Posts From Author: Month: November 2015

Paradise Lost

Paradise of the Pacific: Approaching Hawai’i Susanna Moore Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015; 320pp   “There is no little irony in recognizing that the speed with which [the near-annihilation of the Hawaiian people] occurred,” writes Susanna Moore in her engrossing new book, “serves as testimony to the generosity of spirit, patience, and adaptability of the Hawaiians themselves. In their grace lay their defeat.” Paradise of the Pacific: Approaching Hawai’i, which was a worthy nominee for this year’s National Book Award for Nonfiction, surveys the 120-year period between Captain Cook’s arrival on the Hawaiian Islands in 1778 and their annexation by the United States in 1898. In little more than a century, an entire civilization was stopped in its tracks, its ontological outlook completely overthrown. A native population estimated to be as large as 800,000 when Cook arrived was, by 2013, smaller than 90,000. A culture condemned as heathen by the missionaries who arrived in 1820 was, within decades, literate and largely Christian. Sailors, whalers, merchants and tradesmen radically altered the ethnic makeup of the archipelago. In the end, it was the grandson of one of the first missionaries who successfully petitioned the US Congress to annex the Islands. Moore is careful to position her history […]
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The Emperor of Water Clocks

The Emperor of Water Clocks: Poems Yusef Komunyakaa Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015; 128pp   Yusef Komunyakaa’s poems are governed by a deeply anthropological sensibility. This allows the slips of time and geography that occur in his latest majestic collection, The Emperor of Water Clocks, to reveal how human rituals and behavior repeat themselves across time and space. In “The Gold Pistol”, the language of folk tales, legends and myths evokes a sort of timeless evil: “There’s always someone who loves gold / bullion, boudoirs, & bathtubs, always / some dictator hiding in a concrete culvert / crying, Please don’t shoot, a high priest / who mastered false acts & blazonry”. In these opening lines, one’s thoughts might flit to Hitler or Saddam (“in a concrete culvert”). But Komunyakaa’s subject is another, more recent dictator: “& this is why my heart almost breaks / when a man dances with Gaddafi’s pistol / raised over his head, knowing the sun / runs to whatever shines”. What causes the poet’s heart to break is the historical inevitability (“the sun runs to whatever shines”). The military intervention in Libya, like those in Afghanistan and Iraq, may have prompted brief celebrations in some quarters, but the aftermath has proved cruel. Indeed, […]
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Dispatches From Area 51

I See You Made An Effort: Compliments, Indignities, and Survival Stories From the Edge of 50 Annabelle Gurwitch Blue Rider Press/Penguin Random House, 2014; 256pp “Maintaining a sense of humor is the final frontier or at least our saving grace as we age.” Every seven and a half seconds, an American turns fifty. In her latest hilarious book, I See You Made An Effort, actress and writer Annabelle Gurwitch opens up about the many implications that passing over the threshold of fiftydom has had for her. Whether it’s the unfortunate synchrony of menopause and raising an adolescent boy, the temptations and pitfalls of having work done, or the increasingly depressing career options left open to her in the film and TV industry, she has a brilliantly funny story or flight of fancy to reassure you that with a little laughter we can all get through this together. As subject matter, ageing offers boundless opportunities for excruciating self-revelation. Gurwitch never misses a trick, whether discussing the leakage she experiences when trying out her son’s trampoline or her tentative steps onto the slippery slope of cosmetic surgery. “I’ve filled, frozen and ultrasounded,” she writes, “all in the name of what is often referred to as ‘maintenance.'” Trouble is, she adds, once […]
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