August's Book: Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? by Frans de Waal

Ethology* (2016 - 275 pp.)

In Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?, Frans de Waal summarizes the key literature in the study of animal behaviour, including his own, while advancing the point that animals are worthy of study in their natural environments. Additionally, he points out that animals often learn better than humans; humanity is simply another animal in this way. Animals should therefore be discussed on their own terms, not as a comparator to humans, not as a generic "animal" grouping, and certainly not as a subset of beings inferior to humans. De Waal's work centres on primates, so many of the examples are apes, baboons, macaques, capuchins and other primate species. However, substantial portions of his discussion range from corvids to less common animals like canines (wolves and dogs; sadly, there seems to be a dearth of literature on foxes), cetaceans (especially dolphins) and cephalopods (especially octopodes**). Felines*** and equines are notably missing.

Where do humans and animals sit with regard to each other? De Waal notes that in the never-ending battle between reason and emotion, "Traditionally, animals are depicted as slaves of their emotions. It all goes back to the dichotomy of animals as 'wild' and humans as 'civilized'. (222) He also notes that "monkeying around" is seen as being funny, yet there are far funnier animals, like an ostrich or a giraffe. This points to a sort of uncanny valley of similarity between monkeys and people; calling someone a monkey can be considered deeply offensive, whereas calling someone an ostrich is nonsensical, because monkeys so much more resemble us. From Pavlov to Skinner, historical animal cognition researchers have distanced us from all of these species by using a model of instinct, impulse and incentive to portray animals as subhuman robots.

De Waal explains his alternative to this patronizing model:

The methodology sections of scientific papers rarely offer a look in the 'kitchen', but I think it is crucial. My own approach has always been to be firm and friendly. Firm, meaning that we are consistent and don't make capricious demands but also don't let the animals walk all over us, such as when they only want to play around and get free sweets. But we are also friendly, without punishment, anger, or attempts to dominate. (143)

De Waal goes on to discuss the importance of animals being observed in their native habitats, or alternatively, anywhere they can coexist in the absence of observable researchers. In this way, researchers may find that an animal's lack of response to a human command does not signal stupidity, but rather a simple lack of interest in whatever it was the human was doing. (Those reading at home: try telling your cat to get off the couch.) De Waal points to the importance of within-species interaction: "For culture to arise in a species, all that matters is that its members pick up habits from one another."**** (152)

One of the threads that pops up throughout both the scientific and popular assessment of our relationships with animals is anthropomorphism - the tendency to see animals as human-like. The 20th-century turn toward seeing animals as separate from, and inferior to, humans led to a concept de Waal calls anthropodenial - the inability to see any similarities between animals and humans, or to see any differences as examples of human superiority. (25) De Waal spends much of the book combating this concept, whether through demonstrating the independent development of animals' behaviours toward each other or through the ways they interact with humans. Conspecific behaviour is a key term for how animals interact with each other without the interference of human researchers, who may accidentally create endogeneity. (Consider how you might behave differently if, for example, you had to perform an experiment under a bright light, or if you knew you were being watched. Dozens of studies are arguably useless due to factors like these.)

On a more pop cultural level, the anthropomorphism/anthropodenial debate far predates de Waal, you or me. In the first decade of the 20th century, the "nature fakers controversy" arose when literary figures who made animals seem too human were attacked by rival literary figures who believed that animals were not like humans at all. Animals with seemingly human traits range from Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit to Jack London's White Fang; London was one of the celebrity authors embroiled in the dispute, which eventually drew in then-President Theodore Roosevelt. (Roosevelt thought London wrote White Fang too much like a human, for what it's worth; London denied this.) In more recent times, Brian Jacques famously created his Redwall series of talking woodland animals in a medieval fantasy setting by watching the animals in his backyard. How to Train Your Dragon presented the adorable black dragon lead character acting pet-like (don't try this with komodo dragons!), and Disney's Zootopia went so far as to have the main fox and rabbit characters be named Nick and Judy while having witty conversations about human topics. Non-fiction creators aren't immune; these adorable YouTube videos of otters doing laundry, which is so cute in part because of how bad they are at it, and a raccoon sweeping a floor, show the more everyday side of people wanting to see our furry friends imitate us. These books, videos and movies all go way farther than de Waal does, but they show an equally obstinate unwillingness to accept animals as only those beings from National Geographic documentaries. (Or Quora posts.)

One of the more humorous aspects of Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? is how mischievous animals are across the animal kingdom. A study on crows' responses to friendly and unfriendly humans by John Marzluff at the University of Washington in Seattle shows that crows will divebomb people who are demonstrated to be unfriendly to them. Marzloff points out that humans are a species crows have to evaluate one by one: "It would be a rare hawk that would be nice to a crow, but with humans you have to classify us as individuals. Clearly, they're able to do that." (72) Other mischief consists of captive animals escaping their habitats. Stoffel the honey badger, who is actually a member of the weasel family (and therefore not a badger), found multiple ways to escape from his enclosure at a South African rehabilitation centre. De Waal called this feat a "Houdini act", and noted discussions of honey badgers as being "the Chuck Norris of the animal kingdom". (88-89) Inky, a giant Pacific octopus who escaped from a New Zealand aquarium in 2016, perhaps acted too late to be included in the book; he made his maneuver within a few days of the book's release date. I wasn't at the book launch, but I hope Inky received a mention and some applause!

