World and Town: A gem that I was compelled to go back and buy

The author, Gish Jen, 2010. [CC BY SA 3.0] via Wikimedia.

World and Town by Gish Jen

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book caught my eye at the bookstore but I bought Ha Jin's Waiting instead. Soon after I regretted not buying World and Town and I was compelled to go back to the bookstore and buy it. I am glad I did. 

I usually find it difficult to give five stars to modern literature because I often find the classics so much better. Will this be a classic? I don't think so, but it might just be one of those long-lost gems in years to come. 

This novel covers so much ground yet brings it together so well. It is a book of contrasts. Old age, youth. Children, death. Multiculturalism but from so many angles. Chinese history. Cambodian history. Vietnam veterans, the disintegration of the family farm, the end of long-term marriages, foster homes. Religion - Christianity, Buddhism, Confucianism, burial, suicide, ethnic gangs, multilingualism, academia, science versus religion, religion versus science, pets, old love, new love. Kids who say "like" in the middle of every sentence, small town life, emails from home to the diaspora (like letters that form part of the dialogue in earlier novels), music, farming, hippies. 

In many ways it presents a version of the United States as it is rather than as it is imagined by some (I can only guess, but it resonates with the realities of Australia's cultural diversity). And it all concentrates on a small town in the north. I wondered if Hattie, the protagonist, would start to bore me. She just seemed so old. I think of Scott Fitzgerald who said nobody wants to read about poor people. 

But Hattie is so complex, so interesting. She is nosy, an artist, a scientist, a teacher, lonely. Yet she has a drive and a sense of self-discovery that makes you forget she is an old retired Chinese-American widow living in a small town. The connections with the rest of the world, the different ideas of filial responsibility, of God's work versus the manipulation of churches that prey (not pray!) on the vulnerable. 

The book even mentions the idea of "third culture kids" (something I have only ever read about in academia). It taught me a few things about adaptability and change, too (p. 232):

Even pigeons try to connect what they do with what happens to them. Really, they have no control. But they're wired to try anyway. They have a connection bias, just like people - a tendency to look for cause and effect, whether it's there or not.

Did you know that "Houdini had a tool pocket in the lining of his mouth"? I didn't. Now I have to find out if it's true. Do you know (p. 246):

...what it meant to have had our structures adapted and readapted, but never fundamentally redesigned[?]

I didn't. I don't know whether to call this a lovely story or an inspiring yet realistic tale. But I did love the book and I look forward to reading some more of Gish Jen's work. In an era of xenophobic nonsense, this novel sheds some light on what the world is like beneath the veneer of how things used to be.




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Patricia Piccinini: Curious Affection for the Uncanny Valley

Patricia Piccinini's "The Comforter", Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, 24 July 2018. Photo by Michael de Percy.

The "Uncanny Valley" creeps me out no end, so I entered Patricia Piccinini's recent exhibition at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art with some trepidation. 

The art works on display are so real, I kept waiting for one of the figures to blink or turn around. Like Nathan, the stuffed lion at the South Australian Museum. I stood there looking at him in his glass  box. And then his tail moved.

I was completely freaked out. Thankfully, the story of Nathan confirmed that there was indeed a windscreen wiper motor driving the tail, but it was so infrequent, and so life-like. I still shudder. 

At "Curious Affection" (thank God), nothing moved, but it was so real I expected it to happen at any moment.

This incredible blend of fantastical creatures with human and life-like qualities is not to be missed. The layout of the first half of the exhibition gave the impression that it was all over, except for a large outdoor balloon bladder thing  (Pneutopia) that could be viewed from inside and out.

As I followed the signs towards the exit, a small sign read "Exhibition Continues". And here I walked into a darkened room for the full uncanny valley experience.

The second part of the exhibition was quite the uncanny valley experience. Photo by Michael de Percy.

I admit that I was most comfortable when other people were in the vicinity. This would be a great setting for an uncanny valley horror movie. I found The Couple mesmerising and had to return to it several times.

Patricia Piccinini's "The Couple" at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art. Photo by Michael de Percy.

I mean, Duane Hanson's "Woman with a Laundry Basket" is enough to freak me out, but that couple in the caravan, now that freaked me out no end. I couldn't look away.

Piccinini takes this type of art to a whole new level. I saw the Curious Beasts exhibition at the SA Museum in early 2017. It was not uncommon for fake mermaids and other unnatural curiosities to be made and sold for profit in the 19th century. But Piccinini's work defies imagination.

With Piccinini's work, you know it is not real, it doesn't pretend to be real, but you can't really be sure. Now that's the uncanny valley.

