Ancient Chinese Wisdom (Chuang Tzu)

A sad fact is that the best known Chinese philosophers are often the least original and challenging. Confucius’ moralism is nice, but I find little in it that speaks to the modern reader. Lao Tzu is so mystical as to be either useless or profoundly banal. The great sage of ancient China was a man few today have ever even heard of, much less read, but he offers both philosophical insight and literary beauty.

Chuang Tzu, whose writings are known by their author’s name, was a philosopher later grouped into the Taoist school. (Lao Tzu is usually recognized as the first and most influential Taoist.) Broadly speaking, Taoists responded to the political chaos and violence of their times by declaring human striving futile and advocating “inaction” or wuwei.

Chuang Tzu’s concept of inaction is profoundly liberating. Rather than condemning action as such, he urges his followers to abandon calculation and dithering and follow their inner nature. In this way, he is essentially the antithesis of Hamlet in his “To be or not to be…” speech. A favored metaphor is the example of a skilled butcher. When faced with a difficult joint, an experienced butcher doesn’t calculate the position of the bones and the optimal cutting path, he simply cuts by instinct and succeeds.

Not that Chuang Tzu is just an exceptionally precocious hippie, urging us to follow our feelings. He expresses wuwei as a stirring triumph of the individual over society and the state: “All the titles and stipends of the age are not enough to stir him [the sage] to exertion; all its penalties and censures are not enough to make him feel shame.” In a culture where disfigurement and death were common penalties for dissidents, this statement reflects considerable courage.

Chuang Tzu’s courage arose in part from his skepticism. He refused to believe that wealth was better than poverty, virtue better than vice, or life better than death. The last point is illustrated in this beautiful story:

Lady Li was the daughter of the border guard of Ai. When she was first taken captive and brought to the state of Chin, she wept until her tears drenched the collar of her robe. But later, when she went to live in the palace of the ruler, shared his couch with him, and ate the delicious meats of his table, she wondered why she had ever wept. How do I know that the dead do not wonder why they ever longed for life?

Chuang Tzu’s philosophy is refreshing, but the true joy of his work is the writing itself. Blurring the line between prose and poetry, Chuang Tzu uses a formidable array of literary powers to convey his ideas. Too often, mystical philosophy founders on its inability to communicate ideas that are fundamentally ineffable. Chuang Tzu avoids this trap. Even when his concepts are impossible to put directly into words, he uses a mixture of humor, mythology, imagined dialogues, and metaphors to lead the reader along. The combination of fun and intellectual discovery is rewarding and completely unique.

In a time when the demands of society are increasingly complex and burdensome, Chuang Tzu offers an unusual and valuable perspective on how important the things that seem so urgent really are. The fact that he writes brilliantly and beautifully only makes it more tragic that he’s not more widely read.

Uncommon Grace (The Great Fire – Shirley Hazzard)

I devour love stories and have no particular interest in the literature of war; therefore my standards for both are high. Only a breathless recommendation from a demanding critic induced me to purchase Shirley Hazzard’s The Great Fire, which I read joyfully. Somewhere there must be an attic full of Hazzard’s drafts; there is no other explanation for the shine of each of the 326 pages of this novel set in the aftermath of World War Two.

A couple is in love but circumstances prevent their relationship’s realization. Around them, a world dies: a beloved brother is gravely ill; a good man dispenses advice and then passes away; and old age fells another generation. The plot is not intricate, but not so simple that the reader feels shortchanged. The well-chosen details happen in dense paragraphs or are subtly revealed in meditations, dialogue, or physical description.

It is in these modes where Hazzard shows her expertise in character and setting; her lush scenes would seem quaint if not for a complete lack of cheap sentimentality. When a sister and brother are united in spirit as she recites classical history to him, we feel enriched and charmed, as nowhere is Hazzard cheaply dropping names or pushing buttons. Elsewhere the cliche is drained from cliches and only beauty is left, as in an early passage describing Peter Exley’s close friendship with Aldred Leith:

[Peter's father] had given up expecting sense from this only son, whose bookishness led nowhere and who frittered the last of his youth scrambling round crammed little countries and learning dead inimical languages like Italian and Japanese.

