Category Archives: Books Worth Keeping

Plenty of books are worth reading once.
These selections are good enough that they deserve shelf space; to be remembered and referred to, and to cherish the prospect of one day experiencing them again.

Karla’s Choice, Nick Harkaway

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Picked this up less than fully convinced that a John Le Carre novel sans Le Carre was really needed.  Fact it was penned by the master’s son, Nick Harkaway, made it somewhat more promising than the various Ian Fleming-less Bond retreads by unrelated followers (of whom Harkaway is one, the admirable William Boyd another).  Was encouraged before the start by a statement in the Author’s Note that “There were always supposed to be more Smiley books.”  LeCarre’s having graciously left ten years of blank foolscap between The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy also suggested room for this insertion.

From the start, what I found was encouraging, gliding along quite happily to the familiar rhythms and contexts of LeCarre’s world as scored and conducted by Harkaway (who has the benefit of having actually been present and somewhat privy to his father’s creative processes).   A pleasant enough experience, but not eye-opening – until somewhere around 80% of the way through – stop reading here if you don’t want to spoil the experience for yourself…

Just as I’d begun to worry this might be all retread, Susannah, the naive civilian whose cry for help initially set the entire story into motion, despairs at Smiley’s apparent lack of principle and crosses the Iron Curtain into Hungary (at the time a Communist autocracy tightly leashed to the Soviet Union) to commandeer his mission for herself.  Though believable based upon her earlier actions and personal history, this impulsive act nonetheless flips us into another plot entirely, as Smiley and his professionals must improvise in hopes of catching up with her.  Then, just as I’d accepted that and begun to anticipate the excitement it must generate, Harkaway switched form entirely – stopping the clock to preview various character’s future reminiscences on whether Smiley’d had no idea this was coming and was now in totally reactive mode, or had anticipated and accepted Susannah’s action as inevitable and gone with the flow or had, in fact, callously conceived, arranged and ensured such a dangerous act in order to achieve his own ends at the probabl cost of her innocent life.  By dancing a follow-spot rapidly over Smiley’s talent, skill and commitment even as it highlights several canonic characters’ own abilities and relationship to the master, Harkaway makes clear that moral principle, guilt and regret are the true subjects of the novel, assuming LeCarre’s mantle very nicely, thank you. 

Minutes later (in reading time, that is) we’re back into thriller form, watching as George discovers he has been made and is being tailed, and then as this unassuming ‘little man’ deals brilliantly with the challenges (including a car chase with Smiley at the wheel – never thought we’d see that!).  These scenes are virtuosic for both character and author, and from there it is a race to a signature LeCarre finish: bloodshed held off-screen, morality front and center and more than a hint of anticlimax, until Harkaway surgically exposes just what values and choices lay behind the various participants’ actions. Despite the infamous Karla (through-line villain of the entire Smiley oeuvre) having appeared very sparingly and with minimal back story, it turns out that his ‘choice’ is indeed the true point of this novel.  Not to mention a worthy gift to the fans in how it adds color and insight to Le Carre’s own chronologically-later volumes. Very nicely done!

Credit where credit is due:  I read this in e-book form – one of the more benevolent byproducts of our evolving digital hegemony.  An e-book I had borrowed online from a public, i.e. ‘government funded’ (cue the sinister theme music) library – one of those many liberal-culture institutions from which our marginally-elected leaders are currently scrambling to rescue us.  Had downloaded it in moments and for free – another benefit of the ‘mommy state’ imposed upon us by the ‘deep state’ which is now being shredded in favor of absolute free-market fundamentalism. Who knew we had so much to lose?  Anyone with eyes…

Having thus tested the waters and found them delicious, I’ll now be purchasing a hard-copy of Karla’s Choice so as to compensate author and industry for conspiring to make such an entertaining and worthwhile title available.

Kköszönöm mindenkinek – ’Thank you everyone.’

Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver

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Kudos to the 2023 Pulitzer Prize Board for a totally worthy selection.  Kingsolver ticks a literary box by channeling Dickens and his David Copperfield without crass imitation, a societal significance box by addressing child poverty, abuse and the epidemic of rural drug use (especially opioid addiction, calling out some of the companies and their owners by name) and the readership box by creating a captivating and moving tale featuring flawed but valuable characters of realistic human color and complexity in an interesting land- and culture-scape.

