Adieu Mahfouz

It turns out that I read Palace Walk at a relevant time. Nobel Prize-winner (the first to write in Arabic) Naguib Mahfouz has passed away. He was 94 and had been ailing since a fall earlier in the summer. His death is a reminder to me that we may be losing a generation of authors that create sweeping, epic views of a place and time. The Latin American magical realist authors such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez are aging. Young English-language writers like Jonathan Safran Foer maintain the magic and sympathetic voice, but are often gimmickly; other novels, like Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, show society through a family's life but are harsher and more sarcastic in tone. I personally like empathy.

But back to Mahfouz. He essentially popularized the novel for Arabic audiences and brought Egypt to life at the same time. Some excerpts from the NY Times obit:

Mr. Mahfouz’s city was teeming Cairo, and his characters were its most ordinary people: civil servants and bureaucrats, grocers, shopkeepers, poor retirees, petty thieves and prostitutes, peasants and women brutalized by tradition, a people caught in the upheavals of a nation struggling through the 20th century.

[He] was often called the Egyptian Balzac for his vivid frescoes of Cairenes and their social, political and religious dilemmas. Critics compared his richly detailed Cairo with the London of Charles Dickens, the Paris of Émile Zola and the St. Petersburg of Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

Peter Theroux, the American translator of several major Arab novelists, wrote about completing a new version of “Children of the Alley” in 1996: “Readers of Mahfouz in any language are in thrall to his magic. The warmth of Mahfouz’s characters, the velocity of his storytelling, his gift for fluent dialogue and telling details are unique in modern Arabic literature.”

update: Here is the LA Times' obit. It's very prettily written.

Generation Gaps

I just reread Ivan Turgenev's Fathers and Sons. It's been about 10 years and a whole lot of growing up in the interim, so I was pleased to discover that many of my initial insights still seemed sound: parents and children will always struggle to simultaneously bridge and widen the gap between them; it's tragic when people are so wrapped up with negation that they deny themselves the joy of ever embracing anything; you can enjoy both a simple, sweet love story and a passionate one.

But knowing Russian history and literature enriched the story in so many ways. Reform and revolution were really starting to take hold in younger generations, and the reform had to choose between Europhilism and Slavophilism - learning from the (to be freed) serfs or teaching them, elitism or back-to-the-soil-ism. So after generations of a relatively static caste system, there was about to be room for limited social mobility, and plenty of anxiety about how that would look. The novel was published in 1862 and set in 1859 or '60, and make no mistake - this was a seminal moment in Russian history and book is firmly grounded in it. It is not an explanation of primitive Russian through the ages.

However, what makes it work for a Western audience is that the relationship between fathers and sons (i.e. parents and children) is a universal one, even in harmonious times. And certainly, the generation gaps between Boomers and their parents, and Xers and Boomers are part of the contemporary American consciousness - so we are predisposed to identify with the story of an older generation battling to maintain its hold on society while its children begin their inevitable march to dominance.

I like Turgenev quite a bit. His descriptions and characterizations are vivid, and his attention to detail - finding wonder in the smallest events - lovely. A wonderful introduction to mid-19th century Russia, a place of turmoil and boredom, impoverishment and beauty.

I found the plot

I finished Palace Walk last night and in the last 100 pages or so I found the plot. It is indeed the story of a family, and how external events (the Egyptian independence moving following the Great War) threaten to tear a happy equilibrium apart.

I enjoyed this book quite a bit, and will definitely read the others in the trilogy. My main quibble with Mahfouz concerns his use of stream-of-consciousness when he enters the heads of his characters. It is a useful tool for showing their internal contradictions and how they rationalize them away - but sometimes the streams are so convoluted as to be almost unreadable. Juxtaposed against the rest of his prose, these passages can be jarring. (*In fairness, this could be the fault of the translation. If anyone reads Arabic and wants to find the book and let me know, I'd be curious to find out.)

Also, if you think you might like Mahfouz but aren't in the mood for a 500 page starter novel, I also recommend the slim Akhenaten: Dweller in Truth. Weighing in at less than 200 pages, you can get a taste of Mahfouz as well as a fascinating fictionalized account of a monotheistic pharoah and his beautiful wife Nefertiti.

