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I had to leave the book club meeting because on the day we were discussing this book was when my daughter delivered her first baby, my first grand daughter. I had to rush out of Marlene’s house to go to get Sara West, the doula. Hurriedly, I motored to Kaiser Medical in Santa Clara, CA. I missed the discussion on Wes Moore.
Wes Moore is inspiring, a man of great achievement, who spoke of failure and the ability to rise above it. Failure to do things correctly in the beginning made him strong, determined and able to overcome the unsurmountable difficulties of growing up in the inner cities of Maryland, where drugs and chaos were the order of the lives of African American children living there. Surprisingly, Wes More had a namesake, another Wes Moore who came from the same ghetto and drug infested neighborhood that he came from and he started a connection by visiting him and writing him from the
Jessup Correctional Facility where the other Wes was incarcerated. Two lives almost parallel to a certain point suddenly became divergent. One became a businessman and army reservist, Rhodes scholar and philantrophist, and the other, serving a lifetime of imprisonment. What made the difference? What was the turning point in the lives of the two Wes’ that made them who they were?
This book is very rich in vivid descriptions on what the lives of inner city children are like, drug dealing and drug use are the order of the day, gangs and violence are the horrors of mothers, life is so inimical that there is no other recourse but to leave. But to where? Life’s vicissitudes follow the poor, the marginalized and the downtrodden. But there are the few who escape and who rise above the rest, due to fate, by the hand of chance being kindly or just randomly there. Wes Moore’s mother was a disciplinarian, had the vision to take her son away from the school that housed the drug pushers and the malevolent kids of the neighborhood. He went across town where the affluent students went, and he described himself to be too poor to belong there and too “classy” to belong to his old neighborhood. His mother threatened to send him to military school if he misbehaved in his new school, and to military school he was sent after becoming a troublemaker at his new surroundings. He escaped and was made fun of at military school, but there were enough people there who bcame his role model, people who cared enough for him to straighten and turn his life around.
The book also talked about UBUNTU, a philosphy of life practiced by the tribes in South Aftrica, the philosophy that we are all interconnected. This primes the natives of that tribe in Africa to welcome all guests with open arms, to be non violent, and to realize that we are all a part of each other and that whatever affects one, affects all. Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu preached ubuntu to their fellow Africans.
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I could not run with Ann Patchett as much as I would have liked to. The opening chapter of Bernadette’s Madonna statue being discussed was not too compelling, the beginning of the story dragged and I honestly put the book down and proceeded to read another book. It turns out that the death of Bernadette left three orphan sons and a widower, Doyle, former mayor of Boston. The remarkableness of the family bereft of a mother is that there are no female heirs to pass the Madonna statue to, and that the two other members of the family were African-American boys, adopted into this Irish family. The first son, Doyle’s biological son, Sullivan was not integral to the daily lives of the blended family.
During a snowy evening, after a Jesse Jackson meeting in a Cambridge Mass. home, Tip is almost sideswiped by an oncoming vehicle, when a woman in a Chevy jumps out to push him out of harm’s way. Tennessee, the woman gets badly injured and is sent to the hospital, and leaves behind a young girl, Kenya, who was in the car with her. Tip breaks his ankle. Tip and Teddy, the two boys look for Kenya, the 11 year old girl and they take her in their home.
Tip and Teddy are fine young boys. Tip is a smart, passionate ichthyologist and Harvard student and Teddy, a sweet younger brother has taken a fondness for the religious life, owing to his exposure to Father Sullivan, a maternal uncle. Doyle raises his sons to be upright and successful, loving and secure, and they acquire another member of the family, Kenya by happenstance, who has been watching the lives of Tip and Teddy all along. Tennesse is their biological mother, who has managed to keep tabs of these boys as they grew up with privilege in the house of Doyle. They live next to him in the projects. (In Boston, the elegant homes and the projects are close to each other, one can be living in Cathedral, next to a treelined area of homes of distinguished Bostonians).
