I still thought of myself as a man just passing through.

 A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul, first published in 1979

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary

A Bend in the River is a tale of displacement, where we follow Salim as he finds and loses himself in cycles as an expat in Central Africa. (To be clear, I'll continue to refer to this country he's in as central Africa, because he does not name it as a specific country, but references nearby countries like Uganda. In my head I imagined it loosely as taking place in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but that was just a placeholder in my mind.) Salim seems to be Indian by origin, but has long lived on our near the east coast of Africa, for reasons that were sort of unclear. Salim comes to a small town at a bend in the river in central Africa to take over the running of a small shop that used to belong to a family friend, Nazruddin. During the book, only about a year takes place, but the town transitions into a rebellion, a new governance structure, another rebellion, a takeover, and yet another leadership change, all reflections of the greater country's happenings. Salim has only a few friends, fellow expats Shoba and Mahesh, a couple, and later Yvette and Raymond. Most of the characters we interact with are not African by birth, with the exception of Zabeth, a female trader that Salim interacts with and sells to, and her son, Ferdinand, who attends the local school. Salim's former family servant, Metty, is sent to live with him, and they live together in a sort of wary and uneasy peace. When things get messy for maybe the third time, Salim tries moving to London and plans to marry Nazruddin's daughter, Kareisha, which has long been the plan, but he tires of the city and feels out of place so he returns to his town, only to find that it is not safe for him, so the final scene follows Salim as he departs secretly on a nighttime barge, floating down the river. 

Spoiler Over: Continue Here

My dear blobbists, 

  I know. I have been away for an extended period. Again. My excuse is that I keep getting caught up reading summer book bingo lists, like this one, and reading those 20+ books distracts me from reading my blob list. Also, I made the mistake of putting this book into the book bingo square "Read While Outside", and then I never wanted to be outside again because it was SO HOT and humid. So after reading this book in the car with the windows down by my gym, at a remote camping site on a farm that turned out to be rather overrun with mice, and at a beach where it was so windy I couldn't concentrate, I finally caved and let myself finish it in the comfort of the indoors. It'll be our little secret.

 Oh, and in case there are typos in this post, let it be known that I am down a finger temporarily. Suffice it to say that one should be very careful after replacing one's rotary cutter blade. Now off we go!

  I enjoyed this book, albeit sort of in the way one enjoys a long epic tone poem. It's beautifully written, and full of complex and thoughtful reflections on the world, but as far as plot goes, simultaneously a lot and very little takes place. The village goes through multiple rebellions, people are murdered and executed and affairs take place, but Salim also kind of floats noiselessly along through the ether, which gives everything a sort of surreal vibe. I have never been to any of the countries in Africa, so I have no reference to compare his reflections to, but it felt like a realistic outsider's portrayal to me. 

On time

I think this was the first book I've read where someone is not of a culture/country they're inhabiting, but also not trying to colonialize or take over the culture/country they're inhabiting, which is part of what makes this book feel special, I think. It's really a kind of observer's experience, but it doesn't pretend to be journalistic, or telling you the definitive truth. We just simply see the world as Salim does. Here's a line I loved that gets at this:

The ruins, spreading over so many acres, seemed to speak of a final catastrophe. But the civilization wasn't dead. It was the civilization I existed in and in fact was still working towards. And that could make for an odd feeling: to be among the ruins was to have your time-sense unsettled. You felt like a ghost, not from the past, but from the future. You felt that your life and ambition had already been lived out for you and you were looking at the relics of that life. You were in a place where the future had come and gone.

On rebellions and neutrality

While the content of the book is heavy, and at times, quite dark, there's a certain eloquence in how Salim sees it. Here are a few lines I think capture this well.

• The second rebellion: Having destroyed their town, they had grieved for it. They had wished to see it a living place again. And seeing it come to a kind of life again, they had grown afraid once more.

• In post-colonial Africa everybody could get guns; every tribe could be a warrior tribe.

• The rage of the rebels was like a rage against metal, machinery, wires, everything that was not of the forest and Africa.

