The Equal Earth Projection and the Right Wing Extremist Meltdown

This post was inspired by a post by a friend (sharing the news article) and a response by one of his friends. To be clear, I don’t think this friend was a MAGA. But I do think that Dunning-Kruger was strong with him. There were so many factual errors that I strongly considered replying (usually a bad idea - the whole “answer a fool according to his folly” thing.) However, I was in the middle of a concert week and had better things to do.

 

Instead, I decided it would make an interesting blog post, particularly since I am in the middle of a bunch of books but haven’t finished one recently. Also, because I care a LOT about maps. (See below.)

 

***

 

So, here is the kerfuffle. The United Nations recently passed a resolution encouraging the replacement of the Mercator Projection with the Equal Earth projection. And also to teach that no projection can accurately represent the sphere of the earth. This isn’t a mandate. It is just an encouragement to schools and other institutions to make the change. 

 Equal Earth Projection

This is a laminated classroom map you can buy on Amazon and other places 

And apparently a "radical ideological project" if you are a MAGA 

 

The reason for this is pretty clear: the Mercator Projection distorts the relative size of continents and countries, making those in the north (such as Europe, Canada, and Russia) substantially bigger than they are, and those near the equator (particularly Africa but also South America) look significantly smaller. 

 

In practice, this has led to widespread belief that Africa is smaller than the United States or Europe. 

 

[True story: during the last Ebola outbreak, my wife had to calm some staff down about the admission of a visitor from the opposite side of Africa. People have no idea where the countries are anyway, but also failed to realize the vast distance between eastern and western Africa.]

 

While a handful of eastern European countries abstained from the vote, the only no vote was….the United States.

 

Because we are currently led by a pack of vicious racists, they whinged that this was a “radical ideological project.” Because of course they did. 

 

And yes, this is totally embarrassing for many of us Americans. 

 

But, the right wing here is nothing if not completely allergic to change, and if the Mercator was good enough for their grandparents, gosh darn it MUST be preserved for eternity. 

 

And also: racism. 

 

*** 

 

Before I dive into the debunking of the misinformation this guy posted, let me establish my bona fides for this topic.

 

I have loved maps since I was a small child. Our house always had a globe and a variety of maps, and I spent many hours with them. 

 

I grew up in the Los Angeles area, and, for anyone of my generation, we had a Thomas Guide. This was a spiral-bound book of street maps for Los Angeles County. (You can also get them for Orange County and San Diego County.) If you can drive there, it’s on these maps. I poured over them regularly as a child. 

 

Because of this, from the age of about 12, I could draw the Southern California freeway system from memory. I probably can still do that. I also was able to name all the primary and secondary streets of the San Fernando Valley in order, south to north, and east to west. I’m a bit out of practice on that one, since I haven’t lived there in 35 years. Well, I can probably still do the primary streets.

 

Also around this time, my brother and I created an entire neighborhood which we drew on paper. As in, every street, house, business. If we laid out all the pages, it was probably bigger than our house. 

 

Anyone who has traveled with me knows I have a strong sense of direction. On a clear day or night, I quickly orient myself to cardinal directions, and can think in terms of a map - I absolutely have a map in my head wherever I go. 

 

Same thing hiking in the wilderness. I usually bring a map and compass, not a GPS, and I am oriented to where I am at all times. On several occasions, I have done route finding off trail with others, and I’m generally the one who knows where to connect to other trails. 

 

Even though I do use navigation software at times, I really prefer paper maps, and will tend to study routes in advance so I know where I am. 

 

All this to say that I care deeply about maps and have since childhood. I know a good bit about them, can use them (including map and compass navigation), and have spent a lot of time thinking about things like projections for literally decades. I’m not glomming on to recent news and conjuring up an opinion. 

 

I should also mention that my brother has been on a one-man anti-Mercator crusade for decades. So believe, me, I have heard all the arguments for or against all the major projections. For what it’s worth, I kind of like the Goode Projection, because it’s a bit quirky and also preserves shape and size remarkably well. 

 

Also, here is a plug for Simon Garfield’s delightful book, On the Map. Check it out. 

 

***

 

So, on to the debunking. 

 

Misleading claim: The Mercator Projection is useful for navigation

 

This is at best a half truth, but is misleading. 

 

First, the history. 

 

Belgian mapmaker Gerardus Mercator first created the map in 1569. His intent was to provide a better map to be used by sailors in transoceanic voyages. And it worked pretty well for its time in history. 

 

The basic idea was that you could follow straight lines of latitude across the ocean. 

 

So, the true part of this is that the Mercator Projection was once useful for transoceanic sailing using a map, compass, and sextant. 

 

It had its flaws, however, one of which was that it was actually ahead of its time. While the technology of the time could accurately determine latitude, there was no great way of determining longitude. 

 

It’s not that people of the 16th Century didn’t know how to do this. You simply need an accurate way of determining global time. But creating a reliable and accurate clock that would work in extreme conditions such as violent weather at sea was devilishly difficult. In fact, the chronometer wouldn’t be created and used until 200 years after Mercator created his map. 

 

Once this happened, global travel exploded: the golden age of sail that has inspired literature and art ever since.

 

I’ll also recommend reading about Nathaniel Bowditch, one of my heroes, who was instrumental in creating detailed star charts and calculations for navigation. Oh, and he also was a big deal in the areas of trust, insurance, banking, and higher education. Seriously, one of the greatest men few have heard of.

