by Jan Wong
The tale of the Chinese-Canadian author’s long path from a deluded, naïve red-to-the-core Maoist to a cynical reporter who sees just how wrong she was. Wong’s life is enthralling in its sheer unlikeliness, even if Wong herself comes off as an unrepentant spoiled fool in the first half of the book. Wong dismisses the concerns of her wealthy father (born in Canada, the son of an emigrant) to become one of only two Westerners allowed to attend Beijing University in 1972, in the throes of the Cultural Revolution, and demands to work in the fields, so she can be “purified” by labor. She is far too stupid to understand that Mao’s policies were insane and destructive, and actually believed what millions of Chinese knew to be madness. If Wong were Chinese, she’d be merely naïve, or a tool of the system – as an educated Canadian who should have known better, she comes off as dangerously stupid, and her book is full of excuses and alibis for her actions. She takes pains to cite the turbulent political times, the anti-American sentiment, her youth… but those are not valid excuses. Millions of Americans criticized their government in the ‘60s and ‘70s without swallowing Mao’s gnomish madness, and tens of millions of teenagers may have impulsive tendencies but manage not to be raving absolutists about things which are obviously untrue.
So the first half of the book is infuriating, though still fascinating. Very early into Wong’s first visit to China, she started noticing that the Cultural Revolution had trashed standards throughout China, that “some people seemed more equal than others,” that food stores were sparse; but still she remains deluded and committed to Maoism. What kind of mind must she have had to be so blind? At one point she is so brainwashed (not, it must be noted, by anyone but her own faulty reasoning and stupidity) she denounces students who want her help to escape China. Wong realizes that this was a low point in her development, but she maintains a defensive attitude about even this, comparing herself to other Chinese denouncers. (She doesn’t seem to realize that they, who had to live there, may have had practical reasons to denounce others, such as to avoid more severe punishment for loved ones who may have been implicated.) As with all brainwashed zealots, it is only after her personal desires or freedoms are impacted that she truly begins to question what she believes: “I was sick of the double standard… How dare he interfere in my life. I had changed… I refused to endure the same kind of humiliation every Chinese endured,” she writes about the authorities’ attempts to prevent her from seeing her future husband. Wong’s stupidity and self-interest is rather pathetic, and she is a highly unsympathetic narrator – but as I say, the book is fascinating, if only because her experiences are so unreal and rare. After her apostasy, the book gets even more interesting, because of Wong’s unique ability to blend in with the Chinese people and get stories for the New York Times. She writes about the lead-up to the Tiananmen reprisals, when students went on “hunger strikes” in turns (with snack breaks), and how it suddenly turned from a rather jovial sit-in to a massacre. She gives in-depth reports on execution fields and the practicalities of summary executions; she visits entire villages made retarded and dwarfed by pollution; she investigates modern women trafficking; and she marvels at the breakneck pace of China’s embrace of capitalism, with its McDonald’s run by ex-cadre leaders, the new extravagance of penis and breast reconstruction (though the former has roots in China’s early rural economy, when boys had their penises bitten off by feral pigs as they defecated in fields at night). “Even my maid had a maid,” she writes, bemused at the changes. At this point Wong seems very clear-headed, but even late in the book, she claims that China was “an unrelentingly pure country” in 1980 because guards didn’t take bribes, compared to the pervasive bribery rampant in China today. But surely she realizes that bribery sprouts from lawlessness, and the lack of bribery is more likely rooted in fear of a mad despot than some ideological “purity” that never existed? It left me wondering if Wong ever really learned a lesson, or just got tired of being treated like a Chinese person. That aside, it’s a fascinating look at Chinese written from a unique perspective.
four stars
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Bedside Manners: One Doctor's Reflections on the Oddly Intimate Encounters Between Patient and Healer
by David Watts
The author, an internist and poet, writes brief vignettes about a variety of patients – the resigned, the anxious, the pathologically neurotic, the demanding and blustering. With the longest at around ten pages and most of them no more than four, these are brief scenes, ruminations on what a patient’s words or actions may actually be saying about their inner feelings.
