Book Review: "Our Only World" by Wendell Berry

Our Only World (2015)
Wendell Berry (1934)

 178 pages

… the industries of landscapes: agriculture, forestry, and mining. Once they have been industrialized, these enterprises no longer recognize landscapes as wholes, let alone as the homes of people and other creatures. They regard landscapes as sources of extractable products. They have “efficiently” shed any other interest or concern. (p. 6)

With this emphatic statement Wendell Berry introduces his central theme early in Our Only World, a collection of ten recent essays in which he returns to and further refines ideas with which he has been involved for many years as an author, activist and cultural critic. Over several of the essays Berry highlights the damage done to the land by our modern, industrialized approach to agriculture, which focuses largely, if not exclusively, on the efficiency of farming operations while ignoring the impact of this focus on the land and the people who live on it.

Berry goes on to deeply implicate our modern lifestyle as a key underpinning for the powerful grip that the industrialized approach holds on agriculture. Despite the grim picture he paints of the current state of affairs in our rural areas, however, Berry does also give examples of people developing and implementing ways to return to more sustainable methods of farming and working the land. He argues that these approaches most coalesce into a broader movement, if we hope to survive over the long term.

Reading these essays by Berry, I was reminded of a statement made by Colin Tudge in his 1996 book The Time Before History: 3 Million Years of Human Impact: “… the agricultural systems of the [modern] world are not actually designed to feed people.” A simple sentence on the face of it, but reading it I had both the feeling that it was an obvious and fundamental truth, and that I had a sudden, new-found understanding of reality; it radically altered my view of the world, well beyond agriculture. Tudge, like Berry, did not mean to imply that a particular farmer does not take pride in the food his work provides; his point was instead that agriculture as a system, as an industry, exists not to feed people, but rather, as Tudge goes on to say, “[has] been designed primarily to fit in with prevailing economic norms, or to justify some political conceit or other. Thus, western agriculture [for example] is designed in the end to maximize profit.” (p. 325)

Berry draws the same conclusion in his essays, but as part of a broader point. He argues that prioritizing profit-driven crop selection and efficiency-driven farming techniques, while ignoring the fitness of a particular piece of land to support these choices, causes modern industrialized agriculture to destroy the land, and so, ultimately, all of us. Fritjof Capra makes a similar point in his book The Hidden Connections: A Science for Sustainable Living: “our complex industrial systems … are the main driving force of global environmental destruction, and the main threat to the long-term survival of humanity.” The destruction may be more gradual in some places, more rapid in others, but the end result is in either case inevitable.

Berry notes that this destruction occurs both directly, say in the erosion of the soil through industrialized farming practices and the degradation of surrounding waterways and forests from the run off of the herbicides and fertilizers needed to sustain these techniques, and also indirectly, through the loss of the historical knowledge of place fundamental to both good land management and a close monitoring of the health of the land. He borrows from the environmentalist and author Wes Jackson the concept of the “eyes-to-acres ratio.” Thus, Berry observes, as farms become more industrialized operations requiring far fewer workers, both farmers and those who support farm-work leave their rural hometowns to find work; and, as these small towns decline in population, they also lose the knowledge that had protected the land for generations. This removes yet another restraint on the implementation of efficiency-focused improvements that result in destructive farming practices, and thus further hastens the ruination of the land.

To counter this growing calamity, Berry calls for a return to a less industrialized form of agriculture, to farming done with an understanding of which crops and techniques best suit the particular land being farmed. This would lead to a shift from a regime in which profit stands alone as the sole priority, to one in which sustainability --- of the land and the people on it --- plays a significant role. He describes nascent, locally-centered approaches to growing food that he says mark a return to smaller farms and markets that operate through a deep knowledge of the land being worked, and he calls for these efforts to be supported and expanded. He describes the 50-Year Farm Bill, legislation that he notes currently has little chance of passing in Congress, but has as its goal a complete revamping of our agricultural systems into a more sustainable direction.

The challenge, as Berry recognizes, is to create the space to implement these more locally-organized, and so sustainable, approaches --- the economic space not present in modern, industrial agriculture. Berry’s solution, in proposals described across several of these essays, is a return to an earlier form of working and living on the land. He acknowledges that for this to be possible, however, we must all of us turn away from a profit-driven society and toward a much simpler way of life, with the ultimate goal of having a significantly reduced impact on the world, and a much closer connection to the land. This ultimately means leading a less energy intensive way of life, one more centered on our local communities, our neighbors and the land on which we live.

