Category: FICTION

MYSTICISM

Audio-book Review
 By Chet Yarbrough

Blog: awalkingdelight)
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

The Sentence

By: Louise Erdrich

Narrated by: Louise Erdrich

Louise Erdrich (American novelist and poet, member of the Chippewa Indians, a tribe of Ojibwe people.)

This is a review of a third novel of Louise Erdrich’s books. The three that are reviewed are about native American experience in the U.S.

Louise Erdrich who wrote “The Round House”, “The Night Watchman” and this book, “The Sentence”, grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota. Erdrich’s parents, a Chippewa mother and German father, taught at the “Bureau of Indian Affairs” in Wahpeton.  She is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. (Erdrich’s husband was a professor and writer who was the first director of “Native American Studies” at Dartmouth. He died at the age of 52.)

Erdrich begins “The Sentence” with a bizarre story of an addled brained addict, (the heroine of the story) who is convinced by her roommate to pick up a dead body from a friend’s house.

The addict agrees to do it in return for $26,000 lottery win that had recently been received by her friend. At first, one thinks the dead body is really just a pet, but it is actually a human that was once the boyfriend of the lottery winner. Further, we find this seems to have occurred on an Indian reservation which introduces an element of understandability because of the complication of reservation law versus America’s national government law.

The heroine rents a refrigerated van, picks up the body, and the next thing we find is she is arrested on a cocaine drug running charge. The corpse had bags of cocaine taped to its armpits. The heroine is convicted and sentenced by the federal government to a long prison sentence for breaking a federal law for drug running. The sentence is shortened from 60 years when her arresting reservation officer gets witnesses to recant their testimony. The former accused drug runner is released and marries the reservation lawman who arrested her for the alleged crime.

Finally, “The Sentence” begins to settle down to a somewhat normal life story. The now married couple adopts a young Indian girl who rebels against her mother’s care and attention. This seems a rather common case of mother/daughter relationships that either mends itself in maturity or remains ambivalent for the remainder of their lives.

The adopted daughter appears at her mother’s doorstep unannounced, with a baby carriage her mother presumes is loaded with some inane material items she brought with her.

What the mother finds is that it is a weeks old baby recently born from the daughter’s union with a man her mother has not met. The mother is thrilled to see her new grandson but asks too many questions about the father and disrupts the tentative truce between mother and daughter. The daughter withdraws to a bedroom, slams the door, and the mother realizes what she perceives to be her fault for asking about the baby’s father and his responsibilities.

However, the now grandmother is ecstatic about her new grandson and regrets having angered her daughter, presumably for fear of losing a future relationship with the baby.

Not too much new here from anyone who came from a broken home. Erdrich’s story begins to lag at this point because this seems like a common story of many American families. Then, Erdrich begins to refine her story.

Erdrich turns to events of America’s 21st century world and the story reclaims a listener’s interest. A bookstore in which the heroine works after her release from prison is in Minnesota, the home of George Floyd’s senseless murder by the Minneapolis police.

The heroine’s husband, as a former reservation police officer, offers a whiff of irony to the story. As a police officer, he had looked at crime on a scale of threat to others rather than transgression of a written law. He gauged his action in arrest based on a scale of threat to others rather than violation of the letter of law.

Erdrich’s story encompasses Covid19. It is becoming a clear and present danger to the characters in her story. Businesses are beginning to suffer from the reality of a worldwide lock down. Bookstores are identified as essential services, but customers are reluctant to visit because of fear of public contact. The government offers loans to essential businesses that may be forgiven if they choose to weather the growing pandemic.

The world seems on the cliff edge of collapse with violence on the streets of Minneapolis and a virus that will consume humanity. A feeling from which many Americans are still adjusting.

Erdrich brings these events to the small world of one family. This family is every family with all the good and bad things that happen in life, but Erdrich implies bad things are more common in native American societies. The daughter is an alcoholic with an innocent baby born with an absent father. The daughter chooses to be in a pornographic movie to live a life she is able to afford. She expresses personal shame in a confession to her mother, a fact of her life of quiet desperation.

A layer of mysticism is added by the author that seems superfluous except that it is a reflection of native American’ belief in a spirit world.

