The Non-Western Reading Project

Introduction

One of my three 2009 New Year Resolutions is to try and restrict my fiction (not non fiction) reading list to non-Western authors and books. That is, fiction (and poetry) originating from countries and voices other than the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. (But Shaun! What about Australian Aborigines!? Well, lines must be drawn somewhere).

Why? Well, why not of course. A majority of the world’s population always has, does, and probably will live in non-Western cultures. Why not explore the way the “rest” tell stories and describe love and fear and comedy? Why not explore lands other than the great outdoors of this great country? It’s time someone paints for me pictures of African savannahs and Chilean mountaintops and Indonesian jungles—from the natives’ perspectives! It’s time to explore Chinese folklore and Hutu mysticism and Haitian voodoo and Sudanese love and Colombian fright and Japanese shenanigans!

I don’t know if it’s by accident or by purpose—perhaps a little bit of both—but many Americans I speak with, and perhaps most Westerners in general, “assume” their literature and culture and philosophy is superior. This is understandable, of course; the reverse is probably also true. But this thinking inhibits ones ability or desire to seek out literature and culture and philosophy that is unlike our own. This is why I have embarked on this project—as a reminder that non-Westerners (my “others”) can tell a damn good story. The first “novel,” after all, is credited to the ancient Japanese poetess Murasaki Shikibu.

Rather than being a limiting experience, I expect this project to open me to new, unique, and hopefully profound insights to foreign cultures, lands and peoples. I expect this to be a pleasurable learning experience in the truest sense of the words. I expect that when all is said and done, my horizons on the matters of politics, love, violence, pleasure, comedy, religion, winning and losing, and so much more, will be expanded tremendously.

***

Season of Migration to the North  by Tayeb SALIH (Sudanese)

Tayeb Salih, who passed away earlier this year, first published Season of Migration to the North in 1969, during the waning years of European colonialism. Prominent Arabic-English translator Denys Johnson-Davies brings this thoughtful, colorful, and distinctly African novel alive. One woman’s voice is “saw-edged like a maize leaf,” while the voice of a deceased man rose from the beyond like “dead fishes floating on the surface of the sea.” An inky sky is peppered with stars like “nothing but rents in an old tattered garment.”

But the novel is much more than exquisitely descriptive. It is colorful—I laughed aloud while reading it. It is also sexual, and violent, and often both simultaneously. But what really makes this eloquent story compelling is its seesaw-take on the colonizer and the colonized, the Self and the Other. Colonialism, it seems, is often in the eyes of the beholder, especially when viewed from the perspective of the individual.

Season is a Sudanese post-colonial novel that examines the influence of the Outsider on a culture. Of post-colonial Africa the theme is tried and true—Chinua Achebe, Ayi Kwei Armah, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, to name just three African authors, have written in this vein to great success.

Vastly older than the post-colonial genre, however, is the phenomenon of one people striking out in search of new lands, people, resources and cultures to exploit. Or, to be more precise, colonization. Our pre-historic ancestors began the practice thousands of years ago. Inhabitants of ancient Western Syria, for example, sailed west around 9000 bce to colonize what is now known as Cyprus (see Steven Mithen’s After the Ice, Harvard Univ. Press 2004). Many thousands of years later, adventurers and learned people from the area of modern Sudan and Egypt made headway in Greece (see Martin Bernal’s Black Athena, Rutgers 2006) long before the West, predominately Britain, began to swing the colonial pendulum back to Africa. Recalling the protracted history of colonization and, in this case, African ventures to the West (in light of Western capitalization of Africa more recently), puts such cyclical human practice in some perspective. In striking out for new places, humans have always struggled with the question of otherness.

After years of study in London, the young narrator returns to his homeland of Sudan sometime in the 1960s. There he meets a mysterious stranger, Mustafa Sa’eed, who inexplicably takes the young man into his confidence by sharing his own history of his time in London and his eventual return to his native land. Sa’eed then disappears, leaving the young narrator in charge of Sa’eed’s family and estate—without explanation. Fluidly combining narration of Sa’eed’s past with the narrator’s present, Season tells a brilliant story of a Sudanese’s exploits in London, the British exploitation of Sudan, and the uncertain path on which the African country soon embarks.

Typical exotic and pejorative (and hopefully, by now, passé) Western stereotypes of the African populate Salih’s story. In recounting a sexually frenzied episode with a white woman in London, for example, the enigmatic Sa’eed recalls, “There came a moment when I felt I had been transformed in her eyes into a naked, primitive creature, a spear in one hand and arrows in the other, hunting elephants and lions in the jungles.” It is a point of interest that these thoughts of feeling like a savage or sense of backwardness are always conveyed in Salih’s novel by Africans. While there are a few narrative opportunities for Salih to take the reader into the minds of Londoners and British colonials to gauge their sentiment of the African Other in their midst, it does not happen. For instance, we do not know if Sa’eed’s lover actually envisioned the primitive carnality to which he alludes or if she felt the implied sense of superiority for which she is suspected.

Yet throughout Season, Salih brilliantly turns the colonial discourse on its head. Upon the return of the young narrator to his homeland, local villagers are curious of the other land (London) and people and quiz the unnamed student on his homecoming. “They were surprised when I told them that Europeans were, with minor differences, exactly like them, marrying and bringing up their children in accordance with principles and traditions, that they had good morals and were in general good people.” One need only replace “Europeans” with “Africans” and the same thought sounds as if a proud Victorian explorer was recounting to his parlor friends a recent jaunt across the Dark Continent. In these scenes—which come near the beginning to set the tone for the rest of the novel—the young student underscores how much humanity shares in common in the trappings and desires of everyday life. In doing so he also illustrates our common bewilderment that They are just like Us.

When the Sudanese villagers question their worldly friend about the Other people, are they flipping Orientalist discourse on its head and practicing a form of Occidentalism? Here is a brief exchange between the narrator and his friend:

“Are there any farmers among them?” Mahjoub asked me.

“Yes, there are some farmers among them. They’ve got everything—workers and doctors and farmers and teachers, just like us.” I preferred not to say the rest that had come to my mind: that just like us they are born and die, and in the journey from the cradle to the grave they dream dreams, some of which come true and some of which are frustrated; that they fear the unknown, search for love and seek contentment in wife and child; that some are strong and some are weak; that some have been given more than they deserve by life, while others have been deprived by it, but that the differences are narrowing and most of the weak are no longer weak.

