A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

Source of book: I own this.

A Gentleman in Moscow was one of last year’s book selections for our book club. I was unable to attend that meeting (although my wife did), so I never got around to reading it. However, she convinced me that it was really good, so I took it along on one of our trips last month. 

 

First of all, my wife was, as usual, right. The writing is fantastic. There have been a few books I have read recently in which there were some passages that made me wince. Even books by serious authors. But this book was unique in that I kept finding myself letting scenes wash over me, and basking in the glow of the language. Towles is just a straight-up good writer.

A number of critics have been less rosy about the book, and, after I finished it, I read a few of the reivews. I think the problem is that critics want the book to be...a different book. They want it to have a deeper, darker theme, be more “realistic” about Soviet Russia, to tackle problems. Or something like that.

This is not what this book is at all, and it doesn’t need to be. And it is not what the author intended. As he put it, in answer to the question, “Does the book have a central theme?”

I certainly hope not. In crafting a novel, I do not have an essential message I am trying to communicate. Rather, I hope to create a work of art that, while being satisfyingly cohesive, contains such a richness of images, ideas, and personalities that it can prompt varied responses from reader to reader, and from reading to reading.

In essence, I want to gather together a pile of brightly colored shards of glass. But rather than assemble these shards into a mosaic with a fixed image, I want to drop them into the bottom of a kaleidoscope where, thanks to a glint of sunlight and the interplay of mirrors, they render an intricate beauty which the reader can reconfigure by the slightest turn of the wrist.

I think that is a fine description. And a good example of Towles’ way with words.

With a few exceptions, the book takes place in an extremely limited environment. Count Alexander Rostov, a Russian aristocrat, is saved from the firing squad by his reputation as a revolutionary poet. (It turns out - spoiler - that he didn’t even write the poem.) Given his life, he is deprived of his liberty: he is to spend the rest of his life living in the Metropol hotel in Moscow, and essentially become a “former person,” with no identity. Evicted from his posh lodgings and confined to a former storage room on a top floor, his life changes dramatically. But the 30 year old Count takes it in stride, and finds a life for himself. He becomes the head waiter at the ritzy restaurant - after all, his greatest skill is in making seating charts and pairing wines - and forms friendships with staff, visitors, and foreign diplomats. Oh, and a young girl who later leaves her own daughter in the care of the Count.

The book unfolds over more than three decades: from 1922 through 1954. Towles chose an interesting, symmetric form for the book. In the first half of the book, the timeframe doubles each chapter. So the first section is one day after his arrest, the next two days, and so on, eventually giving a 15 year gap. At that point in the story, the narrative takes a dramatic turn, when young Sofia is dropped off by her mother - who never returns. From that point on, the reverse applies, with the times shrinking as they approach the final denouement.

Towles has said that he typically spends a couple years carefully outlining and plotting his books, followed by a rather rapid writing process. After this, of course, careful editing and revision is done, to polish the final product. I think this shows. I didn’t notice any plot holes, and nearly everything mentioned turns out to be important later. In this sense, Towles uses the careful technique of a mystery writer, but applies it to literary fiction.

There are so many things to mention, I am sure I will forget a lot of what I wanted to say as I was reading. (It doesn’t help that it is harder to take notes while traveling, or that it was hard to put the book down to do so.) However, I will do my best to hit some highlights.

First of all, the characters are great. They are memorable, believable, and human. I am a particular fan of books with good character-driven plots anyway. (My favorite Victorian is Anthony Trollope - true fans will understand why.) Count Rostov is, perhaps, a good bit better than the average aristocrat (and particularly than, say, the sort you find in most Russian novels), but he is no saint. He is as suave as they come, though, and is pretty admirable in the way he adapts to dramatically changed circumstances. I found him to be one of the more enjoyable characters I can remember from the last few years of reading.

There are others, too. Rostov’s friend, Mishka, the nervous, obsessive, and literary person never quite at home in the Soviet machine, despite his socialist beliefs. He is Rostov’s one friend from his youth - they were an interesting pair: Rostov the aristocrat, and Mishka the commoner.

The other members of the Triumvirate - Andrey, the maître d’ of the restaurant (without whom, the hotel would not run), and Emile, the cantankerous head chef - are also delightful. The whole idea of the behind-the-scenes meetings of Rostov, Andrey, and Emile to plan out the important dinner parties for visiting dignitaries - while sampling the creative cooking of Emile - was genius. As was their choice of the name.

The three main female characters are also interesting. Nina first appears as a precocious young girl. She befriends Rostov, and the two of them explore the bowels of the hotel using Nina’s pass key. Nina is studious and appears to have a bright future, but something goes wrong and her husband is sent to the gulag. She pursues him, leaving her daughter Sofia behind.

Sofia is every bit as smart as her mother, but quieter and less assertive. This makes it easier for her to blend in with Soviet values. It is Sofia, more than Nina, who changes Rostov and gives his life purpose.

The final woman is Anna, the actress. When we first meet her, she is young and at the height of her fame. She is also overbearing and arrogant, and doesn’t come off well. Nonetheless, she decides to have a fling with the Count, only to get completely pissed off when he picks up the clothes she has flung on the floor. (Apparently, Towles based part of this on an incident involving her own parents…) She comes around, however, and the two of them have an ongoing affair (if that is what you call a relationship between two unmarried people) for the rest of the book. Although first impressions are negative, she grows as a character, just like the Count. In fact, the two of them essentially grow together, losing their egos and adapting to the changes of life. (Let’s just say that it isn’t easy going from beautiful starlet to senior citizen actress - few have done it.)

