The Garlic Ballads by Mo Yan

Source of Book: Borrowed from the library

This is another of those books that has been on my list so long, I honestly don’t remember who recommended it or when.

What I do know is this: Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2012 for his body of work, including this book, Mo Yan is a pen name - it means “don’t speak,” the book was banned in China, and yet Mo Yan is unusual in that he won the prize and yet did not find himself in prison in China.

Mo Yan wrote quite a number of books prior to and after this one, and, like this one, most were translated into English by Howard Goldblatt, who also abridged some of them. It is not at all clear if that happened in this case - a quick internet search didn’t turn up anything definitive. In any case, it is fairly certain I will never read it in the original language, so what I read is what I had available.

 

 The Garlic Ballads was written in 1995, but is set in 1987, during a historical event - the “garlic glut.” The characters are fictional, but very much of the rest is quite historical. The basic events went down like this: officials of the local Chinese government order the local farmers to plant only one crop - garlic - and promise to pay a fixed rate for it. When the crop matures, there is a glut, and the same officials refuse to buy the garlic, it rots, causing a stink and ruining many of the farmers. They revolt and trash the office of the local commissioner, who hides in his home and refuses to respond. The government cracks down on the protesters, arresting many, who are then subjected to brutal conditions and abuse. Against this backdrop, Mo Yan writes a doomed love story, a tale of prejudice, and several episodes of corruption and oppression by the authorities.

Let me say at the outset that this book is brutal. And I don’t use that term lightly. It is thoroughly violent, with every kick and punch from the police landing with full force. Bodily fluids are everywhere, and if you can’t take people being forced to eat their vomit and urine, you probably shouldn’t read this book. I know our own law enforcement here in the United States has serious issues - and I wouldn’t want to be a young man of color here. But this is on a whole different level, where cattle prods and torture are considered a matter of course, and “justice” is not even an illusion - “confess or we make it harder on you” from everyone from the judge on down. So if you are looking for anything pleasant in this book, I warn that they are very, very few and far between.

The book focuses on two main characters - we see the events mostly through their eyes. The first is Gao Yang, a farmer who is socially disadvantaged because of his descent from people who were landlords before Communism. He is the recipient of much of the abuse in the book, despite his natural submissiveness and puzzlement at what is happening to him. (He got involved in the protests because he got caught up in the crowd, but is singled out as a “ringleader” apparently because of his social standing.) If anything “good” can be said to happen in this book, we assume it will happen in the future after he serves his time. And, to a large degree, we can hope things work out for him because of his wife, who is one of the truly decent people in the book. Perhaps because she is crippled (and therefore undesirable for marriage), she has both compassion and a resilience that other characters lack. The second is Gao Ma, another farmer, who has personal issues of his own, and who actually is a ringleader in the revolt. A smaller portion is told from the perspective of Fourth Aunt Fang, the matriarch of the Fang family.

Mo Yan doesn’t write a sequential story. We are plunged into the aftermath of the revolt with Gao Yang’s arrest, and it takes all of the book before we actually get back to the circumstances of the revolt itself. The characters essentially tell the back story through flashbacks, which are also interspersed with stories from legend and conversations with other characters. To top it off, part of the narrative is carried by short poetry excerpts at the beginning of the chapters, by the blind balladeer who sang the story of the garlic glut and revolt. (The title comes from these songs.) Thus, I would not say that the plot thread is easy to follow. Particularly at first, one can see glimpses of the past and future, but everything is so unclear. I would say that I was able to piece together the outline about halfway through, but many details were still not in place until near the end.

A couple of things really stood out to me about the book. The first is this: a lot of what we here in the West have been taught about Communism - particularly the Chinese version - is a big pile of excrement. It is particularly egregious on the part of the Right in their intentional oversimplification of Communist regimes to an economic system. I have written about this before in the past, specifically how systems like Communism and Nazism are united by their totalitarianism. Not so much religion or philosophy or economics, but by a belief in the necessity to exert absolute control over a population. Thus, it is the existence of the secret police - those above the law and answering only to the corrupt bosses - that define these regimes. I have read a number of books written by those who lived in these assorted countries during totalitarianism, and the universal theme is the lack of political, not economic freedom, which defines them. (One recent example is The Vagrants, by Yiyun Li, also about Communist China, from an insider.)

In this book, this is apparent from the outset. By 1987, at least, the rural Chinese farmers appear to own their land. It certainly seems that way. And, despite the “grow garlic and we’ll buy it,” edict, just about everyone still grows other foods for their own use. A few even hedge their bets, and don’t seem to suffer a consequence. The main way we can tell this is still a communist system is that there is a single buyer for the crops. Which, come to think of it, isn’t that far off from how some markets work here in the West. So no, it isn’t a truly free market, but it isn’t a full command economy, and “capitalism” exists in a recognizable form. After all, the farmers sell their crops and keep the proceeds. If they work harder and grow more, they get more money. So it isn’t somehow that people are too equal that is the problem. (And in practice, they aren’t that equal.) It is the totalitarianism.

What is striking, however, is the way that the totalitarian system readily adapts to the looser economic system - and becomes less a doctrinaire communism, and more like a corrupt kleptocracy, where those in power cheat and steal and take bribes and enrich themselves at the expense of others. And because absolute authority is accepted, they can get away with it.

This leads me to the second observation. In some ways, the Communism of Mao was a radical change from tradition. (Which is one reason why the Cultural Revolution led to mass starvation and other horrific results.) In this book, the past and present cultures both co-exist and fight for dominance.

