Book 223: Palau (English) – A Greater Treasure (Susan KLOULECHAD)

The Captain stood on the beach, watching the longboats return to the shore. Behind them, his ship was a magnificent sight against the rising moon. The sails fitted perfectly and he nearly commended the islanders for their workmanship, but there was no longer any friendship. He thought only for a moment about the effort involved in weaving the large sails from dried leaves. Each had been carefully dyed in dark red, golden yellow, and black, then intricately woven into diamond patterns. Looking towards the mountain, his mood shifted.

 

I said last time that my San Marino book, Androceo, was the newest I had read. That’s not strictly true; this one is even newer! Of all the countries in the world, Palau proved the hardest to find a novel to read. I searched for years, and in the end was ready to admit that one from there didn’t exist. I had already read one book from there – a glossy scuba diving guide, Palau by Nancy Barbour (Full Court Press, 1990) – but although it has a country introduction and nice mythological excerpts (and gorgeous pictures – and not many guides suggest visiting the local jail), it didn’t count as a novel. In desperation I wrote to Susan Kloulechad, who had saved Ann Morgan’s project, and who rescued mine too. Susan is married to a Palauan and lives part of the time in Canada, part in Palau. Very generously she let me read one of her unpublished manuscripts (a different one from the one Ann read). At the time of writing, A Greater Treasure unfortunately hasn’t been published yet. This being the case, I thought it would be unfair to critique a work that, when it is finally (I hope) published, may end up different from what I read (like doing a road test of a prototype car). Maybe Susan will take up some of my suggestions, maybe she will do some re-writing, maybe the publisher’s editor will ask for some changes, or all of the above. So here I’ll just talk about the story.

It’s a young adult adventure novel set in an island country which may be very like Palau. A mysterious stranger, the captain, strides into a tavern in Pewter Bay (presumably somewhere in the Americas, presumably in the 1800s) and announces that he’s after a crew (not a lazy one this time!) to sail to “an island of sparkling diamonds, gems and gold” that he has heard of but has never been reached before. 

Marina is a professor at Pewter University. The captain seeks her out as the sort of Darwin to his Fitzroy, and she agrees to go on the adventure. She develops an ever-closer relationship with the captain which is not to end well. They do find the mysterious, utopian island and set out to colonise it – but it is already inhabited. Marina quickly learns the local language (which Susan tells me is actually Palauan) and she earns more trust from the locals than the rest of the crew do. (She is also more of a conservationist than the rest of them are). They show her a cave in a mountain with a huge diamond inside, which they can use to control the winds. Unfortunately, she shows it in turn to the captain, who avariciously undergoes a Sméagol/Gollum transformation, steals it (killing his local guide), and sets out to sail off with it (leaving distraught Marina behind). But Nature gangs up on him and gets its revenge (having some fun along the way).

In all it was an enjoyable adventure novel with a bit of mythology/fantasy thrown in. She does some lovely descriptions of nature (and appears to particularly be fond of coconut crabs!) along with the amusing mythological escapades. I wish Susan luck with her writing career and am so grateful for her helping me to tick off the land of the green umbrella-like Rock Islands and the stingless jellyfish lake!

 

 

Book 181: Guyana (English) – Palace of the Peacock (Wilson HARRIS)

The solid wall of trees was filled with ancient blocks of shadow and with gleaming hinges of light. Wind rustled the leafy curtains through which masks of living beard dangled as low as the water and the sun. My living eye was stunned by inversions of the brilliancy and the gloom of the forest in a deception and hollow and socket. We had armed ourselves with prospecting knives and were clearing a line as near to the river as we could.

I’m afraid that this novel left me fairly mystified as to what it was actually about, so I’m afraid this review won’t be much use. There doesn’t seem to be much plot and it was difficult to understand what was happening. But the overgrown prose, like the Amazon jungle, is often exquisite, so perhaps the best way to tackle it, if you feel so inclined, is to simply enjoy the words and sentences for their own sake without worrying about plot. The characterisation also seemed nebulous.

It reminded me a little of Heart of Darkness. Donne, a childhood friend of the narrator, has ‘devastated’ the savannas where he governed, exploiting the indigenous people, and had abused his mistress Mariella until she finally killed him. We are on a haunted voyage (of seven days, like the Creation) as the doomed crew beat their way upriver through the jungle. Are the expeditioners in fact ghosts? How many times can you die, and yet still ‘live’ alongside the living? Like the bird and animal noises you hear in the jungle but can’t see, or even recognise, the book is apparently replete with symbolism which sadly passed me by. Does Mariella, also the name of the mission to which they are heading, represent the land Donne had raped? Does the multiracial crew represent the whole population of Guyana?

Harris revisited the locations and themes of Palace of the Peacock in his later novels, and perhaps it is necessary to read all of them to properly understand his outlook. And maybe you need to read this one several times (I read it twice – it is quite short). In the end, I was happy to enjoy the beautiful writing for its own sake.

