Alta Ifland's Blog: Notes on Books, page 2
February 12, 2014
Three Thrillers
Three thrillers with a political/historical background were released in English translation in 2013: The Mehlis Report by Rabee Jaber (New Directions. Translated from the Arabic by Kareem James Abu-Zeid), I Will Have Vengeance by Maurizio de Giovanni (Europa Editions. Translated from the Italian by Anne Milano Appel) and The Mongolian Conspiracy by the Mexican writer Rafael Bernal (New Directions. Translated from the Spanish by Katherine Silver). Of these three, The Mehlis Report is a thriller only for marketing purposes. Set in Beirut in 2004-2005, the novel is centered on the report drawn by the German prosecutor, Mehlis, on the assassination of the Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. While the description of Beirut is extremely vivid, and the reader can feel, on the one hand, the fear that permeates everyday life in a city ravaged by bombs, and on the other, the charm of a complex, multicultural society, the novel doesn’t really come to life. There is something stagnant about it, in spite of its premise—the anxious expectation of the report—, and the idea of having dead people contact the world of the living via cell phones is rather embarrassing (notwithstanding the author’s obvious symbolic intentions; besides, what are the dead supposed to symbolize here? I’m sure the author himself could only give a muddled answer.) This is a very uneven novel (for one thing, it probably has one of the worst beginnings in the history of literature, and I doubt that the editors of New Directions would have ever published it had it been written by an American writer), a novel with potential, but maybe the author, who already wrote fifteen novels before reaching forty, should have taken more than just a few months to write it.
Set in the 1930s, during the Fascist era in Italy, I Will Have Vengeance moves beyond the classical form of the thriller. It is evident that the author has not only commercial aspirations, but also literary, and to some degree he succeeds. The victim being a famous opera singer, the novel includes reflections on music, art, love, and social injustice. The title itself, “I Will Have Vengeance,” is from one of the operas performed by the victim—though I wonder why the translator (or the publisher?) didn’t use the literal translation of “Io voglio sangue,” “I want blood,” which is stronger and more compelling. As in The Mehlis Report, there is a “paranormal” element in this otherwise serious book, which, as far as I am concerned, infuses these books with a layer of kitsch: here, the detective can see dead people from his past talking to him and giving him clues about the crime. Luckily, there is a twist at the end, and although the crime is indeed, motivated by “passion,” the reason is slightly more complicated.
The Mongolian Conspiracy is the closest to a traditional thriller, which, in theory, should make it the least literary; in fact, it is the best from all points of view: written in a highly economical style, witty, politically astute, with an existentialist touch at the end. The original was published in 1969, at the height of Sartre’s fame, of whom this reply is reminiscent: “When you kill…you are forever condemned to solitude.” The reply belongs to the protagonist, a hired gunman, and it is addressed to his former employer. The background is the cold war, and the premise the potential assassination of the American president during his visit to Mexico. But the twist at the end, very intelligent, takes us in a very different direction.
Set in the 1930s, during the Fascist era in Italy, I Will Have Vengeance moves beyond the classical form of the thriller. It is evident that the author has not only commercial aspirations, but also literary, and to some degree he succeeds. The victim being a famous opera singer, the novel includes reflections on music, art, love, and social injustice. The title itself, “I Will Have Vengeance,” is from one of the operas performed by the victim—though I wonder why the translator (or the publisher?) didn’t use the literal translation of “Io voglio sangue,” “I want blood,” which is stronger and more compelling. As in The Mehlis Report, there is a “paranormal” element in this otherwise serious book, which, as far as I am concerned, infuses these books with a layer of kitsch: here, the detective can see dead people from his past talking to him and giving him clues about the crime. Luckily, there is a twist at the end, and although the crime is indeed, motivated by “passion,” the reason is slightly more complicated.
The Mongolian Conspiracy is the closest to a traditional thriller, which, in theory, should make it the least literary; in fact, it is the best from all points of view: written in a highly economical style, witty, politically astute, with an existentialist touch at the end. The original was published in 1969, at the height of Sartre’s fame, of whom this reply is reminiscent: “When you kill…you are forever condemned to solitude.” The reply belongs to the protagonist, a hired gunman, and it is addressed to his former employer. The background is the cold war, and the premise the potential assassination of the American president during his visit to Mexico. But the twist at the end, very intelligent, takes us in a very different direction.
January 2, 2014
The Time Regulation Institute by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar (Penguin Classics, 2013)
More than fifty years after its publication in Turkey and its author’s death, the 400-page novel The Time Regulation Institute by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar is available in English for the first time. Let me start by praising its translators, Maureen Freely and Alexander Dawe, who, judging from the novel’s intricate content and stylistic complexity, have had to overcome tremendous difficulties, and have done it brilliantly. This novel is a masterpiece not only in Turkish, but also in English, which means that the translators deserve as much praise as the original author.
Because of its numerous subplots, it’s very hard to summarize this novel, but let me try: at the beginning, the narrator, Hayri Irdal, reveals that his life has taken a different turn when he met “his benefactor,” Halit Ayarci, and became associated with the “Time Regulation Institute.” After this revelation, the narrative switches back to the narrator’s childhood. As a child, he was fascinated with watches and clocks, and was lucky enough to learn everything about them from one of those wise men of humble origins that any neighborhood used to have in the old days: Nuri Efendi. The descriptions of various types of watches and clocks are among the most beautiful pages in the book, lyrical and funny at the same time, infused with nostalgia for outmoded mechanics/technology and insights on different views of time. The grandfather clock that the narrator’s family owns, ironically called “the Blessed One,” plays an important part—among other things, it serves as a virtual prop when the narrator undergoes psychoanalysis with Dr. Ramiz.
How did Hayri—a poor, simple man—come to be psychoanalyzed? Well, he was taken to court because he was accused of having stolen a diamond (a diamond that didn’t really exist) and in order to determine whether or not he was sane, the court sent him to a doctor, who, as luck would have it, had studied in Vienna. It was Dr. Ramiz who later introduced Hayri to his circle of friends in a bohemian café, and through some of them Hayri became involved with the “Spiritualist Society.” Although Tanpinar satirizes these circles and fads that were fashionable in the first half of the twentieth century in Europe, the satire is colorful and humorous, and the people described are very charming; far from being moralized, the reader is drawn into a magical world.
The “Time Regulation Institute” is the creation of Halit Ayarci, the prototype of the modern man who believes that work necessarily takes places in an office and that anyone who performs “real work” has, or should have, a modern (that is, “regulated”) vision of time. Western readers may not necessarily recognize in this institute an allegory of bureaucratic societies, especially since its hundreds of employees don’t do anything (as absurd as modern societies may be, they do appreciate one thing: efficiency!). Every once in a while some important official (such as the mayor) drops by to visit this important institute whose function is to make sure that all the watches and clocks in the city are set properly. It should be added, though, that the satire (or allegory, as some critics have called it) is very complex, and that Tanpinar is too good a writer to give us simply a black and white image. He is a master stylist, and The Time Regulation Institute is one of the most beautifully written and interesting novels of mid-twentieth-century (when it was first published).
Because of its numerous subplots, it’s very hard to summarize this novel, but let me try: at the beginning, the narrator, Hayri Irdal, reveals that his life has taken a different turn when he met “his benefactor,” Halit Ayarci, and became associated with the “Time Regulation Institute.” After this revelation, the narrative switches back to the narrator’s childhood. As a child, he was fascinated with watches and clocks, and was lucky enough to learn everything about them from one of those wise men of humble origins that any neighborhood used to have in the old days: Nuri Efendi. The descriptions of various types of watches and clocks are among the most beautiful pages in the book, lyrical and funny at the same time, infused with nostalgia for outmoded mechanics/technology and insights on different views of time. The grandfather clock that the narrator’s family owns, ironically called “the Blessed One,” plays an important part—among other things, it serves as a virtual prop when the narrator undergoes psychoanalysis with Dr. Ramiz.