The bookstore in which the heroine works is being haunted by the spirit of the woman who owned the bookstore, a woman that played an important role in the early life of the heroine. The haunting of the bookstore is related to the history of the deceased owner’s life. The bookstore owner lived a life dedicated to helping native Americans, believing she was born as an American Indian. Edrich recounts the discovery of a book by her husband that reveals a secret about the bookstore owner’s life. That secret becomes the focus of the story.

The storeowner’s spirit haunts the bookstore because of a book’s mysterious content.

The spirit will presumably continue to haunt the store as long as the book is missing. The heroine, without knowing the contents of the book, buries it in the hope that the storeowner’s spirit will leave the bookstore. Hiding the book doesn’t work. The storeowner continues to haunt the store and plans to possess the heroine’s body. The storeowner’s desire for possession of the heroine’s body is part of the mystery of the buried book.

The finale of Erdrich’s story is about life and death, love of family, reconciliation between mothers and daughters, and the fate of a storeowner’s spirit. The attraction of Edrich’s books is to know something more about native American culture. In a larger sense, “The Sentence” is about the broad meaning of poverty and discrimination in America and those who suffer from it. To appreciate much of what Erdrich offers in “The Sentence”, a listener needs to be patient.

FICTIONS WONDER

Audio-book Review
 By Chet Yarbrough

Blog: awalkingdelight)
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Oliver Twist

By: Charles Dickens

Narrated by: Jonathan Pryce

Charles Dickens (British Author, 1812-1870, died at age 58.)
Sir Jonathan Pryce (British Actor @ Age of 76)

“Oliver Twist” recreates the London of Dickens’ time with detail created by a genius of storytelling, observation, and wordsmithing.

Charles Dickens is considered by some to be the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. Though Dickens stories offer magnificent glimpses of the Victorian era, he is only one of a number of literary giants of his time. There are the Bronte sisters, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy and Rudyard Kipling. Though not having recently read Kipling, Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre” and George Eliot’s “The Mill on the Floss” recall visions of a past that are as large in imagination, revelation, and erudition as Dickens’ “Oliver Twist”.

What is interesting about audio books is that actors who narrate some of these great books add a dimension to their stories that are missed when read. “Oliver Twist” “Jane Eyre” and Elison’s “The Invisible Man” are three examples of how actors add an intimate dimension to great authors’ books.

A dimension of antisemitism slaps listeners in the face when Pryce says “The Jew” as Dickens’ primary appellation for a criminal named Fagin. Narration of Dicken’s story conjures an image of every nation’s tendency to identify minorities as the “other”, i.e., whomever is not one of “us”.

Pryce’s verbalization of “The Jew” raises remembrance of Hitler’s antisemitism, WWII’s holocaust, and more recently, the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting trial, its convicted perpetrator, and the repellent idea of racial and ethnic discrimination.

Listening to Pryce’s narration of Dicken’s description of Victorian London, a listener reminds oneself that the past is always present. Discrimination is as old as time. Diminishment, abuse, and women’s discrimination remain today. “Oliver Twist” is an example of a great writer who paints a spectacular picture of his time. The squaller of London, the hateful treatment of women, poverty’s existence, ethnic discrimination, and other failures of society are artfully and unforgettably illustrated in “Oliver Twist”.

Discrimination is an irradicable fact of life reinforced by great and forgettable writers.

This complicated story of lucky happenstance, evil doing, and rewarded goodness is artfully written by Dickens and beautifully rendered by Jonathan Price. Price gives weight to the horrible truth of historic antisemitism and how it insidiously permeates the human condition. This is not a condemnation of Dickens but a geniuses’ representation of a sad truth of life and the faults of human society.

VACUITY

Audio-book Review
 By Chet Yarbrough

Blog: awalkingdelight)
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Satin Island

By: Tom McCarthy

Narrated by: James Langton

(Tom McCarthy, British Novelist, Nominated for the Booker Prize twice, One of which was for “Satin Island”.)

To this listener, “Satin Island” is an intellectual journey to nowhere. Obviously, others who determined McCarthy should be nominated for a Booker Prize for “Satin Island” disagree. Anthropology is the scientific study of human behavior, cultures, societies, and languages of the past.