The opening chapter or two induced a little hissy fit in this reader – knee-jerk objection to spending time with a self-destructive junky single mother and a narrator who seemed, at first, kind of stereotypically hillbilly.  The prize award was helpful then, inducing me to power through to where it began to dawn on my urban elitist New York-raised mind that the mother was not going to be our companion all the way through, the child/narrator quite a bit more self-aware than my prejudices first supposed, and the hillbilly voice (along with my dismissive reaction to it) was central to the moral view of the novel. Just as it is best not to judge political speech on the speaker’s accent, neither should the reader allow Demon’s voice, which cements him into his milieu, to obscure his story.

Kingsolver’s craft extends also to the novel’s plotting, following Demon’s trials and tribulations for long enough to make the reader feel his despair and self-doubt while every now and then throwing us the lifeline of a gentle soul or a positive experience before descending again into the long, slow slide.  By the time his fate takes its most significant downward turn (page 333 of 546) we are fully invested and watch the slow-motion pileup with horror until around 508 when a ray of sunshine begins to probe the rotted-out shutters of doom.  Even then, we’re on pins and needles till very nearly the end, hoping against hope that he will find it in himself to succeed and when he does, in the final twenty pages, the payoff brought tears to these eyes. 

I gather some readers have said that happy ending (one should say tentatively happy, having been reminded in the preceding pages of the regression statistics on addiction treatment) feels false and not credible, after all that came before, and it would certainly be possible for an author to have ended this story on the downbeat of despair.  Possible, but not as rewarding and not as true to the model’s modus operandi. Dickens too was writing to entertain a wide public and so needed to grant them the satisfaction of a good story with a rewarding culmination even as he fed them the unvarnished truths he believed they needed to hear.  His legacy over the intervening 175 years is sufficient to suggest that he, and now Kingsolver, made the correct choice in that.

As a writer one can well imagine the fun Kingsolver must have had transcribing character names into the nicknaming vernacular of mountain folk: David Copperfield to Demon Copperhead, James Steerforth to Fast Forward, Uriah Heap to U-Haul, etc.  While Mr. Micawber made a modest move to Mr. McCobb, the author seems to have hewn closer to model the more admirable the cast member:  Aunt Betsey gets the slimmest change of spelling as Aunt Betsy, the Peggety family becomes the Peggot clan and Dora morphs into Dori, still trying her young husband’s patience and love just as much despite the different vowel and dying an early tragic death as well.  Demon’s other romantic interest retains her original name, Agnes, despite being referred to throughout as Angus (for reasons the novel explains).  A further twist is necessary for her father, who in Dickens is Dr. Strong.  Since the physician in that part of the story will turn out to be a villain whose neglectful care and wrong-headed prescriptions start Demon on his steepest and deepest slide, Kingsolver names him Dr. Ward (as in ‘ward of,’ perhaps?) while Agnes’ father and Demon’s putative rescuer becomes the high school football team’s Coach Winfield – as in ‘win on the field,’ perpetuating Dickens’ own custom of punacious character names.  

Another interesting bit of craft regards how reticent the cover quotes and inside flap summary are (at least in the hardcover edition I read).  A potential reader would never know from them what a harrowing story they are in for.  One suspects that was a calculated choice, aiming for potential readers to be drawn in by Kingsolver’s previous commercial successes and the Pulitzer award so they would read far enough to become emotionally invested before seriously questioning whether or not to continue.

One could say a lot more, but I’ll just leave it that Demon Copperhead has already taken a prominent spot on the shelf so I’ll frequently glimpse its spine and be reminded that highly satisfying and truly worthwhile fiction is still possible – even in this age of internet, AI and attention spans measured in microseconds.

