Harcourt

A Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta

admin — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 17:01:00 +0000

Here’s the thing about reading a book that’s set in the place you live: it obliges you to scrutinize the setting, the authenticity of the dialogue, and the accuracy of the story in a way you may not have done otherwise. This effect becomes magnified when the place in which you live is not the place you are from, and when your own situated existence in that un-rooted place resembles that of the author’s. Aside from one’s desire for realism and reflexivity in the story, the reading provides a way of sorting out or reinforcing one’s own position as possessing superior knowledge of, having become better acclimated to, or garnering more acceptance as a foreigner in that place. It is for these reasons that I urge you to take some aspect of my repugnance toward A Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta with a grain of noon.

Paul Theroux’s seemingly self-aware writing of this noir-esque novel is navel gazing, thinly disguised. The narrator, Jerry Delfont, is loosely based on the author himself: a travel writer who has wound up in Calcutta with an acute case of writer’s block, or the double entrendred “dead hand.” Delfont receives a handwritten request from a wealthy American expat, the businesswoman cum philanthropist Merrill Unger, who is in need of his assistance to clear up a delicate matter involving her son’s friend (implied to be the son’s lover), Rajat, and the body of a dead boy. More mysterious than the mystery itself is the untidy explanation as to why exactly Mrs. Unger would call upon a travel writer to do a detective’s job, but this is giving too much inquiry to something so banal. There are far better things to take issue with here.

I don’t know Theroux’s history with the City of Joy, but he got several elements plainly wrong, like the timing of Durga Puja and monsoon, the turns of phrase in Banglafied English, and the ins-and-outs of Shakta philosophy, mythology, and tantric practice. Since it is pretty standard for Western authors to have a baseless preoccupation with the Oriental exotic, and so I was expecting these kinds of errors from the jump, even this wasn’t my primary source of disappointment. That came from the wretched writing (which becomes all the more wretched with Theroux’s attempts at the erotic) and the utterly predictable plot, whose saving grace could have been its setting, were it not for the obvious artifice of its description, its appearance a kitschy vehicle for an otherwise bland story.

A Dead Hand seems to be an exercise in giving mention to the things that amuse and repulse the handful of tourists who make their way to Calcutta, and from the looks of it, Theroux is quite taken with himself for producing such a book. (There is even a moment in the narrative where Delfont has a drink with the actual Theroux in what superficially comes across as self-deprecation, but is tinged with egoistic megalomania.) Unfortunately, he might be the only one so taken.

Written by: Mandy Van Deven, February 26th 2010

Lucky Billy: A Novel about Billy The Kid

admin — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 09:16:00 +0000

By John Vernon

Harcourt

Anything that the imagination can concoct in the way of murders and desperate deeds may be heard upon the streets now in regard to Billy The Kid, but getting at the truth of the many rumors is another thing altogether. -- The Daily New Mexican, May 5, 1881

Billy they don’t want you to be so free. -- Bob Dylan

I: Backstory Billy The Kid earned his renown in the Lincoln County War (1878-1881), a mercantile conflict that tore apart New Mexico. The war pitted a corrupt Santa Fe political/financial “Ring” against young farmers and ranchers who moved to Lincoln from the East when the West opened up and the cattle business boomed. The Hispanic population tended to side with the new Anglo arrivals—an unusual coalition in the West.

The Santa Fe Ring controlled Lincoln via Lawrence Murphy and James Dolan. These two henchmen ran Lincoln by money and pistol. “They intimidated, oppressed, and crushed people who were obliged to deal with them,” wrote one Lincoln resident. Justice in Lincoln County was what Murphy and Dolan wanted, meaning what the Ring wanted.

John Tunstall, a British merchant, became leader of the young ranchers by entering into business competition with Murphy and Dolan. In February 1878, Sheriff William Brady, Ring stooge and embezzler, deputized a posse that included some of the worst saddle trash in the Wild West. They were supposed to arrest Tunstall. Instead, they assassinated him. The killing touched off a powder keg. Lincoln fell into savage anarchy.

