Basic Premise:
All that stands between who we are and who we want to be is resistance.
As with every book, every reader will take away something slightly different. Here are my top lines/concepts:
On truisms that apply to everyone, artists, scientists or aspiring peace makers:
--Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us.
--Often, only fear of imminent death provokes the severing of ties, reaching for a dream.
--Seeking support from friends and family might be the kiss of death.
--Turn pro. Be patient. Master technique. Ask for help.
--Greatest fear is fear of success.
--And, lastly, a hack second-guesses his audience.
On areas where I would rank particularly poorly:
--Individuals who are realized in their own lives almost never criticize others.
--Taking a principled stand in the face of adversity.
--Grandiose fantasies are the sign of an amateur.
On the basic things one must do to defeat resistance:
--Defeat resistance with persistence.
--Treat it as work. Show up every day, no matter what, stay all day, for the long haul, with high and real stakes, paid for, without over identification, learning to master the technique, with humor, praise or blame. If you can do it for work (or school) you can do it for your dream.
--Learn how to be miserable. Or, in other works, persistence is hard.
A few thoughts of my own I would add:
--Without (God or nature)-given talent, defeating resistance might uncover abject inability to produce (whatever it is you are meant to produce).
--Above line might be a form of resistance.
--The imminence of our own death may move us to heroism. The imminence of another's makes us reaffirm what we have (rededicate ourselves to the boring job, renew the vows of a broken marriage). And, with danger gone, routine returns.
--Goals change through life. People may find themselves living a life smaller than the dream, but a good life anyway. Giving up writing the great American novel, becoming the new Picasso, or the next Steve Jobs, may not be a defeat, but its own kind of victory.
--Whatever your goals, defeating resistance feels good. The more you do it, the easier it gets. Eventually, resistance is futile. (Long live the Borg).
Overall, a highly recommended motivational read. Get it.
Detective Kurt Wallander is the creation of Henning Mankell, a prolific Swedish author, and the favorite of Swedish mystery readers before and after Stieg Larsson. The Wallander series is eleven books long. These are written chronologically from Faceless Killers, when Wallander is in his early forties, to The Troubled Man, at sixty. The only book out of time line is The Pyramid, a collection of stories published in the middle of the series with the object of giving readers (by that time you could call us fans) a view into Wallander's earlier years. In addition, Wallander has been honored with not one, but two, TV series, one in Swedish with Swedish actors, the other one a PBS production shot in the town of Ystad and surrounding areas (Wallander's playground) with Kenneth Branagh in the protagonist role. The cast is entirely British.
Kurt Wallander acts as witness to a changing Swedish society as these changes affect the rural area of Skane. On the southern tip of Sweden, right across from Denmark, the county of Skane and Wallander's home town of Ystad are a quick boat ride away from the former East Germany, Poland and the crime-ridden Baltic states of the now defunct U.S.S.R. The malady is contagious, the whole world suffers from the ills of sex trade and traffic, political intrigue, religious fanaticism, political extremism, racism, greed, jealousy and many kinds of betrayal. He despairs of the changes to his world and, as he grows old, finds himself in anachronistic misstep with the spirit of the times.
Wallander is divorced, a fact he carries with obvious bitterness; the father of an independent-minded child, Linda; son of an irascible artist father; sometimes lover; occasional heavy drinker; brilliant detective; respected boss and uneasy subordinate; and, most prominently, loner. Mature readers can't get enough. He is a mirror to our souls, often times the narrative behind our own thoughts. Or, to be precise, my one and only literary crush. At the end of The Troubled Man, the last book, Henning Mankell gives Wallander Alzheimer's disease, proclaiming him as good as dead. Mr. Mankell had made no secret of this. I knew what was coming as I read. Still, I was not prepared for the shock. A voice that had become so familiar was silenced. It hit me with the sadness of a true death.