The last word in the subtitle – “healer” – is aptly chosen, as Dr. Watts attends to not only his patients’ colons and esophagi, but their fears and hopes and memories. Using as his precept “So you’re a doctor, but don’t go around acting like one,” he does a masterful job of checking his ego, putting himself in his patients’ shoes, allowing them their moments of fear or bravado. As the kind of doctor who sees himself as a healer, listener, counselor, and fount of compassion, he also has a few rather pointed and amusing things to say about insurance companies and red tape. As a poet, he is a talented storyteller with a gift for evoking a scene of high emotion in a few lines and ending it on the perfect, ambiguous, moving, or wryly humorous note. I did not like the way in which he eschewed all quotation marks; Watts may be a poet, but this is not poetry, and it was a distracting affectation.
four stars
The author, an internist and poet, writes brief vignettes about a variety of patients – the resigned, the anxious, the pathologically neurotic, the demanding and blustering. With the longest at around ten pages and most of them no more than four, these are brief scenes, ruminations on what a patient’s words or actions may actually be saying about their inner feelings.
The last word in the subtitle – “healer” – is aptly chosen, as Dr. Watts attends to not only his patients’ colons and esophagi, but their fears and hopes and memories. Using as his precept “So you’re a doctor, but don’t go around acting like one,” he does a masterful job of checking his ego, putting himself in his patients’ shoes, allowing them their moments of fear or bravado. As the kind of doctor who sees himself as a healer, listener, counselor, and fount of compassion, he also has a few rather pointed and amusing things to say about insurance companies and red tape. As a poet, he is a talented storyteller with a gift for evoking a scene of high emotion in a few lines and ending it on the perfect, ambiguous, moving, or wryly humorous note. I did not like the way in which he eschewed all quotation marks; Watts may be a poet, but this is not poetry, and it was a distracting affectation.
four stars
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
The Cavalier In the Yellow Doublet
by Arturo Perez-Reverte
2003
translated by Margaret Jull Costa
The fifth Captain Alatriste novel. The Captain and his young (but now rather handy with a blade) ward Inigo are in Madrid, walking a tightrope between their strict standards of honor and their rather lowly status among the pomp, poetry, and provocation of that city’s many cavaliers and officials. Alatriste begins an affair with a famous and beautiful actress, María Castro (whose husband serves as some sort of half-jocular, half-bitter pimp), but is warned to stay away, as her favors are being enjoyed by none other than the king himself. The Captain, of course, cannot be told what to do, and alienates friends and enemies alike by continuing to see the actress. This, unfortunately, makes him the perfect patsy for a plot against the royal wastrel – and when Alatriste’s old enemy, the Italian mercenary Malatesta, pops up, they both know one of them must die at the hands of the other.
This is a superb historical novel, perhaps the best in the series. The vanity of swordsmen for a decaying empire, duels over one wrong glance, strict adherence to considerations of honor, pageantry, assignations, plays, poets whose stars rise and fall at the whims of the court: this is Perez-Reverte’s 17th century Madrid, in all its gritty cinematic glory. The suspense is masterful, with Alatriste and Inigo both independently betrayed by their foolish pride or love, and racing, swords in hand, against a very short deadline separately but toward the same goal. Alatriste is not at all what the modern reader would think a hero – he’s a tired cynical old killer with no fear of death and his every action is mandated by his sense of pride and honor, not fairness or magnanimity – but he has a shred of sympathy for those over their heads and a few sparks of love in him, and that makes him a complex, fascinating figure. He’s the perfect centerpiece for these thrilling, swashbuckling adventures of a grittier, prouder time.
four stars
2003
translated by Margaret Jull Costa
The fifth Captain Alatriste novel. The Captain and his young (but now rather handy with a blade) ward Inigo are in Madrid, walking a tightrope between their strict standards of honor and their rather lowly status among the pomp, poetry, and provocation of that city’s many cavaliers and officials. Alatriste begins an affair with a famous and beautiful actress, María Castro (whose husband serves as some sort of half-jocular, half-bitter pimp), but is warned to stay away, as her favors are being enjoyed by none other than the king himself. The Captain, of course, cannot be told what to do, and alienates friends and enemies alike by continuing to see the actress. This, unfortunately, makes him the perfect patsy for a plot against the royal wastrel – and when Alatriste’s old enemy, the Italian mercenary Malatesta, pops up, they both know one of them must die at the hands of the other.