At one point he concedes that

It may be that we can keep without harm some industrial comforts: warm baths in wintertime maybe, maybe painless dentistry.

One can read this as a bit tongue-in-cheek, but certainly it’s intended to confront us not only with the extent of his proposal, but also the generally unacknowledged, and often unrealized breadth of connections between our industrialized society and our daily lives, and so the impact of our life-styles on the world. It is not just in the ever more wondrous techno-toys offered us; our industrialized society touches nearly everything we do in a day, unless we are simply out for a walk near our homes, or working in our gardens. His prescription can seem, and in fact is, a tall order. But, as his review of the ecological damage wrought by industrialized agriculture --- on our land and so on us ---- makes clear, such a change of living standards may eventually be “forced upon us” by environmental events. (p.150-151)

One essay in this collection deviates from the topic of land use and sustainability. In Caught in the Middle, Berry opens with the observation that

in the present political atmosphere it is assumed that everybody must be of one of only two sides, liberal or conservative, … [that] we appear thus to have evolved into a sort of teenage culture of wishful thinking, of contending “positions,” over-simplified and absolute, requiring no knowledge and no thought, no loss, no tragedy, no strenuous effort, no bewilderment, no hard choices.(p. 73-74)  

He then goes on to write a brilliant and stirring plea for the recognition of a middle ground, a place where complexity is embraced, and easy, thoughtless answers are shunned. He grounds the discussion in what have been, and remain, two highly controversial subjects: abortion and homosexual marriage. On abortion he points out fallacies and inconsistencies in the arguments on both sides of the debate, and, after clarifying his own personal view, makes a strong case for a clear political solution to the issue. On homosexual marriage, too, he debunks the most commonly heard arguments, and concludes by going back to the Bible to define and defend the rights that, two years after his essay was first published, have now been secured by the Supreme Court.

Largely, however, these essays examine the damage our modern way of life is doing to the land, and as a consequence to all of us as individuals on that land and in society. Together Berry’s writings make a forceful call for each of us to embrace a simpler, quieter life, to become more attuned to the land we live on and its needs, and so to play a critical role in stopping the destruction that we, most of us, now contribute to when we ignore the impact our lifestyles have on our planet.

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Along with the Colin Tudge quote I referenced above, reading these essays reminded me also of something from an article  by Bill Kauffman, for the Utne Reader (linked to here),

For almost 60 years, the placeless have waged war on the rooted, stealing their children, devastating their neighborhoods, wiping out local peculiarities and idiosyncrasies. … What we have is class war --- though this war has never been acknowledged because the casualties are places and attachments and sentiments, nothings really, everythings, in fact --- waged by the mobile against the rooted, and the winners are the professionals, people so depraved that they would actually move to a different place for mere money. How bizarre.

I recently saw a bumper sticker relevant to this topic: “There is no Planet B”


I have also read by Wendell Berry --- though before I began writing this blog of reviews:

• In the Presence of Fear: Three Essays for a Changed World [2001]: essays that touch on our modern corporate and political society, and also on the importance of moving to more local economies.
• Citizenship Papers [2003]: 19 essays on a range of topics from the national security response to 9-11, to issues related to the agrarian and local economy themes of Our Only World.

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Book Review: "The Man of Feeling" by Javier Marías

The Man of Feeling (1986)
Javier Marías (1951)
Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa

182 pages

As Javier Marías’ novel The Man of Feeling opens, the narrator addresses the reader directly, questioning whether he should tell us about his dreams, concerned that there isn’t a coherent story to be made of them. He assures us, however, that the dream he has just awoken from was different, that it was based on actual events from some years before. He then describe the moment when, while on a train to Madrid to perform in an opera, he raised his head from the book he was reading and took notice of the three strangers sitting across from him in the compartment --- two men sitting on either side of a woman.

In the dream, at least, the opera singer recalls feeling that it had taken him “a while to notice them, as if something were warning me or as if, unwittingly, I wanted to delay the danger and the happiness involved in noticing them.” (2) With this hindsight the reader proceeds forewarned of the conflicted relationship that will grow out of this chance meeting on a train. Indeed, the narrator then goes on to recall a moment, “shortly afterwards,” in which he is with the woman in a hotel room, telling her of his fear of dying alone.