Here is an unusual family that is put together, with all their attendant differences of race, passion, political and religious affiliations and somehow, they have to get along because of their circumstances and choices that they have made. “Run” is a catch-all for all the “runs” in the intertwined lives of the characters, Kenya is a runner, who runs races, Doyle wishes his boys to take after his political ambitions and compels them to “run” for public office if they could be coaxed into it. This is disappointing to Doyle because all that Tip is passionate about are the plethora of fish specimens that are in the Museum’s ichthyology (fish) run. All the characters seem devoid of any malevolent streaks. This is goodness expressed as the nature of people, they raise their kids to be loved and to be better citizens in a larger human community which is everyone’s duty.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Fire in the Blood, French wine, Nemirovsky, paysan
Fire in the Blood is delicate but fiery as the Beaujolais that they produce in Central France. This is the pre World War II account of Silvio’s internal fire that got consumed and died, his love of life and of Helene that lost its fervor and passion. The fire in the blood lights up in one’s youth and then eats up everything in its path, razes a forest and leaves a tinder-ember debris trail of secrets and concealments. Irene Nemirovsky unveils these secrets layer by layer, as seen from Silvio’s point of view, annotating a journal’s worth of memories and disclosures, enough to drown oneself in regret, nostalgia and loneliness.
Set among the rural “paysan” in a rustic town Issy-l’Evêque, where the landed farm owners minded their own business and did not care much about others around them, Nemirovsky paints the fires that the youth get themselves involved with but cannot extricate themselves out of. Families were identified with their land and they sold and acquired properties when their fortunes dwindled or prospered. Helene and Francois, parents of Collette were the ideal couple, in love, forthright and attentive to the needs of their children. Silvio describes them knowingly, as he peels their past, with the story of Helene in her youth. Colette, their newlywed daughter wishes to have a life like her parents’ but secretly has a sordid affair with the young beau of another young and beautiful married townsgirl. Collette’s new husband, Jean perishes in a “murder” by the river. Her father, upon learning about the circumstances of the death of his son in-law from the farmers, pursues the incident to bring him justice.
The seeds that are sown in the farmland are now about to bear a dreadful harvest. Nemirovsky asks, as if to foreshadow what will come out of the quest to find the perpetrator of the crime, “If one knew what the outcome of seeds that are planted in the field, would one still plant the seeds anyway?”
At a tender 32 when Nemirovsky wrote this novel, she seemed able to assign these issues a universality that traversed the ruralness and isolation of the place and time that it occurred in, lending it a truth that is common among all men. When one is young, there is no vision of things to come, only happiness and pleasures of the heart. In old age, there is only hindsight of what was sought and lost. It is genius of her to be able to see that coming.
The book read like a French meal with good wine and forbidden desserts.
Filed under: Blogroll, Uncategorized | Tags: feminist, Frank Lloyd Wright, love, loving, suffragists, Taliesin
feminist, mother, Tailesin mistress
Mamah, May-muh, Martha! She was born at the wrong time and wrong place! She was educated in Ann Arbor Michigan at the turn of the 20th century, had the pedigree of the upright Midwestern railroaders who valued work and honesty, married a decent and loving businessman-gregarious provider, had the tenacious intellect of a sharp librarian-school marm and suffragist-feminist, was a “looker”, but she was too crazy in love with a man who would have given her the world but could not. Darn!
Mamah Cheney could have had it all but she was sideswiped by her lust for life on the fastlane, the big ego of Frank Lloyd Wright, the promise of being the polyglot sidekick of Swedish born suffragist Ellen Key, and in the end, she had nothing for herself and her two (three including her orphaned nephew) children who she left behind to find love and fulfillment with the iconic architect.
This fictional account of a love story gone tragically wrong and painful, leaves me reeling with wonder, I cannot help but raise some points that challenge thinking outside the home, domesticity, community, society and even world affairs.
First of all, can a mother really be so wildly in love so as to leave her very young children behind to traipse all over Berlin, Italy and Japan to pursue finding herself and her paramour’s budding career? Given that Frank Lloyd Wright was really brilliant (after the fact), was he really worth it? Her marriage to Edwin Cheney was flailing but was she really really that unhappy? She had little Martha with Edwin while she was consorting with Frank! I think it was a case of moral fiber fraying and falling dangerously to an abyss that she couldn’t get enough fortitude to figure herself out of.
