Happy Thanskgiving, Sitting Bull!

Ok, I get the whole picture, Thanksgiving is about reuniting as a family, sharing a good meal with parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, watching football...and finding great deals on Black Friday.
And yes, I know, it is also about being thankful for something. Like the Pilgrims, who, because they were grateful for not having been slaughtered by their savage neighbors, and for having been fed a whole winter by them,  actually invited and treated them to a free meal - one thing very close to total bliss in contemporary America-!!
Yes, Sitting Bull, I know, it sounds unbelievable and yet, it happened. In 1621, in Plymouth, very far from where you lived and before your time, anyway. So, here they are, the lucky "Indians", arriving in the colonists' hamlet, not sure that they would eat anything edible -I don't blame them- but too polite anyway to say anything like that. They seat -on benches or on the ground?-. Do they mingle with the colonists? Do men and women eat together? Do they toast? Does the colonist-in-chief make a speech for them? In Wampanoag or is it translated by a native American who would understand some English? Do they really eat Turkey with cranberry sauce? And some pumpkin pie for dessert?
And after, well, after, I guess they all went back to their cabins and huts and did it...

 I meant AFTER?

After, that's the part I still don't understand. How can you be thankful one day to your neighbor for having fed you and the next day, just decide that you had had enough with his peace calumet and savage dances and ugly face-painting and praise of nature and all that crap and just go on your little business and "kill them all"?!

How come during Thanksgiving people always remember to be thankful to a bunch of do-good Indians that saved the first colonists from starvation but are completely oblivious to the fate of thousands of other Native Americans Indians who were slaughtered, raped, deported, parked, whose children were taken from them, forced to become good Americans by living far away from their parents in prison-type boarding schools, forced to cut their hair, wear White-man clothes, speak English, pray to Christ and so forth?
How come at Thanksgiving nobody ever seems to remember to apologize for all the crimes committed by the colonists and pioneers after the first Thanksgiving meal?  

I wonder if tomorrow, in their reservations, Lakotas, Navajos, Nez-perces, Apaches, Hopis, Comanches, Blackfeet, will celebrate Thanksgiving as well. If their kids would have had to dress up at school in Pilgrims' clothes with black hats and white Henri-the-fourth kind of collars like my daughter did last year.


P.S: In fact, I just learned that each year, some Native Americans from different tribes gather in Alcatraz Island to celebrate an Unthanksgiving Day (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unthanksgiving_Day) in remembrance of all their sufferings and of their occupation of this island between 1969 and 1971, when they fought for more civil rights and a fairer place in the American society.

Between here and there: mourning Britannicus.

Every émigré has to face, from time to time, moments of forlornness, of irremediable loss. To me, it usually comes by surprise, when I’m seemingly drifting smoothly in my American life; like the other night, when I was flicking through channels, trying to catch something more interesting than cops chasing bad guys, bad cooks pretending to be French chefs, arrogant TV anchors trying to convince me of their smartness and grandeur, pet behaviorists willing to teach me how to tame my dog, carpet cleaner experts eager to sell me their awesome new product…After a while, I finally grew tired of my fruitless search and retreated to the French TV5 channel, and it hit me. My “world of yesterday”, as Stephan Zweig called it, was right there on the screen, almost unchanged. The movie was called “Evil friendships” and took place in 2006 in Paris, mostly in the Quartier Latin and at La Sorbonne. The main characters were a gang of Sorbonnards, all students of French and comparative literature, all smart, beautiful and witty people, all passionate about literature and writing, all willing to become either writers or comedians. One of them, though, was a fraud: a very talented guy but too lazy to commit himself to any serious academic writing. Instead, he enjoyed manipulating other students, baffling them with his culture, trying to convince them not to write anything since it would never be worth publishing.

