Book Review: "Nemesis" by Philp Roth

Nemesis (2010)

4 Stars out of 5

Philip Roth

280 pages

(Spoilers ahead.)

“He was struck by how lives diverge and by how powerless each of us is up against the force of circumstance. And where does God figure in this?”

Nemesis

“When I write, I'm alone. It's filled with fear and loneliness and anxiety—and I never needed religion to save me.”

Philip Roth

In Philip Roth’s 31 novels (as of 2016) there are several consistent themes and places: Newark NJ and a nostalgic view of childhood there during WWII, secular Judaism, anti-Semitism, alienation, overt sexuality and guilt. Each of these will occur in his 2010 short novel, “Nemesis”. Roth has told the public, this book, number 31 (which is also the fourth in a series grouped under the title of Nemeses), will be his final book. The superficial Nemesis in “Nemesis” is the polio virus. The book will describe the virus’ depredations on Newark NJ in the summer of 1944 and will center on one young man, Eugene “Bucky” Cantor. The reader will come to quite a different conclusion by the novel’s ending as to who the actual nemeses of the book are, actual and literal.

Bucky is 23 and a mixture of contradictions in 1944. His mother died giving birth to him, and his father was jailed for embezzlement; Bucky’s future prospects should have been bleak. His future could have been a catastrophic failure but for his grandparents (his mother’s parents); they were his hope and salvation. Eugene later nicknamed “Bucky” by his grandfather would grow by his 20’s into a muscular, athletic and empathic man, one filled to the brim with a sense of integrity and duty. Among the many contradictions in Bucky’s life would be two very big ones: his sense of duty and empathy to the needs of others will ironically take him to that miserable future his grandparents tried to help him avoid.

Because he was short (less than 5 ft. tall) and severely nearsighted, he was not successful in his attempts to enter the army at the outbreak of WWII. Bucky was left behind, chafing at his failure to perform his obligations, his duties as a young American male during the war. All of his friends were overseas, but Bucky was left home to work as a Phys. Ed. teacher and playground supervisor in the Weequahic neighborhood of Philip Roth’s own childhood. It was in that playground where Bucky proved his devotion to the pre-teen and teen-aged boys he supervised, and where Bucky will take his first steps to his own personal perdition.

It is July 1944, and the polio virus has not yet been conquered (that lies 11 years in the future with Jonas Salk). It is a hot summer, and children are beginning to show symptoms of infection by the virus. Soon, the sounds of ambulance sirens are heard throughout the city as kids (sometimes older victims) are rushed to the nearest hospital and an iron lung. Some will recover with hardly a trace of the illness, others will be maimed through paralysis, and others still will not survive their first night of the day they first show symptoms.

Is there anything more terrifying to a parent of small children than the knowledge of a secret murderer with unknown means stalking their kids? In this atmosphere, Bucky finds an evolution in his public personae and in his inner psyche. The external changes begin with him as an acclaimed hero in the eyes of the boys he supervises, especially when he stares down a group of Italian toughs. As the epidemic of polio infections gains strength, the scared parents turn to him for advice. Then four of his boys get sick, and two rapidly die. He seeks out the parents of one dead boy to offer comfort. The epidemic worsens, and in the blink of an eye, Bucky is transformed from hero to villain when he is accosted by one parent as being irresponsible in allowing her two boys play in the heat. She screams at Bucky and lays the blame directly at Bucky’s feet for their illness. Ironically, they are the two local bullies, the ones that gave Bucky the most grief on the playground; funny how their bad play is reflected in their mother’s irrational anger at Bucky. It is certain this mother is a bit of an outlier of local parenthood – but not that much of an outlier. The best part of “Nemesis” is the detail Roth brings to how a population fearing the worse and knowing close to nothing about their nemesis seeks constantly for an explanation of their foe or failing that, for someone to blame for their travails. It is quite understandable in the context of this story and is a not so subtle reminder of what is taking place across the Atlantic in Nazi Germany with respect to the European Jews.

Bucky has a girlfriend, Marcia; someone, he loves very much and who loves him back with equal intensity. She is fearful for Bucky and pleads for him to leave the equatorial (Roth’s term) realm of Newark NJ to join her at a camp in the Pocono Mountains. She believes he will be safe from polio there. He refuses at first out of a strong desire to protect his boys. She wins this argument and Bucky leaves Newark for the Poconos where his soon-to-be fiancé awaits him. Bucky is quickly overcome with guilt though, thinking again he has abandoned the boys he watched in Newark. Just as with his inability to join the army, he believes he has again shirked his duty. And just as he before, he refuses to accept the simple fact that he had no say in either outcome. He takes the blame regardless, though he leaves room to rail at a God that would create a polio virus; a creature seemingly designed to take the lives of little boys.

Inevitably, polio reaches the camp where Bucky now watches a new group of boys, and inevitably one will die. Bucky is now convinced he is the source of evil plaguing the Jews of New Jersey. He had once screamed his anger and frustration at God for the deaths. But now in act of remarkable hubris and lacking any evidence for his guilt, Bucky takes it all. He once killed his mother and is now the killer stalking New Jersey; not God or his polio virus. When Bucky himself is maimed by the disease, he breaks off all relations with his beloved Marcia. Again, he takes the blame and offers his behavior as an example of him acting with integrity and doing his duty by her. He claims it is for her sake (so she can marry a healthy man). Marcia is not convinced, nor will the reader be.

How did a young man with so much promise, so much true integrity and beloved by so many, take such a wrong turn in life? How could he turn away a woman and her family that could have been his second salvation (after that provided by his grandparents)? It is an interesting question and one not really addressed by Roth in any manner. Bucky is more of an object lesson. As a Jew he should have known well the Book of Job and the lesson therein that God is not in the business of reward or punishment. As a secular Jew, if not an atheist, Bucky had more than sufficient sense to work towards a clear understanding that there is no design in terms of individual deaths at the hands of the polio virus. It does not pick and choose from the virtuous and the evil of mankind. It simply infects, sometimes maims, sometimes it kills. It really does not need any help from Bucky. Bucky’s claim of guilt is more a manifestation of his lingering neurosis over his mother’s death come to full fruition.

As short a book as “Nemesis” is, it reads like two books to me. In book 1, we meet a young man that could be and is to his young charges invincible. He lives in an America that measures up to Roth’s dreams of an America at her best in terms of ideals and sense of community. All Americans, WASPS, Jews, Blacks and Japanese will work together during WWII to defeat the fascists. And while Bucky may be short and nearsighted, he is an outstanding javelin thrower, weight lifter, and educator. He is a model for the boys he teaches and who he cherishes. His fiancé and her family, and Bucky’s still surviving grandmother cherish him. They have only good reasons to do so.  But deep within Bucky a seed grows; it was planted on the day of his birth, the day of his mother’s death. In the second book, this seed will grow into a thorny hedge of self-destructive self-hatred. Bucky will grow up learning of his mother’s worth, missing her as a ghost he never knew, and wondering at his role in her passing. These thoughts will begin their corrosive effects on his mind, and will come to full effect as children begin to die all around Bucky. He knows he has killed them all. He will come to use his hedge to wall off the world he fears/knows can only benefit by lacking any contact with him.

