Jewish Soul-Searching in India.

When reading about Westerners killed recently in Bombay, I wondered immediately if more than the Chabad couple and their four guests in the Nariman House were Jews targeted by terrorists. The surname of two Americans who were in the city for a New Age seminar-- their Virginia-centered community advocates "sonic technology" to enhance meditation-- intrigued me. (This reminded me in turn of a New York Times article about ashrams where the well-heeled cooled their boots back East. A photo of one elderly Sikh chopping veggies caught my eye: the splendidly monikered "Hanuman Leiberman.") Those associated with "Synchronicity" who were mentioned in the press, it appeared to me, also often had Jewish surnames. I figured that the next issue of The Forward would follow any lead in this direction, and I was correct.

I copy most of its article below, as their situation's probably less known to readers who understandably may have been better informed on the tragic fate of the Chabad rabbi, Gavriel Noach Holtzberg and his wife, Rivkah, who died, while their son Moshe was rescued and taken away by their Nepali Christian nanny to safety. The house was singled out despite its obscurity as a symbolic, if also very human, scapegoat for those who sought, in sacrificing Jews, to incite Muslim outrage. Men and women were singled out and slaughtered because they were Jewish. So was the two-year-old, and I doubt if chance had not intervened, and bravery, if he'd have otherwise survived the torture which occurred before the Jewish adults with whom he was trapped were executed. Some were draped in prayer shawls or tallit; the guess is that the rabbi did this final gesture of decency before he too was killed. One photo in the New York Times of the interior of the Chabad house after the attack resembled a scene from besieged Stalingrad.

It's sobering to reflect when studying the title of this article how many words convey the different aspects of being Jewish: the noble quest, the long burden, the nagging search that all combine in this identification. A tribal legacy that still angers jihadists to conclude a Pakistani "Army of the Pure's" lengthy title by naming it after its targets, "Crusaders and Jews." Centuries pass; the same enemies for Islamists remain. "Victim"; "Seeking"; "Following the Path of Many Jews Before Him"; and, the past forty years for many Israelis, "Went to India." I recommend Irish documentarian and travel writer (although that term seems to diminish his searching memoirs) Manchán Magan's account in his "Manchán's Travels: A Journey Through India," recently reviewed by me here and on Amazon in the U.S. and Britain. Magan's insights into the wounded psyche of IDF veterans who recuperate-- or lapse into an opiated numbness-- in India, in the aftermath of their own struggles with (post?-)colonial political and military reaction during the intifada, make for instructive comparisons.

"Following the Path of Many Jews Before Him, Victim went to India Seeking" by Gabrielle Birkner, The Forward, Dec. 4, 2008. Excerpts follow:

The Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries who died in the terrorist attacks in Mumbai have been the most prominent faces of the Jews murdered there. But about two miles from the apartment building where the couple and four others died, the attacks claimed the life of another Jewish victim, Alan Scherr. His story, it could be said, represents a much more typical example of the Jews who find their way to India: the Jewish spiritual seeker.

Scherr, 58, and his 13-year-old daughter, Naomi were in India as a part of a retreat organized by the Synchronicity Foundation, a New Age group devoted to meditative practice. They died when a gunman opened fire in the Oberoi Hotel café where the father and daughter were having lunch.

The elder Scherr grew up in a traditional Jewish home, supplementing his public school education with Hebrew school at a local Orthodox synagogue. But like many other Jews, his spiritual path veered away from Judaism. Thirteen years ago, Scherr gave up his job as an art teacher in suburban Maryland and moved to the Synchronicity compound in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. He traveled frequently to India, which he considered a spiritual homeland, his brother, Marc Scherr, told the Forward: “India was to him what Israel is to us.”

While not all Jewish spiritual seekers end up embracing their quest for meaning as fully as Scherr did, Jews in recent decades have acquired a reputation for their interest in India’s spiritual side.

“Jews are very prominent in the Hinduism-for-export and the Buddhism-for-export movement — they’re leaders, they’re teachers,” said Rodger Kamenetz, the author of “The Jew in the Lotus,” the best-selling book-treatment of the topic. “I don’t know if it’s something in the Jewish soul or something in the Jewish genes, but we’re always looking for a comprehensive spiritual answer; we’re always looking for meaning.”

One indication of the flow of Jews to India is the 30,000 Indian visas issued annually to Israelis. In fact, the presence of the Chabad house in Mumbai was a testament to the numbers, given Chabad’s work in reaching out to spiritual seekers on the subcontinent; in addition to Mumbai, the Jewish outreach organization also maintains centers in the Indian cities of Anjuna Village, Bangalore, and Manali.

Kamenetz told the Forward that during a recent Passover spent in Dharamsala, India, a base for Tibetan Buddhists, the Jewish presence had been so large that there were two Seders.

Many rabbis and scholars trace the Jewish affinity for India and its holistic traditions to mainstream Judaism’s embrace of rationalism during the second half of the 20th century.

“Partly because of the aftereffects of the Holocaust, the Jewish people’s encounter with the ultimately irrational, there’s a hunger for spiritual answers that rational and philosophical religion cannot provide,” said Yossi Klein Halevi, a writer and senior fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem who calls India his honorary spiritual home. “Those Jews who are not drawn to fundamentalist orthodoxy have had nowhere to go to seek deep spirituality. That accounts, in part, for the massive turn of Jews in our time to Eastern spirituality.”

While in recent years a number of Jewish synagogues and groups have attempted to incorporate mediation and chanting into Jewish ritual, Halevi said that those efforts have not yet proved widespread or deep enough to “draw our most serious spiritual seekers, and keep them within Judaism.”[. . .]

The lure that movements like Synchronicity hold for Jews has been a steady subject of discussion for rabbis and scholars. The executive director of the Jewish Spiritual Literacy in Baltimore, Rabbi Alexander Seinfeld, said that amid the struggle to survive in the Diaspora, many Jewish leaders have lost touch with the “meditative wisdom of our own traditions” — emphasizing rituals that many spiritual seekers experience as empty.

“There is nothing in Buddhism or Hinduism or yoga that is lacking in Jewish thought or teaching,” Seinfeld, the author of “The Art of Amazement: Judaism’s Forgotten Spirituality,” said. “But too many of our Sunday schools, our day schools, and our synagogues lack the institutional ability or knowledge to teach it to its members. It’s no wonder why someone like Mr. Scherr would grow up and say ‘Where do I find it? I didn’t find it in Judaism.’”

Scherr never disavowed Judaism, according to his siblings. While he had not been observant for decades and was not raising his daughter Jewish, he never expressed a desire to convert to another faith, they said.[. . .]

“There is no disjunction,” said [rabbinical student in a Jewish Renewal trans-denominational program, Rachel] Barenblit, who has written about her own encounters with Eastern spirituality in India. “The American-Jewish community has gotten a lot better at integrating things. We don’t have to be threatened by practices that have a Buddhist connotation or a Buddhist flavor.”

But not everyone is so sanguine about the spiritual union. At a memorial service for Scherr, in Baltimore, the Orthodox rabbi who officiated the service, Rabbi Shlomo Porter, compared Scherr’s search for spirituality in Indian faith traditions to an old parable about a man who searches far and wide for treasure — only to find it within his own home: “The tragedy is that people are finding Eastern spirituality more accessible to them than Jewish spirituality, and that they feel it comes with less baggage.”

P.S. By the way, although I never got around to reviewing it as I had nothing new to add to what had been posted on Amazon, Yossi Klein Halevi's 2001 book "At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden: A Jew's Search for God with Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land" remains one of the best books on spiritual searching I've ever found. One of the few titles that I checked out of the library but later bought. To me, the supreme compliment of a volume's value!

Photo: I could not locate on-line the NYT snapshot of the devastated interior of Nariman House. Instead, this illustration from the Dec. 4, 2008 issue of The Forward. Also noteworthy: the fact that Alan Scherr (I note the distinction of only the father in the article as the "Jewish victim.") likewise received an Orthodox funeral. Caption: "AN ORPHAN’S CRY: Two-year-old Moshe Holtzberg cries out 'Ima, Ima!' ('Mommy, Mommy!') at a memorial service in Mumbai’s Keneseth Eliyahoo synagogue for his murdered parents, Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg."

Estonia, Witches, Pagans.

From an early age I recall resisting Catholic demolition of paganism. In eighth grade, I dimly remember hearing about Europe's secularism and leftism leading in France or Germany to a revival of what we'd call New Age and ecologically-centered beliefs, and these being denigrated-- as was the peace sign as a Satanic hexagram-- by my teachers. This I resented, if vaguely, recalling from my reading how Our Lady of Guadalupe superimposed herself as Coalitcue or Tonantzín, local goddess chatting with Juan Diego at Tepeyac in his Nahautl tongue; how Bede or Boniface favored building the church on top of the ruined grove or rubbled temple; how Christmas trees or Irish wakes preserved the fossilization of folk practices.

At least syncretism, as cannily promoted by Catholic missionaries, appeared more sensitive than the pummelling of polytheistic pomps preached by Protestants. (I admit my inborn Irish Catholic prejudice lingers decades later.) Good P.R., smart marketing, less likely to anger the few neophytes and their woad-daubed neighbors. Not that I venerated Patrick either; my sympathies were with Pelagius at best, and even more with those oft-damned keepers of grove and copse bested again and again.

I know, I was but thirteen, but autodidactically skeptical despite my wish that my Church could solve all my youthful dilemmas of conscience and intellect. Maybe that's what lured me towards the medieval and medievalism: the attraction of this remote era in ideological suspension, between rigor and taletelling, observation and speculation. The Scotist, the Eriugenian, the Pelagian all beckon me faintly.

