Finding the reluctant fundamentalist

It’s 11.PM at Barajas, Madrid, and on the impeccable flat screens dotted around the gargantuan halls and corridors of my terminal scrolls the information that the last flight to Lisbon has been delayed due to unforeseen yet oh-so-volatile-and-hopefully-temporary weather conditions. I vainly wish for snow, even in my warm country; that at least would be a dignified reason to delay a late flight on a Sunday evening.

Alas, the fury of the thunders and the rage of the winds must be reserved for those stratospheric layers where only eagles and Airbuses dare. Outside, I recall, it is actually quite warm for such a winter night in the middle of the Iberian Peninsula and I am left to wonder what could possible detain such a small flight.

Wandering around the deserted floors, I notice the airport stores are all closing for the day. Beefy security patrols perambulate the halls, darting nervous looks amongst the lone and stranded people who have cuddled against some rigid bench in resigned expectation of a sleepless night to come. I walk inside a small bookshop in search of a magazine and buy The Economist out of silent desperation.

On a stand, next to the counter, lies the Séccion International of publications, with its neat rows of cosmopolitan literature tightly packed into the only space books are allowed to occupy.

Expecting to draw some comedic satisfaction out of seeing several volumes of either the Da Vinci Code or The Secret translated into Spanish (which would probably only enhance the source material, in a very alarming and paradoxical kind of way), I approach the stand. I end up picking up a book called The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid and move it over to the counter where a sleepy lady proceeds to register the purchase and slip the slim book into a slender red plastic bag. At this moment in time, I know nothing of the book except what the emphatic cover quotations dramatically inform me: that it made the shortlist for the 2007 Booker and that a bunch of journalists and writers love it. It takes me, in fact, a few weeks before I even start reading it back at home.

Set in today’s age and with the sum of today’s fears well at hand, the book is a first hand chronicle of how a bright Pakistani boy undergoes a formal education in America, thrives in NewYork, and  returns to his home land following the events of 9/11 as a disenchanted and burdened Arab with a deepening identity crisis. Renouncing the western world, he electsto lead a quiet life in Lahore, teaching at a University and protecting his family from the impending war with his sovereign neighbours.

The most ingenious aspect of Hamid’s work is possibly the way the very title plays against us from the outset and – midway into the novel – forces the reader to embark on a particularly lucid and impartial evaluation of character. But only midway; for you see, a first person narrative by a Pakistani named Changez (let’s ignore for a moment how awkward and silly the name sounds) does in fact compel us to believe we are witnessing a grand tale of disillusion, disappointment, and perhaps even bloody revenge by this intelligent and well spoken Arab fellow spewing the contents of his personal life to a complete American stranger who incautiously wandered into an establishment in old Lahore. That he may not be this unwilling fundamentalist to which the title alludes is something which only becomes clear when it’s almost too late to invert our constructed views on these characters.

Changez’ past American life was spent in high-polished corporate environments, doing the deeds commonly associated with the most ruthless and impersonal manifestations of western globalisation. In so many words, his job was to appraise companies, most of them on the verge of financial collapse and eager to find an audited reason to perform some cut backs on their staff. In this corporate America, human tissue just happens to be the soft tissue, and Changez quickly realises he is actually appraising the dispensable organic parts of these tentacular and faceless entities rather than the perceived market value of a given firm.

A few trips abroad make the young hotshot realise that in fact, people can hate his guts simply because he is indisputably American, performs a typically American corporate job, dresses like an American CEO and hangs out in the company of Americans. American here means of course Western; one could easily replace Mr. Changez with Mr. Smith, Frau Fritz or Monsieur Bonhomme and nary a thing would change in terms of instintictive hatred.

Changez’ most natural reaction – when confronted with this unexpected display of rampant hatred – is quite obviously to hate the buggers back, starting with the unavoidable and expressive venomous stares. These initial loveless exchanges already represent a form of vicious fundamentalism, strong and irrational, and the novel’s protagonist finds their ethereal and contagious presence to be profoundly unsettling.

Though all the major components of an intelligent and provocative analysis are present, the novel never seems able to fully flesh them out. Hamid gathers an effective enough cast but forgets to bend and twist their shapes into something more plausible, if not palatable. Erica, the protagonist’s love interest, is deliciously constructed as the epitomal modern woman: beautiful, intelligent, ambitious, heavily medicated, and utterly psychotic. Unable to get over a teen love drama of her younger MTV years, she commits suicide in a mental institution and is never heard from again.

