The Brethren

Posted on April 20, 2010 by smellincoffee
The Brethren
© John Grisham 2000
384 pag

               From within the confines of a minimum security prison, three convicted judges spin a web of deceit and extortion across the nation. Relying on a corrupt lawyer with addictions to shuttle mail and handle the money, these three men – termed ‘the Brethren’ —  seek out closeted gay men via classified ads in alternative magazines. Posing as young gay men themselves to earn the marks’ trust, the judges then threaten to expose their victims to their wives if they  do not pay upwards of $100,000. These closeted men have no recourse but to pay, for explaining the circumstances of their extortion means revealing parts of themselves they’ve kept in hiding. The Brethren have little to lose from their scheme, but financial security following their eventual release from prison to gain – and so they write their letters and prey on their victims, watching their bank accounts grow and contemplating future lives of leisure.
    They might have continued to spin their webs for years, but they chanced to ensnare a young politician named Aaron Lake, favored by the CIA to be the next president of the United States. Lake isn’t just favored by the CIA: he was hand-picked by the Director, who has subsequently funded and helped manage Lake’s bid for the office. Fearing the potential rise of a Russian strongman, the Director wants a man willing to double funding for the US military to ward off potential threats – and he does not take kindly to the idea of three felons preying on his man. The Brethren have no idea that the CIA is involved, and their scheme may either result in the biggest payoff ever – or three occupied slabs in the penitentiary morgue.
    I read this first years ago, and have read it a couple of times since then. I picked it up over the weekend intending to read a little at lunch, but found it too interesting to put down. The novel is set during the 2000 presidential election – an obvious Dubya stand-in is mentioned as Lake’s potential running mate, and his ‘liberal’ opponent in November is the sitting vice president. Brethren, like The Broker, is a thriller with its roots in the legal system but which involves global politics:  his CIA director appears in several other books. This is a breezy read with an interesting start, although the story fades to conclusion rather than coming to an satisfying end.
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Teaser Tuesday (20/4)

Posted on April 20, 2010 by smellincoffee

“Verily, verily, I say unto you…not only for reading was Tuesday made, but for teasing also. (Jesus, Tweet from the Mount)

“Leia, he was just a boy. Did you think he came out of the womb wearing a breather and black helmet?” 

– p. 138, Tatooine Ghost

From Should be Reading, as ever.

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Young Hornblower

Posted on April 17, 2010 by smellincoffee

Young Hornblower
© 1948, 1951, 1953 C.S. Forester
672 pages

(My library’s copy has long lost its dustcover, but this would certainly be eye-catching…)

A few weeks ago I began reading and was immediately taken by the adventures of Captain Horatio Hornblower, an officer in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic wars. I knew I would be reading further, and here I am. Young Hornblower collects three sets of stories set during Hornblower’s early career, beginning with his induction into the Royal Navy and first assignment as a midshipman at the start of the French Revolution.  Midshipman Hornblower consists of ten standalone stories that mark Hornblower’s service aboard the HMS Indefagtible, where his resourcefulness and audacity serve him, his captain, and the British empire well as it wars against ‘red France’, a nation that has dared to kill its king.  Hornblower rises steadily through the ranks, becoming his captain’s protege and favorite prizemaster. Lieutnant Hornblower sees Hornblower transfer to the Renown, under the command of an increasingly paranoid and violently insane captain whose mental instability puts their mission at risk. Hornblower and his new friend Lieutnant Bush (his first officer in Captain Horatio Hornblower), along with the other senior officers, must find some way of restoring good order on the Renown or they are doomed. Hornblower and the Atropos, in an odd turn, is set ten years following Lieutnant Hornblower: Hornblower is not so young, nor inexperienced, for he is the captain of a ship sent to the Mediterranean on a secret mission.

Hornblower’s stories are fast-paced adventure. Technical language abounds, but as general background: it can be blithly ignored in the same way viewers of Star Trek might ignore ‘technobabble’. On occasions when naval mechanics influence the story, Hornblower’s thoughts or his subordinates’ words tell the reader what the consequences might be. Interestingly, Forester doesn’t stick to the typical rise-climax-conclusion format of novels. The books’ opening and ending sections may be largely unrelated to the conflict that most of the book addressed. Forester seems to find a good ‘stopping place’, and then ends the novel there. I don’t consider this a fault of the book: indeed, the chapters that ended Lieutnant Hornblower seemed like ‘extra content’, content that you can enjoy but aren’t necessarily recquired for the novel’s plot. I shall be continuing this series.

