“Z. Marcas” - A Short Story by Honore de Balzac - A Component of La Comedie Humaine - 1840

There are many inaccurate claims about the size of Balzac’s Grand cycle of literary works, La Comedie Humaine, making it seem simply to large to undertake.  In fact many book bloggers could finish it in under three months.

Here is the breakdown 

45 Novels

25 Short Stories

21 Novellas.

I have as of now completed 82 of the 91 works.

Included in La Comedie Humaine are about five novels you will rightfully find on 100 greatest novels lists, several very good novellas and short stories.  You will also find works you are bored with but in every work there is something of real value.  Balzac is the ultimate chronicler of Paris, from the highest levels of society, exposing shady dealings, to the poorest of Paris.  He is a genius at descriptions, knows the cost of everything and the reputation of every district.  His cultural influence is simply huge.  The only practicable  way to read him is in an E book.  The disadvantage is the translations are old.

When he feels like it Balzac is a master of compression.  In “Z. Marcas” we learn, through the eyes of two  impecunious Parisian students about their mysterious neighbour.  Marcas lives in poverty.  We gradually learn he has a doctorate in law and was an advisor to a powerful government minister.  He and the students become friends.  

I hope to finish this project by April 1, 2018.

“The Helper of Cattle” - A Short Story by Farah Ahamed - 2017 - Published in Conradology

Farah Ahamed on The Reading Life - includes links to her stories and a very good interview

This will be my sixth post upon a short story by Farah Ahamed.  Obviously I greatly enjoy and respect her work.

I recently acquired a very interesting collection of short stories and nonfiction articles inspired by the writings of Joseph Conrad, focusing on his importance as a post colonial writer of the great cultural importance, Conradology. I was very happy to discover that a story by Farah Ahamed was included.

Dr. Patel, Safari Division Manager for a large Kenyan company, Amber Investments, is at a remote luxury lodge.  He is there to judge the Human Resources potential of the Maasai tribal people, the staff of the lodge.  The accountants and attorneys have already decided it would be a good addition to the luxury lodge portfolio of Amber Investments.  He is there to decide on the viability of the Maasai as staff.  His room is decorated like a Hemingway fantasy hunting lodge.  The company needs the Maasai to make things seem authentic to the wealthy guests.  In his brilliant book on post colonial Irish Literature, Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation, Declan Kiberd talks about how corporations are using the culture of Ireland to create a kind of Disney land of leprechauns and great writers to create money making tourist attractions.  This is just what Dr. Patel is helping Amber Investments do to the ancient cattle culture of the Maasai.  He lacks the self-awareness to understand what he is involved with or why his companies endeavours are resented by the Maasai.

Ahamed does a great job showing us Dr. Patel’s reaction to a huge herd of Wildebeasts crossing a river and being attacked by crocadiles.  When Dr Patel tells his Maasai driver why he is called “Doctor” even though he is not degreed, you can almost feel the  driver’s contempt for him.  It all goes over Patel’s head, he just records in his note book that The Maasai may need additional training to be good servants for the weathy guests.  

We sit in as the lodge manager tells Patel of the cultural impact the loss of their lands has had on the Maasai.  The government of Kenya is concerned largely with keeping foreign investors and tourists happy, not so much in preserving traditions.   

Slowly we see a bit into how much the culture of the Maasai has been destroyed as the land for their great cattle herds, once the source of real wealth and pride, has been taken from them, lately often sold to Chinese investors who bring junkets of guests to gawk at the Maasai and the animals.  Patel could not care less about the Maasai.

Something very interesting happens to Dr. Patel.  I will leave this for you to discover.

This story is very much worthy to be considered in the tradition of the post colonial stories of Joseph Conrad.  We can see the destructive impact the lodge has on the Maasai.  We sense much worse is coming.The entire collection is very interesting.  I do think an important aspect of the work of Conrad is missing in the well done introduction and if I post further on the collection I will speak of this.  There is a deep irony in the use of Doctor Patel as the evaluator of the Maasai, given he is totally a colonial construct with no ties to his ancestral culture left.  

I hope to follow the literary career of Farah Ahamed for many years.  