The best example of this is at the heart of the doomed love story. Gao Ma is in love with young Fang Jinju, the only daughter of Fourth Aunt Fang. However, he is just a poor farmer and former soldier, so her family rejects the idea. Rather, what they want to do is marry her off to a much older and connected man with money...who hasn’t been able to marry before because he is gross and undesirable. But, in this case, there is a sweetener. If Jinju marries him, then Jinju’s deformed eldest brother will get a wife in exchange, which will allow the second brother to marry as well. So her body is basically sold in exchange for social and economic advantage.

Contracts like these are illegal under Communism, which has tried - with some success - to shift society to a more egalitarian view of the sexes. But out here in the rural districts, the law is not enforced, both because of the strength of misogynistic tradition and the universal fact that the wealthy and connected can do whatever the hell they want. The spirited Jinju is not okay with this and refuses, then runs off with Gao Ma and gets pregnant, throwing a huge wrench in the works. And then her family brutally beats her. This does not end well, alas. The greed and cruelty in the Fang family cause them to unravel when things start to go badly wrong.

It is interesting that there are signs of gender equality here and there in the story. Many of the police are female - and they are more likely to act compassionately and justly than the often vulgar and cruel men. The doctor who delivers the children in the village is female and highly educated. She pushes back against the rural parents who celebrate the birth of males, and mourn the birth of females. (As she correctly points out, the very same people then whine about how hard it is to find wives for their beloved sons. On a macro scale, this misogyny has led to a serious lack of females in China.)

Whatever else this book contains, it certainly does not fit an easy “socialism good, capitalism bad” narrative. Instead, it looks at the problems of corruption, of the ugly side of “tradition,” the challenges of forced change, and the human propensity toward violence and brutality. The problems seem rather more universally human than specific to one culture or government. The cure seems not “unrestrained capitalism” but a need for freedom, compassion, and decency. And really, all of those are bound up together. When we recognize others as human and treat them with compassion and empathy, we tend to give them freedom. It is when we dehumanize that enforcing rules and authority becomes more important than everything else. (Hey, didn’t the founder of a major religion talk about that a bit?)

I can’t say I really “enjoyed” this book. It was a tough read. But it also had some amazing writing - although I can’t say how much is in the original versus the translation. The descriptions are evocative, the emotional connection with the characters solid, and the language beautiful. I would be curious if all of Mo Yan’s books are this dark, because it would be interesting to see what he would do with characters in a world in which they could thrive, rather than be brutalized.

The Vagrants by Yiyun Li

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

It’s hard to believe it has been over five years since I read Gold Boy, Emerald Girl - Yiyun Li’s second collection of short stories. Since then, I have recommended them to a number of literary sorts, and I still think they have a unique and moving voice. I grabbed this book, her first novel, on a whim at the library. 

For better or worse, this is a difficult book. It begins with the execution of a young woman for political dissent, and ends with plenty of tragedy and betrayal. But it is also moving - and important - as well as fascinating and well written. Yiyun Li immigrated from China in the 1990s, and her experiences - and those of her parents - shape her writing. The trauma of the Cultural Revolution, the “Great Step Forward,” and particularly Tiananmen Square left impressions on her, and her fiction is set during these turbulent times.

The Vagrants is a novel, but it feels much like a set of interconnected short stories. The execution of Gu Shan reverberates through the lives of various people in the fictional small city of Muddy River, for better or worse. The stories all connect through that nexus (and others) despite their separate threads.

The theme in my view, is the way that a totalitarian society puts ordinary people in impossible situations, so that they predictably betray each other to save themselves. It is Game Theory in action. The game is rigged so that individuals gain - or at least lose less - if they turn each other in, even if that means fabricating “crimes” against the state in their neighbors. By banding together, it is more likely that they could force change, but the risk to any one person is too great, and the likelihood of betrayal practically inevitable.

Yiyun doesn’t write one-dimensional characters. There aren’t many heroes, and few true villains in this book. Rather, people have complicated and ambiguous motives and actions. In what has to be one of the best reversals I have read, the “golden boy” - the little boy with the good heart - ends up with one of the least comfortable futures, with his desire for approval leading to questionable actions and results. The flip side is the malignant idler Bashi, who starts off trying to find a girl he can screw - or rape if necessary. Except that once he finds the vulnerable crippled girl, he finds he can’t follow through on his plans, and ends up discovering a purpose outside his own selfishness. Both of these results are unexpected, and Yiyun makes the changes utterly convincing.

Like in Gold Boy, Emerald Girl, the overwhelming feeling one gets is one of aching loneliness. The system - particularly in combination with the old patriarchal beliefs that never went away - isolates everyone from each other. When you can’t trust your neighbor or your family, how can you have intimacy? And yet, there are some people and some moments where this occurs, and the scenes are total gems of character writing. The title characters, the two childless old people who take in the infant girls abandoned to die at the edge of town - they are bright spots of love. The moment when old Teacher Gu, whose wife has been arrested, finds an unexpected friend in a neighbor below his social circle. And this, after the man’s wife tries to destroy Teacher Gu.

As fair warning, I do need to say that this book is plenty traumatic. Yiyun throws a glaring light on one of the most sickening human rights violations of the Regime: dissidents would be held in prison, given genetic tests, then executed when their organs matched the needs of a powerful person. In some cases, the organs were removed while the person was still alive. This is pretty well documented, actually. Unsurprisingly, the most common victims were ethnic and religious minorities. (Human nature sucks so much, a lot of the time.) There are also some disturbing sexual elements, such as the creepy old man who saves corpses for burial (rather than cremation, as mandated by the Regime.) And severs the breasts and genitals of female corpses for his collection. But perhaps the worst is finding such a connection with characters that you just know are going to suffer.

