Among the Tibetans by Isabella Bird

Travel to exotic lands, meet new people . . . and criticize them

Englishwoman Isabella Bird was a pioneering female explorer of the Victorian Era. She traveled to exotic lands all over the world and published several books on her adventures. What was most unusual, for a woman of her time, was that she traveled solo, unaccompanied by a husband, brother, or similar male chaperone. She led her own expeditions and hired local servants, porters, guides, etc. to assist her. Bird became quite popular through her published writings in books and magazines, which were often illustrated with her own photography. She was the first woman to be elected as a fellow of Britain’s Royal Geographic Society.

In 1889, at around the age of 60, Bird departed on a trip to India and Tibet, then into Central Asia and on to the Middle East. She recounted the Tibetan portion of this journey in her book Among the Tibetans, published in 1894. The book opens with Bird in Kashmir as she’s leaving India to enter into Tibet. From the Kashmiri city of Srinigar, she travelled to the Tibetan city of Leh and from there explored the Nubra Valley. By today’s maps, these sites are located in the Ladakh region of Indian-administered Kashmir, not in the Tibet Autonomous Region. At the time of Bird’s travels, it is unclear to me who actually had political control over the lands she visited, but historically the inhabitants and culture of Leh and Nubra are Tibetan.

Bird deserves to be seen as a feminist heroine for her accomplishments, and I admire and envy her travels. Her writing, however, as exhibited in this book at least, leaves a lot to be desired. It suffers from many of the faults also seen in writings of her male contemporaries. This was the golden age of British imperialism, and many British authors of the era write as if the whole world was merely meant to provide comfort and amusement to British travelers. Whatever fails to do so is deemed “primitive” and “savage.” Bird goes on and on about how the people she encounters are ugly, dirty, stupid, and unreliable. (The fact that she deems the residents of this or that region more handsome than another doesn’t really make up for that.) Although not averse to roughing it in the mountains, once Bird enters a city or town she complains about the squalid accommodations as if she were writing spiteful hotel reviews on Tripadvisor. She also laments that she can’t get a decent cup of tea, even though she’s in the birthplace of tea.

The primary standard by which I judge this book is how much did I really learn about Tibet. The answer, unfortunately, is not much. Bird devotes more ink to her horses than she does to Tibetan culture. Perhaps readers of her time would have enjoyed reading all this horse talk as an integral part of the adventure they could identify with. Considering the general public of Britain likely knew almost nothing about Tibet in 1894, Bird’s book might very well have been a breath of fresh air for them. It does dispense some rudimentary insight into Tibetan life and Buddhism. There’s maybe one good chapter out of five. For today’s readers, however, who grew up on National Geographic, the Travel Channel, and Wikipedia, Among the Tibetans is unlikely to offer any surprise revelations, and the relentless tone of imperialist condescension is off-putting. While today’s travel writers usually adopt an attitude of “When in Rome, do as Romans do,” Bird’s travelog is more, “When in Rome, complain that you’re not in London.”

Bird was a fascinating person, but her writing on Tibet did not fascinate me. I would probably prefer reading a recent biography of Bird (if one exits) rather than her own travel accounts written in antiquated prose with antiquated perspectives.

The Grand Banks Café by Georges Simenon

Maigret and the sea captain’s murder

The 9th novel in Georges Simenon’s Inspector Maigret series was originally published in 1931 under the French title of Au rendez-vous des Terre-Neuvas. It has since been published in English as The Sailor’s Rendezvous, Maigret Answers a Plea, and The Grand Banks Café. Maigret receives a letter from an old classmate, Jorissen, who is now a teacher in Brittany. One of Jorissen’s former students has been arrested for murder, and the teacher asks his old friend for help in clearing the young man’s name. Maigret had plans to take a trip with his wife to Alsace, but he changes their destination to Normandy and brings Madame Maigret along on a working vacation.