• No, in this war, I was neutral. I was frightened of both sides.

• In the beginning, before the arrival of the white men, I had considered myself neutral. I had wanted neither side to win, neither the army nor the rebels. As it turned out, both sides lost.

On dancing 

Salim kind of falls under the spell of Yvette and Raymond, who have close ties to the then-President of the country, and I loved this scene where Salim goes to a dinner party at their house: I had never been in a room where men and women danced for mutual pleasure, and out of pleasure in one another's company.

It made me wonder if he had been in other kinds of dancing rooms, and what those rooms would have looked like. 

On fluidity

There are many reasons why I can't imagine myself stepping into Salim's shoes, but this description of life is one of the big ones:

But in the town, where all was arbitrary and the law was what it was, all our lives were fluid. We none of us had certainties of any kind. Without always knowing what we were doing, we were constantly adjusting to the arbitrariness by which we where surrounded. In the end we couldn't say where we stood.

On travelling to London

I loved hearing Salim's reflections in London, in part because he feels as out of place, or perhaps more out of place, than he did at the small town in the bend of the river. 

I woke up in London with little bits of Africa on me - like the airport tax ticket, given by an official I knew, in the middle of another crowd, in another kind of building, in another climate. Both places were real; both places were unreal.

Indar had said about people like me that when we came to a great city we closed our eyes; we were concerned only to show that we were not amazed. I love this line.

On seizing opportunities to see beauty

Salim is often reflecting during one period what he will do in another: During the days of the rebellion I had had the sharpest sense of the beauty of the river and the forest, and had promised myself that when the peace came I would expose myself to it, learn it, possess that beauty. I had done nothing of the sort; when the peace came I had simply stopped looking about me. And now I felt that the mystery and the magic of the place had gone. How true is this for you, reader? Do you make promises to see something for all that it is in one moment, but when you have the chance, forget your promise? I know I do.

Lines I Liked

I pulled these lines out at random, but now that I see them in a stream, they make a kind of digested chronology, which I like.

• But this is madness. I am going in the wrong direction. There can't be a new life at the end of this.

• We felt in our bones that we were a very old people; but we seemed to have no means of gauging the passing of time.

• All I could do was to hide from the truth.

• I couldn't protect anyone. No one could protect me.

• I could be master of my fate only if I stood alone.

• What you must always know is when to get out.

• When you get away from the chiefs and the politicians there is a simple democracy about Africa: everyone is a villager.

• Africa was big. The bush muffled the sound of murder, and the muddy rivers and lakes washed the blood away.

• The bush runs itself.

Referents and Reverberations

This book reminded me of Everfair, a sort of steampunk reimagining of the origin story of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 

Also one line in particular when Yvette first asks Salim out reminded me of Gatsby - And at the door of the Tivoli, before we went out again into the heat and the light, during that moment of pause we make before we finally go out into the rain, she said to me, as though it were an afterthought, 'Would you like to come to lunch at the house tomorrow?'

I'll leave you with a few lines that resonated with me: 

• I felt burdened by the bareness of my days. I feel this acutely right now. Something's missing, and I'm still trying to figure out what.

• Who wanted philosophy or faith for the good times? We could all cope with the good times. It was for the bad that we had to be equipped. #facts

• I knew that I had travelled far, and I wondered how I had had the courage to live for so long in a place so far away. I've felt this when I lived in NH, and in France. 

• All that had happened in the past was washed away; there was always only the present. It was as though, as a result of some disturbance in the heavens, the early morning light was always receding into the darkness, and men lived in a perpetual dawn. 

I'm off to tackle The Magic Mountain on a scholarly cruise through the Adriatic! I know (gasp!) exciting stuff! Keep each other safe while I'm gone! Keep faith (for the good and the bad times). Good night!

Is it a crime to try and look my best when you come here?

