Try The Geography of Bliss For Your Next Bookation

With summer practically over, and many of us lamenting the vacation that we didn’t take, Eric Weiner offers the next best thing: a bookation!  That’s a made-up word, of course, but it refers be any book that so thoroughly transports the reader it’s like going on a trip without ever leaving the comforts of your reading space.  And The Geography of Bliss: One grump’s search for happiness is one of the most enjoyable bookations we’ve been on in awhile.

There are million of books in the world that profess how to be happy, but Weiner gives us something we can really use by showing us where to be happy.  Admittedly, the study and search of happiness is a little like a hunting Sasquatch or unicorns, but more and more people with really big brains, and even governments, are dedicating an increasing amount of time and resources to this emerging field.  And (spoiler alert!), while anyone looking for an “x marks the spot” guide to happiness will probably not find it, what you will find is a clever, entertaining and thought-provoking examination of people and cultures around the world and a pretty respectable attempt at isolating the keys to happiness. 

Wiener, a long-time foreign correspondent for NPR and reporter for The New York Times, sets out to find the happiest place on the planet and unearth the essential components to this harmony.  He does this by not only searching out the so-called happiest places, according to various polls and studies, but by also venturing to the least happy places –according to these same measures- on earth as well.  He travels to nearly a dozen countries (India, the Netherlands, Singapore, Moldova, Iceland, Bhutan, Qatar, Great Britain, Thailand and the US) to see what happiness is all about. 

Over the 325 pages we learn that happiness is many things to many people.  For example, binge drinking and vocational failure apparently translate to happiness in Iceland.  That Bhutan’s government actually measures the mountain kingdom’s contentment through its Gross National Happiness index, in place of GDP.  That Moldovans love misery.  That the Swiss are uptight, and yet, very happy.  That the Thai people have a scientific method for spotting fake smiles.  But perhaps most revealing is the counterintuitive concept that the more a person focuses on being happy the less happy they’ll likely be.

A self-admitted “grump” Wiener fortunately doesn’t let any of his personal discontent spill over into the narrative and the writing is crisp, lively and full of insight.  And it’s often pretty funny.  Equal parts philosophy guide, travelogue and social commentary, it never drags and there’s always something new to discover on the next page.  The book touches on many scientific studies and academic interviews, but it’s hardly a scientific or academic work.  Wiener includes just enough of the starch to prop up his colorful narrative and give it a point of reference.

Aside from creating a hugely readable and revealing book, Wiener manages to successfully take the reader on a trip around the world from the comfort of an arm chair.  His disarming writing style and investigative journalist skills puts the reader right in the middle of a temple in Bhutan, or the back of van in Moldova, or a coffee shop in Amsterdam, or a grimy strip club in Bangkok.  And while we may never know exactly where the happiest place on earth is (“happiness is a moving target”), Weiner’s given us a pretty good idea of where to start looking.  TLM highly recommends The Geography of Bliss. 

The House of Tomorrow: Punk Rock and Geodesic Domes

Sid Vicious, geodesic domes, and Buckminster Fuller…these are not themes you typically build a sentence around, let alone an entire work of fiction.  However, that’s exactly what Peter Bognanni has done.  And we’re glad he has because he’s not only created an immensely readable novel but he’s managed to put a fresh spin on the coming of age genre, which let’s face it, after several millennia of story-telling, is not easy to do.

The House of Tomorrow is, at times, both irreverent and poignant, charming and devastating, and this contrasting balance stemming from its odd couple protagonists makes this an engrossing book from the first page to the last.  At first glance the pairing of two very different teenage boys seems improbable at best and gimmicky at worst.  But it works.   And after several chapters into the book it seems not only plausible but natural that these students of such divergent gurus (Johnny Rotten and Buckminster Fuller) would join together.

Sebastian Pendergrast is a 16-year old shut-in orphan raised by a Fuller-obsessed grandmother in a geodesic dome on a hill.  Jared Whitcomb is a sickly and chain-smoking punk rock wannabe with a new heart in his chest and arguably the most bitter 16-year old on the planet.  When Sebastian’s grandmother is incapacitated by a stroke he’s left to his own devices and, for the first time in his life, has access to life outside the dome.  It doesn’t take long before the siren song of teenage temptations (think punk rock, cigarettes and girls) beckons.  After a chance meeting through the kindness of Jared’s mother, these two loners strike up an unlikely friendship and the baddest punk duo North Branch, Iowa as ever seen.   