Book Launch and Presentation: Road Pricing and Provision: Changed Traffic Conditions Ahead: Tuesday 4th September 2018

Road Pricing and Provision [ANU Press] CC By-NC-ND 4.0 

The launch of our book, Road Pricing and Provision: Changed traffic conditions ahead, will be in Canberra on Tuesday 4th September, followed by my presentation: https://t.co/UWDpOBN81m

— Michael de Percy (@madepercy) August 17, 2018

On Tuesday 4th September 2018, our book will be launched and I will be giving a presentation entitled: Road Pricing and provision: Where are we now and how did we get here?

To register for the event, please visit the registration page.

The electronic version of the book is available for free download at ANU Press.

The Aeneid: Quasi-plagiarism or slow and deliberate Homerisms?

Fuga di Enea da Troia e San Girolamo by Federico Barocci (1598) [Public domain] via Wikimedia

The Aeneid by Virgil

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Last year I managed to do cover-to-cover readings of Homer's Iliad and The Odyssey, but it has taken me some time to get around to Virgil's "sequel", The Aeneid. In The Iliad, Aeneas is whisked away from the battle at Troy (to heal) and effectively disappears from the story. 

Virgil, in his epic poem written during 30-19 BCE, picks up Aeneas' story (much like Homer does with Odysseus in The Odyssey) and puts him on a quest to become the founder of Rome. (This occurred before the time of Romulus and Remus. Virgil had to reconcile the myth of the wolf-suckled brothers with the earlier Greek myth.) 

This translation puts the epic poem into prose. It is nothing short of gripping. I enjoyed Virgil's Georgics and Eclogues, but this work was brilliant. I can see how Virgil has adapted much of Homer's approach to story-telling, but with several differences. Homer brings in the scenery, such as sunsets reflecting on battlefield bronze, as well as stories about who killed whom. Virgil does similar, but without so much of the scenery. Of course, this is a translation from the hexameter form, and was originally written in Latin rather than Greek, so how this translation compares with the original, I am at a loss. 

What we do know is that Virgil was honouring Augustus Caesar with this tale, and tracing Augustus back to Aeneas. (I recall a family history on the UK's Who do you think you are? where one person's lineage was traced right back to Jesus, so such myths for the aristocracy have been common for centuries.) 

Rather than recount the story, and what I find most fascinating, is the story of the Trojan Horse. Homer barely mentions it, and Virgil fills in some of the gaps. But the larger story that has been passed down doesn't really come from Homer or Virgil. This is not new, but I was expecting that the three books together would give a more complete story of the legend that we have come to know. 

As for the "quasi-plagiarism" of Homer, I tend to agree with La Trobe University's Chris Mackie that:

In this sense the criticism of Virgil of plagiarising Homer, or quasi-plagiarism, seems rather unreasonable.

I am surprised to learn that the poem was never completely finished, and that Virgil wrote at the same speed I write up my research. For the record, that is "about three lines a day".

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The Humble Sentence

Photo by Holly Chaffin [CC0 Public Domain] via publicdomainpictures.net

How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One by Stanley Fish

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

My reading year began with Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book. Adler mentions (p. xi) that after the book became a best-seller, it was parodied by How to Read Two Books and, more seriously, How to Read a Page. So when I saw How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One, I was intrigued. 

With my usual marginalia noticeably absent, I must say the book was worth reading, but it is relatively easy enough to take in in one go. The book provides numerous examples of great sentences, including great beginning and ending sentences. (Dickens doesn't get a mention other than a suggestion that his were over-rated.) There are a number of exercises using various sentence types that are useful. 

Hemingway thought that if he could write just one good sentence, then the day was well-spent (A Moveable Feast, p. 22):

I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, 'Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.' So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say.

Fish doesn't go so far, but sees the sentence as a building block for all great writing. I particularly liked the idea that to be a writer, one has to like sentences, much like the painter who paints because she likes the smell of paint (p. 1). And the poem by Kenneth Koch really sums up this delightful little book:

One day the Nouns were clustered in the street.

An Adjective walked by, with her dark beauty

The Nouns were struck, moved, changed.

The next day the Verb drove up, and created the Sentence.

I would say that the major benefit of reading this work is that it brings the sentence back as the unit of work. I tend to focus more on paragraphs as corralled ideas, but overlook the importance of the humble sentence. Having read this work, I hope I can implement some of the clever suggestions and see the role of the humble sentence in framing not just stories, but also my academic work.

I found this book on Maria Popova's Brain Pickings.

