Man, I see in Fight Club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see it squandered. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables – slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.
Here's my history with Chuck Palahniuk: I saw the movie version of Fight Club when it was first released on video and I was impressed by its rawness and its philosophy and its unapologetically macho vibe. Because I now knew its twists, however, I didn't think I'd ever need to read the book. I eventually picked up some other Palahniuk – Survivor, Invisible Monsters, Pygmy, Damned, Choke – and other than the last one, I pretty much hated all of these but keep reading more, thinking, “He must have written another Fight Club and I want to find it.” Eventually, I gave in and just read Fight Club, and here's the thing: even knowing the twists and having a vague memory of the main details, this was a highly entertaining and interesting read, and what's more, Palahniuk's writing (which couldn't quite be captured by the film) was totally impressive to me. Conclusion: if you're trying to find a book to read like Fight Club, you ought to just read Fight Club. This will be a little spoilery.
The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: you DO NOT talk about Fight Club.
By now that's a cliche, but like most cliches, that started off as iconic; don't pretend you've never thought the rules were cool. Here's what's even cooler: In the afterword of my edition, Palahniuk writes that one of his inspirations for writing this book was the popularity of Oprah's Book Club and of novels like The Joy Luck Club and How to make an American Quilt – all focussed on how groups of women can get together and talk and relate with one another – and he wanted to create a way for groups of men to make these same connections; and not only would his club not involvetalking, but members were strictly forbidden to talk about it with others. This book is anti-talk, all action, with 30-something man-childs putting their bodies on the line because history isn't giving them a reason to prove themselves, and for the most part, they grew up without fathers to teach them how a man should be.
If you’re male and you’re Christian and living in America, your father is your model for God. And if you never know your father, if your father bails out or dies or is never at home, what do you believe about God?
Our unnamed narrator is just this adrift; his life so devoid of meaning that he attends group therapy for conditions he doesn't have in order to vampire emotions from those who are really suffering. His life is so empty that when he meets the charismatic Tyler Durden – a man who says, “Would you do me a favour and hit me as hard as you can?” – our narrator discovers cleansing through pain; his insomnia finally cured. Through Tyler he embraces a transgressive philosophy that states you can fight back against society from whatever low rung on the ladder you occupy – splicing pornography into Disney movies, peeing in the soup tureen at a fancy catering gig – and when necessary, the fight can be elevated to guns and homemade bombs. That the narrator is so quick to abandon his former white-collar life and join Tyler in his soap-making and army-building gives a very pointed critique of our meaningless society; which then becomes this big ironic turnaround with the final reveal (which is somehow both more thoroughly set up and subtle in the book as compared with the movie). You don't need to be crazy to work here, but it helps.
Marla's philosophy of life, she told me, is that she can die at any moment. The tragedy of her life is that she doesn't.
Marla is a much more complicated character in the book – probably because in the movie she needs to act like a doormat and not ask too many questions that might give everything away – and that upped my enjoyment. I didn't include this following bit in my goodreads review, because I acknowledge it's rather offensive (and also because I don't remember if it's in the movie; yet I'm thinking it's so Marla that it must be), but when she tells Tyler "I want to have your abortion", I was struck by how perfectly that captures what a messed up person Marla is. No matter where a person falls on the Prolife-Prochoice divide, who would offer that out as a tragically romantic proposition? It's so offensive in concept to me, but I am not offended in actuality because I can kind of see what Marla means by that; and that's a deft authorial accomplishment. The writing overall pleased me: the way that Palahniuk used repetition and circling was poetic and satisfying without feeling gimmicky. I appreciated the irony of the narrator's favourite group therapy session at the beginning of the book (Remaining Men Together; for men who've lost testicles to cancer) being mirrored by the threat of castration at the end (and the overall theme of the emasculation of the modern man). Even the twist didn't seem gimmicky because it felt organic – a slow revelation of a sickness instead of an unjustified trick.
In the end, I did enjoy Fight Club very much but it seems to reinforce what I pretty much already knew: Palahniuk probably only had one really good book inside him, and while I am pleased to have finally read it, it will take a powerfully persuasive recommendation to make me pick him up again.
Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist is a sprawling and ambitious work by first-time novelist Sunil Yapa that attempts to shine a light on the protests that got out of control at the 1999 WTO conference – known thereafter as the Battle in Seattle – through the shifting points-of-view of seven participants. After the first couple of chapters I thought, “This is totally my type of book, with interesting language and a variety of perspectives on a real historical event”, but by the end, I was sighing, “Why does this need to be so overwritten? When will it show an actually opposing viewpoint?” So, the short review is: This is another novel by an American MFA that uses all the latest literary tricks to reinforce a particular liberal worldview; your enjoyment will likely be tied to how closely this particular liberal worldview mirrors your own. To the longer review...
