Breaking Solitude: The Never-Open Desert Diner a novel by James Anderson

The Never-Open Desert Diner is a good first novel by James Anderson. I like stories of characters conscious of their solitude and thinking about it without running away. Ben Jones is a truck driver in Utah, driving a route that is a day’s journey out and back in a sparsely inhabited stretch of desert. State Road 117 has some turnouts, byways, and an end point with relatively little traffic. He is not fully committed to his solitude as are many OTR truck drivers, but he spends much of every day in solitude. Ben’s past is kept in the background with interesting hints of a much more social and personally risky life left behind.

Time elapses slowly as Ben delivers goods to individuals and small businesses in the vast desert along 117. Ben has relationships with his isolated customers bound by individual rules of privacy learned over time. One of the toughest set of rules is enforced by a 79 year old customer Walt Butterfield, owner of the Desert Diner on US 191. Walt keeps the diner in perfect condition inside and out but does not discuss with Ben why it is never open for business.

This is a great start for a novel, and I looked forward to each chapter. Then, everything changes when Ben’s schedule is interrupted by unexpected events that break the rules of solitude. Changes are the life blood of a novel of character solitude, and nothing lasts forever but the peaceful/violent desert in this novel.

The problem with Anderson’s novel is the relationship and dialogue between Ben and a character new to the desert. It is interesting at the first encounter, but become far too fast-paced, artificially intimate, and symbolic to be believable or consistent with the theme of solitude. Ben and the new resident of the desert off State Road 117 begin to converse in code revealing that they are sudden soul mates existing in a higher plane of empathetic consciousness. After this break in the flow of the novel, there were interesting exciting scenes and good character development, but my keen interest in the story waned. I recommend the novel with my reservations noted.

Cultural Evolution/Revolution: Calls Across the Pacific a novel by Zoe S. Roy

Calls Across the Pacific is the second novel by Zoe S. Roy that describes the lives of characters affected by China’s Maoist Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Her first very good novel, The Long March Home published in 2011, was the story of three generations of women, one immersed in the time of Maoist oppression, one who escaped it in part, and a third who was not directly involved but seeks to understand her family’s legacy of life in the vast, ever changing China. 

In her second novel, Ms. Roy develops the character, Nina Huang, who escapes from Number 5 Military Farm, a re-education location for individuals from families tainted by family histories of perceived anti-Maoist revolutionary activity. Nina and her boyfriend attempt to flee to Hong Kong seeking asylum from a democratic government. The two are separated in flight, and 20 year old Nina makes her way to the U. S. with the generous help of Chinese expatriates. Working hard at tedious menial jobs, Nina makes a life for herself with the idea of ultimately learning about the contrasts between her Eastern and Western cultures through formal education.

Nina earns opportunities for basic and advanced education in the U. S. and Canada and forms relationships in her new settings. But, she does not forget her roots in China that she perceives as positive but morally restrictive in the long run but oppressive and purgative in the revolutionary short term. Using her facility with languages, Nina develops her writing skills and sets out to record the history of her family and acquaintances as a journalist. Nina has a peaceful and fulfilling life in Canada but feels drawn back to China to record the stories of people who suffered greatly during the Maoist Cultural Revolution and its aftermath. A persistent theme in Nina’s story is her view of the evolution of Chinese culture. Is this process dependent on abrupt changes through violent revolution followed by a slow recovery of enduring values? Or is China sacrificing its cultural legacy by rapidly forcing changes in the peoples’ unifying philosophy and the country’s economic strategies?

Calls Across the Pacific is written in a simple and direct style that is appropriate for teenage, young adult, and older adult readers. The freelance articles Nina writes about the experiences of a variety of people in China broadens readers’ understanding of its evolutionary/revolutionary history in the 20th Century.

