Short Stories, Irish literature, Classics, Modern Fiction, Contemporary Literary Fiction, The Japanese Novel, Post Colonial Asian Fiction, The Legacy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and quality Historical Novels are Among my Interests








Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Anatole France Two Short Stories

This is my third year as a participant in the Paris in July Reading Event hosted by Book Bath and Thyme for Tea.   I find this a very interesting and creative event of the sort that helps build the book blog community.  You will find  lots of reading ideas on the host blogs.  I am greatly enjoying participating in this event.  It has motivated me to revisit the work of some of the true giants of European literature, Marcel Proust, Guy de Maupassant, Colette, Alfred Jarry,   Andre Gide, Honore Balzac ,Zola and Dumas. We visited also had visits from Edgar Allan Poe, Katherine Mansfield, The Marquis de Sade and Irene Nemirovsky.  

This is my last post for the event.  I hope it will continue in July 2014 and I hope I am able to once again participate. 




Anatole France (1844 to 1924, Paris) won the Nobel Prize in 1921.  He was a very prolific writer in numerous genres, including the short story.  He was considered one of the profoundest thinkers of the time and his opinions were sought out on many social and political issues.  

"Satan's Tongue Pie" (1897) is a very short parable style short story.  Tongue pie was one of the delicacies of French cooking.  The story is basically a conversation about where to find the best 
Tongue. France was a sharp critic of the Catholic Church and this comes out strongly in this story.  The story is set in Hell (evidently not far from Paris).  Satan is not feeling well.

"SATAN lay in his bed with the flaming curtains. The physicians and apothecaries of Hell, finding their patient had a white tongue, inferred he was suffering from a weakness of the stomach and prescribed a diet at once light and nourishing.

Satan swore he had no appetite for aught but a certain earthly dish, which women excel in making when they meet in company, to wit, tongue-pie.

The doctors agreed there was nothing could better suit His Majesty's stomach.

In an hour's time the dish was set before the King; but he found it insipid and tasteless.

He sent for his Head Cook and asked him where the pie came from.

"From Paris, sire. It is quite fresh; 'twas baked this very morning, in the Marais Quarter, by a dozen gossips gathered round the bed at a woman's lying-in."

Satan's cooks debate about where the best tongue pie is made. I think "tongue pie" has several double meanings.  One of them is trouble caused by gossip.   This is a fun story to read, not great literature by any test but clever, witty, and pointed.

You can read it at the link below

http://www.online-literature.com/anatole-france/jacques-tournebroche/6/

"Five Fair Ladies of Oicardy, Poitou, Touraind, Lyons, and Paris" (1897) is another fable style story.  It is set in 18th century Paris.  It is the story of what was known as a "go between", normally a woman who would approach women acting as an agent for a wealthy man inquiring if she would become his mistress in exchange for financial support.  Basically she was a pimp. The agent approaches women from five different cities.  Here is how her search starts

""The procuress knew, by having seen them at Mass, five ladies of an excellent beauty,--natives the first of Picardy, the second of Poitou, the third of Touraine, another from the good city of Lyons, and the last a Parisian, all dwelling in the Cite or its near neighbourhood.

"She knocked first at the Picard lady's door. A maid opened, but her mistress refused to have one word to say to her visitor. She was an honest woman.

"The procuress went next to see the lady of Poitiers and solicit her favours for the gallant knight. This dame answered her:

"'Prithee, go tell him who sent you that he is come to the wrong house, and that I am not the woman he takes me for.'

"She too is an honest woman; yet less honest than the first, in that she tried to appear more so.

OK take a wild guess where the woman who says she is available on Wednesday when her husband is working out of town is from.

You can read this story here.
http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/16281/

I am not sure if Anatole France is still much read.  I enjoyed reading these two stories.  


Mel u



Tuesday, July 30, 2013

"Drink and Time in Dublin" by Flann O'Brien (Myles na Gopaleen)


This just might be the perfect Irish drinking story by a writer legendary for his own drinking and love of the pub life.  I am grateful for the opportunity to read one of his works through the generous gesture of Dalkey Archives who will soon be publishing a collection of his short stories.  In each of the 75 or so Q and A sessions I have done with Irish authors I have asked them why there is so much drinking in Irish literature.   I received some brilliant answers in response but there is no consensus.  I have a feeling if I asked Flann O'Brien this I would be lucky just to be asked if I was a tea-totaler and on an unlucky day I might get a bottle of Guinness broken over my head. 

This really fun to read story is about what happens when a man's wife leaves him unsupervised for a few days when she goes to visit relatives.   We follow him into the pubs as he gets drunker and drunker. Of course he gets himself in some trouble.  I laughed when I learned he was supposed to stay at his brother-in-law's house while his wife was gone.  There is an interesting turn of events at the close of this very entertaining story. 

You can read this story at the link below.

http://www.brooklynrail.org/2013/07/fiction/drink-and-time-in-dublin#

I hope to read more of his work one day.

Mel u

"Siraj" by Saadat Manto (1951)

Saadat Hasan Manto (1912 to 1955, born Samrala, India, died Lahore, Pakistan) is considered one of the greatest Urdu language short story writers.  He is most known for his fiction about the impact of the Partition of India.   His life was constant struggle to make a living from journalism and his fiction.   


