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 Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays by Albert Camus (trans. Justin O'Brien)]

But when I realized this, that I’d be liberated if I knew that I had to die in the next few weeks, I suddenly understood what the heck Camus was talking about with his whole “Absurd Freedom” chapter. Now, I understood most of it before, but only in an intellectual sense. The absurd has a lot to do with facing the inevitability of your own death, an aspect that I usually ignored because it was a little bit confusing. But now it makes sense. By living with the absurd, by living with the knowledge that you will die and your life will not matter, you are liberated from the burden of living your life! You are freed from making plans for the future, freed from the desire to seek happiness, freed from the social expectations that tell you to move forward and onward and ahead with living. Instead, you are forced to remain in the present, anguished and uncertain, but freed nevertheless. Once you realize that you are not truly free, you are liberated from the burdens of exercising that freedom. Once you realize that you must die, you are liberated from the burdens of living life.

It’s awfully depressing and I don’t agree with Camus at all, but I finally realized what he was trying to say. So in a paradox worthy of Camus himself, I’m really happy about this depressing epiphany. Go figure.

[The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays by Albert Camus (trans. Justin O'Brien)]

So if any of you were waiting breathlessly to see how Camus would affirm life when one lives in the condition of the absurd, expect to be disappointed. Basically, he says, we would not confront the absurd if we were unaware or unconscious. Awareness is what perpetuates the absurd, this paradox between our need for unity and the chaotic uncertainty of the world. So if we are to cling to what we know, which is that we do not know, then we must keep on living to preserve the absurd, “through a constant awareness.” Suicide is not a legitimate course of action, because it eliminates our awareness and renounces the absurd.

A bit of a cop-out isn’t it?

He’s now talking about how this state of living with the absurd is a state of freedom, because one recognizes that one is not free and then is liberated from the burdens of bearing responsibility for one’s free will. Urgh. More paradoxes. This is actually not that much of a headache, however, because it’s been said before by many others, and all you need is an appropriate analogy to figure it out. Interestingly, Camus refers to those analogies. I’m growing incoherent, yes, but I doubt anyone’s following this anyway. He is trying to explore whether living with the absurd is a feasible act, right now, which I think he should have dealt with before coming to his cop-out solution.

[The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays by Albert Camus (trans. Justin O'Brien)]

Camus has now discussed how the phenomenologists end up escaping the absurd in a different yet essentially the same kind of “leap of faith” that the “theistic” existentialists did. Instead of deifying the irrational and turning to religion, they turn to Reason (with the capital R, yes) to provide meaning to the universe. Yet the absurd is a confrontation with the meaninglessness of life so it again denies the absurd like Kierkegaard and Chestov. I don’t really understand phenomenology that well, so I’m just assuming Camus is correct. He says that the phenomenologists, especially Husserl, see consciousness as a direction of attention and believe that all experiences of all objects are equally important. Sounds good so far? They don’t deny the fragmented nature of our perceptions and do not assert the “unifying” principle of reason. We cannot explain the universe; we can only describe. Still pretty good, right? And then somehow, this all becomes understanding the “essence” of an object through being conscious of it. What? Je me suis perdue! Again! Anyway, if anyone can provide me with a concise explanation of phenomenology, I’ll be very, very grateful.

[The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays by Albert Camus (trans. Justin O'Brien)]

I am still in the middle of The Myth of Sisyphus, by Camus, or rather I returned to the book after a week of avoiding it. The subject matter is probably way over my head. After reading for three pages without really understanding what was going on, a sentence finally clued me into what the last section was about. You see, Camus is describing in languid analogies the paradoxical state of expecting a rational world and living in an utterly irrational reality, in the context of the uncertainty of all empirical experiences. He then goes on for quite some time about how this describes the state of the absurd, the “desert” as he calls it, and what is one is forced to accept and not accept about it. Except what he is really doing is exploring every nook and crevice of the same paradox, and I didn’t even realize that he was describing a paradox until now! Oy vey! I mean, I was trying to understand why he was saying one thing and then something else which completely contradicted it! He could have simply said, explicitly, “I am discussing a paradox,” instead of letting me suffer. You probably won’t understand why I had no clue for three pages, unless you’ve been reading the same translation I have. And unless you’re as dense as I am. But seriously, I don’t think I’m that dumb. I was paying attention! I think Camus was being too obscure! Okay, I’ll stop ranting.