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Benjamin Franklin: Unmasked!

Benjamin Franklin by David Rent Etter, after Charles Willson Peale, after David Martin (1835). National Park Service photo [Public Domain].

The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Franklin by Carla Mulford

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have taken Mortimer Adler's advice to heart and so I try to read an author's work before delving into "companion" volumes. But there were many questions I had about Benjamin Franklin, in particular his autodidacticism and his thirteen virtues. How did this happen? What resources did he draw on in developing this process? What did he mean by "Moderation"? This volume, edited by Carla Mulford, answered many of my questions in the first two chapters: "Benjamin Franklin's Library" and "The Art of Virtue". Funnily enough, the first thing I noticed is that Franklin had a habit that was mirrored by Adler (p. 15):

Marginalia provide a way to make a book more practical as well as more personal.

Franklin also found the need to organise his books, although his personalised system was much more pragmatic than mine (p. 18). I discovered, too, ideas about Franklin's pedagogy. For instance (p. 53):

The lecture, the sermon, and all forms of face-to-face hierarchical instruction seemed to Franklin to avoid enlisting people in the creation of mutual understanding and of new forms of knowledge. Such one-sided articulations forced people to accept established truisms, unexamined claims that served and preserved the old order.

Further (p. 54):

His memoirs document his abandonment of methods of forceful assertion and concerted argument in favour of an equivocal, Socratic method.

Franklin saw "enlightened reason" as what we would call today a "democratic" faculty (p. 78), and he believed that (p. 79):

...all received knowledge could and must be tested empirically.

Franklin's views on religion are interesting, if not pragmatic. He advocated for Congress to begin with opening prayers (p. 100) (this still happens in the Australian Parliament) and saw religion as a way of keeping "the ignorant masses from sloth and insurrection" (p. 83). In terms of virtues, Franklin looked not only at individual virtues, but those in relation to "social customs through an evaluation of their results" (p. 108). One point that clarified the dilemma I had noticed but could not articulate (p. 142):

Franklin... simultaneously preached the doctrines of self-denial and good living.

There is so much more in this small volume but best of all it is an academic work. Which means my marginalia focuses almost exclusively on the detailed notes and references provided to each of the essays. I wouldn't recommend reading this before at least reading Franklin's autobiography, but as a companion to the Great Man, this volume is excellent.

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Idealism's fine, but actions speak louder than words...

Eleanor Roosevelt and Fala at Val,Kill in Hyde Park, New York. Photo taken by FDR, November 1951 [Public Domain] via Wikimedia.

Tomorrow is Now by Eleanor Roosevelt

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I am involved in a research project focusing on the four pillars of women, peace and security, emanating from the United Nations' Security Council (UNSCR) Resolution 1325. So I have been doing a number of courses by UN Women and learning about the UN's "gender mainstreaming" project. The basic premise is that gender matters in how people experience their rights, and from here, I decided to read some of Eleanor Roosevelt's work because she was instrumental in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Without Roosevelt, the document that has become so important as a guiding principle for much of the UN's work may not have come to fruition.

There are many critiques of the universality of the declaration, because it starts with a liberal premise, as in the individual is key. I have Roosevelt's autobiography to read at a later stage, but this work intrigued me as it has an introduction by Bill Clinton, and Roosevelt (effectively) stayed alive to finish the book, and died soon after it was completed. (The book was published a few months after her death.) There is much that will make the "Yay, Democracy" crowd happy, and it is clear that the examined life is her idea of the right life:

Self-government requires self-examination, action by the individual, standards, values, and the strength to live up to them.

This is not too far from Mortimer Adler's idea of The Great Conversation. Roosevelt was sceptical of science, and no doubt would have disapproved of the "I f*#king love science" crowd, channelling Huxley and Orwell (p. 123):

...each provided us with an appalling picture of the future of mankind, a life dominated by scientific method in which the humanities and the human spirit had been destroyed... [rather than] use science as an enlightened tool to make this world closer to a Utopia than man has ever dreamed.

Nothing for me to disagree with here, but I attended a number of research presentations lately looking at post-colonial African politics, and the findings were disturbing. So much of the liberal tradition does not readily apply to the rest of the world. I recall Theodore Roosevelt's Autobiography (he was Eleanor's uncle) where the politics of the United States were so corrupt at the beginning of the 20th century, more than 100 years after democracy had been instituted. How are poor, post-colonial countries meant to transition to democracy (which assumes that in itself is a good thing) in a few years when it took the world superpower over a century? These are the questions that concerned me as I read Roosevelt's ideal future. But it certainly fits with my own liberal ideals, for example (p. 124):

I have emphasised in this book two areas in which we must begin preparation today: education and the essential need of sparking in a new, deep, and fervent sense of responsibility in every individual.

