A Tale of Two Cultures

I finished reading Caravans last night. This novel is different from all the previous Michener novels I've read. First of all, it is considerably shorter: only 336 pages. While it has many of the usual elements--relationship of the people to the land, the forward march of history through time, the triumph of ordinary people--it is a complex, psychological drama that develops through the relationships of a handful of characters at a specific time in history. The year is 1946 and the setting is a remote, isolated yet critically important region in Central Asia. The terrain is harsh: enormous, jagged mountains and brutal dessert plains that stretch for miles. In 1946, Afghanistan is at the crossroads of history, literally and figuratively. The protagonist is a young American named Mark Miller (a.k.a. Marcus Meuhler), a Yale graduate and U.S. navy officer, assigned to the State Department for a reconnaissance mission in Afghanistan. (Does this sound familiar? I had to remind myself that I was reading Michener and not Wouk!) The story is told from Miller's perspective, another departure from Michener's usual format. Miller's superior at the American embassy, Captain Verbruggen is impressed--"You've got brains." (p. 6)--and gives him a special assignment. Miller is to locate and retrieve Ellen Jaspar, a 24 year old, gifted American college student who has "disappeared" after marrying an American-educated Afghani engineer who takes her to Afghanistan. Her prosperous, influential parents who have connections to a U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, want her back. Ellen is the epitome of the American beauty: tall, blond, flawlessly beautiful and poised. I imagined she resembled Grace Kelly. How could a woman like this disappear in a country where most of the population is ethnic Pastun or other Persian ancestry? Miller, assisted by an Afghani aid to the embassy named Nur Muhammand, or "Nur", embark on an agonizing journey through the Dasht-i-Margo or "plain of the dead" in search of Ellen. When Miller finally gets a chance to interview Ellen's estranged husband Nazrullah, the Afghani is mysterious and evasive, as are all of the Afghan people that Miller has to work with. This is a chronic source of frustration for Miller (and the reader!). Caravans is a story of an epic clash of cultures: the unabashed, myopic, provincial American vs. the enigmatic, methodical and often dogmatic Asian. All of the major characters in this story are complex and emotionally conflicted as they attempt to cooperate in the search for Ellen. To the American, the Asians are a race of violent brigands; to the Asian, the Americans are just "hopelessly stupid" (p. 328). There are two incidents of unimaginable violence that occur early in the story, one of which Michener claimed to be an eye-witness and the other he claimed to have viewed photographs taken of the incident. As horrific and grotesque as it is, corporal punishment is not exclusive to remote and primitive societies like rural Afghanistan, but is blatantly condoned even in sophisticated, civilised cultures in the west. This paradox is personified in the character of German physician and Nazi operative Otto Stiglitz (with no intentional reference to the famous American photographer Alfred Stieglitz). Altogether, I would not consider Caravans to be my favorite, nor one of Michener's best novels, it is Michener, so it's still a pretty darn good book.

The end of the beginning...