A commercial fishing trawler, the Océan, has returned to the Normandy seaport of Fécamp after having made a voyage to the fishing grounds of the Grand Banks near Newfoundland. Shortly after the boat has docked, the captain of the vessel is found murdered, his body dumped off the wharf. Pierre Le Clinche, Jorissen’s student, was the radio operator on that journey. The crew reports that there was some evident animosity between Le Clinche and the captain during the journey, so the police arrest Le Clinche largely on circumstantial evidence. When Maigret arrives in Fécamp, he searches the Océan for clues and visits Le Clinche in jail to get his side of the story. Maigret also spends much of his investigation in the Grand Banks Café, a waterfront watering hole where all the sailors of Fécamp’s ships spend their time and money.

What’s unusual about this Maigret novel, as opposed to the 20 others I’ve read, is that I had this one figured out—the who, the how, and the why of the murder—about halfway through the book. Normally, I get to the final two chapters of a Maigret case, and he reveals all sorts of details I never thought of. This mystery, however, was not very mysterious, relatively speaking. That’s not to say it’s a bad novel, though. I really like how Simenon draws the reader into the lifestyle of these fishermen on the Normandy coast. The Grand Banks Café is a vivid setting out of an old waterfront film noir. The cast of characters is interesting, and as always Simenon gives them realistic psychological motivations. He brings to life small human dramas that escalate into desperate crimes. There aren’t many viable suspects for the murder, however, so depending on how important you consider the puzzle of a mystery novel, this may not be the Maigret book for you. Like most of Maigret’s adventures, however, I still found this novel a very addictive read.  

Incredible Hulk Epic Collection, Volume 19: Ghost of the Past by Peter David, et al.

Marvel’s ’90s nadir

The 19th Incredible Hulk volume in Marvel’s Epic Collection series of paperbacks reprints Hulk Comics from 1992 to 1994, including Incredible Hulk #397 to 496, Incredible Hulk Annuals 18 and 19, and a few crossover issues from other titles like Doctor Strange and Silver Surfer. During this period in Marvel history, Peter David was a popular and highly acclaimed writer who seemed like the heir apparent to Chris Claremont. I think what made David so popular was that he injected irreverent tongue-in-cheek humor into most of his stories. As a result, however, three decades later, most of the jokes aren’t funny anymore, and every issue feels like an inconsequential waste of time. At this time, the Hulk had Bruce Banner’s brain intact, so he was a smart Hulk (Smulk?). David, however, never lets him do anything smart. Unlike Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four, the Banner-brained Hulk doesn’t engage in any of Banner’s scientific pursuits. Here he’s just a big bruiser. David basically gives him the same wise-cracking personality of The Thing, but without the Brooklyn accent.

The ‘90s were a terrible decade for Marvel art. After several of Marvel’s best artists fled the company to found Image Comics (and even some of those “best” weren’t very good), many of the company’s major titles were left in the hands of mediocre pencillers and untried newcomers. Dale Keown was one of the good ones left behind. Keown draws an excellent Hulk, and other big hulkish brutes, but he’s not so skilled at drawing regular human beings. Unfortunately, Keown only handles a few of the issues in this volume; the rest are in the hands of forgettable lesser-knowns who indulge in the blocky anatomy of the Rob Liefeld school. The ‘90s were also a dismal decade for inking. No one seemed to want to draw shadows anymore, so every panel is made up of thin, chicken-scratch cross-hatchings. This period in Marvel art was a desolate no-man’s land in which Photoshop coloring hadn’t yet become the standard, but in the meantime everyone forgot how to use a pen and brush. Add to that the fact that everything in the ‘90s was EXTREME! so costumes are outrageous and Rick Jones looks like a refugee from a hair metal band. Hulk Annual #19 introduces a villain called Lazarus, typical of this trend, whose outfit looks like a truck full of spikes, tentacles, and shiny armor unloaded on him.

The Leader is the only major Hulk villain to show up in these issues, with the U-Foes under his employ. The Abomination appears briefly in a dream sequence. During this run, the Hulk is mixed up with an organization called the Pantheon, whose members were all named after Greek gods, but they weren’t really Greek gods like the Avengers’ Hercules. They were all just kind of boring and forgettable. A crossover with the former Defenders is plagued by David’s humor and extreme ‘90s villains. There’s the usual romantic strife between Hulk and Betty and Rick Jones and his girlfriend. I liked the Hulk a lot better in the old days when he was dumb and angry. Those classic stories from the ‘60s and ‘70s had more depth and treated the Hulk as a tragic hero. The more Marvel messed with the Hulk—transforming him into different creatures, changing his color, and of course, the oft-repeated trope of Hulk and Banner battling inside of his/their mind—the sillier the character got.

