Captain Corelli's Mandolin

This novel, by Louis de Bernieres is charming, funny, and one of those novels that, though brilliant, knows of its own brilliance and aims for accolades while reaching mediocrity.

I picked up Captain Corelli's Mandolin from the shelf in my room, because it was there. I'd heard of the movie, and seen an excerpt in one of the students' books in school. I figured I might as well give it a try, since the World War II theme is ever-popular (and often present) in conversations I seem to be having - with others and myself. Plus, I've been contemplating writing my own historical novel. So far it's been without success, but the thought still surfaces now and then.

The story takes place just before the outbreak of World War II on the Greek island of Cephallonia, where the locals live as their ancestors did one hundred years prior, simple lives without electricity or running water. A love story emerges, that of the local doctor's daughter, Pelagia, and the young fisherman Mandras.

However, Madras enlists once the war begins. He wants to be a hero and prove himself to Pelagia. During his absence, she loses her love for him because he does not reply to her letters (he is illiterate) and once he returns, she wants nothing to do with him. He joins the communists and holes up in the mountains with the ELAS.

Meanwhile, Mussolini's troops roll into town. Heading them is Capatian Corelli, a consummate musician. He plays the mandolin, and would like to become a professional in an orchestra after the war. He meets Pelagia, and the two fall in love, slowly but deeply.

Trouble brews in 1943. The Germans demand Italy turn Greece over to them, and the Italians refuse. A massacre ensuses, and Corelli escapes. Pelagia knows he must flee - this is best, the only way for them all to survive. Years (and I'm talking years) later, Corelli and Pelagia are reunited. Happily ever after, it seems.

The novel is expansive, over 400 pages, and spans several decades, focusing for the most part on the 1930s and 1940s and the occupation of Cephallonia by the Italians. It is ultimately a love story that incorporates war, music, a critique of antiquity versus modernity, and the idea that, according to de Bernieres, "history ought to be made up of the stories of ordinary people only."

This idea, though noble, seems to be the reason novels exist; histories are for the victorious politicians and memoirs are for the famous. As a historical novel, Captain Corelli's Mandolini did its duty. I enjoyed every bit of the gripping, gory, thrilling and romantic story. I found the characters human; I could relate to them, I could love them and worry about them and want the best for them. But, it must be said: I knew it was made up.  That neither changed my feelings about the novel, nor did it prompt me to dismiss everything I'd ever heard about World War II. It did make me think that there is more to history than what meets the eye in the average text. For that, I'm glad I read it.

But, frankly, the ending sucked. I'll have to watch the movie to see if they changed it to be more "Hollywood." I which case, I might just change my mind about the book's ending...

Love

Another one of those "found gems" i.e. found in my apartment, Love is a novel by Elizabeth von Arnim, a cousin and contemporary of Katherine Mansfield.

Very Mansfield-esque for fans of her work (though von Arnim was also quite popular and widely read in her lifetime as well), the novel is about a woman and a man who share a love of The Immortal Hour, having seen the play nine times and thirty-six times, respectively. They fall in love despite social norms: she is forty-seven, he twenty-five. She is also the mother of a married woman (only nineteen, but still), and a soon-to-be grandmother.

But this love reaches across boundaries and social norms. Christopher loves Catherine determinedly, and she becomes enveloped in his love, just by the act of his loving her. Although during their courtship (one could say stalking on Christopher's part), Catherine think he is just a silly little boy, until she goes to visit her daughter (actually to escape Christopher). Once there, she realizes that her daughter and new son-in-law - actually older than Catherine at forty-nine - who are seemingly full of love, have no room for her. And his mother is a buzzard who makes things practically impossible for Catherine.

She basically goes running back into Christopher's arms.

However, since there is such talk among their acquaintances once they marry, Catherine feels she has to keep up with Christopher age-wise and invests in expensive hair and facial treatments to make her look younger. Ultimately, she looks haggard and decrepit without them, to Christopher's horror. He had never before noticed how much older she was than he, when she left well enough alone.

Actually, according to the afterward, the novel was based on an affair von Arnim had with a much younger man, Michael Frere. When they met in 1920, she was fifty-four and he twenty-four. Their affair was torrid, and though they did not last long as lovers, she helped him to hone his writing abilities and got him published for the first time. She also got an experimental and terribly unfortunate face life in the 1920s to "keep up" with Frere, just as Catherine does for Christopher.

I really enjoyed the book, I think because it appealed to my secret sentimental side but also discussed the idea of blindly accepting social standards as if they were God's will, and put in a good word about double standards in the context of "social norms."