The seven main characters are: Victor, a nineteen-year-old drifter who gets caught up in the protests when he unsuccessfully tries to sell weed to the demonstrators; John Henry, a former reverend and leader of the organised, committedly non-violent protesters who successfully block every intersection between Seattle's convention centre and the Sheraton, where most of the delegates are staying; King, a gorgeous young activist (and John Henry's lover) who, while 100% dedicated to the cause, is afraid of being arrested in case she needs to pay for past crimes; Park, a head-cracking robocop who, it turns out, got his facial scars rescuing children from the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing; Julia, a head-cracking robocop who was born in Guatemala (and therefore knows what bad cops are and knows she's not one of them) and was an LA cop during the Rodney King riots (and therefore laments how it's the cops themselves who create the chaos); Bishop, Seattle's police chief and Victor's estranged father who struggles between feelings of rage against those who would dare to bottleneck his streets and a heart-breaking love for those same people, causing him to apologise even as he's cracking heads; and Dr. Wickramsinghe, the trade minister from Sri Lanka who is so determined to make the meetings at the convention centre that he braves the raging streets.
Victor is pretty much the nexus of the story as he bridges the divide between the protesters who he begins to identify with (without ever overtly acknowledging that they are just likehis community-gardening, soup-kitchening, free-spiriting-artist dead mother?) and the law-and-order world of his (adoptive) Dad. And yet, I have no idea what motivates this kid: after his Mom died, he started smoking weed and reading her socially conscious books until Dad caught him and put an end to that. At 16, so smart he could have started college early, Victor decided instead to travel the world, and even though Bishop was scared to death to allow his brown-skinned stepson to open himself up to the hate the world had in store for him, he waved him off. Victor spent three years in mostly Third World countries – participating in a demonstration by underpaid lettuce pickers and making friends with a group of protesters on the Peru-Bolivia border – without ever thinking of himself as a political person. Even in Seattle, he just happens to be passing through; this is a kid who has apparently seen sweatshops but defiantly wears the shiny white Air Jordans he broke into his Dad's house to retrieve. I ended the book having no clue where he was coming from or where he was going.
And I don't understand what motivates Bishop: I don't know why he made a bonfire of his dead wife's books; I don't know why he told his 16-year-old son (whom we're told he adores as though he was his own blood) to just leave if he's leaving (because he fears the world will gobble him up??); I don't understand why he, himself, the chief of police, would be on the ground assaulting peaceful demonstrators. The following are Bishop's thoughts:
Well the days of community policing were over. The world was a bottleful of sparkling darkness and cops the ones charged with keeping the cork in while the rich shook and shook.
Where did the rich come into it? As the only two other front-line cops shown, Park and Julia are nearly interchangeable; they might have different sympathies, but when danger approaches, they both revert to their training and its automatic use of violence. The hints at sexual tension between them adds nothing to the story and the fact that one was present for the Oklahoma City bombing (and therefore sees everyone as a potential terrorist) and the other was present for the Rodney King riots (and therefore understands how quickly things can get out of control) simply means that these are not typical cops; a strange choice for an author who is trying to give multiple points-of-view.
John Henry is a fine, if shallowly drawn, character; I 100% believe that he wanted a peaceful protest and he can't be expected to have controlled the 40-50 000 people who showed up that day. But I was totally unsympathetic to King and her concerns for her own freedom: at a minimum, she should have been expected to face the music for burning down a ski resort in Vail, if that was the worst thing she had ever done, but when it's revealed what she was really afraid of being arrested for, I could not understand why Yapa wrote her this way; this is not a good person and I resisted any attempt to make me feel sympathetic to her.
On the other hand, I thought that the parts from Dr. Wickramsinghe's perspective were really well done. As a proud Sri Lankan, his thoughts give a good introduction to the recent history of that country (a history that involves unshackling itself from British imperialism, a long civil war and a yearning for modernisation) and his five year quest for the 140 signatures that would gain his country entry into the WTO (and the free trade agreements that he hopes will raise his people out of poverty) is nearly completed; his sense of urgency to get to the conference shows that clearing the streets of protesters is about more than just clearing the streets. When Wickramsinghe is mistaken for a demonstrator (would Park and Julia really have roughed up and arrested this quiet-spoken man in the business suit as he attempts to identify himself as a delegate?) and thrown into a temporary holding cell with actual activists, this led to what I thought was the best scene in the book. When they realise they have the attention of a delegate, the activists explain to Wickramsinghe how Third World countries such as his own are being exploited by the United States and its corporations through the WTO, as if he were an illiterate yokel who couldn't see the forest for the trees. And while Wickramsinghe smiled inwardly at the implied privilege and condescension these youth were unwittingly revealing, he also had to acknowledge being impressed by their education and passion about world affairs. This was a lovely moment of nuanced understanding, within disagreement, between the two sides. And while Wickramsinghe is eventually freed without having been persuaded by the activists, what he later learns from the Director-General of the WTO has a nicely ironic feeling of being predicted by those same privileged and condescending youth.