Or, in other words, the Other is not much different from the Self, as Laila Lalami reports in her introduction to the novel. The most striking instance of the sentiment of “reverse-colonialism” is exemplified in a London courtroom. In a flashback to his criminal trial, Sa’eed likens the courtroom drama to that of a cultural ceremony being performed for the benefit of the visitor. During the proceedings, Sa’eed felt superior to his British counterparts, likening a very serious legal proceeding to a “ritual” being held for entertainment purposes. The trial, he recalls, “was being held primarily because of me; and I, over and above everything else, am a colonizer, I am the intruder whose fate must be decided.” The sole African in a London court, Sa’eed’s feelings of superiority in the midst of a local spectacle demonstrate how, from the individual perspective, colonial attitudes are in the eyes of the beholder.

But his sense of supremacy quickly devolves into one of bitterness toward the colonizers of his homeland.

The ships at first sailed down the Nile carrying guns, not bread, and the railways were originally set up to transport troops; the schools were started so as to teach us how to say “Yes” in their language. They imported to us the germ of the greatest European violence, as seen on the Somme and at Verdun, the like of which the world has never previously known, the germ of a deadly disease that struck them more than a thousand years ago. Yes, my dear sirs, I came as an invader into your very homes: a drop of the poison which you have injected into the veins of history…

Nevertheless, more prominent throughout Season than the idea that Sa’eed or the narrator, as students (ethnographers?), were somehow pioneering colonizers from Sudan in the UK, is the anger, bitterness, and confusion wrought by the white colonizers in their beloved homeland. “The English District Commissioner was a god who had a free hand over an area larger than the whole of the British Isles and lived in an enormous palace full of servants and guarded by troops,” recalls a retired Sudanese bureaucrat. “They used to behave like gods.”

Emotions are hardly straightforward. Ruled by outsiders for so long and then left to define its place in the modern world and to re-discover a sense of self-identity, Sudan and its population (in the immediate post-colonial era) faced existential and identity crises, to say the least. Unwitting hypocrisy of the ruling class abounded. Leaders would condemn and vituperate in their best anti-imperialist bravado the political, social, and economic ways of their former colonizers, only to take leave of Sudan in private jets to their villas on Lake Lucerne or shopping excursions at Harrods in London. How to define the Self in such circumstances? Borrow the best elements from the pre- and colonial past to create a new future? Begin anew? The tension such questions cause within the Sudanese state and in the Sudanese individual persist through Season with no resolution.

In the end, after a violent episode in which Sa’eed’s private library of British culture is destroyed, the young, confused narrator swims to the middle of the river. Each bank is equally out of reach. Much like Sudan after their imperial leaders left, he treads water, his head barely above water, unsure of which direction to pursue, and screams for help.

Finished: 7.27.09                      Verdict: Buy it. Read it. Put it on your shelf, return to periodically.

***

Voices of Time by Eduardo GALEANO (Uruguayan)

Voices of Time is a compilation of ~330 vignettes, most delivered in one page and many in just a paragraph or two. As such, Voices is a colorful collection of fleeting, but not trivial, thoughts from the Uruguayan author. It is, in turns, poetical, whimsical, political and reverential. The collection’s subject matter swings from war to art to history to death to religion everyday living and everything above, below and in between.

That is not to say there are no recurrent themes. Often Voices reads like a train of thought on a given subject; musings on an idea spill over pages like a Slinky stepping down stairs. Eduardo Galeano has a way of not only stitching together one musing to the next, he also weaves fluidly from subject to subject. In one thread, for instance, Galeano spends a few pages on poverty and injustice before transitioning into medicine. The titles of these notes alone showcase this style: “Poverty,” “The Closed Door,” “A Lesson in Law,” “A Lesson in Medicine,” and continuing.

As another example: “Incantations” begins a run of thirteen vignettes with religious overtones. “The Little Christ” and “The Great Beyond” are slotted here. His musings on religion are then, of course, taken over by a series on fear (“Fright,” “Bogeyman,” “Red Alert,” and so on).

The concept of Voices of Time is appealing. Immediately I cannot recall a similarly themed book. Czeslaw Milosz’s Milosz’s ABCs comes to mind, but his is strictly autobiographical, the vignettes being in alphabetical order rather than grouped together by topic. Milosz’s Roadside Dog might come closer to matching Galeano’s style, but Roadside is forthrightly a collection of prose. Jack Kerouac’s Book of Sketches is similar in style (sketches being his term for passing thoughts), but it certainly does not carry the same weight as Galeano’s collection. (I recognize it may be a bit unfair to compare the works of these three authors!)

Because Voices of Time combines story telling, autobiographical recollections, subtle political vitriol and reflections on art, science, sport (and so much more), it defies simple categorization. Moreover, his method of tackling particular subject matter (e.g. political turmoil), while largely residing in the Latin American world, has transcendent qualities missing from similarly themed works.

Recommended by C. Power

Finished: 7.27.09                      Verdict: Buy it. Read it. Put it on your shelf, return to periodically.

***

“Guardian Angel” by Ruben FONSECA (Brazilian)

Read this piece in the gem-laden July/August issue of World Literature Today. If you are unfamiliar with this magazine, I highly recommend a look. Lots of great reviews of upcoming books, author interviews, travel writing, and chock-full of short-short fiction and poetry.

As for Fonseca’s story, not too bad, though in my opinion the story would have been interesting if different people died (trying not to spoil it too much!). The bio accompanying this piece says Fonseca (b. 1925!) “is recognized by many as Brazil’s most important living writer.” I’m intrigued.

Finished: 7.19.09                      Verdict: Tasty appetizer for a greater meal

***

Lolita by Vladimir NABOKOV (Russian)

Having confined myself to reading non-Western authors this year, those familiar with Nabokov and Lolita may question my pick. After all, the book was written in English and it takes place in the Westernest of all Western cultures: the U.S. of A. Rest assured, however, that I am—or was—unschooled in Nabokovism. Only after reading it did I discover it took place here, and only upon tangential research did I find Nabokov had written this book in English, not his mother Russian.

In all likelihood I have nothing new or interesting to contribute to the discussion of this book. Its racy theme and spurts of nymphet ecstasy likely linger in the minds of those who have trod these pages before me. As a novel of unabashed pedophilia, and even incest (“Lolita, with an incestuous thrill, I had grown to regard as my child”) it is distinct. As such it is a sensational read, akin to watching a train wreck in slow motion. Humbert Humbert’s forthrightness about his feelings, passions and miscreant deeds make this novel captivating and absorbing. He said what!? He did what!? Turn the page… Because H.H. neither hides nor obscures his devious thoughts and deeds, the reader is disarmed—an unusual and thrilling accomplishment not easily performed through literature.

