Book Review: "Thus Bad Begins" by Javier Marías

Thus Bad Begins (2016)
Javier Marías
Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa

444 pages

Why do we tend to react so harshly in response to relatively minor deceptions that happen to us personally, while often shrugging off or at least failing to generate sustained indignation over barbarous behavior that we learn has been perpetrated against others, even against friends? This feature of human psychology lies at the heart of Javier Marías’s novel Thus Bad Begins.

Though nominally set in modern day Spain, the story develops as an extended flashback of Juan de Vere, a young man just out of university in the early 1980’s. De Vere works as an assistant to the film director Eduardo Muriel, and, as the novel opens, Muriel has a special request for him: to begin observing closely a friend of Muriel’s, Dr. Jorge Van Vechten. Muriel has apparently learned some disturbing news about Van Vechten, and wants de Vere to help him discover whether it’s true. In answer to de Vere’s repeated attempts to begin his assignment with more details, however, Muriel will only say that he has heard that “the Doctor behaved in an indecent manner towards a woman or possibly more than one,” (43). Thus Muriel leaves de Vere to perform his investigation in the dark --- leaving him at the mercy of his imagination in guessing what the truth might be.

De Vere works at Muriel’s apartment, eventually spending so much time there that Muriel provides him a cubbyhole room in which to sleep. As a result, de Vere gradually becomes a little noticed witness to life in the apartment, where Muriel lives with his wife Beatriz and their three kids, as well as a housekeeper.

De Vere’s intimate view into Muriel’s family life only heightens his curiosity at what Van Vechten could have done to inspire such misgivings in Muriel. Though de Vere generally finds Muriel “one of the most upright, charming, fair-minded men [he] had ever met,” (47), he also observes Muriel regularly behaving coarsely toward his wife in private, often disparaging and belittling her verbally. As de Vere begins his pursuit of the truth about Van Vechten, he struggles to square Muriel’s indignation over what he has apparently learned about the doctor’s “indecent behavior towards a woman”, with his dismissive and derogatory conduct toward his own wife.

Out of this seemingly simple mystery, Marías creates the kind of intriguingly intricate and thought-provoking meditation on human behaviors and idiosyncrasies that runs through so much of his work. His characters exhibit a convincing mélange of good and flawed qualities --- able to demonstrate kindness in some situations while succumbing to temptation in others --- and so provide fertile ground for Marías to elaborate on our human condition. And what Marías sees deep inside us, what he reveals to us about ourselves, can arise suddenly in his telling, a moment of self-awareness for a character that for the reader comes with a jolt of recognition, hitting far too close to home:

… one of those griefs that you put off because you don’t want to confront or plunge into it and which, nevertheless, always comes back, recurs, grows deeper with each attack, having failed to disappear during the period you were keeping it at bay or far from your thoughts. (14)

Characteristic of so many of his novels, Marías mixes fiction and reality to great effect in Thus Bad Begins, including historical figures and places throughout the story. Marías places the fictional director Muriel in a context of real-life members of the film industry; these include director Jesús Franco --- famous for horror and sexploitation films --- and his frequent producer, Harry Towers, along with several popular actors.

Though Franco and Towers may be known to some readers, the pair clearly don’t have the fame that typical real-life figures who appear in novels might; also, only Towers actually appears in the story, and then only for a brief moment. Rather than use his fictional characters to illuminate historical figures and their times, Marías’s inclusion of historical people into the novel seems intended to provide a degree of verisimilitude to the fictional story he tells. The outlandish and stylized films of Franco that Marías refers to, and the strange and immoral stories he describes from Towers’ life have the effect of making the fictional characters and their situations and actions feel more realistic, more plausible.

Marías’s approach also introduces ambiguity about where the fictional elements of his story end and true history begins. That uncertainty leads to surely the most unsettling part of the novel for a reader: whether Marías has drawn from historical reality the disturbing secret of Van Vechten’s past that de Vere ultimately uncovers. Early on, de Vere guesses that this secret might be tied to the Spanish Civil War and the subsequent dictatorship of the fascist victors; Muriel essentially confirms de Vere’s assumption, pointing out a weighty reality of Spain, particularly in the 1980’s:

Almost everything [in Spain] has to do with the [Spanish Civil] War. … A war like that is a stigma that takes one or even two centuries to disappear, because it contains everything an affects and debases everything. (37)

The roles in Spain of individuals and the actions of society at large during and after the war in fact play a central role in Marías’s telling. Given Marías’s style, one cannot help but fear that the uncovered details of Van Vechten’s past are historically accurate, even if he himself is a fictional character. More broadly, Marías’s story provides a look into the complicated, post-dictatorship social situation in Spain in the early 1980’s. Less than a decade removed from Franco’s death and the initially tenuous transition to democracy, Marías points out ways in which social behaviors changed much more rapidly than the political situation managed to keep up with, demonstrating the impact this had and some of the behaviors it led to.