Tom McCarthy seems to have sat at a desk and thought of an idea to write about, i.e., namely anthropology.

McCarthy’s main character is an anthropologist working for a fictional think tank that analyzes companies wishing to have some insight to an unknown future. His employer gives the anthropologist an assignment to write a paper that capsulizes the world’s future based on an understanding of the past and known present.

McCarthy’s story begins in Turin Italy with a brief explanation of the shroud of Turin which is alleged to have been wrapped around Jesus’s body after crucifixion.

The shroud could never have had the imprint of the remains of Jesus. The anthropologist notes it is proven fake because the shroud’s fabric is manufactured centuries after Christ’s crucifixion. The fake of the shroud is an inartful premonition to the course of the story.

The anthropologist’s assignment is a fool’s errand.

Whatever he writes in his report will be like the shroud of Turin. McCarthy tirelessly offers a series of vignettes to reinforce his message. A singular insight that one finds in McCarthy’s story is that anthropology is a science split into two disciplines. One is the acquisition of artifacts that tell an anthropologists’ interpretive story and two, anthropology is a search for written records and interviewed descendants that have first hand recollection of their ancestors’ societies. The first is clouded by interpretation. The second is clouded by understanding of language and descendants’ memories.

A recuring mystery in McCarthy’s story is of a parachutist that dies from a failed, presumably silk (like satin), parachute with nylon strings that were purposely cut.

The nylon strings holding the parachute are the threads of life’s history, like the fabric of the Shroud of Turin, and/or artifacts left for an anthropologist’s interpretation. McCarthy notes the cause of death may have been murder but it might have been suicide. Suspects are arrested. No one is convicted. The person who died is not suicidal. It becomes another mystery of the past.

The anthropologist realizes the report requested by his employer can be based on whatever he chooses to write. He begins to believe his report can be written and widely believed like the story of the shroud of Turin.

The story ends with the death of the owner who hired the anthropologist. The irony of the story is that the anthropologist is widely acclaimed for his final report meant to tell the future of life when he knows his story is like the shroud of Turin.

To this listener, there is too much intellectualism and not enough story. That may be why it did not win the Booker Prize. That is reason enough to me.

GREEN ON BLUE

Audio-book Review
 By Chet Yarbrough

Blog: awalkingdelight)
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Green on Blue

By: Eliot Ackerman

Narrated by: Peter Marek

Eliot Ackerman (Author, former Marine Corps Special Operations Team Leader who served in Afghanistan.)

“Green on Blue” is about America’s military experience in Afghanistan. Like America’s experience in Vietnam and Iraq, knowing one’s enemy is shown to be difficult, at the least, and impossible at the most. Whether the American military is “Green on Blue” or not, it alludes to the fog of war and complications of knowing the color of your enemy.

Ackerman gives a first-hand account of what it was like to serve as a field commander in America’s intervention in Afghanistan. As a Marine Corps Special Operations team leader in Afghanistan, he knows the subject of which he writes.

Ackerman’s novel is a fiction but bells truth and understanding of America’ intervention in Afghanistan.

Just as Ackerman explains the complexity, folly, and error of America’s good intention, he clearly criticizes American leadership’s decision to invade Afghanistan. America’s intent is to dismantle al-Qaeda leadership and possibly capture bin-Laden. It seems the mistake is not about crushing al-Qaeda but in not understanding the culture in which al-Qaeda received support from Afghanistan’s Taliban.

Ackerman creates a story of an older brother that is fatally injured by a bomb blast and is taken to a hospital for treatment.

This is a frontline hospital in Afghanistan like that in Ackerman’s story.

The younger sibling, who had been cared for, and protected by his older brother, pleads with the hospital to save him. To be saved, because the injuries are severe, requires expensive long-term care which his younger brother cannot pay. A Pashtun visitor at the hospital offers to pay for the older brother’s treatment in return for the younger brother’s recruitment into his “army”. The younger brother appeals to a person who appears to be Pashtun, the same culture of the two brothers.

This Pashtun is actually a leader of an Afghanistan military group.

The Pashtun military leader assures the younger brother of his financial support for the older brother to receive the required treatment. The younger brother agrees. The younger brother’s name is Azize. As Ackerman’s story continues, one finds leaders in Afghanistan use America’s intervention only to reinforce their self-interest. Of course, self-interest is a universal human characteristic, but in war, its dimension becomes life and death.

