Fair Weather by Richard Peck

Source of book: Borrowed from my kid. 

 Since my second kid introduced us to Richard Peck about 7 years ago, we have greatly enjoyed his books. He writes with a broad range, from historical fiction to modern ghost stories to Victorian mice to slapstick. Here are our previous selections:

 Here Lies the Librarian

A Long Way From Chicago

The Mouse With the Question Mark Tail

Past Perfect Present Tense

The River Between Us

Secrets at Sea

The Teacher’s Funeral

A Year Down Yonder

I was surprised to discover that we hadn’t listened to a Richard Peck book in quite some time. I believe that there is only one more audiobook in our library system. Indeed, this book doesn’t appear to have been made into an audiobook at all, which is sad. It would make a good one. I bought the book and read it to my younger kids. 

 

The story behind this book is kind of interesting. Originally, Peck wrote a short story about the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, entitled “The Electric Summer.” Unlike some of his other stories, which became the beginnings of other books, this one inspired a novel that was somewhat different from the story. 

The short story was perhaps my favorite of his, being a nuanced coming-of-age story, with a perceptive take on the relationship between a mother and daughter. The novel is rather different, with additional characters, and significant plot changes. In a way, this was disappointing, because I had kind of hoped to read a longer version of the original story. 

But that really is unfair. After all, there is nothing wrong with the book - it really is delightful in its own right. Peck decided to write a less serious and more humorous book, and also direct it more toward tweens than young adults like the original. 

Here is the basic idea behind the book. Rosie Beckett and her family live on a farm in rural Illinois somewhere. (The fictional “Christian County” - while there are counties with that name in Kentucky and Missouri, both are too far away to work for the train trip described.) Their life is, to Rosie, pretty boring and predictable. She isn’t sure she wants that future. (So far, very like the short story.) Then, an invitation from their Aunt Euterpe arrives. She wants them to come visit her in Chicago and see the Columbian Exposition. Rosie’s mom is fearful, but decides to send the three kids, Rosie, older sister Lottie, and little brother Buster for the visit, but stay home herself. One of the reasons she decides to do this, despite her misgivings, is that she wants to get Lottie away from her boyfriend, Everett, who she thinks is a drifter, possibly with a prison background. (This is far from the truth, as we find out at the end of the book.) 

While the mother attempts to send her own train ticket back, it is intercepted by Granddad, who is a force of nature and a delightfully humorous character. He flags down the train en route, and joins the kids, much to the shock and horror of Aunt Euterpe. 

Many humorous adventures ensue, from the kids causing the horribly incompetent servants to quit, to Buster getting lost in the Midway amidst the peep shows and belly dancers. The culmination of the visit, however, is when Granddad takes them to see Buffalo Bill do his show. Granddad’s dog Tip crashes the party, and in the confusion and aftermath, it turns out that Granddad fought in the war with William F. Cody, and they are old friends. This results in an invitation to see the rest of the show in a box, next to Granddad’s idol, Lillian Russell. 

The book has a lot of great humorous zingers, great slapstick, and a bunch of historical figures that are mentioned or appear in the book. As usual, Peck writes a great story. He was just an amazing storyteller, regardless of the topic. 

I thought there were some interesting parallels between this book and the pair of related books, A Long Way From Chicago and A Year Down Yonder that he wrote right before Fair Weather. In some ways, they are mirror images. In Fair Weather, the country girl goes to the city to find herself. In the others, the city girl goes to the country to find herself. In each, there is a memorable and humorous elder relative. Grandma Dowdel is probably the best, but Granddad is no slouch. In all of the books, Peck’s generous portrayal of both city and country life and his gentle humor make the books particularly great for younger kids. 

I should also mention the use of minced oaths in this book. Granddad has a bit of a mouth, but his daughters have taught him to avoid “real” swearing around the kids. So he minces oaths in a hilarious manner. My favorite is “hecaTEE!” which has the brilliance of combining a hellacious reference with the goddess of witchcraft. 

Fair Weather is a lot of fun, and my kids enjoyed it. It seems to be impossible to find a bad Richard Peck book. It is sad that he is no longer with us, and that there will be no more stories, but we are fortunate to have the many he wrote over a long and productive career. 