Speaking of the affair, hats off to Towles for his understated sex scenes. I have mentioned this before, but I think it is brutally difficult to pull off a sexy sex scene in a novel. A horrible one? Sure. Or even a humorous one. But one that is actually sexy is harder. In my opinion, the more graphic, the worse it usually turns out. Sex is a heck of a lot of fun. But it is, in a way, kind of ooky if you think about the mechanics. Hence the difficulty of writing it well. The best part about Towles’ writing in this case is that he focused on the emotional component of what starts out as a purely physical one night stand. The fallout for both characters is what matters, and forms a believable foundation for what becomes - as it turns out - a pretty epic romance.

I should also mention the villain of the book: “The Bishop.” This is the nickname given to a bolshevik who starts out as a waiter, before being promoted all the way to hotel manager, despite his lack of ability. Towles shows a deft touch here, because one comes to loathe The Bishop before one even realizes he is a bolshevik stooge. He embodies all the annoying qualities of bad waiting - he is there when you don’t want him, isn’t there when you want him, pushes expensive wines and entrees despite their unsuitability together, misses social cues, and makes a blundering nuisance of himself. One or two of these are excusable in a basic restaurant - and I don’t nitpick college students trying to pay their way, or friendly diner waitresses who face rather different expectations. But all of these, in a waiter in a fine restaurant? From a person who exudes arrogance and refuses to learn? That’s unforgivable. This is why you know what kind of a person The Bishop is right from the start. That he turns out to be the worst kind of Soviet stool pigeon can be inferred from his character.

The minor characters fill things out well. The seamstress Marina, who becomes Rostov’s confidant and co-conspirator. Osip, the mucky-muck in the secret police (which changes names throughout the book, of course) who forms a bond with Rostov after he asks Rostov to tutor him in French. Richard Vanderwhile, the American diplomat. Abram, the handyman and beekeeper. And others.

I decided to include one scene from the book in this post, just because I think it is outstanding. Sofia has become a concert pianist, and will be performing. Marina has made her a dress which Rostov, being old school, doesn’t particularly approve - it is backless. He figures Anna is to blame.

“This dressless dress. No doubt it was drawn from one of your convenient magazines.”

Before Anna could respond, Marina stomped her foot.

“This was my doing!”

Startled by the seamstress’s tone, the Count saw with some trepidation that while one of her eyes had rolled toward the ceiling in exasperation, the other was bearing down on him like a cannonball.

“It is a dress of my design,” she said, “fashioned from my handiwork for my Sofia.”

Recognizing that he may have unintentionally insulted an artist, the Count adopted a more conciliatory tone.

“It is unquestionably a beautiful dress, Marina. One of the finest I have ever seen; and I have seen many find dresses in my time.” Here the Count gave an awkward little laugh in the hopes of clearing the air and then continued in a tone of fellowship and common sense. “But after months of preparation, Sofia will be performing Rachmaninov at the Palais Garnier. Wouldn’t it be a pity if, instead of listening to her play, the audience was staring at her back?”

“Perhaps we should drape her in sackcloth,” suggested the seamstress. “To ensure that the audience is not distracted.”

“I would never counsel sackcloth,” protested the Count. “But there is such a thing as moderation, even within the bounds of glamour.”

Marina stomped her foot again.

“Enough! We have no interest in your scruples, Alexander Ilyich. Just because you witnessed the Comet of 1812, does not mean that Sofia must wear a petticoat and a bustle.”

Later, Anna can’t resist rubbing it in.

“Is it true?” asked Anna, as she and the Count walked down the hallway after the fitting.

“Is what true?”

“Did you really see the Comet of 1812?”

This is just one well conceived scene, and one which fits in with the characterization. These are exactly the lines which Marina, Anna, and Rostov would have said, and by the time they appear in the book, they form additional examples of the characterization already apparent. I think this is one sign of good artistry: the characters aren’t there to do the motions of the plot. Rather, they act in accordance with who they are, in the world the author creates for them to act.

I greatly enjoyed this book, and strongly recommend it. No, it isn’t intended to have a deep message. But it is a literary work - a work of art, beautiful for what it is, not for its lack of a message. And really, there are themes in this book. Themes like loyalty, friendship, mutual compromise, adaptation, and so on. As Towles puts it, each reader may discover different ideas and gems in the book. And that is what good art does.

***

There are two scenes involving music. The first is where Rostov discovers to his surprise that Sofia has been taking piano lessons from the resident conductor (a man grossly underutilized by the Bolsheviks.) She is playing a Chopin nocturne. Specifically this one:

Definitely a beautiful choice.

Another fascinating scene involves Sofia’s choice of a piece for a competition. While everyone else chooses Russian composers, she goes with...Mozart - his first Piano Sonata, written when he was still a teen. It is an interesting choice, but it works for her, and she launches her career.

***

If you want to read a completely different take on Soviet Russia, you might try The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov - a writer mentioned in A Gentleman in Moscow.