Before The Battle in Seattle, “globalisation” wasn't really on anyone's radar, and while I understand the motivations of some of the protesters like John Henry (to bring to light the shady backroom dealings that are affecting all of us without our knowledge; they may not be evil machinations, but we do deserve to know about them), they weren't all John Henrys in real life. Nothing is mentioned in this book of the Black Bloc and their pre-planned attacks on Seattle businesses or the mistaken reports of people using Molotov cocktails against the police that drove the crackdown; the typical activist here is an old woman who refuses to unlink her arms from other protesters, even when getting pepper-sprayed directly in the eyes; not relenting until a cop applies pepper-spray directly to a Q-tip and runs it under her eyelids (and while cops did use this tactic against other protest groups, I can't find evidence that it happened in Seattle). So, globalisation is bad and primitivism is good (better to break your back in the fields than a garment factory); cops are bad and activists are justified in their use of any means necessary, so what if a few hundred windows get broken?; and if we're very lucky, we'll be pushed to the brink where we can recognise the universal love that underpins all human relationships. Something like that?
I really found this to be a messy book, and like I said initially, over-written in that recent MFA manner; and, hey, obfuscation does not equal profundity you MFA programmes! The only character whose thoughts didn't veer off into murky word-salads was Dr. Wickramsinghe, and whether or not that was because the author is himself half Sri Lankan (and therefore most sympathetic to this mindset?), it's likely no coincidence that I most enjoyed his passages. I can totally see the point of this book, and while I don't need to agree with an author's politics to enjoy his writing, I just didn't find this to be successful. NPR agrees with me and The Washington Post does not; The New York Times seems to come up in the middle. It'll probably win the Pulitzer.
I saw this yesterday on facebook and I think it demonstrates perfectly the mindset of today's anti-globalisation protester:
And all those likes he got! NWO and peoples is so stoopid! Am I right?
I am an invisible man. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids – and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves or figments of their imagination, indeed, everything and anything except me.
Wow. This is one of those classic books you finish and then say to yourself, “How could I not have read this before?” This is the kind of book that makes you contemplate in horror the hundreds, maybe thousands, of reading hours you've squandered on every blandly amusing three star novel on your bookshelf. Equally celebrated and derided when it was released in 1952 (and officially recognised with a National Book Award), Invisible Man is anything but bland; and whether one believes that first time novelist Ralph Ellison helped or hampered the nascent Civil Rights Movement with this bildungsroman of a Southern black man trying to find his place in Jim Crow America, this book and this author refuse to be forgotten. I give it all of the stars.
I'd read before of the unnamed protagonist of the prologue – hiding in his warm basement with 1369 light bulbs and some Louis Armstrong records – and whereas in my previous ignorance I had assumed that he suffered from some sort of mental illness, we learn right away that he is merely hibernating and: A hibernation is a covert preparation for more overt action.The meat of Invisible Man is this protagonist's story; what led him to the hole and his slow recognition of his own invisibility.
This isn't the type of book that I could read quickly. After the first chapter – with a sickening battle royal and a young Southern black man who attempts to retain his dignity in servility; giving a speech (with swollen eyes and a mouthful of blood) on “Negro humility” to a group of piggish white men – I had to put the book down and breathe. The scene had been so vivid and upsetting that it needed to be absorbed and contexualised before I could move on. Could this have happened? Could I bear to witness more? The protagonist's college days – and Jim Trueblood's disturbing story, and the shell-shocked veterans at the Golden Day, and Dr. Bledsoe's interpretation of Black Power – every tragic detail felt like the recording of history; if this story isn't technically true, it's certainly truthful. I kept needing to stop and breathe.
When the narrator moves up to Harlem and his prospects seem to improve (if one forgets the betrayal of the letters of introduction and the worst first day on the job ever at Liberty Paints), finding a way to be a “credit to his race” and a “leader of the people” within the Brotherhood (if only he were blacker...), I was lulled into the protagonist's own complacency – making the climax nearly as surreal and upsetting for me as it was for him. Where was the space to breathe? We find it in the hidey-hole with 1369 lightbulbs and some Louis Armstrong records and the ending is the beginning is the end. But that's just the plot.
Ralph Ellison has said that if he wasn't a writer, he'd have been a jazz musician and he acknowledged that Invisible Man was partly an experiment in writing in a jazz style. While it isn't as “experimental” as that sounds (this is much more reader-friendly than Faulkner or Joyce), the prose oftentimes bebops off into unexpected places.
Then somewhere in the procession an old, plaintive, masculine voice arose in a song, wavering, stumbling in the silence at first alone, until in the band a euphonium horn fumbled for the key and took up the air, one catching and rising above the other and the other pursuing, two black pigeons rising above a skull-white barn to tumble and rise through the still, blue air.
