Qiu Xiaolong, Inspector Chen, and a re-discovery of China

The rediscovery of China of the title is basically just my problem. I imagine better informed people have known about life under Mao, the Cultural Revolution and the subsequent steps to state promoted capitalism. I knew as much as the line above, which is as good as nothing. And it took reading the mysteries of Qiu Xialong to make me realize the extent of my ignorance. Suffice it to say that when I first followed inspector Chen through the streets of Shanghai in search of the murderer of the Red Heroine of the first book, I thought I'd stepped into science fiction. Or Dickens' London. I cringed at the size of the rooms where people live huddled, full families into a closet. I could not believe that people have to fight for the use of charcoal stoves on the stairs, outside these tiny rooms. No one cares to clean the unkempt communal bathrooms, since they don't belong to anyone. All this is the source of continued strains in the relationships of people who live this closely to each other. There are neighborhood guards who know everything. There is the party that has the power to decide on every moment of a person's life, from where you will live to the job you will have. The are the callous nouveau riche and their outrageous luxuries. And all of that is bathed in the enduring effects of the terrible dark years of the Cultural Revolution and the scars they've left in so many. This is fascinating historical reading at its best. And, to top it off, murders happen. I am now an addict.

Chief Inspector Chen is 30 something, tall and handsome (something one intuits because of the effect he has on women, not because we are told). He is also, like any good mystery book protagonist worth the job, honest, hard working, unaware of his allure, and incapable of taking advantage of a woman, no matter how obviously she throws herself at him. Mind you, I would if I could. In the love side of his life, he could use some help. There is an old girlfriend in Beijing whom he doesn't see much, a lovely American FBI agent who dances a little tango around him, but they keep it chaste, and a "little secretary" provided to him by a rich and questionable businessman friend who would be able to provide more services than typing. But, as Marlow before him, Chen tries to choose his dames well.

Chen has friends and contacts in high and low places. From the HCC (High Cadre Children, powerful and now rich sons and daughters of high political figures) to poor retired cops, to new entrepreneurs who deal in the abundant karaoke and dance halls, with their eating, singing and dancing girls, and their private room pleasures. Chen will always know whom to go to for the next clue. But he can't do it all alone, and the cast of characters that follows him from novel to novel is as interesting as he is. There is Yu, his direct subordinate at the police force who at first suspects his flamboyant new boss, but who grows to like and respect a man who doesn't take bribes. There is Yu's wife, Peiqin, who between providing accounting work for a restaurant and taking care of her family, does her own amateur sleuthing, mostly just because they all like Chen. Yu and Peiqin's story also provides more Cultural Revolution background. There is Old Hunter, Yu's father, a retired old policeman who has also discovered in the educated and successful Chen a kindred, if younger, spirit. All of them do their part in catching the bad guys. And it's a pleasure to see them do it together.

Chen, like his creator Mr. Xiaolong, is a published poet and scholar. His university studies centered on traditional Chinese poets, which Chen in the books (and Mr. Xiaolong in real life) have translated into English. Chen is also a devotee of T. S. Eliot, and has translated the poet into Chinese. Translations usually provide him with extra income. He quotes poetry regularly, sometimes to Yu's chagrin. But the reader enjoys a glimpse into a type of poetry that relies on the unsaid, on the ideas behind the words, to deliver its message. I welcomed every interruption. Chen's father was also a follower of Confucius, with gives the opportunity to also quote the great old master occasionally. The one quote that has stuck with me, perhaps from repetition, is simple, yet perfect: there are things a man will do, and there are things a man will not do. Now, deal with that.

During the years of the Cultural Revolution, educated youths were forcefully removed from the cities and sent to the country side to be reeducated. The cruelty of the uprooting and the new conditions destroyed many lives. Many of the plots stem from old hurts, from children separated from parents, from people condemned because of loving someone, love being a bourgeois sin, or from not forgotten cold blooded killings, often times at the hands of super zealous party people, others directly ordered by Mao or his terrifying wife. This was an eye opener to me. Chen is not pointing an accusing finger at everything from the past. He shows respect for the Maoist China he grew up in. He approaches every situation with a healthy dose of impartiality. Which makes the judgment passed on these years the more relevant.

