Twist by Colum McCann

Source of book: Audiobook from the library

 

I have loved Colum McCann’s writing since I first experienced it in Let The Great World Spin, which I listened to on an excellent multi-cast audiobook back in 2017. Since then, I have read (in paper form), Trans Atlantic, and Thirteen Ways of Looking. 

 

McCann was born in Ireland, but later moved to New York. This “trans Atlantic” identity runs through all of his books that I have read, in some way or another. Twist is no exception. In fact, I would say that it is in a thematic way a spinoff from Trans Atlantic, examining another way the world is connected across oceans. 

 

In this case, the book is all about the transoceanic cable system, which carries far more of our international communications than satellites, even today. In researching for the book, McCann spent time aboard a cable repair ship, and this shows in his detailed and fascinating descriptions of life on board the ship. 

 

To be clear, this is a work of fiction - it is a story of a man who goes from a repair expert to a saboteur, a musing on connectedness and loss of connection, and quite a contemplative book. And a good story. McCann plotted this one tightly, with a great narrative arc and use of distinct sections that balance and echo each other. 

 

This particular audiobook was narrated by McCann himself, and he is actually an excellent reader. Since the book is written in the first person, and the narrator is a bit like the author, this works really well, and feels like a natural storytelling device. 

 

The narrator is Anthony Fennell, a playwright who hasn’t been successful, so he takes on journalistic assignments to pay the bills. He ends up going along as a passenger on an undersea cable repair ship based in South Africa, the guest of the head of the repair crew (as opposed to the captain and the ship’s crew), a man named John Conway. But is that really who he is? He comes from a remote Irish island, has some years missing (as do other characters), and seems to have a past. 

 

His partner is Zanele, a South African actress. Apparently, they met many years ago in Florida, and have had an on and off relationship for a long time - she has children from another relationship. 

 

Both of them are “free divers.” For those not familiar with the term, these are divers who do not use SCUBA equipment, but simply hold their breath for an insane amount of time, swim to absurd depths, and treat the whole thing as both a competition and a source of euphoria. 

 

To give an idea of this, an average person like me - or perhaps you as well - can hold a breath for at most a minute and a half. 

 

The current record for a free dive without oxygen is over 11 minutes. 

With the use of pure oxygen before the dive, the record is 29 minutes. Which is insanity. 

 

Free divers can either go down with “constant weight” - meaning they are essentially neutrally buoyant and propel themselves up or down, or with weights they jettison. For the former, the record depth is nearly 400 feet. Again, insanity. Recreational SCUBA divers are limited to 130 feet. 

 

I mention this, because free diving is a big part of the plot. Here too, McCann did his research and got the details right, even though I don’t see any indication he did more than a modest dive to research it - he and I are about the same in stamina, I would guess. 

 

The first part of the book is all about the preparation to go out to sea - Fennell meets Conway in South Africa, is invited to meet Zanele. And then they wait. After all, there needs to be a cable break first. This does eventually happen, off the west coast of Africa, and the ship embarks with a very seasick Fennell. (Who is also struggling with going cold turkey from his alcohol problem - no booze is allowed on board.) 

 

The cable is eventually found, repaired, and the ship is off to the next break - there are several caused by the same underwater event. 

 

But before things can be completed, Conway disappears from the ship just off the coast of Ghana, leaving Fennell without a host - or a ticket back. 

 

Is this connected to other happenings? 

 

Before the ship embarks, Zanele leaves for London, to direct a run of Samuel Beckett’s play, Waiting for Godot, with a climate change metaphor. During the run, a disturbed young man throws acid in her face, and the whole thing blows up on media, which reaches the ship via their slow satellite connection. 

 

This clearly shakes Conway, and is perhaps a reason he abandons the ship. 

 

From there, Fennell has to reconstruct events after the fact. It is a bit of a spoiler, but Conway is alive, although not living openly. And no one knows what his ultimate plan will be, or how it will end. 

 

The later sections of the book reveal as much as the narrator will eventually know, along with his speculation about other details. These are entirely plausible, and in line with the characters, but ultimately, we never get full answers.

 

The book is interesting in that the climax occurs about seven-eighths through the book, leaving a fairly long wind-down. It isn’t exactly a tying up of ends either, but a continuing exploration of the aftermath as it affects Fennell and Zanele. One might call this a bit old-school, a slow unfolding followed by a gentle letdown. I thought it was effective. 

The prose flows smoothly, the descriptions are clear but not overdone, the dialogue believable. I really do like McCann’s writing. 

 

I am still thinking about the various layers of meaning. There is definitely the modern issue of the problems that our mass media, including our internet connectedness raise. Is it better that we know so much? While we also do so poorly in discerning truth from propaganda? 

 

But also very personal things. Can relationships survive two people being drawn in different directions by their calling? How are our connections severed, and can we repair them? What is the cost of repair? 

 

When one loses a single connection, what other connections are compromised? In such an interconnected world - which we have always been - how do we maintain positive connections? 

 

There is also the role of alcohol in the book. Is it a source of connection? Of disconnection? Does it cloud one’s thinking, or enable a kind of clarity. And the book considers all of these as possible correct answers too. 

 

And that is before you get to the more global problems of colonialism and climate poisoning. Again, connections, whether we want them or not. 

 

As with all of McCann’s books, there is a lot to think about. This one is a compelling story, but so much more than that. I have enjoyed every one of his books that I have read, including this one. 

 

The Maestro Myth by Norman Lebrecht

Source of book: I own this

 

I first discovered Norman Lebrecht years ago when my wife brought home a copy of Why Mahler? years ago. I greatly enjoyed it, even if I didn’t always agree with Lebrecht - and in fact the book significantly heightened my appreciation of Mahler’s works, making him one of my favorites. Re-reading what I wrote about it, I think I may have underestimated the extent to which the book would influence me.

 

Since then, I have also followed Lebrecht’s SlippedDisc blog, which is a great source of news about the classical world. I recommend following it. 

 

More recently, I ran across a copy of The Maestro Myth, and snapped it up. Of course I wanted to read about Lebrecht’s opinion of conductors and conducting. Fortunately, this book was every bit as much fun (and enlightening) as I had hoped. 