How did Hayri—a poor, simple man—come to be psychoanalyzed? Well, he was taken to court because he was accused of having stolen a diamond (a diamond that didn’t really exist) and in order to determine whether or not he was sane, the court sent him to a doctor, who, as luck would have it, had studied in Vienna. It was Dr. Ramiz who later introduced Hayri to his circle of friends in a bohemian café, and through some of them Hayri became involved with the “Spiritualist Society.” Although Tanpinar satirizes these circles and fads that were fashionable in the first half of the twentieth century in Europe, the satire is colorful and humorous, and the people described are very charming; far from being moralized, the reader is drawn into a magical world.
The “Time Regulation Institute” is the creation of Halit Ayarci, the prototype of the modern man who believes that work necessarily takes places in an office and that anyone who performs “real work” has, or should have, a modern (that is, “regulated”) vision of time. Western readers may not necessarily recognize in this institute an allegory of bureaucratic societies, especially since its hundreds of employees don’t do anything (as absurd as modern societies may be, they do appreciate one thing: efficiency!). Every once in a while some important official (such as the mayor) drops by to visit this important institute whose function is to make sure that all the watches and clocks in the city are set properly. It should be added, though, that the satire (or allegory, as some critics have called it) is very complex, and that Tanpinar is too good a writer to give us simply a black and white image. He is a master stylist, and The Time Regulation Institute is one of the most beautifully written and interesting novels of mid-twentieth-century (when it was first published).
December 23, 2013
The New York Stories by John O’Hara (Penguin Classics, 2013)
Most of O Hara’s stories have been published in The New Yorker, giving birth to a certain type of story that we now associate with the magazine. Though I am not a fan of this type of story, I find O’Hara’s stories among the most entertaining I’ve ever read.
Having worked as a journalist, the skills accumulated while reporting real facts have served him well and have helped him create punchy, fact-based stories often inspired by overheard conversations. An O’Hara story is often like a play, in that the setting is circumscribed, the period of time in which the events take place is very short (a day or even a few hours), and it sometimes starts and/or ends with dialogue. O’Hara’s characters are from all the walks of life—bartenders, showgirls, cops, doctors, widows (more or less wealthy), drunks, actors—and one can tell that he has a deep knowledge of all the American class structures. But the most idiosyncratic characteristic of his stories is that his characters are defined by/through their voices and way of speaking. His dialogues are so vivid and life-like, that even when you don’t know almost anything about his characters, you can see them. Some of the stories in this collection are nothing more than dialogues between a husband and a wife, or a man and a woman who have just met—but they draw you in from the first line. One of O’Hara’s techniques is to start a story in the middle of an ongoing dialogue, which makes the reader curious to find out the missing piece of information. Another technique is an intriguing, mysterious ending.
Some examples of O’Hara beginnings: “The alarm clock went off and she did not remember setting it.” (“The Assistant); “The famous actress went to the window and gazed down at the snow-covered park.” (“Can I Stay Here?”); “Miller was putting his key in the lock.” (“Good-Bye, Herman”); and some endings: “She knew it [her lawyer’s phone number] by heart.” (“The Assistant”); “‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Me’.” (“It’s Mental Work”).
Having worked as a journalist, the skills accumulated while reporting real facts have served him well and have helped him create punchy, fact-based stories often inspired by overheard conversations. An O’Hara story is often like a play, in that the setting is circumscribed, the period of time in which the events take place is very short (a day or even a few hours), and it sometimes starts and/or ends with dialogue. O’Hara’s characters are from all the walks of life—bartenders, showgirls, cops, doctors, widows (more or less wealthy), drunks, actors—and one can tell that he has a deep knowledge of all the American class structures. But the most idiosyncratic characteristic of his stories is that his characters are defined by/through their voices and way of speaking. His dialogues are so vivid and life-like, that even when you don’t know almost anything about his characters, you can see them. Some of the stories in this collection are nothing more than dialogues between a husband and a wife, or a man and a woman who have just met—but they draw you in from the first line. One of O’Hara’s techniques is to start a story in the middle of an ongoing dialogue, which makes the reader curious to find out the missing piece of information. Another technique is an intriguing, mysterious ending.
Some examples of O’Hara beginnings: “The alarm clock went off and she did not remember setting it.” (“The Assistant); “The famous actress went to the window and gazed down at the snow-covered park.” (“Can I Stay Here?”); “Miller was putting his key in the lock.” (“Good-Bye, Herman”); and some endings: “She knew it [her lawyer’s phone number] by heart.” (“The Assistant”); “‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Me’.” (“It’s Mental Work”).
December 17, 2013
My Top Ten Fiction Books for 2013
(These are books I read in 2013; they were not necessarily published this year.)
1. The Golden Calf by Ilya Ilf and Yevgeni Petrov (Russians)
2. The Singapore Grip by J. G. Farrell (British)
3. The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante (Italian)
4. There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister s Husband and He Hanged Himself by Ludmila Petrushevskaya (Russian)
5. The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim (British)
6. The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson (British)
7. The Canvas by Benjamin Stein (German)
8. The New York Stories by John O'Hara (American)
9. The Door by Magda Szabó (Hungarian)
10. Almost Never by Daniel Sada (Mexican)
]
1. The Golden Calf by Ilya Ilf and Yevgeni Petrov (Russians)
2. The Singapore Grip by J. G. Farrell (British)
3. The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante (Italian)
4. There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister s Husband and He Hanged Himself by Ludmila Petrushevskaya (Russian)
5. The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim (British)
6. The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson (British)
7. The Canvas by Benjamin Stein (German)
8. The New York Stories by John O'Hara (American)
9. The Door by Magda Szabó (Hungarian)
10. Almost Never by Daniel Sada (Mexican)
]
October 8, 2013
Ben Miller, River Bend Chronicle. The Junkification of a Boyhood Idyll amid the Curious Glory of Urban Iowa
This review was first published in The American Book Review:
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/american...
Before reading Ben Miller’s River Bend Chronicle, I never thought a memoir about growing up in Iowa (I confess: I am a snob when it comes to geography!) would hold my attention for more than a few pages, never mind keep me spellbound for 457 pages. But great works of art have the magical power of transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary.
This is not to say that the Millers are an “ordinary” family; in fact, they are as eccentric as it gets. While presenting an American family that epitomizes, through its rituals and habits, the American experience of the seventies, the author infuses the narrative fabric with a potion that elevates the ordinariness to the level of Myth—the Myth of a family that rises and falls (well, mostly falls and falls) like characters in a Greek tragedy, but without their nobility. The Millers make me think of the characters in Grant Wood’s "American Gothic," whose excessive Americanness pushes their “commonness” beyond any ordinary limits, making them veer into the grotesque. For the Millers, and in particular the Mother, who is one of the strongest literary characters I’ve come across in contemporary American literature, are grotesque. The Mother is described with a cruelty that reminds me of Céline (though the narrator’s pain and vulnerability, hidden behind his cruelty, are absent in Céline). What a woman: a feminist, a law school graduate who quotes great poets as she goes through her daily routine, who watches the most “capitalist” shows on TV (“The Price is Right”), dresses like a homeless person, treats her children to the greasiest fast-food diners in town, and shops at Target and Kmart, all the while ranting against American materialism. The Mother’s pilgrimages to various chain stores where she drinks several cups of free coffee and buys whatever is on sale make her into one of the saddest paradoxes of rebellion against what she, or any of us, could call American consumerism. What is the point of rebelling against consumerism if it turns you into the most abject beggar for its leftovers? And if it means taking your favorite offspring, Ben, to ritualistic trips to “Big Boy” for the most disgusting, high-calorie meals imaginable? The description of these trips is memorable in its morbidity:
The waist-high catacomb of the large orange booth culminating in the Plexiglas casket of the salad bar, lemon JELL-O halo and charnel bacon bits and aluminum soup kettle coated with black plastic. Husbands and wives stared at uneaten fries, unable to think of a civil word to say, or any word. […] Couple of all types, but mired in a similar swamp of surreal ordinariness.
