Author: Robert A. Parker

Robert A. Parker, a retired writer and editor, currently writes the blog, A Literary Cavalcade, that offers reviews of 20th and 21st century fiction. His past reviews, written over six decades, have been published in six volumes, also called A Literary Cavalcade. His commentaries on cultural subjects have appeared in America, The Critic, Sign, Communication Arts, Americas, Vuelta, and other publications. He has designed, edited, and written 20 volumes that summarize the Parker family’s literary and photographic careers.

The Double, by Jose Saramago

Saramago remains an intriguing and distinctive author. He is distinctive because of his style, even in translation, a style in which his paragraphs are pages long, with much in each paragraph being an exchange of dialogue between two characters. And yet one is seldom confused about who is talking, primarily because even when the dialogue is separated only by commas, the responding dialogue always begins with a capital letter. And even more, because the succeeding dialogue is a true response—as the perspective, the angle of view, changes.

It is a unique style, and one wonders what prompted it originally. Surely it was not that a new paragraph as each person speaks would require more space and therefore more paper to be bought by the publisher. In any event, his style is unlike that of any other author I know. And yet it is a pleasure to read. It is also a challenge, but one reward is the pleasure in knowing one is following the dialogue. Another pleasure is in certain exchanges, such as with the main character’s own conscience. And still another, I must admit, stems from occasional humorous remarks by the author, as well as his directly addressing the reader, suggesting what fools these mortals of his might be.

But what about the story being told in this style in this 2002 work? One senses that for each of his novels, Saramago tries to identify a human situation, and then stretch it to a logical but extreme depth that reveals something of human nature or human society. He looks at a normal situation, and then asks, “what if…?” In this novel, however, I feel that he has stretched his template too far.

The hero, Tertuliano Maximo Alfonso, a bored high school history teacher, rents, for diversion, a recommended movie. Tertuliano then wakes in the middle of the night, discovers his movie being replayed on his VCR, and becomes aware of a scene he had missed, in which a minor actor in a hotel desk scene is his exact duplicate, his double. It is a moment of surrealism to introduce a surrealistic possibility. But what follows is on a naturalistic level, such as Tertuliano’s convoluted search for the actor who plays the hotel clerk, whose real name turns out to be Antonio Claro; his fear to tell anyone, even his mother and his girl friend Maria da Paz, that such a twin exists; and then, after long indecision, his interaction with, first, the actor’s wife and then with the actor himself. And from there, the author stretches subsequent events step by step, almost to the breaking point.

Indeed, the climax became for me the breaking point. Even early on, I sensed the author was playing with his audience, as he doubled up the complexity of Tertuliano’s situation. But the real breaking point was not the teacher debating with himself: how will he handle the situation? Nor his decision not to tell his girl friend or his mother of this duplicate. And not when the two men communicate, first by phone, then by mail. It was the attempted double twist of the ending. Because it revealed the author was not exploring in this novel the ramifications of more significant shifts in what humans take for granted, such as that we shall die or that we shall not lose our sight. It was because he was exploring a personal situation, a subject less profound and less significant than the premises of his earlier novels.

I might also note that while the two characters are exact physical duplicates, they are completely different inside. The actor is more confident, more outgoing, while the teacher is withdrawn and depressed. And this difference is not deftly explored. It would seem to offer a source of irony that is not taken advantage of. Perhaps John Banville in the New York Times is close to the truth, when he says the two doubles are not created in depth, which results in the reader being more interested in the situation than in the characters themselves and what happens to them.

I should acknowledge that the Boston Globe review calls this work “a wonderfully twisted meditation on identity and individuality.” And that description, within limits, is justified. On the other hand, I also felt Saramago did not probe deeply enough into Tertuliano’s psychological reaction to his situation. Our hero seemed more concerned about his relationship to his girlfriend and mother than in how he should confront himself and the world.

I should also note that Richard Eder in the Times says that this is one of Saramago’s two or three best novels. Not because of the situation, however, but because of the way the author handles it. Meaning the give and take, the back and forth among the characters. For me, however, the give and take involves merely the structure, not the heart of the situation, the heart of the novel. Which is: how is Tertuliano affected inside? Perhaps his final decision, the sudden trickery by this man slow on the uptake, indicates a change, but for me it is a change that reflects more the author’s handling of the situation than anything coming from within the teacher himself.

I was speculating, in fact, that, given the modesty of the situation, the author would come up with a surprise ending to lend his novel a greater impact. Perhaps, I thought, the two characters would swap lives, which might also include a bit of irony. Well, you might say I ended up half right, but the outcome is developed more naturalistically. And is also achieved by introducing sudden death, which was a surprise but not a convincing one. But perhaps Saramago was not convinced either, for he adds on an extra twist, and I believe an unnecessary one. Irony was certainly intended there, but it also was unconvincing, indeed, coming out of left field. Unless, but I don’t think so, it was intended to mirror the lives of actors, such as Antonio Claro, who take on many roles.

I shall certainly be interested in reading more of Saramago’s work. Whether or not he is a Communist or an atheist, he knows how to explore, with originality, the idiosyncrasies produced by nature or by the logical distortions of human nature. He is one of his kind. And, come to think of it, perhaps the complexity of his style helps the reader to become more deeply immersed in the bizarre complexity of his situations. (December, 2016)

Nemesis, by Jo Nesbo

The popularity of this Norwegian mystery writer has been growing, and I was curious to learn what it was all about. I can now understand that popularity, although this early 2002 work did not impress me that much with its story—a prime reason being that the complicated events were difficult to follow. Why was this? One reason is that the characters were not clearly delineated, neither the policemen nor the suspects, villains, and victims. Nor did their interactions help distinguish themselves from one other. But what did impress me was the texture of the writing, the setting of the scenes, and the constant action moving ahead.