 

[Side note: the fact that the Polynesians managed to navigate accurately long before Europeans, and without modern technology, is astonishing. It required huge amounts of memorization as well as skill in reading the ocean and atmosphere.]

 

So, here is where the claim is misleading: 

 

The Mercator Projection was once useful for a specific kind of navigation: transoceanic voyages using compass, sextant, and eventually a chronometer. It was never useful for terrestrial or coastal navigation - for those you need a detailed map of the particular area, not one with straight latitude lines. 

 

These days, literally no one uses the Mercator Projection for navigation. It is beyond useless for the Great Circle routes our aircraft fly. And, for that matter, the routes our ships travel. Straight lines on a globe are not straight on a Mercator-based map. 

 

So, the better way to put this is that the Mercator Projection used to be useful for navigation, but has been outdated for, well, at least a century. 

 

False claim: All of our current maps, including computer navigation, are based on the Mercator Projection

 

This is straight-up bullshit. 

 

To even claim this shows a gross ignorance about maps, mapmaking, and projections. 

 

Here is a somewhat oversimplified version of what mapmaking does:

 

When taking a spherical earth and converting it to a flat map, the first thing you have to do is determine where you are going to center it. Basically, put a pin where the page touches the sphere. At that point, the map is accurate for both page and ball, and as you get further away from that point, it gets increasingly inaccurate. 

 

For Mercator, his map touches the globe at the equator. As the map gets further from the equator, it gets increasingly inaccurate. 

 

When mapmakers create maps for smaller areas, they don’t just cut a piece of the Mercator projection. They instead pick a center, and work outward from there. 

 

This is blindingly obvious if you have ever spent time with an atlas or with maps in general.

 

Seriously. Go get yourself a map of a state like, say, Colorado. Here is one from Britannica. 

 

Notice anything weird about it? 

 

Oh yes, it isn’t as rectangular as a Mercator map would make you believe. 

 

Instead, the top and bottom curve a little, and the top is narrower than the bottom. Why is that?

 

Well, the lines of latitude are not actually straight on a globe. They curve. And the lines of longitude aren’t parallel at all. They converge at the poles. 

 

This map is, in a very real sense, more accurate than a Mercator map would be. It better represents the actual shape of the state of Colorado, and is thus better for actual navigation. 

 

My guess is that to make this map, the mapmaker put a pin in the middle of the state, and worked outward from there. 

 

Again, anyone who has spent any meaningful time with an atlas would know this - every state is drawn to be as accurate as possible. Same thing with the United States, which displays the same curves and corrections in any good map. 

 

The exact same idea is how our digital navigation maps work. Except they constantly readjust the center to be where you are at any given time. (That’s literally the basis for GPS mapping - it is a three-dimensional map of the globe, and the computer calculates where you are and draws the area around you. 

 

It is easy to miss the way GPS maps work, because they display such a small area. The curvature of the earth is pretty negligible at a smaller scale - if I build a table I don’t have to account for it at all. But the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge are nearly two inches further apart at the top than the bottom. A few inches is not noticeable on a map covering a couple miles at most. But I can tell you that GPS apps do not distort more and more as you go toward the poles. They simply re-center and adjust. 

 

This is precisely what the Mercator Projection does not do. 

 

A second issue here is the claim that “nobody is switching their GPS maps to the Equal Earth Projection.” Of course they aren’t. Global projections aren’t used for local maps. And nobody is or ever has used the Mercator Projection for local maps either.

 

This is a red herring and a distraction from what the UN resolution actually is about. It is about which projection is used for teaching and other places where a global projection is needed or useful. It has nothing to do with local maps or GPS software. 

 

False claim: The Mercator Projection accurately shows shapes, unlike other projections

 

Again, clearly bullshit if you actually know maps. 

 

Every projection distorts shapes to some degree, and the Mercator Projection is actually one of the worst. 

 

It’s not like Mercator didn’t try to compensate - he did so by expanding the latitude lines toward the poles so that the vertical dimension got bigger along with the horizontal dimension. 

 

But that doesn’t actually preserve accurate shapes. 

 

On a Mercator map, a rectangle would become a trapezoid, bigger at the top than the bottom (in the northern hemisphere.) Check out the difference between how Russia (to use an example) looks on a Mercator projection compared with a more accurate map using Russia as the center pin. It’s not even close. 

Mercator Projection

Note the stretching of the latitude lines and the huge distortion of shapes 

 

 A more accurate map of Russia, from the World Atlas

You can see how much the Mercator Projection distorts the shape 

 

Now, take a look at the Equal Earth Projection. It is actually quite a bit more accurate as to shape than the Mercator. Perhaps the main objection is that at the edges, it gets a bit less accurate. Meaning the United States, of course. But one could center the map wherever - and online versions let you spin the globe, so to speak. 

 

For nerds: yes, the Equal Earth Projection is based on the Robinson Projection, but compensates more to preserve relative size. This means a bit of elongation for some areas of the map. Again, every projection distorts to a degree. The Mercator is one of the worst offenders. 

 

Misleading claim: Digital maps have mostly replaced printed maps

 

This is at best a partial truth. Yes, most people these days rely on GPS navigation apps. I think this is a horrible development in that fewer and fewer people seem capable of orienting themselves without a device. Heck, it seems most people can’t even walk in an unknown city without staring at their phones to get around. If the networks go down, there are going to be a lot of lost people. Sigh. 

 

Anyway, the point of the UN resolution isn’t to replace digital maps (which don’t use the Mercator Projection anyway - see above), but to replace the global maps we use for teaching. 