Youth equals daring. Risk taking is an obvious condition of the rebellious teenager. But even the conservative one takes leaps of faith if only because there is no way to know better yet. Cliché as the phrase might be, the world is full of possibilities at twenty. If you allow me a gross generalization, I'd say that for many, this remains so at thirty, even at forty. A few lucky, or unlucky, ones, depends from where you look at it, continue to act with reckless abandon into their late forties. But just around fifty the weight of all we have seen, done, suffered, all the suffering we may have inflicted on others, that weight interferes with the decision-making process and we are less prone to take a chance. This might eventually lead to paralysis. And this is exactly the ride that Wallander has taken us through.
After the divorce, anger and regret build an impenetrable barrier. In the second book, The Dogs of Riga, Wallander meets Baiba Liepa, the widow of a policeman in Riga, and falls in love with her. Through the next eight books we are treated to slight paint strokes about the relationship. A romantic get away, her fear of commitment and for his safety, his debilitating desire and love for her, and his absolute inability to do anything about it. Committed to family and job, all it would take would be a selfish act, the kind that's so easy in youth: putting one's immediate desire first, damn the world if it condemns us as fools. In the twilight of life, Wallander is aware of chances that will not present themselves again and still lets them go. But not without a degree of regret.
Growing older is many things. In the world of our parents, getting old started early and there was no remedy for it. We can now choose how old we are, how much immaturity to carry throughout, how many new beginnings we are entitled to. We may decide to start a new career at fifty, take up bungee jumping at fifty-eight, divorce (and face life alone for the first time) at sixty-three, write our first novel at sixty-five, learn to sail at seventy, and leave for our first solo circumnavigation of the world at seventy-six. But everything I said above about the weight of the past remains true. Decisions are harder. Impetuosity is calculated. Immediate gratification carefully planned. And at every step we run the risk of, like Wallander, letting the weight immobilize us. The battle is fought every day. Perhaps I liked having Wallander by my side as a cautionary tale. Perhaps I felt the pull to, like him, just be. Either way, I miss him and mourn him. And, somehow, can't let him go.
Needless to say, I'm rereading the whole series, beginning to end, falling in love again with this alcoholic, overweight, nearly depressed Swedish policeman. Grouchy and despondent as he might be, and lacking in tattoos (dragons or otherwise) or body piercings, Mr. Kurt Wallander still stands as crime fiction's most accomplished character. A fundamental reason for his inability to break away and walk into the sunset with his beautiful Latvian lover is his commitment to a job at which he excels. The chains that bind us need not be iron and spikes. The success and satisfaction of a job well done; the chance to accompany our elders into their own twilight; time spent witnessing the growth of children and their chrysalis transformation into mature adults. Is the only decision to be made between being selfish and being good? Is his paralysis a fear of love and rejection, or an acknowledgment of faults? .... See? These are the thoughts that come and go as I pass the pages, or go back and re-read a paragraph. This is the beauty of great fiction. The constant interaction with one's own mind, like what passes between conversation of people who know and stimulate each other. For all that has ended since Wallander's walk into oblivion, I'll be mourning his passing as the death of a friend.
In The Woods, The Likeness and Faithful Place are some of the best mysteries I have recently read and which may also claim an exceptional quality in the mystery world: a young voice. That, in itself, should not guarantee them the many awards and high popularity. But it's a mark of distinction and a welcome change from all other voices, too many of them 50 an up. Nice to know that young people can solve murders, too.
The bookends are better than the middle. And, in spite of current praise and more awards, the first better than the last. For one thing, In The Woods has the freshness of a surprise. A relatively new police detective, Rob, and his even less experienced partner, Cassie, must find the killer of an adolescent girl that strongly reminds him of an unsolved crime that claimed the lives of his two childhood friends. No need to go into plot summaries. Here is a list of all that works with this book:
the protagonist's voice, Rob, who hides as much as he tells, and hooks you to absolute surrender. You just want him to keep talking
the relationship between Rob and Cassie, their unusual friendship, the too real feel to everything that's right and everything that's wrong
the subtle way how things unravel
being taken for a ride by a masterful writer who hides clues in plain sight of an experienced mystery reader
Two things must happen for a mystery to work, IMHO. An "I didn't see that coming," moment, even though it was all there. And an "I don't want it to end." In The Woods has both, particularly in the unexpectedness of its denouement. It gets thumbs up, five stars, gold stars and my strongest recommendation.