Yiyun’s writing isn’t just good, it’s beautiful. I kept going back and re-reading passages just for the loveliness of the phrasing. It seems like a paradox, for the story to be so horrifying even as the writing is gorgeous.

I also want to talk a bit about totalitarianism, as this book really brought together a lot of my own thoughts on the subject.

In the right wing circles I used to run in - and to which a good number of friends and family still belong, Communism is used as a political weapon, a shibboleth of orthodoxy, and above all as a conversation ender when it comes to political discussions. The problem is that the essential core of Communism is misunderstood - or perhaps misrepresented.

In essence, as the argument goes now, the only two options are the totalitarian communism of Stalin or Mao on the one hand; or the anarcho-capitalism, the economic libertarianism (better described as social darwinism) of Ayn Rand. Thus, anything that smacks of wealth redistribution, a public sector, or regulation, is tarred as “Communism,” or at least “Socialism,” and the horrors of Mao and Stalin dragged out as the argument why we can’t have, to choose a common example, single payer health care. (Or fill in the blank with, say, a higher minimum wage, stronger unions, food stamps, or even Medicare and Social Security.) As soon as you start talking about inequality and the common good, clearly the Gulags are inevitable.

Suggest that maybe things might look more like, say, Sweden (or fill in the blank with another first world country…) rather than the Soviet Union, and you get called a pinko rather fast.

The same thing happened, of course, to the leaders of the Civil Rights movement. Desegregation meant death camps for whites, right?

Of course, for those of us with a Fundie background, “atheism” (with the biggest of scare quotes) was blamed for both Communism and Nazism. But also in there is the idea that the core of Communism is economic. That is, Communism is synonymous with any attempt to address inequality. Touch inequality, and you end up with the Gulag.

I think this very much misses the point. There is a reason why certain nasty regimes resemble each other so much, despite totally different economic philosophies. To give some examples, Nazism (a nasty right wing movement based on racial hatred, religious supremacy, reactionary gender roles, and militant nationalism) turned out to be strikingly similar to Stalinism (a nasty left wing movement based on class hatred, atheism, egalitarian gender roles, and militant nationalism.) And both are strikingly similar to the military dictatorships of Pinochet and Gaddafi. Or the far-right Islamist dictatorships like the Taliban or ISIS - and Iran and Saudi Arabia. Or the kleptocracies of South America. Or even the Roman Empire. The connecting thread for all of these isn’t economic theory - it’s totalitarianism.

Which is ALL about power.

It is about the power to control people’s lives, and deprive them of human rights. You can see in all of these the naked fact that speaking out against power is forbidden, and results in severe punishment, including death. The central idea is that one must never question authority, and that one should surrender one’s personhood in favor of the whims of those in power.

That’s why both hard right and hard left regimes resemble each other more than they resemble the democracies of the first world. That’s also why life in a fairly right wing democracy like the United States is fairly similar in many ways to life in a fairly left wing democracy like Sweden. Sure, there are differences, for better or worse. But in both, we can count on being able to speak out politically without getting whacked.

This is why it is pretty absurd to say that we will be one step from the gulags if we raise taxes so we can have universal health care. (And for that matter, tax rates on the wealthy are far below where they were in the 1950s, often held up as the zenith of American society by the right.) It’s also absurd to say that expecting employers to pay a living wage and provide benefits (like many of those 1950s corporations did - thanks to unions) will lead to the secret police. And also why it’s absurd to say that regulations keeping large companies from destroying the environment will lead to executions for political beliefs. It’s naked scare tactics divorced from any truth of history or even the present.

The Vagrants really brings this home.

In the Chinese society if the 1970s - after the disaster of the “Great Step Forward,” which led to mass starvation, and after the purges of intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution - the economic system actually looks a lot like it did before, just with different people at the top. Class differences haven’t gone away. “Capitalism” still mostly exists in a slightly different form - for the people at the bottom. After all, the upper classes (Communist leaders) are still fabulously wealthy, the middle classes have secure jobs, while the lower classes must find a way or starve. Hey! That sounds not that much unlike, say, every human society in history. Funny how that works. In that sense, Yiyun portrays a thoroughly recognizable society.

But things do look different from another perspective. Because of the totalitarianism, dissent is dangerous at best.

In what has turned out to be an interesting (and to some, surprising) development, modern China has become rather more economically free, while remaining politically repressed. Who knew? You actually can have capitalism and billionaires and stuff - and still have a totalitarian society. It really isn’t primarily about economics...

What struck me most about this is just how right Raymond Aron was. I have mentioned it before, but one of the best books I have read is Aron’s The Opium of the Intellectuals, wherein he points out that both Communism and Nazism are - above all - religions. Sure, they lack the traditional Supreme Being™, but the substitute impersonal forces. In Communism’s case, The End of History™.

In The Vagrants, this really comes out. Early in the book is the “denunciation ceremony” for Gu Shan. Attendance is mandatory for most people - and children. The stadium is filled, and there are hours of motivational speeches (sermons!), patriotic songs (hymns!), and praise of the Communist Party. “Without the Communist Party, we would have nothing!!”

Perhaps the most chilling moment comes in the propaganda delivered by a teacher to the children.

