Seven Years in Tibet

Seven Years in Tibet

By Heinrich Harrer

While reading Seven Years in Tibet, Heinrich Harrer's sublime work of travel literature, I was struck by a disturbing question. Has the epitaph for travel literature already been written?

For centuries, armchair travelers have marveled at the tales of adventurers who have traveled to distant lands. From the works of Marco Polo and Ibn al-Battuta to the invaluable works of Charles Darwin to the amazing stories of Thor Hyerdahl, travel writers have taken readers to places they could only imagine, told stories of exotic people and extraordinary cultures.

But with the relatively recent advent of cheap flights, social media, the Internet and, most devastatingly, globalization, is the era of travel... real exploratory travel... finished? Well, until the advent of interplanetary travel, I think it just might be.

Let introduce the book and then let me explain.

In Seven Years in Tibet, Heinrich Harrer takes us inside one of the most insular cultures ever to exist on this planet. Not only was the Tibet that Harrer visited suspicious of outsiders, it had the luxury of being nestled on the other side of the almost impassable Himalayan mountain chain. When Harrer entered the country in the middle of the Second World War as an escaped POW he became one of only a handful of Europeans who had ever gained access to Tibet. Over his seven years in the country (just in case the title wasn't clear on that) he would meet less than a dozen other Europeans (conversely, I met over a dozen western expats on my first night in taiwan in 2002). There is literally no place on earth left that hasn't felt the impact of Western culture (aka globalization). In that sense, Harrer was given the rare opportunity to see one of the last nations on the planet completely untouched by the Western world prior to the Great Flattening.

The book itself is divided into four parts. The first part deals mainly with Harrer's time in a prison camp in India. As a German on British soil during the early days of World War II he was taken into custody. But he planned and executed his escape and crossed the border into Tibet with the intent of reaching the Japanese lines. The second part of the novel recounts the two years he spent trying to get a foothold in the notoriously insular nation. This part was most interesting to me because it was, by far the most harrowing portion of the book and recounted incidents that could only occur in the duty nowheres of Asia. The third part consists of his first years in Lhasa and the final part is essentially an early biography of the thirteenth Dalai Lama, their friendship and his ultimate flight from Tibet when the Chinese invaded in 1951.

This is travel writing in its purest form. Harrer has no Western crutch, no expat community that has paved the way for his arrival and provided for a nice cushy landing. This is the story of a man who made his way in a nation where he may have been the first of his kind (i.e. German) to ever live in Lhasa. Harrer saw a Tibet that few travelers had seen before and none will ever see again. He saw the pure, unadulterated culture prior to the onslaught of the Chinese invasion and the inevitable incursion of the modern world. And since 99% of the religious buildings in Tibet have been destroyed since the invasion and over 70% of the current population of Lhasa is non-Tibetan, Harrer's work is essentially a eulogy for an entire culture.

Now, I haven't been to Lhasa but I have done my fair bit of travel and, while I still love to do it, I have no misgivings about it. I'm never going to have a unique experience in any of the exotic locales I choose to visit (unless, of course i choose to visit a war zone, which of course I won't). No matter where I go, no matter how far off the beaten path I venture, I am treading on roads well worn by millions of people who have come before me. Every medium sized town in Vietnam and Sri Lanka has a Starbucks. There are fast food outlets in Rangoon and Nairobi. You can buy Bulgari watches at the airport in Ankara and Calcutta and I'm sure if you can't buy a McDonalds Happy Meal in the shadow of the Potala Palace, it's not long in coming.

This incursion has made the notion of travel problematic. If you can experience gourmet Indian cuisine in the comfort of your own home, view the cultural splendors of India from on the television and purchase authentic Indian handicrafts via the Internet why, exactly, would you pay vast quantities of money to fly half way around the globe only to find that Mumbai is a morass of the same 18 fast food chains, coffee shops and clothing outlets you just left? And unless you traveled for a very specific reason (i.e. mountain climbing, surfing, archaeological dig) there is never really much difference between Paris, Pretoria and Phnom Penh. Did you travel for the smell? Because that might be the only thing you couldn't have gotten back home.

With all due respect to Michael Palin, Bill Bryson and Neil Peart, who have written some fabulous travel literature in the past 20 years (focusing on travel with very distinct purposes, I might add), we will never again have a book that represents an introduction to a major nation, city or culture that The Travels of Marco Polo or Seven Years in Tibet was. At the time of publication, Tibet was perhaps the last great unexplored culture on the planet. It's a shame that Harrer's work coincided with its demise (and make no mistake, no amount of Beastie Boys concerts will ever resurrect the Tibetan Nation). The Epilogue to the edition I wrote is a thousand times more heart breaking than the book since Harrer' has had a half century to reflect on the events of his book and see it for what we all know it is, an epitaph.

In that respect, this book is also a cautionary tale for Taiwan, the country I live in (Ten Years in Taiwan?). Taiwan has been the focus of a relentless propaganda campaign since 1949 and while the situation with Tibet doesn't provide exact parallels, there are lessons to be taken for any Taiwanese who cares to listen. The recent self-immolations that have plagued the Tibetan capital represent a desperate endgame that has no happy ending. Is this Taiwan's future should China get the opportunity to act? Let's how for Taiwan (and my) sake we never find out.

Anyway, long story short, Seven Years in Tibet is deserving of the moniker classic travel literature and should be placed on the bookshelf with the other heavyweights in the genre. Perhaps (and lamentably so) at the far right.

(Note: I never saw the Brad Pitt movie)

Where'd You Go, Bernadette?

Where'd You Go, Bernadette?

By Maria Semple

Note: Please read this blog entry in Ron Howard's voice. Thanks.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette? opens with a report card. But it's not just any report card. It's Balakrishna (Bee) Elgin's report card from The Galer Street School, a snobby private school where the parents pick their children up in Subaru's (but not, lamentably for the administrators of the school, in Mercedes). Bee is a special student who has achieved straight Ss throughout her academic career.  Galer School is one of those educational institutions that does't like the stigma of traditional "grades" and thereby gives their students Ss (Surpasses Exellence), As (Achieves Excellence) and Ws (Working toward Excellence), presumably to assure parents that their precious little snowflakes are all some incarnation of excellent.