I finished reading Winds on Thursday evening. It's a great story and I've learned a lot from reading it. The fateful day arrived. The suspense was killing me. Janice is a witness to the attack at Ford Island (Battleship Row) from her Pearl City suburban home and she has a tough time convincing her Chinese housekeeper that it is not a drill. I said previously that I found the character of Janice to be sort of one dimensional. That was back in Chapter 12. Now, forty-seven chapters and 777 pages later, we finally get to see what she is made of. She does not disappoint. She remains remarkably composed throughout the ordeal. Even when her husband Warren shows up at the front door, bloodied from crash landing his SBD Dauntless dive bomber, she remains calm and dutifully tends to his wounds while he recounts the Enterprise's interception of the attackers and the subsequent aerial "dog fight" that ensues. Curiously, Warren seems only minimally disturbed buy the death of his crew mates DeLashmutt and Plantz. "Poor DeLashmutt..." he says, "I yelled but he didn't answer...he was certainly dead." Perhaps it was the adrenaline that kept these two from falling into panic; then again, perhaps military families are trained for this sort of thing. As for Byron, that restless, underachieving middle child, he is fighting for his own and his submarine crew's lives in a similar attack at Clark Air Base, on Luzon Island in the Philippines. This installation was also destroyed by the Japanese on December 8, 1941, just 12 hours after the infamous attack at Hawaii. We don't hear much about Clark Field in the history books. As Wouk acknowledges, the destruction at Clark was at least as catastrophic as at Pearl Harbor but the incident is virtually ignored by historians because "Clark Field was half a day late for immortality." Meanwhile, Pug is taking every form of transportation available in order to get out of Moscow and to Hawaii for his new assignment. I won't say what that assignment is (because I want my readers to read the book!), but I will say that while the bombs were falling on Oahu and Luzon, other kinds of bombs were falling on Pug, even though he was safely thousands of miles away from the action. My heart aches for this guy: a fine, honorable man who just can't get a break. Later in conversation with Warren, Pug describes Tokyo, Japan as a pathetic shantytown that "smells from end to end of sewage and bad fish." This image of "the ugliest city in the world" runs contrary to my perceptions of pre-war Japan. I don't know why I should think so, but I thought that by 1940, Tokyo was a thoroughly sophisticated modern city. Evidently, it was not. As for Natalie and Uncle Aaron, that's another nail-biter. They are still stuck in Italy when the bombs start falling on the other side of the world and Mussolini stupidly declares war on the USA. Natalie has to make some agonizing decisions. I caught myself shaking my head in disgust when she finally realizes her recklessness (rather, foolishness) in trying to fetch her uncle out of Italy. Then, when she makes what seems to make a safe and sensible decision (for the first time in a long while) regarding their plans for departure, it turns out to be a mistake! I won't even begin to share my frustrations about Rhoda! By chapter 57, The Bouleversement (in English: The Reversal), the story moves very quickly, as if Wouk is tying up lose ends in preparation for the next installment of the saga, War and Remembrance. Winds of War, a mere 1047 pages, packs a lot of historical detail into the story of Pug Henry, and I must say that I never once grew weary or bored while reading it. In fact, my experience was quite the opposite. Steve says that Remembrance is much more graphic and descriptive of the crimes and atrocities that when on during this war. This makes me cautious about reading it. I abhor violence and cruelty, and even the one or two incidents described in Winds tend to haunt me. I may skip reading Remembrance for now. Steve got me a whole stack of Michener novels that I'm anxious to start on. I started reading Caravans last night. Its about Afghanistan and I already think its awesome!