Marías has structured the novel as a kind of letter or recollection, written by the opera singer over the course of a single day, in which he recounts the events from four years before that came back to occupy his dreams of the previous night. During his telling, the opera singer repeatedly warns us that he cannot always be sure whether he is remembering the actual events, or instead the interpretation of them in his dream. Thus we are left to rely on a narrator of uncertain fidelity, his doubts about the accuracy of his memories coloring both for us, and for him, the understanding of those events, and of the motivations and sincerity of those he meets.

After the initial description of noticing the trio of strangers on the train, and of his later conversation in a hotel room with the woman, the opera singer goes on to explain how he had met up with the three again in Madrid. By coincidence, the opera singer encounters one of them in the hotel bar a few days after the train ride, a man named Dato, and ends up in conversation with him. The opera singer soon learns that Dato’s two fellow travelers are a married couple, that Dato works for the husband, and that he has as his principal duty to act as a companion for the woman, Natalia, as she accompanies her husband on his business trips.

Having captured the opera singer’s interest, Dato goes on to explain that the woman is not very happy in her marriage, and that on these trips his job is to keep her from getting bored during the day, while her husband carries out his business activities. He confides to the opera singer that though “it’s completely illogical” (44), Natalia has never taken a lover. When Natalia enters the bar a few moments later, the opera singer finds himself, not unwillingly, co-opted by Dato into helping keep Natalia happy during their stay in Madrid.

We already know the opera singer and Natalia will end up in a hotel room together, and not so very long after their first meeting, thus the eventual outcome is not in doubt. Instead the mystery of the story lies in these four personalities circling one another, trying to divine one another’s feelings and intentions: the opera singer, who falls so precipitously in love with, Natalia, a woman he hardly knows; Natalia, apparently committed to her marriage, though, as the opera singer recalls from his first glimpse of her on the train, appearing to be “afflicted by a kind of melancholy dissolution” (9); Dato, who may be simply looking for some help in keeping Natalia busy, but could also be instigating an affair for her with the opera singer; and finally Natalia’s husband, who the opera singer describes as cold and exploitive, and who apparently has a powerful hold over his wife.

Though he serves as our narrator, we never learn the opera singer’s name, and, of the four main characters, his intentions remain at once the most banal and the most mysterious. He tells us about his life as a singer, traveling from city to city, constantly on the move, and of his success in his occupation, but he seems judgmental and utterly shallow in his observations about his own life and about the lives of the people he meets and interacts with. He complains about the loneliness and lack of stability associated with his constant traveling, but he clearly enjoys his success and is accustomed to pursing and getting what he wants. And, during his stay in Madrid, his attentions turn to capturing Natalia from her husband.

In his recollections of the events that brought him together with Natalia, he tends to describe the pursuit not in terms of his love for her, but rather the challenge of winning her from her husband. He recalls his struggle to understand the couple’s life together, based on the strange and cryptic information Dato has provided him, the pas de deux he watches play out between Dato and Natalia as he accompanies them on shopping trips and other excursions around the city, and brief encounters with Natalia’s husband. In an extended thought-scene that is vintage Marías, the opera singer imagines Natalia returning to her hotel room in the late evening, after having spent the day with him and Dato, and meets up again with her husband; jealously playing out different scenarios of this reunion, he creates versions alternatively hopeful and damning to his intentions to win her. Oddly, however, even looking back four years later, he seems unable to articulate what drew him to Natalia in the first place.

The novel, in fact, though nominally a love story, does not present the typical encounters and physical interactions of attraction and love one might expect. In the opera singer’s telling, he describes his pursuit of Natalia, but we hear little about moments when they are actually together. Natalia and her husband share a hotel room, but after the initial train ride we only briefly see them together; we are left to learn about their relationship second hand.

Marías engages the reader here not with physical action, but rather with the labyrinthine psychology of desire. The drama plays out in the mind of the opera singer as he recalls, through an uncertain mix of his memories and his dreams, the sudden appearance of three strangers into his life, and how this meeting led to unexpected changes in his life. In a subtle and compelling approach to storytelling that Marías has perfected, we recognize in the opera singer’s reminiscences --- in what he highlights and what he ignores, in how he interprets and is affected by what he has experienced --- our own insecurities, quirks and obsessions.

