A Loyal Character Dancer, Qiu Xiaolong

   This is the second in a series of novels about Chief Inspector Chen by Qiu Xiaolong. I was very pleased with the first novel in this series. Qiu Xiaolong is a remarkable writer. Consider that he did not spend the first 40 years of his life in the US. Further, he teaches English in the US. These novels of his were written in English, not translated from his native Mandarin into English. That is quite respectable alone. But it is not enough to make me want to read these stories. Yet, here I am, fascinated and addicted to the characters, the setting, the romance built into these.
    This book surrounds a murder and a disappearance. One man is mysteriously murdered and his corpse left in a park. The woman who has disappeared, the loyal character dancer, is of intense interest by both the underground mafia, and the American government, who has sent a special marshal, Catherine Rohn, to retrieve the woman, Wen Liping, who has disappeared.
   The Americans want her because she is a part of an agreement which is contingent for a man, her husband, in the US, to testify against some major mafia figures. But the whole affair is much more complex than it appears.
   The book is set in the late 80s, but it is affected by events that had happened in the 60s. In the 60s, Mao sent China's educated youth to the countryside to learn how to work like peasants. Wen, being a young woman in this period, is particularly beautiful, and becomes a victim to a local magistrate's influence. He wants her, so he takes her against her will. He marries her. He beats her. He cheats on her. She is subjected to debilitating work. Her life was one of misery. So, when the call came for her to go to the US to rejoin him, she could hardly be blamed for not wanting to go to him. But, the politics of the situation is too great for her to ignore.
   She had managed to find a place to hide. But, eventually Chen is able to unravel her whereabouts. He eventually convinces her that the mafia has connections everywhere, and that eventually they will find his report which identifies where she is located. When she is located, her benefactor will suffer the consequences for having harbored her. So, eventually she agrees, though Catherine is able to promise to her that she will not be forced to stay with her husband.
   Chen is very wary. Despite being romantic, he is also quite paranoid. He pays attention and is savvy. He knows he is being watched, and that he has enemies. He doesn't really trust anyone except his trusty sidekick and his sidekick's father, referred to as Old Hunter.
   I really enjoyed this novel. I recommend it. I will be reading the third in this series probably within a month.

The Executioner #1: Mafia Wars, Don Pendleton

   I remember a long time ago, my mom bought or was given a box filled with books from a couple of series: The Executioner and The Destroyer. I probably read every one of the Destroyer series that the box contained. Maybe there were 60 or so in the box. I really enjoyed them. The other series was The Executioner. I may have read one or two, I cannot really remember. But I never took to it. For whatever reason, I wanted to give it a shot. So, I got this one and gave it a read.
   Joe Kenney classifies it as "glorious trash." I think he's being a bit generous, myself. These books are trash. They probably translate to TV movies or episodes very well. It's so kitsch. For Kenney, the book is a monument against political correctness. It might not be politically correct in today's climate, but it wasn't in its own day. Quite frankly, I don't find it to be politically reckless at all. It just doesn't fit today's climate.
   The hero is getting revenge against the mafia for killing his father over a trivial debt. That's how it all gets started. He goes on a planned rampage that brings the entire mafia down in his area. My problem with it is that, though the mafia is certainly involved in bad affairs, there is a certain kind of peace because of their ability to monopolize their trade. There are no turf wars. But, once they are removed, there will be a kind of power vacuum which means a kind of war. I guess that is a fairly serious look at how Bolan's actions would have long lasting impact on the area when it's just a cheap thrills type of book. Such thinking isn't really important. Bolan's father took a loan he couldn't pay back, and he paid with his life. But was it worth killing dozens of people over it? Perhaps those soldiers who fought for the profit lines of the mafia aren't worth anything. It's just a story, right?
   The other thing that I found so kitsch was the 'romance'. The porno scenes inside are so cheesy as he gets into these sort of semi-grotesque sounding women who welcome him with open legs like the cheesy sluts they're portrayed to be. I love sluts. But I prefer my sluts to have something between their ears as well as their legs. They don't have to be smart, but they ought to have more personality than a cardboard box or an inflatable doll.
   Books like this are good because they give me a contrast to the high quality fiction which I am generally fond of reading. I think Stephen King, among others, mentions that it's a good habit to read everything good or bad. I would have to say the chances of me reading The Executioner #2 are slim to none.

The Underdwelling, Tim Curran

To be perfectly honest, I don't know where I picked up this novella. I probably got it for free from somewhere, but I'm not sure where. In any case, it's a relatively new story (2012) by Tim Curran.

It's a well told story from top to bottom, I would say. The writing style is easy to follow. The story follows a debutante miner on his first day of the job. He dreads going into the mine, but chalks it up to typical nervousness for the first day of the job. But it turns out that his premonitions were nothing to sneeze at.

The miners go into a deep pocket that has been buried for about 250,000,000 years. They discover an entire world that has petrified. Everything from dinosaurs to gigantic trees, all preserved in this underworld. But beyond the memorial of a primeval period of time that goes back to the beginning of the dinosaur age, there is an immortal resident.

The immortal resident is described as a super intelligent spider like creature. It is able to tap-tap communicate. It is powerful enough to rip full grown, powerful men into pieces for devouring. It does not eat like a spider, but rather chooses to eat men more like those around a turkey for Thanksgiving: ripping it to pieces and eating limbs and lapping up the blood of its victims. The protagonist, on the other hand, she preserves. She has been lonely for 250,000,000 years, and chooses him as a companion. She feeds him in the darkness. She helps him overcome a serious illness. Then, she gives birth to creatures. Eventually, the rescue team gets into the chamber, but this is where the story ends.

The story reminded me somewhat of H. P. Lovecraft. I am not alone in this vein. It was entertaining. It was short. It was an easy and pleasant enough read. If you like the short horrors of long ago, you will probably appreciate Curran's effort.