Ackerman’s story reinforces Anand Gopal’s non-fiction account of “No Good Men Among the Living”.

As one continues listening to Ackerman’s book, one doubts the older brother is alive or that any support is provided by the recruitment leader. The recruiter simply uses the hospital as a tool to acquire and retain recruits from relatives grieving for lost or injured family members. The end of Ackerman’s story tells the tale.

This is a harsh story that reminds America of how risky and unwise it is to believe America knows best for what another culture has grown to believe.

Soldiers like Ackerman remind us of how hard it is to help other countries be the best they can be. It requires more than bravery. It requires understanding of another’s culture and a willingness to let go of one’s own preconceived notions.

CULTURAL INTEGRITY

Audio-book Review
 By Chet Yarbrough

Blog: awalkingdelight)
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Burning Down George Orwell’s House

By: Andrew Ervin

Narrated by: Donald Corren

Andrew Ervin (Author, Fictional debut.)

“Burning Down George Orwell’s House” seems a reification of John Ford’s “The Sports Writer”. Ervin’s main character, Ray Welter, is like Ford’s Frank Bascombe, but Welter is an alcoholic with a particular taste for aged whiskey.

Both Welter and Bascombe tend to look at women as sex objects, but Ervin characterizes women as equally capable of treating men as sex objects.

By the end of Andrew Ervin’s story, one realizes “Burning Down…” is not just about a man’s view of the world but about human nature and cultural difference. Ervin gives listeners a glimpse of Emily Fridlund’s “History of Wolves” by creating self-actualized women, one an adult, the other a teenager.

The island of Jura, aside from the location of George Orwell’s house, is known for its natural beauty, soaring mountains, and seasoned whiskey. Welter is an advertising executive with an obsession with Orwell who wrote about “newspeak” (a form of persuasion like advertising) and its influence in the world.

The story of culture is woven into “Burning Down George Orwell’s House” by Welter’s decision to leave America and spend several months on a Scottish Island where Orwell wrote “1984”.

Welter is at a crossroads in life. He has been a successful advertising executive but is soon to be divorced by his wife. He is unsure of what to do with his life. He chooses to escape to Jura to better understand the meaning of Orwell’s “1984” but finds a culture that is uniquely different from the life he lived in Chicago.

Welter chooses to let himself be seduced by a 17-year-old islander who is being raised by a violent father who gives her a black eye. The father tries to murder Welter. The young girl is a talented, head strong, graphic artist who is at the beginning of her adult life. She is unsure of what she should do with her life which seems entirely plausible for a 17-year-old. She is torn by her desire to be more than a young woman living her whole life on Jura or one who leaves Jura to see what else life has to offer.

There are many threads of life and culture in Jura that are similar but different than the American life Welter lived in Chicago. There is an underlying belief of Jura’s citizens that their culture is being destroyed by visiting foreigners and the ocean’s rising tides.

The Aisle of Jura’s culture is threatened by both foreign influence and its disappearance from the world by a rising sea.

Greta Thunberg – Swedish Environmental Activist who also happens to be a teenager.

Her father’s attempts to murder Welter based on two concerns. The father’s motive is a mixture of rage over the presumed seduction of his daughter and a wish to have his daughter remain in Jura for as long as he is alive. Jura’s culture is quite different from America’s. Welter decides to leave Jura but arranges for a full scholarship for the Jura teenager at his former wife’s university in Chicago.

Welter’s former employer plans to re-start an advertising business specializing in environmental preservation and wishes Welter to become a limited partner to manage the vaguely defined new business.

There are several transgressions and ironies that a listener will choose from Ervin’s story. The teenager decides to stay in Jura and not travel to Chicago despite her father’s bizarre physical abuse and murderous proclivity. Is there any justification for a 30- or 40-year-old man from Chicago to have sex with a 17-year-old girl? (Welter’s age is undisclosed.) Can Orwell’s “newspeak” help an advertising company make money while saving the environment? Are foreigners’ visits to other cultures a benefit or detriment to indigenous cultures? Is it in the best interest of humanity for all cultures to become less indigenous and more acculturated?