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Other reviews / information: Other works I have read by Marías, though I read all but two before I began this blog of reviews:
 • The Infatuations: A woman learns that the male half of a couple she has seen repeatedly at a café has been killed, and she becomes involved in trying to understand what happened to him; my review here.
• While the Women are Sleeping: A collection of short stories; my review here.
• When I was Mortal: A collection of short stories.
• A Heart so White: A novel of a man who upon getting married reconsiders his past.
• Dark Back of Time: A novel written as a kind of imagined biography; a study of human nature that will pull you in deeply and force you to consider ideas and fears you had tried to leave buried in your subconscious.

You can find quotes from some of these works, and from The Man of Feeling here.

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Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf

Book Review: "The Meaning of Human Existence" by Edward O. Wilson

The Meaning of Human Existence (2014)
Edward O. Wilson (1929)

207 pages

With The Meaning of Human Existence, renowned biologist and Pulitzer prize-winning author Edward O. Wilson could hardly have made a more ambitious, and alluring, choice for a title. Fortunately he rises to the challenge in this slim volume. Building on recent discoveries in genetics, biology and other scientific fields, he describes how certain critical aspects of human nature may have developed due to the evolutionary advantage they conferred. Based on these new understandings, he calls for a re-thinking of millennia-old philosophical and theological doctrines that have attempted to illuminate the “meaning of human existence,” claiming that there is an urgent need to search out new answers to this eternal mystery through a close collaboration of science and the humanities.

To be clear, Wilson does not address in this work the related, though also fundamentally different, question of the “meaning of life.” He does not delve, for example, into why the universe exists, or what constituted the beginning of the universe, questions that science cannot participate in answering, at the very least for the foreseeable future. Wilson focuses here instead on how we humans can pursue a deeper understanding of the meaning of our existence --- of our lives as individuals and as a species.

Wilson notes that for much of history, this question remained the purview of the humanities, that is, of philosophers and theologians. Then, during the age of enlightenment, it suddenly seemed possible that science could answer the question on its own, without resorting to the soft, non-scientific explanations of the humanities. Wilson notes that this path failed to deliver on the early promises of its promotors, as it became clear that --- not surprisingly, in hindsight --- the answers science discovered led only to deeper and more fundamental questions.

Along the way, however, significant steps forward have been taken in our scientific understanding of the development of human nature, according to Wilson, and he argues that in light of these new findings, we can reassess our understanding of the meaning of human existence. As a particular example, he points to the inherent tension in most human beings between their instinctive desire to follow their own self-interest, and their equally instinctive desire to belong to a group, which often requires suppression of self-interest. He argues that recent advances in such fields as genetics and biology support the proposition that there is an inherited predisposition in humans toward holding both of these conflicting instincts, simultaneously.

Wilson describes how the presence of these aspects of human nature, and the resulting tension between them, would have conferred advantages on our ancient ancestors, and so would have represented an evolutionary preferred outcome that became built into our genetic code. The argument is that pure self-interest may have been beneficial to a particular individual in the short run, but would have been disadvantageous to that individual’s tribe in its competition with other tribes, and so, in the long run, also to that individual,. On the other hand, having no self-interest at all would have turned us into what he refers to as “angelic robots” (p. 33), perhaps advantaging the group in a short-term sense, but dooming it over the long run when faced with more dynamic groups, whose members held the two instincts simultaneously and in tension.

The presence of this internal conflict can seem undesirable and unpleasant in the moment --- for an individual faced with a decision between following their self-interest or supporting their community --- but Wilson argues that it is critical to our human existence, to our rise beyond other species in the development of “human-level intelligence and social organization.” (34) Wilson in fact carries this argument a step further, specifically warning against the seemingly imminent use of genetic engineering to improve the human race, in the sense of eliminating such conflicting feelings and emotions, and creating, say, a more emotionally stable version of ourselves. He feels such a move would only diminish a key strength of our humanity, and so place us at risk of stalling in our development as a species.

More to the main point of his work, Wilson goes on to cite recent studies claiming a genetic predisposition in humans to embracing religious beliefs and religious structures. He notes that such instincts would have enhanced the cohesiveness and strength of a tribe relative to others whose members did not have the same genetic pre-disposition, thus fitting neatly into the larger picture of human beings advantageously balancing self-interest and group-interest. He argues, however, that these instincts toward religious and cultural belief systems, which support a group over its rivals, have cohered over the past millennia into dogmas that have resulted in a legacy of on-going discrimination and violence between groups, as we witness so evidently in the world today. What in ancient times provided advantage for one tribe over another, now leads to seemingly intractable conflict.