Granted that it was the zeitgeist of women’s emancipation and feminism, the attendant focus on lack of rights to get out of bad marriages, lack of equal pay for men and women, identity issues surrounding motherhood and caring for children, did Mamah really blaze into the forefront to liberate women of all ages for all time? Or did she just end up exonerating herself?
Was her sacrifice worth the cause? Her alliance with Ellen Key’s cause was almost a chance event in her search for herself and her raison d’etre for villyfying her home and turning her loved one’s lives upside down. The Swedish suffragist had modern ideas about women’s morality and new feminist roles, I think Mamah was eagerly quick to translate Key’s ideas as seen through her private moral dilemma, adultery. In Berlin, Key was tagged as the “wise fool of the feminist movement”, vacillating between being a protector of children and the essence of mothering as a human species-forwarding endeavor versus a woman’s fulfilling her happiness through achieving her personhood through being allowed the choices and liberties to propel one’s potential. I think Ellen Key was wise, period. In Nancy, France, she had told Mamah to find herself first, without Frank, and pursue her own niche in the world, otherwise Frank will just be another “diversion”. It was Mamah who could not find her moral compass and was torn, time and time again between her love for her offspring and her love for Frank and herself. It is a pity that her “soulful” translations of Ellen Key’s work coulda-woulda been heard by a bigger audience had she sent it to The Atlantic Monthly and not published with those who were affiliated with Frank Lloyd Wright’s folios.
Horan’s skill in writing allowed for her characters to be heard, to be seen in both good and bad lights, she allowed all their foibles, their humanity to filter through the puritanical times when society was quick to judge moral turpitude. She allowed her readers to look for understanding and to be compassionate; that her characters were flawed, slaves for higher ideals of truth and beauty and most of all, love. But in being so, they chose paths that were dangerously selfish and hurtful to others.
I will not be quick to say that the tragedy of Mamahs’ end in Taliesin is divine retribution, but simply a horrific event in the life that already has gone through baptism by fire, a fall from grace that happens when people are just going about their daily lives because people are the way they are, fallen from the very start.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 9-11, chaat, culinary expertise, food, isaw, New York, Whole World
This is the second novel of Julia Glass that I read, and I am disappointed reading about the lives of New Yorkers who have domestic problems. There are more concerns in the world that I would rather learn about other than what Julia Glass’ concoctions of coconut cake and torte del cielo-like characters experience and portray. She has glossed over “wild blue” values like fidelity, filial love, and suffering for others that are directed to human beings and not mainly to dogs and animals. It seems like the only genuine affections that are unconditional and pathetically true in this novel are the love for The Bruce, Treehorn, Felicity the parrot, Stan’s menagerie of cats, dogs and other animal foundlings. The love for wife, child or parent may just be passing thoughts to the characters that Glass blows. Has she ever heard of conditions of women in far flung places in the world where cooking is a matter of finding scraps of “isaw” (chicken intestines) to sell in the market for poor people? Personally, I would like to know more about chaat or Indian street food and how the poor people eat it without the expense of wining and dining in white table clothed brasseries. I would rather read about gourmet food that is for survival and not for the pleasures of some “guvnoh” in Santa Fe New Mexico. American high society feather their artsy vacation nests in this ancient adobe domicile of the aztecas. I picked up only one indigenous food, “sopapillos” that I wanted to know more about.
I enjoyed being sort of a voyeur into the lives of the cosmopolitan New York West Villagers and their gentrified community of chefs, booklovers, gay and lesbian couples, psychiatrists, the uppity interstices of their Celtic origins. But enough is enough. I don’t think I can read another novel on these characters whose lives are a blight to my sense of religion, family and sense of purpose. I know about their lives and now I would shudder to think about what will happen to these folks when they get old and gray, and what kind of values they will pass on to George, Scott’s children and Morticia’s grandchildren. And did Glass mention that Scott, Walter’s nephew was Stanford University bound? Forget about Greenies and Alans, these 21st century adults are just anchorless, without trajectory or purpose-flighty-flakes whose lives I really did not care about as I was reading. Glass is crafty with her words and command of lines in classic and children’s literature, specially quoting Emily Dickinson, Dr. Seuss, Margaret Wise Brown, Joan Sweeney and Munro Leaf. Other than those ventures into her literary stash, I found this book lacking in how “flocks of birds binding the world like ribbon, fly the whole world over but always, no matter what find their way back home.” And here, what I mean by home is not just your physical space but the restful joyfulness of belonging to a cause bigger than oneself, and one that will outlast all the terrors and separations we will experience.
