Dan's Reading Journal

Brodeck: A Novel by Philippe Claudel

Brodeck: A Novel is a stunning, disturbing, and thoroughly fabulous book.  It is beautifully, artistically, and powerfully written -- which I assume means that Mr. Claudel can write like a demon and that his translator, John Cullen, has delivered a performance at the top of his game.

Brodeck is essentially some strange cross between Jerzy Kosinski, The Brothers Grimm, and Franz Kafka.  It is a lyrical, introspective, yet foreboding, dark, and ominous.  The story is set is some indeterminate yet familiar middle-European country.  Brodeck, a resident (for vague reasons) and survivor of a prison/concentration camp during an unnamed war (quite reminiscent perhaps of WWII), returns to his home village and to his wife and child.  Not soon after, he is drafted by the town's mayor to write a treatise essentially absolving the village inhabitants of the murder of a mysterious (and wondrous) stranger.

This is a book about the banality of evil, and hatred, and dark, furtive secrets.  But is is mostly a powerful and hugely disturbing exploration of what it is like to be the "other", the strange one, the person out of place in society.  Brodeck grows up different.  Orphaned early (but we really do not know how), he is picked up by a old woman on the road who takes him to another village to live. Brodeck leaves his village to attend the university in the city - and at that university he is out of place, the strange one, not like the others. It is not completely clear what distinguishes Brodeck from his classmates -- it is (as is much in this novel) left unspecified - his he a Gypsy? a Jew? a country bumpkin?  Not defined, but definitely different.  When war breaks out he is thrown into a concentration camp where he survives by becoming a guard's pet.  Literally.  Brodeck becomes Brodeck the Dog, moving about on all fours, eating from bowl on the ground.  He returns to his village and his job as a writer of reports for some vague government bureaucracy.  On day, and stranger arrives in town....the stranger is, well, strange.  He talks in a formal florid style, he dresses differently, he takes lodging at the village inn (run by the village mayor, he has apparent wealth and spends it in the village and in entertainments for the villagers.  The stranger is polite and friendly.  He takes long, solitary walks and is forever writing things down in his book.  When he exhibits his drawings, they turn out to be accurate, but unflattering (and more than a little insightful) portraits of the village inhabitants....and he is later murdered.  Brodeck is drafted to provide the official, whitewashed version of events.

Brodeck knows about being "the other" and is now writing about his own village's treatment of a different "other".  Brodeck "knows how men act when they know they are not alone, when the can melt into a crowd and be absorbed into a mass that encompasses and transcends them, a mass comprising thousands of faces like theirs....the truth is that the crowd itself is a monster...there are no peaceful crowds, either.  Even when there's laughter, smiles, music, choruses, behind all that there's blood: vexed, overheated, inflamed blood, stirred and maddened in its own vortex".  Words borne from experience, in Brodeck's case.  Phenomenal writing in Claudel's case.

Claudel is exploring the world where everyone hates the foreigner, the stranger, the other.  Truly, as Claudel sees it, "there are no happy crowds".  Brodeck, abandoned as a child, raised by a strange outsider, attending a university as a unique minority, imprisoned and abused for no discernible logic, and living amongst those he knows have their doubts - he knows what it is like to be on the outside and is wrestling with absolving his fellow villagers of the crime of which he knows they are guilty.  He really knows..."people are afraid of someone who keeps quiet.  Someone who says nothing. Someone who looks and says nothing.  If he stays mute, how can we know what he's thinking?" and "but down here, it is best never to be right.  That's one thing you always end up paying a very high price for."

Claudel's insight into the hearts and minds is astonishingly good. He knows about ignorance and how it breeds mass hysteria and collective cowardice.  Through Brodeck, he observes that "stupidity is a sickness that goes very well with fear.  They batten on each other, creating a gangrene that seeks only to propagate itself."

In the end, it is Brodeck's capacity - in the face of everything else - to continue to love that gives us hope.  While elucidating the terrible pain that humans visit upon each other, the stupid violence of crowds, the evil visited upon others in the name of hatred, Brodeck can still love.

This is a fabulous novel.  Please read it.