You don't always get the message, in a daily newspaper, that Christian or Cartesian or Communist cosmologies wiped out so much we should value. It underlies, of course, our reductionist, commonsensical, hard-hearted outlook. Instead, we're all tilted, even if products of parochial schools, towards the assumption that the ascension of logic solves what perplexed our bucolic, illiterate ancestors. Practicality rules. Science, progress, and reason dominate, we're lectured, and in this Whig version of our historical inevitability we rise to greatness by planetary dominance.

This first sentence's main verb, therefore, caught my attention in "A Hole in the Ground Erupts, to Estonia's Delight" New York Times, December 9, 2008, by Ellen Barry. I excerpt its tumultous core:

Estonia has been bullied into a series of belief systems over the centuries, from Catholicism to Lutheranism to Russian Orthodoxy and Soviet atheism. Seventeen years after gaining independence from the Soviet Union, Estonia is one of the world’s most secular nations; in the 2000 census, only 29 percent of its citizens declared themselves followers of a particular faith.

That does not mean they are atheists. Craving an authentic national faith, Estonians have been drawn to the animistic religions that preceded Christianity: Taarausk, whose god was worshiped in forest groves, and Maausk, which translates as “faith of the earth.”

Ancient beliefs have survived in the form of folk tales. In stories, the sins of humans reverberate in nature — lakes fly away to punish greedy villagers, or forests wander off in the night, never to return. Trees demand the respect of a tipped hat, and holes in the ground must be fed with coins.

In the case of Tuhala, the physical world begs for such explanations. The settlement, believed to be 3,000 years old, sits on Estonia’s largest field of porous karst, where 15 underground rivers flow through a maze of caverns, audible but unseen by human inhabitants.

The pampered but sensible folks of this Baltic land may be some of our globe's most advanced-- compare Iceland's blend of affluence and animism-- with a gentle gloss of Luther (if such can be dusted lightly!) with a high rate of cellphone adoption, agnostic philosophy, and a love of the stinging birch, perhaps like their linguistic cousins across the sea in Finland. Still, I was tickled to find their faith returns, or regresses, back to atavistic patterns that I'd have assumed-- as we understand neo-paganism in a British context having been a construction rather than a revival over the past century or so-- were obliterated by church, commissar, and consumer. This article cheered me up.

I know that "Bo" over at "The Expvlsion of the Blatant Beast" & "The Cantos of Mvtablitie" savages with erudite wit and a dash of compassion the excesses of Druidry he's endured first-hand in his own kingdom. I delight in his posts. So, I figured sharing this might serve as a counterweight to his insular subjects' ill-informed incantations. Synge's suppositions, the invention of kilts, the concoction of the Burning Times, or the industry around Glastonbury aside-- perhaps the more frigid shores of Northern Europe have preserved a link back to the folk tradition that the British Isles more successfully severed, having been bullied earlier by Bedes and Bonifaces, into cutting these umbilical cords and sealing these maternal wells to the forces that bubble and squeak beneath concrete or cleric?

Photo: NYT, Hannu Oittinen. Caption: "The Witch’s Well in Tuhala can be explained scientifically, but that is not how Estonians prefer to discuss the phenomenon."

Jean-Paul Sartre's "Nausea": Book Review.

It's much more droll, often witty, and even poetic in this 1964 translation by Lloyd Alexander (author of the wonderful Prydain Chronicles) than the author's reputation might lead you to expect. Some Gallicentric references escaped me, and a few footnotes would have helped, but this short novel, or perhaps a philosophical meditation elided into hallucinatory, realistic, and jumbled fictions, deserves wide attention. Perhaps existentialism seems dated by other, often French-dominated, schools of thought in the decades since Sartre debuted with this in 1938, but Antoine Roquentin's disgust at the absurdity of our simply being here that nearly any thinking person, if honest, has experienced permeates and energizes these pages. This review cites representative passages that expressed for me this vibrancy.

Poet Hayden Carruth in his helpful introduction notes how if existentialism's a philosophy, it "has been independently invented by millions of people simply responding to the emergency of life in a modern world." (v-vi) It'd be impossible to film Roquentin's consciousness, but many moments he relates hit you with the immediacy of intimate cinema. Longing to have his own life follow a recurring melody he hears, he contemplates how time suspends under enchantment before breaking down again. At times we feel as if we have total control over the next moment; other times the chain that pulls us along tightens its grip.

He relates how "behind me, the beautiful melodious form sinks entirely into the past. It gets smaller, contracts as it declines, and now the end makes one with the beginning. Following this gold spot with my eyes I think I would accept-- even if I had to risk death, lose a fortune, a friend-- to live it all over again, in the same circumstances, from end to end. But an adventure never returns nor is prolonged." Instead, the "idea" of nothingness haunts him, "unnameable. It waits, peaceful." It asks him if that's what he wants, and then reminds him how he's only fooling himself. (38)

In the little town museum, scoffing at its gallery of great men, Roquentin blanches. On "those somber canvases" he sees the vanity of those who prospered, with confidence, coldness, and cruelty; "they had enslaved Nature: without themselves and within themselves." (90) Unlike Bouville's bovine bourgeoisie, "I hadn't the right to exist. I had appeared by chance, I existed like a stone, a plant or a microbe. My life put out feelers towards small pleasures in every direction. Sometimes it sent out vague signals; at other times I felt nothing but harmless buzzing." (84) This book fills with sensations. It's far more febrile and alive than you may suppose.

Sartre conveys well the tedium not only of living, but of scholarship, the death of inspiration. Roquentin abandons his biography of one M. de Rollebon; he wanders the streets and cafes bereft; he puts up with the splendidly phrased tedium of The Self-Taught Man we all have met in a library or on the bus. Freshness vanishes. His labor appears to shrivel like dried ink: "we have so much difficulty imagining nothingness. Now I knew: things are entirely what they appear to be-- and behind them...there is nothing." (96) Seventy years later, these revelations still reverberate for those schooled, like his hapless yet idealistic, humanist and socialist counterpart, in such nostrums as contained in the autodidact's (he's making his earnest way through the library's books alphabetically by the author's surname) inspirational title by "an American author," "Is Life Worth Living?" The shelves then as now may fill with Chicken Soups for the Soul, but Sartre's bitter remedy still, on the backlist, in my copy's in its 38th printing!

Roquentin's not always cruel or patronizing. He understands the self-will of Self-Taught Man's need that crosses his own loneliness. Yet, Roquentin distrusts answers, theories, or explanations. Parts of his resistance reminded me of Buddhism or psychedelic insights: "each event, when it had played its part, put itself politely into a box and became an honorary event." (96) "Existence, liberated, detached, floods over me. I exist." (98) He wriggles his arms like crabs: "I am these two beasts struggling at the end of my hand." (99) A chestnut tree repulses him as earlier a pebble alienated him. He wanders thus through a land of people and things that he cannot enter, and he's dragged along by thought, as if endlessly. But, of course, that itself's only a prolonged illusion.

"I am the one who pulls myself from the nothingness to which I aspire: the hatred, the disgust of existing, there are many ways to make myself exist, to thrust myself into existence." (100) As thoughts emerge, they surround his mind "and I always yield, the thought grows and grows and there it is, immense, filling me completely and renewing my existence." But this union cannot last. He's challenged by the chestnut tree, and bristles. "Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance. I leaned back and closed my eyes. But the images, forewarned, immediately leaped up and filled my closed eyes with existences: existence is a fullness which man can never abandon." (133)

One is stuck existing. The naked, nude world unveils itself, and without reason. Nothingness appears to be another existence, neither before nor after creation, "this flowing larva." Maybe "the smile of the trees," or the "suspicious transparency of the glass of beer" sums up the mystery we can never solve? He invents a role with his former lover, Anny, as he views other couples trapped in their own relationships; one cannot explain the Void to another person. "This is the girl, here, this fat girl with a ruined look who touches me and whom I love." (143) Anny, too, flails within her self, struggling for meaning in "the privileged situations." Roquentin's moment of connection only reveals her own isolation: "we have lost the same illusions, we have followed the same paths." (150) She tries the imagination evoked by Loyola's "Spiritual Exercises," but even that fails to satisfy. "You haven't found me again," she assures him as she turns him away.

Restless, he wonders about his own freedom: "there is absolutely no more reason for living, all the ones I have tried have given way and I can't imagine any more of them." (156) Luckily, he's still young, if that's any hope; he's exhausted by the effort to endure. "Alone and free. But this freedom is like death." (157) Preparing to leave the provincial port, he finds no epiphany: "Existence is what I am afraid of." (160) A Corsican and the Self-Taught Man brawl; the flesh betrays his former companion, and Roquentin faces his future. "I savor this total oblivion into which I have fallen. I am between two cities, one knows nothing of me, the other knows me no longer." (169) Perhaps the tune that's kept in his head the whole narrative will be enough? "I find the same desire again: to drive existence out of me, to rid the passing moments of their fat, to twist them, purify myself, harden myself, to give back at last the sharp, precise sound of a saxophone note." (175)

(Posted to Amazon US today.)

Cruachán leabhair.

Tá carnán leabhair agam le deanaí. Scríobh me faoi ag dul ar trí lheabarlanna inné. Inniu, scríobhfaidh mé faoi na leabhair go raibh ag faighte uathu.

D'inis mé ort dhá mí ó shín faoi leabhar mór tagartha. Ar chuimhne leat alt níos deanaí go scríofa faoi "1001 leabhair go caitheamh tú léigh sula faigheann tú bás"? D'oscail mé imleabhar seo agus chonaic ag timpeall istigh ann.

