Killers of the Flower Moon - The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann

Rating: 4 Stars

History books don’t cover all that we ought to know. So thank god for nonfiction literature and for investigative journalists like David Grann. In his stellar hit, Killers of the Flower Moon, he reconstructs an almost forgotten story of criminal conspiracy and racial injustice that should be required reading for anyone interested in the history of the United States.

In 1921, an Osage woman is reported missing and is soon found dead. She isn’t the only one. Within the space of a couple of years, 24 people, mostly Osage, are murdered; some with brutal violence while others were suspected to have died of slow poisoning. Frustrated with their local law enforcement, the terrorized Native American community demands federal intervention. Enter the fledgling Bureau of Investigation, later known as the FBI. What is uncovered is a ruthless plot where the high and low of society are involved in the criminal exploitation of the Osage. If discovering the perpetrators was a Herculean endeavor, obtaining justice for the dead proves to be an even more challenging task.

KotFM is mesmerizing narrative nonfiction that has the pulse and pace of the best crime fiction. I would have liked a little more suspense, but the author telegraphs the key suspects from the onset. Perhaps that’s because this is historical and was widely reported in its day.

Grann covers the story from three main perspectives. One is of the FBI. Blasé as we have now become with the wonders of modern forensic science, this period recalls an age where crime scene investigation was still in its nascency. Adding to that, the wild, wild, west was a place that was fundamentally hostile to federal law enforcement. But the Osage Reign of Terror highlights the nation’s desperate need for agents of the law who were unswayed by local political interests.

This is also the case that brought J. Edgar Hoover to the limelight. While we certainly learn quite a bit about the man who became synonymous with the Agency he directed for several decades, it is an agent called Tom White who represents the human face of the Bureau in its investigation into the Osage murders. In a story of mind-boggling greed and malevolence, White’s integrity and decency shows that the flawed America of that day (and this day) is a multi-faceted place where good and evil exist side by side.

Ultimately, however, it is the story of the Osage that holds center-stage. A people who have been hounded and persecuted for centuries face yet another round of callousness and depraved indifference at the hands of their tormentors. Though the crime might have been solved, justice is not served; not really. When one group of people habitually preyed on another, and habitually faced little to no consequence, there can be no legal redress. We can only hope that somewhere along the way we are learning something from history, as our species wearily inches its way forward.

Conan Doyle for the Defense by Margalit Fox

Rating: 4 Stars

 In ‘Conan Doyle for the Defense’, Margalit Fox examines one of the most infamous trials of the Victorian Age in a style that combines the best elements of fiction and nonfiction writing.

A wealthy elderly lady is found bludgeoned to death in her home in Glasgow in 1908. The Glasgow police glom on to a suspect despite a staggering lack of evidence connecting him to the crime. What then follows is a miscarriage of justice that sets a textbook example of how not to try a case.

Fox deftly captures the zeitgeist of a historic era at the junction of raging social forces. A nation that unapologetically established an empire is paranoid about all the foreigners encroaching on its own turf. Oscar Slater, a man of German-Jewish origins, is framed for the murder of Mrs. Marion Gilchrist by the Glasgow P.D. The incompetence and/or corruption of the police force meet their match with prosecutorial and judicial misconduct. The end result is that Slater served nineteen years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.

The case captured headlines at its time. Despite the prevailing mood of xenophobia, there were many who were sufficiently troubled by the weak case against Slater, and the biased trial that he was subjected to, that there was a persistent effort to see justice done. The attempts to exonerate Slater began to gather steam when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle joins the fight. Conan Doyle – writer, physician, rationalist, veteran, sleuth, gentleman, and a knight of the old order…

At The New York Times where she is a senior writer, Margalit Fox is a member of the obituary news department. I do appreciate stylish send-offs. ‘Conan Doyle for the Defense’ is a study of flawed police procedure and a failed justice system; but it is also a glowing tribute to the literary mastermind who was Holmes and Watson in one.

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

Rating: 4 & ½ Stars

2014 Booker Prize

If I had done my usual due diligence before picking up this book, I would have discovered that this was yet another book about World War II. Not just about the Second World War, but a story about Japanese POWs. Then I would have avoided it; because reading ‘Unbroken’ was traumatizing enough, and why would I go through something like that again? But that would have been my loss.

Flanagan’s TNRTTDN is in equal parts ravishing and heart-breaking. The crux of the larger narrative is the building of the Burma Railway in 1943 – a construction feat engineered by the Empire of Japan, on the backs of forced labor and under the most savage conditions. The human cost of the Death Railway, as it was otherwise known, was horrific: an estimated 102,000 people – 90,000 civilian laborers and 12,000 Allied prisoners perished in the effort. The deaths were due partly to tropical illnesses; but overwhelmingly, the ultimate reason was the barbarous indifference of Japan to human life and suffering.

On a more intimate scale, the story is about the Australian POWs – those who succumb to the Death Railway, as well as its survivors. Flanagan, whose own father was one of the Australian survivors, has invested the historical narrative with depth of research and poignant humanity. The toll of building the railway is explored through the perspective of different POWs; as well as through the eyes of their embattled Japanese tormentors – men who were tasked with performing the impossible and who would give no quarter because they belonged to a time and culture where clemency was equated with weakness.

But TNRTTDN is also a love story. The novel’s protagonist is Dorrigo Evans – a senior medical officer at the Burma Railway who later becomes a renowned surgeon. Evans seems to have a charmed life in many respects. As an officer, he was not subject to the same privations as the other prisoners at the labor camp, and afterward he’s, quite rightly, hailed as a hero. But the public éclat that’s lavished upon him, and the good fortune of having family and friends leave no impression upon Dorrigo, obsessed as he is with the woman who got away, the love of his life – Amy Mulvaney.