Sure, this drives the point home well enough. So do the patronising conversations between Changez and his immediate boss or his work colleagues, who don’t seem to have an ounce of interesting things to offer except the same brand og hollow and plastic diatribes that could have come out a legal drama sitcom – and not even a particularly good one. It’s a shame, because the book’s themes would have enormously benefited from a serious and adult entryway into the fabric of our familiar our social and work lives. Hamid’s ideas on natural hate and fundamentalism often make a lot of sense – enough sense, in fact, for them to merit some consideration and a better literary venue. Whether the reluctant fundamentalist is Changez, AmErica or even the reader, and while it seems reasonable to assume neither party is adequately exempt from the folly and fanaticism of our contemporary world, it seems safe to say that Mohsin Hamid achieves here a significant commentary. That is reads more like a primer than a definite novel on the subject is its only significant flaw.

It takes a lot of guts to propose that hate may be just a matter of instinct, and a lot of finesse to pull the discussion out of the tired and beaten philosophical debates on human nature. While there is certainly more to this short book, the educated reader who encounters it has to contend with the uncomfortable notion that no approach to this complex issue can achieve complete plausibility in the artificial realm of human logic. After all, there are a thousand reasons to love as well as a thousand reasons to hate, and a society that preaches and  frequently lauds the former for its irrational and abstract characteristics cannot seriously dwell under the hypocritical assumption that the same reasoning is not applicable to the latter.

Music of 2008, Part One

The obligatory best-of round of end-of-year.

2008 marked a certain personal detachment from music in general. Although still cultivating this art form with more earnestness and pride than most of my peers (from what I can humbly observe, at any rate), this was the year when all my best efforts and my keenest  – albeit rare – states of mind where directed to the magnificent world of humanities, literature, and creation. With varying results, I might add.

I suppose classical music got the brunt of this dolce detachment, as it is already impenetrable enough without a distracted spirit to accompany it. I managed, however, to revisit what repertoire I already knew and, as often is the case with this form of melodic expression, discover new venues of meaning and entire sets of tonalities which seemed altogether original.

There was, in the vast greenfields of pop music, a particular release that seized my attention, both for the quality of its work and the poignant significance of its editorial timing. Portishead’s Third not only marks the unexpected return of the Bristol group, fourteen years after their debut, it also signals the maturation of a few talented musicians who performed a sincere – and no doubt painful – look into what their music had meant, and what it had become.

It is difficult to say who would venture that a band so deeply associated with a time and era could perform a comeback with such creative intensity. Yet Third soars and roars, slums and pounds, trudges along with the willingness of an electronic machine gun, pulled by invisible strings hauntingly puppettered by a Gibbons that is, perhaps for the first time in the history of the trio, just another beautiful instrument amidst the pulsating and ecletic array of sounds here collected. There are a few flairs and flashes of the band’s old brand of soapy trip-hop – gorgeous feints of a kind of musicality too often played at intimate dinners and hip fusion restaurants – but their purpose is never more evident when put next to the album’s new breed of tracks, blistering, unconfortable, supremely dark melodies that progress from the ravenous and disquiet of Silence, the industrial, leaden and acidic bitterness of We Carry On, or the violent and angelical bursts of Machine Gun. More often than not, the arrangements are unapologetically uneven. Furious storms of electronica intertwine with raspy blips of blues, ukeleles clash with distorted guitars, and one’s very musical sense is constantly challenged by abrupt track changes or unforeseen counterpoints. The musicianship is at all times undeniable.

No work can be detached from its time, perhaps unfairly. The same people that yesterday went to their homes, after long nights of house, electronica and a dash of the Bristol Sound, those that crashed at after-hours joints or watched the sun rise behind glass windows and burned-out, vacant stares, those are the same people that now have a job, a family, perhaps children. It is such the responsibility of music, to be something often carried throughout one’s existence with more perseverence and stubborness than anything else under the sun. All else can be expected to fade or to change, but music must be eternal.

For too long had Portishead’s music been held in a crystaline and immutable dome of melancolic allure. Gibbon’s laments were wailed by everyone. Their ballads known by all. Their songs, progressively self-referencing, framed under very specific, familiar, and cosy moods, like conscious and mute keepsakes. It may be too bold to call Portishead’s Third not only a reinvention of their music, but also the reinvention of their time and the dislocation between two eras. Yet for all the hyperbolic diatribe implicit in such a statement, I would be hard pressed to find a better suitor for the contemporary musical soul of the years that stretch before us.

