chapter. His parents and grandparents were farmers, but his great grandparents handled corpses, which is as low as it gets.

He's a low rent money lender, then a publisher of pornography, and finally achieves his apotheosis of financial success, and ruin, by running a Ponzi scheme. How despicable! And how timely - thanks to Bernie Madoff and family.

His virtues, if you'd call them that, are those of the termite. He's hard working, persistent, and he sticks with his family. After having ruined everyone who foolishly trusted him, he's quite ready to start all over again. Interestingly enough, unlike Madoff, he doesn't go to prison, so apparently no crime was committed. Madoff was convicted of securities fraud, wire fraud, mail fraud, money laundering, making false statements, perjury, theft from an employee benefit plan, and making false filings with the SEC. But Margayya simply promised a high return on investments all of which he kept stashed away in his own house. When investors demanded all their money back, he paid them off until he ran out of cash. Then he filed bankruptcy. Where was the crime?

And he's fond of children. The most important purchase he ever made was his son: he promised to give the temple his weight in silver if his wife ever bore one (I love how he had to pay it off immediately since the infant's weight would only get greater). And the story ends as he enjoys the presence of his grandson, even if it's the result of his son being evicted from property taken as part of the bankruptcy settlement.

Despite the catastrophe he brought most of those who either borrowed or lent him money, he seems to have had exactly the kind of money-centered life for which he had successfully prayed. And fittingly enough, the character who appears while he attempts to fulfill his obligations to the god of wealth, is the same character who gives and then takes it all away.

So it's a charming fable, told with the condescending, humorous dismay that a brahmin feels for an enterprising peasant. It's a picture of a well-ordered but utterly stagnant society. Wealth is not being used for any kind of positive development, but on the other hand, Margyya packs his house with bags of cash, and doesn't have to worry about security.

As so ends my fascination with N. K Narayan. There was something so thrilling about the stories based upon his own life. But when he turns he eye outward, the sharp edge is gone, and charm replaces sincerity.

R.K. Narayan : The English Teacher

2011-09-26T04:42:00.000-07:00

“Oh wait,” I said and got up. I picked up the garland from
the nail and returned to bed. I held it to her “For you as ever.
I somehow feared you wouldn’t take it. .. .“ She received it with
a smile, cut off a piece of it and stuck it in a curve on the back
of her head. She turned her head and asked: “Is this all right?”
“Wonderful,” I said, smelling it.
A cock crew. The first purple of the dawn came through our window, and faintly touched the walls of our room. “Dawn!” she whispered and rose to her feet.
We stood at the window, gazing on a slender, red streak over the eastern rim of the earth. A cool breeze lapped our faces. The boundaries of our personalities suddenly dissolved. It was a moment of rare, immutable joy_a moment for which one feels grateful to Life and Death.

And so ends one of my favorite books, which turns out to have been a ghost story, very much in the Chinese genre, featuring a poor, lonely scholar and a playful, beautiful young woman.

Except that the woman is not a fox spirit, but the man's wife whom we have spent many agonizing chapters watch die from cholera that she picked up in roadside outhouse.

Which is why, unlike the previous two volumes in Narayan's autobiographical trilogy, I have no intention of re-reading this one, even though it's my favorite.

I just can't return to the bedside and watch her die slowly all over again.

As in "Bachelor of Arts", the primary drama is internal. The author's mind is a runaway horse - will he ever tame it ?

This novel is so saturated by personal disaster and then recovery -- it's title didn't make any sense to me until the last two pages. What did being an 'English Teacher" have to do with this family drama? (and note --- as in the previous two books, the family is extremely supportive)

But happily, as it turned out -- yes, it was about being an English teacher -- i.e. the abuse of English literature by an educational system whose purpose is to qualify clerks to work for the railroad (or any other bureaucracy). It's an annoyance, rather than an enlightening experience for everyone involved - and so becomes a hindrance to inner development, which the author finally sloughs off as he joins his eccentric friend in running what we might call a "free school"

********************

The ghost story part is especially fascinating because it seems like more than just a literary device. Great care is taken to convince us, as well as the protagonist, that yes, the spirit of his dead wife really is communicating to him through a kind of seance conducted by an amateur medium at a remote, lonely pond not far from a deserted shrine -- all of which is presumably more commonly found in southern India than it is in Illinois.

We might question whether the author ever actually experienced a ghost, medium, and seance - but, without a doubt, he badly needed it to happen. So I don't think this was written to entertain an audience so much as to comfort himself.

R.K. Narayan : The Bachelor

2011-08-23T05:16:00.000-07:00

O.K., now I'm totally hooked on Narayan, and may never read another author until I've gone through all 15 of his novels.

Just as with "Swami", he's put me right inside the head of a person of a certain age -- in this case, about 25 -- and of the same time, place, and caste. (South India, 1930's, Brahmin)

But despite how distant those circumstances are from my own, I completely identify with the turbulent, exciting mental world of a young adult, and with the kind of challenges the mind presents (so different from the life and death challenges faced by young people in revolutionary China)

What's especially remarkable, to me, is the endless tolerance and support young Chandran gets from his long suffering parents who seem to be devoted to letting him find his own way. And there's no doubting that he leads a life of privilege, as they are always ready to wire money -- or even make a large investment as requested.
When he finally chooses a career, his uncle has all the connections to move him to the front of the line and get the best opportunity.

All of which he can comfortably take for granted. His only challenge is his own mind, which is so impulsive it made for quite a dramatic story, putting me on the edge of my chair, and leaving me there as the book abruptly ended with him embarking on a career and a marriage, neither of which felt very secure.

Chandran has already shown himself quite capable of throwing everything aside, and
his decision to marry was made by flipping a coin with his friend, the poet.

Brave, intelligent, creative, and highly spirited --- I just don't seem him selling newspaper subscriptions and married to the same woman all his life.

But then -- the novel's abrupt ending seems to emphasize the abrupt change in our hero's life, for it is the first example of him acting to take care of someone else

He is no longer a bachelor, so this story is over.

And though I was always anxious that the smart and high spirited Chandran would disappoint his family and abandon a conventional, comfortable life, on reflection I recall that he was introduced to us as he lead a formal debate on the question of "First, we kill all historians".

He didn't choose that topic or that assertion -- it was given to him - and he pursued it comically/cynically as good advice for a despot. So this exemplifies him doing as he's told - however brilliantly he does it

But we might also remember that the practice of writing history was forcefully carried into Indian civilization by the invading Muslims. Since truth is timeless, Hindu culture had no historians.

*******************************************************

Two of the major events in this story are driven by astrology: the failed betrothal to cute girl #1, and the successful betrothal to cute girl #2. (the author hardly speaks to either one of them, so in this particular story, they are only cute girls.)

His great supporter, without whom he may never have been published, was Graham Greene who speculated in the introduction that this second marriage was enabled by a "dubious, even dishonest horoscope"

But I am doubting that the occupational pride of the astrologer who arranged it would have allowed him to falsify it.

The first betrothal failed because Chandran's chart showed that he wife was destined to die young if he married before the age of 25. He was already 23 at that time, and as I calculate it,after his 8 months of wandering as a holy beggar, would have been old enough to avoid that condition with cute girl #2 if the wedding was delayed by a year. (which it was)

**************************

Graham Greene's introduction also singles out the following passage as an example of the "Indian twang which lends so much charm to his style":

‘Excuse me. I made a vow never to touch alcohol in my life, before my mother,” said Chandran. This affected Kailas profoundly. He remained solemn for a moment and said: “Then don’t. Mother is a sacred object. It is a commodity whose value we don’t realise as long as it is with us. One must lose it to know what a precious possession it is. If I had had my mother I should have studied in a college and become a respectable person. You wouldn’t find me here.
After this where do you think I’m going?”“I don’t know.”
“To the house of a prostitute.” He remained reflective for a moment and said with a sigh: “As long as my mother lived she said every minute ‘Do this don’t do that’. And I remained a good son to her. The moment she died I changed. It is a rare commodity, sir. Mother is a rare commodity.”’

But it also does a succinct job of explaining Brahmin culture to Europeans - and those Europeans seem to be Narayan's target audience. (after all, Greene helped him find a European, not an Indian, publisher.

************************

R.K. Narayan : Swami and his Friends

2011-08-06T10:27:00.001-07:00

A perfect little book that's about so much more than just little Swami getting kicked out of school.

It made me feel like I was inside a Tamil Brahmin family.

Poor grandma!

A widow now, her bed is her only possession, and it's parked in a dark hallway in her son's small home. She gets love, but not much respect.

And caste distinctions are quite sharp, as Swami and his young companions have no compunctions about lording it over those beneath them in the social order.

They're little monsters -- but though they're mean to other children, as Brahmins, they wouldn't think of harming an animal, even a spider. (Swami ponders taking one as a pet).

Quite memorable is Swami's dispute with a Christian teacher at his school. How can Jesus be a holy person if he eats fish?

Swami is too impulsive to get very far at school. Practical problems in algebra distract him with their practicality. So when asked to calculate the cost of a mango, he wants to know how ripe it is. Which marks him as more of an artist than a pedant - suggesting that this story is autobiographical.

He may be a washout at school, but he will probably be a success in life, since he tries to surround himself with the kids he admires for a variety of qualities: strength, humor, smarts, courage, and the one he admires most is the most likely to succeed: the son of a police chief .

The story was written and set in 1930, in the midst of the ongoing campaign, then led by Ghandi, for Indian independence, so young Swami will be growing up even as his nation is, and his first participation is rather clumsy as he burns his homespun cap thinking that its British made, breaks some school windows in a mob rampage, and bullies some smaller children.

And that's what I like about this book.

There may be a thick atmosphere of sentimentality, but these kids are about as dumb and mean as kids can be.

It's all in a child's-world-view, but that view never leaves us, does it? The inner voice in me that chatters away throughout the day seems to be no older, smarter, or kinder than little Swami.

********

On further reflection - this is basically a romance -- the story of unrequited love of little Swami for Mr. Perfection (Rajam)who has it all: looks, smarts, money, courage, leadership, and fluency in English. And it's even something of a love triangle:

"For a moment, Swaminathan was filled with the darkest jealousy. Mani to sleep in Rajam's house, keep him company till the last moment, talk and laugh till midnight, and he to be excluded! He wanted to cling to Mani desperately and stop his going"

But alas, he is also Mr. Unobtainable -- making impossible demands and finally moving out of town anyway.

Swami's parting gift, which Rajam received from the outstretched hand of Mani as his train was leaving the station, was Andersen's "Fairy Tales" (which Swami couldn't read anyway due to so many difficult English words)

Patricia Pape : Legacy of Resilience

2011-07-04T11:52:00.000-07:00

This is the first self-published book I've ever read - and also the first memoir by one of my fellow Americans, instead of the catastrophic lives that people of my generation led in the People's Republic of China.

But you don't need a cultural revolution to have a challenging life - and this life is fascinating because the protagonist is so bright, healthy, upbeat, and main street middle American -- and yet still so challenged.

It's the kind of project that I wish every bright-enough old person would try to do.

First ,you dig up the family pictures.

Then you scout around for information about the ancestors.

Then you pick a theme and start telling your story, organizing it haphazardly around whatever issues may interest you, and letting your memories run wild.

"Survival" is the the most obvious theme for anybody over 50, and this author's choice of "Resilience" seemed to be a good one.

******************************************************

Why did her parents lead lives of such quiet desperation?

That's really what puzzles me the most about this life story which, like everyone else's, is built upon what happens in the first 20 years of life.

Mom and Dad and two children all seem to be bright and healthy, while Dad is working his way up to be President of a local steel fabricator in Aurora, Illinois.

They're not an ethnic minority facing discrimination and nobody is drafted into the army. They're smart, educated, successful Christian folk who go to church, swim at the country club, and live on a nice quiet, tree lined street in an American city that's an hour out of Chicago.

So why do dad and mom become alcoholics, to the point where dad loses his job and mom has to be institutionalized?

This isn't the kind of question that anyone can necessarily answer, and it has to be nearly impossible for their child to see them outside their role as parents.

But it's what seems to underlie the challenges that face their daughter, as she struggles through alcoholism herself, as well as abusive husbands , all while needing to support herself and raise two children.

Somehow she has picked up a need to be perfect -- leading to a profound dissatisfaction with herself and a need to please others.

The good consequence is an unstoppable, resilient, and even creative work ethic,
and as the author tells us over and over: she is a successful entrepreneur - the kind that gets featured on the feel-good pages of local journalism.

The down side is that it has attracted the wrong kind of men - and one wonders about the nature of her career -- i.e. what has she accomplished beyond making a niche for herself in the economy.

All of her job related prose is about business success rather than what her practice has done to help people or improve her profession.

This is a woman who is heroically self-absorbed, but that is only apparent because she is so honest about herself.

(She reminds me of Catherine the Great, who woke up at 6 am every morning to spend some private time reading, and eventually writing memoirs about how she survived court politics to become empress.)

The episodes about faith offer a nice snapshot of one person's experience with contemporary American mainstream Christianity.

She joined an Evangelical Lutheran church to marry her first husband - became a church secretary - and stuck with it through all the changes ever since.

Unconditional acceptance seems to be her primary goal as a parishioner. Sin and repentance are not part of this picture.

Perhaps her survival-success story is a bit too one-dimensional to be of interest by itself. But she'd be a great character in a story set in modern American suburbia, and I hope someone will (or already has?) written such a novel.

John Pomfret : Chinese Lessons

2011-05-22T05:48:00.000-07:00

I just can't stay away from China - probably because everything I wear was made there.

Pomfret is an American journalist who had the unique opportunity to follow the lives of six graduates of the first university class convened after the cultural revolution. This is the generation that suffered through that catastrophe, and then built the economic engine we see today.

It's an utterly fascinating collection of stories.

On the one hand, as an outsider, Pomfret can look for the bigger picture beyond the personal destiny that limits the vision of all the Chinese autobiographies that I've read so far.

But on the other, he became fluent in Chinese and, as an exchange student in 1980, shared the lives and built personal relationships with the students he met, as he returned to China several times over the following decades, eventually marrying a Chinese born American wife.

Their stories are so wacky, colorful, and amazing -- I had to read the book twice to make sure I caught every last detail.

The overall political picture is grim. Like American political parties, the Chinese Communist party will do anything to stay in power. But whereas American parties are restrained by law, the Chinese Communist Party is the law. There are no checks and balances beyond, presumably, another disastrous revolution.

And three generations of state terror appears to have eroded any sense of personal morality and integrity, creating a culture of ruthless cynicism even more intense than America's as moderated by Christianity.

Little Guan: a brilliant over-achiever who sets family above career but still is a successful manager and business woman. Her compassion, family loyalty, and traditional mysticism sets her apart from all the other characters. Quite a delightful lady, I'm glad we got to meet her.

Big Bluffer Ye: A cheerfully immoral but inventive party functionary who builds a commercial district and is a good earner for the party.

Old Xu : A less clever party functionary who gets thrown under the bus of party politics, but re-emerges as a bag man for a businessman whom he once helped.

Daybreak Song : The lothario who beds the two Italian exchange students in 1980, become an activist who flees the country after Tienanmen Square, and ends up as a foreign correspondent sports writer living in Italy. (it's so funny/tragic how Chinese fans prefer to follow foreign sports teams because their own are so corrupt)

Book Idiot Zhao : The most fascinating of all -- he teaches Marxist history by day, and at night exploits peasant workers in his urine hauling business. (the lawless Chinese human waste industry is endlessly fascinating - and as a scholar, Zhao is also writing a history of it)

Liu Gang: a PLA officer and amateur composer whom Pomfret met during the Tienanmen Square uprising. As a result of that meeting, Liu was arrested by state security and sent to prison. But he re-emerged a decade later as a successful composer writing state-sanctioned nationalistic operas.

Old Wu : a rather sad character whose parents were murdered by the Red Guard while he must write educational material that whitewashes that period of Chinese history.
But his trip to auto driving school is hilarious. (hint: don't rent a car if you visit China)

**************

My Chinese friend tells me that Pomfret's stories are completely believable.

But I find one thing very puzzling.

On the one hand, he presents a society that is completely paranoid about being snooped on by a single-party state insanely jealous of its monopoly on power.

But on the other, he tells stories about people who, if real, might get in bad trouble for what they say to Pomfret.

Even Big Bluffer Ye -- who seems to be the perfect apparatchik -- is also now more visible, and hence more vulnerable, to his peers competing for power within party politics.

************

One theme that's developed here more than elsewhere is sexuality - complete with an historical theory that connects periods of neo-Confucianism to puritanical morals.

The Mao era is seen as one such era, and the profligacy of it's aftermath as a reaction to it. Does every hotel in China really serve as a brothel? Pomfret has some pretty wild stories, several involving himself.

Arabian Nights

2011-03-21T06:15:00.000-07:00

Since I'm averaging about one tale/day, it may take me 1001 days to finish these three volumes, at which time I will have likely forgotten the earlier tales.

So I'll start writing about them now - even though I expect to be periodically diverted into other books (as has already happened).

The first thing that surprised me was the flagrant racism towards Africans.

The worst -- the very worst -- thing that could happen to a man was to be cuckolded by a black slave.

This event first happens to Shah Zaman on page one of the overall framing story that will explain why Sheherazade must continue to tell him stories every night to avoid his misognynist rage.

And then -- it continues to happen within several of the early stories.

Being a slave, the African, of course, has no choice in the matter -- so the real fear concerns the sexual preferences of women.

The second thing that surprised me was the emphasis on fabulous, ostentatious wealth that is a component of almost every story.

And thirdly, I was surprised by the cunning, willfulness, and strength of several female characters - especially the villianess in the epic story that stretches for 100 nights beginning with #45.

Dhat al-Dawahi, the Christian, outwits her poor Muslim male adversaries at every turn, and is only defeated on the very last page through the treachery of her adult great grandson. (so how old does that make her? 80 ? ) She is a master of martial arts as well as disguise -- i.e. she's something of a Ninja.

I am so used to Chinese story telling -- where women are often demons-in-disguise, but not serious opponents on their own.

****************

Finally having finished Volume 1 (through Nights 294), I can agree with Robert Irwin's introductory remarks about its origins in the commercial quarters of arab cities.

Most of the characters are merchants, and manufacturing these tall tales was a likely way to pass time while waiting for customers in the souk.

Befitting stories designed for fools, the protagonist is usually gullible

The target audience is seeking relief from boredom rather than an opportunity for reflection- so only the most basic kinds of motivations drive the story: wealth, lust, greed, and jealousy.

And decorative flourish is more appreciated than narrative logic.

Why does the bandit chief send Ali Baba's clever servant, Marjana, to draw oil from his barrels, all but one of which contain one of his concealed henchmen?

And how can she use a pot full of oil to boil each one of them alive without attracting the attention of all the others?

There were two long sequences in the first 294 nights - one with a Christian villain, mentioned above, and the other with a Zoroastrian villain (nights 249-271)

The above movie poster reminds us that the above kind of scene never happens in the original version - i.e. there is never a sword swinging hero saving a damsel in distress.

The typical Arabian nights protagonist is a Walter Mitty type, like Ali Baba or Aladdin or the fisherman who finds a genie.

Women are typically depicted as quite voluptuous - but usually they are making trouble rather than the victim of it. (and one of their most beautiful features is a very large bottom)

Faulkner: As I Lay Dying

2011-03-01T08:29:00.000-08:00

Taking a break from Middle Eastern studies, I've book-traveled a bit closer to home - although Faulkner's mountain people of northeastern Mississippi are as foreign to me as anyone I've met through literature.

And I think they were a bit foreign to Faulkner, too, as lowlander that he was, he invites his readers to share his contempt for their uncivilized ways.

Their religion is hokum - i.e. the more they've got, the blinder they are. Like the pious Cora who is the quintessential unreliable narrator, or the bungling Anse who believes that God has chosen him, just like the Jews, in order to afflict him with bad luck or his ever-dying wife who was screwed by the pastor of New Hope church.

They don't care about their wives and children - except as work horses, to be replaced when broken or worn out.

And most importantly - for a Southern Gentleman like Faulkner - they have no honor. Both of the women in the piteous Bundren family have had sex outside of marriage with men who disrespected them.

So there they are - lazy dad, his pregnant daughter, and his crippled or crazy sons borrowing a cart to haul the stinking corpse of the dead mother, while the rivers rage, barns burn, and a flock of buzzards follows them from above.

"Who's your real father?" is a question all too familiar to such folk -- as well as -- "where can I get an abortion?"

Which makes this story a bit cartoonish -- as a darker version of "Snuffy Smith" or "Lil' Abner"

But the writing is often as delicious as Shakespeare, and the characters do tend to wax philosophical - often about issues of language - so this curious novel has entered the canon of great English literature.

And it's also a lot of fun to read --- if only to figure out what the hell is going on as the author has tried to disappear and let his crazy or inarticulate characters do all the talking.

It's hard to believe it ever got published in the first place -- back before Faulkner was Faulkner, and before one could surf the internet to find explanations written for the tortured school children who are required to read it.

Did Darl really suffer from PTSD as a result of combat in World War I? That would certainly explain a lot about him -- but nobody mentions that fact. (one more proof that mountain people lack honor. Townsfolk, like Faulkner himself, would let everyone know about their heroic wartime experiences, even if there weren't any)

The problem here is that the central character -- the mother who dies -- hates her own life, and therefore everyone else as well. Curiously, this has made her a proto-feminist heroine, especially as she rejects the language made by men to keep women down and deny her some kind of true companionship.

But this life-hater could never have been a true companion to anyone - even her bastard son, Jewel, who breaks her heart by showing enough independence to acquire a magnificent horse.

She reminds me of Eileen Chang's Yindi in Rouge of the North - as another woman with a very bad attitude, but one who hardly had been forced into a life of misery.

She chose it --- she got it --- she shared it.

But unlike Chang, Faulkner let's all his characters tell the story - so the tone of the book is not dark and depressing. Indeed -- it feels humorous, at least to me.

This is a book that demands multiple readings since each re-reading makes sense of yet another inscrutable passage - and there are always a few left that defy understanding.

But how much more attention does this miserable family deserve?

Thank God the library would not let me renew it for a third time - but now I am curious about how the author wrote about his own kind of people, so I may come back to him later.

Rajaa Alsanea : Girls of Riyadh

2011-01-24T07:07:00.000-08:00

It's been taking me 1001 nights to read 1001 Nights , so I haven't posted here for a while.

But I've given Sheherazade a break to take up the love stories of a contemporary storyteller, Rajaa Alsanea.

Arabic culture seems to specialize in courtly love (was it also the source of the troubador tradition?) - although, today Love/romance is primarily a teenage thing
(since they're the ones with enough time to practice it) , and Rajaa has emphasized that by framing each episode within the perky internet chatter of her narrator, spiced with quotes that would probably seem banal if the authors were not so unfamiliar to me: Nizar Qabbani, Amr Khaled, Jassem al-Mutawa, Prince Bader Bin Abdulmohsen, and Norah al-Hawshan. The first is a famous Syrian poet, the second and third are Muslim televangelists, the fourth is a Saudi prince/poet, and the last may be entirely fictional. There's also a few a quotes from Kahil Gibran - but I'm afraid that he is already too familiar.

Indeed, I suppose most of her stories would seem banal/superficial except that the settings and habits are so unfamiliar to me.

For example, one character has a passionate romance with a man she has never touched and barely seen. Saudi society is so restrictive, couples can arrested by the religious police just for chatting in a coffe shop - which indeed happens to one of the characters and terminates her relationship.

It was just like this love story
from the puritanical years of China's cultural revolution.

Another example is first cousin marriage, which is not only permissible, but would seem to be preferable as the only circumstance that allows a couple to know, love, and respect each other before marriage.

And then there are those numerous periods of obligatory daily prayer, and the many restrictions on the dress and behavior of women.

One thing that is absent (but so important in some other pre-modern societies) however, are the obligations a bride has to her mother-in-law

It should also be noted that despite the censorship of this book by Saudi authorities, there is no illicit sexual activity in this story, other than the time when an unwise girl allowed her husband to take certain liberties before their wedding ceremony.

*******************************************************

Here's the reasons that their romantic relationships fail:

*sex after marriage contract but before marriage ceremony disturbs the boy
*husband felt forced into marriage by parents and resented the wife
*girl can't stand the husband which her parents arrange for her
*boy's parents felt the girl was from unsuitable family
*girl's parents felt the boy was from unsuitable family
*religious police humiliated couple for chatting at coffee shop
*ambitious man needed to marry a better connected woman

And there are even some breakups among the girl friends, most conspicously between the narrator and Gamrah, the character who has taken the hardest knocks and ended up being as a single mother with a bad attitude.

It's notable that none of these girls are committed to anything beyond the excitement of romance, doing well in school, or having a fun career. Their religious and family life is just one of observing obligations. Their intellectual life is limited to astrology or categorizing boys, and as it will turn out, their aesthetic life will center on organizing wedding celebrations.

A potentially more interesting character might have been Um Nuwayyir - the mother of Nuwayyir, who is actually a boy named Nuri, but who is so effeminate his name has been feminized to humiliate him. Um Nuwayyir is a school administrator from Kuwait who offers the girls a place to meet away from the eyes and ears of their restrictive families.

This is a charming collection of stories - especially so because rather than having intellectual or commercial ambitions, the author just seems to be writing people she has known.

Here are the 7 times that non-arranged couples met each other:

Sadeem: party at a bar in London - cousin she grew up with
Michelle: cruising - distant cousin in america
Lamees: brother of a friend - fellow student
Gamrah: internet

Emily Bronte : Wuthering Heights

2010-10-28T05:25:00.000-07:00

One final digression into the canon of English literature - thanks to Azar Nafisi, though she mentioned it only in passing as something that an orthodox Muslim student found offensive due to the adultery (although I couldn't find any)

Thank goodness I was never subjected to this grim tale in high school!

It's so vastly different from Jane Austen -- it's hard to believe it was written in a time/place/social circumstance that was so similar.

I suppose the difference is that Bronte has chosen to write a Gothic novel -- a genre so popular then that Austen even wrote a parody, and might well have included "Wuthering Heights" in her list of the "Northanger Horrid Novels", to stand beside "The Castle of Wolfenbach" and "The Tale of the Black Forest"

How it compares with other examples of the genre is a question which I will never be able to answer, as I prefer horror stories that are brief and whimsical.

And yet, I did find this one as fascinating as a train wreck -- with a very long train falling off a very long bridge into a very deep valley.

And though I'm not interested in being politically correct, this does seem to be one long exercise in racial/colonial anxiety -- centering on the fear of the resentment felt by a dark-skinned anti-hero, of unknown ethnic origin (possibly gypsy), who is smarter, stronger, meaner, and, of course, sexier, than anyone else in that remote Yorkshire valley. And to throw in some class conflict, he is aided and abetted by Nelly Dean -a servant who also serves a narrator - who saves his life as an infant and who gets him what he wants even as she appears to loyally serve other masters.

(although I think the real villain might be Dr. Kenneth -- all of whose patients, just like the author herself, die before the age of 40, and usually, even younger than that)

Perhaps I stuck with this orgy of pain and degradation because it never really turned into a good vs. evil melodrama. Heathcliff was not attacked and eventually destroyed by opponents (as, say, Count Dracula usually is). He was only destroyed by himself - by his own resentment that kept him as distant from human society as he ever was when he was abandoned as an infant in the streets of Liverpool.

One may also note that, as with Austen, this fictional world is completely feminine -i.e., it's the woman's world of the home and family - with no connection to the man's world of labor, craft, commerce, warfare, law, politics etc.. Who manages the estate while Hindley is sinking into an alcoholic daze? And how does Heathcliff make his fortune during the three years that he is gone from the Heights? Why don't the Lintons have any connections in the town who can help them? (even though Edgar serves in some kind of civic capacity)

Were all the novels of that period written for, by, and about women ?

None of the men here can deal with the death of their mate. Old Earnshaw dies soon after, Heathcliff is haunted and driven mad, and Edgar leads a lonely, miserable life and dies in his thirties. Is this a woman's fantasy world -- or what!

It seems to be a fantasy for women who feel overprotected, indeed, imprisoned in the domestic world and long for the dangerous but passionate life outside the gilded cage.

Bronte's poetry would seem to be going in the same direction.

Azar Nafisi - Reading Lolita in Tehran

2010-10-13T08:52:00.000-07:00

This memoir has four (at least) areas of concern.

Mostly, it uses a few classics of English (mostly American) literature to attack the Islamic revolution in Iran.

Tangentially, it's also biographical, autobiographical and literary.

Concerning the fundamentalist Shia regime, the principal charge is that, like Jay Gatsby ("The Great Gatsby"), it has an impossible dream, and like Humbert Humbert (in "Lolita"), it forces that dream upon others.

And yet, curiously, Azar and her students were allowed to continue studying the literature of "the Great Satan". None of them were arrested or punished for it -- which would certainly have happened if they were reading Torah in Nazi Germany or anything Western in Maoist China, or any book at all in Pol Pot's Cambodia.

Perhaps, as women, their pastimes were not considered important enough to be threatening.

Which reminds us that this impossible dream is stridently patriarchal - and Azar feels oppressed as a woman, rather than as a non-Moslim or leftist or democratic activist. (so her class reading list moves from the nutty men at the center of "Lolita" and "Great Gatsby" to the free thinking women who drive the stories by Henry James and Jane Austen)

Lowering the age of marriage down to 9 years old !!??!!

Yikes -- though it's not clear just when sexual activity is permitted to begin. In many cultures, bethrothal is not the same as sharing a bed. Though, Azir does say that Humbert's relationship with Lolita would have been perfectly legal in Iran as long as he married her -- and the ayatollahs also accepted a kind of temporary marriage which doesn't seem too different from prostitution.

The point is -- revolutionary Iran is a man's world. Women provide childen, child care, and sexual pleasure. And when they step out of line, they are whipped or stoned.

The real tragedy of this story is the widespread rejection of moderation by all of the factions who shared power immediately after the Shah's abdication. And Nafisi, as a leftist, admits to her share of the blame.

************

Concerning biographical elements, the problem is that they so tantalizing, but also incomplete.

We get little snippets of her own life: her family background in scholarship, her father as a black sheep who went into politics and became mayor of Tehran (only to be impeached and imprisoned by the Shah). Then there's Azar's first marriage, to an Iranian student in Norman, Oklahoma -- which she says was self-destructive. But all of this information is just too fragmentary to make a story or define a character.

