The atoll in the mind

One, Tilting Leaves by Edith L. Tiempo (Giraffe Books, 1995)



1 Giraffe on the shelf

The backlist of Giraffe Books has recently been lining up the shelves of the popular bargain store Booksale. I'm not sure if the publisher already closed shop or they were just downsizing volumes from their cluttered warehouses. But one could do worse than acquire some of the musty but must-have titles by eminent Filipino writers like Edith L. Tiempo (poems and novels), Antonio Enriquez (fiction), Linda Ty-Casper (fiction), Leonard Casper (literary criticism), Edilberto K. Tiempo (short story collection), and Eileen Tabios (poetry).

2 One, tilting leaves

The deceptive title of Edith L. Tiempo's 1995 novel, seemingly ungrammatical, was taken from the poem "The Atoll in the Mind" (1955) by Alex Comfort. The last stanza appeared as the novel's epigraph.

... the mind's stone tree, the honeycomb,
the plump brain coral breaking the pool's mirror,
the ebony antler, the cold sugared fan.

All these strange trees stand upward through the water,
the mind's grey candied points tend to the surface,
the greater part is out of sight below.

But when on the island's whaleback spring green blades
new land over water wavers, birds bring seeds
and tides plant slender trunks by the lagoon

I find the image of the mind's two trees, cast downward,
one tilting leaves to catch the sun's bright pennies,
one dark as water, rooted among the bones.

The poet at first compares the mind (brain) to varieties of corals ("stone tree") in the reef, including tabulate coral ("honeycomb"), branching black coral ("ebony antler"), and massive or brain coral. A couple more lines and the poet finally settled on another image, possibly that of a mangrove tree that colonized the sandy substrate. The canopies of coral and mangrove conjured the two hemispheres of the brain, pointing toward a duality or divided nature of the self: "two trees ... / one tilting leaves ... / one dark as water". Two contending qualities in a person: light and darkness, good and evil, civilized and savage.

For her novel, Tiempo transplanted the image of the submerged, rooted trees from underwater to land. She used the characters of twins as literal representation of duality. And the trees were made literal trees for the story surprisingly traced an ecological theme of forest loss and environmental degradation. Perhaps it was not that surprising since Tiempo, in her illustrious literary career, had been carefully mapping in her works the search for kindly habitat and habitation, a secure and peaceful dwelling place for humans.

The story centered on Primo Gutierrez, chairman of the Biology Department in a Christian college in a mountainous region in northern Philippines. Primo had an identical twin brother, Pascual, who was shot to death while doing research in a forest area in Mindanao three years before the present story. Pascual was a sociologist studying the mythical epics of the Manobo tribe. He was searching for an old chanter whose version of the Creation myth was "distinctly pagan, [with] no Christian influence". He wandered into a logged over area and most likely came into contact with illegal logging operators who may be responsible for his death.

The story's background of a new statewide policy banning commercial logging of natural forests was a significant national issue. In the early 1990s, the popular sentiment in the country was the stoppage of all forms of logging. The clamor reached a high pitch in 1993 when the Supreme Court handed a famous decision that practically terminated all permits issued to timber companies. The Court found that there was no impairment of contract on the part of the companies since the continued logging operations posed a threat to public interest and ran against the constitutional provision on the public's right to a "balanced and healthful ecology". It was a victorious moment for environmentalists as the Court established a precedent in defining the legal basis for protecting "human welfare" in the face of activities that can lead to depletion of natural resources. Just last year the President signed an executive order that prescribes a moratorium on logging of natural forests.

3 Twins, trees

At the start of the story, a high-ranking environmental officer visited Primo's town to have a dialogue with university officials, businessmen, and the locals about the new government regulations and how the logging ban will be implemented. Conflict ensued between logging concessionaires and a populace who were sympathetic to the environmental cause and who believed that forests need immediate protection. Meanwhile, a fellow scientist and friend of Primo asked if he can capture a local species of a river snake to be displayed in a museum. (Legend has it that one of these snakes went on shore from time to time to meet its human twin.) Despite the unusual request, Primo consented to grant his friend's request.

There's not a lack of clues in the novel pertaining to the metaphors of twins and trees. The river snake, finally caught and caged and taken away from its natural habitat, would acquire a symbolic meaning in the story. Image association (of trees and twins, habitat and shadows) was deliberate.

Just now she was looking up at the two acacias standing together, at the intermingling branches where the lights were softened by the thick foliage.... "They remind me of that Classical myth. The old devoted couple turned by one of the gods into two big trees, and their branches still embracing and twining together."

The novelist's pursuit of poetic imagery jived well with the way the mind could be seduced by a novel idea. It certainly mirrored Primo's obsession with finding out the truth behind his brother's murder. What happened to Pascual three years ago was consuming the living twin. It was like an itching in Primo's being, a worm wriggling inside him. An atoll colonizing and taking root in the mind.

He was shaking his head, "you don't know what I feel about it. I will retrace the events that ended in the Manago forest. I can't as you say, let it lie. The way I feel, it's as if I've left my cut-off arm somewhere and I must find it before it festers beyond helping and I'm lost."