Trudging along the wastelands

Though it could be a not so subtly veiled metaphor for the course my life is taking, the title refers to my initial experience in Fallout 3, the new iteration of a beloved franchise.

Not to my immediate liking is the fact it tends to resemble (though perhaps not surprisingly) Oblivion. The similarity is less graphical than mechanical, even though both games make extensive use of the same core engine. Just as Oblivion had dumbed down Morrowind for the masses, providing easy fast travel, hand-held quests and a horribly bland levelled item system, so does Fallout 3 set out to simplify some of the geeky quirks and perks of its predecessors. In effect, it seems easier to gun down foes, for essentially you can move and shoot at the same time, often juggling between careful usage of your AP and the simple kiting mechanics of any conventional shooter. Though an interesting change, and one I agree works well, the game could benefit from an increased tactical difficulty. Even in close quarters, in the beginning of the game, I could gun down some hardy Mirelurks with extreme ease using only the starting pistol. Their vulnerable area was small and I was playing in Hard difficulty, but still could I kite the poor mollusks around until my points came back and headshots were again available.

Non-melee opponents or speedy foes pose an additional challenge but, on the whole, the combat portion of Fallout is considerably more straight-forward.

Also rather short-sighted is the dialogue system. Though you may change it with a mod, the dialogue options are paired in threesomes, and you need to scroll down to see all the possible replies and queries. A smaller font and more lines would have done the trick just as well, but it is apparent there is a palpable fear of making the game excessively text-driven. I say the initial Fallouts were some of best written games in their time (which means they continued to be some of the best written games well after their time, and into today’s age); there is no need to shun away from long blocks of text as long as you have your precious voiceovers to compliment them.

Lastly, the wasteland seems too warm and almost friendly. Danger lurks under every rock, it’s true, but there are countless outposts where you can seek shelter, and from a certain point onwards very few enemies will make the protagonist break a post-nuclear sweat. Even walking amidst the ruins of DC did not elicit awe from me, who months earlier had been progressing along the plains and abandoned cities of the much more eerie Chernobyl and Pripyat of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. This is something I may return to, at a later point, but I’ve noticed Fallout 3 refuses to go beyond a certain level of desolation and despair. Granted, I still have much to see, but so far there has been nothing comparable to Fallout 2′ s The Den or other hopeless, dark, sombre places where humanity is driven to their most basic instincts. Additionally, the exclusion of almost all flora and fauna has the opposite effect of what is intended. The wastelands feel altogether too futuristic, an artificial apocalyptic scenario against S.T.A.L.K.E.R.’s bleak and uncomfortably familiar environments and their packs of rabid dogs and irradiated, reddened trees.

All in all, I am enjoying my stay in the wastelands.  Bethesda could have utterly mauled the franchise, after all. Despite the nitpicks outlined above (I’d call them observations, rather than criticisms), this is certainly a worthwhile installment.

It has managed to steal play time from Wrath of the Lich King, at least.  I assure you that is no small feat.

The Last Express

Having just concluded The Last Express, one of the forgotten works of famous developer Jordan Mechner (the man behind some of the best videogaming moments of my infancy, when I peddled that prince of Persias forward on a 386 without a care in the world), here are some loose and wholly unorganised observations concerning the whole experience.

The Last Express is, above all, an historic crime novel under the form of an adventure game. That may not sound like the best description, but the game tends to defy the most liberal attempts of categorization. Launched in 1997, its commercial failure was one of the last signs the industry needed in order to abandon the rapidly declining adventure genre over other, perhaps more immediately gratifying genres.

These games have always been a maligned favourite of mine. I say this with the ambivalence of someone who is not always the most patient of cats and sometimes meets considerable difficulty in adopting the puzzle-cracking frame of mind the developers deemed acceptable for this or that portion of the game. A staple of this genres is that if you let these guys on a loose leash, things can escalate into an absurd collection of outlandish puzzles very soon, which is why I have always been more attracted to the more sober games. Gabriel Knight is an excellent example of this.

There is a certain degree of historical authenticity to this game, which is immediately captivating to those who take the faintest interest in 20th century history. Taking place during the year of 1914, the famous Arch-Duke Franz Ferdinand von Österreich has just been murdered by Gavrilo Princip, member of the Black Hand. Though no one realises it, this shall the last Orient Express until 1935, and for more than two decades Europe will not witness its most famous and mystic railroad line in action. A voyage that begins in Paris, reaching Strasburg, Munich, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Constantinople! These are the last echoes of an Old Europe, never to be again. Aboard this transnational express are several dozen passengers, Germans, Frenchmen, a pair of British, a handful of dubious Serbians, three Russians, and so forth. To each of this characters a unique voice was lent; the impeccable acting effort put into this game is certainly worthy of note. Frankly, it’s the details that make all the difference, such as the austrian accent that one begins to listen as the Express soars through Vienna, or the heated discussions between a french chef and his assistant concerning the best way to slice carrots. The protagonist is a charming young american doctor, master of a calm mind, quick reasoning, and a deep arrogant voice.