Building off these and other discussions in the book, Wilson makes a clarion call: the world must use the understanding that science has made in recent years to step back from the various dogmas --- whether religious among the spiritual, or political among the secular --- that pit groups against one another in violent opposition. Through renewed efforts in the humanities, we must move forward toward a new philosophy of human existence, a broader meaning that spans the species, as opposed to the current myriad of ideologies that exist among the groups we’ve divided ourselves into. He argues that science and the humanities must take this step forward together, that neither alone can suffice.

In lucid and engaging prose that invites a reader into a conversation on these topics, Wilson lays out his views on the current understandings of human nature and consciousness, and then coalesces these views into a proposal for a new path forward. To be able to solve the problems we face today --- environmental degradation, fundamentalist violence --- Wilson calls on science and the humanities to develop a new understanding of the meaning of human existence around which humanity as a whole can come together.

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In his chapter Free Will, Wilson discusses this ancient question of philosophers and theologians, again from the context of the latest understandings of science. He concludes that human beings do not, fundamentally, have free will, in the sense that it is at least theoretically possible to capture the set of events that will predict our next decision. Despite that, he argues that we humans can, and in fact must, act as if we do have free will, do have control; he writes “… does free will exist? Yes, if not in ultimate reality, then at least in the operational sense necessary for sanity and thereby for the perpetuation of the human species.” (p. 170)

This lines up with the thinking of scientists such as the theoretical physicist Brian Greene; check out, for example, his interview in front of a live audience for On Being, with Krista Tippett, January 2014.  In the final, on-air version there is a comment that parallels Wilson's thoughts above; follow the links to either the transcript, or the audio of their discussion .

At the audio link there is also the unedited version of the interview, including the following exchange with an audience member (starting around 1 hour, 6 minutes), in which Greene notes that even quantum theory is deterministic.

Audience Member: “… it sounds as if, um, your proposal situates us in a very deterministic universe, and that we are simply, in some sense, um, almost robots acting out of these general laws, and that there’s no novelty within this very, very complex and creative entity that we are as conscious beings.  That’s my first question.

BG: Ah, so, ah, yes, it, it is hard to accept.  [Long pause, audience laughter]  But I wouldn’t go as far as to say there’s no novelty.  You know, when you bring complex systems together, even when they’re governed by deterministic laws of physics, which, as we understand them … and some people would say ‘well, what about quantum mechanics, doesn’t that sort of take away the determinism,’ no, it doesn’t at all, not at our current level of understanding.  So, the mathematical laws that Schrodinger wrote down for the quantum evolution are as deterministic as the laws that Newton wrote down, they determine probabilities, but there’s no place in those laws for anything other than deterministic evolution.   Now you can get novelty, because when you bring complex things together they can co-mingle and interact in ways that may be surprising, and I’m using human language to describe it, sure it comes right out of the equations but it still can be novel by any human barometer.  So, I wouldn’t say that novelty goes away, but yes, free will may, go away.   

AM: So, free will, meaning choice, there’s no such thing as choice.

BG: That’s right.

AM: I do not choose to love, I do not choose to extend myself, I don’t choose to live, to get back to [?]

BG: Well, it all depends on what you mean by ‘choose’.  So, if by choose you mean that you could have done otherwise, then I would say, yes, but I would say that you need to redefine the meaning of the word choose.  Choose is the sensation of choosing; now it is the fact that the laws of physics were just playing themselves out, and that is fundamentally why you did what you did, but to choose is to have the sensation of making that choice.  And we all have that sensation, and that is a definition which I think works well.  It does require a little bit of re-jiggering of your intuition, to recognize that it may be the case that it, the laws of physics that are behind the scenes doing it all, but yes, that sensation of choice is real.  And that’s what we should re-define free will to mean.  Free will is the sensation of making the choice, even though behind the scenes, the laws of physics were pulling the strings.

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Book Review: "Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy" by Jeff VanderMeer

Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy (2014)
Jeff VanderMeer (1968)

 

595 pages

Faced with the unknown, people display a range of reactions, from immobilizing fear to mindless aggression, from cautious wonder to impetuous curiosity. The struggle often becomes one of recognizing whether our natural reaction will put us at greater or lesser risk than some other possible response --- will a quick, aggressive action be what saves us, or will it only make things worse? Encountering something not only unknown but possibly profoundly unknowable heightens these stakes. Just such dilemmas face the characters in Jeff VanderMeer’s Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy, which bundles three recently released novels into a single volume.