Farah Ahamed is a short fiction writer. Her stories have been published in The Massachusetts Review, Thresholds, Kwani?, The Missing Slate and Out of Print among others. She was highly commended in the 2016 London Short Story Prize, joint winner of the inaugural Gerald Kraak Award and has been nominated for The Caine and The Pushcart prizes. She was shortlisted for the SI Leeds Literary Prize, DNA/Out of Print Award, Sunderland Waterstones Award, Asian Writer Short Story Prize, and Strands International Short Story.. from the website of Comma Press.

To mark his 160th birthday, 14 authors and critics from Britain, Poland and elsewhere have come together to celebrate his legacy with new pieces of fiction and non-fiction. Conrad felt that the writer's task was to offer 'that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask.' In an age of increasing isolationism, these celebrations remind you of the value of such glimpses.

Commissioned as part of the Joseph Conrad Year 2017, the book has been published with the support from the Polish Cultural Institute, the Polish Book Institute, and the British Council... from the publisher’s description 

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Stolen Words: The Nazi Plunder of Jewish Books by Mark Glickman - 2015

Note added on December 26, 2017. A Link to a very moving and inspiring story on Catholic Clerics in Iran Saving Ancient Books from ISIS. - from Sixty Minutes

From Sixty Minutes-Please Watch

A Presentation by Mark Glickman on Stolen Words. From the Library of Congress. - Highly Recommended

My Post Upon The Book Smugglers- The Race to Save Jewish Treasures from the Nazis by David Fishman

Everyone knows about the burning of Jewish books by the Nazis, which began in 1933. It was great theatre for the Nazis base.  I was shocked to learn, from Mark Glickman, that with a few scattered outbreaks, the book burning only lasted for about three weeks. There were a few reasons behind this.  One was the practical fact that books are hard to burn.  Secondly it was bringing terrible international publicity on the Germans.  The Germans feared if this publicity continued it would ruin the 1936 Olympics.  They wanted the hosting of this event to showcase their great achievements.  

The Germans, as Glickman elegantly details, began to collect millions of Jewish books from libraries and private collections all through the countries they 

conquered.  France proved an incredible treasure trove.

Nazi pseudo intellectuals lead the efforts.  They used as staff Jewish librarians and real scholars as slave labor.  The Nazis wanted to create the basis, post war, for the study of the culture they intended to destroy, that of European Jews.  The objective was to bring back to Germany about 30 % of the books and pulp the rest.  

Glickman fascinatingly details the efforts to return the books to their owners after the war.  Americans, they recruited very knowledgeable persons, were largely in charge of the reclaiming of the books.  It proved very hard to determine who once owned the books.  In the end 40% were sent, mostly to the Yivo Institute in New York City, 40% to Israel and the rest to Jewish Libraries in Argentina, South Africa and elsewhere.

Glickman details for those not familiar with it, some of the ideological underpinnings of the Nazis.  He also talks about why books, learning and reading were so important to the Jews.

This book is clearly a labor of great love.  

I advise anyone with more than a passing interest in Jewish Heritage and the Holocaust to read Glickman’s book first then that of David Fishman, focusing mostly on events in The Vilna Ghetto.  Glickman’s book is perhaps less academic.

Temple B’nai Tikvah welcomed Rabbi Mark S. Glickman as our Rabbi in July 2016. Rabbi Glickman previously served as the interim rabbi of Beth Shalom Synagogue in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He has also served congregations in Ohio, Washington State, and Colorado. In addition, Rabbi Glickman has been a religion columnist for the Seattle Times and the Tacoma News Tribune and has served on the faculties of Pacific Lutheran University and Seattle University.

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio and raised in suburban Chicago, Rabbi Glickman graduated cum laude from Washington University in St. Louis in 1985. He received his rabbinical ordination from Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati in 1990. His first book Sacred Treasure: The Cairo Genizah (Jewish Lights Publishing) was published in 2011. His second book Stolen Words: The Nazi Plunder of Jewish Books (Jewish Publication Society) was released in 2016.

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In A Day’s Work: The Fight to End Sexual Violence Against America’s Most Vulnerable Workers by Bernice Yeung (forthcoming 2018)

American News Broadcasts and social media have been very much lately dealing with cases of sexual harassment upon women over whom they have power by high profile men in the entertainment business and politics.  Politicians have either resigned or lost elections.  Media personalities are fired and even the so called president of the USA has admitted harassment of women and has been accused of sexual crimes by numerous women. 