The novel begins as a story of two crimes, that of a bank robbery and a murder and that of a death that suggests suicide but may be murder. The bank robbery that opens the book results in the death of a woman teller, and the suspicion that the killer and the victim knew each other. Meanwhile, a young woman is found shot to death, with a gun in the wrong hand. She is a former girlfriend of Nesbo’s series detective, Harry Hole. He had spent the previous night with her but cannot remember what happened.

The result is a series of complicated developments that are difficult to follow, not least because the author keeps shifting his focus: from one crime to the other and from one suspicious activity to another. But also, as I said, because the characters serve more the functions of the plot than come alive on the page. And their shifting motivations are complicated as well. They involve love affairs, jealousy, rage, revenge, the rivalry of brothers, and gypsy culture.

We follow the story mainly through Harry Hole’s efforts to clear himself from suspicion of murder. He duels with a fellow cop who wants to pin the murder on him, negotiates with a gypsy prisoner to find the girl’s actual killer, and receives teasing emails from the girl’s presumed murderer, who intensifies his own sense of guilt. The result is a complexity that keeps the reader off-balance, which promotes the book’s intrigue but can be confusing, as Harry shifts from one concern to another, and from one crime to another.

For a long while, it is not clear which crime is intended to be dominant. The bank robbery and murder that begins the tale, or the girl’s murder that implicates Harry. More time is spent with the latter, which hits closer to Harry’s home, but the former has international implications that prompt a visit to Brazil. While the solutions never come together, their themes, their motivations, do in many ways. There is brotherly conflict, there is betrayal in love, and there is authorial misdirection. Indeed, the solution to the girl’s death, while intended as a big surprise, is for me too much of a twist that betrays the author’s hand. I was unprepared, and therefore somewhat reluctant to accept it.

As Marilyn Stasio writes in the Times: “Nesbo falls back on coincidence and some other questionable devices. The problem isn’t that he fails to tie up all his story lines, it’s that he does it so carefully and neatly that the plot machinery is revealed for what it is— machinery.” Perhaps the novel’s length of around 500 pages has also been necessary to develop this complicated machinery. And so winding it down somewhat succinctly at the end lends a sense of arbitrariness.

Nemesis is the Greek god of justice and revenge. Thus, the title, for each major death is motivated by revenge. But one senses the author has backed into this theme, or at least the title. As if to make the execution fit the crime. But while these solutions reflect a psychological depth, they do not rise out of character depth. They seem to have been pasted in by the author to fit the facts.

And yet, there is enough depth here, enough intriguing plotting, enough Norwegian atmosphere, enough interesting series characters to prompt interest in more of Nesbo. As a series hero, Harry Hole offers distinct, if familiar, possibilities. He is moody, rebellious and hot-headed, tends to drink heavily, and likes to act alone; but he is also one whom other policemen respect, and whose superiors also accept, because of his incisive detective skills.

Among the interesting police characters are Beate Lonn, a new female recruit who seems innocent in the ways of the world, but who can remember faces and whose interaction with Harry offers possibilities; and Inspector Waaler, who dislikes Harry, and is out to pin a murder on him. The other police officials, however, such as Halvorson, Moller, Ivarsson, and Weber are mainly supernumeries who serve a purpose rather than exist as real characters. As is psychologist Stale Aune, whose discussions with Harry serve primarily to give psychological depth and psychological possibilities to the actions of the more suspicious characters.

Yes, I will read more of Nesbo. But I would hope he explores more deeply Harry’s relationships with his fellow policemen. That he avoids fictional complexity in favor of psychological or political complexity. And that he sharpens his focus by digging into the heart of a single criminal activity. Whereupon, the Oslo setting and/or the darker Norwegian atmosphere and culture will also become a plus. (November, 2016)

The Book of Strange New Things, by Michael Faber

This 2014 work is a strange novel, and a fascinating one. It offers a challenge to one’s imagination and a challenge to one’s faith. It is the story of a Christian pastor, Peter Leigh, and his religious wife, Bea. They meet in a hospital, after he was injured in a fall while trying to escape after a robbery. She is his nurse. Love develops between them, as she motivates him to forego his criminal past and turn to religion, just as she had. And theirs becomes a love that will sustain them throughout this book.

But their religious faith raises a major question. For it is challenged by the separate worlds they will encounter, separate worlds that they choose together, certain that their love will survive their separation and their mutual belief that Peter will succeed in bringing the word of God to a distant land.

Indeed, to a far distant land, to the planet Oasis, in a galaxy far away. This planet is being explored and cultivated by an enigmatic corporation called USIC. And here is where author Faber challenges one’s imagination. For while this is serious fiction, it is also science fiction. Peter encounters a world of endless vistas without vegetation, with long days and nights, with unique rain squalls, and with an unusual white flower that is converted by the mysterious, robed Oasans, into food and materials.

Peter is sent to this world by USIC to replace a former missionary. He is to bring the message of Christ to the local population that is already fervently Christian. These Oasans welcome Peter and clamor for more religious instruction. His major resource is the King James Bible, which they call, in their language, The Book of Strange New Things.

The Oasans are looked down upon by the employees of the base settlement that has been established on this distant planet by USIC. They have been told to give Peter anything he needs, because this will further their relationship with the Oasans who provide their food. But while they assist him, they do not take to this new resident who does not share their practical view of this new planet. Only one does, his guide, a woman pharmacist, Alex Grainger. But while an emotional charge develops between the two, they both are careful to avoid deeper emotional ties.

For much of the novel, Peter and his distant wife Bea share messages of mutual support regarding both their love and the importance of Peter’s spiritual mission. But then reality enters, influencing them both. Back on earth, natural disasters occur and society begins to break down. Bea reports these, and slowly we realize they are challenging her faith in God. She also feels deserted by Peter, as she attempts to survive in a disintegrating world over which neither she nor anyone on earth has control.

Peter is troubled by the situation back home and its effect on her, but is more focused on his own situation, his own commitment to his mission with the mysterious Oasans and their need for spiritual support. Gradually, we realize the fervent and sincere faith of this couple is being challenged, both on earth and on this distant planet, and one wonders whether their mutual faith will survive. Where, in other words is this work of fiction headed? In fact, I began to speculate if the positive reception of this work was a reflection of a literary world that seldom relates to religious themes.