Death of a Red Heroine, Qiu Xiaolong

   I have been wanting to read some Chinese fiction for awhile. I wanted something a bit seedy and underground. Maybe something a bit spicy. Qiu Xiaolong came up as a candidate on a list somewhere about a year ago. So, I got some of his books and they have been on my Kindle idling for a bit. At last, I started reading this first in a series of detective fiction novels.
   Qiu Xiaolong, I had originally thought, would be a Chinese writer whose works are translated into English. That thought was only half correct. He is Chinese, but he moved to the US and continues to live there since the early 90s. For his work, Death of a Red Heroine, he was awarded "the 2001 Anthony Award for Best First Novel by a mystery writer and The Wall Street Journal ranked it as the third best political novel of all time. It was based in part on an actual sex and drug scandal from the early 1990s." (from Wikipedia.org)
   It's been awhile since I have been gripped so tightly by a great narrative. There are many aspects that make this book endearing to me.
   First, the setting. I work in China these days. It's 2018 and I've been in China since 2016. I don't really have a solid picture of what China was like in the past aside from what my ex-girlfriend used to tell me. I can certainly see elements of similarity between her memories and the descriptions rendered by Xiaolong. So, in a lot of ways, I feel like Xiaolong is really putting me in touch with the country that has tolerated me to work at a second tier public university.
   Second, I really love his main character, Chen. Chen and I have a few things in common: our love for poetry and a bachelor's degree in English literature. I will say that my love for poetry has mostly gone to sleep for quite some time. I appreciate to an extent, but consider it a bit of an anachronism these days. Perhaps a part of the problem is mine. Perhaps it's the quality of the work. Once upon a time, the greatest writers wrought their full wit on metered, rhythmic, and otherworldly poetry. Today, it is largely left in the laps of those who either like to feel sorry for themselves in some kind of sloppy prose or splatter words on the page much like certain abstract painters abuse canvas. Whatever the case, I love how poetry often helps Chen visualize the world, his interactions with others, and how he ultimately defines himself.
   The plot is fairly simple: a man kills a Chinese model. Chen, the lead detective, is sent to find out who killed her. Eventually he discovers that the killer was a child of a high ranking inner party member. As he gets close to unraveling the case, and the killer, Wu, becomes aware that he's being investigated, Chen very nearly loses his ability to pursue Wu. Through some help from high places, he manages to finish the case. In the end, Wu is tried and executed through the late hours of the night. It's quite a brutal finish.
   Some things that are interesting and stood out for me: the victim, the model named Guan, was famous enough that many people all over China could recognize her. Yet, she lived in a shabby apartment. She is not afforded special privileges despite her fame. There was no economic benefit for what she did. In fact, she had to be the perfect person at all times. She is compromised by Wu who drugs her than photographs her in sexual poses. Yet, she could see the neighbors below her through the holes in her floor. She was treated differently by her neighbors, but not in any kind of positive way. For the entire building she lived in, there were four phones that could be used with some payment. They all had to share a common kitchen area.
   Some things Xiaolong wrote stuck out for me:
   "Political correctness was a shell. It should not, could not, spell an absence of personal life."
   On how China treated its higher education professors, "The poorest is a Ph.D., and the dumbest is a professor."
   "A room's like a woman, he reflected. It also possesses you. Besides, you have to spend a fortune to make it love you." I don't know if this is true about women, but it does seem to be true about a room.
   "It is not people that make interpretations, but interpretations that make people."

   I really enjoyed reading this book and would easily say it's among the best 3-5 novels I've read this year.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

This book has been on my to-read list for decades. I am not sure why I thought it was a long novel. I dimly recall my cousin reading it and it being a brick. Perhaps his edition contained the whole series. In any case, this version that I read was more of a novella.

Apparently it was originally a radio show. What happened to radio shows like this? Do they still do this sort of thing?

The story follows an uninteresting and unintelligent who happens to be drinking buddies with an alien who has been stranded on earth for awhile. Earth is scheduled for demolition, and the alien aware of what's about to happen, decides to bring his drinking buddy with him onboard the ship. Unfortunately, they are not appreciated by the captain and are ejected out of the airlock. Fortunately, they happen to get picked up by an improbability ship on its way to rediscover a kind of El Dorado planet.

There, the reason why earth was created is revealed: it is in fact a computer created to reveal the question that goes to the answer of life which is 42. The earth is created by a mice and humans are important in solving the riddle. When the mice discover that a human being is saved from the planet, they seek to extract his brain to see if they can discover the answer that they've been looking for. Ultimately he escapes.

This book is funny. It's like Monty Python meets science fiction. They did a movie, apparently. What a shame they didn't get Terry Gilliam to do it justice. But maybe I'm selling it short: I haven't even seen it!

My favorite quote would be, "The President is very much a figurehead - he wields no real power whatsoever. He is apparently chosen by the government, but the qualities he is required to display are not those of leadership but those of finely judged outrage. For this reason the President is always a controversial choice, always an infuriating but fascinating character. His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it." It's definitely food for thought.

Black Bazaar, Alain Mabanckou

I'm not sure when or where I picked up this ebook. It's an autobiographical account of the writer, Alain Mabanckou. It's translated from French into English. It's certainly not the usual sort of book that I might find and read. Where did I hear about it? What was it that made me download it? Perhaps it's my love for sinister books and the title is certainly sinister. But in no way is the actual book sinister. Nonetheless, I found it quite enjoyable.

The story is roughly about a man in his early twenties living in France. He sees it as a kind of reverse colonization. He is from the smaller Congo. He starts off as a devilishly stylish young man, obsessed with designer clothes. In some small ways, I was not terribly fond of him as a character in the beginning. He starts off mostly interested in his image and the particular curvature of women's asses. His nickname is Buttologist for this reason.

His biggest influence is a writer who gives him a thirst for writing and reading. He buys for himself a typewriter, and is addicted to writing with it. Eventually, he breaks up with his girlfriend (she really breaks up with him), whom he calls Original Color. Eventually he runs into a young Belgian-French artist who takes an interest in him. She expands his life experience into jazz and other writers.

I liked the idea of the reverse colonization. I never thought of Africans flooding into France as a kind of reverse colonization, but it really is, isn't it?

I would read a part two of this book if it exists. Is it a novel? An autobiography? There is not so much talk about this book available courtesy of Google's first page of results.

