La sua cantante

Bel Canto - Ann Patchett (HarperCollins, 2001)

I feel like there was this period right around my college graduation where everyone on BART was reading The Poisonwood Bible and Bel Canto. I never got around to the former (though I've read other Barbara Kingsolver) but came across a copy of the latter, so after sitting on my shelf for awhile, it made it onto my list of books to read this year. And I'm glad - it made for a particularly nice antidote to the anxiety of White Noise.

While reading, I kept finding myself thinking of the Stanford Prison Experiment. This novel presented a scenario almost the opposite. A group of commandos, terrorists, guards, set against their hostages, or prisoners. And unlike the escalating cruelty that occurred in the basement of Jordan Hall, the story of the two groups stuck in the Vice Presidential mansion of an unnamed Latin American country is one of relationships built and humanity in ascendancy. Over the weeks and months of confinement, they create a new reality, to the point that several never really want it to end - and even fewer are willing to admit the only possible way that it can end.

This raises a few questions. Does the initial power imbalance account for the differences? At Stanford, you have a group of peers, randomly assigned positions of power or subjection. In Patchett's novel, the prisoners represent the powerful and privileged, and in a sense swing the pendulum back to an original state as the authority of the generals slowly (or rapidly?) erodes. Or is it a timing issue? Zimbardo called things off after 6 days, when they got out of control. In the novel, the situation drags on for months. After 5 days, the guards and generals are still very much in power. Had the Stanford Prison Experiment lasted longer, would relationships have been forged and equilibrium restored? And of course, it's useful to remember that I'm talking about a novel and not real life.

Anyway, at one point in the reading, the phrase "recklessly beautiful" came to mind. I don't know exactly what I mean, but it seems appropriate. The characters fall prey to beauty - to the beauty of music, of love. Their embrace of it leads them to live recklessly, carelessly. Not in their actions per se, but in their suspension of disbelief, that this world could continue, or that things could all come out all right in the end.

So you're left with this mesmerizing story, that invites you too to set aside the dark undertones, to ignore the threatening moment. And believe, for a few pages, in something magical. You can know in the end that the system always wins, and still believe that maybe this time it won't. Or that even when it does, the interlude made it worth it.

[Also, the characters! They are treated with a lot of love. I should have allotted them more time. It's the minor characters that made the book: the vice president turned cleaning crew, the French ambassador, the loud and romantic and ridiculous Russians, the singing terrorist, the chess-playing general. They sound so cheesy when reduced to these terms. They were not.]

I heart Michael Ondaatje

Anil's Ghost - Michael Ondaatje
New York: Knopf, 2000

I went through a Canadian phast in my late high school years. While this was largely due to a certain hockey player, it also included a love affair with Ondaatje's The English Patient (both novel and film) and Joy Kogawa's Obasan. I had dreams of moving to Vancouver and having a big dog and taking him on walks to Stanley Park. All of which is introduction, of sorts, to the Canadian Ondaatje's 2000 novel about his native Sri Lanka.

I read it in Denver, and the cold weather and warm family atmosphere made for a gripping counterweight to the book's sultry temperatures and political chill. You understand why Anil left for England, America, etc., and work to understand why she returned to practice forensic anthropology, investigating the murders and atrocities committed by political factions within and against the government. You also work to understand the two brothers who accompany her, one an anthropologist, one a doctor, both destroyed both by their own pasts and the turmoil of their country.

It's hard to say that a lot happens, in the traditional sense of the word. I found myself thinking, well this is where I would go with this plot, and then remembering that Ondaatje is a lot less trite or more interesting than I can be. His prose is lyrical and haunting and quiet and disjointed and all sorts of other good things. Had I not been on vacation, I might have noted passages to share; instead you will have to take my word for it.

In short, he's gorgeous, and I was unsettled and unsatisfied in an entirely satisfying way.