 

Forest of a Thousand Lanterns by Julie Dao

Source of book: I own this

 This was this month’s selection for our “Literary Lush” book club. One of the things I enjoy about this club is that I end up reading interesting books that I never would have discovered on my own. Forest of a Thousand Lanterns was definitely not one I would have discovered on my own.

 

In general, this book wasn’t that well loved by our club. Perhaps it suffered in comparison with Deacon King Kong, which was outstanding, but it also had some flaws of its own. 

 The book is meant to be a retelling/reimagining of the backstory for the Evil Queen from Snow White. The sequel book presumably covers the Snow White part of the story. Dao sets the story in a mythical Asian-style kingdom that appears to draw elements from both Imperial China and Samurai-era Japan. 

 Xifeng is a beautiful young woman, trained by her abusive aunt to be cultured and talented, in preparation for a grand destiny. She is, so the cards say, to become the empress someday. To this end, she runs away with Wei, her lover, for the capital city. She then enters the Emperor’s palace as a lady-in-waiting, before scheming to eliminate rivals and eventually marry the Emperor. 

 Xifeng starts out as a sympathetic character, and for a while, there is at least the question of whether she will turn to the dark side or not. Unfortunately, the real turning point is when she abandons Wei to go to the palace...and this takes place only a third of the way into the book. Thus, pretty much any suspense is over early on, and the rest seems like playing out the string, so to speak. 

 The problem isn’t just with the early decision, but with the psychology. While Dao tries to make Xifeng struggle with her choices, it doesn’t seem like she really does, after she commits to being empress. In the cutthroat world of the palace, it is literally kill or be killed, and Xifeng doesn’t have much agency other than to “follow her destiny at whatever cost.” 

 Furthermore, Xifeng lacks complexity. Her most salient character is her beauty. That’s her calling card, and why she gets what she wants. She has some skills as a result of her training, but they seem performative. She knows vast amounts of poetry, for example, but poems seem to be weapons for her to use, not wisdom she has absorbed. Her motivations are too simple, too, to be believable. 

The book does have some good parts. I thought that the descriptions were evocative, particularly the forest and the palace. Dao creates a compelling world for her characters. The scene with the hot springs and mirror in the water is memorable and haunting. 

 The book also seems to start to go an interesting direction with Xifeng seeking to be free from the patriarchy of her “traditional” culture. This is one reason that she spurns Wei, who, after all, is a bit patriarchal. The forest demon queen is correct, however, that there isn’t anything more “free” about working in the palace. Even becoming empress is, in a world where women are rarely permitted to rule, simply a chance to be a more powerful possession of a man. This interesting question is rather cast to the side as the book goes on. In the actual event, Xifeng becomes the minion of the Serpent God, and not any more free than she would have been as a wife kept at home. And more than that, she wouldn’t even have the benefit of true friendship and love. 

“The truest love and friendship rarely come to those in power.”

 Also perceptive is a “red shirt” member of the diplomatic envoy they travel with. 

 

“I’m sick to death of lords and kings and emperors. What do they do but play games and let their people pay the price in blood? We have no quarrel with each other. Only kings are arrogant enough to believe the world too small to hold other men.”

 This echoes observations by Steven Pinker and Tim Blanning. 

 Overall, the book was disappointing, but not terrible. It was a diverting read for stretches, before kind of fizzling into inevitability by the end. 

Deacon King Kong by James McBride

Source of book: I own this.

 This was this month’s selection for our “Literary Lush” book club. One of the things I enjoy about this club is that I end up reading interesting books that I never would have discovered on my own. I hadn’t heard of either this book (which just came out) and wasn’t familiar with James McBride, although a few of his other books sound familiar. However, I rather enjoyed it, as did other members of our club, making it one of the most universally loved selections since I joined the club. 

 James McBride has apparently written a number of other books, often with historical settings, and was awarded a National Humanities medal by President Obama. I dare say I will be putting his other books on my reading list.