One of the motifs of this book is the vastness of human history – the bewildering force of circumstances beyond our control that shape the destinies of nations and individuals. The other is the inexorable sweep of time in erasing all events, men, and man-made things. What may remain is memory. Remembrance is important – hence the seemingly endless stream of books that exhume old wars and past injustices. We remember our history so that we do not repeat its mistakes. But cling too desperately to the past, and we lose our happiness in the present. Few books I’ve read have expounded this as eloquently as ‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North’.

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

Stars: 3 & ½

2013 Booker Prize

Eleanor Catton’s ‘The Luminaries’ is a multi-faceted dazzler – historical fiction; mystery; whimsical romance; and with a touch of the paranormal thrown in for some extra effect. Yet this olio somehow works without any clumsiness.

The story is set in 19^th. century New Zealand. Walter Moody, newly arrived from England, comes to the west coast town of Hokitika with an intention to try his luck in its goldfields. But his entrance coincides with recent events that have upturned the little town: Emery Staines, Hokitika’s wealthiest man, is missing and presumed dead; Anna Wetherell, a favorite town prostitute; appears to have made an unsuccessful attempt to take her own life; Crosbie Wells, a local hermit, has died under mysterious circumstances; and, Alistair Lauderback, an ambitious politician, is being blackmailed. What this quartet has in common is their mutual acquaintance with the sinister Francis Carver, and his accomplice, the equally devious Lydia Greenway.

Twelve concerned citizens of Hokitika share the information they possess with Moody; determined to find justice for the victims and absolve themselves of any role they might have unwittingly played in the tragic events.

While Ms. Catton employs a slightly modified (thank God!) version of the Victorian style of expression, the most striking aspect of this novel is in its elaborate organization of character and apportioning of timeline according to astrological principles. If you have ever dabbled in the zodiac, this book will probably offer you an extra element of enjoyment. If that’s really not your thing, the character chart may seem superfluous and the titles won’t make much sense. But the book still will; so don’t worry about it.

The bare skeleton of the plot is simple enough. The intricacy lies in how deftly the actions and their consequences are interlaced. The author retains her audience’s interests by switching between past and present; revealing only tantalizing glimpses of the plot at a time; and from multiple perspectives to boot. At 800 plus pages, this is the longest book to have ever won a Booker prize. And yet despite its voluminous might, any reader who expects events to be neatly resolved and the tale to come to a tidy finish will be disappointed. Yes, justice (both the poetic and legal kind) is served, but much is left to our inference. The answers are there; but you should have been paying attention. Or just read it all over again. Go ahead, I dare you.

Ulysses by James Joyce

Rating: 4 Stars

“I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant.”

You’ve got to hand it to Joyce; that breath-taking confidence that he’s written something that will be read for centuries bespeaks a considerable chutzpah. Not quite sure that I would agree with him about that. This amateur reviewer’s unapologetic opinion is that - never have so many words been strung together to make so much nonsense, and for so little purpose.

Perhaps future generations will question the literary merit of ‘Ulysses’ and concur that it’s an imposter that does not deserve to be on every ‘100 Must-Read Books’ list. But as of now, this book remains the unchallenged flagship of novelistic excellence. Having got that off my chest, let’s move on to take a closer look at Joyce’s opus, keeping in mind that there’s really no possibility of one mere blog post doing adequate justice to a work so vast and ambitious in its scope.

A preliminary introduction to how the book originated: the title, structure and theme were inspired by James Joyce’s fascination with Homer’s Odyssey, and in particular, the hero of that epic narrative - Odysseus/Ulysses. It was initially serialized in parts in an American journal and later published as a book in 1922. The entirety of the story unfolds in Dublin on June 16, 1904; a day now celebrated by Joyce aficionados as ‘Bloomsday’ after the novel’s protagonist (and Ulysses stand-in), Leopold Bloom. It’s structured in three parts and eighteen episodes, with each episode named after a character or incident from the Odyssey.

Part One begins with an introduction to Stephen Dedalus, a young writer and school-teacher and the novel’s ersatz Telemachus, son of Odysseus in Homer’s original. Part Two launches our day’s journey with Leopold Bloom. We first encounter him making breakfast for himself and his wife Molly; then setting out for an old friend’s funeral; and later, stopping by his office where he works as an advertising canvasser for the ‘Freeman’s Journal’. The rest of the day is spent in aimlessly wandering in and out of pubs, a church, a library, a maternity hospital, a brothel, with a brief stop at the shoreline. In Part Three, Bloom finally meanders back home with Stephen Dedalus in tow, whom he briefly entertains before heading up to bed. The book concludes with the episode titled ‘Penelope’ (Ulysses’ loyal wife in the Odyssey), but what is more commonly known as Molly Bloom’s Monologue.

The parallels Joyce draws between ‘Ulysses’ and the Odyssey are numerous and more often than not, ironic. After having engineered the victory over Troy, Ulysses voyages for ten years to return to Ithaca, his homeland. Awaiting his return are his aging father; his steadfast son; and, his devoted wife, Penelope, who, spurning her many suitors has remained faithful to their marriage (though Ulysses himself has not). Impeding his nostos (heroic return journey of an epic hero) are vindictive gods, malignant monsters, sorceresses, sirens, and a rebellious crew. Overcoming them all, return he does, thwarting his rivals and reclaiming his throne.