I was an active reader of Marvel Comics in the early ‘90s. In fact, I own some of these Hulk issues in their original printings. It was about this time, however, that I decided to stop reading comics because the quality had declined so much. I like the Epic Collection paperbacks because they allow me to go back and read classic Marvel comics from the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s. Hulk Volume 19, however, consists of comics that are far from epic and past Marvel’s prime.

Jimmie Higgins by Upton Sinclair

Socialism vs. militarism in World War I

Jimmie Higgins, yet another novel about Socialism by America’s most prolific muckraker Upton Sinclair, was published in 1919. In this book, Sinclair paints a picture of what it was like to be a Socialist during World War I. Socialists by definition are pacifists because they refuse to take up arms against their brother workers of other nations. In this time of extreme militaristic jingoism, not only were Socialists persecuted for their beliefs by so-called American “patriots,” they also faced a troubling dilemma in deciding whether to abstain from the war and uphold their pacifism or join the war effort and fight for the defeat of the German Empire.

Jimmie Higgins is a factory machinist who moonlights as a propagandist for the local office of the Socialist Party in the town of Leesville. His position in the party is one of an eager underling. Jimmie is not the kind who makes fiery speeches at Socialist rallies. He’s the guy who posts the flyers and sets up the chairs. Early in the book, Jimmie has a chance encounter with the Socialist candidate for U.S. President (patterned after Eugene V. Debs). When World War I breaks out in Europe, Jimmie and his Socialist friends are outspokenly against America entering the war, at first. Despite his pacifist intentions, however, Jimmie keeps finding himself getting roped into the war effort. The factory in which he works is converted into a munitions plant. After some German Socialists pay him to distribute anti-war propaganda, Jimmie discovers they are agents of the Kaiser. Sinclair finds humor in such ethical conundrums, but they read true to life nonetheless. As Jimmie’s party comrades squabble over what their official stance should be toward the war, Sinclair satirizes the inner workings of the organization, pointing out, for instance, how the Party’s wealthier members—doctors, lawyers, professors—are treated as elites in a party that preaches universal equality.

Much like Jimmie Higgins, Sinclair is a known propagandist. Though he’s often criticized for laying on his socialist views a little thick, in this novel it’s sometimes difficult to tell exactly what he’s trying to say. In some chapters, he satirizes the socialists; in others, he satirizes the capitalists. Rather than one overarching theme to the book, it reads as if Sinclair is making a different point in each chapter. The plot structure of the novel is almost picaresque in that the hero just kind of stumbles from one escapade to the next, as if Sinclair didn’t have a definite plan in mind when he started the book but rather just made it up as he went along. The prose of this novel is written in a style very similar to Sinclair’s later Lanny Budd series, except that Lanny Budd is an international playboy, whereas Jimmie Higgins is a working-class rube only slightly more intelligent than Forrest Gump. Sinclair makes the reader like Jimmie and sympathize with his well-intentioned Socialism, while simultaneously making fun of him.

Though Sinclair gets across his Socialist views in this novel, reading between the lines reveals a rather apologetic tone to the book. It seems as if Sinclair the Socialist felt the heat during World War I, causing him to temper his views for a mainstream audience and assert that “Socialists love their country too!” Sinclair, through the surrogate of Jimmie, seems to be saying, I can be a Socialist and a patriot at the same time . . . so please don’t beat me up or set my house on fire. The novel also suffers from an absurd ending. Sinclair wants to admonish mainstream America for its persecution of Socialists and pacifists during the Great War, but he feels the need to dilute his message with humor. It’s one example of how Jimmie Higgins just never strikes the right balance between frank and funny. A year after the publication of this novel, Sinclair would be far more successful combining social realism with satirical humor in his novel 100%: The Story of a Patriot.

Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson

If a Brontë sister wrote about colonial California

Ramona, a novel by Helen Hunt Jackson, was a huge success when it was published in 1884, and it has never gone out of print since. Though hardly a well-known work of American literature nowadays, except perhaps in the state of California, hundreds of thousands of copies of the book have been sold. This novel was instrumental in formulating the cultural identity of California: the romance of the Spanish missions, chivalrous Mexican aristocracy, and noble, industrious Indians. Ramona likely inspired the creation of Zorro, just about every Ricardo Montalban movie, and many a work of Mission Revival architecture in the Golden State. Jackson was an outspoken advocate of Native American rights, and Ramona was a vehicle through which she lobbied for that cause. In many ways, what Uncle Tom’s Cabin was to African Americans and slavery, Ramona was to Native Americans and the California genocide of the late 19th century.

The novel takes place shortly after the end of the Mexican-American War. The California Gold Rush is underway, as well as a land rush. Since the United States has recently taken over much of Mexican territory, including California, white Americans are moving to the West Coast in droves and driving Mexicans and Indians from their homes. In Southern California lies the Moreno ranch, run by the widowed Señora Moreno and her son Felipe. The Morenos are well-to-do Californios (Hispanic Californians), but their estate has dwindled significantly since the recent U.S. victory in the war. Residing with the Morenos is Ramona, the illegitimate child of Señora Moreno’s brother-in-law and his Native mistress. When Señora Moreno’s sister died, she entrusted the infant Ramona into her sister’s care, and Ramona has been raised in the Moreno household as a foster daughter ever since.

Though no formal arrangement has been made, it is pretty much taken for granted by all that Ramona will someday wed her foster brother Felipe. At the time of the story, both are in their late teens or early twenties. When a band of Temecula Indians comes to the Moreno Ranch to assist with the sheep-shearing, however, Ramona falls in love with Alessandro Assís, a handsome, hard-working Native American respected by all. The young couple decide to marry. When Mother Moreno finds out, she goes ballistic. Refusing to allow her foster daughter to marry an Indian, she drives Alessandro off the property and threatens to imprison Ramona in a convent. Ramona is firmly resolved, however, that she will spend the rest of her life with Alessandro even if she has to abandon her comfortable home and live among the poor and persecuted Indians.

Jackson gets overly melodramatic at times, but not excessively for her time period. The novel includes some unrealistic depictions of mental illness, people dying of sadness and the like, which was common to books of this era. The reader also has to endure the unreasonable Victorian code under which any woman who holds hands with a man is considered a wanton hussy. The story is quite realistic, however, in its handling of racial and social issues following the Mexican-American War. The white settlers did steal the land from the Indians and the Mexicans (who had previously stolen it from the Indians), and Jackson doesn’t mince words about it. This isn’t a John Steinbeck-quality novel by any means, but Ramona is probably better than at least half of Pearl S. Buck’s novels, and she won the Nobel Prize. Though Ramona is a romance, and in many ways a myth, it is very well-written and engaging, with memorable characters that the reader grows to care about. The book quite effectively conveys the plight of Native Americans, and its popular success must have had quite an impact on public opinion regarding Indian affairs. Ramona was an important book for its time. It deserves at least a mention in American literature courses, instead of the obscurity into which it has fallen.  

Fatu-Hiva: Back to Nature by Thor Heyerdahl

Polynesian Walden

Norwegian explorer and author Thor Heyerdahl achieved fame in the late 1940s and early 1950s with his book and documentary film Kon-Tiki, about his voyage from South America to Polynesia on a primitive wooden raft. The Kon-Tiki expedition was not his first adventurous journey, however. As early as his teenage years, Heyerdahl had dreamed of escaping civilization to live a self-sufficient life in an unspoiled wilderness. He decided on Fatu-Hiva, an island in the Marquesas, as the ideal destination in which to live this dream of getting “back to nature.” Heyerdahl deliberately searched for a wife to share this vision, and he found one in Liv Coucheron-Torp. The day after their marriage in 1936, the couple sailed for the Marquesas, where they would be dropped on the shore with little more than the clothes on their backs. In 1938, Heyerdahl published in Norway an account of this unconventional honeymoon entitled Hunt for Paradise. After achieving worldwide fame from his later expeditions, he revised the account and published it in English in 1974 as Fatu-Hiva: Back to Nature.