The story was driven by this obsession with uncovering the identity of Pascual's killer. Its pace and momentum, however, was broken in several directions whenever the story digressed into the situations of other characters. It was rather jarring how undue attention was given to minor characters who were dealing with their own dark secrets. It was as if these characters also began to take root in the story too and it was now hard to uproot them, their identities now a resilient part of the novel's ecosystem.

There was a logger who could not forget an incident in the second world war when he fought as a guerrilla. There was a sideways focus on a teenage son of one of Primo's co-teachers. Baffling scenes and moments intruding on the plot. It was narrative diffusion, stretching taut the novel's boundaries. On the plus side the various concerns made for a dynamic story. The thread of the patchwork vision frayed in unpredictable directions. Moreover, each intrusion was distinguished by a display of small compassionate gestures, small acts of generosity and kindness of the characters.

It was as if in certain places the shafts of light ("the sun's bright pennies") were allowed to penetrate the thick canopy of leaves. The shifted story trained a revealing light on the novel's dark recesses, and the patchwork vision was nevertheless a vision whole and intact. Tiempo's other signature works were similarly built on the rough edges of haphazard plot and imagery, similarly compensated for by the pervading mystery and unpredictable texture of the narrative.

In her late novel The Builder (2004), Tiempo unravelled a murder underpinned by motives to displace indigenous peoples from their ancestral domains. The reluctant detective was a physics professor who was in the middle of building a house for his growing family. Tiempo's characters were often adrift in an exiled or homeless state, as if some meaning was wrenched out from their existence and they were trying to locate or build a traditional home where they can rest their weary, sinful humanities. The image of the house was also conspicuous in her first book The Tracks of Babylon and Other Poems (1966). The collection contained a sequence of five sonnets called "Five Homes"; the first of which was called "The Mason":

Down in the pit, the sanctum, the mason's eyes
Lift to the quarry wall as he taps at the wedge.
From the crumbly blocks jut slowly the edge
Of the sweet sharpness he knows as muscle throes.
Yet it is purpose, too, the astuteness of a rite,
To wield the rod by which a dry stone flows,
To cut his wedge-forms on the towering white,
To pile the bricks of passion and surmise.

Men's rages, his own, he would understand,
A craftsman, he confines them by his hand.
But fashioning his schemes, picking at the stone,
Gouging truth's niches into the echoing walls,
He sees something long since carved: his house of bone,
Where daily his breaths wheeze in the dust-choked halls.

The "house of bone" that harbored "men's rages" was resurrected in "Banhaus", in Marginal Annotations and Other Poems (2001).

Before the furnishings composed the rooms:
Before the bed and the couch conceived
A soft, a warm for the skin and bones,
Before the oven and the freezer cooked up
The hot and the cold
Before the pulled drape let the stray beam
Splatter the shapes and colors,
Would the house then really be?
...............................................................
Old Time, with bell unclappered, may not
Toll old Saxon's house of bone; but
Can never divine it while
The house defines, defiles,
While it confines us.

As with these poems, the novel One, Tilting Leaves was concerned with the teasing out of a metaphor. This project the novelist carried out with the obstinacy of a poet, her single-minded pursuit of organic meaning in the understory of possibilities. The reader is presented an image, deconstructed through several image associations. He is left to ponder the narrative, to see it through (like a craftsman "gouging truth's niches").

In using the image of twins and intertwined trees in the same breath, the writer was guilty of mixing metaphors. Comfort's poem on the split in the mind was also a mixed metaphor of corals and trees. It was in some ways a poem about mixed metaphors (i.e., the divided self). Investigating how the metaphors can hold together or cohere was somehow an act of  reading into, or making sense of, narrative estrangements. The builder of words creates spaces in the text, allowing the reader to recognize the forest from the trees. Perhaps the very reason the other half of the title was withheld was to let us decipher the hidden face of the other.

"Every creature alive is the product of a unique history"—the words of a great naturalist who honored every individual creations.... At what point in my evolution did my twin-nature merged into one? ... Who ... had expunged the secret sharer? In our yoked complexity what was there in us to bring each one to the truth? The spiritual element?—Wasn't this a softened shadow now, the shadow of the old heritage? Risk and harshness and the hungers and drives of the human's evolution. Why else would a man kill, why else could he kill? ... The genetic engineers, should they unscramble the solid intermix to say, This figment is me, this blot is my twin?

Tiempo had defined her ecological ethic from Loren Eiseley. The turn toward evolutionary history as the basis of the animal nature to kill added dimension to the idea of duality. The novelist also hinted at one other habitat from which the characters—all humans, in fact—cannot escape from. The house of memory which either gave man ("the house of bone") the strength to move on with his life or imprisoned him in its insane embrace.