The one thing we all probably believe we know about China is its food. After all, Chinese restaurants, high and low, abound and we can all easily prepare our own home chow mein. Or, we can easliy reheat it. Let's rethink that. This is a quick sampler of what people eat, from memory, and only a tiny percent of the many baffling dishes that pepper (pun intended) the books: chicken feet, fish heads, ginger steamed fish lips, stewed ox eyes, dogs, cats, sparrows' tongues (hundreds must be killed for just one dish), crab and shrimp ovaries, rats (white rat is particularly delicious, I hear), snake blood, or the snake's gall bladder in a cup of spirits (fyi, from a live snake just sliced open in front of your eyes), monkey's brains (from a live monkey whose top skull has been removed). Live turtles boil in broth. Shrimp are better if you see them drawn in a pot of water made hot by trowing in it a layer of hot pebbles. The slow death increases the flavor. And, of course, better if you watch the panicked animals try to jump out. I must admit, it requires a strong stomach to read some passages.

In the end, you will come away educated, entertained, and probably a vegetarian. It will be time well spent. I can't wait for my next read.

The Age of Wonder, by Richard Holmes

In this wonderfully literary book, Richard Holmes recreates the lives of the British men, and some women, who, lacking the basics of a formal education, revolutionized the world of science in the years that stride the late 1700’s and early 1800’s. It is a book about the Romantic age of scientific discovery as lived in Great Britain, with only glimpses of the continent or America.

My only reading about men of science happened in school text books, where science takes center stage, and the discoverer gets introduced in a couple paragraphs, if at all. Here, Richard Holmes stays with his subjects, from their rich, humble, obscure, adventurous, hard working beginnings, to the often disillusioned end. Their achievements are further enhanced when seen in the context of their time and the hurdles they had to overcome in order to succeed.

William Hershell (born in Germany, who lived and made his discoveries in England, with English patrons’ support) built himself, by hand, the forty foot telescope, including its magnificent mirror, that allowed him to discover Uranus and, with his sister Caroline, thousands of comets and an equally large number of galaxies, expanding our solar system and our universe beyond anyone’s imagination.

A couple paper makers (these two were French) decided to blow hot air into an enormous paper bag, and men (and women) flew for the first time.

Humphrey Davy discovered laughing gas, chlorine, iodine and the safety lamp. Mungo Park explored Africa, boldly going where no white man had gone before.

Some of them wrote poetry, some of it quite good. They saw no distinction between science and art. Coleridge, Shelley and Shelley’s wife, Mary, lived among them, and it’s only in understanding this generation of people that one can truly comprehend how she came up with the enduring tale of Dr. Frankenstein and his monstrous creation.

Presiding over all of them was Sir Joseph Banks, who in his youth traveled to the South Seas with Captain Cook in the Endeavor, enjoying a jolly good time cavorting with the welcoming Tahiti natives, and collecting botanical samples. Upon return to England, Banks became president of the Royal Academy and a life long patron to them all.

The term “scientist” had yet to be invented. These astronomers, physicists, Chemists, poets, writers, botanists called themselves philosophers. They had the power to astonish admiring audiences. They welcomed a world of fact, experimentation, progress, and understanding of the workings of nature. They did not find God in it. In creating the word “scientist,” someone compared it to “atheist,” to the chagrin of the most conservative members of society. But the word took.

As science progressed (Darwin was part of the next generation) it eventually split from art and literature. A loss to everyone, I’m sure. When Mr. Holmes takes us to the end of Hershell’s, Banks’s and Davy’s lives, the reader (me) had to take a minute to grieve. Richard Holmes manages, successfully, what Dr. Frankenstein could not – to bring the dead back to life.

I couldn’t think of a better book for a young scientist mind with literary tastes. I hope you like it half as much as I do.

The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield

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.

--Resistance is most powerful at the finish line.

--Resistance = procrastination. Procrastination = resistance.

--Fear will show you what you must do.

--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.

Mourning Wallander

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.

The Books of Tana French

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, by Jonathan Littell

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.

Skeleton Coast, by Clive Cussler and Jack DuBrul

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.

Which is how I felt about the whole book.