So I decline to discuss further the novel itself. It’s a phenomenal work; I am neither the first nor the last to make that claim.

Instead, the use of a second (and third) tongue merits a note of attention. Nabokov’s word choice was so precise and vivid—a mastery of the English language on display in each and every paragraph. (I even found myself running to the dictionary from time to time). The smatterings of French throughout are, no doubt, just as well informed as his English. But because I do not speak French, this heavy reliance on the mellifluous language was frustrating. What gem am I missing when H.H. slips in some naughty looking French turn of phrase?

 I recall the same annoyance in reading A Sentimental Journey by Laurence Stern, a novel glazed with the same French cream. But at least Nabokov and Stern stuck with just one third language. Their bilingual flourishes were not as pretentious and frustrating as Umberto Eco who, in Foucault’s Pendulum, peppered his rambling novel with French, German, Latin, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic—only the latter of which was, curiously enough, given a footnote translation (Because Arabic is base? Not a language of the cultured?). Is it too much to ask for a little assistance when two or three languages are used in a novel? Yet I digress…

Why write in a tongue not your own? On the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, author Ha Jin recalled the horror and despair he felt after the June 4^th crackdown. In protest of the brutal actions of his home government (Ha was in the U.S. at the time) he vowed to write only in English. Writing in the New York Times Ha says:

That was when I started to think about staying in America and writing exclusively in English, even if China was my only subject, even if Chinese was my native tongue. It took me almost a year to decide to follow the road of Conrad and Nabokov and write in a language that was not my own. I knew I might fail. I was also aware that I was forgoing an opportunity: the Chinese language had been so polluted by revolutionary movements and political jargon that there was great room for improvement.

Yet if I wrote in Chinese, my audience would be in China and I would therefore have to publish there and be at the mercy of its censorship. To preserve the integrity of my work, I had no choice but to write in English.

Political motives, there’s a good reason. And Nabokov? Sure, politics played a role in his choice to write in English too—after all, his literature was censored and banned in Russia. But for me Lolita is a romance. Not between Humbert Humbert and Lolita, but between Nabokov and English. It is a passion for that object so hard to obtain, especially teasing when one’s fingertips can almost touch it. His play with English is nothing short of lovemaking (writing), writhing and barely hidden beneath the sheets (the story).

Writing in 1956, a year after Lolita’s publication, Nabokov recalled a review in which an American critic “suggested that Lolita was the record of my love affair with the romantic novel. The substitution of ‘English language’ for ‘romantic novel’ would make this elegant formula more correct.”

Much like Humbert Humbert showed signs of wanting to get caught in his romantic affair, Nabokov reveals his scintillating, titillating affair with another love, the English language; yet it is the audience who gains so much by sharing in the pleasure without the agony of courtship.

“Freedom for the moment is everything.” – H.H.

Recommended by S. Schulman, M. Otis

Finished: 7.16.09                      Verdict: A phenomenal achievement

***

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko OGAWA (Japanese)

An older woman sitting next to me on the train asked me what I thought of The Housekeeper and the Professor. “It’s not riveting,” I answered, “but it’s a quick read.” I liken the book to a piece of chewing gum: delicious and mouth watering at first, but soon the flavor is lost, compelling you to find a trash can in which to spit it out.

Maybe I am being too harsh. But where do writers get off providing the blurbs they do for these novels? Paul Auster, for one, is quoted on the cover of this book, saying the story is, “Highly original. Infinitely charming. And ever so touching.” Such lofty praise! I can’t imagine which blandishments he chooses to heap on great pieces like Still Life with Woodpecker (highly original), Alice in Wonderland (infinitely charming), or The Little Prince (ever so touching). No. The Housekeeper is bubble gum.

What a shame too because the premise that got me to pick it up in the first place really is quite original: a brilliant mathematics professor who, after an accident in 1975, has only eighty minutes of memory (his brain is like a tape eighty minutes long that begins to erase itself every eighty minutes). Every morning his housekeeper must reintroduce herself to him, and he keeps little notes pinned to his suit to remind him of who she is, where his razor blades are kept, and so forth.

But if you are expecting something like Memento, or a moving look into the mind of one experiencing such unique mindfuck of a life (e.g. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), you can forget it. We are never let into the professor’s head. The only glimpses of his mind we are shown are through a few math equations peppered through this slim novel. It’s as if Dava Sobel wrote The Housekeeper as a requirement for her literature class in college before moving on to her scientific-historic journalism.

I happened to check out a book club copy of this novel with eleven discussion questions at the end. For fun I had someone choose a number between 1 and 11. She chose 9. Here is the question:

How does Ogawa depict the culture of contemporary Japan in The Housekeeper and the Professor? In what ways does it seem different from Western culture? For example, consider the Housekeeper’s pregnancy and her attitude toward single motherhood; or perhaps look at the simple details of the story, like Root’s birthday cake. In what ways are the cultures similar or different?

This random pick is apropos; I embarked on this reading project to avail myself of non-Western cultures. I wanted to learn how their authors wrote while at the same time gaining insights into their respective cultures. In this vein The Housekeeper even failed to provide any real insight into the Japanese culture for me. How does the Housekeeper’s early, unmarried pregnancy compare to how women handle the same thing here? Well, not being a woman I can’t exactly say, but I know plenty of women who got pregnant at an early age, unmarried, and they dealt with the situation without too many sneers from society. The same thing happens in The Housekeeper, so not so different at all.

And what about the food? A complete disappointment. Consider the birthday celebration of Root, the eleven year old boy:

I had made shrimp cocktail, roast beef and mashed potatoes, spinach and bacon salad, pea soup, and fruit punch—all Root’s favorites—and, for the Professor, no carrots. There were no special sauces or elaborate preparations, it was just simple food. But it did smell good.

What’s so Japanese about that? That’s sounds like a typical American meal to me.

Moreover, a large part of the “plot” revolves around baseball—while it’s crazy popular Japan it is a quintessential American game and pastime. While Ogawa places this novel in Japan it might as well have taken place in Ohio. So, beyond being a letdown of a story, The Housekeeper even failed to enhance my Non-Western Reading Project experience.

Finished: 7.03.09                      Verdict: A promising premise, failed delivery.