"Siraj" is an entertaining well plotted story set, like others of Manto's stories, is set in the mean streets of Bombay (Mumbai) among pimps, prostitutes and their customers.  Sirja has caused a lot of trouble for her pimp.  She gets more than her share of clients but she never has any form of sex with any of them, not as much as hand holding.  Siraj, like many of the street girls of Bombay was from a small town in rural India.  Her past is kept a bit mysterious but she seemed to have disgraced her family in a failed romance in which she was the pursuer. The pimp is friends with one of his clients and when the client says he wants Siraj for the evening the pimp tells him not to bother as she won't provide service like he is used to receiving. He tells the pimp he will seduce her but he in fact ends up with no satisfaction and falls in love with Siraj.  Here is her description:

"i I had seen Siraj once or twice. She was really skinny but beautiful, and her prominent eyes overshadowed every other feature of her oval face. When I saw her for the first time on Clare Road, I was puzzled. I wanted to tell her eyes, ‘Excuse me, please move aside a little so I can see Siraj.’ Needless to say, it didn’t happen.”

Siraj maneuvers her client into falling in love with her. She gets him to take her back to her home town and in a twist ending we learn how she wound up a prostitute.

Novels about the "dark" side of Indian Mega-Cities are all the rage now.  Manto wrote about this seventy years ago.  He knew first hand what he was writing about.  

I read this in Best Indian Short Stories Vol. Ii, edited by Kushwant Singh.  It was translated by Fatima Ashmed.

Mel u

The Ladies Paradise by Emile Zola (1883)


This is my third year as a participant in the Paris in July Reading Event hosted by Book Bath and Thyme for Tea.   I find this a very interesting and creative event of the sort that helps build the book blog community.  You will find  lots of reading ideas on the host blogs.  I am greatly enjoying participating in this event.  It has motivated me to revisit the work of some of the true giants of European literature, Marcel Proust, Guy de Maupassant, Colette, Alfred Jarry,   Andre Gide, Honore Balzac ,Zola and Dumas. We visited also had visits from Edgar Allan Poe, Katherine Mansfield, The Marquis de Sade and Irene Nemirovsky.  




The Ladies Paradise is an account of life in a giant department store in Paris in the late 19th century.  It is not on the level of Nana and Germinal but I greatly enjoyed reading it.  

The best part of the novel, and it was quite brilliant, was Zola's account of how the department store functioned.  We see how the employees are treated as it grows from a few dozen employees to several thousand. We see how their viciously competitive policies drive many small businesses under.  Zola researched his novels very carefully and there is a lot to be learned about retail in Paris from this novel.  

The weakness in this novel is in the human characters.  The central figure is a heart of gold country girl, Denise, who starts out with the lowest status of jobs in the store.  We see the nasty way other employees treat her.  Many of the employees live in the store dormitory and all take meals there.  Everything is strictly regulated. There are inspectors whose job is to watch over employees to prevent theft and make sure no rules are violated.  The store is a hot bed of gossip. Sales days bring mob scenes and the chaos is exciting.  We learn about life among the ordinary employees, they can and are dismissed without notice at the whim of a superior and we learn about the store owner who has a history as a sexual predator among the female employees.   He develops an infatuation for Denise.  Most who have posted on this novel have said the romance is the weakest part of the book and I agree.  

I would suggest one read Zola's more famous books first.  Then I can see The Ladies Paradise as a good Zola novel.  The BBC recently produced a drama based on it I hope to see someday. 

I hope to post on a short story by Anatole France tomorrow.


Mel u




Monday, July 29, 2013

Dana Hui Lim - A Q and A Session with the author of Mother and theTiger A Memoir of the Killing Fields




Recently I had the great honor of reading and posting on Dana Hui Lim's very important, deeply moving memoir of her experiences in Cambodia under the rule of The Khmer Rouge.  I fear most are not aware of the basic facts of the period so I will relay them.

In 1975, Cambodia was taken over by a group called the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pat.  He had a vision of turning Cambodia into a purely agrian society, starting over at "year zero".  He ordered all residents of cities to vacate.   Under armed guard, often by children, millions were forced out of their homes to work in agricultural projects. Iintellectuals, ethnic Chinese, business people, those who wore glasses, those who gave the slightest resistance were executed.  This continued from 1975 to 1979. As Lim explains in her narrative, it was in large part the destruction, destabilization, and atmosphere of terrible fear and suffering created by the senseless American bombing of Cambodia which created a society where this could happen.  About two million, twenty five percent of population,  died from disease, starvation, exposure and execution from 1975 to 1979.  It ended when the Vietnamese, the traditional enemy of the Cambodians, invaded the country in 1979.  One of the most exciting episodes in Liu's book was the time those in her slave labor camp realized the Khmer Rouge guards were all gone and they were free.   


I feel Lim's book should become an international best seller.   I am going to urge my three teenage daughters to read it.  There is a publisher's link at the end of this post where you can find more information.  I salute Odyssey Press for publishing this book.  

I am very grateful and honored for the opportunity to share this Q and A with my readers.  Some of the questions are deeply personal and I appreciate the forthright answers. 

Mother and the Tiger:  A Memoir of the Killing Field is a tribute to to the power of the human spirit.   The true wonder of Lim's marvelous book is letting us see the incredible hard times she went through without becoming hard.  Her prose is simple and beautiful.  Anyone who ever hated someone for their skin color, their birthplace, their language or religion should be required to read this book.  




1.  Pol Pol claimed on occasion he ordered people out of the cities of Cambodia to protect them from American bombs.  Historically how culpable is the United States in creating a social condition that allowed the Khmer Rouge to take control of the country and murder 2,000,000 people, directly or indirectly?