Unlike most academic texts, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? is illustrated. The New Yorker-style single-panel pictures demonstrate various animals performing the tasks de Waal describes on the opposite page or on the part of the page below the picture, such as a monkey blowing air through a tube to retrieve a peanut. Two of these illustrations stood out to me as being like political cartoons: the comic showing a standing rat dressed as the Pied Piper leading the disciples of B.F. Skinner to their dooms (57) and a group of orcas upending an ice floe so a seal would slip off of it to its rather more certain doom as their prey. (190)

One claim I thought was curious was in the elephant section. Although some research has been done on elephant cognition, such as the famous test of whether an animal recognizes itself in a mirror, elephants have been notably absent from traditional testing facilities:

But even if the pachyderm mind may be the next frontier in evolutionary cognition, it is a most challenging one given that the elephant is probably the only land animal never to be seen alive on a university campus or in a conventional lab. (236-237)

Using the classic rule of "never say always or never", my first thought was: is there any other land animal never to be seen alive on a university campus or in a conventional lab? My second thought was: is there any evidence whatsoever that, perhaps, a live elephant has been seen in one of these settings? To non-answer the first question, I'm still scratching my head trying to figure out which land mammal is least likely to have been seen live in either of these settings. To answer the second question, live elephants have been seen on university campuses, but not for research purposes; Texas A&M's elephant walk has at times apparently involved graduating seniors walking with captive elephants. 

The most impressive part of Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?, to me, is how thorough the endnotes, glossary, bibliography and index are, yet how quickly the book reads. Each chapter cites numerous studies performed over more than a century. The glossary includes terms that range from evolutionary biology terms like convergent evolution^ to more dolphin-focused terms like signature whistles.^^ The bibliography includes enough sources that if someone read and engaged with them, it could be enough for a master's degree in the subject. The index led me to almost everything I needed. Despite having the citation of an academic monograph, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? reads like an airport book. I read it in under 24 hours, faster than I read Jeffery Deaver.

Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? is the literary release equivalent of a lifetime achievement award for de Waal. In the front matter, the list of de Waal's book-length publications goes back to 1982, with a book release approximately every 3-4 years from then until 2016. The personal experiences de Waal relates throughout the book are examples of research studies that have changed the way people think about animals, rather than the trite anecdotes one might find in a different book. On the front cover, the quotation appears: "A remarkable book by a remarkable scientist." -Edward O. Wilson Wilson's groundbreaking work on ants^^^ makes him well qualified to make that statement, which overshadows the numerous bestseller lists de Waal where found himself.

Lastly, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? is a really fun read, as it should be. Some of life's fondest memories involve animal-related fun, whether it's a trip to the zoo or watching Bugs Bunny on TV. De Waal's endless stories of chimps, capuchins, crows, orcas and various other animals had me in stitches. Not everyone's work makes people who read about it smile and laugh. Animal cognition research does just that.

Ease of Reading: 7

Educational Content: 8

*This is the only ethology book I've discussed in the history of this blog. Ethology is essentially a cross between biology and psychology, especially as applied to animals in their natural habitats. The undergraduate course I took on this subject, taught in Wilfrid Laurier University's psychology department, was called "Learning".

**Or whatever the plural of "octopus" is.

***One study de Waal mentions consists of a cat having to rub a latch with its side to open a door. (20)

****What about solitary species like the aforementioned octopodes? Are they incapable of forming culture even though they can solve puzzles, create rock arrangements and play with toys? (249-250)

^From the Glossary: "Convergent evolution: The independent evolution of similar traits or capacities in unrelated species in response to similar environmental pressures." An example de Waal uses is the formation of wings in both bats and birds, two obviously unrelated species which nonetheless both needed to ditch their arms in order to have wings to fly.

^^From the Glossary: "Signature whistles: Dolphin calls modulated so that each individual has a distinct and recognizable 'melody'."

^^^Some puns just have to be made.

July's Book: The Gambler

The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Literature (1867 - 172 pp.)

The Gambler is my first entry concerning a book by Fyodor Dostoevsky, and among the first - if not the first - concerning a book originally written in Russian. I have a good recent history with translations on this blog, from German to Polish to Japanese, so it is fitting that my gigantic Russian literature hole should be at least partially filled here.

The Gambler is partially autobiographical, written when Dostoevsky was an inveterate problem gambler who almost lost all his money numerous times while writing The Gambler in record time to pay off gambling debts. The protagonist, Alexei, sinks into a gambling problem while in a German spa town; his co-travellers Polina, the General, Mr. Astley (no relation to Rick), De Griers, and then Grandmother join him; everyone is waiting for Grandmother to die so Polina can inherit her vast fortune. Many games of roulette ensue.

