The number is thirteen. And so, I will be reading Notes of a Native Son, which my library does not have, so I’ll be off to find myself a copy.

Going to go for non-fiction in the Classics Club this time, since I don’t read too much non-fiction.

1. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
2. Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt
3. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
4. The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
5. A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
6. Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
7. All The President’s Men by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward
8. Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi
9. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein
10. The People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn
11. Backlash by Susan Faludi
12. Sister Outsider by Audre Lord
13. Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin
14. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace
15. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
16. Confessions of an English Opium Eater by Thomas De Quincey
17. Goodbye To All That by Robert Graves
18. The Man Died by Wole Soyinka
19. The Golden Bough by James Charles Frazer
20. Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

This was hard. I’m not great with non-fiction and I don’t have the mind for anything too philosophical. So we’ll see. Let’s hope the odds are ever in my favour and the random number generator will give me a book that I’ll enjoy reading.

Another publisher-says-no-quotes-from-the-book-please review.

I remember when I learned that there had been Indian immigration to East Africa. I can remember it precisely because I had gone to a book fair with my mother, held at the Nepean Sportsplex on the Saturday of (Canadian) Thanksgiving in 2000. I was working at Royal & SunAlliance Insurance Company of Canada in Toronto and had taken the Greyhound home for the weekend. So we went to this book fair of all new books my mother and I and I don’t know why this book fair existed, a publisher clearing stuff out or a bookstore going out of business, but at the book sale I bought two books, The Underpainter (which I still haven’t read) and The Book of Secrets by M.G. Vassanji, a book by an author I’d never heard of before.

(Actually, at that book sale, I might have also bought a book of Dylan Thomas poetry. I’m not really sure where that book came from but it sits on my shelf, also unread.)

After the book sale, we went home, and I ignored most of my family and stayed in my childhood room reading The Book of Secrets, and I learned that there were Indians who had moved to East Africa, blowing my mind that there was migration to somewhere other than North America and Europe. (My mind was later blown again upon learning of Indian migration to the West Indies. Man, I had a very Eurocentric history regarding human migration taught to me in school.)

So all this talk about memories because And Home Was Kariakoo is all about memory, Vassanji’s memories of growing up an Asian in Dar es Salaam and his National Service, memories of bus trips back to his hometown of Nairobi, memories of leaving and coming back and leaving again. Then there are the historical memories, Burton and Livingstone and Stanley, and, of course, the observation that these are all single stories, erasing black and Indian Africans who schlepped the bags and organized and financed the trips and acted as guides and translators. Memories of WWI and the fights between Germany and England over Tanganyika. Memories of the Zanzibar Revolution and its aftermath. Memories of a group of ethnic Indians in Africa (paraphrasing Vassanji because the book asks me very nicely not to quote from it, much nicer than 10:04 did) that weren’t black enough to be black but weren’t white enough to be white either.

There’s a travelogue woven throughout the memories and history. Vassanji travels around Tanzania by bus and car and airplane, up into Kenya to visit Nairobi. Back down again. Dates aren’t given and the stories of Vassanji’s travels seem to be from numerous trips he made from Canada back to East Africa. This lack of dating can be confusing as companions and friends tend to appear and vanish without much explanation and, at first, it put me off. From Vassanji’s fiction, I’d thought his book would have a narrative structure; it doesn’t, but the style grows on you. It takes awhile though and for the first 150 pages I was very much reading in short bursts and then putting the book down, but the last two hundred, I got into the rhythm, history mixed with memory mixed with travelogue mixed with opinion and read more-or-less straight through. I appreciate, as always, science PhDs that have moved into literary writing, even moreso when they write books in which they warn that correlation does not imply causation. Then I want to cheer.

I love how Vassanji notes the current single story about Africa (poverty, war, sickness, failure) erases any others. People are still getting married. People are still having parties. People are still playing games. People are still dancing and having fun and celebrating. And Home was Kariakoo is the refutation of the single story of East Africa, there is more than you know about Africa, more than can be fixed with BandAid or aggressive Chinese investment or soft or realpolitik diplomacy. There is. East Africa is. Gaam in Dar es Salaam where Vassanji grew up is. Changing but is and Vassanji is one who is bearing witness to that.

As for the actual, physical book, I had an ARC that was pretty much as basic as it could be (i.e. actually with notes like Insert glossary here.), so my next few issues are likely addressed in an actual, publish-ready version, but the photographs interspersed in the text aren’t labeled, often making it difficult to determine what in the text the picture corresponds to. The book would also benefit from an index, but I’m also all for indexes in every book, fiction, non-fiction, graphic novel. It will help all of us whose memories are going. But, in this book in particular, it would have helped me to keep some of Vassanji’s friends and travel companions straight (for example, I got Walter and Joseph confused at one point). There are also a few spots where almost identical phrasing is used. That could probably be edited up somehow.

Best part: I’ve already mentioned it: correlation does not imply causation.

Who Might Like This: I think my father-in-law might like this. The travelogue and the history. I have never read Paul Theroux, and I can’t say Vassanji seems overly positive of Theroux in And Home Was Kariakoo, but neither is he completely dismissive of him, so perhaps people who like Paul Theroux would also appreciate this book. And, of course, people who are interested in literary East Africa because Vassanji, once you get past the spurts at the beginning, will pull you along through the tales.

