Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know by Colm Tóibín

Published by Scribner on October 30, 2018

Colm Tóibín begins Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know with an essay that melds the literary history of Dublin with the city’s sociopolitical history. Wilde and Yeats and Joyce and Beckett and Stoker and Shaw and many other writers and poets are still alive in the city’s memory, still called to mind by certain streets and structures. From that stroll, Tóibín journeys to three essays about “prodigal fathers” who, at least for a time, called Dublin home.

Sir William Wilde was the father of Oscar Wilde, but Tóibín begins the essay with a discussion of Oscar Wilde’s two-year imprisonment at Reading Gaol, during which Wilde wrote De Profundis in the form of an angry letter to his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, whose father, the Marquess of Queensbury, played an instrumental role in causing Wilde’s sodomy conviction. We eventually learn about Oscar’s father William, a doctor, archeologist, statistician, and man of learning who straddled England and Ireland.

William’s life was at least tangentially touched by the longstanding conflict between Dubliners who advocated independence and Home Rule and those who opposed separation from England. William is almost tangential to the essay, which tells us at least as much about William’s friends and acquaintances as it does about William. Much of the essay’s interest comes from its description of a time in which “revolutionary fervor in Ireland was ill-fated, half-hearted or part of a literary rather than a serious political culture.” William’s life is a good deal less interesting than Oscar’s, although he did manage to work a scandal into his High Society life involving a scorned and vindictive lover.

John Yeats is the most interesting of the three fathers that Toibin profiles. Toibin compares John to the father of the novelist Henry James: “they sought self-realization through art and general inquiry.” (John earns a gold star from me for his belief that Henry James’ novels are unbearably tedious.) Unfortunately, self-realization doesn’t pay the bills.

To the dismay of his wife, John Yeats abandoned the study of law to pursue a career as an artist. He was never satisfied with his paintings and generally began them anew each day, a habit that impaired his ability to earn money. He could only paint portraits of people he liked, another “infirmity of will” (his son’s assessment) that made it difficult to earn a living.

As a father, John Yeats was “exasperating but also inspirational.” John seems to have been most notable for wielding the Irish gift of gab. He lived the last 15 years of his life in New York, writing splendid letters and gaining American admirers while depending on his famous son to satisfy his debts. Tóibín admires John's ability to write “sentences of startling beauty,” but it is difficult to know what to make of him. John Yeats felt a passionate longing to be something more than he ever became; he lived in imagination more than reality. In the end, his correspondence reveals him to be too self-centered to be a successful father, husband, or lover.

The discussion of James Joyce’s father differs from the first two portraits. We often see John Stanislaus Joyce as James Joyce fictionalized him in stories and novels. In actual life, John ran up unmanageable debt (a common theme among three men Tóibín examines), had a serious problem with alcohol, and was a miserable father. Toibin gleans these facts from various sources, including My Brother’s Keeper by James’ brother Stanislaus, whose anger at their father is palpable.

Yet James, unlike his brother, resisted the temptation to be angry, finding ways to reimagine his father in his fiction. James’ stories often depict his father as his friends see him, not as his children knew him. John is portrayed in Ulysses as Simon Dedalus, “a complex figure of moods, an unsettled rather than a solid presence in the book.” That seems to be an accurate description of all three men.

I’m not sure what this volume tell us, except that difficult fathers sometimes produce sons who are capable of literary brilliance. Tóibín has demonstrated his own literary genius over the years, and while this work of nonfiction doesn’t display the depth of his fiction (it’s difficult to be stuck with facts when imagination offers a richer environment), it is worth reading for its insight into a time and place that produced such vital writers.

RECOMMENDED

The Shadow Killer by Arnaldur Indriðason

Published in Iceland in 2015; published in translation by St. Martin's Press/Minotaur Books on May 29, 2018

The Shadow Killer is the second (and, so far, the last) in the Flóvent and Thorson series, following The Shadow District. The story again takes place during World War II. The novel describes the first meeting of Icelander Flóvent and Canadian (of Icelandic parentage) Thorson, so the novel takes place before the events recounted in The Shadow District.