Peter’s unaffected impressions were meanwhile sent to Leith, whose letters at this time comforted him, supplying a companionable measure of intelligence, and testifying, within Exley’s isolation, to a previous sharing. He saw how Leith, more reticent than he, nevertheless responded to new circumstances as to fresh existence, experiencing antipathy or charm as the essential matter of finite days; accessible, even so, to dreams engendered. Out of their mutual reprieve, Leith had salvaged immediacy; had kept the fugitive vow of every man in battle: If I get through this, the hours will be made to count.

Note that Hazzard takes some liberties with grammar and sentence structure; this combines with the aforementioned plot tendencies to create a book that demands vigilance not only with content but mechanics. The attention is easily given to a book of this caliber, however, and is repaid many times over. From Japan to China to Britain, from acres of ruin to the small internal revolutions of distant lovers, Hazzard is pitch-perfect, and the result is a masterpiece.

The Virus (The Geographer’s Library – Jon Fasman)

Phase 1: Infection
It happened to me last summer. I walked into the living room of my apartment to see my roommate “Clarence” lounging on the couch reading a book.

“What’s up, Clarence?”

“Not much, just reading a book.”

“Cool. What’ve you got there?”

“The Geographer’s Library. It’s a cool mystery. It’s about a murder that’s mixed up with all sorts of alchemical mysticism.”

“Awesome! Can I check it out when you finish with it?”

A week later I was cracking open Jon Fasman’s debut novel, expecting high-brow version of The DaVinci Code, mixing drama, history, and shadowy conspiracies.

Phase 2: Contagion
For a hundred pages, I was delighted. Mysterious murder, check! Likeable young protagonist slowly being drawn into an investigation that’s way beyond his depth, check! Interesting intercalated chapters detailing the strange histories of alchemical artifacts in the victim’s possession when he died, check!

So, when my mom saw me reading the book and asked me about it, it was only natural that I gave her a glowing recommendation and offered to lend it to her when I was done.

Phase 3: Sickness
At about page 150, a sickening realization set in. Nothing more was going to happen. The young protagonist (becoming less likeable with every page) was going to keep running in circles and learning nothing at all. The artifact chapters became almost indistinguishable tales of people somewhere in the Soviet Union being tricked out of artifacts and then murdered by a sinister organization. The only consolation was that the book had to end eventually, at which point the author would be obligated by the conventions of fiction to conclude the story. Right?

Phase 4: Aftermath
Not really. When the book could no longer physically contain any more aimless ramblings, all I found was a slapdash ending that explained none of the book’s earlier events. The chapters about the alchemical artifacts ended up having no relevance to the book’s plot at all. It took me a while to get over my rage at the author, but eventually the healing began. That’s when my mom called to yell at me for recommending the book.

Gone Too Soon (Michael Donaghy — Dances Learned Last Night)

It is a great blessing and a mild curse that there is far more worth reading than any of us will ever get a chance to read. Kurt Vonnegut’s passing has brought to mind the spring day last year when I learned, well after the fact, of Michael Donaghy’s sudden death. I had nobody to share the news with; nobody around had heard of Michael Donaghy.

Donaghy was one of the best contemporary British poets, though he remained obscure in America. I’ve never seen a book of his for sale, except at his reading I attended. Usually I’d just shrug my shoulders and note that the American mainstream has a maximum of total interest; not every competent poet, or history of salt, can hit the radar.

The sort of merit exhibited in Dances Learned Last Night, however, makes it uniquely unfortunate that we’re missing out. Donaghy is not a Stevens-level visionary — Harold Bloom would likely say that he has talent but not genius — but few can match his tack-sharp diction or modulation of tone. His poems are usually short but achieve a communicative fullness: to read one is to be expertly navigated through some human tempest. “Machines” is a typical sure-footed delight, and begins:

Dearest, note how these two are alike:
This harpsichord pavane by Purcell
And the racer’s twelve-speed bike.

The machinery of grace is always simple.
This chrome trapezoid, one wheel connected
To another of concentric gears,
Which Ptolemy dreamt of and Schwinn perfected,
Is gone. The cyclist, not the cycle, steers.
And in the playing, Purcell’s chords are played away.

Dances Learned Last Night is a pleasant compilation: the selections are faithful to the scope of Donaghy’s output yet form a coherent volume. Some of the shortest poems lack the substance of his best work, and in some of his more prosaic efforts we find a poet less at ease in the form, but there is much here to enjoy. Nobody hits my nerves quite the way Donaghy does; my library would be, as the world is, distinctly poorer without him.