 Vanity Fair (A Novel Without a Hero) by William Makepeace Thackeray

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary

Vanity Fair follows the path of two young ladies in early 19th century British society, Amelia Sedley and Becky Sharp. When we first meet them, they are just being released from 'finishing' school, and Amelia is beloved and Becky delighted to be rid of the place. Becky's parentage is less than desirable for high society (her mother may have been an Opera singer! gasp!) while Amelia's future is all but settled with a young gentleman of excellent parentage, George Osborne. Also in the cast of characters are William (Dob) Dobbin, a good friend of George's from their school days, Joseph Sedley, Amelia's portly brother who is in and out of India being a busy colonizer and whatnot, and Rawdon Crawley, the nephew of a wealthy gentlewoman, Miss Crawley. 

I won't divulge all the dirty details here, as they're far too numerous to share (it was originally published in something like 19 periodical installments) and I don't want to give everything away. But suffice it to say, there are any number of ups and downs, and the fortunes of our two main 'non-heroine' heroines swap places more than once. Marriages take place, children are born (rather silly little boys in this case), and some people (!) die. Most everyone runs out of money at some point, and we have a grand time following the machinations of the inhabitants of Vanity Fair. 

Spoiler Over: Continue Here

Greetings, blob fans! 

  Once again, it has been a long time since I have blobbed. My only excuses are that (1) this is a very long book and (2) I have been slow-walking reaching the end of my second list. I may very well just end up making a new list (lucky YOU!), but until then, I am taking care not to 'blob in a rush'. :)

I had never read Vanity Fair before, and I certainly enjoyed the wit of the narrator. The characters weren't terrible lovable (see subtitle above re: novel sans hero) so that made it a little hard for me to keep motivating myself to come back. I think I would much prefer to have been in 19th century society, reading the book as its installments were released, minus the overt racism and mistreatment of Black people. On to my thoughts!

What or where is Vanity Fair?

I thought Vanity Fair was an idea at first, like "oh you vain Vanity Fair!" but it turns out it is a term that, according to Wikipedia: "originally meant “a place or scene of ostentation or empty, idle amusement and frivolity”—a reference to the decadent fair in John Bunyan's 1678 book, The Pilgrim's Progress." With that in mind, this line makes much more sense. 

• Vanity Fair is a very vain, wicked, foolish place, full of all sorts of humbugs and falsenesses and pretensions. 

I found this line equally cutting, when people would come and go from the story: 

• Who is ever missed in Vanity Fair?

I wanna get serial. serial. 

Also according to the interwebs: It (Vanity Fair) was first published as a 19-volume monthly serial from 1847 to 1848, carrying the subtitle Pen and Pencil Sketches of English Society. Can I politely request that we bring this fad back? I loved reading the HPs as they were released (Rowling TERF-iness notwithstanding) and would be super down to have some chapters drop the way they drop new episodes of Love is Blind. (#noregrets #lovethatshow)

Now I would like to give you some snapshots of each of the characters, starting with our non-heroine heroine, Becky Sharp. 

Becky Sharp

• Nobody cried for leaving her. Lol. RUDE, but also turns out to be quite true. 

• Becky: Revenge may be wicked, but it's natural. I'm no angel. 

• If Mr. Joseph Sedley is rich and unmarried, why should I not marry him? I have only a fortnight, to be sure, but there is no harm in trying.

• On the Napoleonic advance into Belgium: If the worst comes to the worst, my retreat is secure, and I have a right-hand seat in the barouche.

• I have passed beyond it because I have brains, and almost all the rest of the world are fools.

• When attacked sometimes, Becky had a knack of adopting a demure ingénue air, under which she was most dangerous.

• To her husband Rawdon - I have your interests to attend to, as you can't attend to them yourself. I should like to know where you would have been now, and in what sort of a position in society, if I had not looked after you?

• William Dobbin, on Becky - She brings mischief wherever she goes.

That gives you a pretty good picture, methinks. She's a bit of a rascal, and occasionally we sympathize with her, but not terribly often. Let's pivot to her girlhood companion, Amelia.

Amelia Sedley

• Amelia was overpowered by the flash and dazzle and the fashionable talk of her worldly rival. Jee, can you guess who that might be? ;)

• Why did you come between my love and me? To Becky, when it turns out she was flirting HARD with George before he (spoiler!) died in the war.