Old-timey Cairo

When my dear friends Lisa and Mariam up and moved to Cairo on me, I was envious, albeit not envious enough to drop everything and join them. I am fascinated by Egypt and its loooooong history, and how ancient Egyptian culture, Arab Muslim culture, and international globalism all come together there. (One thing I did learn from my favorite correspondents: there is a class of people who are "recyclers" and in the end virtually all trash ends up reused somehow.)

And yet, instead of reading about modern Egypt, I keep ending up with books that go back almost 100 years. This selection is by Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz: Palace Walk, the first in his "Cairo Trilogy." Published in the 1950s, the novel seemed (to me) as though it could have taken place at any time, until the war, a hope for German victory, and Australian occupiers arises. Even then, it took me at least another 100 pages until I realized that this was World War I, not II. And now, sheepish about my lack of knowledge of Mediterranean history during the World Wars, I am grounded in the novel itself.

Palace Walk takes the reader into the lives of an upper-middle class Cairene family. The husband is a tyrant to his family, but hedonistic and charming with his friends and the ladies. One son takes after his father (but doesn't know it), another is a serious law student, and the third a naive and rambunctious youngster. The daughters are sweet, dutiful, and largely reconciled to having their lives sheltered from the outside world. The younger is a ravishing blonde; the elder capable and caustic, but unfortunately plagued with a big nose which may or may not stymie their marriage options.

And then there is the mother, Amina. She suffers with a distant and stern husband, but over the years has forgotten that she is, compared to other Cairene wives, suffering indeed. Her world revolves around custom, routine, and her beloved family.

I'm two-thirds through the book (which is 500 pages long), and haven't quite figured out whether there is a strict plot and upcoming climax. It is in some ways more like the Tolstoyan life-of-a-family epics. But I guess Mahfouz has another 2 volumes to make his narrative arc. Regardless, it's a beautiful book, and very evocative in its depiction of the scenes and sounds of colonial Cairo.

Another Egyptian Mystery

The information hasn't made it onto this blog, but many of my readers will know that I am a sucker for Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody mysteries. Peabody is a sassy archeologist in turn-of-the-(20th)century Egypt, and the matriarch of a menagerie of humans and cats. (She is also the mother of Ramses, who over the course of the series proceeds from precocious pest to broodingly romantic hero and a personal favorite fictional character.)

But I digress, as this post is actually about my Maine trip reading, Arthur Phillips' The Archeologist. Set mostly in 1922, the novel is concerned with a young archeologist, Ralph Trilipush, and his drive to discover the tomb of the mysterious early king (not Pharoah, we are instructed) and erotic poet Atum-hadu. The narrative is formed of Trilipush's journal and correspondence from Egypt back to Boston, where his funders and fiancee await, as well as letters from Mr. Ferrell, written three decades later, to the fiancee's nephew, about how he, an Australian private investigator, found himself intangled in the Trilipush case. Which, we eventually find, is filled with intrigue, murder, pretense, and a search for a king that may or may not exist.

I would stretch to make any but the most general comparisons between Phillips work and Peters' series. [On second thought, I am finding more similarities.] Peters has a doctorate in Egyptology, which grounds her works in serious scholarship, but is also aware that she is writing swashbuckling romantic mysteries at the same time. Phillips, googling reveals, was inspired by a scrap of letter to base a novel on the unfamilar topic of Egyptology. (One thing both authors do is integrate famous archeologists such as Howard Carter, discoverer of King Tut's tomb, into their work.)

Phillips' characters are enigmas, appearing through their own or others' writing. And everyone has good reason to misrepresent him or herself. Thus the reader must determine how much to trust, and which lines to read between. This can get tiresome, and I imagine some readers will put the book down rather than do so. However, it does make for an entertaining psychological mystery. To say more would reveal too much.

I was a big fan of Phillips' 2002 novel, Prague (set in Budapest, of course). Only mixed reviews kept me away from his follow-up until now. After reading both, I can say that is a more ambitious novel, but that The ArcheologistPrague is the more satisfying and successful.