Sometimes, admittedly, Marías takes the liberty to descend to more concrete commentary, offering through his characters pointed statements on mannerisms he dislikes. A bit like product placement in a movie, characters will suddenly make critical comments that seem likely to represent Marías’s personal views, such as de Vere pointing out while listening to a friend relating a story: “He made that awful gesture imported from America that people use to indicate quote marks”. (342)   Such comments pop-up up occasionally, and generally seem a bit gratuitous --- often not quite fitting the manner of the characters saying them.

That is a mere quibble, however: in exchange for such isolated moments, the reader is rewarded with Marías’s wonderful observations of our inner lives and complexities. In Thus Bad Begins, he examines the fluid range of justice people have, leading us to respond to perceived personal wrongs with harsh revenge, while being able to look past, ignore or simply not pursue knowledge about more brutal crimes committed against others. As readers, we are left to wonder about our own reactions in such situations --- though hopefully for all of us, with lower stakes than the characters here.

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Other reviews / information:
The books title, Thus Bad Begins, comes from a Hamlet. The story also contains a long quote from Henry IV Part 2 on how easily rumors spread, that Marías later refers back to in a comment that seems particularly apt for our current environment:

… our level of credulity has reverted to what it was in the Middle Ages, with rumor stuffing our ears with false reports … and we refuse to ask for proof, accepting everything as credible because everything has already happened, or so we believe. (285)

Other works I have read by Marías, though I read all but three of them before I began this blog of reviews:

• The Man of Feeling: An opera singer sees a couple on a train; they all disembark in the same city, and he meets them in a hotel, eventually falls into a complex relationship with the woman, who is unhappy in her marriage. My review here.
• 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 Thus Bad Begins 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: "Pond" by Claire-Louise Bennett

Pond (2016)
Claire-Louise Bennett

195 pages

When I read or hear a review of a book that piques my interest, I add the title and author to a list on my phone, as a reminder for some future visit to a bookstore. Generally, even if months or years pass before I finally come across the book, reading the summary on its cover provides me a sufficient reminder of why it had caught my interest in the first place. Some entries on my list, however, have a question mark at the end of the title and author’s name: my notation for a review that intrigued me, but didn’t necessarily convince me. These are the cryptic entries on my list; when I finally encounter one of these titles in the bookstore, I have generally forgotten what had earlier caught my attention --- and, more importantly, what hesitations had tempered my interest.

So it was when I came across author Claire-Louise Bennett’s book Pond in the bookstore a couple of months ago --- it was on my list, but with one of those enigmatic question marks tacked on. Reviewing the summary on the dust jacket convinced me to go ahead and buy it, but left me with little clear notion of what I was wading into when I later opened it to begin reading. In particular, though I read the book as a novel, once I’d finished and sat down to write this review it dawned on me that perhaps it actually consists of a collection of short stories.

Ultimately it can be enjoyed either way, as a set of loosely related stories, or a kind of impressionistic and meandering novel. Bennett has structured the book as a series of vignettes, narrated by a young woman recalling and reflecting on moments in her life, from the mundane to the dramatic. Many of the woman’s recollections center on events in and around a small cottage she leases near the Atlantic coast of Ireland, a dwelling and landscape that she seems to inhabit deeply, with all her senses.

In one story she watches a storm pass over the mountains outside her window as she takes a bath, meditating on the storm’s relationship to the mountains which she imagines it to be revisiting. In another, after spending days sick in bed, she pulls on a coat over her nightgown and walks up a hill from her cottage to get some air; when, as she leans on a gate to enjoy the view of the countryside, a young man with the hood of his jacket pulled up walks toward her up the path, her initial, instinctive fear suddenly gives way to a fevered eroticism as she finds herself bridling again her natural caution and introverted passiveness.

These remembrances seem to pour out of the Bennett’s narrator --- stream of conscious accounts during which she veers off onto non sequiturs, gets distracted by details she can’t quite recall, and jumps back to fill in information that suddenly occurs to her, just as someone sharing a story with you over a cup of tea or a beer might do. In many of these recollections, she broods on the hidden meanings and implications in her relationships with neighbors, friends and boyfriends, meditations that verge on the obsessive as she sorts through her feelings.

In others, she paints lush, impressionistic portraits of the physical world in and around her cottage, exquisite and engaging descriptions that demonstrate an intimate and almost anthropomorphized perception of her surroundings and their impact on her life. Within her remarkable hyper-awareness, the boundaries between her inner musings and the world she inhabits can become fluid and uncertain:

There was a storm, an old storm, going around and around the mountain, visiting the mountains again perhaps after who knows how long, trying to get somewhere, going nowhere. And to begin with nothing, just a storm, nothing original, nothing I hadn’t heard before. I went about my business for a while until it struck me I should disconnect the cables and thus the lights went out on those small matters I endeavor to attend to and I didn’t mind very much because the matters were straightforward and already composed and yet were at the same time quite beyond me at that moment. It was of no great consequence really. I got into the water which had been waiting for some time, the temperature loosening, and then I had the idea about opening the window wide, which I did with no difficulty despite the rigid appearance of the clasp.

