Category: Book Reviews

Eastern religions have always had a certain appeal to me, a way of getting a fresh take on the big questions, something I lost growing up in a fundamentalist church. I had to break away from that, but the big questions remained. I studied Eastern religions only to find them equally laden with dogma. Many years later, I visited a Quaker meeting hall, where friends worshipped in silence. No one preached. No one spoke for an hour of worship. To be honest, I cried a little. I was home. When the talking stopped, there was truth. I am not a Quaker by membership, but they have it right with silent worship, and it is a good fit with Buddhism, especially when Buddhism is relieved of the weight of its dogma. It was with some excitement that I discovered the title, Buddhism Without Beliefs. I was not disappointed.

Batchelor goes back to the source, to the teaching of Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha. Buddha grew up sheltered from suffering, then left home to become an ascetic. After living those two extremes, he sat under a tree, and awoke. The truth Buddha taught was simple: desire is the cause of suffering, and desire is caused by a belief in an unchanging self or soul. Giving up this belief awakens one to the reality in front of one’s nose – the ordinary is extraordinary. Buddha was not interested in elaborate systems of theology; he never appointed a successor. Much of what has become Buddhism was developed by followers over the centuries, often motivated by a desire to maintain power.

Batchelor revives the authentic spirit of Buddhism, asserting that the more fantastic claims about reincarnation and karma can be unloaded for greater insight. Reincarnation is the belief that after life, a person comes back to live another life. Karma is the belief that one’s actions in past lives affect one’s present life. Both ideas assume a connection between lives, a soul. Personally, I can accept a variant of reincarnation. There was a time when I did not exist. For the moment, there is this being that has this sense of me-ness. After that being has gone to fertilize the earth, a time could come again, where there is a being with that same sense of me-ness. But there is no connection between the two. As for karma, clearly my past actions in this life affect my present, but I do not believe there is a connection with future lives. Like Batchelor, I will not insist that the traditional Buddhist beliefs are wrong, I just don’t have anything to corroborate them. As Wittgenstein said of metaphysics, “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” Relieved of its theology, Buddhism provides a simple compelling truth that fits well with my Quaker views.

The intellectually compelling aspects of Batchelor’s book – that of Buddhism without reincarnation and karma – tap out early, and rightly so. Most of the book is a refreshing retake on Buddhism, free of jargon and ideology. The text is a meditation that I enjoyed reading in small, thoughtful portions over several days, a highlight of this summer.

The oil ran out, but the cars still needed gas. The superpowers warred for the last of it, blowing up major cities. The lights went dark. Economies grinded to a halt. Epidemics broke out, killing many. Such is Kunstler’s vision of a post-oil future in World Made by Hand. “A fragment of the plastic Kmart sign remained bolted to the facade – the piece that said – art. The irony did not move me.”

Despair makes sense for the people left behind. A few optimists are waiting for the ’rough patch’ to end, but depression is chronic among the survivors in the town of Union Grove. The family of Robert Earle is dead, except for a missing son. The occasional flicker of the radio brings only doomsday preaching. Still, one cannot help but notice a few silver linings. People are outdoors, working the land for food again, converting their garages back to barns. The dump has become the town’s general supply. The church is doing better than it has in decades, having become the new community center. Robert and others gather weekly to play music. Life could be worse.

Unfortunately, it becomes so. Wayne Carp is head of the gang that runs the supply. One of his men commits a senseless murder. Justice collapsed with civilization, for crimes, but socially too, with women quickly deprecated back to second class, while men carry guns. It becomes clear that what is critically absent in this future is not natural resources or sophisticated technology, but justice — a lesson there.

Brother Jobe is leader of a radical religious group takes over the local high school. It is difficult to be sure of the implications of this group’s arrival. Jobe and his people seem decent, motivated to improve the town, and indeed they make a big difference in the outcome of the story, but at what price? Many threads are unravelled but unresolved in this story – Robert’s son, rumours of a newly elected President – but this fits for a community cut off from the larger world. Another thread is the brotherhood with bizarre elements that beg more explanation, perhaps in another book.

World Made by Hand is one title of an emerging genre that I call, ’Scratch’, in the sense of making from scratch. It includes titles such as Drop City by T.C. Boyle and The Holding by Merilyn Simonds. The stories are about modern people who go back to the land. That is interesting it itself, but the setting is also a metaphor for a psychological journey, through our persona as modern citizens to our more authentic core. It is a quest for answers to important questions, like the value of justice over technology.

