Pioneers of France in the New World – Francis Parkman

A very impressive display of scholarship combined with a storyteller’s flair for the dramatic. Parkman makes the exploration of North America come alive, in all its grimness. Yes, grim, exceedingly grim, full of hardships, brutality, disappointments. In Europe, too, things were chaotic, mostly due to religious conflicts (between people who all professed to believe in Jesus Christ), and these deadly conflicts were continued in the New World. It was a world that offered the possibility of riches, as had been found by the Spanish in the Aztec and Inca empires. But alas, there turned out to be no other such glorious civilizations. And a route to the Far East was sought, but resulted in dead ends. The only source of financial gain was the fur trade, which the Spanish, the French and the English competed for control of. As for the Indians, Parkman refers to them as “savages.” We have a tendency to glamorize the Native Americans, to conceive of them as noble environmentalists. Reading this account, they are indeed savages; tribes are constantly at war with one another, and their treatment of captured enemies is appalling (they delighted in slow tortures). And they readily wiped out the beaver population for what they gained in barter. In other words, they were no better than the white man. A picture of humanity emerges that’s disturbing (or maybe that segment of humanity with ambitions). Some (notably the Jesuits) journeyed to the New World to convert the Indians, who they believed to be possessed by the devil; though they come across as fanatics, their fortitude and determination and acceptance of suffering is impressive. Others had the idea of establishing a self-sustaining colony in America. France failed to do so, despite the efforts of Champlain, who emerges as the hero of this book. My one problem was keeping all the names of people and places straight. Finally I gave up, and just continued to read to have another episode of failure and cruelty and suffering described. What most of these early arrivals discovered in the New World was death – by violence, disease or starvation.

Meet Me in Mumbai – Sabina Khan

This is a young adult novel, aimed at girls in their mid-teens. So why is an old guy like me reading it? Well, it was a proof copy in a box of giveaways, so why not give it a look? It was easy going, fairly interesting in the beginning, so I continued to the halfway point. What I want to explore in this review is how Khan imbeds messages in her book, some of which are untrue or evasive. In the first of two sections, a teenage girl, a Muslim from India going to school in the US, gets pregnant. Ayesha is not promiscuous, and she’s in love, and the boy (also an Indian) uses a condom. But (message) accidents happen, girls, and when you get pregnant you’re in a heap of trouble. Ayesha considers an abortion (which is what the boyfriend suggests), but can’t go through with it. So she gives the baby up for adoption – to a lesbian couple living in Houston. With no misgivings. The message here is that being homosexual carries no stigma, no problems. When the novel changes to the perspective of the daughter, the same age as the mother was in the first section, the two women who raise her (Ma and Mama) are as acceptable and normal as a heterosexual couple. No kids at school sneer at Mira’s lesbian parents. No cold stares from other parents at PTA meetings (remember, to some homosexuality is an abomination). In this novel all is fine. Also, neither girl encounters any prejudice from classmates due to their brown skin. Is this true to life, especially after 9/11, when Muslims were the object of hostility? The author is presenting things as they should be, in a best of all possible worlds, one free of prejudice, hatreds, condemning. Mira has no love interest (her male friend is, predictably, gay); in her section she gets in touch with her rich Indian heritage (message: people should respect cultures other than their own). She also finds letters written to her by her mother when she was in the womb. I found the Mira section boring, so – since things were headed to a reunion in Mumbai with the mother and daughter – I skipped to the last pages. What I got was a sob fest of love, which its intended audience may have responded to with tears.

Scandal – Shusaku Endo (Japanese)

I greatly admired Endo’s When I Whistle, but during the reading of this novel there were at least seven occasions where I was tempted to abandon it. I kept going because the prose was good, and I felt that the author was working out private issues, and that some point would emerge. His narrator is a writer, the same age as Endo (in his sixties), who’s going through emotional crises. One focus of the book revolves around sex of a deviant nature. I found the descriptions of the activities in Tokyo’s porno district to be quite distasteful. Surguro (apparently) has a doppelganger who engages in disgusting acts. Is he, in fact, the dark side of Suguro (who lives a scandal-free life)? Do we humans harbor the darkest of urges: sadism, masochism; can we even find pleasure (sexual in nature) in murder? There’s a lot of soul searching and contemplation of life’s Big Issues, with a touch of religiosity thrown in (Endo is classified as a Christian author). But it’s flailing mess, full of loose ends and twists and turns that go nowhere. As for the resolution that I had been waiting for, there was none that I could discern. In fact, the last paragraph has a phone ringing, which seems to signify something – but what? In looking at my review of Whistle, I close with these words: “. . . a moving novel about the enduring power of friendship and love.” This novel was written twelve years before Scandal. What went wrong?

