Scientific adventuring through Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand
Whether she is WALKING WITH THE GREAT APES, which features the work of Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Birute Galdikas; canoeing the Sundarbans for man-eating tigers in SPELL OF THE TIGER; or, in this case, exploring Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos seeking the golden moon bear, Sy Montgomery single-mindedly seeks out rare animals, refusing to limit her searches to “safe” areas. Facing land-mines in Cambodia, warring tribes on the Thai border with Myanmar (Burma), poachers in Laos, and a 
poverty-stricken Laotian society in which people eat virtually all insect and animal life, Montgomery attempts to track down a golden bear with Mickey-Mouse-type ears and a black mane, thought to be a variety of moon bear, and unlike any other bear known to science, possibly “the scientific finding of a lifetime.”
Frustrated by a search in which all the animals she seeks are found in cages in the city or living, confined, in remote refuges and zoos, Montgomery tries to identify and find the bears’ native habitats, describing the bears’ importance in local culture and the myths and legends which have grown up around them. Through interviews with native wildlife experts, local tribes, and even Hmong refugees in Skokie, Illinois, she tries to capture their fading memories of bear types to see if there is, in fact, an unknown bear species.
A writer, rather than a hard scientist, Montgomery is often lyrical in her descriptions, romantic (some would say excessively so) in her observations and imagery: “Emerging from the deathly still of hibernation, out of gravelike dens, bears rise, Christlike from the dead.” She tends to anthropomorphize her subjects–a bear “reminded me of a street waif,” a civet “stared at us defiantly,” and a pleated gibbon was “stunned and hopeless.”
Less clearly focused and concentrated than her other books, Search for the Golden Moon Bear becomes less a search than a travelogue by the midpoint of Montgomery’s book, as she and the scientists and aides who accompany her continue their explorations into remote and dangerous areas of southeast Asia. Montgomery fans will undoubtedly find this latest adventure fascinating, despite its disappointing conclusions and ominous implications for the future.
Notes: The author’s photo appears on http://www.paulagordon.com, which also contains stories about the author.
Recreating the traumas that Third World citizens face every day, Djaout offers vivid pictures of their complex but fragile lives. Here, in an unnamed country, presumably Algeria, government bureaucrats are concerned only with protecting themselves, their jobs, and their kickbacks, their fear of change so ingrained that any hope of modernization and real progress is squelched. The average citizen tries to remain anonymous, making do in a society which does not reward excellence. As one bureaucrat explains, “…the words ‘creation’ and ‘invention’ are sometimes condemned because they are perceived as heresy, a questioning of what exists already…of the faith and the prevailing order.”
y affecting to read a book which is not in its final form because its Algerian author was assassinated in 1993 at age thirty-nine. Doubly moving for the reader is this book’s warning cry against mindless practitioners of fundamentalist oppression, the very people responsible for the author’s death in Algeria. Djaout clearly knew he was in danger, knew why he was in danger, and knew why he, along with other writers and artists, represented a threat to single-minded fanatics in his country, yet he continued to create, leaving behind this final book, a legacy not just to compatriots who might feel like lonely soldiers against intolerance but to lovers of books throughout the world who sometimes take for granted the power and glory of a free press.
is the powerful story which the reader cannot help but conjure of the author’s own travails as a writer trying to find an outlet for his creativity within a similar society, and his eventual assassination. Equally compelling is the interior story the reader cannot help but create, and which I believe the author expected his reader to create, of what his own life would be like under similar circumstances.
hen Cuba allowed its citizens to leave the country for the United States on anything that would float, Ruins, by Achy Obejas is a touching, close-up look at one man and his family and how he represents the life of the failed revolution of 1959. Like his countrymen, Usnavy Martin Leyva, named for the ships outside his mother’s house near Guantanamo Bay, has always lived in the shadow of the United States, ninety tantalizing miles away. Unlike many of his contemporaries, however, Usnavy truly believes in the revolution and in the revolutionary songs sung by elementary school children.
His quest to find parts to fix the little lamp brings him into contact with glass artisans, and he (and the reader) gradually learns the history of Louis Tiffany and his relationship with the island. Tiffany was hired to decorate the Presidential Palace, now the Museum of the Revolution, but the obvious addition of a major Tiffany lamp at the entrance of the palace never occurred. If the lamp had ever been made, in fact, it would be the “Cuban Holy Grail.” In the meantime, Usnavy learns that many of the “Tiffany Lamps” that are so valuable were actually made by counterfeiters in Cuba, who took glass making to new heights, sometimes more effectively than Tiffany himself. Usnavy quickly determines that if he can just fix and sell the little lamp, he may be able to get enough money to buy a bike for his daughter.
Poet Achy Obejas, born in Cuba but raised in the US, creates a vibrant, and sad picture, of life among the Cuban populace through Usnavy, her Everyman. The emotions conjured in this book are intense, though the action is limited to the everyday life of Usnavy as he tries to live a real life within a revolutionary framework that he will not admit has failed him. Because of its intense personal focus, Usnavy’s emotional struggle resembles drama more than typical fiction, and it is easy to imagine the six parts of this novel as six scenes from a play—one which ensnares its audience in the life of a man trying to keep believing in a dream which has failed, an experience which can only be evaluated in terms of classical tragedy. With its compressed imagery and symbolism, and its dark vision of life as it may still exist today, Ruins by Achy Obejas is a memorable addition to “Cuban noir.”
n unnamed speaker is contacted by a gravedigger and his “depraved friend” to write a biography of the recently deceased philosopher Abd al-Rahman, “the existentialist of Baghdad,” he is told that the biography will be financed by a wealthy merchant and that they have documents to give him for his research. Though the writer knows that these people are scoundrels, he is so destitute that he agrees to accept the job. Constantly looking for valuable information which will eliminate the possibility of distortion, the speaker begins his research. Ultimately, one of his financial backers, a trader in art and antiques, tells him just to “present [me] with some endings, and [I] will choose one.”
sires of the well-off Abd-al-Rahman, who is always seeking the goal of “nausea” through wine, women, and self-indulgence. Whenever he is invited to write an article for publication, he turns it down with the excuse that “Whoever writes finds something worthwhile, a meaningful life. How can I then go on believing in a meaningless world?” They believe in constant talk, not writing – conveniently rationalizing their behavior in terms of their search for “nausea.”