Welcome to After Hours Investigations, just up the stairs. Be careful, one of the steps has a hex on it. Open 9-5, 9 p.m. to 5 a.m., its staff are ready for the most bizarre of paranormal investigations. When the sun goes down, the shades come out. Meet Evgeny Nightstalk, short but uncannily strong, with a nose for finding crime scenes. He lives alone in his bachelor apartment with his porn and pitcher plant. The truth be told, he’s less a pervert than an overgrown Boy Scout. And he has a flair for the reports that make up his agency’s casebooks, the heart of So Dark the Night by Cliff J. Burns. Nightstalk tells the story of their most difficult case, rapped off in staccato lines like the Underwood he is forced to use because of the electric field cast by his partner, Cassandra Zinnea.

Cassandra! “Effortlessly exotic, the life force radiating from her creating an intoxicating aura of grace and elegance and sensuality.” Nightstalk is helplessly in love with her. Who wouldn’t be? Not only beautiful, but brains to boot, stunning the cleverest of allies and enemies alike. No stranger to the night, and powerful in the ways of magic, one couldn’t have a better partner. But what could persuade her to work in a hole like this? Maybe it has something to do with the Old Man, the mysterious and unseen boss presumably inhabiting the office with the closed door.

Something evil is afoot as this novel opens with the live burning of a member of the Brethren of Purity, an ancient secret society dedicated to the guardianship and improvement of humanity. Night by night, Nightstalk and Zinnea pursue the case, interrupted only by off-hours indulgences. “A good, old-fashioned bucket of blood, frequented by bikers and cheap whores, with thugs and villains galore. I could tell right off the bat that it was my kind of watering hole.”

The case really heats up. If the living dead warned me to stay away, I would. Not these two. Nightstalk and Zinnea crown a lineup of fantastic characters they engage along the way: an invisible mole, a timeless librarian, ’Sherlock Holmes’, old knitting ladies who exact a price for knowledge, the list goes on. With their abettance, the pair dig their way to a horrible truth that perhaps no one can stop. Not my usual taste, So Dark the Night is a raunchy occult thriller, written with an elegance and humour I couldn’t resist.

I only have one irrational fear: boredom. After many years of getting to know myself, I admit I have a fear of boredom. I go to great lengths planning for new things to happen so that I will be spared a moment of boredom. What’s so bad about boredom? It can be relaxing. I did say it was irrational. Boredom feels a little like death because nothing is happening; maybe that is it. But apart from boredom, I do not have any irrational fears. Well, except maybe of really high heights, but that is rational, a fall would kill me. And then there’s claustrophobia. The idea of being awake in a closed coffin really spooks me, but wouldn’t it spook you? Wait a minute, are all these fears rooted in a fear of death, in the end of me?

In Sit Down and Shut Up, Brad Warner provides a fresh take on the Buddhist view that “self” is at the root of our troubles. The notion of self as a permanent thing is an understandable mistake. Our self is a constant through our many changing experiences, so we mistake it for a permanent thing. “When a man is sailing along in a boat and he moves his eyes to the shore, he misapprehends that the shore is moving” says Dogen, an ancient Buddhist teacher. Dogen’s book, Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye, is the subject of Warner’s dialog. It taught him many of the insights on his path from a bassist for the hardcore punk band Zero Defects to becoming a Zen priest.

While many books on Buddhism cause my eyes to glaze over (in boredom?), Warner’s perspective on punk brings extra punch. Take anger, the mantle of every punker. “Drop the A-Bomb on meeeeeeeeeeee!” According to Warner, angry music is different than an angry musician. When they were writing or playing music, there wasn’t any anger involved. Angry music was intended to say something true, and playing it shifted him out of his petty self. Anger is about me being right, and you being wrong. If you dispense with self, it is tough to remain angry.

This shift is the essence of Zazen, a meditation practice. Zazen is quite simple. Find a quiet spot, sit on a pillow in full or half lotus, keep your spine straight and your eyes open, and cease the “ten thousand things” that your mind gets distracted by. Turn off the chattering mind, and just sit there. Yeah, pretty boring. But according to Zen Buddhists, ordinary reality is the essence of enlightenment. Sitting in Zazen, we gain a clear perception of the present moment, and unhinge from the self and its complicated yearnings for the past or its plans for happiness in the future if only such and such occurs. “Real happiness comes when you are truly living this moment, no matter what it is.”

