Pessoa: A Biography (2021) by Richard Zenith

Fernando Pessoa

Book Review

Pessoa: A Biography (2021)

by Richard Zenith

    I heard about Portuguese author Fernando Pessoa via the 1001 Books Project, where his The Book of Disquiet (1982) is one of those quirky titles that sticks with you.  The amazing thing about The Book of Disquiet and its status as a canonical work in translation is that Pessoa died in 1935, and the ORIGINAL edition of The Book of Disquiet wasn't published until 1982.   That is because Pessoa published very little during his lifetime, mostly poetry and essays, but when he died there was an entire trunk full of writing, all jumbled together.  The Book of Disquiet was pieced together over the next half century, and then it was finally published, Fernando Pessoa was acknowledged as a fully canon level writer of international literature.

  It takes your breath away, the whole story, which is why I was so excited for this 1400 page(!) biography of Pessoa by Richard Zenith.  I read this book on my Kindle, and it took me literally months to finish.   What's amazing about this book being 1400 pages is that Pessoa did practically nothing his entire life.  He was raised in Durban South Africa- by far the most interesting thing that ever happened to him- then moved to Lisbon after he graduated high school and literally never left.  He also never had a relationship, may have died a virgin.

  At the same time he lived an extraordinary life of the intellect, creating dozens of "Heteronyms" or literary pen names, which he used to write on an amazing number of topics.  He was very active as a public intellectual- essentially instrumental in bringing concepts like Futurism to Portugal and serving as an important hub for the Portuguese avant guard.  Later in life, he was Alistair Crowley's man in Portugal.  Despite a lifespan that ran from 1888 to 1935 (dead at 47) Pessoa presents as an extraordinarily modern man- post-modern, even, in the deepest, most sophisticated sense of those terms.   It's hard not to compare him with Borges- with whom he shares an aphoristic quality.  Borges, who famously spent his working life in the basement of a Buenos Aires library, seems to share a kinship with Pessoa, and I think eventually Labyrinths and The Book of Disquiet will be considered together.

Almond (2020) by Sohn Won-pyung

Korean author Won-pyung Sohn

Book Review

Almond (2020)

by Sohn Won-pyung

     There is no denying the momentum of Korean culture in the international market for popular culture.  You can start with the popular music:  Any nation that can successfully export a boy band to the rest of the globe has proven that it belongs in the top tiers of local-international cultures.   Then you can turn to Korean impact in peak television and film, where Korean work has won awards at the highest levels in the United States and also created the kind of cultural phenomenon one rarely identifies with foreign cultural products.   A similar kind of flood hasn't happened in the higher echelons of international literature, where Korean authors are still marketed by independent publishers and less popular with the general audience than their music and film/tv counterparts. 

    Almond, which was a hit in Korea in 2016, and Sohn Won-pyung's first novel, is about Yun-jae, an almost orphan who is neuro-divergent in the sense that he can't process emotions, something that we would call being "on the spectrum" in the United States, the spectrum ranging from Autism to Asperger's.  Autism doesn't appear to be a known phenomenon in the Korea of this novel- the title refers to the explanation Yun-jae is given for his condition, that his amygdala is too small, like an almond size.   It means something that Almond arrives in English translation via HarperCollins, that is at least a step in the right direction in terms of elevating Korean language literary fiction in translation.  Almond certainly left me asking the question whether Korea knows what Autism is or if that concept simply doesn't exist in Korea.

Mordew (2020) by Alex Pheby

Book Review

Mordew (2020)

by Alex Pheby

   There is much one could write about Mordew by English author Alex Pheby but it likely to go unappreciated unless the reader has first read at least the first book in Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake.   If you haven't read or at least heard of Gormenghast the odds that you will like Mordew is basically zero.   Like Gormenghast, Mordew is what you call "low fantasy"- fantasy without a huge amount of magical or fantastical elements, where the fantasy is the vibe of the thing.   Unlike Gormenghast, Mordew does have some magical elements- Nathan Treeves, an urchin of a decrepit, post-apocalyptic  city controlled by "the Master,"  has special powers.   His journey of awakening takes him to some very dark places- at times it was hard to decide whether Mordew is Harry Potter-esque by the way it weaves some troubling themes and images into a basically YA plot or whether Mordew is a work of fantasy for adults.

  Whichever it might be, Mordew was a real discovery for me- highly recommended- and check out the Audiobook edition, which is fantastic.

Artificial Condition (2018) by Martha Wells

Book Review

Artificial Condition (2018)

by Martha Wells

   Artificial Condition is volume 2 in her genre conquering series, The Murderbot Diaries, a richly drawn series of novellas that focus on the eponymous murderbot and his quest to unravel his identity.  Freed from the necessity of serving the corporation after the events of the first book, Murderbot finds a way back to where it all began, a remote mining colony where he believes he murdered a group of his employers.  He is helped on his way by a sentient spaceship and hooks up with a young group of engineers who specialize in locating advanced technology left behind by extinct spacefaring civilization. 

   It seems clear that each entry in the Murderbot series is more like an additional section of an ongoing story than a stand alone narrative. Given how short each epsiode runs, you wouldn't have to read them in sequential order, but it certainly would help to appreciate the growth of the cyborg protagonist.