 I’m not even sure what to call Deacon King Kong. It is literary fiction, in my opinion. But it is such a weird blend of pathos and humor that it defies categorization. It is a thoughtful book, but with elements of slapstick and magical realism. It makes a pair of suicides seem like a sacrament - a baptism. It makes a potential affair seem good for the characters. It has killer red ants, killer hooch, and mysterious cheese. And, more than anything, it has a bunch of memorable characters, any of which could be the center of their own story. 

 Set in the Brooklyn projects in 1969, the book starts and centers around a bizarre incident. “Sportcoat,” an old man who lost his wife a few years back and has spiraled into alcoholism, shoots the ear off the local drug dealer, a young man named Deems, who was once Sportcoat’s protege in the local baseball team. From there, the past and present swirl around the fallout from that incident, drawing in gangsters, cops, smugglers, an ancient artifact, and a few old secrets. Sportcoat is the deacon of the title - a deacon of Five Ends Baptist Church who prefers the illicit hooch King Kong to any commercial preparation. 

 As it turns out, there are connections to The Elephant, the last in a line of Italian smugglers. Why did his dad fund the construction of the church, including an epic mural of Christ on the side? Deems, in turn, is the pivot point of a drug war. And why did Sportcoat’s wife Hettie end up floating in the harbor? And what happened to the Christmas Fund money she kept but never told anyone where? 

 McBride brings in an honest Irish cop trying to make it alive to retirement, a dying gangster whose daughter runs a bagel shop, the delightful maintenance man for the building, Hot Sausage, and so many more. 

 I hesitate to describe the book more than that, because the plot is fun and full of surprises (although I figured out a few things ahead of time.) I recommend reading it for yourself. 

 McBride’s writing is outstanding - one of the comments in our club meeting was that from the first few pages, you really feel like you are there. The sights and sounds and smells and social dynamics really come alive. One person who had lived in New York City concurred with the reality of the area described - McBride grew up there, the son of an African American preacher and a Jewish-Polish mother - the daughter of a rabbi. The thing is, McBride doesn’t actually spend a whole lot of words on descriptions: he manages to create the picture without obviously doing so. Also a feature of his style is that he can take shootings and drugs and booze and gangsters and add the humor and slapstick without it feeling like a parody. It’s as much a part of the world he creates as the ghost of Hettie. 

 There are lots of good lines, a few of which I jotted down. 

 The first is an incident that is pretty hilarious, but has almost nothing to do with the rest of the plot: an explanation of how the red ants came to Brooklyn. Hector, the Colombian immigrant, gets too big for his britches, and dumps his wife and kids back home. She tearfully agrees to a divorce, and packs him lunch. When he opens it back in Brooklyn, he finds it full of the red ants, and a note saying “Adios motherfucker...we know you ain’t sending no pesos!” The ants establish themselves, and become part of the yearly life of the projects. This leads into a fantastic sentence in which the ants become

 

...a sole phenomenon in the Republic of Brooklyn, where cats hollered like people, dogs eat their own feces, aunties chain-smoked and died at age 102, a kid named Spike Lee saw God, the ghosts of the departed Dodgers soaked up all possibility of new hope, and penniless desperation ruled the lives of the suckers too black or too poor to leave, while in Manhattan the buses ran on time, the lights never went out, the death of a single white child in a traffic accident was a page one story, while phony versions of black and Latino life ruled the Broadway roost, making white writers rich — West Side Story, Porgy & Bess, Purlie Victorious — and on it went, the whole business of the white man's reality lumping together like a giant, lopsided snowball, the Great American Myth, the Big Apple, the Big Kahuna, the City That Never Sleeps, while the blacks and Latinos who cleaned the apartments and dragged out the trash and made the music and filled the jails with sorrows slept the sleep of the invisible and functioned as local color.

 

I’m not the only reviewer to have noticed that line. It’s arguably the most memorable line in the book.

 The missing Christmas Fund money is not only a big motivation for Sportcoat, it puzzles everyone in the church. Hettie never did disclose its location, and it never does appear. (Sorry about the spoiler.) Did she simply pocket the money herself? It seems possible. Is it hiding somewhere in the church? Also possible. What isn’t a mystery is why she kept it herself. 

