Just Finished Reading The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel

Yann Martel is best known for his 2001 novel of Life of Pi...here is a link to my earlier review of it on this blog: [Life of Pi]. His 2016 work the The High Mountains of Portugal conveys a very different mood while continuing with the themes of animals, religion, cross-cultural encounters, mortality and grief...all present in that earlier work. It is divided into three separate tales, set in 1904, 1939, and 1981 with unifying elements of family, religious symbolism, and a small village in "mountainous" east Portugal (where the author points out that there are no true mountains). This book was much more difficult for me to get through than Life of Pi, especially that very confusing second story...but this is how Martel wrote it and I accept it, without necessarily liking it...

The first tale concerns grief-stricken young Tomás, whose beloved wife and their young son had recently died of illness, reacting by only walking backwards while becoming engrossed in a 17th century diary of an obscure Portuguese priest assigned to Angola and Sao Tome in Africa. Tomás embarks on a quest to find that priest's special, mysterious crucifix, hidden somewhere in an unknown rural eastern Portugal church.  The second story involves a Portuguese pathologist, his wife, and a visit from an elderly woman in grief.  And the third is about a burned-out Canadian politician who abandons his office to return to his ancestral roots in Portugal...with a very special companion...

It's often difficult for me to write a review without giving away too much...let me just say in the case of  The High Mountains of Portugal that I've read some of the reactions to it on the Goodreads website and discovered that readers usually either loved it or despised it.  That stands to reason as this novel of Yann Martel is in places difficult to follow as a literal, reality-based narrative and is full of all sorts of symbolism and allegory...seems like the kind of book that high school English teachers like to assign to their hapless students.  I also think a lot of readers were hoping for another story along the lines of Life of Pi and were put off by the descent into weirdness in the 1939 story, but as I had previously noted, the two works do have several overlapping themes.  I'm glad I read it, but I much, much preferred Life of Pi...

Just Finished Reading Watership Down by Richard Adams

For a long time I had heard of Watership Down, a 1972 children's story by Richard Adams about a group of rabbits in rural England looking for a homeland...but it wasn't until last week that I managed to check out a copy from my local public library. I also remember that they made it into an animated movie a few years later but never saw it, either.  Well, after just finishing the book, I was suitably impressed...

Wild rabbits are social creatures, forming societies called warrens.  The characters in Watership Down (a "down" is a hill...there is actually a place called Watership Down in Hampshire) speak a language called "lapine" and organize their society like humans.  Adams originally conceived of Watership Down as a story he told his two young daughters during a long trip.  After their prodding, he wrote it as a book and sought the input of an expert on rabbits as to how they behaved in the wild...the result was an interesting composite of rabbit and humanity.   Hazel and Fiver are two ordinary rabbits living in a warren when the latter, a small rabbit with the gift of intuition, one day suddenly implores the others to quickly leave the warren to avoid destruction.  The warren's leader rejects Fiver's plea, and he, along with Hazel and a few others, manage to escape from the other rabbits.  It is their quest for a new home and the adventures, new friends...as well as foes...that they experience along the way that comprise this compelling tale, along with their folklore exemplified by stories told about their mythical spiritual leader El-ahrairah...

There is a temptation, when reading Watership Down, to draw analogies from it with human society and history...I saw a couple: Britain and America with their traditions of freedom standing up to the militarist dictatorships in World War II, as well as a disparaging look at socialist societies.  But the author denied any attempt at analogy...he was simply telling a story.  And I believe him, although a good writer will often unconsciously reveal much of his or her beliefs through the characters and their behavior.  If you haven't yet read Watership Down, I urge you to do so.  On one level, it's a story for kids about rabbits.  But on another, the text is written in a language for more mature readers.  Makes me want to read some of Adams' other stories.  By the way, Richard Adams passed away very recently...in December 2016...at the age of 96...

Just Finished Reading Under the Dome by Stephen King

Several years ago, not long after Stephen King's very long novel Under the Dome was first published, I began to read it...but stopped in frustration about a third of the way through.  I was tired of all the political references, with the good guys seeming to support then-President Obama and the bad guys against him.  I also took exception to the way evangelical Christianity was being negatively portrayed in the novel: after recently picking it back up and reading it all the way through, I realize why King did what he did but still feel that he could have done more to balance out the equation on both political and religious fronts.  Since I was already attuned to these issues, I could put them in the background as I read and enjoyed the unfolding story.  Turned out to be a pretty good story, after all...