And then, from there, it was possible, unavoidable really, to listen to the storm going around and around, and I knew it was an old one that had come back --- it seemed to know exactly where it was and there was such intimacy in its movement and in the sound it made as it went along and around and around. Yes, I thought, you know those mountains and the mountains are familiar with you also. No --- it was not raging, it was not simply raging --- I heard no element of anger in fact. How loud it was and yet so fragile, stopping and starting for a long time --- it didn’t know where to begin, but it was by no means frantic, either, not at all. I moved a web of lather about the roots of my hair and became immersed in the body of the storm; I knew its structure, saw its eyes, felt its past, and I empathized with its entreaty. It had style, it was experienced; and it came back, and it came back again.

Going around and around, trying to get somewhere, going nowhere. And even though the mountain did nothing the mountain was not impervious to the storm and in fact dreaded its retreat and longed for it always to come back, and to come back again. (65-67)

Resist the temptation to try and tease a concrete plot out of Bennett’s tales in Pond. Instead, surrender to the meandering sensibility and colorful imagery of her story-telling, and so delight in her narrator’s keen, if often ambivalent, meditations on the fundamental ties that bind us to the natural world and the many people in our lives. And perhaps, as a reward, find yourself encouraged to look more deeply and intensely at even the most apparently quotidian details of daily life.

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Other reviews / information:

Read quotes from this book 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: "Death's End" by Cixin Liu

Death’s End (2016)
Cixin Liu (1963)
Translated by Ken Liu
604 pages

[Note: although I make it a point to not include spoilers in my reviews, this is the third book in a trilogy, and it’s not possible to write about it without including some context from the first two books, The Three-Body Problem and The Dark Forest. So, if you haven’t read the first book yet, I suggest you jump back to my review of The Three-Body Problem here; if you’ve read that, but not The Dark Forest, you’ll find my review of that second story here.]

Oh my.

In Death’s End, the concluding novel in Cixin Liu’s mesmerizing and mind-bending science fiction trilogy, Liu explores the full ramifications of the dark vision of life in the universe he introduced readers to in the first two novels. When looking up at the night sky, Liu clearly does not fantasize about potentially thrilling and enriching encounters with galactic civilizations in the vein of science fiction adventure stories such as Star Trek or Star Wars; quite the contrary, he envisions, to quote one of his characters from the second book,

the universe as a dark forest. Civilization [as] an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care … because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. (484, The Dark Forest) 

Popular, romanticized views of space exploration and discovery evaporate quickly in the searing heat of Liu’s all too plausible premise.

In the opening story of the trilogy, The Three-Body Problem, humanity discovers that life in the universe is much more prevalent, and dangerous, than previously imagined. This revolution in humanity’s understanding of the cosmos turns out to be but the tip of the iceberg, however, and in the second volume, The Dark Forest, Liu lays out the harrowing logic behind his bleak vision of the universe.

Early in that second story, Ye Wenjie, the physicist who in the first book revealed Earth’s location to the Trisolaran civilization at our nearest neighbor star, cryptically suggests to young physicist Luo Ji that he study “cosmic sociology.” She briefly mentions to him two fundamental axioms of her newly conceived field: “First: survival is the primary need of civilization. Second: Civilization continuously grows and expands, but the total matter in the universe remains constant.” (13, The Dark Forest)

Ye Wenjie goes on to hint at “two other important concepts: chains of suspicion and the technological explosion.” (14, The Dark Forest) As readers, the importance of concepts such as life’s ferocious survival instinct and the inescapable conflicts caused by life’s exponential growth in the face of fixed space and resources, as well as the unpredictable timing and scope of technological revolutions, follow readily from our knowledge and understanding of the development of civilizations on Earth.

The cryptic chains of suspicion idea, however, seems to represent for Liu the crux of the danger when considering cosmic sociology: to put it simply, no galactic civilization can know a priori, upon discovering the presence of another civilization, whether it is benevolent or malicious. Given that uncertainty, together with the axioms of cosmic sociology, the unpredictable rapidity of technological expansion, and the challenges of the immense interstellar distances and cultural differences naturally in play, the only safe bet for a civilization is to remain hidden. And, if one cosmic civilization does discover another, the only viable option is to immediately destroy it, for fear of otherwise being discovered and destroyed first --- for Liu, the inescapable risk of hesitation is annihilation.

Luo Ji, introduced to the idea of cosmic sociology as the The Dark Forest opens, gradually comes to understand its implications, and in the end uses his new found knowledge to divert the Trisolaran invasion fleet, and so save Earth, by establishing a dangerously tenuous balance of mutually assured destruction. The stakes, though, rise dramatically in the final story, Death’s End, as events upset the delicate balance established by Luo Ji, and humankind must face the full consequences of becoming a visible presence in the dark forest described by Ye Wenjie’s theory of cosmic sociology.

