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IN THIS ISSUE
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| Book Reviews |
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ALWAYS COMING HOME
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Far from having a life, Kate Paine doesn't even want one. Only a year out of Harvard Law School, Kate is an associate with a prestigious law firm and has a resume of high profile cases that she has worked on. She takes great satisfaction in these things. Her dedication to her work is complete until the horrendous death of Madeleine Waters, a partner in the firm. Kate was working with Madeleine to defend a predatory magazine owner against sexual harassment charges, and Kate is now forced to question the choices she has been making.
We would not expect a 26-year-old girl with problems of her own to turn into a prodigy detective, and Kate does not. She is out of her depth; we know it better than she does, and can sympathize. In EQUIVOCAL DEATH we accompany Kate through the discovery of murder and lesser crimes as she learns what is behind the many facades in the firm. The reader gets to be the detective, building a profile of the multiple killer and comparing it to the many facts provided with apparent spontaneity in the narrative.
Perhaps the most outstanding characteristic of this book is that the red herrings are so temptingly fat and juicy. We experience the thoughts of the killer and each of the major suspects, and one by one eliminate the red herrings. This is a suspenseful and interesting challenge throughout most of the book. However, I finally ended up eliminating the true killer on the basis of some information he/she really ought to have had but didn't. It wasn't satisfying to excuse the lapse by blaming it on his/her mental state, so in spite of the thrilling chase I had taken through the pages, I found the solution disappointing in the end.
This is not to discourage the prospective reader, however. Right from the beginning scene, a tactile and visual experience that has claws, this book got a grip on me. There is a tightrope vitality that kept me speeding through the pages. I was so reluctant to lay it down that I carried the book into the kitchen at cooking time, to be able to hold onto it longer. Kate's associates are all either enjoyable or intriguing. Kate's mental journey is so realistic and fast-paced that EQUIVOCAL DEATH is almost a psychological thriller. The visits we make into the head of the murderer are chilling, and we explore the thoughts of the main victim extensively as we look for the roots of the crimes. There is little attempt to acquaint us with detective forensics; our reasoning is meant to be psychological.
This debut novel leaves no question that author Amy Gutman is well acquainted with the stresses and demands of the world of big attorney firms. Gutman is a former attorney herself, with an impressive record of intellectual achievement, and her legal and evidential reasoning is one of the interesting facets of EQUIVOCAL DEATH. Blurb writers have been comparing Amy Gutman to John Grisham, but because of my personal taste for feeling what I read, I would far rather read another Amy Gutman than another John Grisham.
Joy Calderwood
DAUGHTER OF A
ROGUE
Stephanie Lynn Hilpert.
Cover illustration by Mike Jones.
Green Bean Press
Poetry Chapbook 30 pages
$5 check made out to
Green Bean Press, PO Box 237,
NYC 10013.
This is a beautifully evocative, heartfelt chapbook about Stephanie's struggle to find her homeless, mentally ill dad. She shot some footage of him that aired on MTV Unfiltered in 1999. The chapbook is one long poem written out one word per line on a 33 line column like Jesus' cross. The words are graceful, dignified, poetic, stark, haunting and beautiful. The cumulative effect is devastating. The last few pages read:
"If I pray hard enough will you come out of your cave and howl at the moon I will catch your call like a shooting star it shoots through this young spirit like an arrow wolf man I am your moon I am wolf girl mentally ill homeless people roam like wild buffalo and I am your moon Dad I am wolf girl I'd like my pain to be a feather floating in the wind unattached from bird I'd like my soul to be a four-legged beast courageously roaming the world loneliness is worse than a wolf's teeth tearing at the flesh of its prey so violently cruel yet as calm as vague stars in the distant dark it is here I see you in every mentally ill drug addicted homeless man who crosses my path but most of all I see you in every father walking and holding his little girl's hand the way you once held mine it is here without faith wolves enter my mind like wilderness feed on thoughts like prey and they drink from my spirit as if she were a water hole but my God I want to know you will you taste me am I pure enough if I remind you of mangos will you taste me again could I be as pure as a mango seems sweet and fleshy against your tongue too."
There's something provocative, almost incestuous
about that last line of wanting her father to taste her tongue.