But I get the feeling that Nafisi became a scholar because that's what her family does, rather than from any special talent as a critical thinker. She can no more step back from her role of professional academic than the ayatollahs can step back from being professional clergy.

She just runs with the crowd.

As a student, she was a romantic-Marxist: shouting "Death to Shah", but not really meaning it. And as a university professor, she's loyal to her own modern, secular priesthood, and can only find the shortcomings of its adversary, the orthodox Islamic clergy. And she can't really relate to her students as anything more than students.

Did Khoumeni really issue a tract about bestiality, recognizing the need for men to have sex with chickens, so the job of the cleric was to define who could subsequently eat those birds when prepared for table?

Maybe he did - but I just don't trust her report. (BTW, there's a lot about Khomeini's book, "Tahrirolvasyleh" on the internet, with excerpts relating to the above, but a full translation into English is not yet available)

Were a bunch of university faculty really invited to a distant conference, just so they could be loaded into a bus that would subsequently be pushed over a cliff late one night? (and saved by the one professor who couldn't sleep)? Perhaps -- but again -- I don't trust her, since she is opposed to the reactionary regime that murdered people she knew and sent women back to the 10th century. And she does not see herself as a cronicler of history.

It's also interesting, that though her theme is basically feminist, Azar clearly defers to the wisdom of men, including her second husband and the retired movie critic whom she calls her "magician", a reclusive scholar who seems to serve as an unpaid therapist and faculty advisor.

So her American academic colleagues would probably not consider her very liberated.

There's the same sketchiness concerning the lives of her 7 students. All we get is little pieces. One woman was imprisoned several years by the Revolution for being the wrong kind of Muslim. Another had a possessive younger brother. Perhaps a really careful reading could assemble all the scattered facts about each of these characters - but I still doubt there would be enough to have a sharp picture of any of them.

The one thing they all have in common is an interest in Anglo-American culture -- and almost all of them end up in America, either permanently, or as students.

Is that typical for urban, educated Iranian women?

**************

Finally, there are many examples of literary criticism, both specific and general -- and of the general statements, I was most fond of this tract by Joseph Conrad -- which reasserts the Aristotelian concern for mimesis that is so basic to Western European culture and democratic institutions.

As Nazir recalls the impassioned speech she gave at the "trial" her class staged for Nabokov's novel:

"A good novel is one that shows the complexity of individuals , and creates enough space for all these characters to have a voice; in this way, novel is called democratic, not that it advocates democracy, but that by nature it is so" (p. 132)

or as she wrote near the beginning:

"In all great works of fiction, regardless of the grim reality they present, there is an affirmation of life against the transience of that life, an essential defiance. This affirmation lies in the way the author takes control of reality by retelling it in his own way, thus creating a new world... the perfection and beauty of form rebels against the shabbiness of the subject matter"

********************

Nazar's Iranian/American academic life is so peripheral to Iran, and her life is so comfortable (despite the inconvience of wearing the veil), this memoir is not as gripping as all those stories that have come out of China's cultural revolution.

While her focus on the repressive regime reduces/dominates/distorts her reading of English/American literature.

But still ... this does seem to be an honest account of one life led right at the epicenter of the conflict between politicized Islam and secular modernity.

If Islam needs to be enforced by state terrorism, it doesn't seem to have any more of a future than Communism did.

But if secular modernity only works for those who want to be professional academics (like all the women in this book), it will remain vulnerable to competing orthodoxies.

Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice

2010-09-19T19:11:00.000-07:00

Mimicking the first sentence in Pride and Prejudice, the final section of "Reading Lolita in Tehran", entitled "Austen", begins as follows:

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Muslim man, regardless of his fortune, must be in want of a nine-year-old virgin wife"

So I had to make one final diversion from Asian literature, and go back to read P&P, which I had found so boring at the age of 16.

(Apparently, P&P was only elevated to the ranks of "great literature" in the 1940's, so mine would have been one of the first generations to have to read it in high school.)

It seems to be appropriate reading for teenagers -- since, after all, the main characters are in their early twenties, and naughty Lydia is only 16 when she gets married to wicked Wickham.

But honor student that I was -- it was way over my head, and it would have taken quite a teacher to attach me to its subtle approach to human situations that I had never experienced, especially through the lives of late 18th C. English gentry.

Now, almost fifty years later, it had me glued to the page, even if I still don't care whether Lizzy and her sisters will ever find sensible, congenial, and of course, filthy rich, husbands.

Austen just seems to know the questions that will arise in my mind as I follow the text.

So, for example, immediately after Elizabeth has that climactic confrontation with Lady Catherine, I was wondering why her family would not have noticed that she was very upset.

But Austen begins the very next chapter (15) with exactly that problem:

"The discomposure of spirits which this extraordinary visit threw Elizabeth into could not be easily overcome; nor could she for many hours learn to think of it less than incessantly"

And wasn't that an incredible scene?

The unstoppable force versus the immovable object?

The battle of the dragon ladies!

I felt like such a wimp as I read it -- knowing that if I were in Elizabeth's shoes, I would have defensively shouted "Hey, fuck you, bitch!", and the conversation would have ended immediately.

But as it turned out -- maintaining a reasonable contact for as long as she did, allowed Elizabeth to show that she defiantly would not reject Darcy's proposal - and that heroic defiance would drive Lady Catherine to report the conversation to Darcy with outrage rather than contempt, which then encouraged him to renew his nuptual proposal.

And please note, that was the only such pyrotechnic confrontation in the entire book.

The Bennet family's outrage over the Lydia-Wickham affair was just a tiny puff of smoke -- and that reminds us that the drama consequent to inappropriate marriages is the engine that drives this novel -- and it's hard to imagine that engine being so powerful in the eras that preceded or followed that revolutionary period in European history when the aristocracy was giving way to the bourgeois.

"Pride" is what bothers lower class persons (the Bennets) about the uppers (Darcy, Bingley, De Bourgh) -- and "Prejudice" is what that they feel.

BTW - it's interesting to note that nobody in this story has a job. (except, perhaps for Mrs. Bennet, whose job is to marry off her daughters, and whose perseverance in the execution of same makes her the target of the author's ridicule)

Everyone lives off the income of their property -- except for the two characters who are the most reprehensible: Collins, the obsequious pastor to Lady Catherine, and Wickham, the spendthrift, treacherous, gentry wannabe.

And we also might note that the main character, Elizabeth, is hardly the playful, lively soul that Austen repeatedly tells us, but does not show us, that she is.

Elizabeth is consistently wracked by anxiety, self-recrimination, and sharp, acidic contempt for other characters.

I can't imagine her being fun to be around -- and I pity poor Darcy for having to put up with her at Pemberley for the rest of his life -- though he does seem to be a fellow who enjoys being humiliated. Isn't that why he continued to pursue Elizabeth Bennet when she continued to spurn him, and he clearly had many other options?

Which brings us to consider the possible sequels to this story.

Most readers apparently assume the Elizabeth-Darcy relationship to be idyllic --especially since it will continue at the magnificent estate of Pemberley (shown above) -- (which - if you remember - is the reason that Elizabeth teasingly gave for being attracted to such a proud, aloof suitor)

So most sequels have looked elsewhere for drama, except for Mary Sherwood's, who decided to test the couple with the trials of middle age.

But I think this is a disastrous couple - and the real drama will come when their children become adults.

I'd have them conceive a girl on their honeymoon -- and then since their sex life would probably drop off dramatically (she's too much the shrew -- he's too much the wimp), they won't have another child for ten years -- after he comes back from India and rapes her in a drunken stupor.

The second child would be a very smart boy -- likely would grow up homosexual -- and I'd have the story follow his consciousness, just as P&P followed his mother's.

Now that would be a sequel! (though, I suppose it would have to be written in the style of the 20th instead of the 18th Century)

One more thing I noted, is how quickly the characters "fall violently in love" (an interesting use of the word "violent") and then make their marriage proposals. Especially compared with the careful consideration that usually accompany arranged marriages (like the one described here or here ).

Given their beauty and interest in marriage, it's a wonder those 5 Bennet sisters were all still unmarried at the beginning of the story.

And, it's a wonder that any marriage under those circumstances would remain a happy one after a year or two -- much less over the decades.

It's also interesting to note how marginal Christianity was to the characters in this story. One of them (Mr. Collins) is a minister, but the portrait of his groveling and sanctimonious self is hardly flattering, and another ( the worthless Wickham) would have joined that profession if he had the patience.

Church is regularly attended -- but Christian faith or ideals are never mentioned.

It's also interesting to note how marginal the arts were to these gentry lives.

Mary and Elizabeth are the only characters who practice music -- though not very well.

And nobody writes poetry - or seems to have any interest in visual arts, including the kind that is worn on the head, wrist, or neck.

Beauty only plays a role in the description of Pemberly -- with its beautiful woods and magnificent natural vistas.

Scholarship is of some interest -- but only to the rather dimwitted, bookish Mary, and to her father, for whom it mostly serves as an escape from his scatterbrained wife.

Hunting/fishing seems to be the primary passion of this aristocracy -- in sharp contrast to the aristocratic aesthetes described in the Tale of Genji or the Baburnama.

Henry James : Daisy Miller

2010-08-31T05:37:00.000-07:00

As Azar Nafisi puts it:

"I had just begun "Daisy Miller" and was reading about that Europeanized young American, Winterbourne, who meets in Switzerland the enchanting and enigmatic Miss Daisy Miller. Winterbourne is fasinated by this beautiful - to some shallow and vulgar; to others innocent and fresh - young American woman, but he cannot decide if she is a "flirt" or a "nice" girl"

And that's about all there is, since we're not taken any closer to any of the characters.

Miss Daisy is as enigmatic as anyone we might see while passing through a hotel lobby.

This novella is only concerned with a social milieu: status-conscious wealthy Americans living in Europe -- and though the story is only 72 pages - I'm not sure it's worth even that.

Or, if we are to make something of the heroine as that "child of nature and freedom" which James mentions in his introduction, it is only as a fantasy of a morbidly lonely man's imagination.

Though Azar makes more of it:

"Daisy and Catherine (from "Washington Square") have little in common, yet both defy the conventions of their time, both refuse to be dictated to"

and

"from the very first moment she appears with her parasol and her white muslin dress, Daisy creates some excitement, and some unrest in Winterbourne's heart and mind. She presents herself to him as a puzzle, a dazzling mystery at once too difficult and too easy to solve"

Though, I don't think there's much of a mystery here.

These are just people with plenty of time on their hands and nothing else to do other than flirt or gossip about those who do. The attractions of the old world (the castle in Switzerland, the colloseum in Rome) are just backdrops for ennui.

And when Azar condemns Mr. Giovanelli as "an unscrupulous Italian who follows her everywhere to the chagrin of her correct countrymen", she's attributing far too much to a phantom, since the reader has not been taken inside that relationship.

She's bought into the reactionary attitude of Winterbourne & Co. -- which is only natural since the author has shown everything through their eyes -- or more accurately -- through their suspicions.

But I want to hear more about Daisy!

And I wish James hadn't executed her so summarily.

She was apparently a high-spirited, though un-educated girl -- with the many opportunities that wealth could offer her.

And she seemed to be following the wise course of hanging out with Romans while in Rome -- in order to learn something about the world beyond Schenectady.

Henry James : Washington Square

2010-08-25T05:06:00.000-07:00

Yet another book that Azar Nafisi was reading in Tehran - and then briefly discussed as a memorial to Razieh, one of her students who especially liked it and was later executed by the fundamentalist regime.

And I liked it, too -- being completely sucked into those finely drawn moments of human interaction, as seen from the inside of each character's mind.

The entire story seemed to run with the precision and inevitability of clockwork - indeed, that is the metaphor that is used to summarize the story:

"From her own point of view the great facts of her career were that Morris Townsend had trifled with her affection, and that her father had broken its spring"

And as the author had me peer into the crania of his subjects - I'm afraid that I was peering also into my own, and I share Catherine's challenge of growing up with a parent who was as brilliant, rational and perceptive as he was self-centered -- a combination which seems especially American with its pursuit of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" (a phrase which my father must have recited a thousand times)

And poor Catherine's lover was the same way -- so, though it was delightful for the reader to notice how quickly both men perceive each other as enemies -- it was something of a disaster for her -- except that, in the long run, she probably had a happier life as a spinster than she ever would have had as wife to the self centered Morris Townsend.

Nafisi refers to Catherine as the heroine of this story - celebrating the triumph of her indendence - and indeed, she was confronted by three formidable adversaries who all claimed to be looking out for her best interests -- but weren't.

"A hero becomes one who safeguards his or her individual integrity at almost any cost"

That was certainly a shocking moment as her father expresses his excitement rather than his concern over her predicament.

But Catherine's success is a very small one: she will never raise a family or really accomplish anything other than her little "morsels of fancywork".

There's something that's dark and creepy about all this -- as if the main character were just a big juicy bug trapped in a spider web and waiting to be eaten -- while the author is a distinguished entomologist.

Nafisi remarks that Catherine's father (Dr. Sloper) is a modern villain : "a creature without compassion, without empathy" -- and relates this to the regime that is oppressing Iran.

But when has an adversary ever been perceived as empathetic?

And the ayatollahs were/are desparately trying to reject the modernism that so defines all the characters in this story. As Henry James notes on the first page of his story, Dr. Austin Sloper explifies a profession which, in America, "more successfully than elsewhere has put forward the claim of "liberal" -- as he pursued his life's ambititon to "learn something interesting, and do something useful"

I admire and kind of empathsize with Dr. Sloper -- as, indeed, I do with all of the characters in this story (unlike my negative feelings towards all the characters in either Gatsby or Lolita)

I even empathize with the neer-do-well Morris Townsend who would rather explore the world and enjoy himself instead of grinding out a profession --- and the dreamy aunt Penniman who wants to immerse herself in the romance of others.

Fitzgerald : The Great Gatsby

2010-08-16T05:57:00.000-07:00

Continuing my class with Professor Azar Nafisi, I had to re-read this American classic - dimly recalling it from high-school. How could a 16 year old understand such a story ? Or, for that matter, how could a 29 year old (Fitzgerald's age when he wrote it)?

Conveniently, a previous reader had highlighted every mention of color in the copy I got from the library, and explained them all on the inside of the back cover - so I could more easily follow the symbolism of green (growth, desire, envy, greed) , white (purity, emptiness, elegance), yellow (brightness, happiness, wealth) , brown etc.

But the story, as a whole, failed rather badly for me -- seeming to rest upon a shallow, priggish, constipated Midwestern middle-class curiosity and resentment of the polo playing set as fundamentally corrupt and insensitive - combined with utter contempt for a working class (George and Myrtle) who are dupes. (and don't forget about Myrtle's sexual energy - the only character who seems to have any)

With a healthy dose of anti-semitism thrown in (the epicenter of all corruption being the Jewish gangster with all that vermin-like quivering nostril hair who uses the clean cut, war-hero Gatsby as his front man.)

"A small flat-nosed Jew raised his large head and regarded me with two fine growths of hair which luxuriated in either nostril. After a moment I discovered his tiny eyes in the darkness"

Which is to say that Nick, the narrator, is the only character who rings true to me -- all the others being his immature, class-conscious fantasies.

And, BTW , I don't buy his self perception as being an especially honest person -- as he passively hangs out with people he despises and eventually identifies Gatsby as his good friend.

Nor do I share his conclusion that connects Gatsby's ambitious dream of an "orgastic future" with that"last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate with his capacity to wonder"

Won't there always be some people who find something great commensurate with a great capacity to wonder?

Though Gatsby does not appear to be one them (he's more like a psychotic stalker.)

Nor apparently, is Nick Carraway.

Rather than ending an entire book, I think this passage only belongs at the end of chapter one of Nick's life. He would then go back to Minnesota, marry a sweet girl, inherit his dad's hardware store , eventually get divorced by a wife who can't stand his self righteousness, get rejected by his children who can't stand his criticism and hypocrisy, and end up a lonely alcoholic.

It might also be fun to contemplate one of the most reprehensible characters in all of fiction: Tom Buchanan.

A snobbish, racist, philandering, abusive, do-nothing blue blood - who seems to have more muscles than brains -- except that he does mount a passionate, successful defense of his marriage against a fabulously rich fellow who has camped out in his neighborhood for five years, working as relentlessly as Ravana to seduce his wife away from him.

Tom's success surprised me - and if additional chapters for his life were written, I would have him settle down into becoming a good father (he's learned his lesson about consorting with low-lifes) and become director of a yacht club which he would build into a prosperous institution. I.e. -- I figure he would be a no-nonsense manager.

BTW - one loose end, as far as I'm concerned, is the actual value of the Gatsby estate.

The entire narrative is driven by curiosity about this character -- with revelations as evenly spaced throughout the book as sex scenes in a XXX movie.

But how much wealth did he actually accumulate while working for that crafty Jew?

It would have been so easy for Nick to report that the value of estate was less than the loan still due on the mansion, leaving Gatsby as penniless at the end as he was at the beginning. But for whatever reason, Fitzgerald left that question unanswered.

And now it's time to take our seat in Professor Nafisi's class and turn to Chapter two, entitled "Gatsby" in "Reading Lolita in Tehran" --- wherein she ingeniously puts the book on trial for crimes against the Iranian revolution.

As the student/prosecutor, Mr. Nyazi, in the case declared:

"Islam is the only religion in the world that has assigned a special sacred role to literature in guiding man to a godly life... through the Word you can heal or you can destroy. You can guide or you can corrupt. That is why the word can belong to Satan or to God"

".... remember, Ladies and Gentlemen, Gatsby is the hero of this book, and who is he? He is a charlatan, an adulterer, he is a liar... this is the man Nick celebrates and feels sorry, this man, this destroyer of homes!"

And I tend to agree with him.

Gatsby is something like a hero in this book, at least to the narrator who finally becomes his friend and admires his dedication to a dream/vision/memory:
"an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person."

And, though he doesn't say it, he would have to admire Gatsby's financial success -- which is in such sharp contrast to his own struggles -- and without which Gatsby would be dismissible as a psychotic loser, whatever his "gift for hope" might be.

"The Great Gatsby" is only off the hook if we deny that Gatbsy has been presented as some kind of hero - and then we have to query the value of stories without heroes.

Nafisi interprets the book as a cautionary tale about dreams that fixate on the past -- like the dream of Muslim revolutionaries to return Iran to Sharia.

But wouldn't that apply to all historic ideals (including those of freedom, human rights, scientific method etc) ?

I think character of Jay Gatsby is too fanciful/unreal to carry that much weight.

But an Iranian reader might be familiar with priggish characters like Nick, and a universality of the contrast/conflict between provincial vs capitol cities.

She goes on to teach:

"The idea or ideas behind the story must come to you through the experience of the novel, and not as something tacked on to it. Let's pick a scene to demonstrate this point. You will remember Gatsby is visiting Daisy and To Buchanan's house for the first time:

"Who wants to go to town? demanded Daisy insistently.
Gatsby's eyes floated towards her, "Ah", she cried,
you look so cool"
Their eyes met and they stared together at each other
alone in space. With an effort, she glanced down at the table.
"You always look so cool", she repeated.
She had told him that she loved him
and Tom Buchanan saw. He was astounded. His mouth opened a little,
and he looked at Gatsby, and then back at Daisy as if he had
just recognized her as someone he knew a long time ago"

"On one level, Daisy is simply telling Gatsby that he looks cool
and Fitzgerald is telling us that she still loves him, but he doesn't
want to just say so"

Except that --- she did just say so two pages earlier:

"as he (Tom) left the room, she got up and went over to Gatsby, and pulled his face down kissing him on the mouth.
"You know I love you", she murmured.

What strikes me about this passage
is how dry and plain spoken it is.

Where images instead of the author's voice
are carrying the story -- as in a screen play.

Nabokov : Lolita

2010-08-11T05:32:00.000-07:00

Somewhere near the beginning of "Reading Lolita in Tehran", I realized that I had to read the original if I wanted to join that Iranian book club.

My first attempt, about 45 years ago, was a failure. I was a teenager looking for sex talk and quickly got discouraged by the all that dense verbage that fascinates me now.

What a great book! It's language is so much more delectable than the rather dry traslations of foreign literature that have been my passion for the last 20 years.

Here's a choice passage, from late in the book:

"This book is about Lolita; and now that I have reached the part which ( had I not been forestalled by another internal combustion martyr) might be called "Delores Disparue." there would be little sense in analyzing the three empty years that followed. While a few pertinent points have to be marked, the general impression I desire to convey is of a side door crashing open in life's full flight, and a rush of roaring black time drowning with its whipping wind the cry of lone disaster"

It's typical in many ways -- with it's gratuitous use of French, its wildly romantic self-dramatization, its contrasting voices ("few pertinent points" vs. "side door crashing open") and its innaccuracy: i.e., this book is not about Lolita at all.

Instead, it's all about the narrator who calls himself Humbert Humbert -- a European intellectual who despises all things American (except for the financial legacy that required him to live there) and who has a strong taste for early teenage girls.

Indeed, I'd say this book is all about taste -- especially a taste for language -- and Humbert Humbert is a dedicated aesthete, who, unfortunately has an uncontrollable taste for forbidden fruit.

Though, in many times and places (especially in Asia) that taste for children would have been completely acceptable. As Azar Nafisi reminds us, a ten year old girl can get married in Iran, and as we might recall from "Dream of Red Chamber", supplying young girls to old men was a cottage industry in traditional China.

It's only in places like America that laws protect children -- just one more reason why it's hell-on-earth for a man like Humbert.

Actually, it's that description of America c. 1950 that fills the bulk of this text - and that's what is the most delightful and fascinating for me (who was born then) -- all based upon Nabokov's own extensive travels throughout the country in search of his beloved butterflies.

Though it's limited to the kind of places Nabokov knew: small towns and college campuses.

If only Humbert had fixated upon butterflies instead of underage women, he wouldn't have led such a miserable life!

It's an America seen through the eyes of a profoundly guilty man -- and yes, Humbert does feel guilty - obsessively so -- just not guilty enough to stop what he's doing.

And since both Humbert and his creator were professors of literature, the book is packed with literary references, offering endless opportunities for future scholars to pick its bones.

But at the heart of this story is a character who is so vicious, confused, self decieving, and certifiably insane -- I'm wondering if all that study is worth it.

It's only as an artist that Humbert excells, for which his tale is that kind of evidence that is much more credible than anything else he has to say. (two different versions of his sexual initiation are given in an early chapter to caution the reader concerning the reliability of his narrative)

This is a story that has a flesh-eating monster -- but not a hero to kill it.

And an interesting comparison with Nabokov's fellow Russian-American novelist, Ayn Rand, can be found here:

We know what Ayn Rand thought of Nabokov and Lolita. In a 1964 interview, she cited Mickey Spillane as her favorite writer. When asked about Nabokov, she replied: “I have read only one book of his and a half — the half was Lolita, which I couldn’t finish. He is a brilliant stylist, he writes beautifully, but his subjects, his sense of life, his view of man, are so evil that no amount of artistic skill can justify them” (“Playboy Interview” 40). One cannot but note how closely her condemnation of Nabokov resembles her damnation of Tolstoy. We can imagine what Nabokov might have said about Atlas Shrugged by reading his estimate of What is to be Done? in The Gift. Here he mocks Chernyshevsky’s book for its “helplessly rational structures,” its appeal to “rational egoism,” and concludes that “the idea that calculation is the foundation of every action (or heroic accomplishment) leads to absurdity” (293-94). The ideas attacked by Nabokov lie at the very center of Atlas Shrugged whose author held rationality to be man’s highest virtue.

(BTW -- I can't get beyond the first page of any Ayn Rand novel -- but I do think that novels written from the dark side, just like paintings that exclusively depict Hell, can at most, be considered minor masterpieces)

But even if there's no hero to kill Humbert the Horrible -- at least Humbert is the hero who kills his nemesis, the evil Clare Quilty (Clearly Guilty?) who runs off with Lolita and tries to recruit her for his pornographic films.

Is Cue more evil than Hum ?

They're both intellectuals - though Cue is the kind who tries to be a success in the world -- writing syruppy plays for grade schools as well as X-rated pornography.
I.e. -- he'll do anything for a buck -- while Hum is more self absorbed and romantic about it all -- quite content to make art that will "live in the minds of later generations" (but then -- Hum is a trust fund kid)

O.K. -- Cue is more evil -- and we can't feel too bad about his long, painful death that Hum will eventually give him as he finally, and rather comically, retreats to the shelter of his bed spread.

Except that -- every character in this story is seen through the lens of a notoriously unreliable, self serving narrator -- and neither Cue nor Lo nor any of Humbert's female companions have lives of their own.

The only characters who can be contemplated in this book are the author and his protagonist.

(BTW - I just some clips of the Kubrick film -- and James Mason is almost exactly how I envisioned Humbert -- although I no desire to see it or any other dramatization of this novel)

Iraj Pezeshkzad : My Uncle Napoleon

2010-07-20T05:58:00.000-07:00

This comic novel, first published in 1970, had me weeping with laughter in the first chapter.

But the laughter disappeared as it methodically ground out its tale over the next 500 pages, interweaving several stories:

*the teenage narrator's first love
*the political-paranoid fantasies of his beloved's father (the "Uncle Napoleon" of the title)
*the escalating squables between the narrator's father and Uncle Napoleon
*the loutish misadventures of Dustali Khan (who seems to be a cousin of the above)

All of the characters are quite shallow and cartoonish.

But I suppose that what is remarkable is their relentless energy to keep whacking each other over the head, like "Punch and Judy" on steroids.

And the writer's relentless energy to mock the political paranoia of "Uncle Napoleon" who, with assistance of his hilarious loyal servant, Mash Qasem, has fantasized an heroic past for himself battling the British empire. (just like the first Napoleon once did)

Though I think that paranoia concerning the British was well justified -- seeing as the story is set in the forties, when, indeed, Britain did invade Iran in order to open a supply line to help Stalin against Hitler. And during a period when Britain had a monopoly on Iranian oil ( paying a mere 15% of the un-audited profits) -- and only a decade before Britain would get the Eisenhower regime in the U.S. to undermine the popular Iranian government that was trying to nationalize the oil wells, and use a coup to establish Pahlavi Jr. as the puppet-shah.

But even as an ex-patriot, Pezeshkazad had to know all that history as well, so all of his mocking only serves to express the difficulty of his own position -- i.e. that of an educated, secular, and thoroughly alienated modern Iranian.

Just like the smart, vigorous young Iranian sculptor I knew in the early seventies. His family was connected to the Shah's regime -- his uncle was some kind of police chief -- but he could only do what he wanted in America. Very upbeat -- very fun -- very charming fellow who, like Asadolla Mirza, the anti-hero of this novel, seemed dedicated to taking every attractive woman to bed.

A thoroughly disfunctional society - which is only saved from being tragic by the fact that nobody gets really hurt - despite the occasional shotgun blast or clubbing with a leg of lamb.

And note that this story is written in 1970 -- i.e. before the Islamic revolution had institutionalized hypocrisy and repression.

Okagami - The Great Mirror

2010-06-12T07:08:00.000-07:00

Fujiwara Michinaga (966-1027) and His Times
A Study and Translation by Helen Craig McCullough

This is the perfect companion piece to the Tales of Genji, as it covers the same territory (the top Heian aristocracy) from a different POV -- one which is more intested in court politics than in romance and aesthetics.

But it is more of a mining expedition - requiring the reader to sift through all geneological data to get to the little episodes of personal life.

The geneology of that period is especially complex because high ranking men sired children with a variety of high ranking women - and as we learned from Lady Murasaka, these women often led rather desparate lives, without support from either their birth family or their lovers.

The Great Mirror gives no idea what the men did in their official administrative capacaties - it only gossips about their rise and fall -- and especially the rise of Fujiwara Michinaga, an especially gifted courtier.

And again, as in Genji, it is pleasing to note that losers may have to sulk in disgrace, but they don't get killed -- and everybody writes poetry in short stanzas that express the ubiquitious human condition of loss. (along with a lot of clever puns and references that are explained by the translator)

BTW - the translator also offers a long essay about the period, that includes an interesting discussion of Tales of Genji - comparing Genji to his son as examples of the perfect courtier.

It's also interesting to note issues of longevity in these stories -- since many people die young -- but the normal human life span is stated to be 80 -- and the fictional narrators are twice that old.

Sawako Ariyoshi : The River Ki

2010-04-26T06:36:00.000-07:00

This novel is almost the exact opposite of "After Dark" , which I read last month.

Instead of covering a single evening, this novel spans over 60 years (c. 1900 - 1960), which, of course, coincides with Japan's remarkable entry into modern geo-politics, including her victory over the Russian Navy in 1905, her invasion of China, and finally her defeat and occupation by the United States.

And instead of presenting isolated individuals - this novel presents three generations of a traditional family and how it changed in the modern world.

It's not a very long book. Perhaps the author had dreamed up several books worth of narrative, and then narrowed it way down.

The most detailed episode occurs at the end, as the major character, Hana, lies on her death bed and thinks about her family --- a scene that feels so real, the author may well have met such a lady at such a moment, and then written the rest of the book as back-story.

And basically that back story is the end of family, land based feudal society, for which Hana exemplifies the last and best of the grand dames: skilled in the aesthetic arts of koto and tea ceremony, while also proficient in classical Japanese literature and sensitive to the beauties of Kimono and ceramics; solictitous of her mother-in-law, supportive of her husband, and demanding of her children.

The perfect Japanese lady of a certain high status.

(BTW - regarding her support for her husband's career -- we're only shown one example - how she arranges for her brother-in-law, Kosaku, to marry the house maid he has gotten pregnant, and thus avoid scandal)

And one might note that unlike ideal European ladies of similar status, charity is not one her noble activitees. The tenant farmers in her village like her because she's not distant. And there is that episode where she entertains young peasant-class soldiers before they go off to war. But she doesn't help the poor and the sick, the way that ideal Christian ladies should.

(note: two of her favorite classics were the tales of Genji and the Heiki , both of which I have read and enjoyed. But it also mentions the last volume of "The Great Mirror" -- so I've had to order that series, and will begin reading it this month)

It's just a wild guess, but I'm guessing that the characters in this book were drawn from the author's family, and since it was written in 1960, the author would have been Hanako ( who, like the author, was taken by her parents to Java). So Hana may have been an idealized version of her grandmother.

Since the narrative relates how some care was taken in choosing Hana's husband, Keisaku, from among dozens of high-class applicants)-- we may assume that the one chosen is also an ideal person in his time, place, and social status -- i.e. the landed gentry.