***

The Guest by HWANG Sok-Yong (Korean)

I first encountered Hwang Sok-Yong at the 2009 PEN World Voices International Literary Festival, wherein I had the pleasure of attending two of his readings, one of which was on The Guest (the other on the forthcoming English translation of The Old Garden). Mr. Hwang would stroll to the front of the stage, his quiet presence muting conversation in the crowd (you could just feel he was a man with something to say), and speak to us in Korean. A companion would translate his thoughtful phrases, and then he would step into the shadow of the stage as the translator read an excerpt. Whether or not Hwang understands English I do not know (each time he left too quickly for me to meet him), but perhaps he understood the rhythm and tone of the translators’ voices as they read his works—his eyes glistened from the shadows, an aura of quiet grace emanating from his wizened face.

And wizened, no doubt. Hwang has seen some crazy things in life, and we are richer for his experiences. He was in Beijing for the Tiananmen Square massacre, saw the wall fall in Berlin, no doubt witnessed the horrors of war in his home country, and has been imprisoned for visiting North Korea to promote an artistic exchange. Those are facts, but I also bet he is a man who has won and lost in the game of love too… the tell-tale raw emotions from such encounters ooze from his writings.

So here we have a reflection of the Korean War, a war that Americans participated in heavily, but which I have very little knowledge. I know even less of the tragic Korean experience of the bloody conflict. I thank Hwang for shedding light on what appears to me now, a truly horrific, bestial, savage moment in history. Hwang does an excellent job of building suspense by littering the first half of the book with allusions to the horrors of the Korean War (between Koreans, Americans hardly figure into the story). Half way through the book I was quite sure the Korean War was a detestable affair, and that perhaps Hwang was personally touched by the events. The allusions were sufficient; I cared not to delve into nitty- gritty details of atrocities caused by one side or the other. Like it or not, however, Hwang delivers the brutality poignantly. Like a train wreck, I could not help but marvel at the cruelty:

“The mothers will be too content if we allow them to stay with their children,” said the brutes. “Tear them apart at once, and lock them up separately! Let the mothers go mad with worry, calling for their little ones, and let the children die crying for their mothers,” declared the beasts. Brandishing their swords and guns, the murderers tore the children from the bosoms of their mothers, who fought desperately to keep them. They locked the babes up in a different storage building. The heart rendering cries of the children calling for their mothers and the pitiable wailing of the mothers asking for their children—it was all too much. Hungry for blood, the fiendish monsters poured gasoline and straw over the heads of the surviving women and children and set them on fire, and then, as if they hadn’t already done enough, they threw in grenades. In these two storage buildings alone, 910 innocents, including 400 women and 102 children, were slaughtered in cold blood.

The Guest is quietly compelling, haunting even. Hwang’s literary trick of jumping from one narrator (i.e. character) and perspective (first and third) to another in subsequent paragraphs with no forewarning to the reader certainly kept me on my toes. This was used to great effect in chapter 8, “Requiem,” where the back and forth first person (Korean) accounts provide not only a clever, enjoyable narrative, but also serves to remind the reader there are at least two sides to every story. This chapter in particular reminded me of Lazar Stojanovic’s short, brutal documentary, The Skorpions: a matter of fact exposition of ethnic cleansing in the recent Serbian conflict. What Stojanovic was able to capture on film Hwang is able to weave with words. Distressing, to say the least.

Moreover, The Guest, underscored sentiments normally glossed over in American treatments of the Korean War. All sides (North Koreans, South Koreans, Communists, Christians, and Americans) were guilty of committing the worst crimes. Nobody is innocent in war, a point driven home by one veteran who screamed, “Show me one soul who wasn’t to blame!”

With reminders of the horrors of war (what is it good for, really?) tucked away in all corners of our small world, it’s a wonder we can find time to laugh and persevere. The Guest is an important work; that it has been translated into English now makes it a more influential piece. War is universally a hellish experience. The more reminders we have of its debasing influence, the more, hopefully, we will be swayed to avoid its downward spiral.

But also in war, no matter where, appeals for its end are universal too. One elderly character reflecting on the war she somehow survived laments: “I want nothing. Peace on earth, glory in heaven—that’s what’s on my mind. Even if the world is filled with sin, we human beings should just try to get rid of it a little at a time as we live our lives.”

Amen.

Finished: 6.27.09                      Verdict: A worthy, haunting peek at an overlooked war

***

Distant Star by Roberto BOLA ÑO (Chilean)

A “true masterpiece” said Vanguardia about this novel. It must be the case that Vanguardia doesn’t get out to the bookstores that often, because for me Distant Star is consistently less than stellar. It is not an entire disaster: the story is book-ended by twenty exciting pages on either side. But for the most part, the middle of the book sagged under its own boring weight. Many of the sentences just zipped past my eyes, like cockroaches skittering across dirty floors. I know what I saw, but couldn’t tell you what I read. Many pages acted as an excuse, it seems, for the author to list his favorite, obscure and/or radical Latin American authors (and their equally obscure publications). As such, Distant Star is probably read best as a sort of Cliffs Notes for the writers and poets influencing Bolaño’s thinking and writing styles. Surely Savage Detectives and 2666 must be better.

Distant Star revolves around the search for Carlos Wieder, a poet who in the 1970s is shaking up the world of literature and poetry in Chile—by writing enigmatic poems in the sky with smoke he has taken the public’s imagination. The poets of the day do not agree on the importance of Wieder’s contributions: “But these associates knew nothing about poetry. Or so they thought. (Naturally Wieder disagreed, assuring them they knew more about poetry than most people, more than a good many poets and professors, at any rate, living in their oases or miserable immaculate deserts; but his thugs didn’t understand, or dismissed it good-humoredly as another one of the lieutenant’s jokes.) For them that Wieder did in his place was just a ‘daring feat,’ daring in more ways than one, but not poetry.”

This passage reminds me of a profile recently in the New Yorker of the French Spider Man Allain Robert who free-climbs skyscrapers to garner attention for one cause or another. Some of those interviewed for the profile called Robert a glory hog, and because he chose to conquer steel and glass, not a “real climber.” Others claim the man is just plain awesome. The same happens for Wieder’s contribution to Latin American poetry. To some he is an amateur, a circus act. Others find him to be refreshing and a godsend.

A couple of pages later I came across the most beautiful statement in the story. Wieder had just finished sky writing a poem in Latin. The narrator is speaking about a translator’s take on the deed: “Because Latin makes more of an impression in the sky, although in fact he probably used the word ‘impact,’ Latin makes more of an impact in the sky…”

Think about that for a moment… while the differences in definitions of impact and impression are important to the point being made, the idea that we can impact or impress against an entity which has not the least bit of body—air, the sky—is poetic in itself.