And Bloom? Well, he starts his day making a breakfast of ‘the inner organs of beasts and fowls’; followed by a visit to the outhouse to answer Nature’s call, a visit that is described with unsparing detail. His profession depends on ingratiating himself to would-be sponsors. He is forever an outsider in his hometown, a fiercely Catholic city that has no intention of letting him forget his Jewish lineage; regardless of Bloom’s baptism or general lack of religiosity. As he wanders around town, he runs into colleagues, acquaintances, an ex-lover, a young woman who flashes her underwear at him, barmaids, and wastrels. His thoughts turn often to his father who died of overdosing, and a son and heir whom he lost at infancy. In Stephen Dedalus, in whom he takes a paternal interest, he discovers a kindred intellect and a talent that he hopes to foster. On his return home, waiting for him is Molly Bloom; partnered with him in an adulterous marriage. Unlike Penelope, Mrs. Bloom has seen no reason to spurn her many suitors. They have enjoyed her favors and she theirs; and that is not something she intends to change anytime.

Homer gave us Ulysses’ wit, verve, and heroic adventures; Joyce serves up in ‘Ulysses’ the mundane, the sordid, and the flatly uninspiring. What can I say? I guess we don’t live in an epic age anymore.

Yet, there are similarities, too. Bloom, like Ulysses, is intelligent. He is a well-read man, whose thoughts certainly dwell on his family; and if not exactly a leader of men, he is still amiable and seems to get along with most people. Like the sea-faring voyager of the Odyssey, Bloom too watches the stars – he dabbles in astronomy. In a dull century, perhaps a stroll around town will have to take the place of a thrilling odyssey. While Bloom seems besotted with his wife whose voracious sexuality remains untamed by marriage, it can be said that Molly Bloom, herself, is at least not indifferent to her husband.

So much of ‘Ulysses’ is mind-numbingly boring: an endless stream of fillers and inanities; characters that have little or no bearing to the narrative are thrust upon us; we are pelted with strings of names that serve no consequence whatsoever. The language is needlessly dense and opaque, and the reader is assailed with Joyce’s sesquipedalian loquacity, his incontinent verbosity. Some chapters are not merely tortuous; they are downright torturous. The episode ‘Circe’, for example, is an unrelenting sewage of babble and obscenity.

So why bother to read ‘Ulysses’ at all? Are his erudite fans simply misinformed? No; there are veins of gold in the book, but you have to mine them assiduously. A certain grim sense of commitment is needed, not just to finish this book, but to appreciate the literary genius (okay, I admitted it, alright?) exemplified by the mighty intellect, eclectic multi-culturalism, inspired wordsmithing, dazzling vocabulary, and literary experimenting. I stuck with this book for one reason only. I finished my Masters in English Literature several years ago. This book served to remind me that I’m no Master; but that I am and always will be a student of Literature.

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

Rating: 4 Stars

“I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.” – Sal Paradise from ‘On the Road’

And yet Kerouac decided to go ahead anyway and write an entire novel regurgitating that state of mind.

If one has never tried recreational drugs, it’s not particularly pleasant being sucked into someone else’s psychedelic ravings. But hey, once there, why not make the most of the vicarious experience?

This work is considered the definitive work of the Beat Generation, and Jack Kerouac, its spokesman. In historical perspective, the counterculture movement that was the Beat Generation may scarcely register a blip on the radar. But no matter; this droll dubbing of each and every generation seems to be a particularly American trait, one that seeps and permeates its literature. Hence we have the ‘Lost Generation’, ‘the Beats’, ‘the Hippies’, ‘the Yuppies’; all the way up to ‘the Millennials’ - as if labeling a thing enables us to understand it any better.

In Kerouac’s estimate, the Beats were those who were tired of the superficialities of life. In a fairly obvious metaphor, the road is life. Life is to be experienced on a deeper level – “our one and noble function of the time, move.”

And move is what they do. The book traces the restless, fevered traversing of the United States by the narrator, Sal Paradise, and his friend, Dean Moriarty, between the years 1947 and 1950. Paradise is a stand-in for Kerouac and Dean Moriarty refers to his fellow Beatnik, Neal Cassady. Many of the multitudes of eccentric characters who make an appearance in this novel refer to Kerouac’s real-life acquaintances.

Paradise, who lives in New York with his aunt, meets Dean Moriarty a charismatic ex-con who initially latches onto Paradise for food and boarding; and over a period of two years the two, together, and sometimes with the company of others, crisscross the United States in a haze of motion, till Paradise finally wakes up to the sting of Moriarty’s exploitative nature.

The narrative has a staccato rhythm that effectively captures the manic pace of the Beat existence. The life Kerouac describes is one of fast cars, fast women, hot jazz and easy drugs. He does not waste too many words delving into character and motive. On the surface, there seems to be very little introspection. Yet the characters are strikingly outlined – Moriarty, erratic and incoherent even at the beginning of the novel, grows increasingly unstable towards the end; hurt, resentful women nevertheless make themselves easily available to men who have scant respect for them; men who aspire to beatific understanding mainly seem to spout meaningless drivel, all the more meaningless because more often than not, they are stoned out of their minds and all their elevated talk is in direct contrast to their treatment of others – in their careless mishandling of others’ property and feelings.

The Sal Paradise we see at the novel’s end is perhaps no less wearied of Beat existential philosophy; but he has grown disillusioned with Dean Moriarty.

To readers who may have never fallen under the spell of Moriarty, Paradise’s disenchantment may seem long overdue. There is no single path to achieving Grace. But it seems counter intuitive to believe that a life of common sense, common decency, and kindness to one another, is in any way less than the rapturous epiphanies of a febrile, drug-fueled mysticism.