Warner admits the story of Buddha is a boring one. Nothing like the life of Jesus, with miracles and betrayal and all. Buddha was a young prince who lived the first part of his life indulging the pleasures of the body, and the next part denying them in ascetic rituals. In the end, he rejected both, sat under a tree, and was enlightened. He stopped being distracted and beheld reality as it eternally is, right in front of his nose. Yipee. Now what? I’ve heard it said that the only cure for boredom is curiousity but look what happened to the cat. There’s that death thing again. Maybe my fear of boredom is less a fear of physical death and more a fear for the permanence of self. Dropping the illusion of self feels kind of liberating. Next time I’m stuck waiting for a train, or in line at the grocery checkout, I’ll think about it, or better still, I’ll stop thinking about it and practice a little Zazen.

There is enough to grind a bibliophile these days. Publishing has become mass production of feel-good entertainment. Independent booksellers have been replaced by mega-box stores. Serious reading appears to be in freefall. Something must be done. How far would you go for literature?

In Redekop’s debut novel, Shelf Monkey, Thomas Friesen is a lapsed Mennonite and a failed lawyer. Barely staying afloat of depression, Friesen takes a job at a bookstore, READ, “the first circle of Hell, literary limbo, a publisher’s wet dream, the author’s nightmare. A vacuous, arid, vile product of bottom line economics.” Floating above the shelves is a big head, the plump likeness of Munroe Purvis, talk show host, publisher and promoter of the worst kind of sentimental drivel. What Purvis endorses everyone buys. And as Page the manager says, “The customer is always right.”

Thomas feels fortunate to meet kindred literary spirits among the employees. Aubrey is the guru of the Shelf Monkeys, a secret ’book club’ to which Thomas gets invited. “Some books are simply a waste of paper, a waste of effort both to write and to read.” The flaming cover of this novel is sufficient clue to the book burnings that ensue, inspired by Fahrenheit 451. Books burnings, by the literate?! Only for books deemed not worthy by the members’ code. “We meet, we debate, we burn. It’s therapy, really.” Things escalate quickly and darkly, Lord of the Flies style, and Thomas is compelled to choose between his loyalties to his friends, literature, ethics, and his sanity.

Crafty transitions keep the reader vigilant. I found it odd at first that a novel sympathetic to literature would be written in fragments – news clippings, transcripts, emails – but these forms transition into narrative, especially the emails to real-life writer Eric McCormack (whose novel The Dutch Wife has a character named Thomas; I haven’t read it). Early on I found Thomas to be a disagreeable character, a sorry sort wallowing in his self-created misery. But then he asks his therapist, “You ever get lost in a book, Dr. Newhire?” It is the first hint of an inner depth. The novel is instantly Canadian, replete with references such as Tim Horton’s, Timothy Findley, and the Giller prize. In the face of the expressly American Munroe Purvis, the gentle literate Canadians are terrorists, declaring jihad on the worst of capitalism and publishing. I caution the reader, Redekop can take you into damn frightening places.

Shelf Monkey poses a troublesome question to book lovers and the arts in general. The insanity of book burnings is a no-brainer. Rather, I am talking about setting one type of art above another. I have enjoyed some of the ’trash’ that gets burned in the novel. Even Aubrey had a copy of The Celestine Prophecy in his collection. Thomas struggles with the snobbery of the Shelf Monkeys. Who is to say which book is good, and which one is bad? As a recent library sciences graduate, Redekop must be familiar with Rosenberg’s motto, “Never apologize for your reading tastes.” As I see it, no one can ever tell what book will speak to a person. Even so, can we never assert a standard of quality?

Stories are our First Clue to the Existence of Others

Empathy is often mistaken for sympathy. Sympathy is about loving your neighbour, while empathy is about loving your enemy. Nice idea, but is it possible? In The City of Words, Alberto Manguel shows how stories are our first clue to the existence of others, and how the creative use of language allows us to understand those quite different than ourselves, enabling us to work together to build a civilized society.