Ellison also has a keen ear for dialect, which he skillfully lays down on the page: from Southern mammies to Harlem zoot-suiters to a displaced African, Ellison recognises that “black” does not mean one homogeneous thing and distinct voices go a long way towards establishing character. He also allows that “white” America is not homogeneous either – and while many of the worst things that happen to the protagonist are at the hands of white people, he knows that they're generally not evil, just misguided or self-absorbed or blinded by their own ideologies. In a scene that resonates with our own times, a young and unarmed black man is shot and killed in a confrontation with a police officer. The funeral scene for young Clifton – in which the protagonist gives a powerful speech on race relations – has been repeated too many more times in recent history:
This cop had an itching finger and an eager ear for a word that rhymed with “trigger”, and when Clifton fell he had found it...I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know that all cops carry guns with triggers.
Sixty-plus years later, Invisible Man still has the power to provoke and disquiet. I loved the concept and its execution; the big picture and the small details; the snapsot that it provides of its own time and the context that it gives for our own. This is a must read book; leave the bland books untouched.
I tried to not get too political with this review, but that "I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know that all cops carry guns with triggers" line really shook me up. I tend to be on the side of law and order and don't presume that all cops are out to gun down unarmed black men, but it certainly happens too often to ignore. I wanted to believe that Trayvon Martin was responsible for the misunderstanding that led to his death -- otherwise you need to accept that a black kid isn't safe just running out for Skittles and who wants to live in that world? -- but then George Zimmerman turned out to be a violent loose cannon, and who wants to be on his side in this? I couldn't figure out how I felt about the gunning down of Michael Brown: friends might have called him a "gentle giant", but he was still a giant who had just assaulted a convenience store owner and who refused a cop's orders to stop advancing upon him; how scared was that cop? Yet, was deadly force the only answer? Here in Canada, we just got the results of the trial of the cop who shot and killed Sammy Yatim, armed with a knife on a Toronto streetcar -- and while there's enough video evidence for us all to play armchair analysts and declare how we would have peacefully defused the situation, this cop said that he felt deadly force was his only recourse and that he feared for his own life. Yet, what about the fact that this cop was already on the force's radar as someone who drew his gun too often? There are too many incidents in the news, and after reading a sixty year old novel, it's powerful to realise that there have always been too many incidents -- and when a black youth is standing in front of a cop with a drawn weapon, this isn't just a particular event but a continuation of an event that has been playing itself over and over again since the days of slavery. No one such event can be evaluated in isolation; even though the lethal results are entirely personal. In one of those moments of serendipity that define my life, I was watching The Daily Show the other night when Trevor Noah was interviewing DeRay Mckesson of the Black Lives Matter movement. I have been confused about the fairness of people responding #AllLivesMatter whenever someone posts #BlackLivesMatter (because there's truth in that, too, isn't there?), but Mckesson put that in perspective for me: no one would seriously stand up at a breast cancer fundraiser and say, "Oh yeah, well colon cancer matters too" (I'm paraphrasing; it might not have been colon cancer exactly, but that's the drift). And that's so true isn't it: it's entirely reasonable for a group to highlight an area of concern without other people needing to get defensive and insert their own concern; it's not a competition and we all have plenty of concern to go around. And more than that, Mckesson has some strategies, too, for ending the shooting down of black youths by cops (he said there's already been 60 such incidents so far in 2016; can that be true?) and they can be found over at Campaign Zero. What's better than not feeling impotent -- invisible -- about the whole issue in the end?
This is part two of my story of going to Ireland in 1982, the summer after grade nine; in the last few weeks before we were to move out to Alberta, away from everything and everyone I knew. It's interesting to me that I ended last week's Tunesday post talking about how the English oppression of Ireland was to be a major theme of my trip, and then yesterday, this bit of serendipity occurred on facebook: My (former) uncle Eric posted a link to The Irish Slave Trade – The Forgotten “White” Slaves and my mother (who is having a very pedantic week; she's nearly Sean Penn for heaven's sake) replied: Jonathan Swift, the genius of black humour, succinctly captured the existence of the Irish under the English in his short story "A Modest Proposal". This should be required reading in all high schools. I don't know if Mum's thinking is that Canadian high school students should all learn about Irish history, or if she thinks that Swift's essay has universal applications with respect to oppressed peoples everywhere, but I was pleased to have been prompted to read it myself at this time; and especially as Swift captured the point-of-view of Cora's father, who took it upon himself to be my political guide while in Ireland. I wrote briefly about this triponce before, so I'm going to cut and paste and not retread those bits:
(Travelling to Ireland) was an astonishing culture shock for a 14-year-old, but also felt like a homecoming. We stayed with Cora's aunt and uncle in Killaloe, more or less right here on the waterfront:
There were parties most nights at which there was singing and dancing and, having been prepared for the eventuality beforehand, Cora and I would pull out our flutes and play a couple of heart-wrenching duets her brother Sean had written for us. Her Dad gave us a walking tour of the village and pointed across this small river to where there was still a town with English settlers, complete with an Anglican church that had once been Catholic before the troubles. This was the first I had heard of Ireland having been a British holding, and getting the story from the mouth of a patriot, it was duly impressed on my mind as a horrifying and illegal occupation. This was such a painful part of Mr. Ryan's psyche that so far as I know, for the rest of his life, he never applied for Canadian citizenship as it entails an oath of allegiance to the Queen. There were children, dressed in rags, begging for coins in Limerick and this was my first glimpse into this kind of poverty. But there was also the incredible scenery, the green fields and mountains that give Ireland its nickname. We saw castles and cow-filled pastures and ate periwinkles on the beach at Kilkee, and everywhere we went, people, strangers, told me that I was home.