The Wallet of Kai Lung, Ernest Bramah Smith

   I am new to Ernest Bramah. After a number of Japanese pieces of literature, I wanted to read something Chinese. The Wallet of Kai Lung certainly sounds Chinese. Ernest Bramah certainly doesn't sound Chinese. Is it a pseudonym? No it isn't. He's from England. Well, by the time I had that figured out I was already well into the story.
   Bramah's article on Wikipedia states that his works would be compared with those far more famous. That is to say, "His humorous works were ranked with Jerome K. Jerome and W. W. Jacobs, his detective stories with Conan Doyle, his politico-science fiction with H. G. Wells and his supernatural stories with Algernon Blackwood. George Orwell acknowledged that Bramah's book, What Might Have Been, influenced his Nineteen Eighty-Four. Bramah created the characters Kai Lung and Max Carrados."
   To be honest, until reading that bit about "What Might Have Been might have influenced his Nineteen Eighty-Four", I might never have felt the need to read another of his works. That is not to say that The Wallet of Kai Lung is bad. It is in fact a series of short stories, two of which I enjoyed in particular: "The Story of Yung Chang" and "The Vision of Yin, the Son of Yat-Huang." I also enjoyed, though to a lesser degree, "The Vision of Yin, the Son of Yat Huang." The writing style is good, but I could not read more than a single chapter in a single sitting without having to prop my eyes open with pins. Another issue was I had a hard time keeping track of the names. I don't know why I didn't have this problem with the Japanese stories that I read.
   Wikipedia's quotes from the stories are as follows:

•     "He who lacks a single tael sees many bargains"
•     "It is a mark of insincerity of purpose to spend one’s time in looking for the sacred Emperor in low-class teashops"
•     "It has been said there are few situations in life that cannot be honourably settled, and without loss of time, either by suicide, a bag of gold or by thrusting a despised antagonist over the edge of a precipice on a dark night"

I only recall reading the first two.
   There are another four of these books. Will I read another? I don't think so. But, that does not mean I recommend against it.

The Country Doctor, Franz Kafka

   Franz Kafka's novella, "Metamorphosis,"  and short story "The Hunger Artist," has forever placed Kafka as one of my personal top 10 or 20 preferred writer's list for the 20th century. So, when I found "The Country Doctor" by Kafka on feedbooks.com, I of course had to read it. It would seem that it is supposed to be a series of stories. I must hunt down the rest of them and be a bit more diligent in hunting down as much of his work as I possibly can.
   I'm not sure how to look at this story. It's like a backtrack to a very distant age when doctors were largely incapable of doing very much to help people. Their equipment was extremely primitive. For instance, when he listens to the heart of the patient, he must place his head against the chest rather than use any instrument.
   He discovers that the problem with the farmer is that he is infested with worms. There's nothing he can do to help him. Regardless, he is stripped naked and forced to lay with the dying man by the family. He is instructed to save the man or be killed should the man die. Fortunately, he is able to escape through the window with his clothes in hand with the assistance of a powerful team of horses which he had been able to borrow.
   I had no idea what kind of story this was when I started it. But it was definitely a journey into a very strange world. What a loss to literature it was when he died so young. What amazing literature he left behind. He really has very very few peers.

Dark Shanghai, Robert E. Howard

   There are a lot of Robert E. Howard stories on my blog this month. This story follows a sailor, Steve Costigan, who is unusually eager to get himself into trouble. Unlike many of Howard's heroes, this one is particularly stupid. He is so stupid, it becomes half comic, half adventure story.
   He is tricked into thinking that there's a girl who has been kidnapped. So, he goes to rescue her. She fights them tooth and nail. But, at no point does he consider the idea that he's been duped. He believes that he is taking the young woman to her brother.
   As he drags her kicking and screaming to the man he believes is her brother, the truth unravels. The man is not her brother. They are in fact competing thieves for a formula believed to be the equivalent of Ambergris. Ambergis is whale vomit which is used for high end perfumes and is incredibly valuable. 
   So, now that he's aware of having committed a wrong, he does everything he can to fix his mistake. He takes on them all and unkidnaps her. The formula, however, was ripped out of the book she'd hid it in by chance by his partner as a stopper for his bottle of liquor (as the normal stopper was lost). However, upon finishing the bottle, the partner happened across a man who bought it from him for enough money to buy another bottle of booze.
   So, while the characteristics of Howard's main character are somewhat changed into a comical idiot, the fearlessness and adherence to a barbaric code of honour remains hard coded into the character's core. 
   There is definitely some anti-Asian racism in this story. The Chinese characters are referred to as yellow devils. Certainly, the main character thinks nothing about the non-white characters. This is beginning to be a problem for me in how I appreciate Howard as a writer.

The White Stocking, D. H. Lawrence

  

   D. H. Lawrence is one of a few legendary English literature writers of the last century that I have not read anything of. I'm not sure why. I guess I have always had this idea that his writing would be dreadfully boring. This is rather silly I suppose. For what reason I have this impression from him I could not say. Did I see a movie or film adapted from one of his stories or novels and find that boring and used it to forever tarnish my impression of him? I cannot really say. Well, I often see his name on lists of controversial books. Controversial books and writers are often more interesting than the rest. So, I guess I finally found myself motivated to read this short story of his. "The White Stocking" is available in various formats at goodreads.com.
   I think that if I had read this story 10 years ago I might have found it to be boring as expected. But I found some perverse pleasure in reading it. It's the story of a yearling wife who hasn't quite moved on past the other relationships with other men that tempted her before her choice of husband. The other man had decided to send her earrings and the stocking she had lost at a party which had ultimately defined her choice of husband.
   She hadn't quite moved on from that scene and hung onto the fond memories of her with this other man. As her husband discovers that she still has some interest in her former admirer, and she becomes internally cognizant of her lustful desires, and aware of the lustful desires he had had for her, he becomes enraged. On the verge of uncontrollable anger, he strikes her.
   At least for the moment, she is subdued. They fall asleep together in each others arms.
   This story seems to be about how to own your wife when she's thinking of other men. I can't help but wonder that feminists haven't torn this short story to shreds. Where is Lawrence on this? There's the idea that a writer can write a story about something while holding it at arm's length. This is the story free from any judgment. But I think it was an endorsement.
  