Yet I immediately think of Margaret Thatcher and the extreme ends of individualism - all extremes lead to the same rot. That is not to say that Roosevelt's work isn't important, or that it isn't timeless. But is is certainly worth questioning from a non-liberal perspective. The ideas of the United States are seen as a panacea for the ills of the world, and I just can't see how that idealism means much today.

In her life she achieved so many things and many of these were of benefit to those who needed it most. She saw the benefits of education and travel, and was impressed by her grandson's education in the Peace Corps - he learnt that systems of manners are as important as fast access to clean drinking water, and that honouring one's culture enables collective action, so she was certainly not an individualist in the modern sense. Rather than find value in this work as a program for the world, I found value in the program for the self, or, to quote James Allen (1921, p. 48)

...he who has conquered self has conquered the universe.

For Seneca Daily Stoic, p. 241):

Many words have been spoken by Plato, Zeno, Chrysippus, Posidonius, and by a whole host of equally excellent Stoics. I'll tell you how people can prove their words to be their own - by putting into practice what they've been preaching.

Eleanor Roosevelt personifies this idea: actions speak louder than words.

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Rilke: Is it better to choose one's career carefully, or to know oneself through trial and error?

Monument to the poet Rainer M. Rilke in the city of Ronda, Spain. In the gardens of hotel Reina Victoria.
Photo by Wwal [Public domain] via Wikimedia

Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Rilke wrote a series of letters to the young poet, Franz Xaver Kappus, beginning in 1902. Kappus was reading Rilke's poetry under the chestnut tress at the Military Academy in Wiener Nuestadt when his teacher, Horaček, noticed the volume. Rilke had been a pupil at the Military Lower School in Sankt Pölten when Horaček was a chaplain there, and Horaček had known Rilke personally. 

The military proved not to be for Rilke, and he continued his studies in Prague. Kappus, however, felt that his own choice to pursue a military career was "directly opposed to my own inclinations", yet would continue his military career for years after. In the meantime, Kappus decided to write to Rilke to ask for feedback on his own poetry, and Rilke maintained their correspondence despite his constant travels. 

By Rilke's tone in the letters, it is obvious that he enjoyed his correspondence with Kappus, and often told Kappus that if he wished to be a poet, he would need to change careers, or, at worst, he might find time in barracks life to keep at his poetry. The book provides Rilke's correspondence to Kappus, beginning with his return letter of 1903 and continuing until 1908. 

The book also includes a second work, The Letter from the Young Worker, which adopts a letter format to "a polemic against Christianity". This style recalls the dialogues of Plato and others, but in this case is one side of a potential written conversation. In many ways, the style mirrors the way we read Rilke's correspondence with Kappus, only having (mostly) one side of the narrative. In his first response, Rilke provides some important feedback. He suggests that Kappus' poetry lacks an identity. He suggests that Kappus is looking to the outside, but the answer is (pp. 6-7):

Go into yourself. Examine the reason that bids you to write. This above all: ask yourself in your night's quietest hour: must I write? Dig down deep into yourself for a deep answer. And if it should be affirmative, if it is given to you to respond to this serious question with a loud and simple "I must', then construct your life according to this necessity; your life right into its most inconsequential and slightest hour must become a witness to this urge... A work of art is good if it has risen out of necessity... Accept this answer as it is, without seeking to interpret it. Perhaps it will turn out that you are called to be an artist... Then assume this fate and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking after the rewards that may come from outside.

Imagine having such a mentor? Rilke was patient, kind, and wise. His connection with Kappus has, perhaps, something to do with being a poet while in the military system, something I identify with personally (having found that the military was, once I neared the tell-tale signs of the evening of my youth, "directly opposed to my own inclinations"). 

There is so much in such a short work, with Rilke's advice becoming "Candidean" - "take refuge in [subjects] offered by your own day-to-day life" - and focused on the individual rather than the work (and not in a mean-spirited way but as a mentor). 

Given that Kappus continues his military career and does not become a poet of any note, and that Rilke was the opposite in springing from the military's well, it makes me wonder: should we take care in choosing our careers so we do not waste time in the wrong station? Or should we learn what really floats our boat through trial and error? I suspect, based on Rilke's care for Kappus' work, that Rilke really knew himself as a result, while I felt that, perhaps, Kappus had taken the easy option.