Okay, that wasn't so long that the copy-paste was strictly necessary, but here are some more details: Cora's aunt and uncle lived in one of those row houses on the river, and while the interior was of a shabby antique aesthetic, it was cosy and warm. The aunt and uncle were wonderfully welcoming, and I remember every morning tucking into a plateful of greasy breakfast meats, toast made of homemade bread, and darkly delicious tea. Cora had three cousins in this house, and here's what I remember of them: Brendan was a few years older than us and had pale skin with permanent redness to his cheeks and curly brown hair. He was often out with his friends, but was very kind to us when he was around, and when we went on a trip to the seaside at Diamond Rocks (Kilkee), Brendan spent his time windsurfing, as he regularly competed at the sport.
Also just older than us was Kathleen and what I remember most about her was that she was a new driver -- which, by law, meant that there was a large L in the rear window of the car (which I still think is a great idea if it makes other drivers more patient or understanding) -- and I found it thrilling to be in the car with her as she ground the gears and travelled (what was to us) on the wrong side of the road up and down narrow hillside motorways; veering dangerously near to the edge whenever passing a too-wide, thundering delivery truck. Whenever she used the phone, Kathleen needed to have a pocketful of change because they had a payphone on the landing of the stairway of the house -- I never did learn if this was just the normal situation for rural Irish home phones, because at the time, I was under the impression that this was a move Cora's uncle had made to combat outrageous phone bills. (Where did I get that impression? I have no idea if it is right or wrong now.) I didn't get a picture of Kathleen, but I remember her as very cool and very pretty, but I can only just vaguely remember the look of her. When we were at the airport to go back home, Kathleen gave me a shamrock pin that she had bought me herself -- to remember her and to remember also that I was always welcome to return.
Cora's youngest cousin, James, was just younger than us, and we spent the most time with him. He was a geeky miniature of the handsome Brendan, and to my everlasting regret, I once put my hands behind my ears and made a flapping motion to Cora when James' back was turned -- to cruelly point out his large and sticky-out ears -- and of course James noticed it, and of course he was devastated. He climbed out onto the roof and we had to follow him, and although it took a while, I eventually made him accept my apology. After this, that pitched and slippery shale-tiled roof -- although stupidly risky -- became our favourite place to hang out. I remember going with James and Cora to their Granny's house every day, as every day, it was James' duty to make his Granny's afternoon tea and toast -- which involved slicing a large slab of homemade bread, piercing it onto a long-handled fork, and toasting each side over the flame of the range (I doubt it was gas-fired, but if it was coal or wood-feulled, I have no clue). She was a shrivelled up husk of a woman who could never quite remember who I was supposed to be, but young James had a comfortably businesslike manner that showed how suitable he was for the responsibility. The last thing I remember about James was that after he said he loved our Canadian accents and we asked him what we sounded like to him, he put on a John Wayne cowboy drawl that made us hoot with laughter -- surely a southern Ontario accent doesn't sound like that to foreign ears, does it?
Along the street, Cora had another aunt and uncle who only had one child -- the chubby introvert Maureen -- and we didn't hang out as much with them as they were busy working during the day (the uncle was an ophthalmologist) and Maureen was off at a camp for most of our vacation. All of the family was together for the big party the Irish relatives threw for us on our last night. Cora's brother Paul and his friend Peter had shown up on this last day, and although Paul was the only member of the Ryans who didn't sing or play an instrument at these kinds of house parties, Peter put on one of those faux magic shows where he kept banging his fists together and having fingers appear and disappear to his own amazement -- he was a big hit. And again, to my everlasting regret, just as we were laughing and singing and feverishly bouncing around, my more-impulsive-than-wise side decided to blow a palmful of pepper into Maureen's face, and instead of making her sneeze (which would have been hilarious?), it blinded her and her ophthalmologist father freaked out and gave me a strained-patience lecture on the delicacy of the eye. How's that for a last impression? I ruin everything.
