I hadn’t known much about the history of Catholicism in Japan, and the translator’s introduction proved to be helpful in providing some background information. Missionaries, mostly from Portugal, had achieved considerable success in establishing themselves in Japan and had built churches and seminaries with the approval of local daimyo before Japan went through political upheavals that changed the attitude of authorities to Western influence and culture. Foreign priests were banned from Japan, and any Catholics caught were tortured until they denied their faith. Silence thus tells the story of a young Portuguese priest, named Rodrigues, who secretly enters Japan in order to find out what happened to his former teacher, Ferreira, a missionary to Japan who has apostatized. (Ferreira is a real historical figure, while Rodrigues is not.)

As a Korean Catholic, I’m familiar with stories of martyrdom: I’ve heard all my life about the forty Korean martyrs who were executed by the government during the Yi Chosun dynasty, not to mention read my share of hagiographies of early Christian saints under the Roman Empire who died in pots of boiling water or by arrows or on spiked wheels. But the description of tortures in Silence seemed particularly alien and cruel: being tied to wooden posts in the middle of the sea or hung upside down in a pit filled with excrement with holes cut behind the ears to let the blood drain. The goal was not to kill them for the crime of being Christian but rather force them to deny their faith in front of their families and neighbors.

Rodrigues enters Japan with a fellow priest, Garrpe, and spends some time ministering to the Christian villagees he finds, while hiding from authorities. He is, however, eventually betrayed by the guide he hired, Kichijiro, whom he (arrogantly) considers as his own personal Judas. Rodrigues sees the Japanese villagers who helped hide him undergo torture and eventually die, while clinging steadfastly to their faith; he however is spared any suffering. He begins to doubt his faith, wondering and even raging at God’s silence while Christians die ingloriously without any sign from the universe that their martyrdom has been acknowledged. Only in the moment of his own apostasy, as he is about to step on an image of Christ, does he hear God’s voice again: “Trample! Trample! It is to be trampled on by you that I am here.”

Rodrigues’ anguish at the silence of God reminded me of some of the post-Holocaust literature that also asked how could a benevolent God let such atrocities happen. Of course, I don’t equate the persecution of Catholics in Japan with the Nazi attempt at systematic genocide, and perhaps that was why I felt impatient at times with Rodrigues’ self-absorption: what right did he have to be angry at God when he hadn’t suffered nearly as much as those who did undergo torture? (Then again, what right do I have to judge Rodrigues, when I myself have never experienced what he has?) I think though that Endo intends Rodrigues to come across as a priest who has always been somewhat complacent in his faith, who has never been so challenged until his trip to Japan. Rodrigues anticipates hardship and expects to at least be given the chance at a glorious martyrdom: it is all the more dramatic when he apostatizes without even being tortured. It strikes a deliberate contrast coming after his patronizing albeit compassionate attitude towards the Japanese villagers, as well as his wholesale condemnation and judgment of Kichijiro. Rodrigues is human and imperfect and weak—weaker, perhaps, than Kichijiro. The novel moves from a first-person voice in letters to a limited third-person narrating from Rodrigues’ point-of-view to a series of documents recording what happened to Rodrigues after his apostasy. Is the outward progression in perspective meant to mirror Rodrigues’ own progression in self-awareness about himself and his faith? Or is it intended to detach the reader from Rodrigues’ character, giving us space to draw our own conclusions as Rodrigues is forced to grapple with more and more contradictions?

On a final note, Endo questions whether Christianity can truly exist in Japan, whether the Japanese can really be Christian. It seems to be an extremely personal question (Endo himself is a Japanese Catholic) to which he has no answer. Ferreira tells Rodrigues:

This country is a swamp. In time you will come to see that for yourself. This country is a more terrible swamp than you can imagine. Whenever you plant a sapling in this swamp the roots begin to rot; the leaves grow yellow and wither. And we have planted the sapling of Christianity in this swamp. [...] But in the churches we built throughout this country the Japanese were not praying to the Christian God. They twisted God to their own way of thinking in a way we can never imagine. If you call that God [...] No. That is not God. It is like a butterfly caught in a spider’s web. At first it is certainly a butterfly, but the next day only the externals, the wings and the trunk, are those of a butterfly; it has lost its true reality and has become a skeleton. In Japan our God is just like that butterfly caught in the spider’s web: only the exterior form of God remains, but it has already become a skeleton.

I’m not certain why Endo believes that there is a fundamental incompatibility between being Japanese and being Christian—or for that matter, what that incompatibility consists of—but it does become clear that Rodrigues drastically redefines his image of Christ in his moment of apostasy. Can he still claim to be a priest, a Catholic, a Christian? I don’t know, but I can relate to him more in that moment than in any previous part of the book because I too find it easier to believe in the Christ who suffered than the Christ who saved us.