Sebastian plays the straight man to Jared’s ball of fury and neither has been dealt a very good hand in life.  But they make each other better and their respective lives richer and that’s what makes these characters so compelling.  Neither one emerges as a wholly-formed young adult, but for the brief sliver of time we’re allowed in their lives, they lead the reader on a journey of unexpected and satisfying discovery. 

Bognanni‘s prose drips with angst, but a good angst, and he never allows it to suffocate the story.  He keeps the tone on target with inventive teenage dialogue that generally hits the mark.  And that’s one of the surprising things about this book:  his ability to mimic the mostly mindless chatter of teen boys in a way that’s not only engaging, but revealing.   Using Fuller’s creative philosophy as a strangely effective prop, he maintains a narrative that is unexpectedly moving and creates a surprising tenderness amidst the barren void of young male adolescence. 

The House of Tomorrow won the LA Times award for new fiction in 2010 and critical acclaim from various media outlets.  According to his website, Bognanni is hard at work on his next novel. 

The News From Paraguay: All's Fair in Love and Megalomaniacal War

In the past 15 months, 18 days, seven hours and nine minutes, The Literate Man has featured exactly one review of a book authored by a woman.  The reason: we are chauvinist pigs.  But in a meager attempt to right our wrongs we offer up high praise for The News From Paraguay, a delightful book from the very talented author, Lily Tuck (and we’re pleased to note that the National Book Foundation shares our good taste, having named this novel the National Book of the Year in 2004).

The News From Paraguay is the classic love story of girl meets dictator, runs off to the South American frontier to be his mistress, raises a family, and helps run the country into the ground.  That old story.   And Tuck presents this real-life account -loosely based on actual people and events- in a refreshingly original voice, spread over an economic and stylish 245 pages. 

Irish-born Ella Lynch is hardly won over by the rough-edged Franco Lopez at their initial meeting on the Paris party circuit in 1854.  A coarse man from Paraguay with bad English, body hair, and a seven-piece Indian band that follows him like a shadow, Franco is hardly the definition of Parisian chic.  But when Ella’s Russian lover decamps and leaves her penniless and destitute, Franco’s silly boots and his seemingly endless supply of gold suddenly seem a lot more attractive.  Within months Ella’s pregnant and on Franco’s personal yacht sailing for his magical South American kingdom.  Shrouded in mystery and full of surprises, Paraguay might as well be a far-off planet, as Ella musters all her strength and courage, in anticipation of her new life. 

What follows next is a sad and enlightening story of excess, outsized ambition and the self-destruction of a man and a country.  While Franco is a larger-than life character with enormous and lusty appetites, this is mostly Ella’s story to tell as both an outsider (to Paraguay) and an insider (an intimate advisor to the Franco).  It would be easy to fall into a sentimental or predictable tone of lament and loss but Tuck is confident in her writing and presents a powerful and flawed female protagonist that embraces her role in the ill-fated drama.  The author’s consistent narrative remains true to her characters and ultimately reads something like Nero’s diary as Rome (Paraguay) burns around them.   

Tuck is an inventive and disarming writer and she pens a fascinating account of Paraguay’s obscure history using an imperfect love story as her vehicle.  She achieves complexity of narrative not through any single, multi-faceted character but rather through an ensemble of marginal people that provides an impressively broad scope of perspective using relatively simple characters.  And that’s the book’s charm, deftly mixing the viewpoint of the indigenous, ex-pats, mestizos, elites and the victims of one man’s narcissistic ambitions into a recipe of sheer literary pleasure.  Tuck threads these conflicting perspectives together like a handmade quilt and the book reads like a collection of singular, but related paragraphs, each featuring a different and unique narrator. 

This is hardly a definitive history of Paraguay, but that’s not really the point, as Tuck includes just the right balance of true events and research to lend the storyline credibility without bogging down the human elements of the book.  The News From Paraguay is first and foremost the tale of a strong-willed and sometimes delusional woman in love; but the early struggles of the Paraguayan republic and it’s insanely determined dictator provide a fascinating backdrop for Ella’s story.   Anyone that picks up this creative and engrossing work will be glad they did. 

Holy War: Jesus was Vasco de Gama's Co-Pilot

History is riddled with injustices: taxation without representation, the OJ trial, Super Bowls XXX and XLIII and Vasco de Gama second-fiddle status on the list of great European explorers.  Thanks to centuries of reimagining his exploits by popular culture and the Catholic Church, glory-whore Christopher Columbus is the best known and regarded explorer from this era.  But for anyone hoping to see de Gama placed above his seafaring rival on the pantheon of “discovery” Nigel Cliff provides plenty of ammunition for the cause in his terrific and engaging Holy War: How Vasco de Gama’s Epic Voyages Turned the Tide in a Centuries-Old Clash of Civilizations.  

