By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept by Paulo Coelho

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1994) by Paulo Coelho is a tale of one woman’s attempt to overcome her painful past and find true love in her childhood friend who has now become a spiritual leader able to heal people with a touch.

Paulo Coelho

Reunited after many years apart, Pilar meets her man after a conference and throughout the following week she struggles to accept love in her heart and move toward a future that must take her away from her home in Zaragoza.

“I could have,” Pilar thinks. “What does this phrase mean? At any given moment in our lives, there are certain things that could have happened but didn’t. The magic moments go unrecognized, and then suddenly, the hand of destiny changes everything” (p 9).

And it is this hand of destiny that leads Pilar to the banks of the River Piedra, where the book opens and ends (and by far one of the more beautiful openings to a book I’ve ever read):

“By the River Piedra I sat down and wept. There is a legend that everything that falls into the waters of this river—leaves, insects, the feathers of birds—is transformed into the rocks that make the riverbed. If only I could tear out my heart and hurl it into the current, then my pain and longing would be over, and I could finally forget.

“By the River Piedra I sat down and wept. The winter air chills the tears on my cheeks, and my tears fall into the cold waters that course past me. Somewhere, this river joins another, then another, until—far from my heart and sight—all of them merge with the sea.

“May my tears run just as far, that my love might never know that one day I cried for him” (p 1).

And on those banks of the River Piedra Pilar sits to write out her love story that takes place from December 4 to December 10, 1993.

After the conference, Pilar and her love take a road trip into the mountains and she thinks to herself:

“No one can lie, no one can hide anything, when he looks directly into someone’s eyes. And any woman with the least bit of sensitivity can read the eyes of a man in love” (p 20).

And though she struggles with her own love for this man as she debates a more practical future back with her studies in her hometown, the spiritual leader, who remains nameless, knows exactly what he wants.

“‘I did find it. But when I returned to the plaza, I no longer had the courage to say what I had rehearsed. So I promised myself that I would return the medal to you only when I was able to complete the sentence that I’d begun that day almost twenty years ago. For a long time, I’ve tried to forget it, but it’s always there. I can’t live with it any longer.’

“He put down his coffee, lit a cigarette, and looked at the ceiling for a long time. Then he turned to me. ‘It’s a very simple sentence,’ he said. ‘I love you’” (p 22-23).

And in this magical moment, much like many other special moments that populate this rather meagre novel of only 180 pages, the reader senses art shaping and shadowing-out in fine details the raw portrait of life, complicated and beautiful.

“Sometimes an uncontrollable feeling of sadness grips us, he said. We recognize that the magic moment of the day has passed and that we’ve done nothing about it. Life begins to conceal its magic and its art.

“We have to listen to the child we once were, the child who still exists inside us. That child understands magic moments. We can stifle its cries, but we cannot silence its voice.

“The child we once were is still there. Blessed are the children, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (p 24).

Now in the mountains Pilar still struggles with falling in love because she knows how difficult and fearful it would be to give herself completely to love and then be rejected. No woman wants that, and so she hesitates on that delicate line between love and indifference, love-filled chaos and calm safety.

“It was raining in Bilbao. Lovers need to know how to lose themselves and then how to find themselves again. He was able to do both well. Now he was happy, and as we returned to the hotel he sang:

“Son los locos que inventaron el amor.

“The song was right: it must have been the lunatics who invented love…

“But love is much like a dam: if you allow a tiny crack to form through which only a trickle of water can pass, that trickle will quickly bring down the whole structure, and soon no one will be able to control the force of the current.

“For when those walls come down, then love takes over, and it no longer matters what is possible or impossible; it doesn’t even matter whether we can keep the loved one at our side. To love is to lose control” (p 30-31).

And Pilar remains guarding her heart, watching her man closely, unsure of her future, of his love, of the paths set before them. But like a true gentleman, her great love stays true to his word and the course set before the both of them.

“He stopped fooling with his glass and looked at me. ‘No, I’m not mistaken. I know you don’t love me.’

“This confused me even more.

“‘But I’m going to fight for your love,’ he continued. ‘There are some things in life that are worth fighting for to the end.’

“I was speechless.

“‘You are worth it,’ he said.

“I turned away, trying to pretend that I was interested in the restaurant’s décor. I had been feeling like a frog, and suddenly I was a princess again.

“I want to believe what you’re saying, I thought to myself. It won’t change anything, but at least I won’t feel so weak, so incapable” (p 42-43).

And as the two lovers take long walks in the snow and mountains, enjoy drinking wine next to an old well in the center of a very old village, Pilar continues to battle her own heart, fighting every attempt to give in to love and the joy she knows she so desperately needs and deserves.

“I was tired of playing the child and acting the way many of my friends did—the ones who are afraid that love is impossible without even knowing what love is. If I stayed like that, I would miss out on everything good that these few days with him might offer.

“Careful, I thought. Watch out for the break in the dam. If that break occurs, nothing in the world will be able to stop it” (p 47).

And yet Pilar is still afraid of love, to giving herself over completely. She explains:

“‘But then you get used to that person, and you begin to be completely dependent on them. Now you think about him for three hours and forget him for two minutes. If he’s not there, you feel like an addict who can’t get a fix. And just as addicts steal and humiliate themselves to get what they need, you’re willing to do anything for love’” (p 54).

And Pilar finally comes face-to-face with the Other, a part of herself that holds her back from experiencing the fullness of joy and love in her life, that part of people who criticizes, complains and judges and keeps people from taking risks for the sake of change, for the sake of happiness, for the sake of love.

“I began to imagine how I would like to be living right at that moment. I wanted to be happy, curious, joyful—living every moment intensely, drinking the water of life thirstily. Believing again in my dreams. Able to fight for what I wanted.

“Loving a man who loved me.

“Yes, that was the woman I wanted to be—the woman who was suddenly presenting herself and becoming me…

“I looked at the Other, there in the corner of the room—fragile, exhausted, disillusioned. Controlling and enslaving what should really be free: her emotions. Trying to judge her future loves by the rules of her past suffering.

“But love is always new…

“When the Other left me, my heart once again began to speak to me. It told me that the breach in the dike had allowed the waters to pour through, that the wind was blowing in all directions at once, and that it was happy because I was once again willing to listen to what it had to say.

“My heart told me that I was in love. And I fell asleep with a smile on my lips” (69-70).

I wish I could tell you that Pilar found her great love, as many wish they would, but as I explained earlier: the book opens and ends with Pilar sitting by the River Piedra and weeping and writing out her love story as only she could.

But if we have learned anything about true love, Shakespeare said it best: Never did the course of true love run smooth; and the same goes for the rivers we kneel next to and cry for those times we held too tightly to love only to let it slip through our fingers and fall into the waters below, carrying it out to sea far, far from the days that were once filled with sunshine and laughter. May each of us find our great love in life and when we do, let us look to the heavens with blessings and thanks upon our lips to know how truly special life can be if we are strong enough and brave enough to open our hearts once more.

By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept by Paulo Coelho is a strong recommend.

Keep reading and smiling…

CG Fewston is an international writer/university professor who currently holds a post as Visiting Fellow in the English department at City University of Hong Kong. CG Fewston earned an M.A. in Literature with honors from Stony Brook University, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and Fiction from Southern New Hampshire University, where he had the chance to work with wonderful and talented novelists like Richard Adams Carey (author of Their Town, forthcoming in 2015; and, The Philosopher Fish, 2006) and Jessica Anthony (author of Chopsticks, 2012; and,The Convalescent, 2010) as well as New York Times Best-Selling novelists Matt Bondurant (author of The Night Swimmer, 2012; and, The Wettest County in the World, 2009, made famous in the movie Lawless, 2012) and Wiley Cash (author of A Land More Kind Than Home, 2013; and, This Dark Road to Mercy, 2014).

Among many others, CG Fewston’s stories, photographs and essays have appeared in Bohemia, Ginosko Literary Journal, Tendril Literary Magazine, Driftwood Press, The Missing Slate, Foliate Oak Magazine, The Writer’s Drawer, Moonlit Road, Nature Writing, and Travelmag: The Independent Spirit; and for several years he was a contributor to Vietnam’s national premier English newspaper, Tuoi Tre, ”The Youth Newspaper.” You can read more about CG Fewston and his writing at www.cgfewston.me & www.cgfewston.com & www.cgfewston.org

His new novel, A TIME TO LOVE IN TEHRAN, will be published in 2015.

“Love in Hong Kong”
C.G. and Shan, Oct. 26, 2014

View all my reviews

Warrior of the Light by Paulo Coelho
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Warrior of the Light: A Manual (2002) by Paulo Coelho was first published in Portuguese in 1997 and consists of one page snippets (out of 137 pages that can be read in a day or so) inspiring readers to embrace their life to the fullest and to rise to their destiny, whatever that might be. Once again Paulo is able to motivate readers into further contemplating the reality around them and how to excel within themselves in order to shape the most beautiful world they can live in.

Paulo Coelho

But what is a “Warrior of the Light” exactly? Paulo explains:

A Warrior of the Light “is someone capable of understanding the miracle of life, of fighting to the last for something he believes in—and of hearing the bells that the waves set ringing on the seabed” (p xviii).

Below are just some of the pieces that spoke to me, and so I hope they also speak to you in an hour when you may need them the most:

“A Warrior knows that the ends do not justify the means. Because there are no ends, there are only means. Life carries him from unknown to unknown. Each moment is filled with this thrilling mystery: the Warrior does not know where he came from nor where he is going” (p 131).

“By now, millions of people have given up. They don’t get angry, they don’t weep, they don’t do anything; they merely wait for time to pass. They have lost the ability to react. You, however, are sad. That proves that your soul is still alive” (p 122).

A Warrior of the Light “knows that he has learned something with every battle he has fought, but many of those lessons have caused him unnecessary suffering. More than once he has wasted time fighting for a lie. And he has suffered for people who did not deserve his love. Victors never make the same mistake twice. That is why the Warrior only risks his heart for something worthwhile” (p 8).

“Injustices happen. Everyone finds themselves in situations they do not deserve, usually when they are unable to defend themselves. Defeat often knocks at the Warrior’s door. At such times, he remains silent. He does not waste energy on words, because they can do nothing. He knows it is best to use his strength to resist and have patience, knowing that Someone is watching. Someone who saw the unnecessary suffering and who will not accept it. That Someone gives him what he most needs: time. Sooner or later, everything will once more work in his favor. A Warrior of the Light is wise; he does not talk about his defeats” (p 71).

“The moment that he Begins to walk along it, the Warrior of the Light recognizes the Path…Then, accepting the help of God and of God’s Signs, he allows his Personal Legend to guide him toward the tasks that life has reserved for him. On some nights, he has nowhere to sleep, on others, he suffers from insomnia. ‘That’s just how it is,’ thinks the Warrior. ‘I was the one who chose to walk this path.’ In these words lies all his power: He chose the path along which he is walking and so has no complaints” (p 16).

“The Warrior allows his two lives to draw near. ‘There is a bridge that links what I do with what I would like to do,’ he thinks. Slowly, his dreams take over his everyday life, and then he realizes that he is ready for the thing he always wanted. Then all that is needed is a little daring, and his two lives become one” (p 90).

“Occasionally, the Warrior sits down, relaxes, and lets everything that is happening around him to continue to happen. He looks at the world as a spectator, he does not try to add to it or take away from it, he merely surrenders unresistingly to the movement of life. Little by little, everything that seemed complicated begins to become simple. And the Warrior is glad” (p 91).

“When he goes into battle he remembers what Christ said: ‘Love your enemies.’ And he obeys…He accepts that his opponents are there to test his valor, his persistence, and his ability to make decisions. They force him to fight for his dreams” (p 43).

“He must act, but he must allow room for the Universe to act too” (p 28).

“A Warrior of the Light knows that in the silence of his heart he will hear an order that will guide him” (p 27).

“The world seems threatening and dangerous to cowards. They seek the false security of a life with no major challenges and arm themselves to the teeth in order to defend what they think they possess. Cowards end up making the bars of their own prison. The Warrior of the Light projects his thoughts beyond the horizon. He knows that if he does not do anything for the world, no one else will” (p 118).

“One day, for no apparent reason, the Warrior realizes that he does not feel the same enthusiasm for the fight that he used to. He continues to do what he has always done, but every gesture seems meaningless. At such a time, he has only one choice: to continue fighting the Good Fight. He says his prayers out of duty or fear or whatever, but he does not abandon the path. He knows that the angel of the One who inspires him has simply wandered off somewhere. The Warrior keeps his attention focused on the battle and he perseveres, even when everything seems utterly pointless. The angel will soon return and the merest flutter of his wings will restore the Warrior’s joy to him” (p 105).

“He is never taken in by appearances and makes a point of remaining silent when people try to impress him. He uses these occasions to correct his own faults, for other people make an excellent mirror. A Warrior takes every opportunity to teach himself” (p 6).

“A Warrior of the Light respects the main teaching of I Ching: ‘To persevere is favorable’” (p 9).

For the Warrior there is no such thing as an impossible love. He is not intimidated by silence, indifference, or rejection. He knows that behind the mask of ice that people wear, there beats a heart of fire” (p 54).

“A Warrior of the Light is never predictable. He might dance down the street on his way to work, gaze into the eyes of a complete stranger and speak of love at first sight, or defend an apparently absurd idea. Warriors of the Light allow themselves days like these…A Warrior does not spend his days trying to play the role that others have chosen for him” (p 11).

Paulo Coelho certainly has a way with words and wisdom, and Warrior of the Light is sure to pick any reader up on rainy days when the sun doesn’t want to shine, but deep down the reader knows that today is just one more day in a long string of wonderful days yet to come.

Keep reading and smiling…

CG Fewston is an international writer/university professor who currently holds a post as Visiting Fellow in the English department at City University of Hong Kong. CG Fewston earned an M.A. in Literature with honors from Stony Brook University, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and Fiction from Southern New Hampshire University, where he had the chance to work with wonderful and talented novelists like Richard Adams Carey (author of Their Town, forthcoming in 2015; and, The Philosopher Fish, 2006) and Jessica Anthony (author of Chopsticks, 2012; and,The Convalescent, 2010) as well as New York Times Best-Selling novelists Matt Bondurant (author of The Night Swimmer, 2012; and, The Wettest County in the World, 2009, made famous in the movie Lawless, 2012) and Wiley Cash (author of A Land More Kind Than Home, 2013; and, This Dark Road to Mercy, 2014).

Among many others, CG Fewston’s stories, photographs and essays have appeared in Bohemia, Ginosko Literary Journal, Tendril Literary Magazine, Driftwood Press, The Missing Slate, Foliate Oak Magazine, The Writer’s Drawer, Moonlit Road, Nature Writing, and Travelmag: The Independent Spirit; and for several years he was a contributor to Vietnam’s national premier English newspaper, Tuoi Tre, ”The Youth Newspaper.” You can read more about CG Fewston and his writing at www.cgfewston.me & www.cgfewston.com & www.cgfewston.org

His new novel, A TIME TO LOVE IN TEHRAN, will be published in 2015.

“Love in Hong Kong”

C.G. & Shan,

on Hong Kong’s Harbor Front, Oct. 26, 2014

View all my reviews

Mars and Venus on a Date: A Guide for Navigating the 5 Stages of Dating to Create a Loving and Lasting Relationship by John Gray
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Mars and Venus on a Date: A Guide for Navigating the 5 Stages of Dating to Create a Loving and Lasting Relationship (1997) by Dr. John Gray is a companion to the more well-known Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. Men and Venus on a Date, however, provides deeper insight into the world of couples trying to figure out the rules and taboos to dating a Martian or Venusian and holds keys that will unlock the mystery of communication and how to build a stronger and more loving relationship with your partner.

As Dr. Gray explains, “this book is directly written for singles and dating couples who are interested in finding true and lasting love” (p xiii).

But for this post I will focus primarily on some helpful information about how Martians (often of the male gender) and Venusians (often of the female gender) communicate and how they are interpreted and how each partner can work to better express themselves and learn how to communicate more efficiently.

First, though, a reader needs to understand that Martians and Venusians are in fact different and do not communicate in the same shape or fashion, and this is by far the greatest mistake couples make when dating. Just as someone from the East would instinctively learn that people in the West have different customs and cultural habits and do not communicate in the same way so should Martians and Venusians learn and become more aware of how each partner may communicate.

For instance, on Mars when Martians apologize that usually ends the entire discussion and the Martians shake hands, slap each other on the back and go have a beer and all is forgotten. “On Venus,” Dr. Gray explains, “it is the opposite. When you say you are sorry, the discussion begins. When a man says he is sorry to a woman, she will proceed to tell him in great detail why he should be feeling sorry” (p 117).

Now if a Martian does not know this about Venusians then he would likely become annoyed and she would feel rejected and uncared for and an argument would arise and the relationship would begin to break down. If a Martian has the knowledge and skills and knows about the customs and practices of his favorite Venusian, he sits and listens and helps her explore her emotions and learns why he should be sorry and he should quite possibly be taking notes so he doesn’t make the same mistake in the future. This would show the Venusian that she is cared for and help her feel more secure in the relationship.

A woman needs a man who will make her feel special, unique and secure. “She needs to feel that he adores, cares for, understands, and respects her so much that he will always be there for her,” writes Dr. Gray (p 127). A Martian, therefore, needs to understand better how Venusians think, act, behave, and speak; otherwise a Martian will misinterpret his favorite Venusian.

“When we misinterpret each other, it can cause us to sabotage our relationships unknowingly,” writes Dr. Gray. “A woman may mistakenly conclude her date is ‘just another man incapable of making a commitment’ and give up. A man may think his date is another woman whose needs may smother him and take away his freedom. As a result, he loses interest.

“No matter how sincere you are, if your partner is misinterpreting your innocent and automatic reactions and responses, your attempts to create a relationship may be unsuccessful. It is not enough merely to be authentic in sharing yourself; to succeed in dating you need to consider how you will be interpreted as well” (p 3).

There is not a person who I have not met who does not wish to be successful in love. Most people watch their Facebook posts fill up with couples happily in love and couples becoming engaged and writhe with secret envy, asking “How the hell does this even happen? Why can’t it happen to me?” And yet we all desire to be successful in our career and so we study and get degrees and learn the trades and spend countless hours learning how to be successful, and yet we automatically assume love will just happen. Wrong.

Love is as delicate as a plant and needs attention, caring and respect. And these characteristics can also be found in one who spends time studying over a book in a library preparing for an exam. Why do we think that love just happens and we don’t need to prepare ourselves to be the best we can be so we can bring the best to our partner and our relationship?

The truth is that love needs work to last and develop into a strong relationship but true love doesn’t need work to be recognized and respected. True love happens. One night you attend a party when you are filled with doubts about even going and then suddenly you fall into a seat across the very person you have longed waited to meet. You both instantly just know. You both play it cool. Avoiding each other, but in the end always coming back to each other and the conversations flow and both of you just click into place. And both of you know that the Universe has smashed two oceans into each other and it is such a wonderful feeling.

“When soul mates fall in love there is simply a recognition,” explains Dr. Gray. “It is clear and simple as recognizing that the sun is shining today, or the water I am drinking is cool and refreshing, or the rock I am holding is solid. This knowing is not in any way dependent on a long list of reasons or qualifications. Soul love is unconditional. When the right person comes along you ‘just know,’ and you spend the rest of your life discovering why he or she is the right person…A soul mate is someone who has the unique ability to bring out the best in us. Soul mates are not perfect, but perfect for us” (p 14-17).

