Where the Wild Ladies Are

I almost gave up on this book, which is described on Amazon as a "witty and exuberant collection of feminist retellings of traditional Japanese folktales." Both the wit and the exuberance build as the folktales progress, gradually linking together. Which is to say that I didn't get it at all for probably the first one-third, and then enjoyed the remainder of it well enough, though it won't be making any "best of" lists that I compile this year. That said, Aoko Matsuda's work is certainly interesting in what it represents, and there were a number of instances where I found myself laughing despite myself. (I also learned that Japanese pillows are stuffed with azuki beans - at least some of them - which is obviously why they're so amazing. I may add pillowmaking to my 2021 goals.) 

Matsuda should be lauded for the insights, too, as to the role of role of women, particularly in Japan. Most poignantly, she writes "Male employees had to pretend to be capable of doing things they couldn't do, while female employees had to pretend to be incapable of doing things they actually could do. Over the years, how many women had seen their talents magically disappear in that way?" In that sense, Where the Wild Ladies Are offers a modern-day corollary to Stranger in the Shogun's City, in which Japanese women struggle to find their place and controls their lives in the Edo era. Or, as Matsuda so succinctly puts it: how restrictive life as a functional adult is!

I am a sucker for all things Japanese, and the icing on the cake, if you will, was the late appearance of Himeji Castle, the sight of which first awed me - like so many others - from the window for the Shinkansen on my first visit to Japan. The castle tales, as well as stories of other quiet rhythms of life in Japan, was worth the wait.

Three stars. 

This Is It: and Other Essays on Zen and Spiritual Experience

 Disappointing. 

Having read and loved several other books by Alan Watts, I pushed through this one hoping that it would improve, that the humor or grace or joy which so imbue his other works would appear, to say nothing of the golden words. How could it be that the man who penned "by all outward appearances our life is a spark of light between one eternal darkness and another" (Wisdom of Insecurity) or mused that one might swim to experience the water rippling past and for the shifting net of sunlight underneath (Still the Mind) managed essay after essay of long-winded sentences such as "the apparent multiplication of psychological disorders in our technological culture is perhaps due to the fact that more and more individuals find themselves caught in these snarls - in situations which the psychiatric anthropologist Gregory Bateson has called the "double-bind" type, where the individual is required to make a decision which at the same time he cannot or must not make." Sweet mercy. (The great irony is that Watts details his experiences with LSD in this book, so one would think if anything this little volume would be as given to fun as any others: no dice.)

Oh sure, there are still bits and pieces of sage advice and insights, my favorite of which centers on the Japanese and the "compulsion which turns every craft and skill into a marathon of self-discipline." Truer words... More poignantly, Watts notes that in gazing at the night sky "we make no comparison between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations" and that "there would be no bright stars without dim stars, and, without the surrounding darkness, no stars at all." Likewise, in the final pages, Watts leaves readers with the observation, proven so true to me in this interminable year that has been 2020 that "life organized so as to be completely foolproof and secure is simply not worth living." Still, these paltry lines feel like minor compensation for the slog through This Is It.

One star.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind is as its title proclaims: a brief history of humankind. It's also a brief - and disturbing - history of humankind's impact on the planet and the other species, including those that were arguably human, that call it home. Spoiler alert: Harari minces no words in labeling Homo sapiens "ecological serial killers." It's hard to disagree. In any event, Harari manages to combine not only a general history, in which he effectively makes the case that our hunter-gatherer forebears of 10,000 years ago were happier and healthier than much of humankind today - with economic history (the origins of money and credit, the early trade routes, globalization in all its glory) and even aspects of philosophy. 

In regards to the latter, Harari in fact takes a sharp turn late in the book and goes as far as to pose the question of whether happiness depends on deluding oneself. (In case you can't tell, yes, I liked the book, and the writing, very much.) In fact, Harari's dry humor is on display from the first chapter when he declares, "Sapiens...is more like a banana republic dictator." I shouldn't have been surprised when a few dozen pages later, as he explains that the average sapien brain has actually decreased in size since we stopped having to hunt or forage our daily bread and that, in fact, the transition away from the survival lifestyle opened up "niches for imbeciles," which allowed the less....worthy?...to survive and pass on their unremarkable genes.

Time and again, Harari drives home the point that humans, excuse me, Homo sapiens, have lied, stolen, killed, and otherwise ruined things every opportunity they've had, literally from time immemorial. In the time of Hammurabi, "Superiors got all the good things in life. Commoners got what was left. Slaves got a beating if they complained." Cortes described the Spanish obsession with gold to the Aztecs succinctly as a "disease of the heart;" the Soviet experiment with the central barter system meant that "Everyone would work according to their abilities, and receive according to their needs," became "everyone would work as little as they can get away with and receive as much as they could grab." And let's not get into the scourge of religion where, for example, "over the course of...1,500 years, Christians slaughtered Christians by the millions to defend slightly different interpretations of the religion of love and compassion." (I told you, Harari's good.)

The miracle, it seems, is that we've survived to this point. Whether the species will continue to evolve for millenia more, though, is an open question. As Harari concludes, "is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don't know what they want?" 

Four stars.

...and the Rain my Drink

...and the Rain my Drink is Han Suyin's 1956 novel set during the Malayan Emergency (i.e., the Malaysian fight for independence from British rule following the centuries of colonialism). The title derives from an old Chinese ballad that the fighters sang, "I will go to the forest for justice. The wind for my garment I wear. ... and the rain my drink."

I'll dispense with the negatives first: there are simply so many characters here, and many of them with two or more names, that I sometimes found it difficult to keep up with who was who (as well as various plot points involving different characters).

In the plus column, the book is beautifully written, and provides an excellent history and context for those who wish to know more of the this time and place. Reading through those lenses, rather than reading this as a typical novel, allowed me to appreciate it ... and the Rain my Drink even when I was a bit lost in the weeds of the story itself.

Suyin's sympathies clearly lie with the jungle fighters, and how could it be otherwise when "there was no door to the future for them, save through the green mouth of the jungle." (Much later in the book, the other side of the coin is articulated clear as day: " All over South East Asia there were white men pointing out, loud and long, how bad freedom was for anyone but themselves.") For that reason alone this is a great read for anyone who wants to understand more of Southeast Asia, particularly without the distortion of European perspective.

This particular book may be fiction, but the events that underpin each page are grounded in the very real history of Malaya. Anyone seeking to understand the tensions between Malays and Chinese within Malaysia (whom Suyin describes as wielding wealth, but not power, a description which is still apt in parts of the region), where even today each ethnicity's roles and functions in society are codified into law, would do well to read this book, which provides historic background with fictional drama. (Likewise, although it was published before Singapore and Malaysia had separated, the coming chasm is well foreshadowed.)

And yet, while Suyin sympathizes with the fighters, she also recognizes the hardships for the majority who were caught in the middle: "...endured, as so many things were endured in these days between two terrors, that of the Police, and that of the People Inside." Suyin doesn't only capture the tensions of the Emergency, of those between Malay and Chinese, or between those who would fight and those who prefer to exist quietly. She also captures Malaysia - and all of Southeast Asia - in the unrelenting heat and the frequently demoralizing rains. British officers are frequently described as having "whiteskin fury," which explodes most commonly in the heat of the day, not only in Malaya, but in all the places of the Empire where "January is as July will ever be." Hot. Wet. Hotter.  

Likewise, Suyin captures a key difference between Europe and Asia, one which holds as much today as it did 65 years ago when she first penned it, and that is the notional of Europe as "staid, stay-behind and unimaginative behind the surging exaltation of Asia." (That, right there, is why 100 times out of 100 I will bet on Asia over Europe, but I digress.)

There is also quiet wisdom between these pages, the idea, for example, that "there is knowledge that is not knowledge, not in words and yet inhabits the mind, informs it with facts and events." At the time Suyin wrote ...and the Rain my Drink, Malay's future was still very much in flux and Suyin is grappling not only with the British but with questions of the changing world more broadly. Through the voice of her characters, she questions the price extracted by "that other jungle, the ravenous, stupid, loud brash jungle of money-making" and how the price life in that jungle compares to the damage inflicted on the soul by life in the literal jungle. The answers are as elusive as the People Inside.

A last piece of advice: "Remember....there is no such thing as defeat. There is only change of tactics."

Mambo in Chinatown

At 22, Charlie Wong knows little of life outside of Chinatown. The daughter of a Beijing ballerina - who never danced again after moving to America - and a noodle maker - who has raised Charlie and her younger sister, Lisa, alone following the death of his wife when Charlie was 14 - Charlie was never a stellar student and now finds herself at a bit of a deadend, working as a dishwasher in the same noodle restaurant where her father makes the noodles.

This insular world is upended when she accepts a job as the receptionist at a ballroom dance studio and slowly discovers the world beyond Chinatown, a world whose existence was largely a mystery to her. Gradually, Charlie's world separates into two parts - the life in Chinatown with her sister and father, from whom she must hide all aspects of her new life, and the new, Western life which she increasingly embraces. As her sister becomes sicker and sicker, though, and her uncle's Eastern medicine cannot restore her health, Charlie must find a way to bring together these two selves - the two ways of living and being - to help heal her sister. 