La's Orchestra Saves the World by Alexander McCall Smith

Source of book: Audiobook my wife found at a library sale

My kids have been a fan of Alexander McCall Smith for quite a few years now, after my wife introduced them to the Mma. Ramotswe series. McCall Smith (that’s his full surname) is a prolific writer, but seems to hit a note of thoughtfulness and nuance with most of his books, despite writing several each year. He has at least three series going right now, in addition to the stand-alone novels. 

 

 

This book is one of the later, a novel unrelated to anything else he wrote. It is set mostly in the years of World War Two, in rural England.

The title character, La (short for Lavender), is a young British woman who ends up playing a rather unremarkable role in the war effort. We meet her first in a retrospective by her stepsons, who visit her cottage in Suffolk, where most of the events take place. She is still known, years after her death, for her orchestra.

The book then shifts to La’s earlier years. She went to Cambridge (attending an all-girls college), made a disastrous marriage which ends when his mistress in France comes to light, and is gifted the cottage and an income by her former in-laws (who are embarrassed by their son.) He dies soon after, leaving her with a significant fortune. When the war starts, she searches for some volunteer work. However, as she is older and widowed, intellectually stimulating jobs are unavailable, and she ends up tending chickens in the neighborhood near her cottage. After meeting the commander at the local air base, he and she decided to found a village orchestra - to include service members looking for a diversion. Her orchestra plays through the end of the war, disbanding afterward. They briefly re-form during the Cuban Missile Crisis, causing someone to quip that they have saved the world twice.

The other main character is Felix, an ostensibly Polish airman, who joins the RAF after the fall of Poland. In reality, he has a more complex history, being the child of German parents, although he was raised in Poland from age eight onward. La and Felix have serious chemistry, but his reserve and her loyalty to country prevent them from sharing their feelings. It is hinted in the prologue that they connect years after the war, after he has had children and a failed marriage of his own.

McCall Smith has a long history with music. He founded the “Really Terrible Orchestra,” a group of enthusiastic amateurs who make music for the joy of it (and the entertainment of the audience, I am given to understand.) He plays contrabassoon, which may well say something about his personality. He also established an opera house and training center in Botswana, a country that he spent a number of years in, teaching law.

This book is all about McCall Smith’s belief in the healing power of music. I must agree. One of the things about making classical music professionally is that you connect with people from around the world. Even our little hometown orchestra has had players from around the world join us - and that is even before you get to the soloists. I have shared stands with violinists from Russia, the Ukraine, Iran, Romania, Japan, Cypress, and Spain over the years (if memory serves), and that’s just the ones I have had the chance to sit with. Music is a universal language, and it is difficult to see someone as “the enemy” after you have bonded over a Mozart opera, or a Beethoven symphony.

McCall Smith is also correct that what we fight to preserve (in a just war) isn’t merely our home or our tribe. We fight to preserve all that is transcendent and good in the world. To reduce ourselves to the idea of “kill the other people” is to lose the war, to become as vicious and animalistic as the Nazis, or any other genocidal nationalist movement. One of my Symphony colleagues had a bumper sticker: “Less Violence, More Violins.” I couldn’t agree more. (Although even as a violinist, I’d be happy with a few winds, brass, and percussion too.) Music - and the arts generally - represent our aspiration to transcend, to find common ground and meaning with the rest of humanity, and to put our energy and creativity toward beauty, rather than hate.

In general, I thought that La’s Orchestra Saves the World lacked the depth of character that you find in some of his other books - but that might be in part because it is a single book, and you don’t get to see characters unfold across a range of plots and circumstances. The book does showcase McCall Smith’s usual ethical nuances and dilemmas. Is it right to marry someone who you don’t exactly love? How should one respond to betrayal? Should you turn someone in, even if you love them, if you think they might be a spy? What if they turn out to be innocent, but suffer anyway? How do you deal with bigoted neighbors? This is McCall Smith’s best trait, is in his acknowledgement of nuance, and his gentle and non-judgmental probing of the shades of grey.

***

Previous posts about Alexander McCall Smith books:

#1 Ladies Detective Agency series

The Tears of the Giraffe (#2 in the series)

Morality for Beautiful Girls (#3 in the series)

The Kalahari Typing School For Men (#4 in the series)

The Full Cupboard of Life (#5 in the series)

Blue Shoes And Happiness (#7 in the series)

Sunday Philosophy Club series

The Sunday Philosophy Club

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

Source of book: We own this.

I think this is the first time I have blogged about a graphic, well, not novel, because it is more of an autobiographical non-fiction work. Neither does “comic” work, because it is rather unfunny. Tragic is the word which comes to mind.

Persepolis is the first in a two part series wherein Marjane Satrapi tells the story of her life from childhood to adulthood in a comic-book format. Satrapi lived through the Islamic Revolution in Iran, before immigrating to Europe. 

 

Young Marji is a child when the events of the Revolution take place. She is born into an upper class, educated, Iranian family. As she comes of age, she has to wrestle with her privilege and her future. This installment ends when she is sent to Austria to study after she has a series of run-ins with her Islamicist teachers.

Satrapi intended the book in part to reveal a side of history which we Westerners don’t tend to see. We get fed a politically convenient narrative that isn’t always rooted in reality, and this leads to many misunderstandings. Our ignorance also feeds into the xenophobic and Islamophobic propaganda that the Right in the United States uses to justify endless war. (More about that later.)