Bee, however is not your typical special little snowflake. She is the daughter of Elgin Branch, workaholic Microsoft employee with a rabid geek cult-following ever since a now legendary TED Talk (fourth most watched TED Talk, ever!) about a technology that allows people to control a robot simply by thinking about it. Elgin enjoys reticulated bicycles and irrigating his sinuses among other pastimes. Bee's mother is Bernadette Fox, a legend in architecture the way Harper Lee and J.D. Salinger are legends in literature. Within the world of architecture, Fox is both a genius and a ghost. A former recipient of a McArthur Grant and the designer of the now mythologized Twenty-Mile House (mythologized because it was torn down immediately after it was completed). Fox has not designed a house in two decades and has become an angry, agoraphobic recluse to the point that she has outsourced her life to a personal assistant in India for seventy-five cents an hour.

Together, the Branch family live in the ruins Straight House, a former Catholic school for wayward girls which has now been overrun with blackberry bushes and rot. Despite being an architectural and design genius, Bernadette has not so much as lifted a drafting pencil since moving in and renovations have yet to commence. Much like The Branch family's collective sanity, the house is literally crumbling in on top of them. So, the house is, quite obviously, a metaphor about unrequited homosexual desire and to sum up, Bee is pedigree of genius. And with genius comes madness. Beautiful, anti-social madness.

In an attempt to stave off a pony, Bee's parent's had promised to get her anything she ways upon graduation from Galer School (on the condition she achieve straight Ss, of course). Bee calls them on their promise and demands a trip to Antarctica (it is here that I should note that upon my graduation from middle school I was given a pat on the back and told to keep out of trouble in high school).  From that point on, the novel shifts into overdrive and truly awful but seriously hilarious things start happening in rapid-fire succession. There's a landslide, an intervention gone horribly wrong, physical altercations, an arrest, someone scratches their eyeball and, of course, all sorts of Three's Company/Frasier style misunderstandings. The situation is so grave that it requires a trip to the ends of the Earth to rectify the situation (the aforementioned trip to Antarctica, of course). Naturally, Antarctica is a metaphor for cultural erosion.

If the Where'd You Go, Bernadette? sounds like good television, it's no wonder. Maria Semple is a former television writer who worked on (among other things) Arrested Development, which is why I: a) hated every single character and b) loved every single character because I hated them so much (this is exactly why I think Arrested Development is the best television comedy of its generation (sorry 30 Rock). How can you not hate and love to hate Lucille Bluth?). Where'd You Go, Bernadette? is a tightly-constructed narrative populated by delusional Tiger Moms, snobby private school parents, neurotic tech geeks, scatterbrained artists and the now ubiquitous overly-ambitious Asian woman who will do anything to succeed. The characters you are meant to hate are atrocious human beings (that you will recognize from your own life) who get their comeuppance in stunning fashion. But the protagonists are no better. Semple has not written then in such a way that a reader will immediately empathize with them. Nope. Not in the least.. The Branches (Branch's?) themselves are the worst sort of Bobos, a term coined by David Brooks in his book Bobos in Paradise. But who's thinking about sociology while personal assistants based in India are procuring anti-psychotics for you and research scientists are ordering pink penguins at the bar.

As in any good ensemble comedy (whether it is Arrested Development, The Simpsons or Where'd You Go, Bernadette?), the absurdity only works when there is a straight man to counterbalance the insanity. Arrested Development has Michael Bluth, The Simpsons has Lisa and Where's You Go, Bernadette? has Bee. These characters, while often seen as bland, are the lynch pins to the comedic payoff. They are the link between the off-kilter characters and the readers/viewers. In this particular instance, Bee is both the most and least interesting character in the novel, depending on how you read it. It's not terribly difficult to lose sight of her what with all the drug abuse, Russian mafia and dental appointments but make no mistake, this novel is essentially about Bee, not Bernadette.

Written in several formats including e-mail correspondence, psychiatric evaluations, FBI documents, report cards and even a receipt or two, the entire novel comes across as a case file that is weaved intricately and imaginatively without repeating information (a common occurrence in multiple format style novels (see: Dracula)). Semple is one hell of a good comedic writer and now that I know she worked on my favorite television show, I'm sorry that she didn't write more of the novel in dialogue form (there is a transcript of the intervention but it's a tantalizing snippet of what Semple might be capable of doing. I cannot wait to get my hands on more of her work.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette? is the very definition of a summer read but with the added bonus of having literary cred. It's a wild ride and absolutely impossible to put down. I picked it up with more than a little trepidation that it was going to be one of those definitive women's novels (no offense intended, I'm using this term for lack of a better. But there are so very many novels written and marketed to women specifically and I try to steer clear). If you are looking for something light to read on the beach this summer or if you are looking for something a little more literary than the usual check-out fare or if you are simply looking for a book that mentions Antarctica because it's too damned hot and you want to forget about it, you will find something to take away from Where'd You Go, Bernadette. It's impossible to put down.

Kenny Bania inadvertently summed up Where'd You Go, Bernadette? years ago when he succinctly noted: "That's comedy GOLD, Jerry!"

The White Tiger

The White Tiger

By Aravind Adiga

Happy Canada Day!

And like any red-blooded Canadian citizen, I like to enjoy our nation's birthday by sitting down and writing a blog post about modern Indian literature. This year I have the pleasure of cracking a Moosehead, turning up Blue Rodeo on the stereo and getting down to business with Aravind Adiga's "blazingly savage" debut (and short-listed for the Man Booker Prize) novel The White Tiger. I put those words, "blazingly savage," in quotations because they are not my words but rather those of Neel Mukherjee, reviewer for the Sunday Telegraph. I'm not familiar with Mr. (Mrs.?) Mukherjee's work for the Telegraph but a simple racial profile (i.e. reading his (her?) name off the byline) indicates that he (she?) probably knows significant amount more than me about India, Indian culture and Indian literature.

That's not to say that I'm writing about this novel in a vacuum. Long-term readers of this blog know that I am an avid fan of Indian literature and read as much of it as I can get my hands on. And I don't know it you have noticed or not but I have been reading quite a few recent Man Booker Prize winners and nominees, recently. It hasn't been a conscious thing, but I have been made aware of my recent trend and it's true (I picked up a recent nominee this morning, so expect more in the near future). So, I'm not entirely devoid of opinion on this novel and I'd like to think that my opinion has some weight on this stiflingly hot Canada Day in Asia.

