Bryan Washington's Odd Couple Shine in "Memorial"

"Does love need a reason?" from Masao Wada's "Terrace House" is the quote you'll read before settling into Bryan Washington's poignant debut novel "Memorial." You may ask yourself this question several times as you become privy to the complex four year relationship of Benson, an African American kid- averse daycare worker, and Mike, a Japanese American chef whose specialty is Mexican food. They live together, sometimes uncomfortably, in Houston, but when we meet them they are separating for an unknown period of time. One can't help but feel the mix of relief, worry, and resentment that permeates the air.

Both sets of parents have long been divorced, alcohol and violence as factors, so readers will wonder if their memories have stunted Benson's and Mike's ability to communicate with each other and share their deepest feelings. Washington creates a melancholy sense of two people who are just going through the motions, unable to fully commit to the relationship but too needy to walk away.

Mike has just invited his estranged mother, Mitsuko, to come to Houston for a reconciliation visit. At almost the same time he decides to fly to Osaka to be with the dying father he hasn't seen since childhood. This selfish move lands Benson in the awkward position of entertaining a woman he's never met and who, he's convinced, does not approve of her son's relationship with a man, let alone a Black man!

The novel is set up in halves so that we first see Mike only through Ben's eyes.  As Ben and Mitsuko warily dance around each other, finally bonding through the meals that Mitsuko lovingly prepares, Ben learns more about Mike through Mitsuko than he ever got from Mike himself. And Mike, from his precarious situation in Osaka where he's running his father's barroom, meeting with doctors, and parrying the verbal taunts of an angry old man, reminisces about his childhood, his meeting Ben, and his failures in the relationship.

Bryan Washington is a major talent whose first book of short stories, "Lot," was widely praised. He excels at realistic street dialogue while crafting lovely sentences full of anger, despair, and hope. Like Ocean Vuong, Washington juxtaposes graphic, mindless sex with scenes of tender beauty. This brave exploration of race, culture, familial dysfunction, love, and grief, didn't quite make Library Journal's top ten this year but it's certainly one of my favorites.

Missionaries by Phil Klay

In the immortal words of Bruce Springsteen, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mn91L9goKfQ), "War! What is it good for?" Phil Klay, an Iraq war veteran and debut novelist, might echo the Boss.  "Absolutely nothing!"

Klay, like many soldier-novelists before him, (Karl Marlantes' "Matterhorn" comes to mind) brings a searing honesty and the visceral horror of war to the page in ways that may cause some readers to have to look away. And this is part of what infuriates him. How dare we send our young men and women off to fight for dubious reasons and then forget where they even are and what they are seeing every day in the field.

"Missionaries" follows four disparate characters as their lives intertwine in the killing fields of Columbia during the so-called war on drugs. Mason, a medic seeking a safer assignment now that he's a father, and Lisette, a correspondent hoping to make a name for herself in long form journalism, thought they had experienced the worst in Afghanistan. Yet in Columbia Abel saw his entire village destroyed by narco terrorists and Juan Pablo, a military man, is losing control of the various factions vying for power over the cocaine trade. Graft and corruption is rampant. Those who refuse to pay face the enforcers who seem to change every few months. No one can trust anyone.

Klay is an exquisite wordsmith. His powerful collection of short stories, "Redeployment," won the National Book Award in 2014. He excels at depicting the absurdity of war and the oh-so-human responses of soldiers to disfigurement and death, the way black humor is used to deflect emotions that might ravage a person. He also nails the interpersonal relationships of couples long separated by overseas assignments as they try to maintain honesty while abstaining from truths that might be more than each partner could bear to hear.

"Missionaries" is a brutal history lesson in the globalization of warfare in the 21st century, providing a window into the tricky ways that countries defuse blame as each contributes to the creation of modern drone technology allowing violence to be rained down on the innocent from the comfort of a trailer nestled in the suburban hills outside London or DC.

