Nothing could be finer

Three weeks from tomorrow, the Friday before Christmas, I will take the light rail from my home to downtown's King Street Station.  At 9:50 a.m., Amtrak's Coast Starlight will pull out of the station.  Five meals and one night's sleep later, at 7:05 p.m., we will pull into the station in Oxnard, California, where I'll join my family for this year's Christmas celebration. 

I could, of course, fly to nearby Santa Barbara in about two hours, but I won't (although I will fly back).  I won't, because, when trains are involved, getting there is half the fun.  

My longest trip ever by train was in 2008, when I traveled via Empire Builder and Lake Shore Limited from Seattle to Boston.  My trip to Oxnard will be a quick jump by comparison.  I often dream of something longer.  Much longer.

My dreams are shared by others.  Two days ago, the New York Times carried an article by a fellow who had traveled 8,980 miles by train in 13 days -- leaving New York City the day after the Trump victory a year ago.  While he clearly loves trains, his primary objective was to meet a cross-section of Americans, to understand their lives and their fears -- to see why they voted the way they did. 

The best place to meet on trains, as every train traveler knows, is the diner.  Unless you're one of a party of four, you will be placed at a table with at least one stranger.  If you're a solo traveler like me, you'll be seated with three strangers who may, or may not, know each other.  Unless you stare out the window or into space, avoiding eye contact, you're bound to become involved in conversation.

For a non-gregarious person like myself, each seating in the diner thus becomes slightly intimidating.  And yet, in few other social contexts is it so easy to start conversations with people you've never met.  Part of the ease, I suppose, comes from the knowledge that it's extremely unlikely you'll ever meet them again.

The NYT writer* observed that in our fast-paced society, insofar as we talk to others at all, we rarely have the time or inclination to understand the people we talk to.  We make quickie judgments about their intelligence, their status, their opinions.  If we talk about something controversial, our own goal is to prove -- to ourselves, at least -- that we are "right" and they are "wrong."

I mourn the decline of complex truth, the ability to hold two sides of an argument in mind, the desire to understand rather than simply to be right. We have, for the most part, retreated into pure binary thinking.

Train travel -- in America, at least -- is slow and inefficient.  You aren't going anywhere fast.  You can't gracefully walk away from people you consider, at first glance, uninteresting or "wrong-headed."  You're stuck with them for a meal.  There's no way to escape; there's nowhere to go .  Meals are slow and leisurely, because we all like not only to talk, but to look out the window at the passing scene, as we eat.

When you're stuck eating with someone, you begin learning trivial things about each other -- things that would never come up during a brief city encounter.

After a few days of the dining car routine I began to wonder if the train might be a salve for our national wound, bringing us into intimate conversation with unlikely interlocutors, and allowing us to see each other as human rather than as mere containers for ideology.  On the train, I slowed down. I thought more deeply. I listened better, and longer.

Even with people whose politics he abhorred, "there was something about the person’s relationship to family, and loyalty to family, that I found deeply moving."

Slowing down, seeing the person in front of you as a fellow human, considering his way of thinking -- none of this will change your own beliefs.  But it prevents you from demonizing those with whom you disagree.  It keeps you civil.  If it caught on, it could preserve us as a nation.

Of course, you can always avoid the diner and eat in your roomette or at your seat, staring contentedly out the window.  At times, even a social scientist may feel the need to be alone in the universe.  Either way, the train's a fine place to spend a day or two.  Or more.
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*Gabriel Kahane, "How the Amtrak Dining Car Could Heal the Nation," New York Times (Nov. 28, 2017).

"Young adult" fiction

Over the past week -- which included travel time to San Diego, where I spent Thanksgiving, with only my Kindle for reading material --I've found myself re-reading three "young adult" novels by Benjamin Sáenz: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (which I "mini-reviewed" last May); He Forgot to Say Goodbye; and The Inexplicable Logic of My Life.

All three novels feature an introverted teenager, Mexican-American by birth or adoption, who is intelligent, kind, and sensitive, and who has a close relationship to one or both parents, but who nevertheless suffers from low self-esteem and whose instinctive reaction to frustration with others is to use his fists.  I assume I can draw some conclusions about Mr. Sáenz himself.  I assume these characteristics are to some degree autobiographical.