Recommended by S. Milardo

Finished: 5.30.09                      Verdict: A Chilean Literati Insider’s book

***

“The Sweetest Tea with the Most Beautiful Woman in the World” by Tarek ELTAYEB (Sudan)

The title is almost longer than the story. An entry in the short story and poetry anthology, Literature from the “Axis of Evil.”

Finished: 5.07.09                      Verdict: Unremarkable

***

The Joke by Milan KUNDERA (Czech)

The Joke is my second foray into Kundera. I read Slowness in 2006, and according to my book notes I gave the slim book a “so-so” rating, followed by the dictate “must give him another shot.” And so for this project I went back to the beginning with the first novel he published.

In what I take to be a superb translation (I haven’t read the original Czech of course, but the language seems precise), a few—not just one—jokes are discussed, namely Communism, Love, and Religion. In his own introduction to The Joke, Kundera claims his book was/is/and will always be, not a farcical portrayal of Czech Communist rule, but a love story. He’s playing us. A love story? Perhaps, but when he compares the zeal with which Christians guilt-trip their own flock with how the Communist Party does the same to their followers (after all, both fora are social constructs), The Joke cannot be simply read as a passive or accidental belittling of Czech’s ruling party.

“… (we felt participation in the proletarian revolutionary movement to be a matter of, how shall I put it, essence, not a matter of choice; a man either was a revolutionary, in which case he completely merged with the movement into one collective entity, or he wasn’t, and could only hope to be one, and therefore suffered constant guilt over not being one).”  

Where I grew up being Christian was a matter of essence rather than choice, and no doubt the same holds true for dominant religions in locales worldwide—you just are whatever the preachers happen to be. The parallels of these two movements in The Joke—Christianity and Communism—are spot on.

In fact, less than thirty pages after the Christian/Communist comparison, the professorial main character Ludvik fancies himself an apostate who’s been excommunicated, not from Christianity but from the Czech Communist Party. Marx famously quipped that religion is the opiate of the masses; Kundera seems to suggest that blind faith in a political ideology can numb the mind equally.

When Ludvik describes his experience in the penal unit of the military as a “penumbra of depersonalization” the reader is led to infer that the same characterization can be applied to the avidly anti-individualism of Communist rule. For example, on leave from the military Ludvik wanders the streets of a random town, admiring inconsistencies in home life and architecture, and realizes “that I didn’t belong.” Belong to the town, the Communist Party, the military, just didn’t belong, period. These sentiments pepper the novel. How can we not see these facets of The Joke a commentary on socio-political life in Czechoslovakia? The Russians, after all, weren’t too thrilled with the novel. They banned the book and eventually forced Kundera into exile.

(Incidentally, Ludvik’s emotional isolation behind barbed wire recalls that of Raskolnikov’s similar stint in Crime and Punishment, who, like Ludvik does with Lucie, finds comfort and bearing in Sofia (or Sonia). Anguish is tempered by love.)

Here I take the privilege of pulling from a short essay I wrote for the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature—an event that occurred concurrently with my reading of The Joke. I attended a panel discussion on the role of the artist in conflict zones. The dialogue got me thinking of my own projections on Kundera’s role as an author writing under oppressive rule. I quote myself:

“Written in 1962 and published in 1967 in Communist Czechoslovakia, the book got under the skin of Russian authorities who banned the volume and forced Kundera into exile. Knowing the history of the novel and of Kundera’s forced emigration how can I not help but think that Kundera was nothing less than a polemical, political novelist? Yet in his introduction to M. H. Heim’s translation Kundera insists that, despite its fate as a ‘pamphlet against socialism,’ The Joke must be taken for what it was always meant to be: ‘merely a novel.’

“Perhaps I am projecting my own sentiments and images of the role of a Czech novelist under an oppressive Communist regime onto Kundera and his novel. Perhaps The Joke really is just a love story. Maybe. Maybe not. While I am not wholly convinced of Kundera’s position, I am no longer as sure of my own stance.”

It may or may not be a love story, but some of the best material mused on the subject. For example:

“Physical love only rarely merges with spiritual love. What does the spirit actually do when the body unites (in its age-old, universal, immutable motion) with another body? Think of the wonderful ideas it comes up with during those times, proving as they inevitably do its superiority over the never-ending monotony of the life of the body! Think of the scorn it has for the body, which (together with its partner) provides it with the raw material for fantasies a thousand times more carnal than the bodies themselves! Or conversely: think of the joy it takes in disparaging the body by leaving it to its push-pull game and giving free rein to its own wide-ranging thoughts: a particularly challenging chess problem, an unforgettable meal, a new book…”

Lots of jokes discussed in the novel. Which one is the joke? Is this it?

“Do love stories, apart from happening, being, have something to say? For all my skepticism, I had clung to a few superstitions—the strange conviction, for example, that everything in life that happens to me has a sense beyond itself, means something, that life in its day-to-day events speaks to us about itself, that it gradually reveals a secret, that it takes the form of a rebus whose message must be deciphered, that the stories we live in life comprise the mythology of our lives and in that mythology lies the key to truth and mystery. It is all an illusion? Possibly, even probably, but I can’t seem to rid myself of the need to decipher my life continually.”

Is this the punch line?

“…most people willingly deceive themselves with a doubly false faith; they believe in eternal memory (Of men, things, deeds, peoples) and in rectification (of deed, errors, sins, injustice). Both are sham. The truth lies at the opposite end of the scale: everything will be forgotten and nothing will be rectified. All rectification (both vengeance and forgiveness) will be taken over by oblivion. No one will rectify wrongs; all wrongs will be forgotten.”

That Kundera maintains the novel is “merely a love story” is the funniest joke of all.

Recommended to me by C. Haddix

Finished: 5.03.09                      Verdict: An impressive first novel, and a very good joke

***

The Namesake by Jhumpa LAMPIRI (Indian)

A thought occurred to me while I plowed through the first 100 pages of this book. In The Namesake, the father figure works to emigrate to America. In Graceland the main character Elvis has the same wish. In Snow the main character (Ka) lives and works in Germany. In Persepolis Satrapi decamps to the West. In these selections from my reading project characters (presumably at various levels they are reflections of the very authors) seek release of one sort or another in the West. Ironic then that I seek a sort of escape out of the West to their cultures and lands.

I deem The Namesake an average novel (and probably an average movie). There is just enough narrative to move the story along, but there is a decided lack of creativity in the presentation of the story. No passion. No linguistic flourishes. No tangents. It’s as if I was snowed in for three days and Lahiri were reciting a fireside story to pass the time.