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If anyone can take you to Ayemenem, Kerala in India, during the hot Maydays in the 1960′s in great detail, it is Arundati Roy.
She manages to write lyrically about its local color; a river snaking behind her protagonist’s home, the two children who used to live in it, their English cousin who perishes in the river. She narrates the medley of adult lives that become extraordinary in spite of their Indian ordinariness. These are Angliophiles and their love affairs and travails, adventures in Oxford and London. These are the orangedrinklemonade man who molests Estha in a movie theater kiosk. Set in the height of Marxist leanings that have taken over in Kerala in the 60′s as protests against the caste system was at its height, she focuses on the factory owners, their rich landed heritage and their Pickle and Jam Factory founded by a semi blind Mammachi. She writes about The Imperial entomolgist patriach, Pappachi and his sadness that a new species of moth that he discovered was not named after him. She weaves a believable tale of the family who employs Velutha and his family as hired hands in their factory. A paravan, Velutha has a love relationship with Ammu, the mother of the twins, and daughter of the owner of the affluent household. Ammu’s relationship with their paravan is taboo and a complex weave of events lead to Velutha’s mistakenly being accused of the death of Sophie Mol. Fraternal twins Estha and Rahel run away after their mother Ammu, in a fit of anger and frustration, reprimanded them and tells them that the twins are responsible for her miserable and ill fated life. Sophie Mol tags along and drowns as the make shift boat sinks in the river. Baby Kochamma, an aunt whose life is strewn with could have beens and should have beens contrives to have the death of Sophie Mol be pinned on Velutha. Upon her knowing that Velutha was having a love affair with Ammu, she connives to persuade Estha and Rahel to point to Velutha as the “murderer”. Velutha is beaten to death by the police.
In the light of the tragic events that rule the lives of the kids, their parents and their next of kin, the small events that happen in their lives are the only things that they can look at, ignoring the bigger things like injustice and political strife. They seem to be grieving something all the time and as a consequence make poor choices about their life and their relationships.
There are many elements of child abuse, spitting, vomiting and the denigration of women in this novel.
One wonders how the God of small things permit this to happen.
Fascinating, inspiring, daunting and brave, these are the words to describe the efforts of one man to make a difference that will be palpable through the generations of Pakistani women and men that education touched. This is a recounting of the efforts of Greg Mortenson, consumate mountain climber, relentless fundraiser, intrepid leader, inspirational follower, Berkeley bum, errant husband, on and off emergency room nurse and humanitarian. In the barren, poorest interstices of the Himalayan mountains resided the most hospitable, Karkoran mountain people whose children were deprived of not only proper nutrition but of any opportunity to go to school. Young girls would gather in hillsides and wait for instruction, they were writing with sticks on the ground. Greg’s promise to come back to help the people of Korphe began with writing letters to potential funders, helpers and good souls only to be discouraged by the lack of response of people, except for one Dr. Jim Hoerni who gave him $12,000 to get started. Then his real climb that was more formidable than climbing K2 (world’s steepest and next highest mountain in the world in Pakistan) began. 
In 1993 in a Pakistani village in the Karakoram Mountains.Having come back to make good on a promise to help young women and children, he has built 57 schools in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Now in these remote places, he is a hero who has gained the trust of Islamic mullahadins, village chiefs, military commanders, and tribal lords for his unrelenting gift of girls’ education in those rural areas.