The best lies have an element of truth, and the B-52 missions were the most frightening thing that had ever happened to most Cambodians, at least at that time. America was a distant threat, but one that had demonstrated its willingness to kill innocents if that served its interests. That truth was constantly used to manipulate people when it was more convenient than simple force. I think that the US campaign played a large part in destabilizing Cambodia to the point where it was easy to knock the society off balance. For the entire reign of Pol Pot, we were told and we believed that everything that was happening was because of the threat from unseen external powers. With the best will in the world, it does seem to me that the American leadership makes a habit of leaving messes for someone else to sort out.


2.  How long did you ponder writing your book before doing so?  Was the process therapeutic or purging for you?   

From the first idea to a mostly completed manuscript it was about two years. The idea of the book really began when I was telling my partner about my life, soon after we first met. I had never really talked about the events of my life before, and after several years together he suggested that I should write down my experiences, just in dot point form and roughly in order. Once that was done we decided that there was enough for a book, and I set about expanding those brief points into the story as it is now. Writing the book was an emotional journey for me. I grew up in an environment where it was frowned upon, dangerous even, to show one’s feelings. For a long time I tried to forget the terror of my childhood and never spoke of it to anyone, so confronting those demons has been a big step in itself. I had never really been emotional about my past before, but I now regularly find myself in tears when I think about it. It was as if writing the book dragged those memories out of dark hidden places, and I now have to live with them every day. I am not sure if it has been therapeutic or if I am the better for it. Both I suspect, but only time will tell.


3.  Part of the book, indeed a large portion of it is drawn from memories of events from more than thirty years ago, some from when you were only six.   How much of this based on direct memories and how much on reconstructions of thoughts, observations, and conversations of long ago.

The book is entirely from my direct memories, except of course where it tells of the experience of my family when I was not with them. Those sections came from conversations after we were reunited and in some cases after asking family members during the writing process. I know very well how distorted memories can become over time, and that they become a series of impressions rather than a faithful recording of events. Nevertheless, the events of the book are seared onto my mind as clearly as they possibly could be. The mental scars remain that were once open wounds, and they mean that some things cannot be forgotten even if I wanted to. I decided not to include much dialog because I wanted to honour the truth as much as possible. I could not possibly remember exactly what was said all those years ago, and I did not want to simply invent the words of myself or others.


4.   Understandably much of My Mother the Tiger:  A Memoir of the Killing Fields is taken up with the continual search for enough food to survive.   A grandfather of an old friend of mine spent two years in a German concentration camp in Poland.  He moved to the USA and became a very successful furrier.  He never talked about his time in the camps.  He always insisted his wife have several months of food on hand, kept candy on display at all times, had served lavish to the point of wasteful meals and in fact became very heavy as were  his children and even some  grandchildren.  How has the years of food anxiety you suffered impacted your life, or has it not done so?

I smiled when I first read the question; not because of his experience in the concentration camp, but because of the similarity to my own food hoarding habits. I live a short distance from a supermarket, but there is still 40kg of rice in my pantry. Along with other supplies I have about a three month store of basic food at any given time, just like your friend’s grandfather. The difference is that I never waste food if I can help it, and find it distressing when I see people doing so. I have a habit of never letting the rice container that I cook from become empty, and the measuring cup within it is always full of grain. I don’t ever again want to be in a situation when my rice is all gone and that cup empty. I have found that when I have a craving for a particular food then I will buy a lot of it and eat until I don’t want it anymore. I also tend to eat quickly, which ensures that food cannot be stolen away from me. These habits do not seem to be fading very much with time, and I cannot keep myself from collecting resources that are freely available. In the first notes for the book, there were many repeating lines that basically said that I was hungry and that there was no food. Looking at that first effort reinforced to me just how much of a mark starvation can leave on a person.


5.  Your prose style is elegant.  Who are some writers you admire?  

I must admit that I tend to only read memoirs because I can’t really relate to fiction. The first books I ever read for pleasure were a few romantic fairy tales written in Khmer that I borrowed from a friend after I could no longer afford to attend school in Phnom Penh. They were a temporary escape, and let me practice some of the skills I had learned in my brief education. Then it was nothing at all for a long time, followed by English school books once I arrived in Australia. It has only been in the last ten years or so that I have found the time to read for pleasure, and by then my taste for fantasy had withered. The authors I read now tend to write books that are one off, and so I have not really been able to develop any favourites. I like memoirs where people have overcome adversity and succeeded despite the trials of life.


6.  You note toward the close of your book that your Mother always kept a very strong hold onto her Buddhists principals.   How do you think your families faith helped sustain them through very dark times without becoming consumed by hate? 


My family all dealt with their experiences in very different ways. Some of them found comfort in the idea that Karma would repay them in the end. Some decided that it was up to them, and went out to achieve what they could. I took the view that no-one was going to hand me anything and so I would have to work hard and earn my way in my new country.


7.   Are you active in Cambodia groups and social organizations in Australia?   Do you try to follow traditional practices when you can or are these old trappings you have thrown off?  

I was more active in the Cambodian groups until the beginning of this project and became consumed by the idea of completing the book. I will probably pay more attention now, and hope to encourage others to talk about their own experiences. I have left behind many of the traditions of my culture, especially the pre-scientific views of hygiene that many people still follow.


8.   Do you feel much prejudice against immigrants in Australia? 

I experienced some discrimination during my school years, though given my late start that did not last for long. I found it easy to ignore because I was too busy gaining an education to notice most of the time. Once you have been shot at a few times, the insults of the ignorant are nothing to worry about. Prejudice in Australia has grown less over the years, although the hysteria around refugees arriving by boat has been used as a particularly unattractive political football in recent times. Regardless of how people came to be here, I do not think it is right to blame them for desiring a little bit of the safety and happiness that we take for granted. 