A “surreal ordinariness”—this is the element that infuses much of the Millers’ world.
The Father, on the other hand, is closer to the image of the father many of us share: a man in a chair reading a newspaper. But he too has a darker, Millerian, side: a failed writer, author of several unpublished novels. Not only that: he is a practicing attorney, albeit an attorney with no clients and whose legal files are rotting in boxes kept outside. And this is where the narrative is hard to comprehend: both parents have law degrees and literary aspirations, but they live, and force their six children to live, like white trash in a trailer.
Of the six children, Ben is the oldest, followed by Elizabeth, Howard, Marianna, Nathan and Nanette. Elizabeth is the most ambitious, and up to a certain age the closest to her brother, with whom she makes an oath to become a writer. While Elizabeth’s ticket out of the Miller circle is her studies, Marianna uses her looks for the same purpose. She insinuates herself into the households of rich friends, spending as much time as she can away from her family, while her mother and Ben regularly attempt to “rescue” her. These “rescue” missions are tragicomic, as the Mother awaits in the car the return of the teenage son sent to talk to the hosts and convince the rebellious, prepubescent sister to return home. It is hard to come to terms with the image of the Mother reading poetry in the car, as the teenage son tries to play the adult.
Of all the images symbolizing the madness of the Millers, the junk stands out. The Millers are drowning in, and are surrounded by, junk (another irony of the Mother’s fight against materialism!), and when a neighbor asks Ben to pick up some of the litter heaped against their fence (“a dense moat of crap”), we get a glimpse of the apocalyptic landscape:
I found Pillsbury biscuits that had petrified Pompeii-style, […] the geology of a fruitcake, Totino’s pizza slices maggots considered inedible, freezer bags coated with tater tot crumbs, a Hefty bag containing the mildewed dregs from the snack mix that had been dinner for a week in April […].
The list goes on for several pages and includes, besides food and various boxes, “loads and loads of antique mail,” “three toilet seat covers,” documents from the father’s legal files, a plastic Pamper, postcards: “Can’t sit, might get buried alive by mother crap, father crap, brother crap, sister crap, uncle crap, aunt crap, grandpa crap, granny crap, and foulest of all—your own crap, reeking of ammonia and monosodium glutamate.”
Speaking of “your own crap,” the funniest anecdote in the book, a masterpiece of the tragicomic, involves shit. Again, I am reminded of Céline, whose narrator in Journey at the End of the Night, has his butt covered in crusts of dried shit. But Ben Miller is funnier. As a teenager, Ben plays the cello—though, in fact, he mostly pretends he plays—in the school orchestra. Once, he finds himself at a rehearsal in a dire situation: he absolutely needs to go to the bathroom but cannot, not only because it would mean interrupting the rehearsal, but also because in the very narrow space he would run the risk of denting some of the fine instruments around him. So he tries to “hold it:”
It was like I was going to do it, hold it, and avert. My gritted yellow teeth. My elbows pinned to my sides. My tennies braced against the linoleum. I could do it. I could hold it. But then a number of negative factors came into play […]. It happened. I dropped the Load in my corduroy pants in the practice room at Eisenhower Elementary School […]. Without so much as a stutter step, Bach blended with the waste of me and my waste with Bach’s artistry. It was turning cold and sticky and colder and stickier. I lifted my arms at wing angles to aid the drying process below the belt loops […]. It helped […]. It was my greatest performance ever […].
In this excerpt, as in many others, Ben Miller is as unsparing with himself as he is with his mother. This lack of self-pity and, more than anything, the style, which at times has Joycean echoes, make this memoir much more than a story of how to find the light at the end of the tunnel—though it is a story about light and darkness. At the beginning of the book, the way much of the darkness is conveyed is ambiguous: the Mother has the habit of caressing her favorite son, Ben, before he goes to sleep (nothing strange in that, though her stories of abduction and child abuse that accompany her caresses are a little odd); but when fourteen-year-old Ben decides to starve himself, and from a 215-pound boy he turns, in a few months, into a skeleton by eating 580 calories a day, the reader begins to suspect that the bedroom caresses might have been less innocent than initially suggested. The suspicion is confirmed at the end, where we find out that after Ben’s confrontation with his parents and a letter to his siblings, the Mother has stopped speaking to him.
Although the Mother is the most striking character in this book, the main character, besides the narrator, is probably Mr. Hickey. Mr. Hickey is the Millers’ neighbor, and nothing much can be said about him in a summary except that he was always there with a cup of tea and some cookies. And the sensitive boy who was his neighbor and who dreamed of becoming a writer needed desperately to have someone there for him. Another thing that can be said about Mr. Hickey is that he always wore a bowtie and carried a gun to protect himself from potential robbers. When Mr. Hickey died, Ben Miller inherited all his ties, and, if you do a Google search, you can see him reading in one of the (now immortal) bowties. You can look at him in his theatrical attire and speculate about the degree of irony that might (or might not) accompany his disguise. But you’ll never guess that behind that mask hides one of the best contemporary American writers.
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/american...
Before reading Ben Miller’s River Bend Chronicle, I never thought a memoir about growing up in Iowa (I confess: I am a snob when it comes to geography!) would hold my attention for more than a few pages, never mind keep me spellbound for 457 pages. But great works of art have the magical power of transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary.
This is not to say that the Millers are an “ordinary” family; in fact, they are as eccentric as it gets. While presenting an American family that epitomizes, through its rituals and habits, the American experience of the seventies, the author infuses the narrative fabric with a potion that elevates the ordinariness to the level of Myth—the Myth of a family that rises and falls (well, mostly falls and falls) like characters in a Greek tragedy, but without their nobility. The Millers make me think of the characters in Grant Wood’s "American Gothic," whose excessive Americanness pushes their “commonness” beyond any ordinary limits, making them veer into the grotesque. For the Millers, and in particular the Mother, who is one of the strongest literary characters I’ve come across in contemporary American literature, are grotesque. The Mother is described with a cruelty that reminds me of Céline (though the narrator’s pain and vulnerability, hidden behind his cruelty, are absent in Céline). What a woman: a feminist, a law school graduate who quotes great poets as she goes through her daily routine, who watches the most “capitalist” shows on TV (“The Price is Right”), dresses like a homeless person, treats her children to the greasiest fast-food diners in town, and shops at Target and Kmart, all the while ranting against American materialism. The Mother’s pilgrimages to various chain stores where she drinks several cups of free coffee and buys whatever is on sale make her into one of the saddest paradoxes of rebellion against what she, or any of us, could call American consumerism. What is the point of rebelling against consumerism if it turns you into the most abject beggar for its leftovers? And if it means taking your favorite offspring, Ben, to ritualistic trips to “Big Boy” for the most disgusting, high-calorie meals imaginable? The description of these trips is memorable in its morbidity:
The waist-high catacomb of the large orange booth culminating in the Plexiglas casket of the salad bar, lemon JELL-O halo and charnel bacon bits and aluminum soup kettle coated with black plastic. Husbands and wives stared at uneaten fries, unable to think of a civil word to say, or any word. […] Couple of all types, but mired in a similar swamp of surreal ordinariness.
A “surreal ordinariness”—this is the element that infuses much of the Millers’ world.
The Father, on the other hand, is closer to the image of the father many of us share: a man in a chair reading a newspaper. But he too has a darker, Millerian, side: a failed writer, author of several unpublished novels. Not only that: he is a practicing attorney, albeit an attorney with no clients and whose legal files are rotting in boxes kept outside. And this is where the narrative is hard to comprehend: both parents have law degrees and literary aspirations, but they live, and force their six children to live, like white trash in a trailer.