In 1877, age seventeen, Billy went to work for the Murphy-Dolan faction. When he met Tunstall and the cowboys who worked for him, he found them more amenable. He switched sides. This decision says something about Billy because it is difficult to review the war and not conclude that although Tunstall and his group weren’t angels, they were of better character than the Dolanites. Tunstall’s side nonetheless lost the war. Though the hostilities’ aftermath was complex, an aspect of it was that Billy became a symbol of resistance to the Ring, especially among the Hispanics (Billy spoke Spanish). Billy was the only person ever convicted of committing a crime during the war. Ring murderers went scot-free.

II: Billy Lives Hundreds of works of fiction about The Kid exist. His representation runs from Robin Hood to psychotic killer. Ninety-nine films have been made about him. The novels are legion. They include a fine telling by Elizabeth Fackler (Billy The Kid: The Legend of El Chivato), a work that stands out in a bibliography dominated by men. There is a ballet too, with music by Aaron Copland, and a lied by André Previn. Inventing Billy The Kid, an extraordinary metacritical work by Stephen Tatum, demonstrates how depictions of Billy reflect the times in which they are created. On it goes: The Billy industry.

III: Lucky Billy So where does this new novel about The Kid stand?

John Vernon knows the facts. It is also a strength of Lucky Billy that he is able to sketch convincingly so many minor characters. He’s precise at geography and vegetation. A lengthy passage in which Billy watches farmers thresh wheat is superb. He can nail a sunset. An elaborate set piece involving a siege in a house is nicely orchestrated.

But it’s the portrayal of Billy that is the heart of any work about him.

Vernon’s Kid is reckless, brave, callous, opportunistic, and not terribly bright. He shoots small birds more or less for the hell of it. He has an “air of Napoleon.” He talks to his deceased mother—a motif that makes him seem deluded, which is the point. His killing mantra is, “It’s not me, it’s the gun.” He robs a peddler at gunpoint and shoots a rustler coldly then steals his sweater. This jaundiced view of Billy supports a reactionary ideology toward the Lincoln war.

Let me explain.

In the choice between siding with the law in Lincoln or refusing to bow to that authority, choosing the latter—as Billy did—was an honourable resistance. This view foregrounds the violent, sinister people who ruled New Mexico and avows that those who took up arms against them are worthy of sympathy because their insurrection was justifiable. Vernon pays lip service to this reading, but he is so intent on de-romanticizing and debunking Billy and his companions that the novel downplays what was at stake in the war.

For example: Vernon calls Thomas Catron the “putative” head of the Santa Fe Ring. The author doesn’t mean us to take this characterization with a wink.

Catron, the attorney general then a district attorney of New Mexico, had huge land holdings. Among his friends were Bill Rynerson, a district attorney who assassinated the Chief Justice of New Mexico and got away with it; Samuel Axtell, the Governor, fired by President Hayes for corruption; Warren Bristol, judge, who lied on the record to protect Catron. To call Catron the “putative” head of the Ring is to problematize his role in the ruthless venality against which Billy and his confreres fought. Let’s get this straight: The Santa Fe Ring ruled with an iron fist; Catron and his Ring deserved overthrowing.

In other words, Lucky Billy loads the guns against The Kid. In this portrait, we lose all sense of the young man about whom a number of positive testimonials of the time pay tribute. To illustrate: Dr. Henry Holt was the only physician in New Mexico in the late 1870s. He knew The Kid and he had a positive opinion of him.

This portrait that Vernon draws in Lucky Billy not only disrespects The Kid’s life as a whole, it undermines the novel. Again and again we see the same Billy, and this causes the reader to lose interest in him as the central character. Even Billy’s lovemaking isn’t very hot.

Still, it's a good thing we have Mr. Vernon's portrait of The Kid, Lucky Billy adds significantly to the canon.

Enough. Anybody ought to poke into the Lincoln County War some time. It’s a lesson in the viciousness of American power toward its own people. This is why Billy Lives, why understanding him as a scapegoat is a legitimate, even necessary perspective, and why his folk hero status remains despite the debunkers. To understand this vantage and thus see the same tale in a version sympathetic to The Kid, I highly recommend the novel I mention above by Elizabeth Fackler. Her version, published in 1993, remains still the best fictional account of the greatest American outlaw.

Note: Special thanks to Mark Halfmoon.