“[O]ur party has never been wrong and will never be wrong.”

That’s a cult.

That’s the sort of shit that you hear from toxic religions of all sorts. “We are always right and have never been wrong and will never be wrong.” The beginning of the end for me with Evangelicalism (in retrospect), came with a smug and self-congratulatory sermon from our former pastor. In which he basically made this argument.

This is how you get to “kill anyone who disagrees.” It’s when your dogma - whatever the hell that dogma is - is viewed as infallible. As Solzhenitsyn pointed out, to kill by the millions you need an ideology.

It doesn’t matter what that ideology is. It could be Marxism. It could be Aryan Supremacy. It could be anarcho-capitalism. It could be religion, whether radical Islam, or radical Christianity.

Steven Pinker, in his excellent book (which has been a huge influence on me), The Better Angels of Our Nature, described how ideology leads to genocide:

Utopian ideologies invite genocide for two reasons. One is that they set up a pernicious utilitarian calculus. In a utopia, everyone is happy forever, so its moral value is infinite. Most of us agree that it is ethically permissible to divert a runaway trolley that threatens to kill five people onto a side track where it would only kill one. But suppose it were a hundred million lives one could save by diverting the trolley, or a billion, or - projecting into the indefinite future - infinitely many. How many people would it be permissible to sacrifice to attain that infinite good? A few million can seem like a pretty good bargain. Not only that, but consider the people who learn about the promise of a perfect world yet nonetheless oppose it. They are the only things standing in the way of a plan that could lead to infinite goodness. How evil are they? You do the math.

The Vagrants brings this out one hundred percent. Including the part about those opposed to the Communist Party being vermin. In the same section, the school children are instructed that “counterrevolutionism” is a infectious disease, and that it must be cleansed by the strongest disinfectant. Which means killing a few people, but whatever.

You will see this in every totalitarian system. And that includes the white nationalism of Donald Trump, where immigrants and refugees are referred to as contaminants, vermin, disease, and so on.

It ultimately comes down, not to economic theories, but human rights. Do all humans, regardless of race, national origin, religious belief, political belief, sex, gender, sexual orientation, and so on, deserve human rights? Or not. That’s why universal health care, or tax rates, aren’t a slippery slope to the gulags. But calling the press the “enemy of the people” is. It’s why Social Security isn’t some nefarious plot to enslave workers. But eliminating workplace protections is. It’s why telling billionaires that they can’t have an increasing share of the world’s wealth isn’t one step away from show trials for dissidents. But calling for violence against protesters is.

I am a conservative (in the traditional sense) by temperament. I am not a risk taker, generally. I prefer a quiet life, with my books and music and kids and cat. Because of that, I am not at all interested in starting a revolution. I prefer reform and correction and incremental change. I prefer data and facts and evidence over theories, for the most part. Sure, try stuff, but do it carefully, and make corrections as you see what does and doesn’t work.

Yiyun has some similar ideas about revolutions, and I truly loved how she put them. First is what I believe is a Chinese proverb. It is fantastic, if cynical as hell.

“The one who robs and succeeds will become the king, and the one who tries to rob and fails will be called a criminal.”

This fatalistic proverb recurs throughout the book. It guides the actions of many characters - if they can just succeed, whether through theft of through betraying their neighbors, they will be king in their own way. But if they fail, it is catastrophe.

The last one I will mention comes from Teacher Gu when he is talking with his neighbor Guosheng near the end of the book. Liberated from his filters by some booze, he goes on a rant against revolutionaries in general. I don’t agree with all of it - Teacher Gu is a reactionary in his own way, wishing women were more submissive, and that the world was like it was before the Revolution. (I sympathize with him on the second point - life was better for him when he had his freedom, his books, and the respect his intelligence and education deserved.) But this line stood out:

“[B]ut what is revolution except a systematic way for one species to eat another alive? Let me tell you - history is, unlike what they say on the loudspeakers, not driven by revolutionary force but by people’s desire to climb up onto someone else’s neck and shit and pee as he or she wants.”

Dang. That’s both depressing, and all too true. Our current racist right wing movements are driven in some part by legitimate grievances. But they are also driven by the prurient desire to be “better” than someone else. “We may be poor, but at least we aren’t [fill in the blank: n-----rs, immigrants, gays, whatever]”

Ultimately, after reading this book, what I longed for more than anything, is the utopia of what I thought America was. And still is from time to time, occasionally, and with some people. I want the freedom that we (mostly) have. But I also long for the community of commitment to the common good. I know that hasn’t really existed for many in our nation, but the idea has existed for a long time.

And, come to think of it, I long for the utopia promised by the teachings of Christ. A world where hierarchy and power are replaced by mutuality. Where there is true freedom to live our lives, because each of us acknowledges the inherent worth of the other. Where we treat the most vulnerable not as infections to be purged, but as worthy of the love and care we would give to Christ himself.

I have, I suppose, gotten off the topic a bit. But I think it fits. Yiyun’s chilling tale isn’t just about “those Commies over there,” but about us as humans. Our tendencies toward ideological thinking, the ease in which we humans can be motivated to hate each other, and the way that power is a destructive force, no matter what its justification.

Yiyun Li is a great writer - one of my favorites I would say - and although her books aren’t necessarily easy or pleasant, they are important, and give a real insight into our world, and our common humanity.

***

I’m pretty sure I have posted this before, but I have to do it again here. This has long been one of my favorite Beatles tunes, and not just because of those gorgeous Epiphone Casinos.