A dead body is found in the apartment of Felix Lundun. The deceased was shot in the head, execution style, and a swastika was marked on his forehead. Felix, a traveling salesman, seems to have disappeared. Flóvent, the only detective in Reykjavik’s Criminal Investigation Division during the war, wonders if he might have been killed by an American, given the relative inexperience that Icelanders have with execution-style murders. The bullet came from a Colt .45, the sidearm carried by American soldiers. Since an American soldier might be involved, Flóvent is teamed with Thorson, who works for the American military police.

Circumstantial evidence, including a cyanide pill, suggests that Felix might be a German spy. Iceland in 1940 was occupied by the British who were trying to keep it out of German hands, while Icelanders were trying to remain studiously neutral. Felix’s father is a Nazi sympathizer but somehow managed to avoid the British purge. His father’s brother claims to have abandoned his interest in the Nazis, while Felix himself is reputed to be an anti-Nazi communist. Thorson has heard a rumor that Churchill might drop in on Iceland, a visit that might be of interest to German spies, if any are lurking about.

Since Felix is the obvious suspect, the reader will immediately understand that he is innocent, at least of killing the man whose body was found in his apartment. Flóvent and Thorson take occasional beatings as they plod forward with their investigation forward. Eventually the plot addresses theories (popular at the time) that criminals share certain physiological features, leading Flóvent to investigate certain Nazi-inspired experiments that were rooted in those theories. Meanwhile, Thorson is investigating the woman who had been living with the murder victim, a two-timer named Vera who seems to have manipulated every man she ever met.

As was true in The Shadow District, the background to the story involves the relationship between Icelandic girls, who are excited to meet foreign soldiers and sailors, and the Morality Committee, comprised of older Icelandic adults who are inclined to lock up Icelandic girls in reform schools if they dare to fraternize with foreign members of the military. Nazi (or in this case, Icelandic Nazi) theories involving racial purity and Nordic/Viking ancestry also contribute to the novel’s background.

That background, in fact, is more interesting than the plot or the primary characters. Naughty Vera at least has a personality, while Thorson and Flóvent might as well be ice sculptures. Their detailed investigation is at times too detailed to make for a riveting story, although The Shadow Killer does allow the reader to join the investigators in puzzling over clues and pondering potential motives. The solution to the mystery comes as no surprise. The story too often drags to warrant a full recommendation, but the background is sufficiently interesting to warrant a guarded recommendation to fans of cold-weather fiction.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

The Wrong Heaven by Amy Bonnaffons

Published by Little, Brown and Co. on July 17, 2018

The Wrong Heaven is a remarkable collection of stories. In their offbeat nature and humorous takes on serious issues, the stories compare favorably to those of George Saunders and Jonathan Lethem. Amy Bonnaffons demonstrates her versatility by including a couple of stories that have a more serious tone.

In “The Wrong Heaven,” a teacher, wondering whether Jesus is on her side (the evidence suggests not) buys lawn ornaments of Jesus and Mary, plugs them in, and has a conversation. She unplugs them because she finds them to be too judgmental, but lights them up intermittently as the story proceeds. The best part of the story involves a dog who loves listening to Billie Holliday before taking a nap. The story’s moral is that, like charred marshmallows, there’s always another layer underneath, but I still like the story for the brief appearance of the canine jazz fan.

The woman in “The Other One” visits a karaoke place to sing “Hand in My Pocket” over and over, hoping to get it out of her head. The song has been plaguing her ever since she began to doubt the self-serving choices she had made about how to live her life. She hopes to purge the song, or at least to understand how her own conflicted feelings are reflected in the song’s lyrics, by making the song her own. The story is quite funny but it makes a serious point about how the mind deals with stress in ways that we don’t always understand, or tries to tell us things that we need to know.