Just before noon on an October Saturday in the fictional small Maine town of Chester's Mill, a thin, transparent, and impermeable barrier suddenly materializes, separating everybody and everything on both sides of the town's borders.  A plane crashes against the dome as do cars, trucks, and multitudes of birds...many deaths occur in those first few minutes of its existence.  Dale "Barbie" Barbara, the story's chief protagonist (and it contains many protagonists) is close to leaving town after a violent altercation with town ruffians the night before...he just misses getting out in time as the car he was hoping to hitch a ride with doesn't stop as it exits.  So now Barbie has to go back to Chester's Mill, which is full of small-town society and politically dominated by a demagogue, "Big Jim" Rennie, who is a manipulative used-car salesman with no scruples when it comes to enhancing his own power and wealth.  As the dome remains over Chester's Mill, the struggle is on between Rennie's forces and those in the town who want to prevent a dictatorship...

The dome cannot be physically crossed, but the other side is both visible and audible, and radio and the Internet still pass through the barrier.  Barbie is informed by his former Army superior from Iraq that he has been reinstated and promoted to corporal from his former captain rank...and that he is expected to take control of Chester's Mill.  Thus ensues a power struggle with Rennie.  But these characters, although crucial to the story, are just a few of the many that King follows in Under the Dome.  As I said before, it contains many protagonists and subplots...and quite a few villains as well.  I'll leave what happens in this speculative tale to you, the prospective reader, and instead focus on a couple of my own reactions to it...

I can't help but feel that with this story Stephen King was alluding to our planet Earth as a sort of enclosed system that is susceptible to environmental abuse.  The indiscriminate burning of fossil fuels and the release of pollutants into the atmosphere threatens the fragile system that supports our own lives, and like the folks living under that dome, we have nowhere else to go.  I also understand the author's example of how people tend to deny the rights of other species of life to simply be able to live out their own lives...he used the example of kids setting fire to ants with a magnifying glass, regarding them as not really being alive anyway.  What if some alien beings had the same attitude about us that we have toward "lower" creatures?

So in the end, I give a "thumbs up" to Under to Dome.  Be prepared for a long reading excursion, though...it's more than a thousand pages long.  As for the television series, I haven't seen it and don't have any plans in that regard.  There are some sections to this novel that are unforgettable: the strange friendship that develops between Andy Sanders and Phil "Chef" Bushey was totally unexpected.  And Stephen King was brilliant with the dialogue throughout...

What Are They Looking At?

I don't often have the occasion to pass through the University of Florida campus around twilight.  That's just how my life is structured: it seems to be somehow designed for me to avoid UF, although I am always passing by it on one side or the other, on the way to somewhere else. The only recent exceptions to this have been the unavoidable doctor and medical examination appointments I've had at Shands Hospital, an incredibly huge, sprawling, and fast-growing complex dominating the south side of the campus.  But then again, Shands is so separated from the rest of the University that I tend to think of it as a completely separate entity.

Tonight I happened to get off a little early from work and decided NOT to pass right by UF, but instead turn into campus and get a sense of what's going on there.  I drove from the west past Lake Alice on Museum Road and veered around a curve to the right, toward the main heart of the campus.  Suddenly, to my left I noticed a crowd of people congregating at a fence, looking inward at what appeared to be an empty field.  So what was the show?  I didn't see any sign of a sports game going on. Anyway, the student recreational complex was further back, south of me.  This crowd was intently watching something completely different.  I was flummoxed about the source of their interest. Then, just as I had almost completely passed the field, I saw it.  Something that I remember from pictures.  Bat towers were situated back in the field.  The spectators were obviously waiting for the bats to come out and join the night!

I can't recall seeing any bats in the wild around Gainesville myself, but my daughter has seen them flying around my own neighborhood, which is in far northern Gainesville, quite distant from the University of Florida and these towers.  I am very happy to know that we have a thriving bat population around us, if for just one reason:  they help curb the horrendous onslaught of mosquitoes this time of year by feasting on them!