U-235, Lend-Lease and Barbarossa

Ahh...chapter 46 and I am finally past all the lurid details of sordid love affairs and on to the real meat of the story: the race to harness the uranium isotope U-235, the machinations of FDR via the Lend-Lease Act and Operation Barbarossa. In these chapters (40-46), Wouk paints a pretty realistic picture of history. I understand this period in our nation's history better now that I ever have. It helps me appreciate the complexity and precarious nature of geo-political relationships, and I'm left with a broader perspective regarding our nation's current international engagements. As the war in Europe heats up, Pug is called back to the U.S. to take on a job in War Plans: the division of the military responsible for, well...planning a war. He is glad to be out of Berlin, especially after the insulting bribe proffered him by the inscrutable and duplicitous German banker, Wolf Stoller. Pug's American-style rebuff made me proud. Men of his integrity were as rare then as they are now. The Lend-Lease Act (PL 77-11) was something I didn't recall much about from my history classes. This says as much about me as it does about my public school education. The legislation was highly controversial in its time but critical to the outcome of the war. Starting in March, 1941--before the U.S. had officially entered the war--in an act to "promote the defense of the United States" the U.S. supplied the U.K., U.S.S.R. and other allied nations with materials for making war against Nazi Germany. This Act gave President Roosevelt exclusive and unusual powers to provide materials (for making planes and ships) to any nation he deemed worthy. It is frightening to think that one man was actually granted that much power. By 1945, when the war was ending and the program expired, the U.S. had shipped close to $800 billion (today's dollars) worth of supplies and materials to the U.K. The materials, without which the U.K. would most certainly have lost the war, were shipped via merchant marine vessels under the watchful escort of American destroyers. These "convoys" enabled the U.S. to subsidize England's efforts to fend off the Nazi's while remaining in compliance with the Neutrality Act. This legislation prohibited the U.S. from selling any supplies or materials to "belligerents" no matter whose side we were on. The Lend-Lease program also enabled the construction of air fields in Canada and Alaska for the purpose of supplying materials to the U.S.S.R. via Siberia (the Arctic Convoy). Michener writes about this in Alaska. In Winds, FDR invites Pug to sail on a north Atlantic convoy mission to Iceland as a guest, but not as an officer. Pug accepts of course, and is happy to get out from behind his desk and out to sea. He wants to command his own ship, but getting a flag rank always seems just out of reach. Most of Pug's contemporaries have received this promotion, but for some reason Pug has not. I haven't figured out why; he seems to be the most honorable man in the bunch. Barbarossa was the German code name for the Nazi invasion of Russia. Most historians consider this move to be the Fuhrer's greatest mistake because at the time (June, 1941) he could have invaded the exhausted England and probably won the war. Instead, he gambled and made a grab for the oil fields of Romania. Although initially successful, he ultimately lost, albeit four years later. The loss of life, Russian and German, has never been fully accounted. I have read estimates that 70 million people died during this war; most of them were civilians. I have a feeling that pretty soon the war will hit closer to home for the Henry family. Warren Henry, now Navy Lieutenant Henry, United States Pacific Fleet is stationed in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Briny is somewhere in the Pacific on a submarine. Natalie and Uncle Aaron are on their way back to the States. Pug and Rhoda have just purchased a house in D.C. so they can stay put and enjoy their new grandson. Daughter Madeline is well on her way to a successful career at CBS, and December, 1941 is approaching.

Move over Lucy VanPelt..

While I admire Wouk for his thorough and honest portrait of historical events and his gift for story telling, I suspect he does not have a high regard for women and this troubles me. The female characters in this story all seem to emulate the worst of feminine attributes. Of the five women in this story--Pug's wife Rhoda, daughter Madeline, daughter-in-law Janice, future daughter-in-law Natalie and the English WAAF Pamela Tudsbury--only Madeline seems to have her act together. And she's a career girl! She is intelligent, independent, in command of her emotions and her priorities. (She even dates a Communist!) She did not inherit these characteristics from her mom, Rhoda, who is often hysterical, self-absorbed, tends to drink too much and is hypercritical of everyone. Just when I think she can't complain, she does. Poor Pug. Natalie Jastrow is a real piece of work. She is spoiled, arrogant, attention-seeking to the point of being reckless, and also given to histrionics. Like Rhoda, she fusses and complains about the state of her hair, her clothes, the food, the servants...She seems to be selective with regard to her Jewish heritage. She boldly orders a "bacon sandwich" in a cafe to the surprise of Pug and Briny and explains that "most Jews" don't heed traditional dietary laws. However, when her father dies suddenly and she goes into mourning, she insists on wearing black to Warren's wedding and postponing her own engagement for a year, all in accordance with Jewish custom and ceremonial law. Just as Briny is about to enter submarine school, she hops on a plane to Italy! I think Briny is too good for her. As for Janice, she is sort of a one dimensional character. The only child of a powerful Florida legislator, she decides to marry Warren Henry literally days before (the pilot) is sent overseas. Pamela Tudsbury is needy and given to whining. Only a day or two after her fiancee is declared MIA, she's hitting on Pug! I'm left wondering: Wouk must have had some really bad experience with women. I hope it gets better. I'm on chapter 33: Pug's in London and the Nazis are bombing the heck out of the Brits.

A pugnacious Pug named Pugsley...

