Books & Music

Zero K – A Book I wasn’t Ready for?

Don DeLillo: Zero K ISBN 978-1-501-13807-2 ⭐️ I did not understand this novel. If it has message, I did not grasp it. I appreciated DeLillo’s unique and intriguing language, which had struck me already when I read his novel “Underworld” (review here). But language alone was not sufficient to convince me. The novel deals with important issues like age, mortality, the power of science and father-son relationships. But what did DeLillo want to tell me? Perhaps I will have to read “Zero K” a second time, in a few years, when I have grown a little wiser.

I am tempted to say I might add ⭐️⭐️⭐️ after having read it a second time. It is a kind of premonition, I cannot get rid of. I am comforted by this review of “The Guardian” for the reviewer too struggled with “Zero K”. Knowing DeLillo’s oeuvre better than me, he was able to draw parallels to DeLillo’s earlier novels, and to identify those subjects, that are of primordial interest to the writer. So yes, I probably wasn’t ready for this book right now.

Reading the novel was a like a déjà-vu. I remember a piece of music written by Arnold Schönberg that I did not understand at all. I left the concert bewildered and, to some degree, horrified. It took decades for me to learn to appreciate his music, like his String Quartet No. 2 for instance:

Transcending tonality and harmony

What If Karl Marx Was Right after All?

Jürgen Neffe: Marx. Der Unvollendete. ISBN 978-3-570-10273-2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ A colleague of mine once remarked that one had to believe in Marxism at least for a short time in life. Well, after my studies is was done with Karl Marx and Marxism-Leninism. Five years of political science had taught me enough to disregard both as out-of-date and as failed experiment with disastrous consequences for millions. But… my judgment may have been both too harsh and premature with Karl Marx. Since in 2018 the revolutionary philosopher would have celebrated his 200th birthday and since he has been born very close to my home country, I decided to read Jürgen Neffe’s biography on Marx. Quite an eye-opener as I quickly had to admit.

No, I will not become a defender of an ideology that I still consider as failed. Marx once quipped he may be called anything except a Marxist. But Neffe’s book connects Marx’ reflections on the evolution of a form of capitalism, marked by a quickly developing industrial society with most of the wealth detained by a handful of factory owners, to the present day capitalism characterized by an incredible power concentrated in the hand of stock markets, rating agencies and banks. The dependence of workers and the middle class on more or less wise decisions of an elite represented by investment bankers, central bank directors, stock market traders and shareholders is worse than anything that Marx had imagined. Proletarians, unite? It’s rather the wealthy elite that stands united against any form of substantial top-to-bottom wealth distribution resulting in an ever-widening gap between the very rich and the very poor, the famous one percent pitted against the 99 percent, criticized by the movement “Occupy Wall Street”. Has Marx been finally proven right?

It is still too early answer affirmatively. But when I read how meticulously Marx had studied the capitalist mode of production of his time I was stunned by the fact that many – not all – conclusions he derived from his observations still applied today. The proletarian world revolution obviously never happened. But the fact that today even governments are at the mercy of capital owners and stock markets is something Marx had anticipated. He was frighteningly right in this respect.

Neffe must be applauded for his endeavour to link Marx’ theories to the world we live in some 150 years later and to highlight that this great thinker is not yet out-of-date. This said, the biography as such is a fantastic reading experience: the evolution of Marx’ political thinking, the birth of the Communist Party and its many failures, the rift between Communists and Mikhail Bakunin’s anarchists, the important logistical and intellectual role that Jenny Marx, the philosopher’s wife played, the birth of the twin-like relationship between Marx and Friedrich Engels – so many interesting chapters catapulting the reader into the 19th century and making him relive an epoch of tremendous societal changes and challenges.

The detailed explanation of Marx economic theories obviously required a minimum of knowledge on how a national economy is run. Nevertheless, it remains an indispensable part of any Marx biography as it is not possible to dissociate the man and the theory. Only a mind like Marx could come up with such a theory at this turning point of his history. Historical materialism always was and still is a tough nut, but again, it is worthwhile to read since the comparison of Marx forecast and the actual evolution of history shows where Marxism underestimated the inventiveness of capitalistic societies to ban the Communist ghost haunting Europe and prevented a revolution in these countries that according to Marx were most likely to experience one.