He is a strong advocate for the economic health of his rural district -- joins all the relevant associations -- and is eventually elected to the national assembly.

He is also trying to be a modern man -- and he effectively disconnects the family from its high feudal status by giving much of its land to his younger brother, Kosaku, and selling the rest of it to finance his political campaigns.

And yet -- he is completely outside the major drama of national Japanese politics: fascism, militarization, and empire. He neither supports nor opposes it.

Indeed, nobody in this story either supports or opposes it; but there are two characters, Kosaku and Hanako's father, Harumi Eiji, who predict Japan's defeat.

The central story here is the historical change that occurs in just one generation. Fumio is as devoted to being modern as Hana, her mother, was to being the perfect wife.

Regrettfully, Fumio has no sense of that aesthetic which was so important to her mother, and she seems to look to magazines to tell her how things are supposed to be modern. And, unlike her mother, Fumio chooses her own husband in what might be called a love match.

Perhaps more importantly, she and her daughter are no longer separated from their mother's family the way that Hana had been when Hana got married and joined the family of her husband. So when the war forces families to send their children to safety, they often end up in the homes of the mother's relatives.

Hisao Kimura : Japanese Agent in Tibet

2010-04-21T08:38:00.000-07:00

A nice complement to "7 Years in Tibet" written 35 years later by a Japanese scholar who entered Tibet from the northeast at the same time that Heinrich Harrer was hiking toward Lhasa from the southwest.

But this is clearly the voice of an older man who is reflecting upon his life and times, and lacks the detail, immediacy and excitement of Harrer's account.

And Kimura never got to visit Potala palace and meet the Dalai Lama.

Instead, he moves about in the netherworld of expatriots living in Tibet or right across the border.

His general picture of the poverty and lawless chaos of the countryside is the same as Harrer's- and he recounts the motto of migrant Khapas as "Murder men or starve" - along with an injunction to go on religious pilgrimage.

Curiously, his introduction to this world was through something like a Japanese "Peace Corps" that put young Japanese men into peripheral, tribal areas in the hopes that eventually they would help the empire - and Hisao turned out to have a gift for learning languages to the point where he could pass as Mongolian. (it was only his Japanese body language that would later allow someone to see through his disguise)

And just like Heinrich, he had zero interest in Buddhism, even though he was immersed in that culture, was required to chant some sutras as part of his disguise, his Mongolian traveling companion had been trained as a monk, and his only Japanese contact, N. , was a serious novice.

Mostly, you would have to call him an opportunist - but that seems quite appropriate - given his situation as a draft-age young man in 1940 Japan. Most of his generation expected to die - and he certainly came close enough wandering through the mountains and deserts of southwestern China - where all of the various factions: Moslem, Chinese nationalist, bandits etc had one thing in common: hatred for the Japanese.

It's no wonder that when this talented polyglot finally had the opportunity to speak Japanese 9 years later, he couldn't, and had to communicate by writing.

One unusual feature of his story is that includes so many names that can be found on Wikipedia -- i.e. people who got a reputation as teachers or scholars of Tibetan Buddhism or Himalayan affairs, who would later publish books and often end up in America. He sold a pistol to Heinrich Harrer, and coincidentally ran into Lowell Thomas while hiking just over the border, and got described in "Out of this World" as a Chinese trader who spoke fluent English.

His discussion of important teachers whom he met has made this book of some importance to the history of Buddhism, and this website gives a much better summary of his travels than I do.

Perhaps Kimura is just name-dropping, since he would eventually become a scholar of Central Asian culture - but it also might honestly indicate just how small this international community of Tibetan-philes was back in the 1940's. And as a multi-linguist, mastering Tibetan as well as English and Mongolian, he would have fit right in.

Especially since, like Harrer, he had no family or career to distract him.

It's also interesting how he made a living over that time period - eventually becoming an importer/exporter/smuggler carrying things back and forth between northern India and Lhasa. The only requirement for such a job was good health and lack of fear. (On time he and his companion were waylaid by two bandits, but managed to escape since one bandit had the rifle, but the other was carrying the cartridges.)

Another charming episode was when he was introduced to an old Tibetan monk with whom he had to share a cabin - and who soon asked, with a smile, "Do you want it from the front or the back?"

And it's also charming how many people offer to help this complete stranger.

Kimura repeatedly asks "why don't Tibetans do more to protect their independance?"

But presumably, like himself, everyone else is just trying to survive.

After Dark - by Haruki Murakami

2010-04-06T07:58:00.000-07:00

Replace those two chatting adults seen above with a couple of scruffy college kids, and I think you've got the setting for this story by a thoroughly Japanese author immersed in American pop culture.

Beginning with Erich Segal's "Love Story", for which this is a variation that focuses on the moments when two lonely souls find each other, rather than on whatever consequences may follow.

Because this is a story that only covers precisely 6 hours and 56 minutes in the wee hours of a single night.

And that kind of precision is felt everywhere in this story - that feels more like a screenplay than a novel. (just like the Segal book)

Immersed in a high-tech, impersonal world, and surrounded by a variety of people who have failed, our two young protagonists can look forward to productive lives of personal fulfillment -- despite their rocky backgrounds -- due to their honesty, kindness, and persistence.

And their conventionality - as the young man is about to ditch his interest in music to study law, and the young woman is mastering a foreign language -- not just any foreign language -- but Chinese, which is the foundation of Japanese high culture, as well as the booming economic giant of this decade.

(BTW -- the Segal book even gets mentioned in this narrative - though the characters seem to have forgotten its tragic ending)

(BTW II - the relationship between Japan and China is further explored by introducing us to a Chinese prostitute who is beaten and robbed by a rather heartless Japanese techie/aesthete. But to make it a bit more complicated -- the Chinese pimp is even crueler - and as another character says, Chinese gangsters make their Japanese colleagues look like saints)

The story is framed by a bird's view of the city as a kind of gigantic creature, with it's human inhabitants as functioning parts of an organic whole -- a notion which seems distinctly Japanese - and would not fit the Chinese or Indian fiction I've been reading.

O.V. Vijayan : Legends of Khasak

2010-03-03T07:01:00.000-08:00

I had some difficulty keeping track of the characters in this short book, but I don't think that makes much difference, since the only character of any importance is the author himself and his ambivalent relationship to his homeland, the southwestern Indian state of Kerala (which he loved, but to which he never returned to live)

Standing in for the author, the main character, Ravi, is a westernized intellectual who is at the cutting edge of a modern science, but who has dropped out and retreated to the countryside to serve as the teacher in a very primitive, one-room schoolhouse.

Why did he drop out? Was it a clash with his teacher or father? A sexual transgression? The reason seemed a bit muddled -- but a lot is muddled in a drop-out's mind.

At any rate, the village where he ends up, Khasak, is a real mess - rife with disease, madness, despair, superstition, poverty, and ignorance.

Lots of people have stories -- and none of them have happy endings.

But the only persistent malevolence seems to come from the world of the supernatural - whether Hindu, Muslim, or other. The people themselves are more like helpless victims, human violence does not play a role, and nobody gets raped or murdered - despite the ethnic and religious diversity.

Which makes the place rather endearing - even if disgusting.

All of which is seen through eyes of an outsider -- and as one outsider myself, it looks to me that what this miserable village needs are a few Christian missionaries to liberate them from bad karma and evil spirits,and bring them medicine, literacy, and a more healthy lifestyle and sense of positive purpose.

And, incredibly enough, it turns out that Kerala (the real Indian state in which Khasak is an imaginary village) has a large Christian population, a 91% literacy rate, and a relatively high standard of living for it's 33 million people (which would make it more populous than any American state other than California)

And given the popularity of this book, it is likely O.V. is not alone in being so thoroughly modernized, that he can still have tender feelings for what is weird and non-modern about his homeland.

But despite it's relative prosperity - it still has a very high mortality rate, a result, perhaps, of contaminated water sources (50% of he population draws water from wells).Perhaps that is the source of this book's fatalism about death and disease.

Kerala is a fascinating area with it's own language and ancient literary and dramatic tradtions. But it doesn't seem to have much in the way of great temple art -- so I'll probably never go there.

A few more notes about the book:

*There have to be hundreds of stories that send a modern, educated person into the bush to fight superstition and improve the lives of backward peoples, while picking up some native wisdom in the bargin. But O.V. has nicely avoided that formula: nobody seems to learn anything in his Khasak schoolhouse - they just get sick and die -- and the "star pupil" is the village idiot.

*There's also a twist in the role of the hide-bound conservative who resists cultural change. In this story, it's a local Mullah who doesn't really change his mind -- but he's so poor that he applies for the job of school janitor.

****************************************************************************

After a second reading:

It's now obvious that this book needs to be read at least three times.

First -- to get a general introduction to the characters and setting
Second --- to figure out who actually does what
Third --- to tie it all together in reading every scene

Is it worth it?

I'm not sure -- but this is likely to be my only venture into Kerala, so I'm still game.

On my second reading -- I'm more aware of how permeated the novel is with sexuality -- which
was no so apparent in the first reading because it's rarely explicit.

The central character, Ravi, does indeed abandon his career in astrophysics to work out his feelings of guilt for having slept with his stepmother -- and he is summoned back to the academic world by his old professor's daughter (who just can't keep her hands off him)

A shed was converted into a one-room school because that was where the jealous landlord discovered that his wife was meeting her lover.

And the "Khazi" -- the local muslim prophet -- seems to be in bed with every available young woman.

O.V. presents a dangerous, though shallow, world saturated with sexual transgression and hoaky magic, with recurrent scenes of bare breasted young women to incite the one, and omnipresent disease to demand the other.

If that's a fair characterization of traditional India --- thank God for the modern world.

Heinrich Harrer : Seven Years in Tibet

2010-02-16T05:52:00.000-08:00

Tibetan independence has been a politically sensitive subject ever since this book was first published in 1952.

What's good about Harrer's narrative is that he focuses on just what he's seen - both the good and the bad of the Tibetan monarchy.

But there's no disputing that he had joined the Nazi party -- so it's not surprising that the trappings of absolute authority appealed to him, especially when it coincided with his personal benefit - and one can note - that this appears to be what most concerns the author. He wants to have a good time -- which for him at that time, meant adventure - climbing new peaks and seeing new things. He appears to have had no connections with anyone back in Germany - it's as if he were an orphan with no siblings.

This story ends when Harrer fled the country after the Chinese invasion in 1951 (no fun in sticking around with a lame-duck regime)-- so there's no discussion of the consequences of Chinese rule - except in a postscript that accuses them of genocide.

But the glimpses of Tibetan rule in the late 1940's do not especially flatter that regime, even if Harrer was quite happily surprised about his quick rise at court to become a personal friend of the teenage Dalai Lama.

Tibet was ruled by an aristocracy of 200 families and the abbots of the major monasteries - and this system seemed to have had little concern for welfare of the rest of the population - which Harrer shows living on the edge of starvation, with minimal infrastructure (nothing more than footpaths) and at the mercy of bandits.

And despite their deliberate isolationism, they seemed to have had no problem with obtaining and using whatever products of modern civilization pleased them.

After the disintegration of the Chinese state in the warlord era of the early 20th C., Tibet enjoyed a 40 year window of autonomy within which the ruling class might have attempted to adapt its country to the modern world, as say, the Japanese had done during the Meiji era. Instead -- they sought nothing more than personal advantage and were utterly alone and helpless when the People's Liberation Army began to mass at the border.

Assuming that the protective deities were in control of the situation - it's not too farfetched to imagine that they may have decided to let that theocratic state with its 6000 monasteries pass into history. As Herrer describes them, none of the top clerics seemed all that enlightened, and the lower orders of monks were like gangs of hoodlums.

One item of interest is Harrer's report on the coup attempted by the 7th Rimpoche. Did he really mail a bomb to the monk who succeeded him as regent? In this kind of closed society, the only reports are rumors - so who knows what really happened.

Baburnama

2010-02-09T05:43:00.000-08:00

It's hard not to like Babur - unless you happened to be living anywhere in the 600 miles between Kabul and Delhi back when he was sacking cities and demanding tribute.

Born into a family of warlords -- a direct descendent of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane - he started at the bottom, and beating all his uncles, fought his way up.

The Tony Soprano of his day.

Which would make him just one more menace to civilization - except that he was so civilized.

Kind of.

He wanted to be a gentleman - gentlemen appreciated poetry - so Babur did as well. Not that he ever records patronizing a good poet the way he did good wrestlers -- but as he records the virtues and vices of each of his fellow warlords and henchmen, the knack for poetry is one of the former. (along with religious observance, skill with weapons, and courage in battle)

And he had a fascination with geometric gardens with stone watercourses, and seems to have built quite a few as his army scoured the land stamping out resistance.

Of course, he also had a fascination with drinking parties -- and he's quite ambivalent about it.

Binging vs abstinence seems to have been a major drama in his personal life --- so he seems to record every wild party -- as well as his initial reluctance to get drunk and his eventual oath to stay sober - which coincided with preparations for the greatest battle of his career, Khanwa in 1526, five years before his death.

At that battle, Babur defeated a much larger army, led by an experienced Rajput warlord --

by using the new technology of cannons and matchlock rifles -- as well as the old technology of bribery/subversion.

And what is typically charming of Babur's narrative -- is that while moving his army towards the confrontation -- he meticulously records every party, every new garden, and all the details of personal health - the fevers, boils, earaches etc that accompany a man with a very hard, outdoor lifestyle - as well as the drugs that he took. Mercury for constipation (ouch) - opium for pain - and a candy version of marajuana for just about everything. (Babur was a pot head)

Babur had known defeat many times in the past -- indeed his invasion of Hindustan was ultimately the consequence of being driven of his home territory by the unbeatable Uzbeks.

But somehow, at the age of 43, he knew that this battle was going to be a tough one -- which called for the extreme remedy of forsaking alcohol and declaring a holy war against the infidel.

Up to this point, most his opponents had been fellow Muslims -- and it was Muslim heads that he stacked up in towers after each victory.

But the Rajputs were infidels -- so Babur stirred up his troops (outnumbered 10:1) with a fiery speech filled with quotations from the Koran -- which conveniently provided quite a few admonitions to bring death to unbelievers ( as it had been well serving the nomadic plunderers of civilization for the previous 900 years)

One of the many charms of this journal is Babur's curiosity about the natural world - the flora and the fauna of territories that he conquered - especially Hindustan where everything was unfamiliar to him. What fun to hunt rhino!

But more than that -- Babur was especially interested in people -- because it's the job of a leader to know his servants, alllies, and adversaries.

When to reward - when to threaten - when to forgive - when to punish.

These are all very delicate decisions -- and obviously Babur became very good at them. I can't recall a single instance of his condemning any of his peers to death (although the cook who poisoned him got skinned alive). Usually, the offending aristocrat was forgiven after someone else had pleaded for mercy on their behalf.

But was Babur really being candid?

One topic he seems to ignore is sexuality.

As a young man, he records that his mother had to bully him into visiting his young wife. The only romance that Babur recorded was his infatuation with an even younger man, which inspired a few lines of love poetry.

The introduction to this translation, written by Salman Rushdie, claims that Babur was profligate. But the Baburnama is silent. Lots of stories about drinking wine and eating majun - but nothing about sex and/or romance. Some of his colleagues are noted, in a derogative fashion, as catamites - but nothing about his own sexuality - for which there would have been endless opportunity.

Perhaps this was just a topic which a gentleman would not discuss.

My favorite episodes were when Babur was in big trouble -- like when he was running for his life, abandoned by his comrades after a defeat - and paranoid that anyone who recognized him would turn him in for a reward.

Or.... like when he had outworn his welcome in Herat and had decided to cross the mountains to get to Kabul in mid-winter. Bad idea! As he is caught in a winter storm, gets frostbit, and finally finds shelter in a large cave.

Babur is a babbler -- if he were alive today -- he'd be a serial-blogger like myself.

And also, like myself, he may have been totally honest -- but he also does not want to write about the most important decisions in his life - which, in his case, would have concerned geo-political strategy and how he feels about his rather murderous family.

Nehru and Indira

2009-11-12T04:02:00.000-08:00

Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography by Sarvepalli Gopal

This book was my introduction to the incestuous world of 20th c. Indian politics, written by the son of one of the major players, and written with the fawning reverence appropriate for grade school textbooks. So I suppose I should have abandoned it before finishing the first chapter. But it does present a lot of Nehru's own correspondence - and since the most positive possible spin is always being given, one can read between the lines for the rest of the story.

Unlike Mao, the leader of the other Asian giant emerging in the 20th C., Jawaharlal did not have to fight, scheme, and murder his way to the top.

He was a fine, decent, idealistic, handsome man, and he deserved everything that was given to him.

First by his father, a wealthy, successful attorney who was among the founders of the independence movement among the tiny, educated, English speaking elite, then by the Mahatma who took that movement to the wider population, and finally by the British who couldn't afford to run an empire after the Second World War, so they quickly dumped it on whomever was willing to take over.

During all this time, Jawaharlal served as an attractive spokesman for the cause of independence, social justice, and especially for ethnic harmony, a cause for which his background made him suitable -- being born a secular, high-caste Hindu from Kashmir, a Muslim majority state.

The creation of Pakistan was (and continues to be) the great disaster of that period - could he have done more to prevent it?

On the other hand, does he deserve credit for forestalling any further fragmentation? Or for building a modern, industrialized nation ?

The picture I get is of a small, elite group of English speaking, educated Indians (about 50,000 around 1890) who will eventually run the world's largest democracy -- whose leaders get to prove their idealism by periodically sitting in jail for the cause of independence.

Then, once independence is achieved (or given), the dynamics of competing self interest takes over, and the image of the national leader is much more important than the effects of his decisions. (an image that's been passed down through the generations of his family)

Perhaps we could call this the Brahmin era of modern India -- led by the great priest, Mahatma, and his pious followers (Nehru) -- to be eventually replaced by the next lower caste (Kshatriyas) who traditionally wield political/economic power.

And the need to see these leaders in a positive way is so great, we shouldn't even want to know the details of their personal lives and foibles. (thus the current outrage over the Australian film that was going to show Nehru in bed with Lord Mountbatten's wife)
.........................................................................

Indira Gandhi - A Personal and Political Biography by Inder Malohotra

This was a much better read about a much less sacred person. She even married a Parsi. Does that mean that's she's no longer Brahmin?

Perhaps Malohotra has just sold me a bill of goods -- but I get the feeling that he was a concerned citizen first, and a professional journalist second (a feeling that no American journalist has ever given me)

Is he telling the truth about those private interviews he had with Indira? If so, it's as if Plutarch had chatted with Caesar as he was walking to the Forum on March 15 and cautioned him not to go. (though, they both suffered the same fate)

And Indira's story is just as exciting as Caesar's -- or, more like Gaius Marius, in the extreme ups and downs of her career.

So, I'm saying this is great work of history and predict it will be a classic in the centuries to come -- especially when it's read in conjunction with an internet search engine that can fill in all the details on the dozens of other politicians who are mentioned.

Even though, I'm not really sure what Indira accomplished other than staying in office, promoting her lineage, and keeping the Bangladesh tragedy from being as catastrophic to India as it was to Bangladesh.

Did the "emergency" prevent national disintegration ? Did it do lasting harm to democratic institutions? Are India's Hindu, Muslim, and regional ethnic populations any closer to living peacefully with each other?

And to phrase a question in an Indian context, is dharma being further cultivated, or abandoned by commercial and ethnic self interest?

Xinran: China Witness

2009-08-31T07:08:00.000-07:00

A very strange book.

Xinran is a Chinese woman, born into a wealthy entrepreneurial family, who, despite that background, beats out 20,000 other applicants to be become one of the first broadcast journalists in the post-Mao era of the Peoples Republic.

She eventually moves to London where she marries a top literary agent who is the son of "Wild Mary" Wesley, a notoriously profligate upper class woman who became a best selling novelist at the age of 70.

And then, Xinran becomes a professional writer herself (though she uses translators to put her works into English)

This book is apparently the culmination of a ten-year project to tell the story of 20th C. China through the eyes of people who have lived it, in a variety of places and social circumstances, running west to east between the Yangtze and the Yellow Rivers, i.e. the heartland of the country. And apparently, a team of 50 people was involved in planning the itinerary, making the contacts, and then following the author around with movie cameras to record each interview, and then transcribe and edit them.

Whew!

What an effort!

What seems to be missing, though, is a final edit. After several readings, I still can't figure out what happened to "Double-Gun Woman". She was involved with some kind of uprising on Huaying Mountain, and as a result, she and her comrades were blacklisted by the Party. But when and how that all happened remains a mystery. And what happened to the entire story of Fang Haijun, Mao's bodyguard, whose picture made it to the inset of photographs, but whose story was omitted from the text ?

I think Xinran is still doing broadcast journalism - i.e., trying to attract momentary attention with soundbites that are colorful and have broad emotional appeal. These old people have really been through a lot, haven't they? Let's all give them a little more respect!

So we get to meet 11 old people -- and all of them are interesting -- but these meetings are so superficial, and Xinran's repetitive question seems so trite: "what are your 3 saddest moments, and what your three happiest?"

But still -- these brief encounters are fascinating - especially because most of these people are so far from the super-achiever intellectuals who have written all the other books that I've read about this period.

They're all still achievers, though -- whether they've succeeded at selling herbs, fixing shoes, making lanterns, performing acrobatics, or rising up within one of the bureaucracies.

But since all of these characters are survivors, the problem is that nobody survived the first three decades of the People's Republic by being candid -- and each of the people she interviews knows that whatever security they have achieved can vanish in a Beijing minute if they say the wrong thing.

Unlike Xinran and most of the other Chinese writers whom I have read, these old people are still living in China, and China is still ruled by the Communist Party, not by law.

So all of the declarations of idealism and devotion to the Revolution are highly suspect - except perhaps for the Lady General who got to the top of the bureaucracy and retired to a special compound for high officials.

Something I've also noted is the rebirth of the Mandarin meritocracy. Now it reappears as the modern university, but it's probably still just as impractical, and one consequence is the lack of respect for traditional arts like herbalism and lantern making. (and their consequent abandonment)

Especially poignant with the story of the ignorant, starving peasant boy who rose to become policeman, cadre, and judge, but was eventually demoted for lack of education and ended up living in poverty without any benefits like health care. He's the one voice that seems to speak with candor, but he's also given up on his life and has nothing to lose.

Then there's the story of the smart, ambitious woman who failed to get into university, and then devoted her life to making her children PHD, while refusing to apply for any scholarships for them. (and without any apparent concern for what exactly they were going to accomplish besides getting a degree)

I was also fascinated by the texts of several love letters exchanged between a high-official widow and a widower of a much lower rank -- both of whom were in their sixties. The widower is so self-deprecating! And the tone of the letters so sincere, with hardly any evidence of sense of humor.

A Suitable Boy - by Vikram Seth

2009-07-28T05:02:00.000-07:00

It's been two months since my last entry here - during which time I've been hauling around all 1476 pages of this novel until, sadly, the final monkey made its appearance, and there were no more pages left to turn.

But that seems only fair, since the author spent ten years writing the thing (or so it says on the Wikipedia entry which apparently this insatiable chatterbox wrote himself)

Why didn 't he just keep on writing more chapters? I mean -- I really didn't care which suitable boy Lata would eventually marry -- I just wanted him to keep spinning off more characters, taking me into more corners of the Indian world.

Perhaps he had just exhausted his areas of familiarity -- the legal, educational, and business worlds of his khatri caste parents. He valiantly and persistently tried to extend his story into the Muslim world -- but you can feel both the effort and the distance. (and all of those Muslim characters ended up badly - losing either their lives, loves, or friendships in 1951-1952, the year the story takes place, from one Hindu Holi festival to another, and, coincidentally, the year the author himself was conceived and born)

No wait -- there were two Muslim success stories-- among very minor characters -- the fellow who ruthlessly got himself elected to Congress - and the sarangi player who turned out to be a great singer -- but -- stop -- I can't tell you any more -- because suspense can be very important in a 1500 page story.

So if any of you have not yet read the book, you should stop right here. Seth put a lot of effort into tickling and teasing anxiety over eventual outcomes, and I don't want to spoil that pleasure for anyone.

*********************************************************

But if you have already read the book....

One thing that especially strikes me is the sweet, playful, oh-so modern, liberal, educated, and elite Calcutta Brahmo flavor of it all -- exemplified by the Chatterbox -- I mean -- Chatterji family in the story -- which seems to include portraits of the author's siblings, including himself.

Which probably also accounts for something so very English about the storytelling -- the need for central characters who feel good, sincere, innocent, and wholesome. (something that would be quite foreign to the Chinese fiction that I've been reading for the past five years)

And maybe also accounts for the emphasis on history (a notion that didn't enter the Gangetic plain until the Moslems wanted to record their victories over the infidel)

"A Suitable Boy" is more like "A suitable History" -- of post-partition India, with emphasis on its major themes of inter-communal relations, the end of the Zamindari system, the decline of the Congress Party after it had defeated its colonial adversary, and the first, awkward steps of the world's largest and youngest democracy. (compare this to what was happening in China in 1951)

Coming from an enlightened Hindu perspective, the most repulsive character is a Hindu extremist, the wealthy, violent, stupid, amoral (but kind of funny) Raja of Marh. The most important relationships in this story are the friendships and romances between Hindu and Moslem -- but to give Seth credit -- he even-handedly gives a tight slap to the rural Muslim spiritual and political leadership which cannot see any difference between God's plan and their personal self interest at the expense of lowest economic castes.

I get the feeling that Seth is quite serious about the history he presents.

But there's also a love quadrangle -- just like the Judgement of Paris , so it's fun to ponder what each suitor had to offer.

One offered sexual obsession (Kabir, the Muslim student), the second offered sensitivity and verbal sophistication (Amit, the renowned Poet), and the third offered steadfast devotion and financial security (Haresh, the shoe manufacturing executive)

What's a girl (Lata) to do?

Significantly -- other than agonizing over this choice, practically nothing more about her is shown to us. It's as if choice of mate is the most important one she will make in her life. (BTW - despite her repeated protests, I knew all along it had to be -- and should have been -- Haresh -- unless some additional candidate were to appear at the end.

Because above everything -- unlike the author of "Leaving India" , this girl just wants to be a good Khatri woman, taking the clan from one generation to the next.

That trans-generational commitment (in America we call it "family values") is the profound content of this story that's so light-hearted and/or superficial about political and spiritual issues.
And that's why dull, boring, but dedicated Mrs. Mehra gets more face time than anyone else, and the novel is named after her quest.

And also why the center of all catastrophe in this narrative is the elegantly appointed boudoir of a high-class whore. Playpen of the loathsome Raja of Marh, it's also, like the House of the Rising Sun, "been the ruin of many a young man" -- including the Nawab, his son, and that most noble, likable, and wayward of youths, Maan (is he "everymaan"?) who eventually loses his status as a "suitable boy"

Perhaps this is another English/Judeo-Christian feature of this narrative: "Hear O Israel -- follow not the Whore of Babylon"

Though, significantly, unlike Biblical whores, Saeeda Bai is an excellent musician - like the very best of the Sing-Song Girls of Shanghai - and maybe even more so -- because Hindustani music is a very serious art form, both for the author, his story, and the educated classes of India. (and it's Saeeda's sarangi player who goes on to possibly become the greatest voice of his time)

But mostly, this is a light-hearted, superficial narrative -- serving well as a colorful guide to north Indian customs, manners, clothing etc.

I especially enjoyed the description of festivals (how I wish we Americans had something like Holi) - and meandering narrative style that seemed to pick minor characters, like the Urdu tutor, out at random and then surprisingly make them major figures.

Minal Hajratwala : Leaving India

2009-05-19T05:36:00.000-07:00

Minal left India alright (actually, her great grandparents left) -- but she has most profoundly left its family culture, being the only Khatri whom she knows to come out publicly as a Lesbian, which is a big step beyond marrying outside caste. (not to mention rejecting an arranged marriage).

And yet, of all her 35 first cousins, she probably knows more about family history and traditions than any of them, and this book, assuming it to be as accurate as she claims, will be a valuable document for her family for many generations to come.

It's also interesting to the armchair traveler like myself -- to get these little snippets of history from Gujarat as well as Fiji and Durban, South Africa. I'm even fascinated by the tiniest of anecdotes -- like how one family branch temporarily moved to Hong Kong to establish a trading company to supply electronics and such to South Asia and even Africa. (African buyers are only interested in price -- so that's a place to sell cheap batteries that only last for 15 minutes). But now that branch is moving to Australia because Hong Kong is being eclipsed by Guangzhou.

This book is just packed with that kind of detail -- accompanied as well with immigration statistics and a large bibliography relating to Indians in the many places to which they moved. Which is to say that the author is trying to be a serious scholar (though I'm in no position to judge her success)

The author's personal history is also quite fascinating - and very moving -- as she is dragged around the world by her parents, and ends up with a very lonely, unhappy adolescence in suburban Michigan.

When she confronts her parents with her sexuality, her father calls her "an educated idiot" -- for good reason, since her university experience (at Stanford) had gotten her all wrapped up in the theories of feminism long before she became a practicing Lesbian. She is clearly a very bright, top-of-the class kind of girl, and she picks up trendy ideology very quickly. But what else did her background give her? It was her parents who cut her roots to India -- and a handbook for a boyscout "Hindu merit badge" was no replacement. (yes -- her father actually wrote such thing)

Actually -- I wish we had gotten more about the life of her parents. It seems that her father, a chemist, was not especially cut out for either industry or the university. His education was only a ticket to America - and after his heart surgury (stress related?) he ended up as a financial planner. (no further details are given, but I'm guessing that he became a salesman for an annuity/investment company) Her Mom seems to have been more entrepreneurial - getting a degree in physical therapy and opening a suburban practice that became quite lucrative.

But still - it's amazing that Minal could be as open as she was about her parents (I mean -- they're still alive -- and they still seem to be close enough to travel together and live in the same city)

What does America have to offer us immigrants? (I'm including my family as well, since her great grand parents left Gujarat about the same time that mine left Central Europe)

Economic opportunity and university education -- or as author puts it - "freedom" -- the freedom to do and think what you want.

How does that compare with the richness (as well as restrictions) of a traditional culture, whether Hindu, Christian, or Jewish ?

What modern American culture doesn't especially offer is a good place for children -- and so children have found their own pop culture of anger and alienation.