Son of the White Wolf, Robert E. Howard

   This is one of several by Robert E. Howard that I've read over the past little while. This one can be found for free at Australia's version of feedbooks.com. There are many other Howard tales available there. This is another El Borak tale in
   The story follows a shift in power in Turkey as Germany's military begins to fail at the end of WWI and the Brits are taking over. A small time leader decides to begin a mad dash for power. He kills the German authority, kills the old men, women, and young children, and kidnaps the women with the intention of starting a new race in an old Pagan religion.
   Howard was a Texan. To be honest, I have a prejudice against Texans. I see them as a lot of racists and Bible thumpers. Howard, of course, being a favorite of my youth, is Texan. So, he is a bit at odds with my prejudices.
   Speaking of prejudices, my radar is perhaps a bit sensitive. Howard writes that villagers 'crept from their hovels to stare in awe at the first white woman most of them had ever seen.' There is this impression that Howard, much like Edgar Rice Burroughs, felt that the white barbarian was the greatest barbarian. The white barbarian has the brains of a white man, and the ferocity of the 'other races.' He is deadly, but still a gentleman with the ladies, unlike the other races.
   So I worry about this sort of thing that would tarnish my impression of this particular Texan. I have sometimes thought that he wasn't really the racist that so many others are. But love is blind, right? Maybe the fact that I liked him particularly well blinds me to the fact that he might have been a raging promoter of the Aryan super race.
   But, while he has often spoken poorly of the Kurds (in this story and another), he did write of the Arabs who fought beside the hero, El Borak. "A stern chivalry was the foundation of their (Arab) society, just as it was among the frontiersmen of early America. There was no sentimentalism about it. It was real and vital as life itself." So, this passage seems to vindicate him at least in respect to the Arab/Muslims.
   Most of Howard's women are rather weak creatures. But as the tale comes to its conclusion, the woman whom he is supposed to know as a German enemy, he actually knows as a British undercover double agent. Borak gives his respect to her. Howard did have some tough women: Red Sonja, Belit (the pirate captain), and Valeria. They weren't just strong women, they were dominant alpha humans who were not the weak things that the men around them were supposed to rescue.
   In fact, that's sort of one of the reasons why I have always been particularly fond of Howard. His women were not the weaklings that so many other authors portray/portrayed them as. In terms of the charge of racism, this jurist needs to weigh more evidence before a conclusion can be reached.

The Country of the Knife, Robert E. Howard

   I have probably said it before. Robert E. Howard was a favorite of mine when I was a teenager. I must say that I still find his work highly enjoyable. You can find it freely on Feedbooks.org.
   I have read this story before. But it does no harm to read it again. El Borak is another indomitable fighting character. He shares a lot of the characteristics that Howard's Conan has. This story somehow got back onto my Kindle and I didn't bother going for another story. I just decided to reread it.
   The story follows a young man who hears from the lips of a dying friend a message meant for El Borak. So, he sets out for the adventure of a lifetime. Even as he's been caught by El Borak's enemies and he is being hauled to the slave block in a mountain community in some Afghanistan.
   El Borak comes to the rescue and for the message that he wanted to hear from the messenger. Not all goes according to plan. But through a desperate struggle and a great deal of killing, they manage to escape from the clutches of this Afghanistan fort.
  It's not a bad story. Not my favorite series of Howard's. I would never have gone out of my way to reread it.

The King of the City, Keith Laumer

   When I was much younger, Keith Laumer was a favorite of mine. His tales move fast, there's plenty of action, and it's science fiction. An excellent cocktail to hold my interest in those days. I was curious to see how I would like his work at this point in my life. "The King of the City" is a short fiction. I have read it before. You can find it for free at www.gutenberg.org.
   In fact, I feel like I've read it several times before. It's the story set in a world where order has crumbled and a struggle for power in the vacuum is taking place. The main character is a driver who takes a man deep into the city. He has to fight through roadblocks and mafia like characters to get to the heart of the city wherein the city's kingpin exercises his power.
   It turns out that the fare was an admiral in the previous administration's military arm while the driver was also of the military. They are looking for fuel for their ships, and the kingpin has his stash.
   This is a fun little short story.

Daniel Boone, Backwoodsman, C. H. Forbes-Lindsay

   I really enjoyed a lot of the old fashioned cowboy-style/frontiersmen type movies that were very popular about 50+ years ago. I have probably watched hundreds of them. Now, normally when I read a book and then watch a film, I can often lament that there are certain aspects of the book which are inevitably left out of the films. That is true for Daniel Boone, Backwoodsman as well. The difference is that I appreciate being left out of the loop. You can pick up the book for free, courtesy of that great repository of public domain works, Archive.org in a variety of formats.
   I don't take well to racism. I feel this to be especially true about Native Americans, for whom I feel a great sense of respect. In the movies, when I see them, I don't see their ugly faces. I don't think their faces are ugly at all. I have a great deal of respect for their faces, even if they are the enemy of the given protagonist in the film; even if they do some bad deeds. I just don't get the idea that they're ugly. I'm left to my own view or aesthetic sensibilities. In the books, however, one gets into the mind of the writer and the characters. Those are ugly Indians. They're dirty. They're redskins. It really bothers me a lot. Maybe I'll give some more western style books a try in the future. But so far, the few that I have read are similar in how disrespectful they are to those whom we ought to view as our adopted ancestors.
   This book is a story about a famous individual. According to Wikipedia, he was a real man. How much of these stories are made up, embellished, or perhaps fairly accurate, no one can really know. Most likely it's a mix of all those. In any case, it's a book about how he fought in Kentucky for the settlers of the land.
   The way that they treated the Native Americans, and the way that Native Americans were often played as pawns in the games of white men, and summarily destroyed for trying to reclaim what had been their territory, is painful to read. It is of little consolation that, at the end of the struggle for dominance over that land, Daniel Boone himself was dispossessed by land speculators and swindlers. Sadly, though, those dispossessed Native Americans have yet to recover, and are the most ill treated minorities in America.
   I don't think I really recommend it. Though, it's an easy and quick read.