The already expansive, if bleak, scope of Liu’s vision blossoms in Death’s End to challenge everything we think we know about the universe. In a scene set back in the time of the first book, Liu hints at his interpretation of the reality visible to us when we examine the universe beyond our solar system. Ye Wenjie’s daughter, Yang Dong, has found her cherished career as a research physicist in ruins as the Trisolarans have stopped mankind’s progress in the sciences by randomly altering the results of fundamental experiments in physics; Yang Dong finds herself adrift, at a loss to move forward with her life. In a fit of nostalgia, she visits her former lab, where she meets a scientist who has created a model that simulates changes in Earth’s physical environment over millennia, and that allows him to see how altering or removing various factors at a particular point in time can influence Earth’s subsequent development. When he demonstrates how dramatically different Earth would look if life had never developed --- not simply absence of roads and cities, but fundamentally different atmospheric and terrestrial conditions --- Yang Dong finds her life completely unmoored: what meaning has physics at all if everything can be altered by the presence of life? As the story proceeds, the full implications of this reality become clear.

Lest one think that the central themes in this trilogy simply represent an interesting plot line created by Liu, he makes clear in an Author’s Postscript to The Three-Body Problem that he considers the ideas at the heart of this trilogy as deadly serious:

There’s a strange contradiction revealed by the naïveté and kindness demonstrated by humanity when faced with the universe: On Earth, humankind can step onto another continent, and without a thought, destroy the kindred civilizations found there through warfare and disease. But when they gaze up at the stars, they turn sentimental and believe that if extraterrestrial intelligences exist, they must be civilizations bound by universal, noble, moral constraints, as if cherishing and loving different forms of life are parts of a self-evident universal code of conduct.

I think it should be precisely the opposite: Let’s turn the kindness we show toward the stars to members of the human race on Earth and build up the trust and understanding between the different peoples and civilizations that make up humanity. But for the universe outside the solar system, we should be ever vigilant, and be ready to attribute the worst of intentions to any Others that might exist in space. For a fragile civilization like ours, this is without a doubt the most responsible path.

Turning on its head the typical vision of the universe found in traditional science fiction --- of a thrilling future expansion of humankind out into the cosmos --- this trilogy from Liu will leave readers looking up at the night sky with a newfound respect, if not also a shudder of fear.

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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: "Angels of Detroit" by Christopher Hebert

Angels of Detroit (2016)
Christopher Hebert (1973)

422 pages

News reports on Detroit’s decades-long decline and its citizens on-going struggle to climb up out of the resulting despair tend to include two dramatic facts about the city, stark realities that author Christopher Hebert works into the opening pages of his engaging novel Angels of Detroit:

a city of one hundred forty square miles, a third of it abandoned, the emptiness combined larger than the entire city of San Francisco. Boston. Manhattan. Almost two million inhabitants at the city’s height. Two-thirds of them now departed.” (9)

These facts, aside from highlighting the depth of the city’s fall, also reveal a challenge facing its recovery: Detroit is not simply a city down on its luck, it’s a city that’s been abandoned and left to whither. How can one hope to change the city's direction, and then construct a successful recovery, when so little remains in terms of people and industry to provide the necessary impetus and support?

Precisely this dilemma bedevils many of the characters in Angels of Detroit. Though not wanting to simply give in to the city’s desolate reality, they struggle to find effective ways to change its future for the better. In the face of the decay that surrounds them, each seeks ways, within their limited individual means, to change those surroundings: a young revolutionary doggedly pushes a small group of friends into resistance against what she sees as destructive corporate behavior; an old woman won’t take no for an answer as she co-ops people into helping her create an urban garden on a vacant lot; an executive of a corporate behemoth tries to prevent her company from giving up on Detroit even as she herself no longer recognizes the streets of her youth.

Hebert assembles a colorful mélange of characters in the novel, all of whom --- with the not surprising exception of the corporate executive --- live in neighborhoods where many of the homes are empty and decaying, if still standing at all. These are Detroiters largely invisible in news reports about the city, reports that often seem to describe a wasteland filled with a featureless mass of impoverished, listless unemployed, preyed on by violent, incorrigible criminals. Hebert, by contrast, gives faces to the lives of those just trying to survive in these collapsing parts of the city; he has created compelling characters with conflicting hopes and fears, dreams and delusions.

The novel is constructed around a handful of parallel plot lines, each with its own set of characters, and it can be difficult initially to keep all those characters straight, especially as we shift quickly from one context to the next. Overall the story has a bit of the feel of a handful of vignettes about life in the city that Hebert has interlaced to form a book; and though characters from the various plot lines begin crossing paths already early in the story, those meetings are often tangential, with the contact sometimes only by sight, from a distance. It comes then as no surprise when Hebert opens the Acknowledgements following the story by noting that he “wrote this book over the course of a number of years.” (421)

Hebert does not shy away from disturbing reality in his descriptions of the decay and detritus that fill vast tracts of once --- not so very many decades ago --- comfortable, working and middle class neighborhoods. And he makes clear the damaging impact of such conditions on those who remain, those who somehow find it difficult, however, to give up on the city completely. The beauty of “Angels of Detroit” lies in Hebert’s ability to give his characters complex personalities and motivations, to make us realize that behind the simplified image of Detroit we see from across the city borders in the suburbs or the larger world beyond, live real people, making the best of the city they call home --- hoping, struggling for a better future.