This is a superb historical novel, perhaps the best in the series. The vanity of swordsmen for a decaying empire, duels over one wrong glance, strict adherence to considerations of honor, pageantry, assignations, plays, poets whose stars rise and fall at the whims of the court: this is Perez-Reverte’s 17th century Madrid, in all its gritty cinematic glory. The suspense is masterful, with Alatriste and Inigo both independently betrayed by their foolish pride or love, and racing, swords in hand, against a very short deadline separately but toward the same goal. Alatriste is not at all what the modern reader would think a hero – he’s a tired cynical old killer with no fear of death and his every action is mandated by his sense of pride and honor, not fairness or magnanimity – but he has a shred of sympathy for those over their heads and a few sparks of love in him, and that makes him a complex, fascinating figure. He’s the perfect centerpiece for these thrilling, swashbuckling adventures of a grittier, prouder time.
four stars
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Every Day In Tuscany
by Frances Mayes
Not a cohesive memoir so much as a personal diary of the author’s time in Tuscany, now twenty years on since her bestseller. Perhaps because this is her fourth volume of Tuscan ramblings (I have not read anything else by her), she does not take the time to introduce characters but rather just drops their names – is Ed her second husband? Third? Common-law live-in partner? Is her grandchild’s mother her daughter, or Ed’s, or what? Who are all these neighbors, and their relation to her? It’s not terribly important, perhaps, but a nagging distraction for those who have just picked up this one book. In a similar vein, she drops the names of such things as “DOC wines” without explaining that this is an official quality assurance label. In this sense the book is, ironically, very off-putting and exclusionary, since she is trying to write as if composing letters to close friends. It’s very poetic, adjective-drenched, sensual language, light on events and drama, and even lighter on chronological sense. It’s predominately the scents of food and vibrant colorful flowers and thick soft warm cloths, mountains and wooden furniture and Renaissance paintings and fireside sing-alongs.
There is a brief point at which something approaching a conflict of interest or drama approaches. She is caught up in local politics, and – and after a build-up that makes it seem as if a loved one will be tortured in front of her – she relates a slightly unpleasant event that shook her up a bit. Her fear soon passes without further incident, as does her telling of it, and after a few pages musing on the bad things that happened to people she’s known, it’s off again with menus, museum tours, shops, flowers, page after page after page about paintings, apparently cribbed from museum tour guides or books on art history – to me the absolute pinnacle of boring reading. All this, with no particular progression or thought to build up a coherent narrative journey: near the very end of the book is when she chooses to ramble about her struggles with the Italian language – why then? – and of course then switches gears abruptly, droning about what might have been if she’d stayed in Georgia – which can be of no interest to anyone but herself. All this museum-visiting and garden-planting and wine-tasting and restaurant-lingering and pasta-making and house-renovating is perhaps fascinating stuff to those who read to live vicariously, but it is not for me. In the end, Mayes’ personal prose style says very little about Tuscany itself, and quite a lot about what a wealthy woman writer from Georgia enjoys doing all day. That, to me, is not what travel writing is all about. The final chapter is pseudo-metaphysical pretentious nonsense (“is the universe – at some distance – shaped like the bones of a cranium?”). Boring. Utterly boring.
one star
Not a cohesive memoir so much as a personal diary of the author’s time in Tuscany, now twenty years on since her bestseller. Perhaps because this is her fourth volume of Tuscan ramblings (I have not read anything else by her), she does not take the time to introduce characters but rather just drops their names – is Ed her second husband? Third? Common-law live-in partner? Is her grandchild’s mother her daughter, or Ed’s, or what? Who are all these neighbors, and their relation to her? It’s not terribly important, perhaps, but a nagging distraction for those who have just picked up this one book. In a similar vein, she drops the names of such things as “DOC wines” without explaining that this is an official quality assurance label. In this sense the book is, ironically, very off-putting and exclusionary, since she is trying to write as if composing letters to close friends. It’s very poetic, adjective-drenched, sensual language, light on events and drama, and even lighter on chronological sense. It’s predominately the scents of food and vibrant colorful flowers and thick soft warm cloths, mountains and wooden furniture and Renaissance paintings and fireside sing-alongs.