I bring up Mukherjee's words because I cannot think of a more succinct way in which to express my feelings toward this novel. Set in modern day India, Adiga's novel is told from the perspective of Balram who is introduced as an entrepreneur at the onset of the novel. Narrator via a series of letters from Balram to the premier of China, it is revealed that Balram a small-town indian who has work his way out of The Darkness as a driver for Ashok, a local landowner based in Delhi. As driver, Balram is singly endeared, repressed, ignored and abused by his employer, resulting in a complex relationship that culminates in Balram murdering his boss (note: this is not a spoiler as it is mentioned in the first 20 pages of the book). The result is a "blazingly savage" (see I can't help myself) treatise on the injustice of India's caste, the human quest for freedom and the nature of individualism in a collective culture.

On the surface, The White Tiger is a simple (yet effective) examination of the stifling caste system in India and the way in which it maintains and perpetuates itself. Through Balram we are introduced to the knee-jerk servitude of the lower castes and the way in which lower castes are disregarded entirely. In all the novels I have read about India I have never encountered such a naked appraisal of the injustice of the caste system than in The White Tiger. But nowhere in this novel is the injustice more manifest than Adiga's blistering rant on the nature of Indian democracy and the manner in which the ruling castes manipulate elections to their advantage. Scathing stuff.

But for all the ways in which the caste system hinders social mobility in India, there resides within each individual a burning desire for freedom in some form. In this case, it is Balram's desire for freedom from his master's inconsistent and increasingly erratic relationship. Throughout the novel, despite Balram's questionable behavior, the reader finds it difficult to fault Balram in his often wayward quest to find his way out of the intricate web of relationships and obligations that was woven for him since birth.

Which brings us to the theme of individualism. At a young age, Balram is given the moniker of "The White Tiger" by a local luminary touring the schools in the area. In Indian lore, a white tiger is someone who comes around only once in a generation and is different from everyone around them. Despite the fact that his life trajectory seems to follow the median for his particular caste, Balram maintains the notion that he is somehow different from everyone in his village. Is this a partial motive for his later crime? Perhaps, but more telling of his idea that he is different from everyone around him is that the entire novel is a series of letters from Balram to Wen Jiaobao, Premier of China and the leader of the world's most collective culture. What significance is there in Balram, the stalwart white tiger of individualism, in writing to the very antithesis of individualism? Vanity, perhaps. The same confession written to the office of the President of the United States of America would be received with an anticlimactic shrug. Perhaps Balram has an inherent sense of irony.

It should also be noted that aside from these fun themes, there is an underlying current of globalization gone horribly wrong. In a recent blog post I noted that naive protagonists are often better than those in the know simply because it is more entertaining from a reader's perspective to read  a story told from the perspective of someone who knows precious little about the world around them. Despite his recent success, Balram is the poster child for the half-educated child of globalization. In a sense, technology has permeated our culture (and one would presume Indian culture as well) enough to misinform a significant portion of the population about everything from poetry to physics. We see it in America among the adherents of intelligent design and we see it throughout The White Tiger.

This is the novel that Slumdog Millionaire desperately tried to be and failed. That's not a knock on Slumdog Millionaire so much as it's a heap of respect for Adiga's ability to actualize modern India in a way that is both endearing and horrifying at the same time. This novel is unrelentingly ferocious in its depiction of India and its caste system. The White Tiger deserves all of its accolades. If I had somehow read this novel a few Canada Days ago, before Neel Mukherjee, I would have said that The White Tiger is "blazingly savage."

Read it.

Life & Times of Michael K

Life & Times of Michael K

By J.M. Coetzee

This is me talking out of my ass...

Often the most powerful, most blisteringly conscious novels are written from the perspective of the naive. Whether it is the innocent naivety of Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird or the simplistic worldview of Ignatius J. Reilly in a Confederacy of Dunces, or the practical clarity of Yossarian in Catch-22, naivety illuminates the world in a way that erudite characters often cannot achieve. Characters of limited intellectual capacity have a way (albeit filtered through the erudite minds of great writers) of boiling life's complexities down to simple concepts and reflecting them back on the reader as absurdities or truisms or whatever the writer wishes to convey. It is often only through the window of simplicity that we can she the world for what it really is and this particular literary convention is one of the great gifts that novels give humanity.

Conversely, J.M. Coetzee has made a career of reflecting on larger social issues, chewing the fat under the guise of simple characters on flat, 2-dimentional settings. In Waiting for the Barbarians, Coetzee paints a bleak, featureless, Cormac McCarthy-esque landscape in which to wax intellectual on the subject of imperialism. Coetzee thrives in stripped down settings and simple characters. It's no wonder that he is the first person to win the Man Booker Prize twice. Literary critics seems to love simple narratives that involve simple characters. I'm not here to argue with the critics. It's a solid literary device. See Dent, Arthur.

In J.M. Coetzee's Nobel Prize (and Booker Prize) winning novel Life & Times of Michael K, the reader is presented with just such a character. In Michael K, Coetzee has created a character designed exclusively to suffer for the greater good of his reader. Set in apartheid era South Africa, Michael K is a simple man born with a cleft lip who simply wants to help his mother return to her childhood home in Prince Albert in the country before she dies. Unfortunately he attempts this journey in the midst of a war and the trip is rife with dangers. When his mother dies mid-voyage, Michael oscillates between living a life of absolute freedom on the veldt and confined to labor camps as well as living in a state that can neither be called living nor dead. In both circumstances Michael suffers immensely, but only in absolute freedom is truly happy and bears his suffering willingly.

By stripped clear so much of the clutter that the average person's life collects, Coetzee is free to examine man at it's very foundation. Gone are the articles of civilization and the social mores that bind us and dictate kurt behavior. In Michael K, Coetzee has created a character devoid of family and social pressure and completely without material wants and needs. From here, Coetzee is free to use Michael as a vehicle in which to explore the essence of human nature, specifically the notion of freedom.

Freedom is the central theme of Life & Times of Michael K. It is through the clear lens of Michael, a sexless, apolitical entity that we are able to examine the nuances of freedom vs. confinement. In this respect, Coetzee answers the question: is it better to live an indentured life of plenty or a meager life completely unfettered by the demands of society. In true Coetzee fashion, he avoids the temptation to guide the reader's opinion, leaving the narrative open-ended and entirely open for discussion.