The volume also included Beckett’s Act Without Words, which indeed has no dialogue. The whole pantomime seems rather like a post-existentialist satire of Camus’ assertion that the only philosophical question of any importance is the question of suicide. The lone actor, in confronting the futility of his actions, tries to commit suicide but even this option is denied him. Camus at least gives us the will to choose suicide if we so wished, but Beckett seems to be saying that we aren’t even permitted that escape. The actor ends up on the floor, paralyzed and unresponsive. What I would dub the modern nightmare.

The Immortal Game: A History of Chess, by David Shenk: The book calls itself a history of chess, but it doesn’t simply relate the development of the board game alone but frames it in the context of why people have obsessed over this game for centuries. Chess as metaphor, chess as cultural phenomenon, chess as a mirror of sociopolitical and intellectual history (e.g. the rise of “courtly love” under Eleanor of Aquitaine, the French Enlightenment and subsequent revolutions), chess as rational system. The book describes myths and legends associated with chess (the caliph who did not evacuate his burning palace because he was engrossed in a game of chess), as well as famous games (the “Immortal Game” of the title describes a match between Anderssen and Kieseritzky in the nineteenth century) and grandmasters (the personal history of Bobby Fischer). It also talks about the evolution of game rules and strategy over time–I was fascinated by the four historical “stages” in chess style–and the appearance of chess in literature and computer science. All in all, an excellently written book. Shenk likes to dwell on the implications of chess as a game representing the power of free will (versus games of chance, like backgammon) and by extension, the triumph of civilization and rational thought, which he freely admits carries a personal meaning for him in the wake of 9/11. I’m not sure if the more memoirist parts of the book strengthen or weaken it (after all, he also talks about how the obsession with chess can be all-consuming and how chess geniuses lose their sanity), but I did like reading about his own attempts to improve his chess game.

Vita Brevis: A Letter to Saint Augustine, by Jostein Gaarder (trans. Anne Born): In the introduction, Gaarder purports to have found and translated a letter written to Augustine from the “concubine” whom he mentions in his Confessions. I actually took him at his word at first, but if you read the book, it becomes clear that the letter is a fictional vehicle in which Gaarder can criticize Augustine and his influence on Christian theology. Despite Gaarder’s conceit of including “footnotes” citing the original Latin phrases, it’s clear that Floria, the supposed letter writer, sounds like Gaarder (or at least like Gaarder’s usual English translator) and has surprisingly modern ideas that coincide nicely with Western liberal opinions largely held today. I’m no classics expert, but I doubt that a letter originally written in Latin would ever “translate” into the style that Floria adopts. I suppose I’m annoyed because if Gaarder was going to make the pretense of having found a letter to Augustine as some sort of metafictional device, he could have done a much better job of it. It would have been brilliant if he executed the writing well enough to really make the reader believe his framing story of buying the manuscript at a book fair in Argentina. (Choice of country a nod to Borges?) As it is, all it becomes is a tiresome rant on Augustine’s extreme Platonism. Floria basically says (over and over again, while quoting extensively from Confessions) that believing in a Creator God who loved his creation means not denying the physical world and the facts of our physical existence; in fact, it is as much a sin to hate the world as it is to love it too well. Chesterton made the same point in his biography of Aquinas much more eloquently and with much more subtlety. Also, like most poor arguments, the whole book started making me sympathize with Augustine. I mean, I think Augustine’s conception of religion as divorcing oneself completely from the material world as much as possible is a little ridiculous, but I also think that he was genuinely trying, in his own fashion, to devote himself completely to God. And honestly, do we really need to blame all the excesses and mistakes of the Church on Augustine? As Chesterton points out, there are historical reasons for why Augustine’s brand of Platonic Christianity had such great appeal. Then again, I suppose we don’t like to accept that theology can have relativity without being untrue. (Oh, the poststructuralist paradox.)