This is the first book by Jean Kwok that I've read, and I loved her voice. The settings - Chinatown and a professional dance studio - are both so particular, with such nuance, that it's clear Kwok knows of what she writes. Likewise, the infusion of eastern philosophy interspersed in otherwise very snappy (i.e., young and modern) prose, provides a unique voice - and offers sustenance such that Mambo in Chinatown moves out of the mind candy realm and feels a bit more like literature. Such food for thought, if you will, takes the form of lines like "The hardest part of making a sacrifice isn't the moment when you do it. That's the easiest. You're too busy being proud of yourself for being so noble. What's hard is the day after that and the following one and all of those days to come. It's needing to make that sacrifice over and over again, the rest of your life, while in your mind, you can still taste that which you lost. or what you think you lost." Indeed.

Four stars.

The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World

What do we know that we do not know we know? Patrik Svensson comes as near to an answer as I have found: "maybe we subconsciously read our surroundings and come to conclusions we don't even understand ourselves."

From the first page, Svensson hooks the reader with his writing, that evocative imagery that whispers that one will learn of more than eels in these pages: "the Sargasso Sea is like a dream: you can rarely pinpoint the moment you enter or exit; all you know is that you've been there." Like the adept fisherman the reader will learn him to be, Svensson reels the line in slowly, the reader ever more gradually falling under his spell, realizing that the subject of the book is not eels at all, but life itself and the origins of life and the ever-elusive knowing that so many seek, so often without, well, knowing. 

The Book of Eels is, in fact, a treatise to make any philosopher proud. Early and often Svensson reminds the reader that life is often first and foremost about waiting; yet "time is unreliable company and no matter how slowly the seconds tick by, life is over in the blink of an eye." Also unreliable: the mind and memory; what we think we know of who we are and where we come from, our whims. How else to explain the fact that humans will go to great lengths to free ourselves from fate, sometimes even succeed, only to realize "we have no choice but to travel back to where we came from." 

Svensson is taken with the eel not only for sentimental reasons, but for the mysteries it offers; in that sense, the eel becomes a metaphor for life itself. The eel, even today, is widely accepted as one of science's last mysteries. As much as that may niggle, Svensson revels in the fact - the belief - that "even people who trust in science and an orderly natural world sometimes want to leave a small, small opening for the unknowable." It is the ambiguities that Svensson probes repeatedly, the question, for example, of where to draw the line between life and death, of needing to juxtapose the idea that "the person with patience is always awarded eventually" with the caution that "suddenly, one day, it's too late."

A friend likes to ask how much of our lives are the products of hard work, effort, and self-determination and how much is the product of pre-determination, of fate and destiny. I'm not foolish enough to attempt an answer to such a question, though I have long believed that what we need in life - whether books or ideas or people - comes to us when we need them. I heard an eerie echo of that sentiment in Svensson's own belief that "you find what you want to believe in when you need it."

My money, though, is that Svensson leans heavily toward pre-determination. Certainly, the eel's course, from the currents that will carry it to rivers and streams of Europe to the inexorable pull to return to the Sargasso, exists far beyond the eel's control. And of his father, whose work as a road paver offered a sense of fulfillment "from knowing there's a certain permanence to what you make and that other people value it," Svensson wrote, "he was a worker because something bigger and stronger than him had chosen that life for him. The course of his life was pre-determined."

Like the eel, and pre-determined or otherwise, we all must find our way in the world. We are, metaphorically speaking, each of us bound for the Sargasso Sea, each to encounter so many diversions, so many potential pitfalls, and as for the eel, time is shorter than we think. The sand must not course through the hourglass before we've embarked toward the sea. But must we go there, to this metaphorical, almost mystical, sea? Svensson argues persuasively for this outcome: "the origin of the eel and its long journey are, despite their strangeness, things we might relate to, even recognize: its protracted drifting on the ocean currents in an effort to leave home, and its even longer and more difficult way back - the things we are prepared to go through to return home."

As Svensson thinks of the scientists whose life's work was the eel - who undertook to find the needle in the haystack, even when the haystack was an entire ocean - he concludes: "Perhaps there are people who simply don't give up once they've set their minds to answering a question that arouses their curiosity, who forge ahead until they find what they seek, no matter how long it takes, how alone they are, or how hopeless things seem." It is easy to forgot whether he is speaking of scientists, for whom the search was their Sargasso, or the eels themselves. In either case, the sentiment is equal parts melancholy and hopeful, like an eel passing a century at the bottom of a well, persevering to see a thing through. 

And why would an eel spend a century in a well? Because it cannot - will not - undergo its final metamorphosis to full maturity until it is ready and able to undertake the long and arduous journey back to the Sargasso. Which begs the question Svensson asks again and again: how does the eel knows when it's time? When is the eel ready - when are we ready - for the metamorphosis from which there can be no turning back? What kind of voices tells the eel when to forsake the comforts of its muddy home for the uncertain, and often unsuccessful, journey to the sea? What kind of voice tells us when it's time for a similar departure? When life doesn't turn out the way it was supposed to, an eel can put everything on hold, and postpone dying almost indefinitely. What are our options when life looks so very different from what we had imagined?

Through the power of Svensson's pen, the eels of The Book of Eels change shape as regularly as those that ply the earth's waters. In the Basque country and Northern Ireland, in the fish shanties that dot the coast of Sweden, the eel is a cultural heritage. Later it is an endangered species, an exemplar of man's meddling with nature, a canary in the coal mine of global warming. It is a centerpiece in regional cuisines and the holy grail of scientific knowledge; the object of literature, and the center of political disputes. 

Always, though the eel is the representative of the great unknown and, by proxy, faith. No mature silver eel has ever been seen in the Sargasso, Svensson is keen to remind, but we take it as an article of faith that those waters are the spawning grounds. "When it comes to eels," Svensson writes, "not only are science and the eel itself suspect, you can't trust God either. Or God's interpreters. Or words." Svensson leaves it to the reader to infer the follow-up question: if God and words are not to be trusted in relation to the humble eel, in what other, larger circumstances can we not trust that which we think we understand?

We are, Svensson implies, more like the eel than we realize. Every eel seeks its place in the world without a guide, existentially alone. The eels may all aim for the same destination, but each journey is singularly unique. "And seeking a place in the world on one's own: Surely that is, at the end of the day, the most universal of all human experiences." On our own. We are borne into the world alone, and we are borne out of it alone and no matter how surrounded we are while we are here, our journey is also alone. 

Just as we carry in our veins the "salty stream in which the elements sodium, potassium, and calcium are combined in almost the same proportions as in sea water," though generally without knowing it is thus, or giving the fact much thought, so we are, each of us, bound for our own Sargasso Sea, wittingly or otherwise. Perhaps it is just chance that tells us when it is time to stay or to leave, or perhaps it is part of what we know that we do not know we know. Like the eel, most of us may not make it, but that some do is evidenced by the quiet beauty of works such as this. Svensson has found the Sargasso Sea; The Book of Eels is his spawn. Were that I should find mine and the outcome should be half as magnificent.

Permission to Feel: Unlocking the Power of Emotions to Help Our Kids

The mood meter inside the book jacket sucked me in immediately because of my (visceral, negative) reaction to the emotions in the "green" quadrant, which I (correctly) assumed would be presented as the emotional ideal for much of life. 

Honestly, much of the green quadrant fills me with dread. Restful? Blessed? Peaceful? Serene? Are people who regularly feel this way even fully, you know, alive? My home turf, the spot I think of as my resting pulse, is somewhere between Restless and Energized, Annoyed and Pleased. If I'm not totally red, I'm at least a shade orange.... And whatever it may say about me - as a person or a parent - kindness, sense of purpose, and the wisdom to build healthy, lasting relationships are not the skills I'm most desirous of my son possessing as he grows up. Confidence, yes, but from there Brackett and I diverge. Oh, I'm not most focused on math skills, scientific knowledge, or athletic ability, but a sense of justice; resilience, grit, and determination; and a quick wit and silver tongue take precedence over Brackett's trifecta any day of the week.

That said, once I moved beyond our philosophical differences, I quite like Brackett's methodology. The idea of using an emotional RULER (Recognizing, Understanding, Labeling, Expressing, and Regulating) is undoubtedly valuable, and although many of the emotions that I want G to be able to articulate do not appear on the mood meter, even using those that do is good practice. And what doesn't appear? The absence of the cerebral emotions feels like a loss to me, or a missed opportunity at a minimum. Where do skepticism or ambivalence fit? Feeling conflicted? Regretful? Exasperated? Aroused? Stifled? Amused? Objectified? Vindicated? The ever-popular feeling of schadenfreude? Indebted....which does also always render one grateful. 

You get the idea. Although the Mood Meters captures some 100 "moods" too much overlaps for my taste (tired and fatigued or blissful and fulfilled), particularly given that the more nuanced emotions are missing. Are despairing and despondent not the same side of the same coin? This wouldn't bother me so much if Brackett didn't regularly make the point that the richer a child's emotional vocabulary, the more successful they will be in applying the precepts of RULER and, ultimately, in regulating their emotions. Or, as the neuroscientists say, and Brackett quotes, "If you can name it, you can tame it."

I appreciate Brackett's acknowledgment of the fallacy of happiness, and specifically that the pursuit of happiness can be self-defeating. With my son I discuss the obligation all of us has to make the world somewhat better - not to litter, not to lie, to vote against bad ideas and worse policies, to consume less and appreciate more, but I'm careful never to suggest any of this should be done with an eye toward the ever-ephemeral "happiness." And, though I can't exactly put my finger on why, the cynic in me may have laughed a bit at the idea of devoting time and thought to our positive moments so that we may discover ways to extend them.

I've read enough neuroscience books the past few years to discern who can write well enough to be enjoyed by the masses, versus who I'm going to need a medical dictionary to decipher, and happily Brackett falls into the former category. I particularly enjoyed his anecdote on cultural difference in Croatia as well as the many tales out of academia. Ah, students.