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

Rating: 4 Stars

2000 Booker Prize

This isn’t a feel good book. Never mind; it has other things going for it.

For starters there is its technical virtuosity. Atwood has taken an outmoded literary device – the epistolary novel - and imbued it with a savage new life. While the novel is certainly open to feminist interpretations, the author’s approach is iconoclastic in its demolition of fondly-held notions of family, religion, and marriage. That makes for a prickly, uncomfortable read; but artistes’ integrity lies is in staying true to their vision, not in pandering to the fickle caprices of the audience.

The plot is like a matryoshka doll, apparently nesting several stories within the main frame. The narrative opens in the 1940s, ‘ten days after the war ended’. Iris Chase hears of the tragic death of her younger sister, Laura, in a car accident. We learn over the course of the novel that Laura has achieved posthumous fame with the publication of the scandalous (for its time) book, ‘The Blind Assassin’. Iris, several years later, though physically frail, is indomitable and clear-minded in her old age as she never was in her youth. Part of the story is her recollection of her life as she writes it down for an estranged grandchild.

Part of it are also excerpts from ‘The Blind Assassin’ - a story of a young society woman involved with a man on the wrong side of the law, though his crime is never made explicit. The couple meet in various different locations each having their own reasons for being very careful. The word ‘love’ is not mentioned in their trysts, and they are often cruel or callous; yet, their need for one another, even if not always tender, is genuine and palpable.

The third story is the science-fiction tale with which the young man entertains his lover – a fantasy world of oppressive social stratification, sexual deviancy, and a perverted religion based on sacrificial rituals. Even under these unconducive circumstances, there are two unlikely people who fall in love seeking a redemption from the sordid reality of their lives.

Each story is engrossing enough on its own. Atwood’s ingenuity lies in her one-woman enactment of the triple Moirai in spinning the narrative; keeping the skeins from unraveling; and, swiftly and ruthlessly tying the threads together for a truly brilliant yarn.

“…All she has left is the picture. Also the story of it.

The picture is of happiness, the story not. Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there’s no way in or out. In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys. It’s loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward, along its twisted road.”

Sacré Bleu by Christopher Moore

Rating: 3 & 1/2 Stars


Perhaps not everyone will be regaled by the rough misogyny and the superfluity of raunchy humor that's so pervasive in Christopher Moore's Sacré Bleu. The book does offer other compensations however.

For one, the setting is enthralling - late Nineteenth Century Paris set afire with the artistic talents of the Impressionist Painters. The major painters of the day all make at the very least a cameo appearance in the novel, and sometimes much more than a cameo. The book itself is an alluring mélange of historical fact and surreal fiction. Of the two major protagonists in the book, one is Henri Toulouse-Lautrec - the French aristocrat-artist - who zestfully immersed himself in Paris's sexy underbelly. The other is Lucien Lessard, Moore's fictitious baker turned painter. Together, the pair try to unravel the mystery of the apparent suicide of their friend, Vincent van Gogh. The clues lead them on the trail of the sinister 'Colorman', and his elusive companion.


One of the charms of this book for me was the many photos of the great artwork under discussion. That; and the author's intellectual athleticism. I enjoyed his effortless vaults from art history to Greek and Gaelic mythology; and all the better when he takes the reader along for the ride instead of floundering at the sidelines.


And while the bitch-goddess persona exercises a certain fascination on the imagination, in this context it's also a nod to that very French dictum - cherchéz la femme.

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson



Rating: 4 Stars

Americans place a high premium on ‘nice’. It’s a trait pointedly applauded when exhibited by movie stars, top-ranked athletes, and aspiring electoral candidates. One of the most popular films in the recent past has been ‘Forrest Gump’, in which Tom Hanks played the seraphically sweet titular hero, who, despite his sub-average intellect accomplishes one incredible success after another. Face it, this is a country where ‘over-achiever’ is not a compliment; unless the achievements are accompanied by an attitude of “Aw, shucks, it ain’t nuthin’”. Not that I have anything against ‘nice’, and ‘Forrest Gump’ is one of my favorite films. Realistically however, we know that greatness often goes hand in hand with glaring imperfections; that a good man need not be particularly agreeable; and, that ‘nice’ is just one quality among the pantheon of virtues.

That’s why I found the wave of articles about Steve Jobs immediately following his death needing a pinch of salt. Of course, the whole point of eulogies is to accentuate the positive, but these were wandering dangerously close to hagiology – gentle St. Steve of Silicon Valley. As such, they were at odds with earlier stories detailing his legendary short fuse, his hogging credit for the ideas of other people, and abusive tirades. Isaacson’s compassionate, yet candid biography sets the record straight. The author was understandably leery when Jobs approached him to write his life-story. At that time he was unaware of Jobs cancer prognosis, knew enough about him to be skeptical when he went on the charm offensive, and didn’t trust him to restrain his controlling impulses when it came to a depiction of his life. However, he found himself becoming intrigued with the idea despite his reservations, and the result is a deeply thoughtful study, that is as intense as the iconic founder of Apple.

The story of Jobs parentage adds to his legend – the offspring of unmarried students, his adoption by Paul and Clara Jobs was a providential act of destiny that blessed him with selfless parents who set aside their needs to focus on a brilliant, temperamental child who showed early signs of the man he would become. Jobs would feel the influence of his father throughout his life in his desire for faultless craftsmanship. The fascination with design seems to be his own. It is noticeable that all the enduring relationships of Jobs' life (his parents, his wife, at least three of his four children, and his closest friends) were possible because the other party accepted him as he was, difficult as he could be.