But with that said, it does not hurt to learn about your partner’s communication patterns and prepare yourself to be the best you can be. Here are fifteen key insights that can help any relationship become stronger:

1) “Whenever a man does something to make a woman feel special, in her eyes he becomes more attractive…If she has to care too much about his needs, if she has to be overly sensitive not to hurt his feelings, then he becomes less attractive. When she is free not to worry about him, but simply enjoy the fact that he cares about her, then she becomes more attracted to him” (p 37).

Dr. John Gray

2) A man far too often doesn’t understand nor “realize that a woman will feel most supported and impressed when he listens with interest rather than talking about himself or giving advice” (p 36).

3) “A woman’s willingness to ‘share all’ is actually a compliment to the other woman. It is a sign of trust, goodwill, and friendship” (p 38).

4) When a woman is finally “getting her needs met, then and only then is his happiness hers” (p 44).

5) “A man bonds with a woman through being successful in providing for her happiness, comfort, and fulfillment. His doubts are dispelled not primarily by what she does for him, but by how she responds to what he does for her” (p 49).

6) “By clearly understanding the wisdom of going slowly and moving through the five stages of dating [Attraction, Uncertainty, Exclusivity, Intimacy, and Engagement], both men and women will enjoy the dating process more and eventually find true love” (p 59).

7) “If he can respect her, then he is worthy of her” (p 59).

8) “By deliberately putting forth his energy and attention to fulfill a woman’s romantic needs long after a woman has accepted him, a man trains himself to experience that the little romantic gestures of dating are not just to win a woman over but are actually required and necessary to sustain her responsiveness” (p 70).

9) “In stage three, a man should remember that a woman feels most loved and supported when he offers to be of assistance. It is most romantic for a woman when a man anticipates her needs and offers to help. Even if she doesn’t need his help at the time, she will feel supported just because he offered” (p 77).

10) “Women like variety. They like to try new things and have new experiences. By continuing to take risks and try new things, a man is assured of successfully moving through stage three” (p 76).

11) “When a woman has a conversation her objective is to share. A man makes the best impression by asking questions and listening. Sharing in her thoughts and feelings is the way to win a woman over…When he asks questions, it reassures her that she is special and worthy of love. It is evidence that this man cares about her” (p 220-223).

12) “The direct way to a man’s heart is through complimenting and appreciating the things he provided. When a man experiences a positive response to the things he does or provides for her, he is more inclined to feel attracted. This is how a man’s affection for a woman grows” (p 261).

13) “The more a man succeeds in helping a woman, the more attracted he will be to her. A woman also experiences a greater attraction to man when he is helpful to her. She then mistakenly turns this around and assumes that if she is helpful to him, he will be more attracted to her. This is not true” (p 265).

14) “When a man expresses his masculine presence he is generally embodying the three basic characteristics of masculinity: he is confident, purposeful, and responsible. It is these three qualities that make a woman most attracted to him” (p 271).

15) “When a woman expresses her feminine radiance she is generally embodying the three basic characteristics of femininity: she is self-assured, receptive, and responsive. It is these three qualities that make a man most attracted to her” (p 271).

If any of these key insights were new to you and/or resonated with you on any level, I recommend picking up a copy of Mars and Venus on a Date and/or buying a copy for a friend. After all, aren’t our soul mates truly worth it? Aren’t we worth it?

“Choosing a soul mate is not a mental decision based on pros and cons of a relationship,” explains Dr. Gray. “It is not an emotional decision based on comparing how a person makes you feel. It is not a physical decision based on how a person looks. It is much deeper. When our soul wants to marry our partner, it feels like a promise that we came into this world to keep…When our soul wants to get married, it feels as if we have no choice. We have to do it if we are to be true to ourselves. It is this kind of commitment that can sustain a lifetime of love” (p 20-21).

And don’t we all want a lifetime of love? I’ll leave the answer to you… in the meantime:

Keep reading and smiling…

CG Fewston is an international writer/university professor who currently holds a post as Visiting Fellow in the English department at City University of Hong Kong. CG Fewston earned an M.A. in Literature with honors from Stony Brook University, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and Fiction from Southern New Hampshire University, where he had the chance to work with wonderful and talented novelists like Richard Adams Carey (author of Their Town, forthcoming in 2015; and, The Philosopher Fish, 2006) and Jessica Anthony (author of Chopsticks, 2012; and,The Convalescent, 2010) as well as New York Times Best-Selling novelists Matt Bondurant (author of The Night Swimmer, 2012; and, The Wettest County in the World, 2009, made famous in the movie Lawless, 2012) and Wiley Cash (author of A Land More Kind Than Home, 2013; and, This Dark Road to Mercy, 2014).

Among many others, CG Fewston’s stories, photographs and essays have appeared in Bohemia, Ginosko Literary Journal, Tendril Literary Magazine, Driftwood Press, The Missing Slate, Foliate Oak Magazine, The Writer’s Drawer, Moonlit Road, Nature Writing, and Travelmag: The Independent Spirit; and for several years he was a contributor to Vietnam’s national premier English newspaper, Tuoi Tre, ”The Youth Newspaper.” You can read more about CG Fewston and his writing at www.cgfewston.me & www.cgfewston.com & www.cgfewston.org

His new novel, A TIME TO LOVE IN TEHRAN, will be published in 2015.

View all my reviews

The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Art of Loving (1956) by Erich Fromm is as applicable today as it was when it was first published some sixty years ago. Subtitled “The world-famous psychoanalyst’s daring prescription for love,” the purpose of the book and its conjoining series is to “re-examine the contradictory meanings and applications which are given today to such terms as democracy, freedom, justice, love, peace, brotherhood and God” and to establish a “means of liberating mankind from the destructive power of fear, pointing the way toward the goal of rehabilitation of the human person” while one of its main purposes is to “offer new vistas in terms of world and human development while refusing to betray the intimate correlation between universality and individuality, dynamics and form, freedom and destiny” (p 113-114).

Erich Fromm

March 23, 1900 – March 18, 1980

Fromm’s primary concern, however, is to focus on the subject of love, whether it is directed toward our neighbor, self, life partner, children, mother, father, or God. As for the following, what most intrigued me of Fromm’s insights into the “art of loving,” is how one might better realize the relationship a person has to understanding the “love dynamics” one has for God and the differences between irrational and rational faith which further strengthens Fromm’s argument of how a rational faith is a foundation for loving well.

Fromm even writes as if he were alive today, watching the protests and the riots and the repercussions of the elites who control governments and squash the individual with very little concern of the overall impact on society.

“Our society is run by a managerial bureaucracy, by professional politicians,” writes Fromm, “people are motivated by mass suggestion, their aim is producing more and consuming more, as purposes in themselves. All activities are subordinated to economic goals, means have become ends; man is an automaton—well fed, well clad, but without any ultimate concern for that which is his peculiarly human quality and function. If man is to be able to love, he must be put in his supreme place. The economic machine must serve him, rather than he serve it…

“Both the ‘radical thinkers’ and the average person are unloving automatons and the only difference between them is that the latter is not aware of it, while the former knows it and recognizes the ‘historical necessity’ of this fact” (p 110-111).

And most readers would agree with Fromm that even though he published these words nearly sixty years ago they are just as true today as they were then. Most people have become automatons, slave to the economic machine and a managerial bureaucracy who cares very little for the destiny of the individual. And even Fromm concludes that one of the reasons why man has little love for his fellow man is because there has become a simultaneous decrease in the love for God.

But before we get into the disintegration of the love of man and God, I digress…

The Giant Buddha in Hong Kong – photo by CG Fewston

Firstly, if I am motivated within to love by a fatherly-love and motherly-love, being either conditional or unconditional respectively, then how can I, or anyone for that matter, rectify these two loving polarities that (both) detract and attract based on the foundation of one who likewise says at the same time: “I cannot love you no matter what,” and “I love you no matter”?

Erich Fromm suggests these masculine and feminine polarities are necessary and healthy functions of a mature individual, representing the “pole of human existence” (p 35) as masculine and the feminine poles belonging to a natural world which “cannot be acquired, produced, controlled” (p 33).

Fromm further identifies mature love as being true to these two following principles:

(1) I am loved because I love;

(2) I need you because I love you (p 34).

But what if one were to surmise an alternative, either more god-like or divine-like, principle for love—as in these two following principles:

(1) I love because I am neither loved nor unloved;

(2) I love you because I neither need you nor do not need you.

Which is the more unconditional of these two sets of principles: the former or the latter?

And if one set is greater at being unconditional then this god-like stance on love would inherently state, as Fromm so concluded, a more motherly-love, a god being a feminine essence in the Universe producing love for her creations, her children.

In contrast, the more conditional of these two sets of principles would express the views of a more masculine existence, a masculine god expressing his fatherly-love as a conditional pretense upon his creations, his children.

How then is one to rectify this disparity of love?

Is love, then, supposed to be unconditional? Conditional? Both? Simultaneously?

And what are the consequences of each if indeed each are in fact, quite possibly and reasonably—as Fromm would have readers believe—sustainable reasons, motivations and healthy expressions of love?

And as Fromm continues to explain how love is an activity devoid of a simple object being the sole reason to love, would not this following statement account for a more unconditional state of love:

“Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person,” Fromm argues, “it is an attitude, an orientation of character which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, not toward one ‘object’ of love…

“Yet, most people believe that love is constituted by the object; not by the faculty…

“Because one does not see that love is an activity, a power of the soul, one believes that all that is necessary to find is the right object—and that everything goes by itself afterward…

“If I truly love one person,” writes Fromm, “I love all persons, I love the world, I love life” (p 38-39).

And I would further conclude that if God is Love then Love is Life.

And if this then is true, what can Fromm tells us between the variations of faith, either being irrational or rational and how does this relate to love?

“By irrational faith,” Fromm explains, “I understand the belief (in a person or an idea) which is based on one’s submission to irrational authority. In contrast, rational faith is a conviction which is rooted in one’s own experience of thought or feeling. Rational faith is not primarily belief in something, but the quality of certainty and firmness which our convictions have. Faith is a character trait pervading the whole personality, rather than a specific belief” (p 102).

And how does this relate to love, you might ask?

“‘Having faith’ in another person,” writes Fromm, “means to be certain of the reliability and unchanged-ability of his fundamental attitudes, of the core of his personality, of his love. By this I do not mean that a person may not change his opinions, but that his basic motivations remain the same; that, for instance, his respect for life and human dignity is part of himself, not subject to change” (p 103).

But what is love exactly? Can we even define love? Fromm certainly tries when he writes:

“Love is possible only if two persons communicate with each other from the center of their existence, hence if each one of them experiences himself from the center of his existence. Only in this ‘central experience’ is human reality, only here is aliveness, only here is the basis for love. Love, experienced thus, is a constant challenge; it is not a resting place, but a moving, growing, working together; even whether there is harmony or conflict, joy or sadness, is secondary to the fundamental fact that two people experience themselves from the essence of their existence, that they are one with each other by being one with themselves, rather than by fleeing from themselves. There is only one proof for the presence of love: the depth of the relationship, and the aliveness and strength in each person concerned; this is the fruit by which love is recognized.

“Just as automatons cannot love each other they cannot love God. The disintegration of the love of God has reached the same proportion as the disintegration of the love of man…

“The practice of the art of loving requires the practice of faith” (p 86-87, p 102).

And Fromm takes it a step further to conclude:

“To love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself completely in the hope that our love will produce love in the loved person. Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love” (p 107).

So as a new day dawns, much like a new year, I pray and secretly wish each one of us is filled with such faith it is the size of several galaxies so that we might also have as much love within our hearts and for each other.

And for this reason, and many many more, I find that The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm is a very strong recommend.

Keep reading and smiling…

CG Fewston is an international writer/university professor who currently holds a post as Visiting Fellow in the English department at City University of Hong Kong. CG Fewston earned an M.A. in Literature with honors from Stony Brook University, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and Fiction from Southern New Hampshire University, where he had the chance to work with wonderful and talented novelists like Richard Adams Carey (author of Their Town, forthcoming in 2015; and, The Philosopher Fish, 2006) and Jessica Anthony (author of Chopsticks, 2012; and,The Convalescent, 2010) as well as New York Times Best-Selling novelists Matt Bondurant (author of The Night Swimmer, 2012; and, The Wettest County in the World, 2009, made famous in the movie Lawless, 2012) and Wiley Cash (author of A Land More Kind Than Home, 2013; and, This Dark Road to Mercy, 2014).

Among many others, CG Fewston’s stories, photographs and essays have appeared in Bohemia, Ginosko Literary Journal, Tendril Literary Magazine, Driftwood Press, The Missing Slate, Foliate Oak Magazine, The Writer’s Drawer, Moonlit Road, Nature Writing, and Travelmag: The Independent Spirit; and for several years he was a contributor to Vietnam’s national premier English newspaper, Tuoi Tre, ”The Youth Newspaper.” You can read more about CG Fewston and his writing at www.cgfewston.me & www.cgfewston.com & www.cgfewston.org

His new novel, A TIME TO LOVE IN TEHRAN, will be published in 2015.

CG Fewston among friends, Dan (right) and Axton (Left),

Soho, Hong Kong – Dec. 30, 2014

View all my reviews

Mars and Venus in Love: Inspiring and Heartfelt Stories of Relationships That Work by John Gray
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Mars and Venus In Love (1996) by Dr. John Gray is a collection of stories from men and women who either read Dr. Gray’s Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus or attended his conferences in order to improve their relationships. Most of the stories involve married couples or partners who have dated for several years but who were unable to marry. Mars and Venus In Love is an excellent companion to other Dr. Gray books but is recommended for those couples in long term relationships who want to relate to other couples who also had difficult times but were able to work through the hardships and develop lasting relationships.

Dr. John Gray

So what follows are just some of the first-hand accounts from real couples who wrote to Dr. Gray to explain their situations and show how Martians and Venusians can continue to be in a loving relationship despite differences.

Chuck wrote in to say that he had a difficult time communicating with the women he loved. “I was attempting to solve her every problem except the one problem that she really wanted solved. She was really needing me to ‘just listen.’ She had been saying that for years, but I never really understood what she meant. I thought ‘just listen’ meant I should let her finish her point before I give my solution. Now I ‘just listen’; I refrain from giving solutions, and suddenly she feels ‘heard’” (p 16).

Saraceni’s Venus and Mars

Dr. Gray explained why listening is so important for men in order to give their partner the caring the women deserve. “Learning to listen patiently—and not just passively—is a new skill for men. Yet repeatedly men report that keeping quiet and resisting the strong tendency to interrupt a woman with solutions has dramatically improved their relationships. Their partners are much happier and appreciative. Lucky is the man who discovers that satisfying a woman’s need to communicate and be heard is the most important requirement in making relationships loving and harmonious, When a man is a good listener, a woman can repeatedly find the place in her heart that is capable of loving him and embracing him just the way he is” (p 53).

Ellen added to this issue about men needing to listen. “If we women could just trust, and teach men not to try to fix but just to listen, then our hearts would automatically open up and we would feel much close to the men” (p 73).

CG Fewston

Suzanne described her relationship with Rich and how they created a loving marriage: “We tell each other ‘I love you’ every day. We don’t leave the house or arrive home without kissing each other hello or good-bye. One thing Rich has always done since I met him is to call me at least once a day, just to see how I’m doing, and he always tells me when I can expect him home” (p 77).

Marge discussed about her difficulties in her relationship and how she learned to overcome them. “When he cleaned things up, I smiled and said, ‘It looks really great.’ Appreciating his actions was like some secret magical love potion; immediately he was relieved and at peace. I would have never imagined how much easier it could be. With this one change in my behavior, he changed. Then I started to feel love again” (p 17).

Judy wrote in and told about Ken and how they began to honor each other differences. “We communicate, and we know how to honor each other as different sexes. We know how those differences work. I no longer assume it should be easy for Ken to understand me. Sometimes I don’t understand myself, so how should I expect a Martian to? When he listens and tries to understand me, I really appreciate that he tries.

“Before Ken, I would just expect a man to listen and understand. I thought that if he loved me, then he would automatically want to connect with me through communication. I didn’t know that men connect through doing. When Ken feels like he is doing something for me, then he starts feeling connected. Passively listening makes a man feel like he is not doing anything to help” (p 19).

Dr. John Gray commented on men and their caves and how women still love to share conversations with their partners regardless of having a stressful day. “The insight—that a man can love his wife but sometimes not want to spend time with her—is quite surprising for many women and generally very foreign to their nature. When a woman is in love with her man, she looks forward to spending time together and sharing. Even if she is feeling stressed, she still looks forward to sharing the details of her day with the man she loves…on Venus, not wanting to talk is the clearest and most definite sign that there is a big problem in the relationship” (p 31).

Krista added to Dr. Gray’s comments about men and their caves. Krista explained, “Understanding men and their caves changed all my expectations. When he seems distant and aloof I don’t panic. It is temporary. I just say ‘cancel’ to all my automatic responses like, It’s my fault, I did something wrong, he doesn’t love me, I failed him in some way, he doesn’t care for me as much as he used to” (p 40).

Pam, who wrote in about her situation with Warren, offered this great advice about marriage: “It takes more than love to make our marriage work; it takes commitment, education, skills, insight, and tools. We supplied the love and commitment, and John Gray supplied the education, communication skills, insights, and tools” (p 44).

Candice explained about what she wanted in a man and in a relationship when she wrote in to Dr. Gray. “I wanted a man who could open up to me and share his heart and soul. I wanted to be a team. We would always come together to share our feelings, problems, and needs. Someone who depended on me and I on him. It seemed in every relationship after a few months the man would back off in some way. When I tried to get him to talk, there was always ‘nothing’ to talk about or he would feel smothered…

“I was so surprised to find that these men were not afraid of intimacy, nor did they need years of therapy—they were from Mars…Through understanding men and their caves, I learned how I had been pushing them away. I am grateful to have a new model of healthy intimacy, which is achieved through a balance of alone time and together time, a loving blend of being independent and dependent-interdependence” (p 48-49).

Mars and Venus: Allegory of Peace – Louis Jean Francois Lagrenee (1770)

Dr. Gray concluded about men and women and why so many relationships end in heartache and marriages end in divorce and how loving partners can educate themselves in order to create lasting unions that stand the test of time. “Understanding that men are from Mars and women are from Venus has been a key ingredient for immediately improving any relationship. If you were to go to another planet, certainly you would first study its inhabitants’ language, culture, and traditions. Without this vital information you would repeatedly and unknowingly offend others and sabotage your relationships” (p 109).

If you know very little about the opposite sex and/or you don’t really know the best way to communicate with your favorite Martian or Venusians, I recommend you pick up and read either Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus or Mars and Venus on a Date or Mars and Venus In Love—all are a strong recommend.

Keep reading and smiling…

CG Fewston is an international writer/university professor who currently holds a post as Visiting Fellow in the English department at City University of Hong Kong. CG Fewston earned an M.A. in Literature with honors from Stony Brook University, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and Fiction from Southern New Hampshire University, where he had the chance to work with wonderful and talented novelists like Richard Adams Carey (author of Their Town, forthcoming in 2015; and, The Philosopher Fish, 2006) and Jessica Anthony (author ofChopsticks, 2012; and,The Convalescent, 2010) as well as New York Times Best-Selling novelists Matt Bondurant (author of The Night Swimmer, 2012; and, The Wettest County in the World, 2009, made famous in the movie Lawless, 2012) and Wiley Cash (author of A Land More Kind Than Home, 2013; and, This Dark Road to Mercy, 2014).