Of the six children, Ben is the oldest, followed by Elizabeth, Howard, Marianna, Nathan and Nanette. Elizabeth is the most ambitious, and up to a certain age the closest to her brother, with whom she makes an oath to become a writer. While Elizabeth’s ticket out of the Miller circle is her studies, Marianna uses her looks for the same purpose. She insinuates herself into the households of rich friends, spending as much time as she can away from her family, while her mother and Ben regularly attempt to “rescue” her. These “rescue” missions are tragicomic, as the Mother awaits in the car the return of the teenage son sent to talk to the hosts and convince the rebellious, prepubescent sister to return home. It is hard to come to terms with the image of the Mother reading poetry in the car, as the teenage son tries to play the adult.
Of all the images symbolizing the madness of the Millers, the junk stands out. The Millers are drowning in, and are surrounded by, junk (another irony of the Mother’s fight against materialism!), and when a neighbor asks Ben to pick up some of the litter heaped against their fence (“a dense moat of crap”), we get a glimpse of the apocalyptic landscape:
I found Pillsbury biscuits that had petrified Pompeii-style, […] the geology of a fruitcake, Totino’s pizza slices maggots considered inedible, freezer bags coated with tater tot crumbs, a Hefty bag containing the mildewed dregs from the snack mix that had been dinner for a week in April […].
The list goes on for several pages and includes, besides food and various boxes, “loads and loads of antique mail,” “three toilet seat covers,” documents from the father’s legal files, a plastic Pamper, postcards: “Can’t sit, might get buried alive by mother crap, father crap, brother crap, sister crap, uncle crap, aunt crap, grandpa crap, granny crap, and foulest of all—your own crap, reeking of ammonia and monosodium glutamate.”
Speaking of “your own crap,” the funniest anecdote in the book, a masterpiece of the tragicomic, involves shit. Again, I am reminded of Céline, whose narrator in Journey at the End of the Night, has his butt covered in crusts of dried shit. But Ben Miller is funnier. As a teenager, Ben plays the cello—though, in fact, he mostly pretends he plays—in the school orchestra. Once, he finds himself at a rehearsal in a dire situation: he absolutely needs to go to the bathroom but cannot, not only because it would mean interrupting the rehearsal, but also because in the very narrow space he would run the risk of denting some of the fine instruments around him. So he tries to “hold it:”
It was like I was going to do it, hold it, and avert. My gritted yellow teeth. My elbows pinned to my sides. My tennies braced against the linoleum. I could do it. I could hold it. But then a number of negative factors came into play […]. It happened. I dropped the Load in my corduroy pants in the practice room at Eisenhower Elementary School […]. Without so much as a stutter step, Bach blended with the waste of me and my waste with Bach’s artistry. It was turning cold and sticky and colder and stickier. I lifted my arms at wing angles to aid the drying process below the belt loops […]. It helped […]. It was my greatest performance ever […].
In this excerpt, as in many others, Ben Miller is as unsparing with himself as he is with his mother. This lack of self-pity and, more than anything, the style, which at times has Joycean echoes, make this memoir much more than a story of how to find the light at the end of the tunnel—though it is a story about light and darkness. At the beginning of the book, the way much of the darkness is conveyed is ambiguous: the Mother has the habit of caressing her favorite son, Ben, before he goes to sleep (nothing strange in that, though her stories of abduction and child abuse that accompany her caresses are a little odd); but when fourteen-year-old Ben decides to starve himself, and from a 215-pound boy he turns, in a few months, into a skeleton by eating 580 calories a day, the reader begins to suspect that the bedroom caresses might have been less innocent than initially suggested. The suspicion is confirmed at the end, where we find out that after Ben’s confrontation with his parents and a letter to his siblings, the Mother has stopped speaking to him.
Although the Mother is the most striking character in this book, the main character, besides the narrator, is probably Mr. Hickey. Mr. Hickey is the Millers’ neighbor, and nothing much can be said about him in a summary except that he was always there with a cup of tea and some cookies. And the sensitive boy who was his neighbor and who dreamed of becoming a writer needed desperately to have someone there for him. Another thing that can be said about Mr. Hickey is that he always wore a bowtie and carried a gun to protect himself from potential robbers. When Mr. Hickey died, Ben Miller inherited all his ties, and, if you do a Google search, you can see him reading in one of the (now immortal) bowties. You can look at him in his theatrical attire and speculate about the degree of irony that might (or might not) accompany his disguise. But you’ll never guess that behind that mask hides one of the best contemporary American writers.
June 14, 2013
Daniel Stein, Interpreter. By Ludmila Ulitskaya (Trans. from the Russian by Arch Tait. Overlook Press, 2011).
According to the publisher, Lyudmila Ulitskaya’s novel, Daniel Stein Interpreter (published in the original in 2006), is “seen by many as the great Russian novel of our time.” Such a generous description may enlarge the number of readers, but it also runs the risk of raising the expectations too high. Personally, I might have enjoyed the novel more if I hadn’t read it with the constant hope that some great revelation will occur at some point (it didn’t).
My feelings about the novel have remained ambivalent from the beginning to the end. On the one hand, I admired the writer’s ambitious project, as she built a mosaic made of dozens of fragments (i.e., all the characters, each bringing his/her own perspective and story to the Greater Story of Israel). Structurally, the novel is very interesting and daring: written without a unifying “I,” it is a polyphonic novel made of multiple voices, and, although there is a voice that is stronger than the others—that of Brother Daniel, based on a real person—in the end, all the voices mingle to create a unique, hymn-like tapestry. Even the author appears with her own name at the end of each part—the novel has five parts—in a letter that addresses both her personal situation at that particular moment and her difficulties in putting together the novel. Indeed, most of the novel is made of letters written by different characters, or (tape) recordings of conversations between them, or speeches made by Brother Daniel on various occasions, in which he narrates his incredible life as a Polish Jew who worked as an interpreter for both the Gestapo and the NKVD (the Soviet secret police), trying in the process to save as many lives as possible, and who, eventually, converted to Catholicism and moved to Israel.
But a novel with as many voices as this one is not easy to write, and this is where the writer comes short. Many of the voices sound the same, and some, in particular the American characters, are quite implausible. When Alex, an American teenager, informs his mother in writing that he is gay, and uses words like “bound by such vital passion,” the implausibility reaches such peaks that it’s almost comical. Some negative reviews of the novel have mentioned its “flat tone,” but I would rather describe the tone as restrained, and the style as paralleling in its asceticism Brother Daniel’s monastic life. There is a certain serenity that comes off the page, and this is no doubt because the simplicity of the style matches the content of the descriptions. And then, there are the numerous, long paragraphs in which various characters reflect on Judaism and Christianity, which I found intelligent and informative, but others might find tedious. All in all, this is an impressive historical document (indeed, not only Brother Daniel, but other characters have existed, or still do, in real life), but I am not sure it is a very successful novel. The main problem stems from its very premise: Brother Daniel is conceived as a model of humanity, and the entire novel, starting with the author’s foreword, reinforces this idea, as well as its corollary, the necessity of tolerance and understanding between people. I’m all for tolerance and understanding, but I don’t know of any great work of literature based on such an unambiguous, let’s-all-hold-hands kind of message. Ambiguity is (at) the heart of literature, and it is not an accident that the novel’s most vivid character is the least “positive” or “inspiring:” Rita Kowacz, the inflexible Communist and bad mother, who became a Protestant before dying.