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Other reviews / information:

In Detroit: An American Autopsy, reporter Charlie LeDuff provides a personal account of life in modern day Detroit, from the challenged neighborhoods to the challenging politics; my review of his book 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: "Seven Brief Lessons on Physics" by Carlo Rovelli

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics (2016)
Carlo Rovelli (1956)
Translated by Simon Carnell and Erica Segre

86 pages

Though its origins lie farther back in time, a dramatic shift in mankind’s understanding of the physical universe occurred during the twentieth century: we passed from fundamental laws of physics that generally aligned with our intuitive, every-day experience, to models of the physical world that we find difficult to square with our intuitive understanding, models that can in the most extreme cases seem to contradict our common sense expectations of how the world works. And this transformation only continues to accelerate in the first decades of the 21st century.

The loss of this connection to our daily experience in the world has made understanding modern physics particularly challenging for those of us not experts in the field. As a consequence, we can be tempted to assume there is little to be gained by trying to learn about the new theories and models that have been developed, even as we enjoy the many benefits of the technological revolutions that have resulted from them. Have we, however, been perhaps a little too rash in deciding to remain ignorant of these ground-breaking developments?

Theoretical physicist and author Carlo Rovelli would answer that question with a resounding ‘yes!’, arguing in his book Seven Brief Lessons on Physics that by not cultivating some familiarity with the recent work in physics we miss out not only on the dramatic ramifications these theories have for our understanding of the universe, but also on the beauty contained within their complexity. To help introduce non-physicists to what we have been missing out on, Rovelli has collected together concise explanations of each of seven key topics in modern physics, from established theories such as Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, to some of the latest areas of cutting edge research on the structure of the universe and the nature of human thought.

With one exception, Rovelli uses no equations in his telling --- and the one equation he does include serves to demonstrate the remarkable and elegant simplicity with which Einstein was able to express mathematically his General Theory of Relativity. Otherwise, Rovelli uses straight-forward language and occasional sketches to introduce us to the fundamental concepts at the center of these topics, and to their dramatic implications. Perhaps equally important, his lessons demonstrate the transcendent beauty to be found in these visions of the world beyond our everyday experience.

In one chapter, for example, Rovelli describes a theory that leads to the conclusion that space is not a continuous, empty medium, but rather a dense mesh of incredibly tiny particles, which he refers to as “grains of space.” (39) He examines how this view completely alters our understanding not only of the behavior and evolution of black holes, but also the origins and future of the universe itself.

In another essay he outlines physicists’ evolving understanding of heat, including the critical discovery by Boltzmann of “why … heat pass[es] from hot things to cold and not the other way around: … it is sheer chance. … it is statistically more probable that a quickly moving atom of [a] hot substance collides with a cold one and leaves it a little of its energy, rather than vice versa.” (53, italics in the original). Rovelli goes on to discuss the radical implications of introducing probability to physics, in particular for our intuitive understanding of time as flowing in one direction.

The final essay turns inward, as Rovelli reviews recent developments in our understanding of the complexity of human consciousness, and the challenging implications for the uniquely (among species on Earth) human concept of free will. He points out, however, that: “That which makes us specifically human does not signify our separation from nature; it is part of that self-same nature.” (76) Though we are integrally a part of nature, Rovelli concludes, our singular quality of consciousness does bring with it a terrible reality: we, uniquely as a species, have the ability to recognize and watch our own self-destruction from the “brutal climate and environmental changes that we have triggered.” (78)

Not being a theoretic physicist, I can’t vouch for the accuracy of his descriptions of the physics in these essays, but Rovelli does seem to ably walk the fine line of simplifying his presentations without trivializing them --- a reader leaves the book having gained a better understanding of these theories and the stunning vision of the universe that they describe, while still retaining a respectful awe for the apparent complexity of the work physicists have done to develop them.

In Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Rovelli has condensed into engaging and poetic prose the remarkable beauty contained in mankind’s current understanding of the universe. This slim volume will whet your appetite to explore these ideas more deeply and intently.

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Other reviews / information:

In The Meaning of Human Existence, renowned biologist and Pulitzer prize-winning author Edward O. Wilson also discusses the thorny concept of free will; my review here.  At the end of that review I include text from an interview with theoretical physicist Brian Greene on the radio program On Being with Krista Tippett, in which he describes his take on the idea of free will in a humorous exchange with an audience member who clearly fundamentally disagrees with him.

I have since also read Rovelli's Reality is Not What it Seems (my review here).  In the preface to that book he mentions that although Seven Brief Lessons on Physics appeared in English earlier, it was actually written and published in Italian a couple of years after Reality is Not What it Seems, which he describes as providing a more in-depth treatment of the topics; that book also goes back to review the historical underpinnings of the millennia long path over which the developments have occurred.

