The Soong Sisters (1941) By Emily Hahn

 

It would be difficult to overstate the influence the Soong sisters had on Twentieth Century China. To their parents and family friends they were Ailing, Chingling, and Meiling. To the rest of the world they were: Madame Kung, wife of the Chinese banking tycoon H.H. Kung; Madame Sun, wife of Dr. Sun Yat-sen the “father” of the post-dynastic Chinese Republic; and Madame Chiang Kai-shek, wife of Generalisimo then President of Nationalist China.  All three stood at the side of their illustrious husbands, sometimes in front of them, not behind them.  While the book is definitely political reporting, it is also a fascinating personal family history.

Born in Shanghai during the final decades of the Manchu dynasty, China’s final imperial dynasty, the sisters were the daughters of Charlie Soong, a successful businessman and his wife.  There were also two brothers, one would eventually run the family business, the other would grow-up to be the first Finance Minister of the Republic.

While his wife confined her role to mother and homemaker in the traditional style of Chinese culture, Charlie who was educated in America, was adamant all of the children, including his daughters, would also be educated in America. He would send his daughters to Wesleyan University in Macon, Georgia.  It was founded by the Methodist Church in 1836 and was the first American university to convey degrees to women.  All of the Soong children would return to China after completing their educations.

At the time of their return China was going through massive rapidly changing political upheaval.  After overthrowing the dynasty, many factions were competing for power while Dr. Sun served for a period as a transitional figurehead.  The main factions were the Communist Party eventually headed by Mao Tse Tung; and what would become the Nationalist Party, headed by Chiang Kai-Shek, with a factional split between the north based in Beijing and the south based in Nanking. 

The Soong Sisters separately supported different factions, at times significantly stressing family relations.  Madame Sun, who was the keeper of Dr. Sun’s political legacy was an advocate of working with the Communists because they addressed the needs of the peasantry.  Madame Chiang Kai-Shek was ruthless in her support of the Nationalists, defined by her as her husband.  And Madame Kung, as oligarchs always do, supported whoever was in power. The sisters and their differing politics were well known to the Chinese public.

Detractors of the Soong sisters normally describe them this way: “one loved money, one loved power; and one loved her country.”  Clearly, Emily Hahn, the author of this book found that to be an unfair description.  All three loved China, in their own way, and it would be accurate to say they also loved each other. 

The concluding chapter of the book documents the importance of the three of them coming together to advocate for a national unity effort to counter Japan’s invasion of China, and to warn foreign interests (including the U.S.) they could help China rebuff Japan now, which they did not, or they could pay for it later, which they did on December 7, 1941 at Pearl Harbor.

EmilyHahn was an American journalist, author, and regular contributor to the New Yorker Magazine.  She lived in Shanghai during much of the time period of the book and had social access to China’s merchant class, including the Soongs.  Her journalism claim-to-fame was her interviews with Madame Chiang Kai-Shek. Hahn is also one of the key characters in Taras Grescoe’s novel Shanghai Grand.

The Soong Sisters -- complete movie

As always, a movie was made of The Soong Sisters.  It is on YouTube with English subtitles and it is excellent.

Recommendation:  Yes, both book and movie.  Real history buffs should read The Soong Sisters and Edgar Snow’s Red Star Over China (biography of Mao Tse Tung).

Breakfast of Champions (1973) By Kurt Vonnegut

 

Once you have read a few of Kurt Vonnegut’s novels, you have learned to expect the bizarre.  Classify them as science fiction, or comedy, or biting social commentary, but expect dry humor, with no sacred cows. 

Expect too the reappearance of some familiar characters.  And in Breakfast of Champions, expect Vonnegut, as the book’s author (using the pseudonym Philboy Sludge) to have first person conversations with the characters he has created, including threatening to uncreate them.

Breakfast of Champions, published in 1973, and comically illustrated with juvenile line art, is a riot.

The lead character in the book is Dwayne Hoover, owner of the Pontiac dealership in Midland City, Ohio.  He is the town’s most prominent citizen.  As such he has been asked to spearhead the opening the new Arts Center.  In that role he will accept the recommendation of Eliot Rosewater of the Rosewater Foundation (and main character in Vonnegut’s God Bless You Mr. Rosewater) on who should be the honorary guest at the ceremony.  His recommendation is Kilgore Trout, Rosewater’s favorite author. Midland City is excited to have an oft published writer for its opening even though no one in town knows anything about him.

Trout, who appears in several Vonnegut novels, writes science fiction articles.  While they are widely published, they are almost never read. Trout sells his articles to porn magazines. His stories are used as filler between photo spreads. And we aren’t talking Playboy Magazine, the magazines that buy Trout’s stories are more along the lines of Hustler, hardcore pornography lawsuits waiting to happen.  Rosewater reads them “for the articles.” 