But now it’s getting pretty interesting. He is saying that all the existentialists before his time chose to escape the absurd through religion, by deifying and surrendering to the utter irrationality of the universe, but in the same moment denying and rejecting the absurd, because the absurdity of the irrational world does not exist if we no longer struggle to see it rationally. And BTW, irrationality is not simply refusing to argue logically or leaping to unfounded conclusions. Irrationality is the inherent inability for us to know anything about ourselves or the world around us. In that sense, it is the complete opposite of the empiricists who claimed that we can only know through experience, because it says that we cannot know, but it is also the consequence, the child as it were, of empiricism. Isn’t that weird? Come to think of it, that was what Camus was discussing in the third section, even though I didn’t get it at the time. Anyway, M—, if you’re reading this, this means that the irrationality we’re discussing here is not your type of irrationality, but a confrontation with the possibility of nihilism which you completely refuse to acknowledge. Or at least I hope you refuse to acknowledge it.

So according to Camus, the previous existentialists were caught up in the paradoxical state of escaping the absurd by embracing it. He says that this is unacceptable, because he can only be certain of one thing and that is the absurd. (If you look at that statement closely, it’s another paradox: certainty of only uncertainty.) He must seek a new way to live with the absurd without ending up denying it and without ceasing to struggle against it. Yeah, I know, you must be thinking, “Eh?” How on earth is that possible? Well, one of the options is suicide, which we know only because Camus opened up by considering the “problem of suicide,” as he calls it. But because in the introduction, he says that he ultimately concludes that suicide is not legitimate after all, we’ll just have to wait and see what the other option is.

Anyway, I didn’t realize that he was talking in paradoxes in order to discuss the paradox of the absurd until now.

One thing came to mind while I was reading on the subway. All those existentialists prior to Camus, Sartre, and the rest of their generation are indeed the “theistic” existentialists, as my mother’s philosophy professor told her in college. And Camus, Sartre, Beauvoir and the rest of them, whoever they were, are considered the “atheistic” existentialists, precisely because of what Camus says in The Myth of Sisyphus: they are unable to accept religion as a way to live with the absurd because they see it as an escape and a denial of the absurd even though it is also an acceptance. Kierkegaard with his leaps of faith into the irrational, religious stage of existence is what Camus refuses to accept. I was wondering whether historians of philosophy recognized this split between the “theistic” and “atheistic” existentialism simply because Camus pointed it out first or whether because it is obvious.

The Lions of Al-Rassan, by Guy Gavriel Kay: About two years ago, Sai compiled a beautiful, haunting fan soundtrack for this book, and to this day, it’s probably the second most-played playlist on my iPod. I’d been meaning to pick up this book ever since, although I wasn’t sure what to expect since I had mixed feelings about the Fionavar Tapestry (Kay’s four-volume, classic high fantasy series), which I thought had excellent prose, interesting plot points, and really boring characters.

Well, I finally got around to reading The Lions of Al-Rassan, after buying a used copy at a local bookstore, and I can attest that it most definitely does not have boring characters. Granted, the main female protagonist, Jehane, isn’t particularly compelling (I mostly ignored her except for the moments when her know-it-all attitude grated on my nerves), but the story isn’t really about Jehane at all. She just happens to be the principal witness, so to speak, of the momentous meeting between Ammar ibn Khairan (”the man who killed the last khalif of Al-Rassan”) and Rodrigo Belmonte (”Scourge of Al-Rassan”). Although they come from opposing kingdoms and belong to different faiths, their friendship becomes the stuff of legends and ultimately, of tragedy. I kept going back and reading the scenes about the two of them together.

“Are you in love with this man?” she’d asked her husband once in Fezana that winter—more than half jealous, if truth were told.

“I suppose I am, in a way,” Rodrigo had replied after a moment. “Isn’t it odd?”