• Almost all men who came near her loved her; though no doubt they would be at a loss to tell you why. She was not brilliant, nor witty, nor wise overmuch, nor extraordinarily handsome. But wherever she went she touched and charmed every one of the male sex, as invariably as she awakened the scorn and incredulity of her own sisterhood.

So yes, that's Amelia. Eminently.... forgettable. #sorrynotsorry

Here's her hubby: 

George Osborne

• George had an air at once swaggering and melancholy, languid and fierce. He looked like a man who had passions, secrets, and private harrowing griefs and adventures. His voice was rich and deep.

• I can't change my habits. I must have my comforts. I  wasn't brought up on porridge, like MacWhirter, or on potatoes, like old O'Dowd. LOL. I loved this line, when he realizes he will not be super-wealthy if he ends up going forward with his marriage to Amelia. He wasn't brought up on porridge, MMKAY?

• How unworthy he was of her. in reference to Amelia; you can say that again.

Captain Dobbin

• He was so honest, that her arts and cajoleries did not affect him, and he shrank from her with instinctive repulsion.

• She would not see that he loved her. Oh, by the by, Dob is rather hopelessly in love with Amelia. I won't tell you if they end up together or not, but Dob is probably the closest we have to a likable character.

Joseph Sedley

• Warriors may fight and perish, but he must dine.

LOL. #enoughsaid

Rawdon Crawley (jr)

• I dine in the kitchen when I am at home. Oh yes, the unlovable Rebecca Sharp has a baby and proceeds to scorn it for the entirety of his life. He is surprised when he's given the option to dine at the table when they visit relatives, because, as he says, at home he is to dine in the kitchen. Poor dear!

Rawdon Crawley (sr)

• On Becky: He thought with a feeling very like pain how immeasurably she was his superior.

• He did not know how fond he was of the child until it became necessary to let him go away. At least Rawdon jr. gets one parent who loves him!

19th century zingers

The narrator was by far my favorite character. Here are some of (in my opinion) his best lines: 

• In music, in dancing, in orthography, in every variety of embroidery and needlework, she will be found to have realized her friends' fondest wishes. In geography there is still much to be desired. loololololololz

• I know that the tune I am piping is a very mild one (although there are some terrific chapters coming presently)

• It was the author's intention, faithful to history, to depict all the characters of this tale in their proper costumes, as they wore them at the commencement of the century. But when I remember the appearance of people in those days, I have not the the heart to disfigure my heroes and heroines by costumes so hideous; and have, on the contrary, engaged a model of rank dressed according to the present fashion. hagh!

• We must now take leave of Arcadia, and those amiable people practicing the rural virtues there, and travel back to London, to inquire what has become of Miss Amelia. 'We don't care a fig for her', writes some unknown correspondent with a pretty little handwriting and a pink seal to her note. 'She is fade and insipid.' haghaghaghaghaghaghaghaghaghagh

• Every reader of a sentimental turn (and we desire no other) so great. so spicy.

On actual red tape

Okay, so I already knew that our current term 'cutting through red tape' was a reference to actual red tape that had to be cut through, not just metaphorical bureaucracy, but it was still fun to read it here!

The old gentleman's eyes were wandering as he spoke, and he was thinking of something else, as he sat thrumming on his papers and fumbling at the worn red tape.

On recommending a governess, should you require one

 This description was fantastic, and also, can we please talk about how women (white women) were expected to know like a bazillion things but also had essentially no power or professions, outside of being a governess or a wife? Like yes, honey, please do the dishes, and also, before you do that, just tutor our son in constitutional law, mmkay?