But it is not the plot that riveted me on my couch but the setting of this small movie: suddenly I was there again, in La Sorbonne’s old classrooms, being lectured on Montaigne, on La Fontaine, on Abelard and Heloise, on Chretien de Troyes…I was there again, in my own high school classes, later, this time my turn to lecture teenagers on the role of the writer in society, trying to instill in them the very same passion I had for literature; or I was back in the teachers’ lounge, defending Racine’s poetic against Corneille’s; vilifying Beigbeder’s latest opus or arguing with a colleague about Louis-Ferdinand Celine. Yes, my “world of yesterday” was there, on the screen, very alive: in the movie, the students were having heated discussions about literature, and one particular discussion was about the Act II, sc. 2 of Britannicus, one of the most beautiful of Racine’s tragedies. One of the characters was accusing Racine of being “cheesy” and “thick” while the other was trying to explain why he liked that tragedy and that scene in particular, so much. In this scene, Nero makes is first stage appearance; Narcisse, the traitor (since he is supposed to be Britannicus’[1] aide-de-camp but in reality serves Nero’s interests) is also there and Nero confides in him his love for his captive, Junie (Britannicus’ lover), and all his fears about his future: how to get Junie to truly love him? How to free himself from his mother’s powerful influence? How to have Rome’s citizens love him? What to do with his brother? Will he be up to this gigantic task? In fact, this scene is one my favorite among French classical theater: here we have a historical character, well-known for his later cruelties and acts of pure and simple folie (craziness)[2] but in Racine’s tragedy, he is an adolescent, conscious of his destiny but still unsure of the path to choose; he is not yet a monster but a “monster-in-progress”; a monster who loves, who doubts and, above all, wants to be loved, not yet feared. And Racine’s Alexandrines perfectly convey to the reader/spectator all this range of emotions.

Here, listen to Nero’s narration on falling in love for Junie: (the translations that follow are from myself and render only the gross idea, not Racine's poetry)

                    «  Excité d'un désir curieux,
Cette nuit je l'ai vue arriver en ces lieux,
Triste, levant au ciel ses yeux mouillés de larmes,
Qui brillaient au travers des flambeaux et des armes,
Belle, sans ornement, dans le simple appareil
D'une beauté qu'on vient d'arracher au sommeil.
[…] Quoi qu'il en soit, ravi d'une si belle vue,
J'ai voulu lui parler, et ma voix s'est perdue :
Immobile, saisi d'un long étonnement,
Je l'ai laissé passer dans son appartement.
J'ai passé dans le mien. C'est là que, solitaire,
De son image en vain j'ai voulu me distraire.
Trop présente à mes yeux je croyais lui parler ;
J'aimais jusqu'à ses pleurs que je faisais couler.
Quelquefois, mais trop tard, je lui demandais grâce :
J'employais les soupirs, et même la menace.[…] »

Excited by a curious desire,

Tonight I saw her coming into this place,

Sad, raising to the sky her eyes wet from tears,

[her eyes] that shined through the torches and the weapons,

Beautiful, without any ornament, in the simple apparel

Of a beauty that one has just snatched off sleep.

[…] Anyway, pleased by such a beautiful sight,

I wanted to talk to her, and my voice got lost:

Still, seized by a deep astonishment,

I let her go to her apartment.

I went to mine. It is there that, lonely,

From her image I wanted to distract myself [from].

Too present to my eyes I thought I was talking to her,

I loved to her tears that I made run [I’m responsible for]

Sometimes, but too late, I asked for her forgiveness;

I would use sighs, and even threats […]

It is indeed a monster’s love since he seems to love his prey’s defenseless and despair.

Or here, when he confides his powerlessness in the face of his mother’s authority:

« Eloigné de ses yeux, j'ordonne, je menace,
J'écoute vos conseils, j'ose les approuver ;
Je m'excite contre elle, et tâche à la braver :
Mais, je t'expose ici mon âme toute nue,
Sitôt que mon malheur me ramène à sa vue,
Soit que je n'ose encor démentir le pouvoir
De ces yeux où j'ai lu si longtemps mon devoir ;
Soit qu'à tant de bienfaits ma mémoire fidèle
Lui soumette en secret tout ce que je tiens d'elle.
Mais enfin mes efforts ne me servent de rien :
Mon génie étonné tremble devant le sien.
Et c'est pour m'affranchir de cette dépendance,
Que je la fuis partout, que même je l'offense,
Et que, de temps en temps, j'irrite ses ennuis,
Afin qu'elle m'évite autant que je la fuis. »

Far from her eyes, I give orders, I threaten,

I listen to your advices; I dare to approve them;

I get excited against her and try to defy her:

But, I show you here, my whole bare soul,

As soon as my misfortune bring me back to her sight,

Either that I do not yet dare to deny the power

Of those eyes where for so long I read my duty;

Either that for so many kindnesses my faithful memory

Submits her secretly all that I owe to her.