One of the achievements of this novel is the vividness of the confrontation between two civilizations, as experienced by Peter. He and the Oasans take a different approach to their faith. They are more accepting of faith; he is more challenged by it. He has also not experienced a faith like theirs, a faith so undemanding, so compatible with their spiritual needs. Nor has he met beings like them, beings with no recognizable characteristics, not even a recognizable face. He ends up identifying them based on the slightly different colors of the robes they wear. Another achievement is the unity with which Peter and Bea act at the beginning of the novel, and then their separate concerns as the reality on earth changes her life and the reality he confronts on Oasis distracts him from the problems she is facing back home.

The spiritual evolution of this novel concerns, initially, the adversity back on earth. These catastrophic events suggest that the end of the world is coming. The characters do not conclude this, but the author raises the suggestion in a passing paragraph shortly after I wondered about this possibility myself. But unasked is whether the end of the world also means the end of this distant galaxy, and all human life there as well. Or is this is distant civilization being cultivated by USIC to become a haven from earth’s destruction? That is, are the native Oasans to perish along with the humans among them? This is a religious/spiritual issues that the novel does not raise.

Indeed, there are no answers here to the issue of faith. Faber even suggests the Oasans mistakenly believe in Christ because He does not die, and think belief in Him will also save them from death. In a sense, the author comes up with a religious conclusion that has it both ways. There is one environment in which religious faith continues, and one environment in which it does not. My problem is that I was not convinced by its explanation of why in one environment it does not: “The holy book…had one cruel flaw: it was not very good at offering encouragement or hope to those who weren’t religious. ‘With God nothing shall be impossible,’ proclaimed Luke, and that message…now turned itself over like a dying insect, and became ‘Without God, everything shall be impossible.’ What use was that?”

The survival of faith depends on the reality men face? Is that truly an argument against faith? Or is it an argument reflecting the weakness of man? Reflecting a certain despair. Where is man’s perseverance? Yes, one can pray in such circumstances, but why the insistence that God must respond—or one cannot believe in Him?

This work certainly make me interested in reading more of Faber. Because of the credibility of his strange world, the reality of his characters, and his fearless use of a popular genre. I only wish he had given more answers here. For example, to the fate of Peter and Bea. Or is this effort he spent ten years on also setting the stage for a sequel? (November, 2016)

The Painted Drum, by Louise Erdrich

There are three stories in one in this 2005 novel, of which the first story is the most intriguing. All are interesting, however, and all are built around an old, magic Indian drum. The first story is the most interesting because it focuses on a human story, not the story of that magic drum.

It is narrated by Faye Travers, of Indian descent, who is living with, and continually adjusting, to her mother. She is an estate appraiser in New Hampshire. I found her story the most interesting because she beautifully expresses the uncertainties in her life as well as her appreciation of the pleasures of both nature and human contact. (Those pleasures being augmented by the beautiful style of the author.) Faye becomes especially interesting when she breaks her profession’s rules and steals the drum from an estate she is evaluating. She becomes even more interesting when she feels guilty about the theft, for this compounds an already existing sense of guilt, about what she thinks is a hidden love affair, as well as her responsibility for the death of a sister who fell from a tree when both were children.

Indeed, that sister’s death hangs in her memory throughout this novel. Was she truly responsible? As she struggles with her possible guilt, the reader gradually learns not only more about that fall, but more about the type of person Faye was then, and now is. We also become more aware of the presence of death in this novel, how it hangs over everyone’s actions, especially when innocent lives are lost.

Faye’s uncertainty about the love affair with a local sculptor, Kurt Krahe, brings her particularly alive. She tries to hide it from her mother. When his daughter is tragically killed, as are two other daughters in this novel, she cannot hide her compassion—undoubtedly prompted by the memory of her own sister’s young death—and this helps bring him relief from his pain. But when he will not follow up with a commitment to Faye, she backs off.

The second story begins when Faye returns the drum to its original Indian owners out west. There, Bernard Shaawano, an Ojibwe, relates the second story. It is about how the drum came to be: the result of a passionate adultery, ravenous wolves, treachery, revenge, and a ghostly return from the dead. Whereupon, an Indian mourning ritual and a ghostly presence produces the drum and gives it healing powers. Overall, this is a tale of powerful emotions from the Indian past that scald the page with its intensity, but it does not offer the tender depth that I prefer, of Faye’s uncertainty as she faces life. The novel’s tone, the sensitive style of the writing, also changes with this shift to a more direct male narrator.

The final story is about the returned drum and its impact on a impoverished Indian family of four back in Indian territory. After Ira the mother has left them alone, a blizzard begins, and the three children become marooned when their house accidentally burns down. But Ira loves her two daughters, Shawnee and Alice, and her son Apitchi; and is relieved to learn that the children were saved by following the sound of the drum to the house of Bernard, where they find haven from the storm. Bernard then brings the drum to the hospital, where the son, Apitchi, is ill of pneumonia.

The novel closes with a return to Faye, who is now on the road to resolving the issues that confronted her. Is it because she has found and returned the drum to its rightful society? She wonders. “Salvation seems a complicated process with many wobbling steps, and I am skeptical and slow to act.” We last see her in the local cemetery for children, where we met her on the opening page. She has gone there again to mourn her dead sister.

At the cemetery she is also entranced by the black ravens that seem to soar delightedly above her. Similar ravens have appeared throughout the novel, along with ferocious wolves and, at the end, a powerful bear. All are symbols of the nature she appreciates. The ravens, she also sees, as a symbol of the children buried there. “And isn’t their delight a form of the consciousness we share above, and below the ground and in between, where I stand right here?” They also seem to be a symbol of death, the idea of which has haunted this novel. Just as the wolves have seemed a symbol of the ferocious nature that haunts us, even harms us, yet a nature that is without guilt, even as it changes our lives.