Early in his life, Jobs turned to many men for guidance, and initially at least, his mentors seemed as taken with him as he was with them, before mutual disillusionment and feelings of betrayal set in. The world of business may be dog-eat-dog, but Isaacson gives us a balanced perspective by allowing both Jobs and his adversaries their fair say, before weighing in with his analysis. He is sympathetic to John Sculley, who was in the unenviable position of ousting Jobs from his beloved Apple in 1985. Similarly, his assessment of another formidable rival of Jobs, Microsofts’s Bill Gates, is both admiring and respectful. The differences between Jobs and Gates owed more to divergent business philosophies than personal animus. While Gates and many other critics of Jobs were appreciative of the man and his achievements, it is perhaps characteristic that Jobs himself seemed unable to return the compliment, persisting in his solipsistic view of the universe.

This would perhaps lead us to question his much talked about spiritual leanings. But in this as in other ways, he was truly unique. While he might have brutalized his employees, and proved himself unforgiving to those he considered his foes, and unyielding even to his dearest circle of family, Jobs' spirituality was innate and genuine. It could be seen in his unostentatious lifestyle; the sense of aesthetic that wedded functionality and beauty; his intuitive understanding of consumer needs, and yes, a certain integrity in an environment that didn’t make integrity easy. Despite his failings, Jobs continues to mesmerize, and that isn’t merely because he possessed a rock-star charisma evinced by no other CEO. In a world where the profit margin is given over-riding importance, his career is an example of innovation, an instinctual ability to harness creativity, visionary leadership, and the fostering of a corporate culture that engendered, indeed, enforced excellence.

“…a lot of us want to contribute something back to our species…We try to use the talents we do have to express our deep feelings, to show our appreciation of all the contributions that came before us, and to add something to that flow. That’s what has driven me.”

Jobs inspires because he made exceptional and uncompromising use of the time, opportunities, and gifts endowed upon him.

Pulphead by John Jeremiah Sullivan



Rating: 3 Stars

‘Pulphead’, the second book from John Jeremiah Sullivan, is a collection of essays that range from philosophical musings to whimsical vignettes of Americana.

Sullivan has been a contributing writer to many major American magazines, and I’m guessing his beat was the music scene, since nearly half the essays have to do with music in one form or another – Christian Rock, MTV reality shows, or bios of well-known artistes. When talking about music, he invests his subjects with both passion and erudition. His article on Bunny Livingstone stoked my curiosity and led me on a virtual scavenger hunt for those names and events in history that have hitherto left my interest untouched. In his bio on the late Michael Jackson, he explores both his phenomenal talent and the troubling rumors of his later life. Personally, that piece confirmed what I’ve long secretly suspected – M.J. was a god of music.

In his essays on the chaos following Hurricane Katrina, or the tea-party movement, he combines clear-eyed observations with a wry humor. I was especially entertained by an enlightening glimpse into Benjamin Franklin’s views on universal health care. The only piece that struck an odd note was the catchily titled ‘Violence of the Lambs’, which is a little too amusing to be taken seriously. He stops a tad short of predicting a ‘planet of the apes’ situation as a possible future scenario.

With his eclectic choice of themes, Sullivan throws light on many obscure topics, and renders them fascinating to the extent that one wonders how they could have been obscure for so long.

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes



Rating : 4 Stars

2011 Booker Prize

Julian Barnes’ latest book is a slender one, a little over a 150 pages. Don’t let its size fool you; it has all the density of a black hole.

The narrator, Tony Webster, is edging slightly past the point that can still be truthfully called middle age. Still, he is at peace with that, more or less; because as he says in his defense, he’s a ‘peaceable’ man. He’s experienced friendship, love, loss, marriage, fatherhood, divorce, career, retirement – the whole kit and caboodle. Whatever uneasy thoughts he might have about death are eclipsed by a recurring fear of Alzheimer’s – that great erosion of the mind.

The problem of memory is one seared into our consciousness when a series of events force Tony to re-evaluate everything he thought he knew, about himself and his loved ones. As one exasperated ex-girlfriend tells him over and over again – ‘you don’t get it and you never will’. I would like to say there’s a twist at the end, but it would be more accurate to state that the story’s arc is as sinuous as memory can be, when it is at its most capricious and self-inventing.

“…what you end up remembering isn’t always the same as what you have witnessed.”

Barnes style is lovely…and refreshing. Just as we accustom ourselves to his elegant, cerebral manner of expression, he jabs us into alertness with needle-sharp humor, and efficiently placed profanity. When we think we’ve got to know a character fairly well, we’re shocked that the same person had it in them to lash out viciously, albeit in hurt and rage, spilling words that splash like hot acid. Yet, why should we be surprised at all; the book vividly brings home the impossibility of knowing another, when we do not know ourselves. That makes it all the more gratifying when our narrator, defying his ex's opinion of his cognitive abilities, finally ‘gets it’.

Once Barnes received the Booker, which some felt was long overdue, there was the inevitable gossip about the book's merit. I came across two others that were also on the 2011 shortlist – ‘The Sisters Brothers’, which I really enjoyed; and, ‘Jamrach’s Menagerie’ which I tossed aside in boredom after having got partway through the book (if imitation is indeed the highest form of flattery, Yann Martel must be quite flattered). Not every Booker winner of the past has had my unqualified enthusiasm, but this time, I would say that the honor given to Barnes was richly deserved.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot



Rating: 4 Stars

The writing of ‘The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks’ was a labor of many years making for author, Rebecca Skloot. Her curiosity about her subject was awakened when she was still a teenager in science class, and never quite faded away even in adulthood. The actual process of gathering material and writing took a decade of extensive research and exhaustive interviews. The end result is a deeply affecting consideration of the combined ingenuity of many scientific minds; the ethics concerning tissue ownership and research; and the story of a woman, her family, and her community.