 

Like Lebrecht’s other book, this one defies categorization. It isn’t really biography - although it does give a lot of information about the lives of various famous conductors. The stories are of limited scope. We might hear about the childhood of one conductor but not another; or we might hear about one part of a conductor’s career, but not all of it. And, in many cases, Lebrecht gives us a few incidents that fit his point he is trying to make, while the rest is left out. 

 

The book also isn’t just a book about what Lebrecht thinks about conductors, or the art of conduction - although, again, that is in this book. It isn’t just about the history of conducting, although it has some of that too. 

 

Really, this is a book Lebrecht wrote about conducting, conductors, the mythology surrounding conducting and conductors, and a lot of stuff about how music connects with politics and personality and money and art and everything else. 

 

I should also note that the title does not mean that Lebrecht is “debunking” myths about conductors. Rather, he explores the mythology of conducting, of the great conductors, of the “maestro” that sits atop the orchestra like a god and makes music happen. 

 

Lebrecht, as far as I can determine, has never been in an orchestra - he is a journalist and has been described as a “gossip columnist,” which isn’t entirely wrong, I suppose - but he has a pretty good handle on what makes a conductor good, bad, or indifferent. 

 

So, if you are into classical music, you will probably find this book a heck of a lot of fun. As long as you aren’t expecting it to fit any particular expectation. That’s how Lebrecht writes. 

 

The Maestro Myth was published in 1991, which is a lot longer ago than I think it should be - I’m apparently getting old - so some of the information is out of date. Many of the “living” conductors in the book are now deceased, and there is obviously nothing about the current generation of young maestros. 

 

I should note as well that it is a good idea to fact check anything Lebrecht writes before you cite it. Some of his books have had some errors of fact in them, and the sequel to this one landed him in a libel suit which was subsequently settled. The “gossip columnist” part is, as I noted, not entirely wrong, and some of what makes it into all of his books seems to be scuttlebutt, not proven fact. Keep that in mind if something seems a bit implausible, and dig a little deeper. 

 

I mention this regarding this book primarily because of the last chapter, in which he argues that the agents for top-name maestros are ruining the profession. You might take the specifics with a wee bit of salt. 

 

Lebrecht organizes the book sort-of in chronological order, starting with the person he sees as the first true “maestro,” the conductor who was a celebrity in his own right: Hans von Bulow. Ah yes, the guy whose wife was stolen by Wagner, but who arguably premiered more masterpieces than anyone before or since. And it is difficult to argue with Lebrecht’s choice of him as the first true celebrity conductor. 

 

From there, the book goes more or less through time, but also groups conductors in chapters based on themes. For example, chapter four is entitled “Facing the Dictators,” and examines how various maestros of the World War Two era pushed back - or not - against Hitler and Stalin. This means Toscanini (strongly anti-fascist, but possibly self-serving as well) and Furtwangler (a definite collaborator with the Nazis, but it was complicated), but also the communist ex-pats: Szell and Reiner. 

 

Karajan - who was even worse than Furtwangler, but never paid the same price in reputation - gets his own chapter. 

 

And so on through the present. Near the end, Lebrecht devotes a chapter to those fairly systemically excluded from the podium: women, black people, and gay people. To be clear here, Lebrecht even in 1991 thought this was a horrible scandal in the Classical world, and sought to elevate women and minorities, while noting that a lot of conductors were gay, but had to hide it or lose their careers. 

 

I should mention that Lebrecht is Jewish, and that fact is important in how he views the Nazis, antisemitism, and performative diversity. (In particular, his takedown of the Vienna Philharmonic and its performative embrace of Jewish conductors is pretty brutal. It was easier to celebrate Leonard Bernstein than actually acknowledge how many musicians the organization betrayed who then perished in the camps and gas chambers.) 

 

Another thing that I do want to note is that the book does have a few cringy things that are a product both of the time it was written in and the generation Lebrecht belongs to. 

 

One of these that most grated was his use of “girl” to describe grown women. Specifically, women who are of college age or early career - he would describe orchestras hiring “girls straight out of university.” Yeah, it grated badly. Older women are described as “women,” so it has to be an age thing. 

 

The sad thing is, it is clearly an affectation, a way of speaking, rather than a conscious diss of women. Throughout the book, he praises opportunities given to female instrumentalists, singers, and conductors. Even when he uses “girls” he is praising the orchestras for identifying previously overlooked talent and noting that this led to high musical quality. 

 

I can’t think of anywhere in the book that he expresses the view that women are in any way inferior to men, and in many cases, he correctly identifies the misogyny that has made musical careers difficult for women. 

 

So, I am going to just say that he sounds like an old man used to using certain words, rather than an actual sexist. And also, I fault his editor for leaving those in. Maybe 1991 was just like that, but it should have been better. 

 

I’m not going to summarize any of the chapters or list the conductors. Rather, I want to just highlight some things that particularly struck my fancy. And say that if you are a classical music fan - and especially if you are a musician - you should give this book a read. 

 

The opening is pretty darn good:

 

Every age invents heroes. The warrior, the lover and the saintly martyr captivated medieval minds. Romantics worshipped the poet and explorer; industrial and political upheavals set the scientist and social reformer on a pedestal. The advent of mass media enabled idols to be custom-made for separate consumer groups: pop stars for adolescents, screen goddesses for the lovelorn, cardboard soap-opera characters for couch potatoes, sports champions for the more energetic, terrorist hijackers for the world’s oppressed, pop-philosophers for the chattering classes. 

Heroes act as a safety valve in the social pressure cooker. They allow small men in spectacles to identify harmlessly with Sylvester Stallone instead of throwing a punch at the boos, and shy girls to fantasize away their chastity in the flaunted sexuality of Marilyn Monroe and Madonna. Such dreams are unrelated to any concrete reality. The once-ubiquitous bedroom-wall portraits of the South American guerrilla leader, Che Guevara, did not signify incipient juvenile revolution in suburbia. Guevara as a political force was a minor irritant to remote regimes. As an icon, however, he vented the frustrations and yearnings of affluent youngsters in the decadent West.

Such popular heroes are literally mythical, in the sense that they are either insubstantial or wholly fictitious. Cultural gods are no different. Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons have demonstrated that an artist need not be distinctly original in order to be celebrated; the name of Karlheinz Stockhausen is known to music-lovers who have never heard a note he composed. Their fame lies less in anything they invent, than in the myth they represent. 