9.  Personal question.  Ignore if you want.  My three teen age daughters feel not having a new cell phone every six months is a terrible suffering.  How do you feel when you hear teenagers complaining about petty things?   

As parents we all want the best for our children, but I think that when they are given things too freely they sometimes do not appreciate them or the effort it takes to earn them. When I finally began my formal education in Australia I could scarcely comprehend that many of the other students simply did not want to be there. They were more concerned with gossiping and looking nice, instead of the serious business of acquiring knowledge that no-one could take from them. Sometimes my impulse is to drop them into the jungle for a quick lesson in how good they really have it!


10.  It seems most of the guards in the labor camps you were in were themselves children, how did people get picked to be guards and camp leaders?  

The Khmer Rouge in the camps were mostly children only a few years older than the people that they were guarding, so for me that meant they were usually teenaged girls. Most of the guards were chosen from the traditional ‘native’ Khmer people and felt that they had been downtrodden by various sections of society. Young people were the ideal choice since they were uneducated, easy to sway and already resentful of the wealthy and other ethnic groups, such as us Chinese. They had never had any power before, and to be considered important members of the new order must have been very seductive. To be chosen you had to look like one of them, say the right things, act the right way and match the level of brutality that the leadership expected.


11.  Many of the guards and functionaries of the Khmer Rouge, now most would be fifty plus at least, are living still in Cambodia.  Would you favour a tribunal designed to bring these people to justice?  When you meet another Cambodia of a certain age, do you wonder about their past?  

I want them all brought to justice, and not only the people who were relatively young at the time. I want the old men dragged from their homes and places of refuge, and made to stand before those they have wronged. I want them punished, not only for the tiny amount of closure that it might bring to their victims, but because it just might make the next version of Pol Pot, Hitler or Stalin pause for thought before they embark on one of their miserable campaigns. I would like to see them pursued to their very graves and their names become the foulest of curses. We seem never to learn from history unless it is thrust, twitching and bleeding, right under our noses. When I meet people from Cambodia who are old enough to remember that time, I do wonder who they were and which end of the gun they were on. The veil of silence makes it difficult to ask, and the shame of the events makes it even harder to tell.


12.  In your day to day life, how long can you go without your mind flashing back to images of your terrible childhood?   

For a long time those memories were few and far between, set aside in the rush of getting on with life. Now they have all been dragged out one by one for examination, and it is a rare day that goes by without a vivid thought intruding. When I see small children passing on their way to school, I wonder how they would react if the world they knew was suddenly taken away and replaced by something dark and terrible. With the work to finalise the manuscript my memories come to me constantly, even now as I write this.
  

13.   Another personal question you can ignore, you mention your adult daughter working on a PhD.  I know this is rude question, but can you tell us a bit about your daughter's father and how your early years have impacted your close personal life?  

I married young, during university in fact, because, well, that was what was expected in my community. We had one child together, who is as talented and good a person as any parent could hope for. It wasn’t acceptable to ignore all the conventions of my culture, and only much later did I decide that I had to follow my own path. My ex-husband is a good man of the more traditional sort and also a survivor of Pol Pot’s regime. There came a point where we wanted different things, and we parted ways without the sort of acrimony that often occurs. To that point I had done whatever I was told for my entire life and now I had to live for me. This realisation has freed me to try new things and I now try to experience life to the full. 

 14.  what is your favorite city in Australia?  Favorite outdoor activity, favorite Aussie Food, any favorite Aussie movie stars or TV shows?  Favorite Aussie animal?  


I love Canberra, which has been described as a great place to live but you wouldn’t want to visit there. This is slightly unfair, but if you are after the bright lights and big city then Sydney is not far away.
I like to ski, which marks me as rather unusual in my family. I was about thirteen when I first saw ice so I suppose the fascination has never left me, and the ski fields are close to Canberra.
My favourite Australian food is Barramundi with lemon, salt and pepper. It is a large freshwater fish from the country’s North, prized by fishermen for its fighting ability.
Favourite TV shows are the real life tales of people who have done something special, much like the books that I read.
As for animals, the wombat is not as iconic as some of the other fauna, but I like it because it takes no notice of humans whatsoever. If you pitch a tent on a wombat’s usual path, it will sometimes tear its way through the side, walk over anyone sleeping within, tear its way out again and carry on. You have to admire that sort of single-mindedness, although I do wish they would pay more attention to crossing roads safely.


15.   I love your book and I hope it becomes an international best seller.  What steps are you taking to publicise your book?   

I will have an article in my workplace electronic newsletter, which has an audience of up to 20,000 people. My wonderful publisher has her own website and contacts that she will use. I will also seek to gain reviews in various publications wherever possible. Then there is your own website Mel, and I thank you for your kind words and the publicity you have given my story. Commercial success would be nice, but I am content that my story is now set down in a form that will last. I want others to do the same.

 16.  How did you feel when you first held a copy of your book in your hand?   How do you feel on reading reviews of your book?   


Ecstatic on the former and apprehensive about the latter. It was a long time coming and I went through the usual shopping around process that all first time authors need to do. Now that it is real, I want people to like it but I know that the story or the style will not be to everyone’s taste. I hope that either way, they will consider the story as a cautionary tale and lesson on how badly a country can lose its way and descend into madness. I have had a lot of positive feedback from friends and family, but you can never tell if people are just being nice until the book is read by someone who does not know you.
  