 

Come on, all of us had maps in our classrooms, right? And my kids seem to have them in theirs. From a young age, all of us are taught about the world, and a map of the planet is a part of that. 

 

I think globes should be used more too, but they are bulky and more easily broken (and more expensive to replace) than a laminated paper map on a wall. 

 

The UN does have a point here too: the use of the Mercator Projection has indeed created generations of people who think Canada is far bigger than Africa. In subtle ways, this leads to implicit bias in how we think of the world and how we should view the other humans who live in it. 

 

Is a new map going to fix everything? Of course not. Neither is accurately teaching that projections are only approximations of three-dimensional reality. But they are a small change that can nudge our thinking. 

 

Which is, of course, why the Orange Fascist and his government are stoking outrage about it. Anything that might possibly make black people look more important infuriates them.

 

***

 

I am also puzzled by the faux-outrage about this. My parents were and are pretty right wing, but we were taught accurate information about globes and maps and the relative sizes of the continents. It wasn’t even controversial. 

 

These days, however, anything, no matter how innocuous, that in any way challenges white supremacy, triggers right wingers. Even attempts to bring our maps forward 450 years. 

 

Because of this, I want to address two more of the false claims in that comment.

 

False Claim: There are real injustices that need addressing, so we shouldn’t be talking about maps

 

I am so sick of this distraction and redirection. 

 

First, it is possible to work on multiple problems at the same time. One can work on smaller, more symbolic issues at the same time one works on addressing larger injustices! Seriously. 

 

Second, I find it interesting who the people are that keep harping about how we shouldn’t spend any time on symbols are. As in the case with this guy, it is pretty much always white people. Who dismisses the removal of Confederate monuments as meaningless? Pretty much only white people. And usually white men. 

 

This is what you get when the symbolism of our world almost entirely glorifies you and people like you. You don’t notice the constant pernicious effects of symbolism. Think of what happens whenever Jesus is portrayed as a color other than white. People flip out, right? Because the symbolism matters. 

 

And that is the point. Symbolism matters a lot more than middle class white guys realize. At least until they see a symbol changed from them to other kinds of people. As Robert Dussey, Togo’s foreign minister, said before the vote:

 

“Maps shape our understanding of the world. They guide education, nourish the imagination, and influence collective perceptions.” 

 

This is why I think that the argument of “we shouldn’t focus on the symbols” has a significant racist (and sexist and classist, etc.) thread to it. The UN resolution was raised by a group of non-Americans, mostly from Africa. 

 

As I note below, combine this with the “don’t make the racist right wing extremists mad” thing, and it all starts to look like it is more about white comfort than anything else.

 

False Claim: The UN resolution ultimately hurts the left

 

This is one of the most idiotic jingoistic piles of bullshit I have heard. 

 

The vote at the UN was 164 to 1. We were literally the only country to object. 

 

What is more accurate to say is that our white supremacist fascist government decided to throw a tantrum about a change to a more modern map, calling it a “radical ideological project.”

 

The only people who actually think that are apparently….white racist Americans. Full stop. Countries that range from relatively leftist to relatively right wing were fine with the change. It wasn’t even controversial at all. 

 

Only here, where the Orange Fascist and his goons and ghouls are obsessed with ethnic cleansing and American jingoism is this an issue. 

 

And, stay tuned for the book-banning crowd to now go on a jihad against the non-Mercator maps that are in classrooms around our country already. 

 

And you know what? I am so beyond caring what racist right wingers think. Every time we cave to them, we let the Overton Window get dragged ever further rightward. I’ve had enough. 

 

Let’s call this what it is: a racist right wing extremist tantrum. And an absolute embarrassment to our country and most of us Americans. 

 

By opposing the resolution and throwing a racist tantrum, all that has been accomplished is to further convince the rest of the world that the United States is freaking insane and dangerous and deeply stupid. Which, unfortunately, is not inaccurate. 

 

Those of us (like my friend) who are pointing out what an embarrassment this is and that it is a symptom of deep racism and jingoism are not the problem. The racist right wing extremists in our government are the problem. Whether you want to admit that truth or not. 

 

***

 

If you like the Mercator Projection, for whatever reason - nostalgia is probably the most likely - go ahead. Feel free to defend it on its merits. 

 

But don’t make misleading or false claims about it. And don’t pull the “we shouldn’t upset racist right wing extremists by calling out their embarrassing bigotry” card. 

 

Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami

Source of book: Audiobook from the library

 

Somehow it has worked out that the last four books I have finished have all been in translation, each from a different language. 

 

This book has been on my list since it came out, and happened to come up as available as an audiobook. 

 

Before getting into the book itself, I want to mention that the book as we have it in English is actually two books. Kawakami originally wrote the first part as Breasts and Eggs, then, after this book was a success, re-wrote the original and added a sequel to it, which is the second part of this book. 

 

I mention this in part because the two books are very much separate, with their own narrative arcs and central themes and ideas. They contain the same three core characters, and are told from the same perspective. 

 

The other reason I mention this is that the second book is good, but it isn’t as good as the first book, which is a true gem. Again, standing alone, the second book is a good read, and I would recommend it on its own. But that first book is so incredible that it makes the second book feel a bit pale in comparison. 

 

I will also note that, with one exception, men do not come off well in this book. Most of the men are horrible. If they are not outright violent and evil, they are gross. If they are not gross, then they are at least clueless and casually cruel in what they say. In other words, entitled males in a patriarchal society that values them above women. 