The right metaphor has an insidious way of seizing broken minds. The mind selfishly seizes ideas and owns them. Processed by memory, the mediated images have now a hard time of being erased. Tiempo took upon the task of finding ways to dramatize the force of poetry in a novel. She produced a work which coiled around precise natural images and cultivated the tension between homegrown civilization and primate savagery.

4 Postscript: Black pitcher

When, in 2010, a team of scientists first saw the black pitcher plant in Shumkak Peak in the mountain range of Victoria-Annepahan, they were easily convinced it was a new record species. Spectacular and unique, it evolved for years no human memory can recall; only the genetic memory of plants and animals passed on through the generations could explain it. It nestled in the upper reaches of the mountain, in the central portion of the island shaped like a folded umbrella. Its pitcher was uncommonly black, but its soul, no less innocent, was colorless. It harbored the guilt of existence and the hermetic value of its evolution. For its own sake it curled up to catch the rainwater. Whatever extraordinary medicinal powers its juice possesses, nobody knew for now. Yet it was a novelty ware, occupier of an ecological niche in the news. At another time it will be a desiccated museum piece, or a minor attraction in herbaria and botanical gardens. (Whether it will succumb to future calamities masterminded by Cain’s tribe, nobody could say.) The enlarged vessel was a threat to insects and other small animals. Once they slipped down the cavity, it will only be a matter of sunsets for their components to dissolve and be consumed by the plant. Doubtless, it was guilty of preying on unsuspecting organisms, entrapping and incarcerating them down the food chain.

The name of the black pitcher plant was leonardoi, in honor of the botanist who was killed three days after it was found. While doing field work in the forests of Leyte, Leonardo was allegedly trapped in a crossfire between government troops and leftist rebels. Perhaps it was destiny that led his fellow scientists to encounter this carnivorous pitcher in the mountains. The black deed could not taint the blood of killers but their political hearts were impaled in the color of this plant. The human courts may hold tilted scales, but in the courts of nature there lie the balance of poetry. The always objective systematics of ecological memory.

Prophet of fear

State of Fear by Michael Crichton (HarperCollinsPublishers, 2004)



A few months ago I bought a copy of The Global Warming Reader, edited by Bill McKibben. I was surprised to see Michael Crichton is included in the anthology—via a very short excerpt from his novel State of Fear—as one of the dissenting voices in the global warming theory. I've been reading Crichton intermittently in my college days. Seven novels in all, my Goodreads shelf tells me. I enjoyed the guy's escapist fiction. Crichton's high profile and influence must have been the reason for his piece to be included to "balance out" the important essays on a hot science topic. I resolved to investigate further and read the entire novel.

In State of Fear, Crichton tells about how a lawyer and a pair of scientists (the good guys) tried to thwart a series of catastrophic disasters engineered by eco-terrorists. The eco-terrorists are hardline climate change believers hiding behind supposedly committed environmental organizations and corporations. They are intent on demonstrating the incredible impacts of "abrupt climate change" and on sowing fear among the world citizens.

There are indications that State of Fear is Crichton's most personal and most political book, the book where he poured all his "expertise" as a mainstream writer to inform readers of the invalidity of anthropogenic climate change and the systematic politicization of climate science to promote the global warming theory. Crichton emphasizes that global warming is only a "theory" and there's a lot of room for doubts.

This is supposed to be a very technical book and Crichton is good at summarizing his main points and of backing up his "reading" of scientific data and researches published in peer-reviewed journals. Crichton took the trouble of adding references to these publications and journals in footnotes and in a comprehensive bibliography with annotations. This attention to science and the fact that the book clocks in at more than 700 pages demonstrate the writer's intellectual investment to the topic. It is unfortunate, however, that the book often relies on speculative science to carry the plot along.

As Kenner explained it, the rockets were intended to do something called "charge amplification" of the storm. It was an idea from the last ten years, when people first began to study lightning in the field, in actual storms. The old idea was that each lightning strike decreased the storm's intensity, because it reduced the difference in electrical charge between the clouds and the ground. But some researchers had concluded that lightning strikes had the opposite effect—they increased the power of storms dramatically. The mechanism for this was not known, but was presumed to be related to the sudden heat of the lightning bolt, or the shock-wave it created, adding turbulence to the already turbulent storm center. In any case, there was now a theory that if you could make more lightning, the storm would get worse. [emphases added]

Of course a fiction—whether or not it is hard science fiction—is entitled to use existing scientific theories in a fictional manner. But for a novel supposedly intent on debunking the "theory of global warming", the enterprise becomes suspect if the author himself relies on new theories to further his ends. In the scene described above, the scientist Kenner is bent on preventing a "hypothetical" intensified storm that will be brought about by multiple lightnings released into the sky by eco-terrorists. The prevention of this "theoretical event" from happening will presumably stop the evil environmental organizations from claiming that the super storm is caused by climate change, which Crichton repeatedly reminds us is just a theoretical construct. Here's another geoengineering measure that the scientists in the book are also concerned about (emphasis added):

Sanjong said, "It's pretty clear they're going to disseminate AOB, ammonia-oxidizing bacteria, in large quantities. And perhaps more hydrophilic nanoparticles as well."