The Ghosts of Belfast by Stuart Neville

As my readers know, I am a sucker for an author with a good idea.  Stuart Neville has a really good idea and the result (in a first novel amazement) is The Ghosts of Belfast.  Gerry Fegan is a former IRA hit man with more than a bit of problem with mental stability.  He is haunted in fact by the ghosts of the 12 men, women, and children he has murdered on behalf of his superiors in the IRA.  He comes to the conclusion that his only hope to flee these apparitions is to take out all of those who gave him the orders to kill.  This, as you can well imagine, creates quite a few problems for an old Republican with a drinking problem.  His life expectancy doesn't begin to increase when the higher-ups start showing up dead. 

Neville paints a bleak picture of the heroics of the IRA and of its impact on Northern Ireland and Belfast.  His depiction of the wanton violence - now more motivated by the politics of hatred than the politics of progress. (Interesting how political crime in Ireland has devolved into organized crime.  In the US, it appears it went the other way.) The toll on the people and the places are horrific - the decades long nightmare creates psychological burdens for all the survivors - and it isn't pretty in the least.  Neville's dialog is authentic (as far as I can tell - perhaps I should say that his dialog is persuasive) and the story rockets along pretty well with the chapters numbered backward from 12 (that's a hint, I suspect).

Neville includes a bit of a love story, but it is the core violence and the price paid for that violence that is central to The Ghosts of Belfast.  Neville appears to have an insider's view of what's happened and what is happening in Northern Ireland.  That there is any peace - however fragile - appears to be one of our modern miracles if Neville's view of the world has any merit.

The Loss of Two Dear Friends

In the past month, and almost within the same week, I lost two very dear friends.  Dick Francis was 89 years old.  Robert B. Parker was 76.  Between them, they wrote more than 110 books and I have read every one of them except their last (only one of which has just been published) and you can bet that they are on order.

By my loose reckoning, I have spent something like 15 weeks of 40 hour work weeks with Mr. Francis and Mr. Parker, but really it is much more than that.  I started reading Dick Francis in college and seeing as though he started writing in 1962, I had a lot of catching up to do.  I started reading Robert B. Parker in college as well, but it really started getting interesting when a) I moved to Boston, the location of many of his novels, and b) my girlfriend then fiance then spouse started reading Parker as well.  I even received a signed Parker book from my then fiance as a gift.  I was thrilled.  I have multiple bookshelves devoted to both of these men.  Most of my Dick Francis collection, unfortunately now, is in paperback.  But we have all the Parker's in hardcover and many are duplicated in paper.

Dick Francis started his career training to be a jockey (he left school at 15) , but WWII interrupted that progression and he became a fighter and bomber pilot for the Royal Air force - piloting Hurricanes and Spitfires.  He became a steeplechase jockey upon his return from the war and was a very successful one - named champion jockey in 1953-54.  He was the Queen's jockey as well, but had a spectacular failure in "the National" when his horse collapsed just before the finish line.  A number of subsequent injuries forced his retirement as a jockey (in the late 60s) and he began writing articles for The Sunday Express of London (something he did for the next 16 years).  Racing's loss was my gain.  Each of Dick Francis's novels was somehow related to horse racing, but not necessarily as the central theme.  In each and every case, Francis did meticulous research to understand and then use specific expertise in his mystery novels.  For example, in Bonecrack I learned about antiques and the business of antique dealing, in Shattered, glass blowing, and in Second Wind, meteorology.  Mr. Francis wrote a terrific mystery - intriguing, confusing, interesting.  Most of the time English racing was the backdrop and I lost myself in his books.  Mr. Francis never wrote the same book, each had its own world.  Even when he used the same main character (as he did only rarely with Sid Halley and Kit Fielding), the books were all stand-alone.

Robert B. Parker graduated from college and went to war in Korea.  When he returned he went back to school and got his Master's in English Literature and worked in advertising for a while.  He returned to Boston University and received his Ph.D. with a dissertation titled "The Violent Hero, Wilderness Heritage and Urban Reality", addressed the fictional private-eye heroes created by Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Ross MacDonald.  He taught at Northeastern University, became a full professor but turned to full time writing after his first few novels were published.  Parker gave us the wise-cracking, good-hearted, but hard-as-nails PI by the name of Spenser, the love of his life Susan Silverman, and his sometimes partner/backup Hawk.  He gave us Captain Healy and Lt. Quirk, and Sargent Belson. They were my friends.  Even better, my spouse and I read the same books, loved the intimate patter between Spenser and Susan, and occasionally thought (but never spoke) that we had conversations like they did.  Parker had other character series -- the ex-big city cop now small town cop with a drinking problem (Jesse Stone),  and the daughter of a Boston cop, ex-cop turned private eye with a mobster's son as an ex-husband (Sunny Randall) and a few really good westerns featuring Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch.