There has been much discussion about Michael K's last name and whether or not it is indeed Kafka. Certainly the parallels are there. In fact, the novel bears striking resemblances to The Trial and the themes and tone of the novel seems almost lifted verbatim from its pages. This could have been a travesty, but assuming that Coetzee generated parallels between Life & Times of Michael K and The Trial on purpose, one can rest assured that Kafka's essence is in capable hands.

Bear in mind, if you are looking for a light summer read, steer clear. Life & Times of Michael K is a heavy, thought provoking novel rife with symbolism and heavy with metaphor. I read it as an allegory on the nature of freedom vs. incarceration but I imagine it could be read in a number of different ways (as a parable on race relations, for example). The narrative itself is slow and plodding and doesn't really move much at all, but if it is simply plot that you desire, then you've come to the wrong place if you've come banging on J.M. Coetzee's door. To be sure, this is without a doubt a work of literary genius and deserves to be savored like a fine wine rather than devoured like a Big Mac after a 12 hour shift in the mines.

There is a profound wisdom to be found within Coetzee's work and a good portion of that manifests itself within this novel. The novel is deserving of all the accolades it has been afforded.

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

By Ben Fountain

Whether intentional or not, when Francis Ford Coppola debuted Apocalypse Now in 1979 he was thrusting The Vietnam War back into the American limelight, holding it up to America's face for all to consider. While the film would eventually garner the success it so richly deserves, it was a long time in coming. In 1979, America was only four years removed from the images of the last helicopter rising from the roof of the presidential palace in Saigon... the image that signified the ambiguous end to America's most ambiguous war. In many ways, America was not yet ready to deal with the Vietnam War. In many ways, Coppola forced the issue and demanded America step up and face Colonel Kurtz, a metaphor for America's wayward foreign policy in the post-war years.

Fast forward a couple of decades and a couple of even more morally ambiguous wars and you come to Ben Fountain's debut novel Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk. In much the same way as Apocalypse Now, this novel is a stark and ofttimes blistering story that may well do with the Iraq War what Coppola's film did for Vietnam.

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is mainly set over a single Thanksgiving weekend in Dallas. Bravo Company is winding up a tour of the home front after having achieved a level of heroic stardom because one of their recent battles with the insurgency was caught on camera by an embedded Fox News correspondent. The footage  The company has been wined and dined by the country's elite including a stop at the White House. Their final stop is a Dallas Cowboys game where they are to be paraded as heroes in front of an American television audience during a halftime show featuring Destiny's Child. Over the course of the day, the Bravos meet the tight-fisted, conservative owner of the Cowboys, Billy falls in love with one of the cheerleaders and virtually everything they know and understand will be called into question by a world they no longer understand. To the home front, the war is simply a primetime spectacle rather than the real life tragedy it actually is. At it's essence, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is, at its core, heart-breaking.

Told from the perspective of Billy Lynn, a surprisingly astute nineteen-year old soldier with a ferocious game-day hangover, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk instead parades the reader through a particular view of America circa 2004. It has been lauded as the Catch-22 of the Iraq War and with good reason. Fountain delivers a panoply of ironies and absurdities about American culture and society ranging from the tyranny of organized sports to the fallacies inherent in the notion of trickle-down economics. All observed with the full capacity wisdom that a nineteen-year old soldier from small-town Texas can muster. The fact that it is set during the ostentatious, over-the-top consumerism-fueled pomp of an NFL football game (A Dallas Cowboys game, even) provides high definition contrast necessary to see the ironies and absurdities in all their particular glory.

In one especially poignant scene the owner of the Cowboys is addressing a press conference called in order to introduce the Bravos to the Dallas media. He takes the opportunity to provide his own personal justification for the war in Iraq, rattling off a laundry list of reasons pertaining to the economic plight of the Iraqi citizens and the corruption of the Saddam Hussein government. What he and all the people at the press conference fail to realize is that he says nothing whatsoever that differs from the problems faced by most Americans.

And this is the real success of this novel. Fountain delivers his story in such a straight forward, un-ironic tone that the irony of the words are almost (but not quite) lost in their simplicity. I say not quite because Fountain's complete and total lack of subtlety allows the ironies and absurdities to be both peripheral and front-and-center at the same time. All without compromising the actual story arc. Make no mistake, the Bravos are heroes. That is the one constant in the entire narrative. The rest is so decidedly ambiguous it is difficult to maintain a moral compass setting.

With so many themes running side by side throughout the novel it is a little difficult to pin down what, exactly, it is about this novel that sets it apart from virtually everything else written on the subject of the Iraq War. Perhaps, unlike so many other war novels, the actual soldiers are incidental to the story. It is the American public with its obsession with celebrity and shopping and instant replay and meaningless buzz words like nina leven and currj and terrR that plays the central role in Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk. Everybody supports the war and honors the heroes in theory. Everyone can spout off the necessary platitudes about sacrifice with expert media savvy. But do they mean it? America is still a land of haves and have-nots and there are systems in place to ensure that it stays that way... or so it seems to Billy. The culmination of the novel is such a succinct metaphor for the state of America today that I'm surprised it's not cliched (Maybe it is and I'm simply blind).

About halfway through this Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk it occurred to me that I was probably reading what would be regarded as a classic novel in the years to come. It has the style and grace and poignancy in writing to last generations and yet it is so deeply rooted in our own time that it would be a stellar illustration of our world circa 2004. I have no way of knowing whether what I predict will come true, but in my own mind, this is precisely the novel we should be reading ten, fifteen or fifty years from now when we attempt to understand the social, political and cultural motivations America had  during it's most ambiguous war. But more importantly it is a novel in the here and now and perhaps Fountain can force the issue as it pertains to the Iraq War. Perhaps this novel will force America to examine its motivations and try to understand the war's legacy

In that respect, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is not only this generation's Catch-22, it may also be this generation's Apocalypse Now. Absolutely crucial reading.

Flight Behavior

Flight Behavior

By Barbara Kingsolver

I love the opportunities that writing a blog gives me as a reader. I didn't get into it for the free books and I most certainly do not take the few books I get for granted, but it's always nice for me, living overseas, to get an opportunity to read a hardcopy (as opposed to a Kindle version) of a book that I would otherwise have to wait years to get here in Taiwan. Case in point: Flight Behavior. Since reading The Poisonwood Bible a couple of years ago, I have been extremely keen to delve into Barbara Kingsolver's catalog. Alas, the gods of access have conspired against me until recently when I got the opportunity to participate in the blog tour for Kingsolver's most recent recent novel. As an avid reader and a fan of Barbara Kingsolver, I couldn't be more appreciative to the good people at TLC Book Tours.