Because Marji’s family has a long history of political involvement, she is able to reveal the history behind the history, so to speak. The Islamic Revolution was a reaction against the Shaw, who, as lionized as he has often been by the West, was hardly admirable. The great tragedy of Iran is that it had a long history of stability and culture, and was well on its way to being a modern, educated country, with a belief in human rights, and a thriving economy. Sadly, a combination of European interference (in pursuit of oil), combined with battles for power and increasing oppression to retain said power, eventually led to the repressive Fundamentalist religious dictatorship that exists today.

One of the things that really struck me reading this book is that there wasn’t some change to Islam from something else. Iran was a majority-Islam country for many centuries. Rather, revolutionaries used religion (specifically fundamentalist religion) as a weapon, along with war, to justify totalitarianism. The war, of course, was the war with Iraq, which was fed by the great world powers, including the United States and the USSR, and served as both a proxy war for those countries, and as a way for both Saddam and the Iranian mullahs to tighten their grip on power.

(For how this works, I recommend Ursula Le Guin’s book, The Left Hand of Darkness.)

All the religious fanaticism, the head coverings, the repression of women, and so on, came not so much from sincere belief, but in the way that such things allowed for social control. There are so many parallels to the Religious Right in America that it is rather spooky.

While Marji’s family survives the Revolution, she loses a friend to a bombing, and acts out in ways dangerous to her safety in a fundamentalist society. Thus, at the end of the book, she is sent to live in Austria.

Persepolis was originally published in French. Satrapi was educated at the French school in Iran, so she grew up fluent in that language. In Austria, she had to learn German, but French remained her primary European language. This book was translated into English by Mattias Ripa.

Satrapi’s drawings are evocative and haunting. She chose to draw in pure black and white, no greyscale except as suggested by line shading. It is a spare, raw style, but despite its simplicity, it is surprisingly emotional. Details are left intentionally vague, except for the faces, which are cartoonish, but marvelously expressive. In fact, after I finished the book, I wasn’t sure how good the writing was (although it certainly wasn’t poor), but I could see the faces of the characters - particularly Marji - in my head so clearly. That’s good art. 

There are a couple of lines that I have to mention. One is when the fundamentalist principal of the new Islamic girls’ school comes unglued because the girls (who grew up in secular schools) are irreverent about the religious and “patriotic” stuff. The parents are called in, and they push back too. They don’t desire that the girls be covered from head to foot, or be forbidden to play as they did. The best part, however, is when Marji’s dad tells the (female) principal, “If hair is as stimulating as you say, then you need to shave your moustache!” Yes, he actually said that.

The second one is not funny at all. During the war, children were recruited to serve as soldiers. As a cousin in the army tells Marji’s family, “They come from poor areas, you can tell...first they convince them that the afterlife is even better than Disneyland, then they put them in a trance with all their songs...It’s nuts! They hypnotize them and just toss them into battle. Absolute carnage.” This is what ideology and lust for power do. They feed on their own children.

My wife found a used hardback of this book, and both of my teen daughters read it first and recommended that I read it. Because of its occasionally graphic violence and coarse language, it has been one of the most often challenged books. I think it is fine for teens, however. I also suspect that it might be challenged because it is too nuanced for the taste of some. It isn’t particularly flattering to the US and Europe - their interference and colonialist oil grabs caused many of the problems - something we are often unwilling to admit. And the book isn’t really for or against Islam, although it doesn’t paint fundamentalists in a good light. Or the Shaw for that matter. It also is ambivalent about revolutions in general.

It is definitely an interesting book, and I look forward to reading the second book as well.

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness - Tear Down This Wall

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." ~ Thomas Jefferson et al. (Declaration of Independence)

At the time this was written, "Happiness" didn't mean a transitory emotion, but a state of safety and wellbeing. In other words, a decent life unthreatened by starvation or violence. The writers of this declaration believed that it was a human right - given by God - to pursue a decent, safe, and unthreatened life.

Later in that declaration, one of the grievances that was that the King refused to let people...wait for it...immigrate to the colonies.

If we truly believe that "pursuit of happiness" is a god-given, inalienable right, then we have no right to call for the building of walls to prevent others from seeking that right. We have no right to insist on laws that deny others that right. We cannot claim to believe in the equality of mankind or the right to life, liberty, and wellbeing if we claim that one's access to these should be limited to those with the good fortune to be born in a particular place or with a particular skin color or economic status.

Congress and Mr. Trump: Tear down this fucking wall.

The Berlin Wall comes down...

Elephants on Acid and Other Bizarre Experiments by Alex Boese

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

At the end of the year, things get a bit crazy, between music and events and stress and whatever. So I often pick a light book or two for my late December read. Something I can pick up and put down as needed without losing the thread. 

 

 This year, I went with Elephants on Acid and Other Bizarre Experiments, which was recommended by a musician friend. It fit the bill. It is breezy, written in a san serif font, with headings in magenta. It gives basic details of a variety of weird experiments, which, as the author notes, often tell us more about the researchers than their subjects.

One, of course, is the title experiment. What does happen if you give an elephant LSD? Well, at a high dose, it kills the elephant, which is not a good result, to say the least. Perhaps they should have started with a low dose.

While this experiment seems more sadistic and sad, many of the experiments are in the humorous category, such as the utter failure of dogs to go for help like Lassie. The topics range from experiments in reanimating corpses to mating behaviors to poop to animal behavior, to experiments involving the soul. (See Mary Roach…)

There is a little reference to XKCD in the introduction, which sets the tone, and reminds me of just how fun What If? was.