And Home Was Kariakoo by M.G. Vassanji went on sale October 7, 2014.

I received a copy free from the publisher via a goodreads giveaway in exchange for an honest review.

I mean, I think I did. The ARC just showed up one day and I checked my email and couldn’t find anything saying I’d won it, but I think goodreads was having a giveaway for it. In any case, getting free M.G. Vassanji in the mail is always a good thing, but it was a bit of a puzzle as to why I got it. But that’s cool – Doubelday Canada, you want to send me free literary fiction and/or literary creative non-fiction, you apparently know where to find me.

I feel like this blog has, within the last month, transitioned to a book reviewing blog as my writing stalls and I use that time to play Nethack read instead in search of ideas to steal.

I was sent an uncorrected proof with big letters telling me not to quote from this material without permission or without comparing it to the final book. Since I’m unclear as to whose permission I am supposed to seek and I don’t have a copy, nor am I planning on getting one, of the finished book, I guess I won’t be quoting anything. But then my review seems kind of random without examples to refer to. Such is life I suppose. Feel free to use my review as a sort of scavenger hunt through the novel if/when you read it. So here we go:

1. Ben Lerner has a much more impressive vocabulary than I do. Either that or a thesaurus. Why are there so many big words? Is he trying to impress me? Because I would have been happy with easier words for my pea brain to understand.

2. The protagonist of the novel, who I am also going to call Ben Lerner, maybe be the most white, wealthy-ish, middle-class Brooklyn-dwelling resident ever to star in a novel. In other words, Ben Lerner is so self-involved as to be the most boring person ever put forward as a novel’s central character. It is infuriating that Ben Lerner (the author) thinks that I am supposed to be deeply interested and invested in Ben Lerner (the character). I don’t need to read another Great American Masculine Novel. They are always so tedious.

3. Unless, of course, this tediousness is satire. Is Ben Lerner (the author) writing a boring novel to draw attention to how preposterous it still is that we revere the American, white male, masculine prototype as the novel that defines great literature? Is that what’s he doing? Part way through I started to feel that I was the victim of a very elaborate hoax regarding the purpose of the novel. Perhaps this is why Ben Lerner (the character) keeps mentioning how much money his advance was, to highlight the ludicrousness of traditional publishing mores?

4. Equally, Ben Lerner (character or author) could just be a jerk. My writing earns me approximately $60 per year, because I am quite an unsuccessful writer. I don’t need to know how publishing houses are just throwing money at Ben Lerner (the character) to produce half-witted detail-everything-around-me-no-matter-how-trivial novels.

5. There is a scene where a bunch of rich, white people do designer drugs at a party and everything gets fuzzy and oh my G-d is it boring and cliché and unnecessary. And boring. I really want to stress the boring part.

6. There was one point in reading where I thought that the stream of detailing all the minutiae in Ben Lerner (the character)’s life was like In Search of Lost Time. I am sure that was intentional. I should have marked where I felt this in my copy, but I’m pretty positive it was in Section Two: The Golden Vanity, which was a self-contained New Yorker story and has the ability to stand on its own outside the novel.

7. You know who was interesting and not boring and why don’t we have a book about her: Noor, the woman Ben Lerner (the character) stocks food with at the food co-op. I would totally read a book about Noor, without question.

8. Like most male-gaze novels, Ben Lerner (the character) has a lot more women willing to sleep with him than I would find necessary. I mean, there’s only really two women in the novel who sleep with him, but that’s way more than seems likely, but maybe if you’re a quirky, white, wealthy-ish Brooklynite, you’re just swimming in sexual options.

When I started typing this review, I wasn’t as down on the book as I am now. Now I’m pretty down on it. He did go to Marfa, which reminded me of The King of the Hill episode when they go to Marfa and I wished King of the Hill was still on Netflix. The novel is made up of random thoughts like this. I’m sure other white, male, authors will like it.

10:04 by Ben Lerner went on sale September 2, 2014.

I received a copy free from the publisher via a goodreads giveaway in exchange for an honest review.

I did! I finished I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou.

So, I was whelmed. I had the same feeling as I did when I read Obasan. I don’t think one is supposed to like these books. I don’t think one is supposed to gain enjoyment from them. I think one is supposed to read them as bearing witness. Still, both are a bit joyless and bleak and probably full of symbolism that I never pick up on because I almost never pick up on symbolism. There was a distance from the narrative too that made everything seem faded rather than vibrant – like compared to another Southern memoir Bastard out of Carolina.

I don’t have any deep well of feelings towards this book. I read it. It passed the time. Now I can nod when people talk about it. Maybe I’d find Angelou’s poetry is more intense and memorable, since I think that this book is just going to fade out that I read it.

So yes, I am a bleeding heart liberal. And yes, I realize that a dragon is not a person, but when you draw what resembles very strongly a Chinese dragon in a children’s book, and then name him Ching-Chung:

I become very unhappy. And this is a reprint of an older book. Did no one think Hmmm…. this is our chance to go with a less racist sounding name?

In any case, wikipedia tells me that Tianlong is a heavenly, celestial dragon. So I got my Sharpie out and:

Stupid racist children’s books.