I'm enjoying this book. The story is intriguing, but some of the character nicknames are peculiar: like "Pug" and "Briny". I can understand how Victor might have acquired a nickname like Pug which might be applied to a football player or a boxer (or a funny looking dog), but how do you get "Briny" out of Byron? Some of the acronyms are tricky, like CNO and BOQ. I got the first one (Chief of Naval Operations), but haven't figured out BOQ yet (Bureau of Overseas Quadrants? Border of Quai d'Orsay?). And what are "BatDiv" and "BuOrd" supposed to stand for? If Wouk explained these, I missed it. He also uses strange euphemism like "pink-tea job" and "cookie pusher". These occur especially when the navy guys are engaged in shop talk. I haven't a clue what they mean. Wouk must have had an interest in fashion because almost every scene includes meticulous descriptions of the characters' wardrobe or attire. The women are almost always wearing some shade of pink, reportedly Hitler's favorite color. And, it seems that everybody except the head-strong Jewess, Natalie, is blond. Chapter 14, which describes the siege of Warsaw and narrow escape of the "neutrals" is disturbing. Anyone who might be ambivalent with regard to Arizona HB 2162/SB 1070 should read this chapter and be mindful that history has a subtle and surreptitious way of repeating itself.

I Wouk up and smelled the coffee..

After Alaska I was thinking about what to read next. Should I start Hawaii or try another author? My sweet hubby, best friend and literary soul-mate suggested The Winds of War by Herman Wouk. I took his advice: now I'm more than 100 pages into the novel and I'm hooked. "Winds" is one of 18 novels Wouk composed between 1945 and 1980 and is the second in a series. The main character is a WWII naval attache in Berlin. I remember the ABC miniseries back in '83 got lots of publicity and critical acclaim. Unlike Michener, all of the characters in Wouk's story are fiction, with only references to historical individuals like Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin for obvious reasons. The clandestine activities of Victor Henry and his family, the Jastrow's and the Tudsbury's are not based on those of any particular historical figure, although I'm sure they could be. The story has piqued my interest in the period so I've ordered two books from Abebooks (each under $4.00), one on German history and another about the Treaty of Versailles. Admittedly, my knowledge of this period of history is shameful, so I aim to educate myself, and enjoy a good romance novel in the meantime.

Only the rocks and the sea live forever

Finished reading Alaska this afternoon; took me 23 days, but it was worth it. I thought it was going to take me the rest of the summer. What an incredible story! With J.M. you not only get a history lesson, or what we used to call "social studies" when I was in elementary school, you also get a science lesson. I've learned a lot about geology, geography, volcanoes and tsunami just in the last chapter, "The Rim of Fire". That's what makes a Michener novel so great. The story has enough character development, relationship tension and action-adventure to keep the reader captivated. They (the novels) are never boring and always educational and entertaining. You can't ask for more than that from fiction. The last chapter takes us into the more recent past, late 1970's & '80's with a number of historical events that most of us (at least those of us born before 1970) will have some memory of. The story ends sometime between 1985 and 1991: after the great Mexico City earthquake, but before the ANCSA expires. The acronym refers to the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, the 1971 legislation that was intended to address aboriginal land claims and serve as a kind of "economic stimulus" for Alaska. This novel was first published in 1988, so we don't get to learn (in the novel) what happens to ANCSA. However, as acts of congress have a curious habit of self-perpetuation, I suspect that this law has not expired, but rather has been amended and preserved for posterity. At the conclusion of the novel, J.M. seems to suggest that the law will expire and Alaska and its native people will again become vulnerable to shameless exploitation by absentee, Lower Forty-eight industrialists. Perhaps the most fascinating folks in this chapter are the mountaineers. In his disclaimer at the beginning, Michener states that the Japanese climbing team is fictional, but the climb he describes is historical. The summit of Denali/Mount McKinley is the focus of this section and after some sleuthing I learned that there was a famous Japanese adventurer who ascended the 20,320 foot beast, not once, but twice. However, the second time, he disappeared on his descent. His name was Naomi Uemura. He was the first to reach the summit solo. The first people ever to reach the Denali summit were the Sourdoughs. The story of Uemura is quite fascinating itself. I should look for a book about him. The final event in this incredible saga by J.M. is kind of a shocker, but it illustrates perfectly that, in spite of everything humans have done or can possibly do, the land always wins. Only the rocks live forever.