This is another remarkable novel by Erdrich. It blends the humanity of man, the richness of nature, the continuity of culture, and the mystery of the occult. It is not a religious occult as much as a cultural occult. But there is also, perhaps new, an emphasis on nature. That while it can be beautiful, it can also be dangerous. And yet is blameless, even as it can harm us.

Erdrich is often known for her story-telling, which may have been inherited from her Indian culture. While the story-telling here focuses on the occult, it is an occult that operates only in earthly terms. And is external to the characters. Whereas, I am drawn to interiors, in this case the internal conscience of Faye, as she confronts love and guilt, along with the beauty of being alive.

Faye is that rarity, a middle-aged hero who is still seeking happiness, and whose emotional loneliness is easy for the reader to relate to—not least because of the sensitivities of the author. We understand the emptiness of Faye’s life, even as she herself appreciates the richness of life, of nature, around her.

The meaning of this novel lies, for me, in Faye’s life, not in the mysterious powers of the drum. I am often moved by spiritual content, but in this case the spiritual is linked to earthly lives rather than to the life of the spirit, and to human aspirations. Some might criticize that here it is about the Indian spirit, but this novel is less about the Indian culture than it is also about the human struggle for fulfillment.

Erdrich continues to be an author I admire. With each novel, she tackles the human predicament in the context of human frailty, cultural conflict, and man’s spiritual longing. (November, 2016)

An Officer and a Spy, by Robert Harris

This 2013 work is a fascinating novel, and at the same time a brilliant recreation of history. One suspects that Harris felt the general public did not know the details of this famous event, and that its deception and corruption would make an intriguing work of fiction. And I loudly applaud him for this decision. Enough history has been written about the Dreyfus affair. The public, however, does not read history. It reads fiction.

Overall, this is the story of a miscarriage of justice, a plot created at the highest levels of the French army, a plot created to protect the reputation of that army at the expense of an innocent officer, a Jewish officer, in an era of anti-Semitism. And the novel is the story of how this was carried out, how it lasted for a decade, and how it nearly succeeded.

It did not succeed because of one man, the narrator of the novel, Georges Picquart. Picquart’s involvement was central to justice eventually being rendered, even though he acted in collaboration with many others. But a novel needs a central character, and, by making him the narrator as well, Harris has built a convincing case—even as his author’s note warns that “in order to turn history into a novel, I have been obliged to simplify, to cut out some figures entirely, to dramatize, and to invent many personal details.”

What makes this novel so convincing is the detail. We begin with the formal ceremony, in public, denouncing Captain Dreyfus as guilty. Major Picquart is present as a trusted aide of the French plotters, and is promoted to colonel and head of the army’s Statistical Section, a counterintelligence agency, with the assumption that he will be loyal to his superiors.

The Statistical Section has handled the Dreyfus case; and, at first, Picquart assumes Dreyfus’ guilt. But then he learns more and more about the evidence against the captain, and begins having doubts. He reads Dreyfus’ personal letters and his protestations of innocence. Then…a lover gossips that Dreyfus may be innocent, a torn (blue) telegram never sent by the Germans throws suspicion on a man named Esterhazy, and forged handwriting evidence against the true traitor is revealed to be not by Dreyfus but by Esterhazy. It seems he has been selling information to the Germans. Which is what Dreyfus has been convicted of. And so: are there one traitor, or two?

This is the beginning of Picquart’s effort to learn the truth. Who is the traitor? Why has Dreyfus been convicted? How much involved is the hatred of Jews? Is the evidence against Dreyfus sound? If not, who in the army has manipulated the evidence? And why? As Picquart seeks the answers to these questions, as he doubts the evidence against Dreyfus, the novel becomes more and more fascinating.

But this novel of espionage is also history. And is complicated by the era’s anti-Semitism, as well as by an army leadership which fabricates evidence in order to preserve careers and reputations. It is made credible by its portrait of Picquart, an honest and compassionate officer who gradually comes to believe the evidence that Dreyfus is innocent and Esterhazy is guilty, and who then duels with the army and the political establishment to prove his case. The odds, and the army, are stacked against him, as is even his own aide, Major Henry, but he perseveres. And as he endures defeat after defeat, and false evidence after false evidence, the suspense builds.

But unlike Maslin in the Times, I was more intrigued by the slow build-up, by the early “stream of discoveries,” as complicated as were the description of the forgeries, than by the later efforts to curtail Picquart’s allegations and to silence him—even exiling him to Tunisia. The repeated judicial reversals he endures, all under control of the army, do seem inevitable. But then there is a final political reversal—unexpected in the novel’s terms, I think, because Picquart has no role in the public’s growing awareness of the injustice. And the novel is stuck inside his viewpoint.

Louis Begley writes in his Times review that, as a result of Picquart being the narrator, “the focus is necessarily too narrow, failing to take in the historic background.” While I agree that something is lost at the end, as a result, this is outweighed by Colonel Picquart’s early presence. It is his personal involvement that gets the reader involved. That lends reality to the slow accumulation of details. Meaning Harris has sacrificed history for the sake of making the events come alive.

On picking up this novel, I thought the title referred to Dreyfus, who was an officer and was accused of being a spy. But now I think the word Officer refers to Picquart, who is the novel’s hero, and the word Spy refers, by using the “a,” to both the accused and the actual spy. This stems from my conviction that Harris made the right choice in telling this story through the eyes of Picquart. For just as he is slowly convinced by the compilation of evidence—and through him so is the reader—so does the reader understand why he is ready to sacrifice his career in the interest of justice.

The characterization of Picquart himself, however, is less effective. Despite his love affairs with the married Pauline and others, he does not come across as more than two-dimensional. He and Harris are too focused on the Dreyfus affair to allow significant personal complications to enter. And the other characterizations, of the army leadership, are even one-dimensional. They exist mainly as pro-Dreyfus, very few, or anti-Dreyfus. The overall portrayal is of corrupt army leadership, but individual motives are not evaluated. No one’s conscience is explored. Nor are any doubts that Picquart may have in taking a stand that may mean the sacrifice of his career.