Rather, she is expressing her wanting him to feel her pain. I was
very moved by this powerful chapbook. A breeze to read, but it stays
in the mind long after.
Ralph Haselmann
DOGHOUSE ROSES
Steve Earle
Houghton Mifflin, 2001
Fiction, Short Stories
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Eclectic songwriter Steve Earle makes his strong debut in the world of fiction with this collection of short stories. His range is wide and heartfelt and works on many levels. His subjects range from Texas musicians trying to find a place called home to Vietnamese officers dying of cancer looking for a quicker, honorable death. There is even room for a quiet yet haunting look at an aging radical feminist in Europe exploring her past through a young American. And then there is my favorite, "The Red Suitcase" about how a man used to his routine is disturbingly changed forever by the lack of experience of a new deputy in town. These stories are accessible, radiate the human condition, and are a welcome debut to the fiction dance floor from an artist who has proven his storytelling ability in the music genre.
Scott Wannberg
KEY DECEPTIONS
M.E. Cooper
Padlock Mystery Press Mystery
Italian Renaissance
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KEY DECEPTIONS opens cheerfully in a Guild meeting with two tradeswomen tolerantly watching the wrangling of their fellow guild members. However by the end of the first chapter, we discover that Avisa Baglatoni, her relatives and friends are sitting on a powder keg without knowing it, all except Avisa who herself has laid the fuse. She has secretly taken a Jewish boy as apprentice in the locksmithing trade, a crime punishable by death.
Avisa is a fortunate widow because her husband taught her his trade before he died in the accident that left her lame, and she can therefore support herself. Her enviable independence sets her somewhat apart in the community. She is very close to her in-laws, who in turn love her apprentice Bernardo like a son. Avisa's best friend is Luisa, the only other female member of the guild, whose ugliness hides a delicate silversmith's skill and a generous heart. Avisa is unfortunate in her choice of enemies: Ippolito, the mayor's son whose dishonorable advances she has rejected, has vowed to revenge himself by destroying everyone she loves.
The fuse in Avisa's powder keg is lit by the theft of a hoard of silver from Duke Henri Bentivoglio. The town's instant solution is to burn down the Jewish ghetto. Running to warn the Jewish community, Bernardo puts himself in danger of exposure, and sure enough, he is conveniently seen by Ippolito, who now has his weapon. Avisa, her friends and associates, must avert destruction by recovering the silver for the Duke.
The cozy has come to the Italian Renaissance-- with certain adjustments to make allowance for poisoning, pogroms, and routine betrayal. On the one hand is the loyal, supportive group of Avisa and her friends and the accounts of their daily lives, and on the other hand is the comfortable sense of authenticity as Avisa plies her trade. A woman journeyman can't have been common in the trades, especially as a smith, but Cooper explains Avisa's circumstances and connections well enough to be completely believable. The reader is also given eyes in the Duke's palace, the determined Dorotea, whose anomalous position as lady-in-waiting and painter-in-training leads her into escapades that would never have been tolerated in a court lady, so that this one character is only marginally believable.
KEY DECEPTIONS is not meant to be a source for learning history. Although the Bentivoglio family did rule Bologna in 1489, the author has replaced the ruler of that time, the tyrant Giuseppi Bentivoglio, with the more amenable Henri. She does weave into her story the current threat posed by France and has obviously done research on armor and weapons as well as the rules governing the Guilds.
It took me a few chapters before I began to feel that the author was speaking to adult readers. KEY DECEPTIONS will pose no severe challenges to readers new to the historical mystery genre; however it was not long before I stopped being distracted by simple thought lines and plunged into the story. Previously, ME Cooper has published true crime and contemporary cozy mysteries. She has now written the opening books of two historical mystery series simultaneously, the other to be set in the American Civil War. I am told, tantalizingly, that UNCIVIL DEATH has quite a different tone from KEY DECEPTIONS. KEY is perfectly cast for a lazy afternoon.