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Lessons from my cat Desi, or: On not doing what we ought and continuing not to do it

Desi the Disaster is living up to his name.

My cat Desi has not been well. He suffers from a rare skin condition called skin fragility syndrome. It is a result of very little collagen production. His skin is so fragile he can rip himself open just by scratching.

There was a chance he would be put down recently (while I was teaching in Hong Kong). When my wife told me "Today was not a good day to die", I burst into tears.

Desi was a rescue from the Crookwell Veterinary Hospital. I fell in love with him the moment I saw him and he came home with me that day. I was never a cat person; now I always will be. As I sat in my hotel room in Hong Kong, all I could think about was Desi and what I could do if I was at home.

Ernest Hemingway loved cats. The words of Chapter 8 of In Our Time were burning in my brain as I thought about how I would feel if I went through all the anguish of being away, only to return and keep doing the same old same old.

Ernest Hemingway (1924) In Our Time, chapter 8, p. 12.

We have been researching ways to manage Desi's condition and help him heal. Our vet is on board. One journal article mentions that vitamin C can work, and so far it seems to be working. We will be adding yoghurt and hemp oil to his diet. I have learnt how to use VetBond (super glue) for first aid. But it is far from over.

As the Stoics would say, external events beyond our control provide us with opportunities to practise our virtues.

As James Allen would say, "Faith and the living of faith".

I didn't want to be one who "never told anybody". I can't go back to how I was. Desi taught me that.

You were in a Big City and there were Bright Lights

West 42nd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues (1984). Photo by TedQuackenbush [CC BY SA 3.0] via Wikimedia.

Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I "discovered" Jay McInerney when I watched the BBC2 documentary Sincerely, F. Scott Fitzgerald. McInerney's first novel remains a winner. 

Set in Mahattan in 1984, the story covers how almost everyone felt in the 1980s. That time when you were done with nightclubs, but there was nothing else to do. You kept going back, but all you wanted to do was something else. 

This is the first novel I have ever read in the second person. McInerney makes it work. Apparently it was turned into a film starring Michael J. Fox (I never saw it) and also an Off-Broadway rock musical from 1999. 

I often listen to music while reading and writing, usually minimalism and John Adams in particular. The trouble is I have been listening to the same music over and over for more than ten years and sometimes I have to change. 

Lately I have been in the habit of listening to music from the time the book was written or from the country of origin of the author. Most of the books I read tend to be older, so listening to 1984 was never going to happen. 

I typed "bright lights big city" into Spotify, and hey presto! There was the rock musical version of the book. This was the funniest experience I have had with music and reading. 

Many of the songs use the exact words from the book and I had to change the music when I found myself reading the exact words of the book while listening to them at the same time in the musical's soundtrack. 

The song "Coma Baby" had me cacking myself. 

Part of the story reminds me of Guy de Maupassant's Bel Ami sans the cocaine. But it finishes a bit like Tom Cruise's Risky Business or Matthew Broderick's Ferris Bueller's Day Off. It reads like a young person's novel but there is certainly genius there. 

I am yet to read another McInerney, but it is worth exploring more of his work. But the most memorable thing for me was the incident with the music and the book. Not to take away from the book, but the experience fitted right in with the tone of the novel. 

What it must have been like to be so young and write so well.

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The Joy of Korean Literature

Photo by CharlieOnTravel at Flicker [CC-BY 2.0] via Wikimedia Commons

The Vegetarian by Han Kang

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have been reading a few novels translated into English lately and I have not been disappointed. I discovered The Vegetarian on the podcast The Joy of Serious Literature last year and finally purchased a copy. 

According to two of my Korean friends, Han Kang's work is quite popular. This book won the 2016 Man Booker International Prize which is awarded to the best novel translated into English. 

Although not a perfect measure, I am yet to be disappointed by a book that has received a national or international award. Kang's prose is brilliant, and her dialogue (a difficult skill to master) is even better. 

What I have noticed from a few international authors is the interesting use of different voices, for example, switching from first to third-person narration in different parts of the book, and also, in this book, bringing three distinct parts into one compelling story. 

What I enjoyed most about The Vegetarian was the complete absence of a happy ending. It begs the question, who was your favourite character? 

Much like the podcast's host's Korean friend, I found the artist to be my favourite. Not because of what he does, which is a bit out there, but because he is "the only character who gets what he wants". 

I doubt stories like this would work for an Anglo author - I think the tone would make it all a bit "dirty". Without giving too much away, if you are looking for inspiration, this isn't the book for you. But if you enjoy the lasting residue of stories well told, this one will stay with you for some time.

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