 

“She ain’t supposed to walk around with the Christmas box.”

“She had to hide it someplace after she collected for it. Normally she hid it at church. But she didn’t always have time to wait for church to empty out. Sometimes folks would linger eating fish dinners or the pastor would preach overtime or some such thing and she had to go home, so she brung it home with her.”

“Why didn’t she lock it in the pastor’s office?”

“What fool would keep money ‘round a pastor?” Rufus asked. 

Sportcoat nodded knowingly.  

 

I have been a part of a number of churches in my lifetime, and one thing I can say is that I agree with Rufus. And, interestingly, one of the best ways to tell if a pastor is honorable about money is how careful he is to distance himself from the money. The honorable ones keep as far away as possible from it, delegating the financial stuff to someone independent. (Or at least as independent as possible in a small church.) It makes a difference. 

 Another interesting observation comes from the old, retired gangster, the Governor, talking about his deceased brother. (Who was also an artifact smuggler - he found a cave of stolen Nazi treasures including, in a fictional incident, the Venus of Willendorf. This artifact is in the book, although clearly the whole episode is fiction, not fact.) 

 

“He had an apartment in the Village the size of a rugby field. Full of fancy things. I never asked. He had no kids, so I figured it wasn’t anything. My poppa couldn’t stand Macy. He used to say, ‘Macy likes boys.’ I told Poppa, ‘There was a priest at Saint Andrews who’s said to like boys.’ But he didn’t want to hear it. I was a young man back then, fast on my feet and a bit of a wanker, but even then I knew the difference between a sick man who likes children and a man sweet on men.” 

 

This is a distinction lost on a lot of people in my Fundie former tribe, alas. 

 Another perceptive passage concerning sex is between the Irish cop and the wife of the pastor of Five Ends Baptist. She is in a loveless marriage, to an older man who she married before she understood what she was doing. As a divorce attorney, this rings true. 

 

She had been seventeen when she wed a man twelve years older than her. He had seemed to have purpose but turned out to have none, other than an affinity for football games and the ability to pretend to be what he was not, to pretend to feel things he did not feel, to make jokes out of things that did not work for him, and like too many men she knew, daydream about meeting some lovely young thing from the choir, preferably at three a.m., in the choir pew. She didn’t hate her husband. She just didn’t know him.

 

This one too was fascinating. Sister Gee (the pastor’s wife) is pressed for information by Potts, the Irish cop, after an incident in which the hapless Earl tries to put a hit on Sportcoat, but ends up bonked by a wayward bottle, then set on the subway back home by Sister Gee and a young gentle giant from the church. 

 

“You should have called us.”

“Why we got to have the police around every time we has a simple party? Y’all don’t watch out for us. Y’all watch over us. I don’t see y’all out there standing over the white folks in Park Slope when they has their block parties.” 

 

In recent years, as cell phone video has made it increasingly obvious even to this sheltered white guy that our experience with the police is vastly different from the experience of non-whites, McBride calls it straight. “To Protect and Serve,” as the LAPD motto goes, is directed at whites. The police protect “us” from “them.” And serve “us” at the expense of “them.” It’s a heartbreaking state of affairs. 

 

In a conversation later in the book, Potts can’t quite understand why the Five Ends folks are so obsessed with that Christmas Club money. 

 

“You were talking about the church money. It’s got nothing to do with this trouble.”

“It’s got everything to do with it. That Christmas Club money is all we can control. We can’t stop these drug dealers from selling poison in front of our houses. Or make the city stop sending our kids to lousy schools. We can’t stop folks from blaming us for everything gone wrong in New York, or stop the army from calling our suns to Vietnam after them Vietcong done cut the white soldiers’ toenails too short to walk. But the little nickels and dimes we saved up so we can give our kids ten minutes of love at Christmastime, that’s ours to control. What’s wrong with that?”

 

Although Potts isn’t quite getting it, he is falling in love with Sister Gee, and he flounders trying to express his concern for the danger she is in. After all, the drug bigwig wants to put the hit on Sportcoat; and, since the hapless Earl failed, is sending in his big gun: Harold Dean. 