Marx was an enthusiast of classical music, but unfortunately Neffe doesn’t mention whether he had any preference in terms of composers. That’s why I picked a contemporary of Marx, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, who, as a music teacher, supported the revolution of 1905 in Russia and defended the rights of his students to demonstrate at a time when the struggle between students and authorities became increasingly violent. In 1897, Rimsky-Korsakov wrote his Piano Trio in C minor:

Landmarks and memories of sunny days

Exposing Tyranny, Superstition and Warmongering

François Rabelais: Gargantua Pantagruel ISBN 978-2-869-59892-8 ⭐️⭐️⭐️ When I was a student, the study of French literature compelled me to read and analyze a part of a famous Renaissance novel: Pantagruel, written by François Rabelais. “Gargantua Pantagruel” in its modern French version are two novels of a cycle of five satiric stories recounting the life and adventures of the giant Gargantua and his son Pantagruel. Behind the comic veneer lies a deeper meaning of course. Rabelais was an extremely learned man and did not write to entertain. He was master of the French language, fluent in Latin, a doctor of medicine and a close friend of Cardinal Jean du Bellay. And his endeavour was a dangerous one.

Rabelais was one of the few Renaissance authors who dared criticize the ruling powers: tyrannic kings and the Catholic church. Of course, he never mentioned any real names, he distorted facts and exaggerated in the grossest manner. The use of foul language, the depiction of crude scenes added even more to the ridicule, but all this just served to shield Rabelais from the criticism of being a heretic or a state enemy while he blamed the brutality of his time, the superstition of people, scholastic pedagogy, the betrayal of moral standards by the powerful. He voiced a severe criticism of tyranny and presented a blueprint for an enlightened, benign exercise of absolute power.

I knew none of all this when I was a student. No teacher ever explained this to me, no teacher ever put the novel and its strange style in context. My “Pantagruel moment” was one of those experiences that almost turned me away from French literature for ever. Nevertheless, for almost 30 years I had a feeling that, Rabelais being an eminent figure of French literature, I should read the two novels “Gargantua” and “Pantagruel”. The French editor Claude Pinganaud did an excellent job in translating the two works from Medieval French into modern French without sacrificing the substance or the richness of Rabelais’ language.

This said, the book remained a challenging read for me. I am glad I read it, but I won’t read it a second time. Renaissance music however, that’s a different story. I can listen to Emilio di Cavalieri’s monumental work “Rappresentatione di anima, et di corpo” over and over again:

Searching for the salvation of the soul

Who Will Rule the Busiest Sea Lane of the World?

Robert S. Kaplan: Asia’s Cauldron. The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific. ⭐️⭐️ ISBN 978-0-8129-9906-8 China is creating facts in the South China Sea by building airstrips on disputed islands like the Spratley’s, adding aerial defence systems and dredging natural harbours to make them accessible for larger warships. At the same time China’s navy is expanding and modernizing: submarines, cruise-missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles, stealth fighters and space-based command and control assets make China a formidable foe that not even the US aircraft carrier groups in the Pacific wish to confront. Beijing asserts what it calls a historical right to dominate the South China Sea and builds up the military power to defend it.

Robert Kaplan has visited the region and interviewed many officials in the countries having a stake in the question of who should rule the South China Sea: The United States Navy as the guardian of free sea lines of communication in the busiest shipping area of the world? Or China in its effort to exploit a situation where the military and diplomatic influence of the US has passed its climax, in its endeavour to replace an international system dominated by the US by a multi-polar system with Beijing as a major player? The fact that huge deposits of oil and natural gas may lie hidden below the sea floor doesn’t make the answer any easier.

The sustained economic growth has given China the possibility to catch up in terms of military modernization: less numerous but smarter armed forces. This in turn has fueled a spectacular arms race in the region. Singapore eyes the prohibitively expensive US made Joint Strike Fighter as its next generation war plane. Kaplan and the officials he talked to in Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Taiwan portray China as a growing threat that has to be kept in check. Even Vietnam, once an enemy of the United States, feels more at ease with the status quo – the American hegemony – than with a future dictated by China and makes the case for a long term US naval presence in the South China Sea.

While Kaplan’s book has its merits in explaining the different countries’ twisted relationship with China – he is looking back several hundred years in some cases – and their immediate geostrategic priorities, it fails to explain in more detail the Chinese point of view. We learn little about China’s objectives and its long term vision for the region. The possibility that China’s neighbours might succumb to “Finlandization” – submission through Chinese economic pressure – is mentioned, but Kaplan does not elaborate on it. China’s use of soft power to seduce other countries goes unnoticed. The author also fails to explore in an unbiased way the possibility of China exerting a benign regional hegemony similar to the European Union’s regional dominance over the Mediterranean Sea. China is hostile, full stop – that’s the credo.