But in fact my efforts are useless,

My astonished power trembles in front of hers.

And it is to free myself from this dependence,

That I’m running away from her everywhere, that I even offend her,

And that, from time to time, I worsen her troubles,

So she would avoid me as much as I’m running away from her.

 

Many teenagers would recognize their own attempts at freeing themselves from their parents’ love in Nero’s words. It is probably one of Racine’s great talent to infuse life and realism in his Antique’s characters, so that, far from being dusty classics, his tragedies are on the contrary “larger than life”; his Nero, his Bérénice, his Phèdre, his Andromaque are not haughty characters, but sensible, complex human beings, just like us[3]. But with the inestimable advantage of talking like gods, in Alexandrines.

So, that night, alone in my couch, somewhere in the “beautiful California” of Steinbeck and London, I mourned my “world of yesterday”. Because of course, almost nobody that I know care about Britannicus (but I’m not blaming anybody here; the contrary would be astonishing) and because, more importantly to me, I realized that my kids will probably never experience, never feel the physical joy that you can feel listening to Racine’s poetry. Even if I do my best to build a bridge between them and the realm of French literature, they will most likely always be some kind of foreigners in their native language.

That was one of those moments where living here but being from there can be painful.

[1] Britannicus is Nero’s half-brother and is rival on two counts: for being their father’s real heir since Britannicus was supposed to become the emperor but Nero’s formidable mother, Agrippine, opposed the decision and put her son on the throne; and for being in loved and loved by Junie, the woman Nero wants to conquer.

[2] Remember, he kills his brother and his mother and later set Rome on fire; he also liked to race himself in the arena and to recite his own poetry in public.

[3] It is interesting, indeed, to remember that one of the constant critics Racine had to face in his time was this very one that we now consider as one of his most remarkable qualities: putting on a tragedy stage characters who, although they would still speak like the powerful and VIP people they were, would show their weaknesses and doubts. (one of the rule of the  French classical tragedy being that only noble characters should be showed: emperors, princes, kings who would all behave with grandeur. Hence it excluded the expression of personal feelings)

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Why you should read C.J Box's novels



Okay. If you judge a book by its cover, C.J Box would probably not be your most likely future recipient of the Nobel Prize of literature, except if he were to undergo a radical change, both in its writing and, may be more importantly, in its looks: come on, where is the dark, haunted, weary look so typical of your average New Yorker or European writer? And where are the usual overflowing bookshelves or the Parisian cafe crowd?!  Instead, with his black Stetson hat, tough guy goatee and a horse in the background, you would probably assume that C.J Box is more a roman de gare writer rather than a Pulitzer winner. And you would be right. Still, this is not a good enough reason why you shouldn’t read his novels. On the contrary: everybody needs to get a break now and then from the “great” literature, otherwise we would all end up behaving like a spoiled child at his friend’s birthday party, throwing a tantrum because he is unable to enjoy the cheap toy he received as a parting gift… Don’t act like a snob and try C.J Box’s novels out.

Here are a few good reasons why you should read him:

1-      The main character, Joe Pickett.

Considering the genre (thriller), he is more of an anti-hero: he is not divorced, he doesn’t have major marital issues, he doesn’t have a drinking problem, he is not violent nor does he uses slang or dirty words all the time; he isn’t a gun lover (of course he has a rifle and a gun but he doesn’t have a NRA bumper sticker on his pick-up truck); he doesn’t work for the LAPD or the NYPD or as a private eye; he is not even a former basketball star. Nope. He is just your average Wyoming State Park Ranger, married, with two (or three, depending on the novels) daughters, a yellow lab and a horse. He lives with his family in a rundown state-owned small ranch house in Saddlestring, Wyoming, He is a good husband (most of the time), a good father and a good friend too. And, he loves his job, even if the pay is hardly enough to make ends meet.

But he also has some of the expected features of a regular thriller hero: Joe is brave, steady, street- smart (or, in his case, trail-smart), uncompromising – which puts him at odds, from time to time, with his hierarchy and his political connections. And he has the rare ability to find himself right on the path of dangerous criminals of all kinds that chose the remote mountains of the Grand Teton Park to hide…

2-      The location.