Written by: Neil Flowers, April 1st 2009

Wangari’s Trees of Peace: A True Story from Africa

admin — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 17:43:00 +0000

By Jeanette Winter

Harcourt

Wangari’s Trees of Peace is a beautifully imagined account, designed for young readers, of the life and career of Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan scholar, activist, and environmentalist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for her leadership of the Green Belt Movement and her resistance to deforestation. Often, “message books” like these underestimate kids’ level of sophistication and come across as preachy or cloying. In my experience, kids are wary of being propagandized and tune out adult condescension. On the other hand, they are often responsive to environmental issues and moved to action by abuses such as those depicted by Jeanette Winter. What makes this book especially remarkable is that its author does not soft-pedal the hardships that Wangari Maathai faced in her challenge to political authority, even the violence and imprisonment she suffered is represented graphically.

Winter, who provides simple yet colorful and evocative illustrations as well as an age-appropriate narrative, begins the book with an image of shelter: stylized trees in the shadow of Mount Kenya with goats frolicking and a young girl basking in the shade. Wangari is illustrated gathering firewood with her mother, again under the shelter of trees leafed with birds. She and her mother are depicted harvesting crops under a benevolent sun. She then leaves to study in America, and returns to see a land of tree stumps and unhappy women searching great distances, under a much more menacing-looking sun, for wood. Wangari asks poignantly, “And where are the birds?”

The next illustration shows Wangari crying as she imagines Kenya becoming a treeless desert. She then decides to plant trees in her own backyard, cares for them, and then shares her seedlings with others in the village. The trees represent hope, and the other village women embrace the gifts. The trees become “like a green belt stretching over the land”—the author’s nod to the environmental movement Maathai founded.

The book next represents her clash with authority—her standing between the trees and men with axes eager to build an office tower. She is depicted being hit by a club and bloodied by men who “call her a troublemaker and put her in jail.” And yet, in spite of her isolation, we are told she is not really alone, and the women and their trees fill the land with thirty million symbols of hope. Again, the images depict a land of shelter, trees filled with birds, women working happily together. Finally, the book tells of the world’s discovery of Wangari and her victory.

The book justifiably steers clear of some of the controversies that seem inevitably to beset public figures, including remarks she has made about HIV/AIDS. Rather, it focuses on the central figure’s courage and remarkable accomplishments, and the change that women working together can effect.

Written by: Rick Taylor, October 14th 2008

Lavinia

admin — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 20:25:00 +0000

By Ursula K. Le Guin

Harcourt

Ursula K. Le Guin is the author of short stories, essays, volumes of poetry, books for children, and many novels. She has won the National Book Award, five Hugo and Nebula Awards, a Pushcart Prize, and the Howard Vursell Award of American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her new novel, Lavinia, is set in a time when Rome, located near the seven hills, is only a tiny village of little consequence.

Lavinia walks out of Vergil’s epic poem The Aeneid, where she had been a silent character. Le Guin breathes life into Lavinia by creating her world and truly epic story, a tale that is both about love on many levels and war in all its reality. Le Guin manages to capture a mother/daughter relationship that could translate into modern day newspaper article. The author showers this ancient character with a unique voice, in which Lavinia speaks to the spirit of the poet, setting the whole tone of the novel.

I am not a reader of fantasy, but I found the story captivating. This novel is strong and rich in detail and will entice any reader. The images are vivid and the Roman myth of Latrius and Amata, Lavinia’s parents, comes alive in Le Guin’s own way of expanding the story with her imagination. Le Guin’s language is like music, poetry formed into a novel.

“And yet my part of them, the life he gave me in his poem, is so dull, except for the one moment when my hair catches fire—so colorless, except when my maiden cheeks blush like ivory stained with crimson dye—so conventional, I can’t bear it any longer. If I must go on existing century after century, then once at least I must break out and speak.”

Le Guin’s beautiful alternative world made me a fan. I strongly suggest this book to readers of different genres. If you’re not a fantasy reader, come on step out of your box and try this wonderful book. You won’t be sorry.

Written by: Ann Hite, April 9th 2008

Everything I'm Cracked Up To Be

admin — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 18:22:00 +0000

By Jen Trynin

Harcourt

Everything I'm Cracked Up To Be is a rock and roll fairytale. Jen Trynin is trying to find her place in the world of music. Her thirtieth birthday is just around the corner and she wants to be a rock star by then. Sending her tapes out to radio stations and playing in clubs is just the start.