Joy Calderwood
PULLING THE DEVIL'S KINGDOM DOWN
The Salvation Army in Victorian Britain
Pamela J. Walker
University of California
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Any mention of the Salvation Army usually conjures images of thrift shops and uniformed bell ringers at Christmas time. Pamela J. Walker plots the origin of the species with her meticulously researched PULLING THE DEVIL'S KINGDOM DOWN: The Salvation Army in Victorian Britain (UC Press). She details how William and Catherine Booth brought a streamlined path to salvation and a new social order to urban working class people in England, then to Continental Europe, and finally to America. Ms. Walker relies on numerous written testimonials, member biographies, newspapers and the determined scholarship of many others.The bulky 29 page bibliography runs the gamut from the Army's own "War Cry" to the Times Literary Supplement. The Army even made some of their own films.
In 1865, the jumping off point for the Booth's East London Christian Mission was a combination of the Protestant ethic of individual religious experience and the "have you heard the good news?" strategy of evangelism by itinerant preachers. They combined those ideas with the power of instant salvation. They believed that once the sinner could physically feel the presence of the Holy Spirit he would be saved. The catch was that they had to testify in front of a congregation and to convert everyone they knew; it was sort of like a cross between a twelve step program and a ponzi scheme, but it worked. The Mission grew so rapidly that by 1879 the military format was adopted to help control the enormous numbers of converts and the Salvation Army was born.
In the Salvation Army there was "nothing between [you] and Jesus, no ritual, no clergy, no church." Once you'd testified, you were saved. Brandishing the motto "Blood and Fire," the Army cribbed any means necessary to gather people together. They rented music halls for their meetings, then copied music hall posters so perfectly that they were indistinguishable from the posters advertising the acts the Salvationists found so deplorable. They wrote religious lyrics to many popular songs. They soon boasted the novelty of women preachers. They would do just about anything to attract a crowd. Often the crowds would become unruly, but the Salvationists would simply bang the drum more vigorously and sing louder.The Church of England wasn't thrilled with the Booths' methods, but they had to concede that the Army was winning the battle on a front where they had failed.
Before they started the Mission in London, William's demands as a preacher took him to many posts throughout England. During their lengthy separations, Catherine read avidly and redefined the position of women and the church. She believed that "blessings come from unexpected places" and set about writing a letter of protest arguing for equality against a sermon on women's inferiority. Her lack of education limited her argument, but didn't diminish the essential correctness that Christian experience is individual; it doesn't differentiate by gender or any other means. And she had the scriptures to back her up. She started her preaching career in 1857, little knowing how her strides to the pulpit would echo down the century to the position of women in the social structure of today. The Army took women a step further by granting titles of rank, a position in the chain of command, the right to vote and hold office and, most importantly, the right to participate in decision making.
Ms. Walker limited her book to the origins of the Salvation Army in Victorian times. Even though this work is brimming with fascinating social, feminist and religious themes, Ms. Walker chose to set down the facts without a specific political agenda or a sense of humor. She builds a detailed, credible context for her research, but her otherwise commendable objectivity makes for an interesting, but ultimately bloodless read. The potential was there for her to give the material an entertaining twist, but, perhaps in keeping with her subject, she resisted the temptation. She left me with the urge to explore images of the Army in popular culture. In the Booth's time, there were numerous satires and plays devoted to ridiculing the Army. The Hallelujah Lasses were a particularly popular target.
George Bernard Shaw's hilarious MAJOR BARBARA was my first stop. Shaw the socialist uses the Army as a foil to illustrate that all money is blood money. Barbara's father Andrew Undershaft owns a cannon works. She and her father contrive to visit each other's place of work. At the mission Mr. Undershaft shows Barbara that any funds they receive will be tainted because the members of society that keep the charities alive all earned their philanthropic prowess from industries the Army shuns. (His motto could be "Blood and Fire" as well, considering his line of work.) At her father's cannon works Barbara concedes the argument to her father. She takes off her uniform but leaves the Army with her righteousness intact, figuring there are plenty of souls to be saved behind the gates at Undershaft and Lazarus.
In GUYS AND DOLLS, Joseph L. Mankiewicz adapted a story by Damon Runyan and set it to the music and the sharp, funny lyrics of Frank Loesser to concoct the perfect entertainment about sinners and saints. Sky Masterson (Marlon Brando), a sinner's sinner in the eyes of the Army, spouting wonderful Runyanesque dialogue such as "On behalf of the former sinners of the future, I'd like to protest the closing of this mission," falls for the saintly Sergeant Sarah Brown (Jean Simmons) when he takes her to Havana on a bet. He has already given her his marker for at least 12 souls to fill her her failing mission. He makes good on his marker by betting each one of the participants of Nathan Detroit's (Frank Sinatra) floating crap game $1000 against their souls and wins them all, therefore "fighting fire with fire." The group assembles at the mission and proceeds to testify. Do yourself a favor and find the DVD widescreen version of this gem.
In FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE, my favorite of Harold Lloyd's silent features, ultra wealthy J. Harold Manners (Lloyd) accidentally burns down the pushcart owned by a poor Missionary. He promptly writes a large check to pay the man off. The Missionary opens a mission in Harold's name. When Harold reads of his inadvertent philanthropy in the newspaper, he storms down to the mission to have his name removed from the banner out front. After a brief contretemps over the banner with the missionary's lovely daughter (Jobyna Ralston), he realizes he's in love with her and promptly feels compelled to fill the mission with sinners. In one of Lloyd's most brilliant set pieces, Harold races through the neighborhood provoking every thug he comes across until he has a mob of about thirty nogoodniks chasing him into the mission like the pied piper in glasses and a straw boater. In a jiffy, they're all singing hymns and passing the hat.
As usual, Boy marries Girl, but not before Lloyd manages another wonderful set piece as he races across town to his beloved, who's waiting patiently at the altar.
What is it about these missionary females that has men falling head over heels in love with them?
Lisa Andreini
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QUEEN FOR A DAY How does contemporary American poetry of the past ten years differ from the work from the preceding several decades? Ask Denise Duhamel. She'll tell you. There's more work from women and minorities--no longer is the field so dominated by W.S. Merwin, Mark Strand, and other white guys. There's more work that eschews the simplicity of the "confessional" poets and of the Beat poets, while also avoiding the curse of cookie-cutter MFA-program poems. There are fewer poems published by national presses which sound like they could have been penned by interchangeable writers. There is, quite simply, more variety and less of a stolid expectation of what Poetry (note the capital 'P') is. Of course, with a relaxation of what we expect of Poetry comes increased experimentation, and with increased experimentation come new voices and more poetry, as well as the added risk of more lackluster work. One way for a given poet to deal with this is to publish, publish, publish and then go back and mine that published work for the best of what has come from all the experimentation. This is what Duhamel has done. In seven short years, beginning in 1993, Duhamel released five full-length collections of poetry and one chapbook. That's quite a bit of work in a short span of time, especially for someone who only just this year will arrive at an age ripe and old enough to disqualify her for the Yale Younger Poets Award. (She also found time to collaborate with the poet Maureen Seaton on two additional volumes of work, none of which is included here.) And, as is to be expected with such prodigious output, not all the work in those collections was at the same level. I have read, and enjoyed, Duhamel's work for a number of years, but have always been frustrated by the extreme unevenness of her full-length collections. Reading her book KINKY, for instance, I was left feeling that many of the poems were drafts, which may have helped lead to the crystallization of the stronger pieces, but which were not of the caliber of the best pieces in the book. I had this same experience with her book GIRL SOLDIER. QUEEN FOR A DAY, however, takes the finest, most evocative work from all of Duhamel's books and brings it together in one place. The result is really stunning, and the arc of her talent, through the 7-year period represented by this work, is highly evident. There's not a bad poem in these 103 pages. But the most startling thing is how absolutely different the work from each individual collection is, and how similar is the work within each. In her first book, 1993's SMILE!, Duhamel proved to be a poet unafraid of the highly personal, using vivid language to discuss sex, suffering, and related topics. Her follow-up collection, 1995's THE WOMAN WITH TWO VAGINAS, was a nearly 180- degree turn, recounting tales credited to Inuit origins in the plain-speak often associated with translation. These poems addressed some of the issues which found themselves in Duhamel's earlier poems, but with a distance and style which stripped away the heightened emotion. 1996's GIRL SOLDIER took on feminine identity, and Duhamel's voice in this collection proved to be more powerful in the blending of personal and political than before. HOW THE SKY FELL, a 1996 chapbook, found the poet adopting the voices of antagonists and supporting characters in fairy tales and telling their sides of the stories. The resulting pieces were sarcastic, insightful, fun and completely unlike any of Duhamel's other work in point of view--though thematically, these pieces connect well with the overriding theme of GIRL SOLDIER. Each poem in KINKY, published in 1997, addresses Barbie--either by describing a special edition Barbie ("Bisexual Barbie") or placing Barbie in an un-Barbie-like situation ("Barbie Joins a Twelve Step Program"). These poems continue to explore ideas, and origins, of feminine identity, but with another spin on perspective and focus. 