Hungry Ghost: Ballad of a Small Player a novel by Lawrence Osborne

The Ballad of a Small Player (2014) is a novel of contemporary western China, in Macau’s gilded gambling casinos. “Lord” Doyle is an expatriate barrister from London. Doyle thinks of himself as a long term loser personality and an obsessive gambler against luck. The ironic title of Lord has been given to Doyle by the Chinese hotel and casinos staff because of his good suits, yellow gambling gloves, and “quai lo” (Caucasian) airs of royalty he maintains while losing more money than he wins. Wealth that Doyle embezzled and absconded with from London gives him immunity from overt scorn by the Chinese gamblers and staff. Doyle’s self-hatred is mitigated by his identification with Taoists’ concept of “preta” described in English as “Hungry Ghosts.” These poor souls are awaiting reincarnation to a better life existing indefinitely in the equivalent of Christian hell. The hungry ghosts are burdened by a tremendous appetite for food, drink, and other sensory pleasures that cannot be satisfied except during the seventh lunar month of the Chinese calendar. Doyle sees himself as a denizen of the casinos in his seventh month.

The novel is an interesting character study and maintains a consistently gloomy mood against a background of huge glitzy rooms. The depressive views of Doyle are symptomatic of what we call gambling “addiction” in the West. In the East, however, the Chinese call the predictable addictive behavior “luck,” that Doyle associates with the I Ching. Caught between two cultural views, Doyle plays a type of Baccarat that involves no player skill, only a turning of the cards and counting numbers. He casts his fate to the wind every night expecting to lose with no basis for his anticipation. Seeing himself as a loser, Doyle claims that once a loser always one. As an addict, Doyle is a hungry ghost who has selected specific self-destructive behaviors because of his immutable loser personality. Instead of the Western explanation that an addiction overcomes one, the Eastern description is that all past and present living factors (including guilt) have influenced one to pick his individual unreachable “pleasure.”

This is the second good novel of the Orient by Lawrence Osborne I have read. Hunters in the Dark will be published in January 2016.

Momentary Behaviors/Intentions: Hunters in the Dark a novel by Lawrence Osborne

A heart of darkness beats in all of us, from the social isolate to the psychopath. Most of the time, people play by the rules and mores of their societies, because it is convenient and easy to meet their desires. Their Karmas, momentary behaviors and intentions that make their futures predictable, are in line with the expectations and freedoms of others. When a cultural revolution is engineered by a dominant personality or cult, behavior becomes modified, more focused. Even when that revolution has evolved into a stable government, all the players become in the words of Lawrence Osborne, Hunters in the Dark.

Thirty year old British teacher on summer leave, Robert Grieve, visits Southeast Asia on a cheap holiday and crosses over the border of Thailand into Cambodia, a land with a legacy of a genocidal cultural revolution. Loosely attached to his British lifestyle, naive Robert “goes native” in the land of sweltering heat, daily rain, and citizens who seem dismissive their own free will. Their Karma is fatalistic, fearful, and impulsive as if their span of consciousness has been shortened and there may be no tomorrow.

An American expatriate living in Cambodia causes Robert to make what seem to be reasonable choices that lead him to cut many of his ties with his British heritage. Forced by circumstances to survive in the moment, Robert meets native Cambodians from upper and lower strata of the tropical country. Robert’s experience teaching in Great Britain benefits him to some extent, but his ignorance of Asian life makes him vulnerable to people whose Karma is affected by a legacy of Cambodian “killing fields.”

The fast-paced story is a complex study of contemporary West/East cultural interaction that is reminiscent of E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India. Robert is an Englishman, however, who does not have the benefit of a Raj and must learn to find new ways to adapt to the ways of an alien society. This is a very good novel by the author of two previous novels, The Forgiven and The Ballad of a Small Player.

Shadow of Reality: So You Don't Get Lost in the Neighborhood by Patrick Modiano (Translated from the French by Euan Cameron)

Patrick Modiano has written more than 20 novels and has received multiple awards for his writing. In 2014, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. In So You Don’t Get Lost in the Neighborhood, wonderfully translated from the French by Euan Cameron, Modiano gives the reader a view of life in Paris through the constricted paranoid consciousness of a successful novel writer.