 

That said, the one exception to the rule (who only appears in the second book), is a really great and nuanced character, and his particular arc in the story is one of the most compelling subplots in the book. 

 

I am going to try to walk a fine line between giving away too many spoilers and having enough material for discussion. Fortunately, this book isn’t driven primarily by plot, but by characterization and social and psychological analysis. 

 

Book 1

 

This book really contains just three characters - there are other characters who appear via flashbacks or as mentioned by the main characters, but only the three main characters speak. 

 

Natsuko, aka Natsu, is the narrator, and both books are told from her perspective. She is the younger sister of Makiko, who is the single mother of Midoriko, a 12 year old girl going through puberty. 

 

The entire book takes place over the course of a few days, when Makiko and Midoriko visit Natsu in Tokyo. 

 

Natsu and Makiko were raised by their mother and grandmother after their violent, drunk, and unemployed father abandoned the family. Both girls lied to get employment when they were underaged, after both their mother and grandmother died of cancer.

 

Makiko ended up as a single mother herself, and has had a hard life of it. She works multiple jobs, including as a hostess at a bar, where she is expected to flirt with the patrons. 

 

Natsu lives in poverty as well, deliberately working a minimum wage job at a bookstore while she attempts to establish a career as a writer. She sends a bit of money to her older sister when she can.

 

The visit is a social one, but also turns out to be part of Makiko’s project of getting breast implants. How much of this is driven by Makiko’s body image issues and how much is driven by the fact that she is an aging woman in an industry where nubile youth is preferred isn’t clear.

 

In any case, Midoriko has flipped out over her mother’s quest, and has stopped talking. She communicates only by writing. 

 

The book alternates between the main story, told by Natsu, and excerpts from Midoriko’s diary where, among other things, she comments on the events of the day, and expresses her fears and frustration with puberty and the reproductive system generally. 

 

I won’t mention the entire plot, but this book contains a day at an amusement park shared by Natsu and Midoriko, discussions of the sexual and economic politics of the bar, flashbacks to Natsu and Makiko’s youth, and plenty of non-preachy analysis of gender-based hierarchies and expectations in patriarchal Japanese society. 

 

The final scene in this book is some of the most amazing writing and storytelling I have read. It involves Midoriko cracking an entire dozen raw eggs over her head - I can’t even describe it without all that comes before, but I will note that this is a brilliant use of “Chekhov’s Gun.” Eggs are mentioned early, but it still comes as a shock when they are cracked. 

 

As I noted, this part of the story is tight and focused, and superbly told. The characters are believable, and the insights into Midoriko’s psyche and fears and her feeling that her existence has ruined her mother’s life reverberate throughout the story. 

 

Part 2

 

For this part, we fast forward 9 or so years. While it isn’t actually stated, I think we can assume that the traumatic denouement of the last book has led to Makiko abandoning her quest for boobs. 

 

Makiko continues to work at the bar - she is now the de-facto manager, although she doesn’t get paid more for this. Midoriko is thriving, completing her education and enjoying the company of a young man who seems to be a good guy. (He never really appears in the story, so we have to take the author’s word for it.) 

 

Natsu has found modest success, with her collection of short stories about death and what comes after selling enough for her to be asked to write a longer novel. 

 

But, as Natsu approaches 40, she craves a connection. With a child. 

 

This part of the book explores assistive reproduction, intentional single parenting, and a whole host of ethical issues surrounding that. 

 

We start off with understanding that Natsu had a brief relationship with a childhood friend as a young adult, but that relationship ended because Natsu experiences physical and psychological pain during sex. She realizes that she has no sexual desire, and her body does not respond to it. 

 

Her boyfriend, understandably, eventually marries someone else and has children. 

 

Since then, Natsu hasn’t desired a romantic relationship with anyone. However, particularly after an evening with the young daughter of a fellow novelist, she realizes that she would like to meet her future child. 

 

How to accomplish this? Well, that’s…complicated. 

 

The author takes us on a tour of the landscape of assistive reproduction in Japan, where single women have few options. 

 

Legitimate sperm banks only serve married couples. Foreign banks are choosy and expensive. 

 

Individual donors advertise their services. But the guys who do this are creepy at best. Onda may be neurodivergent (I would guess he is), but he is also arrogant, entitled, and disgusting. No wonder Natsu flees. 

 

But the author also explores the flip side of the issue: the children conceived by donation. 

 

The one truly lovely male character in the book is Jun Aizawa, a man who discovers that he was the result of a sperm donation at age 30, in a pretty traumatic manner. The man who raised him has died of a heart attack, and his vindictive and nasty paternal grandmother disowns him. 

 

Aizawa is a doctor, and also works with a support organization for children conceived by donation. He and Natsu end up spending quite a bit of time in the book discussing the ethics of donation and the effects on children. 

 

For Aizawa, the biggest issue is the secrecy and the lies told to protect that secrecy. As he eventually understands near the end of the book, his desire to meet his biological father is really just a displacement of his grief that he was never able to tell the man who raised him that biology was unimportant compared to the love that they had for each other. 

 

I tend to agree with this, by the way. Ultimately, “father” is what you do, not your biological relationship. I’m not discounting those who wish to meet their sperm donor. But as a father myself, it is what you do that counts. And I would consider a non-biological child to be mine. 

 

Another child of artificial conception in the book is Yuriko, who has endured unbelievable evil. Her non-biological father, unlike Aizawa’s dad, was not kind to her. He prostituted her out as a child, after raping her himself.