The “great conductor” is a mythical hero of this kind, artificially created for a non-musical purpose and sustained by commercial necessity. “Orchestral conducting as a full-time occupation is an invention - a sociological not an artistic one - of the 20th century,” acknowledged Daniel Barenboim, an eminent practitioner. “There is no profession which an imposter could enter more easily,” wrote the astute and long-suffering violinist, Carl Flesch. The conductor exists because mankind demands a visible leader or, at the very least, an identifiable figurehead. His musical raison d’etre is altogether secondary to that function. 

He plays no instrument, produces no noise, yet conveys and image of music-making that is credible enough to let him take the rewards of applause away from those who actually created the sound.

 

This is good stuff. As Lebrecht later clarifies, the conductor does have a purpose, and is in a way necessary to the performance of more complex works, but the demands of the job are about far more than the musical needs - it is about being that hero, that god, that maestro who represents the orchestra. 

 

This is not to say that conductors are irrelevant either. A good conductor can get a good sound out of an orchestra, while a bad one, well…

 

A bad conductor is the bane of a musician’s daily life; and a good one is not much better. He gives orders that are redundant and offensive, demands a level of obedience unknown outside the army and can earn at a concert as much as his entire orchestra is paid. 

 

I can attest that this is largely true. I have known plenty of colleagues who quit otherwise good orchestras because the conductor was an asshole. And I can also attest, having played professionally for three decades, that even good conductors can be frustrating. Musicians do not make mistakes because they don’t care - we care a lot. Sometimes, the conductor is simply making things more difficult than necessary. 

 

Fortunately, below the top levels, there are many hard-working and collaborative maestros, and I have had the pleasure of being a part of those ensembles too. 

 

Great conductors can also be a force for art when they successfully premier new works. A perusal of the history of classical music shows that it is littered with failed premiers because of conductors who were ill-prepared, disliked the music, or otherwise sabotaged great works which succeeded later under more able batons. 

 

One measure by which a great conductor can be assessed is in the new music that he brought into being.

 

A conductor who believes in a work, and interprets it well, can make even a “difficult” work seem not just accessible but thrilling. (Special praise here to Esa-Pekka Salonen, who is the best conductor I have seen live in interpreting modern works.) 

 

The early history of the orchestra had two basic approaches. In smaller ensembles, the concertmaster or the soloist could conduct from the instrument. In larger groups, the composer would often conduct. 

 

This didn’t work well in the case of Beethoven, whose deafness and general lack of skill meant that orchestras had to ignore him when he conducted. Lebrecht notes that Tchaikovsky, for all of his genius as a composer and orchestrator, was pretty terrible at interpreting his own compositions - professional conductors would adjust everything from tempos to dynamics to make them sound great. 

 

The chapter centering on von Bulow is fascinating for many reasons, not least of which is the dynamics of his abusive family and the greater issues in 19th century Germany. These seem all too familiar for those of us who grew up under similar authoritarian beliefs about childrearing which resulted in similar political catastrophe. 

 

Bulow’s brutal upbringing, amounting to actual child abuse, was typical of child-rearing methods that today are acknowledged as having been a nursery for Nazism. German parents were encouraged to exercise total control over their children, who learned unthinkingly to obey and, when their turn came, coldly to command. Adolf Hitler was a product of this system, wielding unfettered power by day yet shrieking in his sleep at nightmare memories of childhood. 

 

Von Bulow is also notable for his ability to memorize scores - he conducted the entire four hours of Tristan und Isolde from memory at its premier - just before Cosima, pregnant with Wagner’s child, abandoned poor Hans. 

 

The figure of Toscanini is a complicated one. Yes, he was anti-fascist in very real ways - and he paid the price, being roughed up by blackshirts and being placed under house arrest by Mussolini. But he was also an asshole to his family and players. My favorite line about that is from an anonymous musical collaborator:

 

“Toscanini loves on-one. On his sleeve he wears not his heart but his spleen.”

 

But this was all a hell of a lot better than Furtwangler, who was a buddy of Goebbels and Hitler’s favorite conductor. God, I felt like taking a bath after reading that section. On the other hand, he did manage to protect a handful of Jewish musicians from the Holocaust, so I guess there is that. 

 

Also complicated is East German maestro Kurt Masur, who was beloved of the regime, but who also played a key and positive role in averting violence in the run-up to the fall of the Berlin Wall by opening his concert hall as a public forum - more openness than had been seen in decades. Afterward, when he was asked to run for office, he quipped, “Am I so bad a conductor that I have to become a politician?” 

 

In this chapter enters Caruso, who has a connection to my wife’s family. Apparently, he tried to hit on one of her great-something aunt or cousin (pardon me if I forget the exact degree), and she hit him with either an umbrella or a wine bottle. But he is mentioned in this chapter for, among other things, singing six concerts - and five different roles - in a single week. Damn. 

 

Also fun in this chapter is the feud between Toscanini and music critic (and composer) Virgil Thompson, who was prone to writing scathing reviews. 

 

The chapter on Karajan is quite fascinating. Lebrecht nails down some of the reasons I am not a particular fan of his recordings - I prefer Szell for Beethoven, and Ormandy for Romantic era works - but also exposes a lot of the Nazi shit. 

 

Lebrecht notes that if you were a non-Jewish musician, or indeed a skilled worker of any sort, you didn’t have to join the Nazi party to survive. You could still find work, and many did. Joining the party gave you perks, though. Even Richard Strauss, who is often condemned for remaining silent (in his old age, by the way) rather than condemning Hitler, never joined the party. But Karajan did. 

 

Whatever you think of Karajan as a person and as an artist, there is no doubt that he was the giant figure of his era, both as a live performer and as the first true superstar recording artist. Much of what came after was pioneered by him, from the guest conducting tours to the carefully perfect and lush recorded sound. 

 

As Generalmusikdirektor of all Europe, he demonstrated that it was technically possible in the jet age to be chief conductor in four places at once, earning four full salaries and the applause of an entire hemisphere. His immense fortune and flagrant ambition estranged him from orchestral musicians, whose resentment was compounded by his infrequent presence. 

 

Hating the conductor is a sport among musicians, of course. I had to laugh at Georg Solti’s nickname of “the screaming skull.” 