"To do what?"

"Control the path of a storm," Kenner said. "There's some evidence that disseminated AOB at altitude can shift a hurricane or cyclone track. Hydrophilic nanoparticles potentiate the effect. At least in theory. I don't know if it's been tried on a large system."

"They're going to control a hurricane?"

"They're going to try."

By relying on theories to further a story that will supposedly question a theory, the writer is contradicting the spirit of disproof. If the science of climate is so little understood, why fan the flames of uncertainty?

Anyone with a strong opinion about climate change and global warming will be exercised by this book's rhetoric and argumentation. It is fairly obvious that the book is not balanced. In fact, it is unapologetic in its stance against the consensus of the world's scientists about the strong possibility of climate change. The 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is alarming in its conclusion that climate change is unequivocally caused by man's emissions. A leaked draft IPCC report says that man's contribution to climate change is "virtually certain".

Crichton's position is the opposite. He portrays the science of global warming as built upon erroneous or misguided interpretation of temperature data. To prove his point he takes the trouble of reproducing in the novel many graphs showing local surface temperature variations which show that in some places temperatures hardly register any change at all while in others it is in fact cooling. That is hardly a big discovery since we're talking here of "local" variations and not "global" temperature change.

Crichton's message is that the world is currently in the grip of fear brought about by news of impending global catastrophes. This fear is manufactured by the irresponsible system of politics, law, and the media. Hardcore environmental organizations and their PR machines foment fear presumably to promote their alarmist worldview and to secure more research funding. Crichton sees conspiracy among scientists rather than consensus. He believes that the conclusions of many scientists and their press releases are based on shaky, dubious, fuzzy science. And one sees no irony when this pseudo-scientific, pseudo-philosophical stance is announced by a foaming-in-the-mouth mad-scientist type in the book. Crichton probably wants to lighten the mood and/or soften the gloom-and-doom scenario he painted, but really, the lynchpin of his argument is almost the same as blatant greenwashing. In a mad scientist, he has found a perfect representation of a yammering fearmonger he seeks to denounce.

Based on his annotations of bibliography, though, it is evident that Crichton is not concerned about presenting an airtight case against the scientific basis of climate change but on shaking things up. He not only sermonizes against what he thinks are clueless advocacy groups trying to address global warming issues, he demonizes that brand of environmentalism. He is provocative partly because his arguments often fly in the face of sound science and sound logic. The politicization of climate change, according to him, is comparable to the supposedly strong political support in the US and Germany on eugenics research (which Crichton points out is directly related to "overt racism") in the 1920s and 30s.

I am not arguing that global warming is the same as eugenics. But the similarities are not superficial. And I do claim that open and frank discussion of the data, and of the issues, is being suppressed. Leading scientific journals have taken strong editorial positions on the side of global warming, which, I argue, they have no business doing. Under the circumstances, any scientist who has doubts understands clearly that they will be wise to mute their expression.

There is something tasteless about that argument. It is quite understandable to be skeptical about climate change. For all we know, we might wake up tomorrow being threatened by a new ice age. But still the majority of scientists believe at the moment that there is a large chance of a continuing warming underway. The complex climate system cannot give definitive predictions but only probabilities based on global climate models. For an appreciation of these probabilities the global citizen may need to harbor a "healthy dose" of skepticism. Too much skepticism and its opposite—too much climate change fundamentalism—can equally give rise to a state of unsolicited fear. We may yet adapt to any global warming eventuality if we err on the side of precaution.

State of Fear has flashes of entertaining action sequences but one has to critically parse the message as the scientific basis is essentially unfounded. The rhetoric is not to be taken seriously; it often lapses into dumbness. If one does not relish reading about poorly developed, paper-thin characters in a contrived, didactic plot for more than 500 pages, one needs only to read the transcript of Crichton's three speeches on climate change (found here—pdf) to understand the author's "sui generis" position. It's disheartening.

For a more balanced, more nuanced, and more scientifically grounded views on climate change and global warming phenomena, nonfiction titles offer credible narratives. I recommend The Discovery of Global Warming (2003. rev. 2008) by Spencer R. Weart and Global Warming: A Very Short Introduction (2004, rev. 2008) by Mark Maslin.

Adventures of a Child of War (Lin Acacio-Flores)

Adventures of a Child of War by Lin Acacio-Flores (Cacho Publishing House, 2002)


A novel for young readers, Adventures of a Child of War has as its historical backdrop the Second World War in the Philippines from 1941-45. The child of the title is Eduardo Aguilar who was from a middle class family in San Juan, Manila, and who in the course of the novel was exposed to brutal acts and circumstances of war – aerial bombings, hunger, ground fighting.

In 1942, after succumbing to the Japanese forces which ran over the strategic American military bases in the Philippines, General Douglas MacArthur of the American Army fled the country, with a promise to come back soon to liberate the Philippines. His return took all of three years – tatlong taong walang diyos (three godless years), as a Filipino film about the period portrayed it. During all that time, Eduardo came of age and graduated from playing child's games to war adventures no child should participate in at all.