Another Side of Bob Dylan, Victor Maymudes (Co-written and Edited by Jacob Maymudes)

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Subtitled ‘A Personal History on the Road and off the Tracks,’ and found by happenstance in a used-book store, this is a bit of marketing, in that it’s real subject is not Dylan at all, but Victor Maymudes, a longtime roadie and tour manager for Dylan, who spoke much of the text into a tape recorder in anticipation of a memoir he did not live to write.  Son Jacob (intriguing note: Dylan also has a son by that name) found the tapes after nearly every other possession or memento of his father had been destroyed in a fire, and put together this volume out of loyalty, respect and love.  Intertwining his own recollections, he added also quite a bit of explanation regarding the drifting apart that separated Maymudes from Dylan for years, how they came back together and how they fell-out again, more deeply and permanently, superficially due to business issues touching upon Jacob and his sister, but really thanks to Dylan’s own mercurial and dictatorial personality.  End result, the title is a deliberate misdirection but – as no doubt intended – induced me to pick up and read a book I’d likely not have been interested in if it had been titled more accurately.

Part rock/pop music hagiography, part social history of the sixties, part family paean, what resulted is an oddity but worth the reading.  Maymudes is interesting and unique, his journey intermittently exciting and at other times reflective.  The glimpses of Dylan depict savantic brilliance within the realm of music and songwriting coupled with a chilling inability to understand, consider or forgive those close to him.    As if, being so successful on his own terms at the one or two things he believes matter, he can barely spare a moment or a thought for anyone who is not equally blessed.  This seems confirmed by scenes of his collaboration with other musicians whom Dylan found satisfactory to his craft’s needs and so deigned to treat in a more-humane manner.

A dual portrait then, of two very different characters, their colorful journey and the tragic end of their always-unequal friendship over misunderstandings and slights that by rights should have been, given Dylan’s extraordinary wealth and independence, inconsequential.  Obscure and oddball, but definitely worth holding onto once you’ve come across it.

(Another note: Treehorn Books, Santa Rosa CA, is all a paper-hound could ask for.  Narrow aisles, shelves piled high, well-categorized and welcoming.  Stopped in for the first time to see if they had any G. B. Shaw for a birthday gift and found the perfect Collected Prose; inches thick, hard cover, great condition including library-style plastic over the dust-cover.   I will be back…)

Red Notice, Bill Browder

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Naïve American-born (but later a British citizen) investment banker stumbles upon vast opportunities in post-Soviet Russia, makes a fortune for himself and his hedge-fund clients, then runs afoul of Putin’s thuggish cronies, with tragic consequences, especially for one of his Russian attorneys, who is imprisoned, tortured and beaten to death.

Coming from a background of self-importance, Browder’s brief youthful rebellion is followed by a dive into the hyper-establishment world of investment banking.  It is from that platform he learns the post-Soviet Russian government has given every citizen a voucher to invest in their newly-privatizing economy – a laudable goal, on its surface. Realizing that most citizens have no idea how to benefit from this historic opportunity, Browder organizes the means necessary for himself and other non-Russian investors to buy up those vouchers and benefits, instead.

Perhaps not surprisingly, there are Russians who resent this.  Not, the ordinary citizens, who have made at least a tiny gain by selling him vouchers they believe to be worthless, but rather the local sharks, who resent not being able to gobble up this bonanza themselves.  When they, with the help of corrupt police and courts, begin stealing from Browder’s organization and, even more tellingly, from their own government (and thus its citizens) Browder, being a good child of American idealism, tries to use the rule of law to stop them.  The majority of the text, and its drama, concern this white-hat intrigue, and the death of Russian attorney Sergei Magnitsky, whose only sin was believing to the end in the myth of his nation’s legal system.

This is a compelling tale, worthy of LeCarre or Green, and Browder tells it pretty well for a first-timer (no other pen is credited…).  While one can almost hear the author swearing not to aggrandize his own role, though, he does come off as…well…a crusader for justice.  A jet-setting lifestyle, financed by taking advantage of the same lax government which cultivated Russia’s oligarchs and oligarchy, is hardly a stable perch from which to condemn others, but the degree of corruption and cruelty he uncovers makes such criticism seem rather a quibble. 

The real hero here, as Browder frequently and forcefully reminds us, is Sergei Magnitsky, attorney, husband and father, who risks all for the truth, and pays the ultimate price, his last weeks recounted here with justified horror and sympathy.  It is to Browder’s credit that he then pursued the only form of justice available; the Magnitsky act by which the USA (and later several other nations) put Russa on the public stage and on record as a criminal conspiracy dressed up in nation’s clothing.  (Browder appears also to have taken financial care of Magnitsky’s family after his death, another stand-up move.)