My feelings about the novel have remained ambivalent from the beginning to the end. On the one hand, I admired the writer’s ambitious project, as she built a mosaic made of dozens of fragments (i.e., all the characters, each bringing his/her own perspective and story to the Greater Story of Israel). Structurally, the novel is very interesting and daring: written without a unifying “I,” it is a polyphonic novel made of multiple voices, and, although there is a voice that is stronger than the others—that of Brother Daniel, based on a real person—in the end, all the voices mingle to create a unique, hymn-like tapestry. Even the author appears with her own name at the end of each part—the novel has five parts—in a letter that addresses both her personal situation at that particular moment and her difficulties in putting together the novel. Indeed, most of the novel is made of letters written by different characters, or (tape) recordings of conversations between them, or speeches made by Brother Daniel on various occasions, in which he narrates his incredible life as a Polish Jew who worked as an interpreter for both the Gestapo and the NKVD (the Soviet secret police), trying in the process to save as many lives as possible, and who, eventually, converted to Catholicism and moved to Israel.
But a novel with as many voices as this one is not easy to write, and this is where the writer comes short. Many of the voices sound the same, and some, in particular the American characters, are quite implausible. When Alex, an American teenager, informs his mother in writing that he is gay, and uses words like “bound by such vital passion,” the implausibility reaches such peaks that it’s almost comical. Some negative reviews of the novel have mentioned its “flat tone,” but I would rather describe the tone as restrained, and the style as paralleling in its asceticism Brother Daniel’s monastic life. There is a certain serenity that comes off the page, and this is no doubt because the simplicity of the style matches the content of the descriptions. And then, there are the numerous, long paragraphs in which various characters reflect on Judaism and Christianity, which I found intelligent and informative, but others might find tedious. All in all, this is an impressive historical document (indeed, not only Brother Daniel, but other characters have existed, or still do, in real life), but I am not sure it is a very successful novel. The main problem stems from its very premise: Brother Daniel is conceived as a model of humanity, and the entire novel, starting with the author’s foreword, reinforces this idea, as well as its corollary, the necessity of tolerance and understanding between people. I’m all for tolerance and understanding, but I don’t know of any great work of literature based on such an unambiguous, let’s-all-hold-hands kind of message. Ambiguity is (at) the heart of literature, and it is not an accident that the novel’s most vivid character is the least “positive” or “inspiring:” Rita Kowacz, the inflexible Communist and bad mother, who became a Protestant before dying.
April 25, 2013
The Fat Years by Chan Koonchung (Anchor Books, 2013. Trans. from the Chinese by Michael S. Duke)
Chan Koonchung—who was raised in Hong Kong, has studied in Boston, worked for many years as a successful journalist/editor, and now lives in Beijing—knows what Westerners go for, so he has packaged a novel with all the necessary ingredients: references to the Tiananmen Square massacre, a succinct compilation of the most important events in 20th century Chinese history—this alone is evidence of the audience the author had in mind, as one would only do that for a foreign audience—and criticism of China’s “Golden Age of Ascendency.” There isn’t a cheaper way to success than giving people what they want, and Chan Koonchung knows exactly what a Western, in particular an American audience, wants to hear about China.
The novel’s premise isn’t bad, but to compare it with Orwell, as it has been done, or to call it a satire, when you can’t find a grain of wit or irony in it just shows how gullible Western readers are. The translation may be partially responsible for the cardboard atmosphere, but the main culprit is, no doubt, the author. From the get-go this is a book for fast-food lovers (read: lovers of preprocessed cultural experiences), and this is a novel written as if the author had a list with points to check, all based on market research: does he need a reference to English-language literature? Jane Austen. A reference to French culture? [insert name of] French red wine.
I can see why this novel has gotten so much attention: if you are an American businessman or journalist obsessed with the ascendance of China, this novel contains a lot of interesting information about contemporary China, without being too alienating in its cultural references, which are all carefully selected. But if you are actually interested in literature—after all, this book claims to be a novel—look for something else. The worst thing about this book, however, is not its bad writing and preprocessed message, but the fact that a product conceived in the most abject Capitalist style (that is, by conforming to the expectations of the largest possible market) can actually fool people by pretending that it’s the opposite of what it is.
The novel’s premise isn’t bad, but to compare it with Orwell, as it has been done, or to call it a satire, when you can’t find a grain of wit or irony in it just shows how gullible Western readers are. The translation may be partially responsible for the cardboard atmosphere, but the main culprit is, no doubt, the author. From the get-go this is a book for fast-food lovers (read: lovers of preprocessed cultural experiences), and this is a novel written as if the author had a list with points to check, all based on market research: does he need a reference to English-language literature? Jane Austen. A reference to French culture? [insert name of] French red wine.
I can see why this novel has gotten so much attention: if you are an American businessman or journalist obsessed with the ascendance of China, this novel contains a lot of interesting information about contemporary China, without being too alienating in its cultural references, which are all carefully selected. But if you are actually interested in literature—after all, this book claims to be a novel—look for something else. The worst thing about this book, however, is not its bad writing and preprocessed message, but the fact that a product conceived in the most abject Capitalist style (that is, by conforming to the expectations of the largest possible market) can actually fool people by pretending that it’s the opposite of what it is.
April 23, 2013
Some thoughts on Mikhail Shishkin
On April 4th the Center for the Art of Translation in San Francisco presented a discussion moderated by Scott Esposito with the Russian writer Mikhail Shishkin, and his American translator, Marian Schwartz. Shishkin, who is considered one of the major contemporary writers (and not only in Russia), is a charming, intelligent interlocutor. He now lives in Switzerland, where he worked for several years as an interpreter. It is very important for a writer, Shishkin said, to live abroad because otherwise it’s like living in a house without mirrors. Then, he added that if he could, he would make it obligatory for everybody to live abroad for several years. In other words: one needs to live abroad in order to see himself and his compatriots with the eyes of another. Since in the case of a writer, the experience of physical dislocation becomes entangled with that of linguistic estrangement, this experience has made Shishkin “understand that to write means to create language.” “A writer resurrects dead words,” Shishkin said. The words that we normally take for granted are, as it were, dead, and it’s only when we move away from them—and what better way of moving away than living abroad, in a foreign language?—that we can give them back their freshness.
The discussion continued with a more political topic: Shishkin has recently made public his decision not to represent Russia at this year’s BEA in New York (where Russia is a guest) because he doesn’t want to “be the human face of Putin’s regime.” His decision has created, apparently, a big controversy in Russia. Shishkin ended his comments with a revealing point about Russian culture, in which there has always been a dichotomy between the Tsar and the Poet: “The Poet always wins!”
I bought a copy of his 506-page novel, Maidenhair. As I write this, I am at page 258, and I can honestly say I may not finish it. Let me make this clear: this is a very good novel, and as far as I can tell, the translation does it justice. But it is also a very complex and complicated novel (poor Scott Esposito stated a few times during their discussion that the novel was difficult, and the author interrupted him abruptly with a, “No, it is not difficult!”) and it demands a lot of patience. The novel moves between interviews with Russian and former Soviet citizens who are trying to get political asylum in Switzerland, and the diary of a Russian singer from early 20th century, whose biography the interpreter once considered writing (as Shishkin, the protagonist is an interpreter of Russian origin). Also, in between, we have scenes from the interpreter’s personal life (narrated to a mysterious “Nebuchadnezzasaurus”—a very puzzling character until a minute ago when I read the back cover and discovered that he is the interpreter’s son!). What complicates all these intermingled stories is that the present is sometimes written from the perspective of the past, that is, various characters from the present are presented are characters in a Persian war, so in the end, it’s hard to tell who’s who. But this should not deter you from reading (and finishing) this amazing novel. I have two huge piles of books I have to read in the next few months, and alas, only one life.
The discussion continued with a more political topic: Shishkin has recently made public his decision not to represent Russia at this year’s BEA in New York (where Russia is a guest) because he doesn’t want to “be the human face of Putin’s regime.” His decision has created, apparently, a big controversy in Russia. Shishkin ended his comments with a revealing point about Russian culture, in which there has always been a dichotomy between the Tsar and the Poet: “The Poet always wins!”