17.  Are you working on any other books or literary projects?

Not at the moment. If Mother and the Tiger gains an audience, I would like to tell the story of my brother Khay. I am not aware of much that he encountered but knowing him, I am sure it was hair raising. My partner thinks that there is a movie in the book, but we will see about that!


18.  Talk to us a bit about contemporary Cambodia fiction please.   Are there lots of memoir books?   

There are some books from the perspective of people who lived through the Khmer Rouge years, but on the whole people are very reluctant to talk about their experiences. I mainly read books in English now, because that is the main language in Australia and I always want to increase my skill in my adopted land.


19.  When you hear co workers complain about their jobs, about being over worked or having bad bosses, do you think to your self, what a pack of fools, if they only knew what I have experienced?  

Oh yes, but then I have to tell myself that everyone have their own tolerances and set of experiences. Just because their problems are not usually life threatening does not mean that they are not real and important to them. I have found that I have a very strong reaction to injustice, and have never shirked away from challenging poor behaviour amongst my colleagues. The strong should not abuse their power, even if is only over office politics.  

20.  Once you knew your book would be published by Odyssey, how long was the wait for it to be completed?  Did you select the very striking cover art?  

I signed the contract in April 2011 and we were trying to get a celebrity endorsement that our editor had suggested for quite a while. That did not pan out in the end (celebrities are busy people, especially the nice ones) so we went ahead this year. The cover art was put together by Michelle at Odyssey, and originally had a stock photo of another woman on the cover. Her headscarf was not the type or worn in the style that is common in Cambodia, so I asked my sister Mei to send me some photos of herself. That way there is a family resemblance to me and she looks a lot like my mother back then, although thankfully not as thin. 

21.  In the preface to your book you say millions of Cambodians are suffering, most with no help, from the terrible psychological traumas caused by years of privation.   How do these traumas manifest themselves? Based on your observations are there high rates of drug use, alcoholism, suicide, spousal and child abuse, crime, poverty among Cambodian survivors?  

People do not talk about their feeling much in Cambodian culture. It can cause a loss of ‘face’ to present anything other than a happy facade, although this can cover a multitude of negative emotions. I do not think that the crime/drug/abuse/etc rates are abnormally high, and people have reacted in many different ways. I know that just among my siblings, an outsider would see a wide range of different reactions that obviously stem from our childhoods experiences. One point of pride is that each and every one of us have contributed to our new countries and paid our own way. It is only right to support the society that lifted us up and gave us our chance to succeed.


22.   Do you think your experiences have made you somehow feel alone.   I sense a deep emotional reserve in your book, as if you wanted to scream out your hate and feelings but cannot.   Is it hard for you to open up and trust new people.  Are you only close to people you have known for decades?  Do you still have nightmares? 


We all suffered through the years of the Khmer Rouge alone. Those feelings have remained for a long time afterwards because people wanted to get on with their lives, and there was a collective unwillingness to bring the subject up. I had to bottle up my emotions for so long that it became second nature I think. If I opened those floodgates, my book might have been a hateful diatribe which would not have done anyone else any good. It is very difficult for me to open up to people, and I have only a small group of friends that I would trust with anything meaningful. It takes a long time before I relax around a new acquaintance, and if they betray my trust then I try to have nothing more to do with them. I only have one nightmare. It usually comes in November and will be familiar to many students: Exam time is here and I have not studied.


23.  What are the last three novels you read, or non-fiction?  

They were all non-fiction: The Road to Reality by Dianne Burnett, Pole to Pole by Pat Farmer and The Woman Who Could Not Forget by Ying Ying Cheng.


24.  Have you taken a cross Australia train ride?  I would love to do this?


There is a train called the Ghan that crosses Australia from South to North and the Indian Pacific that goes East to West.  They are both very nice ways to travel by all accounts, but I have not yet tried them out. I may do them one day, although Australia does have an awful lot of nothing in the middle. The stretch across the Nullabor has a dead straight section of 478 kilometres, the longest in the world. You would need a good book...possibly several!  


25.  Talk a bit about the national character of the Australians?   I know you don't like this question but please respond!


Like all countries there is a mix of people, although probably a wider variety than most due to immigration from just about everywhere. A lot of us are sports obsessed, we tend to drink more than we should and to take our massive good fortune for granted. The average Australian ranges from the nicest person you could know, to the dimmest reactionary redneck that you simply wouldn’t want to meet. My Australian born daughter has had insults yelled at her from passing cars. Not very often, but too often. The funny thing is, you might find a person who will unthinkingly make a racist comment but when you point out that one of his or her good friends is a recent arrival, you get a response like “Oh but he’s/she's ok!”. I do think that once Australians get to know a person they eventually accept them for who they are. I hope that this trend will continue as education and online contact increasingly connect the world.  

 26.   There are, per my research, about 25,000 Cambodian Australians.   Do most live in New South Wales?  Do many restrict all social activity to others of similar background?  Have old prejudices against Chinese Cambodians been kept alive in a new country?

Do light skinned Cambodians privately look down on darker skinned Cambodians, as is found in the Philippines and Thailand?