Ar dtosach air, chríochnaigh mé fós "An Léigear Khrishnapur" faoi an India Victeoiriach, "Béim síos" le J. M Coetzee faoi An Afraic Theas agus "Meath agus Titim" le Evelyn Waugh faoi na fichidí ina Sasana. Chuir suas mé léirmheasannaí anseo go deireanach. Anois, chruinnigh mé "An Tiarna na Domhain," le R. F. Benson (níl curtha san aireamh ann) agus "Jack Maggs," le Peadar Ó Ciardha le seachtaine seo caite.

Thosaigh mé go dtí seo "Samhas," le Seán-Pól Sartre. Rinne mé leath bealaigh ag dul sa traein chomh fada seo. Tá úrscéal níos aisteach chomh toradh a déanta amach roimh de. Tá sé níos greannmhar chomh maith leis féin. Ach, is maith liom Beicéid!

Léifidh mé leabhair eile go luath, ar ndóigh. Gheobhaidh tú a carnadh, mar shampla: "Droichead Londan," le Céline; "An Cluiche Coirnín Gloine" le Hermann Hesse; dhá scéal faoi ficheall: "Zugzwang" le Rónán Mac Beinéid ó Bhéal Feirste agus "An Rí-Cluiche" le Stiofáin Zweig. Caithim a scríobh léirmheas faoi beirt leabhar criticiúl ag plé an litriocht ó Thuascaint na hÉirinn go luath ina theannta sin.

Go críochnúil, léann ar feadh mo h-am luí "Na hAdhmháilachaí Zheno" le Italo Svevo. Níl ag léamh agamsa féin go tapaidh. Faigheann sé níos deacair agam. Mar sin féin, feicim luach go leor aige. Bhí maith leis Séamas Seoighe ann. Bhí Seoighe cairdeas a déanta le Svevo nuair go raibh siad i gcónaí ina Trieste céad bliain ó shín beagnach.

A small stack of books.

There's a little pile of books for me of late. I wrote yesterday about going to three libraries. Today, I will write about the books that I've got from them.

I told you two months ago about a big reference book. Do you remember an entry earlier that was written about "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die"? I opened this volume and I looked around inside it.

To start from it, I finished already "The Siege of Krishnapur" about Victorian India, "Disgrace" by J.M. Coetzee about South Africa and "Decline and Fall" by Evelyn Waugh about the 'twenties in England. I put up here reviews recently. Now, I gathered "The Lord of the World" by R.F. Benson (not included in it) and "Jack Maggs" by Peter Carey this past week.

I began thus far "Nausea," by Jean-Paul Sartre. I've made it halfway going by train so far. The novel is more peculiar than I had anticipated. It's funnier as well. But, I like Beckett!

I will read other books soon, of course. You will find piled up, for example: "London Bridge," by Céline; "The Glass-Bead Game," by Hermann Hesse; two stories about chess: "Zugzwang," by Ronan Bennett from Belfast and "The Royal Game," by Stefan Zweig. I must write a review about a pair of criticism books discussing the literature of the North of Ireland soon, furthermore.

Finally, I read during my bed time "The Confessions of Zeno" by Italo Svevo. It's not for me quick reading. I find it for me more difficult. Nevertheless, I see much value in it. There was pleasure for James Joyce in it. Joyce made friends with Svevo when they were living in Trieste almost a hundred years ago.

Griangraf/Photo: Leabhar le/Book by Antain MacLochlainn, "Bímis ag Léamh"/"You're (usually!) Reading".

Ag dul ar trí lheabharlanna.

Tá mé ag dul ar trí lheabharlanna ar laghad le deanaí! Chonaic mé ar lá eile ina páipéar faoi go bhfuil duine go leor go tíosach a déanamh seo. Cuirim cuairt go trí córais. Ar dtús, téim ar chraobhachaí ina gCathair na hÁingeal. Tá mé i gcónaí is cóngarach dóibh.

Ach, níl leabhair go coitianta go fiú uaireanta ansin. Tá ábhar íorónta ann. Ciallaigh rudaí go mór ann; cailligh cailliúntí go leor fós ann

Gheobhaidh mé ádh níos fearr leis áiteannaí ar thuaiscaint anois agus aríst. Caithim ag teacht go rialta go dtí Pasadena anois. Freastail Leon go nua-scoil ansiud. Mar sin, tiomáinim in aice leis láithreachaí éagsulaí go minic.

Is maith liom an foirgneamh greanta ar lár Phaisadena. Níl maith liom an bósca coincréiteach ina chroí Ghleanntán. Thósaigh mé ag baint amach ar leabharlann níos lú go Phaisadena ó dheas gach coicís.

Is cathair é ar leith. Bhunaigh Pasadena Deisceartach mar sin ní raibh ag iarrta Meitidisteachtaí taobhú ag ól biotáille alcól ina ag imeall na gcathair ag timpeall Phaisadena. Thóg lánstaonairí a bhaile féin. Níor dhíol siad licéar ann. Inniu, tá is lú go Paisadena mar sin féin!

Going to three libraries.

I'm going to three libraries at least of late! I saw the other day in the paper concerning many thrifty people had done this. I pay a visit to three systems. At the start, I go to branches in the City of the Angels. I'm living closest to them.

But, there are not even common books there, sometimes. It's an ironic matter there. Most items are meant (to be) there; thefts lose many there too.

I'll find better luck on occasion with places to the north. I must come regularly up to Pasadena now. Leo attends a new school over there. Therefore, I drive near various locations often.

I like the elegant building in the center of Pasadena. I don't like the concrete box in the heart of Glendale. I began taking off for a smaller library to the south of Pasadena every two weeks.

It's a separate city. South Pasadena started because the Methodists did not wish to support drinking of alcoholic spirits in the limits of the city around Pasadena. They built their own town. They did not sell liquor there. Today, it's much smaller than Pasadena all the same!

Griangraf/Photo: On the inside of Pasadena's Public Library/ ar an taobh istigh Leabharlainne Phoiblí Phaisadena

Suhetu Mehta's "Maximum City": Book Review.

"Bombay, Lost & Found," as its subtitle pinpoints, covers Mehta's quest as a native who returns there for two years around 1999. His own story's mingled into those told about a pro-Hindu political party, Sena; Sunil, hit man for the Dawood faction; Ajay who turns rogue cop to fight crime better than he can on a force where one officer missed a rampaging elephant at ten feet due to his antiquated rifle; a couple of memorably described "bar girls"-- Honey's a married man who dresses as a woman for his living while sultry Monalisa's skilled in learning what makes men hard and makes them soft in many inventive ways beyond the mere flesh. These precede his interesting but overly detailed experiences as a co-writer of a "Bollywood" film, "Mission Kashmir." This thick volume concludes with a slum family who moves to the exurban instant sprawl of Mira Road, and another family of Jain diamond merchants who renounce their wealth and their marital ties to wander the roads as they seek merit for a salvation that gives up even a belief in God. In this way, they move towards "moksha," the annihilation that they trust will follow a worthy death. This earns the narrative, at last after five hundred dense pages, its most poignant and powerful scenes.

Since Mumbai, as it's been renamed, somewhat spuriously by the Hindu nationalists according to Mehta, has unfortunately earned much attention the past ten days, I decided to read this book, which had been on my "what next" shelf anyway, right away. It's very broad in its scope, insightful but unwieldy, and crammed with minute detail that while it may please or anger those who have lived among its 19 million inhabitants (five hundred more enter the city each day), may test the patience of those, like myself, not up on many terms sprinkled from Indian languages. A glossary could have helped, as only at their initial mention does Mehta give the meaning; often it's contextual and not explicit. This makes for a smooth read if you're familiar with the lingo, but it can challenge the rest of us.

His rationale: he trades stories as his currency, and gains the trust of gangsters, cops, bar girls, a talented college dropout poet who lives on the "footpath," and ambitious filmmakers. What they have in common, he finds late in his account, is their eagerness for transgression. So many citizens live circumscribed by tradition, family duty, work, and the hassles of dealing with "influence"-- without the personal connection or the greased palm, one cannot succeed in a culture that values the collective ties as much as the individual merit. You must cultivate power.

Why does anyone put up with such an overwhelming place? "Your discomfort is an investment" (472); one sacrifices so one's children or cousins will succeed there. The human spirit, nurtured in villages, has yet to catch up to this megapolitan pace. Millions keep arriving; few seem to leave. This adds force to the Jain family's bold decision to "resign before dismissal" in their emigation, their reversal back to begging on the roads. They alone among so many characters turn from the accumulation of wealth that drives, of course, everyone else into the city.

Mehta's at his best in passing observations that support larger points: how two straight men tend to use a restroom if together, how a Bollywood film skips from point A to point Z, how a city of extremities of luxury and squalor manages to make anonymity a retreat for its lovers and loiterers who must copulate and beg and defecate in public. He notes how its residents automatically turn towards the sea, a counter-orientation, whenever they gaze. It's noisy, dangerous, yet within it for endurance, people must re-create their personal connections if they wish to make it there. "Bombay is, like any other Indian city, full of people in search of answers to the question 'Who am I?'" (100) The danger, as Mehta finds when interviewing the Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray, "a tired, aging fascist," is that many in this tense environment will then take the interrogation to its next step: "Who is not I?" Analyzing the 1993 riots between Hindus and Muslims, Mehta delves into what's since then become repeated in strife all around the world.

