One sure way to make your in-laws continue to think you’re a bit weird in your reading choices? Bring a 669-page novel about the civil war in Sudan when you go on vacation with them. Bringing two books on Spinoza helps, too, I suppose, even if you don’t get to them until the day you’re leaving.
This whole post is a bit belated, but feel like I owe you a book tally for the trip. We packed a very sensible eight books (six mine, two Stacey’s), plus half a dozen to give as belated (or early) birthday presents to family members. And we read eight books (four apiece) . . . but they weren’t the same eight we’d brought.
That sounds like a riddle, but it’s really just the inevitable result of a trip to Powell’s City of Books in Portland. On the bike ride back to our friends’ house, my shoulder bag groaned under the weight of thirteen new books (eight mine, five Stacey’s). Between the broad selection of cheap used books and the satisfying stock of out-of-print titles, it’s probably good that we live a couple thousand miles away.
It was a pleasant trip. We read in airports, on planes, while grilling, in the great house we rented in Sunriver, in Portland parks, and in our friends’ living room. Oh, and we did some other stuff, too, like canoe and ride horses and see old friends and spot a large Vietnamese pot-bellied pig grazing contentedly—and inexplicably—in a Portland park.
And I learned a lesson that will be of use in planning for future trips: when bringing running shoes on a trip, make sure to pack your most worn-out pair. That allows you to, without qualms, leave them behind . . . which makes space for approximately eight books. If I'd realized that while we were still at Powell's, we could have bought one more!
Showing posts with label Acts of Faith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Acts of Faith. Show all posts
Monday, July 17, 2006
Friday, July 07, 2006
Philip Caputo (and a little Graham Greene)
The most obvious shadow lurking over Philip Caputo’s Acts of Faith (2005), a sweeping novel set in Sudan during its civil war, is that of Graham Greene. Like The Quiet American, Acts of Faith highlights the damage done by the blind faith of some distinctly unquiet Americans.
But in a sense, Tolstoy and Dickens are as much Caputo’s guides as Greene, for Caputo is not content with merely updating The Quiet American. His ambition is much greater, on a par in scope with the nineteenth-century greats: while he makes no pretense to be telling Sudan’s story from the inside, he wants to show every facet of the war and the ways that altruism, capitalism, democracy, greed, religion, arms, and international indifference conspire to make a bad situation worse. His cast of characters consists mostly of outside do-gooders, from a pair of self-involved, self-deluding Americans to a mixed-race Kenyan, but it also features a Sudanese Arab leader of a band of murahaleen warriors, a lieutenant colonel in the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army, a variety of Sudanese from various walks of life.
While Greene rootedThe Quiet American deeply in the cynical, weary worldview of Fowler, Caputo instead is true to his nineteenth-century forebears, allowing his omniscient narrator to roam freely among five main characters. And, flying in the face of the writing school dictate to show, not tell, Caputo allows that narrator to make broad ethical, emotional, and ideological pronouncements about the characters. Such straightforward commentary doesn’t always work—on occasion Caputo stretches a point, or tells us something that didn’t need spelling out—but when it does, he is able to deepen our understanding of his characters in just a few words, as in the following passage about a Christian relief worker from Iowa:
My only real criticism of the book is that the plot’s a little too tightly organized. There’s little of the messy contingency of real life—but that, too, fits with my idea of this as an old-fashioned novel, and my criticism says as much, I think, about my suspicion of neatness as it does about the novel itself. The five main characters attempt to make a living, bring relief to the suffering in southern Sudan, and build a life in a strange country. Several of them, much like the sickening number of Americans who’ve written or spoken about the Iraq war as a necessary demonstration of American resolve, seem to view Sudan and the war as existing primarily through the lens of their own need to prove themselves, their mettle or good intentions. And they cling to those good intentions—and to an image of their own incorruptibiilty—even as the destructive evidence of the shortcomings of both mounts.