Here are a few of my favorite bits in the book.

First is the bit on the Baby Mozart phenomenon. It turned out to be devilishly difficult to duplicate the results. (It seems that you can’t get smarter just by ingesting background noise - you have to practice. As any professional musician could have told you.) Anyway, this line cracked me up:

Many researchers reported a failure to replicate the results of the 1993 study. In response, the UC Irvine team clarified that Mozart’s music did not appear to have an effect on all forms of IQ, but rather on spatial-temporal IQ, the kind that applied to paper folding and cutting tasks. In other words, millions of parents were unwittingly priming their children to become master scrapbookers.

Another amusing experiment involved the question of whether men prefer women who play hard to get or not. Well, the answer turned out to be not that surprising to introverted guys like me. Turns out, men actually don’t tend to prefer women who play hard to get. They like women who are selectively hard to get. That is, women who are cold to other people and warm to them. This shouldn’t be a surprise. For the most part, we prefer that there by mutual desire for us, and not indiscriminate attention to everyone. I want my wife to be in to me, and not in to other men. And I suspect she feels the same.

A personal anecdote on this topic. I waited over a year after I met my wife to ask her out. Some of that was circumstance - I was in my last year of law school and just bought a house with my brother, so I had a lot on my plate. But also, I wanted to see if she was in to me first. Fortunately, she sensed this, and encouraged me. This was likewise the way it went in our courtship. She half-jokingly proposed to me months before I proposed to her, and she has never left me in doubt of what she wanted. That worked well for us. So, at least in some cases, the stereotype of the evasive female and the conquering male is more of a culturally driven myth than reality. So women, don’t be afraid to ask a guy out…

Another one which fascinated me - and was something I had never read about before - was the behavior of a certain species of ant. Many ants have specific strategies for keeping their nests dry. This one, in addition to blocking entrances with their heads, has the second layer of defense wherein ants drink up any water which comes in, then go out and pee it outside. Communal peeing, so to speak.

I also want to mention a study (a series, actually) that I am quite familiar with, but should be mentioned regularly. Experimenters found that people will do unspeakably cruel things to their fellow humans if they are ordered to do so by a trusted authority. A shockingly low number of people are resistant to this. It goes without saying that this is of relevance for how totalitarian systems of all kinds come into being and remain in power. It also goes a long way to explain why Evangelicalism seems to be in a competition with itself to see how cruel they can been to refugees, the working poor, and anyone else their political “authorities” tell them to hate. I suspect that it is in part because they have spent the last several decades purging those whose compassion might cause them to question theological - and political - orthodoxy. As one of the researchers glumly concluded in a 60 Minutes interview:

I would say on the basis of having observed a thousand people in the experiment and having my own intuition shaped and formed by these experiments, that if a system of death camps were set up in the United States of the sort we had seen in Nazi Germany, one would be able to find sufficient personnel for those camps in any medium sized American town.

Heck, we already have the children in cages. I’d say, based on my experiences of the last two years, and what I have heard even the “good” people say, I think you could staff the death camps from a handful of churches in any town in America.

Also depressing was the study involving a weird doomsday cult in the 1950s. Failure of their apocalyptic predictions didn’t change their minds. It only made them believe harder, and become more distrustful and hostile to outsiders. Also all too relevant to the politics of our time.

That’s kind of a bleak note to end on - fortunately the book goes from there to the ability of cockroaches to survive a nuclear holocaust. (There was a great Mythbusters episode on this one a few years back.) While roaches fare better than mammals, the best turned out to be a parasitoid wasp. Which begs the question of what it would live on, of course.

Despite a few depressing moments, the book was fun, light, and the sort of thing one reads when tired and wanting to decompress.

The Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu

Source of book: I own this.

This book is part of a single-volume set of the “Classics of Eastern Thought.” I read The Art of War a couple years ago, and now returned to read the next work in the book. The version is this book is a translation by James Legge, which includes an extended introduction giving background information on the work and the history of Taoism.

Like Confucius, whose life overlapped that of Lao Tzu (who was older by roughly 50 years - the two met multiple times according to Confucius’ writings), Lao Tzu lived during the 5th Century BCE. Thus, these writings are quite old, representing some of the earliest religious and philosophical traditions. Furthermore, both Lao Tzu and Confucius claimed that their treatises were the distillations of oral traditions dating back a couple thousand years earlier. (In this sense, they are similar to the Bible, which is believed by scholars to have been written down between the 8th and 2nd Centuries BCE, but which references much older oral traditions.) The Tao Te Ching is a short, unified work, and the evidence that a single author wrote it is strong. The exact identity of Lao Tzu - and whether this was a title or a proper name - is debated, but his authorship is widely accepted. This book is the first in a series of works by Taoist authors - the introduction mentions a number of the later works and how they refer to this book. 

Depiction of Lao Tzu (aka Laozi) by Zhang Lu (Ming Dynasty)

I wasn’t particularly familiar with Taoism before reading this book. Eastern religions in general are not that familiar to me, I must confess. Part of my learning process since I started this blog has been to expand my knowledge beyond the bubble in which I grew up (we all grow up in bubbles of various sizes…) and learn new ideas.