Another reason to see this book as two books and one of the cleverest aspects of the book is the narrator. He (and he is a he) seems to be the standard 3^rd person omniscient narrator. Near the middle of the book, we learn, no; the narrator is one of the boys from the playground, now grown to middle age. The first part of the book is actually 2^nd person narrated, and in the second half switches to 1^st person. We learn how Arnie (the narrator) explains how it is that he knows all – it might not be believable, but it serves a very neat purpose. It allows the narrator (a stand in for Roth?) attempt with logic and empathy to try to persuade the now elderly and bitterly alone Bucky to shed his guilt and live what is left of his life. I will leave it to the reader to figure for themselves how successful  Arnie is. Roth closes “Nemesis” with a short epilog, a kind of paean to the Bucky that was and then wasn’t. I actually this short “song” to “Bucky the Invincible” reveals a lot about what Roth was hoping for in terms of his flawed hero and maybe what this book was mourning the loss of.

“Nemesis” may well be Roth’s last book and though certainly not his best, it is worth reading. For an author that the critic Harold Bloom has listed as one of the four best still working (the others being Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, and Cormac McCarthy), it is incredible to see him do as well as he did with “Nemesis”. It is not a book that I would group with the highest art due to the brevity of its examination of the themes of death, guilt, and hubris; subjects I think deserve a more in depth exploration. I also found the language to be lacking much art or poetry of expression. It is also largely lacking in emotional impact, especially so for the subject of lost children. In a comparison to one of Bloom’s other favorites, Cormac McCarthy and his “Cities of the Plain”, “Nemesis” comes off as a very poor second in terms of how each author grapples with the subject of death. That being said Roth does raise the themes of death and guilt in a manner that is more than sufficiently well done to get any reader to start thinking about them – clearly not something very many books on the Best Seller’s List are designed to do. In a final analysis, this book is worth reading for its examination of the aforementioned themes, and to see a master story teller still very much performing brilliantly on his way out the door.

 

Book Review: "Cities of the Plain" by Cormac McCarthy

Cities of the Plain (1998)

4.5 Stars out of 5

Cormac McCarthy

289 pages

(Spoiler Alert: this review contains some spoilers.)

“Every man’s death is a standing in for every other. And since death comes to all there is no way to abate the fear of it except to love that man who stands for us. We are not waiting for his history to be written. He passed here long ago. That man who is all men and who stands in the dock for us until our own time come and we must stand for him. Do you love him, that man? Will you honor the path he has taken?

Cities of the Plain

“Cities of the Plain” is the third part of a trilogy that Cormac McCarthy began with “All the Pretty Horses” in 1992. It continues the story of John Grady Cole begun in the first book, and it joins him with Billy Parham from the second book of the series, “The Crossing” (1994). This concluding book like the first two includes a cross-border romance, plenty of untranslated Spanish and a considerable amount of philosophizing. It is a substantial change from the picaresque story line used in parts 1 and 2; this book comes much closer to a Greek tragedy in many ways. Like many of McCarthy’s books the themes in this book make much use of the concept of a border in order to explore a subject, the primary subject in “Cities of the Plain” is the border between life and death, the border between dreams and reality,  and how each of these subjects intersection with fate and free will. This is not your standard cowboy yarn.

The year is 1952 and our young cowboy protagonists from the first two books are now best friends and co-workers on a ranch near Alamogordo NM. The issue of death arrives early in the book as McCarthy’s narrative makes it clear that the ranch is failing. But not just the ranch, the whole cowboy world won’t make it too much longer. John Grady is still a master of horses though, and his skills are still a pivotal part of his persona as well as to McCarthy’s desire to explore the nature of horses and man. He will quickly explore the nature of man in a clever scene involving Billy that will help McCarthy examine a positive nature of man, of the differences between Anglo and Latin attitudes and will be part of a series of scenes that foreshadow and explain the book’s climax. In this early scene, Billy will initially drive by a group of Mexicans stranded by the side of the road with a flat tire. His conscience and his memory will quickly force Billy to stop his truck and back it up to the Mexicans where he will, despite the inconvenience to himself and his travelling companion, provide the needed assistance to get the Mexicans back on the road again. When asked by his companion as to why he did it, Billy will recall a story where the roles were reversed and he was helped by a group of Mexicans. The key point to Billy was that even though they did not know him, the Mexicans never hesitated to help Billy; they didn’t even seem to think there was any alternative but to help the stranded Billy.

Beyond the obvious point about Mexicans being more willing to help a stranger than an Anglo is (a trope that appears often in the trilogy), is the introduction of the idea of interconnectedness between men. This is a key theme to “Cities of the Plain” and it will be explored in the context of death. In a later part of the book, the flip side of this idea will occur when John Grady and Billy are using a group of tracker dogs to track down some wild dogs that had been preying on the cattle the two young men were herding. As the track dogs closed in on the prey dogs, the track dogs begin to bay. Billy is struck by how the prey dogs bay back, the prey dogs never knowing at that point in the hunt, that those they felt a kinship to (a connection to), were in fact soon to prove to be their ruin. This dog hunt is working one of McCarthy’s other favorite metaphors: the border. In this case, it is the border between friend and foe. This dog hunt does several other things steeped deeply in McCarthy’s literary worldview by drawing an example of the corruptibility of dogs and by extension to man (vs. the many times described nobility of horses). A second McCarthy theme is the wild/corrupted dogs and their death functions as an allusion to fate, one linked to a graphic depiction of violent death. The fate that one dog could end up a tracker and friend/servant to man vs. the feral dog that can only be an enemy is one lead-in to fate as a theme in this book. An even better example comes from these same ill-fated (I use the term intentionally) dogs when some pups from one of the feral dogs are found. John Grady chooses the fate of one for a life with him; a life clearly very different from the life of the pup’s now dead mother. Again, the point being the life-saving act by John Grady for that pup was a twist in the fateful journey of that young pup, one for which no decision by the pup played any role.

The idea of fate versus free-will  is also described by the narrator early in the book:

“Our waking life's desire to shape the world to our convenience invites all manner of paradox and difficulty.”

At a later occasion, John Grady is trying to understand the choices he has made and whether they were choices at all:

“He sat a long time and he thought about his life and how little of it he could ever have foreseen and he wondered for all his will and all his intent how much of it was his doing.”