Trout will hitchhike from New York City to Midland City to accept the honor.  His travel escapades along the way are … well, memorable.

Once in Midland, Sludge (Vonnegut) will stop by the bar at the hotel where guests are staying.  There he will observe them, and then have a conversation with his characters, wrapping the story up.

There is an additional character in the book named Wayne Hoobler.  He is a Black man who has recently been released from a correctional facility.  He idolizes and works for Dwayne Hoover.  With intentionally similar names, Wayne is economically and socially the polar opposite of Dwayne.  This works perfectly as a social commentary, though distracting from its message is Vonnegut’s frequent use of the “N” work to reflect the "reality" of the times.

Recommendation:  Not for everyone, but if you like Vonnegut’s other works, you’ll love this.

The Secret Garden (1911) By Frances Hodgson Burnett

 

The Secret Garden is one of those novels that I should have read as a kid, but never did. Written by Frances Hodgson Burnett, it is technically children's literature, but works for adults too (sort of like Narnia). The Library of America has collected The Secret Garden along with two other children’s classics written by Burnett, Little Lord Fauntleroy and A Little Princess into a single volume.

In Secret Garden, Mary Lennox, the 10-year-old daughter of English socialites in British Colonial India is neglected by them and primarily raised by the couple's servants. The servants must do whatever the girl commands, a sure formula for a spoiled rotten brat.  When both parents die in a cholera outbreak, Mary is sent back to England to live with her widower Uncle, Lord Archibald Craven, who it turns out is equally uninterested in children. 

Craven’s home is Misselthwaite Manor, a 100-room country house and estate located in the moors of Yorkshire. While there is a staff at the Manor – cooks, gardeners, etc – they are decidedly not “servants,” a point Mary has difficulty adjusting to.  She’s cared for adequately, and is warned that certain part of the estate are off limits to her.  Soon she begins exploring.  Following cries she hears in the middle of the night, she will discover there is a bedridden young boy living in the Manor, the existence of whom no one wants to acknowledge.  She befriends him and discovers his name is Colin, Lord Craven’s son.  He is bedridden because he has been told that he will have a hunchback and die young.

She will also discover a secret garden on the estate, which has been locked for 10 years by order of Lord Craven. She will also meet a young boy named Dickon, the brother of the young girl who brings her breakfast every morning.  Dickon, literally speaks to the animals, and knows everything about plants. Together they will discover a way to get into the long abandoned garden, and begin to bring it back to life. 

Mary in her conversations with Colin tells him about the garden.  He has no interest until Mary calls it a “secret" garden. Eventually, while Lord Craven is out of the country, Mary will convince Colin he must see the garden, and then with Dickon’s assistance will put Colin in his wheelchair and take him to the garden. To shorten the synopsis, the “secret garden” gives Colin the will to live and he will grow to health, and even begin walking, before his father returns to the Estate.

How his father finds all of this out, and reacts to it, are the concluding chapters of the book. 

In addition to reading The Secret Garden, I also watched or re-watched five of the many movie adaptations of it. (Yes, between Covid-19 shelter-in-place guidelines and horrible winter weather, I’ve had a lot of time on my hands).

The review of the movies has been interesting, all of them vary a little from the book narrative. I think my favorite would be the 1949 version (it has the best Mary and the best Dickon, in my opinion). It is primarily filmed in black and white; but gets the Wizard of Oz treatment when the kids restore the garden -- as they walk through the garden’s gate the filming changes from black and white to technicolor.

Movie Trailers

 2020 version

2017 industrial version

1993 version

1987Hallmark television version

1949 black & white version

Actor Colin Firth appears in two of the films, in the 2020 version he plays Lord Craven, in the 1987 Hallmark television version, he does a cameo as Colin Craven as a young adult (this is not in the book, nor is his marriage proposal). The script writers while mostly faithful to the details of the book, all take nuanced liberties with the set-up of the story’s concluding scenes – none of them match the narrative of the book.

The 2017 movie version is interestingly unique.  It is as if Charles Dickens wrote the script, keeping the storyline but changing the setting from an English country estate to Craven Industries in a factory district of London. The secret garden becomes a secret workshop, and the Dickon character is as if played by Oliver Twist.

Recommendation: Read the book.

Wieland or, The Transformation (1798) By Charles Brockden Brown

 

Published in 1798, Weiland or, The Transformation, An American Tale by Charles Brockden Brown, is considered the first American gothic novel. While fiction, it is thought based on the real-life story of James Yates, who in 1781 killed his wife and four children, then attempted to kill his sister -- all on divine orders -- expressing no remorse for his conduct in court later.