How will the Khatri caste adapt to a society that invites them to come out of the Indian ghettos in which they lived in Fiji, South Africa, and even London? (for some reason, Indian culture is more tightly knit in London - and many children would never dream of breaking their parents' heart by not consenting to an arranged marriage)

I suppose there will always be some traditionalists -- but mostly, like Minal and myself, we're all thrown together in America, trying to make a brave new world.

How important is sexual orientation? Well -- it's very important for those under 30, and right now, it still seems to be an important focus of Minal's life as a Lesbian activist. But let's see what happens as she gets older.

********************

Favorite parts:

The rise and fall of the Narsey empire in Fiji - showing the both the benefits and the liabilities of keeping a business within the family. When it begins, family is a good source for loyal, hardworking, underpaid staff. But once it's been established, the family members just take what they want (as loans) , and after the death of the founder, nobody is left to stop them. Another result, in that small island world, is that the family, indeed the entire Fiji Gujarati community, is alienated from the rest of the islanders. (the author shares a quote from James Michener about how unpleasant the Indians seem). So eventually, the native Fijians drive them all out.

And it is interesting to note that other than robberies and children being beaten by their parents, there is no violence in this story, which stretches through 5 generations. That's quite a record for any family living through the entire 20th Century. They were completely outside all the wars and revolutions. None of them served in any armies, one spent some time in prison for political activism against the Raj.

What's missing:

What's missing is a broader, deeper picture of human life (beyond a record of business and marriage). Of course, this would be problematic, given that that all of the characters are relatives of the author, and she probably is going as far as she can. (she also notes, in an interview, that she didn't discuss the people whom she didn't like).

There don't seem to be any crash'n'burns among her extended family - i.e. lifelong dependents, but there are a few very unhappy mothers (who take it out on children or daughters-in-law), and I'm guessing that many of the men would be diagnosed as alcoholics.

There also don't seem to be any over-achievers - except in small-scale business. No politicians, artists, writers (except for the author), scientists (if her father had accomplished something, I think we would have heard about it)

There's also nothing about religious/spiritual life - other than family ritual. From what I've read about Indian temples in America, their histories are rather colorful, with a special place for charismatic leaders (just as in Pentacostal Christianity). The author herself has apparently joined a Zen organization - but there's nothing about that in her book.

BTW - what about those mothers-in-law? They are the great villains of Chinese family drama, but this book only records one ferocious example. And I'm not quite sure what happens to widows in the Khatri family. Do they rule their children the way that aging Chinese widows do?

BTW II: Just to note the role of Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People" in her father's life (it changed his attitude towards prospective employers, and enabled his success) The author also gives a copy as a gift to a cousin -- and the book is even mentioned in Vikram Seth's "A Suitable Boy". This wise approach to human relations is 180 degrees away from the attitude I picked up from my father - but there's no point in me changing now: I've gotten comfortable with being thoroughly disliked.

Thrity Umrigar : First Darling of the Morning

2009-05-02T19:54:00.000-07:00

Very hard to keep a dry eye with this one - from beginning to end -- it's one long sob.

But I don't feel especially exploited because it seems so real, locked into an inward-looking family within the inward looking community of Parsis, one of the world's smallest urban minorities.

Can it be that there's only a hundred thousand of them on the entire planet?

Well, there certainly won't be any more thanks to her.

The author never broaches the subject, but apparently she never marries (and there must have been proposals from other Parsi families) She badly needs to leave home, but rather than taking a husband, she takes an airplane to Columbus, Ohio (which fascinates me - since I did the university there myself, about 10 years before her - and now can picture her in my familiar haunts - especially the stacks in the library)

Or -- maybe I do feel a little exploited -- because this girl, like her father, is such a smooth salesman - and the job of a salesman is to tell customers what they want to hear - so we get just the right amount of guilt-tinged self reflection. Her book is overwhelmed by "like me - like me - please like me".

Her story makes a nice comparison with that of my Chinese friend -- who also ended up standing in front of a U.S. immigration officer -- desperate for a new life -- and confidently turning the situation to her advantage to come away with a visa.

But whatever happened to the idealistic girl who cut classes to protest social injustice? It looks like "mommie dearest" (her cruel, unhappy mother) drove her away. And whatever happened to that poor woman, anyway? There's a postscript about the author visiting her sick father a few decades later, but what about Mom? Did that miserable couple stay together until the bitter end?

There's something so self-centered (self protective ?) about the author, I'm not very interested in reading her novels. But as a story about herself, this one feels so true and compelling. (and she knows how to build one climax on top of another)

As a reader, I felt like I was sitting next to her in the airplane carrying her away from her family - and she took the 12 hours of that international flight to tell me her story.

The images of her sweet, suffering dad and his sister -- who can forget them? Or the car trips they took through Bombay -- the interactions with the street people -- the patient nuns who worked at her grade school - taking her beloved, dead uncle to a "tower of silence", and the gentle oppression of the Indira Ghandi 'Emergency' (gentle compared with China's revolutions)

It's all quite memorable and intense.

But once that plane has landed -- I don't especially want to see this "Mad Parsi" again, who sadly, at least for Parsis, has really no particular attachment to Parsi tradition. In a sharp reversal of the Philip Roth novel, her life is "Goodbye world, Hello Columbus"

Note: it's also interesting to find her review of the John Keay history of India that I recently read.. We came away with very different ideas about Keay's response to the two major issues of Indian history - i.e the Muslim and British occupations.

Maitreyi Devi : It Does Not Die

2009-04-26T05:41:00.000-07:00

A wonder full book.

No -- it's more like a raga -- i.e. it builds slowly (and perhaps a bit tediously) over the 137 pages of its first chapter -- to the thrilling, climactic 9 pages of the last.

And its special joy is honesty -- because who would ever admit to having been so prissy and pretentious as a precocious little teenage girl, growing up in a high-powered intellectual home in Calcutta.

The set-up is so simple: the professor's daughter falls in love with his brilliant foreign house-guest/student. Upon discovery, the student is sent packing, and a few years later, he writes a novel based on the experience. The book seems to be autobiographical (it gives the real name of his girl friend) - but it also fantasizes a sexual relationship between them. And since the book becomes a best seller, it will haunt/disturb/embarrass the girl for the rest of her life.

I.e. --- "It does not Die" -- especially because the author has a crystal clear memory that transports her back 40 years and makes the past present. (sometimes, my memory can do the same thing -- and it's quite a thrill - although her memory seems to be sharper)

And it also "does not die" because, as the Bhagavad Gita tells us, "Unborn, eternal, everlasting, premeval, it does not die when the body dies".

I.e. -- the author is making a spiritual journey -- becoming aware of her soul, as she realizes that she has a soul mate.

BTW - Maitreyi's world is rather special. Her father was a distinguished Sanskrit scholar - and her family were Brahmos -- a Bengali Hindu version of a Reformed Jew or a Unitarian Christian -- as they attempt to preserve the spiritual and ethical components of their religious tradition, while throwing out the old fashioned customs, prejudices, idolatries, etc. So they're very liberal -- but they're still quite upper-upper class -- and just a bit snobbish.

Meanwhile, her personal guru is the 20th C. poet-saint of Bengali: Rabindranath Tagore. Their connection is very close -- the great poet visits the author's remote estate many times, becoming the subject for another one of her books. ("Tagore Memoir")

And her novelist soul mate is rather special also -- he's Mircea Eliade, a renowned scholar of comparative religion (with possibly the longest Wikipedia entry ever written)

Living in such an intellectual world, Maitreyi has some rather sharp words for both of the religious scholars in her life, her father and Mircea - i.e. she thinks they've missed the point of it all -- and she shares a neat symmetry with her father, who also found a soul mate (a student assistant) who was not his spouse (Maitreyi's long suffering mother)

Yes, this story was a very nice trip -- and yet another nice contrast to the stories about living in China during the same time period. How nice to be living a world that is peaceful enough to pursue spiritual growth instead of just personal survival.

My favorite lines ? They would have to come from the climactic ending -- when, after 255 pages of painful reminiscence, the author finally confronts the man who wrote that he had ravished her 40 years earlier. At first, he turns to the wall (of his office at the University of Chicago) and refuses to face her. (how can Dante ever actually meet his beloved Beatrice?) Then.. finally..when does turn to face her: "His eyes were glazed. Oh no, my worst fears are true - his eyes have turned into stone"

The Music Room by Namita Devidayal

2009-03-25T07:49:00.000-07:00

This is the first book that I've read along with Google -- i.e. using the search engine to look up pictures and other details regarding the people and places that are mentioned.

It's so exciting to get a satellite view of the neighborhood where the author grew up (Cumballa Hill) and then move east across Mumbai to Kennedy Bridge, the run-down neighborhood, where her teacher, Dhondutai Kulkarni, shared a two room apartment with her mother and the retired nurse who owned it, and then later follow the teacher to her own subsidized apartment in Shivaji Park.

And so we're introduced to the geography of Mumbai, as well as the private lives of the leading performers of the Jaipur Gharana, a lineage of Hindustani musicians, including the notorious diva, Kesarbai Kerkar, and the founding master, Alladiya Khan.

But something is missing: the music itself -- the powerful force that pulls these lives together and gives them purpose -- and I can't find any recordings currently on disc. (even though Dhondutai Kulkarni was still performing into the 1990's. Elsewhere, the author addresses this issue here )

And what's also missing is the life of the author, Namita Devidayal. We can find her here in her role as journalist for the Times of India - but a looming, unresolved issue remains: will she carry on the tradition in a serious, productive way ?

Like her teacher, Dhondutai, she had a supportive parent who loved Classical music and wanted her daughter to take lessons. But unlike Dhondatai, she had no parent obsessed by it, who would devote his life to chaperoning his precious Brahmin daughter through a demi-monde populated with Muslims, courtesans, and popular entertainers. Namita was destined to get married, go to university, and have a modern, respectable career in journalism, in which, this book plays an important role - especially as it advances her political concern with inter-community harmony. The world of Hindustani music has been both Muslim and Hindu since the time of Akbar - and indeed, Alladiya Khan seems, incredibly enough, to have been both - keeping the women of his family in purdah, but also wearing the Yajñopavītam and singing to the Goddess in the great Mahalaxmi temple.

Will Namita ever concertize and take students herself ? Perhaps she will teach her daughter who laughs in perfect pitch ?Does her husband oppose it ? (she's not very forthcoming about that relationship -- it does appear to be problematic. I don't think he's listed in the acknowledgments., and I suspect that, like her teacher, she will spend her old age by herself)

It's interesting to compare her world of female musicians with that of the "Singsong girls of Shanghai" . Her Chinese counterparts seem to lack the religious/devotional aspect of Hindustani music, although they share a courtesan tradition. Even the divas of Chinese opera (as related in this novel ) seem to be expected to perform more than music. Does the courtesan trade have a future in a world where attractive, talented women have many more options? (I'm sure there will always be a market for it)

Things I remember most:

*The importance of establishing the quality of a single note, the sa - which would seem to correspond to establishing a single form in the figurative arts.

*The moment, near the end of the book, where an old man (in white pajamas and a Gandhi cap) walks up to the singers and remembers hearing Dhondutai when she was a young girl, and then admonishes the author to "learn to commit" and "work on your sa"

*The idea that in order to become a great singer, one must either be very rich, or a poor fakir to whom material things have no value.

*The loving care that Dhondatai gives to her religious figurines - eventually throwing them in the ocean so that they may return from whence they came.

Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson

2009-03-16T07:04:00.000-07:00

Taking a brief respite from foreign novels, I listened to this book while driving down to Cincinnati last weekend on melancholy family business. From one Ohio boy to another -- it seemed like it would be a good novel for this trip. And -- it's supposed to be a classic of 20th C. American literature.

But I was not impressed.

Because it's not really about Winesburg, Ohio --- but only about the sad, lonely, dreamers of that satellite of Cleveland -- the ones who just can't get connected to their lives.

All the characters just seem to be variations on the author himself - who abandoned wife and children to become a great writer. They're all angry, frustrated, shabby -- and always on the brink of some violent act.

I suppose it's been celebrated because it offers the downside of American spiritual life - where religion is phony and individualism means solipsism. None of his characters are devoted to anything other than their own blurry fantasies of self.

But who knows -- perhaps a non-American reader would find it a fascinating window into our world.

And, there is something about northern Ohio that I've never really liked.

Moon Opera by Bi Feiyu

2009-03-16T06:50:00.000-07:00

Ouch! This is the first Chinese novel that I couldn't finish (even if it is barely a hundred pages)

Chinese novels are often about miserable characters in bad situations -- but, until I read this one, they've always been redeemed by the sensitivity of that most important character of all, the person who tells the story.

But this author is just so heavy handed.

I feel like I've been taken to a carnival side show (instead of a Chinese opera), where the viewer is expected to gawk, rather than be introduced to the inner dynamics of a person or social setting.

Even Mian Mian's miserable autobiographic story was better - because at least it felt real.

This one felt like a cardboard puppet show.

India: A History - by John Keay

2009-02-22T06:10:00.000-08:00

Following the path of Monkey and his friends, I've finally journeyed west into the land of Buddha, and selected this general history as an introduction. (it was easy to find - even the Forest Park Library had a copy)

Overall, it was a pleasant read -- but still a disappointment since Keay didn't venture beyond the details of political history - and that seems to be the least interesting aspect of this civilization. (which is probably why history wasn't written there until the Islamic invasions)

What's needed, is a writer who's more immersed in the cultural life of the area, but since it's so diverse, perhaps an overall survey will always be disappointing.

Being British (Scottish, actually), perhaps the author has favored the Raj, but it does seem that there was something like a Pax Brittanica, and everyone would have been better off if the Brits were still stuck with administering that area of the world. Does anyone argue that the Raj wasn't far less sectarian than either the modern states of Pakistan or India ? (note: this is my observation, not the author's)

Considering the three great centers of world civilization, India seems to have weathered the transition into the modern world much easier than either Europe or China --( and who knows how the Islamic world will ever handle it, unless, like Turkey, it becomes militantly secular)

Xiaolu Guo : Twenty Fragments of a RavenousYouth

2009-02-13T05:33:00.000-08:00

I'd already begun reading a history of India -but China keeps calling me back - especially this story of a ravenous young woman.

Ravenous for what ? Most obviously, for food -- an underlying theme in most Chinese novels - this heroine, Fenfang, has a prodigious appetite -though it seems to be quantity rather than quality that interests her -i.e. she's a peasant -- a peasant hungry for a new life outside the boring routine of a small village.

There's that same brusque, flippant, smart, hard edge I've found elsewhere in the young Chinese women of a certain generation -- of both fiction and personal acquaintance.

I don't know that this novella takes us anywhere beneath that sometimes grating edge (how many times did I really need to hear her swear "Heavenly bastard in the sky") - but I guess one needs that edge to survive alone and poor in a great city.

And yes, she does survive -- the abusive boyfriend, the career disappointments, the roach infested hovels. She gets the education she needs and eventually she can sell her dreams (as a script writer). It's an Horatio Alger story -- where hard work, determination, and a relentless ambition to succeed on her own is eventually rewarded.

But we do wonder -- just where she's going to go --once she has gotten the career that can take her anywhere. What will she dream when she can dream whatever she wants ? Will she then become disillusioned - like one of her fictional characters -- now that she can smell the South China Sea ? She is so totally alone - more so than ever at the end of the story - as, for one reason or another, she breaks from the three men in her life (and she doesn't have any women friends)

Hao An, the hero she created for the screenplay that gives her a big break to begin her career, has a rather empty life. He's a relentless, small-time entrepreneur - who becomes attached to no one --other than a cheap whore who dies before he ever touches her.

**********

Small details I'll remember:

*not being able to find any place with clean floors and good air-conditioning in Beijing -besides the McDonalds

*Being so poor that the only contents of her sugar bowl are the two cockroaches who have starved to death.

*Her American boyfriend who is too self-sufficient. (most of the women in the Chinese stories I've been following, fiction or non fiction, end up with an American (or English) boyfriend.)

*The 3rd-rate film director -- who is both thoroughly repulsive, morally and physically - and completely understandable.

*The sadness of the body --not just the heart - for the lost lover --and how those feelings remain, despite the tough, cynical attitudes.

*The importance, in China, of knowing a person's age -- and thereby knowing the kind of life they've had (as the world changes so much from generation to generation). But this is also true of Americans -- which leads to another idea expressed by one of the characters, that Beijing is more American than America.

*How thoughtful the reviews on Amazon were. Careful readers really liked this book -and I liked how one of them wrote : "a story in containing, under its brief, chatty surface, an enormous world"

Wang Anyi : The Song of Everlasting Sorrow

2009-01-19T09:29:00.000-08:00

What's most remarkable about this historical novel is how well it avoids the major historical events of its period -- Shanghai 1945-1985. It's as if civil war, famine, social reorganization, and cultural revolution had never occurred -- and our heroine, Wang Qiyao, might as well have been living in the Tang Dynasty -- because, as the title of the novel suggests-- her problem is timeless in Chinese civilization : she's a concubine whose high-class owner has died, so she is left lonely and unprotected - in everlasting sorrow.

She has many positive qualities: beauty, practical smarts, modesty, endurance, taste --- but what she lacks is the ability to imagine a new life for herself --- so she drifts along -- kept afloat by what men see in her -- until finally -- when all they can see is a tired, old woman -- she sinks. (or mercifully - is murdered - or is it really a suicide ?)

Well --- nobody lives forever --- and she got 55 years of love and life during a catastrophic historical era -- so she is something of a success story. She even has a child (and most ordinary citizens only got to have one) -- who marries a smart, sensitive guy and moves to America.

And yet -- there seems to be something tragic about her story -- as if something important were missing from her life.

She certainly does not qualify as a good Confucian girl -- since she pays practically no attention to her parents -- even though they live close enough to assist her with her new child. Nor would she be a good Communist -- and given her old-style sentiments, it's amazing her cache of gold was not uncovered by the Red Guards. She was completely ignored by them.

She doesn't really have anything to live for -- except for the pleasures of each passing moment -- a meal well cooked -- a party with friends - an occasional night of love - or just watching the shadows move across her room as the evening approaches.

But mostly that was enough. The only thing intolerable was old age -- but does anyone enjoy that ?

I just get the feeling -- that the only problem here was the limitations of her library. Just before she took that fateful step of moving into the "Alice Apartments"-- that library only seemed to include two books: "A Dolls House" by Ibsen and "Western Wing" by Shi-fu Wang -- and there's no mention of any books read ever again.

Is Wang Qiyao really a typical bright, attractive Shangai girl ? The author goes to some effort to establish the typicality of all her characters and settings -- so we're not just contemplating the destiny of one person -- but of an entire city -- and indeed, an entire civilization. (and -- she might be taking that a bit too far -- at least, for my credibility)

But -- perhaps -- from a traditional woman's point of view -- everything important really is the same -- all that matters in life is how you feel in the kitchen and the bedroom - then, now, and forever.

*****************************

And regarding the bedroom -- what's interesting in this story is how sex is an unrelenting disaster -- destroying social opportunities, ending relationships -- and finally -- ending her will to live.

The specific time she clearly enjoys the physicality of it --- is when she's in the practiced arms of a Russian-Chinese playboy -- whom she is duping into taking responsibility for another man's child.

***************************

And here is an excellent review by Francine Prose

Rouge of the North

2008-12-21T07:34:00.000-08:00

Rouge of the North -- Eileen Chang (1967)

Having lived among the "Singsong girls of Shanghai" for 6 months this year, I had to spend a little more time with the translator, Eileen Chang, who subsequently wrote this brief novel about a proper married lady who lived in the same time and place.

Well -- maybe not quite so proper.

It's a rather grim story -- since the lead character, Yindi, though a smart, feisty, healthy, pretty girl -- has a very bad attitude -- and it just keeps getting worse -- even though, by traditional standards, she was both fortunate and successful -- as a lower merchant class girl who marries into a prominent Mandarin family and
produces two generations of heirs. And in the Chinese world where the mother-in-law can make a young wife utterly miserable, her mother-in-law demanded nothing more than ritual obeisance -- and the extended family was well served by a large staff of servants and slaves. Then, after 15 years, both the mother-in-law and the blind,sick husband are dead -- and our low-born heroine got her own house and servants.

So there she was -- an attractive, independent woman in her mid-thirties -- living with a teenage son and a staff of cooks, maids, butlers etc. -- not wealthy -- but with enough to get by without ever working a day.

Doesn't really sound like such a bad life, does it ?

But oh, her life was miserable! She despised and/or feared everyone - and following the lead of her invalid husband, she became addicted to opium -- which seems to be a disastrous event in many family stories from that period -- whether high born or otherwise.

So ... the world got one more depraved dope fiend -- and why should we care ? Only because her story feels so real -- and the decline of the cute, perky shop girl into an addicted, vicious old woman is mirrored by the decline of the family into which she married -- and the decline of an entire civilization as it foundered upon the rocks of the 20th C. -- and Shanghai was rocked by revolutions and invasions.

No romance in all this dreariness -- only one brief, furtive moment when her loneliness was penetrated by a dissolute, whore-mongering brother-in-law who took a break from the singsong houses to ravish her in a Buddhist temple during the celebration of his dead father's birthday.

Boy -- was that fun! -- as she passionately hissed "enemy" in his ear, and then, immediately consumed by fear of discovery, tried to hang herself that very evening.

Thank goodness this novel was short! -- and yet -- as soon as I finished --- a framing episode got me to begin reading it all over again -- swept into the vortex its downward spiral.

Though in a way -- it's a very upbeat novel -- because there is no great misfortune -- only somebody who brings misery upon herself . (she also
manages to destroy the life of her daughter-in-law, but we never get close enough to that character to care much about her)

I've noticed that some readers have written that this story exemplifies the abuses of arranged marriages -- however -- if you read the story carefully, you'll notice that Yindi was given the right of refusal -- which she had exercised in a previous match.
Some have also mentioned that she was denied a marriage with her true love who worked in a pharmacy across the street -- but Yindi specifically rejects this union, which would make her the daughter-in-law of a poor woman in the countryside.

Both women might have been happier had they been sold as children to a singsong house.

One more note: this is a story about Shanghai high society -- so it also touches the international community --and the Mandarin family keeps an authentic English tutor on premises to coach the sons -- though, since our heroine is restricted to the women's quarters, she never meets him.

Sing Song Girls of Shanghai

2008-11-05T09:18:00.000-08:00

By Bangqing Han - translanted by Eileen Chang

I first learned about this curious epic here , as mentioned by Fan Wu, the author of another book that I enjoyed. - and now it's been 6 months since I began reading it.

Six months? Yes -- because it's so hard to follow -- as if it were the transcript from a camcorder that was hauled around from one party to another -- and that's kind of how the story proceeds -- the reader is jerked around through the alleys of the pleasure district -- with a large cast of barely known characters from about a dozen small brothels.

It's a reality show -- and reality is hard to follow - especially for a stranger like myself -- and though it's all about the high-end of the sex trade -- the reader is never taken into the bedroom -- we're just told something like "and their enjoyed each other all night long" or "and then they went to bed, and got up at noon the next day".

Apparently -- this scene disappeared in the early 20th Century -- as the men were no longer locked into arranged, loveless marriages -- and as the international community in Chinese port cities (where the first-class brothels were located) were no longer independent of Chinese jurisdiction.

What's curious -- is the kind of relationships that the men seem to want -- where they aren't buying sex so much as the privilege to date attractive, clever, willful women - and hopefully experience romance. The girls ( and all of them seem to be well under 30) have to walk the fine line between playing hard-to-get ladies--- and still be accessible --- between playing a convincing role -- and still attending to the reality of the situation.

And ultimately -- all of the girls fail -- either making themselves so inaccessible that they get no business -- or believing the fiction that their relationships with the men have a future - and then being bitterly disappointed.

Like "Dream of Red Chamber" -- the story is all about smart, beautiful women -- and how they are struggling to get by -- often from very poor beginnings -- like being sold into prostitution as young children. The men are all well-off -- with plenty of disposable income -- the only drama of their lives occurring when they actually fall in love -- and then must be brought back to the reality that their families will not allow them to marry a whore.

But still -- this is very different world from the early 18th C. -- and I think the big difference is opium. Several of the characters are addicts -- or maybe all of them are, since almost everyhone is a regular user. As William S. Burroughs once wrote -- heroin "degrades and simplifies" the users. In Red Chamber , the characters played poetry games -- in Sing Song Girls, they play the stupid finger guessing game - again -- and again -- and again.

And -- unlike Red Chamber -- the framing-story of the novel concerns a man who is not particularly wealthy (or smart) and his sister who enters the life by choice -- because she finds it glamorous compared to her life in the boondocks-- and the story ends with her facing the harshest of realities: deserted by the upper class lover who had promised to marry her-- bankrupted the preparations for the wedding -- and finally beaten up by a rich hoodlum who just wants sex.

In between that frame -- there are lots and lots of stories -- which all have a different angle.

Maybe because the style of narration is so matter of fact -- I didn't feel really repulsed or antagonistic to any of the characters -- even the rapacious brothel owners (who, in this story, came up as successful courtesans themselves) -- or the obnoxious gangster -- who is a pig and a bully -- but that's the way some people are.

The only character that I came to despise was the wealthy, powerful official who owned an incredibly beautiful garden complex - to which many of the characters were invited to stay for days or weeks on end. He threw a fire-works party that was so spectacular -- I missed my stop on the train while I was reading all about it! A man of great wealth, education, sensitivity,
and social status.

He even took an interest in the lives of the Sing-Song girls -- and had his court poet write up each of their narratives.

But in the end -- though he fucked quite a few -- he really had no interest in helping any of them find a better life -- or in taking seriously his role as a high official. (he was responsible for controlling gambling - but games were conducted on his own estate)

Though some of the lesser men did not behave so callously -- and at the end of the story, they take up a collection to finance the marriage of a young courtesan who was not smart enough to succeed at the profession. Junkie whoremongers with hearts of gold!

Han Joong Nok by Crown Princess Hong

2008-05-09T08:27:00.000-07:00

Han Joong Nok by Crown Princess Hong 1737-1815

A very tough book -- consisting of 6 letters found in the palace of Crown Princess Hong -- relating to the dramatic events of her life -- recurrently -- in no particular order -- and with no particular depth of either description or understanding of the characters and situations involved. What she has to say could be reduced to about a page -- and everything else is perseveration. I.e. -- it's what you might expect from a traumatized fishmonger's wife -- not from the privileged daughter of a high ranking, powerful clan who was selected to marry the crown prince.

In sum: my family is good -- my relatives are loyal and filial --
our opponents are lying, cheating, conniving scum --
oh how they have made us suffer! -- and if it weren't for
my son (who would later become king), I would have killed myself
a long time ago.

Or -- as she wrote in the concluding words of her final letter

"But the "wicked words" of Kwiju and Hannok that had aimed at the destruction of the nation remained unexposed. Moreover, they came to be called faithful retainers and our family suffered from greater calamity quite undeservedly and came to be called heinous traitors. Was there ever such a law and principle of nature? Woe is me! It is not possible for me to understand this curious law of nature even though I spit blood and die."

But of course -- for all her suffering and abuse -- her son DID become king --
which is usually considered a great achievement for the son's mother -- since kings tend to have many women -- and there are always plenty of half-brothers (and their mothers and uncles) who are competing to be crown prince.

So -- I'm not sure she's a dummy -- but if not -- she didn't really take these letters all that seriously as an attempt to justify her family -- but rather -- just as an opportunity to vent her feelings onto paper when she was feeling especially bored or depressed -- 30-40 years after the critical event of her life -- which was the execution of her husband by her father-in-law.

The basic story is that her father-in-law, King Yongio (1696-1776) -- who seems to be recognized by history as a competent ruler -- was faced with a dilemma faced by many dynastic leaders : his number one son of his number one wife (Princess Hong's husband) was a nut case -- and I tend to believe Princess Hong's account of how her young husband capriciously murdered the women and men with whom he surrounded himself (because Princess Hong gained nothing by bad-mouthing her connection to the royal family)

In the Roman empire, Marcus Aurelius had the same problem (Commodius) -- and he did not have the strength of character to destroy his son to save his nation -- but King Yongio eventually did -- albeit through the terrible process of tying him into a rice chest and effectively burying him alive -- as would demonstrate an act of willful deliberation rather than passion.

With her husband destroyed -- this left Princess Hong (and her clan) in a tight spot --but somehow they managed to get her son to the throne. (perhaps King Yongio recognized his talent - and took greater efforts to raise him up properly)

But don't look to this book for any insights into the national issues of Korea in the 18th and early 19th Century-- Crown Princess Hong can see no further than the jealousies and bitter in-fighting within the court. If only her father had written a candid memoir -- he appears to have been a competent statesman serving several kings and crown princes.

Korean royal politics seem to be somewhere in between the Japanese and Chinese systems. Like China -- the king himself (rather than a miliarary chieftain) is ruler. And like China -- national examinations seem to qualify men for politicl positions. But like Japan -- political power is also the prerogative of certain powerful clans -- and I'm not seeing a role for a powerful burearucracy of eunochs directly serving the throne. How Korea managed to remain independent of its two powerful nieghbors puzzles me. I guess it was just too large for Japan to afford to dominate -- and too small for China to bother with incorporating -- so there it sat --an autonomous Confucian monarchy.

Six Chapters from my Life Downunder by Yang Jiang

2008-04-09T16:59:00.000-07:00

A very curious little book - written about 10 years after the author and her husband, the famous scholar/novelist Qian Zhongshu, spent a few years in the countryside "learning from the peasants" during the Cultural Revolution.

And I admit to being completely baffled by it -- perhaps a lot was lost in translation?

The problem is --- nothing happens in those six chapters.

No drama - no death - no character study -- nothing but the kind of stuff that happens to us when we're camping out in the woods. The author's big drama was getting lost in the dark of night -- and how many times has that happened to me?

No -- wait -- there was one death -- the suicide of the author's son-in-law -- but even that event painlessly and swiftly passes by -- as we might regard a flat tire on the highway.

Even her husband, in his preface to the book, wishes she had written more -- specifically one more chapter entitled "A Sense of Shame: Participating in Political Campaigns"

And yet Yang chose to stick to the small, daily routine of life in a labor camp -- which really wasn't all that tough on them -- since, as old people, they were given easy jobs and they still had their salary - or part of it -- with which to buy food.

Perhaps the idea of this book was "We're above all this nonsense" -- in which case, even its 100 pages were way too many.

Except that this book is written about the lives of two literary celebrities -- so I suppose that context must be kept in mind. Especially the husband -- who was both a popular novelist (I wrote about his book here ) -- and -- a celebrated scholar of Classical Chinese literature -- and I can't think of any living English writer who would fit that description.