He is driven to these thoughts by a fateful trip he makes early in the book when he and Billy cross the border into Juárez Mexico in order to visit a bordello. John Grady isn’t preoccupied with the idea of whores and how they came to be whores, or why cowboys want to interact with them (that one is not that tough a question). His consternation stems from a chance sighting of a young woman working as a whore in the bordello the cowboys are visiting. Her name is Magdalena. And John Grady is falling in love with her based solely on a brief look in the bar mirror at her. It is a good example of either love at first glance or yet another example of fate; this time bringing two people to one another; there will be darker examples to come.

Magdalena is beautiful and seems to be a good soul, but she has lived a tortured life. She is in thrall to her chulo, or perhaps because they run their girls out of a building, the pimps are referred to as alcahuete. There is a minor alcahuete with the name of Tiburcio, and a grande alchuete, Eduardo. Both ooze evil and lethal threat. Sadly for Magdalena, Eduardo and Tiburcio have different plans for her than the happy ones proffered by John Grady. Sadly for John Grady, Eduardo also loves Magadalena. Magdalena’s fate no matter her wishes will become the focus of the book’s climax. Referring back to the dog hunt and the two different sets of dogs that went down such different paths in life, one can hardly think of anything else as Magdalena describes her history to John Grady or even more poignantly when late in the book, she makes her way down a Juárez street where she espies two young women her own age sidestepping a puddle on their way to church. Magdalena sees her own metaphorical puddle before her as hopes John Grady will help her sidestep it. McCarthy will lead the reader to that metaphorical puddle with very little immediate warning.

It is not just fate and the nature of man/dogs and man/horses that McCarthy writes of in “Cities of the Plain”. The title just as in “All the Pretty Horses” gives a big clue as to what McCarthy is thinking about when he wrote this book. The title is a biblical reference to Sodom and Gomorrah; two towns that lived in sin and paid the ultimate price of death. Whether McCarthy is comparing those two cities to Juárez and El Paso is, I think debatable. More to the point, I think, is the whole concept of dying and of having someone die in your place. I would draw a distinction between dying for someone and dying in place of someone when we conflate that latter concept with fate. When a soldier dies in a war defending his country, he is dying for you; to some degree he made choices leading to his death. Whereas if someone is “fated” to die, when it seems they made no decision leading to that outcome, have they died in some manner that protected you? Is death a zero sum game? If Death comes calling, must someone die? Whether the answer is “yes” or “no” in this metaphorical question game, one thing is certain, the storylines of Magdalena and John Grady seem very different in the ratio of control/fate, even if they like all men arrive at some point in time at the same ending.

McCarthy could have ended the book with the climatic interaction of Eduardo, Magdalena and John Grady, but he is Cormac McCarthy, and as such he did not. He closed with a lengthy epilog, equal to roughly 10% of the total book length. In this long coda, we find aged Billy Parham having a discussion with a Mexican that Billy at first confused with Death himself. The Mexican denies that he is Death, but I would say he is most certainly the Philosopher King. McCarthy refers to him as the Narrator, and I strongly suspect that was 100% meaningful. The Narrator will lead a baffled Billy down a long description of the Narrator dreaming of a man (the Traveler) dreaming of a group of artfully described travelers. The Narrators dream is explicitly described in terms of details about the accoutrements of the dreamed of travelers, and while this is typical McCarthy writing and it is also instructive. Such detail flies in the face of normal dreaming; it serves to raise the question of what is a dream, and more importantly what is the difference between a dream and the reality we live when we wake? These are weighty questions that the Narrator goes into in some depth. Taken by themselves they are intriguing concepts, but taken in the context of this book’s overall theme of the boundaries between life and death, the idea of dreaming of death versus the reality of dying a death takes on new meaning. This is not your standard cowboy story.

I did not find “Cities of the Plain” to be any less thought provoking than “All the Pretty Horses”. They both move through some pretty heavy philosophical terrain, even as they both tell good tales of romance and thoughtfully describe many aspects of the cowboy life. The difference for me was that I found the language describing the story to be far more lyrical in “All the Pretty Horses” than in “Cities of the Plain”. There is also more of McCarthy’s brand of cowboy humor as expressed by Lacey Rawlins in “All the Pretty Horses” than with Rawlins’ doppelganger Billy Parham in “Cities of the Plain”. I also found the opening chapters of “Cities of the Plain” more poorly paced than those in “All the Pretty Horses”. That being said, and as much as I also liked Larry McMurtry’s excellent writing of the cowboy life (most especially “Lonesome Dove”, 1985), I am far more awed by McCarthy’s descriptions of that life and the much deeper exploration of life and man that he accomplishes with “Cities of the Plain”.

Like “All the pretty Horses”, I strongly recommend “Cities of the Plain”.

Book Review: "White Teeth" by Zadie Smith

White Teeth (2001)

4 Stars out of 5

Zadie Smith

448 pages

“What is past is prolog.”

Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith has written an amazingly good first book. It is a novel written with humor and affection for the characters, of the pains felt by the immigrant and non-immigrant people that inhabit this book, and it is a book that takes a satirical gaze at the different viewpoints between the working classes and middle classes in Great Britain. In short, it is an unorthodox exploration of race and gender relations, and at the individual character level it is a very clever view of expectations versus reality. It is as Time magazine thought when they placed this novel amongst the best English-language novels from 1923-2005, an excellent exploration of the human condition; all the more remarkable as it came from a new author who wrote it at such a young age, 24.

Smith’s book covers a 135 year span of time, though it will focus (with two significant exceptions) on the years from New Year’s Day 1975 to New Year’s Eve, 1992. On that New Year’s Day in 1975 a very disconsolate Archibald Jones will be sitting in his car, thinking about a recent coin toss he made and inhaling the car’s exhaust fumes that are slowly filling the car he is sitting in. He is disconsolate because his first wife, a slightly mad Italian by the name of Ophelia has divorced him. After 30 years of marriage, she will leave poor Archie with nothing more than their broken Hoover vacuum cleaner. With these opening lines, the reader will very rapidly be propelled into Smith’s style of humor and her recursive narrative style. The sad state of Archie’s condition may not be comical to every reader, but the ensuing scene where a local Halal butcher will run to Archie’s car cannot fail to raise a smile on just about anyone’s face. The butcher is not there to save Archie: no, he is upset because he needs the parking space for his customers, and further, as he will repeatedly state, “he has no permit for suicides in his parking lot”. The “blackness” of the humor Smith employs here is slightly out of character for the book, but not her use of humor. She will employ that extensively.

Archie’s comical reprieve will permit him to leave the butcher shop's parking lot and to wander dazedly to a hippie commune where he will meet the love of his life, the beautiful Jamaican immigrant teenager, Clara. Archie being at least twenty years older than Clara will via their marriage, over the next 17 years provide a framework for Smith to discuss how the generational and cultural differences between the working class Englishman and the equally poorly educated Jamaican immigrant can, despite their dissimilarities still find a way to bridge those differences in order to build a life. It may not be the life Clara might have hoped for; because those differences are real and, quite frankly they stem more from the age differences than the cultural ones. Still, the bond is there and they will, through their union produce a lovely being, their daughter, Irie. Irie (Jamaican for “no problem”) will become a character axis of sorts that the overall story will revolve about.