The events of this book took place in the aughts, the first decade or so of Vladimir Putin’s presidency.   As the autocrat now wreaks his havoc on Ukraine, Red Notice (not to be confused with the movie or another novel of the same title, btw) is more valuable than ever for its glimpse behind the curtain, confirming that his tyranny is no recent development, but the true measure of the man, evil rooted and growing for many years.   All the way back to his KGB days in the old Soviet Union, in fact.  Clearly, there is no hope Putin will ever change his ways, and no wisdom in ever believing anything he spouts about agreements, cooperation, the rule of law or any alternative to simple brute force and self-service.  Fair warning to the next president who believes he has seen the Russian’s soul in his eye (43), or finds in him a friendly bro’ with whom to shoot the breeze – with no witnesses and no notes taken (45).

Pass this one around; people deserve to know.

The Well of Loneliness, Radclyffe Hall

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Among the earliest novelistic depictions of homosexual love and life, Hall’s book movingly expresses the solitary pain of living out a prohibited nature. Her protagonist, Stephen Gordon, enters this life a contradiction – christened with the name of the male child she is not – and ends it in the same way – professing love for one woman in order to free the other woman she truly loves to live a more conventional life – the very conventional life for which Stephen has longed since adolescence but can never have.

That conclusion may sound melodramatic, and it bears a bit of that taste, but the tale in its entirety is far more individual and nuanced than any melodrama.  It is, given the date of  publication (1928) , an amazingly deep and subtle reflection of what living a secret can do to a person; the isolation, doubt and self-destructiveness which it may often engender. More than just a woman who loves women, Gordon’s inner life, expressed through third person narration, seems more truly that of the transgendered; wishing with all her heart to live the sort of life her father had, and which those who happen to be born male may take for granted.

Noteworthy also is Hall’s depiction of louche Paris nightlife among the ‘inverts,’ that crowd of homosexuals, lesbians, gender transcenders and others who seek out one another’s company in the few establishments which tolerate them, and where many take refuge in reflexive excess.  This is not a pretty picture, but one of desperation and degradation – and exploitation, as at least one proprietor carefully records his customers’ identities for future exploitation. Other episodes reflect the democratizing effect of war, wherein women are briefly allowed to take on less-gendered roles, and the impact of snobbery and societal rejection, how friends become enemies the moment one’s secret is exposed. One gets the feeling these scenes are written from personal experience, or at leas those of the author’s close acquaintances.

In what seems a typical pretense of fiction from this period, Stephen’s dilemma is one of personal fulfillment rather than survival; being born into substantial wealth, she travels and writes and publishes for personal reasons only. Working for a living is never an issue, thus insulating her from the even greater impacts some of her other gay friends suffer (an artist couple are movingly depicted as they struggle, starve and die, one of illness, the other of suicide borne of despair).

As easy as it might seem to call this an historical curiosity, believing that things are much better now, one must remember thatthat is at most true only of some ‘liberal’ cultures; in many places and cultures around the world (and even here in much of the good ‘ol USA) repression is still the norm.  In truth, The Well of Loneliness is very much as timely today as it was a hundred years ago.

Why We Sleep – Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams, Walker, Mathew, PhD

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An in-depth summary of current knowledge on the subject, by a researcher and sleep-geek unafraid to sound like a prophet in the wilderness.  His central creed is the imperative of 7 to 9 hours of sleep for every adult (more for children, varying by age), of an early to bed early to rise schedule that aligns with the sun’s presence and, most diabolically, of later school start times that would allow developing brains the early-morning REM sleep which data prove are critical to their ability to learn and, even more, to complete the complex brain-development necessary to achieve a healthy adult personality and abilities.

The many research citations go a long way to convince, as they also amaze with the cleverness of researchers, finding ways to determine what goes on during sleep, in minds that are, by definition, in no condition to report it.  Brain wave analysis is an obvious technical aid, but the comparison experiments he relates – involving specific sorts of lessons and challenges presented before and following specific extents of specific types of sleep – are more surprising. As is just the simple revelation that there are so many stages of sleep, each with its own character and purpose. 