"You own this city by right of your anger," (88) he seethes at one point, dealing with its endlessly labyrinthine networks. The recent terrorist attacks seem predicted, as this telling of roughly a decade ago warns of the Hindu enclave surrounded by Muslims eager to attack the financial core of India. Beneath the wedding-cake Taj Hotel, which we learn was erected in 1902 by a Hindu angered at his exclusion from the British-controlled Watson hotel, the desperation percolates: for the price of a breakfast there, one can afford a maid's salary for a month. A hit-man may murder for as low as his take of $35. Prostitutes may be procured for less than $1.50. "Black-collar workers" in the criminal underground infiltrate the police and vice versa. Mehta finally must retreat from his reporting for this reason that he may be "encountered" by the very officer he has been interviewing. Even with Monalisa, Mehta cannot reveal his family's existence, for fear that he can be traced and tracked as that "bar-line industry" merges with the underworld and back to the cops. It's a terrifying realm of "anti-alchemists," who turn all into iron.

So, this sprawling, uneven, but thoughtful report from the planet's largest concentration of people shows much to marvel at, and lots to mourn over. It takes willpower to keep moving through it, as it repeats the nature of its massive subject. Form follows content. Density's the leitmotif. A 1947 Rent Act keeps much of the housing at rates that even a New Yorker like Mehta's taken aback by. People may pull you on to a train in solidarity, as it speeds past slums less than a yard from the tracks. Bar girls may be showered with rupees, enough to feed hundreds who beg outside the club. The endemic poverty, bribery, and failure of socialism make the untrammeled rout of capitalism all the more fearsome and, for most, appealing. As one actor rues, the success story of one who's made it makes for a hundred disappointments. The villages hear the city emigrant's rags-to-riches tale, magnified in the telling, and the allure of Bombay grows brighter on the rural screen.

Mehta reminds us that by 2015, the population will, unimaginably, again double, "the world outside gradually crowding the world inside." (538) It's a city of extremities, with all on display and nowhere to hide one's inner self except in the ambitions and dreams that compel its natives to yearn for it even if they can afford to leave, and once there-- if less favored-- most probably to cling to its humid yet inviting shores no matter what. Even in this press of people, Mehta holds out for the hope that "they have not yet been programmed."

(Posted to Amazon US today.)

Burt Hochberg's "The 64-Square Looking Glass": Book Review.

This handsome anthology gathers forty-four entries that examine "the great game of chess in world literature." They range from mysteries to poetry, tournament accounts to fantasy contests, allegory to journalism. Intelligently sequenced and informatively (if too sparingly) introduced, this volume may appeal too to readers who aren't masters of the ancient pursuit. My review's lengthy, but I wish to give an overview of each of the selections, as details may not be found readily on-line.

The first section covers "Chess Itself." Charles Krauthammer's essay attacks the association by what Nabokov (in his preface to "The Defense") called "the Viennese delegation" too eager to reduce the struggle to a Freudian wish that "sees Mom in his Queen and Pop in his opponent's King." (qtd. 10) Krauthammer might also have noted that Alexander Cockburn in his “hilariously reductionist” equation of chess with neurosis managed to discuss "Defense" in detail without citing Nabokov's own dismissal of the interpretation relied upon by Cockburn or Reuben Fine! Of course, Freudians simply retaliate that their woodpushing opponents repress insecurities. (I reviewed "Idle Passion," and "The Defense," recently here and on Amazon US).

Nabokov's excerpt from his "Speak, Memory" autobiography's also here, along with Andrew Waterman's considerations of Fine and Marcel Duchamp (always a cameo in every chess history), with other ambivalent critic-players. Ezra Pound and Lord Dunsany provide verse. The second section, "Obsession," logically moves into the drives that the first part ignited. "The Defense" and Stefan Zweig's "The Royal Game," proof-texts for Cockburn and Waterman, present worst-case scenarios. These are balanced by Walter Tevis' portrayal of an orphaned teenaged girl and narcotics addict who rises to the championship, "The Queen's Gambit." Alan Sharp's "Night Moves" detective yarn did not captivate me, but I liked the gumshoe repartee about another gal's dubious charms: "'Did she offer you the key to the city?' 'It was more of a guided tour.'" (75) Miguel de Unamuno's "The Novel of Don Sandino, Chessplayer," seemed mired in proto-existential gloom, but it does evoke reliably "this solitary vice of two men together in company." (78) Women-- as Tevis' Beth proves the exception to the rule-- rarely appear as players, and not often even as spectators.

"Only a Pawn," section three, I enjoyed. Lewis Carroll's Red Queen match, that baffled many besides Alice, here gets solved as A. L. Taylor's ingenious essay "The White Knight": "it would be illogical to expect logic in a game dreamed by a child." What Alice sees depends on her limitations. The moral? "This is a pawn's impression of chess, which is like a human being's impression of life." (94) Flowing into Borges' poetic analogy of dreamers dreaming gamers, detouring into Ian Fleming's "From Russia With Love" chapter, the analogy's expanded into Poul Anderson's clever depiction of "The Immortal Game" of 1851 loosely imagined as if played by robot simulators who don't understand why they move as they must. Slawomir Mrozek's "Check!" occupies a gloomier, allegorical setting to show, as befitting his Polish context, the breakdown of such imposed order when run by incompetent masters. It drags on as long as the game it narrates does, however; I prefer Anderson's flair to Mrozek's dispassion.

Part Four introduces "Players Real & Imagined." Elias Canetti-- as Hochberg notes an "astounding coincidence" of a fictional mad player named Fischer-- in his 1935 novel "Auto-da-Fé," anticipates eerily in this excerpt the rise of the champion himself. Brad Leithauser's "Hence" pits a Fischer-like protagonist against a Deep Blue precursor, ANNDY, who delights in dumbing down what humanist Timothy Briggs defends: "the machine can never replace the human being." He warns the spectators: "you honestly don't think hard enough." (148) Robert Lowell's poem "The Winner" assembles Fischerisms into a brief but insightful meditation on celebrity.

Julian Barnes in "Playing Chess with Arthur Koestler" shares five matches in summer 1982 before the elder man's death from Parkinson's. It's a standout inclusion. In Suffolk, Barnes visits the old Hungarian; "Nature is parodying itself for a city dweller charmed by the simplest country sights." (157) Barnes deftly combines raw gamesmanship with an honest evaluation of Koestler's character. "We met over chess, that trivial pursuit which refers to nothing else in life, to nothing significant, and yet which engages our full seriousness." (160)

John Griffith's "The Memory Man" espionage novel has a few pages on the life of a professional player in decline. The reality of the hardship compared with the compulsion to continue puzzles many a non-player unable to fathom "the game that had dignified his life." (165) Sholem Aleichem's unnerving, enigmatic tale of Tsarist Russia, "From Passover to Succos, or the Chess Player's Story," shows the unintended consequences of poor Rubinstein's prowess. The Jewish dominance of chess by Rubinstein's escaped landsmen at the Manhattan Chess Club enters Alfred Kreymborg's scattershot first-person account, "Chess Reclaims a Devotee." While its player's perspective's valuable, for it's a rare one even in this anthology, the essay's erratically organized and as casually arranged as its pick-up games between such adepts as Ziegenschwartz & Levkowitz. Readers of "The Chess Artist" by J.C. Hallman (also reviewed by me here and at Amazon US) may compare Kreymborg's half-century at the MCC with a more recent depiction of that location and NYC's chess culture. "The Last Gambit" excerpts another whodunit, this time set in Philly’s Quaker Club counterpart to the Big Apple, by David Delmar. "Chess players, a diverse enough breed, all had that much in common: the game first, civilities second." (194)

Part Five rouses "Caprices & Caricatures." The frenetic con man's inspiration for Mel Brooks' chess-less film "The Twelve Chairs" (1970) can be found with "Ilf & Petrov," aka Ilya Fainzilberg & Yevgeny Katayev, in their spirited 1928 Soviet satire. Samuel Beckett's wry rendering of a “Zweispringerspiel," or Two-Knights-Game, into a "Z---spott," or "...joke." This scene from his 1938 novel "Murphy" gives his mordantly funny view of an Irish male nurse's contest against a mental patient, Mr Endon. "(Finished on time a round was called a virgin; ahead of time, an Irish virgin.") (218)

I've never found the Canadian humor of Stephen Leacock up to his reputation. “Pawn to King’s Four” does, nonetheless, evoke a sinister aura (I like his glance at a few blind players with pegged boards in the corner) around a chess club's denizens. Woody Allen’s “The Gossage-Vardebedian Papers” delves into correspondence chess; its epistolary construction may remain, as Hochberg introduces it, "probably the funniest story about chess," but this is a volume rather low on humor, at least overt or uproariously contrived.

E.M. Forster’s wit's subtler. His “Chess at Cracow” reports elegantly and with precise observation on a living exhibition of chess figures.

"How charmingly, on this occasion, was the stupidity of the castles indicated by some low, eye-shaped windows in the neighbourhood of their knees! I had never before understood why castles are so difficult to manage. What a settled despair lurked in the beards of the kings! The knights rocked to and fro on their squares, even more indifferent than usual to their immediate neighbours, and the pawns were like overgrown children, defenceless yet dangerous." (238)

He enlivens what Mrozek’s story deadened; but Forster's visit preceded blitzkrieg or Stalinism.

The sixth section, “Love New & Remembered,” dramatizes, in somewhat musty parlors, chess as a struggle to win over the one he or she courts. Anne Brontë’s last novel, “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall” (1848), Thomas Hardy’s “A Pair of Blue Eyes,” (1878), and Sinclair Lewis’s “Cass Timberlane” reveal symbolic strategems. Notably, the women, especially Hardy's Elfride, prove wily if distraught rivals. The “rueful poem ‘The Chess-Board’” by the son of Baron Lytton, E.R. Bulmer Lytton, lives up or down to the literary inheritance you’d expect from that morose Victorian lineage.