Archie’s world also includes his similarly aged, friend from their days in WWII (where they were part of a tank crew), Samad Iqbal. Samad acts the role of a devout Muslim, but anyone would be forgiven for wondering at Samad’s definition of a good Muslim. Samad will frequent with Archie an “Irish” pub owned by a Muslim relative of Samad’s, Mickey. Samad and Archie will pass their evenings drinking alcohol, but will (in Samads’ mind) make up for that lapse by not eating pork. Samad will also engage in an extra-marital affair with his twin sons’ music teacher, Poppy Burt-Jones. He will commit a number of other offenses that he feels are affronts to Islam, but yet he will still continue to do. Samad will write off his misbehavior by blaming the effects of English culture: “people call it assimilation when it is nothing but corruption”. Samad feels he and his boys are being corrupted by their new homeland, yet of course as "bad" as England is, returning to Bangladesh is not really an option that is for even a moment ever considered.

Samad has like Archie has a wife that is a generation younger than him, Alsana. She is unlike Clara something of a thorn in the side of her husband (well, pretty much everyone’s side; she is quite prickly). She was not so difficult though that she and Samad could not have any children; they had twin boys, Millat and Magid (the elder by two minutes). That small degree of seniority between Millat and Magid will play a large role in how Samad will view each of them. Their different temperaments will also play a big role: Millat will while in his early teens, be someone who wishes to be a gangster like his heroes in “The Godfather” or “Goodfellas”, but will as he reaches his late teens turn to radical Islam. His motivation seems more like an attempt to belong than anything else. Magid will be sent at age 10 to live in Bangladesh for 8 years in order to become Samad's vision of a good Muslim; instead he will turn into an atheist/scientist that is more of an Englishman in his views and manners than any of the standard born and bred Anglo-Englishmen that drive Samad so mad. (It is very hard to discern which of the two is the greater disappointment to Samad.)

There are a host of other characters in the book: Clara’s mother Hortense (born during an earthquake in Jamaica and a lifelong devote of Jehovah Witnesses), an old boyfriend Ryan who will throw off Clara to join Hortense in the JW’s, several aged Jamaicans that frequent Mickey’s establishment along with Archie and Samad, a Nazi/French doctor who plays a role in Archie’s personal evolution (and makes an utterly unnecessary return in the climax), and most significantly a Jewish/Catholic middle class family of scientist/atheists, the Chalfens. Marcus Chalfen is the family’s patriarch and noted R&D biologist who will pull Magid even further from Samad in terms of influencing him. Joyce Chalfen is the mother and a noted author of horticulturist subjects. She will pull Millat away (to some degree) from Samad and Alsana as she tries her horticultural/mothering abilities in “fixing” the troubled Millat. The key point here is more how she sees Millat as just another plant gone wrong: in her mind, all it will take is a change of sunlight or watering schedule, and he will be good as new. The satirical description by Smith of Joyce's failure to see the “immigrant” youth as a human as she busies herself with their reclamation is hard to not notice. Marcus too has a project, one even more ambitious, he intends to fix all of humanity and intends to show the world his means to do so on New Year’s Eve, 1992 with his “super mouse”. That his grand creation sounds like a Saturday morning cartoon is one more example of Smith’s satirical wit.

Smith’s language is always entertaining in “White Teeth”, but it is the themes she seeks to explore that are the book’s greatest strengths. Her interest in the immigrant experience and how cultures interact are clearly displayed and easily grasped. However, it is her sense of optimism that underlays her storylines with that I find the most appealing. Consider the following early description of Irie:

“It is only this late in the day that you can walk into a playground and find Isaac Leung by the fish pond, Danny Rahman in the football cage, Quang O’Rourke bouncing a basketball and Irie Jones humming a tune. Children with first and last names on a direct collision course.”

To be sure, she uses a clever metaphor at the end of the description, but it is the subtle joy Smith exudes in this passage that is most appealing; the sense that despite the differences, everything will come out alright in the end. Smith is also such a confident writer: it shows throughout this book right along with her sunny view that hides beneath the black humor and satire that sometimes gloss over deeper feelings. Smith seems to be saying that somewhere under these hybrid children speaking their creole-like languages, there is hope for the future; a future where tolerance will grow right alongside these 2^nd generation kids.

One last note on themes and this comes from the book’s title, “White Teeth”. Superficially, it is tempting to consider how all people regardless of skin color (let alone religion) have teeth that are white. This physical trait is one Smith explores a little in the manner of a teeth-related several metaphorical sub-stories. In one, Clara loses her teeth in an accident, wears dentures and never tells Irie. When Irie learns of this fact, she feels betrayed that her mother could keep such a secret from her; as if Clara’s teeth were more an emblem of who Clara was ,rather than merely a set of teeth, artificial or not. But it really seems to me that it is the fact that teeth have roots far more than the color of teeth that Smith makes better use of. Imagine how important roots are as a powerful concept to the new immigrant. The first generation will throughout their life reach back to their youth in the motherland to help establish their personal identity. Even the second generation explores this concept as they wander in a confused state between their roots in the new land and the old. Smith brilliantly alludes to this point with a story involving Irie. Irie is a child of a white man and a black woman. She has a bit of both her mom and dad in her physicality and her temperament. But the one thing that compels Irie more than anything else at age 13 is her hair; her kinky hair. Irie will spend an afternoon in (one of the book’s best described moments) a Jamaican hair salon as she desperately tries to straighten her hair. Smith wryly describes the lesson Irie learns from this event – it is a lesson on many levels, not just the newly damaged hair level.

If we turn to manner in which Smith writes, it is the structure of her various vignettes and her mastery of several sets of ethnic patois and their particular colloquialisms that are the most impressive. By the time the reader finishes this book, he or she will know in great depth and I think with equal appreciation the particular beauty of lower class Jamaican and Bengali English word usage. Smith will not limit herself to them though, as she will pepper certain sections of the book with conversations by various Scots and middle-class Englishmen and women. Such language is for the most part particularly colorful and artistic, but it leads to two problems I had with book: repetitive use of structure and a certain literary technique. I mentioned above her use of a recursive technique (a flashback, if you prefer). Smith will construct her entire book with many sequences that will have the same structure. They begin for example with something like the one above with Archie: Archie in his car contemplating his pending death, then a flashback that explains how Archie got to this point, which will then segue back to Archie. With a more attentive editor, I think Smith’s over-use of this technique would have been reduced; but since she evidently lacked one or she had one with a starkly different point of view from me, there are many (too many) such recursions. The book and its length suffer for it.