After her songs get recognized on the radio she pulls together a band. With a new bass player and drummer her band is complete. When critics recognize her as the next big thing, many entertainment lawyers and record labels try to sign her. There is even a bidding war.

Trynin picks an entertainment lawyer, Neil Krakow, and a record label, Warner Brothers, and things really begin to heat up. She is sent all across the United States to video shoots, photo shoots and radio interviews. After a while she decides to go on tour, so with her band, manager, soundman, and a van she sets off.

When the tour is over her bass player quits and her drummer gets injured. She fires her drummer and puts together a new band. She even hires a lead guitarist so she can focus on just singing. In the end Trynin realizes that fame isn’t all its cracked up to be.

This story is inspiring to those who want to get in the music business. Although the story is from a humorous point of view, it still gives off that "never give up on your dreams" message. Trynin didnt give up on her dreams and neither should you.

The story also grounds your dreams. Fame isn't everything we expect. Most people think you get loads of money and a good life. This book puts that into perspective so you aren't too dissapointed. Everything I'm Cracked Up To Be is a hit.

Written by: Demara Austin, March 30th 2007

The End of Mr. Y

admin — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 03:01:00 +0000

By Scarlett Thomas

Harcourt

The End of Mr. Y is a science fiction fantasy story. Ariel Manto is a doctoral student writing about a mysterious author, T.E. Lumas. His final book, The End of Mr. Y has never been read by anyone alive because whoever reads the book disappears. After spending the last of her money on the book, Ariel uses it to fall into a trance and enter the Troposphere – an alternate dimension where she can travel through time and space.

This book is long – clocking it at about 400 pages. While it did pique my interest, it was not a thrilling page turner. I set it down for a few days and was perfectly happy to leave it there, with no urge to continue reading just to know what happens next. The End of Mr. Y references a lot of science and philosophy from the late 1800s that some might not be familiar with. Without such familiarity it would be hard to keep up with references to Charles Darwin and a large cast of thinkers. The book, however, is an interesting read once you get past all the references; it turns into a great adventure story.

Written by: Katie Peoples, March 13th 2007

The Women of the House: How a Colonial She-Merchant Built a Mansion, a Fortune, and a Dynasty

admin — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 22:10:00 +0000

By Jean Zimmerman

Harcourt

Margaret Hardenbroeck Philipse, the first woman to build her own lavish fortune in the New World, had the Midas touch when it came to trading everything from furs to slaves in seventeenth century colonial Manhattan, then called New Amsterdam. When Margaret arrived on a ship from Holland, she was only twenty-two years old, independent and determined to “squeeze the honey out of this land, to transform that honey into gold.” By the time of her death a few decades later, Margaret had created a vast real estate empire from Albany to Barbados, commandeered a fleet of trading ships that carried slaves, furs, tobacco, textiles and molasses, and set the tone for the dynasty to follow into the next century.

What’s most fascinating about the book – even more than the character portrayal of Margaret herself, which at some points verges on a clichéd portrait of obsessive greed, ‘workaholism’ and zero empathy for the exploited – is Zimmerman’s tight zoom into the cultural mores of the times. We learn in thrilling detail the progressive, permissive laws of the Dutch and their embrace of equal rights for women vs. the oppressive patriarchal English who later take over New Amsterdam without firing a single shot.

The wealth of historical detail continues as the book shifts to mini-portraits of the women, who follow in formidable Margaret’s wake, on the grand Westchester estate called Philipse Manor Hall: Catherine Van Cortlandt Philipse, who wed Margaret’s widowed husband Frederick and built a grand church; Joanna Brockholst Philipse, the ultimate political wife who married Margaret’s grandson, and Joanna’s daughter, Mary Philipse Morris, the “It” girl of the mid-1700s.

It’s the American dream with a feminist twist: spirit, determination, genius, resourcefulness, and setbacks such slave revolts and the American Revolution, after which the dynasty was tarred as Loyalist.

I wonder when I come upon an inspiring book like this, why still there is persistence to either not mention, or gloss over, the roles of women in American history whose contributions surpassed the traditional role of wife and mother. Margaret – twice married, a mother of five and a flinty woman, who created enough wealth to claim a place as the richest woman in New York in her time – deserves a prominent mention in American history books. Thankfully, Jean Zimmerman gives this incredibly remarkable and accomplished woman her due.

Written by: Cheryl Reeves, March 13th 2007