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YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY by Christopher J. Koch

January 30, 2017 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

year of living dangerouslyTHE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY by Christopher J. Koch (1978) is a sophisticated story about post-colonial Indonesia, journalism and the driving force of identity, particularly the destructive force of conflicting identities.

Guy Hamilton is an Australian correspondent new to the country, which is ruled by the charismatic President Sukarno. Guy’s predecessor left the country without passing on contacts, which leaves him struggling to get stories. Billy Kwan, a Chinese-Australian dwarf cameraman, feeds Guy his first big story, which launches his career and establishes their friendship. Guy is extremely practical, obsessed with his career, and romanticizes women and the British Empire. Kwan is very romantic, moral, intellectual and philosophical, and offers an extremely interesting character constantly spouting challenging ideas. Kwan looks up to Guy as a kindred spirit but also what he could have been, but is ultimately disappointed when Guy fails his moral standards. At the crux of this is Jill, a bright but fragile spirit who works as an assistant at the British embassy, a friend of Kwan’s with whom Guy develops a romantic relationship.

The story of their triangle unfolds with passion but without moralizing, which is done by the characters and not by the author and his stand-in narrator, another journalist who recalls the events of 1965. The story of Sukarno and Indonesia is told in a similar way. Sukarno is a fascinating figure in the story, the nationalist leader who fought the Japanese occupation during WW2 and declared independence in its aftermath. An autocrat, he united an archipelago of islands, languages, ethnicities, cultures and religions to create a nation. Nonetheless, the country remained in turmoil, balanced precariously between the left-wing communist organization PKI and the right-wing Muslim military. As the PKI grew stronger and bolder, a confrontation looms that ignites a soft coup and genocide across the country. Kwan’s conflict with Guy, Guy’s conflict with Jill, and Kwan’s internal conflict all mirror the conflicts of identity within Sukarno and his Indonesia.

In short, THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY is a brilliant novel about identity and history. Highly recommended. The film adaptation (1982) by Peter Weir, starring Mel Gibson, Sigourney Weaver and Linda Hunt, is similarly excellent. It cuts some corners on the novel but is otherwise an excellent adaptation, though it focuses more on the relationship between Guy and Jill. Below is the trailer.

Filed Under: Books, Other History, The Blog

SHAH OF SHAHS by Ryszard Kapuscinski

January 20, 2017 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

shahRyszard Kapuscinski was a legendary Polish journalist who chronicled various wars, coups and revolutions that rocked Latin America and Africa during the ’60s and ’70s. His books transcend traditional journalism into the realm of literature, resulting in him being labeled a “mythographer,” able to capture the zeitgeist of great change.

Years ago, I enjoyed reading THE EMPEROR, in which Kapuscinski talked to former palace officials after the tall of the Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia, that country’s last ruler in a dynasty going back 3,000 years–legend has it to King Solomon. These conversations reconstructed life under the Emperor, particularly in the palace. In my view, it provided a remarkable look inside a bloated, decaying and capricious regime incompatible with the modern world.

More recently, I read SHAH OF SHAHS, in which Kapuscinski chronicles the brutality and fall of the Shah of Iran. The result is a compelling document of ordinary Iranians talking about life under the Shah and the hopes of the revolution that toppled him.

Kapuscinski’s books are long on zeitgeist and short on breadth and facts, providing a deep, emotional and literary take on history, and often cutting to the bone about the primary movers in great world events. SHAH OF SHAHS is a fascinating study of tyranny and revolution through the lens of Iranian culture.

Check out Kapuscinski’s work if you’re interested in a different way of looking a history.

Filed Under: Books, Other History, The Blog

THE IRON HEEL By Jack London

January 4, 2017 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

the iron heel by jack londonThis is Jack London like you’ve never read him. In THE IRON HEEL, his sweeping Dystopian novel published in 1908, a young upper class woman meets a socialist firebrand and becomes entwined in his destiny to play a part in a bloody class war fought on the streets of America.

Labor, pushed deep into poverty and fed up with its share of the produce of capital, rebels against the capitalist class and elects socialists to Congress, which dispels with the trappings of democracy and forms a fascist government in order to hold onto its vast wealth and subvert labor to slavery. So the socialists, who believe the answer is to bring ownership of capital to everyone, begin their long revolution … The result is a novel George Orwell called a “truer prophecy of the future than either BRAVE NEW WORLD or THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME,” and according to Orwell’s biographer influenced his writing of 1984.