Jean Daragane is a middle age intelligent person who has withdrawn to a life of comfortable isolation in his apartment. He has a history of residence changes in Paris with a common characteristic for each venue of an escape route from the building and an anchor to the reality of Paris life outside his window. In his current home, Jean is able to look at a tree in a park across the street giving him a stable immediate connection with the living world and positive childhood memories of Paris. This action of needing only a view of the outside world for peace of mind is reminiscent of the behavior of Meursault in The Stranger by Albert Camus. Jean is not home bound, however, and likes to take daily walks in Paris enjoying the flora, especially in summer.

Jean has relegated his past history to books he has written, novels that are psychologically autobiographical. Once he has written a fictional piece, he does not re-read it or think about the memories that were the foundation of the novel. His oeuvre, however, is like Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray describing the unconscious evolution of the emotion of his past. The emotion spills out of his repressed memories when he is contacted by an advertising agency employee who has a found a notebook that Jean has lost and forgotten in a Cafeteria.

Gilles Ottolini and an assistant Chantal Grippay telephone Jean to arrange a meeting to return the notebook. Jean responds to a vague proposal by the two strangers to write an article based on a name discovered in the notebook.

Receiving a personal call is such a rare event that the reclusive writer agrees to meet with Gilles and Chantal because of fear of blackmail on the one hand and excitement of meeting new people and breaking out of his loneliness and isolation on the other. Jean soon discovers that sharing information from his notebook triggers an emotional revisit to his childhood that leads him away from the peaceful summer memories of walking the tree lined Paris boulevards and sun filled parks in the city. He finds that the results of trauma can be hidden from consciousness, but the childhood emotional reactions to them are as powerful as they were forty years ago.

I really enjoyed reading this novel with its keen psychological insight of the characters and lyrical of descriptions of the atmosphere of Paris. My overall very positive experience of reading the novel was like the one I had reading surrealist Andre Breton’s novel, Nadia. I look forward to reading more of the novels of Patrick Modiano.

True Heart: The Swans of Fifth Avenue a novel by Malanie Benjamin

The Swans of Fifth Avenue is a novel of imagined experience, focusing on the relationship between author Truman Capote and socialite Babe Paley. The “Swans” consist of Babe and her friends beginning in the 1950s who live lives of wealth so great that appearances dominate every moment of their existence. The money comes from former and present marriages to men who pursue their careers leaving social obligation details to their wives. Time seems to hang heavy on the attractive to beautiful women, and they fill it with obsessive attention to personal grooming, stylish clothing, soirees, traveling from one lavish residence to another, spending time on ocean liner sized private yachts, and frequent elaborate lunches at New York City’s finest and most exclusive restaurants. The paparazzi of the time were welcomed to take photos of the women posing for studies in opulence. No camera could catch the urgently churning webbed feet of the swans struggling to maintain appearances, the photos showing only the serene aimless floating of the lovely creatures.

Truman entered into this “lush life” perceived by people who count as a handsome, witty, and talented writer. He loves the vibrant scene of the City and uses his charisma, talent, and work for Vogue to insinuate himself into the social stratosphere of Fifth Avenue. The wealthy men seem happy to have gay and exuberant Truman around to act as a diversion for their wives. Few people knew the psychological importance/dependence “Tru” fostered in the intelligent, lonely, and aimless socialites. This was especially true of Truman and Babe who recognized at first glance the vulnerability and insecurity in each other just below the surface of the public personas they affected. In a way, the love affair that developed between Truman and Babe was like that of Lady Brett Ashley and Jake Barnes in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises; love requited in all aspects but one.

Melanie Benjamin states in an author’s note that she had no inside information about the beautiful people in her novel. She was not a member of their circle, but she did research the public history of them. The fiction is in the writer’s imagination of the dialogues and monologues of the real life characters behind closed social barriers and closed doors of expensive restaurants, hotels, and residences. Since the story is about “a way you’ll never be,” readers are caught up in the mesmerizing interaction of the characters by their external conversations and internal ruminations. Benjamin is so effective at imagining the public and private experiences of Babe, Truman, and the members of the tribe that readers will forget that The Swans of Fifth Avenue is a work of fiction. Readers also may feel they are welcome visitors to the rare atmosphere of the highest social class of people in business, the arts, and public media. Readers will not envy the swans and their connections, but rather will be one of them. As I read the excellent novel, I kept thinking of a song that I have enjoyed for many years, Natalie Cole’s interpretation of Lush Life by Billy Strayhorn.