So, anyway...

Flight Behavior answers the proverbial question: If a butterfly flaps its wings in rural Tennessee do unhappy housewives fly the coop? Dellarobia Turnbow is the aforementioned unhappy housewife on the cusp of throwing it all away. Married early and suffering from a severe case of seven-year itch, she accidentally stumbles upon the new and alarmingly inappropriate winter roost of the bulk of North America's monarch butterflies on a stretch of undeveloped land behind her home. To make matters worse. the land, which is owned by her overbearing father-in-law, is set to be sold to an irresponsible logging company (in literature, is there any other kind?) in order to save the family farm. But the arrival of a scientific research team determined to study the butterflies causes a deep divide not only among the citizens of Feathertown but also within the Turnbow family itself.

What ensues is a litany of local conflicts that act as a microcosm for the growing divide within American society. Democrat vs. Republican. Science vs. religion. Rural vs. urban. Rich vs. poor. It's a veritable cornucopia of Man vs. Man conflicts and that is even before we get into all the man vs. nature and man vs. himself  subtexts. In true Kingsolver fashion (or at least from the perspective of someone who has read The Poisonwood Bible) these divides are examined with a maturity and clarity that is rare among contemporary writers. Rather than simply taking a specific side and hammering her own opinion home, Kingsolver relishes in the role of devil's advocate and gives a fair shake to every side of the coin (well, except the media. Kingsolver saves all a special vehemence just for them). The end result is a rational, open dialog between sides that are not used to rational, open dialogs.

In true Richard Russo style, Kingsolver seems to thrive in telling stories that occur in small, tightly-knit communities. In The Poisonwood Bible, the Price family are living in a small village in the middle of the Congo, far removed from the workings of the modern world. In Flight Behavior she maintains the same sort of isolation by setting the narrative in a small, deeply religious Tennessee town that sees the bare minimum of outsiders. It would seem that Kingsolver enjoys crafting narratives with closed systems.

But one must examine her motivations for maintaining such pristine character cultures. In using small, closed communities, Kingsolver is able to limit the input/output of her characters and introduce specific environmental stresses to her story in an attempt to forecast specific reactions among her carefully constructed characters. Like the lepidopterists that inhabit the laboratories of Flight Behavior, Kingsolver approaches her narratives with the mindful deliberation of a scientist, ensuring that no outside contaminants will sully her instruments prior to the data read out.

And this is the reason for Kingsolver's success. In approaching a narrative in much the same way in which a scientist might approach a problem, Kingsolver is able to do away with outside contaminants and get to the root of an issue. I have heard more than a few people complain to me about the way in which Kingsolver crafts her characters. They are often one-dimensional personalities. That many of her characters can be reduced to single issues (he is a climate change denier) or single character traits (she is an uneducated racist). That may be true, but in Kingsolver's world (as opposed to the previously mentioned Richard Russo), stereotypes are a Kingsolver-esque narrative necessity in that they highlight the very real divides that plague our own communities. But Kingsolver fleshes out the stereotypes and makes it difficult to take specific sides along the way.

But let's not let all this analysis get in the way of a good story. For anyone expecting a repeat of The Poisonwood Bible, you will be sorely disappointed. In that respect, Flight Behavior is decidedly mediocre fare from one of America's great contemporary writers. But still, Barbara Kingsolver's mediocre is most writer's genius, so not to worry. As in real life, there is an ambiguity in everything that occurs in this narrative. Despite the absolutes in which the characters speak, events happen and the characters are forced to compromise their expectations and morals. And just like real life, nobody gets exactly what they want. Make no mistake, Flight Behavior is not a quick moving narrative. Rather, it simmers like a rump roast in a hot country kitchen. And considering the immediacy of many of its environmental themes, Flight Behavior behaves itself by not moving any faster than it should. No more than one would expect if it were propelled entirely on the strength of a butterfly's wings.

Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage

Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage

By Alfred Lansing

If there is a sub-genre of literature that I enjoy almost as much as zombie literature it's anything that has to do with polar exploration. And while I do enjoy a good novel on the subject (i.e. The Terror by Dan Simmons), absolutely nothing compares to the real life dramas that unfolded on the ice at either end of our planet at the tail end of the great age of exploration. I have devoured more than my fair share of non-fiction books on the subjects of Franklin, Scott and Admunsen. Pages filled with endless winters, frostbite and blubber. Stories that burble with the constant threat of hunger, exposure and death. Each of ten rife with tragedy, perseverance and thankless heroism. And for what? Usually nothing more than the whim of an adventurer and the glory of the day. Like the French, Spanish and British captains of the early days of North American exploration, there are so many characters in the great age of polar exploration. The recklessness of Greeley, they mystery of Franklin, the steely determination of Admunsen, the tragedy of Scott and the absolute true grit of Ernest Shackleton, the man whose expedition spent two years on the Antarctic ice and lived to tell the tale.

For those who are unfamiliar with Ernest Shackleton, he was a  British explorer whose 1915 expedition is famous for its almost interminable time floating on Antarctic pack ice. Shackleton and his team had set out to become the first to cross the Antarctic continent on foot but they never even made landfall as their ship, the Endurance, become frozen fast into the thick pack ice that forms on the Weddell Sea. Over the course of the winter they spent on the ice, the pressure eventually crushed and sank the ship, leaving the entire expedition exposed on the ice and drifting with the pack.

Through the gutsy leadership of Shackleton and the diligent measurements made by Frank Worsley, the captain of the Endurance, the entire expedition and crew of the ship were able to survive the ice and a harrowing sea journey to the nearby Elephant Island (off the end of the Palmer Peninsula). From their Shackleton and Worsley outfitted one of their three small skiffs, the James Caird, for an even more harrowing journey from Elephant Island to South Georgia Island, across the Drake Passage, a body of water known as the most dangerous on the planet.

In these latitudes, as nowhere else on Earth, the sea girdles the globe, uninterrupted by any mass of land. Here, since the beginning of time, the winds have mercilessly driven the seas clockwise around the Earth to return again to their birthplace where they reinforce themselves or one another.