Despite the neatly arranged plot, Caputo doesn’t deny the complexity of the situation in Sudan or, by extension, of any war or disaster. He has no patience for the cant or self-congratulation that obscure problems while rewarding often misguided action, and he shares with Graham Greene a deep ambivalence about the power of human action and a certainty of the dangers of unforeseen consequences. At the same time, like Greene, he doesn’t see inaction in the face of suffering as acceptable. Something must be done, but Caputo isn't going to pretend that he knows what that is.
He saves his strongest language of condemnation—in a novel that for all its uncertainty is suffused with the language of ethics—for those whose devoted allegiance to an idea blinds them to the substance of their own actions:
But in a sense, Tolstoy and Dickens are as much Caputo’s guides as Greene, for Caputo is not content with merely updating The Quiet American. His ambition is much greater, on a par in scope with the nineteenth-century greats: while he makes no pretense to be telling Sudan’s story from the inside, he wants to show every facet of the war and the ways that altruism, capitalism, democracy, greed, religion, arms, and international indifference conspire to make a bad situation worse. His cast of characters consists mostly of outside do-gooders, from a pair of self-involved, self-deluding Americans to a mixed-race Kenyan, but it also features a Sudanese Arab leader of a band of murahaleen warriors, a lieutenant colonel in the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army, a variety of Sudanese from various walks of life.
While Greene rootedThe Quiet American deeply in the cynical, weary worldview of Fowler, Caputo instead is true to his nineteenth-century forebears, allowing his omniscient narrator to roam freely among five main characters. And, flying in the face of the writing school dictate to show, not tell, Caputo allows that narrator to make broad ethical, emotional, and ideological pronouncements about the characters. Such straightforward commentary doesn’t always work—on occasion Caputo stretches a point, or tells us something that didn’t need spelling out—but when it does, he is able to deepen our understanding of his characters in just a few words, as in the following passage about a Christian relief worker from Iowa:
The soldiers might as well have thrown spears, and Quinette reflected bitterly on the futility of her effort. She reflected also on the futility of what Michael had done, downing the oil company plane. Had she held on to these thoughts and carried them through, she might have reached some interesting conclusions about actions that arise from deep convictions; but they exited her mind within seconds.Caputo’s prose is similarly clear and careful throughout, unobtrusive yet effective whether describing an aerial bombardment or the business practices of a relief airline.
My only real criticism of the book is that the plot’s a little too tightly organized. There’s little of the messy contingency of real life—but that, too, fits with my idea of this as an old-fashioned novel, and my criticism says as much, I think, about my suspicion of neatness as it does about the novel itself. The five main characters attempt to make a living, bring relief to the suffering in southern Sudan, and build a life in a strange country. Several of them, much like the sickening number of Americans who’ve written or spoken about the Iraq war as a necessary demonstration of American resolve, seem to view Sudan and the war as existing primarily through the lens of their own need to prove themselves, their mettle or good intentions. And they cling to those good intentions—and to an image of their own incorruptibiilty—even as the destructive evidence of the shortcomings of both mounts.
Despite the neatly arranged plot, Caputo doesn’t deny the complexity of the situation in Sudan or, by extension, of any war or disaster. He has no patience for the cant or self-congratulation that obscure problems while rewarding often misguided action, and he shares with Graham Greene a deep ambivalence about the power of human action and a certainty of the dangers of unforeseen consequences. At the same time, like Greene, he doesn’t see inaction in the face of suffering as acceptable. Something must be done, but Caputo isn't going to pretend that he knows what that is.
He saves his strongest language of condemnation—in a novel that for all its uncertainty is suffused with the language of ethics—for those whose devoted allegiance to an idea blinds them to the substance of their own actions:
He had broken faith with the best that was in him and with the humanity he professed to serve. A malevolent voice had whispered a summons; he’d answered. Anyone who does not acknowledge the darkness in his nature will succumb to it. He will not take precautions against its prompting, nor recognize it when it calls.It’s language of near-Biblical moral seriousness, and by the end of this powerful novel, I was convinced that Caputo had the right—as well as the knowledge, understanding, and perception—to wield it.
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