The line seems a little trivial out of context, but what does it mean, after all, to be in love? Ammar and Rodrigo are both great men, but they discover, probably for the first time, their only true equal in each other. Kay describes them as fighting together as fluidly as if they were two bodies controlled by one mind. How bewildering, how amazing to realize that you are not alone but have a counterpart in another human being…and how tragic to know that this one person—perhaps the only person—capable of knowing you entirely must inevitably end up as your enemy. For this book is tragic and ended up breaking my heart as surely as the music originally did. Perhaps it’s the theme common to so many great fantasy novels: the ending of an age, the passing of the ephemeral present into history. This book is about the fall of Al-Rassan, which will never live again except in memory, and I think it’s that awareness that makes Ammar’s poetry so compelling. Another layer of tragedy right there: after all, one could say that the decline of Al-Rassan began with Ammar’s assassination of the khalif and continued with his assassination of Almalik.

What Ammar says to Rodrigo who asks him to join the Jaddites in their Reconquest of the peninsula:

“What would I have you do? What you cannot do, I suppose. Go home. Breed horses, raise your sons, love your wife. [...] Teach your people to…understand a garden, the reason for a fountain, music.”

Special Topics in Calamity Physics, by Marisha Pessl: My college roommate recommended this book to me because she knew I was fond of intertextual references and allusions in my fiction. (I usually like clever books, even when they are too clever.) Anyway, the New York Times review made the character sound a little like Nancy Drew (perky, too smart for her own good, crime-solving, with gang of less-clever sidekicks who willingly tag along—please note that I’ve never actually read Nancy Drew and am stereotyping). But I started reading the book anyway since I generally trust my roommate’s judgment, and much to my surprise, Blue van Meer (the book is written from her first-person perspective) is actually very morose and is prone to overextended analogies and theorizing. A voice that I could very much sympathize with. The textual references were not nearly as impressive as I’d been led to believe. Every chapter is titled after a literary work, and Blue obsessively uses parenthetical citations for nearly any assertion she presents (very good academic habit, in my opinion), but the actual references themselves are mostly incidental and not necessary to understanding the book itself. They’re more to convey character than actual thematic meaning, i.e. not meant to be intimidating.

As much as I liked Blue herself, I found myself getting increasingly irritated with her in the latter half of the book. Why on earth did she continue hanging out with the Bluebloods when it was clear that she didn’t fit in with them and that they didn’t like her? The fascination of Hannah Schneider is one excuse, but Blue spends so much time analyzing how fake Hannah was, for all her fascinating ways, so I kept wondering why did Blue continue even when she knew better. Actually, that’s my problem with the whole book: Blue knew better, admitted she knew better, and yet still wound up in a situation that could only make her unhappy. (Was it just hindsight that made it seem that she should have known better? Was it adolescence?) In any case, the Bluebloods were intolerable. As for the explanation that Blue arrives at…well, it felt too overblown to be believable. Oh, it holds together very well because Pessl carefully sets up clues throughout the book to make the Nightwatchmen conspiracy theory watertight. But the tone of the book was so much about, well, ordinary high school life with an idiosyncratic twist on all the usual conventions, so the whole political radicalism kind of hit me from left field. Perhaps it was meant to leave that impression; maybe you weren’t supposed to completely believe Blue. But I closed the book feeling really dissatisfied, although I’d quite enjoyed the first half of the book, especially when it focused on her relationship with her father. Anyway, that general dissatisfaction also may be why I completely failed to sympathize with Blue over the clear psychological trauma that she must have received on discovering Hannah’s corpse.

(Oh, and Blue might be attending Harvard, but Pessl clearly has never gone to school there. Wish she bothered to do a little more research on that aspect of the book, since she clearly did a lot of research on everything else.)

Criticisms aside, I still think it’s an impressive first novel, and I liked Blue, even if I got frustrated by her. Which in itself is probably a testament to how much the novel engaged me.