This is a story of an Indian immigrant experience in the U.S. and the resulting tension in attempting hold onto what was left behind while trying to embrace your new home country. As such, it’s fine. How it won the Pulitzer I’ll never know—must have been a slow year. And why the reviewer for the New York Times called it “dazzling” befuddles me. Lewis Carroll dazzles; Lahiri merely flickers.

If I sound disappointed, it’s because I am. Lahiri, in titling the novel with such bravado and opening the story with a quote from Nikolai GOGOL’s “The Overcoat,” tantalizes the reader with nods toward a torturous figure in the Russian canon. What, we ask ourselves, could this story of an Indian family in America have to do with high Russian literature? Nothing. What a letdown. Indeed, the reference to Gogol is nothing more than a cheap play on words to make the protagonist’s name pop from the pages.

Namesake: “one that has the same name as another; especially: one who is named after another or for whom another is named.” We are led to believe that after Gogol discovers the man after which he is named led an abbreviated tortured existence, and that Gogol wasn’t even the real name of the Russian author, that Lahiri’s protagonist wishes to change his name because he feels no connection to the Russian and does not want to live an anonymous life with a namesake that wasn’t even real. This is the crucial point of the novel: at this point Lahiri can take us deep into the psychology of a man yearning to discover his true self and place in this world. She could navigate his heady and tormented existential angst. Instead, any pretentions toward the Russian Gogol and the deeper meanings associated with being named after the quirky man are quickly abandoned and the reader is left to tread water in a run-of-the-mill family drama.

At the very least Lampiri has turned me on to Gogol!

Recommended by A. Smith

Finished: 4.24.09                      Verdict: Good airplane reading if Malcom Gladwell and Dan Brown are sold out at the airport bookstore.

***

Zoom by Istvan BANYAI (Hungarian)

Cheating? Yes, but hey, I wouldn’t have read this year if Banyai were American born, so the book and author make it on the list. Zoom is a clever concept. Each turn of the page zooms out from the previous image, disorienting and rearranging the perspective of the reader even though the progression is in one continuous direction: up and out. The flow, however, was interrupted in the scenes between the postage stamp and the island; the transition at this point was less than smooth.

Recommended to me by E. Garrison

Finished: 4.10.09                      Verdict: Reach for the sequel, Re-Zoom.

***

Embers by Sandor MÁRAI (Hungarian)

This is an elegant and taught novel. Márai’s narrative tumbles along like gurgling brook—you can’t help but feel like a little leaf floating along, going with the flow, wary that around any corner you may spill over a waterfall. As such, Embers is an appropriate title choice: tension between its covers veritably glows and you wonder whether the mounting pressure will burst into flames or simply seep and grow cold. I shan’t spoil it for you.

The bulk of Embers happens in conversation between an aging general and a man who was once his closest friend. They haven’t seen each other in over 40 years; something happened on a hunt so many decades ago, but what? That’s what they are here to hash out before they both leave this withering plane.

Embers provides casual but thoughtful insights into love, passion, friendship, secrecy, yearning, desire, and jealousy. Márai can certainly spin a tale: Henrik’s (the General) engulfing narrative and calm accusations made me feel as if I were the accused. A blurb on the back of the book I own claims the reader will be quietly nailed to the spot. How colorful! How right on!

On a wholly different note, while reading the recollection of Henrik’s and Konrad’s childhood I couldn’t help but be reminded of a music video from a few years ago. Sigur Ros’ stellar tragic-romantic music video to “Viorar Vel Til Loftarasa,” in which two young boys, constrained by familial mores and unable to contain their amour any longer, passionately embrace on a soccer field, much to the horror of their traditionally-minded fathers. And although in Embers Henrik and Konrad do not embrace, the sexual tension is certainly palpable.

Recommended to me by E. Garrison

Finished: 4.05.09                      Verdict: An elegant story not to be missed

***

Wiggle Room by David Foster WALLACE (American)

I slipped. But there it was, screaming at me from the pages of The New Yorker. The man intrigues, I had to read. Back to the project at hand!

Finished: 3.19.09                      Verdict: Read everything he wrote

***

In the Heart of the Country by J.M. COETZEE (South African)

I’ve been off my mark lately. It looks like it’s been over a month since I finished the last book in this project. This is for two reasons: first, I was distracted by a few writing projects (now, mostly done) and second, In the Heart of the Country wasn’t exactly a page-turner.

It took me a long time, about two weeks, maybe more, to read this slim novel (138 pages). I had difficult time getting through the first half of the book. Nominally this book, according to the back cover, is a “mirror of the colonial experience.” If so, it’s a dirty, cracked mirror. Better than reflecting the colonial experience, Coetzee’s novel shines a light on the bitter madness of a woman (who can’t get over herself) determined to force history and the barren environment of her surroundings to look her in the face and acknowledge her tough existence. Coetzee portrays the anguish of his protagonist so well that it made it difficult for me to get through the first half of the novel, a half that takes place mostly inside her head. While the language is precise, thoughtful, and surprising, the story comes off as claustrophobic. I wanted to get out of the woman’s head!

I can’t help but compare In the Heart of the Country to Coetzee’s excellent Waiting for the Barbarians. Both stories take place in (to an American) exotic, dusty, faraway lands, and both dance on the perimeter of the colonial experience, albeit from opposite perspectives. And just like Barbarians, In the Heart of the Country never fully shows us the country in which it takes place. There is a horizon, but like the thoughts of other characters, it remains foggy, as if there is no world beyond the line of sight of the protagonist. The environments, like the narratives of both stories, are kept close. It is a ghostly world. We are prisoners of claustrophobic stories, characters and thoughts. Yet in the Barbarians we are at least taken out of the mind of the protagonist; in Country we are forced to rattle around inside the head of the narrator so that at the end, we grow just as made as she.

Kudos again for stellar language. Coetzee certainly has a way with words. Here are a couple of passages that jumped out at me in particular:

-- There was a time when I imagined that if I talked long enough it would be revealed to me what it means to be an angry spinster in the heart of nowhere. But though I sniff at each anecdote like a dog at its doo, I find none of that heady expansion into the as-if that marks the beginning of a true double life.

-- When one truly means what one says, when one speaks not in shouts of panic, but quietly, deliberately, decisively, then one is understood and obeyed. How pleasing to have identified a universal truth.

-- To die an enigma with a full soul or to die emptied of my secrets, that is how I picturesquely put the question to myself.