London was remarkably prescient about some things–the capitalists trump up a war to eliminate their capital surplus (the pretext of which is the Germans launching a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor) to start a world war in 1913, a Great Depression occurs, the press and church attack people who speak out on behalf of social justice, fascism takes root, and so on. He also explains the never ending class struggle in easily understandable terms that are relevant today.

While most Americans value socialism for certain things (Social Security, Medicare, post office, police, firefighters, etc.), they have a cultural distaste for it, and so the modern reader will likely not embrace the socialist solution proposed in the novel, seeing as how it worked out for the Soviet Union. And yet this was written long before the New Deal, progressive taxation, Social Security, the GI Bill, legal unionization/striking, Sherman Antitrust Act and so on helped to build what was once a strong middle class in America–a system that attempted to balance capitalism, which produces innovation, growth and opportunity, and socialism, which reduces cost for certain services, protects labor from capitalism’s excesses, and tries to make the system as a whole serve the needs of the many, not just the few.

Reading THE IRON HEEL, therefore, may feel anachronistic with its stark choices of all capitalism or all socialism, but the basic issues involved–a capitalist builds a factory, workers produce goods in the factory, those goods produce a profit, now who gets what share of the profit?–are just as relevant today. Consider, for example, that since 2000, almost all economic gains in America went to capital, and labor got almost no share of the growth, and one can begin to understand growing anger and social unrest in America. Reading THE IRON HEEL, we also see how the system responds when it’s threatened–with violence, just as today. London’s America portrays a living hell in which capital and labor fight a never ending war for power.

the iron heel by jack london Reading THE IRON HEEL, therefore, may feel anachronistic with its stark choices of all capitalism or all socialism, but the basic issues involved–a capitalist builds a factory, workers produce goods in the factory, those goods produce a profit, now who gets what share of the profit?–are just as relevant today. Consider, for example, that since 2000, almost all economic gains in America went to capital, and labor got almost no share of the growth, and one can begin to understand growing anger and social unrest in America. Reading THE IRON HEEL, we also see how the system responds when it’s threatened–with violence, just as today. London’s America portrays a living hell in which capital and labor fight a never ending war for power.

THE IRON HEEL will make you think. Guaranteed. It will make you think about where America came from, what it might have been, where it might be going. I highly recommend it.

Filed Under: Books, Reviews of Other Books, The Blog

STORIES OF YOUR LIFE by Ted Chiang

December 28, 2016 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

stories-of-your-life-by-ted-chiangTed Chiang’s STORIES OF YOUR LIFE is a terrific collection of science fiction stories. The story, “Story of Your Life,” gained Chiang widespread recognition after it was adapted for the big screen with ARRIVAL.

Short stories aren’t usually my thing, but I was thoroughly engaged by this collection. Chiang can take a single scientific fact or simple premise and make a deep and thoughtful story about it. My perception was somewhat colored by something I’d heard about him, which is he apparently takes a year to write a single short story. I went into each story thinking, well, this had better be the best short story ever, because wow, a whole year. As a result, the things I didn’t like stood out as much starker, so I wish I hadn’t heard that about him. The dialogue is average in quality, and many of the stories read like science articles presented as dramatic fiction. No matter, I still greatly enjoyed each story. In many ways, Chiang’s stories read like BLACK MIRROR in print–here’s a single technology or premise, now let’s explore its implications completely. But what I like about BLACK MIRROR more is it fully explores how technology interacts with human nature.

Three of Chiang’s stories come to mind as real standout stories for me. In “Tower of Babylon,” the Biblical tower is imagined as a giant tower soaring into the clouds and touching the vault of Heaven. A miner must travel for days to reach the top so he can help hack into the vault of Heaven. What will he find? It is true that “as above, so below”?

In “Hell is the Absence of God,” Heaven and Hell are very real things and angelic visitations common, which strike like natural disasters. After a man loses his wife during one of these disasters and is taken to Heaven, he has to figure out a way to get to Heaven to join her even though he doesn’t love God. This was by far my favorite story.

And in “Liking What You See: A Documentary,” a collection of people at a college campus express their views about “calli,” a technology that denies people the ability to distinguish beauty in faces, allowing people to interact in a different way. The students must vote on whether to make calli compulsory for all students going to the college. The way the two sides of the issue were presented was compelling, and I found myself agreeing with both sides. More than the rest, this story strikes me as the most feasible and a possible future debate humans will actually have.

