For the love of language (and politics), plus comments on a few of the latest books I've read

I find myself compelled to point out that Sarah Palin is suffering from "Aleutians of grandeur."

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I just finished a few books sent to me by my brother, lent by friends, and some that I even purchased (that should make the authors happy, though if they only knew how many books I have, they might forgive my current quasi-moratorium on buying more). These recently-read books include Hitler's Peace by Philip Kerr, which was not as engaging as his most engaging books, and at times seemed awkward or forced, but was compelling, nonetheless, and ultimately both illuminating and intriguing. OK, that doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement, but remember that this is a favorite author of mine who reaches the highest standards in most of his books, if not quite in every case. However, I encourage you to read Hitler's Peace, both for the excitement and for the window on a fascinating time in history.

Prior to that, a selection of what I read includes Vicious Circle by Robert Littell, The Mayor of Lexington Avenue by James Shehan, much of Collapse by Jared Diamond (still reading it), and the single volume containing the novels Fatherland and Enigma by Robert Harris.

Here are a few additional recent reads: Water Touching Stone by Eliot Pattison (excellent), Spook Country by William Gibson (judged by the highest standards, very good), and The Painter of Battles: A Novel by Arturo Perez-Reverte (see below).

Collapse is a fascinating book that can be read in bits and pieces, or straight through. I'm still filling in the parts I skipped over, aided in my journey by never using a bookmark and continually starting up in random places (a Dadaist approach, perhaps, but don't you feel the Dadaists need a little more attention now and then?). Collapse offers a lot of hope while also documenting many monumental failures of societies throughout history; it comes from the author of the highly touted Guns, Germs and Steel, also touted (and toted) by my high school age son. I haven't read Guns, Germs ... yet.

The other books I listed are all very good or better, though The Mayor of Lexington Avenue is excellent for 95% of the book, and just OK for the other 5% (don't hold me to the numbers, these are impressionistic statistics, if there are such a thing). Still, The Mayor of... is quite an amazing first novel, with outstanding characters, plot and setting that stretch over two generations, from the poor to the rich and powerful, and from New York to a Florida backwater. I think that if the author had grappled with one less issue or subplot, the book would have remained uniformly outstanding. Nevertheless, it is highly recommended.

Although I've read all of Littell's other books except one, I had made a conscious decision not to read Vicious Circle. I felt the same way when The Little Drummer Girl by le Carre' came out- at the time that I just couldn't handle the subject matter (the Middle East conflict) as "entertainment," though, of course, the book is far deeper than that comment implies. I know this because, after about ten years, I broke down and read John le Carre's take on a part of the Middle East conflict, and was glad I did, and, after my brother sent me Vicious Circle I broke down again and read it as well.

Littell writes so well that I found myself laughing out loud in the middle of very tense scenes. As always, his wonderful language and characters are brilliantly crafted. Still, Israeli and Palestinian people and their many issues are not an easy thing to read about, especially when they are kidnapping, murdering, torturing and negotiating for peace (simultaneously, if not all by the same individuals). I felt that Littell was extremely balanced in his treatment of all sides, and the book is gripping from start to end. Unfortunately, I cried a lot more than I laughed, but that comes with the territory in this case.

The novels by Robert Harris left me a bit flat, Enigma more so than Fatherland. I have to say that the premise of Fatherland is very clever and brilliantly executed, and was used to build up a remarkable, alternative universe, though one where the truth will out. The premise is that Germany won WW2 and, among many other consequences, no GI's liberated any concentration camps. The storyline itself isn't quite as strong as other aspects of the book, though it serves as a good thriller with chilling revelations. Enigma perhaps simply wasn't the book I was expecting- I kept looking for that book on each page and coming up empty. It is definitely worth reading, however, and is another WW2 thriller, with an associated murder mystery.

The Painter of Battles by Perez-Reverte is an unusual book. It is by far the shortest book by the author, as far as I know, but it took me an unusually long time to read. There are a lot of pithy sentences and analyses of paintings and warfare, from ancient to modern. Not that this is a textbook by any means; it is a psychological thriller, and the tension can reach high levels, but it's also a no-holds-barred examination of modern morality, warfare and societies. The language demands an attention to detail that I could not always provide (say at the end of a long day) and I wasn't always alert enough to grasp the point, though I rarely have this problem with books (or with the books I choose to read, in any event). I'm not sure I'm erudite enough to grasp all of this novel, either. My knowledge of art history is fairly spotty- I've seen a lot but haven't studied it, so I tend to forget the details. Nevertheless, the stories within the novel are well worth reading since they are based on real events, more or less, events that were highly significant to the participants and some of their observers, but were probably given little thought by most other people. As with quantum physics, we see here that the observer changes the "experiment" or experience, and here the consequences can be tragic. I'd label this short novel a "must read"!