Harris, Wilson (1921 – ), Palace of the Peacock, London, Faber and Faber, 2010 (first published 1960), ISBN 978-0-571-26051-5

Book 58: Australia (English) – Voss (Patrick WHITE)

Time to pop in at home on the way to my next exotic destination!
If you asked many Australians who is their country’s best writer, or especially their favourite one, I doubt if many of them would say Patrick White. In fact not so many of them have read him; he has a reputation for being difficult, and there are so many other great Australian writers, who are easier to read to boot! (It seems like Tim Winton’s Cloudstreet is the default choice for Australia). But I felt the compulsion to give him a go, and now was my chance.
This classic by Australia’s only Nobel Literature Prize winner is a fictionalised account of the last journey of Ludwig Leichhardt, who mysteriously died on his last audacious expedition trying to cross the continent from east to west. It seems to be a close portrait from what we know; White’s Voss (despite his Norwegian-sounding name) is, like Leichhardt, also a German, a loner, more comfortable in the bush than in society, a good bushman but an equivocal leader (as shown by a mutiny), who tried to maintain good relations with the Aborigines (two of whom travelled with him, and from whose skills he undoubtedly profited).

He himself, he realized, had always been most abominably frightened, even at the height of his divine power, a frail god upon a rickety throne, afraid of opening letters, of making decisions, afraid of the instinctive knowledge of mules, of the innocent eyes of good men, of the elastic nature of the passions, even of the devotion he had received from some men, and one woman, and dogs.

The back story of Voss is his unrequited romance-by-letter with a young Sydney girl, despite his cruelty to her (not least in deserting her for his doomed expedition):
With rough persistence he accused her of the superficiality which she herself suspected. At times she could hear her own voice. She was also afraid of the country which, for lack of any other, she supposed was hers. But this fear, like certain dreams, was something to which she would never have admitted.
I did enjoy Voss, which was a great psychological study of a loner who flees society and a loner who stays at home, and the surprising, tenuous but strong bond between them.
Time to finally get around to reading Cloudstreet!

 

WHITE, Patrick (1912-1990), Voss, Sydney, Vintage, 2012, ISBN 978 1 74275 688 2
(first published 1957)

 

Book 1: China (English) – Journey to the West /Monkey = Xi You Ji 《西游记》 by (WU Cheng’en) (吴承恩)

Book 1:

China (English) – Journey to the West /Monkey = Xi You Ji 《西游记》

by (WU Cheng’en) (吴承恩)

The old man was at the same time delighted by Sanzang’s fine appearance and alarmed by Pig’s and Friar Sand’s remarkable ugliness. Inviting them in, he told the younger members of the family to bring tea and cook a meal. Hearing all this Sanzang rose to his feet to thank the old man and ask, “Could you tell me, sir, why it has turned so hot again although it is autumn now?” “These are the Fiery Mountains, the old man replied. “We don’t have springs or autumns here. It’s hot all the year round.” “Where are the mountains?” Sanzang asked. “Do they block the way to the west?” “It’s impossible to get to the west,” the old man replied. “The mountains are about twenty miles from here. You have to cross them to get to the west, but they’re over 250 miles of flame. Not a blade of grass can grow anywhere around. Even if you had a skull of bronze and a body of iron you would melt trying to cross them.” This answer made Sanzang turn pale with horror; he dared not to ask any more questions.

Probably the greatest of the ancient Chinese classics is the Hong Lou Meng (Dream of the Red Chamber, amongst other alternative titles). Since I had already read it, I chose another classic to kick off this project, the Xi You Ji.
This is a mythologised Ming version of the (Tang Dynasty) pilgrimage to India by one of my heroes, the monk Xuanzang, to bring back the true versions of the Buddhist scriptures (which had become corrupted in China, due to distance from the source and difficulties in translation into a very different language). It is one of the great classics of my beloved Silk Road. When I was in Xi’an I was excited to see the Big Wild Goose Pagoda (Dayanta) where Xuanzang spent years translating them to Chinese, and also the Flaming Mountains (Huozhou Shan) near Turpan in far western Xinjiang where he had one of his adventures. The Xi You Ji is a send-up, and its Xuanzang (called Sanzang in this edition) bears no resemblance to the historical figure! He is accompanied by some mythological animals, Monkey, Pig, and Friar Sand and the poor pilgrim is just a figure of fun who wouldn’t have made it if it wasn’t for Monkey (who is like Sancho Panza to Cervantes’ Don Quijote). It’s such a shame that while the Xi You Ji is well known to Chinese people, the account by the real Xuanzang, who deserves to be as well-known as Marco Polo, both by them and the outside world, is almost forgotten nowadays. Even so, the fairy tale is a good romp!

 

Wu Cheng’en (c. 1500 – c. 1580): Journey to the West, translated by W.J.F. Jenner, Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2008 (originally published 16th Century), 3 vols., ISBN 7-119-01663-6

Monkey, translated by Arthur Waley, London: Penguin Classics, 1994, 1942, ISBN 9780140441116