In the book, Theodore Wieland and his sister Clara are the children of a German immigrant who, disillusioned with other protestant denominations, creates his own with the intent of converting Native Americans to it. It fails to catch on, and in a solitary midnight ritual he will be mysteriously injured; and die as a result of “spontaneous combustion.” His wife will die a few months later.

As unusual as that paragraph may sound, in early American history offshoots of mainline protestant religious denominations were being founded all the time.  Most failed.  Others like the Church of the Later Day Saints (Mormons) founded by John Smyth in New York in 1830, and the Seventh Day Adventists founded by Hiram Edson in Michigan in 1863, grew to have more staying power.

Theodore and Clara, young at the time of their parents’ death, will inherit the estate and be placed with an aunt. While ostensibly protestant, they will not attest to any denomination. Their best childhood friends are neighbors Catherine Pleyel and her brother Henry. In adulthood, Theodore will marry Catherine, and late in the story, Clara will marry Henry. All four will begin to hear voices, setting off a horrible chain of events. A mysterious fifth person will play a major role in these events. And … sorry, I’m not giving any more of a spoiler.

This novel is a page-turner.

Charles Brockden Brown is one of the first American-born major novelists, pre-dating even James Fenimore Cooper. He is credited as a major influence on the later macabre works of Edgar Allan Poe who was born a year after Brown’s death from tuberculosis at the age of 39.

Recommended:  Yes, particularly for American Literature majors.

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019) By Ocean Vuong

 

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a novel of incredibly painful memories told in a beautifully written, hopefully cathartic, letter.  The author, and the book’s main character, are Amerasians, a termed coined to define children born of Vietnamese women and American soldiers during the Vietnam War.  These children have had to navigate many issues in their lives.   

The letter writer is a young man living in Hartford, CT.  He was born in Vietnam near the end of the war. The English translation of his name is Little Dog.  His mother gave him this name, because she hoped it would help him be "overlooked" by many evils: napalm bombs, American guns, Viet Cong guns, and the taunts of those who knew his mother slept with American soldiers.  Post-war, Little Dog, his mother Mai, and Grandmother Lan will be treated horribly because they were considered traitors.  Eventually they will make their way to a refugee camp in the Philippines.  An American soldier, who may or may not be the boy’s biological father, will help them resettle in the States -- and then disappears from the story. 

Little Dog grows up as an immigrant living in a low/no income neighborhood of Hartford; he will learn ESL and begin school; neither his mother nor grandmother will learn English. They exist on his mother’s meager income from working in a nail salon.  Both the mother, and to a lesser extent the grandmother, suffer from PTSD.  Once he becomes a teenager, Little Dog will work summers on a farm on the outskirts of town.  There he will work with and becomes friends with the grandson of the farm’s owner, a friendship that will develop into a closeted relationship.  Dealing with his own issues, the grandson will progressively slip into a severe opiate addiction and die of an overdose.

The novel/letter is Little Dog’s attempt to make sense of this life.  

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, is written by Ocean Vuong, an Amerasian born in 1982.  He is one of three millennial authors I have read in the past year or so who are already racking up literary awards.  The other two are: Pajtim Statovci, an immigrant to Finland, born in Kosovo in 1992, who wrote My Cat Yugoslavia; and Tommy Orange, a member of the Cheyenne Nation, author of There There, born in California in 1982.  Each of these books deals with the survival skills needed to grow up as a minority inside a dominate culture.  

The House of the Seven Gables (1851) By Nathaniel Hawthorne

 

One of my winter reads has been The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It is one of the most recognized titles in American literature, yet I suspect today it is probably one of the least read. It is regarded a Gothic masterpiece.

Set in puritan Massachusetts Colony, the book follows the blue-blood Pyncheon family from the Salem Witch Trial era through multiple generations. The patriarch of the family, Colonel Pyncheon, swindles the property he wants to build a mansion on from a poor carpenter named Matthew Maule by accusing him of being a wizard. As he is being hanged for witchcraft, Maule pronounces a curse on Pyncheon and his hereditary successors who would live on the land. When the mansion, The House of the Seven Gables, is completed the Colonel throws a party to celebrate. As the guests arrive, they will discover the Colonel’s body, dead by “natural” causes in the manner described in Maule’s curse. 

The mansion will pass down through generations of the family, eventually being bequeathed to unmarried Hepzibah Pyncheon for her and her brother Clifford to reside in as long as they may live. The annual stipend she inherited however proves insufficient and the mansion will fall into disrepair, even as she opens a “cent shop” and takes in a boarder to make ends meet. What Hepzibah does not know is that the boarder is a descendent of Matthew Maule, using an assumed name.    