Bernice Yeung in her forthcoming superb work of investigative journalism, In A Day’s Work: The Fight to End Sexual Violence Against America’s Most Vulnerable Workers shows us the terrible sexual violence that has long gone ignored against women who work as night janitors, agricultural labourers (mostly seasonal workers) and household staff.  Yeung tells us that crime statistics indicate that women in these occupations are the most often sexually abused women.  

The women in these jobs often are poorly educated, have weak English skills, come from cultures where no one reports assaults to the police and are totally under the authority of men.  In the case of female night janitors cleaning offices and big stores, the women often work alone.  They have no witnesses to back up their assertions and desperately need to keep their jobs.  Yeung takes us along when a worker for an NGO makes contact with night janitors and we hear stories of horrible abuse, including rape.  

Female seasonal agricultural workers are especially vulnerable.  Mostly speaking little English, often without permanent residency status their male bosses often feel they are fair game for anything.  If the women submit they get to keep working, maybe get preferential treatment if lucky, if they resist they are usually fired.  As they often live in company housing, this makes them homeless.  In one heartbreaking case, a law suit was mounted against an apple   Company where a long time supervisor had abused women for years but the women lost because the companies attorneys were able to destroy their credibility.  The jury were all financially comfortable whites.  

Yeung lets us get to know the women involved, bringing them to life.  They all want little more than to support their families.  

Yeung does show us how some women have fought back, have won law suits.  

The next time a Hollywood producer is charged with abuse or a politician apologises contritely thing of the women in the shadows with little or no protection.  Ask your self why do some women matter and others do not.

Given the current attempt to demonise immigrants, I think this will produce an environment where women in these job fields, legal or not residents, may fear speaking out even more.  Immigrant Women are seen by many, including other women, as probably prostitutes on the side and are judged only by their looks.  

Bernice Yeung is a reporter for Reveal, covering race and gender. Her work examines issues related to violence against women, labor and employment, immigration and environmental health. In 2014, Yeung was part of the national Emmy-nominated Rape in the Fields reporting team, which investigated the sexual assault of immigrant farmworkers. The project won an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award and a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and was a finalist for the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting. A former staff writer for SF Weekly and editor at California Lawyer magazine, Yeung has had her work appear in a variety of media outlets, including The New York Times, The Seattle Times, the Guardian US and KQED-FM. She has a bachelor's degree in journalism from Northwestern University and a master's degree from Fordham University, where she studied sociology with a focus on crime and justice. Yeung is based in Reveal's Emeryville, California, office.

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“Bontshe the Silent” - A Short Story by I. L. Peretz - 1894 - translated from Yiddish by Hillel Halkin

A Podcast of Bontshe the Silent by I. L. Peretz

Yivo Institute Article on I. L. Peretz

“Isaac Leib Peretz was arguably the most important figure in the development of modern Jewish culture—and until 1939 one would not have had to argue the claim at all. Peretz dominated Jewish literary life in Warsaw almost from the moment he settled there in 1890 until his death on the fifth day of Passover, April 3, 1915, his influence radiating outward from the Polish capital to the growing centers of Jewish settlement worldwide. The estimated hundred thousand people who accompanied his remains to the Warsaw cemetery included delegates and representatives of every sector of Jewish life, testimony to his inclusive appeal at a time of increasing political factionalism. When the Yiddish writers of America formed a new literary association the year after his death, they named it for Peretz.”.  Ruth Wisse, from her Introduction to The I. L. Peretz Reader, from Yale University Yiddish Library 

“Bontshe the Silent” (sometimes titled as “Bontshe Shvayg”) is the seventh story by I. L. Peretz (1859 to 1915, Poland) to be featured on The Reading Life.  All of the stories by him I have so far read are contained in The I. L. Peretz Reader, edited and introduced by Ruth Wisse.  (In the interest of full disclosure, Yale  University Press has given me many fine books, including this one.)

Bontshe lived a life of total obscurity, mattering to no one in life or death.  He suffered terribly, he was thrown out of his home by a drunken father and abusive stepmother at age 15.  He married a woman who cheated on him and left him with a son to raise.  As soon as the boy was able, he in turn tossed Bontshe into the streets.  