Related:
A&E did a series of eight movies based on Midshipman Hornblower and Lieutnant Hornblower. The movies take liberties with the original source, but those liberties add to the novels rather than take away from them. They add whole subplots and allow the viewers to become familar with a set of characters rather than just one or two. You can find all of the movies on Youtube, or on Amazon here. I watched them all in a single weekend. Riveting, for me.

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This Week at the Library (15/4)

Posted on April 15, 2010 by smellincoffee

Recent reading:

  • The Infernova is a modern retelling of Dante’s inferno written to amuse skeptics by making religious hypocrites, cult leaders, and other enemies of reason the subject of poetic justice.
  • Strength to Love was a collection of sermons by Martin Luther King Jr. that displays his belief in radical love, nonviolence, the importance of reason in discerning the truth, and the necessity of religious institutions acting as progressive forces in society.
  • In the mood for an adventure, I read Captain Horatio Hornblower, a collection of three sea adventures set in the Napoleonic era and starring the titular character as captain of a frigate. Happily, the books were not just sea stories but contained political intriuge and land-based adventure. I’ll be reading more of the Hornblower series.
  • In the same mood, I read Millennium Falcon, a novel that tells the story of Han Solo’s attempt to discover the full history of his ship. Although set  far in the extended universe, Luceno uses a character’s backstory to cleverly update readers like myself, who aren’t familiar with the decades’ worth of history that the Extended Universe has created past Return of the Jed. 
  • Next up I read Charles C. Mann’s 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus, not to be confused with 1421: the Year China Discovered America. (I spoonerized the years several times in mentioning the books, to my uncomfortable amusement.) Mann’s work reminds me of Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel in his scope and approach. His central thesis is that the Americas were not dominated by a lack of progress as we might suppose.
  • Max Schulman’s Rally Round the Flag Boys! was next. This light comedy set during the early Cold War begins by introducing the readers to a half-dozen eccentric characters and then begins bouncing them off one another relentlessly off of one another. Fifties stereotypes abound.
  • I then read a biography of India’s first prime minster, Jahwahrlal Nehru, and one that focused on how his passions and princples informed the the path India took in its first decades of independence from Britain. The biography is sympathetic, but not protective, and Nehru emerges as a fascinating character.
  • Lastly, I finished the Bhagavad Gita, a poem considered sacred by Hindus for its role in explaining parts of Hindu theology and philosophy. Mitchell’s translation is indeed readable, although not having read another translation, I can offer no comparisons.

Pick of the Week(s):  1491, Charles C. Mann.

Quotation of the Week:
“What are we do?” he asked feebly.
“Do?” she replied. “We are lovers, and the world is ours. We do as we will.” (Beat to Quarters, C.S. Forester)

Upcoming Reads:

  • Young Hornblower, collecting three more Hornblower novels that are set at the beginning of his naval career as a young officer during the French Revolution. 
  • The Secret Life of Plants, Sir David Attenborough
  • Tatooine Ghost, another Star Wars read. 
  • In addition, I’m working on a paper about the development of Anglo-German submarine warfare strategy (1914-1945), but I doubt I’ll have time to read anything through properly. 
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The Bhagavad Gita

Posted on April 13, 2010 by smellincoffee

The Bhagavad Gita: a New Translation
© 2000

Our Gita, the Muslims’ Koran, your Bible — it’s always the simple things that catch your breath. ‘Love thy neighbor as yourself.’ – the Mahatma, Gandhi

Back in late 2006 I began a personal but intermittent cultural literacy project in which I aimed to begin reading about global religions, including tackling their originating documents when possible. Since then,  I’ve studied Judaism, Islam, Taoism, and Buddhism but have time and again avoided the vast subject of Hinduism. What prompted me out of my reluctant was the movie Gandhi, given the affectionate way the titular character regarded the book.

What attracted me to this translation was the cover art and a sewn-in burgundy ribbon intended to serve as a bookmark. The inside page quality and coloration were also obviously chosen with care, with an attention to quality that is rare and so much the more appreciated.