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This is the first novel I read on the Amazon Kindle. I must say I had a hard time finishing the book. I made it to my book club without knowing that half of the ladies did not finish reading it too. Maybe because it dragged on for a long time, to be able to portray the loss of confidence and a sense of who we are and our purpose in life. Power’s style must have been the perfect way to reflect the ongoing confusion of his characters. Maybe it was also because I was reading it on new technology, the e-reader, thus I could not get passed the first few chapters.The main characters in the novel were Mark Schluter, Karin, his sister, Dr. Gerald Weber and Sylvie, Dr. Hayes and Barbara. There is Daniel and Robert Karsh, Karin’s lovers. Mark was in a near fatal accident and suffered brain trauma that renders him incapacitated and needing help. The only one who could provide care for him is his sister Karin. She uproots herself from her job and her home and tries to take care of her brother. A neurological disorder, Capgras, ensues after the traumatic brain injury. Mark doesn’t recognize Karin and thinks she is an impostor. Karin seeks the help of a well known physician and the doctor flies in town to examine Mark. He is apparently the authority on brain disorders, with a collection of journal entries chronicling the vast cases of neurological disorders he has seen and has treated and diagnosed. He is published and respected in his field. When Mark’s condition deteriorates, all that Dr. Weber is able to prescribe is CBT (Cognitive Behavior Therapy).Karin struggles with her own life with caring for Mark and reconnects with her hometown, Kearney, Nebraska. She goes out with Daniel, a friend of Mark’s. Daniel, the conservationist-environmentalist and pure hearted soul is somewhat too wimpy. Karin sleeps with him and another man, Robert Karsh, an evil, selfish, polygamist land developer.In the wetlands of Platte, the cranes migrate and mate, they descend upon the marshes and is the backdrop of the drama that unfolds between Karin, Mark, their doctors and nurse, their friends and the confusion that they are experiencing owing to Mark’s illness and strange recovery.Everybody seems to be going through some kind of Capgras syndrome where the characters start to question their realities and their identities. Only the coming and the going of the cranes, their births and deaths seem to be permanent. The DNA that propels them to do the same rituals every season for all time ensures this. Powers likes to create characters from other classics, and I find this out from a blog review. He has apparently been basing his characters on those in The Wizard of Oz . Karen is Dorothy who wants to go home, Mark is the Scarecrow who doesn’t have a brain, Robert is the Tin man who doesn’t have a heart, Daniel is the lion without bravery. Dr. Weber is the Wizard of Oz, all knowing but is the fraud that misleads his patients. Barbara is Glinda the Goodwitch.The Wizard of Oz, the first American fairytale is the pattern that can be superimposed with the development of Power’s characters. Set in the backdrop of Nebraska, it is the perfect allusion to post 9/11 America where all of us are reeling from Capgras.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bible, elephants, Jacob, menagerie, water
The story unfolds with a prologue that portends what happens in the story. The band in the circus was playing the Disaster March. There was a mad melee, the animal menagerie was lose. Using a first person point of view, Jacob narrates his story from alternating ages, first as a twenty three year old and then from a ninety three year old living in a retirement home.
Jacob Jankowski, the main character in Water for Elephants has some likeness to the biblical Jacob, firstborn son of Isaac. In Genesis, (32:22) the biblical Jacob becomes “Israel” after his wrestling match with God. Jacob asks for the God’s blessing and gets it. Jacob becomes the father of the first thirteen tribes of Israel. He was blessed with prodigious wealth and he was a caretaker to his flock, mainly animals and livestock. The main character in the novel was kindly towards animals, he also had a long prodigious life with the circus during the 1930′s in the Chicago area. Jacob Jankowski in the story, was a final exam shy away from a veterinarian’s degree from Cornell University. His parents were killed and he was left homeless. He found himself traveling with the Benzini Brothers’ flying Squadron, a train car of circus performers and workers. He became the appointed veterinarian of the circus.
In the circus during the Depression, he bunks with Walter “Kinko”, a midget performer. He and the miscreant eventually harbors and takes care of Camel, an elderly circus worker who becomes old and paralyzed, a throwaway employee because he was no longer useful to the circus. Jacob is drawn to Marlena, the equestrian-performer and wife to the cruel animal trainer August. Marlena is equally drawn to him. At first, August is kindly towards Jacob, giving him favors and invitations to dine in the fancier cars where the accommodations were luxurious, unlike the decrepit quarters and conditions that the rest of performers and the workers were housed in. Even the animals were subjected to inhumane conditions, being fed from goat stock and animal entrails that are on the verge of spoilage. Circus owners who are on the verge of bankruptcy were often salvaged by competing shows. Like vultures hovering around a near dying animal, shows purchase menageries and lure performers like fat ladies, Siamese twins, and all sorts of odd, deformed human and animal attractions. The Benzini Brothers purchased a menagerie of animals that included Rosie, a bull elephant. She was first considered dumb and worthless until Jacob discovered she responded to commands only her in her native tongue, Polish. Rosie and Marlena performed successfully and became a hit show. Rosie is treated badly by her trainer August.