And what is quite possibly the most remarkable thing about the Shackleton expedition is not the year they spent on the ice or their miraculous dash across the Drake Passage or even their impromptu crossing of South Georgia Island in order to reach the whaling station on Stromness Bay (a feat that was not repeated until 1954) but rather the fact that not a single member of the expedition lost their life. Of all the hands that left London in 1914, every one of them returned. Very few successful expeditions to the polar regions returned without casualties. It is a testament to the leadership of Ernest Shackleton that in the face of disaster, he was able to maintain order and persevere.

And it is Shackleton's leadership that is the focal point of Alfred Lansing's classic account of this remarkable expedition, Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage. Taken from the astonishing amount of primary source materials available to Lansing (i.e. the personal diaries of virtually all the men on the expedition) and given the exceptional quality of these sources, Lansing paints a picture of a dichotomous leader. Shackleton seems reckless to the point of disinterested in the planning stages of the expedition, making personnel choices based on anemic interviews and hunches. However, whatever selection process he used, it seemed to work because once on the ice, Shackleton's ability to lead in the face of extreme adversity was beyond reproach.

While the reader may disagree about Shackleton's motives and his heedless preparations for the voyage, it is difficult to question his ability as a leader in peril. From the outset, Shackleton had an almost innate ability to get the most from the men around him and the correct measure of tact to maintain order and cohesiveness even as the expedition was facing mortal peril. With very few exceptions, the entire team was able to maintain cordial relations throughout the almost two year ordeal without resorting to violence or mutiny. While a degree of credit should go to the men, it was Shackleton that brought them together and it was Shackleton that ensured they stayed together. One can only extrapolate from that that it was also Shackleton who ensured that all hands returned.

But what makes this book stand along side some of the other pillars of polar literature (The Arctic Grail by Pierre Berton, The Last Place on Earth: Scott and Admunsen's Race to the South Pole by Roland Huntford) is the author's ability to allow the story to work for itself rather than resort to embellishment and hyperbole. Lansing deals with his subject in the clinical, matter-of-fact way in which a good chronicler should. Certainly the events of Shackleton's two year adventure on the Antarctic ice (never once setting foot on the actual continent, I might add) are fantastical enough, certainly there is no need for a writer to garnish the story with over-wrought trimmings. It is difficult to add much to the open-boat voyage of the James Caird without resorting to mythologizing. Better writers have done so in the past, so it is a testament to Lansing that he has resisted, and it certainly must have been a temptation.

If you, like me, devour books about polar expeditions (and I especially like reading them during the sweaty Taiwanese summers, it helps me cool off just a bit) then this is a good call. Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage is both well researched and accessible. It shies away from the florid language of myth-making, maintaining the tone and pace of the materials from which it was born. It is often difficult to construct a compelling narrative from the personal recollections of a dozen men, but Lansing is apt to the challenge. Indeed he has written a book that should be viewed as a pillar in the genre.  One that should be read be an would-be Antarctic explorer (even if their armchair is preferable to and slightly more comfortable than the confines of the James Caird).

A Dance With Dragons: Book Five of a Song of Fire and Ice

A Dance With Dragons: Book Five of A Song of Fire and Ice

By George R.R. Martin

I'm there. I'm finally there!

Two years and 4884 pages later, I'm finally caught up. As of today (May 21, 2013, 26 days after starting the latest installment) I am completely up to date on The Song of Fire and Ice by George R.R. Martin. It's been a long and grueling road. At points I thought I'd never get to this point. I'd like to thank R'hollor, the Seven and the old gods as well as my agent, Petyr Baelish, my publicist, Cersei Lannister and my spin doctor, Davos Seaworth. Davos! Dude! We did it! I owe you a bushel of onions! Wait... wait! Before you cue the music, I'd just like to say that now that I am caught up, I wish I wasn't. I wish I could dive right back into Martin's world.  I'm completely hooked in and I'm not sure what I'm going to do while waiting for the next installment. 

Yeah, that's right. I'm a fully converted and completely unrepentant Game of Thrones fanboy. Sue me.

So it should come as no surprise that I say, without hyperbole, that this series has been the single greatest undertaking in my reading career. It has been every bit as monumental as reading the Old Testament, as thoroughly time-consuming as Infinite Jest and as satisfying as completing my first Shakespeare play in the ninth grade (Twelfth Night for those keeping score at home). But what sets Martin's series apart from those other reading peaks is the sheer scale of the series. 

A Song of Fire and Ice has thrice the number of characters as the Old Testament (There might be more Freys alone than characters in the entire Book of Genesis), four times the amount of pages as Infinite Jest and.... well, okay, Shakespeare is still a better writer than George R.R. Martin, but he's at least in the same ballpark when it comes to writing epic histories. And there's still two books to go!

Furthermore, As of today I join the legion of fans eagerly awaiting The Winds of Winter. More precisely, because I have not seen a single second of the television series I can count myself among the bookishly elite uber-nerds who have forsaken the television series in a vainglorious quest to keep the series intellectually pure. My vision of Daenerys Targaryen is a unique snowflake that will remain untarnished by the creative limitations of the boob tube. How many of the readers of the series can say that? Sometimes living in Taiwan has its perks. One of them is the ability to completely avoid American popular culture if the need arises (as it does here and in the case of Justin Beiber, reality television and the cult of celebrity).

As well, I can now join the increasing cacophony of impatience bombarding Martin as he works furiously (alas, not furiously enough to satisfy this reader) to finish the series (Please take care of yourself Mr. Martin and, please, consider moving closer to a healthcare provider in case you suffer any unexpected medical emergencies). Sure, I'm joining the back of the line, but I am officially in that line and I'm guessing that you are now. (The law of averages says that the last sentence will be true of most of the visitors to this site. If that last sentence does not pertain to you, trust that I didn't mean YOU).

So, what of A Dance With Dragons? Well, I do not want to be the bearer of spoilers for those either A) still mired deep in the printed series or B) those unfortunate souls who have opted for the television version. I will try my best to maintain a spoiler free take on the novel but please, if you are at all worried, stop reading here.