In terms of Emotions at Work: I enjoyed the contrast between this and Robert Greene and would be interested in what each of them would think of the other.

Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town

Barbara Demick's Eat the Buddha is a clear-eyed look at how the situation in Tibet evolved from the early twentieth century, when Tibet was largely independent until today when 'Free Tibet' is the first thing many of us, especially in the West, think of when he hear mention of this place. (Full disclosure: the first thing I think of is that the Tibetan plateau is widely regarded as the most remote place on earth, requiring a journey of 21 days - one by car and 20 by foot - from the nearest city, Lhasa. True story, and one that I include in my urbanization lecture each semester, but I digress.) 

Like so many geopolitical issues facing the world today, we can thank the British Empire for meddling where they shouldn't have, and setting in motion the chain of events that has led to the current situation. As Demick notes, it was the euphemistically labeled "expedition" into Tibet by British colonel Francis Younghusband in 1903 which turned Chinese attention toward the strategic importance of this vast but lightly people plateau. And it's not just me blaming the British; as Demick writes, "many Tibet scholars blame Britain for the subsequent calamities that befell Tibet" (p. 20). Clearly, then, we can put this up there was the Opium Wars and the Sykes-Picot agreement. 

Brits aside, the challenge for the Tibetans, once China turned its full attention in that direction is that it lacked a major "sponsor" (such as the US or USSR) and was ruled by a teenager - the Dalai Lama. Although one can argue the damage has been done, Demick does state the obvious, lest the reader miss it: picking a successor [to the Dalai Lama, ruler of Tibet] be reincarnation is admittedly a dysfunctional system" (p. 258). Likewise, she can't help but pounce on the absurdity of the Chinese Communist Party declaring that it alone will control the selection of the next Dalai Lama, writing "the idea of these Communist technocrats weighing in on matters of reincarnation prompts much hilarity."

Although Demick's sympathies are clearly with the Tibetan people, her account comes across as balanced (she was a staff writer for the LA Times, after all), and provides a fascinating look at a little known corner of the world, particularly as she focuses her attention on the area around Ngaba, which is located in China proper, not, frankly, all that far from Sichuan and other better-known regions of that vast country. At a time when journalism frequently comes under attack, Eat the Buddha also serves as a reminder of the importance of the craft - and the run of the mill hazards journalists face under the best of circumstances (i.e., when they're not evading hostile security forces). For example, in the course of writing this book, Demick fell into an open sewage ditch. Good naturedly, she remarks that it wouldn't have been so bad, except that the water at the hotel was not working and she was unable to bathe. Journalism in Tibet is clearly not for the faint of heart for oh-so-many reasons.

In any event, Ngaba drew Demick's attention originally for the frequency of the acts of self-immolation that occurred there. (These Demick describes in detail, including the shocking, and horrifying, fact that many of those who committed the act would first consume petrol in order to burn from both the inside and the outside. On the plus side, this preparation virtually guaranteed death; as Demick explains, the only thing worse than self-immolating might be to survive such an attempt.) 

As a result of these regular acts of defiance, China cracked down on the region, and cracked down hard, such that from 2011 to 2013, it was nearly impossible to do so much as place a phone call from Ngaba to Beijing.You could forget about Internet, which was entirely unplugged, and heaven help you if you've spared so much as a thought for obtaining a passport. (Even leaving the immediate area to travel elsewhere in China can be daunting, requiring significant paperwork in a place where, not surprisingly given that much of the population still herds goats and yaks, "bureaucratic requirements were challenging for Tibetans raised in a nomadic culture that wasn't strong on paperwork." Strong on paperwork, me thinks is a euphamism about on par with Younghusband's "expedition" that left several thousand dead.)

No wonder, then, that so many Tibetans, especially young Tibetans, sought to flee, typically to India by way of Nepal. Demick follows this harrowing journey, including the necessary zip line across the roaring Sun Kosi River, whose rushing rapids comprise the border from Tibet proper to Nepal. The cost of this one way trip is $10,000 per head. Mercy. 

Eat the Buddha, whose title derives from the starving Red Army soldiers who resorted to looting the monasteries and eating the flour-and-butter religious statues, which to Tibetans, made it seem as though they were eating the Buddha, should be required reading for anyone who wants to better understand the tensions in Tibet, the history between China and Tibet, and the role outside powers, including Britain and the U.S. have played in the region over the years. More than that, though, this is an intimate look at lives lived much as they were centuries ago - men and women who herd yak and burn butter lamps, collect yak dung and caterpillar fungus, who generally want little more than to be left in peace, albeit with the same conveniences - cell phones and electricity, say - that are elevating the quality of life the world over. 

Demick's story ends on the cusp of today - the coronavirus makes an appearance in the closing pages, with Demick speculating how societal changes as a result of the public health emergency may lead to longer lasting measure even after the epidemic has passed. As she poignantly notes of those who have left Tibet - but which one could reasonably assume also applies to those who remain, "they were regular people who hoped to live normal, happy lives...without having to make impossible choices between their faith, family, and their country" (p. 273). Were that it were so simple, in Tibet and everywhere.

Stranger in the Shogun's City: A Japanese Woman and Her World

I am, of course, a sucker for all things Japanese. Even so, Amy Stanley's Stranger in the Shogun's City, the biographical account of a thrice-divorced, provincial Japanese woman who leaves her snowbound village for the big city of Edo, is a particular treat. 

By all odds, Tsuneno should have remained unknown, her life and times, loves and losses relegated to the dustbin of history, the years only deepening her anonymity. She was born in 1801, the oldest daughter of a Buddhist priest in the small village of Ishigami, destined to live a life like that of all the women before her: sweeping floors, tending the brazier, comforting the parishioners of a small temple, and above all, raising a large and numerous family. This was the lot of women in Japan - and around the world, let's face it - in 1801 (and while we're facing the music, we need to acknowledge that in much of the world, it still is today). 

Tsuneno never could reconcile herself to such a life though, cycling through husbands the way other women of her era may have cycled through kimonos. Unlikely though her story is, it is surely not singular. Perhaps most unique is the level of literacy Tsuneno attained. As the daughter of a priest, and thus in preparation for being able to provide support and assistance to a future husband in the running of another temple, such literacy was deemed critical; the letters she would later exchange with her increasingly exasperated family are the fruit of that education.

Stanley is a professor of history; that she stumbled upon Tsuneno's story is a great good fortune. As she notes early, there was nothing particularly noteworthy about the collection of correspondence assembled and maintained first by Tsuneno's father, Emon, and then her oldest brother, Giyu.The tax bills, the loan statements, the memoranda from samurai and planting records were no different than those of any other temple family. What set them apart were the letters. Letters to, from, and about Tsuneno. Ultimately, the entire archive, "rather than telling the orderly story of a family, would begin to tell a different story: hers." 

And what a story! Married off at 12 for the first time, by her mid-30s, Tsuneno had been married and divorced three times, all to men of her father's choosing. Desperate not to be married off yet again, she made a decision - the first independent and consequential decision of her life - to run off to Edo, even then one of the largest cities on earth. As Stanley writes, using Tsuneno's own penetrating, heartbreaking words, "When I wasn't brave, I got caught up in unpleasantness no matter what I did." (An echo from the past reminding all of us today of what happens when we aren't brave: reader, take note.) In Edo she marries again, her fourth husband, but the first of her choosing. Their life - her life - would not be easy, but for the first time, it would be her own.

Tsuneno is endearing; it is one of her letters (available online through the Niigata public archive) that first captured Stanley's imagination, and with which Stanley hooked me in her prologue: To mother, from Tsuneno (confidential). I'm writing with spring greetings. I went to Kanda Minagawa-cho in Edo -- quite unexpectedly -- and I ended up in so much trouble! A confidential letter from daughter to mother detailing so much trouble? Indeed. It is Stanley, though, who brings Tsuneno - and Edo - alive.

Oh Edo! Stanley's descriptions of the Shogun's city with its bannermen and maidservants, the vendors and carpenters, Nihonbashi and Shinjuku and the kabuki theaters! The fire towers, the noodle stalls, the slap of sandals and the cicadas, the temples and their festivals and sea of umbrellas to fend off the summer rains. All of this jumps from the page; it is the Edo-Tokyo museum come to life, and if Stanley's descriptions don't make you want to march backwards in time and experience Edo for yourself, well you just never quite loved Tokyo as much as I did. 

And then Stanley does the most remarkable thing. This book, which I believed wholeheartedly to be a biography of one of the masses, and an ode to Edo before Perry's ships heralded irrevocable change, becomes instead a treatise on the role of women. In hindsight, Stanley has sprinkled the clues  throughout, as when she writes bluntly, "the only goal was to move toward a life that held some hope of change, where she wouldn't be buried alive under a dying old man, in a lonely little village." That sentence took my breath away. When I think of how suffocating life in 21st century America can sometimes be, well, I'll leave it at that.

So while she could have written an engaging biography of Tsuneno and a marvelous history of Edo, Stanley goes one step further. This book becomes a record of the contributions of the countless Tsunenos. This remarkable passage appears in the closing pages:

"...if women like her hadn't come in from the countryside, Edo wouldn't have grown. If they hadn't washed floors, sold charcoal, kept the books, done laundry, and served food, its economy could not have functioned. And if they hadn't bought theater tickets, hairpins, bolts of cloth, and bowls of noodles, the shogun's great city wouldn't have been a city at all. It would have been a dusty military outpost full of men, one of a thousand, not worth all the effort. Tsuneno's legacy was the great city of Edo: her ambition, her life's work...she might have said that the experience of Edo changed her. But she also shaped the city" (p. 236, 237).