 

He wanted to say, “He’s a killer and I don’t want him near you.” But he had no idea what her reaction would be. He didn’t even know what Harold Dean looked like. He had no information other than an FBI report with no photo, only the vaguest description that he was a negro who was “armed and extremely dangerous.” 

 

Dang, that’s some good satire. And it particularly hits home because “Harold Dean” is actually Haroldeen, a young woman. The whole “hey, he looked like the suspect” is problematic for the reason above. It seems the “all black people look alike” trope is alive and well in law enforcement, alas.

 [Side note: years ago, when I saw the Harlem Globetrotters, one of the jokes was that the big “clown prince” guy borrowed a purse from an older woman in the front row. When the referee told him to give it back, he said he couldn’t, because he wasn’t sure who he took it from. It was some woman. What woman? A white woman. Which one? He didn’t know, because they all looked alike…]

 Anyway, Potts keeps harping on “he’s dangerous.” Sister Gee is ready with a great response:

 

“Nothing in this world is dangerous unless white folks says it is,” she said flatly. “Danger here. Danger there. We don’t need you to tell us about danger in these projects. We don’t need you to say what the world is to us.”

 

Preach it. And Potts really is trying to get it, which makes him better than a whole lot of people in our country. 

 I have to end with a humorous bit. It would take too long to explain the characters and the situation, but suffice it to say that rumor has it that Hot Sausage was killed in a gun battle. (He was only injured, don’t worry.) 

 

Joaquin, several spots behind them, looked strangely sad. “I borrowed twelve dollars from Sausage,” he said. “I’m glad I didn’t pay it back.”

“God, you are cheap,” Miss Izi said. She was standing a good five people ahead of her ex-husband and stepped out of line to address him. “You’re so tight with money your ass squeaks when you walk.” 

 

This book was a lot of fun, thoughtful and perceptive, and packed with great characters. I’m definitely planning to add some more James McBride books to my list. 

 

***

 

Just for fun, here is the list of books that our book club has read. At least the ones I have read too. Most of these were read for the club, but a few were ones I read previously - those posts pre-date the club discussion - and some I read afterward, because I missed the discussion. 

 

Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente

Bad News by Edward St. Aubyn

Circe by Madeline Miller

Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Calypso by David Sedaris

The Air You Breathe by Frances de Pontes Peebles

The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

There There by Tommy Orange

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

Be Frank With Me by Julia Claiborne Johnson

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Educated by Tara Westover

Stiff by Mary Roach

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

The Marsh King’s Daughter by Karen Dionne

Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin

Never Mind by Edward St. Aubyn

All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders

Artemis by Andy Weir

Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov 

The Radium Girls by Kate Moore

 

Candide by Voltaire

Source of book: I own this. 

This is one of those books that I probably should have read years ago. We read about it in high school, but I don’t think we read any excerpts. (Probably too racy for a Fundie curriculum...those crazy French authors!) I also didn’t own a copy until recently. I picked up a lovely hardback Easton Press edition at a recent library sale, which gave me the chance to read it. 

First published in 1759, Candide caused controversy and scandal from the outset. Although it was widely known that Voltaire wrote it, he used a pseudonym for plausible deniability. His publishers weren’t so lucky, and were hounded and prosecuted and bankrupted for their pains. Ah, the good old days, when government censorship was inescapable. (Actually, Candide was indeed Banned In Boston in 1929.) As is often the case with censorship, this only increased the book’s popularity, and it became one of the most widely read and translated works of its era. 

Candide was influenced by Jonathan Swift’s earlier work, Gulliver’s Travels, as well as other picaresque novels, travelogues, and coming-of-age stories of the time. The title character (whose name is a bit of a pun, like the other characters) grows up in relative luxury, raised by a nobleman, and taught by Dr. Pangloss, who subscribes to Leibniz’ philosophy that we live in the best of all possible worlds. When Candide tries some kissing on the baron’s daughter, he is evicted, and begins a series of tragic and ludicrous adventures, becoming more and more disillusioned. 