Section seven, “Three Tantrums,” promises more verve. Tennyson’s verse-play “Becket” (1884) anticipates T.S. Eliot's poetic drama. We find a scene from Alexander Cockburn’s father Claud’s novel “Beat the Devil,” published psuedonymously in 1951 and soon a film with Bogart and Jennifer Jones. The pulp prose of elder Cockburn’s more boilerplate, less erudite, than his son’s in “Idle Passion,” no doubt. The fabulist Spencer Holst in “Chess” simplifies matters with a concise moral, within one of his “tiny tales for adults in the guise of children’s stories.” (274)

The penultimate section, “Moved to Murder,” confronts less idle passions aroused by the humiliation of defeat. Theodore Mathieson’s “The Chess Partner” follows a fellow desperate to beat his rival, so as to hold on to his beloved. Henry Slesar’s “The Poisoned Pawn” concocts a tale of revenge based upon an ingenious trick of a "shadow player," one game as white, the other black, manipulating a correspondence set-up a third opponent using the moves of the other game's opposite player! (It's easier than it sounds to follow.) Harry Kemelman’s “End Play” exhibits how a chess position helps solve a murder. The story entangles itself in whodunit fashion, despite this!

Finally, “Confronting the Enemy” offers three fiction writers’ scenarios that heighten the drama of a match between champion-level players. From “The Tower Struck by Lightning,” Fernando Arrabal bases his dramatic showdown on a 1922 Capablanca draw. Not quite a story so much as a semi-fictional essay, but it does discuss in compressed form many themes elaborated elsewhere in the literature. Arrabal also demolishes Reuben Fine's Freudianism.

Martin Amis’ “Money: A Suicide Note” features John Self's ego vs. the author in this spirited, self-referential bout of 80s "greed is good" excess. Kurt Vonnegut imagines a Cold War slangy confrontation, a form of psy-ops torture merged with living chess, “All the King’s Horses,” (1953). A flaw common with much speculative fiction: it starts off with a promising idea that fails to satisfy. In 1965's "The 'Victory'-- A Story with Exaggerations," Vasily Aksynov's “subtle commentary on the relationship between the artist and society in Soviet Russia” (346) illustrates for a final time the many levels on which this simple game can be raised to profound heights.

Hochberg, a proven editor on-- and exponent of-- the great game himself, arranges the collection sensibly. There's one flaw: his notes prove so sparse that often we lack contexts. A few prefaces, as for Arrabal or Anderson, relating to famous games revamped in the entries, are informative. But, his acknowledgements page leaves out many dates of publication or copyright. We need insight into how the various entries in each section illustrated larger themes beyond the mere topic related to chess. These intertextual strategies do emerge for the careful spectator, but a chess writer of Hochberg's rank could have enriched his valuable volume with "color commentary" to educate those only "patzers" or kibitzers within his audience.

(Posted to Amazon US today.)

Blodewedd, Bean Bláthannái & Ulchabáin.

Is Blodewedd, nó Blodeuwedd/ Blodeuedd, bean finscéalach í. D'inis seanscéal Breatnaise ina 'Mabinogi' fúithi. Tá scéal aici seo ag scríofa ina ceathrú roinnt, 'Math'.

Rinne Math agus Gwydion Blodewedd. Bhain siad sísean de bláthannaí doire, giolcachaí sleibhte, agus airgid luachra. Is ciall mar 'aghaidh bláth' as Breatnais. Is bri é a ainm.

Blodeuwedd a tugadh uirthi seo níos deanaí, mar sin féin! Cén fáth? Ar dtús, bhí sí bean Lhleu mac Arianrhod. Bhí sí is áille aice féin, ár ndóigh, ban uile ar fud an domhan.

Ní raibh Lleu ábalta beann bhásmhar a phósadh. Thóg sé bean chéile ag déanta bláthannaí. Ach, tharraing sísean féin ar fear eile. Fuair Gronw Pebr sí. Rugadh sí é ar ais go raibh ag dul san fiach fia fireann air.

Thugadar grá da chéile oíche céann sin. Iarr beirt a dúnmharú Lleu. Ní bheadh go furasta. Bhí cumhachta draíochta air.

Scéal mór fada eachtrúil áta ann. Ní dhearna an lánúin dana ag fáil saoirse. D'fhoglaim sí rún mortlaíochta do fír chéile aice. Mhairaigh Gronw Lleu.

Bhuail Lleu Gronw. Fuair Gronw bás. D'athraigh Gwydion mar ulchabáin sí. Chaill an h-ainm 'Blodeuedd', mar sin 'bláthannaí'. Anois, faigheann ainm 'Blodeuwedd', no 'aghaidh blátha' amháin. Is cosuil ulchabáin í go deo.

Chonaic mé le deanaí léaráid seo. Chuir Gethin ab Iestyn sí ar a bhlog. Tá 'Ríochtaí Ceiltigh' anseo. Déanann sí íomhá di leis gréas stílithe mar críochnochta. Níl fhios agam an cúis. Cad chuige? Is cuimhne liom seo faoi an dealbh bhansagairt (nó bhandia?) Mhinoa ag coinnaigh suas dhá nathair.

Blodewedd, Lady of Flowers & Owls.

Blodewedd, or Blodeuwedd/ Blodeuedd, is a legendary lady. The Welsh legend in "The Mabinogi" tells about her. There's her story written in the fourth section, "Math."

Math and Gwydion made Blodewedd. They brought her out of the flowers of oak, broom of the mountain, and silvery rushes (=meadowsweet). The derivation of "face of flowers" is from the Welsh. It's her name's meaning.

Blodeuwedd was named this later, however! What happened? In the beginning, she was the wife of Lleu son of Arianrhod. She herself was the loveliest, of course, of all women over all the world.

Lleu was unable to marry a mortal woman. He took a wife made of flowers. But, she herself drew towards another man. Gronw Pebr found her. She caught him after he was going hunting for a stag.

They were lovers that same night. The couple wished to murder Lleu. This would not be easy. He had powers of magic.

It's a long, adventurous, story. She learns the secret of her husband's mortality. Gronw kills Lleu. The bold lovers don't find freedom.

Lleu beats Gronw. Death finds Gronw. Gwydion changed her into an owl. She loses the name "Blodeuedd," that is "flowers." Now, she gets a name "Blodeuwedd," or "flower-face" only. She resembles an owl, forever.

I saw this illustration recently. Gethin ab Iestyn put it up on his blog. It's "Celtic Realms" here. She's depicted by conventional style as bare-breasted. I don't know the cause. What's the reason? This brings into my mind the figurine of a Minoan priestess (or goddess?) holding up two snakes.

Slavoj Zizek's "Violence": Book Review

This "Big Ideas/Small Books" offering may repeat much of this Slovene philosopher's earlier critiques. As it's the first work I've read by him, I depend on others to verify this. It certainly tackles big ideas in this brief paperback, but its portability and relative concision may recommend it to those who, like me, had heard of this provocateur but hesitated to enter his dense, diffuse, albeit often entertaining debates.

Zizek's relevant: "The same philanthropists who give millions for AIDS or education in tolerance have ruined the lives of thousands through financial speculation and thus created the conditions for the rise of the very intolerance that is being fought." (37) He compares their guise as "liberal communists" (think Bill Gates or George Soros) to a dirty postcard that shows, if moved slightly, "the obscene figure" who's "at work beneath" the news of debt cancellation or the eradication of an epidemic. Global capitalists need to generate enormous wealth before they can distribute it to others. King Leopold and Andrew Carnegie-- and I might add the Bonos and Brangelinas, perhaps (oddly, Zizek does not name such celebrity counterparts, whom free trade's promoter Thomas Friedman labelled "super-empowered individuals" outside the nation-state or the "electronic herd" of corporate dominance)-- have more in common with today's Davos jetsetters and Hollywood trendsetters than we might have suspected.

On the surface, the "liberal communist" ten-point plan on pg. 18 sounds great; the "RED" campaign for Africa or wearing pink ribbons for breast cancer research or the Google slogan "do no evil" match these goals. So, what's Zizek's gripe with doing good while making a profit? Capitalism must thrive. This creates injustice.

The balance of wealth redistribution by dot.commers and rock stars may be cloaked in humanitarian liberties, but "it allows the capitalism system to postpone its crisis." (23) No Marxist, but schooled as a former Yugoslav subject and ex-Party member/dissident, Zizek notes that while such liberal largess avoids "the destructive logic of resentment and enforced statist distribution of wealth which can only end in generalised misery," it also sidesteps the evils of concentrated affluence and power that keep the rich doling out handouts to the dependent poor.

As a Lacanian, what irritates Zizek? The gap between reality and the Real, the "inexorable 'abstract,' spectral logic of capital that determines what goes on in social reality." (13) An economist may report how an impoverished Third World nation keeps "financially sound" even as the poverty's apparent to any observer.

How do such criticisms of "liberal communism" fit into the book's larger subject of violence? It's a loose tailoring. Thematic stitches may not always be visible. He begins with defining three types of violence. First, there's subjective violence: the kind we can identify "performed by a clearly identifiable agent." (1) Behind this lurks a "symbolic" violence within language. It repeats the role that social domination plays in our habitual speech. For instance, "gold" when named as such means "we violently extract a metal from its natural texture, investing it with our dreams of wealth, power, spiritual purity, and so on, which have nothing to do with the immediate reality of gold." (61)
Third comes "systemic" violence, the "often catastrophic consequences of the smooth functioning of our economic and political systems." (2) The book in "six sideways glances" sidles around its impacts, allowing us to more dispassionately dissect the forms of violence, under critical control even as we peer towards its fearful emanations. The first section investigates the "trap" of "liberal communism" that I have already opened. The second looks into alienation as a solution rather than a problem to the Western need to assert "the right not to be harassed," to keep one's distance from others who may threaten us by their demands to be recognized and respected. (41) This chapter's more difficult, but the gist of it-- which I verified when I studied this very passage today on a crowded subway with my iPod plugged in-- asserts the advantage of European civilization: "the alienation of social life." (59) Rather than a failure, this opening up of a private zone in public allows us to obey rules mechanically, while insuring a proxemic space around us that preserves our inner world. This encourages peaceful coexistence in a multicultural realm.