I think it's interesting -- and perhaps worthy of contemplation -- that I often enjoy YA fiction more than I do standard "adult" fiction.  I'm not talking about trashy adult pulp fiction, and I'm not talking about classics like Hemingway, Joyce, or Waugh.  Or Jane Austen, for that matter.  I'm also not talking about certain foreign writers who write in English, and may write about America and Americans from a foreigner's perspective.  Such as André Aciman.

I'm talking about those novels that are published week after week and are good enough to be reviewed by the New York Times, but that probably will never become "classics" that will be studied by future literature classes.

My thoughts are extremely tentative, and I need to think more about it.  But I suspect that an important factor in my mind, an important distinction between adult and YA fiction, is the presence of "hope."

The young people in YA fiction are often badly scarred by poverty, or upbringing, or lack of upbringing.  They may have made bad choices.  They may be overwhelmed in ways they don't understand by their teenage hormones.  But they have the resilience of youth. They have flexibility. And they have time, lots of time, to change course. Things may get better, and the novel may have a happy ending, or at least a bittersweet ending.  Or the novel may have a tragic ending, a warning to us readers that many children face odds that are stacked too heavily to be overcome.

But whether the end is happy or tragic, throughout our reading of the novel we feel hope, we care about the protagonist, we long for him to succeed.

Maybe you feel the same way about adult novels?  I rarely do.  I see protagonists with a long history of making bad decisions, stupid and selfish decisions, or who have already been overwhelmed by adversities beyond their control.  I don't particularly empathize with them, or particularly like them.  Their adult worries or desires seem trivial and uninteresting -- to me if not to themselves   But beyond my sympathy or lack of sympathy, I don't feel "hope."  I don't see any reason why -- at this stage of their lives, with so much polluted water already under the bridge -- their lives will be happier or more successful or more worthwhile or more helpful to others in the future than they have been in the past.

I know enough middle-aged people who have lost all the enthusiasms and dreams of their youth and are now just going through the motions of life that I'm not interested in reading about their fictional equivalents.

Therefore, I can't sustain my interest in most such novels, in the absence of some sensational extraneous feature -- they discover a pot of gold buried in the backyard! -- that makes the story less boringly predictable, if implausible.

I realize of course that the funny, clever, resourceful kid of today, the one who finds a way to attend his dream university despite all the odds against him, may well end up leading one of the tired, middle-aged lives of quiet despair tomorrow.  But that future's not in the YA novel.  I settle for whatever ending the author gives me, and don't try to second-guess the protagonist's future.

I'm not completely satisfied with the distinction I've drawn between YA and adult fiction.  I suspect I could find -- I suspect I've already read -- plenty of NY Times best-sellers that meet the characteristics I've given for good YA fiction, or that offer totally different reasons for me to find the books and their characters enchanting.

So I'll think about the subject some more.  Accept this as merely my "beta version" of contemplation on the subject.

La Belle Sauvage

I don't like sequels.  Nope.  Never have, unless the "sequel" is a book actually anticipated at the time the original work was written.

Sequels strike me as an afterthought, a way of wringing some additional money out of an unexpectedly well-received original work.  They either change our reaction to the original work so that the conclusion of the original no longer has the impact it once had, or they are parasitical -- weak sisters living off the strength of the original.

Philip Pullman's La Belle Sauvage, the first volume of a trilogy entitled The Book of Dust, does not on first reading strike me as an exception. Pullman says that his new work is neither a prequel nor a sequel to His Dark Materials, but an "equel" -- a different story set in the same Universe. Whatever. Anyway, I'm willing to wait for the rest of the trilogy before drawing any final conclusions.

The "original work" in this case, of course, is the three books of His Dark Materials.  I've commented on both the books, and the movie based on the first volume, The Golden Compass, at various times in this blog.  His Dark Materials is generally regarded as one of the finest examples of fantasy literature told from the point of view of children -- but whose audience is in no way limited to children -- during the last hundred years or so.

The Golden Compass introduced us to an entirely original universe, a universe very similar and parallel to our own, but one with distinct differences.  We followed a pre-adolescent girl (Lyra) from her home in Oxford through a number of adventures, ending with an almost-literal bang among armored bears in the Far North.  We learned that every human being in Lyra's world had a daemon, an animal corresponding to the human's soul, that accompanied its human through life.  We learned of a Church -- a melding of Catholic and Calvinist traditions with headquarters in Geneva -- that dominated the world both religiously and politically.  We learned of a strange substance called "dust," whose importance remained unclear at the end of the first book.