Three Kingdoms, vol 1, by Luo Guanzhong (trans. Moss Roberts): Almost six years ago, I read the abridged one-volume translation by Moss Roberts and thought it was the most amazing epic I’d ever read. I finally got around to purchasing the full four-volume translation, by the same translator, and finished the first volume this summer. Many of the chapters that had been skipped in the abridged version were in this first volume, it seems, since I remember the scene where Cao Cao and Liu Bei drink tea together in the capital (Cao Cao makes his little speech about the heroes of the age) happening fairly “quickly” after Liu Bei gains renown in helping quell the Yellow Turban rebellion, while here, there are chapters and chapters of constant political and military maneuvering, as alliances are made and broken every ten pages. Hard to keep track of, but fun to read about. I was surprised to find how often Liu Bei runs away or pragmatically switches sides because the author of Three Kingdoms is supposed to be biased in favor of Shu but despite this bias, Liu Bei comes off as no more virtuous than Cao Cao. I mean, the author does insert moralizing statements on why Liu Bei is good and Cao Cao isn’t, but when it comes to actual actions, the bias is not apparent at all. Actually, more of the moralizing statements (and awkward justifications for why Liu Bei is a paragon of all Confucian virtues) come from later commentators, who are mentioned in the footnotes, rather than from the author himself. The footnotes are worth reading; Moss Roberts often includes some of the more elaborate interpretations from well-known commentaries, which I found very entertaining.

Zhuge Liang doesn’t appear in this volume at all; he’s introduced early on in the next volume. But despite his absence, there’s a lot of excitement in this first volume. Since the three kingdoms haven’t been established yet, there’s a lot of backstabbing going on. Plus, it’s nice to get more backstory for all of the characters; I didn’t pay that much attention to Wu when reading the abridged volume (being too enamored of Zhuge Liang, of course), so this time, I’m doing a more careful job of keeping track of all the characters.

The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco (trans. William Weaver): I received this book as a graduation gift from the post-doc who supervised my senior thesis. It’s been on my reading list for a while, especially after I read and enjoyed Foucault’s Pendulum. Eco won me over right away by drawing parallels between his protagonist, the Franciscan monk and ex-inquisitor, William of Baskerville, and Sherlock Holmes, what with the physical description, the style of deductive reasoning, and the tendency to slip into periods of lassitude while intaking certain herbs. And of course, Adso, the first-person narrator, sounds rather like Watson, not only in name but in their admiration of their respective detective companions. The solution to the crimes was a little disappointing, although I do think as a nemesis, Jorge is similar to Moriarty in that he only really dirties his own hands at the very end. That final confrontation with both William and Jorge loathing each other as much as they admired each other rather reminded me of the Holmes-Moriarty dynamic. I was surprised though because I had suspected Jorge at times through the novel and had discarded the possibility as being too obvious. In any case, The Name of the Rose isn’t a very satisfying mystery, but it’s still a brilliant book. I liked the intentional anachronistic moments—William’s justification of democracy through theological arguments, the “quotations” in Adso’s writing that would of course only be apparent to a modern reader—and I also thought Eco was very clever in the whole layout of the library. I managed to get through the untranslated Latin without too much trouble as well, although I hope I didn’t miss anything essential in some of the longer passages. I was surprised to discover how much it had in common with Foucault’s Pendulum: in fact, I would say that it is even more “metafictional” than Foucault’s Pendulum, being after all, about books. I could also identify with William, even in his less strictly Holmesian aspect: in the end, for me, the central question of the book was whether it was possible to be both a person of faith and a rationalist…and whether it was even possible to be just one without the other, as paradoxical as that seems. William’s belief in the importance of making knowledge accessible, his desperation to save the forbidden book and the rest of the library (to the point of allowing Jorge to die), and most of all, his crisis of faith after the library has burned down. The whole story tied together well, what with all the philosophical discussions about laughter and comedy, the masses versus the educated elite, heresy as the other side of holy mysticism, the theological question of poverty…I suppose I found the theological arguments in the book easier to read through because of my own Catholic background, although I still found some of the political in-fighting between the orders and the Pope a little difficult to get through.