The History of Love

So much for the lazy summer days (post-Nationals, at least) of my youth. Summer of '06 has had a whirlwind quality to it thus far. While I've been reading steadily, I've been posting practically not at all. But I'm here today, the last of my vacation, catching up.

Last month's book club selection was Nicole Krauss' The History of Love. I can't mention it without the aside that she is married to Jonathan Safran Foer and they are an obnoxiously talented and successful young couple. Hmph. But I can't be too grudging about it, because they are both lovely and soulful writers who have truly touched me.

The History of Love is a little too complicated to explain, but as a rough outline it follows the tale of a book "The History of Love," and its impact on its elderly author and the teenage namesake of its heroine. Plus assorted other characters. There are enough twists to keep you guessing, and while I'm pretty sure I've figured it all out by now, I am apt to agree with my librarian Adele, who claims that the novel reveals new insights upon further readings.

I found the two main characters, Leo and Alma (the younger), utterly heartbreaking and charming. Their idiosyncracies made them recognizable and above all human. And while all the characters live to various extents in worlds of their own making, their attempts to bridge distances and create connections are both funny and touching. The note Leo wears on his lapel when he goes out is just one example.

The night I finished reading, I found myself lying in bed weeping, not of our sorrow, but because of an overabundance of emotion. Krauss, like her husband, is expert at probing emotional soft spots, and manipulating them in ways that aren't overbearing, but leave lasting marks.

More on Turkey

Turkish authors and the Turkish past has been a recurring theme on this blog - which is strange because I didn't know I was so interested in the subject. The latest news is a new defamation case. This one isn't about Orhan Pamuk, thank goodness, but is in many ways more troubling.

Author Elif Sharak is facing jail time over her new novel, The Bastard of Istanbul.

Shafak's book is the story of an Armenian family in San Francisco and a Turkish family in Istanbul whose lives intersect over nine decades.

Its references to the slaughter of some 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks during and after World War I are by Shafak's own admission "difficult to digest" because the overwhelming majority of Turks deny that the genocide took place.

However, the book has topped best-seller lists, selling more than 50,000 copies since its publication in March. "The feedback I received has been very, very positive," Shafak, 35, said in a recent interview.

[snip]

Kemal Kerincsiz, a right-wing lawyer, filed charges against Shafak last month. In one of the passages, presented by Kerincsiz as evidence against the author, an Armenian character says, "I am the grandchild of genocide survivors who lost all their relatives in the hands of Turkish butchers in 1915."

Shafak argued that comments made by fictional characters could not be used to press charges, and the case was throw out. An appeals court, however, overruled that decision last week.

Did you catch that? What a fictional character says is grounds for a defamation case against the author?! I hope that Turkish society can move past the censors and nationalists that want to prevent a national dialogue about a tragic and complicated time in Turkey's history.

Two "Reviews"

I haven't posted in a while because the thought of figuring out what to write about Cynthia Ozick's Heir to the Glimmering World depressed me. (As did the book, for that matter.) The book has some wry humor and is fascinatingly unsympathetic. During our book club conversation, we also decided that Ozick provided a troubling commentary on the alienation of people. If alienation and a cast of exiles is your thing, check it out. As for me, I preferred the book that it almost reminded me of, Muriel Spark's A Long Way from Kensington.

Enough said.

Moving onto my most recent read, Azadeh Moaveni's Lipstick Jihad. This was much more enjoyable, largely because it seemed more human. Azadeh was someone I almost understood (although at my age she was a correspondent for Time magazine). She is probing, and catty, and ridiculous, and thoughtful, feeling her way for an identity that fits. I never questioned my national identity, blissfully American - in fact envious of my friends whose family cultures included more that a null set of commercialized values and traditions. In many ways, I was very lucky, unlike Azadeh, who discovers that - having grown up between two worlds - she will not find a single place where she "belongs". But everyone knows the feeling of not belonging (see Ozick above), and so even when the memoir is utterly foreign, it is also not.