Either of these young ladies is perfectly qualified to instruct in Greek, Latin, and the rudiments of Hebrew; in mathematics and history; in Spanish, French, Italian, and geography; in music, vocal and instrumental; in dancing, without the aid of a master; and in the elements of natural sciences. In the use of the globes both are proficients. In addition to these, Miss Tuffin, who is daughter of the late Reverend Thomas Tuffin (Fellow of Corpus College, Cambridge), can instruct in the Syriac language, and the elements of constitutional law. But as she is only eighteen years of age, and of exceedingly pleasing personal appearance, perhaps this young lady may be objectionable in Sir Huddleston Fuddleston's family. 

 Miss Letitia Hawky, on the other hand, is not personally well-favored. She is twenty-nine; her face is much pitted with the small pox. She has a halt in her gait, red hair, and a trifling obliquity of vision.  OH YES, we'd much prefer the ill-favored Miss Hawky, lest anyone get too excited by Miss Tuffin!

Predicting snapchat

There ought to be a law in Vanity Fair ordering the destruction of every written document after a certain brief and proper interval... The best ink for Vanity Fair use would be one that faded utterly in a couple of days, and left the paper clean and blank, so that you might write on it to somebody else. So basically Thackeray predicted snapchat. ;)

On debt

• Everybody in Vanity Fair must have remarked how well those live who are comfortably and thoroughly in debt; how they deny themselves nothing; how jolly and easy they are in their minds. Rawdon and Becky are continuously in debt, and aside from a brief stint in debtor's prison for Rawdon (from which Becky does not rush to save him, I am sad to say) they are largely unscathed by it. There's even a chapter amusing titled "How to live well on nothing a year". It reminded me of the parties in debtor's prison in several Dickens novels. 

Referents and Reverberations

Gretna Green - Becky and Rawdon run off to Gretna Green for their secret marriage, and I have to think it was something of a 19th century Las Vegas, since it comes up often in Austen novels when people are running off to be married on the double. 

Sackville-Bagginses - the ongoing feud between the various Crawleys and Pitt-Crawleys and this line in particular: "what the deuce can she find in that spooney of a Pitt Crawley?" for some reason put me in mind of the Sackville-Baggins clan at the end of the Lord of the Rings.

Spinster women - this passage about Jane Osborne, George's unmarried sister, reminded me of several sections of The Good Earth where the woman of the house cared for and tended to every last need of the men of the house. 

She had to get up of black winter's mornings to make breakfast for her scowling old father, who would have turned the whole house out of doors if his tea had not been ready at half-past eight. She remained silent opposite to him, listening to the urn hissing, and sitting in tremor while the parent read his paper and consumed his accustomed portion of muffins and tea.

But surely they were not thinking you would give them money? This line made me think of the introduction to Sense and Sensibility, when the brother and his wife continuously negotiate downward the amount of support they will give to the Dashwood women. 

Pitt Crawley thought he would do something for his brother, and then he thought he would think about it some other time

Words that were new to me:

amanuensis - a literary or artistic assistant, in particular one who takes dictation or copies manuscripts

lazzaroni - one of the homeless idlers of Naples who live by chance work or begging.

nabob - a Muslim official or governor under the Mogul empire; a person who returned from India to Europe with a fortune.

rack-punch - a mixed alcoholic punch made with a black liquor called arrack, a form of rum produced in Asia, distilled from the sap of palm trees. (this is a bit of a guess, but it does seem fit the picture with Joseph having returned from India recently)

Semiramis - Semiramis was the mythological Lydian-Babylonian wife of Onnes and Ninus, who succeeded the latter to the throne of Assyria, as in the fables of Movses Khorenatsi

stanhope - a light open horse-drawn carriage for one person, with two or four wheels.

vilipending - regarding as worthless or of little value; speaking slightingly or abusively of

wherry - a large light barge

Phrases we should start saying (pretty pretty please?)

• Are you in your senses?

• Mofy! Is that your snum? I'll gully the dag and bimbole the clicky in a snuffkin. 

• Nuffle your clod, and beladle your glumbanions. (I am particularly fond of this one.)

• No candles after 11 o'clock, Miss Becky - Go to bed in the dark, you pretty little hussy!

• My rascals are no milk-and-water rascals, I promise you.

• A tempest in a slop-basin is absurd. (the MOST absurd!)