This is a well written story that resonates with life as it is rather than how life should be. Alcoholism and wanton sexual relations are two of many sources of human weakness and conflict in society; neither are likely to disappear, regardless of whether cultures remain distinct or unified.

The Anti-Christian

Audio-book Review  By Chet Yarbrough

 

Blog: awalkingdelight) Website: chetyarbrough.blog

 

The Four Books

By: Yan Lianke, Translated by Carlos Rojas

Narrated by: George Backman

Yan Lianke (Chinese author of novels and short stories based in Beijing. Received the Franz Kafka Prize in 2014. Winner of the Man Booker International Prize twice.)
“The Four Books” is a satire exposing the fallibility of belief in a Christian God. Yan Lianke is a Chinese author living in Beijing whose books and short stories are banned by the government.
Lianke’s book satirizes most religions and government leaders.
The main character in Lianke’s story is called “Author” who is charged with responsibility for two of “The Four Books”. Two books are titled “criminal records” and “secret reports” written by “Author” for a camp commandant to know who and what everyone is thinking and doing in a prison camp. The other two books are less clearly identified but there is the “Scholar’s” book and presumably, the Christian Bible. The main characters in Lianke’s book are the “Boy”, the “Scholar”, the “Musician”, and the “Author”.
The character named “Author” reports thoughts and actions of fellow re-education prisoners in return for special privileges. The “Boy” is the camp commandant. The “Scholar”, “Musician”, and “Author” are college educated prisoners, along with other city intellectuals, who are sent to re-education camps in the country. Their jobs are to farm the land and manufacture steel from black sand deposits in the country. The idea is to re-educate scholars on the importance of serving the economic advancement of their country with labor, rather than thought.
The setting of Lianke’s story is the Chinese famine during the “Great Leap Forward” which occurred between 1958 and 1962.
Neither the “Great Leap Forward” nor Mao are mentioned in Lianke’s book. Undoubtedly it is because of personal risk that such mention might have for Lianke. However, “The Four Books” universal appeal goes beyond Mao’s mistakes in China.
Most, if not all, religions and governments fail to provide an economic and social environment in which prosperity and peace can be equitably maintained.
Lianke chooses one period in China’s history as an example of religions’ and governments’ failure to peacefully guide or manage society. Undoubtedly, Lianke chooses China’s story because that is the culture he most intimately understands.
Lianke shows how religion and government ineptly handle human nature.
Whether one is rich, poor, formally educated, or uneducated–the masculine, feminine, neuter, and common person is motivated by self-interest. Religions and governments have tried to deal with human nature by preaching belief in something greater than the individual. Religions have threatened, cajoled, and forgiven society in a vain attempt to control human self-interest. Governments have done the same with similar mixed and failed results. “The Four Books” uses the history of the “Great Leap Forward” because human nature is at its worst in times of great upheaval.
What Lianke reveals is the reality of human nature when neither religion nor government forthrightly deals with human nature under stress. The philosophy of leadership in “The Four Books” is to mandate economic development at whatever cost society is compelled or willing to bear. The choice of China’s leadership is to turn all formally educated urban citizens into rural workers by moving them from whatever jobs they may have had to jobs needed by leadership to rapidly advance China’s economic growth. Little consideration is given to the self-interest of individuals by government leaders’ preaching “the good of the country”.
What Lianke’s story shows is that government uses the same tools as organized religion to advance institutional rather than the self-interests of its people.
Religion preaches heaven, like government preaches economic growth. Religion and government do not deal with realities of today but with a future to be realized. Human beings are viewed as means to an end rather than ends in themselves.
There is no supreme God or deity in Buddhist’ teaching.
Is it possible to serve society with a belief system that equitably treats individual self-interest? Lianke implies Christian religion, other religions, and government cannot offer a solution. However, Lianke implies Buddhism may be a solution. A Buddhist, in contrast to other religions or governments, seeks enlightenment in this world through an individual’s search for inner peace and wisdom. Lianke’s answer to individual self-interest is Buddhist belief in achievement of inner peace and wisdom.
The weakness in Lianke’s argument is that self-interest is an individual human characteristic. Self-interest is unlikely to be erased by Buddhism, Taoism, any religion, or government. Buddhist and Taoist beliefs do not ameliorate aberrant self-interests (most common in human beings) that deviate from those wishing and trying to seek peace and wisdom through Buddhism or Taoism. It may be that there are two types of self-interest, one hostile and the other enlightened. Of course, the weakness of the second is the same as the first. Can human nature, any religion, or government elicit enlightenment?
Self-interest can generate great economic wealth but when unregulated it diminishes peace and often leads to unwise choices and ends. History shows neither government, deistic religion, or contemplation of the “Way” moderates nor contains individual self-interest. A governing system of checks and balances may be a step in moderating and containing self-interest, but it (at best) is a work in progress.
Lianke shows in a famine, self-interest offers two choices. Either one gives up or fights for survival. There is no middle ground.
Self-interest in a famine leads some to prostitute themselves, murder their equals, inferiors or superiors, and become cannibalistic or some combination thereof. No widely accepted religion or government seems to have found a solution to equitably treat individuals’ self-interest. Lianke believes Buddhism may be an answer, but one wonders how an individual’s search for peace and wisdom will feed the hungry.