You say you want a revolution

Well, you know

We all want to change the world

You tell me that it's evolution

Well, you know

We all want to change the world

But when you talk about destruction

Don't you know that you can count me out

Don't you know it's gonna be

All right, all right, all right

You say you got a real solution

Well, you know

We'd all love to see the plan

You ask me for a contribution

Well, you know

We're doing what we can

But if you want money for people with minds that hate

All I can tell is brother you have to wait

Don't you know it's gonna be

All right, all right, all right

You say you'll change the constitution

Well, you know

We all want to change your head

You tell me it's the institution

Well, you know

You better free your mind instead

But if you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao

You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow

Don't you know it's gonna be

All right…

And, no matter how “Christian” you call yourself, if you want me to participate in promoting “minds that hate,” well, you can go to hell.

Dissolution by C. J. Sansom

Source of Book: borrowed from the library

I am always a sucker for a book written by a lawyer. In this case, C. J. Sansom was an English solicitor prior to his literary career, and his prior experience contributes to the virtues of this book, which is apparently the beginning of the series. I am also a sucker for a good murder mystery, particularly if I am looking for light reading while camping. This book fit both categories.

This particular murder mystery is set during the reign of Henry VIII, in 1537. Henry’s second wife, Anne Boleyn, has recently been beheaded for alleged adultery. Henry already broke with the Catholic Church over his divorce of his first wife, and is now carrying out his holy war against Catholicism. To that end, he has been shutting down monasteries, often on trumped-up charges. Although, to tell the truth, the monasteries have been bastions of fat living, sexual misconduct, and fraud for centuries. So there isn’t really a white hat, if you will.

In charge of the “transition” to Protestantism is Thomas Cromwell. He was one of the most intriguing historical figures in Tudor England. Most historians these days believe he, even more than Henry, masterminded the break with Rome, and the (in)famous annulment of Henry’s first marriage. A commoner, Cromwell rose from his humble beginnings - via the legal profession, not coincidentally - to become the second most powerful man in England. The Cromwells were destined to play an important part in the history of England. Thomas’ grand-nephew Oliver would eventually rule England for a time.

Portrait of Thomas Cromwell by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1532

It is against this background that the story is set.

Matthew Shardlake is a talented lawyer, but crippled from a spinal deformity dating to his infancy. He is a bit of an idealist, longing for a world that combines the hope for religious and political freedom as envisioned by Sir Thomas More (Utopia) and Erasmus (The Praise of Folly, and On Free Will). At the time the story opens, Shardlake genuinely believes in the goodness of the English Reformation. After all, the Catholic church is corrupt, and many of its doctrines abusive. (The selling of indulgences and the worship of relics play a key role in this book.) But, as is usual in human affairs, no one is truly good. The monasteries are shut down and their land seized. And then the land is given to cronies of the king. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

C’mon. You know you want to see Moon, Entwisle, Daltrey, and Townshend show how it is done. 

(Yeah, I have done a windmill in church. I'm a rebel.) 

In any case, Cromwell has sent an emissary to a (fictional) monastery in southern England. In a disturbing development, the emissary, rather than negotiating the surrender of the monastery, finds himself neatly separated from his head. Clearly this is unacceptable. Cromwell is outraged, and the monks are terrified that this will be used as a pretext against them.

So, Shardlake’s services are retained by Cromwell. He and his assistant Mark need to sort out this mystery and report back.

Sansom brings the era to life, including the hardships, and particularly the smells. He has a way with the olfactory, shall we say. He also makes the terror of the times real. We tend to forget, in our modern era, that the purges of the Communist regimes of the 20th Century are not anomalies, but just the latest in an endless string of political and religious purges dating to the dawn of human history. (More on this below.)

The monastery turns out to be filled with interesting - and realistic - characters. The abbot, more fond of fox hunting with the local nobility than in running his monastery. The prior, who, along with the bursar, actually runs the place. The bursar, who pinches every penny - except for the lavish expenditures on food and wine. Brother Gabriel, the homosexual musician, who longs for transcendence. Brother Jerome, the monk of a different order, who has been broken on the rack, and who is tormented by the oath of loyalty to Henry VIII he swore while in extreme pain. Brother Guy, the African physician, an outcast due to his race, and now his Catholic faith; but who nonetheless seeks to show compassion to all. And Alice, the doctor’s servant, bereaved by the death of her fiancé, disrespected because of her gender and class, and with secrets of her own.

As is usual in a good mystery, everyone has secrets, even Shardlake. Throughout the book, secrets are teased out, but not in enough time to prevent further murders. And not just these contemporary murders, but past murders come to light, as the secrets of the monastery - and Cromwell’s office itself - are laid bare.

In keeping with my usual policy, I am not going to reveal any more of the plot. In my opinion, the novel is well plotted, although it isn’t the very best mystery I have read. (Ah, the travails of being a mystery aficionado…) However, the period accuracy and color is outstanding, both bringing the past to life, and putting a recognizably modern gloss on the past. In this sense, Shardlake is the perfect narrator. He, like his heroes, looks forward to the modern world, with its freedom of thought and religion, and an end to violence as a means of resolution of political and religious conflict. As a cripple, he is also a cultural outsider, and thus more sympathetic toward the plight of the downtrodden. Thus, he is not blinded (as much) by the sexism of the times, or the acceptance of violence toward the poor. And his epiphany when he realizes the full horror of what Cromwell has done in order to appease Henry is palpable.