Condimentary History (Salt: A World History – Mark Kurlansky)

Few materials have undergone a transformation as dramatic as salt’s. For thousands of years, it was a precious commodity and a vital nutrient. At times it was even used as currency. Today it is usually the cheapest item by weight in a grocery store. It is demonized for its possible unhealthiness. The long, rich evolution of salt is chronicled in Mark Kurlansky’s Salt: A World History. Though not flawless, Salt is an enjoyable and enlightening exploration of the way this common rock has shaped human life through history.

A word of caution to my fellow history nerds: Salt is not a nitty-gritty work of economic history. If you yearn, as I half-did, for a complex analysis of the technical means used to produce, distribute, and consume salt throughout the ages, prepare for disappointment. When it suits him, Kurlansky can produce clear, detailed passages of political or economic history. His explanations of the fundamentals of the 18^th century Atlantic salt trade or how the French Revolution was influenced by the gabelle, the hated salt tax, were satisfying, but Kurlansky is happiest citing medieval cookbooks to show how Eastern European housewives used salt to pickle cabbages.

That quibble aside, Salt does a great job of using the title substance to illuminate the past. Salt’s versatility gives Kurlansky license to explore an assortment of diverse areas. He deals with basics, like the use of salt as a condiment and in food preservation, but he also discusses the Basque salted cod industry (and the intriguing question of whether wandering Basque fishermen reached the New World before the Vikings), a Roman sauce of fermented fish guts known as garum, and the relationship between salt mining and the petroleum industry.

Salt also delights by giving the reader concrete insight into the past. I poked fun at picked cabbage recipes earlier, but those sort of sources show how people actually lived (even if they are a bit fluffy for “serious” history.) The author uses numerous primary sources to illustrate the reality of many of the abstract facts he relates. No prose discourse can convey the importance of salt in everyday life as well as Confederate newspaper articles trying to provide ways for desperate Southern homes to function without salt.

When it reaches the modern day, the book loses some of its luster. Part of the problem is that salt is mostly used as a straight condiment, no longer to preserve foods or in curious sauces. Also, salt, now cheap and readily available, has lost much of its former mystique. Even so, I would have liked to see Kurlansky give a greater explanation of how the salt industry works in the present day and how exactly it got that way. More discussion of the health issues surrounding the substance would also have been welcome.

Salt has its weak points, but it also has a strong heart in its exploration of salt’s heyday, the time when sodium chloride was vital to human health, food preservation, and cuisine. To a modern reader, such a time is completely foreign, but Kurlansky brings it to life. This feat more than makes up for the book’s failings and leaves the reader with a fun, illuminating historical experience.

Meditations and Brief Thrills (Alice Walker – Now Is The Time To Open Your Heart)

It’s exciting to see the giants updating their output. Salman Rushdie has a new terrorism-centric novel; John Updike’s protagonists are aging into the twenty-first century, if to mixed reviews; and Alice Walker has given us Now Is The Time To Open Your Heart, where we can see her sensibilities applied to the modern world.

Now Is The Time’s cultural criticism is unsurprising in its wisdom and boldness; the American government is persistently decried, as are aspects of contemporary entertainment, with a despair that is more constructive and refined than is commonplace in the counterculture. Her characters, too, show flashes of the descriptive brilliance that keeps The Color Purple so close to our hearts. Unfortunately, these individually successful aspects of the novel are rarely combined.

The book often reads as a journal: dialogue seems a stage for aphorism, and the nature descriptions and episodes are more often connected on a metaphorical level than for the sake of a plot. When the characters interacting for their own sakes, the results are splendid — the protagonist, Kate, and her lover Yolo share some of the best scenes when they’re negotiating and growing in their relationship. I would have loved to read more such scenes, and meet more characters developed more than for the sake of a single incident or moral.

The longing is greatest when I read about Saartjie, who is imprisoned and frequently raped, and who commits a defensive murder. The fragments of her backstory are gripping, and in her dialogue with Kate a lovable and engaging character briefly emerges. Ultimately, though, we are left with a few symbols introduced through her and some commentary on Jet magazine. The result is excellent for what it is, but readers of novels want more.

I’m grateful to have read Now Is The Time; moving through its two hundred generously spaced pages is like handling a smooth jewel. But when I reread Walker, I won’t think twice before reaching instead for The Color Purple, where the ambition is higher, characters more robust, and effect greater.