There have been many movies made of The House of the Seven Gables, the first being a 1920 silent film. The 1940 movie is the most prominent. It stars Margaret Lindsay as Hepzibah, Vincent Price as her brother Clifford, and George Sanders as their cousin Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon. It's on Amazon Prime.  It is a good movie even though it takes major liberties with the book’s narrative (for example, the book ends with a death, the movie ends with a double wedding). Another fun version was an adaptation for the Shirley Temple Storybook hour on 1960s television. While its script is shortened, it is more faithful to the book, though it slants the script toward the role of cousin Phoebe Pyncheon, the part played by Shirley Temple. Agnes Morehead played Hepzibah. 

Recommendations: Book YES, but with the warning it is not a quick read, it has a very convoluted plot and is written in prim & proper, formal, puritan English. Also, Yes to the 1940 movie version. It is one of those great black & white Turner Classic Movie films, but understand it is significantly not faithful to the book. As for the Shirley Temple Storybook version, a Yes, because the 1960 television production quality is campy, particularly if you grew up to be a Dark Shadows fan.

The Buried Giant (2015) By Kazuo Ishiguro

 

The Buried Giant is a book of mythology set in the years after what could be the ultimate mythology: King Arthur and the Knights of the Roundtable.  The story has mists, ogres, a dragon, a young boy who has been bitten by the dragon, a warrior hero, and King Arthur’s nephew, Sir Gawain.  What it doesn’t have is a giant, at least not in the generally known sense.

The novel, a fun read, is the creation of Kazuo Ishiguro, winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize for Literature.  He's better known to the public as the author of The Remains of the Day, which is better known as a movie starring Anthony Hopkins.  He’s a versatile author, to say the least.

On two levels the plot deals with memory, addressing the question: Is it better to protect oneself by burying bad memories, nightmares that include tragedy, or to remember these things and try to learn from them?  This is not as easy of a question as you might think.

The story begins in a cave-dwelling village of the Britons where none of the residents have a memory more than a day long.  Living there is an elderly couple who are beginning to have short, unexplained dreams harking back to earlier times.  One such dream is of a son who moved away from the village.  Another dream entails a test of love that a ferryman administers before he will row couples across a river together.  After discussing these dreams with each other Axl and his wife Beatrice, who is not in good health, decide to try and find their son, setting off on an adventure filled trip.

Along the way they come across a village which has just been attacked by ogres.  There is also another traveler in the village, a Saxon warrior.  He leads a small band, including a young orphan boy, out to hunt down the ogre. They find and destroy it, but during the fight the young boy is injured by a dragon that has been dormant for many years.  The villagers fear the boy, having been so “marked” by the dragon, will cause it to return. 

When Axl and Beatrice leave the village the next morning to continue their trip the warrior and the boy will accompany them part of the way, before going their own way.  Along the route they will encounter Sir Gawain.  In full Knight regalia, Gawain is the nephew of the late King Arthur.  Piecing bits of learned knowledge together, it becomes clear that the memory loss is caused by a mist in the land, and that the mist is the breath of the dragon.  The only way to end it is to slay the dragon. While both the warrior and Sir Gawain vow to do so, they each have ulterior missions.

What they do not acknowledge is the role played by none other than Merlin, King Arthur’s magician.  Merlin had conjured up the dragon & its mist-breath to make the warring Britons and Saxons of Arthur’s time forget their past hostilities toward each other, putting an end to their wars of revenge.  That the people forget everything, not just the wars, was an accidental byproduct of the curse. 

What the warrior figures out is that Sir Gawain’s actual quest is to protect the dragon, not kill it – thereby forever maintaining the peace.  The warrior on the other hand, has been sent undercover by the Saxon King to the East (outside of the range of the memory loss aspect of the mist) to kill the dragon, and scout the Briton’s territory in advance of a second Saxon invasion.  To slay the dragon, the warrior must first destroy Sir Gawain.  He will do both.

As Axl and Beatrice continue on their way, and the mist clears, their personal memories will return. Near the journey’s end they will remember that their son had gone to an island, and to get to it they must cross a river.  When they encounter the ferryman that Beatrice has dreamt of, they submit to his test.  

With memories intact, Axl will pass the test, Beatrice will not.  And, with the dragon slain, the Saxons are free to resume their conquest.

This not particularly happy ending however, leaves the question unanswered:  Are Axl and Beatrice better off having remembered their past?  Is the conjured loss of memory the only way for King Arthur’s peace to survive?  Is anyone better off for having slain the dragon, waking the buried giant of memories?

Recommendation:  Clearly in writing the above I have shamelessly violated spoiler alerts. Nevertheless, The Buried Giant is still a fun read.