Among many others, CG Fewston’s stories, photographs and essays have appeared in Bohemia, Ginosko Literary Journal, Tendril Literary Magazine, Driftwood Press, The Missing Slate, Foliate Oak Magazine, The Writer’s Drawer, Moonlit Road, Nature Writing, and Travelmag: The Independent Spirit; and for several years he was a contributor to Vietnam’s national premier English newspaper, Tuoi Tre, ”The Youth Newspaper.” You can read more about CG Fewston and his writing at www.cgfewston.me & www.cgfewston.com &www.cgfewston.org

His new novel, A TIME TO LOVE IN TEHRAN, will be published in 2015.

CG Fewston among friends: from left to right,

Dan, Sylvia, Axton, Kelvin, & CG Fewston

in Tai O Fishing Village near Hong Kong – Jan. 4, 2015

View all my reviews

Invisible: The Dangerous Allure of the Unseen by Philip Ball

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Invisible: The Dangerous Allure of the Unseen (2014) by the polymath Philip Ball is a collection of essays that explores and seeks to illuminate the desires to understand and ultimately control the invisible forces all around us. From Tolkien’s and Gyge’s magic rings, morals of Glaucon, cloaks of invisibility, invisible children, occult forces and sacred magic, theological thermodynamics, the invisible men of science fiction, natural camouflage, time bandits, the Holy Spirit, X-rays, and to the mythic and magical connotations of invisibility, Ball does wonders as he crosses time and space to bring readers a semi-full spectrum encompassing the historical and Philip Ballcontemporary implications involving the “unseen” in our everyday lives.

Philip Ball

“For Plato, then,” writes Ball, “invisibility was not a wondrous power but a moral challenge—to which none of us is likely to prove equal. Invisibility corrupts; nothing good could come of it. In particular, invisibility will tempt us towards three things: power, sex and murder. This is the promise that lured people to seek invisibility throughout time, whether by magical spells or esoteric arts or devices and garments that confer the ability to vanish” (p 4).

Any reader who has crossed the pages and vanished into H.G. Wells’s The Invisible Man (1897) or Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952), one can attest to the fact of how invisibility, either an absence bearing no physical presence to the naked eye or a social mindset making a minority “unseen” as it were, power corrupts the individual’s morals which leads to shameless acts of sexual degradation and then to murder.

Either writers regarding invisibility as a choice topic are not very original, or Plato, as Ball asserts, has a keen understanding of how invisibility in any form challenges a person’s morals. One could even apply this principle to the unseen bankers and corporate heads of conglomerates across the world today.

“Invisibility, then,” explains Ball, “provides access to liminal places tinged with desire, allure and possibility. Such allegorical content means that magical invisibility in fiction should never function simply as a convenient power that advances the narrative. It should not be bought cheaply, nor used idly. That is why the One Ring in The Lord of the Rings supplies a more satisfying, more mythically valid emblem than the cloaks of invisibility in the Harry Potter series. The latter, made from the hair of a creature from the Far East that can make itself invisible, are trinkets, a piece of incidental, even mundane magic. But magic must not be incidental or mundane, for it pulls on a subtle web of forces and must therefore have consequences. Frodo Baggins’ ring will, in the end, steal souls and reduce the bearer to a pitiful, malevolent wraith. That is what invisibility, when depicted in its truthful symbolic guises, does to us: it transforms us and pulls us into another realm” (p 6).

What Ball is claiming is that if fiction, or even science in the real world, deals with forces of nature which far exceed our own human powers, there must be substantial consequences affecting the human condition. Now this can be a physical and spiritual change, as in Frodo and the One Ring, or the malevolent power behind the unseen forces can cause corruption in a far more comical sense. As in the following case of one Spaniard in 1582:

A Spaniard, having dealt with magical recipes and texts, “decided to use invisibility magic” in hopes of changing the course of history by murdering the Prince of Orange (p 14).

“Since [the Spaniard’s] spells could not make clothes invisible,” writes Ball, “he had to strip naked, in which state he arrived at the palace and strolled casually through the gates, unaware that he was perfectly visible to the guards. They followed the outlandish intruder until the purpose of his mission became plain, whereupon they seized him and flogged him” (p 14).

Of course there are various kinds and degrees of invisible forces out there in the universe and world around us, and these forces often remain constant and unseen. Magnetism is one such force. And so is love. Ball, coincidentally, sheds some light on these two magical powers:

“The word magnet derives from the region of Magnesia on the Aegean Sea, where lodestone can be found, but it might also share an etymological root with magic itself. In the Middle Ages the Latin word for diamond, adamas, came to also be used for magnets, and is said to be linked to the French aimant, love—for the attraction of iron and magnet was commonly viewed as a kind of love, or as natural magicians, would put it, sympathy” (p 19).

And unseen love being one of the most powerful forces of attraction in the human condition continues to mystify even the greatest of minds to date. How can anyone explain two lonely hearts living decades in longing to one day collide and forever be shaped and reshaped and united in an invisible poetry of emotions, magnetized and inseparable.

But Ball does not stop there. He goes on to consider the invisible forces of God and Economy.

“There was nothing particularly heterodox in this vision of God acting through a beneficent, invisible force,” Ball explains about Isaac Newton’s attempt to fully conceptualize gravity as a power or ether in the cosmos presented “in a frame of nature by the will of God” which could reveal “divine action in the world” (p 29).

Ball continues, “It was a commonplace of seventeenth-century theology that God exercised providential and active control over events on earth. That was the true provenance of Adam Smith’s famous Invisible Hand that purportedly maintains economic stability: as historian Peter Harrison has said, ‘almost certainly, when readers encountered the phrase in Smith, they would have understood it as referring to God’s unseen agency in political economy’—whether Smith intended it or not. Humans, like planets, were deemed to be led by God’s invisible hand to accomplish His ends” (p 29).

And Ball addresses how aspects of neoliberalism could be dated back to such religious beliefs in an “invisible hand”:

“It seems appropriate,” argues Ball, “that the neoliberal conviction in the ability of the unchecked market to bring about economic stability turns out to have its roots in an expression of religious faith” (p 29).

Ball even further challenges Friedrich Nietzsche’s famous motto “Gott is tott” and Karl Barth who strongly ascertained that “there are no such things as ghosts” (p 62-63).

Ball writes, “We can see, then, that Barth was wrong. It is not the idea of a Holy Ghost that has suffered in recent times, but that of God the Father—too embodied an entity to appeal to any but the most literalist of believers. God has now Himself become the Spirit: disembodied, omnipresent, a life force and a process congruent with a contemporary view of the ‘sacredness of the earth’. Those Baroque images of a radiant greybeard among the clouds now seem quaint if not absurd. God is not dead, he has just become invisible” (p 64).

An invisible God; what do you think about that?

But this is as religious as Ball gets in his collection of essays totaling 282 pages, but his writing at times soars off the page and leaves one breathless with the depth of scientific research and the lyrical resonance which leaves the reader haunted by ghostly images of its own. As in the following passage I shall end with:

“As we will see,” writes Ball, “work on cathode rays soon led to the discovery of X-rays and radioactivity. Because he used phosphors to reveal them, [Sir William] Crookes [1832-1919] befriended the French expert on phosphorescence Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel, whose son Henri discovered the ‘uranic rays’ emanating from uranium that the Curies christened radioactivity. These rays heralded a century of new extremes of light and dark, brighter than a thousand suns and stygian as the world’s end.

“Half a century later and on the other side of the world,” Ball explains, “they were destined to cast shadows burnt onto municipal stonework like the imprints on photographic plates, while the people whose shapes they recorded had, like their city, vanished” (p 115).

Invisible (2014) will make the reader question the attempts science makes to harness and manipulate invisible forces, which as Plato warned in the beginning, leads to far more devastating moral defects; but at the same time Ball remains objective and provides a glimpse of hope in how humanity can evolve and better equip itself with the patient control and harmony to become unified with these unseen forces—whether magical, spiritual, or scientific—and to use such knowledge wisely, rather than like magic books of old that “acquired the same talismanic function as a great deal of the academic literature today: to be read, learnt, cited, but never used” (p 27).

I wish, I pray, I hypothesize that readers will not dive into Philip Ball’s invisible world as if it were a part of the black hole of academic writing, but rather consider the knowledge within as a chance to see the unseen in a new way.

Keep reading and smiling…

CG Fewston

CG Fewston is an international writer/university professor who currently holds a post as Visiting Fellow in the English department at City University of Hong Kong. CG Fewston earned an M.A. in Literature with honors from Stony Brook University, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and Fiction from Southern New Hampshire University, where he had the chance to work with wonderful and talented novelists like Richard Adams Carey (author of Their Town, forthcoming in 2015; and, The Philosopher Fish, 2006) and Jessica Anthony (author ofChopsticks, 2012; and,The Convalescent, 2010) as well as New York Times Best-Selling novelists Matt Bondurant (author of The Night Swimmer, 2012; and, The Wettest County in the World, 2009, made famous in the movie Lawless, 2012) and Wiley Cash (author of A Land More Kind Than Home, 2013; and, This Dark Road to Mercy, 2014).

Among many others, CG Fewston’s stories, photographs and essays have appeared in Bohemia, Ginosko Literary Journal, Tendril Literary Magazine, Driftwood Press, The Missing Slate, Foliate Oak Magazine, The Writer’s Drawer, Moonlit Road, Nature Writing, and Travelmag: The Independent Spirit; and for several years he was a contributor to Vietnam’s national premier English newspaper, Tuoi Tre, ”The Youth Newspaper.” You can read more about CG Fewston and his writing at www.cgfewston.me & www.cgfewston.com &www.cgfewston.org

His new novel, A TIME TO LOVE IN TEHRAN, will be published in 2015.

CG Fewston among friends: from left to right,

Dan, Sylvia, Axton, Kelvin, & CG Fewston

in Tai O Fishing Village near Hong Kong – Jan. 4, 2015

View all my reviews

One stormy night, much like the ones you remember where the wind rattled windowpanes and thunder boomed outside, a knock sounded at the door.

A poor troglodyte who had been travelling for eight years across the vast continents stood outside in the rain as a slightly older woman answered the door. The man could see a warm fire and a table set with the woman’s dinner inside the cottage.

‘What do you want?’ the woman asked. She pulled her shawl closer to her shoulders and stuck her face out to check to see if the man was alone. He was alone and from his shivering she could see he was cold.

‘Could I have a bowl of soup and some bread,’ the man said. ‘And perhaps some respite from the storm.’

The woman looked the man up and down and found his tattered clothes and walking staff to be no real threat and she consented. ‘Wait here,’ she said, and she closed and locked the door and returned back inside.

Before too long she returned to her dinner, ate, and retired to her favorite chair by the fire. The rain beat harder outside and she pulled her most prized quilt closer to her chin. Then a knock came at the door.

The woman rushed to the door and, now quite put off from a second disturbance of the night, asked, ‘Who is out there?’

‘It is I,’ the weary traveler said, ‘the one you made promises to.’

‘Oh,’ the woman said, aghast at having forgotten. ‘Yes, just one more moment. I was putting things together when you interrupted me and I had to stop. Please give me a minute.’

‘If that is all you ask,’ the man said, ‘please take another, and thank your dear soul for helping me. For you see, I have not eaten in almost six days and barely have enough money to get to the next village. Anything you can do will be most grateful.’

‘Not only will I help you,’ the woman replied, ‘I will add a few coins to my gift and see that you are most taken care of. My aunt owns a tavern just down the road and she will put you up for the night. Just give me some time to put your things together.’ With that she closed and locked the door once more.

Turning back to the fire her thoughts drifted soon to the cold rain outside, to her full stomach, and to all the people she knew that loved her, or even if her friends and family did not love her she believed they were thinking of her at that very moment.

She sank back into her chair, pulled her quilt up to her ears and thought of how such a long day of feeding the horses and goats and chickens deserved a nice nap before reading a book before bed. After all, she lived alone in her cozy home and only then did she recall of having forgotten something or someone. Then a knock came at the door.

The woman pushed off the quilt, her head now hurting from all the noise from the storm and the constant banging at her door. She was not quite sure what she was thinking, as you often do upon first waking in the early hours of the morning, when she screamed out, ‘What the hell do you want?! Can’t you just leave me alone?!’

The poor man, for that was exactly what he was: without job, without money, without family in this foreign land, looked with sad eyes at the woman standing in the doorway and turned without a word and walked back out into the rain. The woman stood for a moment watching the storm and darkness devour the visitor and only then did she realize what she had done.

The next day the sun rose and spread its rays onto the wet ground, drying slowly but surely as if there had never been a storm. The woman, however, intended to find the traveler that had come to her door, but she decided to do so after a nice, hot breakfast and a short nap. She had stayed up late the night before and considered it wise to get some rest before taking on a journey that might last the whole afternoon.

At the hottest point in the day the woman, all sweaty from her own travels through land and lane, found the traveler seated quite peacefully in the shade beneath a great oak. The day was in fact beautiful but the woman believed it horrid since she had to walk in the hot sun for hours.

‘Why didn’t you come to my door this morning?’ the woman asked. ‘I had promised you food and money and a place for the night. If only you would have waited.’

‘And where are these things now?’ the traveler said, looking over the woman who only had her bare hands to show him.

‘That’s not the point,’ the woman said. ‘I promised—’

‘What is the point?’ the man said. ‘This is a new day, I am a new man, and I no longer need your help.’

The woman, hot and confused from her own private journey, stared at the man for a second longer than she had wanted to, and it was only then did she see him for the angel he was.

CG Fewston

CG Fewston is an international writer/university professor who currently holds a post as Visiting Fellow in the English department at City University of Hong Kong.CG Fewston earned an M.A. in Literature with honors from Stony Brook University, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and Fiction from Southern New Hampshire University, where he had the chance to work with wonderful and talented novelists like Richard Adams Carey (author of Their Town, forthcoming in 2015; and, The Philosopher Fish, 2006) and Jessica Anthony (author ofChopsticks, 2012; and,The Convalescent, 2010) as well as New York Times Best-Selling novelists Matt Bondurant (author of The Night Swimmer, 2012; and,The Wettest County in the World, 2009, made famous in the movie Lawless, 2012) and Wiley Cash (author of A Land More Kind Than Home, 2013; and, This Dark Road to Mercy, 2014).

Among many others, CG Fewston’s stories, photographs and essays have appeared in Bohemia, Ginosko Literary Journal, Tendril Literary Magazine, Driftwood Press, The Missing Slate, Foliate Oak Magazine, The Writer’s Drawer, Moonlit Road, Nature Writing, and Travelmag: The Independent Spirit; and for several years he was a contributor to Vietnam’s national premier English newspaper, Tuoi Tre, “The Youth Newspaper.” You can read more about CG Fewston and his writing at www.cgfewston.me & www.cgfewston.com & www.cgfewston.org

His new novel, A TIME TO LOVE IN TEHRAN, will be published in 2015.

Axton C. & CG Fewston

Dec. 30, 2014

View all my reviews

Mars and Venus in the Bedroom: A Guide to Lasting Romance and Passion by John Gray

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Mars and Venus in the Bedroom: A Guide to Lasting Romance and Passion (1995) by Dr. John Gray is a useful book to help couples, either new or old, spark the rhythms of romance back into their relationship.

Dr. Gray focuses mostly on sexual aspects in the relationship (as in chapters like “Sexual Confidence”, “The Joy of Quickies”, “Polarity Sex”, “Mechanical Sex versus Spontaneous Sex”, and “Sexual Anatomy and Oral Sex”) and the more basic fundamental aspects of a relationship (as in chapters like “Women are Like the Moon, Men are Like the Sun”, “Why Couples Are Having Less Sex”, “How to Rekindle the Passion”, and “Keeping the Romance Alive”). And most of the chapters do provide useful tips for keeping or igniting passion into the bedroom (or living room if that is you and your partner’s preference).

At times the advice is dated (after all, the book was published 20 years ago and lots can change in two decades), but at times Dr. Gray knows exactly what he is talking about and offers some lasting advice (after all, how much can men and women and sex really change in two short decades?).

But in the end, as Dr. Gray opines: “There is no better aphrodisiac than sex itself. The easier it is to have sex, the more you want it” (p 105). And, hopefully, you want lots of sex with that most special someone in your life, right?

The good news is that older women are the ones who enjoy sex more than older men. Dr. Gray comments on this paradox:

“As a general rule, men peak in their sexual interest when they are seventeen or eighteen years old. A woman reaches her prime when she is thirty-six to thirty-eight years old. It is similar to the pattern that men and women experience during sex. The man gets excited very quickly with little foreplay—except the opportunity to have sex—while a woman requires more time. Quite naturally, he feels that women don’t like sex as much as he does” (p 88).

One rule Dr. Gray suggests is for men to add a ‘0’ behind their usual 2-3 minute-marathon to have a clear understanding that many women need 20-30 minutes to become fully warmed to great sex and even the possibility of an orgasm (p 63). Certainly this does not mean for every man and woman, but Dr. Gray speaks about the general norm for most men and women.

Here is some particularly useful advice from Mars and Venus in the Bedroom:

“The sexual act for a woman is a process of discovering what feels good that day,” explains Dr. Gray. “She does not want her partner to follow any premeditated rigid plan. She would rather that sex be a spontaneous creation each time, appropriate to how both partners are feeling…

“She wants him to know that each time her mood may be different. She wants him to know how to discover with her what she wants. She wants him to be sensitive to her feedback that will assist him in leading her to higher states of fulfilment and pleasure.

“To do this, a man needs to know the basics of great sex and to be willing to experiment by rotating his various skills. Like an artist, he needs to be very familiar with the basic colors of sex and then experiment with how they combine to create a new work of art. Like a musician, he needs to know the basic notes and chord combinations to create a beautiful piece of music” (p 151-152).

CG Fewston, American novelist, with his love

Axton C., Chinese Singer/Model

In other words, Dr. Gray is advising men to be prepared by doing their homework on a woman’s physical composition (i.e., to know how and where to please a woman on her body), to have enough knowledge on sexual positions to keep the woman guessing (i.e., study! study!), and also to practice! practice! practice! (Not such bad advice if you ask me—men and women could all use a little more practice at love-making).

Dr. Gray continues:

“These different expressions of her sexual nature are not planned or thought out, but instead are discovered in the moment.

“When a woman has the freedom to be spontaneous, these different expressions and others will naturally come up and be expressed. When a man carefully takes the time to stimulate a woman with no expectations of how she is supposed to respond, over time she feels safer and safer in sex to do and express whatever she feels. This uninhibited sexual expression frees her to experience new heights of sexual ecstasy” (p 153).

According to Dr. Gray, men need to be patient enough to control their passions and learn to read a woman to help her open up her sexual passions in a spontaneous way. The more the man takes control and is careful to give the woman an orgasm first, the more the man and woman are able to fully explore the gratifications and pleasure of sex together. But Dr. Gray has a bit of advice on the relationship side of being involved with the opposite sex:

“Many men don’t realize why monogamy is so important,” writes Dr. Gray (and he’s absolutely right about this and what follows), “They don’t instinctively understand that monogamy ensures that a woman continues to feel special and loved. If she is not feeling loved in this way, she cannot continue to open herself to him. Trust is essential for a woman to continue getting turned on to her partner” (p 157).

Trust is key for building not only a solid relationship but also amazing sex. The more the woman is able to trust the monogamy and man in the relationship the more she is freed to open up and express her passion and desires in the bedroom (or in the kitchen on the floor).

But the problem with most men, unlike many women, is control. And Dr. Gray speaks about two kinds of control: that of the body and that of the mind:

“When I am turned on to another woman,” confides Dr. Gray, “I look down at myself and think, ‘I’m glad everything down there is working.’ Then I point in the opposite direction and say, ‘Home, James.’ This is called ‘dick-discipline!’”