And in the long run -- they're right.

Their cultural contributions will remain -- and the trauma, madness, and suffering of millions of people during that era will be forgotten.

**********

Most memorable event: the author builds an outhouse - by digging a pit -- surrounding it with four vertical poles -- hanging reed mats between the poles to make the three walls - and finally hanging a reed door over the entrance.

First -- the door gets stolen -- so women who use the facility must go in pairs - one to stand where the door used to be. Then -- one by one -- the walls get stolen -- and finally -=- even the shit gets stolen (it's a valuable fertilizer)-- as does every plant that the team grows in the garden.

All of which -- is a reality check on the glowing reports that well-monitored foreign visitors used to give about the honesty and high-morale that accompanied the communist revolution.

As this book -- as well as Jung Chiang's book about Mao -- amply demonstrates: this was a system that forced people to contemplate nothing beyond their own survival -- or as Lenin wrote: "Freedom is the acceptance of the necessary"

Mao - the Untold Story by Jung Chang

2008-04-05T07:26:00.000-07:00

What can you say about a book like this ?

It's a personal diatribe against the man who tortured and murdered the author's father.

So it's not a history in the great traditions of either Thucidides or Sima Qian -- but that doesn't mean that's it's merely an entertaining rant -- its full of historical theories - and attached documentation -- including the personal reminiscence from hundreds of people who were involved at high levels in the Chinese and Russian regimes over the course of six decades -- assembled over ten years with the collaboration of the author's husband, a professional scholar of 20th C. Russian history.

And perhaps the life the great helmsman can best be understood as one of ruthless personal ambition to kill his way to the top -- of the party -and then international communism -- and eventually the world -- a modern version of the original Chin emperor -- the difference being -- that when the Chin emperor died -- the entire empire rose as one to throw off the domination of his regime -- while the Communist Party still rules China, and Mao is still celebrated as its founder.

Jung Chang is out to change that benign, mythical, celebrity status -- and show her subject as a self-centered , cold, calculating killer -- with no particular talents - except that of political infighting. A heartless parent, a treacherous comrade, a disastrous national leader -- for whom abandoning his own wives and children was as easy as destroying millions of lives through famine or even nuclear holocaust. (he tried his best to get the Bomb and an effective delivery system -- he just didn't live long enough)

I think she makes a good case -- but all this one-sided evidence does beg for an alternative interpretation.

The big problem here -- is that the Peoples Republic was a tightly closed society -- there was no freedom of information - so it's difficult to rely upon anything beyond personal anecdote. How many people died from famine/murder/suicide during Mao's reign ? 70 million ? 30 million ? 10 million ? In the extended family of my Chinese friend -- of the 50 or so members -- no one died -- except for an old grandmother who starved to death in the countryside. But maybe her family was exceptional -- as peasants who moved to Beijing and mostly became high officials. There's no question that the women of her generation -- and their daughters -- had far better lives than her two grandmothers -- but that might well have happened under a Nationalist regime as well.

Which doesn't get this regime off the hook -- but I do get the feeling that I've only been told half the story.

I'm just doubting that murder, terror, and mis-information completely accounts for Mao's success and the longevity of his regime -- or that bungling gullibility accounts for the failure of its opponent, Chang Kai-shek.

Here's a point-by-point contrast of the Jung Chang and the Wikipedia versions of the story:

Mao enlisted as a soldier in a local regiment in Hunan which fought on the side of the revolutionaries. Once the Qing Dynasty had been effectively toppled, Mao left the army and returned to school.(Wikipedia)

*He first enlisted in one of the Republican armies, but left within months as he did not like the drilling or chores, like carrying water for cooking, which he hired a water vendor to do for him (Jung Chang)

Mao turned down an opportunity to study in France because he firmly believed that China's problems could be studied and resolved only within China. Unlike his contemporaries, Mao concentrated on studying the peasant majority of China's population.

*Some of Mao's friends went to France, but Mao did not. The prospect of physical labor put him off. And another factor seems to have played a part - the requirement to learn French. Mao was no good at languages, and all his life spoke only his local dialect.

In early 1927, Mao returned to Hunan where, in an urgent meeting held by the Communist Party, he made a report based on his investigations of the peasant uprisings in the wake of the Northern Expedition. This is considered the initial and decisive step towards the successful application of Mao's revolutionary theories.

*In November 1925, while working for the Nationalists, Mao voiced an interest in the question of the Chinese peasantry for the first time ---Mao's new interest did not stem from any personal inspiration or inclination; it came on the heels of an urgent order from Moscow in October, instructing both the Nationalists and Communists to give the issue priority. The Nationalists heeded this call at once.

Mao was first introduced to communism while working at Peking University, and in 1921 he co-founded the Communist Party of China (or CPC).

*The eight or so founding members were all eminent Marxists, and Mao had not yet even said that he believed in Marxism. The Party was founded in August after Mao had left Shanghai

Around 1930, there had been more than ten regions, usually entitled "soviet areas," under control of the CPC. The prosperity of "soviet areas" startled and worried Chiang Kai-shek, chairman of the Kuomintang government, who waged five waves of besieging campaigns against the "central soviet area." More than one million Kuomintang soldiers were involved in these five campaigns, four out of which were defeated by the red army led by Mao.

*Regarding the four Nationalist defeats:

1 & 2 - "Yet it was not Mao's brutal (scorched earth) strategy that clinched the Reds' victory - what really tipped the scale was Russian assistance (military intelligence)
3 - "the Red base had been reduced to a mere dozen square kilometers, and Mao's men were on the verge of collapse - but Chang did not press on, Mao was saved by the most unlikely actor, Fascist Japan"
4 - "Giving Moscow no time to intervene, the leaders in Ningdu dismissed Mao from his army post" --"the main military figure on the Chinese Red side during this fourth campaign was Chou Enlai

Chiang Kai-shek, who had earlier assumed nominal control of China due in part to the Northern Expedition, was determined to eliminate the Communists.By October 1934, he had them surrounded, prompting them to engage in the "Long March," a retreat from Jiangxi in the southeast to Shaanxi in the northwest of China.

*There can be no doubt that Chiang let the CCP leadership and the main force of the Red Army escape... he wanted to preserve the main body of the Red Army so that it would pose enough of a threat to the warlords ... that they would allow Chiang's army in to drive the Reds out"

After the end of World War II, the U.S. continued to support Chiang Kai-shek, now openly against the Communist Red Army (led by Mao Zedong) in the civil war for control of China. The U.S. support was part of its view to contain and defeat world communism.

*"It was no secret that many U.S. officials were decidedly unenthusiastic about Chiang, and so Mao acted to exploit this ambivalence -- General George Marshall was to perform a monumental service to Mao. When Mao had his back against the wall in what could be called his Dunkirk in late Spring 1946, Marshall put heavy - and decisive -on Chiang to stop pursuing the Communists into northern Manchura, saying that U.S. would not help him if he pushed further, and threatening to stop ferrying Nationalist troops to Manchuria.... Chiang gave in a agreed to a 15 day ceasefire -- Mao thus gained a secure base in northern Manchuria -- with long land borders and railway links with Russia and its satellites... Marshall's diktat was probably the single most important decision affecting the outcome of the civil war"

Following the consolidation of power, Mao launched the First Five-Year Plan (1953-8). The plan aimed to end Chinese dependence upon agriculture in order to become a world power. With the USSR's assistance, new industrial plants were built and agricultural production eventually fell to a point where industry was beginning to produce enough capital that China no longer needed the USSR's support.

*"After Mao had accepted an end to the Korean War , in May 1953, Stalin's successors in the Kremlin agreed to sell China ninety-one industrial enterprises. With these assured, on top of the fifty projects agreed to by Stalin, Mao was able to launch his blueprint for industrialization on June 15. This focused exclusively on building up arms industries to make China a superpower. It's utterly military nature was concealed, and is little known in China today.... According to official statistics, spending during this period on the military , plus arms-related industries, took up 61 percent of the budget- though in reality, the percentage was higher. In contrast, spending on education, culture and health combined was a miserble 8.2 percent, and there was no private sector to fall back on what the state failed to provide"

In January 1958, Mao launched the second Five-Year Plan known as the Great Leap Forward, a plan intended as an alternative model for economic growth to the Soviet model focusing on heavy industry that was advocated by others in the party. Under this economic program, the relatively small agricultural collectives which had been formed to date were rapidly merged into far larger people's communes, and many of the peasants ordered to work on massive infrastructure projects and the small-scale production of iron and steel. All private food production was banned; livestock and farm implements were brought under collective ownership.

*"While the nation was told that, vaguely, that the goal of the Leap was for China to "overtake all capitalist countries in a fairly short time" --- Mao spelled out to small audiences and strictly confidentially just what he meant to do once the Leap was completed. On 28 June he told an elite army group "Now the Pacific Ocean is not peaceful. It can only be peaceful when we have taken over" ... and on August 19 , Mao told select provincial chiefs "In the future we will set up the Earth Control Committee and make a uniform plan for the Earth" Mao dominated China. He intended to dominate the world"

Under the Great Leap Forward, Mao and other party leaders ordered the implementation of a variety of unproven and unscientific new agricultural techniques by the new communes. Combined with the diversion of labour to steel production and infrastructure projects and the reduced personal incentives under a commune system this led to an approximately 15% drop in grain production in 1959 followed by further 10% reduction in 1960 and no recovery in 1961.

*"For the Chinese population, the Great Leap was indeed an enormous jump - but in the amount of food extracted. This was calculated not on the basis of what the peasants could afford, but of what was needed for Mao's program.

In an effort to win favour with their superiors and avoid being purged, each layer in the party hierarchy exaggerated the amount of grain produced under them and based on the fabricated success, party cadres were ordered to requisition a disproportionately high amount of the true harvest for state use primarily in the cities and urban areas but also for export. The net result, which was compounded in some areas by drought and in others by floods, was that the rural peasants were not left enough to eat and many millions starved to death in what is thought to be the largest famine in human history.

*"Mao proceeded by simply asserting that there was going to be an enormous increase in the harvest, and got the provincial chiefs to proclaim that their area would produce an astronomical output ---- claims in this vein were not, as official Chinese history would have us believe, the result of spontaneous boasting by local cadres and peasants. The press was Mao's voice, not the public's"

****************

Overall - I think Mao deserves credit for the strategies that were effective in seizing and holding power.

*the military strategy of incrementally taking the countryside and strangling the cities

*the land reform that assured the loyalty of those who had gained from it

*the endless cycle of purges that kept people focused on saving their own butts by betraying the people they knew.

So while it 's inconceivable that the revolution would have succeeded without the patronage of the Soviet Union -- it also needed a ruthless, inventive leadership like Mao's ---and isn't that why Stalin kept supporting him -- despite his continuous insubordination ?

But the ultimate question is whether all the death and destruction of this revolution achieved anything worthwhile (that would not have been achieved without them) Asked a similar question about the French Revolution, Chou Enlai said that it was too early to tell -- but if the burden of proof is on those who kill and destroy -- the answer would have to be no --regarding all these revolutions - until proven otherwise -- and if medical technology had allowed Mao (and Stalin) to keep on living -- I doubt whether the question would have to be (or even could be) asked.

That's the most frightening thing about the stories of these two despots: they both created an unbeatable system of tyranny-by-terror that was only defeated by their own, natural deaths --
and hopefully this kind of witness to that terror will keep idealists of the future from giving so much power to revolutionary leaders.

If there hadn't been smart, efficient, committed idealists like Chou Enlai to give him power-- Mao would have gotten nowhere.

The Old Guard and The Avant-garde

2008-03-20T10:45:00.000-07:00

Modernism in Chicago 1910-1940 (essays delivered at a 1988 symposium concerning"the coming of Modernism to Chicago") edited by Sue Ann Prince

Some notes on each of the essays (just for my future reference)

1."The Chicago Setting" by Neil Harris --- or as it should have been titled -- "Chicago's Cultural Claims" -- which, for the period in question -- seem best described by Ben Hecht "Americans (in 1913) thought that Art was men who wore long hair and talked like sissies; naked women in a garret; something J.P. Morgan was interested in .... any statue in a public park. In 1923 Americans think Art is something that doesn't look like a photograph.... anything a Russian does; turning colored lights on the orchestra in the movie palace".

I realize that studies of popular culture -- in which the artworld is just a high-end shopping center -- is a growing business in postmodern academia - but I'm a lot more interested in the individual players -- the artists, critics, and collectors. Was Chicago modernism a "false spring"? So far -- it's turned out that only specialists really care about it's roster of early heroes - and their paintings have minimal value on the auction block. But maybe that's just because these few, particular painters weren't as good at doing what they did -- as some of their non-modernist contemporaries were, of whom there were many, many more.

The acceptance of Modernism has been the pinnacle of Chicago civic pride for the past 80 years -- culminating in planting the flag of Picasso in Daley Plaza. But when that flag is finally taken down -- it just might turn out that Chicago has a lot more to be proud of concerning its own cultural legacy.

2."A Modest Young Man with Theories: Arthur Dove in Chicago, 1912" by Ann Lee Morgan -
who asks why this show (a year before the Armory show) was received "more intelligently and open-mindedly than their eastern counterparts"

But I fail to see a problem -- since Dove's paintings are aesthetically pleasing --- like the patterns on a fine carpet. Why shouldn't conservative minded people like them ? The issue of representation vs. abstraction just didn't seem as important to the art critics of that time as it is to the art theorists of today.

3. "Lorado Taft, the Ferguson Fund,and the Advent of Modernism" by Allen Weller.
In some ways the most fascinating essay of the bunch, since the author is old enough to have actually HEARD Lorado Taft give a lecture, and he gives a new twist (for me) concerning Taft's later work. He also raises the issue of the scandalous misappropriation of the Ferguson Fund. Is this the first time the report of this public disaster has been discussed - other than in a newspaper ? Of course, the problem is that neither of these issues are especially relevant to "Modernism in Chicago" -- and the Ferguson issue demands a fuller examination. Who were the trustees that pushed it through -- who were the trustees who objected ?

4."Modernism and Chicago Art - 1910-1940" by Susan Weininger - which introduces the reader to Raymond Jonson, Szukalski, Rudolph Weisenborn, Ramon Shiva,Emil Armin, and Anthony Angarola -- as the leading Modernists of that time and place.

"Michigan Ave. Bridge" by Anthony Angarola (1893-1929)

"His work is of the modern but it is not that new color school or that sensational or cubist school. I stop and looked in Amazement. I thought and thought more and more of the wonderful simplicity in which he caried out his scheme.. his subjects are the deep, underneath stuff"
(Angarola writing about Arthur Davies"

5. "Declarations of Independents: Chicago's Alternative Art Groups of the 1920's" by Paul Kruty.
I found this a fascinating essay -- as it records Weisenborn's dream to build a "Gallery of Living Artists" that led up to the 1928 Arlimusic show that was presented to the leading German art critic, Julian Meier-Graefe, who dumped it -- and effectively ended the dream.

How can a "no-jury" society be anything other than temporary ? Why expect anyone to have the patience to visit an exhibit that's all inclusive ? (I tried it once with "The Chicago Open" --and it's even more depressing than a street art fair)

What this essay needed was an examination of all the other independent organizations that were mounting exhibits at that time - since I think it's only in retrospect that the "no-jury" shows were any more alternative than the rest of them. All Chicago artists were beginning to be locked out of the Art Institute which was looking to NY and Paris for cultural leadership, and pulling farther away from local art.

6."Of the Which and the Why of Daub and Smear - Chicago Critics take on Modernism" by Sue Ann Prince.

Primarily, this essay presents the great antagonists of the Chicago artworld of that time: Eleanor Jewett of the Chicago Tribune (the villainous reactionary) vs. Clarence J. Bulliet of the Chicago Evening Post.(the heroic champion of modernism) -- with a brief mention of the notorious Josephine Hancock Logan, author of "Sanity in Art"

Bulliet wrote a popular book called "Apples and Madonnas" --- which began with the sentence: "An apple of Cezanne is of more consequence artistically than a madonna by Raphael"

Sue Ann Prince dismisses Logan's work as "filled with contradictions" -- since she claimed not to wish to restrict artistic freedoms even as she moralized how artists should practice their art. (but I fail to see how advocacy entails prohibition - in the arts or anywhere else)

What especially interests me is reference to Bulliet's last book "The significant Moderns and their Pictures" -- with it's provocative claim that Modernism was dead - it had run its course from Cezanne to Picasso - and now consisted of puny imitations.

7."Modernism and Design"- not really an area that interests me - but I guess I'll have to keep an eye out for ads from the Container Corporation of America. What seemed most interesting here -- was that that I had difficulty distinguishing the work of the conservatives vs. the modernists -- and the high recognition given to the graphic design of Moholy-Nagy (I just don't think he's that good)

8. "The Little Review" - I guess this tiny journal became quite famous after it moved to NYC and Ezra Pound became its foreign correspondent -- but it sure looks like some artsy college kids having fun before dad finally makes them get a job.

9.Katherine Kuh Gallery - An informal Portrait by Avis Berman. This chapter serves as an introduction to the autobiography that Avis eventually finished for Katherine -- and celebrates her as the heroine of modernist culture in the great cow town -- although Mrs. Jewett and I would disagree. Looking through the list of artists shown at her gallery 1935-1941, the only locals I recognize are Angarola, Jonson, and Weisenborn

10.Traditions and treands - taste patterns in Chicago Collecting by Stefan Germer. - which includes a look at my favorite collector: Martin Ryerson. Germer notes that "formalism" allowed Ryerson to collect back in history- outside the Renaissance stuff --back to 14th C. Italy. Any news about Ryerson is fascinating to me -- because I've noted which A.I.C. items came from his collection --and overall -- his stuff is the best. I can see how formalism encouraged him to look outside the Renaissance tradition -- but I don't think it accounts for the specific places where he went (big collector of Homer) - and didn't go. (for example -- nothing Asian or African)

11. Charlotte Moser essay on the school of the art institute - the "Classic point of view" defined by Kenyon Cox in the Scammon Lectures : search for perfection, clearness, reasonableness, self control, permanence, continuity. The study of plaster casts of classical sculpture required to
bring "beauty and character" to one's art (Charles Francis Browne, 1916,Minutes of the School Committee) " To maintain in the highest efficiency the severe practice of academic drawing and painting from life and from the antique, from objects, and around this practice as a living stem, to group the various departments of art education." (1913 school catalog)

The school goes from primary to secondary importance after the death of W. French in 1916, then flourishes in the 20's as it added an industrial arts program which eventually joined with the Assoc. for Arts and Industries - and income from the school is taken to meet the expenses of the museum. (in 1935 this Assoc. went off to begin a Chicago Bauhaus under Maholy-Nagy.
The addition of art history to the curriculum in 1920 - taught by Helen Gardner.

12. From the Armory show to the century or Progress - the Art Institute Assimilates Modernism. Some interesting quotes from William M. R. French -- who seemed to have a knack for telling people what they wanted to hear (and keeping his job) -- and the attempts of early donors - like Bartlett - to have their works grouped by donor instead of art historically.

*******************

But as it turns out -- there's a much more thorough -- and rather biting -- critique of this book on JSTOR -- called "Cultural Culs du Sac" by Robert Twombly --who, as the title would suggest, is not convinced that Chicago does not deserve its cultural obscurity - at least in the realm of high brow painting.

Twombly is an architectural historian -- has published books about Sullivan and Wright -- so he's got to be an expert on famous Chicago architecture --and remains surprised why anyone would pay much attention to its painting -- or as he put it -- "try to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear"

He's interested in international modernism ( what other kind is there?) and he's just not buying all this civic boosterism - except for those heroic champions of the Modern in Chicago: Clarence Bulliet and Katherine Kuh.

His favorite essays are #2 - the one about Lorado Taft, and #10 about Chicago collectors.
The Germer essay does stand out for its social typology of Modern art collectors -- it seems so nifty - but does it really get to the reasons that specific preferences were felt and subsequent purchases made ? I consider Ryerson to have been such an astute aesthete -- I'm doubting that the "social meaning" of his choices were of much importance to him.

Falling Leaves by Adeline Yeh Mah

2008-02-24T05:00:00.000-08:00

Victim of a cruel stepmother

My challenge in reading this book was to to discover what was specific to its setting -- when it mostly seems to be a timeless Cinderella story . (and indeed, the author subsequently adapted it as such into a book for children)

The problem is --- that when a person feels pain --- the world shrinks to the location of that pain -- and not much can be observed about anything else.

And this girl grew up in a lot a pain -- as something of an orphan within her own large, wealthy family in Tianjin and Shanghai --that came under the control of an unusually wicked and cruel French/Chinese stepmother.

So .. though she grew up in interesting times (born 1938) - that saw foreign invasion, civil war, revolution, and cataclysmic social/cultural change-- the magnitude of these events pale beside the misery of the emotional neglect and abuse that she was feeling -- thanks to one very mean stepmother and the complicity of her father and siblings.

Which makes this a very self-centered book: see how I suffered --see how I triumphed -- and everything else becomes a dim shadow cast in the background --including some intriguing characters --like her grandfather and great aunt.

Her grandfather had built up a successful export business -- only to retire at about the age of 40 -- leaving everything in the control of his very talented son. But why did he do this ? Was he just sick of working? Did he want to devote his life to something else ? This remains a puzzle.

And her great aunt had an extraordinary career in finance -- beginning as a teller -- and eventually starting her own bank devoted strictly to women -- while living with a woman in a luxury apartment above the bank she had built. Did she identify herself as Lesbian ? How did she relate to the changing world around her -- other than, eventually, to have everything she built be taken away by the communists ?

And what about her father ? Obviously -- a very bright guy -- a wunderkind in business -- did everything else about the world really just confuse him? How did that nasty wife of his manage to hold on to him ? It couldn't have always been sexual attraction -- he could afford whatever he wanted -- and she wasn't young and sexy forever. He was Catholic -- did he take that seriously ? What did he really care about ? All this remains a mystery.

Somehow - the cruelty of the Japanese and the Communists and eventually the Red Guards -- just pale in comparison with that incorrigibly mean old stepmother -- who goes to the grave still hating and trying to hurt Cinderella -- even after Cinderella has grown up and found success with a medical career and a very loving, supportive husband.

Mother/daughter were a sadist/masochist team until death did them part.

"Stop it!" ---"Leave your mother alone!" --- "Stay away from that family" --- that's how I was talking back at the book in chapter after chapter ---- but still our poor author kept going back for more punishment -- still hoping to be accepted by parents who never really wanted her.

She often mentions her Confucian family values -- but so much of it seems to be about the money -- the inheritance of a (once) very large estate -- the distribution of which frames the story (i.e. in the first chapter --- Mom steals Dad's estate -- last chapter -- Mom cuts us out of her will, while we discover the Dad's will cut us in)

And it's not that the estate is all that big any more ( 30 million dollars among 7 children) -- or that the author needs the money -- she and her husband are both successful physicians.

It's just that the estate represents the emotional connection of one generation to another -- and she will always be cheated out of it.

*******************

Is this a story of cultural dissolution ? It's set in the foreign concessions of the coastal cities (eventually ending up in Hong Kong) Is it all about a family whose Confucian values are destroyed by foreign intervention ?

Or is it -- as the character's beloved aunt believes -- a traditional Chinese story of a "fox-devil spirit" -- that takes the form of a beautiful young woman -- and then wrecks havoc among all concerned.

That same beloved aunt also believed that the Communists -- despite the destruction that they caused to her family (she ended up living in a hovel) as well as the country as a whole -- were eventually going to "save China" -- and that the 21st C. would belong to China -- just as the 19th and 20th had belonged to Great Britain and America.

And perhaps she was right.

************

A few assorted details of interest:

*the picture of Hong Kong -- as it grows over those decades into a financial center -- and it's bizarre dependence on the mainland.

*the gradual but relentless attack on the commercial class. The author's great aunt is still running her bank a year after the revolution -- but eventually she will be dispossessed and end up destitute.

*the off-hand comment about healthcare in America: how Medicare was such a bonanza for the physicians - where they could bill the government for anything.

Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee by Robert Van Gulik

2008-02-21T05:53:00.000-08:00

What a strange little book !

Robert Van Gulik (1910-1967) was a Dutch diplomat, born in the Dutch East Indies, who worked in both China and Japan. Apparently, he found the original 18th C. novel about the Tang Dynasty official, Di Renjie , in a small used book store in Japan -- and then translated the first part of it into this volume.

But the story telling is so good -- one can't help but wonder if he made the whole thing up ---especially since he went on to create a whole series of "Judge Dee" books of detective fiction.

Well -- diplomats never lie ! (and he did rise high enough to become the Dutch ambassador to Japan), so I'm assuming that the original, anonymous 18th C. text did exist --and what a wonderful thing it was -- introducing us to a Chinese world of cops and robbers from the perspective of the cops (instead of Water Margins , that Robin Hood epic so popular with Chairman Mao)

(note: Van Gulik does refer to specific manuscripts and publishers -- so we can assume that the story is not completely of his invention. He also tells us that the original book came in four parts, of which he is presenting only the first. But as we know from "Dream of Red Chamber" -- Qing Dynasty fiction was accumulative -- with one anonymous writer adding chapters to the work of another -- so later editors should feel just as free to trim and edit however they choose)

Van Gulik's introduction also serves as a survey of Chinese detective fiction -- which turns out to be a magnificent lost world of florid imagination that began, like this book, in the 18th C. -- i.e. during the long and prosperous rule of the Qianlong Emperor.

I've yet to find a better introduction to Chinese civil life in the Confucian legal system that rambled on for about 2000 years -- even into the Communist era.

And it's hard to imagine the character of an official like Judge Dee --who is, on the one hand so thoughtful and compassionate towards the victims of crime -- and on the other --personally supervises the debilitating torture and eventual dismemberment of suspects/criminals.
(and there are no innocent convicts in China --everyone is tortured until they confess)

I just can't imagine how a person can torture and kill that many people --and still remain sane -- and yet, Judge Dee is eminently sane -- if perhaps something of a work-a-holic (and there is no reference to his personal family life --no wife, no children, not even any parents to care for)
Just a man who is devoted to justice -- and the three episodes in this novel give such a good picture of the variety of skills that are involved -- including acting --for the judge must sometimes go in disguise, and pretend to be a physician or silk merchant.

Some various comments as follows:

*Did every businessman have to learn martial arts back in those days ? It certainly seems like a necessary skill for those who do a lot of traveling -- and fighting skill seems much more common than in European civilization. The story gives some quite detailed accounts of fisticuffs:

"Djao sprang towards Ma Joong swift as an arrow, aiming a long blow at his heart region, using the stance called "a tiger clawing at sheep". But Ma Joong dodged the blow by withdrawing one step to the left, a trick called "enticing the tiger out of his forest"; at the same time he hit Djao's outstretched arm a sharp blow with two fingers exactly on the vein inside the elbow. Djao's right arm was temporarily lamed, his attack was stemmed, and he was trying to regain his stance when Ma Joong followed up his success with a sharp blow below Djao's ribs. Now Djao was fully aware that he had an expert opponent and went on strictly according to rules. Using his lamed arm to protect his body, he quickly caught Ma's right wrist with his left arm. But before Djao could twist his arm and place a kick, Ma countered with the trick called "Phoenix bird spreading its wings"; he sprang two feet in the air, thus loosening Djao's grip, at the same time aiming a left kick at his face. Djao, however, had expected this move; he quickly ducked between Ma's legs before he had come down, and threw him on the floor with a crash"

Can you imagine this much detail in any European literature ? Obviously, the writer, and his intended audience, were familiar with such things (and from what I know -- it does seem like a plausible interaction)

*The female villain in this story is really an interesting character: a young, smart, attractive woman who's stuck living in a hovel with an underachieving husband and his stupid mother.
She contrives to find a smart, handsome lover and murder her husband. And then, when captured by the ingenious, indefatigable Judge Dee -- she endures every extreme torture without confessing. (and when she passes out from pain --they wake her up -- to torture her some more) An incredible woman -- who also, though uneducated , figures out enough about the legal system to put Judge Dee in a real bind.

The cover of the Dover edition shows this beautiful, naked young woman while being tortured/interrogated by the good judge. Apparently Van Gulik himself did the drawing in an adaption of plates from the original book -- I wonder just how much this sexual sadism served as an attractive feature for the original text and its original audience.

Not to mention --misogyny.

There are no positive female figures in this book -- the women are either evil or stupid -- and if the crime was not committed by a woman -- it was committed by a man on behalf of a woman -- like the silk merchant who murdered his traveling companion in order to raise the cash to afford a woman.

*Which brings us to the issue of the "rights of the accused" in Chinese jurisprudence -- which seems to coincide with whatever the accuser or accused can get away with. For the accused - that usually means flight. So Judge Dee must be very careful not to tip his hand before the suspect is under his control, or else the suspect can run to places where the Judge cannot find him. Judge Dee does not need a search warrant to obtain evidence -- but he cannot barge into the homes of the well-connected -- so subterfuge is required (i.e. -- one of the judge's assistants can break in as a thief -- which then gives the judge good reason to search for any evidence regarding that "crime")

Needless to say -- no suspect has "the right to remain silent" -- and no legal representation is ever available.

And needless to say -- that without an extraordinarily honest judge like Dee -- this is a legal machine made in hell -- where one man sits as judge/jury/executioner -- and his job is so much easier if he quickly finds the most powerless, convenient suspect and tortures that person until he gets a confession. After which -- he can can confiscate the convict's property and distribute the assets as he wishes. No wonder so many people fled to the mountains to live as bandits.

*And which also brings us to the issue of criminal psychology - of which there is zero. The murderers have no depth -- their betrayals of spouse or companion seem to have no effect on their character -- because the story is not about them -- or the police who catch them -- but only about the progress of the investigation and the execution of the law.

*It's interesting to note the difficulties that are encountered when Judge Dee pursues his suspect into another jurisdiction -- where the officials there must be convinced that they benefit more by helping him instead of the criminal who has many local connections. The solution -- is to set up a situation where the local officials can claim credit for the capture (without actually having to do anything) It's also interesting that author notes, in passing, that the military garrison is there more to control the local, impoverished/predatory population than to defend the mountain passes from invading enemies.

*It's also interesting to note the connective tissue of the story -- how the narrative records so many ordinary events (like dinners and making hotel arrangements) -- that stretch the story out and make it seem more real.