The River Sumida, Kafu Nagai

   In my previous entry about Japanese literature I mentioned that I generally detest romance in stories that I read. I mentioned that I found the finish to be quite lovely and poetic. Well, if that was a flourish at the end, this story is a romance largely from beginning to end. Further, I enjoyed the sweet sorrow, romance, and poetry of the novella. "The River Sumida" can be found freely, courtesy of Archive.org.
   Both stories follow the life of a young boy who grows up to become a young man. However, "When I was a Boy in Japan" ends in a happy picturesque moment: a unity of affection between two good and happy middle class people. "The River Sumida" leaves with scant hope for Chokichi, the main character.
   He lives a happy enough life. His mother takes care of him. They are poor, but they manage. That is, until his childhood love gets turned over to a geisha house. Geisha aren't really prostitutes, are they? Or is that naive? I have heard some say that they are not. But surely that is an unrealistic distinction. Perhaps they are not supposed to, but they do. In any case, the house swallows her up.
   This causes Chokichi a great deal of depression. He largely gives up on school. He skips much of it as he tries to deal with his crippling depression. He watches a play in which he sees himself, the young man, who loses the one he loves to a geisha house. The young man dies in the play, and it ends in a kind of sad farewell between the play's two characters. So, seeing that play, he decides to follow in the character's footsteps.
   One cold day during an early Spring rain he attempts to throw his life away. His uncle, left behind to guard the house as his mother goes to try to save him, ends up nosing around in the boy's room, and discovers a half written letter, sees the unhappy fate of love between the two, and swears to himself to help his nephew better in the future. However, it is unclear whether or not the boy will survive. Survival is for those who have the will for it, not those who have discarded the will.
   Therefore, the two tales are in fact contrasts with one another. While the first was enjoyable, "The River Sumida" is rich in metaphor, visualizations, descriptions, and poetic nuance. If some reader of my blog exists, then I would recommend reading this one without reservation.

When I was a Boy in Japan, Sakae Shioya

  

   "When I was a Boy in Japan", by Sakae Shioya, is available freely at Gutenberg.org. This is the third Japanese book I've read in a very short period of time. There are neither Wikipedia articles about Sakae Shioya nor the novella-length autobiography.
   It is a charming series of stories about a fairly well off middle class boy growing up perhaps at around the beginning of the 20th century.
   My favorite part is actually the romantic finish. I am someone who generally labors through the romantic interludes that sometimes, in my opinion, detracts from the stories. But in this case, I really loved it. After some time being separated from his adopted cousin, they had fallen in love before love involved lust: a kind of purer stage perhaps. In any case, after a long time apart, he takes her to see a lovely view.
   Shioya writes,

   "Why, Fujiama!" she exclaimed. "Oh, how lovely! Could you see that every day from here?"
   "Not in rainy weather... But she wanted to see you today, as everybody else did, and waited there from morning."

I am a romantic in some ways. But too often the romance I find in books is tedious. But I found it to be that poetic romance that I have always had a fondness for.
   I enjoyed this fluffy piece.

The Makioka Sisters, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki

   Jun'ichirō Tanizaki wrote a short story that intrigued me last year called "The Thief." A Wikipedia.org article on Tanizaki writes, "Some of his works present a shocking world of sexuality and destructive erotic obsessions." So, that was what I was expecting and wanting. However, this is not at all shocking or erotic. The other thing Wikipedia writes about him as a writer, "Others (tales), less sensational, subtly portray the dynamics of family life in the context of the rapid changes in 20th-century Japanese society." The Makioka Sisters certainly fit that description.
   This story is a drama. I don't like dramas for the most part. I didn't particularly like this one, but at the same time it wasn't onerous. There is a certain staccato to the style of this book. It is a translation. So, I cannot know that the original wasn't written in a particularly lovely style rather than this kind of practical almost bare bones approach.
   The story is about four sisters. They used to belong to a wealthy family, but the family had lost most of their fortune and some of their reputation. They struggle to find a husband for Yukiko, who is at the center of the story. However, the attention is not entirely on her.
   I'm not really sure what to say. Do I recommend it? It's kind of interesting to get inside of a foreign family drama that is not melodramatic. At times I felt excitement as they endured catastrophic natural disasters, and WWII. 
   The writer never gets very far into the personalities or thoughts of any of the characters. But the dynamic shifting of external cultural influences, economic changes, and those types of social changes in Japan seem to be genuine and without much embellishment. I don't know if I would recommend reading it. But I will not recommend against it. It was enjoyable. But I will be surprised if I remember it a few months from now.

The Dancing Girl of Izu and Other Stories, Yasunari Kawabata

  

When I found this book on my Kindle, I think I was looking for something out of the ordinary. Japanese are pretty good at 'out of the ordinary,' so I thought I would give it a try. How it got onto my Kindle is a bit of a mystery. I don't recall when or why I added it. I know I added a six or so Japanese stories at some point. But I don't know why this one or any of those got selected, as the addition was made some time ago. A little bit of Wiki trivia: Yasunari Kawabata won the Nobel prize for literature. So, obviously, some important people like the writer enough to give him buckets filled with money.
   The book is rather short. "The Dancing Girl of Izu" is the only novella length story with the other stories being short.
   The settings are charming. The characters give a bit of a view into a foreign time and place. "The Dancing Girl of Tsu" is about a student who falls in love with a very young girl. She is a dancing girl. So, as the student and the entertainment group, containing the dancing girl he is interested in, are all going the same way, they decide to go together.
   Despite what I said about the girl being underage, the student isn't some kind of pedophile. He sees her, quite by accident, nude, and realizes that she is much younger than he had thought. While still secretly longing for her, he did not really pursue her any further. Though, he was quite shy and maybe his interest in her was obvious.
   There are a few funny quotes that show the Japanese attitude towards women. Women, at least from the perspective of the women themselves, are polluters. So, when they talk about bathing in a river, the women wait for the men to go first, or, as the woman says, "The water will get all cloudy if we put our hands in. You'd think it was too dirty after us women." I'm not completely sure why she says this. Another variation on this idea comes when they eat when the women invite the student to eat with them. The woman, I'm not sure which, says, "Won't you at least have a bite with us? It's not very appetizing now that we women have put in our chopsticks, but maybe this could be the makings of a funny story."
   The story ends when they part. I kind of regret that. I wish he had continued with the group, and the group was sad to see him go. It was a charming story.
   Most of the stories are semi-autobiographical. Partly fiction and partly true stories of Kawabata recalling his life. A few stories stand out in my memory. The first is the story about his grandfather's slow death. He has to help him in his last months of life. He cannot urinate. Eating is a problem for him. It must have been a very difficult time for a middle school boy. The other one is about a boy who is called on for many funerals. He goes through many personal funerals: his parents, his sister. And so he learns a certain behavior pattern at funerals, and for this reason, he is called upon by many families to attend the funerals of their relatives. Myself, I have been to just one.