I thought it unfair of reviewers to have been so hard on the fourth book, A Feast for Crows. As I said in my review of that installment, it wasn't warranted. Oddly enough, I might be inclined to be a little hard on the fifth novel given that match of its one thousand plus pages seemed like a never-ending build-up to nothing. I was about 70% into the novel when I realized that very little had yet happened. The proverbial dust from the previous novel settled nicely but following that it was simply a lot of characters moving about Westeros and Essos without actually doing much of anything. Fortunately the final third of the novel more than made up for the slow-pace of the first two-thirds and there were enough holy-shit moments in the last few chapters to satisfy even the most jaded fans of the series. 

There are a could of narrative specific thought I had while reading that are worth noting: 

It took five books but Martin finally managed to generate some heated interest in the story lines emanating out of Dorne. Up until A Dance With Dragons, I cringed at a Dornish chapter heading. Now, Dorne finally figured into the storyline in a more concrete and meaningful way. Now if he can just do that for anything happening in the Eyrie all bases would be covered. 

Tyrion continues to be my favorite character, though he lost a little something now that he's off his high horse. Here's to hoping for a return to form in the next installment. I also liked the inclusion (finally) of Barristan Selmy as a POV character. He's always been one of my favorites. But the one character that I want to see done as a POV is the one I fear will never be done: Varys.

I've never been a huge fan of Bran Stark's storyline but it took such a boring, pseudo-spiritual turn in this book that almost stalled out in his chapters. I know Martin is gearing up for something special with Bran but I wish he'd keep the hocus pocus to a minimum.

I'm hoping that Martin gives us a POV character from the House Martell in The Winds of Winter. Of the seven kingdoms, Highgarden is the only one that has yet to have its own POV character and I would really like to understand their motivations better. Or perhaps I'm not supposed to know.

And who the hell is Robert the Strong?

Anyway, as I said, A Dance With Dragons started out slow but those last few chapters made the entire ride so very much worthwhile. So many changes. So many questions. So much uncertainty. My only fear is that, like so many mediocre writers, Martin will end up creating such a masterful set up that he will be unable to follow through. I sincerely hope he knows where this narrative is going because other than in the most general terms, I haven't the foggiest. The rightful holder of the Iron Throne could be Stannis, Tommen, Daenerys or Moon Boy, for all I know. 

And of course, I know nothing.

Previous reviews in this series:

A Game of Thrones

A Clash of Kings

A Storm of Swords

A Feast For Crows

The Magic Circle

The Magic Circle

By Jenny Davidson

About halfway through this novel I was reminded of an interactive work of theater called Sleep No More that had runs in both London and New York (neither of which I attended). According to the interview I heard with the creator of the project, Sleep No More is set in a five floor building which is transformed into a turn-of-the-century hotel. Rather than traditional theater where audience members are asked to sit and watch the action, In Sleep No More the members of the audience, who are given masks upon entry to maintain anonymity but no program, are free to wander aimlessly throughout the building and into any of the various settings. They are encouraged to open drawers and closets, read diaries and interact with the actors (who remain silent throughout the performance). The story, or what little there is of it, is loosely based on MacBeth. Like I said, interactive.

Let me be absolutely clear on something. Jenny Davidson's novel The Magic Circle has nothing to do with this macabre bit of theater, but until about a week ago, Sleep No More the closest thing to Live Action Role Playing that I had ever heard of. That's right. I have lived almost four decades completely unaware of the entire sub-culture of live action role playing games (henceforth referred to as larp or larping). Some of you are probably rolling your eyes at me. How could I have never heard of larping? Surely I've heard of Dungeons and Dragons.

Well, yes. But I had always assumed that was something that a certain demographic of kids did with dice and cards in their parent's basement. I was unaware of the massive cottage industry of dressing up, equipping oneself with all sorts of expensive paraphernalia and wandering around pre-determined environments engaging in some sort of elaborate game complete with scoring. Apparently there are literally thousands of adults who do this and I was completely unaware. Me, a self-avowed nerd. I should hand in my card.

Now, I'm not particularly interested in larping. I'm not about to skip out and buy myself a broadsword, but to each their own. But it's these sorts of discoveries about the world that keep me in books. I love it that even at my rapidly advancing age I am able to discover pockets and corners of this world of which I was previously ignorant. Yay books!

So anyway, The Magic Circle is about three female friends who are particularly interested in larping, specifically in New York City. The three friends are on a seemingly endless quest to concoct and then play an elaborate urban role playing game. But much like games, reality is not exactly what it seems. Anna, the mysterious Swedish-born, occult-obssessed woman next door isn't being entirely forthwith about her past and when her brother shows up on the scene, the lines between the game and reality begin to blur. Much like Sleep No More, The Magic Circle is loosely based on another classic story. In this case it is The Bacchae by Euripides (If you are unfamiliar with The Bacchae, never fear, Davidson has you covered. She provides a more than adequate summary of the story within the narrative.

Viewed simply fas a narrative, The Magic Circle is fairly weak. The story is simplistic, slow and often aimless, especially toward the beginning. Davidson provides very little background about the three main characters and it took me a long time to differentiate between the three as separate entities. Their careers seem to be categorically dismissed in a manner that left me wondering where these three got all their free time. But not too much, because I really didn't develop any strong feelings for her characters. The story seemed to jump across large swathes of time (work, presumably) but as the novel progressed, the narrative did began to take a certain shape and dimension, but it never fleshes out as completely as I thought it could have.

But to read The Magic Circle simply as a narrative it to sell this novel short. Behind the flimsy narrative is a discussion worth having. The Magic Circle is, at its core, a novel about infantilization and the modern glorification of games and play in lieu of earnest relationships and honest dialogue. Davidson spends a lot of time inside the heads of her protagonists, chronicling their neuroses and their inabilities to communicate with family and friends on a mature field. Instead, the characters (and many of us) use games, whether they are role-playing games, sports etc... as a form of social lubrication. Not that there is anything particularly wrong with using games as a way in which to foster and facilitate friendships but, like so much else, there is more than one face on a dice.

This theme got me to thinking about an exceptional book I read a couple of years back called Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults and Swallow Citizens Whole by Benjamin R. Barber. Barber contends that modern markets and the media that drives them have created an endless maze of escapism that has ostensibly "dumbed down" our population via movies, music, television and, yes.... games. While I don't think Davidson was thinking specifically about Barber's thesis or the infantilization of adults in specific, this novel does address the issue, even if by accident, and that's a dialogue worth having.