The Area X of the title is a stretch of coastline, blocked off from the public behind vague government reports of some kind of environmental disaster. Officials, however, find themselves with a much more challenging and mysterious truth, as a kind of force field has descended around this piece of the coast, comprising an area of both land and the off-shore ocean, which prevents access except through a single portal on land. Through an agency called the Southern Reach, the government has been organizing an ongoing series of expeditions into Area X, ostensibly to investigate the environmental disaster that has occurred, but in reality focused on understanding the strange force that has gripped this region, and what it may mean for the future.

The first third of the book, entitled Annihilation, opens shortly after the four members of the designated twelfth expedition have entered through the portal into Area X. They soon discover a kind of tunnel in the ground that they had not been expecting, despite the extensive training and information about the region that they had received in preparation for their mission. Descending into the tunnel to investigate, they begin to encounter phenomena not only unexplainable but seemingly otherworldly. The expedition soon falls apart in the face of what seems to be the natural world in Area X rising up against them.

The focus in the second third of the book, Authority, turns to the organization coordinating the expeditions. The Southern Reach, located just outside the one known entrance into Area X, has had little to show for its long-standing efforts to investigate the phenomenon on its doorstep; many expeditions have been sent in, with results from catastrophic to uneventful, but what information makes it back only generates more questions than answers as to the nature of what is happening, and of what sort of long-term threat it may pose. Decades of failure have in fact created a debilitating hopelessness among the employees of the Southern Reach, made worse by a toxic stew of company politics within the secret agency, all of which undermines any new efforts to make progress.

In the final third, Acceptance, the reader is thrust back into Area X, as the struggle between Southern Reach and the forces that hold sway in the strange region comes to a head. As the confrontation escalates, the characters begin to get closer to an explanation for the strange phenomena occurring. Even as their understanding deepens, however, they find themselves left with only more profound questions about the nature of what they face, and its potential threat to the outside world.

In telling the story, VanderMeer manages to deftly control and manipulate a reader’s understanding of what constitutes the full truth of events. For one, he plays extensively with time in the novel. Though the story broadly flows forward from a point early in the mission of the twelfth expedition on toward the climactic engagement with the power at the center of Area X, along the way VanderMeer shifts continually back and forth between the present and the past. Extended flashbacks and jumps back in time to events prior to the twelfth expedition slowly reveal hints about the motivations of the characters and pieces of knowledge the different characters have about the true situation inside Area X. More unsettling for a reader, VanderMeer manipulates events in the novel by revealing them in fragments: a moment will play out, but then some pagers later a main character will remember back to that moment and recall and relate information not covered in the first pass through it. Thus, not only does the reader only gradually build up an understating of the main characters, even the reality of the story must be pieced together from stingily dribbled out bits and pieces.

A second, more unsettling factor for the reader is the knowledge that some characters spend part of the time under hypnosis, ostensibly to protect them as much as possible from realities of Area X that might overwhelm them and so jeopardize the mission of the Southern Reach. But it can be unclear at any given moment in time whether a particular character is under hypnosis. This leaves a reader wondering, as the focus shifts among the main characters in the story, how much of what they relate can be trusted as actual fact, and how much of what they do is of their own free will.

Oddly unsettling too is the lack of definition of time and place in the novel. A few hints and clues leave the impression that the novel is set a few decades into our future, and in the south-eastern United States. But a reader can’t be quite sure. Other than the diverse names of the characters, and the American sounding names of the local towns and establishments, nothing places the story particularly in the United States. A secret umbrella organization, Central, rules over the Southern Reach, and no other government entity is ever mentioned in the novel. Combined with hints that the country has been suffering under increasing terrorist attacks and environmental disasters, the subtle indication is of a dictatorial state; does the government or country of the United States even still exist as we know it today?

VanderMeer has crafted a gripping novel that engages a reader on every page in the search for the truth. Taken together, the vagueness of place, the constant shifting in time and finally the uncertain agency of the main characters enhances the mystery of what has happened and will happen in Area X. Through these techniques a reader remains effectively as uncertain about what may constitute the realities of Area X, and the full extent of the government’s attempts to understand and control it, as are the characters themselves.