A subject as broad as this naturally demands a polymath, and Walker is enough of one to cite pharmacology and chemistry in support of his arguments, literature regarding the origins of our long held illusions and more literature to show that humans have known at least some of this for generations, we’ve just allowed other priorities to blind us to what our bodies are screaming.  If we are to rise to the many challenges we humans create for ourselves ( politics, wars, climate change, social change, pandemics and general pandemonium, to name just a few), we’d do well to follow his advice.

Saving his most potent Jeremiad for last, the author addresses sleep aids, crying out against profitable products that make no effort to treat underlying conditions, but rather, simply sedate the user into a simulacrum of sleep with none of its functions.  If my own experience with Ambien during a week of all-nighters and 12-hour jet lag had not already been enough to turn me off of the stuff, this book certainly would.

Deserves to be more widely read.  And followed, though one holds out little help for that, in this age of pods, pads, tablets, laptops and streaming, screening, screaming masses.

Sleep well!

The Spy Who Loved, Clare Mulley

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The paperback of this historical biography looks just about as substantial as a copy of Ulysses sitting on the shelf, but at 350 pages it is roughly half as long; is it printed on heavier-than-typical stock perhaps?   Or just buttressed by two Appendices, over thirty pages of attributive notes, a dozen of bibliography, and other supporting material.  Not that the story isn’t substantial, as we follow Christine Granville (nee: Krystyna Janina Skarbek) through the twists, turns, detours and (literal) dead-ends of WWII espionage in a depth of detail which is quite astounding, given that the crucial years of her life were lived in wartime, in secret and under varying names and legends.

Daughter of a dying aristocracy and a nation about to enter the two-stage coma of Nazism and Communism, Christine found purpose and a home of sorts among the secret service and, even more, the partisans, guerillas and Maquis of occupied Europe. For years she dared and dodged, evaded and enabled in ways that clearly contributed to the war effort. That she survived it all is little short of astonishing. When the war ended, however, and the British establishment decided it no longer required her services, she found herself adrift in many ways.  Despite the assistance and loyalty of many comrades, especially those also of Polish origin, she was still struggling to find a place in peacetime when a bit player – a merchant seaman with whom she had struck up a friendship of uncertain intimacy, then left – murdered her in an act of jealous impotence. 

Mulley does a fine job documenting all of this, and has clearly done an enormous effort in the research collating and checking departments.  More than that though, she has depicted the impact of the war from an original viewpoint, with special attention Britain’s taking advantage of Polish patriotism before abruptly abandoning their cause in order to appease Stalin – so he would assist the allies in correcting the damage caused by their earlier appeasement of Hitler…

Nor does the author ignore feminist elements of this story – the unusual degree to which Christine’s father treated her as equal or superior to her older brother, the many ways in which men in authority used her skills and then plied her for her favors, the independent and forward-looking manner in which she withheld or dispensed those favors for her own ends. And her own enjoyment. The tragic way in which what worked in wartime with principled and selfless patriots may have contributed to her death in a peacetime setting peopled by men with far fewer values or scruples. 

A bit slow to start, this slippery-slide through WWII gathers speed, tension and impact right up to its end, the final evening of Skarbec’s life, and more than retains interest through a brief but critical epilogue, where we see how several of the same men who competed for her love and endured disappointment when their efforts were not requited, formed an alliance to protect her memory from the worst tabloid exploitation and prudish disparagement.  That she engendered such loyalty is one more testament to the unique qualities of an extraordinary woman.  Brava.



Freedom, Sebastian Junger

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A very brief – with the text clocking in at only 133 pages, the 13 additional pages of ‘Sources and References’ are fully 10% as long – riff on the nature of freedom, structured as memoir of a 400 mile hobo along railroad rights of way from Washington DC to western PA, just shy of Pittsburgh and the Ohio border.  In the company of a varying group of old friends (who appear to be, or at least include, combat vets, hence the nickname ‘the Last Patrol,’), Junger seems to have embarked on this journey in search of something about simplicity, slowing down, the essence of frontier and a different side of America than he (and his readers) experience in ‘regular,’ daily, modern life.  While the narrative follows the geographic and chronological path of the walk, Junger’s musings are super-structured into three parts – Run, Fight and Think – representing his idea of the components of freedom. 