1999's THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER, Duhamel's most recent collection prior to this, finds her embracing wider topics and writing in her strongest, most assured voice yet. Her husband, and her marriage, are prominent in this collection, though her angle on these topics is still primarily, and very effectively, couched in her own self-image. Four new poems round out the book, and feature longer lines and more prosaic, relaxed diction. These last poems are more self-referential than most of the earlier work, and they seem to be hardly worrying about appearing "Poetic" at all. Brava! The work is challenging and fun, and this book charts the early course of a major talent trying on different pairs of wings before flying too far out to sea. Robert Wynne RIDES OF THE MIDWAY Lee Durkee Norton Contemporary Historical Fiction BUY THIS BOOKA quiet, yet full account of coming of age in the South. Told from the point of view of a young man who is angry, yet empathetic to the holes, in the streets of the fabric of the world, Durkee's assured style is both surreal and rooted in the meat and potatoes now. Not ever overwritten, it does take chances and goes into corners you might not have felt were there. An effortless first novel that richly shines through its character's experiences and encompasses the bones and skin of all its people with a storyteller's elan. Scott Wannberg
SPRING ESSENCE First of all, I want to apologize that I was unable to print the poetry author's name correctly because my Mac does not have an insert button for the ancient Vietnamese language "Nôm." The truth is that, until John Balaban set upon this project, there was not type set anywhere for the language. The language that John Balaban used to translate the poems of our heroine are but one of the amazing things about this collection. The poet was born in the late 1800s in Vietnam, became a concubine--more because of the social structure of the time than by choice--and became such an amazing poet that her works could make fun of the sexual exploits of the leaders of the time without repercussion. Now there is no skill to poking at the habits of politicians, but Huong's poems were not simply crude attacks on the status quo. They are rich with language and layered with meaning. Vietnamese is a language of tones. If a word is said boldly, it means one thing; said lightly, another. She used this, and her amazing compositional skill to compose poems like "Swingin" ("...A boy pumps then arches his back,/a shapely girl shoves up her hips/.../ Spring games who hasn't known them?/ Swing posts removed, the hole lies empty."). The words for "swing" and "copulate" differ only in tone, so you get the idea. She used her poetry to show her disdain for the Buddhist sect that lived in her area. In "The Lustful Monk," she uses the voice of a monk and the metaphor of the raft, "...My life of compassion would have sailed to paradise / if only bad winds hadn't turned me around." Even without the double entendre, her poetry is full of beauty. In "Confession II" she mourns the loss of her husband, whom she considered her soul mate, "...Sick with sadness, spring passes, spring returns. / A bit of love shared, just the littlest bit." This a great contribution to the world of English poetry snatched up out of obscurity by Balaban. He is a translator of many works from the Vietnamese, first learning the language and the culture when he went to work in Vietnam as a CI during the war. He chose to stay and tour the country on foot and, as a result, has brought a lot of the literature to light for English-speaking audiences, and I for one am grateful for the exposure. Carlye Archibeque
THEN, SUDDENLY Let me begin by saying that I absolutely loved this book. Let's get that out of the way right now. Lynn Emanuel's "Then, Suddenly?" is the single most enjoyable book of poetry I have ever read. Of course, that's only my opinion, but I'm the one writing this review. This book is a collection of lyric poems, which explore the act of writing. As noted in the opening epigraph by Edmond Jabes: "The book is the subject of the book." The 27 poems comprising the book are exceptional lyric poems. Each addresses the act of writing, either directly or indirectly. And each finds its own form. There are couplets, tercets, quatrains, irregular stanzas, prose poems, and even a poem with lines so long the reader must turn the book 90 degrees and take it in like a centerfold (that poem, not by chance I'm sure, is called "She" and discusses how the mind tries to deal with the body). One poem is written in the style of Walt Whitman ("Walt, I Salute You!), and another assumes the voice of Gertrude Stein ("inside gertrude stein") in something like a poetic counterpart to the film BEING JOHN MALKOVICH. The writing itself is brilliant, original, captivating, and easy to read. The poems do not feel forced at all. There is no over-poeticizing here. The diction is simple, the voices clear and full of self-referential wonder. I was so struck