According to legend, Cassandra had both the gift of prophecy and a curse that no one would believe her. No one heeded her prediction of the fall of Troy. Such is the state of storytellers across time. Their language suggests ideas that do not conform to the current Zeitgeist. The poets were excluded from Plato’s republic. The literate were persecuted in Nazi Germany. Outsiders. But we need these stories. They serve a vital purpose in unfixing inapt labels and animating lifeless dogma.

One of our oldest stories, that of Gilgamesh, tells of the discovery of “other.” Gilgamesh is a tyrant king who discovers a wild man, Enkidu, outside the city walls. Gilgamesh brings him into the city, and they become brothers, together more powerful and wonderful than before. We see our evil twin, or doppelganger, in many things, including the technology which we fear will supplant us. If we can imagine a way to integrate these perceived evils, we can create a better society.

In the story of Babel, a plan to build a tower to heaven was thwarted by God when he confused the tongues of the builders. Language began as a tool to identify things and keep stock, and without a common language it is difficult to work together; ask the foreigners who come to our cities. But words are not simply our tools; they often take us places we did not expect. It is imagination that gives a sense of hope, progress and the future. Writers create stories in which readers find a hopeful reflection. Their interest in turn creates writers to tell more stories. The presence of many tongues can be a blessing, bringing new stories. It may be better to think of the future as an unending stream of stories than a single project or conclusion. Don Quixote is a tale of a hero who does not necessarily win his battle but moves us with his aspiration.

The theme of the evil foreigner who must be destroyed plays itself out in other stories, often with a chilling outcome. In Jack London’s The Assassin’s Bureau, the assassin’s own rules eventually force him to kill himself. In Arthur C. Clarke’s Space Odyssey 2001, the computer Hal is forced to see the spaceship’s occupants as obstacles that must be killed. In our society, advertising is the new storytelling, the book industry has become business not culture, and the consequences are becoming clearer. The machines of our economics are zeroing in on us. Manguel warns that literature is essential to disrupting this narrow path, to allowing other futures to be imagined, and a better society to be built.

“It was the kind of meal that, when the plates were clean, led some to dark corners to sleep with the hushing of the wind, and others to drink mulled wine until our voices had climbed an octave and finally deepened, in the small hours, into whispers.”

The 100-Mile Diet begins in a cottage with no light, fridge, car or hot water; the kind of place I dream of\ when too immersed in the hectic daily business of life. Most of us would starve out there, or so we believe. After an inspired meal gathered only from the wild, Alisa and James launched a year-long diet of food only found within 100 miles of their home. They found themselves returning from their cottage not starving, but with armfuls more food than they arrived.

Why would anyone limit themselves to eating locally? How does that help anyone? Doesn’t it deprive third-world farmers and truckers of their livelihoods? There are several persuasive reasons. Local foods have fewer pesticides and more nutrition. Seasonal variety is good for developing immunity. Unprocessed foods represent a real solution to the obesity problem. Distant foods are only affordable through cheap oil, arguably enforced politically. Sparing the miles reduces the carbon emissions that cause global warming. And about those third-world farmers: when the 1994 free trade agreement was signed, subsidized corn from America overwhelmed Mexico’s two million small farmers and their 5000 varieties of corn. The collapse of a local industry due to economic deals (or a train derailment spilling ten thousand gallons of caustic soda into the river and killing half a million fish) is merely one disaster in a global economy in which we can always go elsewhere. In a local economy, we are reminded that such events are a catastrophe.

Works for me. But how does one go about eating locally? And can it be done without a “depression style diet of beets, cabbage and potatoes?” Alisa and James started simply, eating seasonally from the farmer’s markets. It is not tough to find these in your area. They sensibly used up supplies like salt that were already in their cupboards, but when they ran out, they improvised, e.g., refining salt from the ocean. They used honey instead of sugar. I have got to get some of that pumpkin honey. The great revelation from local eating is the immense variety of tastes that can be found. It reminds me of my half-dozen batches of home-brewing I did a couple years ago. I started with simple recipes but then discovered real flavour by adding freshly rolled grains and hops.

I went grocery shopping when I was reading their book. I read the source of each product on its label. Local apple juice replaced California grapefruit juice, and blueberries replaced my sultan raisins from Iran. I had no idea that carbonated water came all the way from Italy or Germany; dropped that. I have not replaced coffee yet, but I am thinking about herbal tea. I am sure olive oil can be exchanged for a healthy local vegetable oil. And local vegetables frozen when fresh are always a good choice.