 

And this was hilarious too:

 

Composers dropped out of the music director bracket early in the century as the two occupations drifted inexorably apart. One was perceived as spiritual and other-worldly, the other belonged all too obviously to the material world of power and wealth. The priestly part of the podium function, inasmuch as it survived, resembled the posturing of Sunday-morning televangelists, who preached saintliness while reeking of riches and, periodically, of vice. 

 

The book, naturally, spends a good bit of time on Leonard Bernstein. One of the questions it examines a bit is whether Bernstein’s fantastic success on the podium negatively affected his career as a composer - Bernstein himself certainly thought so. I have played a number of his works, from symphonies to pop stuff, and I do have to wonder. West Side Story is his big hit, but his other works are pretty darn good too, in my opinion. 

 

Also fascinating is the back story to his career. 

 

Raised by the rigid hands of Reiner and Koussevitsky, he came onto the market during the McCarthy witch-hunt when his leftist sympathies, homoerotic inclinations and racial origins rendered him virtually unemployable. Kouseevitsky implored him to change his name, get baptized and married and clean up his act, but Bernstein went his own way, and his openness cost him any chance of inheriting the Boston Symphony, or advancing beyond his pupillage at the New York Philharmonic. 

 

Eventually, however, McCarthy left in disgrace, and Lenny was recognized as a true talent, a unique musician, and an inspiration to so many. One of his students at Tanglewood expressed a sentiment that even those of us who never got to see him live understand. 

 

“When he gets up on the podium, he makes me remember why I wanted to become a musician.”

 

Watching one of his classic videos, like Mahler 2, or his incomparable Young People’s Concerts, you do indeed feel the infectiousness of his love for music of all kinds, and remember why you love being a musician. 

 

There is another interesting quote from a musician regarding Klaus Tennstedt:

 

“Every player wonders sometimes what a conductor does. With Tennstedt you don’t wonder. You know.”

 

As I noted, despite some wince worthy language, the chapter on female, black, and gay conductors is actually really good. And perceptive. He notes that the fundraising for most American orchestras comes from committees dominated by upper-middle-class women. This is still very true. And this has some consequences.

 

The strain of sexual fantasy and sublimation in this relationship is undeniable, and sometimes encouraged. A macho maestro in the prime of life is a powerfully attractive figure. If he is homosexual, his appeal to the lady activists of middle America will diminish. 

 

I would like to think that this dynamic has changed a bit over the last three decades. The “gay best friend” is a bit more acceptable, perhaps - and even desirable. So there are more openly gay conductors. But I think the basic dynamic still has somewhat of an effect, particularly in “middle America.” 

 

Lebrecht also nails a particular dynamic when it comes to female conductors - indeed female bosses of any sort. Women were for a long time relegated to leading all-female ensembles because of it. 

 

Evrard felt a woman was innately inhibited from conducting an orchestra of men, “which often lacks discipline and resents receiving orders from anyone not of its own kind.” 

 

This too, I feel, is slowly changing. I have seen a good number of women conduct the LA Phil over the years - and opera orchestras and smaller orchestras - and have had women guest conduct our own group - and the vibe definitely feels like it is trending in the right direction. This is probably due in no small part to the increase in the percentage of female musicians in most orchestras. 

 

I also would be remiss if I failed to mention Ethel Smyth, composer and conductor - and badass suffragette who was jailed for a protest, and conducted her fellow prisoners in a march around the prison yard singing a hymn while she beat time with a toothbrush. (The story comes from Sir Thomas Beecham, who visited her in jail - he was a big supporter of her music and the suffrage movement.) 

 

(Smyth was also known for her series of relationships with women. Her unrequited love for Virginia Woolf led to Woolf quipping that it was “like being caught by a giant crab.” The two did become friends, however.) 

 

Finally, I will mention that since the book was written, African-Americans have taken more prominent roles on the podium. I have personally seen Thomas Wilkins - maestro of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra - conduct numerous times, and he is a fine interpreter and great stage presence. In this day and age (as Lebrecht notes in the book) true superstars are becoming less and less common, with the younger generations consisting more of competent musicians rather than rock stars with batons - other than, say Dudamel, who else? So Wilkins will never have the name recognition of a Bernstein or Karajan, but I know that I can expect great music when he is conducting. 

 

One of the later chapters looks at the inherent contradictions in the smaller “throwback” ensembles that became popular in the 1980s. These smaller chamber orchestras often eschewed - or tried to - a regular conductor. However, it often happened that a personality would eventually take over the group, either intentionally, or by default. 

 

The OG, perhaps, is the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, which I will admit I adore. Sir Neville Marriner founded it, and eventually took a leading role. These days, it is led by virtuoso violinist Joshua Bell. I am a bit disappointed that I will not get to see them this year due to a conflict with one of my own concerts. Them's the breaks I guess. 

I also was glad to see a mention of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, which is another favorite. Their recording of the Bartok Divertimento for Strings - which I have played a couple of times - is just thrilling. 

 

Finally, I will mention that two of the conductors that Lebrecht considers the last of their kind also happen to be two of my favorites. I saw Simon Rattle twice as a kid or teen, and despite his reputation as more of a modern music guy, his Eroica was mind-blowing. One of those where you walk out stunned and euphoric. 

 

The other is Salonen, who I try to see whenever he returns to the LA Phil. He is so clear as a conductor that I can see how he gets his crisp transparent textures, particularly in Sibelius or modern compositions. 

 

And perhaps that is the best way to end, with a quote from Salonen. As the anti-celebrity, he has always seemed more concerned with music than with showmanship. His advocacy for modern music - and his belief in its relevance and power - is infectious, and I find he truly does make even atonal stuff sound good and evoke emotion. (One of my kids is really into modern classical, and he got to experience Salonen’s Symphonia Concertante for Organ along with Bartok and Stravinsky with me a few years ago - Salonen’s work was his favorite.) 

 

Anyway, here is the quote: 

 

“Everyone keeps telling me that I programme such adventurous repertoire. Yet my relation timewise to Messiaen and Lutoslawski is almost exactly as Karajan’s was to Richard Strauss - and I don’t think anyone thought Karajan was an outrageous avant-gardist.” 

