In the not too distant future the city of Kolkata in India is besieged with floods and famine. Ma, her elderly father, and two year old daughter are preparing to emigrate to the US where her husband has a good professional job. This is one of the families in the story. The other is a poor family from the Sundarban struggling to stay alive while the oldest son, Boomba, has gone to Kolkata to try to earn enough to save his family.
In the two weeks time of this novel, Boomba, driven to desperation and holding a secret about Ma, breaks into Ma’s house and steals her purse which contains the passports for her, her father, and her child. Both her actions previous to his, her current actions, and Boomba’s lead both down paths they could never have previously dreamed with dire consequences for all.
Due to the flooding and famine, everyone in the city is desperate except for the one billionaire who has stayed. Their desperation leads some to behave in undesirable ways, but the main “lesson” of this novel illustrates how just one action by one person can lead to dire consequences for two entire families and possibly others as well–actions have consequences you can never begin to imagine. Be careful.
When I was in the eighth grade, I asked my parents for two books for Christmas, “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey”. I am sure even then there was a more modern version but they chose Dryden’s translation which was basically 17th century British. It took me a while, but I read them both even though I often had to resort to using the dictionary to learn all the words I had never seen before. My favorite then and now is “The Iliad”, the story of Achilles and the Trojan War. Since then, I have read more books than I can count about Achilles and the war, including this one and three recently by Pat Barker, which I wrote about on this blog.
David Malouf focuses on two characters, Achilles and Priam and one singular event, Priam’s decision to disguise himself as an ordinary person, hire an ordinary man with an ordinary cart, and go to the Greek camp and beg Achilles for Hector’s body. The only other main character in the book is the cart driver who likes to talk and share. From him Priam sees another view of life and experiences some new simple things, like cooling your feet in a stream, eating ordinary food. Priam suddenly realizes he has missed much of life’s meaning since, as king, he has been shielded from the lives of most people. The book includes Priam’s thoughts, those of the cart driver, and Achilles’. This is not an action thriller novel. It is the story of three people and their thoughts and reactions to this one event.
Although my son had been here a couple of times previously, he had never been up Mt. Baldy so we decided to drive a way I had never gone before, the Glendora Mountain Highway. It begins in the mountains above the town of Glendora, CA, and goes approximately 22 miles east where it intersects the highway going up Mt. Baldy at the Mt. Baldy Village. This road is not for the faint of heart. Although in good condition and well paved and two lanes wide, it is narrow and windy and without guard rails. Unfortunately, we did not stop and I was so busy driving, I could not see all the views. Unlike most of the highways and roads up toward the mountains all of which have views to the south, this highway crosses over to the other side so that many of views reveal all the rugged mountains to the north. I will attempt this adventure again, but not alone. For most of the trip we saw no other cars, and there is no cell phone reception up this way so best to have someone along with you if you decide to drive this.
After we intersected the main road, we drove to the top but the very top is blocked off so we turned around and parked to hike to Angel Falls. The following photos were taken on this hike. Most of it is paved, but the very last part up to the falls is steep and gravel and necessitates crossing the stream below the falls. We decided to hike farther up a gravel road that climbs up the mountain where the paved part stops. Angel Falls can be heard long before you can see it. This is a relatively easy hike. Even on a Monday, there were quite a few people headed to the Falls so if you do not want crowds, go on a weekday.
These are the first two books of his long career as a writer. Although the cover calls them novels, they are short and what I would call novellas. The most fascinating thing in this publication of the two novels together is his introduction which he wrote in 2014 and where he explains how he unexpectedly became a writer. He begins by explaining that most people in Japanese society follow a certain path–“graduate from school, then find work, then, after sometime has passed, get married.” He did not follow that path: he married, then found work, and finally graduated. He did not want to work for a company; the idea turned him off completely so he decided to open a business, a coffee shop where people could come, hangout, drink coffee, and listen to jazz. He and his wife did not have much money but did manage to put enough together and opened a small coffee shop in 1974. He brought his old piano from his parents’ house to the coffee shop and convinced young jazz musicians to play there for small amounts of money. Some went on to become famous musicians. He and his wife came across some money lying in the street and instead of turning it in to the police used it to pay debts. He spent his twenties running this shop, listening to the music there, making sandwiches, mixing cocktails, typical small restaurant stuff.
