Rollicking Entertainment

Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things is an extremely unusual, imaginative, funky and funny novel to be read with a grain of salt. The author claims the first part is based on “Episodes from the early life of Archibald McCandless, M.D. Scottish Public Health Officer”, and the second part is “A letter about the book to a grand- or great-grandchild by ‘Victoria’ McCandless M.D.”

Both the narrators of the first and second parts and the author himself, are unreliable. Hence the tongue in cheek playfulness of the whole macabre story.

The first part is about Bella Baxter, a Scottish pregnant woman who commits suicide by throwing herself in the river. Dr. Godwin Baxter salvages the body, and transplants the dead fetus’s brain into Bella’s head. With the help of some Frankenstein-style electrical shocks Bella comes back to life as a creature with the brain of a newborn infant, housed in the body of a young woman.

What ensues, as Bella takes quick giant steps in learning, is the adventurous life of an intellectually curious, morally uninhibited, and sexually voracious young woman who is loved and financially supported by her creator, Godwin Baxter, (aka God) is engaged to his colleague, Archibald McCandless (aka Candle) and elopes with God’s lawyer, Duncan Wedderburn (aka Wedder). Their travels take them to Europe, Africa and Asia. En route Bella meets with interesting and opinionated people, from whom she learns about class divides and politics.

After driving her “weary old Wedder” both physically and financially into the ground, Bella continues solo on her journey for a while before returning home. She writes about all her adventures in detail to God, who dutifully reads them to Candle, who in turn, narrates them to us, the readers.

On her return to Scotland, interesting, and might I add, very cleverly written, – courtroom drama style – developments occur that lead to the second part of the book, “A letter from Victoria McCandless M.D. to her eldest surviving descendant in 1974 correcting what she claims are errors in ‘Episodes from the early life of Archibald McCandless, M.D. Scottish Public Health Officer’ by her late husband”.

The second part negates the first part and presents a totally different version of Bella Baxter’s story, with credible objections and rational causes for the intentional misrepresentations made in the first part by Archibald McCandless.

The book is illustrated with pictures from the book, Gray’s Anatomy, and sketches by Alisdair Gray who was an artist as well as a writer. But he claims the sketches are from nineteenth century engravings 😊

Gray explores social themes, such as gender inequity, sexuality, oppression and poverty with his biting sarcasm. About her upbringing Bella says, “Mother had taught me to be a working man’s domestic slave; the nuns taught me to be a rich man’s domestic toy. When they sent me back Mother was dead and I could speak French, dance, play the piano, move like a lady and discuss events as Conservative newspapers reported them for the nuns thought husbands might prefer wives who knew some things about the world.”

Of the medical practice at the end of the 19^th century God, a doctor, opines, “The smooth bedside manner we cultivate is seldom more than a cheap anesthetic to make our patients as passive as the corpses we train upon.” And, “The public hospitals are places where doctors learn how to get money off the rich by practicing on the poor.” About his own dad, also a doctor, he says, “He had very little interest in people, except as surgical cases.”

When Bella asks a friend she met in her travels to change the topic to a happy one, his answer is, “We could talk of the radiant future of the human race a century hence when science trade and fraternal democracy will have abolished disease, war and poverty, and everyone will live in a hygienic apartment block with a free clinic in the basement run by a good German dentist. But I would feel lost in such a future.”

In the Introduction to the book Gray lists a number of historical facts, echoing events in the book, about McCandless, his wife, Godwyn Baxter, Duncan Wedderburn and others, that happened between 1879 and 1886.

At the end of the book there are 40 pages of endnotes, including pictures, under the heading, “Notes Critical and Historical”. Given the general tone of the book, and an erratum note about one of the illustrations of the book, I wouldn’t bet on the accuracy of either the intro or the notes.

Having said that, it not only doesn’t take away one iota from the rollicking entertainment that is Poor Things, it adds to it.

And you Think Your Job is Stressful?

The best-selling book of 2020, Barack Obama’s A Promised Land is a hefty volume. In it, Obama starts with his childhood, proceeds to his university years, first job, meeting and marrying his wife, getting into politics, becoming a senator, getting elected as the President of the United States and the first three years of his presidency.