 

It is understandable, therefore, that Yuriko is anti-natalist. She believes it is immoral to conceive a child, because the child did not ask to be born. Even if most children have good lives, why take the chance that it won’t?

 

By the way, this is a question that matters a lot when it comes to the religious tradition I was raised in. It is one thing to have a finite life that is full of pain. It is another to be tortured for eternity by one’s creator. Why bring a child into the world if there is a chance it will suffer in hell?

 

(This is one reason I stopped believing in hell in Jr. High. The whole idea was morally appalling.) 

 

Honestly, though, Yuriko makes a pretty solid argument. It isn’t irrefutable exactly, but it is consistent and thoughtful. 

 

And, for myself, as much as I am glad to have been born and glad to have my children, I have wondered if I would have had children had I foreseen Trump and the rise of fascism in our country. Was that a future I would have intentionally brought children into? 

 

(Related: this is why I burn with a cold fury at people who put him in office. They chose to destroy our country and harm my children’s future, mostly because they were so fucking racist. They had better be praying that hell doesn’t exist.) 

 

Yuriko herself, however, does admit that most people are glad they were born, even if she isn’t. 

 

Along with this journey that Natsu takes, determining if and how she wants to be a parent, there are other side plots. Natsu finds a conflict between her desire for parenthood and her devotion to the craft of writing. And yet, they are connected. Her impasse regarding having a child has led to writer’s block. 

 

Her editor, Sengawa, is happy being childless and unattached. And also thinks that Natsu would be distracted from writing by having a child. 

 

Makiko has found a way to enjoy her daughter, but acknowledges that her life is harder with Midoriko to support as well. 

 

Natsu’s married friend Rie is unhappy in her marriage, and finds she is ambivalent about her daughter. 

 

It’s all very complicated, this question of parenthood. 

 

One of the strongest ideas in the book - one that Natsu and Yuriko both assert - is that the ethical questions surrounding bringing a child into the world do not merely apply to those who use sperm donation or other assistive technologies. There is nothing magic about creating children through sexual intercourse that eliminates those ethical questions. 

 

From my experience working with families in my professional capacity, I can say with confidence that there are a LOT of married heterosexual couples who have no business making children. And plenty of single men and women who have made excellent parents - often stepping in when the biological parents cannot care for their kids. And certainly plenty of gay and lesbian couples I know are great parents. 

 

Again, there is nothing magical about being a married heterosexual couple having sex. It doesn’t make you a good parent. And being otherwise doesn’t make you a bad parent. 

 

This is, unfortunately, something I have had to come to terms with in my own life. My mentally ill mother had no business having children. The evidence of this continues to cause trauma in my birth family as she lashes out at her sons and their families because we have failed to turn out to be what she expected. We are too human, too individual, too committed to living our own lives, not hers. I resemble her father (in her mind, not real life - we are very different), and yet haven’t fixed her daddy issues. 

 

There is always the “what if” - what if she had delayed marriage (she married at 19) and gotten the mental health care she needed before having kids? Maybe she would have been able to love us as individual humans, not be disappointed that we weren’t like what she wanted and expected. Maybe she wouldn’t have self-medicated with toxic fundamentalist religion. Maybe she wouldn’t have projected her childhood trauma onto me and become enmeshed with my sister. What if?

 

This is at the heart of what Yuriko claims: that parents have children for selfish reasons. We have children for us, not for the children, who do not choose to be born. 

 

By the way, I do not think Yuriko’s argument is the author’s position. After all, she got married and had a kid - and remains married to the father. But, I think that she had to explore this sense of ambivalence, and the question of whether making children is an inherently selfish act. Because it kind of is. And I say that as someone who loves his kids and is incredibly proud of them and is determined to see them as humans valuable for themselves, not as a reflection of me. 

 

So, as I said, this part of the book is good, but it does have some flaws. The biggest one is that it can get bogged down in the philosophy sometimes. I’m not exactly sure what (if anything) should have been cut, but there are times when it feels like the book has wandered away from the story itself and gone down a more abstract exploration of patriarchal culture. 

 

Another thing I thought was a shame is that Midoriko is barely in the second part. And when she is, there is so little time that we don’t see her personality like we did in the first part. Really, Midoriko was the best part of that first book, and a really great character. I felt like she could have been more involved. For example, Natsu talks to everyone else about her plans to conceive a child. Why not talk to Midoriko, who, in my opinion, might have had the most interesting stuff to say about it. After all, she had that existential meltdown in the first book, right? 

 

Finally, the ending is a bit abrupt, and leaves a lot unanswered. Not in terms of loose ends in the plot - the whole book is well plotted. But in terms of the philosophy. If Natsu is going to be a mother, shouldn’t we get to see how this plays out for her? Maybe there will be a sequel, and we can find out. 

 

After all, a parenting experience doesn’t end at birth. It is just beginning, and how a person adapts to the child they actually have, who will be very different from the child they expect, is the biggest question facing every parent. I believe this, more than any other factor, will ultimately determine if a parent will have a good adult relationship with their child. 

 

I could talk about a lot more in this book, from patriarchal culture to asexuality. As with a few other female Japanese authors I have read in the last few years, asexual characters are becoming more common in fiction. Even as a definite allosexual myself, I find stories where romance is not the primary driving force to be interesting and compelling as well. Nothing wrong with romance, of course - I read those books too. But not all stories need revolve around romance. 

