1984 in 2022

 

I read 1984 sometime before college, in or around the year 1984.  So this return to the novel was informative.  Orwell’s misogyny comes shining through the pages.  Julia is a strange and contradictory character in a mostly uninteresting and contradictory way.  Would she give up the caution she has been exercising as a teenager in her illegal sexual forays for her love affair with Winston Smith?  Does Goldstein need to be Jewish?  Probably.  The “Jew” as the other who controls/destroys the system is certainly a historical social and political theme.  But I know Orwell was an anti-Semite.  Did he enjoy his caricaturing Goldstein?  

The end was a surprise.  Winston is essentially an alcoholic.  After all he has been through, all his suffering, Victory Gin is self-medication. He is puffy and heavy.  His pursuit of Julia post-MiniLuv is fascinating but odd.  The encounter in the park with Julia at the end is strange.  His pursuit of her to the tube was discordant. Does it fit into the overall story? 

People Who Eat Darkness

 

Richard Lloyd Parry has extensive experience writing about Indonesia, and Asia generally, and he brings this to bear in his People Who Eat Darkness: The True Story of a Young Woman Who Vanished from the Streets of Tokyo--and the Evil That Swallowed Her Up.  Every culture is inherently misogynistic in its way.  Japan has unique expressions of this universal form of hate, and Parry examines them fairly and in context.  There is always the sense of the “other” in books like these, particularly when a violent crime occurs.  Parry keeps us grounded and helps us think sensibly about a place so different from our own. 

Shabbos Reading

 

Mussar has become successful in Jewish Renewal, broadly conceived.   Mussar was an ethical movement founded in Lithuania away from the Chasidic centers of Europe.  It is very rational, and Litvak.   It was formed in part as a response to the radical stress on the inner life of Chasidism.  Mussar combs Jewish texts, particularly the Torah, to find examples of positive (and sometimes negative) middah, or character traits.  It is very practically oriented and geared to changing our inner lives in a less  euphoric way than Chasidism.

I must admit that Mussar does not capture my heart as much as Chassidus, but there are certainly great and deep merits to its study. This is a strong collection of essays from many voices.  I read a few each Shabbos.  

The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan,

 

The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan, by Yasmin Khan, is both a detailed and brisk history of one of the largest humanitarian crises of the twentieth century.  This work is not only about the creation of two countries, but the infinitely complex topic of decolonization, post-colonization, ethnic and religious conflict, political polarization, regional disputes, and national identity.

In the process of all of this, millions of people living in the Indian sub-continent were displaced, and millions died.  Khan presents all of this with intelligence and compassion. 

Two Trees Make a Forest: Travels Among Taiwan's Mountains & Coasts in Search of My Family's Past

 

Two Trees Make a Forest: Travels Among Taiwan's Mountains & Coasts in Search of My Family's Past by Jessica J. Lee is a heartfelt, intelligent and moving memoir about the Chinese side of her family – and the dislocations and struggles they have faced in mainland China, the ROC (Taiwan) and Canada.

Lee marshals both the political, social, and especially the natural history of Taiwan to tell the story of the fractures within her family.  Like so many people living in the shadow of the twentieth century and its upheavals, Lee struggles to make sense of a world that is gone.

In the Time of Madness: Indonesia on the Edge of Chaos

 

In the Time of Madness: Indonesia on the Edge of Chaos by Richard Lloyd Parry explores not the edge of chaos, but the literal chaos of various civil disturbances in Indonesia at the turn of the twentieth century.  The genocidal violence of Indonesia degenerated into cannibalism in some areas, and civil war in East Timor nearly led to the extermination of its people.  Parry’s unflinching look at a society in meltdown is sobering.

In the Lake of the Woods: A Novel

 

Tim O’Brien’s In the Lake of the Woods: A Novel, walks a fine tightrope throughout.  The reader is given hints, here and there, that a crime may have been committed, but the novel ends on a very uncertain note.  We are left to wonder what happened the night John Wade walked around the bungalow frying plants with steaming water.  Did he boil Kathy to death?  Or did she disappear with the boat?  He stalks her since the early days of their relationship, so why should she/we trust him?  Yet she has a habit of disappearing, probably in response to the stalking.  Did she take the boat, get lost and die?  In the end, who is missing, and who is alive?  O’Brien deftly leaves us in the dark.