There is a brief point at which something approaching a conflict of interest or drama approaches. She is caught up in local politics, and – and after a build-up that makes it seem as if a loved one will be tortured in front of her – she relates a slightly unpleasant event that shook her up a bit. Her fear soon passes without further incident, as does her telling of it, and after a few pages musing on the bad things that happened to people she’s known, it’s off again with menus, museum tours, shops, flowers, page after page after page about paintings, apparently cribbed from museum tour guides or books on art history – to me the absolute pinnacle of boring reading. All this, with no particular progression or thought to build up a coherent narrative journey: near the very end of the book is when she chooses to ramble about her struggles with the Italian language – why then? – and of course then switches gears abruptly, droning about what might have been if she’d stayed in Georgia – which can be of no interest to anyone but herself. All this museum-visiting and garden-planting and wine-tasting and restaurant-lingering and pasta-making and house-renovating is perhaps fascinating stuff to those who read to live vicariously, but it is not for me. In the end, Mayes’ personal prose style says very little about Tuscany itself, and quite a lot about what a wealthy woman writer from Georgia enjoys doing all day. That, to me, is not what travel writing is all about. The final chapter is pseudo-metaphysical pretentious nonsense (“is the universe – at some distance – shaped like the bones of a cranium?”). Boring. Utterly boring.
one star
Friday, January 18, 2013
Bone Dry
by Ben Rehder
2003
The second Blanco Country mystery. Game warden John Marlin is again drawn reluctantly into a homicide investigation. It starts quirkily enough and in his wheelhouse: a drought has made two prominent local men, Emmett Slayton, crusty old rancher (with loveable bumbling would-be crook hillbillies Billy Don and Red from the previous book working for him), and Sal Mameli, an ex-mafioso in the witness protection program, compete for the suddenly in-demand cedar brush-cutting business; Mameli and his nasty son are willing to turn violent to get the monopoly. Meanwhile, there are reports of a beautiful blonde anti-hunting activist pretending to seduce hunters and then vandalizing their gear. But when a hunter ends up shot to death, with one of John’s hunting buddies the prime suspect, things turn grim. John is forced to take a hand when the suspect grabs a hostage and demands that the game warden help clear his name; with the sexy activist now on his side, he digs for a motive while trying to forget Beth, his separated girlfriend.
This is a briskly paced, amusing, silly, and quite over-the-top ride, with a rather crowded cast of dozens, more than a few plots burning at once, and a handful of twists. Some of the characters are unfortunate caricatures (Sal’s dialogue, peppered with “dis” and “dat” and references to New Jersey, is poorly rendered and gets tiring, Inga the activist is a one-note fun sexy hippie chick type), but a core group of fleshed-out principals are sympathetic and multi-faceted. The mystery, hidden beneath all the mayhem and blundering, is solid and Rehder adds a twist that had me smiling admiringly at the end of the book.
four stars
2003
The second Blanco Country mystery. Game warden John Marlin is again drawn reluctantly into a homicide investigation. It starts quirkily enough and in his wheelhouse: a drought has made two prominent local men, Emmett Slayton, crusty old rancher (with loveable bumbling would-be crook hillbillies Billy Don and Red from the previous book working for him), and Sal Mameli, an ex-mafioso in the witness protection program, compete for the suddenly in-demand cedar brush-cutting business; Mameli and his nasty son are willing to turn violent to get the monopoly. Meanwhile, there are reports of a beautiful blonde anti-hunting activist pretending to seduce hunters and then vandalizing their gear. But when a hunter ends up shot to death, with one of John’s hunting buddies the prime suspect, things turn grim. John is forced to take a hand when the suspect grabs a hostage and demands that the game warden help clear his name; with the sexy activist now on his side, he digs for a motive while trying to forget Beth, his separated girlfriend.
This is a briskly paced, amusing, silly, and quite over-the-top ride, with a rather crowded cast of dozens, more than a few plots burning at once, and a handful of twists. Some of the characters are unfortunate caricatures (Sal’s dialogue, peppered with “dis” and “dat” and references to New Jersey, is poorly rendered and gets tiring, Inga the activist is a one-note fun sexy hippie chick type), but a core group of fleshed-out principals are sympathetic and multi-faceted. The mystery, hidden beneath all the mayhem and blundering, is solid and Rehder adds a twist that had me smiling admiringly at the end of the book.
four stars
Saturday, January 12, 2013
Charlie And the Great Glass Elevator
by Roald Dahl
1972
The sequel to the famous book about the chocolate factory, this book begins in media res with Charlie Bucket, the eccentric and magical Wonka, and Charlie’s extended family all in the titular glass elevator, hurtling up into space. With a total disregard for how gravity or any other boring reality works, Dahl has the group fly to the newly built Space Hotel, meet up with some belligerent shape-changing aliens (the Vermicious Knids), rescue some astronauts, and return to Earth where, their cosmic adventures already forgotten, Wonka gives the elderly Buckets some pills that turn them twenty years younger per pill. Of course this doesn’t go right, either.