Although the ending is tragic, and leaves the fate of its characters in an ambivalent state - definitely the last thing I wanted, actually, when I got into it and thought, "Oh, goody. A light and fluffy and fun romance." And then I read the forward to realize Elizabeth von Arnim was related to Katherine Mansfield.

All in all, an excellent read. My college professors would all pat me on the back for picking a real and literary novel over what I could have chosen (among them a murder mystery set in Vienna). And for reading the forward AND afterward. *Pats self on back.*

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

A book I found in the apartment that looked interesting, The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, is a touching, stream-of-consciousness gem that, I think I can say, moved me.


I read it in English (grace à the copy available) though it was originally written and published in French. The story revolves around a concierge named Renée in a ritzy Parisian apartment building who has had to hide her intelligence and love of art and culture all her life, and a 12-year-old girl  named Paloma living in the apartment building, daughter of a university professor and a French parliamentarian, who has the same problem.


I liked the book from its cover, which originally made me want to read it. Also, Johanna collects hedgehogs, and I wondered if this had been given to her based on the title.


It turns out, Renée is compared to a hedgehog by Paloma: tough and prickly on the outside but soft and uassuming on the inside. For some reason that makes them elegant. Not the word I would choose, but whatever. Eventually Renée and Paloma develop a friendship, and become confidants for each other's inner lives, until tragedy strikes. 


The format of the novel is a bifurcated narration, half Renée, half Paloma, and centers a lot on interior monologue and journal entries. Literary and high-brow cultural references abound, as well as some pop culture stuff, mostly pertaining to France. The book is very French - that is, catering to a French audience and written by a French person. It has the same sort of set-up, mistakes, poignant details and allusions as a Truffaut film, with tone and style elements borrowed, it seems, from a Marguerite Duras play, or a Philippe Claudel novel.


The extreme intelligence of both main characters is at first a bit hard to believe, as we only have their opinions to go on, and irksome later on, when they seem so absorbed in absorbing culture, literature, the beauty of the world, etc., that they become static - unmoving, uninterested, and yes, even selfish - vessels of such intelligence. If there really were two geniuses residing at 7, rue de Grenelle, Paris, shouldn't they be doing something more proactive and constructive than whining about how they're so smart that no one will understand them, and the world is so bleak that it's best not to get involved - or just end it all? 


That's not to say Barbery didn't pull off the characters. The book did have remarkably funny parts, and was great fun to read.  Considering myself an intellectual, and tickled especially when I come across obscure references to things I like (Mozart, Kant, Tolstoy, etc.), I loved the characters and the idea behind what Barbery was trying to accomplish. But upon finishing The Elegance of the Hedgehog, I found the idea underdeveloped as a whole. It lacked a certain je ne sais quoi. 

Dreams from My Father

2004 UK-published book cover

Typically, I try to avoid memoirs written by politicians. To me, most of what's out there seems doctored, another bid at election or reelection, a way to color the past in an attempt to keep reputations intact, or prove no wrongdoing while in office. As Winston Churchill once said, "History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it." That's all the proof I need.

I balked originally at reading Barack Obama's memoir Dreams From My Father for these reasons. A copy sat on a shelf in my apartment all year, and I decided, only after getting favorable reviews from one of the teachers at school, that - as an American - I might as well read about my president and his past. In any case, I knew it would be better than Arnold Hautnah ("Arnold: Close-up"), a biography of the former "Governator" Schwarzenegger... It appears the former inhabitant of my flat had a penchant for biographies, which I do not possess.

I was surprised, in a way, and pleasantly so, with the story. President Obama's experiences as a boy, his situation growing up, were not only unique from any other US president to date, they were also unique for the time in which he was young (1960s in Hawaii) and for most Americans. Here's and example. For one of my classes this year, I dug up the statistic that  only 37% of Americans (114,464,041 people out of 307,006,550 from the latest census data) have passports, and only 25% of Americans have valid passports. In addition, only 9% of Americans speak a second (non-native) language fluently. Half of Europeans, according to a recent EU survey, speak two languages. I found these statistics (and more) at The Expeditioner, an online travel magazine.