Because of my limited knowledge, let me be quick to say that my thoughts on Taoism, such as they are, are likely to be at best, incomplete and uninformed. They come from my small experience, my own biases and frames of reference. The point of this post is not to denigrate or judge a philosophical or religious viewpoint so much as it is to engage it. My intent is to weigh what I read, learn things, and dialogue with other ideas.

The “Tao” means essentially “the way,” or “the path.” I found this interesting because the early Christians referred to themselves as “followers of the way,” a very similar term. (“Christian” was a derogatory epithet - a “little Christ.”) In some 19th Century translations, “Tao” was translated as “nature,” with the additional meaning that “nature” was a personification of “God’s laws.” Later translators would point out that this was imposing a rather Western view on the text: following Aquinas and Enlightenment thinkers and their concept of “Natural Law” and so on.

In reality, Taoism doesn’t fit even the idea of being a thing, let alone a deity. As Chuang Tzu (a later Taoist luminary - who is quoted extensively in the introduction) wrote, “Tao cannot be regarded as having a positive existence; existences cannot be regarded as non-existent. The name Tao is a metaphor used for the purpose of description. To say that it exercises some causation, or that it does nothing, is speaking of it from the phase of a thing - how can such language serve as a designation of it in its greatness? If words were sufficient for the purpose, we might in a day’s time exhaust the subject of the Tao. Words not being sufficient, we may talk about it the whole day, and the subject of discourse will only have been a thing…”

I think that the translation as “way” or “path” fits better for that reason. Tao isn’t a thing, it is a journey, a phenomenon, a mode of being. There is no true English equivalent, but so what? Words are too clumsy to pin it down anyway.

It occurred to me after reading this section of the introduction that this is one idea that has sadly been lost within my own faith tradition. Our own conception of God has been reduced to a collection of words about God - that is, we limit our experience and conception of God to an ancient collection of words about the Divine. We think that our scriptures - and particularly our ossified interpretations of that text - are a perfect, infallible, unchanging, scientific description of God and the divine laws. Thus, any chance for change, growth, mysticism, or personal experience (or even empathy these days) is precluded, because the words are the important thing, not the thing itself.

There were some other intriguing parallels in thought that stood out to me. The first was another line from Chuang Tzu’s book: “Before there were Heaven and Earth, from of old, there It [the Tao] was, securely existing.” There is a parallel there with John 1, where Christ is said to have existed “from the beginning.” (On a related note, John 1 also makes clear that Christ is the “Word of God” - not the scripture. Similar to how the writings about the Tao are not that Tao.)

Another one was the description - again from Chuang Tzu - of the early state of mankind. It is a lot like our own Eden, a time before knowledge and desire ruined everything. A time when there was no need for thought or non-instinctive action. As the translator points out, this is a defect common to many religious traditions (and specifically to Taoism and Confucianism), namely, an unrealistic view of the past, and a tendency to discount the progress in virtue and ethics which has been made over the millennia. (Again, let me recommend Steven Pinker’s outstanding book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, which, among other things, notes certain wars in Ancient China as having the highest death rates in history.) The translator does note that the Taoist opposition to knowledge ultimately became its downfall, giving Confucianism and later Buddhism the opportunity to capture minds and imaginations. Thus, at this time, Taoism is a shadow of the influential, vibrant tradition it was for centuries.

Having read the Tao Te Ching, I would say that it has a lot of interesting ideas, some great lines, and some food for thought. But it also - like any ancient text - has problematic passages, and ideas that seem rather harmful if taken too literally.

As I read it, central to the idea of the Tao is a certain passivity. It is rather the polar opposite of the Western (particularly the American) ideal, which is action. One can see an almost direct opposition to, say, Nietzsche. In the one sense, there are some parallels with the teachings of Christ - the use of paradoxes, and losing one’s life to gain it - but in another, the idea seems to be to do nothing and expect that problems will solve themselves. It seems to me to be a dangerous idea to apply to solving problems of oppression, for example.  

Here are some of the lines which I found most interesting.

Book III - Keeping People at Rest

Not to value and employ men of superior ability is the way to keep the people from rivalry among themselves; not to prize articles which are difficult to procure is the way to keep them from becoming thieves; not to show them what is likely to excite their desires is the way to keep their minds from disorder.

Okay then. Of the three adages, the last seems useful (I rather deplore most advertising), the second depends on the interpretation (yeah, if we didn’t value gold, maybe, but people will steal to eat), and the first is hogwash. If anything, our current administration is an illustration of what happens when you don’t value or employ people of superior ability: the idiots and the malevolent end up running things.

The next couple, however, I thought were quite good.

VIII - The Placid and Contented Nature

The highest excellence is like (that of) water. The excellence of water appears in its benefiting all things, and in its occupying, without striving (to the contrary), the low place which all men dislike. Hence (its way) is near to (that of) the Tao.

Definitely a parallel there with the concept of humility and the upside-down Kingdom that Christ taught.

IX - Fullness and Complacency in Success Contrary to the Tao

2. When gold and jade fill the hall, their possessor cannot keep them safe. When wealth and honors lead to arrogancy, this brings its evil on itself. When the work is done, and one’s name is becoming distinguished, to withdraw into obscurity is the way of Heaven.

That certainly seems to be a good antidote to the American obsession with wealth and celebrity.