We start by investigating the death of a friend who has telegraphed the protagonist and urged his assistance on some undisclosed and apparently secret matter. Soon enough, our attention is diverted by hints of an international conspiracy involving Serbia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Germany, and other future belligerents. The intrigue: arms trade, espionage, the whole works. The Last Express succeeds in avoiding ridicule because it never directly portraits these themes, instead opting to develop, with clarity, a solid plotline while nodding left and right to the more complex political panorama. There’s a lesson to be learned from this game’s narrative structure, and that is that when you are tackling potentially complex themes, let alone historical periods of unfathomable density, it pays off to assume the player is familiar with their overall contours. The story should proceed with little to no forceful distractions; there should be no hand-holding (let alone fastidious, factually incorrect hand-holding). With this said, it’s not always easy to create a fictional world where the inhabitants seem fully fleshed out before you even meet them, especially one that leaves you with the impression that those avatars, whose path you are now crossing, will continue to linger on with their lives well after you have disappeared. I suppose this is one additional layer of narrative trickery with which most mediums, including high-brow literature, need to contend.

All this to say that most elements of The Last Express’ world are remarkably characterised. The plot is ably enriched with occasional episodes, carefully constructed in order not to detract from the overall structure. A russian anarchist, for instance, is intent on setting the train ablaze. He barks proletarian threats to the venerable Count Vassili Obolensky while whispering soft declarations to his enchanting granddaughter Tatiana Obolensky. Two Frenchmen chat in the corridor concerning the socialist ideal; fine ideas that had not yet been put into practice. One of them longs for the retaking of Alsace and Lorenne. The other remembers the end of the Franco-Prussian war in 1870 and prophetically asserts that the following war would not be fought with swords and cavalry. Inside one of the compartments, a young English lady is accompanied by a seductive French woman; the two lovers are travelling to Constantinople and dream with the sunset under the sapphic peace of the Mediterranean mirror. A Persian prince (though not a prince of persia) has occupied over four compartments; he is travelling with his concubines and is much annoyed if someone knocks at the door. The last carriage is occupied by a mysterious North-African monarch who conspired to recover a russian artifact once offered to a sultan. A beautiful violinist travels in a shroud of secrecy and incomparable allure; Anna Wolff, an Austrian jew born in Hungary, shall yet become  the key to many of the mysteries taking place aboard this train. On one occasion, she even gives a concert for piano and violin to the delight of a select few passengers.

And so forth. Some of these plotlines are carried out to a fulfilling end. Others are part of the fictitious collection of fascinating and colourful characters, fleshy and convincing icons. One is easily won over by the exuberance of the Express, the powerful magnet it represents to the world of intrigues, romance, conflicts. One accepts the historical background, in which Serbian nationalists are yet again the villains. Germany and the Austrian Empire desire war, it is hushed on the corridors, but the Sarajevo incident has not given them enough reason to wage a conflict. Aboard this Express, the political gambles that are to plunge Europe in a war of darkness are being played out.

The protagonist must move from compartment to carriage, eavesdropping on conversations, taking notice of any leads or evidence. Unlike other games, where the human impulse behind the controls is essential to the progression of the narrative, no one here is exactly waiting for him to make his move. The story simply moves on, whether we are present or not, and one’s success depends on the sagacity and presence of mind to know where to be at the right time. In light of this, there are dozens of different possible endings, tying the most loose ends as possible.

Do not worry, whispers the protagonist’s lover in the end, before returning to Central Europe. This war shall not last a month, and I will be coming to you on the first Express after peace is decreed. Long and treacherous are the painful separations that war imposes on lovers.

So it begins

No presentations this time. No grand declarations concerning the nature of this weblog or the complex designs that presided over its creation. Certainly no endless toil, testing this image on a header or trying to frame that fantastic picture on a sidebar. No fancy comments system either, for who will even visit me? Interesting as those pointless activities may be, they have consistently sapped my initial efforts whenever, in the not so distant past, I have attempted to forge a new blog and regularly establish some writing practices.

So, this time, It merely begins, and I believe this small and idiotic post has been enough of an introduction.