A tangent: William Weaver seems to be responsible for translating both Eco and Calvino. I wonder if he’s some sort of master translator for contemporary Italian authors.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by J.K. Rowling: I don’t consider Rowling to be a great author, which may be why I was able to enjoy this last book so much without feeling any disappointment. People have been complaining about the epilogue, the treatment of Slytherins, and various “out-of-character” scenes, but I was actually surprised by how well-written the rest of the book was. I liked the quest for the Horcruxes, the temptation of the Deathly Hallows, Dumbledore’s backstory, and most of all, the way Harry ended up defeating Voldemort. I probably have a much higher tolerance for derivative adventure fantasy than I do for derivative boarding-school stories, but I think she’s also improved in her writing. The pacing was a little rushed sometimes, but at no point did it stall, which I thought was a relief. The only real complaint I have is that I completely missed the fact that Lupin and Tonks were dead until Harry saw Lupin’s spirit when using the Resurrection Stone. Surely it’s not asking too much to devote more than a sentence to a supporting character’s death. Also, Neville is awesome.

Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace: Wallace is one of those authors who walk perilously close to the line of being a little too clever, which is probably why he gets slapped with the label of being pretentious from those who are fed up with postmodernist (post-postmodernist?) literature. Of course, since Wallace was the first postmodern author I’ve ever read, I think he’s quite brilliant, so I didn’t exactly bring an objective perspective to this novel: I went in prepared to like the book. I also rather like Wallace’s stylistic flourishes (excesses?)—his love of footnotes, his verbose and overly technical jargon, the way his narrative streams-of-consciousness skip and start and circle back (much the way minds actually think)—and authorial voice. But my bias aside, I really do think that Wallace shouldn’t be dismissed as pretentious because he (1) is clearly self-aware of exactly what he’s doing to a microscopic level, (2) has a brilliant and absurd sense of humor, and (3) writes emotion sincerely, despite knowing that it isn’t fashionable anymore to be genuinely emotional.

Infinite Jest is strangely epic in scope, although its subject matter is really (yet again) the spectrum of dysfunctional and neurotic individuals in modern America. It’s told chronologically out-of-order and jumps around from place to place and from character to character, although it seems to focus primarily on Hal Incandenza (junior tennis champion and lexical prodigy) and Don Gately (recovering narcotics addict). Both live in Enfield, which is located on the outskirts of Boston, and having just spent the last four years in Cambridge, the whole setting felt disturbingly familiar. The characters are often walking through neighborhoods that I’ve physically visited; I’m so used to simply imagining places in books that it felt almost surreal to be reading about places I actually knew. What’s interesting is that Wallace wrote the book ten years ago and set it in the post-millennial future, which means that the book is roughly taking place around now. The future he imagined is clearly meant to be unrealistic and ridiculous—what with NATO being dismantled and replaced with an Organization of North American Nations (O.N.A.N.), whole U.S. Northeast being forcefully given to Canada to serve as a waste-dumping ground, cable and broadcast TV being replaced by a new system of customizable mass entertainment monopolized by a company called InterLace—but it’s a little disconcerting to realize that some parts ring surprisingly true, including anti-American terrorism and a rather idiotic president who may or may not be a lame duck. (Well at least Bush isn’t a former lounge singer.) Of course, there are some things that have changed in the past ten years that Wallace wasn’t able to predict, such as the degree to which the Internet has taken over our lives.

I’m a little disconcerted by the ending. We never find out what happens chronologically after the first scene of the novel, and Hal was the character I felt the most invested in reading about. Probably because I could relate to the whole experience of attending a high-pressure school. I keep wondering if the ending is supposed to leave you feeling at a loss—it really seems to just cut off, as if someone flipped a switch on the television—or if Wallace just ran out of steam after a thousand pages. Despite how fragmented the narrative is, the novel is incredibly coherent (even the most seemingly inconsequential details turn up again, if you are an attentive reader, which is why I recommend reading the novel in a continuous stretch if possible). And as silly as it sounds, I really did find the novel meaningful, what it said (or what I thought it said) about freedom and compulsion, pleasure versus happiness, addictions. There are accounts of abuse and dysfunctional family relations, not to mention a thousand ways in which people ruin their lives and reach new points of psychological and physical degradation, all of which I find to be repulsive and depressing in most other contemporary American novels but not this one. I never felt mired, so to speak, in the “filth” of the book, perhaps because Wallace treats all of his characters, even the unsympathetic ones, with a sort of honesty that is kinder than compassion. It’s not a cheerful book but still a funny one. I mean, who wouldn’t laugh at the idea of a militant Quebec separatist group called the Wheelchair Assassins?