Maybe I should set aside some time to watch the bats myself at UF.  It's funny to me, though, how the towers are just right out there by the street, for anyone to see.  I would have thought that they would have been placed in a more secluded spot, if only for the sake of the bats themselves.  Shows how little I know about bats, I suppose...

Confusing Animals is Cruelty

The shout "The circus is in town!" is bound nowadays to bring up an assortment of reactions from people, ranging from excitement and anticipation on to boredom and apathy, and finally to outrage and indignation. I tend to be one of the bored and apathetic, having come to the conclusion that the heyday of high quality circus shows has long passed us by. But an increasing number of people are concerned that the animals in circus acts, like elephants, tigers, and lions, are being abused or at least being treated in an undignified manner. The presumption is that they are wild animals and should be "in the wild", not under the domination of people. I would agree with them to the extent of how the animals were procured in the first place. Were they taken from the wild or were they born and raised in an already domesticated environment? Also, I tend to wince at anyone using a whip on any creature, human or beast, wild or domesticated. It not only riles me to see a lion tamer do this in a circus act, but also to see a jockey whipping his horse in the final stretch of a race. And then being showered with flowers and honors if his horse wins. Disgusting!

That having been said, I am having a problem with those well-intentioned people who try either to sustain captured and at least partially-domesticated animals in a wild setting or to try to train them to return to the wild (even when they were born into captivity). Take a couple of examples.

I recently heard on NPR radio the story of a woman who had cared for several chimpanzees and tried to release them into the wild in an uninhabited (by people) tropical island in western Africa. One chimp, Lucy, was especially fond of her and refused to break the strong personal bond between them and adapt to the "wild life". Finally, the woman, after staying on the island with the chimpanzees and experiencing the frustration that they just wanted to be around her, decided to leave and come back after a year. Upon returning, she discovered the chimpanzees to have adapted somewhat to the wild, although Lucy still remembered her enough to give her a strong, affectionate hug. After another year, she returned again only to discover Lucy's skeleton, with signs that poachers had killed her. Apparently, Lucy had boldly approached them as she hadn't the fear of humans which, as a truly wild creature, she would have carried as a crucial survival trait.

At Sea World in Orlando recently, a known-to-be-unpredictable killer whale pulled a trainer from out of the water down and to her death, violently thrashing her about in front of horrified spectators to as if she were prey. Officials at the park acted clueless as to the cause of this attack, even though this killer whale had long been considered too dangerous for anyone to be in the water with.

Although the last example is very tragic in that it ended with a person's death, the only objection I see is that the people working at Sea World tended to apply human models of behavior to killer whales: this person is cranky so we'll give him his "space" at work; that killer whale is cranky so we'll deal with him the same way and just give him his "space". When domesticated animals go into deviant, violent behavior patterns, their human caretakers need to exert exponentially greater caution with them, whether they be dogs, chimpanzees, killer whales, or another type. Instead, this killer whale had been kept on as part of the show! Foolish!

Of the circus, horse race, and chimpanzee examples, which are the cruelest? I say that taking already domesticated chimpanzees, who had even been taught intricate SIGN LANGUAGE COMMUNICATION with humans, and then throwing them back into the wild to fend for themselves, even if done gradually, is much worse than the traditionally rough treatment that show/sport animals like horses, tigers, lions, bears, or elephants typically receive. Once an animal has been either taken or rescued from the wild, or even born into captivity, it is an obligation on the part of those people responsible for that captivity to bring up that animal with compassion and discernment in its adopted environment, not to throw it back into the wild, grossly unprepared for survival. It is not enough to try to gradually try to train the animal for its new "life" by introducing new foods and abandoning it for stretches. Moreover, it's cruel to do this to animals as they have feelings of their own. They have already formed their own deeply ingrained views of what life is essentially about, only for some "do-gooders" to then decide that it's better to confuse the hell out of them to the point where they don't even know which way is up! Massively disgusting!

Vick Conditionally Reinstated in NFL

Michael Vick, the former Atlanta Falcons star quarterback (three Pro Bowl selections, $100 million-plus multi-year contract) is now being conditionally reinstated into the National Football League after serving eighteen months in prison for his role in staging dogfights and the resulting severe cruelty to animals. Vick has naturally been kicked out of the league for two years. He has been the object for anger and hate among the general public, and why not? Here was a guy who had it all: an athletic superstar, very wealthy, and well-liked in his community and across the nation. What possessed him to engage in dogfighting?