That paragraph is a testament to work and lives of women on down through time, their contributions so seldom recorded in the way that the fates captured Tsuneno's. Stranger in the Shogun's City is a phenomenal work of Japanese history, but it is an equally important work on women's history.

 

The Silence

Don DeLillo's The Silence is one of the more disappointing books I've read in recent memory. It was billed as a very "2020" read: The year is 2022 and on Super Bowl Sunday, the grid - the whole grid - internet, electric, phone, etc., etc., etc. - goes out. The book jacket says that what follows is "a dazzling and profoundly moving conversation about what makes us human." I disagree. I think what follows is, frankly, a lot of inactivity and, based on what we've all lived this past almost-year (though through a different crisis) unrealistic.

If the book had been longer, if DeLillo had explored his characters for more than, I don't know, 24 hours after the digital connections are severed, if he had explored how local and state and national politicians reacted - how they even reached people given the loss of cable and internet and with it, God forbid, Twitter, that would have added depth and interest. If they'd discussed more than Einstein's Theory of Relativity and German philosophy it would have added relatability.

There are a handful of lines with particular resonance: Are we living in a makeshift reality? Is it natural at a time like this to be thinking and talking in philosophical terms....or should we be practical? 

Ultimately, though, this was a book without a point, either one committed to paper, or one for the reader to imagine after finishing the last page. The idea is intriguing, but the execution is lacking.

The 33 Strategies of War

I was told recently that I had more than a touch of Sun-Tzu to me. At the time, I didn't give it much thought, but having read Robert Greene's The 33 Strategies of War, whether this observation was intended as compliment or insult is even more uncertain.

Greene's War aims to distill the laws of battlefield strategy and psychology into tips and tricks for navigating everyday life. Using a rich battery of examples from the ancient Greeks and Romans to the American Civil War generals, the Viet Cong, and especially Napoleon, Napoleon, Napoleon, Greene illustrates his arguments with examples from, well, war. (He also incorporates numerous examples from Hollywood, particularly of Joan Crawford and Alfred Hitchcock, which make for an interesting juxtaposition with Hannibal and the Mujahideen.) The examples, which provide a fascinating history lesson in themselves - given their depth and breadth I couldn't help but wonder how many hours of research had gone into War - serve to illustrate everything you've been told about life: keep your friends close and your enemies closer; think about the long game; prepare an exit strategy; you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Actions speak louder than words. It's better to go down swinging than looking. It's better to ask forgiveness than permission. Perhaps most importantly, as Greene spells out explicitly, "in life, as in war, nothing ever happens just as you expect it to."

As I reflected on my own actions combatting a former boss, I realized how very well I had practiced many of the arts of war...and why I'd been told I had a touch of Sun-Tzu. Oh, I knew I'd done my work well, but it was only in reading Greene that I understood all the nuances of my actions, not least of which was rendering it a "moral battle for public consumption." (Some might say I had to be crazy like a fox to take on the fight in the first place, but either way, I only brought it to fruition because, after I lost the first round, someone who clearly knew which of my buttons to push asked if I was going tout looking or swinging. Greene would approve of her strategy and my response.) My experience also proved his aphorism that the only way to be truly unorthodox is to imitate no one...refusing to follow common patterns will make it hard for people to guess what you'll do next.

All of which is to say, Green's ideas resonated with me. The last line of his 28th strategy stopped me in my tracks, though: "wise courtiers always seem to be paragons of civilized behavior, encasing their iron fist in a velvet glove." For in the midst of the imbroglio with the boss, a student wrote to me requesting advice as she entered the workplace. I began by telling her she must always advocate for herself; encouraged her to always to fight for herself, her team, and what she knew to be right; told her that when backed into a corner, she could decide whether to go out looking or go out swinging - but that, if swinging, it better be for the fences; and finally, that she should cultivate the art of an iron fist in a velvet glove. Sun-Tzu, indeed.

One final thought: Greene schooled me in geography. Evidently the Rubicon is not the mythological river I inexplicably thought it to be, but an actual, Italian one. Who knew? (Don't answer.)

Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America

That Grocery is an ode - even a love letter - to grocery stores is clear from opening lines. The surprising and lovely twist is that it is also a love letter to Ruhlman's father.

Many books - The Food of a Younger Land; Salt, Sugar, Fat; Genius Foods - have been written about food in American and, more to the point, how much of it is merely "food product" that we're better off avoiding. Ruhlman, whom I first encountered in grad school as the author of the exquisite Walk on Water: The Miracle of Saving Children's Lives, manages to largely stay out of those weeds. 

With an almost-laser-focus on Heinen's, a Cleveland-based grocer, he's able to hone in on the place of the grocery store in society: its history and evolution, the push-pull factors of marketing and manufacturers, and the sheer variety and abundance that is nearly every grocery store in America.

As I was growing up, in the years before Costco and Carrefour had proliferated across Europe and beyond, my family regularly hosted exchange students. One of the highlights - and horrors - for these students was always a trip to the local Meijer, where the aforementioned abundance overwhelmed the senses and left them a sense of awe at the number of cereals available - as well as puzzled by who would need so many choices. 

Ruhlman brings the same wide-eyed-wonder to grocery store operations, though he takes it a step further by visiting the lamb farms, the wineries, the carrot farmers, and many others along the journey of keeping grocery shelves stocked. That he does all of this with a light touch, and the narrative of his father's love of grocery shopping and cooking woven throughout, is a testament to both his writing and story telling abilities. He leaves the reader with more questions than answers as to the future of food, and with quite a few products to look for in the grocery aisles.

Our Man in Charleson: Britain's Secret Agent in the Civil War South

 In 1853, Robert Bunch was posted to Charleston to serve as British consul, clean up the mess left by his predecessor, and lobby for British interests. As the US careened toward Civil War, and talk of secession superseded all else in South Carolina, Bunch increasingly found himself thrust in the middle of events, and increasingly as a double agent - chumming it up with the best people, while working furiously behind the scenes to deny the new Confederacy the recognition and legitimacy in Europe it so longed for - and needed.

Christopher Dickey's writing and research are on-the-mark, his portrayal of Bunch flattering without being fawning, and the history engaging. That said, much like Savage Continent, I found I just cannot concentrate on other people's apocalypses at the moment. A country on the brink, neighbor-against-neighbor, is just too reminiscent of the current times. I think I'll turn away from my usual history reading for a bit. :)

Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II

I think in part motivated by my aborted attempt at American Ulysses last month, I have been determined to work my way through Keith Lowe's Savage Continent. Similar to American Ulysses, the topic is interesting, and unlike my chief complete with the former, that White simply included far too many details for the average reader to wade through, Lowe's writing is on point. 

A few years ago, in fact, looking back, I see it was even this same time of year, I began a review as follows: "I blame Shogun. Luncheon of the Boating Party isn't bad, it just pales in comparison to Shogun, which leaves Susan Vreeland's work seeming a bit washed out." Today's context is completely different, but all I can say is: I blame covid. And Trump. Try as I might, I'm simply not in the mood to read about the ravages and savages that followed on the heels of World War II. 

From the opening sentences, Lowe is clear about what the reader will encounter: "Imagine a world without institutions. It is a world where borders between countries seem to have dissolved, leaving a single, endless landscape over which people travel in search of communities that no longer exist. ... There are no banks...Nothing is made here. ... There is no food. Law and order are virtually non-existent, because there is no police force and no judiciary. ... There is no morality. There is only survival." (p. xiii) 

I should have stopped then, right? I mean, it sounds like Lowe is writing to prepare me for the coming electoral apocalypse, rather than merely recounting the experience of a bombed out continent after a half-decade of war. I soldiered on though, no pun intended, through the typhus in the DP camps, through the bones poking through the rubble, through the carnage of 12 chapters. And then I decided enough. It's not that the story shouldn't be told. God knows, we need every reminder we can conjure as to how such periods have ended before. But for me, personally, Savage Continent does not serve the purpose of thou-shalt-not. It merely brought me a lower. 

Perhaps in a few years, I'll revisit this book. It is, as I said, well-written, and despite myself, I am interested in the topic. Just not this year.

The Ghost Army of World War II

The Ghost Army of World War II sheds light on one of the lesser known divisions - and episodes - of World War II. The 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, or "Ghost Army" used every form of deception against the German army as Patton and company fought their way from the hedgerows of Normandy and on across the Rhine. The Ghost Army - at 1,100 strong - was often charged with convincing the enemy that anywhere north of 30,000 men were amassing to launch one or another audacious attacks. They did this through the use of multimedia deceptions, using visual, sonic, and radio illusions, the most amusing of which I found to be the inflatable tanks. 

Their work was so secret that other American troops were not privy to it - as evidenced by the quote from one private: "All of a sudden I see four guys, one on each end of a General Sherman tank, picking the thing up. And I practically collapsed, because I thought, 'Gee, I could never pick up a tank.' "  (A couple of unsuspecting Frenchmen were equally perplexed. A farmer had to be restrained from sharing what he witnessed when looking to round up his herd and instead saw his cows pushing an American tank around. Another time, a breach of the security perimeter led to two cyclists being told "The Americans are very strong.")

Generally, The Ghost Army of World War II is a snappy little book, the writing light, the anecdotes frequent, the humor outweighing the grimness of war. The story about measuring signs was my favorite; I'll not spoil it other than to say: the more things change, the more they stay the same. Authors Rick Beyer and Elizabeth Sayles also do a remarkable job of incorporating art and photography into the story they tell. This emphasis is fitting, as many of the men in the 23rd were artists - their numbers included the likes of Bill Blass, Arthur Singer, Art Kane, and Jack Masey - and by incorporating their photographs and their artwork, works made during the war itself....well, a picture is worth a thousand words.