Unsurprisingly, no one gets along for long with anyone else. Alexei, as unreliable a narrator as he is, is quick to self-deprecate. In the opening scenes of the book, when the characters first congregate in Germany, he admits that interacting with De Griers, "...eventually I got so irritated that I decided to be a bit boorish." (12) This behaviour is not a one-off: "...I once threatened to spit into a Monsignor's coffee." (12) Feelings between Alexei and De Griers appear to be mutual, as during a subsequent conversation, "De Griers glanced at me with a look of hatred." (59) Alexei's gambling affects his relationships later on, resembling a modern anti-gambling public service announcement. In the book's final scene, Mr. Astley remarks acidly on Alexei's fall from temporary riches to what seems like ongoing poverty: "You've ruined yourself beyond redemption. Once upon a time you had a certain amount of talent and a lively personality, and you were quite good-looking too."* (170)

Once Grandmother makes her grand entrance, she becomes the subject of favoritism from the hotel staff due to her riches. Alexei, always the humorous narrator, notes that the hotel uses its own class-based criteria for placing guests: "At spas - all over Europe, it seems - hotel owners and head waiters are guided in their allotment of rooms to visitors, not so much by the wishes and requirements of the visitors as by the hoteliers' opinion of the guests. It may also be said that they seldom make a mistake." (81) Alexei sees himself as above at least some of Grandmother's retinue, as he refers to her servants as "flunkeys". (70) To the crowd decrying wealth and income equality in 2020, in almost everywhere except Europe, this sight could have happened yesterday - even a hotel operating in Europe. Grandmother immediately becomes reckless at the tables; when Alexei is cautious, prior to his spiral into gambling madness, Grandmother states that "'He who fears the wolf should never enter the forest.'" (91)**

Alexei's sometime love match, Polina, becomes a loss as Alexei sinks closer to his enveloping love of roulette. Alexei suspects she will not love him: "I wanted her to come to me and say 'I love you', and if she would not come, or if to hope that she would ever do so was an unthinkable absurdity - well, what else is for me to wish for?" (100) When they finally meet again, Alexei offers her 50,000 francs; (142) her decline of the money ends up being trivial when she inherits Grandmother's fortune. After their final meeting, Polina becomes unattainable to Alexei, to the point that he gets word through Mr. Astley that she is travelling in Switzerland. Ironically, Alexei may well have become richer if he had been able to marry Polina but had never gambled.

The book's highlight is Alexei's emotional roller coaster at the tables. Roulette takes over Alexei's identity by the book's climax: "I myself was at heart a gambler. At that moment I became acutely conscious both of that fact and of the fact that my hands and knees were shaking and the blood was hammering in my brain." (93) This language could just have easily been used to describe Alexei's feelings for Polina. His self-confidence overwhelms him with every win until, finally, he sees that one lost bet would cost him the small fortune he had amassed to that point: "It was the only time during the evening's play when fear cast its cold spell over me, making my hands and knees tremble. For I had realised with horror that I had to win, and that my whole life depended on that bet." (135) Even if Alexei hadn't won the bet, there's always the desire to get back into gambling. After that aforementioned final meeting with Mr. Astley, when Mr. Astley tears apart every aspect of Alexei's character, Alexei thinks after they part: "I'm a lost soul. But why should I not rise from the dead?" (171) 

In 2020, The Gambler asks: To what extent can a 19th-century Russian in Germany be modeled onto present-day people from around the world? The rise of sports betting into online arenas, including fantasy sports, makes it possible for gamblers to use increasingly advanced stats while playing against people whose faces they'll never see. When Grandmother says "Let's hurry back, let's just hurry back. But I don't mean to wager a penny on that blasted zero, or on the equally damned red,"*** (110) it defies meaning compared to the minute calculations of fantasy points (does your fantasy NBA league subtract points for turnovers?) and equally minute calculations of poker odds. Movies like Rounders and 21 move closer, but a true 2020 The Gambler may be yet to be made. At least in Rounders and 21, the characters physically see each other. Movies about brainiacs behind screens tend to be about programmers, not gamblers.

Would a modern version of The Gambler take place online? 

Ease of Reading: 5

Educational Content: 3

*This is a Billy Madison-worthy string of insults, but perhaps worse, as Mr. Astley speaks to Alexei's entire life, not just one incident.

**This quotation makes me think of Jack London's Call of the Wild and White Fang. Having it be a metaphor for gambling may actually make it scarier.

***This quotation is an early statement of gambler's fallacy.

Raptors vs. Heat on My Birthday

Sadly, July 2020 was only the third month in the history of this blog when I didn't post an entry. (The other two were November 2014 and May 2017.) Happily, July's book entry will be coming soon, as will August's (I've already read both books), plus an awesome summer reading list featuring fiction and non-fiction entries ranging from classic to bestseller.

--------------------

With that out of the way, Happy Birthday to me once again! (As well as to Tom Brady and James Hetfield, as I noted in the inaugural year of this blog.) 

Today at 1:30PM Eastern, something happens that has never happened before and might not ever happen again: a Toronto Raptors regular season game on my birthday.

I've been a Raptors fan since the team started making inaugural season preparations in 1994. I had a Raptors T-shirt before they played a game. I even owned Raptors-branded pencils at one point. (More on NBA corporate sponsors in my Quora post today.) I've been to dozens of games, through the horrible 1997-1998 season when they went 16-66, to the first playoff appearances with Vince Carter, to the lows of the 2010 rebuild, to last year's championship. Never, ever, has any of this happened on my birthday - until now.

It's a good game too: the Raptors are the East's #2 seed, and their opponent, the Miami Heat, are fighting for home court in the East's first round. With six fierce competitors in the Eastern Conference this season, a top-4 seed means a key Game 7 at home in the first round if it comes to that.

Raptors vs. Heat - August 3, 2020

Toronto is second in the NBA in steals and second in fewest points allowed in the paint. 

Miami is second in the NBA in fewest points allowed on fast breaks and tied for second in defensive rebound percentage.

Expect lots of defence today from these teams. After the Raptors' suffocating 107-92 victory over the Los Angeles Lakers and the Heat's 125-105 blowout of the Denver Nuggets on Saturday, both teams are ferocious (like Raptors) and scorching (like Heat).

