buffaloSavage's Xanga

Maigret in Vichy

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 13:02:35 GMT

Maigret a Vichy is also known in English as Maigret Takes the Waters. This title indicates that the action takes place in the town famous for its medicinal spas and hot springs.

Dr Pardon, family friend and physician, has ordered the 53-year-old Chief Superintendent to take a real vacation for once in order to dispel his giddiness and malaise. Madame M. accompanies him and it’s nice to see him being affable and courtly with her. One wonders if their marriage was seen as an ideal one by the multiple-divorced Simenon. Good sense of place. Excellent characterization of Balzacian types, both childish in their naivety and monstrous in their greed and heartlessness.

This was translated by Eileen Ellenbogen, who did a dozen other Maigret novels. I highly recommend this 1967 novel as one of the superior late Maigret novels.

All Shook Up, Not Stirred

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:27:59 GMT

Moonraker by Ian Fleming is the third 007 novel, after Casino Royale and Live and and Let Die. Though it has a brisk pace, it doesn't hurtle and careen like those two do. Multi-millionaire Sir Hugo Drax has made a fortune in metals and mining. He is regarded by the British government and people to be a man of peace due to his work on a missile project designed to defend the beloved island. Bond' boss, M., however, believes that the man cannot be gentleman (Drax cheats at cards). So Bond infiltrates the project. One unique feature is that it is set entirely in England, the other I can't give away in a review. Worth reading if one likes Bond novels and one doesn't mind Fleming's run-on, break neck sentences.

Old Writing

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 13:06:41 GMT

Translator Simon Leys says in the introduction to The Analects of Confucius that this is the fundamental text of Chinese literature and Chinese thought. He also argues that, as such, it is one of the most influential books in world civilization. Thus, it behooves readers with ambitions for a well-rounded education to read it, especially if they have an interest in the cultures of Korea, Japan, and communities of overseas Chinese. Leys bravely follows translators such as Arthur Waley and James Legge in tackling this difficult work. His notes are fascinating – he emphasizes how Confucius still makes points relevant to China today (Communists included) and quotes writers such as C.S. Lewis and Simone Weil when they provide support for the Master’s assertions. The language employed is accessible and fascinating.

I read this as the 7th book for the China Challenge.

Mystery for Brainy People

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:36:21 GMT

Cecil Day-Lewis - who was named England's poet laureate in 1968 - wrote detective fiction under the pseudonym Nicholas Blake. So we'd expect a mystery different from the usual run of locked rooms and quirky detectives. One theme, for instance, in the1949 mystery Head of a Traveler is the high costs of creating art (in this case, poetry) and what poets and those unlucky enough to love them will perpetrate and tolerate in pursuit of The Muse. This highly literate novel is for mystery readers who like Michael Innes, Josephine Tey, and Brian Moore.

Not More Complicated than Your Life

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:21:39 GMT

In the late 1930s, Junichiro Tanizaki started The Makioka Sisters, a novel of contemporary manners. The serialization started in 1943 but the military authorities who ruled Japan frowned on its continuation in light of dead serious events like the loss at Guadalcanal and horrendous fighting in the Solomons, the Gilberts, and Tarawa. The censors thought the novel of ordinary pre-war middle-class life was not in keeping with the severity of war time. After the war, it became a best seller because it struck many Japanese readers as an evocation of more gentle times irretrievably past, smashed by the war.

The action revolves around four very different sisters. Tsuruko, the eldest sister, has married an upright banker who was adopted into the family and thus made head of the main house. Very much a daughter of Osaka, she finds upon moving to Tokyo that people notice her Kansai dialect but she finds keeping up the appearances of an old family isn't necessary where nobody knows your name, far from the native region,.

The next sister is Sachiko. She married (and brought into the family) Keinosuke, another banker but much more modern in outlook and manner. They write each poems like Heian era sweethearts. She's anxious that her younger sister marry and be happy. Most of novel's incidents are seen through her eyes.

Next is Yukiko. She is fastidious about manner and keeping up appearances. Easily flummoxed, she gets tongue-tied at miai meetings with prospective husbands. As reticent Yukiko ages, her chances for a good match diminish.