The Moonchild, Aleister Crowley

   Aleister Crowley's name often gets thrown into sentences with HP Lovecraft. I am not so fond of Lovecraft however. Aleister Crowley's name is famous in the occult of the previous century. He seems like a far more interesting person than Lovecraft who created cardboard characters. I hope that one day I will read a Lovecraftian book and say, 'Wow, that was amazing. My opinion on the writer is forever changed.' That would be great. I'm still waiting. In any case, Moonchild is available freely at www.feedbooks.com.
   In any case, Moonchild has far more going for it than anything I've read so far out of Lovecraft. So, I am quite happy that I read it. It was certainly a voyage into a different kind of novel than I've been into of recent months. It is a strange fiction filled with some pretty sinister imagery.
   In one of the scenes where the evil sorcerers, looking to get at the 'white magicians', it's quite an enlivening scene. "The doctor was himself the last to enter the circle. In a basket he had the four black cats; and, when he had lighted the nine small candles about the circle, he pinned the four cats, at the four quarters, with black arrows of iron. He was careful not to kill them; it was important that their agony should frighten away any undesireable spirits." It's a book, right? No actual harm came to any cats in the making up of these words. Harming actual cats would not be entertaining at all. Another particularly brilliantly dark scene involved more imaginary cats being tortured, "The hideous cries of the tortured cats mingled with the triumphant bleating of the goat and the nasal monotone of Arthwait as he mouthed the words of the Grimoire. And it seemed to all of them as though the air grew thick and greasy; that of that slime were bred innumerable creeping things, monsters misshapen..." is such a visually delightful horror. I cannot imagine a more discordant cacophony of sound than the bleating of a goat mingled with the awful cries of four tortured cats.
   Some of the politics were a bit funny. He writes, "A parliament of the wisest and strongest men in the nation is liable to behave like a set of schoolboys, tearing up their desks and throwing their inkpots at each other. The only possibility of cooperation lies in discipline and autocracy..." It would seem that he had a rather sour look on the ideals of democracy.
   There is no real main character throughout this book. Through much of it, I'm under the impression that Lisa la Giuffria is the main character. Through much of the story it is her mind we are exposed to; her thoughts; her experience being brought into magical training. She is seduced by a white magician, Cyril Grey, and persuaded into helping him in a magical battle with a black magician and his black lodge. Ultimately, all the sacrifices that she makes to assist him: joining his cult, going through a kind of willing imprisonment, ultimately gets thrown aside in an act of kindness.
   Then she is whisked away by a Turk who was in love with her. She gives birth to a child named the Moonchild. But she hates the child, as does the Turk. I am unsure if the Turk himself is the father or if she was magically impregnated or some other means of her carrying it. When she gives birth, she isn't even aware that she is pregnant. There does not seem to have been enough time for the Turk to have been the author of the pregnancy. Since this book treats magic seriously, it is well within the realm of such fiction for that to be the case. Crowley makes no effort to clear it up.
   Moonchild seems like it ought to be the first book in a series. But, as far as I can tell in the Wikipedia article, it is not. I can't help but wonder what would have happened to it.
   I recommend reading this book. But if you don't, I don't think you will have missed anything particularly amazing.

The Girl From Hollywood, Edgar Rice Burroughs

   I used to love the Tarzan series. I still enjoyed rereading the first novel in the series. I also used to love the Martian tales and some of his other works. I like the ideas, still, but his writing style is no longer of great appeal to me. It's free at Goodreads.com.
   This story reads like a tale told to warn good families against the dangers inhereint in allowing your innocent daughters to go to Hollywood. Maybe it's a fair warning. What with Weinstein's lecherousness becoming public and the inspiration behind the #metoo movement, perhaps it's not so hard to see that the cliché is as relevant today as it was then.
   Girls become victims of a strong narcotic. It kills one, and nearly kills the other. The director is the man behind it all. Though, one might make the effort to point out that he was also an addict to the drug.
   The story takes place during the Prohibition era. Shannon, the main character, manages to escape the drug and the director and finds herself in a rural area some hours drive away from Los Angeles. She falls in love with Custer Pennington.
  Somehow, as these stories go, the director manages to find her by accident while trying to film on the property of her host. He finds himself on the wrong side of a bullet due to what he had done to ruin a sister of another character Guy.
   I don't recommend reading this book. In fact, there's a really good chance that this is the last time I will read another Burroughs' book. His fiction translates well into movies and graphic novels. But I can no longer tolerate his cardboard cutout characters. It just doesn't cut it for me anymore.

Diary of a Madman, Nikolai Gogol

    I am always interested in strange or weird fiction. I'm not sure how I discovered this particular story or this particular author. There are numerous sources for this text. Gutenberg.org is often a favorite of mine, even though their output is more anemic than many other sources, the quality of their work is often adequate. Wikipedia writes, "...(it) is considered to be one of Gogol's greatest short stories." In any case, on to the story.
   The diary is fictitious: the main character, Aksenty Ivanovich Poprishchin, is a kind of protagonist whose adversary is himself, or the illness which takes hold of him. He starts off like any one of us might: a normal, underachieving bureaucrat. He is pretty much fine. What instigates the descent into madness is unknown. But it does seem to stem from unrequited love. Though, to blame that would be to ignore the fact that similar descents into madness.
   The madness would be cliche today. Perhaps it was already cliché by the time Gogol got around to writing his story. He comes to believe that he is a Spanish emperor and assumes the mantle. It reminds me somewhat of Don Quixote who suffers from a similar delusion: that of becoming a knight. His irrationality, however, does not bring him to an asylum. Quixote, of course, believes himself to be someone or something much more common than that of an emperor. Another difference is that with Quixote everything was real: what was not was the interpretation of everything. So he saw a hotel and interpreted it as a castle. For Poprishchin, he hears the dogs' conversations and intercepts their letters. 
   What separates us from this madness of believing ourselves to be someone we are not. Surely we all start at that point and either become that person or fail to become that person. Even if we become that person we might be judged to be unworthy of that title. So, someone like Neil Degrasse Tyson says he is a scientist. He has the degree. He talks about politics and science. Does he practice science or does he merely talk about it with his degree and name on a paper along with a parade of other scientists. How does he become a scientist. Is it his own perception of himself? Is it the recognition of the institution that he has graduated in a scientific field? For myself, I would say that a scientist is one who practices science, and that I have not seen any evidence that he does so. A child, who experiments, is a scientist. For, that is what a scientist is. That is my definition, which I appropriate from Picasso on his decree that everyone is born an artist, and that the challenge is how to remain an artist. Perhaps one might say the same of Poprishchin: the challenge is not to be the emperor of Spain, but rather how to remain the emperor of Spain despite the many people who would try to convince him otherwise. 
   In any event, I am sure I will be all too happy to read another of Gogol's short stories.