WHO ARE YOU

Audio-book Review
 By Chet Yarbrough

Blog: awalkingdelight)
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Build Your House Around My Body

By: Violet Kupersmith

Narrated by: Quyen Ngo

Violet Kupersmith (American Author, Taught English in the Mekong Delta on a Fulbright Program.)

This is the debut novel of Violet Kupersmith. “Build Your House Around My Body” is an interesting title that cleverly infers human life is built around women, not because of their role in birthing but because of their influence on the other half of humanity.

Kupersmith’s novel suggests the male half of humanity is more maleficent than beneficent. Women are characterized as diabolical in pursuit of revenge for their treatment as less equal human beings and sex objects of men.

Kupersmith’s story is complicated and surreal which may discourage many listeners. On the other hand, its history reminds one who may have visited Vietnam or Cambodia of Southeast Asia‘s different cultural history and mythology. Though animism and the supernatural are less present in America, Kupersmith implies they are ever-present phenomena in the lives of indigenous Vietnamese.

Animism and the supernatural are a distinct part of southeast Asian culture.

There are two main characters, but the most prominent character is Winnie, a woman of mixed southeast Asian and American parentage. She travels from America to Vietnam to become a teacher of English in an adult education class. She seems ill suited for a teacher’s job but perseveres and becomes the mistress of one of the teachers. Kupersmith’s story revolves around the disappearance of Winnie from a house in which she cohabits with this fellow teacher. The story begins with the mysterious disappearance of Winnie. Winnie becomes a vehicle of revenge through possession by a spirt who lives in the body of a dog.

With various journeys through time from the date of Winnie’s disappearance, a listener is given a history lesson on the iniquity of Vietnam’s foreign occupation.
French Rubber Plantation in Vietnam.

During France’s occupation of Vietnam, rubber plantations were formed by French colonists who employed Vietnamese laborers to harvest their crops. Kupersmith implies Vietnamese men and women who worked on these plantations were underpaid and abused by plantation owners.

Kupersmith implies the folly of foreign occupation of an indigenous people’s culture.

What foreign invaders often do not understand of countries they occupy is that occupiers are as likely doomed to failure as assimilation and success. Both occupied and occupier become victims of cultural ignorance. “Build Your House Around My Body” is a cultural tautology. One becomes who they are by the culture in which they live.

Kupersmith introduces soothsayers and spirits who can change their form, occupy other life forms, deform themselves, and find those who are lost while liberating or condemning those whom they choose.

Animist Celebrations in Modern Vietnam.

During Kupersmith’s explanation of colonial times, one is entertained and horrified by indigenous peoples’ belief in animist spirits who wreak havoc upon the world.

“Build Your House Around My Body” is bizarrely addictive. Winnies experience in Vietnam exposes her to poverty, sexual exploitation, and belief in a spirit world that influences, if not controls, all that happens in people’s lives. Reader/listeners of Kupersmith’s story find how potent animist and spirit-world’ belief can be while revealing the iniquity of sexual inequality.