While plenty has been written about espionage in war, from Operation Columba to Operation Mincemeat, The Irregulars to Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy, this is the first work I've encountered devoted entirely to the art of wartime deception. (Perhaps that's not surprising: you can spend a day at the International Spy Museum, and while the museum may boast the occasional exhibit that falls under deception, it's all much more James Bond than David Copperfield.) More disappointing, the National World War II museum lacks a permanent exhibit on the Ghost Army; when I checked their website to see how I had possibly missed it, I was instead met with an announcement that, in fact, there's a special, temporary exhibit on the Ghost Army from March 2020 to January 2021. Thanks to covid, I'll have to give it a pass.

 

The Ghost Army isn't a must read in any traditional sense. It's not the story of major battles, overall strategy, soaring rhetoric, or historical antecedents. That is, it's easily overlooked for those who are interested in the war in the broadest sense. Like Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, though, it's one of those books focusing on a smaller episode that collectively lends richness to the our understanding of World War II. That it does so with humor, rather than a body count, is the cherry on top.

After the War is Over

Jennifer Robson's After the War is Over is escapism fiction as its best. It is sappy and predictable, but I can't think when I've had more fun watching the story unfold as I predicted (hoped!) it would.

Following the end of the Great War, Charlotte Brown has left her job as a nurse in a neurasthenia hospital and returned to work as an assistant in the constituency office of Miss Rathbone, where she is able to work on behalf of the poorest and most vulnerable citizens, for whom she has a particular soft spot. She has also maintained her friendship with her dear friend and former charge Lilly, youngest daughter of Lord and Lady Cumberland, for whom Charlotte was governess.

When Lord Cumberland dies suddenly and Lilly's brother Edward must assume his father's position while grappling with physical and psychological reminders of the war, Charlotte is thrust squarely into their affairs - after all, she has extensive experience with neurasthenia. More difficult than managing Edward's medical needs is coming to terms with their complicated and unresolved history.

As I said, this book is both formulaic and fun. It's the sequel to Somewhere in France, although one needn't have read Somewhere in France to enjoy After the War is Over. I read the former almost five years ago, and recall little from it. Robson does a nice job of filling in the reader on the salient points in the latter book so that it's able to stand on its own.

Five stars.

In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs: A Memoir of Iran

Christopher de Bellaigue is a British journalist who lives in Tehran (or did at the time he wrote In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs, in the early 2000s) with his Iranian wife and son. He is then, well-positioned to think and write about Iranian culture and society for a western audience, but with an insider's nuance.

What de Bellaigue does best is modern Iran: the traffic; the nuances of buying a car, and why new rarely trumps used; the contradictions. If he had written an entire book on the Iran of today (or 2002, say), the entire work would have been a joy. He writes, as one would expect of an author whose byline has appeared in such stalwarts of the Western press as The Economist and the New Yorker, beautifully, using short, snappy prose to bring emphasis, irony, or humor as needed. That said, a reader can only remember/differentiate so many mullahs, so many generals, so many wounded veterans of the Iran-Iraq war. To say I was bogged down in the politics is an understatement, and quickly I learned to skim passages on the competing ideologies that led to or stemmed from the Revolution.

While Iran's relationship with the world today is largely defined by its standoff with the U.S. (and on which side of that standoff others nations choose to align themselves), de Bellaigue deftly raises the issue of the collective West's long history of meddling in the Middle East (see: Hero), writing, "Two centuries of semi-colonization sometimes seem worse than unambiguous colonization; at least the unambiguously colonized got railways and sewers and unambiguous independence."

The Iran-Iraq war looming as it does over so much and so many in Iran and the larger Middle East, de Bellaigue also plucks at the threads of U.S. involvement, not least the Iran-Contra affair. That U.S. arms - to both sides - increased the firepower and made the bloodletting that much greater is clear, only reinforcing one of the central tenet's from Notes on a Foreign Country: U.S. decisions directly impact the lives of those in other countries on a regular basis, in a way that is difficult for Americans to appreciate. (Although the global experienced with Covid-19 may offer a taste.)

The most telling exchange occurred toward the end of the book, as de Bellaigue is discussing the present and future of Iran with one of the few Iranians he considers a friend, Mr. Zarif. In thinking about the state of the country, Zarif draws a corollary with the state of the Iranian-made Paykan, the butt of more than one joke throughout the book (and country, it seems). Zarif says, "When I get into my Paykan and it lurches and coughs, I think to myself that the men who made it aren't well enough trained or paid, and that they have bad equipment and are badly managed and didn't sleep well last night. ... On the few occasions that I've been in a Mercedes and been astonished by its mechanical perfection, don't you think I've asked myself if the men who built this car are better off?"

Food for thought.

Four stars. 

American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant

 American Ulysses, you're bringing me down.

In fact, after waiting eons to read this book, I'm not going to finish it. Oh, Ronald C. White writes well enough, but he's never met a fact he didn't like and as a result American Ulysses is swollen until any sense of story is lost in the mists of a veritable dissertation. (One example, just one, from a description of weaponry in the Mexican War: "His special weapons this day were a pair of eighteen-pound cannon, heretofore used only for defense because their massive weight made it so difficult to haul them into battle. ...each cannon pulled by six yoked oxen across seven miles of open prairie...they employed canister, a tin can filled with up to twenty-seven lead balls stuffed in sawdust...they possessed a range of up to three hundred yards" (p. 73). By the time I've gotten to the range, I've nearly forgotten how we got there. Or why. And so it goes for many hundreds of pages.)

In addition to being a tome, bloated by excessive adjectives and extraneous facts, American Ulysses is a tad too worshipful for my taste. I'm not suggesting Grant wasn't admirable, but from White's descriptions - and I was deep into the Civil War before I gave up the ghost - it appears Grant can do no wrong. For example, White seems to completely dismiss the idea that Grant drank any more than any other soldier or officer in the Army. Maybe White's right, but given that none other than Sherman felt the need to comment upon his drinking - "Grant stood by me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was drunk, and now we stand by each other" - White's dismissal strikes me as disingenuous at best. (And if White included that telling little quote, he did so after I'd closed the book for the final time.)

I left off reading somewhere in the realm of Vicksburg, and therefore certainly before Grant's presidency. Admittedly, I was mildly curious as to what defenses White would presumably offer for the corruption and cronyism that are generally accepted to have been widespread during Grant's second term, in particular, though not curious enough to tackle the next 400 pages.

I did, however, read the epilogue, and I have to say, given White's hero worship of Grant, it's somewhat surprising that he concludes his work not with his own soaring assessment, but with the words of Theodore Roosevelt who "surveyed the landscape of American history and made his judgment: Mightiest among the mighty dead loom the three great figures of Washington, Lincoln, and Grant," (p. 659). I find this decision all the more intriguing in that White chooses to continue with Roosevelt's second rank, which includes Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and Andrew Jackson. The times they were a different then, but that anyone would rank Andrew Jackson so highly must call into question his overall judgment. (I've previously called into question TR's judgment, though, as I take the thoughts of America's greatest imperialist with more than just a grain of salt.)

Most surprising of all, White adds a concluding sentence or two following TR's thoughts that he has seized the opportunity to make Grant's story "accessible to the wider audience he deserves." Maybe he deserves it, maybe not, but the audience that will sit - and sift - through 650+ densely packed pages is not exactly wide. Or at least, I'm not an avid enough reader, non-fiction nerd, or history buff to appreciate it.

The Rent Collector

Ki Lim and Sang Ly live in Cambodia's largest dump, Stung Meanchey, where their daily aspiration is to earn enough for a few bites of pork and vegetables to accompany the nightly rice. Their great dream is for their chronically-ill young son, Nisay, to become healthy. Through an improbable turn of events (more on that in a minute), Sang Ly learns to read from the perpetually drunk and equally bitter - and embittered - old woman, Sopeap, who comes each month demanding rent money for their canvas-walled shack. Known to the tenants as the Rent Collector, Sang Ly susses out one of Sopeap's most closely held secrets, changing the course of both of their lives.

Camron Wright's story is so treacly that had I not been reading for work, I never would have finished. And while the writing itself is not bad, there's simply nothing to recommend it on that basis alone. I felt uneasy as I read, thinking that, compared to a work like Twilight in Djakarta or And the Rain My Drink, it lacks authenticity and voice. Moreover, while I could, at the most basic of levels, understand the author's decision to construct a story around a quest for literacy, the circumstances render this so unlikely as to interfere with the story itself. That is, the best fiction doesn't *feel* like fiction, but Wright's story is so improbable that the reader can never leave the realm of *reading* the story and simply *feel* it.

It wasn't until I came to the acknowledgments, though, that I was able to put my finger on exactly what bothered me throughout. The acknowledgments begin with Wright sincerely thanking "The many great writers of classical literature whose work I've referenced or quoted in The Rent Collector. In a handful of cases...I've modified their original work. There is a reasonable chance that all are horrified, but their work is in the public domain, and, of course, they are dead and I'm not." The arrogance! And then it hits me: this is what has left me so uneasy. The entire book is rotten with it, and now that I've identified my chief gripe, I can't let it go.