The Lifted Veil, George Eliot

   Adam Bede was required reading for me in my university education. It gave me a certain respect for the author, George Eliot. It's been my intention to return to another of her works. More than ten years has passed since graduation, so it's been more than ten years. A part of the reason for that is that I'm just not fond of literature which is focused on human social schema. In any case, so I happened across the novella, "The Lifted Veil," and gave that a read.
   To summarize, the main character, Latimer, has some clairvoyant abilities. He can sometimes foresee the future and read the minds of others. He foresees his marriage to Bertha, the woman he at once loves, fears, and despises. Yet, he is compelled into her as his will is quite weak.
   Over time, in his marriage to Bertha, his ability to read her mind and the minds of others weakens. The cause of this is unknown. However, it might have something to do with her taking on a maid who has her own abilities. Or, it might have to do with that he tries to avoid using it. He doesn't like reading people's minds. He would rather shut it out. Finally, Bertha tries to poison him. This, too, might be the cause of losing his ability. I suspect that this might be the case since after the discovery of the poison, he flees to another country, and his supernatural gifts return to him.
   The knowledge of the attempted murder comes about after her maid is revived momentarily by a blood transfusion. It is a somewhat odd finale to this novella.
   There's a kind of silly feminist essay about this story called, "Bertha as the Failed Hero?: Analysing The Blood Transfusion Scene in George Eliot’s The Lifted Veil." It argues that Latimer was somehow forcefully penetrating others through his use of clairvoyance. Considering how hard he tried to avoid it, and how it worked on both genders and not just the female, I don't know how well I can buy her arguments. "...man becomes the giver of life to ‘Woman’" and "Thoroughly confined to her role as Other [and apparently little above the rank of a dehumanised animal], Mrs. Archer, in her deathly state, is compelled to accept male penetration in the form of a phallic needle full of blood." It seems to me a rather tenuous relationship. Naturally, Mrs. Archer is dead. We don't know if Meunier chooses her for the experiment because she is a woman or simply out of curiosity to see if the blood can bring back the dead. There is no statistical data to examine to demonstrate whether this is an assault on femininity or a comment thereof. We have no idea if Meunier has done this to a male or female before or if he chooses females only. I wonder if the author, who leaves his (or more likely) her name as 'letitbeprinted' would consider a life saving procedure of blood transfusion from a male nurse or doctor to a female patient a form of rape or sexual assault? I love feminism, but feminism of this form is logically little better than patriarchal religion.
  We also don't know why the maid confesses at last. Perhaps a look into the void of death is a heavy prospect with knowledge of the murder in progress on her conscience. She seemed ready to take it with her to the grave one moment, but not on her second chance of parting the world with such information left unsaid.

The Invisible Girl, Mary Shelley

   "The Invisible Girl" is a romance tale by Mary Shelley.
   She, the invisible girl, Rosina, is an orphaned girl who falls in love with the son of the widower father that adopts her. Peter, the son, waits to declare his love for Rosina until she approaches an appropriate age.
   This brings to question: what was his age, what was her age? What does "lovers in after days" mean exactly? The ages between the two is not clear. However, it cannot be so different, since they were 'companions in childhood...' But, there must be some difference since, if they were of the same age she would mature faster than he would, and he would not be waiting for her to come of age. At that time it was not uncommon for men to marry very young girls, even fewer years than 12. So I cannot help but wonder about that.
   In any case, unlucky for them all, the father's sister's husband dies, and she joins the family. She does much mischief and has Peter sent away and Rosina banned from the house and made homeless. She was a bitter woman, perhaps. Perhaps she had Peter's best interests in heart: what is an orphan doing with the son when the son should be married to a wealthier family. Whatever her intentions were is not made clear. She is merely described as a nasty woman.
   When Peter comes back, he finds that Rosina is gone. He thinks that she is dead. One evening, during a storm, a light shines and shows him the way to shore. The light saves his life. When he looks to solve the mystery of this fairy light, he discovers Rosina half starved. They reacquaint and marry.
   It's not a bad story. However, many of her qualities are those of the docile and submissive girl. This is not the type of character I expect from a writer famed for her early feminist politics. Having recently read The Last Man, I can say it is not the only book which lauded such aspects of submissive nature to a girl. On the other hand, this story may simply be her reporting on a story she discovered from a painting, as she mentions earlier in the story. However, this sort of thing, a fake back story, is not so uncommon. So, real back story or not, I cannot tell.