Kaplan belongs to the Realist School of political science, established by Hans J. Morgenthau in the 1950s, seeing international relations primary as a struggle for supremacy and analyzing shifts in power balances in terms of strategic interests and the military, political and economic means to reach these goals. This school of thought has however severe limits when it has to explain a globalized world with multiple interdependencies, and Kaplan’s book was already at its publication in 2014 partly out of date in its insistence on conventional military power and its understanding of modern military strategy.

The author advances the argument of “the stopping power of water” to explain why invading a disputed territory is far easier than occupying it, especially when the territory is inhabited by a hostile population. This weakens his own case meant to illustrate China’s dangerous designs. At the same time he fails to see that China has developed, just like Russia, concepts for hybrid warfare: fostering low-intensity internal conflicts by exploiting economic, ethnic or cultural fault lines, disinformation and propaganda spread over social networks, clandestine sabotage acts, subversion of enemy forces and civil servants. This type of warfare is far more subtle and dangerous as it targets the social cohesion of the opponent’s civil society. Its study requires a much more encompassing view of international relations than the Realist School ever has developped.

In 2014 the Ukraine crisis was in full swing, it was and still is a blue-print for the partial success of Russia hybrid warfare, creating “frozen conflicts” that bind the enemy’s political and military resources, situations where the opponent cannot capitulate for political reasons on the one hand and on the other hand is not powerful enough to triumph over his aggressor. A low-intensity war of attrition, waged in the diplomatic and political arena, coupled with an occasional military show of force and the exploitation of ethnical tensions in countries like Malaysia or the Philippines are much more likely to be part of China’s foreign policy than brazen military interventions. The recent dispute over airline codes refering to “Taipei, Taiwan” instead of “Taipei, China” illustrate such an approach. The occupation of this or that reef, the blockade of an Asian competitor or the conquest of Taiwan may simply not be necessary for China to assert its dominance.

Kaplan’s mantra-like emphasis on China’s expanding navy as a proof of its aggressive goals is besides the point, and ironically the author delivers himself the key by quoting the Chinese strategic thinker Sun Tsu: The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting. China can wait until the dominance of the South China Sea falls into its lap like a ripe fruit as the role of the US in world affairs is declining. Its modernized navy will not allow China to establish dominance, but to preserve it. Time is on China’s side and it has a notion of time different from ours. It is thinking in decades and centuries, not in legislative periods. Sun Tsu would be pleased to see that his teachings are still a guideline for Chinese policy makers.

Now this book is hard-nosed political science, no-nonsense stuff, a troubling look into the crystal ball. To this I would like to oppose the delightful and delicate music of a Japanese composer, Toru Takemitsu:

Floating like dust – the sound of transcendence

Mendel Singer Facing Life and God’s Trial

Joseph Roth: Hiob. (English title: Job) ISBN 978-3-423-13020-2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Mendel Singer is an ordinary Jew in an ordinary Russian hamlet. Singer fears God and can recite for every situation in life an appropriate passage of the Torah. He has a wife, Deborah, whom he loves despite her occasional furors, two sons, Jonas and Schemarjah, and a daughter, Mirjam. A fourth child is underway, and shortly after its birth, it becomes clear that Menuchim is unlike the others. He doesn’t grow properly, he doesn’t talk properly. He seem condemned to remain an idiot with occasional epileptic fits.

It is the first of Mendel’s trials by God and more are to follow. A specific destiny seems to be reserved to each member of the family and in the end Mendel loses his faith both in God and mankind. “God is cruel and the more one obeys him, the more severe he becomes” – that’s Mendel’s conclusion. He wants to burn his book of prayers, his prayer shawl, the tallit, and his tefillin, the leather box with passages from the Torah coiled inside. But Mendel’s hands refuse to obey Mendel’s anger against God’s apparent lack of justice.

For God’s ways are inscrutable and a miracle concludes this very moving novel, published in 1930. Roth was an exceptionally gifted narrator and the way he explores the mystery of faith, the tension between religion, tradition and the modern, secular society is in the tradition of the best German writers. Until recently I didn’t know nothing about this author and I am truly glad to have discovered his writing.

The possibility of faith is a recurrent subject in classical music and the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt has written a “Te Deum” in which I hear the magnitude of the question:

Light and darkness, faith and doubt