To sum up, this is another case of Harris making the past come alive, of placing the reader in another era by having him identify with a real participant of that era. And by confronting the reader with that character’s daily decisions. The secret to making history come alive in fiction is focusing with a close-up lens rather than a panoramic lens. The panoramic lens is for the historian. I would hope that Harris might take this approach again—such as with the origins of the Russian Revolution. (November, 2016)

 

The Olive Field, by Ralph Bates

This novel belongs to 1936, the era in which it was published. It does not read like a novel of today. Nor even like a novel of Hemingway or Fitzgerald, both of whom introduced a new style and a new literary attitude.

What I mean is that this novel has a rich vocabulary, but not a rich reality. It is about a small town in Andalucia, Los Olivares, that produces olives on a vast scale. And while we learn a lot about different kinds of olive trees and how they are cultivated, it is difficult to sense the reality of the village, both its geography, which is liberally described, and its people, who more often represent various political and spiritual viewpoints.

And that is my major problem. The characters do more reacting to the events around them than, as individuals, reacting to and influencing each other. Indeed, the movement of the novel is geared more to the calendar and the seasons. And each event within the calendar brings out the culture or the politics of the town, but they are isolated events, linked by the novel’s theme rather than by the actions of the characters. Moreover, it is often difficult to separate and identify each character, given their lack of interaction, and given that the characters are often identified by their titles rather than their names. Is this latter point, in fact, why at the end of a later 1966 edition there is an extensive list of the principle characters?

There are many events presented here that seem intended to illustrate the Spain of the 1930s, the political changes taking place and the economic dependence of this town on its single industry. Thus, there is a religious procession and a counter demonstration, with a subsequent trial. There is intrigue between two priests. There is a major storm that ruins the olive crop. There is rebellion by the olive workers. There is even a rape and an attempted abortion. But the events are not tied together. They seem to be included primarily to draw a complete portrait of this town and its people just prior to the explosion of the Spanish Civil War.

I write this as I am half way through this novel. I shall continue reading, however, because this work received many notable reviews when published. Let us see if I will revise my opinion over the second half.

 

No, I do not. Bates continue to portray life in the olive fields, the harvests, the problems and violence the workers face, their rebellion against the landowners and the supporting civil authority, finally resulting in the massacre of workers as they attempt to demonstrate against the town leaders. There is also the fate of Don Fadrique, the town’s leader and main landlord, as he discovers the betrayal of his mayordomo, a quiet interval that adds richness to the town’s atmosphere but does not advance the novel.

There is also the birth of an illegitimate child, a boy, to Lucia Robledo, in which the entire town becomes involved. This is followed by the unexpected death of a minor character. Which leads, arbitrarily, to the transfer of the two main characters to the north of Spain, to Asturias.

Those two characters, both advocates for the workers, as is the author, emerge from this conflict between the landowners and the olive workers. Joaquin Caro is more thoughtful, a negotiator, a peacemaker, while Diego Mudarra is more aggressive, more violent, more physical. Both love music and the guitar, both earn respect from other workers, and because both fall in love with the same girl, Lucia Robledo, they are both personal rivals and political companions.

It is Joaquin who makes the (author’s?) decision to move the action to Asturias. He does so because of the sudden death of his brother Marcial and because of the town massacre. He no longer feels tied to Los Olivares, and he feels disillusioned by the defeat of the olive workers. And, perhaps more significantly, Lucia has moved there (although I missed the author telling us why), and he still loves her.

Whereupon, the novel makes to two time jumps. First, Joaquin has found Lucia and has married her, and the reader encounters a lengthy discussion of how well they love each other, largely based on whether or not he will allow her illegitimate son to join them in Asturias. Which, again, does not advance the flow of the novel, even as it is an interesting psychological issue that enriches their portraits.

The second jump in time confronts the reader with a precursor to the Spanish Civil War. It is 1934, and suddenly the aggrieved workers in the north rebel against the center right government. The latent tension in the air seems to arbitrarily explode. And with this development, the entire tone of the novel changes. Joaquin and Mudarra are still prominent, but the novel’s action no longer revolves around them. Instead, they are used by the author to portray the uprising against the government. The action is conveyed more through narrative than through dramatization. One even wonders if Bates has chosen this premature rebellion in order to end his novel with a moment of high drama.

Why am I so negative about this novel which received much high praise when it was published? I wonder if it was the times—in another sense. That because it sympathized with the workers, it was regarded favorably by the anti-fascist intellectuals who were the critics. Certainly, Bates draws here an effective portrayal of the tensions within Spanish society in the 1930s. And he clearly favors the workers, even as he acknowledges the violence on both sides.

But Louis Kronenberger sums up my reaction in his 1936 New York Times review: Bates “can paint an exciting scene, stage a moment of telling drama, record a sharp conversation; but the sure, steady vividness which results from the march of events themselves, the creative breadth which makes the narrative and the meaning of the narrative inseparable, are things beyond his power. ‘The Olive Field,’ for better or worse is intensely episodic….[and] not, as it was plainly intended to be, a successful panoramic novel.”

I, too, admire the effort, but, less so, the result. (October, 2016)

Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf

This 2015 work is a beautiful novel, a surprising novel, a tender novel. It is the most unusual love story I have read in a long, long time. It is about a couple in their seventies, Addie Moore and Louis Waters, neighbors whose spouses have died long ago, and who are now lonely. Especially at night.

Without any prelude, on page one, Addie walks over to Louis’ house and proposes that they sleep together. Every night. And just talk. Perhaps also hold hands. But no sex. She just wants the warmth of another person at night. She misses it. And Louis is flummoxed. Indeed, the reader is caught off guard as well. It is such an unusual beginning to such an unusual novel. Indeed, any novel.

The author died at age 71, shortly after completing this novel, and one wonders if it was not his own age and his own emotional life at that time that prompted him to consider looking into just such a situation. At that age, as one’s friends drift away, and frequently die, a sense of loneliness does enter one’s life. One may or may not consider it foolhardy for Haruf to conceive of such a proposal. And for Louis to consider it. But one has to be grateful that the author did explore it.