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Book Review: "Fully Empowered" by Pablo Neruda

Fully Empowered (1967)
(Original: Plenos Poderes; 1962)
Pablo Neruda (1973)
Translated from the Spanish by Alastair Reid

135 pages


Many years have passed since I first discovered the poetry of Pablo Neruda, through a girlfriend from Chile who had a copy of Fully Empowered (Plenos Poderes).  The poems in the collection range from impressionistic descriptions of nature, daily activities or common objects to ruminations on the nature of our lives and those of the poor and working class.  I picked up my own copy of the book some 20 years ago, and a couple of other collections of his work since then. Over the years, however, I’ve had a bit of a conflicted history with his poetry, and have only now read through all the poems in this particular book.

When I first came to Neruda’s poetry I knew little-to-no Spanish, so, although I had bilingual collections of his works, I was reading them in the English translations.  Despite being limited to the versions in English, I found several of his poems deeply affecting.  In Fully Empowered, for example, the poem Births (Los nacimientos), with Neruda’s transcendent description of the moment of birth, struck a powerful chord in me, and remains my favorite among Neruda’s poems. (To read the poem in Spanish, or Alastair Reid’s English translation, follow the link here.)

So too the extraordinary image of love Neruda creates out of a simple, everyday act in To Wash a Child (Para lavar a un niño), and the startling conclusion, in the poem’s final lines, with a bittersweet reminder of our loss of innocence as we grow older:

In that way, newly washed, the child leaps into life;
for later it will have time for nothing more
than keeping clean, but lifelessly by then. 

(Y así recién lavado salta el niño a vivir
porque más tarde sólo tendrá tiempo
para andar limpio, pero ya sin vida.)

And also in this same collection, the powerful image of a spoken word coming to life, in the opening lines of The Word (La palabra):

The word
was born in the blood,
grew in the dark body, beating,
and took flight through the lips and the mouth.

(Nació
la palabra en la sangre,
creció en el cuerpo oscuro, palpitando,
y voló con los labios y la boca.)

But, but … so many of his other poems read flat to me, and I had trouble recognizing in them the inspired beauty many others seem to find in his work. To be clear, I always felt this represented a personal shortcoming, not a valid conclusion on Neruda’s work. (Aside from lacking the background to critically evaluate poetry, I consider what one likes, in literature, music, or art in general, to be a simple preference, not an absolute value; I acknowledge the validity of critical evaluation of art, but not the requirement that critical acclaim implies that any particular person should necessarily find a work appealing.) Over the years I have occasionally returned to the books I own of Neruda’s poems, to give them another go, and see if, from a new vantage point in life, I experience them differently; the result, however, has always been the same --- no particular resonance to much of his work.

Recently, however, I picked up Fully Empowered again, but with a twist: I’ve been learning Spanish over the past years and though my Spanish remains only passable, I know enough to be able to read it, albeit with the support of a dictionary. I randomly opened the book to a few different poems --- intentionally choosing ones I was not already drawn to in their English versions --- and read them now in Spanish, with the help of Alastair Reid’s translations and a dictionary on the side. The result startled me; poems that had seemed so flat in English came almost magically to life for me.

I recognize that literature in general, and poetry in particular, can be extremely difficult to translate in a way that captures both the meaning and the characteristic tone of an author, and not just because words have different nuances of meaning in different languages: each language has too a different, inherent rhythm. Reading Neruda’s poems in Spanish, I was for the first time truly confronted by the chasm that translation can create. The rhythm and the flow of the poems in Spanish combine with their meaning to an extraordinary effect, and the poems now sang out more beautifully than I had experienced them in English.

As a specific example, take the opening lines of Planet (Planeta):

Hay piedras de agua en la luna?
Hay aguas de oro?
De qué color es el otoño?

Focusing on just the first sentence, there is a natural rhythm to it, built around three groupings that all have emphasis on the second to last syllables, and with the very typical for Spanish ‘a’ sound at the end of each grouping:

hay PIEdras ... de Agua …en la LUna

Reid’s translation of the first three lines is:

Are there stones of water on the moon?
Are there waters of gold?
What color is autumn?

Looking again at the first line, one can see how Reid has been able to create a similar rhythm with a direct translation:

are there STONES … of WATER … on the MOON

The pattern is now built around the emphasis being on the single syllable nouns that conclude each grouping, which is a minor difference, but notice that the line loses some of the melody inherent in the Spanish, in which the ‘a’ sounds rounds out each group. Thus, though the enchanting image Neruda creates in this line comes through in the English translation, the lyrical cadence that enlivens the original has been lost.