 

The English version as translated by David Boyd and Sam Bett. My understanding is that they split the labor between narration and dialogue. I am not qualified to comment on the translation, as I cannot read the original. Maybe my second kid, who can read at a third grade level, will read it in Japanese someday and comment on it for me. We’ll see. Anyway, unlike some books where the style is unique enough, this one seems a bit more bland in the translation. For whatever that is worth. 

 

The audiobook was narrated by Emily Woo Zeller and Jeena Yi. I am pretty sure one did the bulk of the narration, while the other did Midoriko’s diary, but I am not sure which is which. In any case, the voices were fairly easy to follow, with each character having a unique one. It’s a good audiobook. 

 

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

 

Invisible Cities consistently makes lists of the best short fiction. For this and other reasons, I have had it on my list for a while. 

 

It is impossible to fully categorize this book, or even describe it. It is an imaginary conversation about cities between Kublai Khan and Marco Polo, wherein Polo describes a series of cities, all of them imaginary and named after women, and Khan responds in the opening and closing of each chapter, often seeing the descriptions as philosophical rather than real. 

 

The book owes much, of course, to Polo’s stories about his travels in the Mongol Empire (written down later by Rustichello da Pisa), and his often fantastic descriptions of places. I think it also is a nod to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s fragment, “Kubla Khan.” 

 

As I said, it is really hard to categorize. The structure is very detailed and mathematic, with 55 different cities described, in 9 chapters and 11 categories, and a spiral structure within the work. 

 

There are other websites that can go into crazy detail about the structure and the meaning of each story. That is not my intent here. 

 

I think it is sufficient to understand that the book is all metaphor, and that the cities say something about the human condition, mortality, community, inequality, and much, much more. One could read it over and over and still see new things. 

 

For me, what struck me most is that for all the cities, there is a face and a flip side. Often, this is between the glamor of the public face contrasted with the underbelly. And, in a metaphorical sense, the good and bad of humanity, the public face and the private demons. 

 

I wrote down a few of my favorite lines, but want to clarify that these are not necessarily the ones that are most important, or most thematic. I just liked them. 

 

The first is from the opening.

 

There is a sense of emptiness that comes over us at evening, with the odor of the elephants after the rain and the sandalwood ashes growing cold in the braziers, a dizziness that makes rivers and mountains tremble on the fallow curves of the planispheres where they are portrayed, and rolls up, one after the other, the despatches announcing to us the collapse of the last enemy troops, from defeat to defeat, and flakes the wax of the seals of obscure kings who beseech our armies’ protection, offering in exchange annual tributes of precious metals, tanned hides, and tortoise shell. It is the desperate moment when we discover that this empire, which had seemed to us the sum of all wonders, is an endless, formless ruin, that corruption’s gangrene has spread too far to be healed by our scepter, that the triumph over enemy sovereigns has made us the heirs of their long undoing. 

 

Thus for all empires, including the American one. As we are seeing unfold at this moment in time.

 

Some of the tension between Khan and Polo stems from their different perspectives. Khan is concerned about his empire, while Polo is all about the journey. 

 

“The other ambassadors warn me of famines, extortions, conspiracies, or else they inform me of newly discovered turquoise mines, advantageous prices in marten furs, suggestions for supplying damascened blades. And you?” the Great Khan asked Polo, “you return from lands equally distant and you can tell me only the thoughts that come to a man who sits on his doorstep at evening to enjoy the cool air. What is the use, then, of all your traveling?”

“It is evening. We are seated on the steps of your palace. There is a slight breeze,” Marco Polo answered. “Whatever country my words may evoke around you, you will see it from such a vantage point, even if instead of the palace there is a village on pilings and the breeze carries the stench of a muddy estuary.” 

 

I loved this observation, from Maurilia:

 

In Maurilia, the traveler is invited to visit the city, and, at the same time, to examine some old post cards that show it as it used to be: the same identical square with a hen in the place of the bus station, a bandstand in the place of the overpass, two young ladies with white parasoles in the place of the munitions factory. If the traveler does not wish to disappoint the inhabitants, he must praise the postcard city and prefer it to the present one, though he must be careful to contain his regret at the changes within definite limits: admitting that the magnificence and prosperity of the metropolis Maurilia, when compared to the old, provincial Maurilia, cannot compensate for a certain lost grace, which, however, can be appreciated only now in the old post cards, whereas before, when that provincial Maurilia was before one’s eyes, one saw absolutely nothing graceful and would see it even less today, if Maurilia had remained unchanged; and in any case the metropolis has the added attraction that, through what it has become, one can look back with nostalgia at what it was.

 

This really speaks to all nostalgia, doesn’t it?

 

Related, from Fedora:

 

On the map of your empire, O Great Khan, there must be room both for the big, stone Fedora and the little Fedoras in glass globes. Not because they are all equally real, but because all are only assumptions. The one contains what is accepted as necessary when it is not yet so; the others, what is imagined as possible and, a moment later, is possible no longer. 

 

Another one, from the opening of another chapter.

 

“It has neither name nor place. I shall repeat the reason why I was describing it to you: from the number of imaginable cities we must exclude those whose elements are assembled without a connecting thread, an inner rule, a perspective, a discourse. With cities, it is as with dreams: everything imaginable can be dreamed, but even the most unexpected dream is a rebus that conceals a desire or, its reverse, a fear. Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.”

 

This really is a profound insight into societies, which are at their core made of desires and fears which drive behavior. 

 

This line from “Chloe” ties in as well. 

 

If men and women began to live their ephemeral dreams, every phantom would become a person with whom to begin a story of pursuits, pretenses, misunderstandings, clashes, oppressions, and the carousel of fantasies would stop.