As I said before, Cora's family could be divided into those who looked like her round-faced roseate father (as Cora herself did, as all of these Killaloe relatives did) and those who looked like her pale, pinched and narrow-faced mother. Her parents were also very different kinds of people: her Dad warm and loving, always ready to laugh or burst into song; her Mom cool and reserved with an infrequent yet acid-tongued temper; and yet, when Mrs Ryan laughed, the whole world laughed along. It was fascinating to me to see that these traits held for their birth families, too. We started and ended the Ireland trip in Killaloe, but for a few days in the middle, we stayed with Mrs. Ryan's family in Limerick. As I noted above, this was the first time I had ever seen dirty children begging in the street, and when I later read Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes, I recognised the setting and appreciated that his story was only a couple of generations removed from what I had seen for myself. I remember we were sitting in a pub one afternoon, having a snack of lemonade and crisps (and as I remember them, Irish crisps were superior to Canadian chips by far), and I had tried to pay for my own snack (as my mother had instructed me to make sure I paid my own way whenever possible), but Cora's Dad told me that if my pence were burning a hole in my pocket it would be appropriate to put them in the "poor jar" on the bar. I felt shy but sanctimonious as I dropped in my coins, hoping that I had improved the lot of those beggar children; barely more than a child myself.
The aunt and uncle from Cora's Mom's side that we stayed with were also pretty uptight, and in contrast to the shabby-yet-cosy home in Killaloe, the Limerick home was newish and completely without character. There was a constant chilliness to the interactions -- even between Cora's Mom and her sister that she only saw every couple of years -- and there certainly wasn't a kitchen party. I remember that Cora had a little cousin, probably not quite two, and he was allowed to wail in his crib and no one would go to comfort him. One evening, Cora and I snuck away to peek in on him, and the little guy was standing against the bars of his crib like a prisoner of Alcatraz, his eyes swollen and his face smeared with snot, and when he saw us, the wordless crying turned into a repeated stream of, "Feck off the two of youse, just fe--eh--eh--ck off..." Cora and I never swore and this profanity was equally amusing and shocking to us -- we probably stood in the doorway longer than might be considered kind to this little guy, but we got a morbid kick out of listening to him telling us to just feck off. And that's all I remember of Limerick: dirt, poverty, and foul mouths.
Also in this middle portion of the vacation, we went to Cora's Dad's family's caravan (like a mobile home in an RV park) in Kilkee. This is where Brendan did his windsurfing, and although it was really too cool for us to swim, Cora and I enjoyed hanging out on the beach (and any time I've read of a "strand" in Irish fiction, this is the type of place I imagine). As I said above, we bought periwinkles in paper bags to snack on, and one afternoon, we took turns riding a gorgeous white horse down a ways and back for some small fee. And now to the reason for this week's song selection: this caravan camp had an arcade, and although Cora and I weren't big on these early video games, we did go there at night because that's just where the teenagers went. One night, the opening bassline of the Stray Cat Strut started up from the jukebox, and although I hadn't heard it before, I was immediately drawn to the retro rockabilly sound. Looking over towards the jukebox, I saw the most amazing sight: two guys dressed like Brian Setzer (although I had never seen him at this point), with ducktails and blazers and bolo ties and drainpipe trousers. I was electrified by their appearance. They looked like early Beatles, like early Elvis, and strutted like they weren't aware of anyone else in the arcade, and as they passed deliciously close by me, I was beyond smitten and didn't even get a glance from them. Cora was miffed by this whole scene -- she was not electrified by these greaser throwbacks -- and although my desire was to spend the evening drinking in these guys, maybe trying to get them to notice me, Cora decided that the night was somehow ruined and I could choose to follow her back to the caravan or remain behind by myself. So we left.
Like I started to say last week, Cora spent a lot of this vacation mad at me. It was to be our last three weeks together, and I don't know if being together nonstop had simply made her sick of me or if she was preemptively getting used to not having me around. She was forever stomping off, or not talking to me, or making jokes at my expense, and although I felt powerless to protest in my position as a hanger-on to her family vacation, at least I always had Cora's little sister or James to hang with. This was really a terrible way for us to have ended such a close friendship: I was about to move across the country, to where I knew no one, and I already felt like I had made that transition; as though, already, I hadn't a friend in the world.