He also liked baseball and often went to see his favorite team which he admits was usually not very good and rarely won. Just when the team had a turn of events and seemed to be winning, he suddenly had this thought rush through his mind: “I think I can write a novel.” He claims he still can recall that exact moment and sensation. After the end of the game, he took the train to a store and bought a “sheaf of writing paper and a fountain pen.” Each night after he arrived home from the coffee shop, he went to work writing. It took him six months and a lot of work to write “Hear the Wind Sing”. He admits he had no clue how to write a novel, especially since his favorite novels were 19th century Russian novels and US detective stories. He struggled and almost gave up. He decided to try a new tactic and wrote it in English then translated it into Japanese. He says his English was very simple so that is how he wrote. He decided to submit it to a literary journal, not expecting much. He was shocked when he received a call that his novel had been short-listed for a new writers’ prize. This was a year after his attendance at the baseball game and he had just turned thirty. He had almost forgotten about even submitting the novel. An incident with an injured bird suddenly caused him to think that he was going to win the prize and go on to become a novelist. He wrote “Pinball, 1973” as a sequel. Shortly after, he decided to become a full-time writer and sold the business.
Reading this introduction enlightened me about some of his other works and certain repeating themes and especially settings. In all his novels I have read, music and coffee shops play a role. His novels have characters who know a lot about music; now I know how and why.
There is nothing like meeting a goal while enjoying it to bring a sense of delight as well as accomplishment. I walk daily–today I arrived at day 707 without ever missing a day–looking at the flowers, visiting with all the other walkers. I live in a walking neighborhood with friendly walkers who at a minimum wave. Some stop to chat and some check on me if they have not seen me out walking in a while because of the different routes we take or different times we walk. One particular person who checks on me taught me how to make some of her native food–India. Another lady several blocks away prefers to walk with others, not alone, so if she sees me out, we join together in the company of her little dog, June, whom I have never seen actually walking. June rides in a baby carriage.
Now, as I write this, I’m enjoying another late afternoon of delight in my backyard. The hibiscus is full of ruby flowers. Freeway daisies, bright white and purple, pop up everywhere. Four different colors of bougainvillea sport their joy. One nasturtium–they are popping in places I never even planted–is sporting the same color of ruby as the hibiscus. The lemon tree is full of almost ripe lemons some of which I have promised to friends and neighbors. One woman cannot eat all these lemons. Meanwhile, I listen to different birds singing their varied songs and to the gurgle of the water fountain by the Nile Blue French doors and watch the hummingbird who is watching me.
I feel grateful to be surrounded in beauty and quiet joy.
As I mentioned in a previous post, his books on delights were mentioned to me by two different people in two totally different settings so I decided to stay sane in all the seriousness of my life, reading something lighter might be a good thing to do. I guess I was thinking delights like flowers, food, etc. but this is more like a series of short essays about life all written in the span of one year–his gardening, experiences strolling around his neighborhood and favorite coffee shops, food, his parents, his wife, some personal history, his experience as a college professor, children. However, he also addresses serious issues–his meeting a homeless veteran just out from a stint in a mental facility and how he was compelled to help out after first driving off, racism he has experienced, his issues with the government and social media, family death, and life in general. And above all, what it means to him to identify as a poet.
As a person who works with high school students mostly non-white, many of whom have family members who are undocumented, I worry and need to find daily delights to stay sane. I decided to make a list of some of the past week’s delights:
-afternoons 70 degrees, sunny, no wind
-hummingbirds sipping nectar from both flowers and the two feeders
-singing a song the lyrics of which come from a poem by Langston Hughes where he dreams a world with no racism
-sitting on the back patio, listening to birdsong while I read a book about delights
-learning that all the rains have eliminated drought in California
-appreciating all the colors of the flowers blooming in my yard
writingontherim 