The novelist Lin Acacio-Flores steered the narrative away from sentimentality and managed to depict a realistic war-torn community trying to surviving the reign of the Japanese Imperial Army. Eduardo's childhood adventures took on a new turn when he befriended Captain Abe, a Japanese officer, who took a liking to the boy and taught him to ride the captain's horse. The unlikely friendship of the two was one of the many ethical dilemmas of wartime life that troubled Eduardo's young mind. Is friendship with the enemy ever appropriate? Is that not a manifestation of "collaboration" with the conquerors?

The book's tone is often whimsical, derived as it is from young Eduardo's point of view. The serious episodes are sometimes tinged with comic relief. There was a scene for example when, faced by the threat of dying from hunger, Eduardo and his father had to steal sacks of rice which the Japanese confiscated from people and hoarded in a warehouse. One sack of rice had a hole in it and left a trail of rice grains in the road leading to Eduardo's house.

Must erase it! I thought. I looked around wildly for something like a giant blackboard eraser. None. Then I saw Mama's walis tingting [bamboo broom] leaning against the fence where she had left it.

I grabbed it, raced out into the street, swept the line from side to side up to where it wandered into the middle where people's feet had erased it. Mama followed me with another broom, a walis tingting fastened to a long stick. She swept away the rice other people had spilled in front of our house.

Back into the house we ran, she like a bony witch in her loose dark nightgown, dragging her broom. I had this crazy thought that if the Japanese came after her, she'd fly away on that broom. Gasping, she shut the door after the three of us. Papa locked it and leaned against it for a moment.

There is pathos in the fact that Eduardo's mother had become a "bony witch" in his eyes. People at that time had to eat less and less as the scarce food had to be rationed in small amounts.

One other noteworthy aspect of the book is it is one of those fiction embedded with real photographs. The photographs are taken from Shin Seiki (Bagong Araw ~ New Era), a wartime propaganda magazine published by the Japanese. The author explained her use of this device in a preface.

The decision to use photographs, instead of illustrations, came from a belief that more and more, the younger generations have forgotten the last great world war to reach our own shores, changing the history of our country – for good or ill – forever.

Indeed as time passes, the collective memory of the war becomes fainter and fainter in the consciousness of a new generation of Filipinos. I myself do not remember studying about the Japanese episode in my secondary schooling in the 1990s. My impression is that, save for some sporadic period movies, the second world war is seldom a topic of popular culture, let alone children's literature.

Actual photographs may lead young readers to ask questions about the truth behind fictional events. It can contribute to an understanding of historical situations they can hardly visualize. Photographs and diagrams such as the ones reproduced in the book – "Common Types of Air-Raid Shelters" and "Recommended Layouts of Open-Trench Air-Raid Shelters" – can facilitate understanding and critical perception of young readers.

The 1945 Battle of Manila (not directly presented in the novel), for example, is a significant event whose magnitude is now lost in the minds of the people. Texts and photographs (like the ones pictured at this link) may serve to add to the narratives of war and to national memory.

The novel ended with a climactic episode perpetuating a famous myth associated with the end of the war: the lost Yamashita treasure (popularized in the 2001 movie Yamashita: The Tiger's Treasure). True or not, the myth has come to exemplify the nature of war as built on the fortunes and tears of people. The discovery of the treasure, together with the possibility of owning riches beyond one's imagination, becomes another essential aspect of the story concerned about ethical choices in times of war, in a young readers' novel at that.

Evil and the Mask (Nakamura Fuminori)

Evil and the Mask by Nakamura Fuminori, translated by Satoko Izumo and Stephen Coates (Soho Press, 2013)


How does one unleash maximum evil? The novel by the young Japanese writer Nakamura Fuminori, 36, provides many avenues to explore the filthy black nature of murder, impersonation, wars, more wars, terrorism, copycat terrorism. It features an antihero (Fumihiro Kuki) who was chosen by his father to succeed him as a "cancer" in the world, as the embodiment of pure evil. The family business is in fact the very instrument of evil as it built upon destructive, anarchic aims through the trade of war materiel and ammunition. Here's the long-term plan of Fumihiro's elder brother, also destined to be another malignant tumor in society.

Most of the companies of which I'm the major shareholder deal with war in one form or another, from brokering arms deals overseas to rebuilding after the wars are over.... I'm putting all of my efforts into abolishing the article in the constitution that says that Japan can't export weapons. If we can repeal that we'll be able to sell locally produced weapons to other countries, then whenever a war breaks out we can reap vast profits. The arms business is a gold mine, because weapons are consumables. The longer the war drags on—in other words, the more people are killed—the more money we make. Japan's superior technology will take the world by storm. Imagine we develop a fighter plane. We can include the maintenance in the contract, the whole works. It's a gravy train with no end. Obviously it's not the money I'm interested in. What I'm looking at, as an end in itself, is hundreds of thousands of people dying in those economic currents.