by some lines, I re-read entire poems on the spot just to experience them again. In "inside gertrude stein", the narrator states "if a river could type this is how it would sound, pure / and complicated and enormous." From "The White Dress": "it hangs there, / in the drooping waterfall of itself, / a road with no one on it, bathed / in moonlight, rehearsing its lines." The narrator of "The Corpses" introduces the title characters: "hunched like poker players at my kitchen table, / under a seething stratum of cigarette smoke, / (they) are unhappy // with the rewrites of the afterlife." Always the act of creation is the focus. And in "Ode to Voice", Emanuel writes "A voice is not a story but a way of // presiding over a story, if one / were to happen by." She concludes this paean to Voice by describing her subject one more time, using one of many recurring images in the book: "It hangs in the closet / of the mind like a beautiful dress // waiting for a beautiful nakedness / to come along." The main thing that truly sets this collection apart from other devastatingly well-written books of poetry, however, is the scope and power of its thematic focus. Read straight through from page 3 to page 63, these lyric poems ruminate on writing, and work together to create a narrative that charts the arc of the book itself in the act of its creation. "The book is the subject of the book." The book opens by empowering the reader as deity, in "Like God." From there, Emanuel explores different forms and voices, but always remains aware of the artifice of language out of which all poems are made. This artifice is one of the three main subjects of the book. The other main subjects are the challenge of the writer and the active role of the reader. Emanuel describes herself in the act of writing in several poems, and admits herself as creator of these poems, within these poems, in a way akin to some of Kurt Vonnegut's wilder fictional concoctions (i.e ? "Breakfast of Champions"). The result of all this lyrical meditation on writing and reading, combined with the recurring images and metaphors which dot the book, is what feels like a novel in verse, with 2 key characters: Lynn Emanuel (the writer, so named on the cover of the book and in the poems themselves), and You (the reader, unnamed but holding said book). I know of no other collection of poetry that invites the reader to participate so fully. I know of no other that offers such a fascinating glimpse behind the scenes at the work as its being created. This book is, quite simply, a stunning achievement in which it is a pleasure to participate. Robert Wynne | |
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UNFINISED MESSAGE Selected Works of Toshio Mori Heyday Books Literature, Collected Works BUY THIS BOOK
A few words about Toshio Mori. He is one of the creators of modern Japanese-American literature, a pioneer writer of ethnic-American literature and a significant California regionalist. Mr. Mori, a Neisei (second generation Japanese-American) was born in Oakland, California in 1910 and spent all of his life (save for three years at the Topaz concentration camp in Utah) in the East Bay where he made his living operating the family nursery. In his early 20s Mr. Mori decided to learn the craft of fiction writing and spent four hours a day applying himself to that end after finishing a ten-hour day on the job. He studied masters of the American short story form such as O. Henry, Sherwood Anderson, Ernest Hemingway and William Saroyan who later became his advocate in literary circles and described him at the outset of his publishing career as "one of the most important new writers in the country." With Saroyan's help Mr. Mori's first collection of short stories, YOKOHAMA, CALIFORNIA was scheduled for publication in the spring of 1942. The publishers elected to cancel publication after the US entered World War II with the anti-Japanese-American backlash that followed. The book was finally published in 1949 and Mr. Mori finally received the recognition his work merited. I recall seeing copies of YOKOHAMA, CALIFORNIA on the bookshelves of the parents of Sansei friends but I didn't read any of Toshio Mori's fiction until the late 1980s. I was struck by the quirky originality of his prose style, the result of learning English as a second language (which puts him in the company of Joseph Conrad and Jack Kerouac) and being a self-taught writer. To my delight, the present volume abounds in examples of Mr. Mori's original mind. UNFINISHED MESSAGE is a collection of short stories, letters, photographs, a long interview and an extraordinary novella titled "The Brothers Murata." This novella is set in the Topaz camp and vividly describing camp life, but at the center of story is the complex relationship between two brothers. Frank, the elder brother is a "no-no boy," a Japanese-American internee who refused to cooperate with the War Relocation Authority and organized resistance against the unjust (and ultimately unconstitutional) Executive Order 9066. His younger brother Hiro has volunteered to serve in the US Armed Forces and counsels