The Emigrants - W.G. Sebald

Paul's aversion to the Church of Rome was far more than a mere question of principle. though; he genuinely had a horror of God's vicars adn the mothball smell they gave off. He not only did not attend church on Sundays, but purposely left town, going as far as he could into the mountains, where he no longer heard the bells. If the weather was not good he would spend his Sunday mornings together with Colo the cobbler, who was a philosopher and a downright atheist who took the Lord's day, if he was not playing chess with Paul, as the occasion to work on pamphlets and tracts against the one True Church. Once (I now remember) I witnessed a moment when Paul's aversion to hypocrisy of any description won an incontestable victory over the forbearance with which he generally endured the intellectual infirmities of the world. In the class above me there was a pupil by the name of Ewald Riese who had fallen completely under the Catechist's influence and displayed a degree of overdone piety- it would not be unfair to say, ostentatiously- quite incredible in a ten-year-0ld. ....

Who am I to disagree with Susan Sontag who called this book a masterpiece? I concur, wholeheartedly. Like other Sebald books, this one is about places and spaces. He describes realities that are magically dreamlike. Included in this book, as in his others, are unusual photographs that seem to have come out of an old trunk. The photographs interspersed throughout the text add immensely to the journey Sebald takes us on. Reading Sebald is like wandering into a secret room that you don't want to leave.

The Emigrants covers four displaced people in its four sections. They have all fled a horrible past to live unique lives. Together the tell a compelling story of the human spirit exploring areas most often left unexplored. This may be my favorite Sebald book and I love them all.

Leavings - Wendell Berry

The Shining Ones

While the land suffers, automobiles thrive,
shining as they glide by the dying towns,
the empty fields bare in winter,
the deserted farmhouses, obstacles merely
to an ideal trajectory from everywhere to anywhere.

This is a wonderful book with a common theme for Berry- the environment. His poetry is simple, yet powerful. He connects with nature and is able to convey his love for the natural world in poems full of emotion. Many of the poems in this collection call attention to the great harm we humans are inflicting on our planet. They are both sad and disturbing while calling attention to the beauty and wonder. Worth reading and re-reading.

Questionnaire
1. How much poison are you willing
to eat for the success of the free
market and global trade? Please
name your preferred poisons.

Forbidden City - Trina Robbins

The 1940s was a boom time. During the war years, people thronged to the Chinese nightclubs. They came to forget the war for just a few hours, for the beautiful showgirls, for dance teams like Toy and Wing or the Tai Sings, for romantic singers like Larry King, "The Chinese Frank Sinatra" and Frances Chun "The Chinese Frances Langford." Movie stars from Hollywood like Bing Crosbie, Boris Karloff, Ronald Reagan, and Jane Wyman rode the trains up from Hollywood to participate in war bond drives, visited the nightclubs, and mingled with the entertainers. GIs on their way overseas, attracted by promises of exotic entertainment, filled the clubs. Many were from small Southern towns and had never before seen an Asian. They didn't know where they were being sent, or if they would come back, and they spent their money as if there was no tomorrow.

Asian entertainers, too, thronged to the clubs--and like Filipino Tony Wing or Japanese Dorothy Toy, born Takahashi, they were not always Chinese. Teenage girls whose traditional parents forbade them to dance, ran away from home to perform on the stage. They came from Oregon and Hawaii, from as close as Stockton, California, and as far as Hong Kong, and they converged in San Francisco's Chinatown.

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This book documents the Golden Era of Chinese nightclubs in San Francisco which existed from the 1930s into the early 1960s. The pictures, which are abundant, are great. The text, other than a short introduction, is entirely direct quotes from persons involved in this unique setting. Many of the tales are very interesting, however, it would be a much better book if the author had taken time to weave the accounts into an historical account rather than depend solely on first-person recollections. I enjoyed the book with its fascinating glimpse into a uniquely American historical anomaly.

The Stranger - Albert Camus

For the first time in a long time I thought about Maman. I felt as if I understood why at the end of her life she had taken a 'fiance,' why she had played at beginning again. Even there, in that home where lives were fading out, evening was a kind of wistful respite. So close to death, Maman must have felt free then and ready to live it all again. Nobody, nobody had the right to cry over her. And I felt ready to live again too. As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself - so like a brother, really - I felt that I had been happy and that I had been happy again.

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A timeless classic, this is the most well-read book of Camus. Written in 1946 it reads like a modern text. The stranger in this story is a man detached from the life around him. He lives detached in his own world, intelligent but uncaring of what surrounds him. Existential philosophy is defined by the central figure, although Camus referred to it as expousing the absurb. This short novel is extremely dense while still being easy to read and follow. It is an amazing piece of writing in that it gives the reader so much in so few pages. Classic themes that continue to resonate leave the reader thinking about this book for a long time after finishing it. I now understand why this book seems to be on everyone's must read list. Read it if you haven't already.