I do not really know the breakdown of where people of Cambodian background live in Australia. I do know that they are fairly spread out, though the majority are in Sydney (New South Wales), Melbourne (Victoria), Brisbane (Queensland) and Darwin (Northern Territory).
I can’t speak for all, but in my own family people socialize with whoever they want. My partner is caucasian, others are with other cultures.
The prejudice against Chinese people was only really held by the zealots of the Khmer Rouge. In fact, a Chinese husband or wife was and is considered a good result by everyone else. They are seen as more dynamic business people and much sought after by the match makers.
Light skin is considered a sign of beauty in Cambodian culture, because of its association with prosperity; working in the hot sun makes you darker. There are all sorts of skin whitening treatments, most of which don’t work, for sale in Phnom Penh. Now that the idea is ingrained, it will be a long time before it fades I think.


27.  Quick  questions
A.  Lap top or tablet? - Laptop
B.  e reading or traditional books? - Traditional books
C.  Dogs or cats? - I have never had either so I can’t really choose. My favourite animal growing up was the golden bull I mention in the book. He was strong and smart and showed us the way home when we were lost.
D.  Favorite Adelaide restaurant? - Never went to any, we were always saving money.
E.  have you been to Angkor Wat? - Yes, it is magnificent
F. labor party, liberal party or greens? - Yet to decide, they are both engaging in questionable politics

 28.  "  Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has defended Australia's new asylum policy, saying it targets "merchants in death".
Under an agreement signed on Friday, asylum-seekers arriving by boat in Australia will be sent to Papua New Guinea for processing.

Those found to be refugees will be settled in PNG, which is to receive Australian investment.
Critics have accused Australia of shirking obligations and outsourcing its problem to a developing nation.
The move comes as Australia tries to tackle a sharp spike in the number of boat arrivals, and just a few weeks out from a general election in which asylum is expected to be a key issue.
Kevin Rudd, who last month ousted Julia Gillard as Labor Party leader amid dismal pre-election polling figures, has described the new policy as "hard-line".  From Manchester Guardian
Dana, this seems like a terrible policy.  Is it has horrendous as it sounds.  Is it a giant step back for Australia?

In the lead up to an election, both sides of politics seem to be engaged in a race to the bottom when it comes to Australia’s treatment of refugees. The problem is a difficult one, impossible in fact, and there are no perfect answers. One thing is clear to me though; the solution is not to use desperate people as political footballs in an attempt to garner votes. It is unworthy of the high ideals which Australia prides itself on, the main one of which is the concept of the ‘fair go’. It hardly seems proper to ignore the international conventions that we have agreed to when they become inconvenient. Other nations have had more refugees cross their border in a single week than Australia has ever had in a year. The people arriving on boats are just the symptom of the wider problem, which is simply that sometimes the situations that people find themselves in are worse than the risk of escape. Do people really think that people would leave everything they know and risk their lives if the alternative wasn’t worse? I have seen people say, apparently in all seriousness, that they would never put their families onto a rickety boat. I ask them: what would you do if you knew that people were coming tomorrow to kill you and your children, or worse. Join the fictional ‘waiting line’ that people are so fond of talking about? No, they would sell whatever they could and pay whatever it took to escape. Making a deal with another country to deal with a problem so that we can pretend that it doesn’t exist, shows a lack of faith in ourselves. 


29.  The Woman Who Could Not Forget by Ying Ying Cheng  is a very moving book in which the mother of iris Chang(author of The Rape of Shanghai) attempts to come to an understanding of why she killed herself.    You listed this as one of the last three books you read.  Please tell us a bit about your reaction to the life and death of Ms. Chang.


I was deeply saddened by the death of Iris Chang, who worked so hard to tell a story that badly needed to be more widely known. Her hard won education, children and work were all signs of a life lived well, but mental illness can strike anyone at any time. It is a terrible thing that people can be struck down by happenstance and their accomplishments reduced to ashes in their own minds. I have never suffered from depression, but it frightens me that we are all potentially vulnerable to the same fate.

 

30.   Do you think that the undeniable fact that the Cambodian experience, the actions of the Japanese in China during W W Ii are much less  talked about or even known than European events like the Irish famines of the 1800s or the Nazi Holocausts evidence of a deep seated racism?


I think that in many cases apathy causes much of the under-reporting of other countries and cultures. People often prefer stories about people similar to themselves and the media caters to that desire, because their business is only to sell advertising space. It was also the case in Cambodia that all outside communication was shut down, and by the time more information was widely available it was far too late. Having said that, it certainly seems to be true that the lives of others are deemed to be worth less, the further away they live and the more different their skin colour. It should not matter and we should not ask for whom the bell tolled, but we are imperfect creatures. When we take the time to think about it though, and then deny that others laugh, love and mourn their dead just as we do, then we have forgotten what it is to be human.

 

31. Norodom Sihanouk, King of Cambodian from 1941 to 1951 and 1993 to 2004 was for a time the puppet head of state for the Khmer Rouge.  He effectively ruled from 1951 to 1970 as dictator.  He claimed many of the troops of the Khmer Rouge were falsely told they were fighting to restore his rule.  Big question is was he an opportunistic self serving person who went however the wind was blowing or did he try to mitigate the horrors of the Khmer Rouge as he claimed?


Sihanouk may not have meant for the horrors that befell Cambodia to occur, but he lent the Khmer Rouge support when their numbers were small and this helped to vastly multiply their forces. His obsession with regaining his power meant that he placed his needs ahead of the people of Cambodia. He appeared to place his own welfare ahead of his people, and death and destruction was the result. I think that a King worthy of the title would live and die with his people, serving them and not himself.

