Monthly Archives: May 2013

The Emigrants by W. G. Sebald, translated by Michael Hulse

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Reading The Emigrants is a strange experience. It is fiction that reads like non-fiction. The novel tells the story of four unrelated people who emigrated from Germany during the 20th century, but it is written in the first person, as if the narrator is recounting these people’s experiences based on his own research. In addition, there are photographs scattered throughout the book that seem to represent the characters and settings that Sebald describes in an apparently realistic way.  

The paperback edition of the book indicates that many early reviewers considered the novel to be a masterpiece. I enjoyed Sebald’s later novel The Rings of Saturn more. I didn’t find the characters in The Emigrants especially interesting. Perhaps the reviewers were influenced by the newness of Sebald’s technique. They must have been impressed by his prose. The English translation is spare and often matter-of-fact but always beautiful. (6/30/12)

Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, edited by David J. Chalmers, et al.

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Metametaphysics is the study of metaphysics. It deals with these questions: how metaphysics is done, how it should be done, and whether it is worth doing at all. The particular branch of metaphysics that is the principal subject of this book is ontology, the philosophical study of being or existence.

Metaphysicians who do ontology argue about what things are fundamental or real or exist: for example, in what sense do tables and chairs exist? do numbers exist in the same sense? are collections of things like your-house-and-your-left-ear just as real as your house or your left ear? Or, for example, is a statue made of marble one thing (a statue made of marble) or two things (a statue and some marble)? Some philosophers argue that ontological questions are pointless or merely verbal. Some philosophers disagree. This book has sixteen recent essays that are intended to explain what ontology is, how it should be done, and whether it should be done at all. 

My favorite essay in the book was “Answerable and Unanswerable Questions” by Amie L. Thomasson. Professor Thomasson argues that many metaphysical or ontological questions cannot be answered. For example, they presume that there are reasonable criteria for deciding whether numbers or propositions are things in some supposed neutral or generic sense of “thing” that can be applied to numbers and propositions just as well as it can be applied to dogs, tables or elementary particles.

She correctly points out that it makes no sense to ask whether something is a thing unless we already know what kind of thing it is supposed to be. We should all agree that numbers exist, since we can all identify numbers, such as the number 3. But we cannot say whether the number 3 is a thing in some more general sense, since there are no agreed-upon criteria for identifying things in that more general or neutral sense.

It seems that the only interesting ontological questions are whether it is more coherent or consistent or helpful to categorize various things as existing or real or fundamental. There is a lot of agreement about what exists, but not about which words should be used to say what exists.  (6/25/12)

Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone

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Dog Soldiers is a novel about some misguided people who smuggle heroin from Viet Nam into the US during the Viet Nam war. Some bad guys try to take it away from them. The novel won the National Book Award in 1975 and was made into a very good movie called Who’ll Stop the Rain. A while back I watched the movie again and thought the book might be even better, or that it might better explain the characters’ motivations.  

Having read the novel, I think the movie is better, even with the movie’s altered Treasure of the Sierra Madre ending. It probably helped that Robert Stone was one of the screenwriters. Although the movie didn’t include some characters and incidents from the book, it included enough. In addition, the people who chose the actors did an extraordinarily good job finding performers who perfectly fit the roles: Nick Nolte as the modern day samurai; Michael Moriarty as the confused writer; Tuesday Weld as his troubled wife; and the three gentlemen who played the scary bad guys. 

I’m not sure why the book won the National Book Award. Perhaps because it captured the dark side of the 70s so well and portrayed some vivid and convincing characters. Here is a passage, not necessarily representative, but expressing a characteristic attitude:

“In the course of being fragmentation-bombed by the South Vietnamese Air Force, Converse experienced several insights….One insight was that the ordinary physical world through which one shuffled heedless and half-assed toward nonentity was capable of composing itself, at any time and without notice, into a massive instrument of agonizing death….Another was that in the single moment when the breathing world had hurled itself screeching and murderous at his throat, he had recognized the absolute correctness of its move. In those seconds, it seemed absurd that he had ever been allowed to go his foolish way, pursuing notions and small joys. He was ashamed of the casual arrogance with which he had presumed to scurry about creation. From the bottom of his heart, he concurred in the moral necessity of his annihilation.”  (6/9/12)

Ask the Parrot by Richard Stark

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For someone who makes his living as a thief, Parker doesn’t pull off many easy jobs. Something, or more than one thing, usually goes wrong. 

In this episode, Parker is on the run after a big bank job and conveniently meets a civilian who wants to pull off a different job, robbing a racetrack where he used to work. Instead of lying low and then pulling off the racetrack job, Parker and his new pal join a posse that is hunting Parker. Nothing goes smoothly after that. People get killed. Other crimes are committed. There’s a chapter written from the point of view of the parrot (it doesn’t end well). 

Parker is still a professional tough guy, but he does an awful lot of talking in this one. He shouldn’t have joined that posse.  (5/23/12)

Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household

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Rogue Male, a novel published in 1939, isn’t about an elephant on the loose. It’s about a wealthy English nobleman who is a famous adventurer and apparently a big-game hunter. He decides to stalk the leader of a foreign country, supposedly not to assassinate him, but to see if an assassination would be possible. The Englishman, who is never named, is captured before he decides whether to pull the trigger. 

The foreign leader is never named either, but his country borders Poland, so it’s apparently Hitler. The Englishman is tortured and left for dead but escapes, eventually making his way back home. Unfortunately, he has to keep running, because the bad guys, not having found his corpse, are looking for him. So, eventually, are the police. Most of the novel takes place in the English countryside, and, surprisingly, underneath it. Once again, the hunter has become the hunted (hunters should be used to that by now). 

I heard about this novel because it’s one of the out-of-print books that the New York Review of Books has been reissuing. It’s a terrific adventure story and has been filmed twice. As with most adventure stories, it isn’t quite plausible, but it would be interesting to see a film version, or try to write one.  (5/17/12)