It’s utterly madcap, written as if with a young child’s attention span, logic, and sense of perspective about events. The scenes in which the president discusses the alien attack on the Space Hotel are almost Dr. Strangelove-ish, with President Lancelot Gilligrass convening his cabinet, “a sword-swallower from Afghanistan, who was the President’s best friend,” and the Vice-President, who is Gilligrass’ nanny and actually commands the room. The Chief of the Army keeps wanting to blow everything up and making explosion noises with his mouth, and the President gets distracted from the problem when he thinks of a terrifically ridiculous idea for a fly trap. And that’s just a couple of chapters; the Buckets race from one crazed event to the next. Dahl puts in groan-inducing puns, Carroll-lite doggerel, silly metaphors, neologisms, nonce words, and antiquated but actual words (“he’ll lixiviate the lot of us!”). It’s all thoroughly silly, and it’s hardly as brilliant as Carroll’s calmer surrealism, but it’s light-hearted and memorable.
four stars
1972
The sequel to the famous book about the chocolate factory, this book begins in media res with Charlie Bucket, the eccentric and magical Wonka, and Charlie’s extended family all in the titular glass elevator, hurtling up into space. With a total disregard for how gravity or any other boring reality works, Dahl has the group fly to the newly built Space Hotel, meet up with some belligerent shape-changing aliens (the Vermicious Knids), rescue some astronauts, and return to Earth where, their cosmic adventures already forgotten, Wonka gives the elderly Buckets some pills that turn them twenty years younger per pill. Of course this doesn’t go right, either.
It’s utterly madcap, written as if with a young child’s attention span, logic, and sense of perspective about events. The scenes in which the president discusses the alien attack on the Space Hotel are almost Dr. Strangelove-ish, with President Lancelot Gilligrass convening his cabinet, “a sword-swallower from Afghanistan, who was the President’s best friend,” and the Vice-President, who is Gilligrass’ nanny and actually commands the room. The Chief of the Army keeps wanting to blow everything up and making explosion noises with his mouth, and the President gets distracted from the problem when he thinks of a terrifically ridiculous idea for a fly trap. And that’s just a couple of chapters; the Buckets race from one crazed event to the next. Dahl puts in groan-inducing puns, Carroll-lite doggerel, silly metaphors, neologisms, nonce words, and antiquated but actual words (“he’ll lixiviate the lot of us!”). It’s all thoroughly silly, and it’s hardly as brilliant as Carroll’s calmer surrealism, but it’s light-hearted and memorable.
four stars
Sunday, January 6, 2013
Martha Speaks: White House Dog
"by" Susan Mettaugh
2011
It should be noted that this book is not by Susan Mettaugh as listed, but rather “based on the characters created by" Susan Mettaugh, an "adaptation" by Jamie White, based on a TV script by Dietrich Smith. It is a book written by a committee in pieces, for the purposes of extending a brand, in this case a television show – not to tell a story. In this episode, Martha calls the White House to opine that the new president should adopt a shelter dog. Then the president hears that Martha can talk and hires her to solve a problem with his new dog. He then puts her on a temporary committee to interview dogs to find out what they’re thinking. None of this leads to any resolution. It’s not particularly funny or charming. Scenes that are descriptions of TV moments that require visuals for humor or interest don’t translate to the printed page. Bonus points for pushing the shelter dog message, and shoehorning in quick facts and definitions in a well-intentioned if stilted effort to be educational.
two stars
2011
It should be noted that this book is not by Susan Mettaugh as listed, but rather “based on the characters created by" Susan Mettaugh, an "adaptation" by Jamie White, based on a TV script by Dietrich Smith. It is a book written by a committee in pieces, for the purposes of extending a brand, in this case a television show – not to tell a story. In this episode, Martha calls the White House to opine that the new president should adopt a shelter dog. Then the president hears that Martha can talk and hires her to solve a problem with his new dog. He then puts her on a temporary committee to interview dogs to find out what they’re thinking. None of this leads to any resolution. It’s not particularly funny or charming. Scenes that are descriptions of TV moments that require visuals for humor or interest don’t translate to the printed page. Bonus points for pushing the shelter dog message, and shoehorning in quick facts and definitions in a well-intentioned if stilted effort to be educational.
two stars
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)