Chiang’s a talent to watch, and I’ll be buying his collections in the future, though at the rate of a story a year, it’ll be the year 2026. Check out STORIES OF YOUR LIFE for a collection of thought-provoking science fiction stories.

Filed Under: Books, Cool Science, The Blog

BLOOD MERIDIAN by Cormac McCarthy

November 30, 2016 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

blood-meridianSometimes, I’ll read a book or watch a movie that is so brutal I’m left going, WTF? Then I’ll try it again and end up thinking it’s genius. I keep waiting for that to happen with Andy Kaufman, but even so many years after his death I’m still going WTF. CLOCKWORK ORANGE, on the other hand, is a good example. I found the film disturbing when I first watched it at a ripe young age and not in a good way. Years later, I watched it again and found it brilliant.

BLOOD MERIDIAN is a good example of a book that struck me that way. I recently reread it and this time it nailed me. The novel, written by the great Cormac McCarthy, is in my opinion as grim as his seminal apocalyptic work THE ROAD. It tells the story of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old boy adrift in a world of violence in the American West in the 1850s. He signs up with a group of independent operators hoping to overthrow the Mexican government and set themselves up as kings. After the Comanches end their ambitions, he ends up joining a group of homicidal maniacs contracted to hunt Apache scalps for various governors in Mexico.

The story is based on historical events occurring along the Texas-Mexico border during that time period, but McCarthy’s prose transforms the story to the mythical. BLOOD MERIDIAN subverts romantic notions of the Wild West while elevating senseless brutality to poetry. The most intriguing character is the Judge, who may be the devil, God or simply the brutal spirit of the West. He chews up every scene with his embrace of the natural world, chaos, hedonism and violence, and plays the antagonist to the Kid. McCarthy’s signature beautiful descriptions take you through myriad cultures and geographies but always bring you back to an almost nihilist outlook that people are violent and animalistic pleasure seekers, and life is cheap. The Wild West he paints is both gritty and mythical, a form of Purgatory in which the Kid lives a violent life contradicted by occasional kind deeds, and in which the Judge would make him a disciple or destroy him.

Overall, BLOOD MERIDIAN is a powerful Western epic that will stick with you and make you question the darker side of human nature.

Filed Under: Books, Reviews of Other Books, The Blog

SPARTACUS by Howard Fast

September 29, 2016 by Craig DiLouie 2 Comments

spartacusHoward Fast’s SPARTACUS, which he self-published in 1951, is one of my favorite novels. It was later adapted into a terrific film directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis, Jean Simmons, Laurence Olivier, Charles Laughton and Peter Ustinov. Both are worth enjoying as the same but distinctly separate stories of Spartacus’ life.

Fast wrote SPARTACUS in response to the three months in prison he spent during the McCarthy Era, and self-published it because no publisher would touch it. Now it’s a classic.

SPARTACUS tells the story of the slave uprising against Rome during the Third Servile War (73-71 BC), led by Spartacus, a Thracian gladiator. Fast’s novelization of his life differs in some key respects from the life of the historical Spartacus so as to tell the story he wanted, which is an interpretation of Spartacus. The novel expresses the theme that life, love and freedom are paramount human values, and that oppression and slavery debase humanity.

The theme is evidenced in the story structure, which is split between two narratives. In one, a group of Roman nobles travel Italy touring the “tokens of punishment” (crucified slaves), the other flashbacks and stories describing Spartacus and his fight to end slavery. The Romans have the best of everything, a rich life built on the labor and suffering of millions of slaves. They don’t particularly enjoy it, though. Wealth and idleness have corrupted the virtues that build their republic, enabled by slavery. They hate and fear the slaves they exploit, going so far as to call them “instrumentum vocale,” or tools with a voice.

In the other narrative, we see Spartacus struggling to survive as a slave working in a marble mine and then as a gladiator in the arena. It disgusts him that people could be used up and thrown away to thrill jaded Romans. Gladiatorial combat isn’t gloried as it in films like GLADIATOR or the TV series SPARTACUS. Men don’t slaughter each other just to hear crowds cheer. The novel is closer to real life, which is the gladiators were fed and adored and pampered but only for their ability to kill other men until they themselves were finally killed. They hated it.

Spartacus leads the gladiators in a revolt and begins building a slave army that intends to overthrow Rome and begin a new golden age reminiscent of idealized simpler times. He smashes army after army sent against him until finally the Romans destroy him. But have they destroyed what Spartacus represents, the human spirit?

SPARTACUS is beautifully written and stirring. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend picking it up.

Filed Under: Books, Other History, The Blog

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