Evanston: THE ELEPHANT’S JOURNEY; THREE STATIONS;
and a sexy song
Evanston: THE ELEPHANT’S JOURNEY; THREE STATIONS;
and a sexy song
In 1549, fifty-one years after Vasco da Gama landed in India, an elephant and its mahout made the return journey to Lisbon, Portugal.
Like most originals, the elephant was not much appreciated and languished for two years on the banks of the Tagus, until in a royal example of re-gifting, King Joao III of Portugal gave the elephant to Archduke Maxmillian of Austria as a wedding present. Thus in 1551, elephant and mahout travelled from Lisbon to Vienna. This is the historical fact on which the great Portuguese writer, Jose Saramago, who died last month, based his last novel.
I have seen effusive reviews of THE ELEPHANT’S JOURNEY, which I assume are based on respect for the dead. Jose Saramago deserves respect. There is no contemporary novelist that I admire more. Yet to compare THE ELEPHANT’S JOURNEY to his greatest books, such as THE YEAR OF THE DEATH OF RICARDO REIS and BALTHASAR AND BLIMUNDA is absurd.
This is not to say that I did not enjoy THE ELEPHANT. I did, despite paragraphs that run on for pages and a refusal to conform to standards of capitalization. The book has intelligence, charm and novelty. The idiosyncrasies only make it more difficult to find a place to stop reading. And I read this short book in two sittings anyway.
…
Continuing a series is difficult; repetition of a formula can quickly become boring.
Conan Doyle excelled with Sherlock Holmes. Alan Furst has done well, but may be beginning to flag. But Martin Cruz Smith is still going strong with Arkady Renko of GORKY PARK fame. Partially this is because the Soviet Union of GORKY PARK has become the Russia of THREE STATIONS, a new and different society; and partially it is because Martin Cruz Smith is a very superior writer.
THREE STATIONS is mostly set in contemporary Moscow, a place almost as brutal as Stalin’s Moscow.
I happened to finish this novel on the day that the murder of 72 migrants apparently by a drug gang in Mexico was reported. I was struck by the similar brutality in life as in the novel.
THREE STATIONS is very readable. A stolen baby. Child prostitution. Billionaires. A serial killer who leaves his victims in ballet positions.
Somewhere in THE ELEPHANT’S JOURNEY is a line that applies to THREE STATIONS to the effect that we should never be surprised by the cruelty of human nature.
There is also in THREE NATIONS the following, spoken by a newly minted Russian billionaire: “It turns out we don’t know how to run capitalism. That’s to be expected. As it turns out, nobody else knows how to run capitalism. That was a bad surprise.”
…
Browsing iTunes I happened across RED HORSE, a collaboration by Eliza Gilkyson, John Gorka, and Lucy Kaplansky.
I already have music by all three, and like all the tracks on the album. But one song, Lucy Kaplansky’s “Scorpion” stands not only out, but by itself as one of the subtly sexy songs of all time.
The lyrics of this song are a fine poem, which culminate in: “I’m going to sting you with the kiss of my lips. Going to sting you with a piece of my mind. Going to sting you with the taste of my skin. Then you’re mine. Then you’re mine.”
I must admit that “the taste of my skin” gets to me.
Men nearly seventy probably aren’t supposed to care about such things. But some of us do. For those of you who are younger, that may be good news, or bad.
Live as passionately as you can. And be stung by the taste of a woman’s skin.
Friday, August 27, 2010