Two Books About Women

Alexandra Popoff's new biography of Sophia Tolstoy ( The Life of Sophia Tolstoy) is based in large part on an unpublished memoir by that most long suffering of literary wives. For those who have seen the cinematic version of the Tolstoys' final days together, The Last Station, this is a must read. Popoff is a pedestrian writer but her material makes up for her flat prose. It's hard to imagine a more put-upon woman than Sophia, who was a mere girl when she married the already-noted novelist. The description of their wedding night alone--a near rape--is enough to stand the reader's hair on end. In the long years that followed she bore 13 children, buried 3 of them, ran at least 2 households simultaneously, supervised the publishing of Tolstoy's works, managed the family's complicated finances, etc., etc. etc. It's exhausting even to read and one marvels at the depth of her emotional and physical strength. One also marvels at the depth of her husband's egotism, if that's what it was--hard to say. As someone who considers War and Peace and Anna Karenina, let alone some of the short stories, essential to life, it's hard to reconcile their all-encompassing humanity with the man who emerges from Popoff's pages, based pretty directly on Sophia's memoir. It's not that she complains all that much, and indeed, it seems obvious enough that the Tolstoys loved each other, or whatever the word might be for such a complex relationship. When I was in Russia a few years ago I visited the Tolstoy's Moscow house. Standing in a perfectly preserved sitting room room, we listened to a recording of the great man speaking and playing a short piece on the piano. It was an incredibly moving moment for a lover of his work. Yet now, looking back, I ponder the dilemma of a great artist who is not such a great human being, or was he? It's a mystery, but Sophia is a marvel.
By chance, the next book I read (or re-read) was Kate Walbert's A Short History of Women. I'm not exactly sure why, but it moved me tremendously the first time around, about a year ago and I wanted to understand better its appeal. the women in question range from a girl growing up in late-Victorian England to a young woman starting at Yale in the present day--with quite a few in between. Linked by blood, their stories, which are presented in short-story form and some of which were published as such, arguably do form a kind of history of a certain kind of woman. the character with whom I was most intrigued, perhaps for obvious reasons, was one roughly my age who gradually finds herself protesting the Iraq war, divorcing, and living a nun-like life, for reasons she cannot entirely explain, even to herself, as she admits on the blog that her daughters, somewhat to their dismay, discover by chance. She still, she insists, wants to get it right, whatever "it" might be. There are some marvelous set pieces in the book, one of which is the former's reluctant participation in a '70s consciousness-raising group that will ring true with anyone who ever endured one. I especially liked a section about a young Manhattanite mother whose daughter's play date turns into a sadly pleasant drunken session with the other mother.
It's interesting to think about these 2 books side by side, Sophia's selfless toil and, I think, genuine love for her genius husband, and believe it or not, her sense of having had at least a satisfying life, compared with the frustrated, unsatisfied longings of the women in Walbert's book, who feel continually silenced by the world around them. Neither book resolves anything, but each lays out some fascinating issues.

S.C. Gwynne's Empire of the Autumn Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Power Indian Tribe in American History is a wonderful book in spite of its cumbersome subtitle. I confess to having known next to nothing about this subject and only noticed the title because it was reviewed in the Times alongside Nathaniel Philbrick's book about General Custer, to which, as it happens, it is far superior. And what did I learn from Gwynne? For one, that Texas is indeed a different place from the other 49 states and for another, that the story of the settler's treatment of the Indians is even worse than one might imagine. And yet that's too simplistic a way to put what was an inevitable tragedy, or so I think. Gwynne has a talent for putting the clash between the Indians and the whites who moved into the West in the 19th century in perspective, as a confrontation between a Stone Age civilization and the modern age. This is not to say that he considers the Indians savages in a derogatory sense, merely that we need to understand the basis of the conflict between the two sides in the broadest possible sense.
His tale abounds in fascinating characters, beginning with Quanah Parker, who was able to reinvent himself after surrendering as a "white" Indian. But then he was half-white, the son of a mother who was captured by the Comanches as a child. That woman, Cynthia Parker, is quite a person in herself. Recaptured by whites in a raid in which her husband was killed and at which time she was nursing her daughter Prairie Flower, she never re-adapted to "civilization" and died a broken, unhappy woman. And there are so many others, Indian fighters, Comanches, soldiers, the first Texas Rangers--the list goes on and on in Gwynne's colorful, heartbreaking and highly informative book.
A thought for the day: "A book must be an axe for the frozen sea within us." Franz Kafka.