War as the modern industrial complex of evil—an efficient machine ran by capitalists, workers, and soldiers of atrocities, fed by the sustainable energy of constant warmongering. War as the ubiquitous laboratory for inhumanity. 
 
This is a topical novel, inevitably invoking the two world wars, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the War on Terror, the many wars we seem to never tire of making. It is a novel of its time, particularly relevant given the recent pronouncement of Japanese officials bent on amending the country's pacifist constitution (embodied in Article 9 of Japanese constitution).

Fumihiro, shaken by his father's plans for him, set into motion a sequence of events that give readers a peek into the twisted minds of warlords and terrorists. Billed as a Japanese noir detective story, this novel avoids the excesses of the genre by being restrained in its presentation of violence. Sometimes it's too restrained, too understated, as to become more and more creepy with its creeping resolution of the plot. All the celebrated murders and wars in the novel are not described as they happen but only indirectly, either told in conversation by the characters or reported on television and newspapers. The reader may be privy to the planning of a murder or terrorist act but he does not witness its full execution. All we get are accounts of the crimes.

"There's this group doing strange things recently, isn't there? Like simultaneous explosions in different places. The ones calling themselves JL? They’re on the news all the time. The media are condemning them, calling them 'The Invisible Terrorists,' but that's just spurring them on. It looks like there have already been copycats as well."

…

"And now they’ve made a threat. 'We're going to assassinate all the politicians, starting with the baldest. If you want to stop us, the Prime Minister has to hold a press conference and do a perfect impression of the singer Hiromi Go.' Wouldn’t that be hysterical?"

...

"Really? That's crazy."

The Prime Minister channeling Hiromi Go? How bad can that be? See Goldfinger 99 for reference.

The deadpan tone of the novel sometimes breaks into contained hilarity, unintended or not. Here's one upstart terrorist describing the ambitious plans of the terror group.

"We're attacking all accepted values. Authority, class differences, shared perceptions. We don't care what happens to the social structure—revolutions are for suckers. Our target is people's collective consciousness. It's like throwing a cream pie in their face."

By now it was raining quite heavily.

"Come see me again, and I'll give you some specific examples. You're not the type to tell the cops. You're not a loser. You hate people, don't you? And you don't give a damn about society. I can see it in your face. I've got a gift for spotting kindred spirits. But I'll tell you one thing. If we move right away from ethics and morality and common sense, a completely different world will emerge. Sort of as a bonus. Okay, see you."

A completely different world will emerge. He's not kidding at all, that terrorist.

The noir detective aspect of Evil and the Mask is apparent from various devices: brooding, angsty protagonist, bleak atmosphere, femme fatale figure, and, well, a detective. The novel opens with an extract from the diary of a detective who accidentally got involved in the case. This, however, turns out to be not so much about detection and problem-solving as about the timeless superhero story of good versus evil. Is evil encoded in genes, embedded in tissues like a cancer? Where is the place of personal/private transactions of evil within the larger context of public/wholesale wars?
 
Evil and the Mask turns out to be a novel of ideas, with the evildoing characters speaking in the dialectical manner of Plato. By the end of the book, philosophical exchanges with cold-blooded murderers, corrupt businessmen, and budding terrorists lead to some plausible ideas about how evil spreads like a happy virus. No talking cats or leeches falling from the sky in this book. The novel turns out be well-grounded in reality. That probably makes it more uncanny.
 
In his preface to The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares—via Alain Robbe-Grillet's Paris Review interview—Borges said that all great novels of the twentieth century are detective novels. His examples: The Turn of the Screw, William Faulkner's Sanctuary, The Castle. Unlike the traditional detective novel, the specific detective novel he had in mind are those that are not concerned about the solution to the crime but to the investigation itself. [Here I'm reminded of the modern species of the novel called the 'novel of inquiry' (nobela ng pagsisiyasat) by the Filipino novelist Edgar Calabia Samar, who expounded on this in an essay in Halos Isang Buhay (Almost a Life).] Robbe-Grillet continues his reading of Borges:

Detective novels are consumer products, sold by millions, and are made in the following way: there are clues to an event, say a murder, and someone comes along and puts the pieces together in order that truth may be revealed. Then it all makes sense. In our novels what is missing is “sense.” There is a constant appeal to sense, but it remains unfulfilled, because the pieces keep moving and shifting and when “sense” appears it is transitory. Therefore, what is important is not to discover the truth at the end of the investigation, but the process itself.

The process is all that matters. The process is the novel itself. Roberto Bolaño faithfully borrows this method in The Savage Detectives. But he makes certain concessions in 2666. After the interminable length of the latter novel, Bolaño is forced to explain some of the mystery but still manages to keep a good deal undisclosed.