My best friend in fourth grade had an American journalist father and a Persian mother. She was born the year of the revolution. That didn't mean anything to me at the time, but now I am old enough to wonder about their lives. The mother - how did she suffer the loss of her homeland? In Thousand Oaks was she close enough to an emigre community? Would she have lived and raised her daughter in America regardless? And my friend herself - we grew apart and moved in very different circles by high school. I saw her clique as pretty shallow, and I mourned the loss of my funny, brilliant friend. But was she struggling to carve out her own identity, embracing the American, the Persian, the Iranian, the Valley Girl?

There's been a spate of interest in women and Iran of late: Reading Lolita in Tehran (read my review here), Marjane Satrapi's graphic novels, a recent episode of KQED Forum, and more. And from it, I believe that we better understand Iran and Iranians, at least those of the diaspora, who so often go home. But - and perhaps this is good - we are no closer to predicting what the future holds for Iran.

Heating Up

I read Dog Days over a week in which summer came to Los Angeles with a vengeance. It's been hot enough to recall the Dog Days of August 2004, which I - like Melanie, the novel's heroine - spent in DC. Unlike her, however, I was not hooking up with my married lover in fancy hotels; also, I walked and took the bus rather than jumping in cabs all the time.

All that said... I don't have an inspired review. Ana Marie Cox maintains some of her bloggery sparkle. And I enjoyed the "veiled" analogies to actual Beltway personages and events. And like West Wing, it's an alternative universe that co-exists uneasily with the present. It is 2004 and the incumbent is a fool of a president named Golden; Yet Cox mentions the Bush twins. (Etc. Some of these inclusions are rather funny, especially - and perhaps only - if you follow Washington gossip.)

A few things distance Dog Days from your standard chick lit, so far as I can tell. One is that it does not include your typical romance; another is a (slightly) nuanced ending. These are good things. What didn't work for me was Melanie's jaded tone. It's desirable to have acute observational skills and a sharp tongue; it's less so when said observational skills overlook endearing and redeeming qualities in people. What worked as Wonkette - a sexy and louche lush - worked because it was a put-on. One can't help feeling that Cox really cares. But Melanie - who should care - ends up showing us nothing to care about. Which may be the trouble with Washington today, but also makes for a bit of a downer.

So. The upshot is that I still think this was a good book for me. I loved the little Washingtonian notes that made me feel like an insider. (A central character works at my Austin Grill - one in a chain of popular but pretty icky restaurants - a location all of a 4 minute walk from my old apartment.) I still love Cox. But I would recommend her novel sparingly. Instead, look for her on the pages of Time.

A Confession

I don't think I've ever pretended to be immune to the lure of chick lit, although I don't indulge all that often. (Exceptions made for Helen Fielding.)

But last night, I started the oft-mentioned Dog Days, by Official Erin's Library Icon Ana Marie Cox, now Time columnist extraordinaire. Thus far, it is a just barely disguised account of the 2004
presidential campaign. Apparently some Washingtonienne gets thrown in too. And there's a little West Wing too, and a HUGE dose of Blackberry love. Our heroine Melanie has a glamorous life, sort of. So it's catty and sexy, and yet nerdy too.

This is not the best of books, and I prefer the blogging/columnist Ana Marie to the novelist. But that doesn't mean that it's not a rollicking good time to read.

Istanbul was Constantinople... (finale)

Last week was the book club discussion on Louis de Bernieres' Birds Without Wings, which I finished less than 24 hours ahead of time. (It goes by pretty fast, all told, but it's still a really long book.)

I was very pleased with the discussion, which was almost uniformly positive and struck a good balance between focusing on the book itself and wandering off on related tangents. And as a historian, I was pleased that so many other readers expressed their delight in learning more about a place and era that was new to them. Someone made the point that Americans are likely to be unaware that WWI took place anywhere other than Western Europe. I myself was particularly intrigued with this look at how nationalism took hold (piecemeal, to be sure) and brought about the downfall of one of the great multi-ethnic empires.

The fate of the village - which in a way is the novel's main character - and the villagers is poignant and interesting and seems authentic. I won't give any details, but I felt satisfied.

Powell's Rocks

Happy Election Day to my California readers! I hope that you voted (even if it wasn't very exciting).