Jacob however, makes sure that the menagerie is cared for, much to the pride and delight of Uncle Al. Jacob gets Marlena pregnant as they carry on an illicit love affair. Kinko and Camel get redlighted. During the Depression, resources were tight and all workers who did not contribute to the circus were expended. August becomes paranoid and hits Marlena, he becomes increasingly cruel to everyone including the animals. In the succeeding events, the circus starts to fall apart.
In the melee that occurs, a stampede ruins the performance and August perishes. Uncle Al is also found dead underneath a collapsed tent. The circus is dismantled but Jacob and Marlena refused to part with their menagerie, including Rosie whom they were very fond of. They join the Ringling Brothers Circus and become successful performers.
Jacob recollects his youth in the circus, this is prompted by his is eagerness to watch a circus performance that happens to be passing through. Simon, one of his sons, forgets to visit him on the day of the show but Jacob manages to go by himself in spite of his feebleness and being wheelchair bound. In the end, he rejoins the circus through some force of circumstance and extraordinary fortune.
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Control. The issue is about pedophilia, but the main thread that connects all the psychological and philosophical fabric of abuse is about possession and control.
Nabokov’s classic is a master in visceral and intellectual sexual excitation, and the reader is hooked from page 1. It opens with a letter to the gentlemen of the jury, Humbert Humbert is making an appeal for himself as he is convicted for a crime of passion, shooting Clare Quilty, the man who lured Lolita to run away from him.
The letter is lengthy, and it chronicles Humbert Humbert’s beginnings from Europe (Swiss, Parisian, somewhat Russian) and his predilection for young girls aged 12 and around that. He journals his attraction and having married girls who exhibited childish and prepubescent behaviors, Monique and Valeria who he either leaves of leaves him. In his vagabond migration to America, he settles in a Ramsdale, New England lodging home of Charlotte Haze and her young daughter, Lolita. (L, Lola, Lo, Dolly). He immediately gets enamored with the child and plots to be near her, coveting, lusting. He marries her mother. Lolita is sent to camp for that summer and Humbert plans to eliminate Charlotte who wildly mon cheried the newly acquired groom.
Charlotte Haze perishes in a freakish accident and Lolita falls into Humbert’s hands. He extricates Lolita from camp and tells her that her mother is ill, dying in a hospital. They travel to pass the time to look at scenery, driving from motel to motel in the pretext of him minding a daughter. The language of seduction during these parts of the novel gets steamy, erotic and racy. The story is picaresque.
Lolita gets raped twice a day, but the irony is that she was the one who seduced Humbert on that first night of their sexual encounter. Lolita had sexual relations before Humbert that really characterized her as being precocious and not the innocent child that Humbert originally imagined she was. Humbert doted and cared for Lolita but he isolated her from all contact with others, making sure that she is aware that there is no other place for her to go. If they were caught, he threatened that she will be the ward of the state and that would be a far bigger misfortune than what she had then. They travel to 311 sites across the country, 27,000 miles across the sad scenery of motels and parks that dot the maps that they used, they had no destination and every night Lolita was in tears, Humbert was sexually gratified. Lolita was not the compliant and mousy little girl that one would expect under the control of Humbert. She was feisty and fought with Humbert, exchanged sexual favors for her demands of where to go and what to buy as well as what to do with their time. She controlled him as much as he controlled her.
I did not like my reaction to this novel. I was seduced by its eloquent and vibrant portrayals of images, sensual and otherwise. His language was fluid, ridden with erudition and poetic imagery. Nabokov is the master of crafting words, he is credited for coining new words like “nymphet” and “faunlet”. I did not like that I felt sorry for the pedophile. I do not know whether this was a romance novel with grotesque underpinnings, but a romance anyway. I know that there was too much eroticism and that it was love expressed the wrong way. But I thought the language that expressed the “romance” was very beguiling and indeed romantic, but ironically, was about abuse, debasement and wretchedness.