This is a wonderfully entertaining novel that will bring back active echoes of the past for the older reader, interesting social history for the less seasoned adult readers, and glimpses of bizarre behavior that occurred in ancient history for young adults.

The Magic Territory: The Map and the Territory by Michel Houellebecq

Michel Houellebecq's fifth novel, translated from the French by Gavin Bowd, is an engrossing book that becomes increasingly integrated and satisfying as the story unfolds. The prologue places the reader in the middle of the artistic life of Jed Martin, a pale, slight, and somewhat bewildered son of a successful Parisian architect. He is similar in his non-assertive personality to Thomas Mann's character, Hans Castorp. Jed is preparing a solo exhibition in the spring of his paintings of people in a wide range of professions that capture the embodiment of the vocations. There is a potential for a top market value for these works of art. He is having difficulty with a painting of two artists whose work has become so popular that they have achieved the ArtPrice ranking of number 1 and 2 of the richest artists in the world.

The novel is divided into three parts, each dealing with the monetary and symbolic value of art. In part one, Jed's artistic development is described as being greatly influenced by his father's focus on straight lines and livable angles in architectural drawings and the beautifully designed photographic equipment of his grandfather. Jed matures from childhood drawings to photographing manufactured objects in relentless realistic detail, gradually eliminating background to focus on close-up shots. From these representations of the perfect blend of monetary value and functionality in an industrial world, Jed becomes interested in the symbols representing real objects in the environment. He photographs road maps of cities and countryside and contrasts them with their associated real world counterparts photographed from the sky. The juxtaposition of map and land, symbols and actuality are stunning in his artwork and gain high market value. Executives of a map making company pay Jed generous sums to use his work in their advertising.

In part 2, Jed becomes interested in the combination of symbol and form and tries to capture the integration of these two factors in the motivation of outstanding working individuals. Photographs do not capture this merging of human characteristics even with computerized manipulations of images. Jed realizes that only in painting can the artist fuse symbolism and realism to show the essence of human beings, to go beyond the structure of the paintings' depictions. He spends years (7 as does Hans in an Alpine sanitorium) in relative isolation attempting to perfectly capture this fusion. The subjects of the work and those who accumulate art are fascinated by the results because they see themselves as more than they thought they were, and more fascinating than they actually are. Jed becomes very rich due to supply and demand for these coveted paintings. He remains indifferent to his riches but does organize a showing of his work. In order to present the work, he needs a catalog writer who can set the stage for the exhibition. Jed approaches the eccentric and controversial writer Michel Houellebecq to write the catalogue and listens to his concepts, theories, and disjointed aphorisms that increase with wine intake. This is reminiscent of Hans Castorp who listens with increasing interest to the wide-ranging debates of Settimbrini and Naphta as he ventures on brief trips down the mountain to the village. In this novel, the two asocial creative characters form a chaotic working relationship that leads inevitably to great financial success.

In part 3, the connection between finances, artistic production, psychological disintegration, and end of life circumstances bring some resolution to the reader. It is a nice acceptance of evitability with a conclusion that at the extremes, both financial success and failure provide the circumstances of insightful art. The vast middle ground between these extremes where most of us live involves distortions of creative views of personal experiences and restricted happiness. Representations of humanity are inextricably tied to money and social competition reducing much of human motivation to basic survival activities. Capitalism maintains this vast middle class rationalization. Jed seeks the integration of ideas he achieved in his art in his own work life history. The reader will judge if he reaches this goal just as I had to judge whether Jed Martin and Hans Castorp found something worth living for.

I really enjoyed reading this novel. Again, it produced a strange relaxation, a welcoming of unruly thoughts and circumstances and a view of an avenue to an acceptable death. From a different dimension, I experienced the same withdrawal from social determinism reading The Map and the Territory by Michel Houellebecq as I did in reading The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. I had a feeling of a perfect personal fit in the symbolic worlds of the two authors and a genuine reluctance to return to the mundane world of daily activity.