XI - The Use of What Has No Substantive Existence

The thirty spokes unite in the one nave; but it is on the empty space (for the axle) that the use of the wheel depends. Clay is fashioned into vessels; but it is on their empty hollowness, that their use depends. The door and windows are cut out (from the walls) to form an apartment; but it is on the empty space (within), that its use depends. Therefore, what has a (positive) existence serves for profitable adaptation, and what has not that for (actual) usefulness.

This is a distillation of the concept of passivity, emptiness that characterizes much of the Tao.

Another one that I rather disagree with is this one, rendered initially in poetry.

XII - The Repression of the Desires

Color’s five hues from th’ eyes their sight will take;

Music’s five notes the ears as deaf can make;

The flavors five deprive the mouth of taste;

The chariot course, and the wild hunting waste

Make mad the mind; and objects rare and strange,

Sought for, men’s conduct will to evil change.

2. Therefore, the sage seeks to satisfy (the craving of) the belly, and not the (insatiable longing of the) eyes. He puts from him the latter, and prefers to seek the former.

I’m not feeling that one, I’m afraid. If you are starving, sure, eat. But if your existence is reduced to filling your belly, that is mere existence, not transcendence. It strikes me that this one is the sort of thing the wealthy have all too often said to those they oppress - say, slaves.

On the other hand, the idea that you cannot attain the Kingdom (of God or the Tao) by grasping rings true.

XXIX - Taking No Action

If anyone should wish to get the kingdom for himself, and to effect this by what he does, I see that he will not succeed. The kingdom is a spirit-like thing, and cannot be got by active doing. He who would so win it destroys it; he who would hold it in his grasp loses it.

There are a couple of paragraphs on the subject of war, which I found interesting.

XXXI - Stilling War

Now arms, however beautiful, are instruments of evil omen, hateful, it may be said, to all creatures. Therefore, they who have the Tao do not like to employ them.

And then later:

LXIX - The Use of the Mysterious (Tao)

2. There is no calamity greater than lightly engaging in war. To do that is near losing (the gentleness) which is so precious. Thus it is that when opposing weapons are (actually) crossed, he who deplores (the situation) conquers.

Honestly, I really feel that the recurring mistake that the United States has made since our victory in World War Two has been to lightly engage in war. That is why we have caused calamity and destruction with little if anything to show for it. The Tao isn’t fully pacifist - defensive war is provided for. But war without justification, or undertaken without careful thought, leads to suffering.

Another passage which was interesting was the one on government. In many ways, it reads as a statement of libertarian principles. As with all things libertarian, I have mixed feelings. Certainly laws can be used to oppress. But the cure isn’t the absence of laws, which lets the rich and powerful plunder everyone else (and destroy the earth in the process.) Also, as with The Wealth of Nations, I think statements that appear libertarian need to be seen in context. In a 6th Century BCE world, or a Feudalist or Mercantilist society, there is bound to be a reaction against laws written to protect entrenched interests. That doesn’t mean that the cure is to eliminate laws against pollution, discrimination, or wage theft, as modern libertarians seem so eager to do. Anyway, here is the passage:

LVII - The Genuine Influence

1. A state may be ruled by (measures of) correction; weapons of war may be used with crafty dexterity; (but) the kingdom is made one’s own (only) by freedom from action and purpose.

2. How do I know that it is so? By these facts: In the kingdom the multiplication of prohibitive enactments increases the poverty of the people; the more the implements to add to their profit that the people have, the greater disorder is there in the state and clan; the more acts of crafty dexterity that men possess, the more do strange contrivances appear; the more display there is of legislation, the more thieves and robbers there are.

3. Therefore, a sage has said: “I will do nothing (of purpose), and the people will be transformed of themselves; I will be fond of keeping still, and the people will of themselves become correct. I will take no trouble about it, and the people will of themselves become rich; I will manifest no ambition, and the people will of themselves attain to the primitive simplicity.

So, yeah, kind of, right? Paragraph 2 does fit with regulation aimed at rent-seeking. And it seems a good description of that whole process, whereby people find it more profitable to game the system than to contribute to it. But the cure seems pretty useless. Sitting back and watching the rich plunder the poor doesn’t lead to an automatic correction. (Unless you mean a violent revolution, which would not be my preference.)

Let me end with a series of three quotes, which I think make an interesting progression.

XLVIII - Forgetting Knowledge

He who devotes himself to learning (seeks) from day to day to increase (his knowledge); he who devotes himself to the Tao (seeks) from day to day to diminish (his doing).

LVI - The Mysterious Excellence

He who knows (the Tao) does not (care to) speak (about it); he who is (every ready to) speak about it does not know it.

LXXI - The Disease of Knowing

To know and yet (think) we do not know is the highest (attainment); not to know (and yet think) we do know is a disease.

We are back to the idea (alluded to earlier) that Taoism - particularly the later works - aren’t in favor of increasing knowledge. That first one seems to lean that direction, particularly if you omit the filled in words. However, in the later passages on knowledge, there seems to be a shift not toward “don’t know,” but toward “don’t be too sure you know.” And that is an excellent lesson.

In the second one, Lao Tzu hits on a vital truth: those who actually know things aren’t all that busy yelling about it. Whereas those who loudly trumpet their knowledge generally don’t know jack shit.