And more follows, “Just by containing my sexual feelings and repeatedly directing them to my wife, I increase my ability to be turned on to her. Also by controlling my feelings when I am away from her, I have more control in sex…

“When a man can both feel his passion and control it, a woman can begin to let go of control, release her inhibitions, and start to really feel her passions. As a man learns to control his passions, not only does he help his partner reach higher levels of fulfilment, but he can also experience greater levels of sexual pleasure and love…

“When a man is in control, it means that his passions is so great that he could easily have an orgasm, but instead he holds back and gradually builds up his partner’s passion…

“When a woman is able to surrender and fully receive a man, he can easily maintain control while feeling increasing passion. When she is able to relax, receive, and enjoy his loving touch, he can last longer. He can continue giving as long as she is fully receiving” (p 159-161).

CG Fewston, American novelist, with his love

Axton C., Chinese Singer/Model

The lesson from Dr. Gray is that if you give more, you will certainly get more. Try focusing less on your own passions and lusts and desires but focus on making your partner happier and more fulfilled (in both life and in the bedroom) and you just might get some benefits as well.

The truth is sex and relationship is not a one-way street in a busy construction-loaded city; it’s more of a hand-in-hand union walking beside a swan lake and when no one is around—since this is a privately owned lake park by you and your special partner—you throw off your clothes and make wild, mad love until dusk as the swans swim by with their wide, innocent eyes). Sex and relationships are a partnership, a product of two people (most of the time) working together, caring together, and loving together more and more each day.

But much like life, as well as in the bedroom (or in the shower), women want spontaneity, to be surprised, to be kept guessing, to continue to be allowed to feel the magic of life and love and romance. “A woman,” writes Dr. Gray, “feels most excited when she doesn’t know what he is going to do next [in the bedroom? in the car? in the backyard?]. Predictability is a turnoff…

“A man needs to remember that variety is very important to women” (p 145, 178).

And both sexes should remember some sage advice from Dr. Gray:

“Just as great communication opens a woman up to enjoy great sex, the possibility of great sex directly helps a man to be more loving in the relationship” (p 99). It’s a yin and yang kind of thing—you know, the sun and moon, the white and black, the one and the other.

Most women need to talk to connect while most, if not all, men need sex to connect—that’s just a fact of biology. Many women and men are simply wired differently and need to remember not only how to please themselves but how to please their partners even more. These are some of the advanced skills Dr. Gray mentions in his book.

And so we come to that time and place where an end is required (oh, how I hate endings, but these do lead to new doors and newer paths ahead), and so I will choose to end as Dr. Gray ends Mars and Venus in the Bedroom:

“By keeping the romance alive and practicing advanced bedroom skills,” explains Dr. Gray, “you can and will continue to enjoy great sex. May you always grow in love and passion and enjoy God’s special gift. You deserve it” (p 206).

Yes, yes you do.

Keep reading and smiling…

Dr. John Gray

CG Fewston, American novelist, with his love

Axton C., Chinese Singer/Model

CG Fewston

CG Fewston is an international writer/university professor who currently holds a post as Visiting Fellow in the English department at City University of Hong Kong. CG Fewston earned an M.A. in Literature with honors from Stony Brook University, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and Fiction from Southern New Hampshire University, where he had the chance to work with wonderful and talented novelists like Richard Adams Carey (author of Their Town, forthcoming in 2015; and, The Philosopher Fish, 2006) and Jessica Anthony (author ofChopsticks, 2012; and,The Convalescent, 2010) as well as New York Times Best-Selling novelists Matt Bondurant (author of The Night Swimmer, 2012; and,The Wettest County in the World, 2009, made famous in the movie Lawless, 2012) and Wiley Cash (author of A Land More Kind Than Home, 2013; and, This Dark Road to Mercy, 2014).

Among many others, CG Fewston’s stories, photographs and essays have appeared in Bohemia, Ginosko Literary Journal, Tendril Literary Magazine, Driftwood Press, The Missing Slate, Foliate Oak Magazine, The Writer’s Drawer, Moonlit Road, Nature Writing, and Travelmag: The Independent Spirit; and for several years he was a contributor to Vietnam’s national premier English newspaper, Tuoi Tre, “The Youth Newspaper.” You can read more about CG Fewston and his writing at www.cgfewston.me & www.cgfewston.com & www.cgfewston.org

His new novel, A TIME TO LOVE IN TEHRAN, will be published in 2015.

CG Fewston, American novelist, with his love

Axton C., Chinese Singer/Model

View all my reviews

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Satanic Verses (1988) by Salman Rushdie, often known as the “Godfather of Indian fiction”, incited such a global incident of anti-Islamism that the former Iranian Supreme Leader Khomeini ordered a fatwā (an official death sentence) on Rushdie’s head on February 14, 1989. And in recent events, it has become apparent, that this novel still has some influence in world affairs today.

Lars Vilks, a 68-year-old Swedish artist, organized a meeting called “Art, Blasphemy and the Freedom of Expression” at a café in Copenhagen to mark the 26th anniversary of the fatwā issued against the novelist Rushdie.

On February 14th, 2015, approximately 200 bullets from a lone gunman tore through the Krudttoenden café and, later in the day, the same gunman opened fire on a synagogue. The twin attacks in Copenhagen killed two and injured several more civilians and police officers.

Cleric Ahmad Khatami

Even last year, after 25 years, cleric Ahmad Khatami reinstated the fatwā against Rushdie and reminded Muslims across the world that the $3.3 million USD bounty on Rushdie’s head is still waiting to be claimed.

E.L. Doctorow, in Vanity Fair, once commented that the novel was “our first taste of the relationship between faith and violence.”

Salman Rushdie

Without question The Satanic Verses, a Booker finalist once banned in India and South Africa, has made a dent in world affairs and continues to stir up controversies.

But what makes this book so controversial? What causes blood to boil and men to go out and commit acts of murder and terror? Why do Muslims become so enraged at the sound of the title and the story held inside the book’s pages?

It just so happened that I finished reading The Satanic Verses on February 9th, 2015 and can offer some brief insight into this book that just may end with Rushdie’s death. But who is to say for sure?

The book—to begin as a foundation for understanding the novel’s plot—contains three narratives, and I shall classify these as A, B, and C.

Salman Rushdie

Narrative A is the story of Gibreel Farishta and Saladin “Salad” Chamcha, who could be the spitting image of Mr Salman Rushdie himself if one were to read too much into things. Gibreel is often portrayed as an angel while Chamcha is cast as a devil-satyr who at one point “had grown to a height of over eight feet, and from his nostrils there emerged smoke of two different colours, yellow from the left, and from the right, black… [and]…his bodily hair had grown thick and long, his tail…swishing angrily, his eyes…a pale but luminous red…[with a]…sizeable erection emerging from his loins” (p 291). By the end of the novel, however, as Gibreel and Chamcha have returned to their natural human-selves and Gibreel has murdered two people, the reader is allowed to question which character is actually an angel and which a devil.

Salman Rushdie

Narrative B is the story of the Prophet Mahound, easily recognizable as the Prophet Mohammad and the story of how the Qur’an became inspired and how Islam disseminated as a religion. By the end of the book, in Narrative A’s final chapter called “A Wonderful Lamp”, we are told that Narrative B and Narrative C are actually failed movies performed by the actor Gibreel:

“Chamcha had heard that Gibreel Farishta had hit the comeback trail. His first film, The Parting of the Arabian Sea [Narrative C], had bombed badly; the special effects looked home-made, the girl in the central Ayesha role, a certain Pimple Billimoria, had been woefully inadequate, and Gibreel’s own portrayal of the archangel had stuck many critics as narcissistic and megalomaniac. The days when he could do no wrong were gone; his second feature, Mahound [Narrative B], had hit every imaginable religious reef, and sunk without trace” (p 513).

Narrative C is the story of Ayesha, a common girl who becomes touched by the angel Gibreel and becomes a spiritual leader to the village Titlipur. Eventually Ayesha, covered in butterflies, leads the faithful people of Titlipur on a pilgrimage to Mecca which ends with them descending into the sea, where they are never seen again.

The entire novel, composed in nine chapters, is structured thus:

(A) B, A, C – (A) B, A, C – (A).

Narrative B (the Prophet Mahound section), however, will be, I believe, the narrative which contains the most offensive material, as we will now briefly explore, for Muslims.

“Question: What is the opposite of faith?

“Not disbelief. Too final, certain, closed. Itself a kind of belief.

“Doubt” (p 92).

And so we begin our dive into Rushdie’s pseudo-pantheon of critical Islamic-storytelling as the Prophet Mahound becomes inspired on his 44th birthday to recite the holy verses which later become a religion:

“Not my voice I’d never know such words I’m no classy speaker never was never will be but this isn’t my voice it’s a Voice.

“Mahound’s eyes open wide, he’s seeing some kind of vision, staring at it, oh, that’s right, Gibreel remembers, me. He’s seeing me. My lips moving, being moved by. What, whom? Don’t know, can’t say. Nevertheless, here they are, coming out of my mouth, up my throat, past my teeth: the Words.

“Being God’s postman is no fun, yaar.

“Butbutbut: God isn’t in this picture.

“God knows whose postman I’ve been” (p 112).

From the above passage we can quickly see two things: (1) that Rushdie with the use of the word “picture” is referring to Gibreel Farishta and his making of the motion picture Mahound, as cited above on page 513; and, (2) that Rushdie has made it abundantly clear that the Prophet Mahound is the fictional representation of the Islamic Prophet Mohammad.

And Salman later enters into the picture:

“What finally finished Salman with Mahound,” writes Rushdie in the chapter “Return to Jahilia”, “the question of the women; and of the Satanic verses. Listen, I’m no gossip, Salman drunkenly confided, but after his wife’s death Mahound was no angel, you understand my meaning. But in Yathrib he almost met his match. Those women up there: they turned his beard half-white in a year. The point about our Prophet, my dear Baal, is that he didn’t like his women to answer back, he went for mothers and daughters, think of his first wife and then Ayesha: too old and too young, his two loves. He didn’t like to pick on someone his own size. But in Yathrib the women are different, you don’t know, here in Jahilia you’re used to ordering your females about but up there they won’t put up with it. When a man gets married he goes to live with his wife’s people! Imagine! Shocking, isn’t it?” (p 366);

and Salman, the character and not the author, goes on to reflect of how he sat at the holy Prophet’s feet writing down the holy verses only to change them to his own liking:

“At first Salman took this to be no more than a nostalgic reverie of the old days in Jahilia, but then it struck him that his point of view, in the dream, had been that of the archangel, and at that moment the memory of the incident of the Satanic verses came back to him as vividly as if the thing had happened the previous day. ‘Maybe I hadn’t dreamed of myself as Gibreel,’ Salman recounted. ‘Maybe I was Shaitan.’ The realization of this possibility gave him his diabolic idea. After that, when he sat at the Prophet’s feet, writing down rules rules rules, he began, surreptitiously, to change things…

“So there I was, actually writing the Book, or rewriting, anyway, polluting the word of God with my own profane language. But, good heavens, if my poor words could not be distinguished from the Revelation by God’s own Messenger, then what did that mean? What did that say about the quality of the divine poetry? Look, I swear, I was shaken to my soul…”

“So I went on with my devilment, changing verses, until one day I read my lines to him and saw him frown and shake his head as if to clear his mind, and then nod his approval slowly, but with a little doubt” (p 367-68).

As well as all Muslims might be “shaken to soul” if Salman, both character and author, are true to the possibility that the holy Recitation had been changed, altered, modified, adjusted, manipulated in any way, because that would most certainly mean that the entire Qur’an becomes suspect, as well as the entire religion of Islam—and that would create doubt.

But Rushdie has more to offend, if offend he has, especially with “The Curtain” and the twelve prostitutes who pretend to be the holy Prophet’s twelve wives in order to secure greater profits.

“The Curtain, Hijab, was the name of the most popular brothel in Jahilia, an enormous palazzo of date-palms in water-tinkling courtyards, surrounded by chambers that interlocked in bewildering mosaic patterns, permeated by labyrinthine corridors which had been deliberately decorated to look alike, each of them bearing the same calligraphic invocations to Love, each carpeted with identical rugs, each with a large stone urn positioned against a wall…

“The girls of The Curtain—it was only by convention that they were referred to as ‘girls’, as the eldest was a woman well into her fifties, while the youngest, at fifteen, was more experienced than many fifty-year-olds—had grown fond of this shambling Baal, and in point of fact they enjoyed having a eunuch-who-wasn’t, so that out of working hours they would tease him deliciously, flaunting their bodies before him, placing their breasts against his lips, twining their legs around his waist, kissing one another passionately just an inch away from his face, until the ashy writer was hopelessly aroused; whereupon they would laugh at his stiffness and mock him into blushing, quivering detumescence; or, very occasionally, and when he had given up all expectation of such a thing, they would depute one of their number to satisfy, free of charge, the lust they had awakened…

Salman Rushdie with former wife, Padma Lakshmi

“When the news got around Jahilia that the whores of The Curtain had each assumed the identity of one of Mahound’s wives, the clandestine excitement of the city’s males was intense; yet, so afraid were they of discovery, both because they would surely lose their lives if Mahound or his lieutenant’s ever found out that they had been involved in such irreverences, and because of their desire that the new service at The Curtain be maintained, that the secret was kept from the authorities” (p 376, 379, 381).

Padma Lakshmi

And it can’t be any clearer than that. Rushdie has established a brothel that hires prostitutes to enact sexual fantasies with men based on the roles of the holy Prophet’s wives, the youngest fifteen-year-old prostitute holding the position of Ayesha, the Prophet’s favorite and youngest wife. If that is not blasphemy, I do not know what is.

 Padma Lakshmi

But for good measure we shall continue with this train of thought of Ayesha, prostitutes, the roles of women, and the holy verses recited from the Prophet Mahound, the Messenger, as found in The Satanic Verses by Rushdie:

“As the bottle emptied Salman began once again to talk, as Baal had known he would, about the source of all his ills, the Messenger and his message. He told Baal about a quarrel between Mahound and Ayesha, recounting the rumour as if it were incontrovertible fact. ‘That girl couldn’t stomach it that her husband wanted so many other women,’ he said. ‘He talked about necessity, political alliances and so on, but she wasn’t fooled. Who can blame her? Finally he went into it—what else?—one of his trances, and out he came with a message from the archangel. Gibreel had recited verses giving him full divine support. God’s own permission to fuck as many women as he liked. So there: what could poor Ayesha say against the verses of God? You know what she did say? This: ‘Your God certainly jumps to it when you need him to fix things up for you’” (p 386).

And there we have it. If the Christian’s Holy Bible is the Word of God, then according to this above passage, the Qur’an as recited by an archangel, and not God directly, to the holy Prophet, then there must certainly be room for doubt in an educated man’s mind.

But Rushdie here is also calling out the audacity of the holy verses to be preferential to man’s sexual desires and perversions while neglecting the roles of women as equal counterparts in marriage and society. And we can see this clearly depicted when the women/prostitutes become empowered by enacting fantasies of the Prophet’s twelve wives to such a degree that the prostitutes forget their real names and ultimately lose their identities. Who are these women? and where do they belong? might be good questions to consider at some point throughout the novel.

Padma Lakshmi

As for now, let’s end our reflections on The Satanic Verses with Rushdie’s own meditation on life and happiness:

“Nothing is forever,” writes Rushdie in the final chapter, “Maybe unhappiness is the continuum through which a human life moves, and joy just a series of blips, of islands in the stream. Or if not unhappiness, then at least melancholy” (p 516-517).

For Rushdie’s sake, I hope life is filled with a bit more happiness and peace of mind, despite having a three million dollar price tag on his head.

Nothing is forever, true. But one hopes to be a bit more optimistic in a world fraught with pessimism and religious-backed terror-extremism.

Regardless, since that is neither here nor there, if you want to know more about why and how The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie is or could be offensive to Muslims, then I recommend picking up a copy and reading for yourself. After all, an educated person is an individual choosing to make up one’s own mind and letting others think whatever they want to think. Such is free will. Such is freedom. Such is maturity.

Keep reading and smiling…

CG Fewston

CG Fewston is an international writer/university professor who currently holds a post as Visiting Fellow in the English department at City University of Hong Kong. CG Fewston earned an M.A. in Literature with honors from Stony Brook University, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and Fiction from Southern New Hampshire University, where he had the chance to work with wonderful and talented novelists like Richard Adams Carey (author of Their Town, forthcoming in 2015; and, The Philosopher Fish, 2006) and Jessica Anthony (author of Chopsticks, 2012; and, The Convalescent, 2010) as well as New York Times Best-Selling novelists Matt Bondurant (author of The Night Swimmer, 2012; and, The Wettest County in the World, 2009, made famous in the movie Lawless, 2012) and Wiley Cash (author of A Land More Kind Than Home, 2013; and, This Dark Road to Mercy, 2014).

Among many others, CG Fewston’s stories, photographs and essays have appeared in Bohemia, Ginosko Literary Journal, Tendril Literary Magazine, Driftwood Press, The Missing Slate, Foliate Oak Magazine, The Writer’s Drawer, Moonlit Road, Nature Writing, and Travelmag: The Independent Spirit; and for several years he was a contributor to Vietnam’s national premier English newspaper, Tuoi Tre, “The Youth Newspaper.” You can read more about CG Fewston and his writing at www.cgfewston.me & www.cgfewston.com & www.cgfewston.org

His new novel, A TIME TO LOVE IN TEHRAN, will be published in 2015.

View all my reviews

The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion by James George Frazer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (1890) by James Frazer is a massive collection (over 900 pages worth) of legends, myths, folklore involving religion and magical belief systems from around the world since the dawn of human consciousness. To begin, we should remember the elementary concept involving a human mind rising above its station in mental evolutionary terms:

“Small minds cannot grasp great ideas,” explains Frazer, “to their narrow comprehension, their purblind vision, nothing seems really great and important but themselves. Such minds hardly rise into religion at all” (p 70),

and the history of religion, as Frazer later argues, “is a long attempt to reconcile old custom with new reason, to find a sound theory for an absurd practice” (p 573), which sounds much like what academics do when they write their research and publish it into that black hole called ‘scholarly publication’—the masses read very little of these academic essays and care far less for these constantly dated reasonings and hypotheses.

Even scientists cannot prove that there is or is not a ‘God’; the best of the best minds can only prove religion false, and religion is simply the creation by humanity in futile attempts to explain what it cannot comprehend—as of yet.

Humanity has for some time now reached an understanding between magic and religion and in such an evolution of thought we, as a human race, now comprehend how “magic has preceded religion,” just as religion has preceded science (p 40).

“It becomes probable,” writes Frazer, “that magic arose before religion in the evolution of our race, and that man essayed to bend nature to his wishes by the sheer force of spells and enchantments before he strove to coax and mollify a coy, capricious, or irascible deity by the soft insinuation of prayer and sacrifice” (p 66).

But humanity has advanced and will continue to do so. The important question relates itself to the correlation of evolutionary phases: will humanity advance morally (i.e., spiritually—not religiously, since these old notions of religion as being man-made have repeatedly been proven as inaccurate) along with the rapid, exponential technological advances we find ourselves witnessing from year to year?

Can, in effect, humanity’s inward presence match that of its outward progress? Historically speaking it has not been so and growing pains (e.g., war, slavery, global terrorism) there have been.