Turning over a local leaf can get quite philosophical. Their diet was not vegetarian, and this raised the question of whether the animals had been fed locally. They lived near the US border; should they break the law by taking local foods across it? Inevitably, you must ask yourself if you are doing this because you believe the world is falling apart. When Alisa and James were shucking corn in their apartment they felt like part of some apocalyptic cult. While it is hard not to wonder at times if our fast global culture can sustain itself, I must count myself with them among the non-believers. Instead, I see progress as something that is not always linear; sometimes we must take a few steps back to pick up something we missed. A few weeks ago, I read an objection to slow food on the grounds that women would likely have to do most of the work. Both Alisa and James worked hard, but James did most of the cooking. Perhaps we had to step away from slow food for awhile to advance women’s rights, but now may be a time to return to it for our health and that of the planet.

Alisa and James are journalists by trade, but they know how to have fun with language; they “scuffed over to the farmer’s stand” and ate strawberries “superlatively sun-sweetened to the brink of sweet booziness.” The edge in their relationship was of no more interest to me than it appeared to be to James as they alternated narration by chapter. I wondered if Alisa was simply missing some nutrient in her diet. I much preferred the drama of their quest for wheat: the disappointment at the ruined bag, the discovery that wheat had been grown locally in 1890, and Alisa’s delight when she declared, “I found a wheat farmer.” With a little effort, everything was possible.

Conceit tells the story of Pegge, daughter of the seventeenth century poet, John Donne. The common sense of conceit is excessive pride; of that, so this telling goes, Donne was not innocent. But Donne the poet is historically known for his use of the literary conceit, the juxtaposition of unlike things to surprise and reveal. He used a open compass to depict parted lovers still joined at the soul. The story is about partedness, both parted love and duplicity, and eventual consummation.

The elderly Dr. Donne is dying, or so he hopes. The great love of his life, his wife Ann, is long dead. He is now Dean of St. Paul’s cathedral, eager to take his seat with the saints. He has already preached his funeral sermon and commissioned his effigy. But he lingers; “I am not alive, but God will not kill me”. Donne is prudish and vain but cares genuinely for the welfare of his children. Of all his children, only Pegge shows the spirit of a poet. It does not suit her for marriage or for the writing of Donne’s memoir. Instead, a credulous Izaak Walton is employed to handle Donne’s notes. Walton is a beautiful young man, the object of Pegge’s desire. A secret meeting has Pegge removing her scarlet bodice to help snare a massive carp that Walton cannot quite manage. The extended overlay of fishing for mirror carp with lovemaking might have gone badly in the hands of a lesser writer, but Novik delivers it deliciously.

Pegge’s family awaits her first period so she can be married off, while Pegge’s tears for her “childish, reluctant womb” quicken the ghost of Ann. Ann becomes narrator, telling how the young Donne persuaded her to risk her father’s wrath and poverty by marrying him. He loved her sincerely. He promised they would lie together in life and death, even had it carved on her gravestone. But now he plans to be buried with the deans in St. Paul’s and not with her. He will not be able to abandon his vow so easily. “At the exact moment that your soul springs from your body, I will be there to trap it with a long, devouring kiss.” Donne’s dying dreams send him ravishing Ann’s ashes.

Donne dies at last. Ann and God are there, and while the claim on his soul seems decided, the most fervent part of the story is still to be told. Until now, Pegge’s life seemed overshadowed by her parents. While they knew great love and contended with God, Pegge appeared as a little girl with a crush. During her father’s life, she failed to wrest answers about love from him. In death, he still dominates her life. She marries the man Donne chose, or nearly so. William Bowles is a kind and true husband, but he does not understand the possession that takes hold of Pegge, summoning the writer in her to reveal Donne the man, freeing him from lies and sainthood. “How hard it is to have a wife who loves the smell of ink and paper!” The great fire of England that began the story ends it too, with Pegge deciding Donne’s ultimate fate.

The story is a sensual one, shaped by Donne’s poetry. It is an extended love poem with language, characters and feelings the reader will want to savour one page at a time. How this one could have slipped the Giller shortlist I do not know.