And finally, in the last one, we have the source of the problem. As has been said, the greater part of knowledge is knowing what we don’t know. The more you learn, the more you realize you don’t know, and the less eager you are to spout off to everyone else. This has, alas, become an epidemic in our “post-intellectual” age - as in “my ignorance is as valid as your verified facts.” It is truly a disease. This is how you get people thinking that their theological opinions (or political theories) determine reality. That they can somehow “know” exactly the meaning of everyone else’s genitals and what they do with them. That they can “know” that the cause of poverty is always and only laziness. That ignorant tweets are somehow as valid as decades of actual experience.

Lao Tzu offers a cure:

2. It is simply by being pained at (the thought of) having this disease that we are preserved from it. The sage has not the disease. He knows the pain that would be inseparable from it, and therefore he does not have it.

In order to avoid this, you have to be pained at the thought of being wrong, not at the thought of being shown to be wrong. If you are open to learning new things, to changing your mind, to seeing a different perspective, you won’t have the disease of thinking you know when you really don’t. That has been my goal for a long time. I want to be right. Which means I have had to change my mind in response to additional evidence. If you read early posts on this blog, you can see that I have changed, philosophically, theologically, and politically. I think that is a positive thing.

The Tao Te Ching was an interesting book. I obviously disagree with parts of it, agree with others, yet throughout found it a fascinating look into a different perspective.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J. K. Rowling

Source of book: We own all the Harry Potter books...but this one was the Stephen Fry audiobook version borrowed from a friend.

So, this year, I finally started working my way through the Harry Potter books. (You can read my thoughts on Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone here.) I figure that now that I have made it through the first two books, I can qualify as a proud member of Hufflepuff, rather than a muggle. 

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was a fun enough read, although it felt a bit derivative. It is easy to see significant plot parallels to the first book: the torment with the Dursleys, a visit to Diagon Alley, the trip to Hogwarts, conflict with Draco Malfoy, Quidditch, a nefarious threat hidden under Hogwarts, a visit to the forest, and so on. In that sense, it felt formulaic.

On the other hand, there were some really great characters and moments. I am very sad that Gilderoy Lockhart had to leave Hogwarts, as he was thoroughly hilarious. (And all too realistic when it comes to narcissistic celebrities.) And all those alliterative book titles.

The use of the diary was also creative, and made for a fun puzzle. In general, I thought the ideas were intriguing and made for an interesting story.

It was nice to meet the Weasley family in this book. They are, in contrast to the Dursleys, a fundamentally decent family. Relatively poor, and decidedly “lower class” in the conventional sense (despite being pureblood wizards), they reject both the bourgeois social climbing of the Dursleys and the aristocratic snobbery of the Malfoys. In a sense, this is Harry’s first experience of true family.

I also liked Rowling’s choice to tackle racism head on in this book. Whether it is in the form of slavery (house elves) or casual exclusion (ghosts) or obsession with “blood purity” in the case of the Malfoys, this book takes a hard look at it. Harry, as the good guy, gets a reputation as someone who treats outsiders with kindness. Even though Dobby is annoying and ends up hurting Harry in his efforts to “protect” him, Harry nevertheless treats him well, and is rewarded in the end. Harry skips the feast to attend Nearly Headless Nick’s deathday party. He continues his friendship with Hagrid, even after he is led to believe that it was Hagrid who opened the chamber. And, of course, Harry stands up for the “mudbloods” at the school, including Hermione.

Things got quite interesting at the end, when Dumbledore has to break a promise. After making it clear that he would expel Harry and Ron if they broke any more rules, he decided that there were...exceptions. Given my own background, this is, of course, rank heresy. An authority figure was expected to always follow through on threats, no matter what, or risk losing the respect of the underlings. (Not that my parents exactly hewed to this.) But in real life, as Dumbledore realizes, the rules are less important than the truly important things. Saving Ginny was definitely a greater priority than following certain rules.

Also quite interesting was Dumbledore’s insistence that identity is formed by what we do, not by our birth. In Harry’s case, his choice to reject Slytherin and choose Gryffindor is what truly makes him a Gryffindor. In the same way, the fact that his background is quite similar to that of Tom Riddle doesn’t mean that he is destined to become another Voldemort. Our choices become our character.  

I think that both of these philosophical ideas contributed to the suspicion that Fundamentalist/Evangelical sorts had to the books. After all, the books are pretty subversive of authority and rules. The characters often have too choose to do the moral thing, rather than the correct thing. Authority is often incompetent or malevolent - and just plain wrong. And, as it turns out, our character isn’t really determined by how orthodox our beliefs or how carefully we follow the rules. It goes beyond that to the choices we make and how we choose to act toward others.

I do have one geeky quibble with the book. Rowling makes extensive use of classical mythology, and is generally reasonably accurate. In her creation of the basilisk, she makes a key error, which bothers me. I understand her choice to make the basilisk far larger than the classical version. Artistic license and all, I suppose. But the real error is in the description of how a basilisk comes to be. According to the book, a basilisk is hatched from a cockerell egg incubated by a toad.

No, no, NO! That’s backwards. A cockerell egg incubated by a toad gives you a cockatrice! For a basilisk, you need a snake or toad egg incubated by a cockerell. (To be fair, the two creatures have been confused before - including in past translations of the Bible, where obscure Hebrew words were “translated” to mean various mythological beings. But still.) Yes, I know this is a seriously nerdy complaint, but there you have it.