Parker had a philosophy that he used in all 60+ novels - there is honor in this world and the good, right people - regardless of what else they may do - worry about that.  Those people have a code of conduct and they follow it.  Spenser has a code he lives by (and he's a good guy).  Hawk, who is decidedly not always a good guy, has a very similar code that guides him and while he may break legs for a living, Spenser can rely on him to to do the right thing.  Similarly, Hawk can unconditionally rely on Spenser.  Its simplistic, sure.  But it helped Robert B. Parker entertain me endlessly.

Parker and Francis provided the literary equivalent of comfort food.  When I was stressed, or tired, or uncomfortable, or sick, I would pull out a volume and re-read. I would laugh at the same wisecracks (Parker) or marvel at the mastery of a foreign skill (Francis) and disappear from the world for a few hours (both).  I can still do that - in fact, there are two Parker novels and one Francis book on my bedside table right now and I bet neither was written before 1990.  It is nice to know that in some ways they will never leave me.

However, there will be (by May of this year) no more new Spenser novels or Jesse Stone, or Sunny Randall stories. No more adventures with Virgil and Everett and I will really miss all of them. I loved it when I found out a new book was out.  I will miss that excitement too.  Better news for the Francis dynasty -- the last four Dick Francis mysteries were co-written with his son, Felix.  While I know it will not be exactly the same, I hope Felix gives it a shot -- it would be a delight to have some new Francis mysteries to keep me company.

For Dick Francis's bibliography, please visit Dick Francis;

For Robert B. Parker's bibliography, please visit  Robert B. Parker

The Snakehead by Patrick Radden Keefe

Subtitled "An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream", Patrick Radden Keefe's research and resulting expose/novel is indeed a revealing, sometimes revolting, and completely revelatory look at the mechanics of human smuggling.

The tale centers around a middle-aged noodle shop proprietor (in fact a grand-mother) known as Sister Ping who starts out "helping" and ends up creating and leading (i.e., as the "snakehead") a world-wide criminal organization focused on transporting willing Fujianese (from Fujian province in China) illegally into the United States, making herself fabulously wealthy (like in the $40mm range) in the process.  It is also a tale of how economic conditions (poverty in Fujian province, opportunity in the United States) drive desire and the flow of human capital and how law enforcement (and in many cases, the laws themselves) seem to be always one step behind - at least a day late and a dollar short. 

Keefe does a very good job tracing the connections, pathways, and ruses used to get thousands of people from China to the United States via Hong Kong, Burma, Thailand, Kenya, South America and Mexico using planes, trains, boats and automobiles.  Note here that none of these illegal immigrants are being forced to come to the US - quite the opposite - they pay a lot of money to take the risky journey.  Keefe also humanizes the transported - showing how in many cases they come to establish healthy, happy, and productive lives once they reach our shores.

Sister Ping's empire starts in the 1980's as a wave of immigrants from Fujian province start flowing to the US given economic conditions.  Sister Ping builds an organization to meet the demand and is regarded as a hero back home.  In the US, many of the illegal arrivals have to spend many of their first years here living in the background, in the shadows and controlled by Chinese gangs wherever they happen to settle.  Things begin to unravel in 1993 when the Golden Venture, an almost un-seaworthy ship rented for the purpose of bringing some 300 illegals into the US, founders off the shore of Long Island (in Queens).  As the police and others arrive to find hundreds of non-English speaking Chinese swimming to shore (and more trapped on a sinking ship), the chase begins. 

It takes the FBI some 10 years to figure all this out, but in the end Sister Ping's gang enforcers have turned on each other in fits of murderous violence and in revenge turn each other in to the cops, her husband is suspected of ratting her out to save himself, and Sister Ping is finally identified, arrested, tried, and sentenced to many years in jail.