La Belle Sauvage is different from that first volume of the earlier trilogy.  We already know about daemons and the Church and its Magisterium.  No need for much exposition.  The entire book takes place while Lyra is still a baby, and the hero's task is to keep her from being captured and possibly killed by the Magisterium.

The hero is a new character, Malcolm, a pre-adolescent son of an Oxford-area innkeeper.  Malcolm is an extremely likeable boy, and proves to be brave, intelligent, and resourceful.  When a great flood -- perhaps supernatural in origin -- hits the Thames valley, he and a young girl named Alice escape with the baby Lyra in a canoe, attempting to evade the agents of the Magisterium as they float downstream to London.

The story -- to me at least -- lacks much of the adventure and magic, the philosophical and religious implications, of The Golden Compass.  Lyra's world is already a given, its rules largely known from the original series.  This book reads more as a boy's adventure story -- admittedly, an exciting story -- than as the masterpiece represented by Pullman's first book.  The story's introduction of fairy creatures out of British folklore, during an episode in its second half, seems forced and out of place.

The book was fun to read, but I finished reading it with the feeling that my time might have been better spent elsewhere.  As I said at the beginning, the trilogy awaits publication of two more volumes, and I'll reserve judgment.  But La Belle Sauvage itself did nothing to change my long-held view that few sequels are worth writing.  Or reading.

Civilized gathering place

Hadrian, that most civilized and Greek-loving of Roman emperors, founded the Athenaeum in the second century A.D.  The Athenaeum was a school devoted to literary and scientific studies, and to the sharing of educated views. It was located in the middle of what is now the Piazza Venezia in Rome.

The term has since been used repeatedly, not only for various cultural institutions, but for men's clubs (notably that in London), and even for hotels. 

Not to be out-shone, Seattle has sported its own Athenaeum since January 2016.  The Seattle Athenaeum is primarily a subscription library (a modest $125 per year), located in the downtown YMCA building.  I confess that I was unaware of its existence until my friend Pat suggested that we attend a noon presentation yesterday by local author Robert Berry, discussing the presidency of William McKinley.

We discovered the entrance to the institution through a small, discreet side door in the large Y building.  Within, we discovered rooms with books, rooms for sitting quietly and reading, rooms for lectures, and rooms for study.  The books are primarily donations from members' private libraries.  As non-members, Pat and I paid ten dollars apiece for admission to the lecture, an experience that was well worth the price.

Rather than sitting in a large (or small) auditorium, we were ushered into what resembled a university seminar room -- chairs and tables in a circle, with additional chairs against the wall.  Some 25 or 30 people showed up, enough to fill the room.  Professor Merry was introduced by the personable David Brewster, the founder and editor of the Seattle Weekly, the founder of Seattle's Town Hall, and the founder of the Athenaeum itself.  Mr. Brewster gets around, and is clearly a Seattle asset.

Mr. Merry -- both a scholar and a conservative journalist -- gave an interesting presentation of his basic thesis from his best-selling book (published this year) about McKinley.  (He thinks McKinley has been underrated.)  He was then joined by Tom Cronin, a professor at Colorado College and former president of Whitman College, who discussed McKinley from a liberal point of view.  Both speakers were often in substantial agreement, but Cronin felt that McKinley failed to attain the top rank of American presidents because of his lack of interest in promoting racial and economic equality.

My interest was less in the speakers' competing arguments than in observing their personalities and the courtesy and mutual respect with which they disagreed with each other.  Not surprisingly, both speakers, liberal and conservative, find the Trump presidency both distressing and frightening.

It's nice to know that small groups of intelligent people have forums, like the Athenaeum, in which to gather, hear and discuss matters of interest, and meet each other informally over lunches they've brought with them.  The experience reminded me of happy experiences from my youth -- as well as experiences from Hadrian's time -- and offered some hope that the Trump years will not forever define American life and civilization.

This, too, will pass.

Asian holiday

Sunset from our place on Bali

Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill. 
--Kipling

I lead a charmed life.  Long rides in taxis and "tuk-tuks," through crazy traffic, and never injured.  Lay-overs, going and coming, at Seoul airport, and never nuked.  Hiking under the shadow of Bali's highly active Mt. Agung volcano, and never buried in lava and ash.