Run – To be free, one path is to escape those who would enslave them.  In early history, humans were well-suited to this, being among the greatest endurance machines of any land animals (birds and sea mammals, of course, out-class us by geometrical proportion).  Interesting to note that mechanized transportation, despite making travel fast and easy, has actually done more to decrease that freedom, by requiring we buy into an economic and social system to acquire and afford any slim possibility of moving faster or farther than our oppressors.

Fight – the earliest human conflicts being physical and between individuals, freedom was province of the largest, strongest and/or most ruthless fighters, who casually subjugated the rest (women being, by that definition, the least free of all; though Junger’s discussions are pretty much anthropocentric, women being mentioned now and then, almost as a sidebar).  Deeper examination, however, reveals that the biggest man does not always win. Whether in individual combat, where a smaller, quicker or more enduring man may best a big, slow opponent, or in war, where a small grass-roots insurgency can almost always win over a large mechanized, formalized army, the outcome is never so simple and rarely so certain.  This, he points out is why we have any hope of freedom – if it were always true the strongest would dominate, conflict would suicide and disputes end as soon as it became clear who was the stronger. (To an extent, that is the case; except that ‘stronger’ is a complex enough characteristic that it may take a battle to determine to whom it properly applies.)

Think – here our guide considers some less- obvious indicators of Freedom.  Having little or nothing to lose, he points out, makes his band of walkers more free than those whose homes and communities they pass (kudos to Kris Kristofferson and Bobby McGee for keeping us all mindful of that one).   By relieving them of dependence on a larger social structure or economy, it further enhances the illusion of freedom, though Junger points out that no one living an existence more developed than that of individual hunter-gatherer is ever that free (and a purely individual hunter-gatherer is doomed to extinction, so…).  There is always trade-off between belonging to a social unit and having the freedom to do whatever one wants. Always.

Different styles of leadership though, result in more or less freedom.  Hierarchical organizations, by allocating resources and authority in unequal measure, result in far less freedom for most of their members.  Non-hierarchical structures, where resources are shared and authority is earned and maintained by casual action and consensus, allow for greater freedom at all levels -and tolerate a greater level of disorder, as result.  The Irish and American battles for independence are referenced here, and also employed as lead-in to the one section that more-deeply acknowledges female contributions, pointing out women’s roles in keeping the community alive while men fight over it.  And also, at crucial moments, making public the moral or immoral bases for actions, sometime even shaming the men of one side or the other into acting more justly. Sometimes.

It is fitting then that the tale winds to a close by considering labor battles, just as he nears Pittsburgh, Youngstown and the industrial centers of the mid-west, a region identified in the public mind with both a vociferous defense of freedom cast as patriotism and a simultaneous lack of freedom under the stifling supply/demand market for lesser-skilled labor and the power of capital and market domination.

One other through line is Junger’s appreciation for the many lost and wild places still remaining in what is generally considered a densely-populated part of the USA.  Railroads, he points out, are both a source of such (the buffer lands either side of long-distance tracks being prevented from despoilation both by their often-rugged geography and the danger, noise and disruption they would inflict on any other activity placed beside them) and by law – theoretically off limits, yet practically un-policeable, as this tale proves.  There is still an American frontier, Junger suggests, room for exploration and room for freedom, of a sort, if one is willing to put down the trappings of belonging and comfort and take up the hard work and simple satisfactions of other places, other eras, other ways of life.

Having listened to and considered these worthy ruminations, perhaps the final word is to read the author’s notes on the book jacket and learn that Junger “…lives in New York City with his family.”   Freedom, it seems, is what one chooses it to be.

Endure, Alex Hutchinson

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Subtitled Mind, Body and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance, this in-depth survey of then-current (2018) scientific knowledge on the subject is written in the extended-magazine-article vein of Malcom Gladwell, who penned its foreword.  For a distance runner, it’s riveting stuff; as researchers ferret out the relative importance of physical versus mental fitness, of food, oxygen, hydration and heat, etc., etc.  For anyone else though, it’s likely to be too much by a multiple of miles.