Lines I liked:

• The world is a looking-glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.

• Are not there little chapters in everybody's life, that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of the history? 

• We will reserve that sort of thing for the mighty ocean and the lonely midnight.

• Who has not seen a woman hide the dullness of a stupid husband, or coax the fury of a savage one?

• To how many people can one tell all?

Well, blob friends, it has been a pleasure! I'll leave you with a few of my favorite lines: 

And as we bring our characters forward, I will ask leave, as a man and a brother, not only to introduce them, but occasionally to step down from the platform, and talk about them: if they are good and kindly, to love them and shake them by the hand; if they are silly, to laugh at them confidentially in the reader's sleeve; if they are wicked and heartless, to abuse them in the strongest terms which politeness admits of. 

Miss Crawley, on hearing that Becky has run off to Gretna Green in the night: Gracious goodness, and who's to make my chocolate? Send for her and have her back; I desire that she come back.  Honestly, who will make my chocolate?!  

Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied? -come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out.

This play is all played out, so we're off to the mighty ocean and the lonely midnight. Don't forget to nuffle your clod, and beladle your glumbanions! And no candles after 11 o'clock, you hear! 

I'm off to the Bend in the River. Keep safe, keep faith, good night!

Ah, I have heard of a Revolution, but I have been too busy in my life to attend to it. There was always the land.

 The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary

The Good Earth chronicles the life of a peasant farmer, Wang Lung, in rural China in the early 1900s. When we first encounter him, he is living with his father on a small plot of land, and has just decided to 'take a wife'. He goes and gets a slave from the House of Hwang, a well-to-do house in town, and takes her home to be his wife. Her name is O-lan. We follow the pair through decades together, with Wang Lung continually focused on getting more land and doing what is necessary to feed his growing family. O-lan bears him several children, and after a stint in the south when they must beg for food for weeks, they get a windfall from looting during an uprising, and return to the north and buy more land. 

Wang Lung continues to expand his land and becomes a wealthy man, and his wealth attracts others to him, including an unwanted uncle and his family. Wang Lung can't get rid of the leeching uncle because it turns out he works with the Redbeards, a clan of looters/raiders, and has been secretly protecting Wang Lung, so Wang Lung decides to turn the uncle and his family onto opium use. Wang Lung becomes dissatisfied with O-lan and buys a concubine, Lotus, from a teahouse in town, and moves her into his estate. O-lan eventually falls ill and Wang Lung feels guilty, caring for her until she dies. His children are continually dissatisfied with what he provides them, and make plans to sell his land when he dies, much to his chagrin. The final scene ends with Wang Lung begging them not to sell the land, and them promising they won't, but smiling behind his back.

Spoiler Over: Continue Here

HOKAY, blobbists, it has been a minute. I will freely admit that in my attempt to make a more inclusive second list, I included more women, but I realize that this did not account for the issue of people writing stories that aren't their own, so I ended up with books like this, which were groundbreaking at the time, but also problematic. 

So. I read the book anyway, because I want to make relationships with all books that are my own, not founded on anyone else's opinion, and I will share some interesting reflections that I came across in the 'reader's excerpt' in the middle. 

In case it was not obvious to you/you did not know, Pearl S. Buck was a white lady from America, born to missionary parents, who was raised largely in China. Some people thought that it was super swell that she told the world all about agrarian life in China, but lots of other people were like, hey, lady - that's not your story! And also, that's not all of China! (This is a DRAMATIC oversimplification, I am aware.) Here are some interesting niblets I found in my copy that I found enlightening (and which I read, true to my form, after reading the book, as I didn't want to be influenced by context). 

From a NY Times Book Review, from Professor Kiang Kang-Hu, of China

Her portrait of China may be quite faithful from her own point of view, but she certainly paints China with a half-black and half-white face, and the official button is missing! Furthermore, she seems to enjoy more depicting certain peculiarities and even defects than presenting ordinary human figures, each in its proper proportions. She capitalizes such points, intensifies them, and sometimes 'dumps' too many and too much of their kind on one person, making that person almost impossible in real life. In this respect Mrs. Buck is more of a caricature cartoonist than a portrait painter. 