*Perhaps the strangest -- and most wonderful -- feature of this genre of Chinese literature -- is the Interlude -- or intermission -- in the middle of the story that separates the problems from their resolution -- and that involves similar -- but different-- characters acting out a similar, but different brief story.

Here -- it's a woman dallying with two men -- and begins with the song "Only sing of beauty , only sing of love, never think of duty, when you think of love". Yes -- where is beauty -- or danger -- more apparent than in sexual attraction ?

*And let's not forget the supernatural -- which, as the introduction explains -- is present -- but not critical to the plot -- so it serves as a kind of mysterious incense.

When a ghost or dream speaks -- it functions just like a horoscope: it effectively predicts nothing until after the events have already happened . Needless to say -- I like that approach -- as it keeps the story feeling real.

Apparently -- there are currently over a hundred historical Chinese detective novels now available -- but only one more has been translated into the English -- and obviously, I'll be reading it very soon.

Fortress Beseiged by Qian Zhongshu

2008-02-11T06:12:00.000-08:00

Qian Zhongshu was apparently one the great minds of the 20 th C. -- proficient in classical Chinese literature -- as well as the occidental languages of Latin, German, English, French, Spanish (and maybe a few more).

This very popular novel was written in his thirties ---- about a young man (his own age) returning to China in 1938 after several years of study in Europe (just like Qian did)

So... like all of the Chinese novels that I've been reading from the later generations -- this is a fictional variation on the author's own life -- presenting the kind of people whom the author knew.

And these people are rather repulsive-- even the protagonist -- who is a Holden Caulfield kind of fellow --utterly cynical about the phonies of the world --but not really doing much himself --
a total washout --who has managed to get himself recognized as a scholar without learning a damn thing about literature, people, or how to live his life.

In a way-- it's kind of refreshing to have the central character of a story be such a loser -- after reading so many first-person-non-fiction accounts (like "Wild Swans") where the protagonist has a healthy respect for herself and her family.

But ..... who wants to spend 400 pages of dense reading with such a loser surrounded by more of same? How much nihilism can a reader endure ? (and the reading was indeed dense -- with 50 footnotes per chapter - packed with references to Chinese literature)

Well -- I endured about 100 pages worth and gave up. I just couldn't spend any more time with all these phony intellectuals, preening their self esteem while the country around them (during the Japanese occupation) was going up in flames. The "stinking ninth class" indeed ! Perhaps Mao was right -- and they did all need to be re-educated by the peasants. (and BTW -- in addition to being pompous bores -- several of the characters were distinguished by how badly they smelled -- oh, for a whiff of fresh air !)

The protagonist was thoughtless and self-centered -- but there was kind of honesty about him --i.e. he would fool others , but he wasn't fooling himself --and so there were some poignant moments between him and the women who found him attractive ( but would eventually be bitterly disappointed.)

And there were some very funny moments of interaction in their little dinner parties -- like the one pompous fellow who claimed to be a philosopher and a personal friend of "Bertie" (Bertrand Russell) who had actually come to his Chinese friend with several questions (though neglecting to say these questions were something like "how was your trip?")

(And I especially liked the author's description of a university degree as a "fig leaf to hide one's ignorance")

I suppose that if the reader were mired in the university world himself, especially the study of Chinese literature, this book would be outrageously funny (and it was recommended to me by one of scholar-characters in another book, "February Flowers")

But for me -- 100 pages was enough.

Wild Swans - by Jung Chang

2008-01-28T08:07:00.000-08:00

Superlatives are racing around my brain -- and I want to say something like "best novel of the 20th Century" -- but it's not even a novel -- it's a first person account of a family's life in the 20th Century that's probably as honest as the author could make it
(given the constraints of writing about your own family)

But it still feels like a novel -- because it's so colorful -- and it addresses great issues - both psychological and social.

For my first superlative -- I'll propose that the author is a genius -- in her ability, like Conrad's -- to write with such command of a foreign tongue -- and to encompass such a range of emotion and event.

Here - for example - is a slice taken from page 402:

"This group of "old city youth" was very friendly. They gave us an excellent meal of game and offered to find out where the registrar was. While a couple of them went to look for him, we chatted with the others, sitting on their spacious pine veranda facing a roaring river called the "Black Water". On the high rocks above, egrets were balancing on one long slender leg, raising the other in various balletic positions. Others were flying, fanning their gorgeous snow-white wings with panache. I had never seen these stylish dancers wild and free.

Our hosts pointed out a dark cave across the river. From its ceiling hung a rusty looking bronze sword. The cave was inaccessible because it was right next to the turbulent river. Legend had that the sword had been left there by the ancient wise prime minister of the ancient kingdom of Sichuan, Marquis Zhuge Liang in the third century."

(the author then procedes to to tell of the story of how Zhuge defeated the local tribal leader 7 times -- each time releasing him only to have him rebel again -- finally winning over the barbarians' "hearts and minds" -- and then comparing it to Mao's strategy -- and with the Charles Colson - Richard Nixon variant of "when you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow")

So as you can see --in this short passage Jung Chang:

1. Continues the story of her own personal Odyssey (she needs to find the registrar to approve her relocation from the countryside to the city -- a very important move for any Chinese)

2. Refers to recent the recent history -- of the "old city youth" - which she had just explained was the group of city youth who went to the countryside BEFORE the Cultural Revolution because they had failed the entrance examinations to schools and they had bought into the idealism of helping their country

3. Sets a scene of great natural beauty -- showing her love for such things -- which is an important, and recurring feature, of her character -- as well as telling us that she had never had the opportunity in her life to see some of these things before -- as well as her attraction to what is "stylish, wild, and free"

4. Refers to the hero of that most important saga of Chinese literature, "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" -- every reader of which (including myself) is absolutely thrilled by a relic from same. (since "Three Kindoms" is an historical novel - it's characters were based on real people)

5. Discusses how the current leader of Chinese civilization applies a similar strategy -- but with a difference, as noted by reference to then-current American civilization.

So her story is intensely personal -- even as it explains contemporary society -- and puts it into the context of 2000 years of Chinese civilization.

********************************

And by the way -- so many details of her life correspond exactly to the story I've been writing about my friend

Both born in the early 50's
Both have parents who were high officials of almost the identical rank
Both have 4 siblings
Both fathers are accused during the Cultural revolution - and suffer terribly
Both mothers devote their lives to restoring their families
Everyone sent to the countryside
Both use the "backdoor" clout of their parents to get back to civilization
Both manage to get jobs as nurses
Both get into college by the skin of their teeth
Both go to a foreign language institute to study English
Both leave China at the first opportunity
Both never come back (except to visit the family)
Both marry Anglo intellectuals.

The major differences are:

My friend is from Beijing (northeast) - Jung Chang is from Chengdu (southwest)

Jung Chang's father was a lot closer to the top party leadership. He had spent five years in Yan'an with Mao and company -- and he could get some of them on the telephone.

Jung Chang's parents come from the urban business class -- while my friend's parents were born to peasants

(and more than that -- Jung Chang's maternal grandfather and step-grandfather were both remarkable men -- the one being a renowned physician, the other a powerful warlord)

Jung Chang's father comes from a devoutly Buddhist family -- my friend's father was Christian (and his brother became a priest)

And regarding the story of the family throughout the century -- the most important difference is that Jung Chang's mother really wanted to get that story told -- and she spent every day for many months giving an oral history to her daughter.

************************************

This is a one-of-a-kind book -- about a one-of-a-kind event in one of the planet's great civilizations.

Apparently it became the #1 selling non-fiction book of all time when it was released in 1991 -- and I'm not surprised. The story is as gripping as anything I've ever read.

Mao was a major character in "Wild Swans" -- and he's the focus of all attention in her next book -- "Mao - the untold story" -- which I can't wait to read.

Ida Pruitt: Old Madame Yin

2007-12-29T06:11:00.001-08:00

After reading her oral history of "A Daughter of Han - the Autobiography of a Chinese Working Woman" -- I was more than ready to read this, Ida Pruitt's next book about the women she met in China in the 1930's.

But this one is very, very different.

To begin with -- it's written 40 years later (published in 1979) - when Miss Pruitt was 91 years old -- so this is a very old woman -- digging way back into her memory.

And then -- though she didn't get to know this woman as well -- i.e. she didn't have her over for tea three times a week over two years (as she did with her first subject) -- this elegant woman did seem to have a more powerful effect on her -- as someone whom she admired and perhaps wished to emulate.

So this book is less a sociological study -- and more a self portrait of the kind of woman the author (or - a part of her) nostalgically regrets that she was not : aesthetic, maternal, harmonious, majestic. Not to say that this Baptist missionary's daughter regretted her life as a writer, single woman and pioneering social worker -- but I think that the Chinese girl in her saw Old Madame Yin as a resplendent role model.

Old Madame Yin had led an almost storybook life --- that began as the prettiest girl in her village, the daughter of a small shop keeper -- who caught the eye of a young soldier who had been adopted as a boy into the Taiping army -- and then as a man into Qing army.

Both the pretty young girl and the handsome young man had to marry other spouses -- but after both of those spouses had died --- they found each other, joined their families together, and made a love match. Completely Storybook !

And then to add to their good fortune -- Madame Yin's son by her previous marriage (so he should have remained a member of her ex-husband's family) turns out to be an effective businessman who makes a fortune in manufacturing and pays for the enormous family compound which Miss Pruitt is privileged to visit.

With all the other children -- and their spouses -- and concubines -- and grandchildren from both -- and the extended family of servants -- it's a complex setting that's worthy of another 'Dream of Red Chamber" -- which, regretfully, we can't get because our author only visited the place a few times -- and had to get most of the information from a servant that Madame Yin had pressured her to hire/adopt. One son marries a French woman whom he meets while attending school in Paris (that's a disaster) --- and another is a loser who lives in the world of sex and drugs (his concubine tries to kill herself). There's also the charming story of the attempted marriage arranged between two children from the parent's previous marriages -- but Madame Yin's daughter is too smart but ugly -- while her husband's son is too handsome but stupid -- and they spend their wedding night stubbornly sitting back to back on the wedding bed.

But mostly -- the book is a few long scenes of reminiscence -- like the first time -- and the last time --that the author met her subject -- so the book serves as something of a tribute to a friend that's been living in the author's memory for many, many years.

Something else to note here: though she's now rich, Madame Yin was born into the same urban small-merchant class as the poor working woman whom Pruitt interviewed for her first book -- and she has had just as little formal education. (she claims to be illiterate -- but apparently has no problem reading sub-titles on the movie screen) There's even the delightful moment when Pruitt introduces both older women to each other -- and they must determine relative status to make the proper seating arrangements (they're both from the same class - but the poor woman is a few years older, so she gets priority)

How I wish we could find out what happened to the family in the subsequent decades of war and revolution. The boy adopted to be the son of the second son's wife would be about 20 at the beginning of the People's Republic. I wonder what happened to him ? How I would love to hear his story.

Miss Pruitt was a distinguished woman in China -- invited back to visit even during the most revolutionary years -- so if anyone from that family wanted to contact her, it would not have been difficult to find her. But nothing is said about them in her 1979 book -- so I fear the worst.

Jacques Barzun: From Dawn to Decadence

2007-12-17T05:06:00.000-08:00

Jacques Barzun: From Dawn to Decadence, 1500 to the Present, 500 years of Western Cultural Life.

Finally made it through my first reading of this magnificent tome -- done intermittently over the past year -- a chapter here -- a chapter there -- as opportunity presented -- in between the Asian material I've been reading.

It's details are my delight -- all the introductions to authors of whom I'd never heard -- or known just barely.

But it's overall theme still eludes me -- it's concluding chapter is a disaster -- and it just seems to be the rant of a fussy pedant -- who's been scolding students for too many decades -- and seems unaware of the culture that lives and prospers outside of books -- and outside the fads of either popular entertainment or professional academia.

Take, for example, his slam on the internet:

"The last 20C report on the "World Wide Web" was that its popularity was causing traffic jams on the roads to access and the unregulated freedom to contribute to its words, numbers, ideas, pictures, and foolishness was creating chaos - in other words, duplicating the world in electronic form. The remaining advantage of the real world was that its contents were scattered over a wide territory and one need not be aware of more than one's mind had room for."

Is that all this cultural savant can say about this extraordinary phenomenon that has made so much knowledge immediately accessible on demand ? Is he just irritated because he's had difficulty getting connected ? (he must have been using AOL as his service provider!)

More serious -- his slam on what he calls "Demotic life" -- where society caters to individual wants, rather than individuals accepting the lead of an authoritative social order -- what he sees as the culmination of a 500-year process of emancipation.

So now we have the welfare state -- responsible to everyone's needs -- instead of the welfare family/clan -- only effective among those families that can afford it. Is this transformation really a sign of decadence ?

I question his vision -- or rather -- I question it when he looks beyond his world of academia -- where I think he's seeing quite clearly -- and is somewhat prophetic to call his profession back from its scientistic specialization -- and leading it back, through his own heroic example, towards generalism.

Here's a man who reads across all the specialties -- in sciences as well as history, literature, philosophy, theology -- and attends to all the arts - including music and painting (though I don't remember his giving much attention to poetry -- perhaps because he's aiming at a pan-European viewpoint -- and poetry is so language specific.)

But he's also a scholar who seems to be exclusively Eurocentric. Oh - I'm sure he would consider such a criticism to be yet another example of the collapse of Western Civilization -- but, to quote a Chinese proverb : "the mountain cannot see itself" -- and I'm really doubting that anyone who never steps outside our narrow, Occidental corner of the world will ever be able to write about it very well.

The fact is - we Occidentals have had our day in the sun --- over running the rest of the planet and bringing our culture to it. But the sun of that day is setting -- and our leading scholars should probably become as familiar with the other great world civilizations -- as their leading scholars have become familiar with us.

Daughter of Han

2007-12-03T06:53:00.000-08:00

What a remarkable book ! -- and what a remarkable author , Ida Pruitt, who was uniquely situated to be the perfect cross-cultural interlocutor for old Ning Lao. As I later learned off the internet -- they were actually born in the same town, scenic Penglai, on the Shantung peninsula. There's no indication that they met in those early years, but Ning Lao worked as a servant in the homes of foreign missionaries -- just like the author's Baptist parents -- and certainly they would have been comfortable speaking about old time times together when they met in Beijing 40 years later.

Every "oral history" is a unique collaboration -- because it's not just one person who has stories to tell -- but it's also the other person drawing those stories out, putting them into her own words, and editing/arranging it all for publication.

It's clear that Ida Pruitt was very interested in the details of social customs and beliefs -- and her informant gives us a lot of detail concerning the rituals that accompany marriage, birth, death etc.

But as the story develops -- its the strong, unique personality of Ning Lao that takes over - as her life is propelled forward (or backward) by her sense of family, propriety and what she calls her bad temper.

She doesn't pull any punches in reference to the members of her family. Her husband was an opium addict who would sell his own daughter to get high. (and she would never
get to meet that daughter again) -- while her second daughter was a continuous cause of grief in her life. Her son in law also became an addict and that seems that daughter never forgave mother for arranging that marriage. Is it any wonder that her grandaughter refused to get married at all ? She went ahead to get educated by missionaries and become a college teacher in Beijing -- and later disappears into the countryside to join the Chinese resistance to Japanese occupation in the thirties.

Perhaps the most compelling part of the story is the part we don't know: how it all turned it -- since these interviews are given in Japanese occupied Beijing -- and soon the Ms. Pruitt (who also must have decided to remain unmarried) had to leave the country -- and there's no further contact with any members of the family. Did any of them survive ? What about her son and his children ? Are there any grandchildren - or great grandchildren out there who can connect to the internet and finish the story for us ?

What really separates this book from all the others I've read -- is it's emphasis on family -- where people live as families, not individuals -- a notion completely foreign to myself -- as well as to the Chinese story-tellers born 100 years later.

I couldn't believe how mother Ning Lao was able to run the lives of her adult children -- or was bitterly disappointed when she couldn't.

She herself was spared such domination in her early days because her parents died young and she never had a mother-in-law. So she was pretty much on her own --which was not an easy thing since young women back then were completely unprepared for it. She nearly starved to death -- and had to begin a career as a beggar -- and then later as a house servant.

Some memorable details include:

*examples of semi-organized charity in the town where she lived - i.e. the rich people provided soup kitchens for the poor all through the winter -- and Ning Lao would have died if they hadn't.

*Ning Lao's response to Christianity. She worked in the homes of missionaries (just like Ms. Pruitt's parents) -- so she was always being pitched for conversion. But she
just couldn't see how people were any different after conversion -- except, of course, that converts were paid a healthy monthly stipend.

*the prevalence -- and destructiveness -- of opium addiction in her world.

*the illiteracy of the local high military officials in the late Qing dynasty. The ones she know had risen through the ranks -- but not because they could ever read anything.

*Ning Lao inviting her worthless, thieving husband back into her bed -- so that she could get pregnant and hopefully have a son.

*the story of the young women in a family for whom Ning Lao worked -- where they all got so involved in reading "Three Kingdoms" that one of them was possessed by the spirit of Lord Guan. the butt-kicker (who, conveniently, had a local shrine)

*Ning Lao adopting a mother -- as someone to advise her and help her get jobs around town - although that "mother" --- and the rest of her family - does not seem to figure in Ning Lao's decision to move away from the area. This is the kind of mother who offers the benefits of nurture -- without the problems of control.

*what an interesting woman that educated grand daughter must have been -- as she had to mediate between her mother and grandmother -- and help to support them both. She seems to have had some kind of social or national idealism -- which grandma does not understand well enough to describe -- and since she's fluent in English she could have told us about it -- if only she had survived the civil wars.

*Favorite quote:

"Truly, my destiny is not a good one. I was not born at an auspicious time. The eight words of my birth time are not good ones. My husband spoiled my youth, son-in-law my middle years, and now it is my daughter who makes my old age unhappy"

note: apparently this book is often assigned to college or high school students -- so explanatory essays are sold to worthless, lazy students by a company calledExampleEssays.com If you are one such worthless, lazy student, I can only warn you that the sample essay posted on their site contains a serious, factual error.

Daughter of China: Meihong Xu and Larry Engelmann

2007-11-20T18:32:00.000-08:00

I have to salute Larry Engelmann (who also co-authored Feather in the Storm" ten years later) -- he's a bit heavy handed in making his stories feel dramatic -- but he really seems to disappear behind the voice of the storyteller whom he's enabling -- while when I do a similar thing -- I make the storyteller speak through me.

Larry Engelmann in 1988, the time of this story

But then -- he's a serious oral historian -- and I am only a dabbler.

And I also have to salute Meihong Xu -- because her story is chock full with the kind of details of 20th C. Chinese life that fascinate me - as she weaves back and forth between a foreground drama of arrest, interrogation, and escape, and a background fabric of childhood life and family history in Jiangsu province.

There are so many extreme, dramatic stories in the 20th C. -- and her little peasant village, on the road between Shanghai and Nanjing seems to have had its share.

One thing that distinguishes Meihong from all the other Chinese writers that I've read: she's not an intellectual. Not that she isn't smart -- after all, she was one-of-ten girls chosen out of the entire country to be the first class of female graduates from an intelligence officers' training school in Nanjing. But there's no teachers - writers - artists- lawyers etc in her background. She is completely outside "the stinking ninth class" - and though she's a wonderful story teller -- she mostly just wants to get ahead in the world - to be safe, prosperous, and a good daughter of her family and country.

I especially love the stories about her peculiar relatives: her poor aunt who was divorced for being childless, but then accused of being "not a woman", and
then accepting the guilt of being a village troublemaker -- but eventually finding true love with a retired businessman. And her maternal grandfather who was an early
supporter of the communists, made a local leader, got revenge on the bandits who had boiled his father alive, and died of exhaustion while touring the country as
a speaker on behalf of communism. And of course -- her paternal grandmother -- who was not her biological grandmother -- as she let her own child be switched for another woman's. Not to mention that grandmother's husband --
who drowned the author's infant aunt and owned a factory in Shanghai that he ran so well that the communists let him stay in charge -- and even let him badmouth the Communist regime whenever he felt like it. Who could invent these kinds of situations?

And finally there's the central story of Meihong the cadet and Larry the American English professor -- and there's something very wrong about it.

Not that it didn't happen the way they tell it -- but that Larry's behavior really wrecked Meihong's life. She may have escaped death and prison -but
she didn't escape an exile that separated her from her family and country -- and what else was she going to live for ?

Yes -- she does tell us that her 4 years in the academy had left her disillusioned with the army, state, and party that she served -- and she had already proven her disobedience by pursuing a relationship with her first husband, an older cadet.

Her story about the rebellious academy graduates who were angry about being posted to Tibet was very revealing. The sons of high ranking officers, they didn't expect to get this graveyard posting -- so they rioted -- deserted -- left the army -- and immediately were given lucatative jobs in the civilian sector. The following year, the school administrators realized their mistake, and this time sent the sons of peasants to that unpleasant outpost. No wonder that Meihong, coming from a peasant family, had become disillusioned.

But she had specifically told Larry that he must not process the film that pictured her in uniform -- and that his facility was was not secure from listening devices -- and he willfully - recklessly - and maybe even intentionally went ahead and ignored her. Was it just a coincidence that his actions made her dependent upon him by ruining her career ? I just don't think so. And there was someting creepy about how he moaned about his miserable lonely life the first time they were alone together.

This is the photo of Meihong that got her in so much trouble

So first he trashes her life -- then he redeems it -- and I'm not too surprised that she left him after a respectable 7 years together in sunny California.

************************************************************************

Some other favorite details:

*the quota for executions that the party gave to each district -- and the eyewitness accounts of them through a small girl's eyes
*the smart little girl who stood up on tables to belt out communist songs -- but wouldn't begin until she was offered peanuts
*the madhouse scenes in the train stations where people are packed onto trains and those trying to leave can't get past those trying to enter --and people waiting on the platform shit in place rather than surrender their place in line.
*the kindness of the train conductors toward our ticketless heroine as she flees across country.
*the petty thievery that seems to be endemic in every project.
*the cheesy hotel in the far-west oil city where the electricity is only turned on a few minutes each day so that tenants don't waste it -- where there aren't any locks on the doors -- and the sheets are changed every few weeks or so. NOT a five-star hotel !
*the kindness of the soldiers who were sent to help each village in the 60's -- but how they became unwelcome in later decades.
*the incredible events of 1976 seen from village eye-level: the death of the three top Communist party leaders, including Mao, all accompanied by an earthquake that killed half a million people -- changing history as the personal and national levels.
*the amazing bureaucratic hassles involved in marrying a foreigner -- and the amazing ways that our protagonists got around them.
*the loyalty of the "12 Pandas" (the first class of female cadets) towards each other -- when paranoia, suspicion, and betrayal are the norm for secret police intelligence work.
(and how none of them served out their 15 year commission - while three of them left the country)
*yet another story that came to a climax in Tianamen Square in 1989 - this time we get a general's viewpoint - as he knows the troops will be firing into the crowds.
*and I really worry about that poor general -- whose father had crossed over from the Kuomintang -- and who seemed to be a ringleader of the progressive "capitalist roaders" He's really very loyal to Meihong -- he warns her -- his connections help her get married -- he gives her 5,000 Yuan to help grease the wheels of the bureaucracy in her favor-- and eventually he is cashiered and disappears. (and given his close connection to Meihong -- if she really can't get in contact with him -- he's probably not alive any longer)

In Conclusion: this was my favorite contemporary Chinese book to date -- tedious as it became during the recitation of all that interrogation -- it throbbed with history and life.

And it's probably worth a second read.

Ha Jin: The Crazed

2007-11-08T05:48:00.000-08:00

A nice companion piece for "Lily" -- this is yet another story that ends in the streets of Beijing in June of 1989 with the demonstration and military crackdown at Tianamen Square.

And yet again, the protagonist, from the intellectual class, "had no grand purpose or dream of democracy and freedom" -- and did not actively participate in the demonstrations or fighting --- so much as he tried to help those who did.

In the final pages, this protagonist, Jian, "was driven by desperation, anger, madness, and stupidity" -- all of which was explained within the first 33 chapters -- as he attended the convalescence of his professor of Chinese literature -- who was also his mentor, role model and prospective father-in-law.

And this is where the narrative - for me -- was most problematical.

His teacher, professor Yang, has had a stroke and is blabbering away in his hospital bed. O.K. -- strokes happen -- and since they can affect the mind -- sometimes the victim can start running off at the mouth.

The problem is that, as it turns out, the reader needs to be accepting all this blabber as true --- as revelatory of the reality of Yang's life -- so that we can join his student, Jian,in piecing together what that life has really been like.

The author never gives any hint of fantasy in anything Yang is saying -- as he shouts at the ceiling of his hospital room --- so I suppose that the reader has to join the narrator in accepting it as true as if Yang were confessing everything to a close friend. But I just don't accept it -- and I don't know why the protagonist would accept it either.

It seems like all of the characters in this book (including the author ?) is as "crazed" as the book's title.

It's a ugly a book about an ugly world -- but not necessarily a real one.

Here's a late scene, as he helps his ailing mentor relieve himself in the chamber pot:

"I felt giddy and like vomiting. Look at this mountain of anomalous flesh! Look at this ugly, impotent body! What a hideous fruit of the futile "clerical life", disfigured by the times and misfortunes. He reminded me of a giant larva, boneless and lethargic... the foul odor was scratching my nostrils, stifling me, and I tried not to breathe. Yet despite my revulsion, my horrified eyes never left him"

Whew ! this book smells as bad as the old running shoes, abandoned by Jian's room mate , the one who suffered from athlete's foot. (our author seems to be attracted to this kind of detail)

The family history here is similar to the other books I've read about this generation
(Jian does have a sibling -- although we never meet him in the story) The parents are intellectuals who are sent to the countryside for re-education -- where they spend the rest of their lives. Like the protagonist in "February Flowers", Jian is an academic over-achiever -- and his parents are very supportive for him to have the kind of life that was denied to them.

But again -- it doesn't work out that way. The more Jian comes to understand the world -- as revealed by the stroke-damaged but truth-telling mind of his teacher -- the more he despises it -- and longs to break free and get out.

The truth is -- his teacher has been profoundly frustrated, angry, unhappy, miserable, self-loathing -- all the time that he's been apparently leading the life of a successful academic, husband, and father. He's cheated on his wife -- she's cheated on him -- the communist party has corrupted his academic department --everything is just as rotten and foul as those old stinking shoes. If only he had worked at an American university instead ! (apparently -- he hasn't read similar novels about the lives of American academics)

Meanwhile -- where is the great literature in all of this ? It doesn't seem to be an important part of their lives -- except as an occupation for instructors. There isn't that thrill of poetry that filled Prospect garden (in "Dream of Red Chamber") The only poetry that seems to have captured their imaginations is Dante's "Divine Comedy" -- because, of course, the setting is Hell.

I guess that's why Jian is all too ready to suddenly alter his life plan right on the brink of taking his final examinations that will make him a professor. He realizes that being an academic is just like being a clerk -- and if he's going to be a clerk, why not be one who can have a positive impact on people's lives ? (so obviously, he's never been that involved with the teaching that he's done)

And yet -- I've been reading several novels with 1960's born Chinese authors/protagonists -- and this is the first one where I really want to read a sequel -- i.e. it looks like the protagonist has broken free and is ready to do something more interesting than stagger around as the walking wounded.

So I'm taking this to be the first chapter of a glorious epic -- and tedious and miserable as it may have been -- I feel it might be redeemed by future volumes.

February Flowers by Fan Wu

2007-10-23T05:43:00.000-07:00

Here's a perfect companion piece for Mian Mian's "Candy" -- presenting the story of a "good girl" in contrast with Mian Mian's poor junkie --- both semi-autobiographical protagonists being born around 1970 into the kind of intellectual family ( the "stinking ninth class") that were sent to the countryside in the course of the Cultural Revolution.

But this was also the generation of single-child families -- so even Ming, Fan Wu's "good girl", is just as deeply troubled - disconnected from human relationships -- disconnected from herself.

Yes -- Ming has some problems -- and she ends up maybe even worse than Mian Mian's reformed junkie -- as she compulsively, desperately pursues her missing soul-mate (missing self? ) who may, or may not, be living in San Francisco.

But at least both Fan Wu -- and her self-based character, Chen Ming, have stayed away from drugs and booze -- i.e had a much healthier life-style -- and as a consequence the author can produce a much more coherent novel -- actually, kind of a tightly faceted gem, full of carefully constructed passages and inter-connections that reward those who re-read it.

I don't know if it's characteristic of everyone in their generation of single-child families ---- but neither Fan Wu's nor Mian Mian's protagonists find role models outside their own generation.

Dropping out of school -- Mian Mian's girl becomes obsessed -- and mis-led -- by the worthless spoiled kid musician-junkie, Saining --- but Fan Wu's girl is an over-achiever -- she stays in school -- is at the top of her class -- goes to university --and studies the greatest achievements of both Chinese and English literature. But none of her teachers play any (positive) role in her life.

Modern Euro-style university culture has failed her -- just as much as the Euro pop-youth culture has failed Mian Mian -- leaving them both as willful, mis-led, lost, and alienated children -- incapable of becoming parents themselves (just like me !)

But at least both of the authors are art obsessed -- and actually, I feel very close to Fan Wu's images of university life -- which feel very similar to my own -- even her special meditation place up on the roof of her dormitory (I also escaped to the roof -- in my case, it was the corridors of the dark and empty football stadium) She was bookish -- I was bookish -- she lived closely with less-than-intellectual roomates fresh-off-the-farm --- and so did I. She found same-sex companionship more accessible -- and was kind of alienated by the college dating game -- and so was I. She was driven to achieve success in an academic career -- and I was -- well -- no, I wasn't -- so, I suppose that's where our similarity ends. And America is such an easier place to live than the People's Republic ! You don't need residency permits to live wherever you choose -- but come to think of it -- the Chinese world was beginning to loosen up -- and Chen Ming's story is set in Guangzhou, that major city just 100 miles up the Pearl River from the extraordinary boomtown of Shenzhen -- and both Chen Ming and her soul-mate, Miao Yan, would have opportunities to live their lives outside the official channels of promotion.

And here's some other, disconnected thoughts:

The main thing I want from these Chinese novels -- or actually, any novels -- is the honest reflection of an author trying to figure things out and put a pattern on life as they've known it.