A few lines stood out. One is spoken by Alice:

“You are both the same, reformers and papists, you fashion beliefs which you force the people to follow on pain of death, while you struggle for power and lands and money, which are all any of you truly want.”

This was certainly true of the English Reformation. And of the religious wars of that time. And of the English Civil War. And really, it is true about pretty much every war with religious overtones past and present. Or pretty much any war ever. Whatever the average person thinks it is about, for those at the top, it is and has always been about power and money. Maybe I am just cynical, but I don’t see clean hands much of anywhere. Religion has ever been used as a tool by those who would rise to power and seek their own glory and wealth. Shardlake comes to realize that even the cause he genuinely believes in has devolved into oppression and greed.

As Shardlake says at the end, speaking to Brother Guy, his fellow outcast from society:

“[T]here is nowhere safe in the world now, no thing certain….Perhaps we are all a little mad. The Bible says God made man in his image but I think we make and remake him, in whatever image happens to suit our shifting needs. I wonder if he knows or cares. All is dissolving, Brother Guy, all is dissolution.”

The hindsight of history shows too that Shardlake is in a sense right. England would remain “Protestant” (however you define that) only until the death of Henry’s son Edward. After that, Henry’s daughter by Catherine of Aragon, “Bloody” Mary, would attempt to re-Catholicize England. (Despite her name, she actually murdered far fewer than her father.) Then, Elizabeth I would return England to Protestantism, then James I and Charles I would so irritate the nation that we ended up with Oliver Cromwell, and the English Civil war, and on and on. In fact, there would continue to be religious and political slaughter and strife in England until 160 years later, after religious tolerance was finally accepted during the Glorious Revolution. (And that is just in England. In most of the world, things would remain worse for a few more centuries…)

Shardlake is also right about something else. The dissolution of the monasteries was in some sense necessary and maybe even good. However, for many, the breakdown of long standing institutions caused nothing but hardship and an unmooring from all that gave their lives security. Certainly, the transfer of wealth from one greedy institution to another wasn’t exactly an improvement, and the loss of the institutional charity of the Catholic Church did in fact cause many poor to suffer. But as much as that, one cannot escape the fact that for most people, their religious observances and beliefs were violently and somewhat senselessly rearranged. And not just because of genuine beliefs. In fact, the reason for the change was mostly the fact that Henry wanted to marry his mistress. The “official” view of God, imposed from above on pain of death, torture, and forfeiture of property, was in fact dictated by the shifting needs of those in power. And, for a century and a half, all was in fact dissolved, and the average person would be required to shift his religious “beliefs” at the whim of the ever-changing will of an ever-shifting ruling class.

In the end, Alice and Shardlake can agree that the dream of most of us - to be left alone to believe as we wish, as long as we grant others the same right - is what truly matters to us common folk. It is those with the power and wealth that manipulate, oppress, and even kill, so that their own power and wealth can be maintained.

I am looking forward to reading the other books in this series. This one is promising for its careful plotting, believable characters, period color, and deeper themes.

Note on the violence of the past:

I have written a good bit lately on the violence of the past, and the way we seem to have forgotten it. Some of this was from my own thinking and exploration, but a good bit was bolstered by reading The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker.

We tend to glorify the past. In other words, Mark Antony had it exactly backwards. To correct him: “The good that men do lives after them. The evil is oft interred with their bones.”

During the reign of Henry VIII, who is generally liked as a politician, although that whole “beheading the wives” thing isn’t quite kosher, he killed at least 57,000 people for political or religious “treason.” The range is 57,000 to 70,000.

So, if we use the lower of the numbers, how bad is this?

Well, the population of England during the middle of his reign (the time the book is set, for what that is worth), was about 2,500,000 people. (2.5 million)

Thus, he killed about 2 ¼% of his subjects for disagreeing with him or political or religious grounds. That’s about one in every 40 people. Murdered for “disloyalty.”

What would this look like today?

Well, the United States, as of 2015, had about 320 million residents.

If you were to kill off 2 ¼%, that would mean about 7.2 million people. Can you imagine if this happened today?

That’s more than the population of Washington State. That’s more than double the population of Los Angeles. That’s nearly three times the population of Chicago.

All killed for disagreeing with the king on religion or politics.

Anyone want to return to the past?

Note on Thomas Cromwell:

Cromwell did eventually lose his favor with Henry VIII. It’s kind of amusing that he both orchestrated the divorce (thus currying favor with Anne Boleyn and her family) and orchestrated her death. In fact, as the book points out in painful detail, Cromwell knew the king wished to “eliminate” Anne, so he found a way. A lower class musician, Mark Smeaton, was arrested because he was convenient. He was tortured on the rack until he confessed an affair with the queen (which was physically and chronologically impossible.) This “confession” was used to ensure her death - and his. Basically, two innocent lives were destroyed to please the king. Mark’s death was, perhaps, less excusable. Anne at least aspired to be queen. Mark was an innocent bystander, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, and suffered torture and execution as a result.

Again, anyone want to return to the past?

So, Cromwell. He lost the king’s favor when he advocated that Henry marry Anne of Cleves. This was more a political than a romantic marriage, and Henry was decidedly not attracted to her. (She may well have been a bit plain, poor girl.) The subsequent annulment lawsut involved medical testimony of “wet dreams” among other things. Ah, the glory of being a lawyer in high profile cases.

Anyway, Henry was pissed at Cromwell as a result of this whole thing, so he trumped up some charges against him, and Thomas lost his head.

