Back home

I just spent a relaxing week doing nothing much, at least nothing that I had to do. Lots of reading, lots of sitting on the balcony watching and listening to the waves lapping the white sands of Santa Rosa Beach, and lots of time not doing emails, not reading political blogs, and not writing one myself.

What did I read? Besides catching up on back copies of the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books, I read one of Virginia Woolf's second-tier novels, Between the Acts; a highly praised, just published, first novel by Justin Torres, We the Animals; and most impressive of all, the 2009 highly readable Destiny Distrupted: A History of the World through Islamic Eyes by Tamim Ansary.

If I were not already a devoted Virginia Woolf fan from her two great novels, Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse, along with her less-popular, experimental novel, The Waves, as well as the insights in her reviews and essays, and the window into the people of Bloomsbury in her diaries and journals, I would not be inclined to return to her work. But I will, because of the greatness that is there in the better parts.

We the Animals has some beautiful writing and tells a compelling story of a boy's coming-of-age in a family life described in the dust jacket as "fierce and absorbing, full of chaos and heartbreak and the euphoria of belonging completely to one another. . . . It leaves us reminded that our madness is both caused by, and alleviated by, our families . . ." Michael Cunningham called it "a dark jewel of a book. It's heartbreaking. It's beautiful. . . Justin Torres [is] a brilliant, ferocious new voice." Marilynn Robinson called it's language "brilliant, poised, and pure."

It's really a novella at 125 pages, or actually it feels more like the first half of a two stage novel. We definitely want the rest of this young man's story. However, his editor says, "were it a few pages longer it might not be as perfect." The author is only 31, a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford. This is his debut novel, following a highly discussed short story in The New Yorker last month. So we will definitely hear more from him.

Destiny Disrupted is that rare book of history that encompasses a vast amount of information and is yet so readily accessible and interestingly written that I looked forward to reading the next chapter. The author often ends a chapter with a cliff-hanger: "And then the catastrophes began." Or a quirky hook: "In 1600 . . . a visitor from Mars might well have supposed that the human world was on the verge of becoming Muslin. The Martian would have been mistaken, of course: the course of history had already tipped, because of developments in Europe since the Crusades."

But these are matters of style that make for interesting reading. The substance of this book is what is so compelling. I am certainly one Westerner who has been abominably ignorant about the history of the Islamic world and its culture. There is so much misunderstanding, so much ignorance, and so much prejudice, hatred, and fear in our world about that world. Constantly, as I read, I thought "What must they think of us?" when our rabid right-wingers foment about "the Muslims."

One small example: During what we think of as the Dark Ages in Europe, when civilization (ie, the civilization known to Westerners) had been largely halted, if not completely reversed, few people could read; books existed only in monasteries. And yet at the same time, the Muslim world was flourishing in culture, knowledge, philosophy, poetry and enlightenment. They thought of Europe as "a more or less primeval forest inhabited by men so primitive they still ate pig flesh. . . . They knew that an advanced civilization had once flourished further west . . . [but] was now little more than a memory."

The other strong impression is that, yes, extremists of Islam resort to violence, as they do in our world (were the atrocities of the Crusades, done in the name of Christianity, any less barbarous than slaughter done in the name of Islam?). Let us not judge a world religion on the basis of the worst that its extremists do, but in its effect of the lives of its typical adherents. For Islam, that is a deeply-rooted, gentle acceptance and kindness toward their fellow humans, giving to the poor, taking care of the sick, and educating their children.

One main difference: Christianity emphasizes the personal salvation of the isolated soul; Islam emphasizes the construction of the perfect community.

For anyone who wants to understand Islam and the history of the world, including a major portion of history that has been left out of, or distorted, in our own history books, I recommend this highly readable book.

Ralph