Bridget Jones’s Diary, by Helen Fielding: I’ve seen Bridget Jones referenced obliquely so many times—in magazine articles, in the Very Secret Diaries, in passing conversations—that reading the actual book was somewhat of an anticlimax. I suppose it also didn’t help that I had watched the movie with Renee Zellweger and Colin Firth before I ever read the book. It was a light-hearted and enjoyable read but somehow unexciting. I suppose the problem is that I don’t think—or write—like Bridget at all, so the book’s appeal to me was more a matter of anthropological curiosity than any sense of identification.

The Club Dumas, by Arturo Pérez-Reverte (trans. Sonia Soto): Sometimes a book is so perfectly fitted to one’s tastes that discovering it feels almost like an astrological convergence, an incredible coincidence and yet also an act of fate. Excuse my melodrama. I came across this book while combing the fiction shelves of the small bookstore at LAX, where I had been waiting several hours for my flight back to Boston. (I arrived at the airport at half past two in the afternoon, and the flight was scheduled for nine that evening.) I wonder if I would have ever come across the book otherwise and am thankful that I did. How could there be a book more custom-tailored to my guilty pleasures? The combination of Dumas and The Three Musketeers (a book that I had near memorized when I was ten), neurotic bibliophiles and book-forgers, an intriguing mystery with a cynical sleuth, occult rituals, a suspenseful plot, an unreliable and probably egomaniacal narrator…what more could I ask for? In fact, the neurotic bibliophilia alone would have been enough to appeal to me; in the end, this book for me was a book about the inseparable dangers and pleasures of reading. I am still not sure what exactly the girl was supposed to be—I suspect Pérez-Reverte may have been a little too ambitious in his storytelling since that plotline was resolved rather sloppily—but I adored the major plot twist in the book and the fanaticism of the characters. To love a book is to let it possess you.

The Charterhouse of Parma, by Stendhal (trans. Richard Howard): There are two elements to The Charterhouse of Parma that make it such an enjoyable book. First, of course, is the romance. Not only romance in the sense of the forbidden love affair that is the crux of the story, but also the romance of youthful and impetuous idealism, a rosy-colored vision of the world where men are brave and gallant, love is always true, and heroes and heroines remain picturesque even in tragedy. Think Italy. Think Napoleon. The other element of course, which makes this novel something more than a romance, is Stendhal’s French skepticism and deft ironic commentary on the story. Against Fabrizio’s dreams of valiant battle, you have the absurd reality of getting lost in the middle of the battle and being taken for an enemy by the very soldiers he came to aid. Side by side with Fabrizio’s amorous adventures in Parma, you have Count Mosca and Duchess Sanseverina maneuvering for for political dominance at the Prince’s court, an exercise that revolves around the careful flattery of the monarch’s ego. Stendhal is not contemptuous but he does write condescendingly of the Italians, who are quick to emotion and far too caught up in their romanticism. (The French of course are too cynical and sophisticated to embarrass themselves in such a fashion.) His narrative voice is essential to this novel; ironically, it makes Fabrizio and Clelia’s love story seem more poignant and pure.

The Grand Tour, or The Purloined Coronation Regalia, by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer: I think the letter format in Sorcery and Cecelia was more engaging than the diary entries and testimony in this sequel. But it was charming to see the four interacting. There is less prickliness and almost a sort of sweetness between Kate and Thomas…Cecelia however retains a matter-of-fact pragmatism. I read a review of the first book that criticized the two authors for giving their narrators such similar voices, and I have to acknowledge that the two are much more distinguishable in the sequel than they were before. Kate is more obviously insecure, while Cecelia is confident about everything. I must admit that I had no idea which author had written which character until I read this book.