A thirty-one year old African-American woman called Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer in 1951. Despite her death, cancer cells harvested from the tumor in her cervix continued to produce an entire generation of new cells every 24 hours. These cells were named HeLa after the first two letters of Henrietta Lacks first and last names. The first human cells to be generated in a laboratory, they earned the label ‘immortal’, because they were all descended from one original sample that produced a continually dividing line of cells. Due to her unknowing gift, Henrietta Lacks made possible some of the most vital medical and scientific advances of the past century and the present.

“The reason Henrietta’s cells were so precious was because they allowed scientists to perform experiments that would have been impossible with a living human. They cut HeLa cells apart and exposed them to endless toxins, radiation, and infections. They bombarded them with drugs hoping to find one that would kill malignant cells without destroying normal ones…If the cells died in the process, it didn’t matter – scientists could just go back to their eternally growing HeLa stock and start over again.”

In one way or another, HeLa can be credited with the development of the polio vaccine, the standardization of the field of tissue culture, cellular cloning, mapping of the human genome, and various medicines to treat cancer, blood-pressure, and depression. This list doesn’t, in fact, begin to cover the immeasurable boon the HeLa cells have been to humanity.

Skloot’s excellent investigative research does more than carefully piece together the historical evidence leading up to medicine’s great breakthroughs. She restores to Henrietta Lacks the one thing the zealous minded scientists took away – her humanity. There is something oddly ironic, yet moving in that this simple, little-educated mother of five should have been the cause of such mind-boggling technical advances.  It would appear that the world benefited by the suffering that ravaged her last few months of life. To the ones she left behind however, especially her five children, there was no reprieve from their acute loss; a loss which was compounded years later by the discovery that their mother’s cells were still ‘living’ in a way that they found hard to understand. Just as hard for them to understand was  why Henrietta Lacks legal heirs were struggling to pay their medical bills while pharmaceutical companies continued to profit from their mother’s death.

The reasons were many and complex, but they lead to the discussion about tissue study and proprietorship that is at the heart of the book, and the moral, academic and ethical considerations that are weighed in the balance in the raging dispute between medical research and patient rights. Skloot raises a lot of difficult questions, but apparently there are no easy answers. However, there is too much at stake on either side to ignore this troubling and thought-provoking debate.

My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk

Rating: 3 & ½ Stars

[Translated from the Turkish by Erdag M. Goknar]

Orhan Pamuk was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006

“…Let it not be forgotten that in the Glorious Koran, ‘creator’ is one of the attributes of Allah. It is Allah who is creative… who brings that which is not into existence, who gives life to the lifeless. No one ought to compete with him. The greatest of sins is committed by painters who presume to do what He does, who claim to be as creative as He…”

This statement is the essential conflict of ‘My Name is Red’, Orhan Pamuk’s intricate tale of Art and murder in 16^th century Turkey under Ottoman rule. It’s a world where artistry is circumscribed by religious ideology, and where mad old painters aspire to blindness as the ultimate mark of Allah’s favor.

The world of these painters, or more correctly, miniaturists, is the centerpiece of the novel. They are anguished souls unable to unleash their true artistry, shackled to the traditions of the ‘old masters’, and forbidden to innovate. This last condition is proving especially cumbersome because the Ottoman Empire has become increasingly susceptible to the influence of European art with its dazzling use of perspective and seductive portraiture. But in the eyes of the imams, that way lies heresy and perdition. The painters are torn between artistic envy and their religious convictions.

Then a miniaturist, working on a book specially commissioned by the Sultan, is murdered. There are any number of suspects - from his rival-colleagues to the followers of a fundamentalist cleric. Summoned to solve the mystery is Black, an erstwhile artist and clerk. Black accepts, in order to ingratiate himself with the father of his beloved, Shekure. Black is a fool for love, but Shekure is a single mother living at the mercy of a patriarchal society. She has no intention of yoking her family’s fortunes to Black without carefully hedging her bets.

The book is gratifying, both as historical fiction as well as an intelligently crafted mystery. It proceeds at a leisurely stroll, and with the frequent scenic detours down the by lanes of Ottoman art, history, culture and philosophy, it is often an aesthetic delight, with many passages of surpassing beauty. The plot has mystery’s requisite tension, and the conclusion is satisfactory, if not highly suspenseful.

Where it falters is in setting and characterization. I would have expected more color and richer detail in descriptions of sixteenth century Istanbul, one of the most storied cities in the world. More disappointing is the characterization. It has the same flaws that may be leveled at miniature painting – lack of depth and perspective. The story is told through multiple viewpoints, but the characters frequently contradict themselves and indulge in so much double speak, that we have no idea who they are, or what they believe. They remain mostly a strange, amorphous bunch. The prevailing mood of characterization is an unabashed homoeroticism. Not a single youth escapes having an adoring adjective – ‘pretty’, ‘lovely’, ‘beautiful’- affixed to his person. The problem with a literary world where every male is assumed to be just a little bit gay is that it is at best a lop-sided, and at worst a falsified view of human nature. Literature becomes less Art and more artifice.

Turkey has long been at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and the Middle East, and its struggle with cultural identity is evident in the novel. That is to say, Pamuk portrays it but seems unable to reconcile the differences. What the book offers is an exclusively Islamic worldview that fails to reaffirm the import of one of its most inspiring lines:

“Nothing is pure…To God belongs the East and the West. May he protect us from the will of the pure and the unadulterated.”