 

Exactly. And a lot of what is being written in this century is great music that really should be heard more often. 

 

Obviously, there is a whole lot more in this book. It’s fun, surprising, insightful, outrageous, and gossipy all at once. It is a look into not just the musical side, but the business side, the political side, and the cultural side of this business of conduction, and the mythology our society has created around the role. 

Tar Baby by Toni Morrison

Source of book: I own this

 

Sometimes, the reason I end up reading a book is a bit of luck or circumstance. I found a Franklin edition of Tar Baby used somewhere (I forget where) at a low price, so I grabbed it. Honestly, I hadn’t ever heard of it. Morrison’s other books are better known, including the ubiquitous high school/college assignment book, The Bluest Eye, which is the only book of hers I had previously read. 

 

This is a great selection to kick off Black History Month with, in my opinion. These days, more than ever, it is necessary for those of us human beings of good will to keep the faith when it comes to diversity and basic human decency. The current regime is already purging the truth from NPS sites, including the reality that our founding fathers enslaved people. 

 

One of the many ways to stand against white supremacy and fascism is to continue to read, talk about, and share books by black authors. Every year since I started this blog in 2011 I have chosen at least one book to ready for Black History Month. The list is here, and also includes other books by black authors, and a few books by white authors about black history. 

 

Tar Baby is not, however, one of this year’s selections. I is just a book by a black author that I wanted to read and got around to last month. Stay tuned for the official selections later. 

 

This book is a bit different than The Bluest Eye and Morrison’s other books. For one thing, it is set in modern times (meaning the 1970s in this case) rather than the past. It also is relatively free from racialized violence. The violence that does occur is also much more personal, if that makes sense. 

 

The book takes place mostly on a fictional private island in the Caribbean. The scene partially shifts to New York City, then a small black town in Florida. There are also references to Philadelphia and Paris, where some of the backstory took place. So it has a rather cosmopolitan feel to it. 

 

There is also the sense of the opening of a world, of an expansion from the intimate living-room drama to the larger stage, and an expansion from personal relationships to the greater culture, as the book progresses. 

 

I also think the book is fascinating because it focuses every bit as much on its white characters as its black ones. Everything is interconnected, and what we learn about each character reveals the others at the same time. 

 

There aren’t that many characters in the book. Valerian Street is an absurdly wealthy man. He took over the family candy business in his youth and grew it, selling out and retiring when it became apparent that his son Michael has no interest in it. Michael, as we later find out, hasn’t seen much of his parents in years. He has taken a different path, working in social work on the Navajo Reservation, and generally doing the liberal hippie thing in constructive ways. 

 

Michael is Valerian’s only child, and the child of Margaret, who was a much younger beauty queen sort who caught the rich guy. She is pretty shallow, but also in deep denial about many things, and many such women are. 

 

Working for the Streets are Sydney and Ondine, a black couple who have been with the Streets for decades, first in Philadelphia, and now on Isle des Chevaliers. The relationship is particularly strained between Margaret and Ondine, however. 

 

Also a part of the household is Jadine, Sydney and Ondine’s niece. She is extraordinarily beautiful, and somehow Valerian took an interest in her. And not in the creepy way of old rich white guys: he paid her way through college, enabling her to work as an artist and model in Paris. For the first part of the book, she is back on an extended visit. 

 

There are a couple of minor characters: Gideon (aka “Yardman”) and Therese (“Mary”) whose real names the Streets have never bothered to learn. 

 

And finally, there is the character who turns everything upside down: Son Green, an American black man who has stowed away on a ship, but ends up escaping to the island. 

 

He hides out for a while, before being discovered in Margaret’s closet, to the horror of everyone. Except Valerian, who does the least expected thing and invites Son to dinner. 

 

Christmas is approaching, and Margaret is sure that Michael will come to visit this time, and has invited an old professor of his to join them.

 

This sets the stage for a gradual unravelling of the various relationships, the revelation of some dark secrets, and the opportunity for Morrison to explore not only the minefield of race and class relations but also the question of authenticity. 

 

How does one “live authentically” as a black person? Is it to take Jadine’s path and succeed - indeed thrive - in the white world, playing by white rules? Or is it Son’s approach, to disdain the systems he is in, and refuse to live by the rules they impose? And, for that matter, where do Sydney and Ondine fit into this idea of “authenticity”? Are they less authentic because they have chosen to stay in their “place” because it keeps them fed and housed and has resulted in a tremendous advantage for their niece? 

 

Beyond that, there are a lot of twists and turns in the book, which I won’t reveal. 

 

Morrison’s writing is excellent as usual, and her use of dialogue to reveal her characters is a masterpiece. This is a book that I was thoroughly immersed in start to finish, enjoying the use of language while caring a great deal about each character. 

 

And that is the thing too: there are no true villains and no true heroes in this book. Margaret and Valerian are pretty horrible in the way of super-rich and privileged white people, but not uniquely horrible. And they are more complicated than that, and thus are somewhat sympathetic characters. 

 

This leads to the title. We all are familiar with Joel Chandler Harris’ story from his Uncle Remus books. The rabbit is taken in by a figure made of tar, and becomes furious when it refuses to answer him. So he punches the tar baby, getting stuck. 

 

Harris didn’t invent the folk tales, of course, and didn’t claim to. He was a journalist with a listening ear, and wrote down the folk tales he heard from black folk. As Tar Baby itself notes, another version of the story has the farmer create the tar baby, not the fox - there are multiple versions told. 

 

But the old tale raises a number of fascinating questions. Why was it that the lack of an answer infuriated Br’er Rabbit? What might that represent in the broader culture? What does the briar patch mean? One explanation is that Br’er Rabbit as the trickster represents black people, and the substandard habitations they have been all too often limited to are like a briar patch. Not a great place to be, but home enough, and not without advantages. 

 

I mention this because of the episode in the book where Son takes Jadine back to his hometown - which certainly seems a bit of a briar patch to her. 

 

In the context of Tar Baby, there is also another question: who is the Tar Baby in the story? Is it Jadine, entrapping Son? Or Son entrapping Jadine? Or something else altogether. Morrison’s introduction to the edition I own hints at some meaning, but coyly refuses to answer the question. Perhaps this is for the reader to find for themself. 