HINDSIGHT (G.W.’S LEGACY)

Audio-book Review
 By Chet Yarbrough

Blog: awalkingdelight)
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Landfall (A Novel)

By: Thomas Mallon

Narrated by: Robert Petkoff

Thomas Mallon (Author, novelist, essayist, and critic.)

Thomas Mallon’s book is a fictionalized account of George W. Bush’s administration. Mallon cleverly includes a fictional love story that adds some drama to his story. What one should be wary of is Mallon’s political bias and how it might color the story.

In listening to a book of fiction that uses the names of the known, it is difficult to separate fact from fiction.

Fictionalizing history-making characters is particularly difficult when it is written about events of the near past. What helps is the knowledge that all history books are partly fictionalized by choice of an author’s facts. Revisionist history is why past Presidents have both risen and fallen in the eyes of historians and the public.

George W. Bush makes some bad decisions as a young man, but more importantly and significantly, as a two-term President.

The son of former President H. W. Bush comes across as a decent and flawed human being. America’s consequence from Iraq and Afghanistan invasions and George W.s response to Katrina show American government hubris and failure. Mallon’s story shows American’s fallibility as a democratic government. Both Republican and Democratic parties in America have made good and bad domestic and international decisions; some of which have been reversed, others not.

Mallon writes of the difficulty of working through America’s deadly mistakes in Iraq.

Mallon chooses to write a fictional account of the bad decisions made by President George W. Bush. Some of us have short memories but Mallon reminds listeners of the last four years of George W.’s Presidency. Some in Bush’s administration reluctantly suggest America must withdraw from the mess America created by removing Iraq’s autocratic and brutal dictator, Saddam Hussein. Some of George W.’s leaders were misled (or lied to themselves) about Iraq’s threat of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). No one in George W.’s administration manages to persuade policy makers that American nation-building in foreign cultures is a fool’s errand.  

Autocratic governments know little about what it means to be free, or at least free within the rule of law.

Mallon creates a story that implies there is a great deal of descension in the second term of George W.’s administration. This is particularly evident in the intellectual conflict between the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, and Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice. There is a growing recognition by leaders in the administration, that America could not re-build Iraq’s government. Rumsfeld may have suggested immediate withdrawal of American troops from Iraq with political spin that infers America’s job is done.  The President and Secretary of State Rice realize the Presidency and American resolve is tarnished by withdrawal, whether it is militarily or diplomatically accomplished. Mallon’s novel concludes G.W.’s legacy is the Iraq debacle and the mishandling of the Katrina disaster in Louisiana.

Katrina disaster in Louisiana

As time passes and history is rewritten, Mallon’s conclusions are likely to be repeated. Neither George W. Bush, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, nor Secretary Rice will be remembered as great leaders. It is not judgement about their patriotism or their desire to make America safer or better, but a consequence of political mistakes.

George W’s administration fails to understand nation-building is folly, and natural disasters are not about the dead but about quick and organized aid to survivors. Mallon’s book is a reminder of how difficult it is for any organization’s leader to become great in the eyes of history.

TO BE A WRITER

Audio-book Review
 By Chet Yarbrough

Blog: awalkingdelight)
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Transit

By: Rachel Cusk

Narrated by: Kate Reading

Rachel Cusk (British author, novelist.)

In “Transit”, Rachel Cusk offers a master class for people who wish to be writers. Cusk creates a picture of a writer’s life, i.e., the places they go, conversations they have, and work they do in writing a story. Cusk explains what it is like to be a writer. Whether writing about oneself, an incident, an acquaintance,  or an important “other”, the art of writing is in the details and how they are arranged to stimulate readers’ or listeners’ interest.

Cusk cleverly begins her story in her search to purchase a flat in London. A realtor tells her to find one in a good neighborhood that is underpriced because of its dilapidated condition.

The realtor advises a good neighborhood is where the greatest value is when purchasing a home. The idea is that reconstruction will increase value beyond cost of repair if the flat is in a good neighborhood. As a part time professor, Cusk’s heroine is in the business of reconstructing writers, like a homebuyer reconstructs a home.

The neighborhoods for writing are fiction and non-fiction. Cusks counsel to writers is to reconstruct their writing if a story is not up to its neighborhood’s standards. As any reader/listener knows, books have been published with both richly and poorly written stories.