The other structural complaint (and this is by far, my biggest complaint) covers the same ground: overuse of a particular literary technique. The technique in this case is Smith’s use of “speeches” by certain of her characters. Taken by themselves as standalone scenes, these speeches are often extremely witty and (sometimes) useful in explaining the characters’ backgrounds, the story’s themes, and the book’s overall arc. Her themes and optimistic views are the strength of this novel (and why I recommend it), but the overuse of the various “speeches” and a too-convenient tying up of story lines for the climax weaken the novel and why I do not give it the perfect score of 5 stars that I would otherwise have given it.

I do recommend this book. It may go into excessive detail over parts of the Islamic and Jehovah Witness religions, and it certainly has at least one too many prolonged speeches by Hortense, but it is a brilliant examination of identity, multiculturalism, race and religion, and yes teeth (on several levels – a grown Irie becomes a dentist!). There is a quality and spirit that I love about this book. It may be a little too long, but it quite definitely makes me want to look into one of the four additional books Smith has since published. As I marveled over "White Teeth" what is a Smith of 40 and now a professor of English in an American university have to say about man? I would really like to find out. In the meanwhile, if you have not read “White Teeth”, I suggest you do so. You will be glad that you did.

Book Review: "All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy

All the Pretty Horses (1992)

5 Stars out of 5

Cormac McCarthy

438 pages

(Spoiler Alert: this review contains some spoilers.)

The world is quite ruthless in selecting between the dream and the reality, even where we will not. Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting.

Alfonsa (“All the Pretty Horses”)

There is a spare language used by the 3^rd person narrator of “All the Pretty Horses” that reaches at times the level of the highest free verse I have ever read. Winner of the 1992 U.S. National Book Award it is such a contrast to Cormac McCarthy’s far more critically beloved “Blood Meridian”. Both are excellent, both work thoroughly McCarthy’s favorite geography of the US/Mexican border regions, both require a little understanding of the Spanish language, and both require a lot of appreciation for what is special in both cultures; but “All the Pretty Horses” is so much more accessible a story than “Blood Meridian” , every American will enjoy this book.

The story concerns a sixteen year old Texan, John Grady Cole. Though to be perfectly clear, John Grady might also be considered a Mexican-American in many ways; certainly with respect to his understanding of Spanish and to a great degree the people that speak that language in southern Texas. But as John Grady will soon understand once he undertakes his pending journey, he may not all that well understand the needs and priorities of the people living in northern Mexico; no matter how well he understands their words, he may not understand their meanings.

John Grady’s tale begins in 1949 San Angelo, Texas with the death of his grandfather and the resulting sale of the ranch John Grady was raised on by the Mexican-American servants to his grandfather. His father and mother did not raise him to any great extent, but he shares many Anglo sensibilities with them; one of which is to run the ranch that is about to be sold. Others sensibilities John Grady will display throughout the book is his strong sense of loyalty and responsibility – traits John Grady will see in some of the Mexicans he will soon be living and working with. Unable to prevent the sale, he travels south to Mexico with a friend, Lacey Rawlins. Along the way they meet a younger man who claims the big bay horse he rides belongs to him. Little about this young stranger seems believable, not his ownership of the horse or the big gun he carries, not his stated age of sixteen (he looks thirteen), or even his name, Jimmy Blevins (a radio preacher in Texas). Blevins will be the undoing of Rawlins and John Grady, as is quite presciently foreseen by Rawlins during one his extended, cowboy comic dissertations. Grady and Rawlins will separate from Blevins after his bizarre behavior when he tries to “steal” back the big bay after he loses it in a thunderstorm. Blevins will disappear for several months while Grady and Rawlins will find work as ranch hands on a hacienda, the La Purísima in Coahuila Mexico. It is there, the reader will soon learn how much young John Grady knows about horses, and it is a substantial amount. During this interlude, John Grady will fall I love with the daughter (Alejandra) of the ranch’s owner, the hacendado, Don Hector. But Blevins’ actions regarding the big bay will have consequences for everyone in this book; one of which is the imprisonment of Grady and Rawlins. They will escape the prison in time after several horrendous experiences within the prison and by unorthodox means (unorthodox to Anglos). These “means” go back to the honorable (disapproved, by some parties) behavior by John Grady back on the ranch. These circumstances occur in a manner that allows McCarthy to include a love story or two, and several other dissertations, though these are made by two of the older residents of Northern Mexico: the father and the great-aunt (Alfonsa) of Alejandra.

It is not the story line that makes this book so enjoyable a read: it is the descriptions of the borderlands between Texas and Mexico, the language and attitudes of Mexicans and Anglo-Americans, and in the themes of this book. Look at how McCarthy describes the land and his use of polysyndeton (repeated use of conjunctions), a technique he will employ frequently in this book. The following passage is perhaps my favorite, but there are so many, especially in the first third of the book, I was left in awe:

They heard somewhere in that tenantless night a bell that tolled and ceased where no bell was and they rode out on the round dais of the earth which alone was dark and no light to it and which carried their figures and bore them up into the swarming stars so that they rode not under but among them and they rode at once jaunty and circumspect, like thieves newly loosed in that dark electric, like young thieves in a glowing orchard, loosely jacketed against the cold and ten thousand worlds for the choosing.

Not only is the land McCarthy describes beautiful and haunting (though not in any but a spiritual way), but he uses his conjunctions in a way that lures the reader down an emotional path he wants them to feel as well as see.

He does something similarly when seeks to describe the different ways Mexicans and Anglos see the world – again, there is that component of spirit that shows up in this book in a very different way as compared to most authors:

The Mexican does not believe that a car can be good or evil. If there is evil in the car he knows that to destroy the car is to accomplish nothing. Because he knows where good and evil have their home. The Anglo thinks in his rare way that the Mexican is superstitious. But who is the one? We know there are qualities to a thing. This car is green. Or it has a certain motor inside. But it cannot be tainted you see. Or a man. Even a man. There can be in a man some evil. But we don’t think it is his own evil. Where did he get it? How did he come to claim it? No. Evil is a true thing in Mexico. It goes about on its own legs.

However, as beautiful and intriguing as the language McCarthy uses in “All the Pretty Horses”, it the themes he explores so intelligently that kept me enthralled: belonging and loyalty, fate and responsibility, innocence and knowledge. To whom is John Grady loyal, to his land, long-time friend or to a young man whose behavior screams the he is not to be trusted? John Grady will not generalize nor compromise his sense of loyalty. If trying to help Blevins will land John Grady in prison for crime he did not commit, he will still do it. If dying in prison would have prevented Alejandra from making a deal that compromised her ideals in order to save John Grady, he would have rather died. On innocence, what is the Blevins character, innocent or not? He was young, but he most certainly committed a crime; some bad ones. Was his behavior the result of fate; a fate that was writ in stone the day he ran away from an abusive step-father, or was he as he seems in terms of his non-existent understanding of his situation, simply innocent of comprehension, if not also of various crimes. These are topics well written of by any writer, and is done most exceptionally well by McCarthy.