Isaac Newton by James Gleick

Rating: 3 ½ Stars

For many children, introduction to Isaac Newton, and by extension physics, begins with the famous story of the apple. That story may not be completely myth, but certainly it was exaggerated. There does not seem to be an isolated ‘Eureka’ moment leading to Newton’s discovery of the laws of gravitation. It was borne out after years of intense observation, contemplation, and experimenting.

Isaac Newton was born in 1642, the son of an illiterate farmer. At an early age, the fatherless boy was abandoned to his grand-mother’s care when his mother remarried. He grew up a lonely, neglected child. Having shown no aptitude for farming, he entered Cambridge University at the age of nineteen, eventually becoming a Professor of Mathematics and earning a Fellowship. He later left his teaching job when he was, by royal appointment, made Warden of the Mint in 1696. He fulfilled his duties zealously, bringing his mathematical exactitude to the job at hand, and earned honor and wealth in this field as he did in the scientific one. He died in 1727, a wealthy, famous recluse, who had never married, and had allegedly been celibate all his life.

There are some people who have fascinating personal lives; others who choose to make what should be private, public. Newton remains to the end of the book, complex and unknowable - it’s hard to take the measure of the man who invented calculus and enabled the prediction of Halley’s Comet. His influence is felt in the very words that form the rudiments of physics: force, mass, action, reaction, momentum, gravity. It was only with Newton that these words entered the lexicon as scientific concepts. He was an obsessive thinker who asked himself endless questions about the nature of the physical world, then attempted to work out the solutions for himself, though he did keenly study the notes of both predecessors and contemporaries.

 In 1703, he was nominated President of the Royal Society of London, an organization dedicated to the promotion of scientific knowledge. In his new position he encouraged experiments in light, heat and chemistry; and championed early research into electricity. If he shared meagerly from his vast store of knowledge, part of it seems to stem from his inborn secrecy, and part from his innate caution in publishing his theories; in his words, “to avoid being engaged in disputes.” He grew enraged at those he perceived as envious pretenders.

With Newton, for the first time perhaps in English history, a man of science became a national hero. The poet, Alexander Pope eulogized him thus:

“Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night,

God said, Let Newton be! And All was Light.”

Yet, during his lifetime and after, he had his detractors, and not just among fellow scientists. Some less admiring poets were Keats, Shelley and Blake, who seemed to loathe him for reasons both diverse and obscure – for the loss of mystery in the universe, for the diminishing of faith, and for England’s increasing industrialization. That’s a lot of blame to lay at one man’s door. Genius lives for its own reasons. Oddly though, Newton didn’t appear to have an overly inflated opinion of himself,

“I don’t know what I may seem to the world, but, as to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

'Sakhi' Book Club April 2011 Pick

There are seven colors in the rainbow; we learn this in preschool. As we grow older, we learn something else; these seven colors and their tones are what we can actually see. Beyond that, there are more than 16 million colors in the visible spectrum. We will never see those colors, simply because our eyes were not designed to see them, though other species are. It strikes me that maybe Malcolm Gladwell is from another species too. Oh, I know his vision is likely limited to the basic visible spectrum like everyone else’s. Yet he seems to see more, and he is generous in sharing those insights. ‘Blink’ for one, is an eye-opener. 

Every moment – every blink – is composed of a series of discrete moving parts, and every one of those parts offers an opportunity for intervention, for reform, and for correction.

The premise of ‘Blink’ is simple: the quantity of time taken to arrive at a conclusion does not determine the quality of the decision, namely, split-second decisions can be just as good, very often better, than the ones made after great deliberation. As a corollary, our snap judgments are not infallible. We do make mistakes with our off-the-cuff choices. The good thing is that our instinctive responses can be educated and improved.

Galdwell’s métier is offering the reader a dazzling array of examples to prove that his theories can be evinced across the board, that they are in fact, part of an appreciable pattern. He does that here too. We are time and again introduced to art historians, psychologists, athletic coaches, military strategists etc. who use their expertise to engage in flawlessly accurate decision-making. The key-word is ‘expertise’. Innate talent and professional training aside, all these people have something in common. They are not theorists. They’ve put in the man-hours needed in their chosen fields and earned their experience, to the point that their skills have now become second nature to them. They are very, very good at what they do because they’ve been doing it for a long time, and because it is their passion.

As for the rest of us, we’re not going to be able to tell a genuine work of art from a fake, and thank god that no man's fate hangs on our instantaneous presumptions of his innocence or guilt. We will however, continually make snap judgments, because that is part of being human. Our senses feed us a constant stream of input. The problems occur because the filter to process all that feedback is more often than not corrupted, meaning, our judgment is distorted by our unconscious biases. As Gladwell elucidates in ‘The Warren Harding Error’, we too often judge a book by its cover, nor do we always even know what we want. Still less can we put them into words. 

He offers us cases of spectacularly bad decision-making and makes a simple but convincing argument that that in all those instances, good judgment was derailed by a combination of stress, lack of objectivity, lack of time, and/or an overload of information. As he succinctly observes, information is not the same as understanding. Perhaps, this is especially important to remember in the time of the Information Age, when we’re bombarded by useless tidbits of news from all sides. Keeping that in mind, perhaps a more selective approach to the plethora of data available to us would refine our judgment, to make it if not fool-proof, at least less error prone.

To A Mountain In Tibet by Colin Thubron

Rating: 4 & 1/2 Stars

Colin Thubron does not indulge in the sort of travel spiels intended to lure in unsuspecting vacationers. For example, reading ‘To a Mountain in Tibet’ is hardly likely to send anyone careening up the Himalayan slopes with the idea that a jaunt to Tibet would be just the ticket. At no point does he understate the remoteness and inaccessibility of this land. That would leave the armchair traveler wondering as to the mysterious allure of mountains. What is it that men seek there that they can’t find elsewhere? Adventure, perhaps? Or, maybe, is it the desire for solitude, a quest for the meaning of life, or, a chance to confront one’s own mortality?