The story works because Addie and Louis are both very good people and very considerate of the feelings of both each other and their families. Which enables one easily to identify with them. Louis admits to Addie initially that he does not know how to react to her proposal. Which helps to make the situation work, as it draws the reader into the unusualness and seriousness of her proposal. But he accepts, because he recognizes the same need, the same loneliness, within himself. The title clearly refers to a relationship that is at the level of their souls rather than of their bodies, even as it satisfies the emotional needs of their bodies.

We also identify with this couple because both are making a last attempt at happiness in their lives, lives that have not been marked by family accord, and both believe that they should strive for such happiness. “I made up my mind I’m not going to pay attention to what people think,” Addie also says. “I’ve done that too long — all my life. I’m not going to live that way anymore.” And as we get to know them, we readers also feel they deserve the happiness they seek.

They begin slowly, sporadically, until they become comfortable with each other; and then they persuade themselves that what they are doing is natural, is normal, and is nothing that needs to be hidden from their neighbors. They even flaunt their relationship by going together downtown into the fictional Holt, Colorado, and lunching together. Lurking, however, in the reader’s mind, and eventually in theirs, is the presence, the possibility, of sex. Will they or won’t they? And before the end, Haruf beautifully resolves this issue.

But conversing in bed each night is not going to justify a short novel of barely 175 pages. A back story is needed. And so Addie and Louis tell each other the story of their marriages, including the betrayals and the failures, and how each lost their spouse to death. But, in addition, complications are needed. These begin with the death of a neighbor, a friend, making the reader aware of the couple’s own fragile future. But more significantly, complications come with the arrival of Addie’s son Gene and her grandson, six-year-old Jamie. Gene and his wife have separated, and so he leaves his son temporarily with Addie. Upset about the turmoil at home, Addie finds, the boy has withdrawn into himself, crying at night. And gradually, she realizes that Gene has been treating his son in the same aloof, uncaring way his own father treated him.

So, much of the novel concerns Addie’s and Louis’ efforts to restore her grandson’s emotional life. And Louis is very successful at this, which begins to further antagonize her son. At Louis’ suggestion, for example, the couple buy the boy a dog, which gives him a living being to relate to. They also resume their nights together, and help Jamie to see it as normal. But, ah, those complications. By the time Jamie is comfortable with Addie’s and Louis’ situation, his father returns. And from this point, the novel slowly winds down to its moving conclusion.

Haruf is an unusual writer that everyone interested in literature should know. Simplicity marks both his style and his characterizations. But beneath that simplicity is complexity. As Ursula K. Le Guin writes in The Guardian, “Haruf handles human relationships with fierce, reticent delicacy, exploring rage, fidelity, pity, honor, timidity, the sense of obligation; he deals with complex, barely stated moral issues, pushing perhaps toward an unspoken mysticism.” Thus, in this work, these are good people, sensitive, tender, and kind; yet they are involved in adultery, poor parenting, the death of a child, rigid emotions, and a failure to communicate with a spouse.

The mysticism is touched on lightly, as the couple discuss life after death, and disagree. It is more present in their determination to ignore the world’s opinion and to raise their relationship to the level suggested by the novel’s title.

Finally, the simplicity. In just 175 pages, the author communicates the emotional connections of these two lives, the reaction of a gossipy town, the clash of contrasting moralities, and a generational conflict. That they come across reflects both the directness of his presentation, the bare details needed, and the deep, personal emotions of love, pride, and envy that are prompted simply by two people sleeping together. The complexity of the situation is also simplified by the couple addressing, first, the unusualness of their situation, and then by their refusal to react to the gossip around them.

It is regrettable that Haruf died before being able to create more novels of such simplicity, such tenderness, such independence, and such emotional depth. One suspects, however, that his qualities, which reflect deep human understanding, will outlast those of today’s literary authors whose contemporary attitudes may become no longer so pertinent. (October, 2016)

Jack Gance, by Ward Just

This 1989 work is an ambitious novel that doesn’t quite come off. It is too episodic as it portrays the world of politics. It is most effective when its hero Jack Gance is young and naïve, and discovering the mysterious, hidden compromises behind the conflicts in Chicago politics. He also discovers the road his own life will take, when the Chicago machine hires him as a political pollster and he becomes fascinated by the power and intrigue in a world he never knew existed.

Like many youth in politics, Jack starts out as an idealist. The idea of polling appeals to him because in the Kennedy era ”hope, not fear, animated America at that time; and a campaign needed a narrative as much as a movie did, and for the same reasons.” And, in an apt metaphor, the human political reactions that polling reveals creates the novel’s narrative—that is, Jack’s rise in the political ranks. Ward here introduces the moral richness that lies deep within that political life. Indeed, as Judith Martin summarizes in her New York Times review, this novel “is about the difficulty of weighing loyalties, strategies, and principles in the not-always-successful attempt to achieve an accommodation of conflicting demands in public and private life.”

Jack also has a personal life that makes us interested in these career decisions. His parents are not happy with those decisions, particularly his father, a worldly man who tries to teach him about political life but then mysteriously lets himself be a fall guy. The IRS sends to prison for a crime neither Jack nor the reader understands. The only explanation is that his father has stood for a certain uncompromising standard that Jack himself cannot relate to. And this will later be contrasted with the compromises that Jack himself makes with E.L. Mozart, a Chicago lawyer deep inside the Chicago political machine.

Jack’s personal life also includes two affairs, one a true love affair and one a merely physical affair with a married women, Carole Nierendorf, when she is ignored by an ambitious husband also in the political world. Her presence seems intended to underscore Jack’s commitment to politics rather than to any personal life. He also somewhat falls into this affair on a rebound from the serious affair, which is with a refugee student, Katrina Lauren, who carries to Chicago the scars she endured in Berlin during World War II.