I will leave open for the reader the connection between the title and the characters in this book. It is a connection that will be seen as a metaphor to help one understand the connections between all life in this world; most certainly between the side by side worlds of Old West Texas and post-revolutionary northern Mexico; worlds often seen as alien to the citizens of each world as they struggle to understand the other. This book contains some violence (not very much for a Cormac McCarthy book), but a great amount of understanding of the human condition. It is a book well worth reading. I strongly recommend it.

I close with one final quote and a clue to the book and title:

“What he loved in horses was what he loved in men, the blood and the heat of the blood that ran them,''

Movie Review: "Trumbo"

Trumbo (2015)

R

3 Stars out of 5

Director                                Jay Roach
Writer                                   John McNamara (screenplay); Bruce Cook (book)
Cinematography                 Jim Denault
Costume Design                 Daniel Orlandi

Bryan Cranston                  Dalton Trumbo
Michael Stuhlbarg             Edward G. Robinson
Diane Lane                          Cleo Trumbo
Helen Mirren                      Hedda Hopper
David James Elliott            John Wayne
Alan Tudyk                          Ian McLellan Hunter
Louis C.K.                             Arlen Hird
Elle Fanning                        Niki Trumbo (teen through adult)
John Goodman                  Frank King

"As far as I was concerned, it was a completely just verdict. I had contempt for that Congress and have had contempt for several since. And on the basis of guilt or innocence, I could never really complain very much. That this was a crime or misdemeanor was the complaint, my complaint."

Dalton Trumbo (1976)

At times, Hollywood reminds me somewhat of a child picking at a scab. The child just can’t leave it be, and in the case of Hollywood they can’t let go of the collective angst their liberal hearts feel about the post-WWII era when they split into two groups: one group determined to express their first amendment rights by belonging to the American branch of the Communist Party and a second group that was determined to penalize the first group for their “anti-American” beliefs. Both factions claimed the high moral ground; both, I think could make thoughtful arguments for their positions. Then as now though, thoughtful arguments were often a second thought, it was far easier to demonize those with whom you disagree. “Trumbo” tells this story from the point of view of Dalton Trumbo, a member of a group of Hollywood writers collectively known as the Hollywood Ten.

“Trumbo” starts with several jarring jumps in the film’s tone. It begins with a black and white movie starring Jimmy Cagney (Michael Stuhlbarg) in a film written by Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston), moves to the real world to the stage where Cagney’s movie is being filmed, to Trumbo’s idyllic home life as a wealthy member of the Hollywood elite, and then to a movie theater where Trumbo is portrayed in the news reel that preceded the movie he and his family are there to see. As Trumbo exits the theater he is accosted by an angry theater patron who throws a coke on Trumbo and calls him a traitor based on what he saw in the newsreel. Trumbo will hear this epithet many times throughout the course of the movie. He will also encounter a Hollywood gossip columnist, Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren) and John Wayne (David James Elliott), both of whom will prove to be long term opponents, at least in this movie version.

Following the theater incident, Trumbo will meet with a group of like-minded friends from Hollywood: Ian McLellan Hunter (Alan Tudyk), Arlen Hird (Louis C.K.), Edward G. Robinson and others. Eventually, a group of ten drawn from Trumbo’s group will be subpoenaed to Washington DC to be interviewed by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Trumbo will convince the faint-hearted within his group they should protest the interview as a violation of their 1^st amendment’s right to free speech. Their performance before the committee will result in a “Contempt of Congress” charge that will send many of them to prison. Once released from prison Trumbo will return home and joyous family. He will be forced to sell his home due to his reduced financial situation; a situation that exists because he now can no longer get a job in Hollywood. He will write screenplays without attribution to earn money, and without attribution because he like many others are now blacklisted in Hollywood. Two of his screenplays will win a writing award from the Oscars, but won’t be awarded to Trumbo (for many years) since he hid his name from the public when he wrote the screenplays.

In Trumbo-the-character’s interactions with a devilishly well-played Hopper by Mirren, there are no greys in portraying her as a woman allegedly devoted to exposing Communists in Hollywood. Hopper is so devoted though, she comes across in the movie as a variation of a fascist as she threatens her opponents and then writes articles that ruin those same people’s ability to earn a living in Hollywood. Her protestations notwithstanding, her motivations actually appear to be more in line with a desire to dominate people with her threats and articles as much as to protect America from her perceived enemies, native born communists. In contrast, Trumbo is portrayed in the starkest contrast to Hopper as a man who selflessly is seeking the right to speak his political mind, even if his “speech” consists of little more than membership in the Communist Party of America. And this grey-less contrast is the primary fault with this movie: the anti-communists are a group with a valid fear (however misdirected towards their fellow citizens it may have been), they act like thugs in this movie; while the noble, idealistic communists of Hollywood lack all faults, except for maybe believing too much in their cause. The screenplay’s storyline by John McNamara is a superficial examination of the people, the events and is highly tendentious.

With respect to the characters, the primary character Dalton Trumbo is often well played by Bryan Cranston. There are moments near the end of the movie when his character is told by his long suffering wife Cleo (Diane Lane) that he is losing his family as he works endless hours to win his victory against Hopper & Co. Trumbo will eventually slow his non-stop rush to produce sub-rosa scripts that must be sub-rosa due to him being on (Hopper’s?) blacklist; but must still be written to bring in an income for him and his family. As their family life disintegrates, Cleo will persuade him to seek out his eldest daughter, Niki (Elle Fanning) in order to have a meeting of minds. Close-ups as directed by Director Jay Roach will reveal subtle emotions running across both Cranston’s and Fanning’s faces as they seek to renew their previous close father/daughter relationship. Sadly, this scene is the classic “exception proving the rule”: the rule in this case, is that character Trumbo is not a well-fleshed out character. He largely consists of two emotions: his pre-prison thoughtful leader of his philosophical cadre and his post-prison driven to succeed at all costs script-mill writer. Perhaps, these two Trumbo’s are symbolic of the actual man before and after prison, but they no better define a real man’s character any better than the “neo-Nazi” Hopper character that Trumbo persistently meets in this film.

“Trumbo” does have some technical merits that I admired throughout the movie, most notably the suits worn by Cranston and designed by Daniel Orlandi. The film depicts a 13 year period from 1947 to 1960, and Orlandi’s designs for Trumbo are a nostalgic delight to the eye (or at least to eyes interested in male fashions) that evolve over that period. It is odd though that as good as the costumery was the make-up seemed sadly out of sync in terms of quality. When we first meet Cranston/Trumbo in 1947 his hair is a shocking pitch black – right perhaps for the real Trumbo in 1947, but most definitely not for the much older Cranston. Somehow the make-up artist just never got Cranston’s lined faced to agree with his hair color. Also along this line, there is a scene where the out of shape, wrinkled 60 year old Cranston is playing the 42 year old, unlined Trumbo as he enters prison. The image of a nude Cranston bending over in order to perform the evidently required prison-film scene of inspecting anuses is an image I really wish I never had seen. In any event, there is some mis-casting of a too old Cranston, or in poor make-up to conceal this discrepancy.