Best of all: in a league that has an October to June schedule, with August often being a season of doldrums, the Raptors are playing on my birthday.

Incidental Japan Month! Shogun

Shogun by James Clavell

Historical Fiction (1975 - 1152 pp.)

Shogun is the third 1100+ page novel I've read during the current pandemic, The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss and 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami being the other two. Unlike 1Q84, which takes place in 1984 amidst a Terminator-style '80s action plot, Shogun takes the reader back to an era I study with some regularity and the general public gobbled up back in 1975: the year 1600.

Shogun follows the story of John Blackthorne, an English sea pilot based on the real-life William Adams, the first English sailor in Japan. Blackthorne's story roughly follows Adams's, as both rise within the Japanese nobility through seamanship and linguistic skills, but Clavell fills out Blackthorne's emotions, dreams and loves in a way that isn't available from the records of Adams. Other characters, such as the daimyos Toranaga (ally of Blackthorne) and Ishido (enemy), the samurai Yabu (mostly ally) and Mariko (aka Maria, a convert to Catholicism, and Blackthorne's love interest), Portuguese pilot Rodrigues (frenemy?), Jesuit priest Martin Alvito (mostly enemy), and Blackthorne's Dutch sailors aboard the Erasmus, are also based on historical figures from the time period. Throughout Shogun, each character confronts conflicted loyalties, cross-cultural mishaps, and the ongoing battle between obligation and desire. Catholics are Blackthorne's mortal enemies, which is frequently lost on Japanese nobles who know Catholicism as the only form of Christianity.

History

Clavell's historical background is weaved into the story, rather than spat out as a lecture series, keeping the reader engaged with the characters and their surroundings. When Blackthorne draws a map of the world for Toranaga, Blackthorne brushes away everything away from the coastlines, demonstrating the state of mapmaking in 1600. (257) Nakamura's* discussion with Toranaga regarding Toranaga's vassalage to him (459-463) could be from a history textbook, yet the fourth wall stays standing. Likewise, kami are defined in a discussion between Mariko and Blackthorne, (622-623) which is helpful to Western readers unaccustomed to being surrounded by spirits, as an Englishman from the year 1600 would need explained as well. The lack of standardization of military uniforms, even in major military forces,** (531) is a part of history that lasted longer than most non-historians realize.*** These touches make Shogun's history (or at least most of it) real to popular and scholarly audiences.

Although previous authors have discussed Shogun's alleged historical accuracies at length in terms of social norms and political hierarchy,**** there are two more factual inquiries. Clavell makes generous use of socket bayonets as typical armaments of feudal Japanese soldiers, or at least of soldiers equipped with European-made guns: “At once Omi gave an order. His men slipped out the short sheathed bayonet sword that hung almost unnoticed from the back of their belts and snapped it into a socket on the muzzle of their muskets.” (535) However, in 1600, no one was using socket bayonets, European or Asian. Socket bayonets were invented in the late 1600s and were not in widespread use until the War of the Spanish Succession, a century after the events in Shogun took place.

To a lesser degree, Blackthorne's spot decision to pull an arrow out of a wounded soldier without first bandaging the wound unsurprisingly causes more damage. (933) Although modern first aid was not invented until the 19th century, soldiers had used arrows for centuries before 1600. Why Blackthorne, a seasoned veteran capable of commanding a ship, would pull out the arrow in this way is never explained.

Economy

A sorely missing concept to much of speculative fiction is one of Shogun's strong points: the wildly contrasting English and Japanese attitudes toward economics and trade. Various Japanese nobles' distastes with the Anglo-Dutch primacy of trade culminate when Yabu tells Toranaga that “Money’s filth – a toy for women to play with or for dung-filled merchants.”^ (281) However, Yabu seeks the ability to strangle rice and silk traffic, (169) characters both English and Japanese squabble over unfair 75% tax rates that, according to the Japanese, should be capped at a still-outrageous 60% (548), and the price of gold figures into Yabu's discussions with Blackthorne and a translator later on. (930)

With commodity availability and pricing being so central to control over feudal Japan, the importance of capital should follow. An early description describes the sad economic situation of the eight-year-old son of General Nakamura, the presumed heir of Japan: “The Court of the Son of Heaven was easy to dominate because, though it possessed all the land, it had no revenue.” (70) This is explained to Blackthorne through a curious inversion of Lockean private property, again emphasizing the central nature of commodities to feudal Japan: “Only peasants can own land. Understand? But samurai own all the produce.” (135) Ownership of land is relegated to farmers, of money below the status of samurai, yet the goods produced on the land and purchased with the money are of extreme importance to samurai. This is one bridge Blackthorne never crosses; he thinks in monetary terms until the end.

Culture (Animals)

Much of Shogun involves cultural differences and misunderstandings between the various nationalities of the characters, especially between the English and the Japanese. Whereas previous authors discuss everything from religion to sex, I'll focus on a topic deeply ingrained in Shogun yet notably absent from many previous reviews: animals.