Thubron is too reticent and subtle a writer to offer us any facile explanations.  We do learn a few things, however. Thubron is in bereavement over the recent demise of his mother. He had lost his father several years earlier, and his sister had died in a tragic accident at the age of twenty-one. That leaves him now the sole survivor of his family, an unenviable position for anyone to be in. Rather than a mere description of exotic people and places, this is a meditation on family, love, loss, and, grief. 

You cannot walk out on your grief, I know, or absolve yourself of your survival, or bring anyone back. You are left with the desire only that things not be as they are. So you choose somewhere meaningful on the earth’s surface, as if planning a secular pilgrimage. Yet the meaning is not your own. Then you go on a journey (it’s my profession, after all), walking to a place beyond your own history, to the sound of the river flowing the other way. In the end you come to rest at a mountain that is holy to others.

The book is not all philosophizing, by any means. The mountain in question is Mount Kailas, sacred to Buddhists, Hindus, and the Bon religion of Tibet. The route taken is through the Karnali valley in Nepal, with Thubron being accompanied by three Sherpa who serve as guide, cook, and porter. The author tells us about the lives of the various ethnic groups inhabiting the regions he passes through. He treads lightly on the geopolitics of the region, though he does not shy away from bleak references to the Chinese government’s ongoing efforts to obliterate Tibetan identity. The picture we get of the country’s urbanized landscape is an unattractive, homogenized drabness.

So much for the shabby towns; yet, his prose is exquisite when he speaks of the natural backdrop of his travels. His limning of plant, animal and mineral life is delicate as feather strokes, leaving echoes of beauty in the memory. Whether he’s describing the pristine loveliness of Lake Manasarovar, or the stark majesty of Kailas, we’re awe-struck at the splendor that still graces our ravaged planet.

Though he does debunk a lot of the myths that shroud this land of legendary mysticism, he also listens to and narrates fabulous tales of miracle and wonder, as in perhaps, his wistful reference to the lamas of the ‘rainbow body’. This refers to the passing away of an enlightened lama, who upon the death of his corporeal body, dematerializes in a spray of iridescent light. Thubron is well-read in the Eastern faiths, but throughout the book, he wavers between the scholar’s instinctive skepticism, and the lonely wanderer’s yearning to believe. Even as he accomplishes his goal of completing the kora - the circumambulation of Mt. Kailas - he wonders at the thin line that delineates superstition from faith.

He had me wondering too.  It seems to me that doubt is a precious gift, no less so than belief; the un-dissuaded pilgrim is enriched by both. Tentatively, I would suggest that superstition is the groping in the dark, immured in the blindness of our own mind. As for faith…it must be that which can discern the Rainbow Body.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

Rating: 3 Stars

[Translated from the French by Alison Anderson]

“With the exception of love, friendship and the beauty of Art, I don’t see much else that can nurture human life.”

This declaration is made by Paloma, one of the protagonists of Muriel Barbery’s novel, translated from the original French by Alison Anderson.  Paloma is not alone in her thought; Renee Michel shares her feelings as well. Paloma and Renee make an odd couple. Whereas Paloma is the precocious twelve-year old daughter of the well-pedigreed, excruciatingly educated, and affluent Josse family, Renee is the fifty-four year old concierge of the apartment complex they live in. 

Barely acquainted with each other, they are almost mirror images in other ways. Renee hides her voracious intelligence behind a surly, semi-literate façade, and Paloma remains brooding, mostly alone, over the shortcomings of her family and the Parisian haut monde that is their social circle. In fact, Paloma has had enough of snobs and hypocrites – that’s why she has decided to commit suicide on her thirteenth birthday. Having made peace with that choice, her interim goal is to have as many profound thoughts as possible expressed in the form of haiku.

That is one of the other things Paloma and Renee have in common: a love of Japanese culture. They’re not merely intellectuals; they’re aesthetes. Their interior monologues are disquisitions on the essence of Art, Literature, Music, Nature, and Philosophy.

Underneath their prickly armor, Renee and Paloma conceal both an unexpected caring and integrity. Ms. Barbery has created an especially exquisite character in Paloma, an ennui-ridden child who calls it as she sees it, and she sees a lot. Paloma skirts the dangers of being a poseur by virtue of her unflinching, lacerating honesty. Once she resolves to appreciate the positive, we see her awakening ever more profoundly to the beauty all around her.  

 

The one distracting thing, and yes, it is a major distraction, is the tendency to indulge in endless specious arguments that leaves the reader glassy-eyed and befogged. Here is one such gem:

When we say “a table”, when we utter the word “table”, when we make the concept of the table, are we still designating this table or are we truly referring to a universal table entity that establishes the reality of all the particular tables that exist? Is the idea of the table real, or does it merely belong to the mind?

Really? Does furniture merit so much strenuous thought? All this sophistry sounds damningly like the very thing that both Renee and Paloma purport to despise – the pretentious vanity and empty ratiocination that characterizes intellectuals. 

A fact that often escapes the clever, but is never forgotten by the wise is that whereas intelligence is a tool to be used and enjoyed, Life is a gift to be loved and cherished. In its most lucid moments, Barbery’s book reveals this awareness that under the pettiness, sham and absurdity, Life throbs in ineffable loveliness, and Art in all its forms merely captures these intimations of beauty.