The biggest opportunities this movie raised as a topic but then did not really deliver on were the twin topics of 1^st amendment rights and the astonishing perquisites for public condemnation without evidence that Congress has. Trumbo and the other Hollywood Ten could have circumvented congress’ powers had they claimed the 5^th amendment's right to not self-incriminate. But to the group’s point, does the 1^st amendment’s right to free speech permit one the right to belong to a hated group such as the Communist Party? The answer may well be they do not, if that group advocates violent overthrow of the American government (an issue completely skipped in this movie); but if they don’t advocate such and they are merely political pariahs (e.g. Japanese Americans during WWII), what are their rights before Congress? And even more to the point, does Congress have the right to cross-examine a citizen in a manner calculated to defame them, and to do so without presenting any evidence regarding their guilt? Does Congress have the right to arbitrarily ruin people’s reputation? And what of the real Trumbo’s opinions regarding the Soviet Union's practice of free speech versus the United States? This movie most certainly gives no indication that real Trumbo publically supported the Stalinist regime of the USSR (at the very least made excuses for them). This movie gives no reason to question Trumbo’s opinions or even to know them beyond his argument with Congress; he is found innocent by this movie of all charges and aspersions. I will repeat myself; this movie is highly tendentious. There is only a wrong side and a good side the argument under discussion.

“Trumbo” is a missed opportunity. It came with several marvelous actors (Cranston, Lane, and Mirren), but failed to write three dimensional characters for them. It raised at least two intriguing questions about the rights of the American citizen when facing an interrogation from Congress, but it failed to explore those points in any detail whatsoever. It even failed to explore in much detail beyond a thrown coke or spoilt swimming pool the effects on the families of the Hollywood Ten. Instead, this movie set out to describe a confrontation between Good and Bad, where the screenwriter had the freedom to define those two groups as harshly and thoughtlessly as he wished. There was some good acting in various scenes by Cranston and Mirren, but not quite frankly by anyone else. And to top off the acting, this movie made the oft-repeated error of having John Goodman play the one character he almost always plays: the big, heart of gold character that despite his flaws will always come through in the end. I cannot really recommend this movie to anyone unless you really, really love Bryan Cranston’s acting; and even then if no other aspect of the movie within which he appears will detract from your love of his acting. Good luck to anyone else who watches this film.

Book Review: "Moby Dick, or The Whale" by Herman Melville

Moby Dick or The Whale (1851)

4.5 Stars out of 5

Herman Melville

663 pages

"Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me."

"Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee."

Ahab

As a high school senior I once stared with dread at a thick volume I was assigned to read for class. The book was Herman Melville’s 1851 masterpiece “Moby Dick, or The Whale”. Now as a far older reader (hopefully somewhat wiser, too, but that is perhaps debatable), I decided to re-read it. I did so partly in an effort to continue a personal quest to fill in the various literary gaps that I possess. But partly, I re-read it to see if I would have the same reaction as an adult as when I was a child. I had recently tried the same experiment with Hugo’s “Les Miserables”. I had finished that book with this question: what would a typical adolescent learn from this book; how differently would an adult react? How many sixteen year olds can understand either of these unique works of art, even at the superficial level, let alone at any of the deeper levels? I couldn’t that is certain. I think, only now after a lifetime of experiences with the human condition, that I am finally approaching some level of understanding. And despite the hours spent working my way through the archaic language, the endless obscure biblical and Shakespearean references, the chapters-long digressions into cetology and whaling techniques, I can confidently say, it was worth the effort of reading “Moby Dick”. I cannot even say re-reading anymore. It was truly as if I read it for the first time.

There are so many ways to analyze “Moby Dick”, one trembles at the task. If we try a mechanical approach first, let’s consider how the novel is structured. There is historical and critical evidence to suggest that Moby Dick is two books: the first is a simple yarn about a young man joining a commercial whaling vessel and his adventures, the second is an encyclopedic compendium of 19^th century scientific cetology, of whale related art, of details of 19^th century whaling techniques, and a terribly complex tale overlaying the simple yarn that employs biblical allusions and Shakespearean language and motifs. It is critical for any reader to think in these terms when one reads this book; reading through the details of “Moby Dick” takes more patience that Dostoevsky’s “War and Peace” requires, and just as careful a reading for symbolism and theme as anything by Shakespeare – “King Lear” is the play that most comes to my mind. (At the most superficial level, who is madder, Ahab or King Lear?)

Sticking with the mechanical for the moment, let’s examine some of the patterns within the overall novel. There is a seeming randomness to the manner in which the chapters are organized: some are devoted to a simple narrative, others to thorough investigations into whales in art and science, or to Moby Dick’s seeming preternatural evilness, while other chapters are dedicated to a common theme (e.g. conversations on the quarter deck). However, within the chapters there are patterns in the events that take place. Consider the nine meetings (aka gams) that Ahab’s ship the Pequod takes with other whaling ships. The pattern these meetings display is a marvelous use of foreshadowing: with each successive ship, each ship’s captain relays their own encounters with Moby Dick (the fierce whale that Ahab seeks), and with each encounter, the results have proven to be more horrific. The pattern set by these other ships warns the reader very clearly of Ahab’s own pending meeting’s outcome.

Another internal aspect of the chapters is the narrator Ishmael. Not only does Ishmael have one of the most famous opening lines in all of English literature (“Call me Ismael”), his own biblical allusion (the disinherited/outcast son of Abraham’s union with his handmaiden Hagar), he plays two distinct structural roles in Moby Dick: an immature young man learning whaling as a character in the story, and an older, experienced man recalling the story that he alone (spoiler alert) survives; the key here to Ishmael as narrator is his oft stated goal of “telling the story right”. His symbolic role of the outcast (just like his biblical forefather) is a critical element for Melville in investigating and describing this book’s primary themes of identity and the oft-described good/evil duality. Because Narrator Ishmael is the outsider, he can stand away from the god/man dualism of Ahab or the good/evil dualism of Moby Dick and describe what he saw without subjective bias. But by begging for permission to “tell the story right”, Melville also gives himself permission to not only include the cetological digressions, to jump supernaturally from one character’s view of the events that unfold within the overall story, and to most critically provide an omniscient knowledge of conversations and events that the character Ismael could not have actually witnessed. Consider the following description of the Ahab/Moby Dick duality by Narrator Ishmael:

 "All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick."