As long as a Western cannot himself or herself read Chinese texts and, as long as he or she depends chiefly on Chinese coolies and amahs as the source of information and as first-hand translators, there is little hope left for him or her to really understand and truly interpret China, even though he or she be born and live always in China.

 This felt really apt after reading the story - it was like reading Uncle Tom's Cabin, in that the characters had movement and feeling, but they were also caricatures of human beings, in a way that had deeply harmful potential for stereotyping and ongoing ignorance of a broader range of experience. I also want to point out that he uses some derogatory terms that aren't OK in today's parlance (coolie), so he's got some classism going on there as well. Here's Ms. Buck's response to this way of thinking, from a speech she gave: 

One of the isolating factors of my own experience has been that some of the morbidly sensitive modern Chinese, especially those abroad in foreign countries, have not liked it that I have written of the everyday life of their people. In China itself it was accepted without dislike except that it was a foreigner who wrote it. It was often said there, 'It is a book which a Chinese should have written.' Apparently with the simplest purpose in the world, namely, merely to write novels, surely a harmless necessity for a novelist, and without any sense of wrongdoing, I was able to infuriate an astonishingly large number of people. 

This statement was CRINGEWORTHY for me to read as a white woman in the 21st century. She's basically saying, hey, I was just writing a book, and I had totally good intentions, so that's enough, right? I can understand that living in China for so much of her life made it it a rife subject for her fiction writing, but my main concern (of many concerns, tbqh) is that she is nowhere to be found in this book, and it's a work of fiction that was clearly taken as nonfiction/a study or portrait of life in China. 

Now I don't think you have to base all fiction in yourself because that's nonsense, but I do feel like she sort of sat across the room from her experience in China and wrote about what she saw on the wall in the way that a photographer does, which means that she could only see things through her Westerner, missionary lens. It feels like Buck really failed to capture nuance, and when she should have drawn in pencil, she used a Sharpie. And of course, because of the way our society works and because of racism and imperialism and oppression, she got a Nobel prize for doing it. Because when you feed into the system of oppression you get a cookie. I also just feel like she missed this amazing opportunity to take a risk and really tackle her OWN subject material; what was her experience like straddling these worlds? How did she create her own identity? 

Anyway, I will now respond to the book itself, with the disclaimer that I am responding to the book as a work of fiction, not as a representation of Chinese life. I have also walked away from this experience realizing that I must add Chinese fiction authors to my list, as I am woefully lacking in this area. Understandably I will have to read translations, but there's still a WIDE world to discover.

It starts with a Proust quote...

So Ms. Buck started off with a Proust quote. And you all know I love me some Proust. But I just didn't really understand why it was there, or what it had to do with the novel At. All. It was a quote about the little phrase, for the Proustians out there, and I just couldn't for the life of me see what it had to do with Wang Lung's experience or life. If you're going to use a quote (and especially a Proust quote) make it connect!

Casual misogyny

Again, this is a response to the representation in the novel, not Chinese life writ large. 

It was hard to read this book, as generally in this narrative, woman = slave. O-lan is literally a slave who is sold to Wang Lung, and repeatedly throughout the book, women are property, not people, but they are also expected to be superhuman. I suppose in some way Ms. Buck was trying to highlight this contradiction, but it still ended up reading as cringeworthy to me.

Here are some examples of this misogyny/where woman also = badass. Note, I'm using 'the woman' for effect, not to de-humanize her.

• When the woman (O-lan) stops in the middle of her labor to prepare Wang Lung dinner.

• When the woman (O-lan) works beside her husband in the fields and also keeps the house and home, throughout the duration of her many pregnancies.

• When the woman (O-lan) kills their ox to feed their family because Wang Lung can't bring himself to do it.

• When the woman (O-lan) bears him child after child after child, despite being starving herself.

• When the woman (Wang Lung's daughter) does not weep, though she is in pain from foot binding:

'Now I have not heard you weep,' he said wondering. 