Blackthorne revolts the Japanese by hanging a pheasant to age until his servants claim it is rotting, causing the gardener to cut it down against Blackthorne's orders. The subsequent execution of the gardener is completely against Blackthorne's wishes, but is aligned with the way the Japanese servants are accustomed to operating. That a dead pheasant is considered food at all, let alone aged, is alien to the Japanese; that the saga ends in death - "over a pheasant!", Blackthorne exclaims in horror - is alien to Blackthorne and to any modern-day reader. Hare soup, a favourite of Blackthorne's, is similarly unpopular among the Japanese faithful. (555) Meanwhile, Mariko assures Blackthorne he will eventually appreciate eating raw fish, skeptical as he is. Near the end of the book, Blackthorne eats raw fish with rice, not only with tolerance, but having craved it.^^

Companion animal husbandry is a topic that allows for more cross-cultural understanding. Toranaga is an avid falconer, often using his falconing^^^ time to meditate on his actions and his place in the Japanese fedual hierarchy. Thanks to a combination of Shogun and the timely searching of a few relevant maps, I learned just how easy the husbandry of peregrine falcons is as a cultural adaptation for Blackthorne, as they breed in both the United Kingdom and Japan. (585) Cross-cultural reverence of the majestic peregrine falcon continues to the present day, such as in Toronto's peregrine falcon live webcam.

As always, when an author introduces me to a new word, I give thanks where it is due. In Clavell's case, the word is "caparisoned", (287) a word I am surprised I had not encountered in my readings of medieval and early modern European history. According to Dictionary.com, a "caparison" is:

noun

a decorated covering for a horse or other animal, esp (formerly) for a warhorse

rich or elaborate clothing and ornaments

verb

(tr) to put a caparison on

All those Renaissance fair horse garments are so much more easily summarized now.

Shogun caps off the run of extremely long novels I've had the fortune to read. The reading portion has been good fortune, although it almost seems crass to think of good fortune in 2020. Mariko offers a bit of Japanese civil war-era wisdom during a discussion with two courtesans that feels like it could be describing the current pandemic: “These are sad times. Difficult for nobles. Difficult for peasants.” (868)

Ease of Reading: 5^^^^

Educational Content: 7****

*Nakamura is based on Toyotomi Hideyoshi (d. 1598), the unifier of Japan in the immediate pre-Tokugawa period. English-language fiction featuring Hideyoshi would have been fascinating, but I understand Clavell's need to (a) have an English visitor present for the reader live through vicariously, and Adams did not appear in Japan until after Hideyoshi's death; and (b) write a story with more compelling rivalries than simply having everyone bow down to Hideyoshi a bunch of times.

**"Major military forces" excludes irregulars, such as Islamic State, while not being limited to post-Treaty of Westphalia-style nation-states.

***For example, World War II armies in Eastern Europe occasionally wore old Austro-Hungarian uniforms from World War I; this was a cruel irony considering how many European countries fought World War I in part to gain independence from Austria-Hungary. This is mentioned briefly in The Eagle Unbowed by Halik Kochanski, in the chapter on the war in Ukraine, but is unfortunately unmentioned in my entry on that book.

****Numerous sources debate the accuracy of the events depicted in Shogun. Clavell straddles the divide between history and fantasy, two genres discussed at length in the 1981 New York Times feature on Clavell, by having his characters engage in unlikely acts influenced by Clavell's own time period (e.g.: 1970s-era women's liberation movements) while existing in a highly realistic setting. For a comparable balance, see The Winter Palace by Eva Stachniak or Sutton by J.R. Moehringer.

^This is not the only time people believed to be beneath samurai are referred to as "dung-headed". Peasants receive the same moniker.

^^I usually use spoiler alerts in these situations, but you didn't seriously think Blackthorne would die anywhere before the end of the book, did you?

^^^"Falconing" appears with a squiggly red line under it in Blogger despite no such underline appearing under the word "falconer". I am unsure what activity Blogger thinks a falconer engages in then. If Blogger is correct, and "falconing" should appear as a spelling mistake, consider it a word I have invented.

^^^^Shogun reads as quickly as an airport book. However, the sheer number of characters and locations in the book makes the reader forget some of the more minor ones exist. A Shakespeare-style Dramatis Personae and a detailed map of Japan in 1600 are all that keep Shogun from being a very easy read. Otherwise, Shogun's ease of reading is a compliment to the terseness of Clavell's prose. He deftly avoids 100-word sentences in favour of a short, clipped style. Off topic: this eighth footnote is likely a record for this blog. Any more of them, especially if they source more, and I'll have a damned term paper.

First Championship Anniversary Day

A year ago today, my hometown Toronto Raptors won their first ever NBA Championship, 4-2 over the Golden State Warriors. I've been a Raptors fan since the plans for the team started taking shape in 1994, a year before their inaugural season starting in 1995. The team celebrates 25 years of play this year.

A year and a day ago, the St. Louis Blues won their first ever Stanley Cup, 4-3 over the Boston Bruins. My dad has been a Blues fan since their inception. Although I rooted for the Montreal Canadiens and the Detroit Red Wings back in the '90s, I casually picked up Blues fandom from him. (I was blogging about other issues yesterday.)

With the NBA and NHL set to reboot under drastically different circumstances than we're accustomed to, especially the NHL's World Cup of Soccer-style play-in tournament, it's a good time to reflect on 2019, when life was more normal.

The idea of a Raptors parade in downtown Toronto seems preposterous in the age of COVID-19. (I didn't go anyway.)

I saw the Raptors' victory coming, but the Blues stunned me so much I had to take pictures of my TV:

Pictures of course mine. I got that cabinet for $10, but that's a different story for a different time.

It's nice to have something to celebrate right now, even if it's only in very recent retrospect.