That's it for my capsule summaries and other comments of the day.

© 2008 James K. Bashkin

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All posts have been updated- more links and text

Please note that I have copy edited all posts, improved content and added promised links (along with new-found links). Thanks for all the continued feedback. I guess blogs don't really work this way, so I'll have to start getting it right the first time, but given the state of things, there will be a few more global updates. The Skull Mantra (Eliot Pattison) and The Murder Room (P. D. James) and Nick Hornby's reviews remain the only work that has received long(ish) treatment, with text added on Robert Wilson, Philip Kerr, David Lodge and Lawrence Durrell, among others.

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Murder in China and Tibet, and London; Peter Rozovsky!

OK, so I read Qiu Xiaolong's books a while ago and gave an impressionistic synopsis of the first one, Death of a Red Heroine that was probably influenced by the second (A Loyal Character Dancer). If you want to read a more more detailed series of analysis, complete with references to major newspaper articles, and insight, go to Detectives Beyond Borders, which the author Peter Rozovsky kindly referred me to, and search for Qiu Xiaolong. Sorry, I can't get the link to work to take you to exactly the right place yet. But, so much for my "no objective standards" comment- now I feel pressure! Added later: here is the link to Qiu Xiaolong I was missing.

So, on to The Skull Mantra (TSM) by Eliot Pattison and The Murder Room (TMR) by P.D. James. I read both of these in August, with rather different results. I won't repeat my comments about the Pattison book already made to Peter Rozovky's blog, so here is where to search for them (my answer to the question in the Sept 1, 2007 post). Again, sorry about my poor HTML skills- I have to sort out why the links I had were not working.

I did struggle a little at the beginning of TSM, and had started it before but not gotten far. This time I had the good sense to read on. Contrast this with TMR, which starts with a beloved T. S. Eliot quote (from Burnt Norton)* and moves quickly to that area outside of London much loved by fictional characters, being approximately three miles north from 221B Baker Street, and by real people, including authors: Hampstead Heath. The Heath is crisscrossed by roads but is really quite large, with open grassy areas, wooded regions and walking or running paths to tempt lovers, criminals and healthy English people of a certain age. The reader is immediately put in the care of a perfect host, the urbane Commander Adam Dalgliesh, a published poet* whose day job happens to be at New Scotland Yard. TMR was easy to start, like candy or a bottle of single malt.

*see Qiu Xiaolong's inspector Chen!

Now, before I go on, I should dispense with some psychological baggage. Until this August, I had boycotted P. D. James for about 30 years. Why? Because the books were bad? No, rather the opposite. I found the writing to be so good, the characters to be so engaging and the story to be so gripping that when I finally learned who the villain was the last time I read James, I was too depressed to want to go through that experience again- the fellow was too likable (ignoring the crime, anyway). Oddly enough, looking over the back catalog online today, I haven't been able to figure out which book caused this reaction- I'll have to go to the library and read the last chapters of all of them, because I remember that chapter vividly (given the way my 49-year old memory works, I might well find out I was boycotting the wrong author, but I will get to the bottom of it).

So where are we? TSM has us spending time inside a prison work-camp and building roads by hand, high on a Tibetan mountain. While doing so, we start to learn about Tibetan prayers and religion through the eyes of a true outcast, a hated Chinese prisoner embedded within the Tibetan prisoners. However, in a spirit that may be relatively unique to Tibet, some of the imprisoned monks welcome their Chinese "comrade", if over time, so that he is much more at home with the prisoners than with the abusive Chinese guards, Warden, or any other ethnic Chinese he is likely to meet in Tibet.

Everything, and I mean eventually EVERYTHING, is turned upside down by the discovery of a headless body by the prison work crew, right where they are supposed to build the rode. The only experienced detective in the region is the mysterious Chinese prisoner whose file contains no information because he committed no crime, except to attempt to expose corruption by a Party official too powerful to fight. It is a bit like the world of the Chateaux d'If from Alexandre' Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo or The Man in the Iron Mask, where a note from royalty could imprison a man for life without due process. Oh, it sounds a bit like imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay, too, though I hope that will come to an end before long. So is the mystery going to be placed in the hands of the lowest of the low, a former inspector reviled and made to disappear by his fellow Chinese and reviled by many of the Tibetans he will meet? (Tibet has been colonized violently by China in an ongoing process that started on October 1, 1949)

As I read deeper into TSM, the memories of his institutionalized mistreatment and cherished, but deeply hidden, memories of time with his father show us a man who has learned to survive by fighting his instincts, keeping his head buried, and now, against his will, that head is plucked out of the sand, its eyes are forced open, and he is given the choice of solving the crime or watching the massacre of his fellow prisoners. Why such drama? Because the Tibetan respect for the dead and fear of evil spirits means that the road building will not restart unless and until the murder can be cleared up in a way that mitigates all superstition. So, solve this crime for me and make sure I like the answer, is essentially what the local military commander orders the prisoner, who is given some freedom of movement, a driver and a translator.