“The process of thought which leads to the change from the one mode of conception to the other is anthropomorphism,” explains Frazer, “or the gradual investment of the immanent spirits with more and more of the attributes of humanity. As men emerge from savagery the tendency to humanise their divinities gains strength [e.g., Islam’s prophet anyone?]; and the more human these become the wider is the breach which severs them from the natural objects of which they were at first merely the animating spirits or souls. But in the progress upwards from savagery men of the same generation do not march abreast; and though the new anthropomorphic gods may satisfy the religious wants of the more developed intelligences, the backward members of the community will cling by preference to the old animalistic notions” (p 508).

In Joseph Campbell’s Myths to Live By and in my next post, I will explore the effects such an understanding has brought to the psyche, at the individual and social levels. But for now, let us move forward by moving backward in time with Frazer’s quest to rationalize ‘quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus’ (p 67).

For most of the book it can be falsely concluded that Frazer is determining the “golden bough” as an indirect reference to an ear of corn, as one might gather from the following indictment against two powerful social systems that once ruled the known world:

“The Greeks and Romans sacrificed pregnant victims to the goddesses of the corn and of the earth, doubtless in order that the earth might teem and the corn swell in the ear” (p 34)…

“Thus far,” explains Frazer, “I have for the most part assumed an identity of nature between Demeter and Persephone, the divine mother and daughter personifying the corn in its double aspect of the seed-corn of last year and the ripe ears of this, and this view of the substantial unity of mother and daughter is borne out by their portraits in Greek art, which are often so alike as to be indistinguishable” (p 325, abridged version).

And Frazer rightly applies the basic concept of human folly for those of us who are aware of the overwhelming corruption among individuals in current positions of leadership—no less unsettling as those in power, both religiously and politically, who sacrificed pregnant women and unborn children for a greater sense of control long, long ago:

“The general result is that at this stage of social evolution [no less than today] the supreme power tends to fall into the hands of men of the keenest intelligence and the most unscrupulous character” (p 55).

And this is exactly of the nature of magicians to supplant chosen corruption for the common good, and not unlike the history of leaders who malformed their own roles to fit their own devilish needs to rule.

“Hence the king,” writes Frazer, “starting as a magician, tends gradually to exchange the practice of magic for the priestly functions of prayer and sacrifice” (p 109)…

“On the whole,” continues Frazer, “comparing the traditions about Athamas with the custom that obtained with regard to his descendants in historical times, we may fairly infer that in Thessaly and probably in Boeotia there reigned of old a dynasty of which the kings were liable to be sacrificed for the good of the country to the god called Laphystian Zeus, but that they contrived to shift the fatal responsibility to their offspring, of whom the eldest son was regularly destined to the altar. As time went on, the cruel custom was so far mitigated that a ram was accepted as a vicarious sacrifice in room of the royal victim” (p 352).

So has the politician and world leaders of today who have gradually exchanged their priestly function of prayer and sacrifice for their political functions of serving the rich while stealing from the poor, a not too uncommon deception since the birth of civilization itself. I digress.

And there is no doubt for over eight hundred pages or so Frazer does focus in great depth on corn and the corn goddesses as what might help answer the question, “What is this golden bough?”

With chapter titles like “Corn-Mother and Corn-Maiden in N. Europe”, “Corn-Mother in Many Lands”, and “The Corn-Spirit as an Animal”, along with section headings such as “The Corn-mother in America,” “The Spirit of the Corn embodied in Human Beings”, “The Double Personification of the Corn as Mother and Daughter”, “Songs of the Corn Reapers”, “Killing the Corn-spirit”, “The Corn-spirit slain in his Human Representatives”, “Animal Embodiments of the Corn-spirit”, which include the corn-god as inhabiting the cock, hare, cat, goat, bull, cow, ox, horse, mare, pig, boar, and sow, it is no wonder any reader might grow to believe that Frazer was coming to the conclusion that the golden bough that adorns the book’s cover was in reference to corn or a corn-goddess or the like, but that reader, as is Frazer’s attempt, would be wrong.

Granted, Frazer states his primary aim of the book is to determine the religious rules and rites which governed the succession to the priesthood of Diana at Aricia so long ago,

(1) Why had the priest of Aricia [the King of the Wood at Nemi] to slay his predecessor?
(2) And why, before doing so, had he to pluck the Golden Bough?

Frazer even admits the process of discovering such a reason for succession took him more than thirty years to do so and multiple editions regarding just such a discussion. But by the end of this book the golden bough is not corn or a corn-goddess, as he explains in the following,

“Virgil definitely describes the Golden Bough as growing on a holm-oak, and compares it with mistletoe [now up until this point Frazer has been focused on corn, and this, from a thesis standpoint, is a sudden shift in view from corn to mistletoe as to a valid reason for having to “pluck” the golden bough before a ritual slaying]. The inference is almost inevitable that the Golden Bough was nothing but the mistletoe seen through the haze of poetry or of popular superstition…

“Breton peasants hang up great bunches of mistletoe in front of their cottages, and in the month of June these bunches are conspicuous for the bright golden tinge of their foliage…

“A hint of its real origin is possibly furnished by the statement of Pliny that the Druids worshipped the plant because they believed it to have fallen from heaven and to be a token that the tree on which it grew was chosen by the god himself. Can they have thought that the mistletoe [also known as “thunder-besom”] dropped on the oak in a flash of lightning?” (p 840-51)

After all that Frazer is still not quite certain as to what the golden bough is, but he has narrowed it down to either corn or mistletoe, which turns a golden hue if cut from the oak after some time. Frazer, like all good academics writing into that black void that doesn’t ever quite reach the ears of the masses, has this excuse to offer:

“We can never completely replace ourselves at the standpoint of primitive man, see things with his eyes, and feel our hearts beat with the emotions that stirred his. All our theories concerning him and his ways must therefore fall far short of certainty; the utmost we can aspire to in such matters is a reasonable degree of probability” (p 851).

Frazer is right, after all. We can never know what primitive men and women were thinking or feeling eons ago. We can only surmise and make educated guesses, which is exactly what both religion and science do—make good guesses. Scientists, unlike priests and the church, are often far swifter at changing their positions if found to be originally misguided, misjudged or miscalculated. After all, we are only human, right?

“We must remember,” Frazer reminds us all—scientists and children of God alike, “that at bottom the generalisations of science or, in common parlance, the laws of nature are merely hypotheses devised to explain that ever-shifting phantasmagoria of thought which we dignify with the high-sounding names of the world and the universe…

“In the last analysis magic, religion, and science are nothing but theories of thought” (p 854).

And now that is something worth considering—these theories of thought.

Keep reading and smiling…

Sir James G. Frazer

CG Fewston

CG Fewston is an international writer/university professor who currently holds a post as Visiting Fellow in the English department at City University of Hong Kong. CG Fewston earned an M.A. in Literature with honors from Stony Brook University, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and Fiction from Southern New Hampshire University, where he had the chance to work with wonderful and talented novelists like Richard Adams Carey (author of Their Town, forthcoming in 2015; and, The Philosopher Fish, 2006) and Jessica Anthony (author of Chopsticks, 2012; and, The Convalescent, 2010) as well as New York Times Best-Selling novelists Matt Bondurant (author of The Night Swimmer, 2012; and, The Wettest County in the World, 2009, made famous in the movie Lawless, 2012) and Wiley Cash (author of A Land More Kind Than Home, 2013; and, This Dark Road to Mercy, 2014).

Among many others, CG Fewston’s stories, photographs and essays have appeared in Bohemia, Ginosko Literary Journal, Tendril Literary Magazine, Driftwood Press, The Missing Slate, Foliate Oak Magazine, The Writer’s Drawer, Moonlit Road, Nature Writing, and Travelmag: The Independent Spirit; and for several years he was a contributor to Vietnam’s national premier English newspaper, Tuoi Tre, “The Youth Newspaper.” You can read more about CG Fewston and his writing at www.cgfewston.me & www.cgfewston.com & www.cgfewston.org

His new novel, A TIME TO LOVE IN TEHRAN, will be published in 2015.

View all my reviews

Myths to Live By   by Joseph Campbell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Myths to Live By (1972) by Joseph Campbell is a collection of lectures/essays taken from a series of Campbell’s talks at The Great Hall of the Cooper Union Forum in New York City between 1958 and 1971. “My continuing pleasure in lecturing there derived in part,” explains Campbell, “of course, from the old-fashioned, simple grandeur of the Great Hall itself and the knowledge that Abraham Lincoln once spoke from the very stage on which I stood” (p vii).

And even then, in that Great Hall where great men stood and lectured on things past, thing present and things yet to come, Campbell foretold of a great calamity that was befalling the world.

At the time, however, the world could not have known how important Campbell’s warnings (or proclamations?) could be to the globalized world we have and live in today. When Nietzsche called man “the sick animal,” das kranke Tier, he could not have been too far off in his assessment because, as Campbell writes, “our nature is not like that of the other species, stereotyped to fixed ways” (p 241). And that is how the world finds humanity—the sick species that howls at the moon:

“What gods are there, what gods have there ever been, that were not from man’s imagination?” (p 253)

Long, long ago in a place that had no name for fire, the first human beings were in fact emerging and stalking around flames in awe and wonder and fear because they believed that somehow the heavens had opened up and gods spit down such power to bestow into their hands and this was to be worshipped, even shunned.

“However, there was among them one who had in his dawning soul the potentiality of something better,” writes Campbell, “and that potential was evident in his sense of awe before the unknown, his fascinated curiosity, with a desire to approach and to explore” (p 240).

With such “awe before the unknown” and with such “fascinated curiosity” and with “a desire to approach and explore” I invite you now to read, suspend any judgments (“Judge not, that you may not be judged”), and like those ancestors of ours who first harnessed fire, so too we might be able to harness a new kind of fire, the fire of Reason. A reason not of thinking or the mind or science or religion but of the soul reasoning with all of its faculties. Are you brave enough to continue? I believe you are…

Science, as the second function of myth, pertains to the awe and the hopes of understanding the cosmological dimension, “the dimension,” explains Campbell in an interview in The Power of Myth, “with which science is concerned—showing you what the shape of the universe is, but showing it in such a way that the mystery again comes through. Today [and even in our time and into a hundred years from now] we tend to think that scientists have all the answers. But the great ones tell us, ‘No, we haven’t got all the answers. We’re telling you how it works—but what is it?’ You strike a match, what’s fire? You can tell me about oxidation, but that doesn’t tell me a thing” (p 39).

So I must ask: what is God? Of what substance is God made? Where did God come from?

Religion is an attempt to understand, to explain and to teach about God and the Universe in a spiritual sense and focus. But what is God?

Scientists have classified the known world—still waiting for the unknown to be discovered—and can give names to strange new wonders and help explain how these unfamiliar objects work—but that doesn’t tell us a thing. We need to know more…We want to know more… because that is exactly what makes us human and sets us apart from the animal kingdom.

Science has explained that religious lore when set against historical proof is inaccurate—and despite the surmountable evidence and truth to this, people are still debating with much ‘fire and damnation’ between Evolution and Creationism. If “creationism” simply means acts created through divine powers (and not just rejection of sound reason) then, in my mind, both evolution and creationism may exist as one—nothing has been rejected, but only explained, expanded. A divine power, which remains a mystery to humanity and science, set in motion the acts of evolution to fulfill acts of all of creation. This contains reason.

And yet Americans war with words at this debate. And many retreat back into their known “myths”, which as Campbell defines in The Power of Myth and elsewhere, “The myths are metaphorical of spiritual potentiality in the human being, and the same powers that animate our life animate the life of the world” (p 28).

And since the world has become globalized in the last hundred years, and since science has done much to refute most, if not all, religious accuracy, humanity—and I mean people from around the world—have lost the power of their personal myths; people have lost themselves in this strange new world and they do not know what to do—other than retreat back into old myths that no longer hold any power, and this too is bewildering and fills one with great fear and anxiety.

And yet here we are.

How then shall I begin? (Yes, I am only beginning…)

Let us start with a recent news report I witnessed a few days ago while riding a train north from Hong Kong to mainland China. On the small television set in the train I saw the Middle Eastern group often referred to as ISIS (more so for the West’s ideology and its clever attempts at implying the false non-Christian mythic symbol ISIS, the Egyptian goddess), short for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, despite also having the less popular acronym ISIL, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, destroying their own mythology.

ISIS, just in the last week, filmed themselves smashing ancient artifacts in Iraq once belonging to the time of Nimrud, and many other times now lost, in northern Iraq and other priceless Assyrian motifs. In addition, ISIS and their holy sledgehammers smashed various Muslim mosques in stern beliefs of fulfilling their dead Prophet’s Koranic commands.

And here is the problem Campbell predicted some forty plus years ago: the men and women of this newly emerged and globalized world today are lost, confused, scared, and are retreating into past religions and past belief systems in hopes of restoring order to their eternal and infinite souls.

Science, in its grand wisdom to show what is and what is not (but still failing to prove the existence of the One True God) has proven, quite accurately, how religions—from Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam and Christianity—are historically inaccurate and un-conforming to today’s standards for the creation and existence of codes of conduct and morality. Much the same as Zoroastrians came face-to-face with themselves in a world where their religion was once dominate but soon snuffed to ash in the growing wind of grandfather fata growling, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

“And so we are right now in an extremely perilous age of thunder, lightning, and hurricanes all around,” remarks Campbell in 1971’s “Envoy: No More Horizons”, “I think it is improper to become hysterical about it, projecting hatred and blame. It is an inevitable, altogether natural thing that when energies that have never met before come into collision—each bearing its own pride—there should be turbulence. That is just what we are experiencing; and we are riding it: riding it to a new age, a new birth, a totally new condition of mankind” (p 255).

That “new birth” leading to a “new age” has not come and humanity finds itself remaining in an “age of thunder and lightning”.

ISIS destroys, in essence, its own heritage and its own past which pertains to absolutely nothing to that of the West simply because these once familiar and holy and remarkable motifs that at one time or another spoke to these people from these Middle Eastern regions (namely Iraq, Iran, Syria, etc.) and these symbols and motifs and statues are dead things, lifeless in every spiritual sense and are no longer “spiritually” speaking to these people from this region as mythological symbols should and these motifs have become strange, unholy and terrifying.

Since these mythological symbols have been destroyed inside the mind and spirit of these men belonging to ISIS so these men feel they must destroy the actual physical objects that no longer carry any significant meaning and spiritual value as the objects once did.

“When the world changes, then the religion has to be transformed,” explains Campbell in The Power of Myth, “That is a fact we had better to do. But my notion of the real horror today is what you see in Beirut [much as we are witnessing in Iraq and the Levant in our own time]. There you have the three great Western religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—and because the three of them have three different names for the same biblical god, they can’t get on together. They are stuck with their metaphor and don’t realize its reference. They haven’t allowed the circle that surrounds them to open. It is a closed circle. Each group [much like children might say] says, ‘We are the chosen group, and we have God’” (p 26).

Can anyone possess the God, the One True God. I know not how or why. I think no one can “have God”.

For one, religion as humanity has known it for the past several thousand years has changed, and that includes every religion known to all nations and all creeds. Religion—whether a Jew, Hindi, Christian, Muslim—no longer exists as it once did. I can hear the learned men and women now scoffing; I can hear the wisest of the holy men and women now turning their eyes in contempt. But think about it…seriously stop and consider, reason, explore the unknown:

“For there is no divinely ordained authority any more that we have to recognize,” writes Campbell in Myths to Live By, “There is no anointed messenger of God’s law [no matter how bad ISIS or other Muslims and Christians alike want there to be]. In our world today all civil law is conventional. No divine authority is claimed for it: no Sinai; no Mount of Olives. Our laws are enacted and altered by human determination, and within their secular jurisdiction each of us is free to seek his own destiny, his own truth, to quest for this or for that and to find it through his own doing” (p 248).

God is not dead; He has just been renamed, and we no longer have the myths to support this change. We need myths that encompass the entire planet, not just a chosen set of people.

And yet, much the same as Americans fighting to keep their religion alive by saying, “God did, he really did, create the world in only six days and rested the seventh!” so are ISIS and other Islamic extremists, according to their own religion and sets of stories, fighting to keep their religion alive, and all this is perfectly natural. How so? Let’s listen to what the expert in mythology says about humanity’s ongoing frustrations:

“What is occurring is completely natural,” explains Campbell even in 1971 and in Myths to Live By, “as are its pains, confusions, and mistakes…And now, among the powers that are here being catapulted together, to collide and to explode, not the least important (it can be safely said) are the ancient mythological traditions, chiefly of Indian and the Far East, that are now entering in force into the fields of our European heritage, and vice versa, ideals of rational, progressive humanism and democracy that are now flooding into Asia” (p 255).

Just a few months ago I bore witness to Occupy Hong Kong, an event filled with protests and rallies being remarkably peaceful and on the opposite extreme we have ISIS’s binge of destruction and mayhem, and on the rather residual level that ISIS is now faced with—change that cannot be undone, awaking to find a world both strange and unfamiliar.

And these spiritual events, if you may allow me to call them that—since that is exactly how I interpret these psychological turmoils and struggles of consciousness the world is faced with in my time on earth—refer to the inward potentials of our species to grow, evolve into a unified human species no longer separated by dogmas and no longer bordered by beliefs and no longer distinct in religious radicalism but unified in its understanding that we are, in fact, and have always been, one species meant for greater acts (than war, hunger, and poverty) we have thus far exemplified in the propensity of the human will to endeavor.

William Blake once wrote: “If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.”

And this is how I see the world before us: infinite. Even if you do not. Even if ISIS cannot.

In 1970 Campbell remarks on the horizons set before humanity:

“And with each expansion of horizon, from the troglodyte cave to the Buddhist temple on the hilltop—and on now to the moon—there has been, as there must inevitably be, not only an expansion of consciousness, in keeping with the ever-widening as well as deepening insights into the nature of Nature (which is of one nature with ourselves), but also an enrichment, refinement, and general melioration of the conditions of human physical life…

“It is my whole thesis, consequently, that we are at this moment participating in one of the very greatest leaps of the human spirit to a knowledge not only of outside nature but also of our own deep inward mystery that has ever been taken, or that ever will or ever can be taken.

“And what are we hearing, meanwhile, from those sociological geniuses that are, these days [and still even in 2015], swarming on our activated campuses? I saw the answer displayed the other day [as I often do on the internet] on a large poster in a bookstore up at Yale: a photograph of one of our astronauts on a desert of the moon, and the comment beneath him, ‘So what!’”

So what? I would consider this an irreverence of the highest form. Humanity unites the known world and stands atop the moon too give us images that still move us and unite us on one accord today and there remain some with the minds of children who remark, “No biggie.”

Such comments deserve no place in such a world ever-changing to new heights of consciousness. Such comments come from the mind of one who is not ready for change, to evolve to see the mystery unfold before them. Such comments are unholy.

We all have consciousness and this is a power not often used. “The important thing about each of us,” Campbell writes, “is the quality of his consciousness” (p 128). And out there, in the world, and the internet, the quality of consciousness found in a majority of men, women, children is considerably poor and malnourished. And the reason for this is because of the Monster State. “Man should not be in the service of society, society should be in the service of man,” explains Campbell, “When man is in the service of society, you have a monster state, and that’s what is threatening the world at this minute [and even at this hour]” (p 8).

CG Fewston, American novelist,

with long-time partner

Axton C., Chinese model/singer/entrepreneur

I have no answers here. I promised you none. I only asked you to explore with me the connections I see each second of my life, seconds which overwhelm me, tire me. I simply wanted a companion to walk beside me on this journey of discovery. And so you have…

But I would like to end with a quote from Chief Seattle, who replied to the U.S. president in 1852 when asked to sell some land. Chief Seattle replied that land and sky belonged to no one and could not be owned and, therefore, could not be sold or purchased. He concluded thus:

“As we are part of the land, you too are part of the land. This earth is precious to us. It is also precious to you. One thing we know: there is only one God. No man, be he Red Man or White Man, can be apart. We are brothers after all” (p 43, The Power of Myth).