To be clear, I mean no criticism of Alastair Reid’s translations; if anything I sympathize with the struggles he must have gone through to re-create (a more appropriate term it seems to me, than ‘translate’) these works in English --- with its rhythms and flow so different from Spanish --- while retaining Neruda’s meaning. In a different context, one can understand why some songs, when translated into a different language, retain the popular melody, but are given an entirely different set of lyrics, built to support the melody, not to retain the original meaning.  Reid obviously did not have that option with Neruda’s poetry.

So, I recommend, if you are able, reading Neruda’s poems in their original Spanish, even if you need to lean on the translations and a dictionary for support. The effort will be well-rewarded by the beautiful whole of these works in their original language.

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Other reviews / information:

I also have a CD of Neruda reading some of his poems. I was surprised, when I first heard it, by the monotone voice he uses to recite his works; there is a modulation to his reading, his voice generally rising during a particular line, but he keeps his voice very flat, leaving the impression of intense melancholy or a lamentation. But, upon listening to his delivery over several poems, his approach gradually comes to feel appropriate. And, one’s inclination when reading his poetry is to adopt this voice oneself, whether reading them aloud or silently.

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Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf

Poem by Pablo Neruda: "Los nacimientos" ("Births")

My favorite among Pablo Neruda's poems is Los nacimientos (Births), from the collection <u>Plenos Poderes</u>,which, with Neruda’s transcendent description of the moment of birth, as well as his trenchant portrayal of how unknowable to us the two most important moments in our life remain, struck a powerful chord in me.

The poem in its original Spanish, as well as a version in English farther below, are from the book <u>Fully Empowered</u>(my review here), a bilingual edition of the collection <u>Plenos Poderes</u>, translated from the Spanish by Alastair Reid.

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Los nacimientos

Nunca recordaremos haber muerto.
 
Tanta paciencia
para ser tuvimos
anotando
los números, los días,
los años y los meses,
los cabellos, las bocas que besamos,
y aquel minuto de morir
lo dejamos sin anotación:
se lo damos a otro de recuerdo
o simplemente al agua,
al agua, al aire, al tiempo.
Ni de nacer tampoco
guardamos la memoria,
aunque importante y fresco fue ir naciendo:
y ahora no recuerdas ni un detalle,
no has guardado ni un ramo
de la primera luz.
 
Se sabe que nacemos.
 
Se sabe que en la sala
o en el bosque
o en el tugurio del barrio pesquero
o en los cañaverales crepitantes
hay un silencio extrañamente extraño,
un minuto solemne de madera
y una mujer se dispone a parir.
 
Se sabe que nacimos.
 
Pero de la profunda sacudida
de no ser a existir, a tener manos,
a ver, a tener ojos,
a comer y llorar y derramarse
y amar y amar y sufrir y sufrir,
de aquella transición o escalofrío
del contenido eléctrico que asume
un cuerpo más como una copa viva,
y de aquella mujer deshabitada,
la madre que allí queda con su sangre
y su desgarradora plenitud
y su fin y comienzo, y el desorden
que turba el pulso, el suelo, las frazadas,
hasta que todo se recoge y suma
un nudo más el hilo de la vida,
nada, no quedó nada en tu memoria
del mar bravío que elevó una ola
y derribó del árbol una manzana oscura.
 
No tienes más recuerdo que tu vida.

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Births

We will never have any memory of dying.

We were so patient
about our being,
noting down
numbers, days,
years and months,
hair, and the mouths we kiss,
and that moment of dying
we let pass without a note ---
we leave it to others as memory,
or we give it simply to water,
to water, to air, to time.
Nor do we even keep
the memory of being born,
although to come into being was tumultuous and new;
and now you don’t remember a single detail,
and haven’t kept even a trace
of your first light.

It’s well known that we are born.

It’s well known that in the room
or in the wood
or in the shelter in the fisherman’s quarter
or in the rustling canefields
there is a quite unusual silence,
a grave and wooden moment as
a woman prepares to give birth.

It’s well known that we were all born.

But of that abrupt translation
from not being to existing, to having hands,
to seeing, to having eyes,
to eating and weeping and overflowing
and loving and loving and suffering and suffering,
of that transition, that quivering
of an electric presence, raising up
one body more, like a living cup,
and of that woman left empty,
the mother who is left there in her blood
and her lacerated fullness,
and its end and its beginning, and disorder
tumbling the pulse, the floor, the covers,
till everything comes together and adds  
one knot more to the thread of life,
nothing, nothing remains in your memory
of the savage sea which summoned up a wave
and plucked a shrouded apple from the tree.

The only thing you remember is your life.