Much tension in the book comes from mixed allegiances amongst Chinese military, political and policing institutions and amongst Tibetan factions, tribes or monasteries, some of whom may be dealing illegally with drugs, antiquities or both. Some witnesses and other participants in the events belong to these various factions. However, the slow re-emergence of the inspector's pride, which seemed to have been beaten and starved out of existence, provides a forward motion to the story, as the inspector struggles less and less with himself and more with the mystery at hand. The inspector is not the only person who finds his pride re-awakened by the circumstances: his assigned army chauffeur/guard/watch-dog is forced to face the humanity of the Tibetan people he is oppressing, and forced to recognize that his "work" is a sad, shameful and unsuitable end to a proud military career.

One of the best parts of the book is the development of our relationship with the military commander (not the same person as the prison camp warden). This man is not shown as a caricature, and ultimately he needs the truth as badly as the inspector, creating a situation that could prove fatal for all.

The nearby presence of a Western mining operation and the first bus-load of tourists for the season place spatial and temporal bounds on the investigation, yet long journeys across high desert and through dangerous mountain passes must be negotiated in attempts to track down a witness before he can be killed by the as-yet unidentified murderer(s).

Further complicating things is the discovery of a cave, in between the prisoner's work camp and the Western-leased mine, filled with skulls dating back to the beginning of Tibet's recorded time. This introduces a possible motive for murder, in that some group, Chinese or Western, is looting the artifacts, a highly illegal act.

Ultimately, an unwavering attention to detail in the face of the many feints and misdirections carried out by the murder(s) allows the inspector to track certain key artifacts that may or may not be missing, and to tease out the web of people connected with them so that the crimes begin to unravel. However, even with many of the basics of the case seemingly within our grasp, a series of absolutely shocking, yet immediately credible, revelations awaits us.

The end of TSM is a typical race against time in some ways, but there is nothing typical about the setting or the motivations of its key people, let alone the brilliant manipulations that have been carried out to insulate the puppet master(s) from the actions that caused so much destruction of life. After the slow start lasting maybe 12 pages, I read the book pretty much straight through, trying not to rush or miss anything, trying to keep separate and distinct the different temples and tribes and their roles, but increasingly anxious about the fates of all concerned.

So wither The Murder Room? TMR has plenty of its own misdirection, with contemporary murders in a museum apparently copying a set of murders from long ago, memorialized in that very museum (which is dedicated to the period between WWI and WWII). There are sympathetic characters, there are unpleasant characters, there are characters about whom one is ambivalent. After the first crime, there is more murder and attempted murder, and more lives may seemingly yet be lost at any point. So we have urgency. We also have the parallel story of Dalgleish's love interest, who is inconveniently located at Cambridge, and some internal police politics that are trumped by "larger" concerns, a catch-phrase for so much now, as it probably always has been (sorry Caesar, the seating plan for today's committee meeting is "need to know, only").

The problem is that the larger forces at play (i.e. National Security) really aren't at play. Instead we have a bunch of government ministers, judicial appointees, and wealthy people trying to protect each other, regardless of whether the case is solved or not (and with blatant disregard for potential additional victims). This may have resonated strongly in the U.K. after the revelations about how false confessions were obtained by torturing suspected IRA members, but in today's world, in the USA, this seems like an old story, a story that is probably being acted out now in real life, but one that has no more hook than last year's headlines. It is expected behavior, and why should we care how some other member of the privileged classes justifies his or her self-serving behavior? Fine, throw them in jail (or pardon them if you are President Bush), but don't expect me to be shocked that somebody in authority lied, or even compromised National Security for personal or political gain. I've been living with a Vice President who outed a covert CIA operative during wartime. Didn't we formerly execute people for treason? Now they go on the lecture circuit. So, for me, this book started out like gangbusters and ended up a bust. It is an OK read- the language is good (which is not so common these days), the minor characters are well drawn, and the workings of Dalgleish's mind are a pleasure, but the final third of the book is a major disappointment that left me feeling completely disconnected from the fate of the criminal(s).

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