This vacation was also notable for the things we didn't do; anything touristy. It was pointed out to me that we would not be visiting the Blarney Stone (which locals apparently pee on to punk the tourists who come to kiss it), and as we motored past half-ruined castles, the Ryans mocked anyone who would pay good money to go eat an "authentic recreation of a medieval meal" in one where they forced you to pick up your poultry legs with your hands (their baffled emphasis). As I said earlier, Cora's Dad took every opportunity to point out historical places where the British oppressed the Irish, and as an insider with a very definite prejudice, his tutelage has been an important part of what I have evolved into a more nuanced perspective. I remember one evening, Mr Ryan was telling his relatives about my own Irish roots, explaining that my grandparents were Dowlings and lived in the very Irish-rooted PEI; that I myself was indeed from the island. Cora's aunt asked if that meant I enjoyed seafood and I said something like, "Well, my grandmother likes to eat gross things like octopus and oysters she slurps right off the shell as soon as she digs them out of the sand with her toes, but I just stick to lobster." Cora's Dad laughed himself purple and said, "That's why I love you, Krista, you're such a dark horse." Even now, I don't totally understand exactly what made my answer that funny to him, but this scene perfectly captures the trip: Cora's Dad warm and loving and jovial, and Cora herself jealously glaring daggers at me as I beamed in confusion (later, Cora refused to even talk to me as I went on about isn't it cool that her Dad called me a dark horse when the only other time I had ever heard the phrase was as the title of a George Harrison solo album; she wouldn't even help me figure out what a "dark horse" was; yet she was pretty sure it was nothing flattering).
Eventually, it was time to go home and the Irish Ryans gave us a teary farewell at the Shannon Airport. Although the flight over had been a nightmare, going home was unremarkable. And then it was time for the Canadian Ryans to bring me to the Toronto airport to fly out to Alberta to join my family, and that was a teary affair, too -- I probably wasn't alone in wishing that Cora and I had been able to get along better. As I said last week, I had stupidly been protective of my Beatles albums and posters, and as I walked alone onto the plane with my straining plastic bags, I understood that I made a tragic sight; maybe even as tragic as I felt. I found the row where I was to sit, and as I struggled to shove my plastic bags into the overhead compartment and the handles began to tear, the husband of the young couple in my row jumped up to help me with a quizzical look on his face. When I was seated, the couple asked for my story, and when I started to explain that I had been on a vacation to Ireland as my family was moving out to Alberta, they were shocked; thinking that this was somehow incredibly sad and inappropriate. Maybe I had explained it wrong? Because, no matter how disappointing the actual details of the trip were with Cora on perma-mad, this trip to Ireland was the greatest gift my parents (mainly my mother) ever gave me.
The Reluctant Fundamentalist has a simple but interesting format: beginning with the line, “Excuse me sir, but may I be of assistance?”, a young and bearded native of Lahore named Changez accompanies an uncomfortable American businessman to a cafe, and as the day turns to night, Changez tells the story of his own years living in America, causing the businessman to become increasingly agitated. The American's speech is never recorded but his end of the conversation is demonstrated through Changez's sporadic interruptions of his own monologue with lines like, “But why do you flinch?” or “What did he look like, you ask?”. By the end, it seems pretty obvious that this isn't a random meeting; but if one of these men means the other harm, which one is the intended victim? Everything after this is spoilers; hard to talk about this book without getting into specifics.
Changez's story is straightforward: after graduating head of his class at Princeton, he gets a high-paying job with a firm that assigns values to companies that are ripe for corporate takeover. He also falls in love with a rich blonde New Yorker who can't get over the death of her first love. When 9/11 shocks the city and Changez begins to suffer the suspicious glances of his neighbours, he begins to question how much he really belongs in America. As his family back in Pakistan begins to feel the effects of a ramp-up to war with India, Changez returns home and becomes a university lecturer; either becoming an anti-American radical or incorrectly accused thereof. So what would prompt a man to lead a stranger to a cafe table and lay out these details, many of which were very personal and unflattering? Is Changez laying a trap or making a preemptive explanation to a would-be murderer?
It seems an obvious thing to say, but you should not imagine that we Pakistanis are all potential terrorists, just as we should not imagine that you Americans are all undercover assassins.
Changez's story is also an allegory: I'm not someone who ever reads meaning into names, but author Mohsin Hamid is pleading for it with this book. “Changez” not only has the English connotations of instability and maybe even revolution, but it is also the Urdu (Changez's first language) for “Genghis”. The woman he's in love with is named Erica and her dead boyfriend was Chris; after 9/11, she becomes paralysed by her nostalgia for her former relationship and it becomes hit-over-the-head obvious that Hamid is talking about (Am)Erica grasping for meaning in her former roots with Chris(tianity). The company Changez works for is called Underwood Samson – or Uncle Sam, yuk yuk – and its mission to facilitate regime-change based purely on profits and losses, with zero regard for the people these takeovers might affect, assigns to a typical American company the world's view of a typical American military intervention. Even the title about being a “reluctant fundamentalist” refers to Changez's time with Underwood Samson as their company mantra of “focus on the fundamentals” is the only time that word is used in the book; making it clear that although (Am)Erica may have had a knee-jerk reversion to Chris(tianity) post-9/11, corporate greed is the true and fundamental religion of the USA. If there is a secondary meaning – if Changez has indeed become a radical fundamentalist – well, that's America's fault, too. The final scene sees Changez walking the American back to his hotel – followed by some toughs from the cafe – and as the American reaches for something in his pocket, flashing a glint of metal, Changez says, “I trust it is from the holder of your business cards.” It seems pretty obvious that whether the American is reaching for a gun or a business card – whether he works for a company or The Company – it's all the same: whether in war or business dealings, America is bad and deserves what's coming to it.