Despite many dissenters who've recently popped up in the media (Mr. Donald Trump being just one of many examples), I find it refreshing that the current American president spent part of his youth in Indonesia, and had one immigrant parent. This shows that he has perspective that reaches beyond the United States, and an understanding of global affairs. I may be biased as an American living abroad, who got her degree in languages, but it seems to me that a global perspective in today's world is a very, very good thing. It doesn't mean being less patriotic, or less American, to have an understanding (if ever so slight), appreciation and respect for other cultures. Half of the problems in the United States come from a lack of respect for those different from ourselves - a lack of experience with foreign cultures, a disinterest in even trying to get to know anyone who is not just like you.

And here is where I found Dreams From My Father particularly moving. Not only do we get stories of the president's childhood, but as he grows, so do his reflections about race, culture, identity, belonging, the American Dream, his father. What it means to be a black man in America. His reflections become less about him and more philosophical, even spiritual. He talks about his quest to belong, from elementary school days in Honolulu where he looks for acceptance from his father in their one and only encounter, to confused party-monster evenings at Occidental where he admits dabbling in drugs (a phase he quickly grew out of), to community organizing in Chicago's South Side, to going back to his roots in Kenya. 

W.E.B. DuBois in 1946

In a class I took on diversity in the classroom, as part of teacher training, we read W.E.B. DuBois' The Souls of Black Folk which, although dated, was a particularly enlightening read on race relations in the 1900s. In particular, the interviews of former slaves struck me as particularly pertinent. This is part of American history which is less discussed. Of course, everyone knows what Slavery was, but in your average American history classroom, far more attention is paid to the intricacies of the Battles of Bull Run, Antietam, and Gettysburg, to Lincoln's speeches and Grant's horse, than to the end of slavery in the 1860s. In fact, your average American history classroom mentions slaves all of twice: the first slaves who come from Africa in the 1700s and the Emancipation Proclamation. In short, much of this part of history is never explained. Americans ignore the shameful bits of history, hoping they will just go away if no one talks about them.

This is quite the opposite in Austria. Nowadays (though this used not to be the case) the Holocaust, Nazism and World War II are openly discussed in classrooms, as a way to enlighten students, to explain the perils and stupidity of prejudice, which is still rife in many parts of Europe, unfortunately - mostly toward newer immigrants from Africa, Turkey and Southern Europe (the former Yugoslavia particularly). How can a nation as a whole relate such atrocities to its people? Ignorance and blatant honesty are two options, but there must be more, with integrating acceptance into the cultural pathos the end result.

As I followed the story of Barack Obama's return to his roots in Kenya, meeting his family, discovering ever more pieces to the puzzle that was his father, I came to realize that many Americans who travel abroad are looking for this same thing: a place to belong, culturally. A place to call home. A return to the homeland, to the ancestors. Not everyone needs this, of course. I suppose I'm getting this from a number of other American teaching assistants who learned German in the first place because their ancestors immigrated however long ago from Central Europe, be it Austro-Hungary, Germany, Bohemia, Switzerland.

I guess that was part of my idea, too. But after living in Austria for nine months, I don't feel any real need to find my family roots, to explore genealogical pasts, retrieve distant cousins from Bavaria or East Prussia, as I probably could if I looked hard enough. It does make me a bit sad when some of  my students ask, "What is the American national costume?" The Austrian one, of course, is the Tracht consisting of Lederhosen or a Dirndl, Alpine hats and sturdy shoes, varying by region in slight ways. I find the question funny - of course, I could always answer "Jeans and a T-shirt" which seems to be the American national dress code. But I always reply that we don't have one. Some people wear the national costume of their ancestors, but since over 90% of Americans stem from immigrant backgrounds (at one point or another, be it one or seven generations removed), and the USA has such a huge population compared to Austria, it would be impossible to categorize us all as one thing or another.

Going back to DuBois: mixed-raced himself of almost equal parts European and African descent, even he found solace in Europe where none could be found in America, saying at one point that he was treated with more respect as a scholar in Nazi Germany than from white American colleagues. Such remarks today are inflammatory, one of the reasons DuBois has fallen out of favor, even to an extend with the NAACP, which he helped found. However, I think this shows the fervent human need to belong. To be accepted, respected, and acknowledged. President Obama, in his travelling to Kenya to confront his father's ghost, recognized his need to unite the bifurcated parts of his being: his white American half, and his black African half.

The true power of the memoir is the acknowledgement that with an understanding of one's self, of identity and one's place in the world, fulfillment and happiness are more easily attained. I'm not going to go into politics or anything, or conjecture that Barack Obama feels fulfilled. That's really not my place - I've never even met the guy. But his ability to take something so personal and apply it broadly is the real power of the memoir.

As the oracle at Delphi said, "Know thyself." Sometimes more easily said than done.