Heart of a Dog - Mikhail Bulgakov

I am handsome. Perhaps I'm really a dog prince, living incognito, mused the dog as he watched the shaggy, coffee-coloured dog with the smug expression strolling about in the mirrored distance. I wouldn't be surprised if my grandmother didn't have an affair with a Labrador. Now that I look at my muzzle, I see there's a white patch on it. I wonder how it got there. Phillip Philipovich is a man of great taste- he wouldn't just pick up any stray mongrel.

Written in 1925, this short novel is a sharp-witted, humorous attack on Russia after the Russian revolution of 1917. A science experiment goes awry in the home lab of an educated doctor at odds with the proletarians. The author has received much posthumous acclaim. His style is creative and crisply written. He is able to create a funny book with dark themes. His political comments on totalitarianism often ring true today. A very entertaining read from another great Russian writer.

Marcovaldo - Italo Calvino

Cold has a thousand shapes and a thousand ways of moving in the world: on the sea it gallops like a troop of horses, on the countryside it falls like a swarm of locusts, in the cities like a knife-blade it slashes the streets and penetrates the chinks of unheated houses. In Marcovaldo's house that evening they had burned the last kindling, and the family, all bundled in overcoats, was watching the embers fade in the stove, and the little clouds rise from their own mouths at every breath. They had stopped talking; the little clouds spoke for them: the wife emitted great long ones like sighs, the children puffed them out like assorted soap-bubbles, and Marcovaldo blew them upwards in jerks, like flashes of genius that promptly vanish.

This is a very amusing collection of very short stories that create a short novel. The stories all involve a rural man moved into an industrial area of Italy after the second world war. He is a dreamer and finds simple pleasures in the city, mostly through fanciful dreams and poorly prepared actions. Calvino makes the tales engaging and fun as the sketches quickly become more fantasy than reality. The simple man is bewildered by his city life and longs for the simple pleasures found in nature. I can't imagine anyone not taking pleasure in reading these delightful stories. Calvino has done a great job of bringing together a cohesive group of stories that combine to tell a larger tale. The writing is wonderful as it is moves quickly and brings the reader to instant involvement in Marcovaldo's quirky life.

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea - Yukio Mishima

I could have been a man sailing away forever. He had been fed up with all of it, glutted, and yet now, slowly, he was awakening again to the immensity of what he had abandoned.

The dark passions of the tides, the shriek of a tidal wave, the avalanching break of surf upon a shoal...an unknown glory merged in death and in a woman, glory to fashion of his destiny something special, something rare. At twenty he had been passionately certain: in the depths of the world's darkness was a point of light which had provided for him alone and would draw near someday to irradiate him and no other.

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A very compact writing style allows this short novel to cover an overwhelming abundance of ideas, emotions, and themes. Mishima writes as an objective third party narrator with three main characters- a woman, her young son, and a sailor. The book centered on Japanese culture, but is universal in its themes. The sea plays an important, largely as a metaphor for a more adventurous life. The sailor must decide between life on land with a woman he loves and the sea which draws him. This book is very disturbing as it details discontent of teenage boys and the dark places that can lead. Sexy, terrifying, wistful, hopeful, intriguing, and filled with tales of adventure, relationships between lovers, fathers and sons, mothers and sons, and coming of age-- this book packs as much into a hundred plus pages as anything I have read. This book has been called a masterpiece by many and rightfully so.

Summertime - J.M. Coetzee

Mr. Vincent, to you John Coetzee is a great writer and a hero, I accept that, why else would you be here, why else would you be writing this book? To me, on the other hand - pardon me for saying this, but he is dead, so I cannot hurt his feelings - to me he is nothing. He is nothing, was nothing, just an irritation, an embarrassment. He was nothing and his words were nothing. I can see you are cross because I make him look like a fool. Nevertheless, to me he really was a fool.

As for his letters, writing letters to a woman does not prove you love her. This man was not in love with me, he was in love with some idea of me, some fantasy of a Latin mistress that he made up in his own mind. I wish, in stead of me, he had found some other writer, some other fantasist, to fall in love with. Then the two of them could have been happy, making love all day to their ideas of each other.

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This is a thoroughly enjoyable and wildly clever memoir. The story about the author assumes he is dead and has left behind some notebooks. A young author attempting to write a biography of Coetzee interviews persons found in the notebooks. Not only is the premise great, the writing is as well. The persons interviewed have differing takes on the Coetzee and present unique and largely unflattering glimpses into their interactions with the author. The interviewees are unconnected with each other, but the tales taken as a whole combine to present a more clear picture of the man. Each one left me more fascinated with the complexity and unassuming nature of the author. Without a doubt, this ranks as one of my favorite books. Clever, fun, and masterfully written.