The Jesus Sutras: Rediscovering the Lost Scrolls of Taoist Christianity, by Martin Palmer: The subject matter of the book is quite fascinating since it traces the history of early Christianity in China centuries before any Jesuit missions. It describes a Christian tradition that developed separately in the Middle East, India and central Asia and is hence not continuous with the history of Catholic church (and subsequent Protestant denominations) in the West. It’s unfortunate though that the writing wasn’t very compelling and used phrases like “the Church of the East”, which implied an orientalist attitude that grated on my nerves. I think the book was also extremely disorganized: Palmer kept jumping from his personal account of discovering the ruins of an indigenous Christian monastery in Western China, to recounting the history of how Christianity entered China and merged with Taoist and Buddhist doctrines, to summarizing and translating the “Jesus Sutras” (Chinese texts that refer to Christian scripture and liturgy) without providing an overarching flow to his argument. I wish he had chosen a more academic tone and stripped the personal commentary from his book. I also wish he didn’t analyze the Sutras prior to providing the translated text; it seems to be dodgy academic practice to try to bias the mind of your reader with a particular interpretation of a text (given that he can’t exactly assume that his reader is already familiar with the texts in question). Mostly, what I found most irritating was that he built up my expectations with his claims that the Sutras were an important contribution to spiritual literature. Granted, I have no idea how the original Chinese reads, but the English translation sounded awkward and uninspiring to me. Also, I didn’t find the blending of Christian theology with Buddhist and Taoist (more Buddhist than Taoist, in my opinion, despite the title) philosophy to be all that radical. It’s easy to find common points among all religious doctrines; the question is at which point do you end up generalizing so much that you end up becoming nondenominational. If Palmer had seriously addressed whether or not this “adulteration” of Christian theology can still be called Christian, I would have liked the book a lot more. (Are you still Christian if you diminish the historical existence of Christ and turn him into an abstract Savior? Conversely, are you still Christian if you emphasize the humanity of Christ and overlook his divinity? I don’t know the answer. To be honest, I don’t think I’m capable of grasping the dual nature of Christ; instead I slip into the fallacy of believing in two different Christs, one human and one divine.)

I should add that of course, one could say that Catholicism (and the Protestant sects which it spawned) is the adulterated form–and I think to a certain extent, that is Palmer’s contention. The Christian message has become distorted and politicized in “the West”, and hence we ought to look to “the East” to revive Christian spirituality and return to a more original form. But I find that whole attitude aggravating: Buddhism and Taoism have been equally subject to distortion, and I would presume a “Taoist Christianity” would be no different. No matter where you go, religion has been a tool for power.

Mike at Wrykyn, by P.G. Wodehouse: The prequel to Mike and Psmith, although I don’t know if it can rightly be called a prequel since I believe the two books were originally published together as Mike. The book talks about Mike’s first year at Wrykyn as he makes his mark through his superlative cricket skills, while juggling relations with his brother, an overbearing head of house, his roommate (an upperclassman known for getting into trouble) and the Wrykyn cricket captain. Schoolboy pranks included, although not as many as I expected, since the book is in fact mostly about cricket. I wish I knew more about cricket but the book is still enjoyable without any knowledge of the sport.

Leave It to Psmith, by P.G. Wodehouse: Switched from reading about Jeeves and Wooster to reading about Psmith, who is absurdly and delightfully verbose. He is able to get away with anything by simply never losing his composure; in the stickiest situation, he always makes everyone else feel that he has the upper hand. That’s the charm of a thoroughly arrogant character, of course. I suppose the trick is that he never irritates the reader with his arrogance, although other characters certainly find it infuriating. I liked that Wodehouse also finally created a strong female character, who is assertive and independent, without including any criticisms that come off as subtly sexist. (Female characters that are as spunky as Eve in the Jeeves and Wooster books come off as irresponsibly mischievous or domineering or scheming to entrap Bertie in marriage. Along the same lines, the weepy poetic female character in this story turned out to be a thief, whereas in a Jeeves and Wooster book, she would simply have remained soppy all the way through.) I also hadn’t realized that Freddie Threepwood was such an idiot; I read a later Blandings short story where he becomes much more competent.

The Deer and the Cauldron, vol. 1, by Louis Cha (trans. John Minford): Louis Cha is the English pseudonym of the popular wu xia novelist Jin Yong. The Deer and the Cauldron is one of his works that is available in English. The translation is most definitely for people who don’t know anything about the Chinese language, and considering this audience, I’d have to say that the translator did a good job. Of course, one might be annoyed by the fact that several characters’ names are translated literally (for example, Xiaobao becomes Trinket) but I think that it does convey a nuance that English readers might otherwise miss. Also, the translator takes pains to explain every possible reference, even at the cost of interrupting the story, and there’s a very comprehensive glossary at the beginning that explains nearly everything else. The story itself is very humorous, detailing the adventures of Trinket, a young rascal who was born in a brothel and (at the moment) ends up masquerading as a eunuch in the palace. The setting is early Qing dynasty, when the Han Chinese, especially in the South, were still feeling resentful and rebellious toward their Manchu conquerors. (Trinket hails from such a Southern province.) In the Brotherhood of River and Lake, the underworld in which so many wu xia stories take place, the Triad Society (or more accurately the Society of Heaven and Earth) are among many who conspire to overthrow the Manchus and restore the Ming. Trinket makes for an unexpected hero, although well within the Chinese storytelling tradition (I suppose one could compare him to the monkey king in Journey to the West?), and he’s hilariously foulmouthed, tactless and yet somehow compelling. I hesitate to draw any larger conclusions at the moment, since there are two more volumes to the work, but it’s definitely a lot of fun to read.

Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox, by G.K. Chesterton: In a sense, this book is not simply a hagiography of Thomas Aquinas, but rather Chesterton’s reaction to “modernism”: his explanation of why he turns to Catholicism to find answers that modern philosophy cannot provide. Very gently done of course because Chesterton never quite preaches at the reader; instead he presents his opinions in a delightfully subversive way, overturning the usual stereotypes about Christian religion and Catholicism in particular. One of his points, which struck me as particularly important, is that Christianity is essentially a religion that celebrates life. It is easy to forget this fact considering tendencies within the Church to emphasize asceticism and original sin, but Chesterton argues that asceticism is in many ways a natural emotional impulse, which the structure and dogma of the Church holds in check. He writes that the Church’s traditionalism is what prevents it from embracing extremes, that keeps it professing the innate goodness of all creation. Faith is complex and shifting, but religion provides a structure in which it can remain healthy instead of stagnant. Chesterton’s perspective is clearly far from conventional, but I felt that he articulated what it means to be Catholic.

Chesterton also does an excellent job, by the way, of putting Aquinas in a historical context: the renewal taking place within the Church, the rise of new monastic orders (the Dominican and Franciscan friars), the Manichaean heresy, Albertus Magnus, the revival of Greek classics via the Muslims in the East, Aristotelianism and Church theology. I appreciated the originality of his interpretations—he really has a way of turning one’s view of history topsy-turvy—although I will say that Chesterton has a tendency to generalize in order to fit things into a clear pattern (dialectic?—although he himself would deny that he poses any dialectics). He makes an interesting comparison between Buddhism and Christianity, saying that the two are similar precisely because their philosophies are exact complements: they describe the same contours so to speak but are nonoverlapping. In other words, where Buddhism ends with Self, Christianity posits a Creator, although that sounds a bit too glib. Not exactly a groundbreaking insight in itself, since the grandmothers at my church say essentially the same thing (our parish, being Korean-American, has a unique relationship with Buddhist tradition), but nonetheless meaningful. I don’t quite agree with the way Chesterton draws sweeping conclusions about the East—particularly since I’m Asian myself—but other than that, I must say that his conception of spirituality is very much my own. I really do recommend the book, if only to get a better understanding of theology. It’s very easy to read one or two books, or even worse, listen to one or two people, and believe you know what Christianity is about, but I find that everyone complicates the issue with their own personal psychologies (and no one less than Catholics themselves) and forgets the simplicity of the message underneath. Chesterton returns to that simplicity and explains the exterior complications with remarkable lucidity. His explanation of Augustine, or rather Augustinianism and its influence on Church theology, was eye-opening for me.

I find it very difficult to discuss religion directly—it is, after all, intensely personal, not to mention difficult to verbalize—but I think the following quote explains best my own reason for theism:

“Things change because they are not complete; but their reality can only be explained as part of something that is complete. It is God.”

The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde: I read the sequel Lost in a Good Book first, so I had the disadvantage of already knowing, in a loose sense, what was going to happen in this book. This may have biased my reaction to it, of course. I think I enjoyed the sequel more, although I’m not sure if that’s because Fforde’s writing has improved since his first novel, because I dislike Jane Eyre more than Great Expectations or because Fforde’s cleverness can only last for the duration of a book and a half before growing tiresome. The uncharitable part of me would say it’s the last. I do appreciate the whole setup with all the details of this alternate world from the obsession with literature to the not-so-secret tyranny of the Goliath Corporation, and I didn’t even mind the worst of the puns, but at a certain point, I felt that Fforde was just throwing clever idea after idea at me without much substance to back it up. Frankly, his writing at its best is only average. There were a few moments when I was quite appalled at how awful the dialogue was and wondered what sort of editor would let him get away with that. Also, the characters are amusing as flat caricatures but there is absolutely no development whatsoever. One might ask, is there supposed to be, but when Acheron Hades utterly fails to come across as particularly evil other than Fforde’s insistence that he is, the story falls flat. I do acknowledge that Fforde is parodying certain literary stereotypes, but in Acheron’s case, he failed to make it amusing. Thursday also doesn’t work as a character for the simple reason that she isn’t one person, but ten. She keeps changing her personality to suit the situation—hardened veteran at one point, rejected lover at another—but she becomes completely amorphous as a result. Again, I suspect that this lack of effective character development is at least partly intentional, but I’m still left with the impression that Thursday is a badly executed Mary Sue that takes itself a little too seriously to be funny. Oh, I adore all of Fforde’s ideas, and I’ll freely admit that he’s clever beyond belief, but there’s still something missing. I can’t remember if Lost in a Good Book managed to acquire that something or not, but nonetheless I’ve lost all desire to track down the sequels.