(I double down on this assessment when I look up Wright's author bio on Amazon and read "Camron Wright...has a master's degree in Writing and Public Relations from Westminster College. He has owned several successful retail stores in addition to working with his wife in the fashion industry, designing for the McCall Pattern Company in New York. Camron began writing to get out of attending MBA school at the time, and it proved the better decision." Now this has become personal. I'm sure he think he's merely cutesy - ha! these authors are dead; I'm not! - but plugging fashion design in his author bio? Really? And he began writing to "get out of attending MBA school?" This is a point of pride for him? Deep breaths, Sarah, deep breaths.)

Mostly, though, and this very much falls into the category of not-my-business, I'm most bothered that this is the book EMBA students were assigned prior to traveling to Cambodia and Vietnam in 2018. I see no value - historically or culturally, nor of the story itself. Frankly, Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy would have been more appropriate in providing context for students around the choices to be made vis-a-vis trading one type of hard life for another one; if historical context is what the faculty wanted, The Elimination (Cambodia) or The Sorrow of War (Vietnam) would have been far better choices, imHo.

Suffice it to say, I do not recommend this book, nor can I think of any circumstance under which I would assign it. The end.

The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship

My last encounter with David Whyte, Crossing the Unknown Sea, left me wanting more of his magical prose, those words that ebb and flow as surely as the tides. I would probably read a treatise on sheep farming if Whyte wrote it; after all, the closing paragraphs of Crossing the Sea - the "loves and affections [that] cannot be held in some limbo inside us...[that] have set off on a voyage from far inside us to find their homes in the clear light of day" (p. 244) - are still ringing in my ears many weeks later. If The Three Marriages does not quite live up to Crossing the Sea, it's only because Whyte set such a high bar.

He begins the book with an anecdote of being at sea prior to an important talk, not in the literal sense, but the figurative one, and search as he might, an appropriate topic would not come. We've all been there in some form or another, though few have the chops to spin it into 300 pages, and certainly not with the lyricism or the imagery that Whyte so consistently offers. Who but Whyte might look at all of mankind and offer the following observation: "By definition, all of us, living at this time are descended from a long line of survivors who lived through the difficulties of history and prehistory; most of whom had to do a great deal of work to keep the wolf, the cold and the neighboring tribe from the door" (p. 23)? I want such thoughts flittering and floating through my mind, please and thank you.

Admittedly, the first two or three score pages are somewhat uneven. Whyte is fonder of his poetry in this work than in Sea, and the inclusion of poetry in the midst of such prose lends the first part of the book an uneven tone. Even when it's not entirely my cup of tea, though, it's difficult to find fault with Whyte: the liberal helping of Dante and Austen, Stevenson and Homer, those I've read and those I've jotted down for future reading, turns The Three Marriages into a book lovers treasure hunt. (I especially loved the collection of "marriage warnings" halfway though, one of which literally caused me to LOL, its truth so bitterly on-point. The truth comes hard and fast in The Three Marriages, but it's possible that only The Nantucket Girl's Song vies with said advice to Fanny in pithiness.)

Not only does Whyte incorporate the works of the likes of Austen and Stevenson, but he uses their life stories to further his own arguments about marriage - to a life's work, as well as to another being. Alone among those with whom I have ever discussed Austen, I do not like her work. More to Whyte's credit, then, that I so enjoyed his incorporation and analysis of her writing into the larger whole.

And when he writes of work, real work, of the work we do when we find we made a certain way and bring into it our best versions of ourselves, there too, does Whyte convey with words the images we might have glimpsed briefly but lacked the linguistic vibrancy to put into real thought. Who, after all, doesn't want to work in the office that is "a magic island of constant busyness where all of [one's] colleagues...mov[e] hyponotically from fax to printer to filing cabinet to meeting, like an elaborate court dance" (p. 115)? And who cannot relate to the reality that "most work is done in the midst of a host of other clamoring, crowding priorities? The great swaying underground carriage of life" (p. 273)?

Whyte certainly is not in need of bonus points, from me or anyone else, but his introduction of Pema Chodron was certainly icing on the cake for me; in some regards, Whyte explains the who and what of Chodron better than she herself does. If I hadn't already read my way through so much of her writing, I would be now. Just as he wove Stevenson and Austen into two of the marriages, so to does Chodron get her turn, through the marriage with the self, as well as that of work. It is in thinking about Chodron that Whyte offers the powerful observation that "freedom comes through a persistent, all-encompassing tenacity" (p. 229).

As I lost myself in the last chapter of The Three Marriages - in which Whyte and a terrified yak herder set out through an honest to goodness quagmire at dark to search for a lost member of a trekking party - I realized that even beyond Whyte's lyricism, his storytelling is so far beyond that of most authors that he really could write a guide to farming that I would want to read now and in the future.

All of that said, my favorite part would still have to be Whyte's observation of work-work: "In building a work life, people who follow rules, written or unwritten, too closely and in an unimaginative way are often suffocated by those same rules and die by them, quite often unnoticed and very often unmourned" (p. 139). Truth.

The Elimination: A Survivor of the Khmer Rouge Confronts His Past and the Commandant of the Killing Fields

In high school, my favorite teacher was a former journalist. It was she, I see now, who first taught me the trick of assigning popular press books in lieu of textbooks. With her, we read and dissected Kaffir Boy, Warriors Don't Cry, The Diary of Zlata Filipovic, The Diary of Anne Frank. War and apartheid and genocide were Lisa Walker's currency and so it is no surprise that her world civilizations course focused on the worst of humanity, from the obvious (Hitler and the Jews; Stalin and the Ukrainians) to the contemporary (Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda; Bosnians and Croats and Serbs in the former Yugoslav states) to Armenia and, yes, the Khmer Rouge. Ms. Walker - unabashedly and unapologetically liberal Ms. Walker - was determined we would learn the ins and outs of worst regimes to have ruled in modern times. 

So, I thought I knew something of Pol Pot and his KR cronies, but it turned out this was only the tip of the iceberg, for I was aware of the genocidal aspect of the regime, but nothing else. What else? The emptying of the cities - all cities; the elimination of all forms of currency, such that barter became the only means of procuring what little goods might be had; changing the name of the country - hell, changing the names of pronouns; shutting down the education system; forbidding marriage by choice/for love and assigning spouses...and then monitoring their sexual relations; instituting a national haircut.  

As Panh writes, "the Khmer Rouge wanted to mold and shape everything: bodies, words, society, landscape" (p. 142). An official slogan of the regime: "Personal feelings are not allowed." They were, in short, not only cruel, but crazy. And then there was the famine. If it wasn't as devastating in raw numbers as the Holodomor, that's only because the actual population of Ukraine was so much larger than that of Cambodia, for ultimately roughly one out of every three Cambodians perished under the heel of the KR.  

Rithy Panh lived all of this. The son of a renowned government minister, his family was evacuated from Phnom Penh and declared new people, set to work - like all Cambodians - digging canals, building dikes, diverting rivers. As Panh notes, "Democratic Kampuchea became a worksite. ... The worksite, it appeared, was in fact a labor camp" (p. 64). And when a population becomes no more than forced labor, those who force the labor no longer view them as human.  

Human right didn't exist. This statement, poignant in its directness, comes directly from Comrade Duch, former commander of Tuol Sleng, or S-21, one of the country's most notorious prisons, a place where torture was the order of the day, and from which only a dozen prisoners left alive. Now, decades later, Duch is himself under interrogation by Panh, the child-turned-laborer-turned-refugee-turned award-winning film director. "Mr. Rithy, the Khmer Rouge were all about elimination. Human rights didn't exist" (p. 73). Another official slogan of the KR: If you don't work hard enough, the Angkar will transform you into fertilizer for the rice fields" (p. 170). This wasn't hyperbole. (The Angkar or "Organization" was how the Communist Party of Kampuchea referred to itself from 1975-77.) 

Panh, whose Elimination, like a film, pans back and forth between his life in Paris, his interviews with Duch, his memories of labor and starvation and fear, conveys the horrors of the time through his concise use of language. For example, in describing the death toll inflicted by the KR - 1.7 million - he notes that this total was reached "without the means of mass extermination," (p. 110), a notable distinction as compared to the ovens of the Germans or the guns of the Hutus.  

It's only fair to ask: how does this happen? While any meaningful explanation is far beyond the scope of this brief summary, Panh provides a clue when he mentions the gap between the cities and the countryside - between the peasants and the professional class. That gap, Panh notes, was immense - and "that injustice was the ground on which the Khmer Rouge prospered" (p. 67). I'll not take the trouble of drawing parallels between the ideologies prospering in certain countries today and the vast and growing gaps - in income, education, wealth, and culture - between segments of society therein. 

Panh reserves some of his harshest words - outside of those for Duch, Pol Pot, and the rest of the KR apparatus - for Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman. In their 1980 book on the situation in Cambodia, After the Cataclysm, they wrote "it became virtually a matter of dogma in the West that the regime was the very incarnation of evil...how the 'nine men at the center' were able to achieve this feat or why they chose to pursue the strange course of 'autogenocide' were questions that were rarely pursued" (quoted by Panh, p. 234).  

Panh's anger and revulsion is understandable, but I believe so too is Chomsky and Herman's bafflement (and that of Alain Badiou, whose work in Le Monde comes in for scorn a page earlier). This idea of 'autogenocide' is so intellectually challenging because throughout history, genocide, though literally meaning "only" the act of killing a race or people, has effectively meant the act of killing an other race or people. The Jews. The Ukrainians. The Armenians. The Tutsis. The Bosnians. In all cases, they were targeted for their religion, their race, their ethnicity: their otherness. The KR killed their own people, though, and did so indiscriminately and without distinction, on a scale that is difficult to imagine, even today. 