I bought a copy of his 506-page novel, Maidenhair. As I write this, I am at page 258, and I can honestly say I may not finish it. Let me make this clear: this is a very good novel, and as far as I can tell, the translation does it justice. But it is also a very complex and complicated novel (poor Scott Esposito stated a few times during their discussion that the novel was difficult, and the author interrupted him abruptly with a, “No, it is not difficult!”) and it demands a lot of patience. The novel moves between interviews with Russian and former Soviet citizens who are trying to get political asylum in Switzerland, and the diary of a Russian singer from early 20th century, whose biography the interpreter once considered writing (as Shishkin, the protagonist is an interpreter of Russian origin). Also, in between, we have scenes from the interpreter’s personal life (narrated to a mysterious “Nebuchadnezzasaurus”—a very puzzling character until a minute ago when I read the back cover and discovered that he is the interpreter’s son!). What complicates all these intermingled stories is that the present is sometimes written from the perspective of the past, that is, various characters from the present are presented are characters in a Persian war, so in the end, it’s hard to tell who’s who. But this should not deter you from reading (and finishing) this amazing novel. I have two huge piles of books I have to read in the next few months, and alas, only one life.
April 8, 2013
Mo Yan and the Latest Nobel Controversy
We have become accustomed by now to controversial selections for the Nobel Prize in literature, so in this sense it came as no surprise that the latest choice has, once again, left some people shaking their heads. The difference is that this time the surprise was not over the “obscurity” of the writer, but the political implications of the choice. Not only is Mo Yan no dissident, he has often taken positions supporting the Chinese regime. In this sense, the Nobel jury, which in recent years has chosen writers whose political stances were at least as important as their writings (Orhan Pamuk, Herta Müller, Jean-Marie Le Clézio, Harold Pinter, etc.), has surprised us. Some—Ian Buruma, for instance—have claimed that the surprise is a good one, considering that much too often the Nobel prize has been awarded for other reasons that strictly literary ones. Others—those concerned with human rights violations, in particular—have been very critical of the prize.
Although highly appreciated in his home country, Mo Yan has often acted in a way that can not only be categorized as cowardly, but can be said to support antidemocratic and anti-intellectual practices of the Chinese government. Mo Yan has defended himself against his detractors by commenting that literature should not be expected to be “political,” and that for him literature and politics are separate. In principle, I agree with this statement (although the question of what is “political” may have many different answers), but as it happens, Mo Yan doesn’t agree with himself. I mean that literature shouldn’t be expected to express directly a specific political ideology (even “engaged” writers like Sartre knew this, and their best works are only indirectly political). But Mo Yan’s novels are among the most political novels I’ve read, and his statement is dishonest. Red Sorghum (Penguin Books, 1994) is a historical novel, and both Red Sorghum and The Garlic Ballads (Arcade Publishing, 1995, 2012) are heroic epics concerned with the lives of Chinese peasants at various moments in history. Red Sorghum takes place in 1923-24 and the late thirties, during the war against Japan. The Garlic Ballads is set in the late eighties, and depicts the interaction between peasants and various local Chinese officials. The image of the latter is at best unattractive; at worst, these officials are portrayed as highly corrupt and criminal.
Mo Yan is a very political writer, but he is political in a way that has the seal of approval of the Chinese government. There are many events of China’s history (like the wars against Japan) or the corruption of local Chinese officials that are considered fair criticism. The latter, in particular, is acceptable as long as the system itself is not questioned. Therefore, when Mo Yan speaks against politics in literature, what he really means is that he has no intention to criticize the Chinese government and communism as an ideology per se (truth be told, no one has asked him to mix politics and literature—rather, he was expected to act in a more dignified way in the public sphere situated outside the literary space). My guess is that his defense of the Chinese government is rooted in a strong nationalism (visible in his writings) and a hatred of modernity and materialism (brought to China by the “foreign devils”).
Having said this, let’s take a look at the novels themselves. Both novels are the kind of long epics that require patience and stamina to finish. In a way, they are very Hollywoodian (Red Sorghum, by the way, was made into a very successful film by Jiang Yimou): they are packed with action, killings, guns, policemen, backstabbing, survival after near-death experiences, deeds of heroism and betrayal, and images of gorgeous landscapes. Red Sorghum is set in the village where Mo Yan grew up and which, after he was awarded the Nobel, the government decided to proudly turn into a Chinese theme park. The setting is described with the passionate intensity of the former peasant (i.e., Mo Yan) who longs for his roots: “A boundless expanse of sorghum greeted the reddening sun”; “The space between heaven and earth was filled with the red dust of sorghum and the fragrance of sorghum wine”; “She opens her eyes amid the pearly drops of sorghum”; “Grandma and Granddad exchanged their love surrounded by the vitality of the sorghum field. … My father was conceived with the essence of heaven and earth…”; “[The sorghum stalks] begin to moan, to writhe, to shout, to entwine her.”
Mo Yan is famous for his visceral naturalism, in which he presents the nature of all living creatures in a non-sentimental, raw way (his men fart and belch even in the most romantic moments). Here is an extreme example: “the bloated carcasses of dozens of mules had been found floating in the Black Water River …; their distended bellies, baked by the sun, split and popped, released their splendid innards, like gorgeous blooming flowers.” These descriptions are certainly beautiful, but when the author estheticizes scenes with people killed in horrible acts of violence, something seems wrong.
Red Sorghum starts in 1939, when the narrator’s grandmother, a beautiful young woman of unusual intelligence and courage, is killed by the Japanese while bringing food to the father of her child, Yu Zhan’ao (also referred to as “Commander Yu”), and his comrades-in-arms. From here, the story goes backward, following a hard-to-define temporal structure that is also present in The Garlic Ballads. It would be too simplistic to say that the story moves back and forth in time, though it does move between 1939 and 1923 (before Douguan, the narrator’s father, was conceived), with occasional flashbacks or “flashforwards” to other years, one of them being 1985, when the narrator returns to his native village.
In 1923 the narrator’s (future) grandmother is sixteen and betrothed to a rich man, owner of a sorghum wine distillery, who has only a small problem: he’s a leper. The future bride is transported in a sedan chair pulled by several hired men, including Yu Zhan’ao, who eventually kills the bridegroom and moves in with the bride, with whom he fathers a child, Douguan. The novel is written mainly in the third person, from the point of view of the narrator, who has heard the story from his father (Douguan), but there are moments when the author moves away from this structure to give a voice to other characters.
I confess I didn’t understand whether the fighting with the Japanese described for big chunks of the novel, had occurred only once, twice, or three or more times. The present is always mixed with the past (something specific to many Chinese writers) and the same butchery occurs in all the fighting scenes, so, in the end, it’s impossible to tell when a battle has ended and another one has begun. It all seems like the same, unending battle, to which the writer keeps coming back. Red Sorghum includes some of the most violent scenes I’ve ever encountered in a novel: a scene in which the Japanese order a local butcher to skin a man alive; a scene in which, after murdering with a bayonet a little girl in front of her mother, the Japanese soldiers rape and kill the latter; a scene in which, after a (or several) battle(s) with the Japanese, hundreds of dogs from the neighboring villages come to devour the corpses—a truly nightmarish landscape that proves the author’s penchant for horrific exaggeration.
The Garlic Ballads is less bloody, but very violent, nonetheless. To begin with, the novel has an epigraph from none other than Stalin, which is—ironically—an admonishment to novelists who try to “distance themselves from politics.” My personal guess is that Mo Yan uses the famous name as a password in order to get his “ballad”—which criticizes corrupt Chinese officials and policemen—past the censors.
This novel too has a complicated structure: each chapter is preceded by a quote from a ballad by Zhang Kou, Paradise County’s blind minstrel, in which are summarized the chapter’s events. It is from one of these summaries that we find out that the events take place in 1987 (the book, published in 1988, was, according to some accounts, banned after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989). Like Red Sorghum, The Garlic Ballads is built around an element that infuses the entire novel: here it’s garlic (in all its states, fresh and rotten, incorporated in dishes and drinks). But don’t get ready for a fiesta of the senses: by the end of the novel, after dozens of pages of putrefied garlic, and men who belch after eating too much of it, you don’t want to hear of anything garlicky for a while!