In an ironic twist, Anne of Cleves came out of things reasonably well. Henry may have found her to be a turn-off, but he gave her a generous settlement (she got lands that used to belong to Anne Boleyn’s family), and treated her like a sister. She ended up outliving Henry all his other wives, dying at the ripe age of 41 (good for the time for a woman - and nearly a decade longer than Henry). And whatever Henry may have thought, she hardly seems to be all that unattractive.

Portrait of Anne of Cleves

by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1539

Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

This is my 2014 selection for Banned Books Week. Technically, that was back in late September, but I was delayed by a few factors. First, I got busy and let the event sneak up on me. Second, Palace Walk had to be ordered, and took a couple of weeks to come in. Finally, because the book is nearly 500 pages long, it took me a while to read it.

Just a reminder of my rules for book selection (which you can read about here):

I distinguish between banned books and challenged books. A banned book is one that is made illegal to publish or to possess by a government. A challenged book, in contrast, is one that either is sought to be kept out of a library or school, but is not illegal to publish, buy, or own. I believe there is a significant difference, although the reasons for banning and challenging are often the same.

Here are the reviews for previous Banned Books Weeks:

Areopagitica by John Milton (2011)

Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (2012)

The Quest for Christa T. by Christa Wolf (2013)

***

Palace Walk is the first book in the Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz. Written in Arabic in the 1950s, it wasn’t translated into English until 1990, after Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize for Literature. (He remains the only Arab to win it.) As an interesting tidbit, the translation was overseen by Jackie Kennedy Onassis, back when she was an editor for Doubleday.

Mahfouz grew up in Cairo in the 1910s and 20s, in a devout - and strict - Muslim family. To a degree, Palace Walk and the later books of the trilogy reflect facets of his life from childhood to middle age, although they are not autobiographical. He has admitted that the youngest son, Kamil, is based on himself, but the events (at least the non-historical ones) do not directly mirror his experiences.

Mahfouz was a prolific author, writing dozens of novels and plays, hundreds of short stories, and various other works over his 70 year career. His work didn’t really break through to the Western world, however, until relatively late in life, after he won the Nobel Prize.

This book was suggested to me by a frequent and well-read commenter on my blog. After doing a little research, I realized that Mahfouz was an ideal choice for Banned Books Week.

The Cairo Trilogy was banned throughout most of the Arabic world - except Lebanon - which makes it fit my criteria.

However, it is the personal life of Mahfouz that really seals the deal. Before Salman Rushdie made headlines by being the subject of a fatwah calling for his assasination, Mahfouz was on the Islamic Fundamentalist “death list.” After Rushdie fell afoul of the extremists for his novel, The Satanic Verses, Mahfouz defended him, which reminded the extremists that they already hated him. In 1994, despite police protection, the 82 year old Mahfouz was seriously injured in an assassination attempt outside his Cairo home. (Rushdie was apparently wise to have fled to England…) So, Mahfouz can truly be claimed as a hero in the fight for free speech - and received honorable wounds.

[Side note: I read The Satanic Verses a few years before I started my blog. I highly recommend it as an example of Magical Realism, and as a clear case of how fundamentalists cannot stand any questioning of their dogma. Great book.]

Mahfouz spoke one of the most insightful comments about how censorship reflects poorly on the censors.

“No blasphemy harms Islam and Muslims so much as the call for murdering a writer.”

Palace Walk is set in the Cairo of Mahfouz’s childhood, at the end of World War One through the Egyptian Revolution of 1919. The book follows the family of Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, the tyrannical and hypocritical father.

Ahmad has two sides to his personality. To his family, he is harsh, controlling, devout, and aloof. To his friends, he is jovial, personable, and free. He loves “wine, women, and song.”  (Let’s just say that “sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll” isn’t new by any stretch…) Although he confines his wife to the house at all times, and demands absolute, unquestioning obedience from his children; he himself stays out all hours of the night, drinking and singing, and having a series of affairs with courtesans.

His eldest son, from a prior marriage, is much like him - but without the discretion to stay out of obvious trouble. His second son is a serious and politically passionate student. The youngest (the stand-in for Mahfouz) is a young boy. The elder daughter is jealous of the younger for her beauty and desirability. The mother is in repressed denial about her husband’s dalliances, and submerges her own personality in her obedience and submission to his every whim.

While the political turmoil rages around them, the family itself experiences dramatic change. Both girls marry, which changes the dynamic of the family. The second son rebels - not out of a desire to cast of the yoke - but because of his idealism in support of Egyptian nationalism. The elder son, unable to control his sexual desires, attempts to rape a servant, so his father marries him off. This ends badly as the son becomes bored with what he has as a matter of property and seeks new thrills, causing embarrassment to his family. In a number of different ways, the author portrays the changing of society and the gradual erosion of the father’s absolute control of his family.

The turmoil in society is two-fold. First, there is the political upheaval as Egypt seeks independence from England. Mahfouz does an excellent job of creating in the reader sympathy for the Egyptians, while retaining the humanity of the British. There is no simple good/evil dichotomy here, but it is a change from the often jingoistic British perspective of colonialism. Mahfouz writes it well because he lived it. Even though he was only seven years old, he felt that the events had a profound effect on him, and he writes accordingly.

The second societal change is from a traditional, patriarchal society to one in which women are viewed as having some rights of their own. Education, for example - or even the right to walk the streets unaccompanied by a man. It is profoundly sad that this change, which started in Egypt 100 years ago, should have met such absolute reversals throughout the Arab world in the last several decades.