The Likeness follows Cassie, undercover, impersonating a dead girl, her doppelganger (identical double), to find her killer. The idea stretches the limits of possibility, so it's harder to buy into it. But, again, she has an impeccable voice, and a cast of four other college students. It is great fun to read. It's not The Woods.
After the success of the two books above, I couldn't wait for Faithful Place. Frank Mackey, undercover policeman who made a strong appearance in The Likeness as Cassie's case lead, is back, this time trying to solve a twenty-two year old murder, that of the girlfriend he meant to elope with as a teenager, but who disappeared the night of their agreed escape from their Dublin working class neighborhood and dueling families. The portrait of Frank's family is a work of art. His alcoholic father, his abused mother, his siblings all suffering from different degrees of disappointment, the life he fled from and the consequences this escape had for him and those he left behind. Tana French peels the layers of the mystery with precise strokes, allowing a slow zooming in, until there's nothing to hide. It's as much murder mystery as a chronicle of a class and a time. In this regard, it couldn't be better.
Early in the book, a character enters the scene as an obvious bad seed. It was with a little smirk that I saluted Miss French. Nice, I thought. She's throwing an obvious one at us. I wonder who the killer will be, because this character couldn't possibly be it. Throughout the book, she plants enough red herrings to keep the reader wondering who the killer might be. So I must confess a little disappointment that I wasn't fooled.
Maybe I should get off the mystery drug so I can recover my innocence. I won't blame Tana French for my jadedness, though. Every one of these books is worth a day in the sun. Or a whole vacation.
The Kindly Ones has stirred strong emotions for probably the wrong reasons. Max Aue, an SS officer, narrates the action as he moves from one assignment to another in war devastated Europe. First, through the victorious advance of Hitler's army, then through its defeat. There is no plot other than following Max around. He is a gay man tormented by memories of his childhood and his sister, which he doesn't see much in adulthood. He believes in Hitler and the Reicht, though he's not a believer. Through his eyes we experience the victim and the executioner, the concentration camp prisoners in their daily degradation, and the Nazi officer's families in her deliberate ignorance.
Some have called this narrative a pornographic retelling of brutality, offensive and purposeless. The book is brutal, particularly Max's time in Crimea and Ukraine. But not purposeless. My understanding of WWII and Nazi war crimes was, up to The Kindly Ones, limited to concentration camp savagery. While smoke of human bodies consumed in the incinerators must have troubled inhabitants near the camp, they could always claim a relative degree of ignorance. Thus Nazi officers are seen as the ultimate genocidal crazies, while the general population went along because, among other things, they didn't know the worst of it. Not sure how I came up with that assumption, but it has little to do with reality.
Jonathan Littell researched the events he retells. And he focuses his lens a lot closer on the Russian campaign, perhaps aware of people like me who knew nothing about it. There was no innocent by-stander in Russia. More Jews were killed here than anywhere else. Entire villages wiped out and executed in common graves, with the full knowledge and often collaboration of the non-Jewish population. Bodies hung from balconies on every major or minor street, and locals walked by as if these were geraniums in bloom. German officers beat, humiliated or right out killed Jews in plain sight and they got less of a response than if they'd kicked a dog. The atrocities of this part shocked me. But I felt only thankful for the enlightenment.
The book is not perfect. Mr. Littell finds his themes in Green mythology, and structures the book from parts of a Bach Suite, though I found it impossible to tell the difference in narration from the Toccata to the Sarabande and all the others. Much has been made of Max's homosexuality and sexual degeneracy, but I sort of shrugged at the brother, sister incest and a crazy later fantasy that Max Aue experienced only with himself. I have red much, much worse. Still, he is not a likable character. While during the war he seems to be shielded from having to kill himself, he does commit his own murders. More a Nazi believer as an old man than as a young SS officer, his mind is twisted and cruel, but he keeps it hidden from view. This makes one wonder how many like him camouflaged themselves among ordinary people, claiming ordinary pasts and raising families who never got to know the monster within.
Flaws and all, the book is a powerful indictment against war and fanaticism. It shows what it means being inhuman. It is powerful propaganda, yes. But if Americans bothered to read it, they might realize this is propaganda they may want to subscribe.