David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet is an enchanting novel. The first of his that I've read--I have a lot of catching up to do--it stands out from too many other contemporary novels in the breadth of its reach. Set in an outpost of the Dutch East Indies Company in Japan at the beginning of the 19th century, it is both a compelling love story and a portrait of a society in transition. The Jacob of the title is lowly clerk employed on Dejima, an artificial island connected to the Japanese mainland by a single stone bridge--the better to protect the Japanese from the potential pollution of the alien race that seeks to trade with them.
The narrative moves back and forth between Jacob's story and that of a Japanese midwife, Orito Aibagawa, who is famed for her skill. Unpredictably, Jacob falls in love with her and thus begins the story of a relationship that in time involves not just them, but others in both of the worlds in which they live. Although I have no way of knowing how accurate it is, Mitchell's depiction of Miss Aibagawa's world, especially the shrine in which she is an unwilling resident for a while, is totally convincing. Moreover, almost every character in the story is worth getting to know, especially Jacob. I won't give away the ending, except to say that while not exactly happy, it is deeply satisfying. Please read, and find out for yourself.

Words, Words, Words

In The Library at Night Alberto Manguel writes that for the cultures of the Book, Judaism, Islam and Christianity, "knowledge lies not in the accumulation of texts or information . . . but in the experience rescued from the page and transformed again into experience, in the words reflected both in the outside world and in the reader's own being." Later, he claims that Paul, who never knew Jesus "face to face," knew that since he had read the Word, the Word was now "lodged in him" and "that he had become the Book, the Word made flesh, through that little bit of the divine that the craft of reading allows to all those who seek to learn the secrets held by a page."
It's interesting to think about this notion of words becoming experience, even divine experience on a more mundane level. For instance, I have just finished Nathaniel Philbrick's book about Custer, Sitting Bull and the Battle of the Little Bighorn, The Last Stand. It's a fascinating subject but the book doesn't come off. Usually I enjoy reading even the more technical descriptions of battlefield maneuvers, of which there are plenty in this story, but I got very weary of the events leading up to the slaughter of Custer and his men, perhaps because the words did not translate into lived experience--especially important in a work of history of this sort. Neither Custer nor Sitting Bull came to life for me--although both of them are colorful and ultimately tragic men. Philbrick's compare and contrast methodology just doesn't work, at least it didn't for me.
When I was about twelve I was sent to a camp in the Pennsylvania Poconos that featured a staff member said to be Sitting Bull's grandson. In our camp photo, dressed in full tribal regalia, he stands in the midst of the campers, little girls in white shirts and shorts. It's quite a scene, and one that came to mind reading the appalling account of his grandfather's last sad days and his death.

Dining with a Poet

As most of you probably know, W.S. Merwin has been chosen as the next Poet Laureate, succeeding Kay Ryan. So there he was on the evening news last night, walking around his house in Hawaii, talking about his work and reading a poem. He is an old man now, with a shock of white hair, but at one point photos of him as a young man--he was notoriously handsome--flashed on the screen. He is now 82 or 3, roughly 10 years older than me. Some fifty plus years ago, when I was 19 and on the verge of being married, I sat next to him at a dinner party at my parents' house. They had met Merwin and his then wife, the formidable Dido Milroy, in London and brought him to Cornell, where my father taught, for a reading. My mother put me next to him at the table, where I sat frozen with shyness at finding myself in the company of just about the best looking man I had ever seen, and a poet to boot. In short, Merwin really looked like a poet should look, unlike some of the others I had met, who were so disappointingly ordinary. Wild thoughts raced through my head, did I really want to get married and seal my life's fate, or so I thought? All my doubts about the decision emerged. Maybe I could just run away with Merwin instead. At one point he turned his brilliant blue eyes on me and asked me what I wanted to do. When I mumbled something incoherent about writing he came back with, of course, of course I wanted to be a writer--what else was there?
I went to bed that night dreaming of possibilities--none of which I pursued, and in the end that's been just fine. But all through the years I have followed Merwin's burgeoning career and chaotic love life. His poetry and translations have given me enormous pleasure, especially his later work. I recommend it highly.. Also, for anyone who loves France, or good memoirs in general, I suggest The Lost Upland, a portrayal of his property in Southwestern France.

Politics, Politics, Politics

I have been immersed in Robert Caro's epic biography of Lyndon Johnson--which is quite a reading experience. The first two volumes, The Path to Power and Means of Ascent are behind me and now I begin The Master of the Senate, which begins with Johnson's questionable victory in the 1948 Senate race in his home state of Texas. I can only hope that Caro is almost finished with the fourth and final volume of The Years of Lyndon Johnson because I want to know the whole story.
I don't think I've ever read anything quite like these books, and I have to say that I started them under protest. But after only a few pages I was hooked, this despite the considerable physical challenges. So far I've tried a tray, a pillow and my knees--all of them only partially satisfactory; and when I picked up the third volume, the heftiest so far, I almost went straight to Amazon and ordered a Kindle.
There are so many reasons to find these books an absorbing reading experience that it's hard to know which to put first. But above all, Caro is a fine writer, with an eye and an ear for his topic. On the one hand, I can't imagine anyone doing a better job of making the Texas hill country from whence Johnson came so vivid, and on another, his sensitivity to Johnson's character and his knowledge of it seem extraordinary. He also convinces the reader that he has left no stone unturned in his research, in his account, for instance, of the 1948 Senate race that saved Johnson's political career and paved the way to the presidency. This part of the story reads like a thriller, filled with unforgettable characters.
On hearing that I was reading Caro, someone remarked that she didn't think Johnson was worth writing about, a comment to which I could not find an answer because there are so many reasons. Caro argues that LBJ's ascent marked a transformation of American politics, that there is a before LBJ and an after. Granted, he does not emerge as either an admirable or a likable man--quite the contrary--but in terms of his understanding of power and the growth of modern politics, well, one has to grant him a certain greatness, even if it's the greatness of a Mephistopheles.
So if you are interested in character, politics, American history, the role of political power in this country, or just fine writing, read Caro--you won't be sorry even if your knees hurt afterwards from the sheer weight of the books.