 

32.  Were you mesmerized as I was by the great mural carvings at Angor Wat? 


The carvings are extraordinary not only for their sheer scale and detail, but also the impression of depth. I recall one battle scene where a warrior on an elephant is frozen in the act of falling from his mount; a small thing but this was carved from stone hundreds of years ago. The humour captured in that moment tells me that the artist was not so different from me. I watched the sun rise over the temples and was able to climb to the top sections of the Wat. I think visitors are no longer permitted in those areas for their own safety, due to the fact that the ancients thought that if one would approach the gods, then the journey should be difficult, with the stairs very steep and their tread very narrow. I hope that the temples are preserved for future generations to see.

 



Publisher supplied bio

Dana Hui Lim was born in Cambodia and was only six years old when the Pol Pot regime seized power. She survived the rule of the Khmer Rouge through a combination of good luck, and a determination to survive that she had not previously known she possessed.

Dana arrived in Australia when she was eighteen years old. She was unable to speak English and had virtually no formal education. She began high school in Year Ten, went on to complete a university degree and began a career in the Australian Public Service.

Dana wants to share her story with others to encourage them to persevere in the face of adversity. She would also like to urge her countrymen to discuss their experiences, or set down their own stories so that they are not lost forever. Her book serves as a warning to people of all nations and races, to be wary of the danger than can occur when ideology is not subjected to reason.


I strongly urge all librarians to obtain this book.  

Dana Hul Lim has written a book that deserves to become a classic.  It is a tribute to the power of the human spirit, our ability to triumph over evil.


Mel u


Saturday, July 27, 2013

Alfred Jarry A play by a French forerunner of Surrealism. - Ubo Cuckoleded

OThis is my third year as a participant in the Paris in July Reading Event hosted by Book Bath and Thyme for Tea.   I find this a very interesting and creative event of the sort that helps build the book blog community.  You will find  lots of reading ideas on the host blogs.  I am greatly enjoying participating in this event.  It has motivated me to revisit the work of some of the true giants of European literature, Marcel Proust, Guy de Maupassant, Colette,  Andre Gide, Honore Balzac ,Zola and Dumas. We visited Edgar Allan Poe, Katherine Mansfield, The Marquis de Sade and Irene Nemirovsky.  Yesterday I read two plays by Alfred Jarry.  What they are exactly about has been subject to debate for decades, for sure they are in part satires on French politics, corruption and social norms. His plays all premiered in a Paris.   



Alfred Jarry (1873 to 1907) is considered one of the founders of European Surrealism with his bizarre, absurdist Ubo plays, the best known of which is Ubo Roi (1986).  William Butler Yeats was at the premier as was Ruffington  Bouseau, author of The Manly Man's Guide to the Black Sea, and many other works.  I knew there were two other Ubo plays and I especially wanted to read them when I found I could obtain translations by Cyril Connolly.  Ubo is a king of a European country.   He is an insane capricious tyrant know for sending anyone who annoys him into the "debraining machine." 

Ubo Cuckoleded is a very strange drama sort of about what happen when Papa Roi (there are sweeping family issues in these plays) decides Mama Rio has been committing adultery with the court pataphysician.  The pataphysician is an heavy handed satire on the pomposity of French philosophy, among other things.  Ubo Roi decides to have him implaled, making the punishment fit the crime.  There is a really bizarre Greek chorus like group in the drama consisting of not of the real world small creatures.    This was a lot of fun to read and I hope one day to see it preformed.  It is also a commentary on French politics, the staidness of classical French theater, and no doubt contains a lot of topical references I miss.

Jarry was a very influential figure.   Beckett admired him as did Yokio Mishima.  He is considered one of the founders of surrealism. 

I first became acquainted with the work of Jarry through an event on Wuthering Expectations.  In my post on Ubo Roi for that event I talked about Susan Sontag's placement of Jarry in the literature of cruelty rather than that of camp. In that post I accepted this contention of Sontag:

"For instance, there is the kind of seriousness whose trademark is anguish, cruelty, derangement. . Think of Bosch, Sade, Rimbaud, Jarry, Kafka, Artaud, think of most of the important works of art of the 20th century, that is, art whose goal is not that of creating harmonies but of overstraining the medium and introducing more and more violent, and unresolvable, subject-matter. . . . Clearly, different standards apply here than to traditional high culture. Something is good not because it is achieved, but because another kind of truth about the human situation, another experience of what it is to be human - in short, another valid sensibility -- is being revealed."  (From "Notes on Camp")

Now I am not fully convinced Jarry should not be seen as camp (as defined by Sontag).  I am leaning to seeing him as camp, I do not think he means the cruel deranged elements of his dramas to hurt, to cause pain.  I admit I sort of see Sade as camp also.   Maybe at one time Jarry could have been correctly placed in the European literature of cruelty but I think now he will be experienced as a form of high camp by most theater goers and readers.   There is an underlying feeling of joy in rebellion in Jarry I do not find in the writers Sontag sees as part of the literature of cruelty.  


Think of a Mad Magazine rewrite of Theban Plays.  

Roberto Bolano greatly admired Jarry.   


http://www.bibliographing.com/bibliographing-reading-challenge/. 

http://wutheringexpectations.blogspot.com/2011/06/i-only-discussed-ubu-roi-with-you.html

These two links are very good sources of info on Jarry.  

I also read Ubo Unchained and greatly enjoyed it.

I also found it a personal bonus to read the translations of Connolly.  

I hope next to post on a short story by Anatole France.   I'm reading Zola's The Ladies Paradise and hope to post on it before July in Paris ends.