Obama comes across as composed, sensitive, intelligent and kind-hearted. He talks with devotion, love and gratitude about his mother, grandparents, sister, wife, children and even his dog, Bo. He expresses regret that his job didn’t leave him enough time to do everything possible for his loved ones. He talks about how his family was his main source of comfort and happiness in the most stressful times.

He also comes across as humble with a self-deprecating sense of humor. He mentions how Michelle makes fun of him for his “Hawaiian walk” and his children tease him for talking “so slow”. He also stresses the irony of his receiving the Nobel Peace Prize while sending tens of thousands of additional troops into Afghanistan.

Obama says that besides the politics of the life of a president, he also wants to talk about what it feels on a personal level to live the life of a president. These parts of the book are interesting and often funny. He talks about the “pervasive routine weirdness” of everyone standing up when he entered a room. How he told them to “Sit down!” but they stood up again the next time he entered the room. He says how strange it felt that his first name disappeared, except with his family and close friends. How every one answered even his most simple questions with, “Yes, Mr. President. No, Mr. President.”

He talks about the gorgeous flowers he enjoyed seeing on his short walks to his office. The constraint of not being able to go out for a walk or for a dinner with his wife. The secret service agents reporting his every move, whispering into their wrist microphones, “Renegade to the residence,” or “Renegade to secondary hold,” meaning the bathroom. How the mostly Latino and black staff that did the cooking, serving and cleaning, didn’t let him even take his plate to the kitchen, because they wanted to serve him fully like they did the other presidents, and telling him, “You just don’t know what it means for us to have you here.”

But the bulk of the book is about politics.

I think most people realize that being the leader of a country, let alone the superpower of the planet, is difficult. But this book gives you a better appreciation for why most American presidents age and grey so prematurely.

Obama talks about having not only daily agendas full of heavy-duty, contentious issues, but also daily surprises. From the Recovery Act to Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, to relationships with Russia, China, Iran, Israel and the Arab world, relationship of whites and blacks in the U.S., Climate Change, the Clean Air Act, Immigration Reform, the Dream Act, Wall Street Reform, closing Guantanamo Bay, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy, Deepwater Horizon oil spill, military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, ordering the killing of Osama Bin Laden, etc. etc.

Add to this the illogical, dysfunctional, and almost childish bipartisan politics, in which the Republicans would oppose any bill that the Democrats proposed, even if they had put it forward in the past and lost.

And you think your job is stressful?

Obama discusses all this and more, in detail, explaining the background, the who, what, where, when, why and how of things. This is interesting and educating in terms of the mini history lessons on various topics, and the description of the complicated processes of negotiating, decision making, and affecting change. But it makes for serious information overload.

Although he introduces every character with an excellent brief physical and behavioral description, as the reader loses count of the number of people he talked and worked with, they all blend into a blur.

He is generous in complimenting most people he worked with, especially Nancy Pelosi, mother of five, and the first female speaker of the house in American history. The only person he takes a discreet shot at is Trump.

And all throughout the book, he waxes philosophical on the role and function of political leaders in history. When he visits the pyramids of Egypt he thinks about the challenges that pharaohs had and how they compare to his. He wishes he could talk to Ghandi and ask where he found the strength to do so much with so little? And he seems to conclude with, “Whatever you do won’t be enough…but try anyway.”

Nothing to Write Home About

You learn a lot about the state of affairs in today’s Russia, reading Keith Gessen’s A Terrible Country. He somewhat debunks the image of the boogeyman Russia, and presents a much more layered, complicated, often self-contradictory facets of Russian people, politics and leaders.

The story is about Andrei Kaplan, a Jewish Russian young man, who emigrated to the states as a child, got his PhD in Russian literature from the U.S., couldn’t land a job in academia and returns to Russia at the request of his only older brother, Dima, to care for his elderly grandmother. The brother is a former successful businessman in Russia who is currently being sued and prefers not to be in the country.

Having heard horror stories of communist USSR from his parents, and having grown up and been educated in the U.S., Andrei returns to Moscow with certain preconceived ideas and expectations, most of which are proven wrong.

But that doesn’t mean that Russia is a good or comfortable country to live in. Andrei recounts how things that are straightforward and easy to do in the US, are complicated and difficult in Russia. Buying a regular sweater for his grandmother turns out to be very difficult. Finding a hockey team to play on, becomes a maze. But that, of course, is partly because he’s an outsider, unfamiliar with social cues and conventions, and not in full command of the nuances of the language.