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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 Path" by Michael Puett and Christine Gross-Loh

The Path (2016) Michael Puett (1964)
and Christine Gross-Loh

204 pages

Like an invisible straitjacket, a host of deeply held but largely unexamined cultural mores constrain our assumptions and expectations for our lives according to Michael Puett and Christine Gross-Loh, authors of the fascinating and thought-provoking book The Path. Puett and Gross-Loh argue that those of us raised in the West would do well to recognize and consciously reflect on these implicit cultural norms, and by so doing acknowledge how poorly they often serve us. As an alternative, Puett and Gross-Loh introduce and discuss the teachings found in a half-dozen texts of Chinese philosophy from the last millennium BC, contrasting the philosophies outlined in these works with established Western thinking on how to live one’s life.

Puett, a professor of Chinese history at Harvard University, has taught for some years now a history class on Chinse philosophy. His class has apparently become hugely popular, and in the book’s Forward, journalist Gross-Loh describes an article she wrote on Puett’s class in 2013 for Atlantic magazine, a piece that became a springboard for her to join with Puett to write The Path.

Puett and Gross-Loh open with a statement that should not be considered surprising, but that none-the-less provides a useful reminder, forewarning readers to be prepared to re-consider their assumptions as they read on: “A certain vision of history has become conventional wisdom.” (5) This “conventional wisdom,” according to the authors, represents an ossified Western view of history that serves to reinforce existing Western assumptions on how best to live life, while dismissing Eastern philosophies as antiquated and out-of-touch with modern realities. In a series of short essays, the authors then explore and explode some of what they refer to as “our most cherished myths” (7), unchallenged beliefs that have grown out of this particular Western view of the past.

Puett and Gross-Loh follow up in the second chapter by providing context for their subsequent examination of early Chinese philosophers, giving a brief introduction to the critical period of transformation that occurred worldwide in the final millennium BC, a time now referred to as the Axial Age:

In a revolutionary history shift, the Bronze Age aristocratic societies that had dominate Eurasia for two thousand years, passing power and wealth down exclusively through hereditary bloodlines, began to crumble. …religious institutions that had been embedded in the earlier aristocratic cultures fell as well. As a result, religious and philosophical movements flourished across Eurasia. (17) 

Among these movements were several initiated by Chinese philosophers; through the texts left behind by these philosophers --- generally compiled by their disciples --- Puett and Gross-Loh provide a window into an alternative way of understanding and living our lives.

The first of the philosophers discussed, Confucius (551-479 BC), felt that we should focus on our small, daily actions in order to not only change for the better the way we live, but also transform the world around us. Drawing from The Analects, a text compiling statements and actions attributed to Confucius, Puett and Gross-Loh examine his emphasis on carrying out our everyday activities and interactions with others through rituals --- patterned actions and reactions that we consciously create. Far from the commonplace view of rituals as contrived and artificial, Confucius saw rituals as enabling us to break free of our existing, unthinking modes of behavior, rote rituals that we follow without pausing to consider their origin or impact.

Instead of defaulting to these existing patterns of behavior, Confucius encourages us to consciously create new, “as-if” rituals --- behaviors that we perform as-if the world were the way we would prefer it to be; by then performing such rituals repeatedly, we will gradually transform ourselves, and so our world. The authors give the historical example of “please” and “thank you”, a ritual they describe as having developed centuries ago, as the market economy spread: in that market setting, people wanted to create a brief moment of pretended equality between participants who were not generally equal in fact ---- that is, an “as-if we are equal” ritual to smooth out the interaction.

A more concrete example the authors give relates to having a difficult relationship with a colleague, friend or family member. Rather than simply responding to them with the anger we feel, we can instead intentionally let go of our natural reaction and develop a new response --- create a ritual that will result in a more constructive interaction. Far from being contrived and artificial, developing such new rituals can slowly, over time, allow us to transform our relationship with that person, and so change a tiny part of our world. For Confucius, a series --- a lifetime --- of such changes will positively transform the world, bottom-up, one ritual at a time.

The second philosopher discussed is Mencius, who lived in the late fourth century BC. Puett and Gross-Loh open with a consideration of a contemporary of Mencius, Mozi, who held to the view of “a coherent and predictable world created by a good deity” (58). This made Mozi and his followers similar in many ways, the authors point out, to Protestants and our modern, Western accepted belief that behaving correctly will inevitably lead to success.

Mencius, on the contrary, found the world to be capricious. For that reason, Mencius felt that:

Hard work would not necessarily lead to prosperity. Bad deeds would not necessarily be punished. … [and he] believed … [that] it is only when we understand that nothing is stable that we can make decisions and live our lives in the most expansive way. (60)

By accepting a view of the world as capricious, we avoid the unhealthy rut of assuming that rational decision-making can lead us to the best life, or the opposite fallacy, that of giving in to the idea that we should simply follow our gut instinct. Instead, Mencius felt that we need to achieve a mind-heart balance, which can be done by using the mind to understand our emotional responses, and then cultivate those responses, over time, to become more aware of the complexities of the world. In doing this we are “honing our judgement: seeing the bigger picture, understanding what really lies behind a[nother] person’s behavior, and remembering that different emotions such as anxiety, fear, and joy will draw out different sides of people we tend to think of as rigid.” (76)

Another important aspect of recognizing the capricious nature of the world, according to Mencius, is that it enables us to get past the limiting idea that we can make firm, rational plans for our future. Realizing that both we ourselves and also the world around us will change unpredictably enables us to let go of the fixed patterns of behaviors and expectations about ourselves that we unthinkingly fall into and that limit our future development. Through the intentional cultivation of new and different interests, we give ourselves the ability to more easily adapt to the uncertain future that awaits us.