Mel u

Katherine Mansfield in Paris- Two Short Stories with a Poem




To L. H. B. (1894–1915)

Last night for the first time since you were dead
I walked with you, my brother, in a dream.
We were at home again beside the stream
Fringed with tall berry bushes, white and red.
“Don't touch them : they are poisonous,” I said.
But your hand hovered, and I saw a beam
Of strange, bright laughter flying round your head
And as you stooped I saw the berries gleam.
“Don't you remember ? We called them Dead Man's Bread !”
I woke and heard the wind moan and the roar
Of the dark water tumbling on the shore.
Where-where is the path of my dream for my eager feet ?
By the remembered stream my brother stands
Waiting for me with berries in his hands …
“These are my body. Sister, take and eat.”  Katherine Mansfield




This is my third year as a participant in the Paris in July Reading Event hosted by Book Bath and Thyme for Tea.   I find this a very interesting and creative event of the sort that helps build the book blog community.  You will find  lots of reading ideas on the host blogs.  I am greatly enjoying participating in this event.  It has motivated me to revisit the work of some of the true giants of European literature, Marcel Proust, Guy de Maupassant, Colette,  Andre Gide, Honore Balzac ,Zola and Dumas. We visited Edgar Allan Poe, The Marquis de Sade and Irene Nemirovsky.  

Today we will spend some time with Katherine Mansfield.  Mansfield was born in Wellington, New Zealand in 1888.  She died in France in 1923 and was buried in Avon, near Paris.  She was in France seeking a cure for TB from at Georges Gurdjideff's Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man in Fontainebleau.  

Katherine Mansfield means a great deal to me.   I have  an article in the journal of the Katherine Mansfield society.  I have written some seventy five posts on her work,  far more than any other author.  I have read several biographies and some novels based on her life.  I value her as a person and deeply regret her way to early death.  I know she deeply craved a home she never really found once she left New Zealand.  Her time in Paris might have been as close as she ever came to it.   

I was going to talk about Mansfield's relationship to Paris and why it is important to understand this to grasp her work and respect her life but you can learn more about this from excellent books by Kathleen Jones and Linda Lappin than I could convey so I will just post briefly on two of her set in Paris short stories.

"Je Ne Parle Pas Francais" is told in the first person by an English man who came to live in Paris with the hope that it would inspire his writing.   The first reaction on reading this story has to be that Mansfield is making use of her husband John Middleton Murray in this narrative.    Much of the story takes place in a cafe.  Mansfield loved the Cafes of Paris where one could sit for hours for the price of a cup of coffee or glass of wine.  The narrator meets another aspiring writer, a man, and the story turns on their relationship.   I cannot help but read in lieu of what I know of the life of Mansfield and the picture of the male character is hardly flattering.  This is one of Mansfield's longest stories.  You can easily find it online.

"Pension Sequin" is set in  boarding house in Paris.  An English woman is at the door asking if they have a room.  The fun in this great story is in the acute observations of the woman, in the interplay of the people in the house and the landlady.  Once she left New Zealand Mansfield always lived in rented houses and rooms, never staying anywhere much longer than a year.  I think Paris represented a kind of place of freedom for Mansfield where she could throw off some of the repressions of her raising.  It was where her beloved brother was killed in 1915 in WWI.



Mel u

Friday, July 26, 2013

"The Husband Who Said Mass" by the Marquis de Sade (1791)


This is my third year as a participant in the Paris in July Reading Event hosted by Book Bath and Thyme for Tea.   I find this a very interesting and creative event of the sort that helps build the book blog community.  You will find  lots of reading ideas on the host blogs.  I am greatly enjoying participating in this event.  It has motivated me to revisit the work of some of the true giants of European literature, Marcel Proust, Guy de Maupassant, Andre Gide, Honore Balzac ,Zola and Dumas. Today we will meet a charming Marquis more famous than all of them put together. 



The Marquis de Sade (1740 to 1814, Paris) probably has a better name recognition than any of the great French writers on whose stories I have posted on this month.  His most famous literary works are  Justine, 120 Days in Sodom, and The Philosophy of the Bedroom.  He also wrote a number of Gothic short stories.  His works are still considered pornographic by many. At the time they were written the frank eroticism, sexual violence, anti Catholic philosophy, and mockery of marriage got him imprisoned.  If made into a movie, his major works would be XXX rated.  Historically he is seen as in away a liberating writer, fighting the regressions of the clergy.  He took a way pre-Fruedian look into the darker recesses of sexuality and dragged them out in the open for all to see.  How many writers have had a form of sexual behavior named for them?

"The Husband Who Said Mass" (translated by David Coward) exhibits many of the features of Sade's work.  It mocks Catholic clerics and the Mass, shows husbands as just idiots waiting to be cheated on, wives as insatiable beasts craving massively endowed lovers, and depicts, in a very mild way, sexual gymnastics right out of the latest video. There are three main characters.  One is a Carmelite Brother, an order of clerics the narrator tells us are famous for having large male endowments.  Sade loves a wicked joke and this makes us think how could an order of men bound to celibacy get such reputation? The brother is in love with a local married woman and she wants to find out if the rumors about Carmelites are true as her husband hardly qualifies for membership.  The brother tells the woman's husband he cannot say the next mass and persuades her devoutly Catholic husband to fill in for him, thus providing him an opportunity to fill in for him in the bedroom.  The wife falls in love with the Carnelite as soon as she sees he is very qualified for membership in the order.  Later the husband will talk to him about the mass and how much he thanks the brother for letting him fill in for the priest.  The priest says "don't worry, I will let you do it a lot from now on".  

I read this story in The Oxford Book of French Short Stories.  You can read it by downloading a sample of the Kindle edition of the book.  

Mel u