The novel is somewhat autobiographical. Gessen was born in a Russian Jewish family, emigrated to the US, studied there and went back to Russia to take care of his grandmother for a while.

Gessen paints a vivid picture of Moscow, its tortured intellectuals and dissidents, its well-dressed business class, sipping impossibly expensive cappuccinos in myriad chic cafes of the capital, the regular people who can only afford to buy provisions from street vendors, its overt racism, the courtyards where people sit down to chat over a bottle of beer, the sushki, the kasha, the kotleti, the borscht, the tea…

He describes a capitalist political system, from which many people benefit. But there’s also those who have lost everything with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Then there are the idealistic socialists and anarchists who want their voices heard and risk life and limb for it.

But that doesn’t mean that as Andrei’s grandmother keeps repeating Russia is “A Terrible Country.”

Gessen portrays human relationships with a different hue and higher degree of tenderness from the one we’re used to. Andrei gets pistol-whipped for no reason by the boyfriend of a girl he meets in a club one night. When the boyfriend, the son of a high-ranking politician, shows up as a guest player on the opposite hockey team Andrei plays on, and Andrei picks a fight with him, a tough, arrogant player on the opposite team sides with Andrei. When Andrei thanks the aggressive, unfriendly player, the latter is matter-of-fact about it. He tells Andrei the guest player was wrong and Andrei was right, and there’s no question about that.

Nokolai, a fellow hockey player, constantly nags Andrei to help him renovate his dacha. But when Andrei asks him to lend him the dacha so he can take his grandmother there, Nikolai readily agrees.

When Andrei and his older brother, the tough, macho Dima, move their grandmother from her apartment despite her mild objections, both men cry.

There’s humor in the book too. Like when Andrei explains how profanities are turned into verbs in the lingo of some Russians. And how this sometimes totally clouds the meaning, even for those who use this language themselves.

I have to also mention a number of things that I disliked about the book. The narrator, Andrei, is annoying. He’s had the privilege of being highly educated in the US, but he lacks self-confidence and is a whining, jealous, finger-pointing, blaming, endlessly complaining young man. Although realistic, at times this voice gets under your skin and you want to grab him, give him a good shake and scream enough!! Get over yourself!

The plot is pretty much flat until Part 2, when Andrei finally finds a hockey team that allows him to play.

Another thing I didn’t like about the book is that it’s packed with unnecessary details, that don’t serve any purpose. There’s no significance to what Andrei packed in the bag which he took to the hospital for his grandma. Even less significance to which bag he packed it in.

The plumbing problem that happens on the day of his grandma’s birthday party is another example. Gessen spends about half a chapter detailing the steps Andrei takes to fix it.

Some other details, which are about Russia’s literary past, like Pushkin’s life or Marina Tsvetaeva’s ordeals are informative, but have nothing to do with the story.

A Terrible Country will appeal to readers who want to find out about life in contemporary Russia, but as a piece of literature it’s nothing to write home about.

Who Gets the Money and How?

Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty by Daron Acemoglu, economist from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and James A. Robinson, political scientist from University of Chicago, is a non- fiction book, which is well-researched, reasonably argued and painstakingly analytical. It’s informative, educating and thought provoking.

The authors try to prove that the reason some nations are wealthy and others are poor is not because of their geography, climate, natural resources, culture, or religion, but because of their political and economic institutions.

Nations that are rich, have a central government, respect the rule of law and are able to create “inclusive” political and economic institutions, which allow power and income to be shared by a large group of their citizens, provide incentives for people to try hard, bring in innovations, hire others and trade both internally and with other nations. The rich nations usually have democratic governments.

Conversely nations that don’t have a central government, don’t respect individual’s rights to property, and set up “extractive” political and economic institutions, –institutions that exploit people and don’t let them reap the reward of their efforts— leave no reason for their people to work hard or to try new equipment, practices or trade partners. These nations end up poor, at times despite their rich natural resources. They are usually nations which are run by authoritarian regimes, dictators or oligarchs.