The youngest sister is Taeko. She is more modern, in other words, more daring, impetuous and even wayward. She calls to mind another Tanizakian wild child in the novel Naomi, though Taeko has more respect for herself than Naomi could dream of. Taeko is impatient because she must wait until Yukiko is married before she, Taeko, can marry Kei-kun, a long-time lover. Strange that though Yukiko displays the culturally cherished ideals of womanhood (stick thin, delicate, silently modest, submissive), it is Taeko that attracts the suitors with her liveliness, creative talent, and drive (she has her own doll making business and teaches it too).

At about 500 sometimes slow-moving pages, this book is much longer than the usual Japanese novel, but just as structurally loose. For a guy, Tanizaki knows quite a lot about feminine artifacts such as kimono, obi, and cosmetics. We get more information than we need about how a go-between should arrange a miai or how Taeko prepared for a doll exhibition. But, as I indicated above, by page 100 I was persuaded the characters lived and breathed and got sick and felt frustration and contentment.

The novel moves in life-like rhythm – new people meet and disappoint each other, tact is exercised, defeats are endured, ordeals survived and people move on. Stuff happens, that’s all, it's life and Japanese life and customs are not any more or less intricate than yours or mine. I don't think we do justice to this novel if we look at it a merely an artifact or momento of what Japanese customs were like at a certain time in a certain place. Tanizaki puts real people in a setting and tells us what happens at his own pace. He makes art out of daily life, like Flaubert did in Madame Bovary.

The other appeal was its regionalism – it takes place in Osaka, which anybody who has lived in the Kansai region (me, 1979-80) will have tender feelings about, as Tanizaki obviously did. I added to my list of Eras I'd Live In, Osaka in the Thirties, to go with 10th-century Constantinople and Tang era Canton. The four sisters are genuine Osaka ladies - like certain kinds of Southern women here in the US, they have no sense of time because a lady doesn't hurry and a gentleman doesn't express impatience.

Tanizaki hints of the ongoing car of war. Teinosuke is wary of talking about the Sian Incident (December 1936) with a German neighbor. Headlines tell about Japanese bombing of Chinese cities. Characters worry about showing self-restraint in somber times. For instance, Teinosuke is surprised Kei-boy isn't cuffed about in the streets because he dresses like a dandy . Even with these tiny hints, one feels that a way of life is going to be irrevocably changed, as big wars always change life. A subtle pain, nostalgic but realistic and accepting, is felt throughout the novel.

Okay, full disclosure time. I read this novel during a uniquely difficult period, the details of which don't belong in book review blog. Anyway, I don’t often require novels to take me away from it all. It also strikes me as disrespectable to use a serious novel as mere escapism, as a kind of pain-killer. Tanizaki’s emphasis on the minutiae of everyday life was reassuringly normal and realistic to me going through a rough patch. I was happy to find a refuge in this novel, cheered to be reminded that people manage tough times and get out on the other end and live the rest of their lives. Stuff happens and it’s no use to whimper, “I want my life back.”

I read this for the Japanese Literature Challenge 3.

On the Border

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:21:55 GMT

The Candlemass Road by George Macdonald Fraser is historical novella is set on the Scots-English border in the 16th century. Lady Margaret Dacre grew up in Queen Elizabeth's secure court in London. Upon returning to her late father’s lands in the anarchic North, she is outraged that bandits are crossing the border onto her lands to extort from her people and upon failing to do so, plunder and murder.

The sheriffs of the crown are no help – indeed what can they do against mad and bad men who can cross borders with impunity?

She finds that she has to use an outlaw named Hobbie Noble to protect one of her families. A fight he has with marauders in one of the best action scenes I’ve ever read. The characters of the priest-narrator, the Lady and the Outlaw live and breathe. Fraser makes us believe in the smart tact of Priest, the calculating coldness of the Lady, and the surefooted will to survive in the Outlaw.

Well worth reading for those into short sinewy historical fiction. Plus, it has exuberant period dialogue which you'll like if, like me, you dig Bard of Avon lingo: "A sorry pack they were, the men-folk stout enough but dirty and ill-clad, the women as slatternly as I ever saw, and if there were three pairs of shoon among them it was enough." Begs to be read aloud.