It seemed to me then – and to be honest, sir, seems to me still – that America was engaged only in posturing. As a society, you were unwilling to reflect upon the shared pain that united you with those who attacked you. You retreated into myths of your own difference, assumptions of your own superiority. And you acted out these beliefs on the stage of the world, so that the entire planet was rocked by the repercussions of your tantrums, not least my family, now facing war thousands of miles away. Such an America had to be stopped in the interests not only of the rest of humanity, but also in your own.
I see that quite a few American universities are giving copies of The Reluctant Fundamentalist to incoming freshman classes, and I wonder if that's purely a sign of liberal self-loathing. As a Canadian, I don't feel particularly defensiveabout the thrust of this book, and I think it is valuable for how it lays out a Pakistani point-of-view; why a young Muslim man who had his piece of the American Dream couldn't help but smile when he saw the World Trade Center towers crumble to the ground. I appreciated that, although Changez had been a scholarship student at Princeton, that didn't mean he came from a dirt poor background; just as globalisation had reduced his family to a type of genteel poverty, Changez repeatedly makes the case that this is true for Pakistan as a whole. We in the West might imagine Pakistan as a poor backwater, but as Changez says, “Four thousand years ago, we, the people of the Indus River basin, had cities that were laid out on grids and boasted underground sewers, while the ancestors of those who would invade and colonize America were illiterate barbarians.” and “We built the Royal Mosque and the Shalimar Gardens in this city, and we built the Lahore Fort with its mighty walls and wide ramp for our battle-elephants. And we did these things when your country was still a collection of thirteen small colonies, gnawing away at the edge of a continent.”; he even gently mocks Princeton for having been built of acid-washed blocks to imitate the type of antiquity his country is entirely composed of. I don't know if I was ever aware of India's threat to Pakistan post-9/11 and it was understandable that Changez was bitter that the American government took India's side in the conflict, despite the Pakistani government allowing the Americans to launch airstrikes against Afghanistan from their territory. If all of those freshmen are being encouraged to read this book in order to gain a more nuanced view of world affairs – if the message isn't simply America bad – then I can certainly see its value.
But surely it is the gist that matters; I am, after all, telling you a history, and in history, as I suspect you – an American – will agree, it is the thrust of one’s narrative that counts, not the accuracy of one’s details.
The Reluctant Fundamentalist is quite a short read at about three hours, and despite Hamid writing that a novella is “a platypus of a beast”, I think it achieves what he set out to achieve. But even though it preserves a certain viewpoint, that doesn't mean that I found it to be all that deep or particularly well-written. I'd probably give it 3.5 stars and am rounding down to keep it out of “I loved it” territory.
The following isn't hardly even tangentially related, but it struck me as significant of something earlier this morning and I needed a place to put it. On Facebook, I noted that my mother had made a comment on a Humans of New York post, so I clicked to see what had interested her. The "human" said:
“I grew up in the church. I accepted Christ when I was seven years old. At the age of sixteen, I decided to dedicate my life to serving Jesus while attending a mission camp worship service. My biggest accomplishment is all the times I’ve helped young kids find a relationship with Christ. And my biggest goal in life is to tell everyone about Jesus. I’m here in New York trying to plant churches. It’s a mission field unlike any other. There are people here from all over the world, so the message you spread here can travel anywhere. I know all my answers are super churchy, but feel free to share it. I won’t be reading the comment section.”
And my mother commented:
"Too bad you won't read the comments (whomever) because I had something relevant to say. You might have learned something."
How condescending is that? My mother was raised by strict and devout Catholic parents -- attending masses even before school; where she was taught by severe nuns who refused to answer my mother's philosophically thorny questions -- and although she had us baptised and sent us to Catholic schools, she never attended mass after leaving home and grew to despise the church as paternalistic (a revelation she came to embrace ever more fanatically during the bra-burning '70s) and grew even more disgusted as she watched her saintly father's heart break over the revelations of sexual abuse in the '90s; was sickened (for good reason) that her father's priest refused to offer him counsel or even listen to his sorrow, ever protective of Mother Church. What in all of that might my mother have wanted to share with a devout missionary Christian? What might this churchy woman have "learned"? As a further note, my mother is exactly the type of anti-American liberal who would delight in a book that lays the blame for 9/11 at America's feet (although she wouldn't use the word "America" because she hates the USA's use of the word "America"; because "We Canadians live in North America, too. What about South Americans? Who agreed that people from the USA get the exclusive use of that word?" What does that even mean? I have never met another Canadian who wishes we could call ourselves Americans if only our southern neighbours hadn't co-opted it like they do everything else.) Maybe there's some kind of a connection in here after all...