cooperation and submission as the surest way to prove loyalty. Mr. Mori does not take sides but rather explores the contradictions of the human heart, and builds to a wholly unexpected and powerfully tragic denouement. This novella stayed with me for days. As for the short stories, they are nicely paced stories with psychological insights into credible characters leading ordinary lives in sometimes incredible situations. Stories abound with Kierkergaardian irony of irreconcilable opposition of subjective and objective sometimes to humorous effect, sometimes to tragic effect, and the story called "The Chauvinist," about a man feigning deafness to escape the responsibilities of family life is particularly effective. Even comic stories are characterized by controlled pathos without sentimentality. Mr. Mori is skillful at capturing the illuminating and revealing moment in the lives of ordinary Issei and Neisei Middle American citizens. Richard Modiano |
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WHAT REMAINS
Nicholas Delbanco
Warner Books
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WHAT REMAINS is the tale of three generations of German Jewish immigrants: grandparents, parents and children. The story jumps from 1984 London where the Benjamin, one of the children is visiting his uncle who is nearing the end of his life, to 1930s Germany where the grandparents (parents at this time) and their children live a privileged life in prewar Germany. Each chapter is a point of view from the brothers Gustave and Karl (the parents), Karl's wife Julia, their son's Jacob and Benjamin, and Karl and Gustave's mother Elsa. Thus told, the story is multi-layered with each character revealing more to the reader about situations and motives until each character, no matter how difficult is sympathetic.
Art in the form of painting is a major theme in the book, as is philosophy. Karl, a frustrated artist, took is place in the family business of manufacturing and selling bristles for paint brushes so that Gustave could go into the world of art. But even Gustave only buys and sells art. We see Karl painting and from his description of his work we see a talented amateur , but when his children look on his are we get yet another opinion.
Elsa is the voice of pre-Hitler Germany, her children are the voice of fear and change having moved to a new country, London, to escape Hitler, and their children are the voices of hope having only heard stories of the horrors of Nazi Germany and what it's like to have your whole world torn apart. Elsa swears she will never return to Germany because it is forever tainted in her memory. Memory is important here, the opening quote is from Pound, "What thou lovest well remains, the rest is dross." We find with Elsa and with all the characters that what remains is based on their memories and how their life is shaped by them. Elsa will always remember, "...my Ludwig, the hat in his hand and the expression on his face when he said, Elsa, will you marry me?"
Elsa also holds dear a philosopher named Boethius, who was a prisoner all during the writing of the book she holds most dear. She tries to pass on her beliefs to Benjamin when he is a child one day outside of his school. She asks him to tell her what he sees when he looks at the building and he replies that he sees his school, but she tells him he is wrong. "No, that's what you decide...and what you've been taught to call it. Not what you see but what it means...And when it's what it means, your eye's not innocent anymore."
Interpretation of life is paramount here with each generation deciding what life means based on what is experienced. Julia, BenjaminÕs mother, who was a teenager in the wild prewar Germany, has a different idea of life and what remains. While on a ship to visit America, where Julia will eventually insist that the family be moved, she gives Benjamin another view of life. As they stand on the ships deck she asks him what he sees. Being a child he believes he has learned the right answer from his grandmother and he replies that he sees and he answers "blue" for the ocean. But his mother names the part of the ship for him, "bulkhead" "stanchion" and says that having learned these she has an important piece of information. "The world exists in language, according to certain philosophers, and though I do not entirely agree with them they are not entirely wrong. Here are lifeboats for example...if someone says assemble by the life boats...I know just what he means." Then she passes on what is perhaps the most harsh and important lesson she has learned and wants to pass on to her son, "...remember, when they take away our house and kill the people that you love they can't take away what you carry in your head."
This is a rich story full of conflicting feelings and opinions that all seem to be viable in any equal or opposite situation. Delbanco is a good storyteller and a talented writer taking the time to allow all his characters to develop individually side by side until they complete a whole that equals family.
Carlye Archibeque
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