The third text the authors consider is referred to as the Laozi. They note that “Laozi, the Chinese thinker to whom the Laozi is attributed, is a mysterious figure,” (89) about whom little is known, even whether there was an actual person by that name. The Laozi describes the Way, which the authors state has been miss-represented in the West as an idealized past to be returned to, a time “when life was purer and simpler … [and a] natural perfection that exist beyond us and with which we need to come back into harmony.” (90) In reality, they say, the Laozi describes the Way as a state of being that existed before the Universe began, “an original, ineffable, undifferentiated state” (91); the key for each of us, according to the Laozi is to re-create the Way in our lives, by “recognize[ing] the degree to which the distinctions that pervade our experience are actually false,” (93) and so recognize and acknowledge the fundamental connectedness between all things. Thus we do not achieve the Way by, say, returning to some earlier idealized time or going off into nature or meditating; instead we do so through realizing the interconnectedness of all things, and using that understanding to guide all aspects of our daily lives, from our leisure activities to our work.

Puett and Gross-Loh provide concrete examples, such as dealing with a difficult supervisor at work, or squabbling children or a distant teenager at home. By learning to recognize the interconnectedness of everything, and seeing how others’ lives --- their personalities, histories, and present situations --- affect their behavior, we enable our own ability to deal with them differently, in a manner more likely to have a constructive outcome. As we accomplish this in our daily lives, through the multitude of interactions we have each day, we become the Way.

The Laozi addresses a second, related concept on how to properly turn a deep understanding of the interconnectedness of everything into a method of effecting change in the world. The key concept, as the authors quote from the ancient text, is that:

Weakness overcomes strength,
Softness overcomes hardness. (100) 

Puett and Gross-Loh argue that typical Western culture, which “places such a premium on strength and ambition,” (101) can mislead us in our understanding of the Laozi. Through statements such as “weakness overcomes strength,” the text does not advocate passiveness, rather it promotes the idea that while aggressiveness and brute force can sometimes be briefly successful, these approaches also generate a resistance which ends up undermining their success. On the contrary, having a deep understanding of the interconnectedness and relationships between things enables us to guide and influence events in the direction we prefer, in a way that bypasses such resistance by, in a sense, bringing everyone along with us. The authors provide numerous compelling historical and everyday examples, stretching from military conflicts to national political disagreements to personal interactions, to demonstrate the effectiveness of using the Way as described in the Laozi to enable us to effect a transformative impact on our lives and our world.

The fourth text discussed, Inward Training, consists of a set of writings that urge readers to reach for the “divine energy”. Again, the authors introduce the text by first examining the modern, Western concept of self-divinization, around which has been built up, they argue, damaging associations of asserting one’s self, of imposing one’s self on the world to change it. The Inward Training, instead, focuses on our ability to “alter the world by cultivating [ourselves] to take on divine qualities.” (123) The method differs significantly from Western ideas of self-divinization in that “when we reconceptualize action and agency as arising from connecting rather than from dominating, we become more divine in an essential way: We become more fully alive.” (123) In order to achieve this, the text emphasizes the importance of not allowing external events --- whether positive and uplifting, or negative and depressing --- to affect us too strongly. By seeing the connectedness of things, the Inward Training describes how we can achieve an inner balance and alignment, one that will build up and maintain our inner spirit or energy, and so bring us closer to the divine.

The authors next discuss Zhuangzi, a Chinese philosopher from the late fourth century BC. They note that the text attributed to him, the Zhuangzi, emphasizes the importance of the Way and the connectedness of everything, just as did the Laozi, but from a much different viewpoint. Unlike Laozi, for Zhuangzi: “You could never become the Way … rather … the Way was about embracing absolutely everything in its constant flux and transformation.” (143) We accomplish this, according to Zhuangzi, by not limiting ourselves to what we believe to be true; instead we must constantly be opening our minds through new experiences that broaden our understanding and recognition of the connectedness of the world, and so eliminate the rigid distinctions with which we view the world. “We think we know what is beneficial, what is large, what is virtuous, what is useful. Yet do we really understand how arbitrary the words and values we depend on really are?” (156) Thus, he points out, something that is large, or virtuous in one context (perhaps the context we naturally gravitate towards given our personal experience), may in another context not be those things; by recognizing the interconnectedness of all things, we enable ourselves to recognize that.