The Devil in Music, by Kate Ross: Maybe it’s because I read this last book a month later than the first three, or perhaps it’s a function of the setting, but The Devil in Music seems to stand apart from the rest of the series. We are given more to the story and yet not enough, we hear more about Julian’s past than ever before, there are politics and music involved, and most of all, Julian is in Italy, not England. I’m glad I read The Charterhouse of Parma before this book because I had a better sense for the passions of the place. Julian falls in love more intensely than he does in previous novels (which may be why the emotion seems more convincing). The novel is more interesting for the music (and the Carbonaro conspiracies) than the mystery itself. All the new characters are vivid and fascinating, and I was particularly moved by the story of Valeriano, the castrato singer.

Conrad’s Fate, by Diana Wynne Jones: Chrestomanci is such an insufferable teenager, but he is still my favorite part of this book. I don’t know whether it was because I was reading the text on-screen rather than in print, but I found the pacing more uneven than usual. The usual untangling of the plot as all is revealed at the end felt more rushed than ever, and truth be told, I wasn’t all that interested by Conrad as a character. He was a bit nebulous, I thought. I wouldn’t quite go so far as to say the book was unsatisfying, but it felt like a permutation of previous storylines, which I found odd because DWJ likes to try out new things. The real highlight of the book was seeing Christopher before he actually became Chrestomanci and also getting a glimpse of his relationship with Millie. Prior to this book, I wouldn’t have had the confidence to attempt Chrestomanci fanfiction, but now I have a better handle on his character.

Cut to the Quick, by Kate Ross: The first of the Julian Kestrel mysteries featuring a Regency dandy as the detective. When you hear such a premise, the sort of protagonist brought to mind is a flippant, well-dressed wit whose trivial façade hides a sharp intellect. In a word, rather like Peter Wimsey minus perhaps the appearance of foolishness—in any case, someone who puts on an act of superficiality as befitting a dandy. I am not the first to hold such incorrect assumptions before making the acquaintance of Mr. Kestrel, arbiter of fashion and amateur detective, but I soon revised my impressions. Julian, to put it simply, is the epitome of cool. His very way of life can be summed up as “It’s not what one wears but how one wears it.” (I’m certain a quote to that effect occurs in the book.) I was surprised to find him such a sober character, and the resulting mystery is hardly the humorous novel of manners I expected, but rather dark and unsettling. More Brontë than Austen, with all the suppressed passion, buried family secrets, and declining noble houses (as Gothic as one can get without resorting to supernaturalism). Julian remains calm, collected and rational throughout the story but nonetheless he is rattled and provoked by events (no Holmesian detachment here).

Four Ways to Forgiveness, by Ursula K. Le Guin: Four interconnected novellas in the Hainish universe, describing the planet Werel and its former slave colony, Yeowe, which recently gained independence. Both planets hope to join the ranks of the Ekumen but are reluctant to accept the social and cultural changes sweeping both societies, in the wake of Yeowe declaring independence from Werel. After years of warfare attempting to keep control of its colony planet, Werel itself faces an internal emancipation movement and a breakdown in its internal caste system. Of course, Le Guin does not examine these societies from a bird’s-eye view; instead we are given a picture of these two planets piece by piece through the stories of the individuals living in this time of tumultuous change.

I confess, the reason why it’s taken me so long to update this blog is because I have been trying and trying for many months to write down my reaction to this book. That it made an impact is certain, although I can’t say that the book provoked any major change in my way of thinking. However, these four novellas are some of the most compelling stories I’ve read by Le Guin (I would rank it with The Dispossessed, The Left Hand of Darkness and the short story “Solitude”). Le Guin chooses outsiders for her perspective: outsiders because they are marginalized by society or outsiders because they are strangers. There are many social issues explored in new and thought-provoking ways, from the institution of slavery itself to the position of women in an oppressed society to the tension between tradition and progress. Slavery forms the major theme, and Le Guin creates an interesting twist on the issue of race and skin color. The Werelians all have blue-toned skin (a pigmentation developed in response to their sun’s spectrum), and the slaveowners have dark, blue-black skin while the slaves are pale, almost ashen. I appreciate these details of worldbuilding in Le Guin’s writing; she is as memorable to me for the cultures she constructs as she is for her characters. Indeed, an easy connection to draw is the slave-based societies of the Confederate South and the aftermath of the Civil War, but in fact Yeowe reminds me also of African countries, struggling to build a nation post-independence, and Werel’s caste system reminds me at times of Hindu India and at times of even more ancient civilizations. But I think drawing such comparisons is useless and reductionist. These novellas are not commenting on the history of one specific nation; they are describing something fundamentally human. Le Guin is describing the journey, both metaphorical and literal, of an individual in a changing society and culture: the struggle to define yourself as a person when others are so willing to reduce you to anything less. It is not a paean to individualism but rather a testament to human integrity. There, it took me far too long to figure out how to say that, but now that I have, it’s almost a relief.