Given the definition of Borges, I would say that Evil and the Mask can be considered a traditional detective novel. The truth is discovered in the end; all clues are accounted for. Still, the novelist Nakamura defies some expectations of the detective novel through an unusual approach to the determination of crime. The crime is already determined from the start. What the rest of the novel does is unfold the investigation process of the criminals' investigation into their own selves, how they determine the extent of their guilt and punishment. To some extent, it is an investigation not of the crimes which are transparently presented but of the criminal intents. If that makes sense. In addition, the detection in the novel is not really undertaken by the detective ("someone [who] comes along and puts the pieces together in order that truth may be revealed") in the book. The detection is made by the criminals themselves. In the end, the detective scratches his head, just as puzzled as he was when he entered the picture halfway through the story. He may have a theory about the crime but he is as clueless as ever.

This is only Nakamura's second novel to appear in English translation. He is a prolific writer and appears to be a critical favorite, having won prestigious prizes in Japan like the Akutagawa Prize and the Kenzaburō Ōe Prize, the latter for a novel which appeared as The Thief.

In Evil and the Mask, it’s not only terrorists and detectives who appear to be almost invisible. The book's translators, Satoko Izumo and Stephen Coates, seem to be peripheral too as they have produced a version that is almost invisible, save for some cultural references, in the target language. It captures what must have been Nakamura’s clean and spare diction and his appeal to universal and timeless themes. However, the translators themselves literally disappear in the book. Their names can't be found in the dust jacket, book flaps, or title pages. Their names only appear on the copyright page, in tiny lettering.



I received a review copy from the publisher.

An exercise in destruction

PORTRAIT OF JULIA (1992) by FRANK AUERBACH

This wraps up my posting on W. G. Sebald's The Emigrants, a haunting prose work on memory, falsification, and amnesia. The poet Michael Hulse has to be acknowledged for his sterling version of Sebald's language and idioms. As in the case of Javier Marías's masterful exploration of memory and guilt in Your Face Tomorrow (2002-2007, trans. Margaret Jull Costa), I am reminded of the philosopher Paul Ricoeur's appropriation of Freud's idea of work in On Translation (2004, trans. Eileen Brennan): The work of translation is a work of remembering and a work of mourning. In Hulse's writing, these two kinds of work are not mutually exclusive.

In "translating" the story of his fourth and last subject (Max Ferber), Sebald might as well describe the quandary of all translators. This can be gleaned from his narrator's despair after thoroughly investigating the life of the painter Ferber. It is a metafictional moment of self-consciousness and inadequacy.

During the winter of 1990/91, in the little free time I had ... I was working on the account of Max Ferber given above [the foregoing text]. It was an arduous task. Often I could not get on for hours or days at a time, and not infrequently I unravelled what I had done, continuously tormented by scruples that were taking hold and steadily paralysing me. These scruples concerned not only the subject of my narrative, which I felt I could not do justice to, no matter what approach I tried, but also the entire questionable business of writing. I had covered hundreds of pages with my scribble, in pencil and ballpoint. By far the greater part had been crossed out, discarded, or obliterated by additions. Even what I ultimately salvaged as a "final" version seemed to me a thing of shreds and patches, utterly botched.

Capturing memory is hard work. It can be likened to producing early drafts of translation – "crossed out, discarded, or obliterated by additions" – or at least revising and rewriting several thoughts (passages) and fine-tuning one's perception of events (language). This passage comes right after describing a natural template of perpetual destruction, that of the production of salt through the "ceaseless flow" of water: "that theatre of water ... the long term and (I believe) impenetrable process which, as the concentration of salts increases in the water, produces the very strangest of petrified or crystallized forms, imitating the growth patterns of Nature even as it is being dissolved."

It is not that different from Ferber's unusual approach to portrait painting, described as "an exercise in destruction". It is a combination of successive erasures of paint off the canvas and the continuous reconstruction and application of paint over the surface: "The moment the model had sat down and he had taken a look at him or her, he would erase the portrait yet again, and once more set about excavating the features of his model, who by now was distinctly wearied by this manner of working, from a surface already badly damaged by the continual destruction." For the narrator, it all "amounted to nothing but a steady production of dust." Dust is the constant material hovering all around Ferber's work.

The routine of remembering is a form of work; it can be physically and mentally taxing. It can be unsettling, literally backbreaking and extremely painful, especially if it requires unearthing memory within a memory within a memory.

The flood of memory, little of which remains with me now, began with my recalling a Friday morning some years ago when I was suddenly struck by the paroxysm of pain that a slipped disc can occasion, pain of a kind I had never experienced before. I had simply bent down to the cat, and as I straightened up the tissue tore and the nucleus pulposus jammed into the nerves. At that moment, all I knew was that I mustn't move a fraction of an inch, that my whole life had shrunk to that one tiny point of absolute pain, and that even breathing in made everything go black.... I also remember that the crooked position I was forced to stand in reminded me, even in my pain, of a photograph my father had taken of me in the second form at school, bent over my writing. In Colmar, at any rate, said Ferber after a lengthy pause, I began to remember, and it was probably those recollections that prompted me to go on to Lake Geneva after eight days, to retrace another old memory that had long been buried and which I had never dared disturb.... On my train journey through Switzerland, which truly is amazingly beautiful, I was already remembering these scenes and images of thirty years before, said Ferber.

