Dance & Drink & Screw

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

They say "write what you know." So physician Abraham Verghese, born in Ethiopia from Indian parents, chose for his first novel a narrator born in Ethiopia that was raised by Indian parents and who eventually becomes a surgeon.

Cutting for Stone is an epic soap opera worthy of Sidney Sheldon's best. A nun traveling by ship from India to Ethiopia saves the life of a British doctor onboard. They later become colleagues in an Addis Ababa hospital, Missing, and silently fall in love with each other. The outcome is tragic - the nun gives birth to twins, Marion and Shiva, and dies in the process. The father, Dr Thomas Stone, is overcome with grief and abandons the babies to a pair of Indian doctors - Hema and Ghosh - to raise.

The twin boys grow under the shadows of Missing and experience some of Ethiopia's historical changes. Marion, the virginal and unremarkable twin, is the narrator. He's not as clever and seductive as his brother Shiva (who steals the girl he loves from under his nose), nor is he his adoptive mother's favourite. Fate eventually exiles him from Ethiopia, to a life in a poor hospital in New York where all doctors are foreigners, all patients are on Medicare and all corpses can expect to be organ harvested for rich Americans.

You can really see Ethiopia and its people in Verghese's novel and it is one of its few pleasures, alongside the look at the unfair healthcare system in America. But the plot - full of sentimental coincidences and love making worthy of a Bad Sex in Fiction Award - leaves a lot to be desired. Marion is an unlikeable narrator, but I don't think that was Verghese's intention. The writing only comes alive with the scenes of hospital proceedures, and although these come along quite often they are not enough to hold this long novel together.

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I'm reading at the moment a really great book on the unconscious and the mythological, by Michael Vannoy Adams, called - of course - The Mythological Unconscious. A passage caught my attention:

Pallas Athene was the Greek goddess of war. At her birth, she sprang from Zeus's head, with, as Kerényi says, "a far-echoing battle-cry," in "armour of gleaming gold," and "brandishing her sharp javelin." According to Kerényi, Pallas Athene was "a warlike virgin." He notes that the epithet "Pallas" means "a strong virgin, a virago, as she would be called in Latin."

I immediately thought of the video I posted yesterday, the trailer for RuPaul's upcoming Drag Race (season 4):



There she is, walking towards us in her golden armour, like Athena. Wikipedia describes Athena as "the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, warfare, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, justice, and skill... [she] is also a shrewd companion of heroes and is the goddess of heroic endeavour."

So the "girls" she creates are the heroines that will fight during the Drag Race until one is crowned the victor. In previous shows, RuPaul has sat at a judging table (Mount Olympos?) and dispensed her wisdom to contestant, her praise, her encouragement, while they compete against each other. There are always guest judges that help her decision (fellow Gods) and she always visits the room where contestants work on their outfits to see how they are doing (which involves RuPaul climbing down some stairs into the room).

Later in the book Zeus is discussed and how he is related to thunder/electricity. Now, thinking again of Athena/RuPaul as the daughter of Zeus (the other side of Zeus?), check out the video again around 0:50 seconds, when Zeus' power fills the room and rushes through Athena/RuPaul's hands.

And aren't drag queens "virginal" in one sense, just like Athena? Their ubersexuality and sexual language only reinforcing how they are neither men nor women, but a construction (the "droids") - virginal until either a man or a woman chooses to remove their outer drag shell (shells, of course, being related to Aphrodite, goddess of love). Athena and Zeus are myths - images - and so are drag queens, who play up to their own favourite myth-like stars when they create their looks.

The book also mentions the "Black Athena" theory, which I had never heard of before - and which RuPaul embodies in the video: a theory that Ancient Greece is more indebted to Africa and Asia than is commonly known or promoted.

Again from Wikipedia: "The Greek philosopher, Plato (429–347 BC), identified [Athena] with the Libyan deity Neith, the war goddess and huntress deity of the Egyptians since the ancient Pre-Dynastic period, who was also identified with weaving. This is sensible, as some Greeks identified Athena's birthplace, in certain mythological renditions, as being beside Libya's Triton River."

I'm not sure if RuPaul or her producers were aware of the connection when they made the video. Perhaps they weren't, otherwise they would make it more explicitly "classical Greece"? Either way, in my opinion those myths are channeled by RuPaul in the video and neatly embody what she wishes to portray in herself and for the show.

Thoughts and questions on Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible.

( The Judges )

I'm currently reading Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible with verybadhorse . We read one section, stop and comment before moving on. I just finished "Genesis" and I'm now halfway through the second-part, "The Revelation". Some thoughts under the tag on...