The Last Man, Mary Shelley

   I have a tremendous amount of respect for Mary Shelley. While there are arguments and evidence to state that she was not, ultimately, the original founder of science fiction, there are none who argue that she is not the first to write one natively in English. Further, her novel might be construed as the earliest science fiction work still in print today. The other thing that is rather outstanding about the author is that she was an early feminist. One might not see that in either of her novels. Neither of them feature a prominent or particularly strong, or even important, female character.
   The story itself is true to the title, as far as the narrator knows. He is the last man. How this was brought on exactly isn't exactly known. It rises from the defeat of some Muslims in Constantinople. Were they the creators of their own destruction, or did they merely see it coming? They were not the only ones, as the conqueror himself felt the ominous fate breathing at his back. Though, he would not face the plague, he would be crushed by the wreckage caused by an explosion, he thought plague would bring about his end.
   How exactly this plague was brought about is an unsolvable mystery. However, there are a few suggestions. When a ship lands on England's shore from America, there were "strange sights ... averred to be seen at night, walking the deck, and hanging on the masts and shrouds." But the next passage which describes the cause has given me a great deal of thought concerning Shelley, and has perhaps damaged my remembrance of her forever when the narrator saw "...a negro half clad, writhing under the agony of disease, while he held me with a convulsive grasp... he wound his naked festering arms round me, his face was close to mine, and his breath, death-laden, entered my vitals." I don't know if these were supposed to be demons or a representation of disease, but obviously it instigates heavy suspicion that Shelley, for all of her good qualities, was a racist. It isn't quite as painful as reading The Deerslayer so recently where racist ramblings were frequent and severe. It's also not absolute, as there might be some other meaning that I cannot penetrate. But, whatever excuse I make for it seems like a thin veil.
   Some other things that gave me trouble was the hard romance or romanticism of the novel. The characters are overly good in a way that I find distasteful and boring. Their feelings of pure love were difficult to get through. There were so many pages of them that I had almost set down the book to never return. It wasn't until I read a partial review that I decided to go back to finish what I had started.
   There is also this notion of having read about a whole life. This story starts with the narrator as a boy and follows until the year 2100. This, of course, means that the story was set in the not so distant future (though I will probably be extinct myself by the time that number is the calendar of 'now').
   It is easy to poke holes through the naiveté of Shelley: there are horses, no machines. There are no cell phones. There are no technologies that one might associate with a science-fiction story. There is only a plague far from Shelley's lifetime.
   The plague kills everyone, except for those closest to him. Those two he loses to a storm at sea. Then, he is utterly alone save for a sheep dog.
   One noticeable absence is that Shelley fails to consider that in a Europe without men, the populations of predators would rise, and quickly. Bears, boar, and wolves would quickly become major problems to survivors. Though, they are never seen. Even lions would return to Europe if humanity were suddenly gone.
   Despite its failings and despite my dislike for some of the sentimentality that became tedious for me, her craftsmanship on this novel is at times quite amazing and by far more masterful than her Frankenstein. As some have said, this novel was 'a forgotten treasure.'

The Danger Mark, Robert W. Chambers

Cover photo from Abebooks.

I have read a few of Chambers' books over the last few years and have generally come away rather impressed. On Wikipedia, however, there are a few criticisms of him which are not at all flattering: Frederic Taber Cooper, "So much of Mr Chambers's work exasperates, because we feel that he might so easily have made it better." Who is this Cooper? Then there is the much more famous H. P. Lovecraft who writes, "Chambers is like Rupert Hughes and a few other fallen Titans – equipped with the right brains and education but wholly out of the habit of using them." As I've said, I don't know who Cooper is, but I certainly know who Lovecraft was and have read a few of his stories. While he is more famous than Chambers for the great monsters he crea
ted, in no way would I consider him superior in any way.

So, to the novel The Danger Mark. To be sure, The Danger Mark is not what I had wanted, or hoped for, when I began reading it. I had hoped for something along the lines of some hard weird fiction. That was not what I got. I got a romance. After having read The Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper and suffered from some of the worst melodrama in years, it was actually quite easily read and digested.

The story is roughly that of a privileged circle of people who become a part of the Seagrave twins. For a long time, I held out the hope that there would be a dark turn and some interesting weird fiction would poke its nose out. But the danger mark, though referenced a few times, was nothing more than the risk of alcoholism for one of the principal characters, Geraldine Seagrave. She fights it off successfully at the end, but not before it claims the life of a much less likeable character.

Over-and-over I had to remind myself that Chambers was not European. His turns of phrases are often beautiful, sometimes poetically beautiful, which made the whole go down more easily. An example, "... one still, sunny afternoono, standing alone on the dry granite crags of the Golden Dome, he looked up and saw, a quarter of a million miles above him, the moon's ghost swimming in azure splendour. Then he looked down and saw the map of the earth below him, where his forests spread out like moss, and his lakes mirrored the clouds..." These types of gorgeous landscapes come up with some frequency.

I also appreciated the fact that Chambers was clearly not one of those who saw women as particularly inferior to men. Geraldine, from early on, is able to stand up to her brother and beat him up. There is a scene where Kathleen, the love interest of her brother, mentions that when she marries Duane, he will be able to mold her as he pleases. While that was unpleasant enough, I have certainly seen worse. When hunting for boar, it's not the men who take down the dangerous boar, but the skillful shots of Geraldine and even another female character, Rosalie.

I don't really recommend reading the book. It's definitely a good read. Perhaps if you're looking for a romance between the child-like descendants of wealthy families, it will have an appeal for you. If, on the other hand, you're looking for weird fiction, I'm afraid that this is a blank.

The Deerslayer: James Fenimore Cooper

I have heard much good about the skills of James Fenimore Cooper (September 15, 1789 – September 14, 1851). This novel, The Deerslayer, certainly has an intriguing name. There's something wonderful about the beautiful forests of Canada and Northern USA. I love the old western movies. If you, dear reader, are at all offended by racism or, to a lesser extent, sexism, then I suggest leaving this book aside. It was unpleasant to read and required quite some endurance.

Cooper has a good vocabulary, and he is certainly decent at using it. However, his style is heavy in sentimentality. But the hardest thing for me was the abject racism and, to a lesser extent, sexism of the story that harmed this book.

For Deerslayer, the idea of marrying a 'red skin' is so abhorrent, that he would rather be killed than marry one. He says to Hetty, a 'feeble minded girl,' when she proposes that he marry the 'Indian' widow, "Ought the young to wive with the old--the pale-face with the red-skin--the Christian with the heathen?" Racism is very heavy throughout the novel. Hetty, as mentioned already being a half wit, is a half wit only insofar as that it is "a mind beneath the level of her race."

Cooper's novel will certainly offend the feminists, as the ideal woman "... shouldn't be forward, and speak their minds before they're asked." A good wife's place is there to, as Judith puts it, is "...ready to study your wishes, and healthy and dutiful children anxious to follow in your footsteps..."

This book took me a long time to read, and it wasn't pleasant. I'm glad it's over.