Recommended to me by M. Wucker

Finished: 3.19.09                      Verdict: Maddening. Stay with the Barbarians

***

Persepolis by Marjane SATRAPI (Iranian)

2009 is the 30^th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, so why not read a little bit in that vein? Since this is a graphic novel, it’s a super quick read. This does not diminish from the story though; pictures are worth a thousand words (imagine then how many words are in this book!). The images are simple black and white snapshots (no shading), without unnecessary detail. Minimal flourishes and frills pepper the graphics, like parsley on the side of your entrée they are a nice touch without detracting from the main attraction.

Well, Persepolis is the story of a young lady (Ms. Satrapi) coming of age in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution. Page one starts in 1980 with Marjane receiving a veil in which she must cover her hair at school (and elsewhere). And so it begins. We are treated to the trials and tribulations of a young, rebellious, liberal (and privileged) woman growing under a suffering, repressive Islamic fundamentalist regime. From her point of view we witness the absurdities of religious fundamentalist dictates (and the consequences if they are not followed), the Iraq-Iran War, an escape to Vienna for her formidable years (stranger in a strange land syndrome hits hard), a return to war-ravaged Tehran, and finally, self-imposed exile to Europe.

Persepolis is a fine introduction into life in the Persian lands. I stress introduction, because I am hesitant to believe her experiences were typical. Her family is liberal, well-educated, and wealthy. Marjane had the ability to leave for Vienna. She received money without question almost every time she asked her mother for it, and her family had the luxury of throwing parties during the worst of times (especially during war). It would be a fascinating exercise to compare her story to one of a poor girl growing up at the same time, to say nothing of hearing from a boy—poor or rich, educated or not—as the male perspective is entirely absent from Marjane’s narrative (I don’t blame her, of course!).

According to my Movie Life List, I saw the animated version of Persepolis in July 2008. While I absolutely do not recall seeing this film, many parts of Persepolis seemed so familiar I felt that I was re-reading the whole book. I don’t recall seeing the film, so my feelings of déjà vu indicates the film must be true to the book, a rare quality for book-to-film adaptations.

Finished: 2.10.09                      Verdict: A gateway drug to more Iranian lit.

***

Uh Oh.

Coming into this project I knew I’d be tempted to pick up a good ol’ American or British classic. I just thought these enticements would come later, perhaps six months into the experiment. Here I am six weeks and I find myself staring longingly at James Fenimore COOPER’s The Last of the Mohicans—it’s practically screaming my name! Will EISNER’s New York crept into my house last week too, and I find myself thumbing through random pages (but not reading!). And it seems that Huckleberry Finn has found its way into recent conversations and readings, making me want to pick that one up again. D. H. LAWRENCE and ORWELL beckon too… oh! The agony!

For now, I still have nonfiction books and MOSSMAN’s phenomenal Stones of Summer to placate my desires. While I have yet to succumb to other temptations, I can’t predict what’ll happen when I am finished reading Mossman’s insane masterpiece.

***

Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather by GAO Xingjian (Chinese)

I don’t know if I’ve learned my lesson or not. I chose this book much like I chose Pamuk’s Snow—I stopped by a local branch of the NYC library knowing full well that I needed to pick up Gao’s One Man’s Bible only to find Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather was his only book on the shelf, which I grabbed (likewise I was supposed to get Pamuk’s My Name is Red, but only Snow was in stock). While I would read Gao’s book three times before I would read Snow again, I don’t think it is his best work. I must learn to be more patient with the library system, or start rummaging the shelves at larger branches.

While taken as a whole or individually the six short stories in this book are not spectacular, it is still a worthy collection. Of them, “Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather” is my favorite—a rumination that eventually tumbles over itself into train-of-thought narrative. I liked “In an Instant” the least; while its premise is not unique (a story about the millions of things happening right now), its idea remains attractive. Still, this last story is 30 pages long; halving could get the same point across. As it is, “In an Instant” is (ironically) a windy reminder that life, for the most part, is a continuous train of small, dull moments—which may be the point—but it makes for tedious story telling.

Before I finished Buying a Fishing Rod it occurred to me that Gao’s style is not so much to tell stories, but rather intends to capture what I call “life moments.” Gao skillfully arrests the interludes of everyday experiences that may/not be personally historic, but are memorable nonetheless. The translator’s note at the end of this small anthology confirmed my feelings, noting that Gao’s fiction “does not set out to tell a story. There is no plot, as found in most fiction, and anything of interest to be found in it is inherent in the language itself.”  Gao’s unusual approach to fiction reminds me of the combined magical realism-Kafka-esque experimentation of The Republic of Wine by Chinese author MO Yan. It may be that contemporary Chinese authors, constrained by current politics and burdened (and burned) by recent historical memories, are using experimental or “radical” fiction techniques to tell their stories. If this inclination holds true, be prepared to be awed by more and more modern Chinese fiction being translated into English.

In order from best to worst, my preferences are: Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather; The Temple; The Park; The Accident; The Cramp; In an Instant.

I now have One Man’s Bible sitting on my desk, but I’m not sure I’ll read it next. I have to be in the mood for a certain book, it has to speak to me, and right now One Man’s Bible is whispering.

Finished: 2.04.09                      Verdict: Good subway/airplane read

***

The Elephant by Aravind ADIGA (Indian)

Another quick, short story coming from The New Yorker. It’s worth noting that the two short stories I read in January, by Danticat and Bolaño, also came from The New Yorker: they seem to be doing their part in bringing non-Western authors to an American audience.

A decent story, nothing special. A good read for your airplane or subway rides. It’s a quick story about Chenayya, a bicycle-cart delivery man, who toils painfully day after day in a dead-end job. He wonders what else he can do to get ahead, since nobody wants to pull carts for the rest of their life. Chenayya fantasizes about other positions in life, but in the end sees his position as futile. It did get suspenseful near the end when it was unclear if someone was going to die at the end of a saw. (I’m confused about the title, considering the actual elephant in the story plays such a minor role).

“The Elephant” could be a simple reminder that the poor in the U.S. of A. often have just as much (or more) in common with the poor around the world than they do with the wealthy in their own country.

Finished: 2.02.099                    Verdict: A nice intro into Adiga’s larger works

***

Snow by Orhan PAMUK (Turkish)

I keep a database of all the books I have read, including those I cannot finish. When I can’t complete a book I feel disappointed, frustrated and a bit of a failure. From time to time, though, it happens. Snow marks the 20^th book to be added to my “Unfinished” list. I quit on page 282 of 426.