( Genesis )

Barack Obama, Dreams of my Father, 1995
Barack Obama’s first book is more like a novelised autobiography than a straightforward memoir. First of all, it’s divided into three acts, like a conventional novel – beginning with his upbringing in Hawaii (idyllic childhood), past his baptism by fire in Chicago’s poor communities (Barack playing one of John Grisham’s young lawyers against insidious corruption at all levels ala The Wire), culminating in his trip to Kenya in search of the final pieces to the jigsaw he calls “father” (a tour de force graced with humor and insight not amiss in one of Zadie Smith’s familial comedies.) His search for all the pieces that will complete his father’s story is an indirect search for his own self – a strong, self-assured, intelligent, multi-cultural, well-travelled person it turns out to be that unsurprisingly defeated America’s Republicans. This memoir's strongest message is that Obama can't be placed in a box - he's too much the man which America should become in the 21st century.

I wish my book club had discussed this book after the announcement of his Nobel Prize for peace; it would have accentuated even more the divide in our group as to the book’s qualities. Some (like myself) enjoyed Obama’s story, despite some corny self-mythologizing passages, because we sensed the big heart behind the pen. Others felt it was too calculated (the formal three-act structure a good example), smartly envisaging an eventual place for himself in the White House. I don’t think that's the case: Obama wouldn’t have been so candid about his use of cannabis, for example, if he wanted one day to be president (the memoir was written in 1995, when just to smoke but not inhale was a bullet to the foot.)

This memoir is an easy, enjoyable read and a good reminder that America chose the right guy.

I first heard of Rokia Traoré a month ago, when I was skipping TV channels and landed on Later with Jools Holland. I fell in love with her performance and logged onto the internet straight away to find out if she was playing London. And she was: the Barbican last night, tickets as low as a tenner!

The thing I like about her is that it's music that brings together a whole bunch of stuff: a little Blues, a little Folk; some lyrics in French, big rhythm that makes everyone stand up and dance; a Billie Holiday cover; a lot of emotion that you can feel even if you don't understand a word. A type of Funk. And a lot of happiness.

Her performance at the Barbican could have blown the place up. It's only too bad that she didn't perform in a venue where everyone had to stand - and couldn't get away from dancing. That's what her music is meant for. If it were a gig in Brasil, everyone would be pouring out of the gig with sweat dripping down their bodies. But this is England... though, to be fair, she managed to get everyone up by the end, dancing in front of their seats.

Many of you may not know this, but although my mom is Brasilian and my dad is English, I was born in South Africa. I don't have family there, I left when I was quite young - to be raised in Brasil - but I still have that connection to Africa, no matter how small. It's in my childhood photos and my first memories. I feel drawn to African culture - in all its variety and distinctiveness - because this is what surrounded me: my parents' records, paintings and books on the Zulu; the stories I was told of my parents' life there when we left for Brasil (escaped South Africa's government, actually - my mom didn't want my brothers and I serving its compulsory military). It's a part of me I haven't really explored, but I've always known it's there.

I know that Mali is as different from South Africa as Brasil is to Peru, but there are certain things that countries share when they are on the same continent. A spirit? An imaginary closeness? History? I like it, whatever it is. Last night, I reflected a lot on my own birth and life, and the birth and life of others...

Hello James,
Thanks for the mail, I am so sorry for Igor. I have a client in united kingdom that wants to issue a check to my company in london, I will like you to receive the check and deposit into your bank account and if the money has been deposited into your account you can deduct %10 from the money and send the remaining money to my manager in africa. I hope this deal will be good for you.

I am waiting for your reply on this deal.

Regards

Adams

Dear Adams,

Out on the winding, wintry morgues we'd roll and fall in glee. I had a temper like my jealousy - too hot, too greedy. How could Igor leave me, when I needed to possess him? I hated him... but I loved him, too.

Bad dreams in the night - Igor once told me he was going to lose the fight, leave behind my lingering, lingering, lingering bites.

"Carvalho, it's me, I’m Igor, I've come home and I'm so cold, let me in your window. Carvalho, it's me, I’m Igor, I've come home and I'm so cold, let me in your window."

Adams, it gets dark! It gets lonely, on the other side from him. I pine a lot, I find the lot falls through without him. "I'm coming back," Igor wailed. "Cruel Carvalho, my one dream, my only master."

Too long I roamed in the night. And now he's coming back to my side, to put it right. Igor's coming home to my lingering, lingering, lingering bites.

"Carvalho, it's me, I’m Igor, I've come home and I'm so cold, let me in your window."

Ooh! Let me have it. Let me grab his soul away. Ooh! Let me have it. Let me grab his soul away. You know it's him -- Igor!

Wistfully yours,

James

P.s. I managed to snap a photo of the apparition outside my window. Do you think it might actually be Igor?!?

( A photo of Igor's ghost? )

Hello James,
When is Igor coming to africa??

Hello Mr Lawrence,

I am very worried about Igor. I don't know when he'll arrive in Africa... I don't even know if he's still alive!