This extended remembrance within a remembrance is not without its side effect of forgetting. There are gaps in the narrative of remembrance, stretches of unaccounted for events – "memory block", we might call them. The work of remembering may induce not only vertigo but physical infirmity. In the case of Ferber, it seems to confirm even his "inner constitution" at a young age, an apparent scoliosis or propensity to be bent while concentrating at work. The one who remembers, voluntarily or accidentally, with such "painful clarity" (as if the events happened only yesterday), carries the load of memory on his back like a sack or baggage, sometimes so heavy he is forced to stoop and become crooked and bent. It is a handicap experienced by those who spent their lives doing the same things over and over. How memory can bring physical infirmity is prefigured early on in the second section of the book when the narrator encounters the aged porter of an inn: "He was so doubled over that he cannot have been able to see more than the lower half of anyone standing in front of him. Because of this handicap, no doubt, he had already taken a quick glance at the latecomer outside the glazed door before he crossed the hall, a glance that was the more penetrating for being brief."

The "business of writing" is questionable in the first place because the writer exercises his creative license in selecting and falsifying some details and elements of his "historical" narrative. Ethics and aesthetics collide in the process. In order to get his ideas across, the writer is forced to invent connections in the narrative, connections that may not be there in the first place. There is inherent contradiction in the reliance on memory to tell a story and in acknowledging the unreliable turns memory sometimes make. Between memory and forgetting, however, the writer has already made his choice. The path of least resistance is not for him. The balance of truth and fiction must remain precarious and suspect. In interviews, Sebald has expressed his personal reservations on his appropriating the lives of real people (like the painter Frank Auerbach) in his narratives. Yet the aesthetic choices he makes in the service of his art brings to the forefront the function of fiction to produce not a tidy reality but untidy composites of that reality.

In consciously altering historical, reality-based narratives and in bringing to the surface the falsifications of memory, Sebald treads the line between moral and aesthetic scruples. What makes for great art – or what makes for a strong potential for greatness in certain art – seems to be its capacity to exercise the memory of those who read, view, hear, or see it. Great art must prick the conscience, let loose the sympathetic imagination. Thus, pictures of great suffering like Grünewald's "Entombment of Christ" or Tiepolo's fresco or breathtaking natural landscapes (as opposed to man-made art) seen up close, occasioned in Max Ferber a flood of remembrances – "one thing had led to another" – of his childhood and youth. And thus, his mother Luisa, facing an imminent threat, suddenly takes the task of remembering to articulate her childhood memories. Resisting death through memory and mourning. It seems the most natural thing to do.

From the top, the road runs down, along the edge of the woods, to Höhn, where the fields open out and the hills of the Rhön can be seen in the distance. The Saale meadows spread before you, the Windheim woods nestle in a gentle curve, and there are the top of the church tower and the old castle – Steinach! Now the road crosses the stream and enters the village, up to the square by the inn, then down to the right to the lower part of the village, which Luisa calls her real home.

Luisa's first person memoir occupies a large part of Ferber's story. It continues to describe the minutiae of life in her village, the rise and fall of her family fortunes, the impending danger from Nazism. The obvious model for Luisa's clean and clear prose style is Adalbert Stifter in Rock Crystal (1843, trans. Elizabeth Mayer and Marianne Moore): "Among the high mountains of our country there is a little village with a small but needle-fine church spire. Conspicuous above the green of abundant fruit-trees, this spire—because the slates are painted vermilion—can be seen far and wide against the faint blue of the mountains. The hamlet nestles in the very center of a fairly wide valley that is an almost perfect ellipse...."

In her restrained and devastating memoir, Luisa lists the names of her neighbors and their occupations: the Lions who supply oil for the lamps, Meier Frei the merchant, Gessner the baker, Liebmann the slaughterer, Salomon Stern the flour merchant, Fröhlich the plumber, and so on. It is not now surprising to observe how in this work of fiction, Sebald's subjects and their relatives and acquaintances are portrayed as dedicated to their work, some of them to the point of obsession: Paul Bereyter as tutor and schoolteacher, Ferber as painter, the narrator's uncle Kasimir as a construction worker atop skyscrapers, his great-uncle Adelwarth as majordomo and butler, Dr. Selwyn's father as proprietor of emporium, etc. They are emigrants who work for a living, braving the wear and tear of life and its accompanying experiences and memories. To work and remember is to postpone dying.

It is thus fitting that the book ends with a series of photographs (described, not shown) of ghetto workers in Polish production sites – women sitting making baskets, child apprentices in metalwork shop, men making bullets, men in the nail factory or rag depot, three young women behind a loom. The narrator sees in the workers a resigned engagement in the daily grind of production. They, the dutiful workers, are not entirely voiceless in the photographs. They proclaim in a silent chorus the assumption of their work, the source of their salvation and destruction.

... faces, countless faces, who looked up from their work (and were permitted to do so) purposely and solely for the fraction of a second that it took to take the photograph. Work is our only course, they said.