While I am a library devotee, I am also a fan of bookstores, especially when they have any of the following:

• cafe
• staff recommendations with little cards
• a huuuuuge collection

Which brings me to Powell's Books in Portland, Oregon (also online), the massivest (to make up a word) bookstore I can think of. And the source of a joyous few hours during my one weekend in Portland. Today's Times Business section (of all places) explores the success of the new/used/online company, what separates it from other indie booksellers, and its possible future under 27(!)-year-old book heiress Emily Powell.

It's not fair. Separated by only a year, and yet I'm struggling to keep up with my book lists and she's has a reader's dreamland in her hands. If anyone out there has a book empire out there to give away, please keep me in mind...

Istanbul was Constantinople...

This month's book club selection is Birds Without Wings, an epic novel by Louis de Bernieres about the final years of the Ottoman Empire. I am about 2/3 of the way through, and still developing my impressions, but since it is long and there is likely much to say, I figured I may as well begin.

De Bernieres is also the author of Corelli's Mandolin, of Nicolas Cage film fame. A friend reviewed that book approximately as follows: "I expected it to be really bad, but it wasn't." Which is a little mysterious, but I would say that Birds Without Wings is probably better. It is sweeping - covering at least 20 years in the life of a little town in Anatolia, as well as the fall of the Ottomans and the rise of Kemal Ataturk. How multiculturalism hardens into nationalism forms another central theme. And there are at least 10 characters telling the narrative, among them the town imam, his wife, her Christian best friend, the latter's beautiful daughter and her ugly best friend; the potter and his son and son's friend, as well as the town's nobleman and his mistress. Plus of course Mustafa Kemal. The chorus of different voices makes for a rich and almost magical set of tales (some more enjoyable than others, of course, but all crucial to the whole).

It's a tragedy, by the way. The full extent isn't yet clear, but we just made it through World War I and the traumatic birthing of modern Turkey and Greece is yet to come.

Joan Didion & Magical Thinking

Library Mom will be happy to hear that Joan Didion was thinking of anthropology in titling her blockbuster memoir/reverie of death and recovery The Year of Magical Thinking. She found herself engaged in magical thinking, performing the same sorts of rites as peoples who believed that certain rituals would cause effects rationally unrelated, such as sacrificing a virgin to make the crops grow.

I don't know about you, but I have definitely done some magical thinking of my own. And I can point fingers at others who have as well, even if they wouldn't admit it. Two examples from my adolescence: the "belief" (?) that singing Tears for Fears' song "Shout" would somehow bolster the Mighty Ducks, and re-examining again and again dance competitions that didn't go well, thinking that somehow a reimagining could and would change the outcome. Or, more darkly, the fear of days that seemed too beautiful, as within three months days like this brought a dangerous brush fire that threatened our home and the murder of a family friend. (This last superstition I haven't quite let go of.)

This spurt of revelation is meant to serve as introduction to a book that I was a bit worried about reading. I've had some trouble lately with books and movies being overhyped to me. Turns out I had nothing to fear from Didion. The Year of Magical Thinking is masterful and deeply moving. It was open and honest, and yet self-protective. It felt profoundly true.

Didion lost her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, on December 30, 2003, in the midst of daughter Quintana's illness - a flu that morphs into pneumonia and eventually neurological damage. (And, after the period covered in the book, Quintana's own untimely death.) This double-whammy complicates mourning and grief, and by Didion's own account, it is not until the summer of 2004, at the Democratic National Convention in Boston, that she realizes she is Not Okay. And so, she begins to write.

This is my attempt to make sense of the period that followed, weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I had ever had about death, about illness, about probability and luck, about good fortune and bad, about marriage and children and memory, about grief, about the ways in which people do and do not deal with the fact that life ends, about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself. As a writer, even as a child, long before what I wrote began to be published, I develooped a sense that meaning itse3lf was resident in the rhythms of words and sentences and paragraphs, a technique for withholding whatever it was I thought or believed behind an increasingly impenetrable polish.

The power of the former sentence almost obscures the importance of the latter. For her whole life, Didion was able to use writing to remake the world, hide behind her prose. Suddenly, she "need[ed] whatever it is I think of believe to be penetrable, if only for myself."

And she was. Her evocation of thoughts and emotions was so powerful for me that I literally felt my mind racing as if it were my own, and felt myself on the verge of her same anxiety attacks. (That part seemed a little unfair. I could have used a little more distance.)