About a week ago, the ship he was stowed away in sent a distress signal that was picked up by the YMCA Royal Navy. It appears that the ship encountered heavy storms on the way to Africa and crashed against some rocks. Many died or disappeared under the waves; Igor was one of the few that survived (his morse code was sent from the captain's cabin just before he jumped out of the window and managed to land in one of the dinghys.) Unfortunately, he lost all of the Virgin statues with the gold coins, apart from one stuffed down his trousers (maybe it's enough for a down payment on your property, if he gets there?) The gifts for the security guards were also lost.

About a few days ago, I received a text message from his mobile phone. It appears that the survivors of the ship found an island off the African coast and are currently there. All attempts on my part to locate the exact position of the island, however, have been futile - it's as if the place is off the maps! He was in high spirits until this morning, when a distressing message arrived together with a mobile photo: "They all died. Please help me. I'll try to make it to the second island in a boat I found. They killed them, the Others killed them all..."

As you can imagine, I'm deathly pale with worry. I sincerely hope he manages to make it to Africa and buy the land for me, but I'm not getting my hopes up. I fear the worst.

Attentiously yours,

James Carvalho

( Last photo sent from Igor's mobile phone )

Hello Cavarlho,
Thanks for your mail, i will like to see the photo of mr igor so that i will know how to describe him whenever he arrives in africa. i will also want to know how much he will be bringing with him?
The coins you are talking about is it the coins that they normally spend in uk? pls advise me so that i wll know what to do.

Regards

Adams Lawrence

Hello Adams,

Please find attached a photo of Igor. I am sure you will have no trouble spotting him once he arrives in your beautiful country. He will meet you at midnight inside Querelle Bar, where all the solitary sailors go when they seek love. He will have with him two statues of the Virgin. Each statue will contain inside 20 gold coins, which I hope is enough to pay for government taxes, put a down payment on the land and buy a lil' gift for each of the security guards (by the way, can you give me suggestions for gifts to them? Do they like cashmere and taffeta?)

It's been 9 hours now since Igor said goodbye and went to the port. It was a very emotional scene, with tears shed by the both of us. Damn, I am going to miss that hunchback! I know I treat him harshly sometimes, but he is a good companion and does the housework competently. I hope you treat him well when you meet him, Mr Lawrence.

Igor will try to send me telegraphs from the boat if he manages to enter the captain's cabin without being noticed. I shall keep you updated on his journey. In the meantime, tell me about yourself. What is your favorite book, your favorite film? You are very mysterious Mr Lawrence. Are you one of those strong and silent types?

Hugs,

Mr Carvalho

( Photo of my P.A. and finance officer Igor )

Dear Cavarlho,
Thanks for your email, presently i am not in uk because of some business deals, i am in spain right now.
Firstly i believe that the land will be ok by you because there is a duplex that was built by me on the land and i have force men that guarding the house and the land 24 hours, so travelling down to west africa to see the land will never be a problem becuase there is sea around the land and you will be welcomed properly like a king. i want you to contact my lawyer in west africa so that he can tell you more things about the land and how the transaction will take place. my lawyer in west africa can be reached on his phone: +123-4567891011 or you can mail him earlier so that he can tell you what to do next. this is the email address of my lawyer: adams.lawrence516@legaleagle.com tell him that you are from brown lennon and i will call him now.
Regards
Brown Lennon

Dear Mr Lennon,

It warms my heart to hear you describe me as a King. Many moons ago this was how people called me when I walked the streets of Europe's capitals. As things go, my name has fallen from use (and into a certain disrepute) and is now almost forgotten by those who should remember it most. I am also very happy to hear that the land is provided with a duplex protected by guards. I imagine they must be tall, strong men - their powerful muscles and piercing eyes inspiring fear and admiration on those that approach the compound. Can't wait to meet them!

Since our last correspondence, it has become a matter of urgency that I leave the U.K. I fear that some individuals here do not have my best interests at heart and are determined to find my resting place. I have a faithful friend, Igor, who is a type of personal assistant - he will be travelling to West Africa before me to make sure my arrival by boat goes smoothly, and that the duplex is fitted for my needs. The both of us are very keen on leaving this island A.S.A.P.

On a completely unrelated note, have you ever watched the TV show Rupaul's Drag Race? Igor and I have been so addicted to it we spent nearly our entire Easter weekend watching it. There are some Fierce Divas in that show! I highly recommend it as a mixture of light entertainment and fabulous spectacle unlike anything else on the telly. I only wish they would bring the format to the U.K. because I could see the British public lapping this show up. What's the TV like in your country by the way? Are there many interesting shows? I do tend to stay indoors a lot (especially during the summer) so I rely on the TV for some of my entertainment.

I hope this e-mail finds you well. Please do pass my contact details to your lawyer and ask him to contact me (but only after 8pm) so that I can learn how to proceed from here.

Yours truly,

Mr Carvalho

P.S. Igor waves hello.