At the time, Fatu-Hiva was home to a few small coastal Indigenous communities and a handful of white men. The Heyerdahls ventured into the interior of the island to live a semi-isolated existence in the jungle. They relocated a few times to different locations around the island, where they built their own homes and mostly foraged for fruit and shellfish. Heyerdahl doesn’t just describe what they saw and did but also, much like Henry David Thoreau in Walden or Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, philosophizes quite a bit about nature and man’s place in it. This includes much eloquent lamenting on environmental degradation. In this travelog, Heyerdahl’s account goes beyond the romantic stereotype of a South Pacific paradise and presents the realistic pros and cons of living on a tropical island.

It was here in the Marquesas that Heyerdahl first got the idea that Polynesians are descended from seafaring Peruvians, an theory he tested with his Kon-Tiki expedition. On Fatu-Hiva, the Heyerdahls encountered many Polynesian ruins and anthropological artifacts. Heyerdahl points out the stylistic similarities between the art of the Polynesians and Indigenous South Americans. He also discusses in much detail the migration or transplantation of plant and animal species between the Americas and Polynesia. He hypothesizes on which species were brought to Fatu-Hiva by white explorers and which preceded them (thus brought by ancient South American mariners). This theory of the American ancestry of Polynesians was controversial for its time, since most scientists believed that Polynesians were descended from mainland Asians who migrated Eastward. Today, Heyerdahl’s theory is considered racially problematic pseudoscience, and DNA evidence doesn’t support it. Nevertheless, when it comes to expedition narratives, Heyerdahl knows how to write a good book. For those who like exotic adventure, Kon-Tiki is an excellent read; Fatu-Hiva is merely good. For a better account of roughing it in the Marquesas, read Herman Melville’s Typee.

Given Heyerdahl’s background in zoology, I was disappointed that he didn’t write more about the wildlife of Fatu-Hiva. He focuses more attention on the human inhabitants of the island. Despite being far off the beaten path, Fatu-Hiva was not entirely uncivilized nor untouched by European influence. In fact, the greatest danger faced by the Heyerdahls is unexpected: Catholic islanders who persecute the couple for being Protestants. Heyerdahl readily admits that his experiment in getting “back to nature” was only partially successful because the negative aspects of human nature and modern civilization were to some degree inescapable. Nevertheless, his attempt at a tropical idyll is admirable and makes for an interesting read.

A Flag Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of National Symbols by Tim Marshall

Vexillogical history, with an emphasis on violence and jingoism

I’ve always had an interest in flags and heraldry, probably because I’m a graphic designer. Flags are like the ultimate logos in terms of impact and endurance (in some cases). Even though they’re not always well designed, I find it interesting to learn about the stories behind how flags were created and the intended meanings of the colors and symbols. Not surprisingly, therefore, Tim Marshall’s book Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of Flags is right up my alley. It was published in Britain in 2016. The American edition was retitled A Flag Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of National Symbols.

In this book, Marshall discusses the origins and symbolism of numerous flags. Most of them are national flags, but he also covers some organizational flags and a few anomalies like the checkered flag of racing. For the purposes of discussion, Marshall divides these flags into families, like evolutionary branches with similar characteristics—for example, flags based on the American flag or the British Union Jack, the tricolors and crosses of Europe, and flags exhibiting the pan-Arab, pan-African, or pan-Colombian (Latin American) color schemes. Marshall doesn’t discuss the flag of every nation of the world, but he does cover around a dozen flags in each category. Presumably, he has chosen the flags of more populous nations or those with more interesting origin stories.

The book starts out rather underwhelmingly with its history of the United States and United Kingdom flags. These are two of the most important flags in the world, but English-language readers are also likely to already know much of what Marshall has to say about them. The chapter on the U.S. flag reads like a Cub Scout manual. The farther afield that Marshall looks, to smaller nations outside of North American and Europe, the more likely the reader is to find surprising, untold facts and histories. The book does contain many interesting stories about how flags were created and how their designs have been shaped by political events.