 

I noted a few lines in this book that I wanted to mention. First up is the issue of class. Sydney and Ondine take an instant dislike to Son, and even refer to him as a “swamp nigger.” Clearly they think they are a lot higher class than he is - they work as domestics, not manual labor. 

 

Son, on the other hand, sees the “higher class” black culture as essentially borrowed white culture. At one point, he calls Jadine a “white girl,” saying that she, like the white people, assume that he is a rapist. She becomes furious and flings back at him that he doesn’t get to determine who qualifies as a black woman. 

 

Later, Gideon talks with Son about Jadine. 

 

“Your first yalla? he asked. “Look out. It’s hard for them not to be white people. Hard, I’m telling you. Most never make it. Some try, but most don’t make it.”

 

There is another passage, where Son observes Yardman. It’s an interesting observation. 

 

He stared at his back. Yardman, she called him. That was Yardman’s back. He knew backs, studied them because backs told it all. Not eyes, not hands, not mouths either, but backs because they were simply there, all open, unprotected and unmanipulable as Yardman’s was, stretched like a smokehouse cot where hobos could spend the night. A back where the pain of every canker, every pinched neck nerve, every toothache, every missed train home, empty mailbox, closed bus depot, do-not-disturb and this-seat-taken sign since God made water came to rest. 

 

Another great observation is from Valerian. 

 

The unending problem of growing old was not how he changed, but how things did. A condition bearable only so long as there were others like him to share that knowledge. But his wife, twenty-two years younger and from another place, did not remember, and his friends were dead and dying. 

 

This is just one of many examples of how well Morrison writes characters. And I mean, she nails her white characters in a way that few white writers ever do with black characters. I felt I knew and know people like Valerian and Margaret, and can see myself in him at times. 

 

Valerian’s thoughts on Michael also resonate. This is a moment when Valerian sees how the members of his household look at Son at first, and realizes that when Michael called him and his servants “bourgeois” that this is what he meant. 

 

He had defended his servants vigorously to Michael then, with aphorisms about loyalty and decency and with shouts that the press was ruining with typical carelessness the concept of honor for a people who had a hard enough time achieving any. What he had said to Jade, he believed: that Michael was a purveyor of exotics, a typical anthropologist, a cultural orphan who sought other cultures he could love without risk or pain. Valerian hated them, not from any hatred of the minority or alien culture, but because of what he saw to be the falseness and fraudulence of the anthropological position. 

 

In our modern parlance, Valerian accuses Michael of “virtue signaling” - something my own parents have accused me of as well. As if any feeling of solidarity and empathy with those outside of one’s racial tribe exists only to make us feel better about ourselves. Which is horseshit. One look at Minneapolis and the way that white people have literally put their lives on the line to protect their immigrant neighbors is enough to indicate that maybe, just maybe, empathy and solidarity can and do exist across lines. And always have. 

 

I’ll end with an observation by Son, about the way race and wealth make a person blind to others. 

 

Son’s mouth went dry as he watched Valerian chewing a piece of ham, his head-of-a-coin profile content, approving even of the flavor in his mouth although he had been able dismiss with a flutter of the fingers the people whose sugar and cocoa had allowed him to grow old in regal comfort; although he had taken the sugar and cocoa and paid for it as though it had no value, as though the cutting of can and picking of beans was child’s play and had no value; but he turned it into candy, the invention of which really was child’s play, and sold it to other children and made a fortune in order to move near, but not in the midst of, the jungle where the sugar came from and build a palace with more of their labor and then hire them to do more of the work he was not capable of and pay them again according to some scale of value that would outrage Satan himself and when those people wanted a little of what he wanted, some apples for their Christmas, and took some, he dismissed them with a flutter of the fingers, because they were thieves, and nobody knew thieves and thievery better than he did and he probably thought he was a law-abiding man, they all did, and they all always did, because they had not the dignity of wild animals who did not eat where they defecated but they could defecate over a whole people and come there to live and defecate some more by tearing up the land and that is why they loved property so, because they had killed it soiled it defecated on it and they loved more than anything the places where they shit. 

 

Ouch. That’s a sick burn, but it is true. And if you aren’t picturing Trump and Musk’s faces - and those of so many more like them - you should be. Hey, one of them even used AI to generate a video of himself shitting on all of us. He’s just more honest than most of them.

 

I will mention that there is some domestic violence in this book, and another scene of two women hitting each other. Which, by the standards of a Morrison book is pretty tame fare. There is also a homicide that occurs offscreen, so to speak. 

 

But I think the real “trigger warning” this book may need is that it shines an ugly light on the assumptions that underlie our capitalist imperialism and the people whose exploitation our lifestyles depend on. Morrison doesn’t lecture, doesn’t preach really. (Although occasionally a character will.) She shows rather than tells, and the most uncomfortable part is that she sees all too clearly into the hearts of her characters. They aren’t exactly villains, but everyone has a huge blind spot or two. 

 

As a final thought on the book, I love that it does not offer easy answers. In fact, I don’t think it offers answers at all. 

 

Instead, it says “here is reality” and asks “what do you think should be done about it?” 

 

It’s good writing too, if I didn’t already make that clear. Morrison is one of the best writers of her era, a master of character and description and thoughtful exploration of important themes of our time. And perhaps all times. 

 

We Do Not Part by Han Kang

Source of book: Audiobook from the library

 

Han Kang won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2024, the first female Asian writer to do so. I previously read her book, The Vegetarian, back in 2020, and it became one of the favorite books of one of my kids. 

 

I had been meaning to read more of her books, and this one became available when I needed an audiobook for my commute for rehearsals and concert. 

 

We Do Not Part is definitely not quite as weird as The Vegetarian. It is also much more political, after a fashion. Like some of her previous books, it is partly about a traumatic violent episode in post-World War Two Korea, one that is fairly unknown to us in the United States, despite our complicity in it. 

 

For me, the book had some very good parts, and a lot of beautiful writing. However, it also suffered from a certain amount of inconsistency, and got bogged down in the historical accounts to an extent that it felt like she really wanted to write a non-fiction book just on the massacre, rather than a novel with episodes from the past. 

 

The massacre in question took place just before the Korean War broke out. For background, Korea was occupied and colonized by Japan for quite a long time before the war. You can read some of that history in Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, which I thought did a good job of integrating the history with the modern day story. 