The story itself is highly unrealistic, shockingly bloody (although few actually end up dying like we think they have), and deliciously satirical. Voltaire takes on pretty much every institution of his time, but also a lot of beliefs - and the problem of evil. Religion, of course, is thoroughly skewered, which is one reason it was banned. But also, governments, the military, philosophers, and society get solid digs throughout. Hypocrisy isn’t hard to find, of course. 

Regular readers of English Victorian literature like myself tend to find French writers a bit...racy. The thing of it is that they assume a certain degree of female promiscuity as normal, and don’t have the obsession with virginity that English and American writers seem to. This book plays sex for laughs and horror. The main female character, Cunegonde, is raped in the second chapter, is kept as a mistress by both a Jew and a priest at the same time (shocking enough at the time), becomes the mistress of a Governor in South America, then a sex slave to a pirate, and finally ends up as the nagging wife of Candide. But at least she becomes a good cook. (It is hard to explain how funny that line is without the context.) 

The book is both very much of its time, yet with timeless satire. I can’t say all of it has aged well - the bit about the women taking monkeys as lovers feels like a racist jab at indigenous peoples, for example. But much more feels contemporary. After all, Voltaire points out the tendency of powerful men to rape and abuse women, or at least use and discard them. Greed and jealousy haven’t gone away either, nor has ludicrous class chauvinism. Human nature is still human nature. 

Speaking of that, Candide is forced into the Bulgarian military, but chickens out and hides during the brutal battle. Voltaire’s description of the aftereffects of the battle are unfortunately spot on:

He clambered over heaps of dead and dying men and reach a neighboring village, which was in ashes; it was an Abare village, which the Bulgarians had burned in accordance with international law. Here, old men dazed with blows watched the dying agonies of their murdered wives who clutched their children to their bleeding breasts; there, disemboweled girls who had been made to satisfy the natural appetites of heroes gasped their last sighs; others, half-burned, begged to be put to death. Brains were scattered on the ground among dismembered arms and legs.

As he flees this horror, he comes across a village that belongs to the other side, and the same thing was done by them. At this point, he is still clinging to the “this is the best of all possible worlds” philosophy, but it is getting harder. 

Soon afterward, Candide is reunited with Pangloss, who relates the sad fates of the baron and his household. (Although it turns out they aren’t all dead…) Pangloss looks like hell, and confesses that when Candide caught him “giving a lesson in experimental physics” to the maid, he caught syphilis. 

“My dear Candide! You remember Paquette, the maid-servant of our august Baroness; in her arms I enjoyed the delights of Paradise which have produced the tortures of Hell by which you see I am devoured; she was infected and perhaps is dead. Paquette received this present from a most learned monk, who had it from the source; for he received it from an old countess, who had it from a cavalry captain, who owed it to a marchioness, who derived it from a page, who had received it from a Jesuit, who, when a novice, had it in direct line from one of the companions of Christopher Columbus.” 

Voltaire is actually correct about this: it is generally agreed that Columbus’ crew brought syphilis back from the New World with them. But notice how many unspoken truths Voltaire puts in this one statement. Pangloss taking advantage of his position to seduce a maid, who had previously slept with a monk, who also did it with a countess. The randy countess did it with both clergy and military; the soldier was irresistible to multiple rich women, one of whom also had the hots for young boys. (A page would be from ages 7-14, typically.) That boy was infected after being raped by a priest, who got it by a chain back to Columbus. That’s a lot of morally and/or socially unacceptable relationships that were widely known to exist, but were not always talked about in public. 

Despite all this, Pangloss continues to cling to his philosophy. 

“It was all indispensable, and private misfortunes make the public good, so that the more private misfortunes there are, the more everything is well.” 

If you think this sounds a bit like Social Darwinism (which would come into vogue a century later), you are right. 

Candide is, through improbably circumstances, reunited with Cunegonde, only to find that she is dependent on selling her body to the Jewish merchant and the Inquisitor on alternating days. They both show up, and, jealous of finding Cunegonde in the presence of another man, try to kill Candide, who kills them instead in self defense. Cunegonde marvels that Candide, who is both mild mannered and incompetent with a sword, manages this. 