Bonus Book! 12 Years a Slave

12 Years a Slave by Solomon Northup

Primary Source (1853/2013* - 242 pp.)

When on Earth does a primary source become a major movie release?

12 Years a Slave, 160 years later.

Solomon Northup was born free, lived in New York State with his wife and children, practised carpentry while playing the violin on the side, and then was lured to Washington, DC with the promise of being in a travelling circus band for a fair wage. From there, he was drugged,** imprisoned, shipped to New Orleans under an assumed name, sold into slavery at an auction block, and then put to work on three slave plantations. Finally, after almost twelve years in captivity (1841-1853), under William Ford (1841-1842), John Tibeats (1842-1843) and Edwin Epps (1843-1853), he was able to send letters to his compatriots back in New York, some of whom received their letter and immediately came to his rescue.

The form of the narrative combines the legacy of 18th-century English literature with a modern touch that resonates today. The descriptions at the start of each chapter correspond roughly to the succeeding paragraphs, with each description acting as an entry in a chapter's table of contents. Although this makes events like fights and attempted escapes less unexpected, it adds anticipation. Learning that there will be an axe attack in one chapter, for example, makes it harder to put the book down. It also shows Northup's ambition in seeking a wide audience for 12 Years a Slave, as memoirs or journals typically do not take their forms from novels.

The opening scenes, in which Northup descends from freedom into slavery, contain some of the most harrowing descriptions. Whereas slavery, once started, turned into a sort of daily monotony for Northup, the transition toward slavery involved: deception by two supposed circus ringleaders, the aforementioned possible drugging, unlawful seizure of a government-issued document establishing Northup's freedom, imprisonment in fetters in a slave pen, the giving of the assumed name Platt to Northup, and a bout of smallpox on the boat to New Orleans. Northup's bewilderment is transferred to the reader. Northup comments on the poor showing at the one circus show he played at on his violin: "The audience was extraordinarily sparse, and not of the selectest character at that, and Hamilton's report of the proceeds presented but a 'beggarly account of empty boxes.' " (14) His early attempt at rescue in New Orleans was thwarted by the uncertainty of the auction block, which could lead Northup to any number of possible destinations: "...it was then impossible to conjecture my ultimate destination, and requesting he would take measures to rescue me." (43)

Northup was a highly literate man who composed letters, read when he had a book in front of him, described the inner machinations of a sugar mill to a level of detail I could not possibly have done, (139-140) and made 12 Years a Slave a literary work. Ultimately, though, Northup faces the recognition that no matter how poorly Tibeats or Epps treats him, they are all human: "Blessed be sleep! It visiteth all alike, descending as the dews of heaven on the bond and free." (94) When the plantations' inhabitants come to blows, they are surprisingly balanced, such as when Northup defends himself from Tibeats so effectively that Northup puts his foot on Tibeats's neck until Tibeats relents. (71) Northup waxes literary when, in describing the events of years later, he decries the entire civilization of the pre-Civil War South: "Every man carries his bowie knife, and when two fall out, they set to work hacking and thrusting at each other, more like savages than civilized and enlightened beings." (134-135) Rather than a book summary or (gasp!) a book report, this entry weighs the merits of a primary source as a literary source. Here, Northup straddles the fine line between a true diary, factual but private, and a written performance. Gates Jr. acknowledges as such when, in the book's Afterword, he openly acknowledges that Northup engages in occasional factual wrongness, including regarding Northup's own birthyear.^ Northup's contemporaries verified the heart of his account, but it is interesting to see just how much the factual timeline can be bent until it breaks.

Northup's descriptions of the vicissitudes of slave life jar the reader into just how arbitrary an existence they were forced to live. I was taken aback at the average daily quota of two hundred pounds of cotton picked per day per slave, (109-110) considering I think of cotton as being an extremely lightweight material. By comparison, a heavy pair of jeans weighs approximately two pounds. Patsey's five hundred pounds of cotton per day seems unreachable to me. The abundance of bacon sounds delicious until Northup reminds the reader a few times that it is frequently worm-infested, rendering it inedible; he then remarks that the "flesh of the coon^^ is palatable" and that roast possum is "delicious". (131-132) As someone who's eaten nothing more adventurous in the USA than Kentucky burgoo, I can't imagine the foods Northup describes. All of that changes once per year, though, on a very special day I can identify with: "It was Christmas morning-the happiest day in the whole year for the slave." (189) His description of Mary McCoy's Christmas feast in 1852 portends good things to come. Northup would be rescued less than two weeks later.

Samuel Bass, a Canadian abolitionist who found work on Epps's plantation, sends the letters to Sandy Hill, New York, that would lead to Northup's rescue. Northup's overhearing of a conversation between Bass and Epps leads Northup to realize that Bass could be of assistance, especially when Bass gives his opinion on the institution of slavery: "There's a sin, a fearful sin, resting on this nation, that will not go unpunished forever." (179) That punishment would come eight to twelve years after the release of Northup's memoir, when slavery was destroyed by the Union Army. Sadly, although there is evidence of Northup being alive in 1863, his last public appearance was in 1857, (236) and there is no extant document showing what Northup thought of the Civil War.