When he dies he is shocked when the most supreme angels trumpet his arrival and Father Abraham personally welcomes him to the afterlife.  He knows he will be tried to see if he is worthy of heaven.  The defending attorney (Peretz was an attorney and I suspect a very eloquent courtroom performer) recites all Bontshe suffered in silence.  When the prosecutor takes over, he can think of nothing bad to say about Bontshe.  Father Abraham tells him that on earth he may have had nothing but now all the riches of heaven are his, all he has to do is ask.  Bontshe says, almost afraid to speak, that he would like every morning to have a hot roll with butter.  As the story closes, everyone in court is laughing at Bontshe.  They cannot fathom the life that has lead him to ask for only this.

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“The Gourmet Club” - A Short Story by Junichiro Tanizaki- 1920 - translated by Anthony Chambers

Information on The Japanese Literature Year 11 Event, hosted by Dolce Bellezza

Japanese Iiterature and history on The Reading Life

Junichiro Tanizaki (1886 to 1965) is one of my “read all I can” writers.  Were he writing now, his every new  novel would be a bestseller, made into an international movie.  I have been reading his work for years.  Among my favourite of his novels are Naomi, Some Prefer Nettles and his most now read book, The Makioka Sisters, about four upper Class Japanese sisters in search of a husband, Austen fans love this book.  (Viking Press has very recently published his The Maids, told from the point of views of the maids of the four sisters.  As soon as this is out on Kindle I will read it!). 

“The Gourmet Club”  gives us a fascinating look at high end dining by the rich in Tokyo during the 1920s.  The Gourmet Club has five members, all idol rich men bonded by their love of sybaritic dining, with an occasional exquisite prostitute as a side interest.  A man, known as “The Count” is the head of the group, which meets at his mansion.   They roam the city looking for Gourmet delights.  One day The Count is out scouting around alone.  He smells something wonderful cooking from a simple Chinese restaurant in a new to him part of Tokyo.  This turns out to be a wonderful source of traditional Chinese food, lovingly described by Tanizaki, who had a reputation as a gourmet himself.  It is a magic place.  The story is very worth reading just for the very detailed descriptions of the menus.  I will leave for your imagination the recipe for and the rituals associated with “Fried Korean Woman”.

As far as I know this story can only be read in the collection pictured above.  I was kindly given a copy of this book, which is a great edition to Japanese Literature in Translation.

Jun'ichirō Tanizaki

Born

in Nihonbashi,Tokyo, Japan

July 24, 1886

Died

July 30, 1965

Genre

Literature & Fiction, Nonfiction

Influences

Edgar Allan Poe, Sade, Oscar Wilde

Jun'ichiro Tanizaki (谷崎 潤一郎) was a Japanese author, one of the major writers of modern Japanese literature, and perhaps the most popular Japanese novelist after Natsume Sōseki. 

Some of his works present a rather shocking world of sexuality and destructive erotic obsessions; others, less sensational, subtly portray the dynamics of family life in the context of the rapid changes in 20th-century Japanese society. 

Frequently his stories are narrated in the context of a search for cultural identity in which constructions of "the West" and "Japanese tradition" are juxtaposed. The results are complex, ironic, demure, and provocative.  From Goodreads.

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Some Observations on passing Five Million Pages Views

The Reading Life is a Multi-Cultural Book Blog Commited to Literary Globalism.  

This morning The Reading Life passed the Five Million Page Views mark.  

I recall when I told my wife back in July 2009 that I was starting a website on which I would write small articles on the things I read.  She gave me a wifely look and said “who will read these articles?”, I said I did not know and then she asked me “what if no one reads them?”   I thought then it will be amazing if I keep The Reading Life going for three months.  Now well over eight years have passed and I have done 3211 posts.  I also have done 100 Q and A sessions with Writers.  If anything is of lasting value on my Blog it will  be in the interviews.  I have come into contact with great people all over the World.  I have tremendously expanded my own reading life from your standard educated in west in the 1960s classics to encompass a much vaster deeper, wilder, wiser World.  

The greatest readers in the World are in the international book Blog communities.  

Way more than half of The Blog page views are on posts on Short Stories.  The most viewed such posts are on older Short stories by Filipino writers and Short stories by Indian authors.  Interest in Katherine Mansfield is also strong.

In theory my Blog is supposed to Center on literary works focused on people who lead reading centered lives.  I have wandered for from this but I seem to always return.  

I offer my great thanks to those who take The trouble and time to leave comments.  You have helped keep me going.  

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