Monkey Hunting

Cristina Garcia's lovely Monkey Hunting tells the story of a Chinese family divided between Cuba and China, the US and Vietnam, in a way no academic text ever could capture. Garcia's fictional account of Chen Pan's family across multiple generations provides a humanising portrait to the rather dry historical accounts of Chinese indentured labor. Intriguingly, Garcia's tale extends this family saga into one of multiple diasporas, connecting Vietnam, rural China, Shanghai, New York, and Havana (as well as Africa, through Chen Pan's Afro-Cuban wife, Lucrecia, and the role of Afro-Cuban spirituality and music). Home and family are, as seen through the contours of this complex family's trials and tribulations, fluid and encompassing in ways that are both illuminating and moving. Chen Pan and his descendants are never free from his shadow, and neither is he ever a distant figure in the lives of his progeny. 

Impressively, Garcia manages to fuse Chinese folklore, literary references, and religion into the Afro-Cuban spiritual worldview quite well, attesting to the importance of Chinese immigrants in Cuban history, culture, and family bloodlines. The political and racial questions are never absent, whether dealing with the 1912 race war in Cuba, discrimination against people of color in New York and troops serving in Vietnam, or the role of the state and politics in sowing division. As one may suspect from Garcia's politics, she is no fan of Castro, and even more critical of Mao and the Cultural Revolution (the life of Cheng Fang, imprisoned for alleged capitalist values), albeit avoiding the capitalism versus communism debates for a more humanistic approach on the ways in which modernity and tradition enclose our worlds.

Polka Dots and Moonbeams

Chet Baker's solely instrumental recordings are growing on me again. Sure, he's not a Miles Davis, but the world would be a very boring place if we all sounded the same.

Our Friends From Frolix 8

"Good God, he thought. What am I thinking? Nobody's risen from the dead in 2100 years; they're not going to start to now." 

Dick's Our Friends From Frolix 8 immediately brings to mind Lies, Inc. and Three Stigmata but somewhere in between those two novels in quality. This one, a sort of combination of Nietzsche, 1984 and Dick's interest in Christianity and theology more broadly, succeeds far more convincingly than Lies. The alien, Morgo, ontologically changes and absorbs matter, aiding Thors Provini, the 'Christ-like' figure in the novel, in defeating the New Men and Unusuals who rule Earth. Nick Appleton, the common man or everyday person type of character, ubiquitous in Dick's novels, experiences this revolutionary period in which the dictatorship of the Unusuals and New Men is threatened. Drugs and marital strife are also present, as one would expect. Despite the oppressive totalitarian society created by the New Men and their telepathic or precog Unusual allies (an alliance that is beginning to fall apart), Appleton's moral position at the novel's conclusion is beautiful, powerful, and, in accordance with some of Dick's more overtly Christian work, defends emotional and ethical intelligence, not intellectual superiority.

Moses Migrating

Sam Selvon's hilarious Moses Migrating, the last of the trilogy that began with Lonely Londoners, takes us back to Moses's roots in Trinidad. The comparison here is to Naipaul's The Mimic Men, in which a man from an island modeled on Trinidad, is similarly trapped between "homes" and mimicry. Here, however, Selvon playfully uses Carnival and mas as an extension of the critique of mimicry among West Indians. Moses, so obsessed with defending Brit'n, even in the face of racist immigration laws and Enoch Powell, plays Britannia for Carnival. Along the way, we learn more about the origins of Moses and Bob, his former white Friday from Moses Ascending, who may have more in common with Moses than he ever knew. Through the metaphor of playing mas, Lovelace's The Dragon Can't Dance is also an important Trinidadian reference, albeit one in which the Indo-Caribbean population of the island is more than just background to the plot, as we see in Moses Migrating. 

As one may expect in a novel based on dislocation and Carnival, up is down, white is black, and a changing Trinidad, appearing different to locals and tourists, reveal the problematic space in which people like Moses can inhabit, trapped as he is between colonial deference to the Mother Country and a world in constant movement, particularly the rise of Black Power, his own aging, and rootlessness. He barely recognizes Trinidad, had rarely left Port of Spain, thinks he is in love with a younger woman living with the same Tanty who raised him, but never finds the room for authenticity or honesty. Even his relationship with Galahad, a friend from the Lonely Londoner days, is not an authentic friendship as each lies or distrusts the other. Yet, with his characteristic wit, Selvon's balanced use of humor and satire allow for entertaining reading, despite the disappointing and pathetic end. In that sense, Moses could perhaps accompany the Indo-Caribbean narrator of The Mimic Men, Ralph Singh, in that London hotel with fellow transients. As Doris reminds him, his entire life is playing mas.