'No,' she said simply, 'and my mother said I was not to weep aloud because you are too kind and weak for pain and you might say to leave me as I am, and then my husband would not love me even as you do not love her.'

When O-lan has been sick for months and he doesn't see it

Poor O-lan, who is the REAL protagonist of this story, gets sick and increasingly sicker and basically no one (including Wang Lung) notices. Here's his response to himself:

'Well, and it is not my fault if I have not loved her as one loves a concubine, since men do not.' And to himself he said for comfort, 'I have not beat her and I have given her silver when she asked for it.'

Oh yes, Wang Lung, that's such a high bar. Not beating her and giving her silver when she asks. This is one of those Sharpie examples - how many foreigners walked away from this novel assuming that most Chinese peasants beat their wives? We're clearly meant to believe that Wang Lung is unique in this regard. 

The land

For Wang Lung, everything comes back to the land, and I have to say that this is a place that really touched me. I know that land ownership is complex given that much of the land currently occupied was taken from other peoples. There is, however, something so pure and affirming about having a plot of land to farm and create the food you need to survive. This part of Wang Lung was something I loved and connected with, but it felt like no amount of land was ever enough, which I guess was his fatal flaw. The book is full of lines like, "We must get back to the land." and "As long as there was the land!" 

When O-lan wants to keep the pearls

O-lan finds a stash of jewels in the looting post-uprising, and while she gives them over to Wang Lung, she asks if she can keep a pair of pearls. When he asks her what she would do with them, she says, simply: 

I could hold them in my hand sometimes. This line killed me. Wang Lung (being the asshole that he is) later takes the pearls from her to spend on his concubine, I think.

No food to eat vs. no food

This was a fascinating realization/heartbreaking understanding to reckon with that came up in this book. Wang Lung and his family have to leave their land and go south to beg for food at one point, because there is simply no food to be had in the country in the north. I guess I don't spend a lot of time thinking about the different ways one can be food insecure, and as a westerner in a very wealthy country who lives in a city, I'm used to the idea that food of some kind exists somewhere. But at several points, Wang Lung and his family are starving, or trying to make dirt or a few beans stretch for days of sustenance, because there is simply no other food to be had. Here's a line that I thought captured this eloquently:

Wang Lung and his family had come from a country where if men starve it is because there is no food, since the land cannot bear under a relentless heaven. Silver in the hand was worth little because it could buy nothing where nothing was. 

The place where a mother used to be

So like I said, O-lan was the real hero of this novel, and it unfortunately takes her being on her deathbed for the rest of the family to realize it. I was also reading 'Crying in H Mart' while I read this book, and it was a beautiful counterpoint, as it deals with a daughter's grief and attempting to fill the space her mother did. I know I would be LOST without my own mother, and I'm so grateful for all the times she has made comfort and continues to make comfort for me and my sisters. Love you, mom!

All through the long months of winter she lay dying and upon her bed, and for the first time Wang Lung and his children knew what she had been in the house, and how she had made comfort for them all and they had not known it.

Words New to Me

geomancer -  a method of divination that interprets markings on the ground or the patterns formed by tossed handfuls of soil, rocks, or sand.

Lines I Liked

• A small soft wind blew gently from the east, a wind mild and murmurous and full of rain. God, I loved this line. This was probably my favorite line in the whole book.

• Hunger makes thief of any man.

• Wang Lung was afraid of his happiness.

• Everything seemed not so good to him as it was before.

Well, blobbists, I'm off to read Vanity Fair, and add more Chinese authors to my ongoing list. Feel free to shoot me recommendations! 

I'll leave you with this tidbit, which is a note from Ms. Buck which I quite liked. 

I am always glad when any of my books can be put into an inexpensive edition, because I like to think that any people who might wish to read them can do so. Surely books ought to be within the reach of everybody.

On this, Pearl, we can agree! Books should be within the reach of everybody! Happy holidays blobbists, whatever you are celebrating, and I'll see you in the new year! Keep safe, and keep faith!