Except for these two women and his mother, the daily lives and career decisions of all the characters early in Jack’s career revolve around the world of Chicago politics. And, indeed, it is a valid presentation of Chicago and that world. Martin, however, suggests in her review that Jack is portrayed at a deeper level: “One sees a man without malice or inflated ego trying to do his duty to people and institutions but finding it all immensely complicated.” But for me the result is too arbitrary a portrait, because of the novel’s short length.

What I mean is that after the learning experiences of Jack’s youth, the author jumps ahead from career step to career step, without detailing for the reader how one step led to the next. Jack has simply moved up—to the White House as an aide to the president, then back in Chicago running for the U.S. Senate. It is as if Just has wanted to describe two worlds, that of Chicago politics and that of national politics, and the compromises that are required to take each step. But until the final approach to Jack by lawyer Mozart on a Chicago golf course, Just offers no connection in terms of those steps. He simply leaps ahead to a new decade, letting the reader fill in the gaps. As if he did not want to double the length of this novel in order to spell out what often takes a lifetime in politics to achieve.

Instead, his primary connection is more thematic. Thus, he introduces a conversation much earlier in the book in which Jack’s mentor, Professor Karcher, a Jewish refugee, tries to awaken Jack from what he calls the innocent hypocrisy of their university. He wants Jack to get out and discover the realities of real-world politics, and recommends a first step, which Jack takes. “City Hall is your graduate school,” he says. “That’s where the fieldwork is.” Which we are intended to recall, as we review the final practical decisions Jack needs to make to advance his career.

Finally, Just ends with a chapter whose idealism offers an ironic contrast to the corruption and deal-making that Jack bought into in order to achieve his final success. That Washington and national politics does work, he says, because of compromise and the art of dealing. But it too obvious an irony, underlining too strongly for me the author’s message that real politics does not preclude the ambition, selfishness, and aggression of political human beings.

Christopher Lehman-Haupt disputes that irony is suggested by this ending, saying that Jack’s words “seem more wise than ironic….He has accepted his figurative castration. He reflects the truth of recent American history.” But this final scene does not work for me because of the obviousness of the message, which is given to a visiting group of receptive, naïve high school students. While their bored teachers, who represent the standard disbelief in politics, respond with yawns.

Most of the individual scenes of this novel do work however. They cover Jack’s visit to a summer lake with his family, the dissolution of his casual affair, deal-making in Chicago restaurants, trading news with a Washington columnist, a phone conversation while looking into the Rose Garden, or making a career decision on a golf course. Author Just captures the atmosphere in each case, and, more significantly, what is not being said directly but which is nevertheless being communicated.

I am ready to read more Just novels, despite my disappointment here. He is one of the few novelist willing and able to portray the world of politics, with all its conflicts, its ironies, its moral issues, and its human ramifications. (October, 2016)

The Drop, by Michael Connelly

This 2011 work is an outstanding mystery, one of Connelly’s best. Harry Bosch is approaching mandated retirement as a cop, and he is given two cases. The two cases are not connected, and they never overlap. But what they both do is examine the idea of justice. From almost opposite directions. They ask what are the ends that justify the means of administering justice. And in one case, the reader leans toward the justice thwarted rather than the justice achieved. And in the other, he leans toward the justice achieved rather than the justice compromised.

The novel works because of the complexity of both cases, but it also works because Bosch is fully human. He is a cop, but he has a personal life that begins with his 15-year-old daughter, Maddie; and he often stops his investigations—as Connelly stops his fast pace—to interact with her. Their conversations may last less than a page, but we see what a good father and a good person he is. Bosch is also a widower, and lonely; and when he meets an attractive therapist, Hannah Stone, on one of the cases, both he and the reader hope she will be able to fill the emotional side of his life. In fact, even his daughter wishes so. Meanwhile, in his professional life, Bosch has an interesting, changing relationship with his partner, Chu, who both helps him and betrays him. Chu himself is also interesting, as he has his own issues, and resents this boss who never confides in him.

The Drop is aptly titled. DROP stands, conveniently, for Bosch’s status in the Deferred Retirement Option Plan. Plus, one case he is handling concerns whether George Irving, a man who has dropped from a hotel balcony, has died as a result of a murder, a suicide, or an accident. And why does his powerful politician father Irvin Irving, an anti-police nemesis of Bosch, ask Bosch of all people to handle a case which involves the death of his son?

The other case involves a rape and murder from the past that went unsolved, and had been dropped by the police. Now, it has resurfaced in the LA police department’s Open-Unsolved Unit, where Bosch works, after new DNA evidence has been discovered. Plus, there are also occasions when Bosch is being encouraged to drop each of these two cases.

Connelly spends more time on the first case, in which the prominent politician demands that Bosch find the truth about his son’s death from the hotel balcony. The case brings Bosch into the continual contact with the politics and justice practiced in Los Angeles, and offers the reader frequent insights into the interactions among citizens, the police, politicians, and judges. This case revolves around the son using his father’s political connections to curry favors for his clients. Bosch learns that the son’s situation is more complicated than that, however, and as he explores the son’s connections with politics, the police, and his family, the detective leans toward different explanations of his death. This is what builds the suspense, as the reader is also turned in one direction and then in another.

The rape and murder case is complicated by the fact that the blood on the victim’s body belongs to an eight-year-old child, Clayton Pell, who is now an adult. He could not have committed the rape and murder, of course, at eight years old. Then who did? Bosch uses logic and his powers of investigation to find out, but then the boy emerges as a mayor player as he both emerges as a criminal himself and seeks his own kind of justice. This dark side of society is leavened, however, by Bosch’s romance with the boy’s therapist; and yet at the same time it is complicated by the boy’s evolution into a man whose adult transgressions have been formed by his rough early life. So, when do we sympathize with Clayton Pell, and when do we not? Connolly loves these emotional conflicts, these ironies, and his work is all the stronger for it.

After these two fascinating, complicated cases, it is the book’s ending that helps it to end on a strong point, one that points to the irony and complexity of justice. For it suggests that one guilty man may not be so guilty, after all. And that the department Bosch is so dedicated to appears to have its own kind of guilt.