Cusk describes a young woman writer who is divorced, has two young boys, lives in London and makes a living as a writer and adjunct professor for “wanabe” writers. Cusk takes reader/listeners on a journey to a writer’s book club meeting. Writers attend distant book club meetings to tell their stories and sell their books. In the telling at one of these meetings, one hears of admiration and love/hate relationships between authors. At the same time, one learns of the tediousness of travel from one book club to another while learning how writers think and talk about their books.

Cusk’s heroine talks to aspiring writers and what they wish to write about. In her story, a listener/reader finds what makes research and facts important in writing a book. Writing must put research and facts together in a way that makes a story interesting and relatable to its audience.

Research and details are important but putting words together to mean something to many reader/listeners is the difference between mediocrity and genius.

Cusk’s story may or may not be about herself, but “Transit” offers valuable insight to anyone who is interested in becoming a writer. Cusk’s heroine is both relatable and informative while telling a story through the lens of a writer’s lived life which, like all lives, is in “Transit”.

LIES AND TRUTH

Audio-book Review
 By Chet Yarbrough

Blog: awalkingdelight)
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Words of Radiance

By: Brandon Sanderson

Narrated by: Michael Kramer, Kate Reading

Brandon Sanderson (Author, fantasy and science fiction novelist, former BYU student majoring in biochemistry.)

“Words of Radiance” carries the same fantastical experience a reader/listener envisions when listening to “Eye of the World”. Brandon Sanderson’s “Words of Radiance” illustrates why he was chosen to finish Robert Jordan’s posthumous work. Sanderson’s book is long and may take many chapters for one to become engrossed in its story.

Brandon Sanderson finished Robert Jordan’s “Eye of the World” after Jordan’s death. “Eye of the World” is a story of imagination about the experience of a young boy in a fantasy world imagined by Jordan.

There are a great many characters in Sanderson’s story. The characters represent disparate cultures that have different societies that seem destined to compete until the end of time. Each culture is hierarchal with kings, armies, citizens, and slaves. A singular king believes all these cultures must come together for peace, and tranquility because a storm, an Armageddon like event, is coming. The goal of unity seems unlikely as the story develops. Interestingly, this king is far from perfect despite his prescient vision. He is drunk near the end of the story when all appears to be lost.

Characters in Sanderson’s story are not just kings but people who have supernatural abilities. One former prisoner in this world has those abilities which he is only beginning to understand. Sanderson adds a third principal character, a 17-year-old seer who is also only beginning to understand her powers.

Sanderson creates a white clothed antagonist with supernatural ability who is killing leaders of this fantasy world.

The most interesting innovation by Sanderson is the invention of “spren”; i.e., spren are “ideas” who accompany characters in his story. Spren show themselves as symbols, figures, or lights. They offer guidance to the characters they follow. Spren guidance comes from their ability to slyly spy, modify their form, unlock doors, and inform their companions. There are spren who accompany both sides of the pending battle for the future of the world. The spren recognize life is driven by lies and truth, concluding both can have ethical value. Ethical value comes from lies that mislead miscreants and truths that help the helpless.

God is dead in Sanderson’s story. How or why God dies is undisclosed. The only remainder of God’s existence is a spren (the idea of God) which chooses a hero to defeat the Armageddon that is coming. The spren’s choice of heroes and heroines manages to defeat the coming storm and offers hope for world unity in the future.

The devil is called Odium.

After the storm passes, God’s spren suggests if God can be killed, so can the devil. Odium’s possible death is “hope” for those remaining after the storm.

Loss of species are noted in Sanderson’s world because of overhunting and ignorance, a reminder of today’s culture with degrading water and land environments.

There are storms in Sanderson’s story that remind one of the cataclysmic age in which we live. Great winds, lightning, and flooding threaten nations.

At the end of Sanderson’s story, a listener recognizes this fantasy is a mythical representation of this world, i.e., good and bad leaders, poverty, environmental degradation, and ethnic inequality.

THE INTERNECINE RUSSIA/UKRAINIAN WAR

Sanderson leaves listeners with a laugh by resurrecting a character who is thought to be dead, i.e., not a God or warrior, but a seer. There remains some hope in Sanderson’s imagined world, but it is cloaked in hardship and toil.