We are brothers and sisters after all, and we are infinite—if only we choose and believe to be.

Keep reading and smiling…

CG Fewston

CG Fewston is an international writer/university professor who currently holds a post as Visiting Fellow in the English department at City University of Hong Kong. CG Fewston earned an M.A. in Literature with honors from Stony Brook University, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and Fiction from Southern New Hampshire University, where he had the chance to work with wonderful and talented novelists like Richard Adams Carey (author of Their Town, forthcoming in 2015; and, The Philosopher Fish, 2006) and Jessica Anthony (author of Chopsticks, 2012; and, The Convalescent, 2010) as well as New York Times Best-Selling novelists Matt Bondurant (author of The Night Swimmer, 2012; and, The Wettest County in the World, 2009, made famous in the movie Lawless, 2012) and Wiley Cash (author of A Land More Kind Than Home, 2013; and, This Dark Road to Mercy, 2014).

Among many others, CG Fewston’s stories, photographs and essays have appeared in Bohemia, Ginosko Literary Journal, Tendril Literary Magazine, Driftwood Press, The Missing Slate, Foliate Oak Magazine, The Writer’s Drawer, Moonlit Road, Nature Writing, and Travelmag: The Independent Spirit; and for several years he was a contributor to Vietnam’s national premier English newspaper, Tuoi Tre, “The Youth Newspaper.” You can read more about CG Fewston and his writing at www.cgfewston.me & www.cgfewston.com & www.cgfewston.org

His new novel, A TIME TO LOVE IN TEHRAN, will be published in 2015.

CG Fewston, American novelist,

with long-time partner

Axton C., Chinese model/singer/entrepreneur

View all my reviews

‘The Universe is inside each one of us,’ the old man told the boy seated next to him on the cliffs facing the Mediterranean Sea. ‘Your mother, God rest her soul, wanted you to know that.’

The boy stood to follow his father down the hill, but the boy stopped and looked out over the sea to where a ship was passing across the horizon. He thought of how he had lost his mother to the Black Death and what great sorrow it brought him.

When he was at the bottom of the hill faced with the pastures of his father’s sheep, the boy knew he had lost his great joy and doubted if he could ever find it again. Nevertheless, he knew that the Universe inside him was divided by a great sorrow and a great joy.

A few years later the boy buried his father next to his mother on the same hill overlooking the same sea. His father had followed the sadness each bottle provided and the boy believed on some nights his father might one day be happy again. But that had not been the case and the father died a broken man leaving the boy without a family.

The boy sold his father’s land and sheep and a week later was hired to work a merchant’s ship. The boy, becoming a young man, dreamed of faraway lands and peoples and the great joy he had lost years, years ago.

Decades later the boy, now grown into a man, returned with his wife of many memories and their two teenage sons and infant daughter. He and his family stood on the deck of the ship named Santa Isabel and looked up at the graves on the cliff where his father and mother were buried.

‘Where are we?’ the eldest son asked his father.

The father leaned down and gave the boy a kiss on his head and said to his family, ‘We are home.’

CG Fewston

CG Fewston is an international writer/university professor who currently holds a post as Visiting Fellow in the English department at City University of Hong Kong. CG Fewston earned an M.A. in Literature with honors from Stony Brook University, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and Fiction from Southern New Hampshire University, where he had the chance to work with wonderful and talented novelists like Richard Adams Carey (author of Their Town, forthcoming in 2015; and, The Philosopher Fish, 2006) and Jessica Anthony (author of Chopsticks, 2012; and, The Convalescent, 2010) as well as New York Times Best-Selling novelists Matt Bondurant (author of The Night Swimmer, 2012; and, The Wettest County in the World, 2009, made famous in the movie Lawless, 2012) and Wiley Cash (author of A Land More Kind Than Home, 2013; and, This Dark Road to Mercy, 2014).

Among many others, CG Fewston’s stories, photographs and essays have appeared in Bohemia, Ginosko Literary Journal, Tendril Literary Magazine, Driftwood Press, The Missing Slate, Foliate Oak Magazine, The Writer’s Drawer, Moonlit Road, Nature Writing, and Travelmag: The Independent Spirit; and for several years he was a contributor to Vietnam’s national premier English newspaper, Tuoi Tre, “The Youth Newspaper.” You can read more about CG Fewston and his writing at www.cgfewston.me & www.cgfewston.com & www.cgfewston.org

His new novel, A TIME TO LOVE IN TEHRAN, will be published in 2015.

View all my reviews

“Inside the taxi the heater sputtered. The driver strained to see the roadway through the frost on the taxi windshield. Outside I could see the birches and awnings sagging with snow. ‘T’amo e T’amerò’ played over the radio as Leila clung to my arm and twisted her diamond engagement ring about her finger.

“She sang with the song, ‘I love you and I will love you,’ and her closed eyes flittered. She nudged her face deeper into my side and she inhaled what I thought was the musky smell of my jacket. She sighed…

“And as she stared out the taxi window at a beggar frozen in the snow, I yearned to have her look at me. The passion was not in any one part of Leila. It was everything made whole, unified by prominent forbearance of her ancestry and future. She was a timeless aggregate, provocative and world-changing. Children would become her blessing, one day, and I wanted to share in that dream. Her stare often moved me into speechlessness, captivated me into forgetfulness, and I longed to know what she was thinking without her ever having to say a single word. But I knew such things were impossible for me” (p 43).

— from  A TIME TO LOVE IN TEHRAN (2015) by CG FEWSTON

Women Parliamentarians of Iran in mid 1970s Tehran, Iran:

Chaloos Road, Iran – 1974:

Miss Iran Finalists 1974:

Soheila Jorjani – Miss Iran 1974:

Iran Air Advertisement, 1974:

BATHING BEAUTIES:

Shahbanou Farah and Friends

In Bathing Suits at Caspian Sea Resort (1974/75):

Maydane Shahyad Atyameh, Tehran, Iran

postcard used posted to UK – 1974:

View of Mount Damavand and Haraz River

from Manzariye village, Polur:

Alborz Mountain range seen from Tehran:

CG Fewston

CG Fewston is an international writer/university professor who currently holds a post as Visiting Fellow in the English department at City University of Hong Kong. CG Fewston earned an M.A. in Literature with honors from Stony Brook University, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and Fiction from Southern New Hampshire University, where he had the chance to work with wonderful and talented novelists like Richard Adams Carey (author of Their Town, forthcoming in 2015; and, The Philosopher Fish, 2006) and Jessica Anthony (author of Chopsticks, 2012; and, The Convalescent, 2010) as well as New York Times Best-Selling novelists Matt Bondurant (author of The Night Swimmer, 2012; and, The Wettest County in the World, 2009, made famous in the movie Lawless, 2012) and Wiley Cash (author of A Land More Kind Than Home, 2013; and, This Dark Road to Mercy, 2014).

Among many others, CG Fewston’s stories, photographs and essays have appeared in Bohemia, Ginosko Literary Journal, Tendril Literary Magazine, Driftwood Press, The Missing Slate, Foliate Oak Magazine, The Writer’s Drawer, Moonlit Road, Nature Writing, and Travelmag: The Independent Spirit; and for several years he was a contributor to Vietnam’s national premier English newspaper, Tuoi Tre, “The Youth Newspaper.” You can read more about CG Fewston and his writing at www.cgfewston.me & www.cgfewston.com & www.cgfewston.org

His new novel, A TIME TO LOVE IN TEHRAN, was published on April 2, 2015 —

10 years to the day of the publication

of his first novella, A Father’s Son (April 2, 2005)

“Thus one skilled at giving rise to the extraordinary

is as boundless as Heaven and Earth,

as inexhaustible as the Yellow River and the ocean.

Ending and beginning again,

like the sun and moon. Dying and then being born,

like the four seasons.”

found in Sources of Chinese Tradition, p 5

CG Fewston

CG Fewston is an international writer/university professor who currently holds a post as Visiting Fellow in the English department at City University of Hong Kong. CG Fewston earned an M.A. in Literature with honors from Stony Brook University, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and Fiction from Southern New Hampshire University, where he had the chance to work with wonderful and talented novelists like Richard Adams Carey (author of Their Town, forthcoming in 2015; and, The Philosopher Fish, 2006) and Jessica Anthony (author of Chopsticks, 2012; and, The Convalescent, 2010) as well as New York Times Best-Selling novelists Matt Bondurant (author of The Night Swimmer, 2012; and, The Wettest County in the World, 2009, made famous in the movie Lawless, 2012) and Wiley Cash (author of A Land More Kind Than Home, 2013; and, This Dark Road to Mercy, 2014).

Among many others, CG Fewston’s stories, photographs and essays have appeared in Bohemia, Ginosko Literary Journal, Tendril Literary Magazine, Driftwood Press, The Missing Slate, Foliate Oak Magazine, The Writer’s Drawer, Moonlit Road, Nature Writing, and Travelmag: The Independent Spirit; and for several years he was a contributor to Vietnam’s national premier English newspaper, Tuoi Tre, “The Youth Newspaper.” You can read more about CG Fewston and his writing at www.cgfewston.me & www.cgfewston.com & www.cgfewston.org

His new novel, A TIME TO LOVE IN TEHRAN, was published on April 2, 2015 —

10 years to the day of the publication

of his first novella, A Father’s Son (April 2, 2005)

“Thus one skilled at giving rise to the extraordinary

is as boundless as Heaven and Earth,

as inexhaustible as the Yellow River and the ocean.

Ending and beginning again,

like the sun and moon. Dying and then being born,

like the four seasons.”

found in Sources of Chinese Tradition, p 5

The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Power of Myth (1988) by Joseph Campbell (along with interviewer, Bill Moyers) is the complete televised interview published in a book of clues to help better understand our own personal destiny as well as the destiny of our society.

As I write this, the America I had known as a child crumbles to pieces as though it has become wet sand in the palm of corporate greed. David Simon, author of the hit HBO series The Wire, agrees with me when he says, “There is definitely two Americas.”

David Simon

And David further laments on the sad state of American affairs in his essay found in The Observer:

“You would have thought that we would have learned what works. Instead we’ve descended into what can only be described as greed. This is just greed. This is an inability to see that we’re all connected, that the idea of two Americas is implausible, or two Australias, or two Spains or two Frances.”

Greed. There is no better diagnosis than greed to help explain the turmoil and uprisings transpiring all across America in the last few years, as well as in many other parts of the world.

And we will continue to see these uprising from the simple meek, the average people who have been cheated out of their rightful inheritance to human equality—certainly all are born with equal potential but they are not given equal opportunities, not by a long shot.

And no matter who you are, greed can never be the reason to live nor can it be the silver lining to one’s personal and social destiny. And these invisible social boundaries often found in a “social status” created to divide men and women can be described as a doomed concept of the infantile Ego seeking superiority over an equal.

And Campbell knew more than most about the broken future ahead. He explains in The Power of Myth:

“Man should not be in the service of society, society should be in the service of man. When man is in the service of society, you have a monster state, and that’s what is threatening the world at this minute” (p 8).

And so almost thirty years since these words were spoken by my mentor Joseph Campbell that America finds itself as the great Monster State and it is no wonder why the world watches the uprisings all across America with great interest—it is like watching Rome burn, no?

But here we are. All across America the corporate pigs have firmly established their rule of greed and American citizens from all walks of life are finding themselves discontent, dissatisfied and disillusioned in their Monster State that surrounds and suffocates them.

Campbell speaks of this discontent and the anticipation of the individual in a broken society to evolve to something more:

“Your life is much deeper and broader than you conceive it to be here. What you are living is but a fractional inkling of what is really within you, what gives you life, breadth, and depth. But you can live in terms of that depth. And when you can experience it, you suddenly see that all the religions are talking of that” (p 70).

David, too, speaks of this existential crises happening all across America in his essay in The Observer:

“We have become something other than what we claim for the American dream and all because of our inability to basically share…And that’s what The Wire was about basically, it was about people who were worth less and who were no longer necessary, as maybe 10 or 15% of my country is no longer necessary to the operation of the economy. It was about them trying to solve, for lack of a better term, an existential crises…That’s the great horror show.”

And to better understand the tragedy of both the individual and society—what could be called as the Horrific Fall from Human Greatness—Campbell explains how an internal evolution takes place:

“This is a fundamental psychological transformation that everyone has to undergo. We are in childhood in a condition of dependency under someone’s protection and supervision for some fourteen to twenty-one years—and if you’re going on for your Ph.D., this may continue to perhaps thirty-five. You are in no way a self-responsible, free agent, but an obedient dependent, expecting and receiving punishments and rewards. To evolve out of this position of psychological immaturity to the courage of self-responsibility and assurance requires a death and a resurrection. That’s the basic motif of the universal hero’s journey—leaving one condition and finding the source of life to bring you forth into a richer or mature condition” (p 152).

 And this is what the world is seeing: the “death” of a way Corporate and Political America has been growing fat and lazy by treating its hard working citizens as labor fodder. And this death is necessary for America, in both corporate and political psychological tendencies, to evolve into a more mature condition—and if America does not evolve? Well, it will burn. There’s no question about it.

And Campbell sympathizes with modern Americans, even in 1987 when the interview aired on PBS:

“When you think about what people are actually undergoing in our civilization, you realize it’s a very grim thing to be a modern human being. The drudgery of the lives of most of the people who have to support families—well, it’s a life-extinguishing affair” (p 160).

And when families and individuals begin to feel the weight and pressure of this “life-extinguishing affair”, they will do what they did in Baltimore, among many other places: they will pick up a brick and speed along the death of their America.

And as the corruption of capitalism and corporate greed continue to provide profound evidence for their own inevitable demise, Americans are witnessing the oldest mythological motif:

As you come out of the forest with gold piled high on your back and in your hands the gold turns to ash (p 164). And America is now coming out of that forest.

And what happens if America continues to ignore such time-honored truths as those Campbell spent the better part of the twentieth century discussing among the greatest minds in the world?

Joseph Campbell (1904-1987)

Campbell has an answer for this, too:

“If the person [and society] insists on a certain program, and doesn’t listen to the demands of his own heart, he’s going to risk a schizophrenic crackup. Such a person has put himself off center. He has aligned himself with a program for life, and it’s not the one the body’s interested in at all. The world is full of people who have stopped listening to themselves or have listened only to their neighbors to learn what they ought to do, how they ought to behave, and what the values are that they should be living for” (p 181).

And the fact remains for Corporate America to digest and seriously consider: the body [as in the people] is no longer interested in your program [as in capitalistic greed]. And things are going to change whether Corporate America likes it or not. Why? Because there is always the brick.

David speaks of this in his closing remarks about his broken and divided America:

“We’re either going to [change] in some practical way when things get bad enough or we’re going to keep going the way we’re going, at which point there’s going to be enough people standing on the outside of this mess that somebody’s going to pick up a brick, because you know when people get to the end there’s always the brick. I hope we go for the first option but I’m losing faith.”

And lose faith he likely will. Corporate America is on a collision course with more bricks thrown by a generation who are no longer satisfied with staying quiet and performing the status quo because they are now awake and have fully realized that quid pro quo is a grand deception; there’s no gold and riches at the end of this rainbow—ashes and dust are what Americans are getting for their hard work and honest morals. But the question still remains: how should America proceed?

“There are gods of violence, there are gods of compassion,” Campbell says in his interview with Moyer, “there are gods that unite the two worlds of the unseen and the seen, and there are gods that are simply the protectors of kings or nations in their war campaigns…

“When you can get rid of fear and desire and just get back to where you’re becoming, you’ve hit the spot. Goethe says godhead is effective in the living and not in the dead, in the becoming and the changing, not in what has already become and set fast. So reason is concerned, he states, with striving toward the divine through the becoming and the changing, while intelligence makes use of the set fast, what is knowable, known, and so to be used for the shaping of a life.

“But the goal of your quest for knowledge of yourself is to be found at that burning point in yourself, that becoming thing in yourself, which is innocent of the goods and evils of the world as already become, and therefore desireless and fearless. That is the condition of a warrior going into battle with perfect courage. That is life in movement” (p 259, 273-274).

By recognizing this particular ability to reason, as Goethe mentions, and to contemplate Campbell’s call to find that “burning point in yourself”, we can start to perceive the steps to help us evolve, both personally and socially.

And we must also further understand that life is change, that our Universe requires change on every level, and that we must become desireless and fearless when seeking such change in all aspects of life, either personal or social, in order to be deserving of the rewards that are sure to follow in the new America, a new and better World for all.

CG Fewston

CG Fewston is an American novelist who currently holds a post as Visiting Fellow in the English department at City University of Hong Kong. CG Fewston earned an M.A. in Literature with honors from Stony Brook University, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and Fiction from Southern New Hampshire University, where he had the chance to work with wonderful and talented novelists like Richard Adams Carey (author of In the Evil Day, October 2015; and, The Philosopher Fish, 2006) and Jessica Anthony (author of Chopsticks, 2012; and, The Convalescent, 2010) as well as New York Times Best-Selling novelists Matt Bondurant (author of The Night Swimmer, 2012; and, The Wettest County in the World, 2009, made famous in the movie Lawless, 2012) and Wiley Cash (author of A Land More Kind Than Home, 2013; and, This Dark Road to Mercy, 2014).

Among many others, CG Fewston’s stories, photographs and essays have appeared in Bohemia, Ginosko Literary Journal, Tendril Literary Magazine, Driftwood Press, The Missing Slate, Foliate Oak Magazine, The Writer’s Drawer, Moonlit Road, Nature Writing, and Travelmag: The Independent Spirit; and for several years he was a contributor to Vietnam’s national premier English newspaper, Tuoi Tre, “The Youth Newspaper.” You can read more about CG Fewston and his writing at www.cgfewston.me & www.cgfewston.com & www.cgfewston.org

His new novel, A TIME TO LOVE IN TEHRAN, was published on April 2, 2015 —

10 years to the day of the publication

of his first novella, A FATHER’S SON (April 2, 2005)

“Thus one skilled at giving rise to the extraordinary

is as boundless as Heaven and Earth,

as inexhaustible as the Yellow River and the ocean.

Ending and beginning again,

like the sun and moon. Dying and then being born,

like the four seasons.”

found in Sources of Chinese Tradition, p 5

View all my reviews

CG Fewston

CG Fewston is an American novelist who currently holds a post as Visiting Fellow in the English department at City University of Hong Kong. CG Fewston earned an M.A. in Literature with honors from Stony Brook University, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and Fiction from Southern New Hampshire University, where he had the chance to work with wonderful and talented novelists like Richard Adams Carey (author of In the Evil Day, October 2015; and, The Philosopher Fish, 2006) and Jessica Anthony (author of Chopsticks, 2012; and, The Convalescent, 2010) as well as New York Times Best-Selling novelists Matt Bondurant (author of The Night Swimmer, 2012; and, The Wettest County in the World, 2009, made famous in the movie Lawless, 2012) and Wiley Cash (author of A Land More Kind Than Home, 2013; and, This Dark Road to Mercy, 2014).