As a Canadian, I feel proud of the fact that Samuel Bass was Canadian. He is also the only named Canadian in the book. One hundred percent of the Canadians who are mentioned by name in 12 Years a Slave help Northup emerge from slavery. The one point Bass omits is the complete lack of mention of the name "Platt" anywhere on the letters he sends. (184) Due to this omission, and Northup never going by his actual name in Louisiana, Henry Northup almost never found Solomon. Even with his best efforts, Solomon Northup needed a little luck to return to freedom.

12 Years a Slave has three appendices that further restrict the percentage of paper that actually contains Northup's writing. Appendix A is a copy of the New York statute under which the Governor was compelled to appoint and compensate a representative to rescue a freeman kidnapped into slavery: Chap. 375, An act more effectually to protect the free citizens of this state from being kidnapped, or reduced to Slavery, (219-220) reproduced on Wikisource here. Being the interpreter of statutes I am, I read this short statute a couple times. The main thing that jumped out at me was the preponderance of the word "shall". When a slave was kidnapped from New York State into slavery, the Governor shall appoint a representative, the representative shall rescue the person in question, and the Governor shall compensate the representative, at least for expenses incurred. This is mandatory language, signalling that the legislature did not want to take its chances with a governor who was either sympathetic toward slavery or simply too apathetic to open the public coffer for a rescue mission. Many statutes that delegate authority use words like may, permissive language that grant a discretionary power. Not so for Chap. 375, which ties the Governor's hands. To Governor Washington Hunt's credit, he "took a lively interest in the matter" and appointed the self-nominated Henry Northup as representative immediately. (195)

Where does 12 Years a Slave leave us in terms of appreciating a primary source as a work of literature, then? My old mantra of art appreciation - "Does it do what it is attempting to do?" applies once again. 12 Years a Slave was meant both as a memoir and as an attempt to reach a large audience. As a memoir, Northup's attention to detail (see, for example, the sugar mill description) grants historians the source material they require. As an attempt to reach a large audience, the fact that a major movie was based on it 160 years after its release should suffice.

Ease of Reading: 6

Educational Content: 9

NOTE: I occasionally jump between present tense and past tense during this entry. The rule is simple: present tense applies to events confined to the book, whereas past tense applies to historical events primarily outside the book. For example, Bass sends the letters, as the evidence for this event lies within the book's narrative, as whereas Hunt appointed Henry Northup, an event that occurred when Solomon Northup was understandably not present.

*Northup's original account was written, published and discussed widely in 1853. The edition I read, from 2013, contains three introductions (Foreword by Steve McQueen, Editorial Essay by Henry Louis Gates Jr., Introduction by Ira Berlin) and an afterword by Gates Jr. I did a double-take before realizing that Steve McQueen, the director, was born six years after The Great Escape (1963), starring the other Steve McQueen.

**Gates Jr. thinks Northup's captors got him very drunk, (233) whereas other sources state that the effects Northup relays are consistent with belladonna or laudanum poisoning. The exact cause of Northup's shaky memory of that night is unimportant compared to what he endured afterward; this uncertainty merely shows how inexact a reading of events 160+ years ago is bound to be.

^Northup claims to have been born in 1807, whereas Gates Jr.'s assessment of the available records shows Northup to have been born in 1808. (240) Chillingly for me, assuming the 1808 date is correct, that means Northup was abducted at the same age I am now.

^^"coon" is short for "raccoon". This was a term that I, being from Toronto, grasped right away.

June's Book: 1Q84

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

Fantasy (2010/2011* - 1157 pp.)

Zelkova serrata, a tree native to Japan, pictured here in 2006. The zelkova tree plays a key part in the setting near the end of the book. Picture from Wikimedia Commons.

1Q84 is the first Japanese translation in the history of this blog. In Japan in 1984, Aomame, a young assassin and personal trainer, and Tengo, a young novelist and math teacher, trade chapters during a story that brings them together over a mysterious novel called Air Chrysalis, a science-fiction-esque cult called Sakigake, and a cast of characters that rotates in and out of their lives. The book's highlight is the opening scene, when Aomame departs a taxi on the highway to take an emergency stairwell toward her newest kill. For the 1100+ pages afterward, nothing is the same.

One of the earliest questions that arises is when the beautiful 17-year-old Eriko "Fuka-Eri" Fukada writes Air Chrysalis, and Tengo rewrites it but it is published solely under Fuka-Eri's name, whether it is "literary fraud". While ghostwriters' names are generally included on the front covers of published books (see here for an example on this blog), I've never heard of an uncredited ghostwriter being the source of a fraud. If anything, the uncredited ghostwriter is the one being cheated, but Tengo is in on the plan from the start. For as many times as the characters use the "fraud" term, no one ever faces any legal or public relations consequences for it. The highlight of the Air Chrysalis story arc is when Aomame reads extensively from it, (665-679) drawing the reader into what would otherwise be a King in Yellow-style referenced work that only the characters, never the reader, get to see.

Meanwhile, Tengo copes with the illness and eventual death of his father, with whom he was always close geographically but was never close with emotionally. Tengo's father's position as an NHK fee collector, going door to door in the name of the Japanese state television company, leads to NHK fee collection references appearing at eerie times in the latter part of the book. At the home where Tengo's father is staying, where the nurses Kumi Adachi, Tamura and Okura help him, Tengo identifies with the main character in "Town of Cats", a fictitious short story about a man who wanders too much in a town full of cats and is subsequently unable to take the train home. Tengo's constant wonder of whether he will get home, or where home even is, pervades his perspective throughout the book. It is to him as the alternate reality year 1Q84, which looks like 1984 intentionally, is to Aomame.