As Didion cares for Quintana, trying to boss her way into making her daughter better, only slowing accepting that there are limits to what she can do, she considers the inherent dilemma in the mother-child relationship. Seeing Quintana in the ICU after neurosurgery, she whispers, "I'm here. You're safe."

It occurred to me during those weeks that this had been, since the day we brought her home from St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica, my basic promise to her. I would not leave. I would take care of her. She would be all right. It also occurred to me that this was a promise I could not keep. I could not always take care of her. [...] Things happened in life that mothers could not prevent or fix.

And please let no one ever say to me that the mother-adopted child relationship can not be as strong and elemental a force as the biological one. This is a quibble I have with some fellow readers. Following her talk at the Festival of Books, I was in a circle in which I was the only one who had yet to read the book. Others claimed that her relationship with John seemed to be much richer and more important than the relationship with Quintana, that she felt his loss more. I argued, but from the gut, and unarmed with knowledge from the book. Now, having read the book, I think my gut was right. Both losses are unfathomable, in different ways. Dunne and Didion were intertwined through 40 years of life together, and a deep love. Didion and Quintana were mother and daughter, entwined in an entirely different way. Mourning each of them must (and should) be different. (Not to mention that Didion had not lost her daughter at the time of writing the book, demurred when invited to add a postscript about Quintana's death, and has been on a book tour perhaps as a way to blunt the process of grieving. That last is a little bit of unnecessary psychoanalysis, but I hold the main point.)

Having written for longer than I perhaps intended, I will just say that I have found few books so wholly satisfying. The Year of Magical Thinking is truly stunning.

Festival of Books, Day 2

Sunday saw us back at UCLA, for a shorter stint at the Festival of Books.

Our morning session was on "Pleasures of the Text" - though a more accurate title for the panel's focus could be "The Sky is Falling: Why No One Reads Except the People in this Room." I think this was partly the fault of the moderator, again Times book reviewer Susan Salter Reynolds. The other panelists were 2005 Erin's Library star Jane Smiley, star translator Gregory Rabassa, NEA administrator and poet Dana Gioia, and Publishers Weekly editor Sara Nelson. Nelson verbalized a sensation I knew well - that I just had to have a book with me, that I didn't feel right if I was without reading material. On the other hand, Gioia and Nelson also ruined it by explaining that they were able to read so much because they didn't sleep. Also, Gioia claimed not to have a life. I am okay with giving up some extracurricular activities in favor of reading - obviously I do so already, and my coworkers already mock the time I spend with my newspaper and New Yorker. I am emphatically not, on the other hand, interested in giving up sleep.

I'm getting off topic a little though. The discussion also talked about how these great readers became readers, what they thought of the ebb and flow of "the novel" and whether it as a form had lasting appeal (yes), and why young people aren't reading. Gioia presented some sobering statistics (downloadable report), and Nelson and Smiley both discussed how their children saw reading. Conclusion: in the past, children read "great works" that were child-appropriate; now there is a pedagogy of children's literature, which young people - sensing condescension - scorn. Etc. Etc. I walked away thinking about the roles I could play in encouraging reading, and reaffirmed in the importance of reading in my own life.

The afternoon session, which had the sparsest attendance of any we went to, was a conversation with Times editor Dean Baquet. Interviewing him was Kevin Roderick. His take on the interview (and links to other bloggers at the Festival) is here. They discussed blogs, local/national/international coverage, Baquet's plans as he enters his second year at the helm, major issues facing Los Angeles, and more... Baquet seemed very human, which I liked, and extremely ambitious about the paper. It was sitting there that I realized how many changes had been implemented in the year that I've subscribed. I still don't know that it's the paper of my youth, but it's a pretty amazing paper. (For contrast, the Bay Area offers three major dailies, all of which seem profoundly mediocre.) The audience itself was interesting, and can be split into three major categories. First: Times staffers or watchdogs; Second: younger people - maybe college journalists?; Third: the unclassifiable folks like us.

Take for the second day: significantly smaller. More chai and some purchased (but deeply discounted) books.