Iron and Silk

#688
Title: Iron and Silk
Author: Mark Salzman
Publisher: Vintage
Year: 1986/1987
224 pages

This is an easy to read account of Salzman's two years teaching in China. It was the 1980s, so his perspective on China (and the Chinese perspective on him) is different from that of Peter Hessler's in River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze in the next decade.

Salzman's encounters are charming and depict rural China very positively. One wonders when he found time to teach and prep his lessons, to say nothing of grading, between his various martial arts trainings, calligraphy lessons, and bouts of travel with fishing families. In all, a comparatively benign introduction to living and working in another country.

Abongui My People Cote D'Ivoire My Country America My Home: The Ethno-history of a Small African Kingdom

#687

Title: Abongui My People Cote D'Ivoire My Country America My Home: The Ethno-history of a Small African Kingdom
Author: Kouassi Pascal Soman
Publisher: iUniverse
Year: 2003
218 pages

Ivory Coast.

Soman chronicles his history from village boy to World Bank employee, using his own opportunities and obstacles to highlight some of the development issues faced by his community. More than many other memoirists, he draws attention to the role cultural values may play in community development, with the added credibility of his experience on both sides of the experience.

The initial chapters are more formal and somewhat stilted. My guess is that they were written last (and the number of word choice errors and typos supports this supposition). Bear with it until he gets to his own story, which is engaging and flows more naturally.

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight

#686

Title: Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight 
Author: Alexandra Fuller
Publisher: Random House
Year: 2003
315 pages
 Audiobook.

Besides being an interesting memoir, it's a good example of how history can be conveyed and reflected upon through events and exposition by characters. Here, Fuller uses her mother's drunken soliloquies to hold the history of the end of colonial Africa.

Earlier sections were more compelling than those in the latter third of the book.

Nox

#685

Title: Nox
Author: Anne Carson
Publisher: New Directions
Year: 2010
192 pages

I'm not sure I'd classify this as poetry. It's really a collage/pastiche/construction. I found it absorbing and meaningful, but even though its linguistic/structural core is a poem by Catullus, mourning his brother's death (hence, Carson's brother's death), I found it poetic but not a poem. Read with Carol Maso's The Art Lover to compare two ways to constellate language and images as a memorial.

Place of Refuge: A History of the Jews in Cyprus

#684

Title: Place of Refuge: A History of the Jews in Cyprus
Author: Stavros Panteli
Publisher: Elliott & Thompson
Year: 2003
192 pages

Cyprus.

If read in conjunction with other sources, a reasonably good introduction to the history of Jews on Cyprus. On the positive side, this was not a topic I knew much about from ancient history up to the halutzim. On the other hand, the author assumes that referencing some events without explaining them is sufficient, and compounds this problem by stating what happened but often not suggesting why it happened. There is some repetitive material that is verbatim or nearly so, particularly in the biographical appendix. 

I Curse the River of Time

#683

Title: I Curse the River of Time
Author: Per Petterson
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Year: 2008/2010
233 pages

Read as hardback/audiobook.

Not at all happy, and no resolution, but quite a poignant portrait of a young Norwegian man who is too wrapped up in shame and anxiety to connect with others. 

Down and Out in Paris and London

#682

Title: Down and Out in Paris and London
Author: George Orwell
Publisher: Harvest
Year: 1933/1972
213 pages

Audiobook.

Orwell's first publication, one in which he has yet to find his voice. Since this is exaggerated/fake autobiography, the anti-Semitism, presumably Orwell's though articulated by other characters, is wearisome. The argument that the sentiments in this book aren't anti-Semitic because Orwell later wrote an essay about anti-Semitism is not convincing.

Here is Orwell as world-wise young punk, telling older people about the world he knows about but they don't. It's intended, I think, as expose, but doesn't manage to pull this off. Part of the problem is that though it has a moral theme, the action is picaresque, and since parts are fictionalized, it's reasonable for the reader to ask what the point was and why, if fictionalized, the ;point couldn't have been made through more compellingly structured action.

Read with anything by Anthony Bourdain to compare the life of a plongeur to  that of contemporary urban restaurant workers.