I don't want them pandering to a particular audience -- which is what anyone who wants to sell something has got to be doing. In that regard -- I have more respect for Fan Wu than any of the others -- i.e. her main character is relentlessly unappealing -- as either a good girl, a rebel, a hot sex person in the city, a Lesbian, or even a literary scholar (she just can't get into reading China's greatest novel: Dream of Red Chamber). She's a selfish little twit --- and her story refuses to go very deep into any of the other characters -- even the trashy Miao girl who becomes the focus of her attention. And yet still -- her story is so poetic.

As a outsider to the Chinese world -- it's impossible for me to know when dialog and situations are realistic -- but strange as all of it is to me -- it still feels that way -- especially the aggressive, biting dialog that characters will have with each other. I've experienced some that candid banter myself with Chinese women - I don't like it -- but that's how they are.

And what about those sex scenes ? They are certainly bizarre - but hardly salacious - as our drunken protagonist hides her head beneath covers as her "lover" consummates the masturbation that she had requested on the eve of her 18th birthday -- almost as strange as that arrangement that Mian Mian had with her mirrors. These kids are so sad !

One of the dramas involved here -- concerns the publication of the book itself -- discussed in the following interview with the author: "Your work was "rejected by several American agents for being too subtle and conservative ... Do you feel that the English speaking world has a misconception that entertainment needs to be racy and unsubtle for the public to buy it?"

To which the Fan Wu replied: "I think it’s a fact, instead of a misconception.....
I discovered [the publisher's] website by chance while trying to find an agent last summer, after I had been rejected by more than thirty agents in the US."

And a final note about Chen Ming's problems with "Dream of Red Chamber" -- i.e. she only liked the poetry, and couldn't get into the dramas of all the characters. Might this be because she didn't share Cao Xueqin's rather Buddhist involvement in the suffering of others ? I don't think she's picked up much from Asian (or European) philosophy or spiritual practice to help her through life. She's read everything --- especially 20th C. literature --- but nothing has taken hold.

And now I wonder -- where are the male voices from that generation -- the poor devils who have to live with these brilliant, self-centered, utterly confused women ? I hope that I can find some of their novels as well,

Candy by Mian Mian

2007-10-15T05:33:00.000-07:00

A semi-autobiographical novel of a girl born into the intellectual class in 1970 - with that incredible self-centeredness of that entire generation who had no sisters or brothers -- with nothing to live for --but how they feel right NOW.

So it's a series of obsessions -- sex, drugs, broken heart, and eventually self-descriptive writing (how else would we ever get this book?)

All of it enabled by the poor, suffering parents - like her father -- who, in the very first sentence,
"pushed her in front of the Mona Lisa" and made her listen to classical music -- but all in vain.
She hated/feared the beautiful -- she had staked out her personal territory as a world of:

"The smell of air-conditioning, the smell of heroin, real and bogus, the smell of condoms, the smell of blow jobs, the smell of fast-food take-out containers, the smell of frozen fruit, the black-and-white Cantonese movies, the smell of table lamps, the smell of sweet-rice porridge, the smell of paper money, the smell of the hotel manager, the smell of vomit"

The first half of her book records her descent into this hell of ugliness/emptiness following the suicide of a classmate at her elite high school -- and the wonder of it is the juxtaposition of the two girls -- the one who is making the decent - and the one who has obviously climbed back out - and now is looking back and writing about it.

And the special wonder of it, for me, is how real, how understandable it all seems -- although its all taking place in a very different cultural tradition -- even if its boom-town setting of Shanzhen is a kind of a nether world joining Chinese and American commerce -- and the ever beckoning presence of American rock-n-roll. (the protagonist and her friends all dabble as grunge-rock musicians - and know the sad story of Kurt Cobain)

I suppose that its great virtue is that she blames no one but herself -- but she also isn't making any effort to lift herself up -- other than by entertaining her readers with this "candy" made out of her suffering and degradation.

"I have one more present for you. It's a song. It's called "all the good children will have candy to eat"

We're not good children. And I'm out of candy.
We are good children, and the candy is our stories"

The second half of the novel -- following her trips to rehab --that her ever suffering father has arranged for her -- is less compelling. (and BTW -- whatever happened to mother ? she's as absent from her story as her boyfriend's father is from his)

The narrative thread is gone -- and the story bounces around through various time and various speakers -- chaotic, confusing -- sometimes humorous - always nihilistic - as our girl is finding a place in the world --as a modern artist.

All her friends are artsy -- and there are some episodes that are memorable -- like when her sculptor boyfriend wants to engage a professional cinematographer to film them having sex in their own special way (it requires a mirror). She doesn't want to --but has no strong reason to resist -- so they go ahead and engage a gay friend to do the job -- but when they're finally all together in the hotel room, the energy for it is gone - and who really cares anyway ?

The portrait of her first lover and lifelong soulmate is interesting. He's just as self-obsessed as her -- maybe more so - and like her, his indulgent lifestyle is the gift of his intellectual parents.
Their sexual attraction burns out -- but they remain connected -- as if through mutual disgust (I think that's the only feeling they really trust)

But the portraits of her other lovers are so mishmashed together - as if seen through a drunken fog. At some point, she starts sleeping with women -- but that's no big deal for her -it's just one more way to get through the night.

I guess the question here is -- how is her world different from some of the trash-punk- rock scenes in America or elsewhere ? And how is it different from the low life spent by Golden Lotus in that Ming Dynasty erotic classic ? An underworld of sex-drugs-music seems to be a timeless opportunity -- available in any civilization -- and those of us who avoid it are sometimes entertained by those who haven't.

And finally -- the question is -- if these kids' parents knew how painful -- and expensive -- the lives of their children would become -- would they have done anything different ? We only get distant glimpses of the father's life -- but it seems to be tumultuous as well. He's quit his job for the state, and is striking out on his own as a self-employed engineer - which might be why he supports an independent life for his daughter, allowing her to drop out of school and go wherever she finds opportunity as she "finds herself". It's not made very explicit, but he also seems to have separated from his wife.

Mian's protagonist, like herself, opted out of parenthood -- but what can people do if they want a family ? It's almost as if the generation that were sent to the countryside had it better -- or even those pre-1900 generations with the terrifying Confucian father authority figure.

********************
Some further reflections -- a week later -- after listening to Billie Holiday on the Verve recordings from the late Forties -- I guess my favorite vocalist lived in a very similar world - of despair, loneliness, self-destruction, and bi-sexuality -- but also amazing creativity. Billie's crackling voice sounds like she's 70 years old on those recordings -- and she was only in her early thirties.

Lili by Annie Wang

2007-10-09T17:46:00.000-07:00

What I really want is a knowledgeable, contemplative, serious witness to the world of modern China - but it's so hard to tell when Annie Wang is being that -- and when she's just pandering to an American audience that wants a story about love and freedom.

On the positive side - she puts some very articulate, thoughtful speeches into the mouths of various characters (or maybe we should call these speakers "informants" rather than characters --as they represent certain points-of-view on society rather than credible portraits of flesh and blood people.

But on the negative side -- these informants are all on the same side of the fence -- they're all people who, like Lili, the narrator, have issues with the Communist regime -- so the entire story is something of a melodrama: good, powerless people versus the evil, powerful state.

Back to the positive side -- the characters of Lili's family seem real and fascinating -- and she puts them through some changes. And the time that we spend being with them -- just seems real to me.

Lili seems real, too -- her voice -- her attitude -- what catches her attention -- what doesn't. But as a severely abused, un-educated, humorless person with an attitude from Hell --
she's just not that interesting (we're told she's a good classical Chinese musician -- but we don't get to hear her play) -- while her boyfriend, the Jewish-American journalist, is completely unbelievable. (but maybe that's not such a problem: after all, I'm reading this book
to learn about China, not about Jewish Americans)

But more than any of the these characters -- the real subject of this book is the June 4 Incident, or as it's known in the West, the Tianamen Square protest and massacre. Although it only occurs in the final few chapters, it pulls together all the narrative threads, and gives me, former student protester that I am, a real sense of the confusion, the thrill, stench, and the danger of being there -- at one of the those amazing moments when a populace seems to spontaneously rise up to assert that government requires the consent of the governed.

Wang's next book, "People's Republic of Desire", shows the aftermath, ie. a populace -- or more specifically, the intellectual class -- spending its energies in pursuit of "where's mine" -- so no wonder it's less serious -- that's the theme of a comedy, not a tragedy.

I know that the real value of this book is in its details --its little moments of interaction -- as they define the life the Chinese intellectual class -- the "stinking ninth" class
as revolutionary ideology would have it -- but novice that I am -- I'm not yet sure which moments are the important ones. Lili's interrogation by the state security agents (with the fat caterpillar fingers) seems oh-so-real.

One thing that feels important is the length of the entire Tianamen protest. That central public square in the capitol city was occupied day and night by protesters for 50 days --
which I don't think would be permitted in even the democracies of the West. (how long was the "Bonus Army" of protesting WWI veterans allowed to camp out in Washington DC before soldiers were sent to evict them ? -- and they weren't even camped next to the capitol building)

Comparing this story to the one I've been writing -- the big difference is that when the dust settled after the cultural revolution, my subject had a network of well-placed family connections to help her build a life -- and Lili had nothing left but a beautiful face and a bad attitude.

******************************************

But on further thought :

My visit to the Wikipedia entry on the Tianamen Square protest reminded me of that big statue of liberty that the students had built there. This enthusiasm for "liberty" is not just an American ideology -- it had been picked up by that generation of students - most of whom had probably studied English. And maybe the same thing with our American idea of "Love".

These young Chinese have been adopting things from American culture --- just as I and some of my fellow "big noses" have been borrowing things from the Chinese.

(I'm just hoping that Ms. Wang didn't also borrow another American attitude: telling people whatever they want to hear so that she can make a sale)

Emily Wu - Feather in the Storm

2007-10-02T05:53:00.000-07:00

Emily Wu is the daughter of Ningkun Wu (author of "A Single Tear") and 15 years after that book was published, she collaborated with Larry Englemann to publish an account of her family's life in the Chinese countryside during the 1960's and 1970's.

So it makes for a different view of the same circumstances: the family of a blackballed intellectual sent out to the countryside to be re-educated by the peasants.

But with the vulnerability of youth -- her story is much more emotional -- and factually, much less reliable.

So there you have both it's advantages and disadvantages.

Emily Wu can make the reader cry -- but she is not a reliable witness -- except as she embodies the effect those catastrophic years had upon her -- surrounded by so much death, deprivation, and abuse.

For example, her father's book never mentions the murder of "Old Crab" - the abusive cadre and leader of Gao Village where her family had been sent -- which would have been an event too significant for him to ignore.

But Emily and Larry turn it into a kind of feel good emotional payback --introducing a heroic war veteran as the agent of revenge -- standing up to the besodden, greedy, lecherous village bully --- as they turn the book from being chronicle into a B-movie screenplay.

And then we have to ask -- what else was put into the story for cinematic effect ? Did all of her young friends really die or end in tragedy ? Was she really reading all those novels in English when she was a teenager ? (maybe I missed it - but I don't recall reading how she was taught)

How much of what we're reading is the recollection of a life -- and how much has been contrived for our entertainment ?

I guess the part that feels the most real is the ever-recurring theme of shit. Why would anyone want to make that up ?

Shit is everywhere -- it's a kid's job to collect it -- and out-houses or sewage pits continually reappear as difficult, dangerous, and , of course, very unpleasant places. (and that's where Old Crab makes his final appearance - face down in a sewage pit, covered with flies)

And the other part that feels real is the isolation - the private world of the only girl in a family that is itself isolated as political criminals from the rest of society -- where everyone maintains their own, fragile inclusive status by shunning/abusing the outsiders.

But the final chapters in the mountains -- with the romance -- with the suicide -- with the captured tiger -- with the improbable but satisfying triumph --well -- these were very enjoyable. I saw the scenery -- I smelled the air -- I wept at the loss -- I celebrated with the triumph -- and I saw how her story paralleled the life that I've been recording on another one of my blogs.

Acceptance at university was the ticket out of China.

My friend got that ticket through hard work, intelligence, good luck --and high family connections. But Emily's family connections were all bad ones -- her education was minimal -- and it looks like it was mostly her incredible intelligence that saved the day.

The love story, in the last few chapters, also runs similar to the true love stories told by friend: the emphasis on language - and the absence of carnality. Emily and her lover were from the intellectual class - so they focused on reciting and composing classic poetry -- quite appropriate for the mountain setting where they were living. It was certainly difficult for young lovers to stay together in those years -- it was way too impractical.

I'd really like to hear about the rest of Emily's life (but without the special cinematic effects!)
What ever happened to her younger brother, Licun ? The older one got into college like Emily did -- but the younger one had such a terrible childhood, I wonder whether he recovered.

People's Republic of Desire

2007-09-25T09:13:00.001-07:00

(photo by Jerome De Perlinghi )

OK, Annie Wang's 2006 breezy little novel is a piece of trash, but that's why it's so much fun, isn't it ?

How low can the Chinese go -- or as Annie wrote in the introduction "I want to be free falling, free falling with a China that is no longer homey"

And as she continued:

"I am casting off my burdens... no longer will I play the role of a Confucian intellectual"

But... she never really was a Confucian intellectual .. was she ? It was just a role -- a facade -- and that's what her stories are about: facades and how to keep them -- and it should probably be required reading for Americans who want to do business in China.

And yet --- and yet she did hold me -- prisoner to the page all the way to the bitter end -- waiting, I suppose, for the "oral sex" that was promised on the jacket (but which she never delivered.) -- or for some profound revelation or change (never got that either -- just a wee bit of fashionable do-gooder fund raising for poor people - and very choppy, improbable resolution to her own broken heart in the final chapter)

And it is true -- that whenever I felt tired of a certain riff (like I've had enough successful, pretty women for a while) -- she'd offer up something else to hold my attention.

Her narrative seems to be suspended between the pornographic ( it never comes close) and the self-righteous (doesn't go very far that direction either)

Her sex-in-the-city girls like thrills --- but they don't really seem to like sex -- and those few who pursue it without remorse are scolded for it.

Were the situations and characters real ? As the amateur historian -- this is the question that most concerns me - and I think the answer is no -- they're as real as the episodes in "Journey to the West" - except that the pretty people become monsters of selfishness instead of blood drinking demons.

But the gonzo attitude -- yes, I bet that's real -- and what an incredible thing to happen after a few generations of puritanical socialism.

And the incredible turnover in generational attitudes -- is it every 10 years now ? -- I bet that's real too. The Chinese 20-somethings of today can be very scary -- because they've got nothing but infantile desire. No Confucius -- no Buddha -- not even Chairman Mao -- they've got nothing to live for but immediate gratification.

Or so it seems (from stories I've heard beyond the pages of this book)

But China is a very big place -- lots of room for local variation -- and I'm sure there's plenty of smart, talented young people who are aiming for something other than a life of "the rich and famous" -- but that might be beyond the scope of a popular journalist.

***********************************************

Here's the passage that I think I'll remember most:

(from the lips of Chinese American Mimi - the character whom the narrator seems to respect the most)

"There is an ancient Chinese saying, "I can't tell the true shape of Lu Mountain, because I myself am in Lu Mountain" The truth is incomprehensible to one too deeply involved to be objective. So you have to be able to leave to observe"

"Then what does the United States mean to you ?"

"It is the crystallization of order, the rule of law, rules, credibility, reason, and justice. It is a kind of ideal created by humankind. This piece of land gives people hope, gives people space, lets people discover their own potential. To me the most fascinating thing about it gives people a path of struggle. This path of struggle is far more stimulating and enriching than the path of enjoyment"

(America doesn't especially appear this way to me -- but then I've never lived anywhere except on Lu Mountain)

Ningkun Wu: A Single Tear

2007-09-15T16:40:00.000-07:00

As I near completion of my own collaborative account of life in the People's Republic, I've begun to read some others -- beginning with Ninkun Wu's 1993 chronicle of an English professor's life as a condemned "rightist" from 1951 - 1980.

Born in 1920, and schooled on the mainland, he continued his education in the U.S. -- and returned to China in 1951 to "put his expertise to some good use for the new China" --that expertise being in modern English literature.

Despite his good intentions and leftward sympathies, almost immediately he was identified as a rightwing enemy of the people - and he would spend most of the next two decades in one kind of gulag or another: forced labor camps, prison farms, or finally one of the small villages where teacher and students were sent to "learn from the peasants" during the cultural revolution.

This book is his record of relentless persecution and victimization -- and yet I don't get the feeling that he was especially paranoid or hallucinatory -- i.e., I'll bet this stuff really happened to him, his wife, and most of his fellow university faculty. Those who were talented at riding the waves of political hysteria -- and had no qualms about ratting on their colleagues -- did alright --- and everyone else suffered. The author appears to have had zero political savvy - and only survived thanks to the persistence, faith, resources, and probable likability of the young student who married him.

As a one-dimensional melodrama (good people being abused) -- it's rather shallow -- without those qualities or insights that you might expect from a scholar conversant in both Chinese and European literature. (except that - hey - he had a hard life - he was 70 years old when he wrote this book - and as he reports in the preface, he did so with some reluctance)

But maybe just being an accurate documentary is enough. It certainly opens a nice little window into certain times and places -- like the forced labor farm up in Manchuria (not so far from the collective farm where my Chinese friend would later spend a year) -- or the peasant village where his entire family was sent for re-education (as my friend's mother had been)

There are brief sketches of a variety of interesting people -- good, bad, and ugly --and we're aware of the narrator's rather compassionate -- if not very deep - view of his fellow humans. His wife was Christian --and I think we can feel her imprint on his imagination (indeed, a few of the chapters were written or dictated by her.)

(BTW - I think the most memorable character for me will be "Looney" -- not that he, the young village idiot was so memorable -- but that Yikai Li, the author's wife, saved him from getting beaten to death by his father and the village leader -- even though he had been annoying and stealing from her as much as from anyone. She had the nerve to intervene and threaten the most powerful man in the village. It's a compelling issue -- because people who live on the brink of starvation may not be able to afford to accommodate a disruptive crazy person -- but, as it turned out, a traffic accident resulting in Looney's permanent injury, also produced a significant damage-payment, sufficient to serve as a bride price for his younger brother. Might this serve a metaphor for the disasters and achievements of the author's own tragic life ?)

Accepting his role of suffering victim -- there isn't really a lot of drama here -- even when he comes close to starving to death. But I liked to wander around the details -- like the medical diagnoses and care -- and the books that it referenced (I knew all the historical Chinese literature he mentioned, but none of the modern -- and his choices in English literature which mostly centered on Shakespeare - and specifically Hamlet.

The penultimate chapter, concerning his rehabilitation, seemed to reveal the most about the author's reaction to what had befallen him -- both the resignation and the resentment -- especially in the 15 minute interview he was granted by his former, younger colleague from the University of Chicago, T.D.Lee . While the author had returned to China to dig ditches and starve, Dr. Lee had stayed in America to pursue a stellar academic career and earn a Nobel Prize in physics.

"As I briefly answered his questions (I did not want to outstay my welcome)about what I was in Beijing for (political rehabilitation) and what I and some of our mutual friends had been through over the years, he showed no sign of strong interest or emotion. Dignified and self assured, he looked the eminent scientist and scholar par excellence. I quickly sensed that we were living in different worlds across an unbridgeable gap.... Secure in the "imperialist fortress of America, he was hailed as a patriot in Communist China, feted by every top leader of the party.. as an honored guest of the state. Recalled to serve the motherland, I was denounced as an enemy of the people .... but I would never have exchanged my bitter cup of lifetime reeducation for the salutary toasts from the masters of the proletarian dictatorship"

(as they parted, Dr. Lee inscribed a copy of James Thurber's "Fables for our time" and gifted it to the author - leading the author to recall an all-night conversation they had 30 years earlier at the International House of the University of Chicago (I've been there !) ,when "kid brother" Lee had called the famous novel "Dream of Red Chamber" unscientific because the hero was born with a precious jade in his mouth -- leading the author now to respond with Hamlet's "there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy")

.......................................................................

Three thoughts that kept recurring as I followed him from one tribulation to another were:

1. He never accepted his political role as a transmitter of modern, Euro-American culture. Maybe he would have been just as persecuted if he were a civil engineer (in the cultural revolution, he would have been) -- but not necessarily in those earlier waves of leftist 'reform'.

Or maybe he finally accepts that role in the last chapter, on page 350, when he has finally been restored to his university position in 1979, attends a conference, and speaks out against the director of the "Department of Theory of Art and Literature at the Ministry of Culture" -- when that cultural leader concludes that "We must persevere in the Marxist Leninist stand, viewpoint, and method in our theory of art and literature" -- and he agrees with the man's son who says "Daddy, forget your Marxist Leninism - it's so passe. Nobody is interested in that anymore".

The author then went on to question just what Marxist-Leninism was, after so many flip flops and disasters over the previous decades.

Then he asks "how many of us are familiar with modernist literature ? How can anyone put a ban on it before people have a chance to read it and make up their own minds about it ?"

2. As it turned out, the left wing of the Communist party was completely justified in feeling threatened about a return to capitalism and "the four olds" (old thinking, old habits, old values, old etc)

Socialism was failing -- and all the waves of ideological hysteria only postponed its collapse.

3. Lots of people died in this story -- but I don't recall that a single one was murdered or executed or disappeared (as happened when Stalin decimated his own party in the great Soviet purges).

Socialist rule was incredibly inept -- and led to mass starvation -- but the people who died were not necessarily political enemies -- they were just people who could not endure malnutrition or psychological abuse.

And when judging the performance of the Communist Party -- we do have ask how else that nation could have stayed independent and free from civil war in the second half of the 20th C.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Finally -- just to raise some points of difference with the subject of my Chinese chronicle,
Ningkun Wu :

*was 30 years older - therefore already an adult with a career when the Communists take over
*was intellectual class instead of high-official class
*spent about 15 years in one kind of forced labor or another -- my subject spent one - while her father, who was Ningkun's age and an official in the C.I.D. (state security) spent 6 years in solitary confinement.
*had no good family connections (although it was his wife's family that saved his life by sending him food from the black market)

.... and some points of similarity:

*both had Christian connections (Ningkun's wife -- my subject's grandfather)
*both specialized in the English language
*both ended up living in America
*both of their Chinese stories begin and end in Beijing

note: A very informative podcast that summarizes the history involved in Ningkun Wu's life can be found here

--- narrated by a man who met the author (and whose father had founded the English department at the Chinese school where Ningkun was initially hired.)

He relates that Ningkun was the very last intellectual at his school to be pardoned because the order for his imprisonment had been signed by Deng Xiaoping - and no lower authority felt comfortable with countermanding him. (a similar situation held for my friend's father, who was sent to prison on an order signed by Chou Enlai )

Annie Dillard: Encounters with Chinese Writers

2007-06-24T08:09:00.000-07:00

This book only runs for barely a hundred pages -- but still I couldn't finish it -- and have no idea why anyone would recommend it.

And I have no idea why this young woman was chosen, back in 1982, to join an American delegation that was meeting with Chinese professional writers -- since it doesn't appear that she had ever read any Chinese history or literature -- even in translation.

And, finally, I have no idea why she -- as an intelligent person -- would have wanted to join that delegation herself (other, of course, than for a free ride to an exotic place - and perhaps the opportunity to publish this little book)

There she is -- in the beginning pages of her account -- meeting a man who:

"holds my eyes. There is something extraordinary in his look. This occurs a dozen times over the course of the banquet -- the man is taking my measure -- he is measuring what I can only call my "spirit", my "depths" such as they are. No one has ever looked at me this way. There is nothing personal or flirtatious about it. He is going into my soul with calipers"

Or... maybe he was just curious ?

This is what I'd call fanciful nonsense.

But, perhaps, there is some purpose to this manuscript:

It serves rather well to exemplify the attitude of mainstream American intellectuals of our time toward Chinese civilization -- an attitude which is in no way reciprocated by the Chinese -- who, ethnocentric and arrogant as they may be, have driven themselves to study the English language and the Western world.

The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizaki

2007-05-06T08:40:00.000-07:00

Here's a quick follow-up to my reading of the epic "Tale of Gengi" -- and it feels like a distant, dim memory of that high-aesthetic world -- where the modern characters still write careful, important letters with brush on paper -- still take music and dance classes -- and still pay attention to their kimono -- but it does seem that these kimono have been laundered a few times too often -- leaving them clean and spotless -- but maybe just a little faded ?

Unfortunately, respectability, not beauty, seems to be the motivating factor here -- i.e. the Makioka sisters are middle class -- as is 20th C. Japan.

And how patient they all are ! (except for the naughty Taeko)

The story is set in the years leading up to the war with America -- and if these sisters had lived in Hiroshima, I'm sure that if they survived the blast, they'd be out trying to find poor Yukiko a proper husband the very next day.

As if Yukiko cared -- which makes the story so enjoyable -- because the whole process is beneath her -- and yet -- despite her non-cooperation -- despite that pesky spot that keeps appearing over her eye on certain days of the month -- and despite her advancing age (she's ten years older than she should be) ---- still ---- she manages to draw interest from one man after another -- each one from a higher class than the one before. It's amazing -- and such a tribute to the persistence of her sister Sachiko and her husband -- and especially of their meddling friends.

"It takes a village to get a nice girl married"

Of course, I'm partial to Taeko --- the youngest sister who can't get married until her older sister, Yukiko finds a husband.

So Taeko just throws respectability out the window -- and is a very bad girl: she elopes -- she becomes an artist -- she wants to go to France and learn dress-making -- she works her rich-loser boyfriend for cash -- and finally -- worst of all -- she gets pregnant by a bartender.

Oh -- what's it all about, Taeko ? Is it just for the moment we live ? (sorry -- I break into a popular melody from the 60's)

And against this eternal striving for either respectability or gratification -- is the enemy of us all: sickness and death -- portrayed quite graphically -- even unpleasantly -- along with the very problematic world of Japanese health care c. 1940

The people in this genteel society are so well mannered -- but human bodies -- as always -- can be so terribly rude --- so how appropriate that the story ends with Yukiko having diarrhea on the train to Tokyo where she will finally join her aristocratic new husband.

Is this an accurate portrait of this time and place ? I have no idea -- but since the novel is so highly regarded -- I'll assume, for now, that it is.

And one interesting feature -- is the complete indifference of these well educated, well employed people to the global catastrophe that their government has been inflicting upon the people of China. They're not for it (as their German friends admire the national ambitions of Herr Hitler) -- they're not against it -- their only connection (up to this point - Feb. 1941) is the feeling that ostentatious, extravagent expenditure would be inappropriate in a time of national crisis.

All that matters is that Yukiko find a good husband -- so the Makioka name can still be treasured.

*****************************************************

Postscript - -- the more this book settles into my memory -- the further that connubial concern recedes into unimportance -- and more I'm thinking about the social matrix being laid out -- one node at a time -- with equal if not greater importance given to all the characters who were half-Makioka (the 2 husbands) or not Makioka at all (the cast of potential husbands from various social situations) and especially the support staff: the servants who, like servants in European literature, know more about what's happening than their masters -- and that hair stylist who seems so patiently devoted to finding her customer a suitable match.

It's something of a "rock soup" -- where the main ingredient (the rock, Yukiko) is inedible -- but it's all the other ingredients that provide the nutrition.

Tale of Gengi

2007-03-12T07:49:00.000-07:00

Oh No ! My trip with Murasaki Shibuku (and Arthur Waley) through the shining world of the Heian aristocracy is finally over -- three months and 1100 pages later.
Will I ever read another novel where all characters communicate by exchanging lines of poetry?

There were so many ways it was enjoyable -- but what strikes me most now -- after just finishing -- is the gradual change -- not in the characters -- but in the storytelling --
where cliff-hanging drama does not appear until the very last notes -- as cruelly, the author compels me to quickly finish that which I never want to leave.

Has there ever been such a book ? --- not really one book, but three --- for each of the generations -- where the author's attachment gradually moves from that epitome of gallantry,
Genji himself -- the beautiful, elegant, poetic, musical, compassionate lover --- to the vulnerability of the beloved -- i.e. the women whose lives depend on high ranking men finding them attractive.

And as we become more involved in the woman's drama -- we're shown much more ambivalence in the leading male --as we move from the perfect Genji to his poor grandson,
Prince Kaoru whose Buddhist compassion can never quite equal his royal self centeredness.

Ccuriously, the one character who can span all three generations -- is the spirit of Lady Rokujo - who feeling rebuffed by Genji -- proceeds to possess/murder women in each generation of his descendants.

And yet -- the book did have problems for me -- mostly the absence of that visual/musical beauty on which the story seems to depend but which the writing -- maybe any writing --
cannot deliver. I.e. ---- I think Lady Muraski really needed to be a film director --so we could see the beauty of all these women -- experience the beauty of Genji when he dances --
and hear the beauty of all the music these characters are playing.

Without that beauty -- it's really just an endless series of unhappy stories of women seduced (raped?) and then abandoned.

The only beauty is the poetry -- which, of course, can only be dimly felt in translation -- but still can be felt in the clever metaphors chosen for each situation.

And I guess there are some very poignant moments: like Genji's embarrassment about having to ignore his physical repulsion for one of the women he loves and cares for.

And yet still -- I hung on every sentence -- as a brief window into a very strange -- but very real world -- where the rules of interaction are so different from ours -- especially
with this business of rape -- that was accepted in certain situations -- and yet still has its tragic consequences (the endless,unspeakable sorrow of Ukifune) -- or the regular occurence
of what we could call statuatory rape -- or even incest -- i.e. a guardian (Genji) having sex with his adopted child (the character called Murasaki) -- the morning after
being described so poignantly -- I had to believe the author herself knew all about it. (although in that case -- the character goes on to a mostly happy life -- that ends only when
her husband, Genji, is compelled to marry his next child bride)

It's a different world -- but something else I notice is that it's a story without the villains, murders, or executions that would accompany most sagas of royal families elsewhere
in history. Losers don't get strangled -- they just have to move to the country -- and even that murderous Lady Rokujo is less a villainn than she is an understandably broken heart -- who
actually is unaware that her spirit is causing so much trouble. Neither good nor evil trumph -- people just blossom -- mature -- and die --- like flowers in the garden -- some getting
more sun -- some being more beautiful -- than others.

But still --- there is something very annoying about the sweet smelling Prince Kaoru -- because he seems on the verge of being compassionate rather than just pious -- but he can't quite be concerned with anyone but himself -- and poor Ukifune is going to be suffering forever in her unfinished story.

********************************************************

on further thought ---

Maybe we can see this as yet another exercise in "redeeming the ordinary world" -- in this case, the ordinary world of women in a very small elite.

