2020 Reading–February
Only five books finished this month, but, hey, it’s a short month, even with Leap Day!
[image error]Friend by Paek Nam-nyong
Friend by Paek
Nam-nyung is a curiosity, at least. Paek is a North Korean and his novel is one
of the few published in the West. It was originally published in North Korea in
1988, then published in South Korea a few years later, and more recently in
France in 2011. It will be published in April in the U.S. by Columbia
University Press, and look for my review of the book then in the New York Journal of Books. The novel’s
focus is a judge, Jeong Jin Wu, who must adjudicate divorce cases in his
district, a small city some distance from Pyongyang. A divorce petition is
filed by a woman who is a singer. She wants to divorce her husband, a lathe
operator. The judge investigates the case, finds that there is a child
involved, and both parents are being selfish and obstinate. He also discovers
the damage caused by an earlier case he handled in which he did grant the
divorce and separated the two children of that couple by awarding custody to
the parents of one child each. Given the author’s official status as a member
of the Writers’ Union in North Korea, one might expect politics to find their
way into the novel, but the book is interesting because it isn’t political. It deals with the everyday lives of
these people, although it seems that they are all being exhorted to do their
best for the betterment of their country.
[image error]Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips
Disappearing
Earth by Julia Philips is beautifully written. Such fluid prose,
capturing the look and feel of a setting—the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia—that
is unfamiliar to most of us. It’s called a novel, although as I read it I felt
that it was more of a novel in stories, in which the many chapters that focus
on the large cast of characters all orbit around the central mystery: what
happened to the two girls who were kidnapped? Although I liked the book a lot,
I was reading it just after the controversy over another novel, American Dirt, came to my attention.
That book involves a migrant from Mexico and the author has been lambasted by
some critics (starting with a Latina reviewer) for a number of misdeeds, first
among them being cultural appropriation. I reject the cultural appropriation
label; artists should be free to depict anything their imagination desires. If
they don’t do it with sensitivity, then the work may be said to be poorly
executed, but that doesn’t make it evil. Disappearing
Earth is a book about Russian and native peoples on the Kamchatka
Peninsula. The author is neither Russian nor a native of that region, although
she did spend time there doing research. Why isn’t she also charged with
cultural appropriation? Because the native people of Kamchatka have no voice in
America? Because we don’t care if another “white” (i.e. Russian, in this case)
culture is appropriated? I’m genuinely curious about this. In any event, the
book has received much praise that I think is richly deserved.
[image error]Only As The Day Is Long by Dorianne Laux
Only As
the Day is Long by Dorianne Laux is a collection of new and selected poems that I
picked up when I heard the poet read in Portland, Oregon at Powells Books last
year, having visited that city for the annual conference of the Association of
Writers and Writing Programs. The book includes a large number of selected
poems from five earlier collections, as well as a number of new poems in the
title section, “Only as the Day is Long.” There is a lot to love here and I’ve
been reading it gradually over a month or more. I think I am most moved by the
new poems, though, many of which deal with the death of the poet’s mother (who
also appears in many of the earlier poems).
[image error]The Feather Thief by Kirk Wallace Johnson
The
Feather Thief by Kirk Wallace Johnson begins with a description of a theft in
2009 of a huge number of preserved birds from the British Museum of Natural
History. The author then describes how the bulk of the collection came to be in
the museum, having been assembled by the British naturalist, Alfred Russel
Wallace, who independently of Charles Darwin came up with a theory of the
origin of species. Johnson becomes obsessed with the crime and tries to learn
as much as he can about the thief, Edwin Rist, a gifted flautist and fly tier
who himself was obsessed with the exotic feathers he craved for his most
elaborate creations. While it’s an engaging story, I’m puzzled by Johnson’s
insertion of himself into the narrative. He finds it necessary to explain that
he heard about the theft while fly fishing during a difficult time in his life
and that his research was somehow a relief from his work with refugees (also
not relevant to the theft). Other than that, however, it was fascinating. It
might also have been interesting if Johnson had explored the psychology of
tying flies that will never be used to actually fish, which seems to me a
bizarre pursuit.
[image error]Pigs by Johanna Stoberock
Pigs by Johanna Stoberock will be part of a panel discussion I’m moderating in March at the Virginia Festival of the Book called “Writing the Anthropocene.” The term Anthropocene refers to the human era and specifically the extreme impact humans have on the environment. In this case the subject is garbage, especially garbage that ends up in the oceans. On an island—somewhere, not specified—all the garbage washes up on the shore (including discarded humans), where a crew of children feed it all (with occasional but rare exceptions) to a bunch of pigs. Meanwhile, some adults live in a villa on the hills and party and drink martinis all day and force the children to work. The children are finely distinguished from each other—one is a toddler who doesn’t speak, until the day when she begins speaking in the language of an adult obsessed with acquisition and consumption. Very allegorical, and part of the fun of reading it is deciphering what the message actually is. I can’t say I’m entirely clear about that, but I’m still pondering it.