The story begins with the arrest of several people accused of having participated in a mob attack against the County offices—Gao Jinjiao, Gao Ma, Fourth Aunt Fang, Gao Yang—and then, like Red Sorghum, moves back in time, and then forward again. I lost count of how many times Gao Yang is forced to drink his own urine (whether in school or in his prison cell), and how many times Jinju (Fourth Aunt Fang’s daughter), in love with Gao Ma in spite of her parents’ wish for her to marry someone else, is savagely beaten by her parents and brothers.
A very original narrative technique is that in the next-to-last chapter the excerpt from the ballad sung by Zhang Kou is followed by an authorial intervention: “At this point in Zhang Kou’s ballad a ferocious policeman jumped to his feet and cursed. . . . He kicked Zhang Kou in the mouth, cutting off the final note. . . .” Yet, it is only in the last chapter that the minstrel appears in the story itself, and we are told that he too was briefly incarcerated, released, and then murdered on a sidewalk, his mouth crammed full with sticky mud. Undoubtedly, Mo Yan has conceived the slain minstrel as a stand-in for the Artist who tells the truth—thus (in his vision!) for himself. The technique of the ballad as a meta-story that parallels (or mirrors) the thread of the novel, and the characters’ speech peppered with proverbs and “peasant wisdom” remind me of the Albanian writer Ismail Kadare, whose novels display the same tension between an old way of life and a society built on communist bureaucracy.
I admit I forced myself to finish Mo Yan’s novels because I believe that he is a good stylist and a master of impressive novelistic structures, but I didn’t particularly enjoy them: it’s not simply that I don’t enjoy reading dozens of pages of war and prison descriptions; what I find hard to swallow is the author’s belief in a “greater” China, a China of the past when men (and women) acted heroically, in contrast with the people of today, only interested in material comfort. Frankly, if Mo Yan’s example of this greatness is that of a time when men ate only “fistcakes” for more than ten years, and spent their lives butchering each other, committing such acts of bravery as stuffing a goat’s belly with five hundred bullets in order to retrieve them later (once again, Mo Yan might have used the word “hundreds” a little too lightly!), I’m with the people of today. Still, Mo Yan is a very complex writer, and his novels are worth reading. Both novels (and, in fact, all of Mo Yan’s novels that have appeared in English) have been masterfully translated by Howard Goldblatt, who deserves at least part of the credit for his Nobel Prize.
Although highly appreciated in his home country, Mo Yan has often acted in a way that can not only be categorized as cowardly, but can be said to support antidemocratic and anti-intellectual practices of the Chinese government. Mo Yan has defended himself against his detractors by commenting that literature should not be expected to be “political,” and that for him literature and politics are separate. In principle, I agree with this statement (although the question of what is “political” may have many different answers), but as it happens, Mo Yan doesn’t agree with himself. I mean that literature shouldn’t be expected to express directly a specific political ideology (even “engaged” writers like Sartre knew this, and their best works are only indirectly political). But Mo Yan’s novels are among the most political novels I’ve read, and his statement is dishonest. Red Sorghum (Penguin Books, 1994) is a historical novel, and both Red Sorghum and The Garlic Ballads (Arcade Publishing, 1995, 2012) are heroic epics concerned with the lives of Chinese peasants at various moments in history. Red Sorghum takes place in 1923-24 and the late thirties, during the war against Japan. The Garlic Ballads is set in the late eighties, and depicts the interaction between peasants and various local Chinese officials. The image of the latter is at best unattractive; at worst, these officials are portrayed as highly corrupt and criminal.
Mo Yan is a very political writer, but he is political in a way that has the seal of approval of the Chinese government. There are many events of China’s history (like the wars against Japan) or the corruption of local Chinese officials that are considered fair criticism. The latter, in particular, is acceptable as long as the system itself is not questioned. Therefore, when Mo Yan speaks against politics in literature, what he really means is that he has no intention to criticize the Chinese government and communism as an ideology per se (truth be told, no one has asked him to mix politics and literature—rather, he was expected to act in a more dignified way in the public sphere situated outside the literary space). My guess is that his defense of the Chinese government is rooted in a strong nationalism (visible in his writings) and a hatred of modernity and materialism (brought to China by the “foreign devils”).
Having said this, let’s take a look at the novels themselves. Both novels are the kind of long epics that require patience and stamina to finish. In a way, they are very Hollywoodian (Red Sorghum, by the way, was made into a very successful film by Jiang Yimou): they are packed with action, killings, guns, policemen, backstabbing, survival after near-death experiences, deeds of heroism and betrayal, and images of gorgeous landscapes. Red Sorghum is set in the village where Mo Yan grew up and which, after he was awarded the Nobel, the government decided to proudly turn into a Chinese theme park. The setting is described with the passionate intensity of the former peasant (i.e., Mo Yan) who longs for his roots: “A boundless expanse of sorghum greeted the reddening sun”; “The space between heaven and earth was filled with the red dust of sorghum and the fragrance of sorghum wine”; “She opens her eyes amid the pearly drops of sorghum”; “Grandma and Granddad exchanged their love surrounded by the vitality of the sorghum field. … My father was conceived with the essence of heaven and earth…”; “[The sorghum stalks] begin to moan, to writhe, to shout, to entwine her.”
Mo Yan is famous for his visceral naturalism, in which he presents the nature of all living creatures in a non-sentimental, raw way (his men fart and belch even in the most romantic moments). Here is an extreme example: “the bloated carcasses of dozens of mules had been found floating in the Black Water River …; their distended bellies, baked by the sun, split and popped, released their splendid innards, like gorgeous blooming flowers.” These descriptions are certainly beautiful, but when the author estheticizes scenes with people killed in horrible acts of violence, something seems wrong.
Red Sorghum starts in 1939, when the narrator’s grandmother, a beautiful young woman of unusual intelligence and courage, is killed by the Japanese while bringing food to the father of her child, Yu Zhan’ao (also referred to as “Commander Yu”), and his comrades-in-arms. From here, the story goes backward, following a hard-to-define temporal structure that is also present in The Garlic Ballads. It would be too simplistic to say that the story moves back and forth in time, though it does move between 1939 and 1923 (before Douguan, the narrator’s father, was conceived), with occasional flashbacks or “flashforwards” to other years, one of them being 1985, when the narrator returns to his native village.
In 1923 the narrator’s (future) grandmother is sixteen and betrothed to a rich man, owner of a sorghum wine distillery, who has only a small problem: he’s a leper. The future bride is transported in a sedan chair pulled by several hired men, including Yu Zhan’ao, who eventually kills the bridegroom and moves in with the bride, with whom he fathers a child, Douguan. The novel is written mainly in the third person, from the point of view of the narrator, who has heard the story from his father (Douguan), but there are moments when the author moves away from this structure to give a voice to other characters.
I confess I didn’t understand whether the fighting with the Japanese described for big chunks of the novel, had occurred only once, twice, or three or more times. The present is always mixed with the past (something specific to many Chinese writers) and the same butchery occurs in all the fighting scenes, so, in the end, it’s impossible to tell when a battle has ended and another one has begun. It all seems like the same, unending battle, to which the writer keeps coming back. Red Sorghum includes some of the most violent scenes I’ve ever encountered in a novel: a scene in which the Japanese order a local butcher to skin a man alive; a scene in which, after murdering with a bayonet a little girl in front of her mother, the Japanese soldiers rape and kill the latter; a scene in which, after a (or several) battle(s) with the Japanese, hundreds of dogs from the neighboring villages come to devour the corpses—a truly nightmarish landscape that proves the author’s penchant for horrific exaggeration.