 

When the war ended, and Japan was defeated by the allies, Korea was “freed.” Which meant they got ruled by a US military regime, then a US-backed dictatorship. 

 

In the run-up to the Korean War, various rebel groups, many of them communist or leftist, vied for control of the country. Eventually, the hostilities escalated from a civil war to a proxy war between the US and China, with the Korean populace considered mostly expendable. 

 

One of the most sordid episodes before the war took place on Jeju Island, a large volcanic island off the south coast of Korea. I had never heard of it, but it is apparently a big tourist destination due to its milder weather. 

 

In retaliation against the rebels, the government murdered tens of thousands of civilians - men women, children, and infants. These ended up in mass graves, the existence of which was brutally suppressed by the Korean government until decades later, when the dictatorship was replaced by a democracy, and the survivors were able to put enough pressure on the government. 

 

For this book, Han Kang weaves elements of autobiography with fiction and with the historical events. 

 

Kyungha is a woman who seems to be a stand-in for the author. Like the author, she suffers from migraines, and has developed vivid nightmares after researching a massacre for her latest book. 

 

She reconnects with her long-time friend from college, Inseon, who is an artist, carpenter, and filmmaker. The two of them decide to do an artistic film about the massacre, one that utilizes Kyungha’s nightmare of trees shaped like humans with snow falling on them. 

 

Then, Kyungha receives a text asking her to come immediately to the hospital, and discovers that Inseon has severed some fingers while working on the carved trees. She also needs a favor: her bird has been left alone at her remote home and needs water and food immediately. This will require Kyungha to drop everything and fly to Jeju Island, find her way to the remote property, and see if the bird is living or dead. 

 

And all this occurs in an unusually strong storm that has dropped snow all over the island. 

 

Essentially, this, with some history of both Kyungha and Inseon, their families, and their relationship, which is kind of ambiguous, makes up the first half of the story. 

 

We get some hints of what is to come. Inseon’s mother was a child who, along with her older sister, survived the Jeju Massacre, losing the rest of their family in what turns out to be highly traumatic and horrible ways. 

 

For the second half, which is divided into two further parts, the line between reality, history, and hallucination becomes seriously blurred. The ending is ambiguous - what really happened? Was any of it real? And that actually works okay, although I do think that kind of ending is a bit trendy right now. 

 

The bigger problem is that so much of the second half becomes Inseon and Kyungha sorting through all the old newspaper clippings and other research that Inseon’s late mother did to research the massacre and try to find out what happened to her brother. 

 

And what I mean by that is that the plot goes so off track into the past, with laborious detail, statistics, anecdotes that are unconnected to the actual characters of the story - it really becomes more like a nonfiction account of the massacre as it occurred in multiple places - that the momentum of the book is lost. I also think that the author gets bogged down in her outrage at the inhumanity of the US-sponsored dictatorship and its thugs that she ceases to write in an effective or compelling way. It feels self-indulgent. 

 

Now, I do understand that some of this may be because I was never the intended reader for this book. It was written in Korean, for Korean readers, who I presume are more likely to see the incidents the way we Americans might see our own Civil War, and find the details more personal and thus compelling. 

 

For me, it was enough to get a taste of things. I can understand that our own understanding of the Korean War (like the Vietnam War) is deeply flawed on multiple levels. Both came from the end of a colonialist occupation. Both ended up as proxy wars between the great powers. And in both cases, the great powers either slaughtered civilians themselves, or encouraged the local governments and armies to do so. Although equally true is that things would probably have gone pretty FUBAR even if the US had stayed out of Korea entirely. Humans are just shitty, no matter our ethnicity. 

 

It is a shame that the book felt this way, because, had the historical stuff been edited better, and the book shortened by a good hour or two, it could have been a tight, effective story. Nothing important would have been lost by summarizing the historical details rather than creating a documentary within a novel. 

 

That leads me back to the main story, the one of two women who are bonded in a fascinating way. They each have their family trauma, and it helps to know the background. 

 

The atmosphere of the snowstorm is amazing, and the language of the descriptions is gorgeous. How much is original and how much is the translation by Emily Yae Won and Paige Aniyah Morris is not clear to me, but the combination makes for truly beautiful writing. 

 

At its best, the book is luminous and evocative, terrifying and sublime, deeply emotional yet restrained. For much of the first half, and for the final moments, I was completely sucked in and immersed in the storytelling. 

 

And then, an hour would go by at a time, and I struggled to listen, as it got bogged down in the details. 

 

I wonder if the curse of being an award-winning author is that editors are afraid to tell you to make cuts. Because I really think that had there been better editing, a better focus on the essentials rather than detail, and a little less of a preachy outraged tone, this could have been a truly amazing book. 

 

It’s still worth a read, I would say, because the good is so good, and you can, at least on the printed version, skim a bit when it starts to feel like a documentary. 

 

The audiobook, read by Greta Jung is good. Jung does a good job overall of portraying the characters. My only quibble is that at times it is a bit difficult to pick up the switch from the voice of Kyungha and Inseon, and since the stories being told shift often, this can make it a bit difficult at times to keep straight whose family story is whose. It’s a tough one to do, of course, because you have two women who are fairly similar - you can’t rely on dialect here at all. Overall, though, a good listening experience. 

Mojave Ghost by Forrest Gander

Source of book: I own this

 

My wife occasionally finds interesting collections of poetry by modern authors. This book is one of those.

 

I wasn’t really familiar with Forrest Gander before reading this book, which is one of his more recent ones. Gander is a native Californian, born in the Mojave Desert (of the title) - specifically Barstow. Which, if you know, you know.

 

He has written not just poetry, but fiction, nonfiction, and translations. His Pulitzer Prize came from one of his poetry collections, but he has won other awards for his translations from both Spanish and Japanese. 

 

Gander originally got his degree in geology, and had been planning to further study paleontology. However, a cancer diagnosis made him reconsider everything, and he switched to writing. 

 

He has taught, traveled, collaborated with artists in other media, and generally followed his own path. 

 

Mojave Ghost is an interesting book. It consists of a single rambling account of his journey along the 800 miles of the San Andreas Fault, primarily the part in the desert. But it isn’t exactly narrative. It is mood, observations, aphorisms, philosophy, and a bit of anything you might write a poem about. Throughout, it is haunted by his ongoing grief over the death of his first wife, but also twined with his awakening love for his current partner. 