My initial critique of this book was that it could have benefited from a strategic editing of its over four hundred pages, but in retrospect, I've changed my mind. When a soldier-writer bares his soul on the page the very least we can do is bear witness.

A Reading Job Well Done and Other Thoughts

For the third year in a row I have been asked to participate in the choosing of the top ten literary fiction books of the year for Library Journal. Three of us have been voraciously reading for two months as we suffered over whittling the list down from a hefty number of fifty-five! And still there were some that I'm sure we have missed. But yesterday afternoon in a zoom meeting - what else - we found serendipity among us and decided on our top ten in record time. I can't wait for the article to be published (December issue) so that I can share with you the wonderfully diverse list of authors and their marvelously original works.

In the mean time, bear with me as I adjust to this horrible new "upgrade" to the Blogger format which has been giving me fits. I simply do not have the psychic energy right now to create a new blog on Wordpress and try to import ten years' worth of work. Maybe this winter?

One of the most rewarding benefits of participating in a project like this is being introduced to authors I might never have crossed paths with and being able to share my excitement with you readers. After all, yes, we had to narrow down our choices to ten but honestly there were really no losers. Each novel is noteworthy in its own way and I have enough material to last for months!

Stunning books by debut authors vied for attention with established award winners like Sigrid Nunez, Martin Amis, Marilynn Robinson, and James McBride. My admiration for writers continues to grow unchecked.

Today I am taking a break from the news and from serious fiction to try to revitalize my waning sense of humor. In two weeks we may have a new president and my stomach is in knots. It's fitting that I relax on the swing, on what may be our last warm day of the year, with Christopher Buckley's satire "Make Russia Great Again," though I must admit it's pretty difficult to even work up a laugh as we face the waning months of this destructive administration.

Tomorrow I'll get serious again with my thoughts on Phil Klay's "The Missionaries."

The Fire Next Time, Book Discussion of James Baldwin's Classic

Long before Ta-Nehisi Coates penned his sorrowful yet powerfully angry letter to his son, "Between the World and Me," James Baldwin wrote a similar missive to his nephew in the introduction to "The Fire Next Time." What's so difficult for me to tell you is that, though sixty years separates the two books, the letters sound almost identical.

The fear is palpable, the fear that if the young Black boy refuses to accept what he's been taught, to despise himself, that he's less than his white counterparts, if he goes about with his head held high, he will be a target of white resentment. Baldwin exhorts his namesake, "If you know whence you came, there is no limit to where you can go."

Diane Rehm, who retired from her daily NPR radio program a few years ago, is still doing what she loves - talking about books. Next month? "1984." This month it was the Baldwin. She was joined by several academic scholars including Princeton's Dr. Eddie Glaude, Jr. whose new book "Begin Again" delves into James Baldwin's work as it relates to America's history with race, poet and writer for the Atlantic Clint Smith, and author of "The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks," Jeanne Theoharis. What an inspiring way to spend an afternoon!

Like Ms. Rehm I too was ashamed to admit that I had never read this particular book of Baldwin's. What an eye opener! It could have been written yesterday. Baldwin is especially eloquent when he talks about his youth, his abusive step-father who was ironically, a preacher, and Baldwin's own decision to best the man by following in his footsteps and being better, more powerful. He discovered the power of words early on, controlling the congregation with his sermons. He soon lost his faith, but he honed those words for years and, by the time he returned in 1963 from self-exile in Paris, he was, according to Glaude, at the height of his talents and ready to bear witness to the movement.

Theoharis posited that Baldwin demands that this nation grow up and reckon with its racial past by accepting that the myths we have always taught and told ourselves are not necessarily the truth, that no one in white America is completely innocent of setting up the structure that holds its Black citizens back to this very day.

Baldwin's own words on the end page of this brief, cogent work seem prescient. ""Everything now, we must assume, is in our hands....If we, conscious white and conscious blacks...do not falter in our duty now....we may be able, handful that we are, to end the racial nightmare, and achieve our country, and change the history of the world." We work together or lose it all.