And so, one wonders how cynical Bosch will remain in Connelly’s next book. Will he be further disillusioned by the police corruption that he terms “high jingo”? Or will he soften, as he shares his heart with someone besides his daughter? No, he has to remain the hard-boiled cynic, even as he remains a needy person. Perhaps, in fact, the cynicism is to shield him from that neediness. On the other hand, maybe the world around him will be lightened by either Hannah or future characters. We shall see. All I know is that this novel has certainly interested me in more of Connelly’s work. (October, 2016)

The World Is Flat, by Thomas L. Friedman

Friedman is a journalist, not an historian. The thinking behind his columns have helped make him one of my favorite sources of worldwide trends. I agree with much of what he says, and I like how he illustrates his points through his own personal experience and using as examples real people and real situations.

He does this again at the start of this new 2005 work. He explains what he means when he says that the world is flat, and then narrates how he arrived at that conclusion. Basically, he says, the economic playing field is being leveled by technology. That is, people can now collaborate and compete on different kinds of work from different corners of the world—and all on an equal footing. Result: a single global network of knowledge.

Friedman offers a provocative prediction when he says the future may bring together social liberals, global service workers, and Wall Streeters on one side, and on the other side social conservatives, local service workers, and labor unions. Twelve years after his writing this, one can see those trends beginning. Such as today’s reaction to free trade.

Friedman asks, “Should I believe in free trade in a flat world?” And his answer: “Even as the world gets flat, America as a whole will benefit more by sticking to the basic principles of free trade.” This will work, he says, as long as the global pie keeps growing and new technology advances. That as long as large companies move overseas, small companies will arise at home and create new jobs. Also, wages will rise overseas, creating wealth and more customers for those here.

But U.S. workers will need to upgrade skills that cannot be outsourced. And government and universities will need to help. The problem, Friedman says, is that we have seen a “steady erosion of America’s scientific and engineering base.” He cites other countries catching up, while Republicans reduce funding of National Science Foundation. One result is fewer students here getting college science degrees. In China it is 60%, in the U.S., 31%. And for engineering degrees: China, 46%, U.S. 5 %. This difference will impact us in 20 years, he says.

Reasons: Chinese youth are ambitious and patriotic. U.S. students have different priorities, many wanting to be lawyers and bankers. Also, U.S. has no national education programs; all are controlled in the states.

Friedman says that the flattening of the world began on 11/9/1989, at the fall of the Berlin Wall. This opened up communication and relationships between the East and the West, and the new technology quickly increased the possibilities of trade. The greatest fear for him is the rise of protectionism. Because trade promotes good relationships among countries, not antagonism. It also promotes openness inside countries, and these countries enjoy the most freedom.

Trade, he says, stimulates innovation and connects knowledge centers. To stop the flattening of the world, on the other hand, would curtail human development. When a society has more memories of the past than dreams of the future, its end is near, he says. It has lost its imagination and its ambition.

To sum up, this book has a theme more than an argument. It is about the world turning flat, about the new technology connecting everyone and allowing everyone to work on an equal footing, including individual workers, companies of every size, and countries at every stage of wealth. But the message is communicated through anecdotes rather than a sustained argument. That is, Friedman quotes individuals from all over the world to illustrate his points, mostly individuals from business. And this is a journalist’s approach, which Friedman is.

The book apparently began when the author went to India to create a television documentary on the business world in India, and this opened his eyes to the economic growth that was happening as a result of the new technology. And then he realized that what he calls the flattening of the world was happening everywhere, not just in America.

His book concludes with an exploration of the Arab-Muslim word. Why the violent agenda there, even if it is not a majority agenda? His answer is that some look at the Western world and see its openness but not its freedom of thought. Rather, they see decadence and promiscuousness. He reminds us that al-Qaeda is a political organization, not a religious one. That the young men who join it have lost their sense of identity, of rootedness, of dignity. That they lash out at a world they see as having deprived them of those qualities. Thus, 9/11.

These terrorists have entered the world of politics, because their lives have not improved as a result of their faith. And the flatness of the world is what has made them aware of this. They want their power of the past, of the 7th century, in this 21st century. But, at the same time, they deny the free inquiry, the creativity of today that is what has left them behind. Result: they are humiliated. The cause of terrorism, Friedman says, is not economic, the lack of money; it is frustration and rage. That I why so many in the Arab world were happy to see the United States humiliated by 9/11. It was revenge for their own humiliation from our support of both Israel and the unjust, backward world of Arab rulers

As the book jacket says, “when scholars write the history of the world [between] Y2K and March, 2004, what will they say was the most crucial development? The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11 and the Iraq War?” Thomas Friedman’s answer is this book, and its answer is “the convergence of technology and events that allowed India, China and so many other countries to…create an explosion of wealth in the middle classes of the world’s two biggest nations and giving them a huge new stake in the world of globalization.”

What helps make his work valid today, a decade later, is the explanation of how the flattening of the world has coincided with the expansion of world trade. Each supports the other, he says. And he argues that together they have remarkably improved the standard of living worldwide. Which is particularly important in the U.S., where the expansion of trade has resulted in the loss of factory jobs. His argument, however, is that, long term, U.S. workers will benefit, because more customers will exist worldwide for U.S. products. To benefit, however, U.S. workers must be retrained to have new skills, that the government must support such retraining, and that both must have the patience to wait for the results.

Overall, Friedman makes a good case for the flattening of the world. But it is not a carefully organized case. It is a journalist’s first person accounting of his travels through the world as he talks to businessmen and government officials who support his case. There are no counter-arguments to his thesis here, no data to support an alternate case. What he is intent on is explaining the flattening, how it affects companies and individuals, and what is needed to adapt to this change.

While very informative, indeed educational, the book is somewhat disappointing because it takes the short view of journalism rather than the long view of history. It is more involved in the details of flattening, how it is happening, rather than the long view of how it will change the world.