The portrayal of Ahmad is excellent. On the one hand, he is easy to hate, despicable in his lust and drunkenness, and unbearable in his hypocrisy. On the other, he is relatable in a weird way. He is able to justify his own lapses and retain his good opinion of himself. He (correctly) notes that the Koran appears to permit dalliances with courtesans and concubines (as does the Old Testament, incidentally), and he makes up for his abuse of alcohol (in his mind) by his strictness with his family. His efforts to raise them right mitigate his own lapses. It is in so many ways a familiar hypocrisy. Goodness in one area excuses lapses in another. From the Pharisees on down, this is an unfortunate human tendency. (It is perhaps most visible when religious leaders fail…)

And Ahmad is certainly a narcissist. The greater world revolves around him because of his scintillating personality. His family revolves around him because of his place of authority and power. And he must be the center. As he puts it, regarding the potential marriage of his daughter, “No daughter of mine will marry a man until I am satisfied that his primary motive for marrying her is a sincere desire to be related to me...me...me.” At one time, I might have blown this off as an exaggeration, but my experience with John Thompson [insert link] speaks otherwise, as he seemed to think that my family should consider it a great honor to be pursued by such a luminary as him.

Ahmad isn’t just a hypocrite, either. He is a product and a member of the society in which he lives. Many of the men cheat habitually. The Greek tavern is a regular haunt of Muslim men. There is an entire subculture of entitlement that is fed by the societal beliefs about women. Because men regain near absolute power over the women, they themselves are the only checks on their behavior. Thus, a truly moral man may avoid the culture of philandering, but there is no consequence for those who indulge. After all, the women must obey and shut up. After all, what are their options? Return to their parents’ home is about it.

Mahfouz is brutally honest about the attitudes toward women. The eldest son, Yasin, has nothing but contempt for his mother, who had multiple marriages and affairs after being divorced by his father. “Every woman is a filthy curse. A woman doesn’t know what virtue is, unless she’s denied all opportunities for adultery.” This from a young man who squanders his income on wine and prostitutes. Because the double standard is the standard in societies that denigrate the equality of women. He can sleep around at will, but she must remain pure.

It was quite painful to read the passages dealing with Amina, Ahmad’s wife. She was married to him at 14, and has buried her very self in her service of him. She knows he stumbles home drunk every night, and that he has had a string of affairs, but she refuses to acknowledge this to herself. Instead, she represses everything, never having an opinion or need of her own. As she says to him after he rather violently rejects her extremely subtle attempts to relate a marriage proposal regarding her younger daughter, “My opinion is the same as yours, sir. I have no opinion of my own.”

It would be easy to dismiss this as either an exaggeration or as something limited to extreme Islam. However, this is exactly what leaders of Christian Patriarchy like Bill Gothard taught should be the attitude of those “under authority.” Po-TAY-to, po-TAH-to. It is the concept of absolute obedience to authority by those under it. Namely, women and children.

The problem with Ahmad isn’t strictly a religious one. Many of his friends are far less strict. Indeed, the society as a whole was transitioning toward one where women had freedom, and children were to be nurtured rather than controlled. Ahmad is an unusual specimen even in his time and culture. However, the culture also supports the structure that allows his abuse. His friends may question his strictness, but they cannot and will not question the hierarchy of power that enables it. He may not use his rights wisely, but they are certainly his right.

Thus, Ahmad is able to inflict his abuse on his family, and there is no real recourse for them. Palace Walk is thus a powerful story of how structural power imbalances enable and feed the abuse of narcissists like Ahmad.  

One final thought on this book. I was struck by some significant similarities between this book and The Cypresses Believe in God. [An outstanding book. Highly recommended.]  Both are set during times of civil unrest, both follow a close family, both have an eldest son tempted by sex and a second son idealistically following a vision, both chronicle the weakening of religious and political ties. The plots are in a number of ways parallel, although I cannot find evidence that they were aware of the others’ work. The differences are fascinating, however. In Cypresses, the parents are admirable, salt of the earth types. In Palace Walk, they are highly dysfunctional and of little help to their children. In Cypresses, the whole world goes crazy. (This is the most terrifying part of the book.) In Palace Walk, the revolution is logical and justified to a large extent. Neither the British nor the Egyptians are stark raving mad like the various parties to the Spanish Civil War. In Cypresses, religion and family ultimately draw toward moral, compassionate behavior, while in Palace Walk, both fail to offer truly moral guidance. Thus, in Cypresses, in a world gone mad, family and faith offer the refuge from the maelstrom. In Palace Walk, the insanity comes from within, and only escape from the tyranny of the family structure as excused by religious teaching can lead to a better way.

Perhaps, in the end, the contrast of the two books might best be seen in the characters of the two fathers. Matías Alvear is full of integrity in his public and private life, and full of genuine love and compassion for others. When all goes to hell, his family knows his heart, and responds accordingly. For Ahmad, once his power to abuse and control starts to slip, he has nothing left to his relationships with his children. They are free to disregard him and his directives, because there is no underlying relationship of love and mutual respect.

The book itself seems to anticipate a sequel, as it ends after a catastrophe, but without tying up the loose ends. However, I looked up some information on the sequels, and it appears that there is a significant time gap before the next book. Mahfouz appears to expect the reader to fill in the fallout of the final events. I shall have to find the other books in this series, as I am curious to see how it ends. In general, the writing is compelling. If anything, I found myself wishing the book was a little longer so that more information about certain events could be included. The characters are memorable and believable, and the psychological aspects of the relationships are compelling.