The Garlic Ballads is less bloody, but very violent, nonetheless. To begin with, the novel has an epigraph from none other than Stalin, which is—ironically—an admonishment to novelists who try to “distance themselves from politics.” My personal guess is that Mo Yan uses the famous name as a password in order to get his “ballad”—which criticizes corrupt Chinese officials and policemen—past the censors.
This novel too has a complicated structure: each chapter is preceded by a quote from a ballad by Zhang Kou, Paradise County’s blind minstrel, in which are summarized the chapter’s events. It is from one of these summaries that we find out that the events take place in 1987 (the book, published in 1988, was, according to some accounts, banned after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989). Like Red Sorghum, The Garlic Ballads is built around an element that infuses the entire novel: here it’s garlic (in all its states, fresh and rotten, incorporated in dishes and drinks). But don’t get ready for a fiesta of the senses: by the end of the novel, after dozens of pages of putrefied garlic, and men who belch after eating too much of it, you don’t want to hear of anything garlicky for a while!
The story begins with the arrest of several people accused of having participated in a mob attack against the County offices—Gao Jinjiao, Gao Ma, Fourth Aunt Fang, Gao Yang—and then, like Red Sorghum, moves back in time, and then forward again. I lost count of how many times Gao Yang is forced to drink his own urine (whether in school or in his prison cell), and how many times Jinju (Fourth Aunt Fang’s daughter), in love with Gao Ma in spite of her parents’ wish for her to marry someone else, is savagely beaten by her parents and brothers.
A very original narrative technique is that in the next-to-last chapter the excerpt from the ballad sung by Zhang Kou is followed by an authorial intervention: “At this point in Zhang Kou’s ballad a ferocious policeman jumped to his feet and cursed. . . . He kicked Zhang Kou in the mouth, cutting off the final note. . . .” Yet, it is only in the last chapter that the minstrel appears in the story itself, and we are told that he too was briefly incarcerated, released, and then murdered on a sidewalk, his mouth crammed full with sticky mud. Undoubtedly, Mo Yan has conceived the slain minstrel as a stand-in for the Artist who tells the truth—thus (in his vision!) for himself. The technique of the ballad as a meta-story that parallels (or mirrors) the thread of the novel, and the characters’ speech peppered with proverbs and “peasant wisdom” remind me of the Albanian writer Ismail Kadare, whose novels display the same tension between an old way of life and a society built on communist bureaucracy.
I admit I forced myself to finish Mo Yan’s novels because I believe that he is a good stylist and a master of impressive novelistic structures, but I didn’t particularly enjoy them: it’s not simply that I don’t enjoy reading dozens of pages of war and prison descriptions; what I find hard to swallow is the author’s belief in a “greater” China, a China of the past when men (and women) acted heroically, in contrast with the people of today, only interested in material comfort. Frankly, if Mo Yan’s example of this greatness is that of a time when men ate only “fistcakes” for more than ten years, and spent their lives butchering each other, committing such acts of bravery as stuffing a goat’s belly with five hundred bullets in order to retrieve them later (once again, Mo Yan might have used the word “hundreds” a little too lightly!), I’m with the people of today. Still, Mo Yan is a very complex writer, and his novels are worth reading. Both novels (and, in fact, all of Mo Yan’s novels that have appeared in English) have been masterfully translated by Howard Goldblatt, who deserves at least part of the credit for his Nobel Prize.
April 5, 2013
Le Salon Du Livre [Book fair], Paris, March 22-25
A dispatch about the first day of the fair, March 22, was published in Words without Borders
http://wordswithoutborders.org/dispat...
On Saturday (March 23rd), the Salon was so crowded one had to push one’s way through the crowd. As chance would have it, at some point I took a break and, as I was about to exit, I ran into two outlandish characters dressed in some sort of nineteenth-century gothic attire. I recognized immediately the famous, eccentric, Belgian-born novelist, Amelie Nothomb, accompanied, as usual, by a bodyguard. All in black, she was wearing a long dress with coattails on top, and a very tall, felt hat. The “gentleman” was equally in coattails, a similar hat, and carried a walking stick. Where was my camera when I needed it? I didn’t stay to witness the commotion her appearance must have caused, but in the past I’ve seen fans kiss her hand and kneel before her.
It was only on Sunday (March 24th), the third day of the book fair, that I spotted in darkest corner, at the smallest stand in the pavilion, a familiar star-studded fabric covering half of the stand: the American flag. Of the fifty participant countries, only three other countries had their flags up, besides the US: Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Iran. I approached the stand and saw behind the flag a handful of books in gaudy colors that seemed to have been pulled in a hurry from a teenager’s bookshelves. Of all the authors, I recognized one: Joan Didion. I turned toward the woman who, I was told, represented the American embassy and, after I introduced myself as an American writer, I expressed my surprise at such a poor display. She explained, rather annoyed, that this was the first time in fifteen years that the US even had a stand, and we had to be hopeful. I countered, saying that it was hard to be hopeful when the “most powerful country in the world” had the weakest stand of the fair, and, as I was asking who was responsible for the choice of the authors, she interrupted me with a brusque “Good-bye, now. I’m busy,” and turned her back on me.
I remembered how indignant American writers had been when the Nobel jury had declared that Americans don’t participate in the world’s cultural exchange. What the Nobel jury was referring to was not the American writers, but American cultural institutions (publishers who are not interested in publishing foreign authors, or an embassy that couldn’t care less about American writers, never mind about foreign ones). “Coincidentally,” the Iranian stand had, like the American one, only a handful of books too. Once again, it turns out that we have more in common with Iran than we might think. Let the others share books, we will proudly display our flags!
http://wordswithoutborders.org/dispat...
On Saturday (March 23rd), the Salon was so crowded one had to push one’s way through the crowd. As chance would have it, at some point I took a break and, as I was about to exit, I ran into two outlandish characters dressed in some sort of nineteenth-century gothic attire. I recognized immediately the famous, eccentric, Belgian-born novelist, Amelie Nothomb, accompanied, as usual, by a bodyguard. All in black, she was wearing a long dress with coattails on top, and a very tall, felt hat. The “gentleman” was equally in coattails, a similar hat, and carried a walking stick. Where was my camera when I needed it? I didn’t stay to witness the commotion her appearance must have caused, but in the past I’ve seen fans kiss her hand and kneel before her.
It was only on Sunday (March 24th), the third day of the book fair, that I spotted in darkest corner, at the smallest stand in the pavilion, a familiar star-studded fabric covering half of the stand: the American flag. Of the fifty participant countries, only three other countries had their flags up, besides the US: Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Iran. I approached the stand and saw behind the flag a handful of books in gaudy colors that seemed to have been pulled in a hurry from a teenager’s bookshelves. Of all the authors, I recognized one: Joan Didion. I turned toward the woman who, I was told, represented the American embassy and, after I introduced myself as an American writer, I expressed my surprise at such a poor display. She explained, rather annoyed, that this was the first time in fifteen years that the US even had a stand, and we had to be hopeful. I countered, saying that it was hard to be hopeful when the “most powerful country in the world” had the weakest stand of the fair, and, as I was asking who was responsible for the choice of the authors, she interrupted me with a brusque “Good-bye, now. I’m busy,” and turned her back on me.
I remembered how indignant American writers had been when the Nobel jury had declared that Americans don’t participate in the world’s cultural exchange. What the Nobel jury was referring to was not the American writers, but American cultural institutions (publishers who are not interested in publishing foreign authors, or an embassy that couldn’t care less about American writers, never mind about foreign ones). “Coincidentally,” the Iranian stand had, like the American one, only a handful of books too. Once again, it turns out that we have more in common with Iran than we might think. Let the others share books, we will proudly display our flags!
Notes on Books
Book reviews and occasional notes and thoughts on world literature and writers by an American writer of Eastern European origin.
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