Another consequence of developing this level of understanding is the opportunity to achieve what Zhuangzi refers to as trained spontaneity in the activities of one’s life. Puett and Gross-Loh explain the concept of trained spontaneity as the achievement through training of a kind of “effortless competence,” the point at which “we just ‘know’ what feels right without having to think about it.” They note that when we act to achieve this level of training “in all spheres of our lives, from the mundane [such as ironing clothes] to the rarified [such as playing a piano] … we are changing our whole approach to life … [our] entire way of being in the world.” (149)

The final philosopher the authors consider is Xunzi, “who lived about two hundred fifty years after Confucius … [and who] synthesized the works of all the thinkers who came before him.” (166) They note that Xunzi most closely agreed with Confucius, believing strongly in the power of rituals. Unlike Confucius, however, for Xunzi all human progress towards taming of the natural world to our needs, and development of our civilizations, has consisted of the creation of rituals. Thus, for Xunzi, like the other Chinese philosophers discussed in this book, the goal of someone seeking to transform their own life, and thereby the world, is not to attempt to return to a more “natural” state. Xunzi in fact felt that such a state can no longer even be conceived of, given the long development of human civilization in all its aspects, effectively thousands of years of the creation of systems of being (i.e., rituals) relative to the natural world to improve our lives. “The real question should be: in each instance [in our world], are we employing artifice wisely and well.” (177) To improve the world, we must constantly strive to evaluate and improve on our rituals.

Puett and Gross-Loh emphasize early in the book that the Chinese philosophers they examine do not provide a radical, prescriptive plan for how to change one’s life. Instead, by learning about the philosophies associated with the half-dozen texts they examine, we can begin to free ourselves of the assumptions we have accepted uncritically from the Western culture we’ve grown up in, and, in examining them, make conscious decisions about which provide benefit, and which perhaps do not. In opening, and so broadening our understanding, we put ourselves in a position to transform for the better the way we live our lives, and thereby also put ourselves in a position to help transform the world.

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Other reviews / information:

Michael Puett and Christine Gross-Loh were interviewed on the Diane Rehm show, linked to 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: "World of Trouble" by Ben H. Winters

World of Trouble (2014)
Ben H. Winters (1976)

316 pages

[Note: although I make it a point to not include spoilers in my reviews, this is the third book in a trilogy, and it's not possible to write about it without including some context from the first two books, The Last Policeman and Countdown City. So, if you haven't read the first book yet, I suggest you jump back to my review of The Last Policeman here; if you’ve read that, but not Countdown City, you’ll find my review of that second story here.]

With but a week to go before the impact of an asteroid expected to largely wipe out life on Earth, former detective Henry Palace pursues his final case in World of Trouble, the concluding book in Ben H. Winters’ The Last Policeman trilogy. Following a cryptic trail of uncertain clues to a small town in Ohio, Palace goes in search of his sister Niko, desperately hoping to find her ahead of the now imminent apocalypse.

Niko’s involvement in a far-fetched scheme to save the planet appeared as subplots in the first two books in the trilogy (The Last Policeman reviewed here, and Countdown City reviewed here), in which it was revealed that she has become actively involved with a group of people convinced that a nefarious conspiracy lies behind the U.S. government’s lack of efforts to prevent the asteroids impact. The group believes that they have discovered a plan that the government has intentionally covered up, a way to deflect the asteroid; to foil the conspiracy, the group works to put that plan into action. Palace, though convinced that his sister and her comrades have fallen victim to wishful thinking in the face of the coming catastrophe, at the same time struggles to make sense of the extensive capabilities the group has managed to acquire in the otherwise rapidly disintegrating economic and political environment caused by the approaching asteroid strike.

Late in the second story, Palace watches Niko disappear in a helicopter; unwilling to follow her, he also does not try to prevent her from leaving to pursue the plan she believes will save the Earth. As the second book ends, Palace reaches a house in western Massachusetts that several of his former police colleagues have converged upon in the hopes of creating a location of relative peace and safety for their families to ride out the final months before the asteroid hits. As World of Trouble opens, however, Palace finds himself unable to abandon his sister to her fate, and feeling guilty that he had not stuck with her, he has left the safe house in an attempt to track her down.

Passing through the dystopian and chaotic remains of a pre-apocalyptic world, Palace casts about for even the smallest clues that point toward his sister. In what has been a hallmark of these stories, Palace finds that the perverted social and political situation confounds his analysis of what he learns, leading him through a dangerous and complicated labyrinth of miss-calculation and miss-interpretation as he doggedly struggles to uncover the surprising truth about his sister and the plans she’s been involved in.

Taken together, the three books in Winters’ trilogy form an engaging offering, providing both the thrilling drama of the best detective stories and a compelling psychological look at mankind faced with a sudden and inglorious end.

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Other reviews / information:
In the post-script of my review of Countdown City, I likened Winters' trilogy to Nevil Shute’s novel On the Beach (my review here). As I read World of Trouble, in which the end really has become imminent, another comparison came to mind: Lars von Trier’s movie Melancholia, in which a rogue planet enters the system on a collision course with Earth. Von Trier focuses entirely on the psychological impact of the coming apocalypse and includes a healthy dose of surrealism, while Winters, in his trilogy, uses the psychological implications more as a pungent spice for his gritty detective stories; there is, never-the-less, a strong overlap in how the two works examine the complex and varied reactions of different people to the imminent end of the world.

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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