This is a thriller set in Namibia and Congo involving the beautiful Sloane McIntyre, who is looking for lost diamonds in the Skeleton Coast, and the ruggedly handsome but lame (as in pirate lame) Juan Cabrillo who commands the Oregon, an ultra sophisticated and powerful boat camouflaged as a decrepit old vessel. They fight rebel armies and a rogue group of mad environmentalists (ah, those darn long haired, patchouli wearing, pot smoking, gender vague, vegan environmentalists!) And everything progresses in a pile of cliches that makes one wonder why would the book need two authors.
Sloan is strong, but to Juan she takes second seat. He, an ex-CIA man who deals arms for strange motives, sails under an Iranian flag, hides an extra gun in his prosthetic leg and is never wrong, inspires different variations of lust from the girl or his crew. In Skeleton Coast, fight scenes are described as if drawing storyboards for the movie, with only two options. One, the good guys kill or capture all enemies. Two, through betrayal or some other unforeseen act, they get captured. There is no in between. Or, actually, there is a long in between where the authors (again, two? really?) notate in minute detail every bullet trajectory, each contortion of every body, all destruction of man made or nature props. With an actual book, I could have turned the pages and skipped all this. With a digital recording, my mind went to the grocery list or the last office quibble while waiting for each choreographed set of acrobatic moves to end. Much as in bad sex.
Which brings me to the book reader, Scott Brick. Everything Mr. Brick reads sounds like a bodice ripping romance. The crescendoes. The almost whispered lows. The quickening of the pace. The pauses. The pathos. Again and again. There are no ordinary paragraphs. There is no concession to the reader's ability to interpret the words. He booms them for you. And as with the lover who has grown repetitive and stale, the mind does recede into its own thoughts waiting for it to be over.
I read "War and Peace," by Leo Tolstoy, at the same time as "The Kindly Ones," by Jonathan Littell. "War and Peace" was written in the nineteenth century and has become a classic. "The Kindly Ones" dates from only a couple years back. It received awards and rave reviews in France. It's been denounced elsewhere. While very different, both intersect in a physical space -- the theater of war of two armies trying to reach Moscow--Napoleon's French army in "War and Peace," and Hitler's SS and other forces of the Third Reich in "The Kindly Ones."
"War and Peace" is over fourteen hundred pages long. This review will be short. It's been called the greatest novel ever written. Maybe. Some authors still find inspiration from it. I can see that. I, who knew nothing but the obvious about it, found myself reading a satire. For about at least twelve hundred of the fourteen hundred pages all main characters are weak, selfish, gullible, conniving, lustful, obsessed, superstitious, fearful, tyrannical, too rich, too lazy, too vain, gossips, and incapable of financial management. Their serfs, of which they have thousands, have no voice or presence. We move back and forth between the pure soap of parties and alliances in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and the front where Napoleon manages to reach Moscow, only to retreat in defeat. The history lesson is great, but Tolstoy spends a lot of time musing about the meaning of it all, and he certainly could have used an editor. Ideas tend to be repeated within the same paragraph. In the end, when through hardship the protagonists realize the error of their ways, they still remain a hugely rich family, as self-involved as before and either ignorant or paternalistic to the people they own. While some find inspiration in it (did I say that before?), from the disorganization of war to the commonalities of peace among the aristocracy, "War and Peace" is showing signs of age
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I'll leave it here today. My notes on "The Kindly Ones" will follow later. I don't see you running to the store to get either book, anyway. In the meantime, I will try another one of your yummy looking recipes.
First, the few things I knew about this book and the reasons I read it: Considered by some a masterpiece, it is a novel born from Ms. Rand’s philosophy of the world (the triumph of the industrialist), and after decades of failed attempts to make it into a movie, it finally seems to be in full production. I got curious and had to know.
Setting: A United States set in a parallel dimension, with elements of early last century, but with emphasis askew. Planes and automobiles abound, but people/freight travel mostly in trains. TV is mentioned, but mass communication happens mostly through the radio. The most important industry is copper mills, though a new version of it (Rearden copper) produced by one of the heroes (Hank Rearden) is a better option. Most countries outside the U.S. are ‘people’s republics’ controlled by ‘looters,’ who are also represented inside the U.S. One would think that workers’ revolutions would have originated these foreign regimes. One would be wrong.