Jennie Gerhardt – Theodore Dreiser
Dreiser began Gerhardt in 1901; it wasn’t completed until 1911. During this time he led a tumultuous personal life and had health problems. The novel shows the adverse effects of its long gestation. Even the quality of the writing changes; the second half is more polished. But can one use the word “polished” in referring to Dreiser’s prose? He’s a plodder piling up the bricks for his massive edifices. A strength he had was a compassion for the downtrodden that comes across as sincere. And he had scope – in covering many decades in a life a weightiness is generated. Still, major flaws were present throughout this book. The plot is disjointed (probably due to his leaving and coming back to it over all those years). And Dreiser constantly tells us how Jennie feels, but he doesn’t show those feelings being developed. This is a love story, but we get no scenes of intimacy between Jennie and Lester. The same omission involves Jennie’s daughter. We’re told that she’s devoted to Vesta, but we don’t see them interact. Vesta is an offstage presence whose primary purpose is to die at age fourteen (and for poor, bereft Jennie to grieve). The core of the novel involves a conflict between two very different personalities. Jennie is simple in that she can love wholeheartedly; it’s her gift. It’s not in her nature to be angry, or demanding, or assertive. She gives herself fully to a man who is above her in the hierarchy of society. But Lester cannot respond by committing to her; his indecisiveness drags on and on while Jennie waits. I was involved enough in their dilemma to stick around to the maudlin ending. But I don’t see myself reading anything else by Dreiser. His best work was his first, Sister Carrie, which he spent one year writing. Not ten. In that book his strengths – his compassion and scope – prevailed over any flaws.

The Surrounded – D’Arcy McNickle
The author of this novel, which came out in 1936, was half Indian and half white, as is his main character. The book opens with Archilde Leon’s return to his home after living for years in Portland, Oregon, where he eked out a living from his talent as a violinist. He intends this to a be a brief last visit. When he left he had been on bad terms with his volatile Spanish father. Max Leon had married an Indian woman who, as a child, had fully accepted the white man’s god (she was known as “Faithful Catherine”). But in her old age she had returned to the Indian ways; now she and Max live apart. Max is also estranged from his seven sons; none fulfilled his hopes of taking over his ranch, and some turned wild and dangerous. Archilde is definitely not of that ilk; he’s mainly an observer who keeps a tight rein on his emotions. During his stay he reaches an understanding with both parents. They die, and Max leaves Archilde a considerable sum of money. With this inheritance Archilde could pursue his dreams of traveling and developing his musical skills. Yet he hangs around aimlessly (there’s a woman involved, but this is a weak aspect of the story). Ultimately he becomes a victim of the violent acts of others. This ending seems imposed. It’s as if the author was out to make a point: since the Indian culture was set upon and destroyed, Archilde must suffer the same fate. McNickle denies his character the future that he achieved; at the age of seventeen he left the Flathead Reservation and began an academic career. Perhaps he saw his life of accomplishment as an anomaly. Yet, though he made Archilde an anomaly, he still has him wind up in shackles. McNickle succeeds in showing the plight of the Indian in the 1930s, especially insight into their way of thinking. But this is a case of the sociologist taking precedence over the novelist. Interestingly enough, the most vital character in the book is a white man: Max Leon.

When I Whistle – Shusaku Endo (Japanese)
Finally, at long last, a novel that got to me emotionally. It begins with Ozu recalling the day – some fifty years ago – when a new student named Flatfish entered the study hall of Nada Middle School. The depth of the friendship which develops between the two teenage boys was believable, as was the romantic attachment Flatfish has for a girl with whom he has only a few bumbling encounters. Though he has no chance of winning her heart – Aiko is way above him in social class and has a naval academy suitor – Flatfish’s feelings for Aiko remain strong throughout his short life. When he’s a soldier stationed in China (WWII has broken out) Ozu becomes the bearer of a gift which Flatfish wants the now married and pregnant Aiko to have. This encounter with Aiko carries Flatfish’s love, and she responds by giving Ozu a pen to send to Flatfish. A few years later Ozu again seeks out Aiko, who has lost both her husband and child to the war; she’s now living in a mountain village. Ozu had been sent Flatfish’s possessions after his death; one item was the pen, and Ozu had come to return it to her. That pen, a gift which shuttles back and forth, takes on a symbolic aspect: it denotes Flatfish’s devotion and Aiko’s kindliness. These feelings from the past are revived in the present when Ozu discovers that Aiko is a patient in the hospital where his son is a doctor; she has cancer. This humane story has its dark counterpart in the person of Ozu’s son, Eiicho. Half the book is given over to the deceptions and manipulation of this heartless, ambitious man. The medical profession as a whole isn’t portrayed in a positive light. Drugs are dispensed not because they can help a patient but because the pharmaceutical firm that produces them has deep pockets (note: the novel was written in 1974). Also shown in a highly negative way is how Japan treated its soldiers: brutally, as if they were the captured enemy. Flatfish died from pneumonia, but malnutrition and constant beatings from his superiors were contributing factors. The novel isn’t a complete success; at the end Endo is unable to close with the emotional focus he was obviously searching for. Another problem involves something that was out of the author’s hands. There must be unique difficulties in translating Japanese into English. I don’t think the clumsiness of the prose is Endo’s, and at times it was distracting. But despite those minor issues Endo wrote a moving novel about the enduring power of friendship and love. *