Part Three confronts the eruption of violence, with the protests over the Danish caricatures of Muhammed and 2005's French banlieu riots. The urge to tear down not the enemy's camp, but to burn one's own Parisian neighborhood (even a mosque), Zizek explains as a need for those demeaned to be noticed as citizens. This outburst also shows the impotence of such violence. True fundamentalists, such as Tibetan Buddhists or the Amish, he reminds us, foster indifference rather than insecurity towards the mores of non-believers. Those insecure, such as the Muslim mobs in Pakistan, only betray their desperate fragility, their own projected inferiority. Those complaining about Euro-American dominance, Zizek insists, nevertheless define their opposition as aligned against its hegemony. (Porto Alegre fails to oust Davos: the neo-liberals have no genuine alternative vision in a late-capitalist empire, either.) Religious fundamentalists who have gained the spotlight, he adds, situate themselves in the true source of challenge today: religion supplants science as "one of the possible places from which one can deploy critical doubts about today's society." (82) Science now solves our problems; religion stirs them up?

This chapter could have discussed further the limits of politically-correct "rules" when refusing to treat the uncomfortable truths it will not report for fear of inciting intolerance. Also, the vexed problems of massive immigration into the First World deserve more than an apercu or two. Still, Zizek provokes thought. He prefers to wander into (however astute or quirky) analogies to chocolate laxatives or Wagner.

In the fourth section, liberalism and fundamentalism both get castigated. Zizek reminds us that the European tradition always has mocked the divine; he finds such treatment "unimaginable in an Islamic culture." (106) I suppose so from the well-known, recent evidence, but still I wondered if this was too broad a statement for the past fourteen centuries? He points out an often overlooked abuse of rhetoric: discussing the hyperbolic equivalence of Israeli policies towards Palestinians with the Nazis "strangely contradicts Holocaust denial" preached by many in the Arab and Muslim worlds. (110)

He also reminds us of the fate of those who dare to speak out against liberal pieties; Oriana Fallaci's fall from leftist grace comes from her daring "to take the multiculturalist subservient 'respect' for the Muslim Other seriously." She incites contempt for exposing the "assymetry" of allowing Eurabia to colonize the continent, while Europe constantly retreats, apologizes, and urges only more "respect" for a regressive, intolerant barbarism. She failed to perceive how "fake" Western tolerance can be; it's "a sign of hidden and patronising racism." (114-15) Again, Zizek tends to raise many topics deserving more than a paragraph or two, but that's the tendency of his methods: to stir up our reactions.

This section's also digressive, but the whole book's so. It's like hearing a fascinating but erratic professor. Zizek has elsewhere belittled teaching; he's a professor who does not have to enter the classroom except when he wants, if at all. Yet, you get the sense of his restless range. I highlight what intrigued me; you may find an entirely different set of references that may rouse your enthusiasm. The book's full of detours, sideways glances, and momentary asides.

Israel & Palestine kindle more sparks. Zizek's at his best when urging a non-statist, truly sacred space for Jerusalem. He wonders at the U.S., the most religious of advanced nations, allying so strangely with the most atheist land (70% in some Israeli polls) which exists on the nature of its religious foundations! If Israel had been created two centuries ago, it'd have shared the roots of most "founder states;" its sin appears to be for the left that it was created after such imperial campaigns were delegitimized.

Skirting back to tolerance, Zizek as an atheist encourages us to remember how Europe's contribution to progress rests in its freedom not to believe. Blasphemy only works in a religious space. If we give in to all those who protest, we risk strengthening the pact between fundamentalists and the PC-left: "a society immobilised by the concern for not hurting the other, no matter how cruel and superstitious this other is and in which individuals are engaged in regular rituals of 'witnessing' their victimisation." (130) Botox injectors get equated with those forced to endure clitoridectomies by a too-capacious liberal tolerance granting a dimwitted approval to even oppressive cultures.

Instead, Zizek rallies for the courage to condemn religion if it indeed is truly entangled with hatred. We must fight religion if at its core we find violence. Apologists keep assuring us that we can rescue the truth of genuine faith from savage hijackers. Zizek inverts the game. Hack down the roots of violence. He dismisses cloaking its motives as if in a misused "authentic core" of a noble religion. The truest pacifists, he asserts, are those who lack belief. He wishes to advance atheism as a truly disinterested method to attain peace-- free of the Big Other of Marxism, monotheism, or consumerism, for that soul-dispiriting matter.

Section five's for me less engrossing. Yet, it has its moments. It covers "tolerance as an ideological category." Zizek observes how the price of living in the free West means that we may suffer violence, torn from our cultural roots so as to survive in our multicultural West. Within this milieu, the greatest art endures after it has been wrenched-- as with Homer or Shakespeare-- from its original context.

Society pretends to allow us free choice, but we have no option, usually, but to profess love for our parents or our flag. We're caught in a paradox of acting as if what's prescribed is preferred, as if we had some say in the choice. Juxtapositions float by: a TV show "Nip/Tuck" and the ground-floor vs. first-floor labelling of buildings in the U.S. vs. abroad; "The Birds" and the shot of the plane hitting the Twin Tower; Bukharin & Stalin compared to the hapless heroines of Lars von Trier's film trilogy. This portion left me somewhat at sea, but I kept paddling along.

In the last section, "Divine Violence," G.K. Chesterton provides unexpected evidence for what Zizek proposes as a truly mature acceptance that there's no larger supernatural rationale for our fate. Catastrophes occur, but God's gone. He wonders if the Incarnation and Crucifixion represent a God who's abandoned the transcendental to be truly and ultimately human. There's no Ascension, no Easter in Zizek's theology, therefore. God's demolition of the protector, and His assumption of the mortal, stands for our own existential plight. There remains, nonetheless, Judgment Day. But, it's delayed by the leftists. They promise that the "banks of rage" pent-up by so much injustice will bailout the oppressed. But, like the French or Soviet revolutions, the day of reckoning, and of utopian payback, gets postponed endlessly.

The epilogue reviews the main points. Three lessons earn summation: 1) When we shout down violence outright as "bad," we participate in mystifying its less visible social forms. Our capitalist system furthers the violence that erupts, by the inherent unfairness of the economic rules we all must agree to play by. 2) Real violence can evade those who try to act out their outrage. Twice Brecht's motto echoes: "What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?" 3) Subjective and systemic violence intertwine. Acts can be violent or not depending on context. I doubt if his immediate comparison to the Higgs field of quantum physics would be one that anyone else would supply for clarification! Still, Zizek stays on track: "the first gesture to provoke a change in the system is to withdraw activity, to do nothing." (214)

What is there to be done? For one distrustful of Marx, of the state, of Kapital, not to mention God? Zizek concludes: "The threat today is not passivity, but pseudo-activity, the urge to 'be active', to 'participate', to mask the nothingness of what goes on." (217) The true challenge? To step back. Abstaining from the political game, refusing to shop to stimulate the economy that has tottered because of our overspending-- I wonder what effect our concerted effort not to fuel capitalism, vote for oligarchies, or buy into credulity might achieve? Zizek's discussion may not provide any answers, but his typically barbed appeals may cause us to reorient ourselves away from the structures imposed on us that appear like natural facts.

(Photo: Once more, the British edition's much better than the American cover. Review posted to Amazon US and cross-posted over at "Not the L.A. Times Book Review." See also mine on Amazon of his 2012 take on 2011, "The Year of Living Dangerously".)

St Beuno & the Saxon's Charge.

Speaking of bibliomancy (see my "Book Meme" entry yesterday), I picked up off the shelf next to my desk where I type this one of my rather randomly (thanks to a remodelling done when I was off in the Celtic Fringe meself) arranged Irish-related books. I chose one I'd been meaning to root around in. Oliver Davies' anthology for the Paulist Press series, "Celtic Spirituality," opened to this (for me) haunting passage when I parted the pages by chance:

"One day, when Beuno was walking around his corn, near the river Severn, he heard from the other side of the river the cry of an Englishman, who was encouraging his dog in pursuit of a hare. At the top of his voice the Englishman shouted: 'Charge, charge.' These were words of encouragement to his dog in his own language. When Beuno heard the shout of the Englishman, he immediately turned and went straight back to his disciples, saying to them: 'Put on your clothes, my sons, and your shoes, and let us leave this place. The people of the man of foreign speech whom I heard calling to his dogs across the river shall invade this place. It shall be theirs, and they shall keep it in their possession.'" (214-15)

Davies tells us that this hagiography exists only in one Middle Welsh version circa the fourteenth century, but it may come from an earlier Latin source. It seemed as I transcribed the abbot's quoted warning very Latinate in its cadence and balance; I am sure Cymraeg possesses too this elegance, to be sure, but neither my fingers nor my wit cannot coax out such magic hiding there in these ironic, yes, anglicisms, given my woeful lack of Welsh. While Davies emphasizes in his brief comments on this short text its primitive and to him structural qualities (hail Levi-Strauss at his centenary!) which repeat decapitations and threaten deflorations, I wondered about this text as an historical marker of the coming of the Saesnag.

Darrell Wolcott helps out slightly here. Composite Lives of St Beuno at Ancient Wales Studies explains the typical medieval conflation, or confusion, of two Beunos. The saint at Holywell may have lived between 515/520-590 at the latest. The other, an abbot at Clynnog Fawr, flourished the following century. The healing of Beuno's niece, Winifred, accounts apparently for the fame of both saints; he raised her from the dead after one of those Celtically symbolic decapitations after lustily attempted deflorations.

At Early British Kingdoms, David Nash Ford, incorporating Baring-Gould's 1907 entry, informs us that the site of St Beuno Gasulsych's (545-640) preaching's known as Maen Beuno; the standing stone's at Berriew near Welshpool. Around here, therefore, the sight of the Saxon and his sounds first appeared.

But, if we know where, what about when? I spent a quarter-hour leafing through indices of Welsh histories on my shelf, after an on-line search turned up nothing. Thanks for old-fashioned scholarship! In the best place rather than the last I should have looked, John Davies, on pg. 62 of his revised Penguin "History of Wales," answers my query. He estimates "about 610" for when Beuno heard "the language of paganism" across the banks that caused him to flee for Gwynedd. There, today, Welsh still survives.

Photo: Formerly Jesuit seminary, now retreat center, St Beuno's in North Wales carries on the Christian apostolate of over 1600 years in that nation. It seems so long ago that the Welsh tamed the Saxon, leading those who hailed hounds into Christian mores and Catholic customs. Even though beheadings and ravishings may have continued if less abated. The site near St Asaph's known to the literati today, perhaps, as Gerard Manley Hopkins studied theology there in the mid-1870s while "writing a third of his mature poetry," according to the website. I thought this image of two men from the center making the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises at Snowdon Lake captured well the power of the water, the human, and the natural that the saint(s) heard in various languages, sixteen centuries ago. No dogs "charge," at least in visual range. I wonder, peering: is there a third man on the far side of the lake?

Book Meme Award?

Credit or blame Stephen McEvoy over at "Book Reviews & More." My circle of trusted blogmates who I can "award" in turn as I've been rewarded by my Canadian counterpart may be too narrow! None of the six I ferreted out last month after "Bo" over at "The Expvlsion of the Blatant Beast" and "The Cantos of Mvtabilitie" tagged me (see last month's "Tagging" entry for details) appeared to have taken the byte bait. So, I don't want to burden them with more unwanted taps. I can barely find five now.

If Chris B. (Leader of the Pack), my dear wife (CasaMurphy USA), Coyote (Coyote-BlueJay), or Tony (Ecopunks) won't take me up on last month's belated challenge, well, maybe they will on this month's pursuit. "Bo" might, as a confessed bibliomancer. As "Bo" noted to me after tagging me, this spontaneous divination works wonders. But I'm only bugging them at this discreet distance. And Miss T, since she's back in blogspot.com style (now débuting her Templeton Chronicles).

From Mr. McEvoy, here's the explanation:

The Rules:
Pass this on to 5 blogging friends. Open the closest book to you, not your favorite or most intellectual book, but the book closest to you at the moment, to page 56. Write the 5th sentence, as well as two to five sentences following that.

And my dutiful excerpt, very first book at arm's reach. Had to be the second, as the first was one I'd just reviewed, "Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess," full of diagrams, so only five sentences the whole page. Bigger tome hoisted, I started five sentences down, and copy the rest of the paragraph.

"Yet a helium nucleus really does weigh less than four protons, despite being composed of heavier particles. We are forced once again to remember that we are in the realm where quantum physics and its associated effects dominate, and the solution lies here. It is true that if we can measure the mass of a proton on its own is slightly less than that of a neutron, but the substance particles are not free. In a helium nucleus they are bound together by the strong nuclear force and are less free to move. The creation of these between subatomic particles releases energy and we measure a drop in the mass." ("Bang! The Complete History of the Universe." Brian May, Patrick Moore, Chris Linott. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2007. Pg. 56!)

P.S. Spousal Synchronicity Syzygy: I realize that "bibliomancy" produces no fitting image. Neither does "spontaneous divination." Complaining aloud, my wife heard me. (She also suggested googling "girl reading bible" after a few discouraging keywords failed to conjure up my eidetic image.

She told me, to my surprise, that similar to her writing about eucalyptus the same time I was last month, she'd been working on a blog piece about none other than spontaneous divination-- that very afternoon! She sent me a paragraph to prove it. It's true.

Here's her amazing entry confirming again our forking paths, our winding roads that lead back from labyrinths towards each other. She does make me happy, and I try to do the same in my fumbling, bookish, introverted, clumsy gait. Read her reflections: "Semiotics".

Photo: Walter Sanders. Blind Girl Reading a Braille Version of the Bible. Life Magazine, Sept. 1956.

"Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess": Book Review.

Originally compiled in 1966 by a subsidiary of Xerox, reissued to coincide, naturally, with the Fischer-Spassky showdown in '72, when I went to a bookstore recently, this was the only chess book in the gaming section now given over to Sudoku! It's never been out of print, I suppose, and although if under a different name you and I would probably not be looking at nearly 250 reviews of it on Amazon (where this appeared today), it's a useful if idiosyncratic compendium of end-game mates, pins, forks, transpositions, and defenses.

Many reviewers previously on Amazon have condemned this book for its ghostwritten quality. Contrary to what some detractors claim, it's clearly explained, in the acknowledgments on the copyright page, and the prefatory remarks crediting the co-authors Stuart Margulies and Don Mosenfelder, that it's a collaboration. Fischer "speaks" in the first person here and there when sharing some moves from his past games, but that's it for any "autobiography." Leaving aside the controversial career of the name on the cover, the contents may not please everyone. Despite the elemental introduction, it's less a book for absolute novices, but not one for those able to plumb the intricacies of defenses with clever or arcane names.

As the Xerox imprimatur may hint, I see it as a precursor to a simple computer tutor, with its 275 "squares" with diagrams (interspersed with instructions) equivalent to screenshots. It lacks the animation, of course, and it can be more difficult to "see" the positions beyond the set-ups, but this lack of movement can also force you to develop your own visual skills to use during games, when one must rely on this ability.

Can this book help you? It begins with a quick overview of the moves. This can be used as a refresher. Then, the book jumps into what for hundreds of pages it tackles: how to mate. Not how to get to the enviable point at which the pieces are set up in the diagrams. So, it has a purpose, like the traditional collections of chess problems, or the books devoted to particular strategems or stages in the game. But, the gap between the opening, middlegames, and the endgames, or near endgames shown here does make for a rather ambitious leap from the King's Gambit to the kinds of advanced situations laid out here.

After showing you how to play, the bulk of the book bounds into back-rank mates, defenses and variations there, displacing defenders, attacks on enemy pawn cover, and a final review. Not the usual print full of "1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6." among Sicilian Dragons. It's a one-of-a-kind set-up that Fischer and his co-writers create. They call it "programmed instruction;" you may call it drill. Used correctly, it can place you in the active role. It may appeal to visual learners (like myself) for reasons that I will consider below.

As the book progresses, the solutions that you get when turning the page do get more compressed. You find yourself, even if you fail to solve the problem, able to glimpse at least the rudiments of thinking ahead as you play. Knights, often a piece that learners wish to use too much, here enter the fray later in the text; bishops too tend to hang back a while. Now and then, as with a real coach, the captions glide over what you want to know more about, but this challenges you to begin to try harder to ascertain what Fischer, Margulies, and Mosenfelder are teaching you.

I am a total beginner; I've recently taught myself as an adult the basics. For me, as a self-taught type of student, these drills help me get in shape. While one reviewer boasted that this book can be read easily in a couple of hours, I have no idea how this could be done realistically for even a speedreader at the beginner or introductory level student at whom I suppose this book's pitched. The lack of notation does encourage you to simply stare at the page and make your mind do the work that no computer or opponent may have the generosity for you to learn. I spent weeks with this book during my commute.

I took it where a chess board cannot go-- on the bus and train and while waiting in offices. The reproductions of the black pieces can be hard to discern on the pulp paperback pages, and their dimensions may be small. But the portability and simplicity of this tutor has much to recommend itself for those who may be tired of or unskilled in notation, wanting a pictorial analysis instead.

Ag gabháil buíochas.

Bhí mé ag ceiliúradh Lá Altaithe leis mo theaglach agus chairde le deanaí anseo. Feicfeadh tú ar an griangraf os cionn go raibh duine fásta amháin ar ár bhord! Níl tú ábalta feiceáil Bob, mar sin féin! Tá sé féin taobh thiar díomsa. Bhí sé céim dochtúra a fháil ar feadh samhraidh seo caite.

Tá mé in aice liomsa ag imeall ár chlár. Dúirt Léna go raibh ceaptha leis an íomhá seo 'eisint agamsa'! Ansin, Bob agus Risteard. Tá sé ag obair ina tíonscail na scannánaíochta leis Léna. In aice leis, tá sé Neans agus a céile Dónal. Is beirt ceolteóra siadsan. Tá mo bhean chéile Léna ar chúl eile ansuid. Bhí sí ag cócaireacht bia níos blasta orainn uile.

Shúigh síos Chríostín i ngar a fear chéile Ciardha. Is seandalaí é. Chaith sí go minic ar a leathanta saoire níos i gcongarach cá bhfuil i gconaí Bob agus Críos anois! Shiúlfaí idir dha teach ina cuig noimead go furasta.

Is Ciarraigh ag seinm giotár a dhéanamh mar cheird. Tá Dónal ag seinm gléasannaí cheoil go leor freisin. Is maith Chríos ag seinm giotár freisin. Ach, níl Chríos seinnteoir is gáirm dó. Tá sé féin ag coinneail uisce úr ina sléibhte Naomh Crois. Is lánúin phósta is nua anseo, Chríos agus Bob. Phósadh siadsan an fiche is trí lá Dheireadh Fómhair seo caite.

Cé bhfuil ag an dara chlár? Bheul, d'ith páistí ann. Bhí siad Leon, mo mhac. Tá sé is sine de bheirt. Thóg Niall an griangraf seo. Ár ndóigh, is Niall an dara mac againn. Tá inion Linda agus mac Criostín (an triú ceann anois?) de Nheans agus Dhónal. Chuaigh Jairo fós. Is sé mac hÁine, ach ní raibh sí ag tagtha ann.

Bhí féile chéad seo go leor go raibh ag déanta ár chistín nua. Bhí iontach Lhéna mar úsaid a gréithe cócaireachtaí agus an oigheann agus dhá inneal a ní i bplataí. Phioc si na dathannaí gorm agus glas agus oraiste ar na seomraí anseo fosta.

Cheannaigh sí teilifís níos mo. Cén fáth? Iarraidh sí agus mo mhac a breathnaigh cláir nuair go cruinnithe ar an urlar ar lár ar ár bhaile.

Féadaim a rá go mbeadh ag fanacht anois agus ansin, ach fásaim go míshhaimhneach go taipidh. Is dith orm a fágáil ar mo leabharleann beag. Toghaim áit níos suaimhneasach go géarr.

P.S. Scríobh mé alt is mo seo go luath, ach ní raibh foclóir agam ar dtus. Bhí sos an uair roimh sin go muineadh. Chaith mé ar fad faoi ag obair as Gaelige ar mo h-inchinn amháin. Ní raibh fhios agam frasai agus bri go hairithe. Rinne mé nótaí as Béarla nuair níl fhios agam leagan Gaeilge ar mo h-intinn. Mheas mé go ard, agus bhí ag cleachtadh a cabhair agam.

Giving Thanks.

I celebrated the day of Thanksgiving with my family and friends recently. You can see in the photograph above that there were only adults at our table! You are not able to see Bob, however! He is behind me on the far side. He got his doctoral degree during the past summer.

I am nearest at the edge of the table. Layne said that this image captured "my essence"! Then, Bob and Richard. He works with Layne in the film industry. Next, there's Nancy and her spouse, Dan. They are a pair of musicians themselves. There is my wife, Layne, at the other end over there. She cooked a very tasty meal for us all.

Kristen sits down next to her husband, Carey. She's an archeologist. She spent her holidays often very near where Bob and Chris are now living! One may walk between the two houses in five minutes easily.

Carey plays the guitar, making his living. Dan plays many musical instruments also. Chris likes to play the guitar too. But, Chris is not a musician by his trade. He himself keeps the water fresh in the mountains of Santa Cruz (that same word again [~cross!]).

Who's at the second table? Well, children ate there. They are Leo, my son. He's the elder of the two. Niall took this picture. Of course, he's the younger son of ours. Linda's the daughter and little Chris the son (the third one now?) of Nancy and Dan. Jairo came too. He's the son of Ana, but she could not come there.

This was the first grand feast that was made in the new kitchen. Layne marvelled at using her cookware and oven and two machines for washing dishes ("dishwasher" is not in my Irish dictionary). She picked the blue and green and orange colors in the rooms here as well.

She bought a larger television. Why? She and the sons wanted to view programs when they gathered on the central floor of our house.

I might say that I stay now and then, but I grow restless quickly. There's a need for me to leave to my little library. I choose a more soothing place shortly.

P.S. I wrote most of this entry earlier, but I did not have a dictionary on me at the start. There was a break before teaching. I spent the duration working in Irish only in my brain. I did not know a phrase and a particular meaning. I made notes in English when I did not know the Irish version in my mind. I reckoned mightily, and it was practicing to help me.

Gerard Donovan's "Young Irelanders": Book Review.

I've reviewed (here and at Amazon US, where this review appeared yesterday) this Galway-born, New York-based novelist's previous work: "Schopenhauer's Telescope," about a Balkan-ish standoff, in educated exchanges, between a captive and his captor; "Sunless," (aka "Doctor Salt" abroad) a dystopian take on the pharmaceutical industry set near the Great Salt Lake; and "Julius Winsome," a feral blend of Shakesperean invective and wilderness revenge. All three should be made into films. [I think of the first (which he told us in 2006 was just optioned) directed by Srdjan Dragojevic as a less scabrous "Pretty Village, Pretty Flame"; the second by Todd Haynes in "Safe" fashion; the third by Sam Raimi as with "A Simple Plan."] You can see from these three novels how broad Donovan's range can be, and in this first collection of his short fiction, thirteen Irish settings intensify rather than narrow his artistic scope. (In Britain, its title is "Country of the Grand.")

At a reading of "Julius" in Oregon about two years ago, I heard the author explain why he didn't write Irish-themed fiction; it simply did not demand his attention the way his other plots had. Still, he's been building up a solid stack of it over fifteen years. This anthology reveals Donovan's ability to hone in with his clear gaze, poetic glimpses, and delineated scrutiny upon the difficulty of relationships. Set in Salthill, Galway city, Ennis, Moycullen, and such often overlooked (save in the Jack Taylor noir series by Galwegian Ken Bruen, also all reviewed by me) hubs on or near the suburbanizing Irish western coast, these depictions concentrate less on the scenery, little on the blarney, more on the b.s., and lots on the contemporary despair.

They're linked, loosely, by themes. In "Morning Swimmers," a cuckold overhears his friends talk of his wife's affair. He spies on those he had trusted, as they "tip over like milk into tea. They swim once around the tower, bodies static but busy, insects in a toilet bowl." (20) "How Long Until" follows a man who suspects his wife; "he wondered what kept any couple together, what preserved a marriage from the people in it." (30) The writing's efficient, moving the pace along firmly yet modestly, befitting its conflicted characters. Donovan favors the guise of transparency. His characters tend to drift along, yet beneath their predicaments, time pulls them out of their shallow introversions. In "Shoplifting in the USA," the protagonist "wanted it to be true that people like me can survive, but hope can break you if you keep insisting on telling yourself the truth." (53)

This underlies the storylines. "Country of the Grand" follows a man's mid-life crisis compressed into an early evening. Married nineteen years, his wife calls him at the office: "He put the phone in his pocket without going to voicemail." (57) "By Irish Nights" reminds us of Donovan's start as a poet; this brief narrative itself unfolds as nearly a prose-poem, harnessed to the natural power beneath the man-made dominance of the island. This tug sustains itself over the much longer account of "Archeologists." At first, the struggle of the paired Neolithic excavators racing ahead of the relentless construction that bulldozes bogs appears pat, but with one's patience in the uncovering of the literary layers, deeper meaning sifts in.

"The little flakes of stone and soil could have been planets at the end of her brush, so far away they seemed," and the female archeologist cannot "bridge the gap somehow," for "those people from the past did not speak loudly enough about themselves." (100) But, she perseveres, although what she unearths unsettles. The last sentence: "They stared under the creaking wire as the brown and mute bones of the Young Irelander moved in and out of the dark." (108)

"Glass" regresses to 1974, before the boom, and reminds us of less distant-- if nearly as remote given current Irish consumerism-- struggles for survival. Fewer options then. A teenager recalls his mother's admonition. "But a lot of men would like to meet a widow who lives in a clean house. I'm going back to that pub. I'm going to meet a nice man on his holidays." (123)

The later stories explore dislocation. These drew me in less readily, but this may reflect only my own identification with the characters rather than any inherent lack of quality. A new widow finds out about her husband's secret past in "Another Life;" this story reminded me of Frank O'Connor or Seán O'Faolain in its reminders of a more domesticated, middle-class, scenario of an aging woman's loneliness. "A photograph is dated instantly by color, she once heard Paul say. But black and white is timeless." (134) For "The Summer of Birds," a shadowy presence of new immigrants parallels the creatures fed by a young girl in her mother's mysterious absence from their estate. "We lived in a suburb east of the city, another development of many that spread white houses over the green hills like spilled milk," she reflects. (148)

"The Receptionist" moves into stranger studies, of a cuckolded voyeur's unsettled presence at a Galway city hotel. His upheaval's expanded into "Harry Dietz," the longest entry here, and one that in the protagonist's mental confusion recalls the main figure trapped in "Sunless." Donovan's on to a clever idea with his transposition of Cold War-era bomb shelters with terrorist threats today, combining into Harry's flight into a Chicago subway station. Still, parts of this lengthy story drift about in verisimilitude that may not keep every reader's attention span sharp!

"New Deal" precedes this with its own violence, physical rather than mental. It's the only story with any action. The reliance on psychic rather than visceral struggle may make, after one reads story after story, less of an impact. I think, as with "Julius" and "Schopenhauer," that when Donovan enters the world of payback, his fiction does take a leap into a more immediate grasp of tension if not resolution. After the cease-fires, those crossing and recrossing the Irish border abandon slogans for robberies. "We used to kill for country, now we had something we could count." (175)

The volume concludes with "Visit." Old age comes to the narrator's parent, at a home in Mullingar, exiled in the midlands away from her home: "My mother faced west where the sky breached the uneven rooftops and the early evening light pressed the orange doors of the houses. She was smiling. Her eyes were closed and her face was calm, turned to the sun." (222)

The sun may be setting, but the peace of this last story pervades with welcome closure after the many wanderings of its earlier characters, lost and desparate, as on the outskirts of the author's transformed hometown: "Galway had spread in the last decade, gushing for miles along the roads that led to it, pink and blue neon signs, huge hotels standing alone till more business built up around them, and then the rabbit-cage houses." (32) Out of this new terrain, Donovan digs his own path.

P.S. Short Interview with Donovan at "The Short Review".