“My dear young lady,” replied Candide, “when a man is in love, jealous, and has been flogged by the Inquisition, he is beside himself.” 

That’s a laugh out loud line, and wouldn’t be entirely out of place in The Princess Bride. 

One of the watercolor illustrations from my Easton Press edition of the book, by Sylvain Sauvage.

There is a decent amount of gratuitous boobage, but what do you expect from a French artist?

The party flees to South America, where they end up in Paraguay. Candide’s servant, Cacambo (the most rational person in this crazy book), spent time there, and explains how things are. 

“Their government is a most admirable thing. The kingdom is already more than three hundred leagues in diameter and is divided into thirty provinces. Los Padres have everything and the people have nothing; ‘tis the masterpiece of reason and justice. For my part, I know nothing so divine as Los Padres who here make war on the Kings of Spain and Portugal and in Europe act as their confessors; who here kill Spaniards and at Madrid send them to Heaven; all this delights me…” 

Eventually, Candide meets another philosopher, Martin, who is the opposite of Pangloss. Martin is cynical and pessimistic about everything, which makes him as mockable as Pangloss. Here are a couple of exchanges:

“But to what end was this world formed?” said Candide.

“To infuriate us,” replied Martin.

I am reminded of the famous line from The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy…

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory mentioned, which states that this has already happened.

Later in the conversation, the naive Candide asks another question:

“Do you think,” said Candide, “that men have always massacred each other, as they do today? Have they always been liars, cheats, traitors, brigands, weak, flighty, cowardly, envious, gluttonous, drunken, grasping, and vicious, bloody, backbiting, debauched, fanatical, hypocritical and silly?”

“Do you think,” said Martin, “that sparrow-hawks have always eaten the pigeons they came across?”

“Yes, of course,” said Candide.

“Well,” said Martin, “if sparrow-hawks have always possessed the same nature, why should you expect men to change theirs?”

Near the end, Candide and Martin are the guests of Pococurante, a rich epicurean who is a critic of everything. Martin is just cynical, but Pococurante finds his “excellent taste” prevents him from enjoying nearly everything. After dismissing the classics of the time as mostly rubbish, Pococurante gives away his game:

“Fools admire everything in a celebrated author. I only read to please myself, and I only like what suits me.” 

I know a few people like that. Nothing against reading for fun - hey, I do it all the time! But to go through life unchallenged, only dabbling in what you already know and like, seems a tragedy. 

After all these crazy adventures, Pangloss, Candide, Martin, Cunegonde, and a few others they have picked up on the way, settle down on a bit of land in a sort of commune, and find some bit of contentment, if not exactly happiness. Martin urges everyone to work without arguing as that is the only way life will be endurable. Pangloss, despite admitting that he didn’t actually believe his own optimism, keeps on preaching it, claiming that all the horrors of the past were necessary for their current situation. Candide, finally older and wiser, ends the book by saying:

“‘Tis well said,” replied Candide, “but we must cultivate our gardens.” 

Candide is unlike any other book I have read, I must say. While clearly in the 18th Century style, it’s short episodes and rapid-fire plot contrast with the more wordy and rambling style of Swift and others. The book is short, but covers a bewildering amount of ground. All the wit and satire happens in such a rapid-fire manner that you can’t just whip through it - you have to stop and savor it. In a way, I was reminded of Mark Twain, who also used unexpected twists, improbable events, and razor-sharp satire throughout his work. 

***

Update: I got busy and completely forgot that I needed to add music to this! 

Back in the day, when I was a rookie violinist with the BSO, we had these summer pops concerts outdoors in the heat. We got a full rehearsal and a quick run-through before the concert, and that was it. We played 1812 Overture at the end with fireworks and stuff. 

Anyway, because literally everyone besides my brother and me had played the stuff a gazillion times, we got handed our music before the first rehearsal (we had a shot at 1812 because our teacher gave us parts to work on), and had to sight read Bernstein's Candide Overture. 

Total flop sweat time. 

We managed to make it through without playing in the rests, at least. Now, it doesn't seem as terrifying as it did back then, but I still remember that feeling of panic. Welcome to the big league, kid...