As I was finishing The Elimination, Comrade Duch was dying. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-53994189 One imagines Panh would agree with the woman quoted by the BBC, "He deserves to serve more prison terms." I'm less certain he would agree with her final words: "But now he has died, I can forgive him."

Just So: Money, Materialism, and the Ineffable, Intelligent Universe

From the time I was quite young, I've harbored this notion that past existences, past experiences, and, let's not mince words, past lives, somehow shaped me. As much as this idea was very much at the core of who I was, I would also look upon it at times as though from afar and wonder: where the hell did I get this idea? More curiously, did anyone else have this same feeling? Intuitively, I knew these were not the kinds of question one might ask of teachers or aunts or even friends, and so I did not, not ever. In a way, then, I can best describe Alan Watts as a relief - for not only do I feel he would understand these questions, but that these notions, which seemed so far removed from the staid midwestern life that surrounded me, were not perhaps as decidedly odd as I had assumed.


And that is how Watts is for me: assurance that I am not losing my mind, but allowing myself to find it. Early on he introduces the idea of the wiggly world and returns to it often. Essentially, it's like this: the universe is comprised of wiggles, which is to say the concave and the convex, the worms and snakes inching through life, the waves of wind through a field of wheat, the spirals of a snail shell. Few straight lines occur organically in nature, and as Watts continued to elaborate on the idea throughout Just So, I realized how much of the tension is my own life has derived from trying to force the squiggly and wiggly to become something straight. Eventually, like the caterpillar grown too large for its cocoon, the wiggles can simply no longer be contained and burst forth. Perhaps they've sprouted wings and colors and bear the name butterfly rather than caterpillar, but the essence remains.


Earlier this summer I read Gavin de Beck's The Gift of Fear, about the power and the value of intuition. Unfortunately, de Beck tells his reader, in most cases we've been taught to reason our intuition away. Watts makes the same argument when he writes "Your brain is capable of finding out, but if you don't trust it, you will fumble along and do silly things, and you have been habituated to not trust your brain," (p. 178). As proof he cites similar circumstances to de Beck: "when you find yourself in crisis and you just spontaneously act with intelligence when there is absolutely no time to go over options and think through various decisions. Your own being steps in and comes to your aid" (p. 180). In my own life, I am reminded of the spring 2001, when I was admitted to the business school at UM, a goal toward which I had worked for, I don't know, 10 years. And yet, as I handed over the acceptance, something deep within me surged forth, in hindsight, a crisis, and I demanded back the acceptance papers and instead submitted the papers that indicated I would decline the offer of admission to one of the top business schools in America, a school from which 22-year-old graduates even 20 years ago could often expect starting salaries in the range of 100K. At the critical moment, though, I knew this was not for me.


And how appropriate that I should remember this incident while reading a book whose subtitle begins Money, Materialism.... because it reminds me that my knowing, that is, the deeply personal intuition lodged among my core beliefs, has correctly calibrated the value - and point - of money all along. As Watts says, it "isn't practical until you spend it and, more importantly, enjoy it."


As with other of Watts's books, his treatment of technology is eerily prescient. All of our wires and cables may not have disappeared, but we are able to untether in ways that much of Watts's early audience would have found unfathomable, even if he was already fathoming it. Certainly it's the case that "everything we'd ever wish to know or learn [is] available on a screen right in front of us" (p. 64). So, too, have our "ordinary telephones disappear[ed] to be replaced by individual devices" (p.85) and if they may be a bit larger than the "size of a pocket watch" one of them is, in fact, a wristwatch. And when Watts posits that "at some point in the future, electronic communication will even take the place of air travel, because...I'll be able to re-create myself in front of my father in England, just as if I were sitting the same room with him" (p. 86), well: Zoom, much? As to his concerns about privacy, I'll say nothing more than 'Amazon Halo.' (Actually, I will say more: the Halo is really, really creepy. But don't take my word for it: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/08/27/amazon-halo-wearable/.)


But, as always, with Watts this is personal. It's personal when he writes of having nothing to fear once you've nothing to lose, and I see myself in my old office divulging to the one friend I had there my plan to quit and then to out our boss for being a total lecher. I remember how I'd worked out the night before I could do it - and then, less than 24 hours later, how I was offered a split position with my current job....which would only seem to support Watts notion that "there's no use in worrying about whether or not this what you're supposed to be doing...as..the most pleasurable things in life almost always happen unexpectedly" (p. 170). Well, that one landed like a ton of bricks, actually.


I can't help but compare it to the idea that if the real troubles in your life are the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday (bonus points for naming the lyric!), so too are the real joys. Enumerating those joys - from the opportunity to return to MSU nearly a decade and a half ago to many of my most rewarding friendships - I am struck again and again by this pattern. This pattern is all the more breathtaking (and I mean breath taking in the literal and original sense of the word) for my recent revelation that I actually don't need - in fact, no longer even want - the proverbial crystal ball. I have experienced too many times too recently the intermingling of positive and negative, the overwhelming gratitude that comes from situations that would appear only to offer hearthache and pain, the unbounded truth that our lives are not always peopled by those we would want in them, but always - always - by the people we need in them.


Often when I read, I find various songs going through my mind. I'd be no child of the 80s if Material Girl hadn't pulsated through my brain at least a couple of times, but really, the song I kept hearing as I read Just So was The Dance. I can hear Garth Brooks's twang: "I'm glad I didn't know | The way it all would end the way it all would go | Our lives are better left to chance I could have missed the pain | But I'd have had to miss the dance."


Fittingly, Watts compares life to dance, argues that life is a form of dancing. I'm a terrible dancer and so I never do, but maybe I should start.

Twilight in Djakarta

"Because people don't trust each other they do not believe that human beings are equal and that they can and must be able to live together."

Whether in post-independence Djakarta or the US today, Mochtar Lubis has captured the crux of what ails society in that single sentence. Others thought so, too. I've borrowed a copy of Twilight in Djakarta from the university library, and at least three different readers have seized on this same statement, judging by the underlines, asterisks, and exclamation points that embellish it. (Who else has read this book since it entered circulation in 1964? For what classes or other purposes have they read? Why did they feel justified in marking the text? And why does any of this matter to me?) 

 

In any event, this is clearly not a happy novel, but one dominated by cynicism and fatalism, which is not surprising when one considers the paroxysms of violence, poor governance, and doubt Indonesia faced as Lubis wrote. Lubis, a journalist whose critical editorials led to arrest, and various bouts of imprisonment, was well-acquainted with these challenges. In Lubis's world, only the poorest and lowliest avoid the plague of corruption, and only then for lack of opportunity rather than a moral compass. For this class Lubis observes, "under the Dutch or under our own people, no different."

Twilight in Djakarta was the first Indonesian novel to be translated into English but like his sentiments or trust (or the lack thereof), so many of the universal truths Lubis articulated remain valid today. Lubis philosophizes a bit, expounding on such (arguably universal) notions as "you must seize whatever you desire and whatever makes you happy, quickly and without hesitation," (though one can certainly debate the moral imperative of such a statement), while also providing a masterclass on the perils and pitfalls of democracy. 

 

About this latter he writes "We're not going to force the people to swallow our ideas. We can only inform them of these ideas and hope that people will gradually understand, accept and make the ideas their own. Therein lies the strength of democracy, but its weakness as well." One need look no further than the response to the current pandemic to see this principle in action. Likewise, Lubis notes "one of the basic assumptions in a democracy is that every person living in it must have enough intelligence to make conscious choices." Enough intelligence? I think I actually snorted.

My favorite observation, though, is made by one of Lubis's ubiquitous officials while in flight over his troubled country. "Below him spread tall and steep mountain ranges, valleys in greens and yellows, and from time to time the brilliant light of the sun flashed on the surface of streams which gleamed in their winding course below. A yellowish-white road stretched through the countryside. From above, it looked like a fine, smooth road. But Murhalim knew how it was in reality: murderous for vehicles, full of pot-holes, deteriorating with every passing year..." If that's not an analogy for life, I don't know what is, for how many times does something look bright and shiny and unblemished from a distance but shows itself to be otherwise upon close examination?

Beyond such imperatives, beyond the essence of the burgeoning city itself, Lubis provides valuable insights into the myriad matters large and small Indonesia (and so many other countries) needed to grapple with in transitioning to independence. Again and again Lubis returns to the idea of the impacts of Western thought and technology on Indonesian culture and tradition, and his concern for both the people coming to terms with this new world, as well as Indonesia's image, as when one of the characters expresses concern that "We either have to accept and use it or we'll just have to go on being a backward nation." The outsize importance and influence of China, America, and the the USSR permeate the plot; substitute the EU for the USSR and one could undoubtedly make the same  observation today.

When Lyndon Johnson said, "You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair," he was speaking of race in America and the acute need for affirmative action. Yet his words seem most fitting in contextualizing what the ("first") world asks of countries in the developing world on a regular basis. Like much else Lubis illuminates, neither has that fact changed in the nearly 60 years since publication.

Brother Enemy: The War After the War

Brother Enemy is a detailed look at a conflict most Americans have not heard of: that between Vietnam and Cambodia in the late 70s and early 80s. More broadly, this was was a Sino-Soviet proxy war, with the Chinese strongly backing Cambodia (or the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea, as its Khmer Rouge rulers christened it) and Vietnam drawing support from the Soviets. Not quite the narrative non-fiction I had hoped, Brother Enemy is a thorough (read: weedy) overview not only of the conflict itself, but of the many geopolitical factors that played into it. In no particular order, these include historic tensions between Vietnam and Cambodia; Vietnam and China; Vietnam and Thailand; the legacy of the first (French) and second (American) Vietnam Wars; the historic role of China in Southeast Asia; the jockeying for position of China, the U.S., and the Soviet Union; the emergence of the Khmer Rouge followed by the utter devastation they wrought on every aspect of life in Cambodia; and U.S. policy toward Vietnam, particularly as regards normalization of diplomatic relations following the Vietnam War, the issue of which was dominated by the MIA question. I've probably missed a couple, but you get the idea. As a journalist, Nayan Chanda had access to impeccable sources at the highest level of every government and regime; it's difficult to imagine a more complete or more even-handed approach.