In this vein, the thematic centerpiece of the novel (for me, anyway) is the Christmas dinner at Ruth's mother's house. Ruth's mother is a collector of vintage toys and is given a first edition copy of The Game of Life from 1860. Despite the fact that the game is a historical artifact in the eyes of Ruth's mother, Ruth's friend Anna suggests they play the game. What follows is a flash of brilliance in an otherwise mediocre read. The episode speaks volumes about the games people play with each other within their own personal relationships all within the strict confines of an actual, physical game being played. What isn't said becomes every bit as important as what is said.

In fact, had Davidson edited this already short novel a bit more and had it centered around this particular episode rather reaching for the parallelism between The Bacchae and reality, it would have made for an exceptional short story. As it stands, The Magic Circle is an accessible novel about a subject that will is relatively unknown to most readers and could potentially be an excellent way in which to introduce the notions of larping to readers (such as me) who have never heard of it. Unfortunately, it is a great idea fallen a bit flat. There are moments in this novel, but they are too few and too far between.

The New Republic

The New Republic

By Lionel Shriver

Lionel Shriver's 2012 novel, The New Republic, is actually a problematic manuscript with a checkered history. Originally penned in the late 1990s, this psychological novel about terrorism was dismissed by American publishers as too jejune for American readers. Following the attacks on September 11, 2001, and the proceeding years of earnest introspection (at least among literary circles) an ironic take on terrorism and journalism continued to frighten off publishers, until recently. Apparently the social and political climate of 2012 was ripe for an unabashed satire on media sensationalism and terrorism. In the meticulous Shriver style, there are no psychological tables left unflipped and no sociological surfaces left unswiped. Having recently finished Shriver's Orange-Prize winning novel We Need to Talk About Kevin, and loving it, I desperately wanted to love this novel as well. Alas, I didn't. But it's not all bad.

The New Republic is set in the fictional state of Barba, a drab, beard-like (Barba... get it?) appendage of land that extends into the Atlantic Ocean off Portugal's southern coast. Barba has recently become a European hotbed of terrorism under the guise of a paramilitary group known as the SOB – a radical terrorist cell fighting for Barban autonomy from Portugal and claiming responsibility for a seemingly random series of violent international attacks. Due to the rash of attention, foreign correspondents from the world's major media sources have descended on this European backwater previously known only for its unceasing gale-force winds, its tacky souvenir production industry and the hairy pear, a local fruit that is every bit as unappetizing as it sounds.

The foreign correspondents form a Greek chorus of media personalities (or lack thereof. Shriver's two-dimensional take on the members of the foreign press is rife with meaning), producing tired examinations, reasonings and rationales for the violence in lieu of any hard reporting on the ground. Joining this murder of squawking crows is Edgar Kellogg. Kellogg is a greenhorn journalist sent to Barba to replace Barrington Saddler, a larger-than-life personality who has gone missing and who may or may not have a lot more to do with the SOB than simply writing about them.

But the entire point of The New Republic isn't the narrative so much as the themes it illustrates, sometimes in bold relief. Shriver, obviously, takes aim at the notion of modern terrorism and the manner in which it is reported to illogical extremes but this novel is really about charisma. Why some people have it and others don't and what drives people who don't have charisma to emulate and ultimately turn on those who do have it. In this vein, Shriver is disappointingly predictable. Kellogg recounts the story of why he has quit his Manhattan law firm to become a journalist. He is determined to follow in the footsteps of his charismatic prep school friend with whom he hasn't spoken in decades. Turns out that his friend has grown up to become a milquetoast sycophant for the Daily Record newspaper and possesses none of the self-assurance that he possessed in school. This was like discovering the butler killed Lady Butterbum in the conservatory on page 12 of a 400 page book. You'd think Edgar would learn his lesson right there before shipping off to a european hellhole, but apparently Edgar isn't that bright. Diligently, Shriver trudges on and, lo and behold, exactly what she says will happen in the beginning actually happens at the end.

Predictability is certainly a problem, but my real problem with The New Republic was the characterization of Shriver's have-not anti-hero, Edgar Kellogg. Kellogg is simply irritating. He's blunt, rude and completely devoid of charisma. Furthermore, he seems to lack class, tact and common sense. He's also arrogant, haughty and condescending. He's incapable of hiding his true feelings and utterly incompetent at his job. I could go on, but you get the picture. Needless to say Edgar is a bastard.

While I understand that Shriver is attempting an examination of charisma and needed a character that was indeed lacking in it, but Kellogg is so relentlessly devoid of any emotions ascribed to charisma that he almost ceases to exist in any sort of reality understood by the reader. How does someone like Kellogg even ingratiate themselves enough with anyone to discover their lack of charisma? I wouldn't give Edgar 15 minutes before standing up and walking out on him.

By way of explanation, Edgar was once a morbidly obese kid and, though he lost the weight, he never lost the inferiority complex. Fair enough, I suppose. Consequently, Edgar has awkwardly shifted into adulthood with an acute sense of both entitlement and disdain for those around him. Why shouldn't he have what others have? He deserves it more than they do, anyway. In that respect he had transferred his personal self-loathing onto everyone else. That's some serious pop psychology right there.

In literary terms, this makes Edgar not so much a character but a caricature. He is, like the blathering idiot reporters at the local Barban watering hole, a predictable cartoon cut-out of what would happen if someone had zero charisma superimposed on a novel along side the world's most charismatic correspondent. This makes The New Republic a wolf in sheep's clothing. It is less novel and more a psychological and sociological diatribe.

Which is why the novel, as a whole, fails to impress. Don't get me wrong, Lionel Shriver's acute understanding of her subject matter is apparent, especially on the subject of terrorism and the media and the elements that would be used with such effect in We Need to Talk About Kevin are manifest throughout. Furthermore, the writing is, at times, sublime and, at points, this novel can be scathingly funny. But it lacks in any real movement, drags on so unnecessarily through the middle and leaves the reader with a rather cop out ending. Unfortunately, the strong qualities of this novel only made this reader feel cheated out of what could have been an extremely poignant book.

As it stands, it simply feels like a novel that should have remained right where Lionel Shriver left it in 1998... taking up a few megabytes of space on an out-dated hard drive. Perhaps the publishers were right the first time. Perhaps we didn't really need The New Republic.