Day Late for Veteran's Day

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:47:58 GMT

During WWI, Hervey Allen’s unit of the National Guard (from Pennsylvania) fought in France. Many military and cultural historians consider Allen’s Toward the Flame: A War Diary to be the best combat memoir of WWI by an American. This is not a mud and blood memoir of the trenches since by the time Hervey and the men he served with got to fight, it was a war of movement. Allen was keen observer and gives descriptions of men dealing with shelling, anxiety, boredom, and ordinary but wonderful activities such as eating. Hervey gets across that in battle the individual infantryman’s survival depended on a combination of training, comrades, lay of the land, and luck. Allen gives a powerful account of the battle for Fismes and Fismette during the Aisne-Marne offensive of 1918. Some historians of the war call that battle the worst five days of fighting faced by the American forces in WWI. Allen is best-known as the author of the historical novel Anthony Adverse in the 1930s. It sold like hotcakes for its stirring story and spicy parts.

One time I heard PBS' Rick Steves interview an Englishman who takes tour groups around the beaches of Normandy. The English guide says American tourists don't usually know what side the US fought on in WWI

A Strange Catcher

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:59:03 GMT

Moe Berg: The Spy Behind Homeplate (Vivian Grey) is a biography was written for the YA audience.
To say the least, Moe Berg's father frowned on his son's passion to play baseball, assuming it was a Jewish son's duty to study hard and become a professional and be his own boss. Blessed with a photographic memory, Moe learned many foreign languages and obtained a law degree. Being a brainy guy, he had his eccentricities so Casey Stengal, who knew many odd people, said Berg was the strangest man to ever play pro baseball. Moe played 15 years in the majors, but with WWII raging, he became a spy for Wild Bill Donovan's OSS, the mother of the CIA.

Let's Talk about Procrastination Later

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:18:35 GMT

Mon (The Gate) is the last novel in Natsume Soseki’s First Trilogy. The first two installments, Sanshiro and Sore Kara (And Then), covered alienated intellectuals that could not find a place in the rough and tumble of modernizing Japan at the beginning of the 20th century.

Mon (The Gate) departs from the parentally-supported characters and focuses on two adults that make up an unlucky couple. They lead a drab, uneventful life, barely able to make ends meet on his salary as a government clerk. He works five and half days a week and his too exhausted to deal with basic family problems, much less live the examined life. They only positive aspect the couple has is their love for each other but for his part even the stance of “us against the world” is not enough to keep his unlived life from stirring and making trouble with guilt, anxiety and depression. He takes a spiritual retreat to a Zen temple, thus the title of the novel, the gate that lead to the monastery.

Granted, a portrait of middle-aged people in a lower-middle-class marriage sounds like unpromising stuff for a whole novel. Such is Soseki’s art that he takes this mundane material and makes us readers turn the page in aroused expectation that something surprising is going to happen. Skillful modernist that he is, Soseki uses time shifts to reveal gradually, with great control, how the couple find themselves in such a narrow world.

The translator was Francis Mathy. Though a glossary and biography list are included, they are not needed by somebody who knows already what geta and o-zoni are. Unlike the other Soseki novels in the Perigee editions from the late 1980s, this one has no forward or afterward by the translator.

I read this for the Japan Literature Challenge 3.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:36:08 GMT

At the start of the Great Beastly Cultural Revolution in 1966, Mao Zedong exploited idealism and urged youth to smash the Four Olds, that is, anything like priceless cultural treasures or anybody like strict teachers that youth, in its arrogant stupidity, didn’t like. Imagine Mao’s surprise by 1972 when power struggles and political instability brought the country to near chaos. A piece of the solution was to get youth out of cities and into the country where they could be controlled more easily by slovenly violent peasants.

The novel Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie is about the two teenage boys who are sent down to the country. They experience the hardships of lugging nightsoil and plowing fields with stone age technology. They are victimized by the sadistic village headman. Their souls are saved when they discover a cache of Western classic novels in translation. They also get a idea of the ups and downs of romantic love from the seamstress of the title. The novel is fairly light-weight but to Dai’s credit he implies that not all the effects of reading great literature are beneficial.

I’d recommend this novel to those interested in the Cultural Revolution or serious readers looking for a slender middle-brow read for a change of pace. I read this novel as the 7th book for the China Challenge.