Absolutely none of these characters are likable; Murakami's great gift is making the reader care so much about what happens to all these people I don't like. Aomame is a wreck; Tengo is going nowhere in life; Komatsu, the publisher, is manipulative; Fuka-Eri doesn't say much; Professor Ebisuno, her legal guardian, barely publishes. When the reader sees the unfulfilling lives these characters lead, largely by their own hands (although Fuka-Eri gets slack, as she was raised by the Sakigake cult), it is readily apparent that the alternate world, 1Q84 and/or the Cat Town, is what these characters need. When life isn't what you want it to be, trade it for a different life, as my short story "I Drank the Toxic Cocktail" posited back in 2012.

For all the chatter of "don't give your characters names that are too similar, it'll confuse the reader", Murakami has expertly named characters incredibly similarly (to an English-speaking eye) yet there is never any confusion. Tamaki, Tamaru, and Tamura are all characters, and although they never meet, they all recur throughout the book. At no point did any of these two characters appear to be the same person, nor was there ever any confusion. In the same way that your phone contacts might contain, say, a Mike B and a Mike S,** similar names in fiction can work plenty well.

One of the great ironies of 1Q84 is when multiple characters call Air Chrysalis a "harmless tale" or "harmless fantasy novel". (958, 987, 997) Fantasy can be anything from misleading childhood education,*** to a Christian apologetic (even if The Guardian wants to gripe about it), to an attack on academic mathematicians, but none of those are harmless. Murakami obviously knows this, so the fact that the characters have effectively entered the world of Air Chrysalis but then write off the book they've entered has a sly feel to it.

Parts of 1Q84 are highly quotable. Here are a few of my favourites:

“Robbing people of their actual history is robbing them of a part of themselves. It’s a crime.” -Tengo, to Fuka-Eri (322)

“[Niagara Falls] was the most boring town in the world.” -Tamaru, to Aomame (403)

“You’re nothing.”^ -Tengo's father, to Tengo (509)

“Good and evil are not fixed, stable entities but are continually trading places.” -the Leader of Sakigake, to Aomame (558)

“There were only a few government offices and companies that managed information by computer. It cost too much and took too much effort. But a religious organization of national scale would have the resources to computerize.” (827)

“It’s not like it’s crammed with hot-off-the-press information or anything.” -Tamaru, to Aomame, discussing Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time (970)

“Once you get your hopes up, your mind starts acting on its own.” (1028)

“There's something about those secrets that only the deceased person can rightly understand. Something that can't be explained, no matter how hard you try. They're what the dead person has to take with him to his grave. Like a valuable piece of luggage.” -Kumi Adachi, to Tengo (1075)

Then, of course, there's "Lucky", the faux-Aesop's Fable about the vegetarian cat who decides a rat carcass has a good trade-in value.

At times, 1Q84 feels more like it is coming from Murakami than it is from the characters. Having a main character, Tengo, be a struggling author reads like Write What You Know. Having Air Chrysalis be a literary journal submission that subsequently becomes a bestseller reads like Wish Fulfillment, and is arguably more unrealistic than an actual air chrysalis. The characters all know obscure bits of literary, historical and scientific trivia, even Fuka-Eri, who has spent most of her life in an isolated cult compound; after a while, the reader feels like this is the trivia Murakami knows, not what the characters should be realistically expected to know.

There are a few points in 1Q84 that leave me confused. One is that Murakami goes to pains to describe Aomame's unnaturally large left ear during her first couple chapters, which she sees as a deformation, although it is covered by her long hair. Then, even after she performs various intimate acts with various characters, no one appears to ever notice this large ear, nor does Aomame worry that someone will. Finally, "her small, pink ears" (1134) are mentioned near the end of the book. What happened to this abnormally large ear? On a different but equally confusing note, the term "Indian summer" (1119) is used. In a classic American novel, I could see this term being used. 1Q84 is a translation from Japanese, though. Why would Japanese people use the term "Indian summer"? These points may seem minor, but they belie a litany of perplexing behaviour taken by the characters and wording used by the narrator at various times.

1Q84 is a page-turner, with 200+ pages in a single day melting by. It still comes out feeling about 300-400 pages too long; an 800-page book is long enough, but 1157 is even longer than Pat Rothfuss.^^ Murakami frequently spends two-plus pages on a shaggy dog story, such as when Tamaru discusses his old quasi-friend at the Catholic orphanage, or uses four sentences when two would suffice. Nonetheless, the book still blisters by.

Something I learned: in Japan, cans of hot coffee have been available from vending machines since the 1970s. Being used to cans of cold coffee, and paper cups of hot coffee, I was blissfully unaware it was even possible to dispense a hot metal can from a vending machine without it being too hot to touch. The characters purchase these a few times. I would too.

Ease of Reading: 10

Educational Content: 1

*Original publication dates of the Japanese original and English translation respectively. The Japanese original was published in 2009 (Books 1-2) and 2010 (Book 3) but was not published as a full volume until 2010.

**These were two of my friends during Grade 2. In the 25 years since then, I have never once confused them. Why readers would confuse fictional characters so easily evades me.

***Why is King Arthur ruling France? This may be the greatest mystery in Disney history.

^I have no idea whether any member of Iceage has read 1Q84, but that this is the title of their 2013 album feels fitting.

^^The Wise Man's Fear (unreviewed), which I read in March, is 1107 pages long.