To prove their theory the authors use a multitude of examples from centuries ago to the present, spanning all continents. Their examples include the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Incas, Aztecs, Mayas, Cuba, Venezuela, Columbia, Chile, Peru, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, The Congo, Sierra Leone, Egypt, Somalia, Ethiopia, Spain, Portugal, England, France, ancient Rome, Turkey, Russia, China, Vietnam, Korea and others.

The authors analyze each ruler or period in a civilization or country either to prove their theory or to refute other theories about wealth distribution among nations. After the first 10-20 case studies, I must admit, the examples started going right over my head. When at about the middle of the book they said, “As we discussed in chapter 4…”, I was lucky if I remembered a fraction of that discussion!

However, this does not mean that I didn’t understand what the argument was or how they went about proving it.

When it comes to proving the authors’ theory, I don’t have the background or the knowledge to agree or disagree with them. Their arguments, supported by their examples sound reasonable.

But at times the arguments sound repetitive and at times there’s information overload. Plus, I don’t know of any other examples that might disprove their theory.

And I have to confess that when it comes to supporting their arguments by comparing various nations, and how they dealt with certain circumstances in different epochs, my lack of historical and economic expertise stops me from vouching for the strength of the proof.

Having thus disqualified myself as a knowledgeable critic for this book, I have to say all of this doesn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy the book. On the contrary, it was an eye-opener for me. I learnt a whole lot about concepts, events, people, countries and political practices I didn’t know anything about. Most importantly this learning experience has changed my perspective. I look at the current events, leaders, conflicts, laws, policies and their probable motives in a different light.

If you like learning about stuff you don’t know much about, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty has a lot to teach you about history, governance, politics, economy and distribution of power and wealth.

Holding up a Mirror

Canadian Stage does it again!

It stages a play based on the work of the 19^th century Russian writer, Nikolai Gogol, and makes it reflect our 21^st century reality.

 

Last year it was The Overcoat: A Musical Tailoring. This year it’s Revisor. The Overcoat was an opera based on a short story, Revisor, a dance performance based on a play. The Overcoat was a Canadian Stage production, Revisor is produced by Kidd Pivot, a Vancouver company.

 

On the surface Revisor is a comedy of mistaken identity. A corrupt government official, mistakes a charlatan, newly arrived in the city, for an inspector. (Revizor is the Russian word for inspector.) At first the official and the supposed revisor start posturing for each other, but soon the official decides bribery will work best. He wines and dines the revisor and pays him handsomely. Meanwhile other government officials, all of whom have secrets to hide, fall over each other to slander one another and bribe the revisor not to tell on them.

The clever script, written by Jonathan Young, is pre-recorded by nine voices, eight characters and a narrator, –the revisor’s voiceover is done by Young himself– and interspersed by music and sound effects. The voiceover inserts a degree of detachment between language and reality.

Eight dancers impersonate the characters, at times lip-syncing to the script, at times dancing to the music, and at times making exaggerated movements with indescribable speed and agility to match every word, or even every syllable of the script.

This makes the play absolutely hilarious.

Crystal Pite’s choreography pushes the boundaries of human body, creates most of the laughs, and at times lends a lyrical and philosophical air to the dances. Her direction is innovative and makes her actors/dancers run for their money.

In an interview with Georgia Straight, Jonathan Young puts it elegantly, “Words create this tangled network between us. Language is a network of meaning and emotion and pain and humour. And working with Crystal, we see that language in the body.”

The snippets of dialogue, often repeated, often absurd, could have been taken straight from the media coverage of our Canadian and U.S. politicians today. “A deceiver who cares for none and stands for nothing.” “…unified and divided”, “subject is”, “allusions to”, “evidence of”, “reconfigured”, “reoriented”, “visibly moved”…

The fact that each and every character, intelligent or not, minister or clerk, is corrupt, makes the play even more poignant, farcical and depressing.

The music and sound effects, by Owen Belton, Alessandro Juliani and Meg Roe are rich. Some sound effects like the knuckle-cracking sounds enhance the physical feats that the dancers perform, and add to the farce.

Revisor is a jaw-dropping performance by eight amazing dancers in a satirical play, based on a century-old Russian one, which mirrors our politics and our era. No amount of grandstanding about our progress, superiority, democracy or transparency can deny that.

If you haven’t already seen it, there are four more performances in Toronto, March 13-16, before Kidd Pivot takes it to Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Montreal.