Let’s also establish some points about the style. Three adjectives precede every noun. Most are negatives: incredulous, indifferent, unstated, incomprehensible, unimportant, unknown, un-thought, involuntary, incredible, inhuman, causeless, purposeless, heartless, unsuccessful, undesirable, unpatriotic, unendurable, inestimable. A Word search should be done to count the number of times “impersonal” makes an appearance. The above, by the way, are mostly good things in Atlas Shrugged. So is contempt, especially if bitter. Solemn and sullen tend to intermingle. Characters are also astonished a lot, laugh silently, and do nothing but smoke. Let’s hope the producers are making this into a comedy.
The world, and the characters of this novel, are divided into the good and the bad, black or white, no shades of gray. And, by the way, there are no blacks or any other races. This is all a conflict among Caucasians.
On the bad side of the ring are top-level industrialists who care more about the common good than profit—the looters. On the good one, the for profit industrial tycoons, one track mind people for whom gratitude, psychology and folk music are cardinal sins—Dagny Taggart, our heroine, and all her male consorts.
Lazy workers, people who do not think or care and just want to receive, side themselves with the looters. Their notions of social justice seem founded in an attitude of apathy and lack of leadership ability, thus creating more poverty and suffering with their actions. On the other hand, dedicated workers look up with reverence and awe to the scarce Dagny Taggart’s and Hank Rearden’s of this world.
The enlightened set (though they probably would not appreciate the word enlightened because, among other things, they despise Oriental philosophy and soy beans) eventually strike against the looters by abandoning their factories or their jobs following the command of a mysterious John Galt, who fed up with messages of social justice set up to stop the engine of the world.
Looters, whether rich factory owners, government officials, or low-level workers, are in general full of malice or guilt, and their moral shortcomings show, among other things, in the poor décor they choose for home or office. And, in an interesting twist, they don’t even enjoy sex. They just can’t do anything right. While our heroes are young, eager and mostly tall, blond, lean and beautiful. But all characters, to a T, suffer from the same malaise: an earnest and humorless rejection of brevity. Atlas Shrugged is the triumph of the long-winded. John Galt wins the prize with his three-hour-long speech (literally, it takes that long to read it) where he repeats ad infinitum his theory of the survival of the fittest.
There is also a pirate who has the honor of bearing the worse name in literature, bar none: Ragnar Danneskjold (rhymes with minuscule). Dagny Taggart is as good at the head of her family’s railroad as on her back. Contrary to looters and their women, whose only actions in the sack are angry, Dagny astonishes her men with her prowess, though we are left to imagine what she does since it’s not described. She also goes through all of the good ones, starting with Argentinean industrialist Francisco D’Anconia, following with Hank Rearden, topping it up with John Galt. At this point, Francisco and Hank acknowledge John’s superiority, gladly accept that he takes their adored woman, and retreat to play with their toys. There’s a scene following this renunciation where Francisco and Hank actually sit on the floor and play with some plans, contented children letting the adults do their thing. This smells of cult mores—if you’re too young to know about David Koresh, do a Google search and you’ll get it.
Near the end, Francisco, Hank, Ragnar and Dagny rescue John Galt from a torture chamber where the worse of the looters have applied some death ray punishment to his naked body. The scene has the consistency of TV sci-fi preceding even the original Star Trek. Valiant earth men, about two or three of them, breaking into an alien facility and deactivating the death machine as audiences at home could smell the paint in the cardboard set, while a robot repeats “take…me….to…your….leader,” and their fake swords appear to break on camera. I can’t wait to see what the movie does with this material.
In conclusion, my open, eager, impersonal mind struggled through the incomprehensible, un-thought, sullen prose, which almost became unendurable, though I bore it with bitter contempt and enjoyed it with silent laughter. In the end, I had to fight the desire to open my own copper mine, run a railroad and smoke a cigarette. I settled, instead, for a plate of tofu.
On areas where I would rank particularly poorly:
