Reading Wednesday
Mar. 16th, 2016 03:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhWhat did you just finish?
Drinking Gourd by Barbara Hambly. In the 13th book of the Benjamin January mysteries, Benjamin's participation in the Underground Railroad takes a turn for the complicated. The plot starts when Benjamin is summoned to the small town of Vicksburg, Mississippi, where the local Railroad workers need a doctor who knows how to keep secrets. He brings along his friend Hannibal (a white man) for protection, and they soon find that there are many more secrets around than either anticipated.
This is a hard book to talk about without spoilers because of those very secrets. Many characters who seem trustworthy prove not to be, and first appearances count for very little. But without giving away specific plot details, I can say that the book deals with a paradox that's been around since at least Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale: "For though myself be a full vicious man / yet I can tell a moral tale". In this case, if the local Underground Railroad absolutely depends on one man, how much harm can that man do before it balances out the lives he's saving? Does it ever? Can good and evil even be balanced on the same scale like that? Benjamin is forced to ask himself how much evil he can tolerate to keep open this line of the Underground Railroad.
And he's not the only one facing hard decisions. Many people in this book are striving to justify the bad they do with acts of goodness, or let the appearance of goodness cloak their badness, or just trying to find the easiest path between two terrible fates. It's a book of incredibly complicated choices, and many of the decisions made could be betrayals or salvations; it all depends on your perspective.
Another theme is the position of women (and I kind of mourn the absence of Rose in this book, because I'd love to see her comments on it all. Though I suppose it's easy to guess what she would say). Black and white, upper class or prostitute, they're all trapped by the patriarchy and left with few options. Whether they sacrifice themselves or those with yet less power, there's little they can do to break free. Also – I can't think of a way to bring this up subtly – there is a lot of rape in this book (though none of it "on screen"), so if that's something you're sensitive to, be aware.
If there's anything I would critique, it's that the book is a little too busy, especially at the beginning, although it's hard to fault it for that because there's an enormous cast to be introduced, with all of their relationships and rivalries, not to mention a new setting to describe. The mystery hangs on a complicated tangle of 'who knew what when and where were they?', which necessitates the telling of yet more detailed information. Personally, I missed seeing the characters get a chance to simply breathe and spend time together, and I would have liked more space for their emotional reactions after some of the dramatic moments. But that lack (if it even is one; I'm sure some readers are bored with those sort of characterization details and prefer the action) makes room for a book that is much grander than much of the series, and which grapples with questions of a deeper and darker nature.
You could easily read this book without knowing anything about the rest of the series. It's a book that takes seriously the problems of ethical action in a flawed world, of the impossibility of escaping from any awful situation without doing some damage, and it gives a picture of American history which is complicated and layered and hugely engrossing. As dark as this book is, it was hard to stop reading. Highly recommended.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
Middle Passage by Charles R. Johnson. Well, this is a confusing book to describe. In 1830s New Orleans (yes, yes, one guess why I bought this book), Rutherford Calhoun is a highly educated ex-slave and current thief and general scoundrel. Seeking to escape his debts and avoid marrying his girlfriend, he stows away on a ship, only to discover that it's a slave-ship. He's remarkably nonchalant about this, at least until they reach Africa and load on their captives. After that things take a turn for the worse.
Despite the topic, it's not at all a depressing or grim book; it's a little bit humor, a little bit adventure, a little bit magical realism, and a whole lot of postmodern philosophy. Johnson was clearly hugely influenced by Moby Dick (we have the captain obsessed with pursuing a goal, the gentle first mate, the cabin boy who loses his voice and his mind) as well as The Mutiny on the Bounty (the friendship between the narrator and the one 'good' officer, harsh punishments leading to a mutiny) and probably a hundred other sea tales that I'm unaware of. The first person narration is insanely erudite, rhythmic, and wry, full of (presumably deliberate) anachronisms, and is a better inducement to read the book than the actual plot. Here he is describing the captain of the ship after the mutiny:
I saw half the ribs on his right side were broken, that he strained not only to deny a physical pain involuted and prismatic but deeper wounds as well. What were these? I could see that all he valued would perish from the indifference of Allmuseri [the slaves] who would no more appreciate the limits and premises of his life than he would theirs, whereby I mean his belief that one must conquer death through some great deed or original discovery, his need to soar above contingency, accident, and, yes, other pirates like John Silver and Captain Teach, his pseudo-genius – to judge it justly – which could invent gadgets but lacked genuine insight, which rained information down on you like buckshot, but in the disconnected manner of the autodidact, which showed all the surface sparks of brilliance – isolation, vanity, idealism – but was adrift from the laws and logic of the heart. All at once I found that I was still ensorcelled by a leader who lived by the principle of Never Explain and Never Apologize. But I pitied him too, for his incompleteness. I pitied him, as I pitied ourselves, for whether we liked it or not, he had changed a people simultaneously for the better and worse, made himself the silent prayer in all their projects to come. A cruel kind of connectedness, this. In a sense we all were ringed to the skipper in cruel wedlock. Centuries would pass whilst the Allmuseri lived through the consequences of what he had set in motion; he would be with them, I suspected, for eons, like an ex-lover, a despised husband, a rapist who, though destroyed by a mob, still comes to you nightly in your dreams: a creature hated yet nevertheless at the heart of all they thought or did.
I discovered after finishing this that Johnson has apparently written multiple books on Buddhism, which makes perfect sense. Themes of utter connectedness, of how action ripples inward and outward, of the interweaving of past and future into the now, and the way that nothing (whether person or thread or waterdrop) exists as an individual but only as part of the whole form the foundation of Middle Passage. I'm not even sure I 'get' everything here, but I liked reading it, and I'd recommend it.
What are you currently reading?
The Coral Strand by Ravinder Randhawa. Another book off NetGalley.
Drinking Gourd by Barbara Hambly. In the 13th book of the Benjamin January mysteries, Benjamin's participation in the Underground Railroad takes a turn for the complicated. The plot starts when Benjamin is summoned to the small town of Vicksburg, Mississippi, where the local Railroad workers need a doctor who knows how to keep secrets. He brings along his friend Hannibal (a white man) for protection, and they soon find that there are many more secrets around than either anticipated.
This is a hard book to talk about without spoilers because of those very secrets. Many characters who seem trustworthy prove not to be, and first appearances count for very little. But without giving away specific plot details, I can say that the book deals with a paradox that's been around since at least Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale: "For though myself be a full vicious man / yet I can tell a moral tale". In this case, if the local Underground Railroad absolutely depends on one man, how much harm can that man do before it balances out the lives he's saving? Does it ever? Can good and evil even be balanced on the same scale like that? Benjamin is forced to ask himself how much evil he can tolerate to keep open this line of the Underground Railroad.
And he's not the only one facing hard decisions. Many people in this book are striving to justify the bad they do with acts of goodness, or let the appearance of goodness cloak their badness, or just trying to find the easiest path between two terrible fates. It's a book of incredibly complicated choices, and many of the decisions made could be betrayals or salvations; it all depends on your perspective.
Another theme is the position of women (and I kind of mourn the absence of Rose in this book, because I'd love to see her comments on it all. Though I suppose it's easy to guess what she would say). Black and white, upper class or prostitute, they're all trapped by the patriarchy and left with few options. Whether they sacrifice themselves or those with yet less power, there's little they can do to break free. Also – I can't think of a way to bring this up subtly – there is a lot of rape in this book (though none of it "on screen"), so if that's something you're sensitive to, be aware.
If there's anything I would critique, it's that the book is a little too busy, especially at the beginning, although it's hard to fault it for that because there's an enormous cast to be introduced, with all of their relationships and rivalries, not to mention a new setting to describe. The mystery hangs on a complicated tangle of 'who knew what when and where were they?', which necessitates the telling of yet more detailed information. Personally, I missed seeing the characters get a chance to simply breathe and spend time together, and I would have liked more space for their emotional reactions after some of the dramatic moments. But that lack (if it even is one; I'm sure some readers are bored with those sort of characterization details and prefer the action) makes room for a book that is much grander than much of the series, and which grapples with questions of a deeper and darker nature.
You could easily read this book without knowing anything about the rest of the series. It's a book that takes seriously the problems of ethical action in a flawed world, of the impossibility of escaping from any awful situation without doing some damage, and it gives a picture of American history which is complicated and layered and hugely engrossing. As dark as this book is, it was hard to stop reading. Highly recommended.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
Middle Passage by Charles R. Johnson. Well, this is a confusing book to describe. In 1830s New Orleans (yes, yes, one guess why I bought this book), Rutherford Calhoun is a highly educated ex-slave and current thief and general scoundrel. Seeking to escape his debts and avoid marrying his girlfriend, he stows away on a ship, only to discover that it's a slave-ship. He's remarkably nonchalant about this, at least until they reach Africa and load on their captives. After that things take a turn for the worse.
Despite the topic, it's not at all a depressing or grim book; it's a little bit humor, a little bit adventure, a little bit magical realism, and a whole lot of postmodern philosophy. Johnson was clearly hugely influenced by Moby Dick (we have the captain obsessed with pursuing a goal, the gentle first mate, the cabin boy who loses his voice and his mind) as well as The Mutiny on the Bounty (the friendship between the narrator and the one 'good' officer, harsh punishments leading to a mutiny) and probably a hundred other sea tales that I'm unaware of. The first person narration is insanely erudite, rhythmic, and wry, full of (presumably deliberate) anachronisms, and is a better inducement to read the book than the actual plot. Here he is describing the captain of the ship after the mutiny:
I saw half the ribs on his right side were broken, that he strained not only to deny a physical pain involuted and prismatic but deeper wounds as well. What were these? I could see that all he valued would perish from the indifference of Allmuseri [the slaves] who would no more appreciate the limits and premises of his life than he would theirs, whereby I mean his belief that one must conquer death through some great deed or original discovery, his need to soar above contingency, accident, and, yes, other pirates like John Silver and Captain Teach, his pseudo-genius – to judge it justly – which could invent gadgets but lacked genuine insight, which rained information down on you like buckshot, but in the disconnected manner of the autodidact, which showed all the surface sparks of brilliance – isolation, vanity, idealism – but was adrift from the laws and logic of the heart. All at once I found that I was still ensorcelled by a leader who lived by the principle of Never Explain and Never Apologize. But I pitied him too, for his incompleteness. I pitied him, as I pitied ourselves, for whether we liked it or not, he had changed a people simultaneously for the better and worse, made himself the silent prayer in all their projects to come. A cruel kind of connectedness, this. In a sense we all were ringed to the skipper in cruel wedlock. Centuries would pass whilst the Allmuseri lived through the consequences of what he had set in motion; he would be with them, I suspected, for eons, like an ex-lover, a despised husband, a rapist who, though destroyed by a mob, still comes to you nightly in your dreams: a creature hated yet nevertheless at the heart of all they thought or did.
I discovered after finishing this that Johnson has apparently written multiple books on Buddhism, which makes perfect sense. Themes of utter connectedness, of how action ripples inward and outward, of the interweaving of past and future into the now, and the way that nothing (whether person or thread or waterdrop) exists as an individual but only as part of the whole form the foundation of Middle Passage. I'm not even sure I 'get' everything here, but I liked reading it, and I'd recommend it.
What are you currently reading?
The Coral Strand by Ravinder Randhawa. Another book off NetGalley.
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Date: 2016-03-25 01:18 am (UTC)