 

The discussion of empires continues in the framing sections of the chapters. Here is another great line from Polo.

 

“Yes, the empire is sick, and, what is worse, it is trying to become accustomed to its sores. This is the aim of my explorations: examining the traces of happiness still to be glimpsed, I gauge its short supply. If you want to know how much darkness there is around you, you must sharpen your eyes, peering at the faint lights in the distance.”

 

One of the best examples of the duality of cities (and humans) is this one:

 

The city of Sophronia is made up of two half-cities. In one there is the great roller coaster with its steep humps, the carousel with its chain spokes, the Ferris wheel of spinning cages, the death-ride with crouching motorcyclists, the big top with the clump of trapezes hanging in the middle. The other half-city is of stone and marble and cement, with the bank, the factories, the palaces, the slaughterhouse, the school, and all the rest. One of the half-cities is permanent, the other is temporary, and when the period of its sojourn is over, they uproot it, dismantle it, and take it off, transplanting it to the vacant lots of another half-city.

And so every year the day comes when the workmen remove the marble pediments, lower the stone walls, the cement pylons, take down the Ministry, the monument, the docks, the petroleum refinery, the hospital, load them on trailers, to follow from stand to stand their annual itinerary. 

All too often, what we assume is permanent is actually the most temporary. 

 

In the close of that chapter, Polo describes to approaches to thinking of cities. I found this fascinating, and applicable in a way to understanding humanity and culture as well. 

 

“From now on, I’ll describe the cities to you,” the Khan had said, “in your journeys you will see if they exist.”

But the cities visited by Marco Polo were always different from those thought of by the emperor.

“And yet I have constructed in my mind a model city from which all possible cities can be deduced,” Kublai said. “It contains everything corresponding to the norm. Since the cities that exist diverge in varying degree from the norm, I need only foresee the exceptions to the norm and calculate the most probable combinations.”

“I have also thought of a model city from which I deduce all the others,” Marco answered. “It is a city made only of exceptions, exclusions, incongruities, contradictions. If such a city is the most improbable, by reducing the number of abnormal elements, we increase the probability that the city really exists. So I have only to subtract exceptions from my model, and in whatever direction I proceed, I will arrive at one of the cities which, always as an exception, exist. But I cannot force my operation beyond a certain limit: I would achieve cities too probable to be real.”

 

What is “normal”? What is “the norm”? Is it just another way of saying “majority,” or, as is more common when dealing with humans, is it just “whatever I prefer”? 

 

And then, there is one of the most famous lines in the book, but one that I think is good.

 

“There is still one of which you never speak.”

Marco Polo bowed his head.

“Venice,” the Khan said.

Marco smiled. “What else do you believe I have been talking to you about?”

The emperor did not turn a hair. “And yet I have never heard you mention that name.”

And Polo said: “Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice.” 

 

Another line, from “Adelma”:

 

I thought: “You reach a moment in life when, among the people you have known, the dead outnumber the living. And the mind refuses to accept more faces, more expressions: on every new face you encounter, it prints the old forms, for each one it finds the most suitable mask.”

 

And another one from near the end:

 

“It is not the voice that commands the story, it is the ear.”

 

I can’t forget this one from “Perinthia,” which reminds me so much of the authoritarian parenting gurus my parents followed - many of which are completely estranged from their kids and grandchildren now. The city is laid out as the astronomers direct, to put everything in perfect harmony with the heavens and the gods. 

 

But, like any city, it fails to meet the standard of perfection. In this case, the city seems to produce more than its share of disabled, insane, and otherwise “not normal” people. 

 

Perinthia’s astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong and their figures are unable to describe the heavens, or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters.

 

I’ll end with the ending of the book, which I think is amazing. After this lengthy tour of the complexity of cities, society, and human nature itself, Khan wonders if there is any hope? 

 

He said: “It is all useless, if the last landing place can only be the infernal city, and it is there that, in ever-narrowing circles, the current is drawing us.”

And Polo said: “The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering in it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.” 

 

It’s pretty hard to beat that as a way of wrapping up such a philosophical discussion by way of metaphor. 

 

As with any book in translation, it is impossible to entirely separate the work of the author from the work of the translator. The English version of this book was translated by William Weaver, and I found the prose to be highly poetic and beautiful. 

 

I am now curious to read more of Calvino - he is described as a “postmodernist” writer, and, if this book is any indication, he uses unconventional forms and ways of telling his story. I liked this one, so perhaps the others will be interesting as well. 

Special Assignments by Boris Akunin

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

 

The adventures of Erast Fandorin continue…

 

I have written about several other books in this series, which I am reading in order. Here is the list - and I do recommend reading them in the correct order, because the story of Fandorin’s life unfolds along with the mysteries he solves.

 

In order:

 The Winter Queen

The Turkish Gambit

Murder on the Leviathan

The Death of Achilles

    

This book is a bit unusual, because it actually contains two different stories, each about half the length of the usual novels. I am unsure whether to count this as one book or two books.

 

Anyway, the first is The Jack of Spades, and is a fairly humorous mystery about a skilled con man. The second is The Decorator, which is literally about Jack the Ripper, imagining that he was in fact a disgraced Russian medical student who goes crazy, and returns to Russia to continue his crime spree after leaving London. 

 

The books are very different in tone. The first is lighthearted, and a true battle of wits between Fandorin and “Momos,” the con artist extraordinaire. 