 

It is one of those books that you don’t so much read as let it wash over you. And yes, it needs to be read aloud. The words are delicious, and the sounds are part of the meaning. There are a lot of unusual words, unusual choices of words, and some that seem almost made up. The meaning is in the sound, in the implication. 

 

Rather than try to further describe it, I figure I will just quote a few of my favorite passages. Understanding, however, that they are better in context, and that I could have picked many times as many. 

 

Back here, he imagines her

everywhere he looks. As the spring hills boing green.

 

All awake are the crows.

 

Flayed by the paper cut of her scent in his memory.

 

For her, it was home. This town

where various stirps of Christian 

fundamentalism intersect 

with unchecked retail sprawl.

 

Now the train just pass on through.

 

I’m not sure if this is referring to Barstow or not, but it could fit any number of desert railroad towns that are now just where the trains pass through on their way to somewhere else.

 

Back at Lana’s Diner, watching the woman

at the far table sweep her hair to her other shoulder

and flash her teeth at her companion.

 

Red sauce, says the woman when her eggs come,

and the waitress returns with ketchup.

 

As I’m picking up my check

from the table where I’ve eaten alone,

the waitress calls Come again, and

instinctively I answer, We will.

 

Handwritten note near the cash register:

Do Not Lean Arm on Pecan Roll.

 

So I pay up and step into humid

rock-flavored afternoon heat.

Dark pompadour clouds casting giant shadows.

 

There is so much in that passage. We all know the sort of diner, of course. The devastating realization that the speaker still thinks in terms of “we” even though she is no more. And that line about leaning on the pecan roll. That is hilarious. 

 

As latent with futurity as a closed stopcock,

the dawn redwood before it leafs out.

While in a brief sideshow, our lives take place nearby.

 

It’s so contagious: your quick, rubato, navel laugh.

 

Walking side by side

through Armstrong Woods,

its terminated air strong as snuff,

We feel the kick-in of elation.

 

Only in your company do I

concentrate and hold together

like the tightening vortex of a tornado.

 

I’ve wandered in Armstrong Woods several times, most recently with my wife, who adores the redwood forest. But how about that last stanza? There are these emotional punches throughout the poem, seriously excellent writing about feelings that can’t be entirely captured with words. 

 

Snorting at the uselessness of poetry, the proctologist

we meet at the New Year’s party is armed

with a restricted vocabulary of catch phrases and 

pomposities. A mind, you whisper to me

as we turn away, can rivel up like an old apple.

 

The words become so small, they cannot stand.

 

Oh god. Yeah, we all know that type.

 

Not, you say, to fall back

endlessly into the routine of ourselves.

Nor to compose ourselves always

from the same syllables.

 

I love that one. 

 

You tell me a heartache is not an object of perception.

I wonder. But what do I know of your heart?

 

Experience is first a matter of feeling.

Even the feeling of not having a feeling.

 

The tokens of love we exchange

don’t express love’s meaning so much

as its ineffability.

 

So my experience of you is infinite. Never

contained within your dimensions.

 

So many of the parts I loved are like this, trying to grab onto words that give a vision into inner life. This, in my view, is why the loss of poetry in our culture is one of the reasons for the rise of toxic masculinity and men who channel everything into anger. We need poetry. 

 

When they tell me it’s narcissistic 

to speak of regrets, to let myself circle

in this whirlpool and to go on

about it, when they tell me I need

to move forward, to focus outward,

to offer my attention to others,

 

aren’t they themselves prompted 

by an overbearing concern for control

which is another form of narcissism? Isn’t

this very mourning a constancy

to something beyond myself? Don’t

I have the right to my own experience

of heartache and anguish and failure?

 

You do, child. But not for so long.

 

At peace means despair

has settled in its place.

 

There is a profound truth there: that a concern for control, and particularly that form of control that demands that the sufferer avoid making others uncomfortable, is itself an expression of narcissism. I know it was (and still is) used as a weapon against me. Why do I bring up the past? Why can’t I just say only nice things? Why can’t I move on?

 

Maybe I can’t because I am still in mourning for the loss of my family, of my autonomy regarding college, of the love and acceptance I needed. 

 

I also find that enjambment does some good work in the second stanza. Reading aloud brings out “Isn’t” and “Don’t,” the speaker’s rebuke to the false comforters. 

 

Again, throughout the book, grief is mixed with the thrill of a new love. One does not displace the other. Both are true at the same time. 

 

I recall the human event 

of you turning your face

toward me for the first time. How

many lives before I fail to see it so clearly?

 

There are times when, in our mind at least,

we must swim back upstream

to where the love originated.

 

That it might be what it was and is again.

In bed and out.

 

Because all that is in me is in your eyes.

 

You, who are the discharge of my singularity.

 

So very good. 

 

She wasn’t fixed, necessarily, on happiness

which she couldn’t, in any case, distinguish

from luck. What she wanted was to flourish.

 

Happiness, she said once, is for amateurs.

 

The one exception to the poem as a running stream of thoughts and events is a section near the end where Gander sets a single stanza on each page, each with a Haiku-like image of a person or place. I picked this one, because I kind of resemble it. 

 

In long-sleeved shirts and hats with neck flaps,

they hike a thaumaturgic canyon path

limned with tall mustard flowers.

 

The final section is entitled simply “Coda,” and is a single stream of consciousness. The writer is at a place where the effects of the fault are visible, the rupture of the rocks, the displacement. It is in that desert place somewhere, but identifying details are sparse. The ending of the poem is so good that I will end this post with it. 

 

Heat and silence. Still, the ground insists

its openings will be filled. Why

not apply? Apply myself. Over and over. This argument

goes beyond me. I who have never been

homeless. Groundless. Am I just going to stand gobsmacked

at the mirror while my years run out? What

 

is left of experience that hasn’t

been measured? Is there

an app for that? As I bend, I feel

the weight of the specimen stones

I carry in my jacket pocket slide forward.

As I continue my solo descent

along the canyon’s seam. As I sip

and hold a quick breath. As I slip from sight

into a chimney of rock. 

 

I definitely enjoyed this book, and will probably have to add some more of his writings to my library.