Among many others, CG Fewston’s stories, photographs and essays have appeared in Bohemia, Ginosko Literary Journal, Tendril Literary Magazine, Driftwood Press, The Missing Slate, Foliate Oak Magazine, The Writer’s Drawer, Moonlit Road, Nature Writing, and Travelmag: The Independent Spirit; and for several years he was a contributor to Vietnam’s national premier English newspaper, Tuoi Tre, “The Youth Newspaper.” You can read more about CG Fewston and his writing at www.cgfewston.me & www.cgfewston.com & www.cgfewston.org

His new novel, A TIME TO LOVE IN TEHRAN, was published on April 2, 2015 —

10 years to the day of the publication

of his first novella, A FATHER’S SON (April 2, 2005)

“Thus one skilled at giving rise to the extraordinary

is as boundless as Heaven and Earth,

as inexhaustible as the Yellow River and the ocean.

Ending and beginning again,

like the sun and moon. Dying and then being born,

like the four seasons.”

found in Sources of Chinese Tradition, p 5

Amsterdam by Ian McEwan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amsterdam (1998) by Ian McEwan rightfully won the Booker Prize and the novel, being only 178 pages long, was claimed by the Sunday Telegraph as “a psychologically brilliant study of heartlessness.” And that is exactly what a reader will get: a superbly written piece of brutal heartlessness and blatant betrayals on all sides, but Ian does it so well it feels like the reader is getting slapped in the face with silk.

The story starts out in a wintry London at a funeral and revolves around the dead, Molly Lane, and her surviving husband, George, and her lovers: the struggling editor of The Judge Vernon Halliday, and the genius Clive Linley who is writing the musical score of his lifetime.

And Ian’s ability to weave the plot and dialogue around these heartless but ambitious characters is pure brilliance:

“At last,” Ian (author of Atonement) writes, “Clive was gripping George’s hand in a reasonable display of sincerity. ‘It was a wonderful service.’

“‘It was very kind of you to come.’

“Her death had ennobled him. The quiet gravity really wasn’t his style at all, which had always been both needy and dour; anxious to be liked, but incapable of taking friendliness for granted. A burden of the hugely rich” (p 9).

Ian McEwan

And then there is one final character the story revolves around: Molly’s former friend, the Foreign Secretary named Julian Garmony, who is later discovered to have taken pictures dressed as a woman and Vernon must decide if he will ruin the man. But for now, Clive, the musician faces Garmony at Molly’s funeral,

“Then the Foreign Secretary did an extraordinary thing which quite destroyed Clive’s theory about the effects of public office and which, in retrospect, he was forced to admire. Garmony reached out and, with his forefinger and thumb, caught hold of the lapel of Clive’s overcoat and, drawing him close, spoke in a voice that no one else could hear.

“‘The very last time I saw Molly she told me you were impotent and always had been.’

“‘Complete nonsense. She never said that.’

“‘Of course you’re bound to deny it. Thing is, we could discuss it out loud in front of the gentlemen over there, or you could get off my case and make a pleasant farewell. That is to say, fuck off’” (p 16).

And the heartlessness that is so popular in people these days just gets worse as Clive, out on a hike in the Lake District, witnesses a possible rape and decides instead to finish working on his masterpiece:

“The woman shouted again and Clive, lying pressed against the rock, closed his eyes…

“The jewel, the melody. Its momentousness pressed upon him. So much depended on it; the symphony, the celebration, his reputation, the lamented century’s ode to joy. He did not doubt that what he half heard could bear the weight. In its simplicity lay all the authority of a lifetime’s work…

“What was clear now was the pressure of choice: he should either go down and protect the woman, if she needed protection, or he should creep away round the side of Glaramara to find a sheltered place to continue his work—if it was not already lost. He could not remain here doing nothing…

“Twenty minutes later he found a flat-topped rock to use as a table and stood hunched over his scribble” (p 87-88).

And far too often in this world we live in, we find pathetic men like Clive who choose to ignore what is morally right and instead focus on their own selfish needs and desires—and in any morally intelligent being, this sort of behavior is highly unacceptable. Ian, one may consider quite evident in this work, asks the hard questions about morality and ambition and friendship and betrayal.

But what of Amsterdam, the namesake of the book?

According to the time of the book, Amsterdam had just passed certain laws to aid people in killing themselves (i.e., euthanasia), while Clive and Vernon, two very good friends, have an awkward talk, in hopes of not wasting away and dying from cancer like their former friend and lover, Molly Lane:

“‘So, what I’m saying is this—I’m asking you, as my oldest friend, to help me if it ever got to the point where you could see that it was the right thing. Just as we might have helped Molly if we’d been able…’

“Clive trailed away, a little disconcerted by Vernon who stared at him with his glass raised, as though frozen in the act of drinking. Clive cleared this throat noisily.

“‘It’s an odd thing to ask, I know. It’s also illegal in this country and I wouldn’t want you to put yourself on the wrong side of the law, assuming, of course, you were to say yes. But there are ways, and there are places and if it came to it, I’d want you to get me there on a plane. It’s a heavy responsibility, something I could only ask of a close friend like yourself. All I can say is that I’m not in a state of panic or anything. I have given it a lot of thought…’

“Both men accepted that the nature of the request, its intimacy and self-conscious reflection on their friendship, had created, for the moment, an uncomfortable emotional proximity which was best dealt with by their parting without another word, Vernon walking quickly up the street in search of a taxi, and Clive going back up the stairs, to his piano” (p 49-50).

But what makes Ian’s writing top-notch is not just the plot and his profoundly twisted characters, but the superb ability to manipulate simple words into sentences that spark life into existence:

“Finding the notes would be an act of inspired synthesis,” Ian writes of Clive. “It was as if he knew them, but could not yet hear them. He knew their enticing sweetness and melancholy. He knew their simplicity, and the model, surely, was Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. Consider the first line—a few steps up, a few steps down. It could be a nursery tune. It was completely without pretension, and yet carried such spiritual weight…

“During the first hour or so, after he had turned south into the Langstrath, he felt, despite his optimism, the unease of outdoor solitude wrap itself around him” (p 76-77).
And then there is when Ian, a true master, can combine all elements of his craft into a few sentences that, if one were to look closely and pay attention, give the story’s ending away:

“The hours passed, and Vernon picked up his copy of The Judge several times to read again about the medical scandal in Holland. Later on in the day he made a few phone enquiries of his own. More idle hours passed while he sat about in the kitchen drinking coffee, contemplating the wreck of his prospects, and wondering whether he should ring Clive and pretend to make peace, in order to invite himself to Amsterdam” (p 149).

Amsterdam by Ian McEwan is a simple, but elegant, read and can be completed in one or two sittings on a lazy afternoon when the rain has deprived the reader of an outdoor hike of her own. The writing springs to life on almost every page and the corruption that haunts weak men’s souls is just as relevant today as it was when the book was first published some seventeen years ago. And for these reasons, among many many more, this is why Amsterdam is a strong recommend.

Keep reading and smiling…

More books by Ian:

Canal. Amsterdam. Netherland

CG Fewston is an American novelist who is a member of AWP and a professional member of the PEN American Center, advocating for the freedom of expression around the world. CG Fewston currently holds a post as Visiting Fellow in the English department at City University of Hong Kong. CG Fewston earned an M.Ed. in Higher Education Leadership and Administration (honors), an M.A. in Literature (honors) from Stony Brook University, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and Fiction from Southern New Hampshire University, where he had the chance to work with wonderful and talented novelists like Richard Adams Carey (author of In the Evil Day, October 2015; and, The Philosopher Fish, 2006) and Jessica Anthony (author of Chopsticks, 2012; and, The Convalescent, 2010) as well as New York Times Best-Selling novelists Matt Bondurant (author of The Night Swimmer, 2012; and, The Wettest County in the World, 2009, made famous in the movie Lawless, 2012) and Wiley Cash (author of A Land More Kind Than Home, 2013; and, This Dark Road to Mercy, 2014).

Among many others, CG Fewston’s stories, photographs and essays have appeared in Bohemia, Ginosko Literary Journal, Tendril Literary Magazine, Driftwood Press, The Missing Slate, Foliate Oak Magazine, The Writer’s Drawer, Moonlit Road, Nature Writing, and Travelmag: The Independent Spirit; and for several years he was a contributor to Vietnam’s national premier English newspaper, Tuoi Tre, “The Youth Newspaper.”

You can read more about CG Fewston and his writing at

www.cgfewston.me & www.cgfewston.com & www.cgfewston.org

His new novel, A TIME TO LOVE IN TEHRAN, was published on April 2, 2015 —

10 years to the day of the publication

of his first novella, A FATHER’S SON (April 2, 2005)

“Thus one skilled at giving rise to the extraordinary

is as boundless as Heaven and Earth,

as inexhaustible as the Yellow River and the ocean.

Ending and beginning again,

like the sun and moon. Dying and then being born,

like the four seasons.”

found in Sources of Chinese Tradition, p 5

View all my reviews

Dubliners by James Joyce
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Dubliners (1914) by James Joyce is a short story collection focused on the city of Dublin and various characters who best represent the Irish city and its cultural history. Joyce completed Dubliners in 1907 but had to wait another seven years for the book to be published, impressive when you consider that Cambridge did not have a Chair of English Literature until 1910, while Divinity, Civil Law and Greek (1540), Moral Philosophy (1683), Music (1684), Chemistry (1702), Astronomy (1704) and Modern History and Arabic (1724) had much earlier dates of conception into Cambridge University than its own native language and literature (see Arthur Quiller-Couch’s Cambridge lectures published in On The Art of Writing). We will discuss Arthur’s lectures at Cambridge and Joyce’s 1939 masterpiece Finnegans Wake another time, but let’s continue diving into Dubliners—which, as mentioned—begins to set a precedent for literature written in English at a time when studying such literature was a novel idea for many universities.

There are fifteen stories in the collection and total 152 pages, making this a light but provocative read over the course of one or two afternoons or one story a day for two weeks. From the beginning story “Sisters” about two sisters who mourn for a priest who has recently died until the ending story “The Dead” about Gabriel attending a New Year’s Eve party and the aftermath which haunts his soul in the early hours in his hotel room with his wife, the stories give readers a clear example of the kind of male role models found throughout Ireland in Joyce’s childhood.

The first four stories—“The Sisters”; “An Encounter”; “Araby”; and, “Eveline”—illustrate, however, the much needed improvement on Joyce’s craft at such an early age and lacks the control and power that readers wait for in the last three stories: “A Mother”; “Grace”; and, “The Dead”.

In the first four stories, Joyce is prone to dangling modifiers and mawkishness (mere trifles) found in young writers, but he corrects such behavior by the end of his first book, creating a collection of vivid stories that show the sad state of commoners in Ireland around the turn into the 20th century, and these stories best represent Joyce’s childhood.

Some have considered Dubliners as one of the best collection of short fiction, and I too admit that at the time I might also may make such a claim, but to make such a claim while moving quickly into the 21st century would be half-hearted and would be foolish of one who has read widely and deeply to half-prophesy against all the literature and other collections that have been written since 1914. The more likely question then is to ask, “Is it art?”

But Dubliners is not a reflection of Joyce as a whole man, nor him as a boy, but a reflection of his abilities and the attributes of his male psyche and character as late as the start of World War I; from then on the world and its populous would most certainly have changed from within and from without. The Universe is change, wrote the great Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Indeed.

As one example, “An Encounter” is a story about two schoolboys who skip school to see the sights of the city only to end in an abandoned field talking to a homeless man about “sweethearts” and how “every boy has a little sweetheart” and suddenly the man “stood up slowly, saying that he had to leave us for a minute or so, a few minutes, and, without changing the direction of my gaze, I saw him walking slowly away from us towards the near end of the field” where the man proceeds to masturbate in the open, and the boy-Joyce can neither answer his friend nor raise his eyes when Mahony exclaims, “He’s a queer old josser” (p 13).

If “The Sisters” is about friendship and religion (the boy-Joyce and the priest) then “An Encounter” is about friendship and sex (the boy-Joyce and the strayer), both much older male figures who don’t have exactly what it takes to make a solid role model.

“After the Race” is by far one of the better stories in the lot of fifteen by Joyce, and provides another male figure for the boy-Joyce gone wrong, as does “Counterparts”, which is story number nine on page 55 and shapes a nice climax to the collection which will end with Joyce as a young man in the idea of Gabriel, also the name of a Biblical angel—and angels are desperately needed in a collection of stories that provide example after example of the sordid despair of humankind’s depravity to inflect pain and anguish on one another.

“After the Race” begins with one of those passages the reader knows by heart was written by the writer after the fact, after the story has been completed and the writer takes the opportunity to backtrack and seek to work a smoother transition into in medias res—and Joyce does do this, and despite the opening being extremely beautiful it does not match the tone of the rest of the story. We will see this by story’s end, but now for the opening:

“The cars came scudding in towards Dublin, running evenly like pellets in the groove of the Naas Road. At the crest of the hill at Inchicore sightseers had gathered in clumps to watch the cars careering homeward and through this channel of poverty and inaction the Continent sped its wealth and industry. Now and again the clumps of people raised the cheer of the gratefully oppressed. Their sympathy, however, was for the blue cars—the cars of their friends, the French” (p 24).

Now compare the opening passage with later lines and passages from the story:

“The car ran on merrily with its cargo of hilarious youth. The two cousins sat on the front seat; Kimmy and his Hungarian friend sat behind” (p 25).

“They drove down Dame Street. The street was busy with unusual traffic, loud with the horns of motorists and the gongs of impatient tram-drivers” (p 26).

“A torrent of talk followed. Farley was American. No one knew very well what the talk was about” (p 27).

“Cards! Cards! The table was cleared. Villona returned quietly to his piano and played voluntaries for them. The other men played game after game, flinging themselves boldly into the adventure” (p 28).

Now one can easily distinguish between the master at his best in the opening passage on page 24 (despite the dangling modifier in the first sentence: is Dublin running or are the race cars?) and the craftsman struggling at his best in the following examples on each and every page until the last of the story on page 28. Joyce worked extremely hard on that opening but failed to give the rest of the story its due attention. Regardless, as I mentioned earlier, “After the Race” is by far one of the better and more positive stories of the collection, and far too often overlooked for the story “Araby”, which is praised in most university classrooms, probably because “Araby” comes in at story number three in the collection and consists of a romantic tale of a boy in childhood on an adventure to buy his sweetheart (as preluded in “An Encounter”) a gift.

“Counterparts” has one of the strongest narratives in the collection but once again likely illustrates the poor male role models Joyce had when he was growing up. Farrington is a low-class clerk who at the beginning of the story sells his pocket watch in order to skip out of work early for a few cold beers which later unfolds into a drunken night with his friends and colleagues hopping from one bar to the next in the cold winter night. And the end comes as swiftly and as unexpected as the one in “The Dead”.

Here, as underlined in my book when I first read the story, is the ending to “Counterparts”:

“He took a step to the door and seized the walking-stick which was standing behind it.

“‘I’ll teach you to let the fire out!” he said, rolling up his sleeve in order to give his arm free play [notice the writer’s lack of attention: ‘said’ is ‘rolling up his sleeve’? This is what we call a dangling modifier and can be easily fixed with: said he, rolling up his sleeve]…

“‘I’ll teach you to let the fire out!” he said, rolling up his sleeve in order to give his arm free play.

“The little boy cried, “O, pa!” and ran whimpering round the table, but the man followed him and caught him by the coat. The little boy looked about him wildly but, seeing no way of escape, fell upon his knees.

“Now, you’ll let the fire out the next time!” said the man, striking at him vigorously with the stick [notice here the writer’s attention to detail: here Joyce gets it correct, and he is beginning to shift these small miscarries of the language more and more by the collection’s end]…

“Now, you’ll let the fire out the next time!” said the man, striking at him vigorously with the stick. “Take that, you little whelp!”

“The boy uttered a squeal of pain as the stick cut his thigh. He clasped his hands together in the air and his voice shook with fright.

“O, pa!” he cried. “Don’t beat me, pa! And I’ll…I’ll say a Hail Mary for you…I’ll say a Hail Mary for you, pa, if you don’t beat me…I’ll say a Hail Mary…” (p 63).

And the story ends on this powerful note: a Hail Mary, which reads for the Catholics in the below traditional version:

“Hail Mary, full of grace.
Our Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women,
And blessed is the fruit of thy womb,
Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
Pray for us sinners,
Now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.”

Now notice that from the above stories we discussed these stories deal with poor male role models and at the end of the worst kind of role model—a drunk who beats his son over such a simple thing as letting the fire go out—we have the boy-Joyce seeking a woman’s protection through the Hail Mary prayer: “blessed art thou among women” and not “men”.

But the boy-Joyce grows up and is portrayed through the now married young man named Gabriel who returns to his hotel room with his wife, Greta, at the end of “The Dead.”

Greta has reflected on a past lover who is now dead and in the early hours of a new year Gabriel watches his wife cry for another man:

“The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself, which these dead had one time reared and lived in, was dissolving and dwindling…

“His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead” (p 152).

But does this collection of scoundrels and spiritually confused characters constitute art?

Tolstoy would agree it does. How so?

In What is Art? Leo Tolstoy argues that three things are required for creating art, and they are as follows:

“A real work of art destroys, in the consciousness of the receiver, the separation between himself and the artist; nor that alone, but also between himself and all whose minds receive this work of art. In this feeling of our personality from its separation and isolation, in this uniting of it with others, lies the chief characteristic and the great attractive force of art.

“If a man is infected by the author’s condition of soul, if he feels this emotion and this union with others, then the object which has effected this is art; but if there be no such infection, if there be not this union with the author and with others who are moved by the same work—then it is not art. And not only is infection a sure sign of art, but the degree of infectiousness is also the sole measure of excellence in art…

“The presence in various degrees of these three conditions—individuality, clearness, and sincerity—decides the merit of a work of art, as art, apart from subject matter” (p 82-83).

Joyce might agree to this definition of art since he believed one of the best short stories ever written was Tolstoy’s “How Much Land Does a Man Need?”, and Joyce called the story “the greatest story that the literature of the world knows.”

Do we have individuality in Dubliners? Absolutely. These fifteen stories percolate with Joyce’s Irish identity as well as the countless other characters who populate this collection of short fiction.

Do we have clearness? I believe we do, and certainly not Joyce at his best, but the writing as illustrated is clear and vivid and compels the reader to lose herself inside these pages of death, heartache, true mortality and the clearness of how bad everyday people can be. The collection is a depressing one, filled with stories of the worst kind of characters who are sexually depraved, morally corrupt, religiously bankrupt and traumatized youths who have to witness this grown-up world.

Do we have sincerity? At the end of “Counterparts” and “The Dead” readers see Joyce at his most sincere, treating the subject matter delicately and carefully.

Dubliners, then, by Tolstoy’s definition would be classified as a work of art. And I would not be the one to disagree. The collection of short fiction has stood the test of time: 101 years, in fact. And the collection will likely continue long into this century as a sharp edge of glass giving us a portal into the past: of how things were, of how things are, and of how things should never be in the years to come before our deaths.

CG Fewston is an American novelist who is a member of AWP and a professional member of the PEN American Center, advocating for the freedom of expression around the world. CG Fewston currently holds a post as Visiting Fellow in the English department at City University of Hong Kong. CG Fewston earned an M.Ed. in Higher Education Leadership and Administration (honors), an M.A. in Literature (honors) from Stony Brook University, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and Fiction from Southern New Hampshire University, where he had the chance to work with wonderful and talented novelists like Richard Adams Carey (author of In the Evil Day, October 2015; and, The Philosopher Fish, 2006) and Jessica Anthony (author of Chopsticks, 2012; and, The Convalescent, 2010) as well as New York Times Best-Selling novelists Matt Bondurant (author of The Night Swimmer, 2012; and, The Wettest County in the World, 2009, made famous in the movie Lawless, 2012) and Wiley Cash (author of A Land More Kind Than Home, 2013; and, This Dark Road to Mercy, 2014).