 

The second is lurid, breathtakingly violent, and littered (literally) with dead and mutilated bodies. I thought maybe the author was being gratuitous, but then I looked up the stuff on Jack the Ripper, and, well, Akunin is just using the police reports as sources. 

 

I’ll look at each book in turn. 

 

***

 

The Jack of Spades

 

I very much enjoyed this book. The plots and counterplots between Momos (apparently Russian for the ace of spaces) and Fandorin escalate throughout, until it becomes breathtakingly daring. 

 

Interestingly, this is the rare case where Fandorin doesn’t entirely win. Rather, in one way of looking at it, Momos ends up winning in the end. (I won’t spoil it more than that.) At best, there is a stalemate, where everyone involved ends up agreeing to move on. 

 

Furthermore, the action that sparks the end for Momos’ career in Moscow ends up being his ill-advised decision to prey on a notorious gangster and slumlord - someone with his own level of ruthlessness and lack of conscience. 

 

One of the best things about this book is Fandorin’s sidekick, Mr. Tulipov. Unfortunately, he doesn’t get to stick around to the end of the next book, because I rather liked him as a character. And also because of his name, which is mentioned on page one. 

 

And that surname, from the word tulip! It was simply a joke. He had inherited the ill-starred family title from his great-grandfather. When Anisii’s forebear was studying in the seminary, the father rector had the bright idea of replacing the inharmonious surnames of the future servants of the church with names more pleasing to God. For the sake of simplicity and convenience, one year he named all the seminarians after church holidays, another year after fruits, and great-grandfather found himself in the year of the flowers: someone became Hyacinthov, someone Balzamov, and someone else Buttercupov. Great-grandfather never did graduate from the seminary, but he passed the idiotic surname on to his progeny. Well, at least he had been named after a tulip and not a dandelion.

 

The case starts off with the conning of an English gentleman at the expense of the mayor of Moscow (who is Fandorin’s employer starting in the last book.) It really is embarrassing when the mayor purportedly has sold his mansion to an Englishman, and the Englishman in turn has paid millions of kopeks. Ouch. 

 

Fandorin gets involved because the case would cause a huge scandal if it came to light. Discretion, of course, is Fandorin’s specialty. Well, that and a lot of other skills. 

 

After Tulipov is dispatched with a message to Fandorin, he is hired for what seems like a dream job. 

 

“From this moment on until the case of the Jack of Spades is closed, you will be at my disposal. We shall be working together for a while. I hope you won’t find it too b-boring.”

 

As if. Working for Fandorin may well get you killed, but it is never boring. 

 

I also wrote down a line about a religious group that has a lot in common (politically and philosophically, not theologically) with American Evangelicalism: Russian Orthodoxy. Momos sets up a charitable lottery using the identity of a European Evangelical group. (The book is set in 1886, when European and American Evangelicals were more alike than they are now.) 

 

And then the details had been important, of course. So that it wouldn’t just be an ordinary charitable lottery, but a European evangelical lottery. The Orthodox believers weren’t overfond of members of other creeds, but where money was concerned they trusted them more than their own - that was a well-known fact.

 

One big scene toward the end of the book is the one where Momos impersonates a hermit. I found it fun that the book he uses as a prop is Gulliver’s Travels, which he selected because the old copy was thick and looked impressive. 

 

One final line from this book comes from Masa, Fandorin’s Japanese valet and assistant. (The author, like Fandorin, spent time in Japan, and worked as a translator before writing these books relatively later in life.) He and Tulipov are talking about Fandorin’s seeming depression after being foiled in his most recent attempt to defeat Momos. 

 

“Need woman. With woman bad, without woman worse.” 

 

As I said, this book is relatively light-hearted, quite humorous, and has an ending that is somewhat unexpected.

 

***

 

The Decorator

 

As I said, this book is a lot darker, and literally involves Jack the Ripper. 

 

It starts with the discovery of a prostitute who has been murdered and carefully and meticulously eviscerated, with organs laid around her in an artistic manner. 

 

And yes, this is literally from the case histories of Jack the Ripper. 

 

The book is mostly from Tulipov’s point of view, but there are also episodes from the point of view of the Ripper, where he explains his bizarre religious views which lead him to his murders.

 

This book is definitely more of a classing whodunit sort of book, a more bloody version of Agatha Christie, perhaps. 

 

There are a number of potential suspects, some red herrings, and enough clues to figure out who the perpetrator is if you pay attention. 

 

And so many bodies. Too many bodies. And too many of them innocent women. (The murder of the nasty police inspector character is less traumatic.) 

 

I didn’t enjoy this book quite as much. I’ve never been fascinated by psychopaths like Jack the Ripper, although I know people who go for that sort of thing. The fact that he was real doesn’t make it better either. 

 

The ending is also a bit troubling, although it makes sense in context. 

 

There is one line, though, that I thought was interesting. Fandorin and his current girlfriend, the devout Angelina, are discussing beggars and charity. Fandorin makes the (rare) mistake of thinking that beggars congregate around palaces because rich people give more. Angelina corrects him. 

 

“No, poor people give more than the rich.” 

 

Which is true. And Christ pointed it out as well - the story of the Widow’s Mite isn’t an admonition to give when you are poor, but an indictment of the way the rich give pennies and then feel generous. 

 

 Both books have a decent amount of social commentary mixed in, and it is generally good and relevant to all societies, not merely the Russia of the late 19th Century. 

 

Although I didn’t love this book as much as the first one in the collection, it still was a worthy read. And those who like a bit more gore in their mysteries will probably love it.