The Gita itself takes the form of a conversation between the god Krishna and a human being named Arjuna, who is reluctant to engage in a battle to reclaim his homeland. Although the articles I read introducing the Gita claim that Krishna disguises himself as Arjuna’s charioteer, in Mitchell’s translation he is referred to throughout the book as The Blessed Lord and speaks of himself in the first person as a divine entity. Midway through, he explicitly reveals himself as the God,  the being from which all deities find their source, and shows Arjuna his true physical form.

Before this, and following it, Arjuna and Krishna converse about the meaning of life, suffering, wisdom, the path to righteousness, the value of faith, and many diverse but related concepts. Krishna opens the conversation by encouraging Arjuna to have courage. Their conversation expands from there, Arjuna asking Krishna to elaborate on one question or another.

In reading, I saw the origins of ideas I associate with Hinduism — reincarnation and universalism, for instance. I also saw the origins of ideas I associated with Buddhism (Krishna identifies desire as the enemy of wisdom).  Even translated into contemporary English, the Gita is not a light read, but Mitchell’s offering is lucid on the average, and I tended to find myself caught up in the narrative flow — pausing only to refresh my memory of what a particular untranslated Hindi word meant.

Although translated poetry assuredly loses something in the process, Mitchell manages to convey beauty and simplicity here. Unlike his translations of other works (Gilgamesh and the Tao te Ching, which I’ve previewed but don’t have access to), Mitchell refrains from ‘updating’ the text with modern idioms and allusions. If you’re interested in reading the Gita for literacy purposes — or just looking for poetry that reminds you Hindu and some Buddhist religious principles — I’d say Mitchell’s translation is promising.

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Nehru: the Invention of India

Posted on April 13, 2010 by smellincoffee

Nehru: the Invention of India
© 2003 Shashi Tharoor
282 pages
 

The movie Gandhi introduced me to many of the key figures in India’s independence movement and early political leadership, and beyond Gandhi no man interested me more than the Mahatma’s right hand, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Gandhi’s commitment to nonviolence stemmed from his near-mystic religious beliefs, but Nehru held fast to those convictions without religious training. The close relationship between the two men in light of their differing religious convictions fascinated me, so I decided to read a biography of Nehru,  India’s first prime minister,

Nehru emerges from this book as an iconic figure for Indians: their Thomas Paine, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln all converge under his mantle. Nehru defined the necessity of independence, participated in the movement, and attempted to steer the ship of state around sectarianism and political subordination to the world’s superpowers. Nehru is in ways more western than eastern: largely nonreligious, educated in England, and valuing western political theory more than eastern religious principles. Interestingly, he and Gandhi come to the same conclusions from different approaches on various subjects.  For instance, Gandhi believes in self-sufficiency as a spiritual value while Nehru sees it as a Marxist necessity: without economic independence Indians are doomed to political bondage of one form or another.

Tharoor presents an easily digestible narrative here that is sympathetic but not protective of Nehru. Tharoor clearly admires him for his pragmatic idealism, integrity, and internationalism, but sees Nehru’s political leadership as flawed, particularly in the realm of economics and foreign affairs. The ending chapter – following Nehru’s death – attempts to summarize Nehru’s influence on the stated he helped create and dominated for so long. Regardless of Nehru’s administrative shortcomings, he is for me as interesting a politician as I’ve never encountered. He reminds me of Marcus Aurelius: thrust into the spotlight unwillingly, wary of the power he possesses, daunted by the responsibility, and yet determined to make his character prove worthy of the challenge. Most remarkable for me was the way he checked himself: at a time when no one would criticize him, he wrote to a newspapers anonymously warning that “Nehru has all the makings of a dictator in him”.

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Teaser Tuesday (13-4)

Posted on April 13, 2010 by smellincoffee

A tease, a tease, a Tues-day tease….from Should Be Reading.

A well-worn story, perhaps apocryphal, has Churchill recalling the years Nehru spent in British prisons, saying, “You must hate us.” To which Jawaharlal replied: “I was taught by a great man never to hate — and never to fear.”

p. 188, Nehru: Inventing India by Shashi Tharoor

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Rally ‘Round the Flag, Boys!

Posted on April 11, 2010 by smellincoffee

Rally ‘Round the Flag, Boys!: The raucous, hilarious, big bestseller about sex, guided missiles, real estate, commuters, love and the U.S. Army in a Connecticut town
© 1957 Max Shulman
277 pages

There are some authors for whom I will buy or obtain a book blindly. Max Shulman is one of them, thanks in part of my extreme affection for his Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. A few weeks ago I read another of his works and enjoyed it — well enough to look for another book, not knowing what it might be about.