Brighton Rock

Although Brighton Rock is centered on a teenage gangster in the seaside town of Brighton, thematically this novel fits in quite well with Greene's Catholic novels. Rose, in particular, her ability to stand by and love a man committed to damnation regardless of tragic consequences, stood out to the reader as one of Greene's more memorable characters. Ida, as a socially 'free' women driven by Right and Wrong rather than good and evil (the framework of Rose), is a remarkable character in her sexual freedom and autonomy. The contrast between Right and Wrong versus good and evil also demonstrates the murkiness of ethics in a modern society in which religion does not dictate law. Thus, in her own way, Rose's belief in love and fidelity to Pinkie is arguably 'good' even if the actions of the characters are Wrong. Similarly, Ida's pursuit of what's Right, removed from a Catholic ethics, ignores a larger purpose or calling. These opposing conceptions illustrate part of the conflict between Ida and Rose, who though young and naive in her own way, nonetheless clings to her 'Roman' predilection for damnation and heaven. And the suggestion of a Catholic hope for all, despite it all, figures prominently here as in Greene's best Catholic novels, in spite of the ultimate tragedy that awaits Rose.  

You've Got To Have Freedom

Haven't listened to this Pharoah Sanders classic for several years. A nice tribute that made me smile. 

Favorite Reads of 2016

1. Howards End
Sometimes the classics are required reading for a reason. Although I only knew Forster for his science fiction short story before tackling this novel, I highly recommend it for its sophisticated portrait of English social relations.

2. A Morning at the Office (Mittelholzer)
Mittelholzer's realist novel accomplishes for Trinidad's social system what Forster did for England.

3. The End of the Affair
Graham Greene resonates with me like few writers. Greene's tale of love and loss is profoundly moving and drew on the author's own affair with a married woman.

4. Neuromancer
Science fiction with literary ambition by one of the genre's great writers. Although the Rastafarians used in the novel's heist were criticized by some, Gibson's vision of the future is horrifyingly accurate in some ways.

5. Billie Holiday: The Musician and the Myth
A serious book on Billie Holiday by one of the greats in jazz writing. Although more of a musical biography rather than a narrative of her life, Szwed takes Holiday's singing seriously as music and art. Published in honor of the centennial of her birth, too.

6. 4 Lives in the Bebop Business (Spellman)
A classic in jazz. Spellman's chapters on Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman should be required for anyone wishing to learn more about the social milieu in which avant-garde jazz developed in the 1960s.

7. Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (PKD)
A totalitarian society envisioned by Philip K. Dick in the 1970s. Hints of his later Christian and religious themes are present, but it's also perhaps his best novel of the 1970s.

8. The Heart of the Matter
Perhaps my favorite Graham Greene novel, this World War II tale of love and guilt takes place in Sierra Leone.

9. The Left Hand of Darkness
Science fiction classic for anyone interested in gender.  You can tell LeGuin’s father was an anthropologist...

10. The Quiet American
The one in which Graham Greene predicted the Vietnam War.

11. The Power and the Glory
Possibly Graham Greene's most beautiful work, this tale of a fallen priest in Mexico almost made me want to return to the Catholic Church. Almost...

12. Camp Concentration
Disch was one of the more literary practitioners of science fiction and this classic tale is both harrowing and suspenseful.

13. The Transmigration of Timothy Archer
In terms of its prose, this is by far Philip K. Dick's best novel and his only work with a fully developed woman protagonist.

14. Middle Passage (VS Naipaul)
Although much of Naipaul's rants and screeds about the 'Third World' are misleading or dishonest, I find his first travel book, commissioned by Eric Williams, to be his best since it describes his 'native' region, the West Indies.

15. The Lathe of Heaven
LeGuin's most phildickian novel. Highly recommend the first film adaptation, too.

16. Black No More (George Schuyler)
For fans of satire and the Harlem Renaissance. Schuyler is a personal hero of mine.

17. An Island Is A World (Selvon)
An early masterpiece from Sam Selvon. Very autobiographical and true to its title.

18. My Bones and My Flute (Mittelholzer)
Ghost story that is suspenseful, engaging, and frightening by one of the best writers to ever come out of Guyana.

19. Letters Between a Father and Son (Naipaul)
Intensely personal correspondence between Naipaul and his father and Naipaul and his sister, Kamla. Reading these letters will soften any criticism of Naipaul as a writer or person.

20. Dr. Futurity (PKD)
Time travel, colonialism, mixed-race people, and more from this adventurous and fun PKD novel.