Two Vietnam Novels

A few weeks ago two novels about Vietnam were reviewed on the front page of the New York Times Book Review by Danielle Trussoni. Somewhat reluctantly, I put both of them on my library order list. Trussoni is not my favorite novelist and lately I've grown suspicious of rave reviews. Who is scratching whose back, I always wonder. But now that I've read both books I'm eating a large dish of humble crow and telling others about them.
The first to arrive was The Lotus Eaters, a first novel by Tatjana Solis. For those of you who might have forgotten, in the Odyssey Odysseus reports that some of his fellow battle-weary Greek veterans were lured into eating the "honey-sweet fruit of the lotos," which made them forgetful of the "homeward way." Tennyson picked up the episode in his poem "The Lotos-Eaters," to imagine Odysseus/Ulysses bemoaning his fellow mariners' longing to languish on the Lotos-eaters' island rather than "labor in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar" to the point even of death.
Solis's lotus eaters are American journalists in Vietnam, drugged on the opiate of war and not eager to go home. Helen, a 32-year-old photographer who has abandoned her safe life at home for the chance to depict the war in which her brother has died, finds herself in an affair with Darrow, a prize-winning photographer with a complicated marital situation. He is killed, and later in the book there is a marvelous scene in which Helen takes a few of his possessions to his widow--it's not at all what one expects, and is all the better for it. Somewhere in the middle of all this, she falls in love with Linh, his Vietnamese assistant with a complicated past that includes some involvement with the other side and a dead wife and child. It's a good choice though, as he is by far the superior human being, wise beyond his years and deeply in love with her. What is unlikely about their relationship becomes totally believable in Solis's capable hands. Linh is a great character.
What stands out in this novel is the degree to which it conveys the hallucinatory, morally ambivalent, seductive atmosphere of wartime Vietnam--one can almost smell the place and feel the weight of the air. The notion that war is a drug that that turns its participants into addicts is not a new idea but this novel really shows how it happens, especially in the character of Helen, who knows better but shoots up anyway. Her semi-abandonment of Linh, partially selfish, partially not, exemplifies the contradictions in her character. But worry not, the novel has a satisfying ending, one that redeems her without simplifying. All in all, it's a great read.
Karl Marlantes' Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War, also a first novel, is very different. Focused on Bravo Company, a rifle platoon of 40 Marines led by second lieutenant Waino Mellas, it is about war, plain and simple, and a complicated war that the US lost at that. Marlantes served as a Marine and it shows; I'm not sure I've ever read any account of war that convinced me it was the real thing as this one does.
Matterhorn is the name given to a hill between Laos and the DMZ where Mellas's company is ordered to build a fire-support base, only the first of almost impossible tasks they are meant to carry out--it will only get worse. There were moments when I wondered to myself if I really wanted to know so much about leeches, jungle rot, fever, rotting corpses, immersion foot, etc., but what kept me reading was the human factor, beginning with the appealing Mellas, a reservist with a Princeton degree and an understandable lack of self-confidence in the face of the impossible tasks asked of him by the unsympathetic brass who give them their orders.
The Marines of Bravo Company are a polyglot lot with some big racial problems that frequently turn violent, only complicating an already complicated situation.
Mellas growing understanding of the tragedy, the futility, the uselessness, the horror of the war is the crux of the book and Marlantes is very good at tracing this process, always in human terms. In this sense, it's a heartbreaking book with a universal impact. In one sense, The Lotus-Eaters, fine as it is, is a narrower novel. Yes, addiction to war, or war porno, as it has been called, is universal, but not to the extent that the human experience of battle is. In this respect, Matterhorn brought to mind Caroline Alexander's wonderful The War That Killed Achilles, a reading of the Iliad with an emphasis on its implications for our understanding of the boundless human cost of war.
In short, Marlantes has written what seems to me a major novel, one that goes well beyond the Vietnam War. And it does have, fortunately, an excellent glossary for those of us less familiar with the terminology of the conflict.