Yes, the main characters are Genji and his male progeny -- and plenty of reference is made to their elite, elegant, artsy lifestyle-- but the story is driven forward by the anxiety, sorrow, and even the anger (Rokujo) of the women.

I mean -- who cares what happens to the men in any of these relationships ? If it doesn't work out -- there's plenty of other attractive women available. And even if it does work out -- they're going to keep on looking for more women anyway.

The Wolf Pit

2006-12-11T06:34:00.000-08:00

I'm doing Asian now -- and haven't read an American novel since"House of Seven Gables" about 5 years ago -- but stumbling accross the unique opportunity to know and correspond with the author I'm reading -- I took a path closer to home -- and read one of the books by Marly Youmans who's been an enthusiastic reader of my sculpture/painting blog over the past month.

As readers of my book blog (if there ever are any) will quickly conclude --- I read for what might be called the exotic --- the places far, far from home -- to experience not just fantasies -- but the fantasies of people who lived in very different real worlds. I've spent over 50 years surrounded by conntemporary American minds -- I'm ready to travel somewhere else.

But when I travel -- whether it's to ancient Rome or Medieval Japan -- it's always over the bumpy road of translation -- i.e. I can follow a sequence of images and events -- but the cadence of speech is , at best, perfunctory --- and that cadence is the special pleasure I've found reading Marly Youmans -- espeically when the action picks up -- and things are happening rat-tat-tat.

Unfortunately, the book I chose was very unpleasant for me. Just like every painting has a certain decorative color scheme -- her novel was painted in certain colors -- which I'd identify as black-red-brown. Though as one of the characters might have said -- "it's my own damn fault" -- since the ugly title, "The Wolf Pit" should have been sufficient warning --- and just like when little Virginia (a character in the story) is offered a choice of stories to hear "All blood and guts, or sugar and sap and a good little princess" -- she picked "All blood and guts" -- and so did I --- and believe me -- that's what I got.

And so -- I struggled -- and it was really tough going for me until about Chapter 11 -- when I finally became engaged in story -- and couldn't put it down the rest of the way.

What it's got --- is Americana -- with all the loving details of home and field -- and minor characters - and scenes -- that seem pulled from American movies and painting -- like the opening scene, for example, pulled straight from a Brady photograph of a Civil War battlefield -- and I often felt rushed back to the very first illustrated books I read in grade school - depicting the cheerful but serious life of families on the frontier.

And it's got that innocence, bone-headed idealism, and consequent melodrama that just seems so tragically American. (well--- I'm sincerely doing my best --- the body language, boyish face of G.W. Bush seems to say)

Plenty of melodrama --- incredibly innocent, helpless victims -- and incredibly competent, vicious villians --- which I think makes the book so authentic to the psychology of is period -- but also very unreal.

When the victim-heroine starts writing her story --- I just don't buy it -- I hear the author's melifluent voice -- not a home-educated slave girl of 1860 --- and when the victim-hero delivers his heroic speech and prophetic dream as he reaches the end of his path ("Never, never will the land, the soil, the earth be divided again. Never will civil strife soak the fields and meadows...") -- there is no way that I can imagine this profundity coming from the mind of that day-dreaming-boy -- and when his cousin Nash pronouces "Of all my family, he is the best, the one who thinks and plans, who could be something" - I jump up from my desk in amazement. Were we reading the same book ? This boy's a sweet dreamer -- not a thinker and planner !

But still --- I have to admit -- despite the rocky beginning -- I loved the book -- as a fantastic quilt -- just like the one that Agate is making at the end -- full of colorful threads -- patterns -- images --metaphors-- something of a jumble perhaps -- not like a tight French painting -- not like a designer town home in Manhattan -- but like a comfortable, rambling southern home -- full of folksy treasures.

There's an interweaving of things -- of chapters -- voices -- images -- metaphors -- and it's very, very feminine.

And -- of course -- I have to mention -- full of reference to the visual arts -- because --- rather obviously, the author loves them -- and they are always popping into her mind --no matter how well -- or not well - they seem to fit into the story --- like the statue that gets (I think comically) hauled around and buried a few times near the end of the book. Or -- like the introductory sentance of the final, magnificent chapter "like a scene from a medieval engraving of two skeletons carrying a third between them..."

"It is my grave, he tried and failed to whisper, while the soul went out of his body like a sigh"

That's the final line of text -- and I doubt that any translation could do it justice.

Pillow Book by Sei Shonagon

2006-10-30T05:51:00.000-08:00

A unique and difficult book in many ways -- especially in translation -- since the author's concerns are so literary -- and all the poetry, in both Japanese and Chinese, is inaccessible.

But there's also her life in the court of a 10th C. Heian empress -- and her very personal observations are probably what has made this collection so endurable over the centuries.

And -- it's a something of a puzzle --- where all the pieces have been scattered at random -- and the reader has to make up his own stories about how they could fit together -- i.e. the sequence of vignettes must be considered strictly arbitrary - both as to when the original events actually occurred -- and as to when Shonagon wrote about them.

It's as if each episode was written on a separate sheet of paper, and then the collection was thrown into the wind and re-assembled at random.

Meanwhile the author does not especially write directly about things --- since she seems to be expecting notes addressed to herself to eventually be made public within court.

Yes -- it's a puzzle -- but her world seems so elegant and exotic -- the fascinated reader is driven to puzzle it out.

My first observation -- is that this woman feels rather distant from the world in which she lives. We don't get reports of intense dramatic moments of fulfillment or loss. Was she ever deeply thrilled or wounded by love ? She doesn't even mention the death of her lord, the empress -- although that event ended her dazzling life at court. Maybe it's just that she's such a good Buddhist --- i.e. the world is an illusion -- and these centuries -- in both China and Japan -- do seem to be the high-water mark for this spiritual practice.

So I'm feeling that she's been kind of anesthetized -- where she notices the colors and the scents of things --- but she's not that involved with their unique shapes -- or destinies. Maybe it's that her position as courtier was so vulnerable -- supported only by her wits -- she can afford to be nothing more than self centered.

For all her love of beauty --- she never tells us about a special painting -- ceramic -- seal -- ink stone -- building -- or pattern of fabric. We mostly hear about nature: the moon in the sky, the dew on the spider's web, the morning mists etc. --- all things that I'm guessing are just the standard topics of canonical Chinese poetry. And when we hear about how people are dressed -- it's always about the layers of tinted cloth -- not about the patterns -- or about the cut or shapes.

It leads me to wonder whether she has really felt the feelings she records -- or whether she's just 'feeling' what she is supposed to. For example, when she notes how delightful it is to hear the emperor playing his flute late at night --- is that because she really has an ear for beautiful music -- or just because it's the emperor -- and everything the royals do is just so special. (she never notes that any other musical performance was especially memorable)

And nobody has a story. (unless the reader wants to try cobbling one together)

This is what is most surprising to me -- for a person living at court --- surrounded daily by rumor, gossip, successes, tragedies --- she doesn't want to tell any stories about human destiny --- which leads me to that one story she does tell ---- that is so incredible to my barbaric ear --- the one about the man whose house burned down.

It's the story of a man whose house was built close to the imperial compound -- and when the hay in an imperial stable caught fire --- the fire spread and burned down this man's house, nearly killing his son. There being no insurance companies back in those days -- this man was probably rendered desititute -- and he approached the ladies of court looking for a handout.

Well --- Shonagon gave him a handout all right --- a mocking poem -- full of the puns and the literary allusions that were her specialty -- that the poor, illiterate man couldn't even read -- but thinking that it was some kind of promisary note, would take to some offical to cash in for his compensation. Oh, what a fine joke that was on him -- when he learned that he would receive nothing but contempt. Hah - hah- hah --- now look at that poor wretch cry !

I suppose this is just the meaness that a vulnerable person turns back upon the world --- and while this behavior itself is not especially appealing -- the candor in expressing it is probably what keep our eyes glued to the page -- and digging through the notes to figure out what was going on.

There's really two volumes here: volume one is the translation --- and volume two (equally as long) are the translator's (Ivan Morris) notes -- filling in the reader on the details of historical characters, places, figures of speech, and probable chronologies --- and the two have to be read side-by-side.

When all that digging is done ---- what of value has been discovered ?

By itself -- it's just a small selfish person in a small clannish world -- but its larger context is the life of Chinese culture outside of China -- which is a story that is still being played out.

Zhou Enlai -The Early Years by Chae-Jin Lee

2006-08-08T18:28:00.000-07:00

I'm still fascinated by the transformation of China in the last century. I think Japan had every reason to think that they could play the same role that the conquoring Mongols/Manchus/Jin and earlier warlike neighbors had played as rulers of the Central Kingdom -- that just didn't seem able to govern itself.

But some kind of surprising idealism erupted -- managed, at least in some part -- by that elegant intellectual, Zhou Enlai --- so the story of these founders of the PRC interests me.

But if this book has a use -- it's as source material for others that will follow -- since no attempt at understanding is made beyond the idea that Zhou was a good Confucian boy turned gentleman. How his youthful idealism adapted to the cold calculations of power -- and murder --- this story is left for others to tell.
And .. there isn't an attempt to get inside the mind that chose communism over the other ideologies that were available.

It's just the story of a bright, studious, shy young man whose clan identifies him as the hope of his generation and gives him the best education available -- though he is distracted -- and eventually consumed -- by the political unrest in the last decades of the Qing Dynasty.

Yoshitsune

2006-08-03T07:44:00.000-07:00

Yoshitsune : A fifteenth century Japanese Chronicle -- translated with introduction by Helen Craig McCullough.
....................................................................

A fascinating spin-off from the "Heike Monogatari" concerning the most daring and successful general of the war, Minamoto Yoshitune (1159-1189) -- who, something like Scipio Africanus in the Punic Wars, shot quickly to the top as a brilliant young leader, but peaked at the age of 25 -- incurring the jealousy of his older brother,Yoritomo, the first Shogun and the founder of the Kamakura era.

What's especially curious about this collection of tales, written over 200 years later, is that the great triumphs of his career are completely ignored. In one fatal paragraph he goes from joining his brother to lead the rebellion against the Heike, to being feared by his brother as soon as the Heike are destroyed. All of his great exploits -- as told in the Heike Monogari, are ignored -- and he spends most of this book running for his life -- avoiding assasination attempts -- and traveling in disguise into northern Japan to seek the protection of Fujiwara Hidehara.

All of the exciting, colorful stuff is left to his remarkable retainers, especially Benkei -- a baby-Huey/Friar Tuck cartoonish character who is very large, very strong, very clever, and very funny -- and as poor young Yoshitune wanders through the mountain trails, Benkei plays a very similar role to Monkey in the Chinese "Journey to the West". Yoshitsune may be a great swordsman and general --- but all he really does in this epic is cry, get depressed, and impregnate a number of beautiful young women who fall madly in love with him (and then die)

He is hardly involved in even his last stand --- where 2/3 of his remaining retainers desert him --- and one-by-one the 5 who stay loyal meet their death by holding off an army of 20,000 -- giving him enough time to properly disembowel himself. ( which is, I think, the only thing that he does well after he flees the capital -- performing a wide, deep incision that allows him to pull his own intestines out from his abdominal cavity--- yeccch !)

One of the questions that recurred during reading -- was for whom this story was intended. So much of it seems similar to American action movies --- with humor, goofy banter, and cartoonish behavior aimed at 12 year old boys. But some extended stories of his suffering wives would seem to aim at a different reader/listener --- pointing towards the suggested origin of this text as stories told in villages by itinerant entertainers -- to people of every age who want to hear about the outside world and the great, colorful people who live in it.

The translator has provided a wonderful introduction that gives an historian's narrative of events and links the many episodes to other versions of the stories -- and this version is high on color and local detail -- but very low on politics and real-world relationships --- I mean, the fact that Yoshitsune is an utter failure at court politics is ignored as much as his great success in battlefield strategy.

Here -- he's just a fugitive with some wild friends and fawning, beautiful women -- and the translator suggests that the Japanese term for "under-dog" was coined simultaneous with the telling of these stories in the Muromachi era.

My favorite quote comes from the advice that Hidehara, the norther chieftain to whom he fled, gives to his sons: "Whenever a messenger comes from Kamakura, cut off his head. Yoritomo will not send any more after you have executed two or three. If, by chance, he does, you will have to realize that the matter is serious and act accordingly"

Another feature that seemed memorable -- was the role played by handsome young men as pages to older monks or warriors --- where the young men are dressed as women -- with white powder on their cheeks and eyebrows pencilled in -- so much so -- that when robbers break into the inn where the adolescent Yoshitune was staying, they assumed he was a girl and brushed him aside (a fatal mistake -- as he soon whipped out his sword and butchered them)

Another curiousity was the source of Yoshitsune's remarkable abilities. Another legend has him learning swordsmanshp from mythical forest creatures (that's where I first saw him -- in a painting many years ago -- maybe in Boston ?) But this story has him teach the martial arts to himself -- driven by the memory of his great, defeated father. Regarding his ability as a general --this story accounts for it by book-learning (just like the sage-warriors in Three Kingdoms) -- where Yoshitsune gets a copy of a esoteric text that teaches the art of war by seducing the daughter of the man who keeps it in his library. (and of course -- eventually leaves the girl who dies of heart break )

It's all very whimsical -- but intriguing -- since our hero is also prone to depression and suicide.

What did all those pretty girls see in him ?

Japan From Prehistory to Modern Times - by John Whitney Hall (1968)

2006-07-26T08:49:00.000-07:00

Three kinds of histories get published, don't they ? Histories to entertain the general reader -- histories to be used as textbooks -- and histories for other historians --- and I think this one was intended to be an introductory textbook -- touching on ideas that are current in the discipline, and acceptable within secondary school systems.

One doesn't get the feeling that a great mind has brought it's wide learning and unique focus to bear on the subject -- instead I see a lecturer filling the time with acceptable platitudes -- with one eye on the clock.

How is Japanese feudalism different from European ? How did owner-tenant relationships change over the course of 15 centuries ? The key words used in a discussion of this topic are introduced (and will be on the test !) --- but the differences are hardly explained.

And the great periods of change (the end of the Heian era (beginning of shogunate and samurai)-- the end of the Tokugawa era (end of the Shogunate, beginning of a modern, industrial state) -- and the American occupation (beginning of elected government)seem to be barely understood. The author repeats at least three times that the American occupation and political engineering was "amenable" to the Japanese people -- but what does this mean ? Sid they vote for it -- or did they just accept it --the way a prisoner walks quietly to the scaffold ?

Regional autonomy seems to be a critical issue in these periods of change -- especially in the end of the Shoganate where the armies of two provinces are sufficient to defeat the forces of the central government.

Relevant to the Mishima novels I read earlier -- martial/nationlist idealism (and the politics of assasination) seemed to have been crucial to the sad story of Showa politics that directly led to so much grief in Chinese and southeast Asian history of the 20th Century. Did any of Mishima's characters (or the author himself) ever express one hint of remorse for this disaster ?

Heike Monogatari

2006-07-09T06:30:00.000-07:00

I guess this 13th C. epic is sort of an Illiad of Japanese literature -- as an endless source of subsequent retellings in theatre and fiction -- echoing right down to the present -- even Mishima's last book "Decay of the angel", as the title borrows an idea that Heike Monogatari uses several times to reference the loss of glory that is so much more poignant than glory itself.

This is a story that loves the taste of defeat ! And almost everyone gets to enjoy it -- as today's victor becomes tomorrow's loser -- and ultimately gets the opportunity to write a brief poem about their setting sun.

Just as with the poetry in "Dream of Red Chamber" -- all this poetry is lost on those of us who rely on translations -- but still I enjoy them -- like this one -- that the cloistered emperor wrote when visiting the remote hermitage of his aunt -- a daughter of the supreme Heike minister who had seen her clan -- including her imperial son -- driven from the capital and eventually annihilated at a climatic sea battle:

The Cherry Blossoms
have blown from the trees
that stand on the bank.
They are once again blooming
upon the ripples of the pond.

What's a "cloistered emperor" you might ask ? It's one of those bizarre arrangements that had to be made to accomodate the sacred-political theory that there can only be one imperial family --- with the reality that political power is developed within competing clans of ministers acting as regents -- so usually as soon an emperor becomes old enough to figure out what's happening, he is removed from public life to become a monk -- and one of his infant nephews/siblings is made emperor.

The machinations of power -- and even the great, decisive battles, are given short shrift in this style of story telling -- what's important are scenes of great sorrow -- or great bravery (but even then, it's the bravery of the loser's last stand -- not the winner's triumph) -- and what the hero was wearing to his last battle seems just as important as how he fought it.

Even the outcome of the last great power struggle of the epic ---- between Yoshitune -- the successfull general who completed the destruction of the Heike -- and his brother Yorimoto -- who doesn't seem to do anything other than gather power -- is left unreselved by the narrative (footnotes tell us that Yoshitune eventually killed himself)

What's important here is suffering -- and there's nothing better than when it's the long, drawn out, hopeless kind --- like a captive endlessly waiting for his execution. (note: lots of people are executed -- but unlike some of the gruesome scenes in China's "Three Kingdoms", nobody is tortured to death. A simple beheading suffices -- even for Shigehara, the Heike general held resposible for the worst atrocity of the era: the burning of the temples at Nara. It was suggested that he deserved all "Three thousand and five varieties of punishment" proscribed by Chinese law -- but in the end, he was only beheaded -- after plenty of time for sorrowfulful despartures from his wife, retainers, and son. Here are the final poems between him and his wife:

Shigehara:

Crying ceaselessly,
You have made these robes for me
to be worn but once
In memory of your tears
I shall never take them off

His wife:

How foolish of me
to make these new robes for you
in expectation
this change of robes means nothing
It is but our last farewell.

And it may be significant that the apparent leading villans of the piece are both essentially politicans -- not generals -- and they never taste defeat. Kiyomori, the Priest-Premier, whose arrogant behavior summoned the divine retribution that annihilated his family, died of natural causes -- or -- maybe you'd call them super-natural causes since his body got so hot, it burned those who touched him. (I guess Hell just couldn't wait ) -- and Yorimoto who was still alive, and in control, at the end of the story.

Something else to note is that history is sometimes inconvenient for epic -- the most glaring example being the flock of geese that frightened/stampeded the huge Heike army at Fuji river.

Well - clearly I'm a fan of this kind of story telling any way -- if I want to read history, I'll read history books -- but if I want to savor the poignance of defeat and loss (and what Sports fan doesn't ?) this is a treasure trove

Mishima: Decay of the Angel

2006-05-20T15:57:00.000-07:00

So this is how it feels to be held and then released from a great story --- I'm stunned ---the parade of images is over (all my own creation - as the author himself would testify)-- the story like a skein of silk threads -- some -- actually many -- I could delicately pick up and follow -- and some that just sat there -- mysterious -- incomprehensible -- maybe tedious -- maybe brilliant -- I'll never know.

How could a story about such loathsome people be so lovely ? I hear the cicadas -- I see the bright skies and dark shadows -- it was all so beautiful--- and I'm guessing that when I die -- if I get a a few last days to think it over -- I'll probably be remembering this final book and the wretched hero's final, painful climb -- following the uncertain path of a white butterfly through the cryptomeria grove -- up to the Gesshuji monastary to receive his final puzzle/revelation.

(And yes -- the angel actually did display the five signs of death/decay: soiled garments, heavy sweating, body odor, loss of self -- plus a few more alternative options)

The precise -- triumphant -- merciless -- near-fatal --- explanation of story offered by the hero's convenient, congenial neighbor --- what a way to draw a conclusion -- and what a way to dress her for this event:

"sleeves trailing to the hem of the skirt, her evening dress was beaded over its entire surface. The shifting colors and patterns of the beads from the neck down over the skirt were such as to dazzle the eye. At the bosom, the wings of a peacock in green on a gold ground, waves of purple over the sleeves, a continuous wine colored pattern down over the waist,purple waves and gold clouds on the skirt, the several boundaries marked in gold -- the white of the organdy ground set off by a threefold western pattern in silver net -- from the skirt emerging the toe of a purple satin slipper -- and at the always proud neck, an emerald Georgette stole, draped down over the shoulders and reaching to the floor -- below her hair -- cut shorter than usual -- hung earrings of gold -- her face with the frozen look of one who had more than once been served by plastic surgeons -- but the parts that still remained under her control seemed to assert themselves all the more haughtily -- the awesome eyes -- the grand nose - the lips like red-black bits of apple beginning to rot -- tortured into a yet more shining red."

Could it be that I actually empathized with the miserable protagonist ? The one who does absolutely nothing good with his life -- priveleged by health, intellligence, social position, and education ? who enables two (almost three) young men to kill themselves ? Who haunts public parks to spy on couples making love ? Who builds his house to have peep-holes ? Who has romantic feelings for only one person -- a woman a third his age -- whom he connives to have seduced (or is it raped ?)

I don't think so -- I think I'm empathizing with how the story is told --- aware of clever devices that never seem to be repeated -- aware of brisk economy in depicting action -- yet tedious redundancy in reflection --- which seems to be the way my own life proceeds.

When I began reading Mishima -- with the story of his dramatic suicide and all --- I would have said something like "what a waste" --- but now that I know him --- I'm quite sure that this strangely gifted man knew that he was never going to write any better -- or look any better -- or feel any better -- or care about anyone or anything else --- so why not sacrifice himself as the last casualty of WWII ? (i.e. Japan's final transition into the modern, Americanized world )

Sayonara -- good buddy ! Thanks for the ride.

Temple of Dawn

2006-05-11T09:27:00.000-07:00

Whew! What an exciting conclusion! Almost makes me forget all the tedious, redundant speculations/reflections of the our wretched, middle-aged, middle-class hero.
I'd like to see a statistical study of Mishima novels -- how many times the word 'death' is used -- and just as Eskimos have 20 different words for 'snow' -- I would guess that Japanese has multiple words that English translates as 'contempt'

Is it any wonder suicide is so popular in that culture of death and loathing ?

There seems to be -- what I guess -- is an accurate presentation of the Yuishiki school of Mahayana Buddhism -- where "the world is presented in the form of a waterfall - that lives and dies every moment -- it's continuity being what is called "alaya consciousness" -- that flows eternally -" in order to make the world exist" -- "so that man may find enlightenment."

It's an idea that gets repeated again -- and again --- and again --- to the utter fascination of the writer and his hero --- and the utter boredom of the reader. (a feeling I share with Kat Craft -- who loaned me these novels in the first place)

But then --- there are these moments of sheer thrill -- where the story picks up and races downhill at breakneck speed -- with each detail and point-of-view perfectly chosen and connected to on-going motifs -- and I admit -- that I found nothing so thrilling as joining the author and his hero as all three of us carefully removed the law books from the shelf in his study, and looked through that little (carefully planned) peep-hole in the wall to watch the bizarre erotic behavior in the adjoining bedroom -- my "eyes" straining -- along with that other middle-aged voyeur -- to see the convulsing flesh in the dim light against the far wall.

What's absent here are the social ideals that inform European novels -- and the idea of growth and maturity of people and social institutions. But there's also something missing from Mishima's Buddhism: compassion -- so rather than developing interest in the variety of human destinies (as Cao did in 'Red Chamber) -- Mishima only has contempt for everyone -- and his world shrinks so that none of the characters in his novels feel real -- other than himself: the great arrogant, but pathetic,
contemplator/artist/voyeur.

And yet ---- yes, I am dying to read the final installment in the tetralogy -- the last thing he wrote before plunging the knife deep into his own abdomen, and spilling his guts on the freshly polished floor.

I guess I'm as a bad a voyeur as he was.

One last thing: I just realized that, other than the protagonist, this novel is peopled more with women than men - reversing the trend of the previous two novels. The protagonist has no male friends - but he does have a wife, the conspiratory neighbor, and that poor Thai girl he's continually pursuing. The time spent with other males in the story is mercifully brief: they are so loathsome (the artsy Bangkok guide, the creepy intellectual, the brutish nephew).

Mishima: Spring Snow and Runaway Horses

2006-05-05T09:36:00.000-07:00

Tateishi Harumi, Boston Museum

Two things facinate me about these books -- First -- the subject matter - the Modernization of Japan -- an incredible event in Japanese as well as world history -- as that small country caught up with Western Europe in the space of one generation -- while China, the predominant society of east Asia if not the world -- fell into a hundred-year-nightmare of colonialism/civil war/revolution/totalitarianism. So many issues are involved : economic, internal-political, geo-political,religious, moral, spiritual, aesthetic --- and Mishima tackles them all.

The second is the sincerity of the author himself -- and what could be a better proof than seppuku -- i.e. ritual self-disembowelment -- a suicide requiring too much determination to be anything but sincere.

And maybe there's a third cause for fascination as well: the traditional obsession with craft/aesthetic that informs all the Japanese arts. Mishima is a perfectionist -- and so many scenes sparkle like a well made tea cup.

And yet ---- so much is problematical.

The characters are so shallow/self-absorbed -- there are some wonderful soliloquies (exclusively of self disgust) -- but when characters interact with each other -- it doesn't seem real -- and the novelist usually turns the reader's attention to something visual that surrounds them.

And there are really only two characters: the self-destructive hero who repeatedly kills himself from one Buddhist incarnation to another --- and his childhood friend who repeatedly enables him to do it. It feels like the novelist wants us to buy the purity, tradtional nobility, and beauty of the one -- and the modern, European rationality of the other --- but I don't. Sincere --- alright -- they and the author are sincere -- but so is a psychotic -- and why should I care about psychotics (except perhaps to admire the therapy that heals them)

And maybe most troubling: the steady decline of narrative quality -- where the
first book, Spring Snow, is utterly absorbing -- with the joys of calculated drama, accumulated tensions, revelations - and perfect dream-like images -- like the island on the lake in Matsugae park - with it's tiny waterfall and snapping turtles.

"Runaway Horses" continues the parade of images -- with a spectacular Shinto ceremony and that uber-dramatic moment under a grander waterfall - -- when the enabler identifies the reincarnation of his self-destructive friend. But then the narrative flow is destroyed by a 48-page digression into the text of the "League of the Divine Wind" --- a tract said to have been written 30 years earlier to commemorate the abortive rebellion of some Shinto priests and their idealistic young followers against the (modernist) Meiji restoration -- but obviously written in the author's (Mishima's) own voice. And following that the characters stopped being exotic/strange -- and began to appear shallow/tiresome/unreal --- as they became more precisely drawn as elements of the author's ideology -- rather than as characters that could have actually drawn breath.

Biographical information about the author confirms his progress toward suicide/spectacle with the publication of each of the 4 books in the series. First, he studies martial arts -- then he joins a military self-defense unit --- then he starts his own para-military organization. And biographers also describe his procedure of writing: stories go from his head to the paper -- from first page to last -- without revision -- in perfect penmanship.

I.e. -- as I see it -- his life progressively fails --- as his novels do-- to find a way for a man to live in a modern Japan --- and the sheer insensitivity (to the victims) of his terrorist war-mongering is as chilling as the smug hatred exemplified by the Islamic terrorists of today.

Maybe a man CAN'T live in modern society as a man (in book three, the hero reincarnates as a princess) -- and maybe all men in Confucian society are repulsive in one way or another (a possible conclusion from the "Dream of Red Chamber" -- where the author, though male, is exclusively devoted to the company of women -- with the possible exception of one cross-dressing actor)

Stay tuned for the rest of book three and four -- (as well as for the next hundred years of world hisory)

Prior Readings: other

2006-05-05T09:34:00.000-07:00

(to be posted eventually)

Prior readings: China

2006-05-05T09:33:00.000-07:00

(to be posted gradually -- as I recall them -- most recent coming first)

Carnal Prayer Mat: (18th Century) (Rou Poutuan) by Li Lu, translated by Patrick Hanan. There's no attempt at believable characters or situations in this strange Buddhist meditiation on carnality: the handsome, financially secure, brilliant young hero has two ambitions in life: to be the world's most famous poet - and to marry the world's most beautiful woman. A genuine but unconventional Buddhist monk (one who fails to either live on a mountain-interpret scripture-or beg for alms) cautions him against such lustful pursuits -- but the young can only learn by experience (how else ?) and he begins a descent into depravity -- consorting with criminals and eventually grafting the penis of a dog onto his own -- to better satisfy his adulturous consorts -- of which he begins to have many -- each more lustful than the other. Finally, his misdeeds catch up with him --- he repents his evil ways -- and castrates himself to terminate his uncontrollable apetitites. Ouch ! There's a kind of whacky hilarity about these procedings -- where the poor hero is at the mercy of his lust as well the desparate housewives who seem to want nothing more than his amazing canine cock. There's no love in this story -- but then, there aren't any ghosts either -- and I think the two go together in Chinese story telling. Perhaps it was intented to be a cautionary tale for adolescent boys.

But there are also some remarks that seem aimed at a more mature audience:

"The way to look at a woman is the same as the way you look at calligraphy or a painting. There is no need to study a scroll brushstroke by brushstroke;all you have to do is hang it up at a distance and judge its power. If it shows adequate power it is a masterpiece. If its power is blocked, and the scroll lacks vitality, it is no better than a print; however fine its brush technique, it is mere hackwork and hence useless. Now if a woman's beauty has to be examined close up to reveal itself, it will be limited at best. The qualities of a truly beautiful woman cannot be obscured, even though seen through a curtain of rain,mist, flowers, or bamboo. Even if she is glimpsed through a crack in the door, or hidden herself in the dark, a sense of her charm will emanate of its own accord, and make the observer marvel "How comes it she is like a heavenly one ? How comes it she is like a god ? If you think these qualities reside in her physical form, you are wrong. But if you think they lie outside her physical form, you are also wrong. They are beyond explanation, hence marvelous. " Was this a widely shared attitude towards quality in painting ?

The differences between this story, and the earlier, more famous erotic novel, "Golden Lotus" should also be noted -- for here the emphasis is on satisfying women, rather than the other way around.

Ssma Chien: Records of the Grand Historian. Imagine if only 2 chapters of Livy's Punic wars were available -- and that's what faces those who rely on English translations of this great historian of the early Han dynasty. Ssma was on site --- at this critical juncture in world civilization when the Chinese Confucian state was born -- and he paid for his frank observations with his manhood (the emperor -- a very competent, important leader -- had him castrated for defending a disgraced general -- and come to think of it -- Socrates nearly lost his life 300 years earlier in similar circumstances) He wrote history -- both ancient/mythological and recent/actual --- and it's his accounts of his own time -- and the triumph of the first Han emperor -- that make the most fascinating reading -- not just about who killed whom --- but also discussion of currency, flood control, and economics.