As it turns out, Rally ‘Round the Flag Boys is an entertaining comic story about what happens when the US Army invades a small town in Connecticut in the late forties or early fifties. Shulman opens the book by introducing the reader to our viewpoint characters, most of whom live in the small town of Putman’s Landing. Their paths and plot threads will converge — or collide with great drama —  in that town with comic results. Putman’s Landing was once a small fishing village turned into a bedroom community following a postwar building boom. ‘Round the Flag is definitely a product of the early Cold War period, particularly its emphasis on surburbia. 1950s stereotypes abound: one of the plot threads concerns an unhappy commuting husband whose homemaking wife is too busy running the PTA and a score of other civic organizations for romantic intimacy.

Part of the book’s humor consists in having these characters bounce off one another, like the staid but affable conservative father and his daughter, who speaks nothing but fifties jive. Shulman has a knack for dry and oblique humor that strikes from behind and kept me rolling. Unlike Tomatoes are Chapter, ‘Round the Flag’s characters are largely sympathetic and their tragedies are all the more effective at rendering gasps and laughs because of it.

Shulman provides a riot, and although the book is a bit dated that adds in part to its charm. Unfortunately for those who might be interested, this book is probably quite rare.

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1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus

Posted on April 11, 2010 by smellincoffee

1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus
© 2005 Charles C. Mann
465 pages

1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus is an ambitious book that attempts to rout a host of assumptions about the land and people of the western hemisphere prior to European contact.  Author Charles Mann tackles a host of questions and beliefs, but most find their root in the idea that primitivism reigned supreme in the Americas — that both the land and people were largely untouched by the passage of time until European exposure. Mann wishes to overturn the related ideas that the western hemisphere contain lands largely untouched by humanity  and that the people who lived here were relatively uncivilized, not far removed from hunting and gathering.  In their place, he sees the Americas as continents heavily modified by their original occupants,  densely populated, home to many more than the traditional “big three” organized polities. These polities were not just familial clans, but empires in their own rights with political dramas and ambitions that unfolded exactly as they might in Europe, China, or anywhere else.  Essentially, Mann sees the original Americans as humans — not idealized ‘noble savages‘ or ridiculed primitives.

To be sure, the civilizations of the Americas were limited  in some respects compared to Europe, Asia, and Africa. Without draft animals, people were unable to engage in the large-scale agriculture that almost defines the western idea of civilization. Mann’s account how people adapted to the environments of the Americas reminded me a quotation from an introduction to anthropology: people have found many ways to be human. Time and again, Mann makes the case that pre-European Americans were not strictly primitive, but that their history had simply developed differently from people living in the eastern hemisphere. They couldn’t farm in the way of the east, but they manipulated their environments all the same — creating large, wild orchards in the Amazon and fish-trapping on a massive scale that required large public works.Technologically, their path simply diverged again. Metalworking in Mesoamerica, for instance, was as advanced as anywhere else, but it was put to different uses  — as elaborate ornamentation instead of weaponry. The same was true of science, and Mann attempts to convince the reader that both European and American scientific progress had strengths and weaknesses compared to the other.

This is a fascinating work with massive scope, reminding me of Jared Diamond’s classic Guns, Germs, and Steel. Human history abounds here, but science — particularly genetics and climatology — have large parts to play. Mann sees the collapse of the Incan and Aztec empires as owing more to European disease and a relatively limited gene pool among American progenitors than to European weaponry. Interestingly, Mann’s narrative often includes his first-hand documentation. He records his experiences in gathering evidence, exposing himself to both wonders and perils. At one point in the work, the airplane he is in runs out of gas above South American jungle and he barely avoids catastrophe. (My Tuesday Teaser referenced another peril.)
1491 was well worth the time spent reading it, being endlessly fascinating. Mann presents a compelling and simple case, one I’m only happy to recommend — particularly to history, geography, and anthropology readers. I can’t imagine Jared Diamond readers in particular not enjoying this.

Related Reading:

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Teaser Tuesday (6-4)

Posted on April 6, 2010 by smellincoffee
If it’s Tuesday, I must be teasing like Should Be Reading. 
“The ticks are not bad, are they?” I asked him hopefully, viewing the tall grass and underbrush between the road and the mounds. “No,” said the driving, beaming. “When full, like grapes they fall off and no harm is done.” (1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus)

The perils of primary research….

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