That said, what Chanda endows upon Brother Enemy in journalist integrity, he lacks in storytelling. Although there are flashes of possible brilliance - the Yugoslav and Chinese diplomats making a mad rush for the Thai border following the Vietnamese assault on Phnom Penh or the momentarily-desired political asylum request of Prince Sihanouk to the United States - by and large, this reads as a white paper. The shame in that is the stories that could have been told, although in fairness 1) Chanda is a journalist, seeking to provide a complete (and seemingly balanced/unbiased) accounting and 2) the book was written in 1986, in the last great thrust of the Cold War. 
 
latter point is especially interesting to reflect upon, for every aspect of the conflict and the book is imbued with the flavors of the Cold War. In hindsight, today's reader knows this was perhaps the last great paroxysm of that war, but in 1986, the Cold War seemed destined to go the distance. (In second grade, we loathed the Soviets, actively cheering against them during the Calgary Olympics, during which my teacher kept a medal table on the blackboard that we updated daily, and once practiced hiding under our desks in the event of an attack. In third grade, we cheered the fall of the Berlin Wall and understood we needn't concern ourselves with Soviets anymore. Soviet attack drills have now given way to active shooter drills, the likelihood of which is far, far greater on any given day in America than a Soviet attack ever was. But I digress.)


Also unresolved (and unresolvable) in 1986: questions of national identity vis-a-vis the big powers. In my travels I've often noticed that the identity of countries with long experience of external pressure and power (even if not outright subjugation) becomes wrapped up with the identity of the larger power. In the Baltic states, it's rare to listen to more than three sentences without a reference to Russia or the Soviets; in Poland, it's the Prussians and Russians; and several years ago in Cuba I was surprised to hear how frequently the US was spoken of by those providing context of Cuban culture and identity. We Americans may give scant thought to the little island off the Keys, but literally and figuratively, our land casts a massive shadow that no one there can escape. (Even more surprising in Cuba: the box of Lucky Charms for sale in the grocery store under the auspices of (Swiss) Nestle, who purchased the rights to the Cuban market from (American) General Mills. Again, I digress.) 
 
Chanda does an admirable job of speaking to the influence of China on the Vietnamese identity, but - largely, one assumes, because Cambodia is still in the throes of warfare - says much less, if anything about the long-term influence of China (or any other country) on Cambodian nationalism, identity, or culture. Chanda does address an issue that could be ripped from the headlines today when he speaks about the tensions over rights to the islands in the South China Sea; to that end, I could only shake my head at the incomplete reporting even the best news sources today offer. There's simply too much history to include in the thousand words some poor journalist is allotted to explain the most recent developments and so that's all we get: current developments and no context. Alas.


Most impressively, though, is the ways in which Brother Enemy grapples with the influence of the big powers - for the purposes of his work, those would be China, the Soviet Union, and the US - on the smaller countries. Anger toward imperialism is an easy trap to fall into - for me, I think of the Panama Canal and David McCullough's Path Between the Seas or Hawaii, which Julia Flynn Siler argues in Lost Kingdom was the U.S.'s first imperial adventure or even the news out of Mali this past week that the leader of the recent coup there was trained by the U.S. military. More broadly, one need look no further than Suzy Hansen's Notes on a Foreign Country, in which she forcefully and effectively makes the case that decisions by the U.S. regularly and directly impact the lives of those around the world....and that because of the nature of U.S. imperialism, as compared to the old European empires, the U.S. version is equally if not more insidious and damaging than those older empires, which were openly acknowledged, and whose ties, for better or for worse, were formalized. 
 
So it's all very depressing, and again, easy to feel a burst of anger about foreign policy. But. But - and I think this may be irony - Chanda's work actually made me feel better instead of worse in the sense that this.is.what.countries.do. All countries. From time immemorial, it seems. Because competition. Because pride (personal and national). Because sometimes man just likes a fight. The best we can hope for, it seems, is writers and reporters like Chanda to capture the story and raise it to the level of consciousness it deserves. For how many stories like this one simply go untold?

Crossing the Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity

The first thing to say about Crossing the Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity is that it’s not actually about work. The second thing is, my God, what would it be, to be able to write as David Whyte does? Whyte’s lyricism infuses the pages with linguistic beauty that has to be experienced to be understood.

This book, you see, was supposed to be merely a distraction for me, an interlude between various histories of Southeast Asia, works of fiction by Vietnamese and Indonesian authors, tales – real and merely informed – of war and colonialism and regret. Work, in fact. Instead, and in no small part because of the prose, Crossing the Sea captivated me wholly and completely, slightly unnerving me in the process, for this book felt as though it could have been written for me, an admittedly absurd idea.

Against the backdrop of the Galapagos in the opening chapters and the Spanish steps at the end, with Seattle and Snowdonia nestled snuggly in the middle, Whyte works his wordsmith magic. He does so in describing his mother, she who crossed the Irish Sea at 15, against the wishes of her widowed father. Here, Whyte hones in on the “effervescent, temporary power of leave-taking and the powerlessness of those left behind” such that the reader can picture a bent man, raging against the world, as he plunges a knife deep into a chair, the only course of action left for him. Is it any wonder that her son perceives the mark this experience has left, unspoken though it may be? “She has never said it out loud; she has always lived it out loud.” (p. 109) The courage of the leave-taking, the courage of living life out loud: the determined and tenacious teen smoothed and strengthened over time as seaglass tumbled by waves.

Whyte similarly conjures imagery from ink when he reflects on the fortune that befalls those who know beyond a superficial level how to make a life of meaning, writing that this notion of purpose “is silver, gold, the moon, and the stars to those who struggle for the merest glimmer of what they want or what they are suited to.” Before I’d fully digested his meaning, I was transported, fairy-like, to twirl in the moonlight beneath ribbons of metallic light.

In pondering the essence of a life well lived, Whyte writes “death’s tide washes over everything we have taken so long to write in the sand.” (p. 178) Life: ephemeral; time: ever slippery, and the chief mistress of Crossing the Sea. I’ll say no more of her than that to read “speed is a sin…glu[ing] us into whatever immobile, unattending identity we have constructed” (p. 121) was to be hit in the solar plexus, so uncanny was the resonance with my own personal reckonings.

Though they make their homes in different genres, the parallels between Whyte’s philosophies and those of Alan Watts or Pema Chödrön are many and remarkable. Only the choice of words separates their notions of self-determination powered by the twin undercurrents of joy and gratitude and necessity of remaining wholly in the moment. Whyte’s observation that there are “powers at play in the world about which [we] know very little” could just as easily have come from either Chödrön or Watts.

Like Chödrön, Whyte writes of edges galore, while it’s in the notion of unmaking a life where Watts’ and Whyte’s thoughts are twinned. Where Watts presents the idea of embroidery representing exterior and interior life – beautiful on the front and messy threads hidden beneath – Whyte merely observes that “in order to stay alive, we have to unmake a living in order to get back to living the life we wanted for ourselves” (p. 77). Where Watts stops, Whyte pushes on, asking: for what is desire? The origin of the word, the reader learns, is the old Latin root, de sider, or of the stars. “To have a desire in life literally means to keep your star in sight, to follow a glimmer, a beacon, a disappearing will-o’-the-wisp over the horizon into someplace you cannot yet fully imagine” (p. 78). Here again my mind takes flight, slipping the surly bonds of earth of follow Whyte’s glimmer, whatever it may illuminate.

Lest I appear to slander the title, I’ll slip in that it’s not wholly true to say work does not feature. After all, in speaking of dignity and personal honor, Whyte admonishes his reader of “certain things we should not do, certain people we should not work for, lines we should not cross…money we should not earn…” (p. 90). In the event the deed is done? “We must speak out, take the wheel, call the rest of the crew ourselves, or, if all of these avenues are blocked, abandon ship, resign, and go elsewhere” (p. 47). Of the workplace itself, Whyte notes presciently of “multi-ethnic, eccentric, and slightly chaotic organizations” that will be both infinitely more ungovernable and adaptable than the reader of 2001 could imagine. Check, check, and check.

Only once does Crossing the Sea begin to drag a bit; ironically, it’s as Whyte describes his transition to full-time poet that his writing reaches a low ebb. It is in returning, in thought though not in person, to the Galapagos that he recovers, for in reading “There is no mercy in this world if at least once in our lives we do not feel the privilege of being wanted where we also want to be wanted” (p. 195) is one not quickened?

Multiple times as I read, I wondered if I needn’t ruminate on Whyte’s words or his meaning so deeply, if I might perhaps be better served merely to luxuriate in the wash of his lush prose over me. Whyte’s own words put paid to such a notion. Writing of Margaret Thatcher, he observes that whatever else she may have been she was only and always “unutterably herself,” thus persuading me that my own nature could not, or at least should not, be so easily countermanded. When Whyte doubled down a few chapters later writing “one of the distinguishing features of any courageous human being is the ability to remain unutterably themselves…” (p. 165), I was glad for my insight though admittedly unsure that I qualify for such lofty esteem. The sentiment, though, well the sentiment is something for which we all might strive.