All that science can use a little drama, so in addition to sprinkling in the anecdotes, Hutchinson wisely brackets segments of his book with the story of Nike and Eliud Kipchoge’s attempts to run a sub-2:00 marathon. The technology and resources devoted to that goal are staggering, as is the idea of what that pace demands of a human animal. An inspiring milestone, despite the questionable advantages employed to achieve it.

Even Hutchinson confesses by the end that it is all a bit confounding, and the best advice is still pretty simple.  His response is to quote this haiku by trainer Michael Joyner:

“Run lots of miles

Some faster than your race pace

Rest once in a while”

Practicing your craft and pushing your limits regularly are nothing new.  Perhaps the most significant piece of insight Hutchinson discovers is the importance of believing in your own potential to exceed past performance.  All the rest may make a small difference at the margins, but when race day comes it is often inspiration and commitment that make the difference between elation and disappointment.

My own thoughts at the end of this read were less about how to maximize one’s performance in endurance events, than of what that performance can mean to other aspects of life.  Running a marathon is never going to change the world (unless you are one of the genetically- and socially-blessed .001 percent, and even then will change it in only a very slim aspect), but having run a marathon can give one the confidence and strength to be better at any or all of the other things one does.  And that, I believe is where the real value lies, in the endurance of life itself.

The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga

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Darkly humorous, this Booker Prize-winner plays with our desire to believe its hero is actually a decent man despite his early admissions of guilt. When, late in the tale, his crime becomes clear (the ‘unreliable narrator’ turns out to have been entirely reliable), we are challenged to decide whether we condemn or forgive him, given the greater evil of the world in which he is required to survive, and in which we all play a part, regardless of how remotely.

Set among the impoverished majority of early 2000s India, The WhiteTiger can be read as a primer for those unfamiliar with that society, but they are also clearly an abstract for the hundreds of millions in similar straits in other nations around the world (“the colossal underclass,” as Adiga is quoted describing them on one website).  Insufficient resources, insufficient opportunity, insufficient education, insufficient justice; all these contribute to Balram Halwai’s ruthless take on survival.  That ruthlessness though, armors a soft heart – his anger takes forever to rise, his violence is not enjoyed, but endured for what it will achieve.  Even when he grudgingly admits to condemning his family back in the village of Laxmangharh, his reasoning is more amoral rather than immoral – he takes no pleasure in their fate, but rates it only incrementally worse than that to which they had already been condemned by birth: a few more decades of poor, ignorant backwater toil before the death which eventually comes for us all.  The same ‘cage’, as he describes it, from which he has so narrowly escaped.

That metaphor of the white tiger (a creature, we are told, of which there is only one born in an entire generation) works on multiple levels.  Not only are the poor caged as truly as animals in a zoo, so too is there little value in being a unique individual -beautiful, talented or valued in any way – if one must still live one’s life in a cage with nothing to do but eat sleep and procreate.  And when Balram kills and steals from his employer Ashok in order to escape, one is challenged to judge those acts any less natural (and neutral) than a tiger who, finding its cage door left open (the novel’s ‘red bag’ on the car seat…), might well kill and consume its keeper on its way out of the zoo.  Not out of perversity or evil, but simply as an act of survival – kill or be killed, eat or be eaten. 

In a brief author interview appended to the e-book edition, Adiga vouches for the reality of his settings and the corruption he describes.  This is fiction but not speculative fiction; poverty and oppression such as this really exist, and those with certain strengths or intellect may well be driven to extremes such as Balram’s in order to feel they have escaped it – even if, to these middle-class American eyes, his upward step seems a very small one.  All those heavily-accented voices on unsolicited phone calls, those poorly-worded spam e-mails and destructive malware episodes we hear about on the evening news – this novel educates us as to why anyone would spend their hours in what we are so quick to dismiss as criminal activities.  They are, perhaps, just surviving in the best way they can find.   

Amid such bleakness, it is very fortunate that both author and character bear an abundance of wry humor. Naming Ashok’s American-born wife ‘Pinky Madam’, is one inspired example, the comic self-aggrandizement of Balram delivering his entire memoir in a series of late-night monologues directed to the soon-to-visit Premier of China is another.  An abundance of such touches ensure that that this bleak message is not bleak in the telling.

A unique and eye-opening prize-winner well worthy of its award, and a useful reminder of how undeservedly-fortunate we of  ‘the first world’ really are.