Among many others, CG Fewston’s stories, photographs and essays have appeared in Bohemia, Ginosko Literary Journal, Tendril Literary Magazine, Driftwood Press, The Missing Slate, Foliate Oak Magazine, The Writer’s Drawer, Moonlit Road, Nature Writing, and Travelmag: The Independent Spirit; and for several years he was a contributor to Vietnam’s national premier English newspaper, Tuoi Tre, “The Youth Newspaper.”

You can read more about CG Fewston and his writing at

www.cgfewston.me & www.cgfewston.com & www.cgfewston.org

His new novel, A TIME TO LOVE IN TEHRAN, was published on April 2, 2015 —

10 years to the day of the publication

of his first novella, A FATHER’S SON (April 2, 2005)

“Thus one skilled at giving rise to the extraordinary

is as boundless as Heaven and Earth,

as inexhaustible as the Yellow River and the ocean.

Ending and beginning again,

like the sun and moon. Dying and then being born,

like the four seasons.”

found in Sources of Chinese Tradition, p 5

View all my reviews

The Greatest Salesman In The World by Og Mandino
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Greatest Salesman in the World (1968) by Og Mandino is a book that will change your life for the better. It did for Matthew McConaughey. Before he became a well-known actor, Matthew was going to become a lawyer. Instead he became lost in reading The Greatest Salesman in the World and it changed his life ever-after. Perhaps losing ourselves is what we need.

“The book’s a kind of philosophy on life,” Matthew told one magazine. “I started reading it right before I was due to take my exams for law school and I got so engrossed in it that I was almost late for my exam! But it was well worth it because that book changed my outlook on life and gave me the courage I needed to chase my dream of applying to film school.”

Oscar-winning actor, Matthew McConaughey

And this book has also changed my life as well. The Greatest Salesman in the World tells the story of Hafid who has earned such incredible wealth through trading throughout all of ancient Europe and the Middle East that he turns to his most trusted friend, Erasmus, and asks,

“Old friend, how much wealth is there now accumulated in our treasury?”

And Erasmus replies, “I have not studied the numbers recently but I would estimate there is in excess of seven million gold talents” (p 3).

But to Erasmus’s confusion, Hafid decides to sell everything.

“I do not understand, sire. This has been our most profitable year. Every emporium reports an increase in sales over the previous season. Even the Roman legions are now our customers for did you not sell the Procurator in Jerusalem two hundred Arabian stallions within the fortnight? Forgive my boldness for seldom have I questioned your orders but this command I cannot comprehend…” (p 4).

And Hafid goes on to tell Erasmus the story of how the boy-Hafid was given ancient scrolls and sworn to secrecy and later rose to such heights of success where men who chase such desires often fall into madness.

“All but one of these scrolls contain a principle, a law, or a fundamental truth written in a unique style to help the reader understand its meaning. To become a master in the art of sales one must learn and practice the secret of each scroll. When one masters these principles one has the power to accumulate all the wealth he desires” (p 12).

And Hafid, the greatest salesman in the world, continues,

“It is, indeed, a simple task provided one is willing to pay the price in time and concentration until each principle becomes a part of one’s personality; until each principle becomes a habit” (p 13).

But there is much more to this story than principles and codes and precepts of conduct. As a boy, Hafid stumbles to bed one cold night into a stable in Bethlehem after a few days of failed attempts to prove himself worthy as a salesman by selling an expensive robe given to him by his master, Pathros.

“Hafid closed his eyes and sighed. Then he walked swiftly toward the small family, knelt on the straw beside the infant, and gently removed first the father’s tattered cloak and then the mother’s from the manger. He handed each back to its owner. Both were too shocked at Hafid’s boldness to react. Then Hafid opened his precious red robe and wrapped it gently around the sleeping child” (p 31).

Hafid returns to his master, Pathros, without having sold the robe, but rather having given it away for free, and the boy considers himself a failure. But the words from Pathros will provide a clue to the business of sales and to the true nature of living:

“Hafid, so far as material wealth is concerned, there is only one difference between myself and the lowliest beggar outside of Herod’s palace. The beggar thinks only of his next meal and I think only of the meal that will be my last. No, my son, do no aspire for wealth and labor not only to be rich. Strive instead for happiness, to be loved and to love, and most important, to acquire peace of mind and serenity” (p 20).

And it will be Pathros who judges the boy-Hafid’s heart to be pure and gives Hafid the secret scrolls which unlock the keys to success.

And so we begin with the Scroll Marked I:

“Today I begin a new life…Failure no longer will be my payment for struggle. Just as nature made no provision for my body to tolerate pain neither has it made any provision for my life to suffer failure. Failure, like pain, is alien to my life. In the past I accepted it as I accepted pain. Now I reject it and I am prepared for wisdom and principles which will guide me out of the shadows into the sunlight of wealth, position, and happiness far beyond my most extravagant dreams until even the golden apples in the Garden of Hesperides will seem no more than my just reward…

“Nature has supplied me with the knowledge and instinct far greater than any beast in the forest and the value of experience is over-rated, usually by old men who nod wisely and speak stupidly…

“Good habits are the key to all success… I will form good habits and become their slave” (p 51-54).

The Scroll Marked II:

“I will greet this day with love in my heart…

“Is it not so that birds, the wind, the sea and all nature speaks with the music of praise for their creator? Cannot I speak with the same music to his children? Henceforth will I remember this secret and it will change my life. I will greet this day with love in my heart…

“Henceforth I will love all mankind. From this moment all hate is left from my veins for I have not time to hate, only time to love. From this moment I take the first step required to become man among men…I will greet this day with love, and I will succeed” (p 58-62).

The Scroll Marked III:

“I will persist until I succeed…

“I will persist until I succeed. I was not delivered unto this world in defeat, nor does failure course in my veins. I am not a sheep waiting to be prodded by my shepherd. I am a lion and I refuse to talk, to walk, to sleep with the sheep. I will hear not those who weep and complain, for their disease is contagious. Let them join the sheep. The slaughterhouse of failure is not my destiny…I will persist until I succeed” (p 63-64).

The Scroll Marked IV:

“I am nature’s greatest miracle…

“I am nature’s greatest miracle. I am not on this earth by chance. I am here for a purpose and that purpose is to grow into a mountain, not to shrink to a grain of sand. Henceforth will I apply all my efforts to become the highest mountain of all and I will strain my potential until it cries for mercy” (p 69-70).

The Scroll Marked V:

“I will live this day as if it is my last…

“I will live this day as if it is my last. This day is all I have and these hours are now my eternity. I greet this sunrise with cries of joy as a prisoner who is reprieved from death…

“I will live this day as if it is my last. I will avoid with fury the killers of time. Procrastination I will destroy with action; doubt I will bury under faith; fear I will dismember with confidence. Where there are idle mouths I will listen not; where there are idle hands I will linger not; where there are idle bodies I will visit not. Henceforth I know that to court idleness is to steal food, clothing, and warmth from those I love. I am not a thief. I am a man of love and today is my last chance to prove my love and my greatness. I will live this day as if it is my last” (p 73-76).

The story unveils a total of ten scrolls (the remaining five will be up to you to discover).

And what of Hafid? Of Erasmus? Of the robe Hafid gave to the infant in the manger?

Well, I’ve got my copy but you will just have to read The Greatest Salesman in the World to learn those secrets for yourself.

But I must warn you: this book will change your life. Are you ready for such change?

CG Fewston is an American novelist who is a member of AWP and a professional member of the PEN American Center, advocating for the freedom of expression around the world. CG Fewston currently holds a post as Visiting Fellow in the English department at City University of Hong Kong. CG Fewston earned an M.Ed. in Higher Education Leadership and Administration (honors), an M.A. in Literature (honors) from Stony Brook University, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and Fiction from Southern New Hampshire University, where he had the chance to work with wonderful and talented novelists like Richard Adams Carey (author of In the Evil Day, October 2015; and, The Philosopher Fish, 2006) and Jessica Anthony (author of Chopsticks, 2012; and, The Convalescent, 2010) as well as New York Times Best-Selling novelists Matt Bondurant (author of The Night Swimmer, 2012; and, The Wettest County in the World, 2009, made famous in the movie Lawless, 2012) and Wiley Cash (author of A Land More Kind Than Home, 2013; and, This Dark Road to Mercy, 2014).

Among many others, CG Fewston’s stories, photographs and essays have appeared in Bohemia, Ginosko Literary Journal, Tendril Literary Magazine, Driftwood Press, The Missing Slate, Foliate Oak Magazine, The Writer’s Drawer, Moonlit Road, Nature Writing, and Travelmag: The Independent Spirit; and for several years he was a contributor to Vietnam’s national premier English newspaper, Tuoi Tre, “The Youth Newspaper.”

CG Fewston has travelled across continents and visited such places as Mexico, the island of Guam, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Macau, Viet Nam, Cambodia, Singapore, Taipei and Beitou in Taiwan, Bali in Indonesia, and Guilin and Shenzhen in China.

You can read more about CG Fewston and his writing at

www.cgfewston.me & www.cgfewston.com & www.cgfewston.org

His new novel, A TIME TO LOVE IN TEHRAN, was published on April 2, 2015 —

10 years to the day of the publication

of his first novella, A FATHER’S SON (April 2, 2005)

“Thus one skilled at giving rise to the extraordinary

is as boundless as Heaven and Earth,

as inexhaustible as the Yellow River and the ocean.

Ending and beginning again,

like the sun and moon. Dying and then being born,

like the four seasons.”

found in Sources of Chinese Tradition, p 5

View all my reviews

A Room with a View by E.M. Forster
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A Room with a View (1908) by E.M. Forster is his third novel following The Longest Journey (1907) and the morbid-ending Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905). Forster, however, ends A Room with a View on a much happier note than his first novel and proclaims himself as one of the premier English novelists of his generation with his love story that centers around young Lucy Honeychurch and her sweet admirer George Emerson, who attempts to steal Lucy from her fiancée Cecil Vyse, a surname playing on the words “vice” and “vise” meaning to oppose or to constrict and control.

Upon its publication Forster’s A Room with a View helped established the linear and tight form of the English novel for the next one hundred years. There are no grand historical backgrounds stretching on for dozens of pages. There are no sidewinding twists and turns to confuse and distract the reader from the primary action among Lucy, George and Cecil. There is only Forster at his finest hiding his authorial hand in a well-penned romance that refuses to let the reader go throughout the rather small 222 pages bound in a book no bigger than a man’s hand.

Hong Kong Harbor, 2015

And who is our young heroine? Lucy, like many young women her age—then and now—was “no longer a rebel or a slave” and as her fingers tapped the piano she long mused over she understood that “the kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world; it will accept those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected” (p 34).

Forster, or our anonymous narrator left over from the Victorian novels, continues to describe his protagonist as she suffers the stultifying etiquette found in high English society and in that modern league of pretentious ivy which strangles the vines of the gentle meek who are the true foundation of society:

“The commonplace person begins to play, and shoots into the empyrean without effort, whilst we look up, marveling how he has escaped us, and thinking how we could worship him and love him, would he but translate his visions into human words, and his experiences into human actions. Perhaps he cannot; certainly he does not, or does so very seldom. Lucy had done so never…

“And she was tragical only in the sense that she was great, for she loved to play on the side of Victory. Victory of what and over what—that is more than the words of daily life can tell us. But that some sonatas of Beethoven are written tragic no one can gainsay; yet they can triumph or despair as the player decides, and Lucy had decided that they should triumph” (p 34-35).

And it is in this following Italian arena de amour which Lucy will shape her non-English Victory and her interest for the young god George:

“The Piazza Signoria is too stony to be brilliant. It has no grass, no flowers, no frescoes, no glittering walls of marble or comforting patches of ruddy brick. By an odd chance—the statues that relieve its severity suggest, not the innocence of childhood, nor the glorious bewilderment of youth, but the conscious achievements of maturity. Perseus and Judith, Hercules and Thusnelda, they have done or suffered something, and though they are immortal, immortality has come to them after experience, not before. Here, not only in the solitude of Nature, might a hero meet a goddess, or a heroine a god” (p 62).

While in Italy on holiday—which begins the setting of this story—Lucy meets George and his father, Mr. Emerson—one who reminds Lucy of the restricting antithetical aristocracy found in the English bookworm Cecil. And it is Mr. Emerson, much like angelic music descending from heaven on high, who sets the stage and themes of this quick novel when he confesses to dear Lucy about the state his son, George, is in:

“I don’t require you to fall in love with my boy, but I do think you might try and understand him. You are nearer his age, and if you let yourself ago I am sure you are sensible. You might help me. He has known so few women, and you have the time…But let yourself go. You are inclined to get muddled, if I may judge from last night. Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them. By understanding George you may learn to understand yourself. It will be good for both of you” (p 31).

And Mr. Emerson injects the love-life of our goddess Lucy with that singular most interesting word “muddled”, which she is most sure to do when while on an Italian hillside she wanders away from the group and runs into George, alone and contemplating the Universe like Pan occasioned to do, if you will.

Lucy is thrust into George’s arms and they share a delightful moment, a moment of lovers in secret waiting to find one another vulnerable and unafraid in what for Tristan and Isolt Gottfried calls the “La fossiure a la gent amant” which one can translate as “The Grotto for People in Love” (found on page 44 of Joseph Campbell’s The Masks of God, Vol. IV: Creative Mythology), and it is here we find Lucy entering such a grotto:

“From her feet the ground sloped sharply into view, and violets ran down in rivulets and streams and cataracts, irrigating the hillside with blue, eddying round the tree stems, collecting into pools in the hollows, covering the grass with spots of azure foam. But never again were they in such profusion; this terrace was the well-head, the primal source whence beauty gushed out to water the earth.

“Standing at its brink like a swimmer who prepares, was the good man. But he was not the good man that she had expected, and he was alone.

“George had turned at the sound of her arrival. For a moment he contemplated her, as one who had fallen out of heaven. He saw radiant joy in her face, he saw the flowers beat against her dress in blue waves. The bushes above them closed. He stepped quickly forward and kissed her” (p 73).

And, later back in England at Windy Corner, it is this young god who instructs the clergyman Mr. Beebe on the essence of reality and philosophy:

“I have reflected. It is Fate. Everything is Fate. We are flung together by Fate, drawn apart by Fate—flung together, drawn apart. The twelve winds blow us—we settle nothing” (p 136).

And by story’s end, as Lucy finds herself torn between Cecil and George, Fate steps in with the solemn words from her old friend Mr. Emerson, who sits by the fire. Together she and he wait out the rainstorm in the clergyman’s private room while Lucy’s mother prays in the chapel nearby:

“If only [Lucy] could remember how to behave!

“[Mr. Emerson] held up his hand. ‘But you must not scold him.’

“Lucy turned her back, and began to look at Mr. Beebe’s books.

“‘I taught him,’ he quavered, ‘to trust in love. I said: ‘When love comes, that is reality.’ I said: ‘Passion does not blind. No. Passion is sanity, and the woman you love, she is the only person you will ever really understand.’ He sighed. ‘True, everlastingly true, though my day is over, and though there is the result. Poor boy! He is so sorry! He said he knew it was madness when you brought your cousin in; that whatever you felt you did not mean. Yet’—his voice gathered strength: he spoke out to make certain—‘Miss Honeychurch, do you remember Italy?’”

And as the rain beats down on the windows and rooftop, Lucy contemplates George’s forward behavior of several kisses and direct admission of his unwarranted love for her.

“Feeling a little steadier, she put the book back and turned round to [Mr. Emerson]. His face was drooping and swollen, but his eyes, though they were sunken deep, gleamed with a child’s courage.

“‘Why, he has behaved abominably,’ she said. ‘I am glad he is sorry. Do you know what he did?’

“‘Not ‘abominably,’ was the gentle correction. ‘He only tried when he should not have tried. You have all you want, Miss Honeychurch: you are going to marry the man you love. Do not go out of George’s life saying he is abominable” (p 209-210).

And Mr. Emerson has one last thing to say on his son’s behalf to Lucy as she attempts to sort out her love life and the coming trip to Athens in hopes of leaving all her turmoils behind:

“You’re shocked, but I mean to shock you. It’s the only hope at times. I can reach you no other way. You must marry, or your life will be wasted. You have gone too far to retreat. I have no time for the tenderness, and the comradeship, and the poetry, and the things that really matter, and for which you marry. I know that, with George, you will find them, and that you love him. Then be his wife. He is already part of you. Though you fly to Greece, and never see him again, or forget his very name, George will work in your thoughts till you die. It isn’t possible to love and to part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal” (p 215).

And it is there we leave Lucy to make her choice. But how wonderful it must be to live in a less critical world that believes in love at first sight, romance that flowers until the deathbed comes, and all the beauty of what we thought about love was like in our immortal teens but lose as we mature to experienced adulthood.

But after all is said and done, despite what the majority of zombie-hearted men and women murgle while they hurl their detestations at those lovers secured in their grotto and in each other’s arms, we understand that love—whatever you want to call it—is a choice, and you will just have to read A Room with a View—quietly to yourself or out loud as I did to my unicorn-love and dream girl—to find out what choice Lucy makes, or you could simply watch the movie—both are memorable and true to Forster’s vision of what romance is like and should forever be.

Either way, do try to let go and trust in love.

CG Fewston is an American novelist who is a member of AWP and a professional member of the PEN American Center, advocating for the freedom of expression around the world. CG Fewston held a post as Visiting Fellow in the English department at City University of Hong Kong from 2014 to 2016. CG Fewston earned an M.Ed. in Higher Education Leadership and Administration (honors), an M.A. in Literature (honors) from Stony Brook University, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and Fiction from Southern New Hampshire University, where he had the chance to work with wonderful and talented novelists like Richard Adams Carey (author of In the Evil Day, October 2015; and, The Philosopher Fish, 2006) and Jessica Anthony (author of Chopsticks, 2012; and, The Convalescent, 2010) as well as New York Times Best-Selling novelists Matt Bondurant (author of The Night Swimmer, 2012; and, The Wettest County in the World, 2009, made famous in the movie Lawless, 2012) and Wiley Cash (author of A Land More Kind Than Home, 2013; and, This Dark Road to Mercy, 2014).

Among many others, CG Fewston’s stories, photographs and essays have appeared in Bohemia, Ginosko Literary Journal, Tendril Literary Magazine, Driftwood Press, The Missing Slate, Foliate Oak Magazine, The Writer’s Drawer, Moonlit Road, Nature Writing, and Travelmag: The Independent Spirit; and for several years he was a contributor to Vietnam’s national premier English newspaper, Tuoi Tre, “The Youth Newspaper.”

CG Fewston has travelled across continents and visited such places as Mexico, the island of Guam, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Macau, Viet Nam, Cambodia, Singapore, Taipei and Beitou in Taiwan, Bali in Indonesia, and Guilin and Shenzhen in China.

You can read more about CG Fewston and his writing at

www.cgfewston.me & www.cgfewston.com & www.cgfewston.org

His new novel, A TIME TO LOVE IN TEHRAN, was published on April 2, 2015 —

10 years to the day of the publication

of his first novella, A FATHER’S SON (April 2, 2005)

“Fewston delivers an atmospheric and evocative thriller in which an American government secret agent must navigate fluid allegiances and murky principles in 1970s Tehran… A cerebral, fast-paced thriller.”

—  Kirkus Reviews

“Thus one skilled at giving rise to the extraordinary

is as boundless as Heaven and Earth,

as inexhaustible as the Yellow River and the ocean.

Ending and beginning again,

like the sun and moon. Dying and then being born,

like the four seasons.”

found in Sources of Chinese Tradition, p 5

View all my reviews