A Broken Vessel, by Kate Ross: In retrospect, I think this mystery was my least favorite of the series. I liked Sally well enough but didn’t understand why she was so fascinating to Julian (I don’t know if he quite understood that himself). More to the point, the crime itself was dreadfully unpleasant, especially the abduction of young girls and women. That isn’t to say that crime is ever pleasant to read about, but the theme of degradation ran throughout the novel, from the reform house for “fallen” women to the horridness of the crime itself. So many of the incidental characters, not to mention the main culprit himself, repulsed me, and Julian didn’t play enough of a role to erase the bad flavor left in my mouth. But it does Kate Ross credit, since it’s a much more realistic depiction of Regency society than the drawing rooms of Almack’s alone.

Whom the Gods Love, by Kate Ross: Quite possibly the best constructed mystery in the series. Through Julian, we get to see the dead man from the perspectives of the people affected by him: first as the man he appeared to be, then more gradually, the man he really was underneath. We are left with vivid portraits not only of Alexander Falkland but of all the other characters as well, with their fears and passions, at both their best and their worst. I think this book is the only one in the series where Julian doesn’t fall in love with a woman. Of course, my favorite part of the book was Verity Clare, better than the most audacious of Shakespearean crossdressing heroines. The scene where Julian meets the Clares’ grandfather was also a rare insight into Julian’s past; he is such a self-contained, unreadable person that he makes it difficult for anyone, including the reader, to get a handle on him. Julian is someone who takes excruciating care not to expose his vulnerabilities in public or private. It was nice, I thought, to see him drop his defenses, even for a second.

Foucault’s Pendulum, by Umberto Eco (trans. William Weaver): I don’t understand at all how people can tolerate the insipid prose of The Da Vinci Code when they have a sheer masterpiece like Foucault’s Pendulum to fill all their occult conspiracy-theorizing needs. Actually, mentioning the two books in the same paragraph seems a sin, since the two operate on completely different levels. I once heard that reading Foucault’s Pendulum was a prerequisite for any would-be modern literate, but it was not so much the cleverness or the erudition that impressed me as the sheer epic impact of the book. The wittiness (I couldn’t stop laughing at the wry humor in some parts of the book, especially in the descriptions of some of the “Isis Unveiled” patrons), the growing uncertainty and suspense (the book begins on a foreboding note, that a joke gone too far would become sinister), the love, the tragedy, the mystery in the oldest sense of the word. The book covers an exhaustive spread of occult-related subjects, from the Templars and Rosicrucians to South American voodoo rituals. Not to mention speculation on nearly any other imaginable topic as well, like computer programming and pinball machines. I love literature when it thinks in such an exuberant fashion, drawing wild yet convincing connections, where everything is a metaphor, in both a meaningless and meaningful way. The book is not just about faith and skepticism, but about Europe in the post-war era, about falling in love and being in love, about dissatisfaction, about identity, about making sense of a nonsensical world. Foucault’s Pendulum was one of those books that washed over me like a tidal wave, such was its colossal force.

Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino (trans. William Weaver): I finally settled down to reading Calvino, after seeing him referenced just about everywhere. I was about to choose If on a winter’s night a traveler but changed my mind at the last instant, because who could resist the poetry in this image: Kublai Khan and Marco Polo, one listening for the first time of the cities in his own empire that the other has traversed. I was reminded of Schrödinger’s Cat, multiplied manifold: an infinite range of possible cities…Are they one city? Many cities? Something of the tone reminded me of Kahlil Gibran—the imagery, the traveling, the distant setting. Indeed, a book to read over and over again, in excerpts and in whole, on insomniac nights or long subway rides.