If Snow is a representative example of Pamuk’s catalogue, I don’t want anything else to do with him. We’re talking about a Nobel Prize of Literature winner here—how can this novel (or any of his books) be that awful!?! I won’t delve too deep into what the story is “about” because what the book jacket describes as the narrative only touches half of the incredibly minor but exaggerated happenings in the tiny, snowed-in town of Kars, Turkey. The reason I picked up the book in the first place was because one of the motivations for the protagonist, Ka, to visit Kars was to explore the mystery behind the suicides of Muslim girls not allowed to wear their headscarves in school. Great! A topical item into which I may get some insight! Alas, the thread is dismissed a quarter of the way into Snow.

Plot lines and characters (and their actions) are melodramatic and hyperbolic; it was the emotional swings that got to me, occurring at quick, clickety-clack speed. We all have our emotional ups and downs, but Pamuk’s characters fall in and out of love and become angry and hateful all in one paragraph (one real-time moment), page after page after page. Before long (50 pages?), I gave up caring about the emotionally erratic characters and cared even less about the outcome of the story. Snow became frustratingly dull, to keep reading would have been excruciating. I tried.

But I won’t dwell on the downsides. For one, Snow did have me looking at Google Maps and Wikipedia entries of Kars, Turkey and its surrounding geography. I am now a teeny-bit wiser to Turkey’s eastern landscape (normally I just pay attention to Istanbul in the west). Also, I found myself following Turkish politics and news for a couple of days, comparing the political-religious events of the country to the events in Snow—thank goodness Turkey’s real-life politics is more interesting than Pamuk’s fiction.

Also, one line struck me; it resonated with my motivation behind this non-Western reading project. Right before I gave up the story (p.279) one exuberant, Kurdish youth, expressed his frustration of German (and European in general) seeming insistent condescension to non-Westerners, specifically in this case to the nations living in Turkey (Kurds, Armenians, Turks, etc). He bellows, “When they write poems or sing songs in the West, they speak for all humanity. They’re human beings—but we’re just Muslims. When we write something, it’s just called ethnic poetry.” I want to ensure that I don’t have that automatic reaction when I read something from a non-Western author.

Ultimately, Orhan Pamuk’s Snow is a reminder that just like in the West, some stories are duds.

Quit: 1.28.09                Verdict: Run, don’t walk, away from this book

***

Graceland by Chris ABANI (Nigerian)

By switching between flashbacks and the present, and sprinkling in some gritty scenes (child rape) and colorful detail (quoting John Wayne) Abani builds a compelling narrative through the first half of the book, like the beginning of a roller coaster ride clacking you to the top of the first big hill. About halfway through I felt eager and anxious that the rest of Graceland would be a frightening, downward spiral—I was right. Abani unfolds his story woven with interesting characters in a land less than paradise (slums of Lagos); there is always a nagging sense that things are not going to be pretty. This, I assume, is the way life in Lagos’ netherworlds really is, which is why I am was a little disappointed in the “Hollywood,” sort of cheesy final pages.

I, having never visited a real-deal slum, have foggy ideas of its poverty, of putrid streets and filthy public toilets. Bare bedrooms and drug deals in the shadows. Guns tucked under t-shirts and barefoot children padding down litter-strewn, unpaved roads. Details make a story unique to the author, place, and narrative. In Graceland, examples include intermittent allusions to Igbo customs and offhand remarks mixing local, animalist beliefs into the narrative. In one quick scene, the protagonist Elvis Oke is young, in the yard, fetching water for his bath and whistling the theme song from Casablanca. His grandmother admonishes him: “Elvis, stop dat! You know it is taboo to whistle at night. You will attract a spirit.” Without that witchy-warning, this slummy backyard could be anywhere: the backstreets of Tijuana, forgotten parts of Queens, the sprawl of New Delhi, the favelas of São Paulo. Details are what bring it back to Lagos each time. Yam recipes. Palm oil and palm wine. Herbal remedies and anti-witchcraft concoctions—these are Nigerian.

Graceland’s overarching themes (boy becomes a man; vulnerability in the face of violent regimes, etc) are universal. The main character, Elvis Oke, mulls over a decision to follow his dream of becoming a dancer, noting, “There was a positive side to not trying at something: you could always pretend that your life would have been different if you had.” Who can’t relate to having to make such a decision?

Still, Graceland seems to me to be a story that is—in its particulars—very Nigerian. I appreciate getting a glimpse of the lives of those living physically in a place many in the West find exotic and curious, and easily packaged as a “megacity.” Abani writes that the streets of the slum “singed straight and proud, like a rope burn or a cane’s welt.” I am not sure I know what a cane’s welt looks like; Abani certainly does and so do, unfortunately, his fellow Nigerians. Later, after some very scary tribulations, Elvis has an exchange with a soldier who roughs him up. Abani expresses his impotency: “The tears that wouldn’t come for his father streamed freely now as he felt worthless in the face of blind, unreasoning power.” Just little reminders that between New York City and Lagos, our day-to-day existences, and the hurdles we must overcome to get through those days, are very different.

Recommended to me by G. Lawrence

Finished: 1.11.09                      Verdict: Great story, please make the movie

***

“Meeting with Enrique Lihn,” by Roberto BOLA ÑO (Chilean)

Finally! It seems the literary world has been aflame and agog over Bolaño for a couple of years now. He’s been on my list since I read a commentary of Savage Detectives and his life in The New Yorker. I read this short story (the first novel of the project is underway!), and quite enjoyed it. Bolaño, Chilean, dead in 2003, has an uncanny way of capturing the rational surrealism we simply call "dreaming." I can’t wait to read a lengthier work.

Finished: 1.08.09                      Verdict: Gimme more Bolaño!

***

“Ghosts,” by Edwidge DANTICAT (Haitian)

I eased into the non-Western author project for 2009 with a short story written by a Haitian-American. Why such a timid introduction? Well, because I checked out The Stones of Summer by Dow MOSSMAN right before this whole thing began—a book I’ve been itching to get my hands on for more than a month. While I finish up Mossman’s doorstop I opt for an easy introduction into my mission.

“Ghosts” is a quality story about a country—and its gangs—that gets little attention these days. Haiti is a country whose knees have buckled under one disaster, human and natural, after another. It sits 681 miles off the coast of Florida, and yet we know little and do less to help its impoverished. I am glad to have read a story that lends a small measure of insight into a country rarely on the American radar.

Finished: 1.05.09