“Horse” is the story of a woman who takes injections that turn her into a horse, but the larger theme is the longing that some women feel to live an entirely different kind of life, perhaps the kind of wild and powerful life that an unbroken horse represents. To make sure readers understand the point, the woman describes her transformation as “a cautionary tale” of “what happens when you ignore your own wildness for too long.” The woman’s transformation is juxtaposed against her roommate’s transition to motherhood. What they have in common is hope that their changed lives will be better and fear that there’s no turning back if their new lives are not what they expect.

In “Black Stones,” a dying woman explains to the angel of death the problems she has had being “the other woman.” Like all men, the angel of death has conflicting desires and isn’t good at understanding women.

The wannabe grad student who provides day care for two kids known as “The Two Cleas” sees the postmodernist irony that the people she encounters bring to their performances of life. But how will her postmodernist observations affect her own post-feminist performance of life? Will she decide that living is better than performing, or is performance and being amused by the performance of others ingrained in modern intellectual life?

The narrator of “A Room to Live In” carves two small children from balsa wood and they come to life, making her a God to the kids but not a great wife to her husband. I think the story is an allegory for parenthood. Whatever it is meant to be, the story is funny and sweet.

The characters in “Alternate” try to apply Obama’s promise of hope for the future to their own lives, only to discover that they cannot escape from the present. The narrator’s only plan is to decorate a blank wall in a way that will persuade her lover to come back. The story blends the difficulty of political and personal change in a way that is both funny and insightful.

“Goddess Night” pokes fun at women who take themselves and their worldviews much too seriously. It’s one of a couple of stories that explore sexual alternatives from the amusing perspective of a woman who considers herself clueless about what those alternatives might be. I like the advice the protagonist receives: “Just follow your desires, and you’ll live into the answers.” And I like the protagonist’s realization that women are both goddesses and mortals, “always already dying, always yet to be fully born.”

Only a couple of stories are not primarily the stuff of comedy. “Doris and Katie” is a touching story about friendship, relationships, aging, reactions to traumatic news, and the inevitability of everything coming to an end.

The most poignant story (and my favorite in the collection), “Little Sister,” is narrated by a young girl who isn’t so young by the story’s end. She copes with a dysfunctional broken family by creating a not-quite-imaginary little sister who lives under her bed, unless she’s been buried in the ground or beneath the floorboards. The story is about the ways people find to protect themselves from harm, or at least to protect an untouched image of themselves that will survive the harsh reality of life.

There isn’t a bad story in the collection, and I suspect that most readers will find one or two to be memorable. I’ve never encountered Amy Bonnaffons’ work before, but I hope to encounter her again and again.

RECOMMENDED

The Fox by Frederick Forsyth

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on October 23, 2018

The writer who started the trend of giving villains a cool nickname with The Day of the Jackal has returned with The Fox. Except that the Fox isn’t a villain. He’s an autistic teen hacker who is pretty much indifferent to, or intimidated by, the non-digital world. In that regard, Frederick Forsyth is following the trend of creating a hacker with an emotional disorder. The Fox, we soon learn, is the best hacker in the world.

After months of investigation, a harmless breach of the NSA database is traced to a house in a suburb north of London. The Americans, certain that the hacker will be protected by armed terrorists, want to send in SEALs with guns blazing, but the British insist on a more subtle, clandestine operation to occupy the house. Thus they manage to avoid killing the Fox, a teenager with Asperger’s syndrome, and his innocent family.

The Fox simply wanted to meet the challenge of breaking into an NSA’s database, but the Americans claimed he caused millions of dollars of “damage,” meaning it will cost millions to fix the flaw that he exploited and exposed but did not create. As is often true of cybercrimes that do not involve theft, the damage the Fox caused was to egos, not cybersystems.

Forsyth thus sets up a vulnerable teenager as a standard but sympathetic character. Wielding flattery as a weapon, Sir Adrian Weston convinces the American president (who is easily manipulated by flattery) to let Britain hang onto the Fox, where he will become a key player in Operation Troy. One of his first tasks proves to be supremely embarrassing to Russia, which prompts a call for revenge against the Fox. He later takes on Iran, North Korea (twice) and Russia again.