Keefe makes this a much of an adventure/mystery as he can, but the fascinating part is really in the details of how Sister Ping put this all together - how the system worked, and how everyone involved contributed to ferry thousands of illegals to our shores.  The other thing Keefe does with great skill is to show how - no matter how good the intentions, an enterprise with criminal activity at its core necessarily becomes dangerous and viscious.  As the criminality climbs, the quality of resources available as labor devolves.  Soon the lower levels of the organization begin to try to overly enrich themselves and turn into into those for whom criminality becomes an objective in itself - with all of its attendant violence and chaos.

Interesting reading, fascinating reality, and not a bad set of things to know about how the world works.  Give "The Snakehead" a try.

A Country of Vast Designs by Robert W. Merry

It is clear to me that many of my readers have not been sitting around asking themselves, "I wonder when the next biography of James K. Polk is coming out?" I get it, I really do.  James K. Polk is would probably not be on the top of my list either except for a couple of things.  First, I am an Andrew Jackson fan, and just finished a good (but not great) biography by Jon Meacham (editor of Newsweek) by the title of American Lion - a book, I am ashamed to say, I have failed to review in this blog.  So my interest is Jacksonian America is reason #1 - and Polk was, perhaps the last of the Jacksonian Presidents.  Second, it got a very good review in the New York Times Sunday Book Review ( by the way, The Sunday Book Review is edited by a college colleague and much better writer than I, by the name of Sam Tanenhaus).   Third, as the history major, I have always been intrigued by the the people and events that shaped America.  And James K. Polk certainly helped shape America.  Polk was an unapologetic expansionist and under his watch, the United States expanded by one-third adding Texas, the Oregon Territory, and New Mexico and California. It is in that vein that I recommend reading A Country of Vast Designs.

Merry, the President and Editor-in-Chief of Congressional Quarterly, Inc did a a very good job keeping my interest and wove the key themes of Polk's presidency (slavery, manifest destiny, diplomacy with Britain, and war) together with skill.  Merry has a perspective on Polk and history that I found interesting.  With regard to Polk, he shows how indomitable will (and political maneuvering) can and does trump morality and how by holding fast to an overarching strategy (or vision) Polk overcame all the deficiencies of personal relations that he created for himself.

Polk's presidency was preceeded by Jackson, then Van Buren and Tyler (Tyler succeeded William Henry Harrison who died of pneumonia a month after giving a 3 hour inaugural speech in the bitter cold) and preceeded Zachary Taylor (who won his fame in Polk's war with Mexico), Millard Fillmore (who succeeded upon Taylor's death in office after only 16 months), Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan (who was Polk's irascible and irritating - if not downright disloyal - Secretary of State).  Abraham Lincoln was elected President follwing Buchanan.  Polk sat right in the middle of the creation of the USA we know today - land acquistion by conquest and diplomacy, the beginnings of the politics of succession and the Civil War, and the death of the Whigs and creation of the Republican Party (under Abraham Lincoln among others).

In many way Polk evoked some of the same feelings as Truman did and for many of the same reasons.  They saw the world in straighforward fashion, had a vision of success, and used all the tools at their disposal to ensure that success happened.  In Polk's case, a war with Mexico brought Texas (and one could argue California, New Mexico, and Arizona) into the United States -- and Polk has been vilified since for engineering a war for profit.  Truman lost no sleep in ordering the use of nuclear bombs to bring an end to the war with Japan.  Simple ends accomplished by using all the tools at their disposal. 

While not purple prose, Merry is an engaging writer and I found the subject matter - and the politics - of great interest.   As a side note, one of the intriguing aspects of Polk's time was that the Whigs (later the Republicans) were the advocates against slavery while the Democrats agitated against the use of tax funds for public improvement projects like roads (because it was unconstitutional). 

Everything in a circle, yes? Thus, Polk's extraordinary success in a time of politics every bit as bitter and partisan as today's actually gives me hope that we can yet accomplish something important and meaningful.

As a post-script, American Lion by Jon Meacham is a very worthwhile read as well.  Meacham spends even more time than Merry going through the minutia of the brutal political environment of the time - as Jackson generated even more partisan politics than Polk.  Anyone who thinks it is only recently that dysfunction, deceit, and distortion have risen to the top of the political scene need to read both these books.  As in, when it comes to politics -- whether discussing Cicero, Jackson, or Obama -- there really ain't much new under the sun.