Sailor Ishmael would neither know nor comprehend such thoughts (and there is a multitude of such within the book), but the demi-god Narrator Ishmael; he knows all. However while Narrator Ishmael assumes this god-like role within “Moby Dick”, there is of course, another character far more deserving of that description and character role – Ahab.

One last note on the structural elements of “Moby Dick” concerns the language used, especially Ahab’s. In this case it is a highly instructive component to the book; it seems at times to be a lesson in (if nothing else) the poetic language and techniques of Shakespeare. “Moby Dick” is filled with Ahab’s and others’ soliloquies. A favorite minor speech by Ahab of mine is where he worries over what is driving him:

“What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me?”

Does this not sound like a line from “Macbeth” or “King Lear”?  Ahab’s poetic language, is also salted  with “thee’s” and “thou’s”, words that constantly work to create a mood of Quaker-like religiosity in Ahab’s tortured god-less soul. All of these elements of language work to place him outside the realm of his contemporaries (i.e. mortal man). For while, the narrator Ishmael tells the story, it is Ahab’s story, more so than any other character in the book.

Another way of trying to understand “Moby Dick” (as with any work of fiction) is to explore the author’s personal history. And while it is tempting to investigate the temporal influences on Melville when he wrote this book (his love of Shakespeare and most especially his reading of the sinking of the whaler Essex by a whale), it is really far better in my opinion to focus on two other aspects of “Moby Dick”: themes and characters, most notably a triad of characters, Ahab, his Quaker first mate Starbuck, and his harpooner, the Parsi, Fedallah. Let’s begin with these three characters that are so central to this book. As anachronistic as it may be, I was constantly tempted to think of the three in Freudian terms. Ahab with his monomania, his nearly uncontrolled rages, and his apparent indifference to the needs of others seems a perfect example of Freud’s “id”: instinctual urges. If Ahab is the “id”, then most surely Starbuck, the calm and prudent man with a purpose based in reality must be Freud’s “superego”: essentially the brake on the “id”. That would leave the mysterious Parsi Fedallah as Freud’s “ego”: the reality based part of the mind that mediates between the “id” and the “ego”. And here is where my pet theory breaks down, for it is certain that Fedallah play a very fuzzy corner in this human triangle of forces. Ishmael refers on several occasions to Fedallah as Ahab’s ghost; this suggests a relationship with Ahab certainly, maybe a dark one, but definitely no role as a mediator between Ahab and Starbuck.

Dropping the Freudian approach, let’s think about Fedallah as a Parsi. There is meaning in this religious affiliation, but is it straightforward or an allusion to another theme(s) in the book? Parsi’s are part of the Zoroastrian religion; a key component of this religion is that the world is split into two distinct groups: good and evil, light and dark; and that the good Zoroastrian works for the light/good. There is no part of “Moby Dick” where Melville makes any reference to Fedallah as agent of good, far from it. He seems much more like an aspect of Ahab, not of God. He is in some ways a burnt out husk of a former Ahab. His Zoroastrian references may be solely to indicate that the world is indeed split into good and bad; but in this character’s case, as in Ahab’s they most certainly do not necessarily belong to the side of the “good”.

Better then to focus on Ahab, and Ahab almost alone. For a book named after a whale, this book really is much more about Ahab and what he represents; Moby Dick is merely his goal and chosen nemesis, nothing more. We first hear of Ahab from the Quaker owner of the Pequod when he describes Ahab as a “grand, ungodly, god-like man”. This is one of the most prophetic lines in the book, because for the first 27 chapters of the book, we will not meet Ahab in person (so to speak). When he does appear, he is a man larger than life; perhaps god-like to the impressionable Sailor Ishmael but as he will learn, most definitely godless. Rather, it appears that Ahab may mistake himself for God. He will speak of himself as striking the sun, should it insult him. He is largely an unchanging, monotonic character: a man driven mad apparently by the loss of his leg to the whale Moby Dick, but in reality to the rage he feels that there is an “inscrutable thing” that seeks to limit, to control Ahab and his destiny. At times Ahab will display normal human behavior: he is more than charismatic enough to excite a worried crew into chasing Moby Dick, and on another occasion he will doubt himself as in a conversation with Starbuck (the only man to whom Ahab will speak as a man) he will call himself a fool and wonder aloud at his folly in spending a life at sea. But these examples of humanity are the exceptions that prove the rule that Ahab sees himself as one unyielding to man and nature, he appears mad to all as he seeks to fight the “unconquering whale” that Ahab has defined as the personification of the “inscrutable force” that he will resist to his dying breath.

Ahab’s personality (such as it is) leads to one of the many themes that help define “Moby Dick” as a great book. While Ahab has consigned himself to perdition in his mad anger at Moby Dick/Nature/God (“…from Hell’s heart I smite at thee…”), the theme isn’t so much whether Ahab belongs in Hell or not, but rather the issue of vainglorious Man setting himself up as an equal to God. And even far more to the point, is the whole concept of identity – is Ahab a man, or a god? What of the crew: is South Seas harpooner Queequeg, a cannibal (as Ishamel first thinks when he meets him) or a man, or for that matter, are all the non-Anglo Saxon members of the crew (and there are many) men or sub-men? Melville takes great care to very clearly point out early in the book that Ishmael’s friend Queequeg is more of a civilized man that Ishmael. Is the issue Queequeg’s identity as a man, or Ishamel’s perception of him as a cannibal? The other harpooners are a Native American, an African American, and the non-Christian Parsi Fedallah. Melville makes abundantly clear that these men hold positions on the ship nearly equal in stature to the ship’s officers; he is signaling the high functional value of these men that exists despite their minority status. Deeper down though, it is more than an exploration by Melville of human political rights, but is instead a definition of humanity, of identity. These various non-Anglo Saxon/non-Christian men display on many occasions acts of bravery and selflessness that is not displayed by any of the WASP members of the crew. What defines these men, their actions or the color of their skin? Melville may have described Ahab with some ambiguity regarding his humanity, but there is none for the harpooners excepting Fedallah (he remains more ghost than man).

To go back to my original question: is this a book for adolescents? Certainly the lessons contained in the themes (and I have listed only the primary one of identity – a theme that might also be re-characterized as perception, for example) are valuable lessons for anyone, adolescent and older. Still, I have to wonder how well a teenager can pick up on these themes and techniques. I also have to wonder how many adults are willing to wade through the language and digressions. But if you are one, then I recommend that you set aside several days (weeks?) and wade indeed into this book. It is an example of a book (more so than “Les Miserables”) that every American should read; partly for the explorations of identity that are so relevant even up to today, but also for the realization that these issues were so well explored by an American writer in the middle of the 19^th century. For a problem that might have been solved at our nation’s birth, for one so well explored in the mid-19^th century via a civil war, for the political rights of every man regardless of color or religion to still be so much in question, that is an unsolved enigma that would have humbled anyone, including Ahab.