Forsyth portrays the United States (or more particularly Trump, although not by name) as extraordinarily gullible in trusting North Korea, making decisions based on ego (including the desire for a Nobel peace prize) rather than facts. Some readers might disagree with that assessment. Those readers may find themselves disliking The Fox for political reasons (assuming that they understand Forsyth is disparaging their favorite president). On the other hand, readers who get their news from a wide range of apolitical sources will likely regard Forsyth’s portrayal of the administration as spot on.

Forsyth’s political digs at America are amusing, but the plot comes across as more fantasy than thriller. In a fairly nonviolent way, the Fox manages to do serious but lasting damage to three totalitarian regimes. If only it were so, the world would be a safer place today. Yet the plot leads to those results without generating much tension (certainly nothing like Forsyth has managed in his better novels). Forsyth injects some action scenes as Britain’s best are assigned to protect the Fox from snipers and assault teams, but their success depends on luck as much as skill. This is far from an edge-of-the seat thriller, although Forsyth’s novels always move with good pace.

Wesley is portrayed as a typically competent strategist, an exemplar of British reserve, while the Fox is an insular hacker stereotype. A couple of collateral characters have a subdued romance, but nothing particularly surprising happens during the course of the novel. It is fun, however, to imagine that one autistic kid (with some stalwart Brits on his side) could make the world such a better place. I find it hard to dislike such an optimistic novel.

RECOMMENDED

Albert Einstein Speaking by R.J. Gadney

Published by Canongate Books on June 12, 2018

Albert Einstein Speaking begins with a wrong number dialed by 17-year-old Mimi Beaufort in Princeton, who finds herself speaking to the most famous scientist in the world on his 75th birthday. Einstein likes her voice and tells her to call back. Then he begins dictating correspondence and random thoughts to his secretary, reflecting on war, the horrible treatment of Jews in Germany, the horrible treatment of blacks in America, and his own inadequacies as a parent and husband.

A story that begins as fiction and quickly transitions to a fictional autobiography soon becomes a biography. It briefly recounts Einstein’s life from childhood (his mother thought he was a strange boy who would amount to nothing), with little touches that foreshadow the man he would become (including his awe and fear of the mysterious forces that prevented him from tricking his compass to point in a direction other than north, his first inkling that “there’s something behind things, something deeply hidden”). Later he confronts antisemitism at a Catholic school. It’s no wonder he preferred the glory of his own mind to an educational system that was nothing but a distraction from intellect.

We follow Einstein through his career (first in the patent office and later in various academic positions), his relationships, his battles with anti-Semites in the European scientific establishment, and his remarkable ability to make deductions about how the world works. We learn that he is a terrible husband and not much of a father but hey, he’s Einstein, he doesn’t have time for conventional ways of living.

The story emphasizes how Einstein was belittled, and his theory of relativity mocked, because he was Jewish. Later in life we get a glimpse of his regret for suggesting to Roosevelt that he pursue an atomic bomb, and learn that Einstein was not immune to the FBI’s misguided pursuit of communists during the age of McCarthyism.

Most of the story consists of one abbreviated event following another. In fact, Albert Einstein Speaking often reads like an abbreviated biography that lists facts while minimizing context or analysis. Pages and pages go by without a hint that the book is a work of fiction, so resolutely does it recount Einstein’s travels, lectures, letters, meetings, and decisions. That doesn’t mean the book lacks interest, but it isn’t what a reader expects from a novel. Only when the story returns to Mimi does the book really come alive.

Albert Einstein Speaking reminds us that closed minds will happily reject the rigors of scientific inquiry when inquiry leads to results that get in the way of politics or prejudices (not that a reminder is needed, given the prevalence of global warming deniers). An openness to inquiry and free thought is an openness to people, and hence a rejection of racism, of religious prejudice, and of all notions of national superiority or exceptionalism. Humility and compassion on a global scale were Einstein’s great virtues, apart from his intellect. The virtue of Albert Einstein Speaking is its reminder that true genius lies in learning how to live harmlessly, in harmony with nature and with all the people who are not us.

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