 For a European, Wyoming  is  the paragon of Western exoticism: its name evokes wilderness, endless mountain ranges, horseback riding, wolves and grizzly bears…It is also rural America, where hunting is part of your life, where most people vote Republican, where foreigners like me would be spotted immediately…yes, so although it would probably be quite uncomfortable for me to live in a town like Saddlestring, I liked  a lot the background scenery of Box’s novels and the atmosphere resulting from the omnipresence of nature. I also have to say that, when it comes to nature, Box’s prose becomes almost poetical. He has some beautiful descriptions of the wilderness and of his hero’s’ close relationship to nature.

3-   The topics.

Box has a knack for choosing interesting and underused topics in crime novels: through his several books, he tackled green terrorism, Christian fundamentalism, anti-federalism, Wyoming politics and always without being Manichean. Good job, C.J.!
And, because the hero is a game warden, you'll also learn a lot about the hunting and fishing legislation in Wyoming! (ok, it might not be so relevant to you, but you'll still read some nice pages about nature and wild animals)

4-      Family life.

As I said above, Joe Pickett has a family and thus a family life. The way Box describes his hero’s family is both very realistic and quite humorous. For a guy, he has a very accurate perception of some women’s issues and of the children psychology.  His character has a very strong-will wife, Marybeth, who becomes, novel after novel , a very successful entrepreneur (and it gives Box the opportunity to reflect on some couple issues such as how to deal with the stereotype of the husband as the breadwinner); he has two daughters whom we follow from childhood into almost (so far) adulthood. The older one, Sheridan, is a lot like her father: brave, selflessness, serious and very aware of environmental and social issues. The younger one, so far, is the portrait crache of her maternal grandmother: selfish, superficial, spoiled. The mother-in-law, although quite cliche, is a funny character and Box knows how to use it when he needs to relieve the tension for awhile. The dialogues between the parents and their daughters are very realistic and any reader who is a parent will enjoy seeing the Picketts dealing with the joy and sorrow of raising children. I should also mention the character of the yellow lab-I know it sounds cheesy, but I do also have a yellow lab and Box's paper yellow lab will immediately win the heart of all the readers who own a lab-
Moreover, the familial and social background of the novels give you a good insight of the middle-class life today, in America. I really do think that critics tend to underestimate the importance of realism in crime novels. No need to read only Jonathan Franzen to learn about America today. Many crime novels also give you a fair reflection of the everyday life of the middle class.


5- The action.
You'll get plenty of it in these novels, although not the usual car chase: instead, expect snowshoes chases and horseback riding pursuits. And most of the action is assumed not only by Joe Pickett, but also by his Nemesis of a friend, the mysterious Nate Notalowski: he may be a former CIA agent turned mercenary and he is currently wanted by the FBI, which is why he is more or less always living clandestinely. The character itself is not that new: many crime novel heroes have a tough guy as a best friend without much principles doing the dirty work at their place. However, in this case, although not new, the character is an interesting one: Nate is a free-thinker, violent and sensible at the same time; he has freed himself from any social compromise and the Pickett family is almost his only contact with society (but he is also going to change, novel after novel). So, action scenes, especially when Nate gets involved, are very satisfying (especially when Nate crushes some stupid, ignorant and self-righteous guys...)

Not convinced yet? I can't say that, when reading one of the Joe Pickett's novel, I have been moved to the point I would cry or that I would keep reading again and again the sames pages because of the style of its writing (1); yet, if you like crime novels, you'll enjoy the Joe Pickett's series because it has both all the ingredients of the genre (a nice guy, some pretty deranged bad guys; humorous and touching secondary characters, lots of shooting and crushing skulls)  and also some not so common ones, and these kind of ingredients (the ones that play with the genre boundaries: the family life; the scenery; the topics) are the ones that make C.J Box novels fun (2) and interesting to read.
So, C.J, when are you done with the next one?


(1) I'm currently reading again La Vie devant Soi -The life before us- by Romain Gary/Ajar and yes, sometimes I'm so moved I cry...to be continued.


(2) I can't believe I used "fun"...such an American adjective... I should have said enjoyable, pleasant, entertaining, distracting...