This is hardly the definitive work on de Gama's life nor is it anywhere near the first to poke holes in Columbus’ “achievements” (this book, in fact, devotes only a few chapters to Columbus ' doings despite a teasing reference to a “great rivalry” on the inside flap).  But what set's this work apart is the impeccable research and accessibility of the historical context surrounding this pivotal moment in history.  There's nothing really new here but Cliff's presentation and narrative are refreshing; he book flies-by as he wraps historical facts in personal details.  He deftly balances the historical nuts and bolts with human levity adding lightness to a subject matter that tends to be gruesome and greedy.    

There’s very little known about de Gama’s personal life but Cliff enhances this information by detailing an abundance of little known personal info about the Iberian monarchy, their courts and other explorers.  This is where Holy War shines, thanks to a mountain of foot notes (arguably the most impressive we’ve ever seen) and the author’s vision.  Cliff’s version truly is a people’s history and his attention to these details makes this usually academic terrain, we dare-say, riveting –and we’ve never use that kind of word to describe historical non-fiction.

Where the book falls short is its promise to unearth any original Huntington-like “clash of civilizations” moment in this well-trod ground.  And as Cliff painstakingly points out, de Gama’s voyage was motivated by a search for heathen souls, treasure and revenge –themes that would actually seem to bind 15^th century Iberia and the Islamic East.  Cliff also fails to connect the dots between the modern “war on terror” and 15^th century clashes in any sort of meaningful way as the introduction seems to promise. 

But don’t read this book for a re-defining of the civilization cornerstones and ethics that have carried us to the present; leave that to the tweeds in the ivory towers.  Read this book as a rich and colorful glimpse into the place and context of the Age of Exploration.  If you do you’ll be well rewarded. 

With only two books under his belt (The Shakespeare Wars, Schuster & Simon, 2005; look for his forthcoming Last Crusade, Schuster & Simon, 2012), Cliff  has already placed himself among the most readable historians working today thanks to his historian’s eye for detail, his writing talent and rare foresight in arranging the details.  In the tradition of venerable contemporaries such as Howard Zinn or David McCollough, cliff tells the story from the ground up rather than the top down ensuring that the information is not only accurate but engaging.

This is a lively and fascinating re-telling of one of history's greatest naval expeditions and the powers behind it.  Historical non-fiction simply doesn’t get any better than this.   

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys: Giving Voice to the Madwoman in the Attic

The premise of Wide Sargasso Sea is fantastic: to present the back story of Antoinette Cosway (also known as Bertha Mason), the infamous "madwoman in the attic" and wife of Mr. Rochester in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. And, if you're a lover of the character of Mr. Rochester, you may wish to stop reading here, because Jean Rhys is more than moderately successful in exposing his prejudices and placing the blame for his wife's alleged "madness" squarely upon his shoulders.

The work is even more impressive when it is considered in historical context: published in 1966, the book came just four years after Jamaica's independence from the United Kingdom, and can be read largely as a rejection of the long period of British imperialism and subjugation of the Afro-Caribbean populations of the West Indies. In short, Rhys (a native of Dominica) argues that the British never understood the culture or the motivations of their unwilling subjects, and it is this misunderstanding, labeled as inherited "madness" by Rochester, that condemns his wife to solitude and leaves her only an act of desperation.

Beautiful, powerful, and occasionally scattered (like the culture it describes), Wide Sargasso Sea is number 94 on Modern Library's list of 100 Best Novels. Weighing in at less than 200 pages, the minimal effort is well worth the reward. For both literary and historical reasons, this is a novella that is not to be missed. Highly recommended.

Rivertown: A Marco Polo Journey for the 21st Century

In case you hadn’t heard China is a pretty big deal. It’s not only a massive place but it’s home to one-fifth of the world’s population, fifty-six distinct cultures, over two-hundred languages and is poised to become the most colossal economic force in history by mid-century. But there’s only so much you can learn about a country through statistics and in the case of China it’s not much.

To really understand something about China you need to know the people and Peter Hessler knows the Chinese people. He is perhaps the world’s foremost foreign authority on what makes the people of China tick -at the very least the most insightful writer of such things. After spending two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in the backwater Sichuan town of Fuling and becoming fluent in Mandarin Hessler stayed on in China for the next decade as a correspondent and contributor for The New Yorker and National Geographic, respectively. He has since become the go-to chronicler of the turbulent remaking of modern China and just might be the first “Genius Grant” recipient ever featured on TLM.