In fact, the talk of flags often seems like just an excuse for Marshall to discuss politics, a subject on which he is very knowledgeable. He has worked as a journalist in many nations of the world, including several war zones, so he offers his personal perspective on the nations and political developments covered in the book. Sometimes he’s a little too openly biased in his opinions of particular nations and peoples, when a journalist should maybe keep his cards a little closer to his vest. As the title of the book indicates, Marshall certainly makes an effort to emphasize the negative aspects of flags—the violence they inspire, conflicts over flag burning, the co-option by right-wing factions, warmongers, racists, and so on. Marshall seems to revel in reports of conflict and patriotic sacrifice. It is undoubtedly true that people take their flags very seriously. If fewer writers glorified the notion of dying for one’s flag, however, maybe fewer people would be slaughtering each other over symbolic pieces of cloth

Marshall has written a series of popular books on geography for general audiences. In A Flag Worth Dying For, he strives to make the subject of flags interesting to readers interested in current events and recent history. Personally, I would have preferred a nerdier book that focused more on the flags themselves rather than politics and war, and a book with a more comprehensive selection of nations rather than Marshall’s somewhat arbitrary choices. For those with an interest in vexillology (the study of flags), Alfred Znamierowski’s World Encyclopedia of Flags is a book that I enjoyed, or you can browse through the treasure trove of information at crwflags.com/fotw/flags/.

Doctor Strange Epic Collection, Volume 3: A Separate Reality by Roy Thomas, et al.

First half meh, second half marvelous

The Epic Collection is a series of trade paperbacks in which Marvel reprints their classic comics in full color. The Doctor Strange Epic Collection, Volume 3, published in 2016, consists of issues from 1969 to 1974 featuring Marvel’s master of the mystic arts. I had recently read Doctor Strange Epic Collection, Volume 1 and couldn’t get my hands on Volume 2, so I jumped ahead to Volume 3. Since Volume 1, the magazine in which Doctor Strange got his start, Strange Tales, has been retitled to Doctor Strange while continuing the same numbering system. Volume 3 begins with issues 180 to 183 of that series. Apparently, the good doctor was not one of Marvel’s more popular characters at this time, because Stephen Strange retires from sorcery and superherodom in 1970. Not until December of 1971 does he return to once again take up the mantle of Sorcerer Supreme. Even then, the character was relegated to titles like Marvel Feature and Marvel Premiere. In June of 1974, however, Marvel finally had enough confidence in the character to start a new Doctor Strange series beginning at issue #1.

Volume 3 starts out well with four issues of art by the incomparable Gene Colan, whose dynamic page layouts lend themselves well to Strange’s occult adventures. The writing by Roy Thomas, however, is not so great. It was at this time that Doctor Strange was wearing a blue mask and attempting to maintain a secret identity, even though his real name and superhero name are the same. Unlike most Marvel characters, Strange has almost no personal life to speak of, which makes him rather one-dimensional, although he does have a girlfriend, Clea, who spends a lot of time on the sidelines. (There is one odd scene in which Strange meets the writer Tom Wolfe in Times Square, and it turns out they’re old friends.) The stories in the first half of the book are mostly horror stories in which Strange faces off against a series of reptilian humanoid creatures that look like they came right out of old Tales to Astonish comics. Once Colan leaves, things get even worse as the Doctor is juggled like a hot potato through the hands of a string of mediocre artists and writers.

With Marvel Premiere #9, however, writer Steve Englehart and artist Frank Brunner take up the creative duties for Strange, and from there his exploits take a turn for the better. I’m not a huge fan of Englehart; some of the stuff he wrote for the Avengers and Defenders just seemed too weird-for-weird’s sake to me. Here, however, his style meshes well with the essence of the character. After too many pedestrian horror stories, the Strange tales once again enter the realm of glorious cosmic mysticism. Brunner also excels in his artistic duties. He is not quite the consummate anatomist that Colan is, but he does a great job of envisioning and rendering all of the alternate dimensions and magical phenomena that Strange encounters in his sorcerous work.

One thing I have never seen in a superhero comic in my entire life: a character actually excuses himself to go to the bathroom. One of the villains says, “Nature calls,” and exits the room for five minutes, allowing his captive to escape. Leave it to Englehart to come up with that.

The first half of Volume 3 is probably 2-star work, with the exception of Colan’s beautiful art. The second half of the book, however, is solid 4-star work from Englehart and Brunner. Initially, the reader of this collection might judge Doctor Strange to be a forgettable B-list hero, but by the end of the volume one finds hope that the character will ascend to Marvel greatness.