Home at last, arriving in Seattle by way of Seoul two afternoons ago, and only now feeling mentally capable of setting down a few thoughts in writing.

It was a great three weeks, both as a travel experience and as a family reunion to celebrate a couple of 70th birthdays.


Volcano Agung seen from temple
site on Lempuyang

I arrived in Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand, on October 18 -- joining my sister at a cluster of stilted cabins called "The Little Village," a mile or so walk down a narrow country road from my nephew Denny's rented home.  We made frequent treks down that road to visit the very comfortable house he's been renting since last June when he accepted a job teaching sixth grade at the same international school his daughter Maury was attending.  We joined him and a couple of other early arrivals, my first night there, to celebrate our Thai experience by visiting a locally run pizza joint, and spent the next three days hanging out with everyone and hearing about Denny's local experiences.

Unfortunately, the school had just been flooded by the tail-end of the monsoons, giving Maury a vacation and Denny the experience of working with fellow teachers to prepare temporary quarters for the school.  A bit stressful for my nephew, but he handled it all with aplomb.


Sister descending Lempuyang

After three days, four of us flew to Bangkok, where we spent a night, and then on to Denpasar, Bali, getting our first view of newly awakened Agung as we flew over the island.  We joined many of the other members of our 13-person group at the airport. Our rental management provided us transportation to our new homes. We drove northward for an hour, weaving crazily through masses of tuk-tuks and bicycles, drawing ever closer to the threatening volcano.

We were delighted by the accommodations that my sister Kathy had negotiated for us.  She had rented all three houses on a large plot of land, surrounded by lush green lawns, and bordering the sea across a channel from Lombok island. Everything about the place was beautiful -- the detailed interior and exterior woodworking of the houses, the palm trees, the infinity pool overlooking the ocean, the nightly sunsets.  I had to summon all my curiosity to tear myself away and wander out the front gate occasionally, where the world of Bali locals existed along a dirt road that lead eventually into the nearest town of Candi Dasa.


Angkor Wat at dawn

Both the manager and staff of our property, and the staff of an adjoining resort whose outdoor café we visited frequently, were overwhelming in their hospitality.  Although the Candi Dasa area is a major tourist area, the publicity about the supposedly imminent eruption of nearby Agung had virtually eliminated the presence of foreign tourists.  We had the entire region almost to ourselves.

We spent one morning driving even closer to the volcano -- although still remaining outside the 12 kilometer "forbidden zone" -- to climb the sacred mountain of Lempuyang.  Lempuyang's summit is about 5,000 feet, and the path to the top leads past seven Hindu temples or shrines.  The climb is one of the major tourist attractions of northeast Bali.  We saw no other tourists while there -- but we had beautiful, unclouded views of Agung herself.  Four of us ascended to the top temple, and the rest climbed as high as the second.


Temple at Lamphun, near Chiang Mai,
where we attended Loi Krathong, a
Buddhist festival of lights.
 

After a full week on Bali, about half of our group left for home.  The rest of us flew by way of Kuala Lumpur to Siem Reap, Cambodia.  We stayed at a small bed and breakfast in the center of town, our units surrounding a swimming pool.  We explored nearby Angkor Wat, which Denny and I had explored ten years earlier. (Photos from 2007) The ruins are very extensive, stretching far beyond the most famous ruins ("Angkor Wat" proper).  They deserve a return visit, and further exploration.

Kathy and I  caught a 5 a.m. taxi to the ruins one morning to watch the sunrise.  The sun rose, of course, but chose to rise behind a cloud.  Nevertheless, the ruins -- while hardly free of visitors -- were more peaceful and especially attractive in the early light of dawn, and we didn't regret missing a couple of hours of sleep.

After three nights in Siem Reap, we returned to Chiang Mai, spent three more nights at The Little Village, and then moved into the central "old city," a square of about 1¼ mile length on each side, surrounded by a landscaped moat.  We spent three more nights in the old city, concluded by dinner at La Fourchette, an excellent French restaurant owned and managed by a superb chef.  The service was excellent, and I don't mind throwing in a plug for the place.

Then, one by one, we headed for home.  I was the last of our group to leave Chiang Mai.  I won't be the last to return for another visit.