But it’s his two years in Fuling, his initial impression of the “sleeping giant,” that he focuses on in Rivertown (Oracle Bones, Harper Collins 2006 and Country Driving, Harper 2010 are his other books about China) and it’s one of our favorite books regardless of genre. It’s part memoir, part examination of a culture unfamiliar to the West and entirely engrossing. Hessler’s elegant and revealing prose achieves a rare clarity for a subject matter often clouded with misunderstanding and bias.

In Rivertown Hessler paints a picture of an ancient past coming to terms with the radical upheaval of several recent decades of reform and how the current generation –unwittingly thrust into this tumult- is coming to terms with this uneven transition. Embedded in a university classroom in the Sichuan hinterland Hessler writes from a privileged position surrounded by the unvarnished optimism of his student’s youth and the excesses and atrocities of their parents’ generation forever lurking in their thoughts.

Hessler’s done what almost no other observer of China has been able to accomplish: paint an even-handed portrait of present-day China as seen through the eyes of ordinary people and written in an accessible, perhaps even heartwarming, style. He captures both the innocence and indoctrination of his students’ thoughts and behaviors and presents these contradictions in a lively and engaging metaphor for an entire country. But his principal triumph is that he doesn’t try to simplify the complexities of modern China or compare them with the ways of the West; he simply tries to understand them.

What gives Hessler’s work such accessibility is the fact that he’s neither an academic (although his collective knowledge of Chinese culture, language and history would seem to qualify him as such) nor an outside observer as almost every other voice on the subject is. Hessler is as close to a Chinese insider as a waiguo ren can be and his writing style and introspection border on the literary.

This is one of the most tender, poignant, insightful and clarifying examinations of Chinese culture and society ever written. As purely memoir, it stands apart for the author’s piercing self awareness and the articulation of dislocation that foreigners experience in an inward looking society. As a glimpse into the human side of the changing social and culture currents in present day China it stands alone. TLM highly recommends Rivertown.

Work Song: Another Doig Hit

Ivan Doig is a terribly inventive writer. As one of the preeminent writers of the American West anything he puts on paper is worth reading. Doig provides us with a thinking man’s glimpse into the Wild West; always looking beyond the cowboys and gunfights and providing a more complex –but always fun- account of the settling of this unsettled land.

In his most recent novel, Work Song, he has found the perfect backdrop to showcase his storytelling and writing talent: Butte, Montana. At one time during the past century Butte not only had the largest red-light district in the US but was also home to more millionaires per capita than any place on the planet thanks to its massive copper deposits which earned it the reputation as the “richest hill on earth” (curiously enough, Butte also produced the great Evil Knevil -arguably its greatest natural resource). Naturally this promise of instant wealth drew every type of character imaginable to the little town at the foot of the Rockies and this melting pot provides a rich and fertile canvass for Doig and his talents.

In Work Song Doig bring backs the popular protagonist Morrie Morgan from The Whistling Season (Harcourt, 2006) and he provides the same insightful narrative as an educated fish-out-of-water in his new surroundings among immigrant miners. Hoping to strike it rich in Butte he instead stumbles into a position as librarian overseeing “the finest set of books west of Chicago.” It’s while working at this fantastic library under a bearded mountain of a man known as the “strangler” that he runs into a former student and quickly finds himself embroiled in a battle between the powerful mine owners and the miners’ union. He manages to complicate his situation even further by falling for the widowed –and apparently off limits- owner of his boarding house.

The book begins a bit uneven and some of this has to do with the assumed familiarity of the reader with Morgan from Doig’s previous work. But the reader needn’t be familiar with any of his other books to appreciate Work Song and patience is generously rewarded once the book hits its stride. By the time we were midway through we couldn’t put the book down. There are times when the writing seems more clichéd than folksy and some of the characters are memorable only for their caricature-like qualities. But this takes little away from the overall enjoyment of the book and as a protagonist Morgan is a complex and compelling figure whom Doig skillfully uses as a vehicle to project elements about the broader time and place he occupies as he reveals the various layers of the man.

Doig’s real skill is telling a story and using the historical context of the West to paint a memorable setting; he’s done a masterful job bringing a turn-of-the-century mining town to life. Work Song hums over the final 150 pages and the ending proves to be more fulfilling than expected as the story works to a plotted crescendo with the writing getting tighter with every turn of the page.

Work Song is a quick and fulfilling read and while perhaps not Doig’s greatest work it’s well worth a look. He’s a fascinating man and a fine writer and his latest book is a unique period piece that you won’t forget any time soon. Highly recommended by The Literate Man -as are most of his Doig’s books.