On the other hand, cruel exploitation of animals for economic gain or leisure is a time-honored tradition. Look at our beef, pork, poultry, and seafood industries. How much do most of them concern themselves with the well-being of the animals they raise for food? And what about hunting and fishing, which involve "human beings" using increasingly advanced technology to inflict painful deaths on wild animals? I am currently visualizing Sarah Palin shooting moose from a helicopter. How far removed is that really from Vick's crimes?

Having said all that, I believe that Michael Vick deserved to be prosecuted and reviled for his crimes. But I also believe in rehabilitating and allowing those who have served their sentences for the crimes they committed to be fully allowed back into society. Roger Goodell, the NFL's commissioner, apparently agrees with me on this and has permitted Vick conditional reinstatement as a player this year, eligible to play in the regular season on the sixth week. Former coach Tony Dungy has volunteered to mentor Vick through this period. Vick has been very vocal with contrition and regret for his crimes as well as gratitude for the opportunity given to him now to do something positive with his life. The Philadelphia Eagles have signed him to a short-term contract that is conditional on him making the team and staying true to his reinstatement terms. Good for them!

I have read and heard hardliners who apparently want Michael Vick to be banned from football forever and still feel great anger and hatred toward him. But, like Tony Dungy, Commissioner Goodell, and the Eagles, I believe in second chances and reconciliation. I am rooting for Vick's second chance to be a success for all concerned!

Good and Bad Animals (And People)

When I was a little boy growing up in South Florida in the sixties, we had basically two types of ants to contend with: red ants and black ants. If I were to stumble upon an ant hill, I took care to notice which type of ants lived in it. For the red ants bit and the black ants didn’t. So I drew the moral conclusion that the black ants were the “good” ants and the red ants were the “bad” ants. Of course, in thinking this way I was being the immature little kid that I naturally was. But our society, while claiming maturity, does just the same thing with animals.

Chimpanzees have recently been in the news, due to the story of the chimp who seriously injured a woman out in California. Hearkening back to the days of Cheetah in the Tarzan flicks, chimpanzees have always enjoyed a positive image as being intelligent, fun-loving and social. But did you know that wild chimpanzees in Africa have been reported to eat people, especially little children? The hippopotamus, with its big eyes, cute little ears, and lumbering body is also the recipient of an undeserved popular press. But hippopotamus attacks account for more fatalities in Africa from wild animal attacks than from any other animal. Other animals that folks generally think are good but can surprise and injure with their aggression are dolphins and swans.

On the other end, snakes get abysmal popularity ratings, although attacks from them tend to be defensive in origin. Gorillas have been common horror/sci fi movie material, but in truth their behavior would generally match up much better with human “civilized” behavior than would their relatives, the chimpanzees.

It is peculiar how some animals are stereotyped as “good” or “bad”. Who can forget the assorted cartoon shorts from childhood (Pixie and Dixie and Mr. Jinks, Tom and Jerry, Mighty Mouse) that depict mice as the good guys, cats as the evil predators, and dogs as the benign (and brutish) allies of the mice. But isn’t this typecasting of animals just a reflection of how people treat each other?

The booming cosmetics, botox, and plastic surgery industries base themselves on the idea that people are obsessed with their appearances, and for good reason. Those regarded as attractive will receive much better respect and treatment from others throughout their lives. In our movies, aren’t the good-looking people the good guys and the ugly ones the villains? Just take Lord of the Rings with its hideous orcs and beautiful elves. Or the recent Batman movie The Dark Knight with Harvey Dent the District Attorney. This character is a “good guy” until he becomes disfigured by severe burning. Then, in his physical ugliness, he becomes evil and joins the bad guys (including Heath Ledger’s equally hideous Joker).

We need to overcome our stereotyped views of both people and animals. All of us are born into this one life of ours with a capacity to change, but much of what we are we have no real control over. And those things shouldn’t make a difference to others. But sadly, they often are the things that can determine to a great extent the degree of success or failure in our struggles for social acceptance and material prosperity.