My one liner: Maugham is one of the 20th Century’s great authors, and this book touches so many sides of human emotion, development and  self-realisation

‘Deb quando tu sarai tornato al mondo,
E riposato della lunga via,
Seguito il terzo spirito al secondo,
Recorditi di me, che son la Pia:
Siena me fè, disfecemi Maremma:
Salsi colui, che, innanellata pria
Disposando m’avea con la sua gemma’
 
‘Pray, when you are returned to the world, and rested from the long journey,’ ollowed the third spirit on the second, ‘remember me who am Pia. Siena made me, Maremma unmade me: this he knows who after betrothal espoused me with this ring.’

In his introduction to The Painted Veil, W. Somerset Maugham quotes from Dante to let us know  what was the inspiration of the story. The passage is from “Purgatorio” which is the 2nd volume of La Commedia Divina (The Divine Comedy). Pia de’ Tolomei was a gentlewoman of Siena. Her husband suspected her of adultery.  He was too afraid of her family and station to put her to death, so instead he took her to his castle at Maremma and left her there, with the plan that the noxious vapours there would kill her off.  However, she took too long to die and in the end he had her thrown out of the window.

Similarly in The Painted Veil, Walter Fane, a bacteriologist based in Hong Kong  in the early 20th century marries Kitty, a frivolous young girl who, upon
arrival in Hong Kong falls for the charms of the local cad, Charles Townsend.  Upon discovering the affair, Walter volunteers a secondment for both himself and Kitty to Mei-Tan-Fu, a fictitious colony deep inside mainland China, which is infested by cholera, in order that Walter can assist in containing the disease.  In all probability he is leading one or both of them to death.

Many of Maugham’s works deal with the constant conflict in humanity between the transient or frivolous on the one hand, and the more stoical values of constancy, substance and true knowledge on the other.  Take for example one of his other novels, The Razor’s Edge. The main character of the book is Larry Darrell, an American former-WW1 pilot who decides to go on a spiritual journey of enlightenment that eventually takes him to the East, while his wealthy socialite friends mostly suffer reversals of fortune and continue to be mired in the demands placed on them by the high society in which they operate.

In The Painted Veil it is Kitty’s journey from wannabe socialite to a state of knowing, understanding and world-weariness that comes through experiences of sadness, betrayal and human suffering.  Her husband Walter himself is considered a nobody in the social whirl of Hong Kong.  

“She had discovered very soon that he had an unhappy disability to lose himself.  He was self-conscious.  When there was a party and everyone
started singing Walter could never bring himself to join in.  He sat there smiling to show that he was pleased and amused, but his smile was forced, it was more like a sarcastic smirk, and you could not help feeling that he thought all of those people enjoying themselves a pack of fools.”

A recurrent theme throughout the novel, and one which leads the reader to consistently reflect on the title, taken from a sonnet by the English Romantic
poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley:

"Lift not the painted veil which those who live / Call Life"

Even Walter’s wife hates him:

“It was laughable; he had no sense of humour; she hated his supercilious air, his coldness and his self-control.  It was easy to be self-controlled when you were interested in nothing but yourself.  He was repulsive to her.  She hated to let him kiss her.  What had he to be so conceited about?”  He danced rottenly, he was a wet blanket at a party, he couldn’t play or sing, he couldn’t play polo and his tennis was no better than anybody else’s.  Bridge ? Who cared about bridge ?”

And yet, on the cholera-infested colony of Mei-TanFu, which is where Kitty pays the price of her infidelity, none of these skills are useful.  The only Western inhabitants are the Deputy Commissioner Mr Waddington, and the French nuns in a local convent, which also serves as an orphanage for children whose parents have succumbed to the disease.

Here, Walter is in his element:

“He’s doctoring the sick, cleaning the city up, trying to get the drinking water pure.  He doesn’t mind where he goes, nor what he does.  He’s risking his life twenty times a day.  He’s got Colonel Yu in his pocket and he’s induced him to put the troops at his disposal.  He’s even put a little pluck into the magistrate and the old man is really trying to do something.  And the nuns at the convent swear by him.  They think he is a hero.”

The landscapes painted by Maugham take you to the location.  As and aside, if you are interested in fin de siècle South East Asia as seen through colonial eyes, I would also highly recommend one of Maugham’s travel books, The Gentleman in the Parlour.

But Maugham’s speciality is conveying Eastern mysticism, and its impenetrability to Western eyes.  In The Painted Veil, this mystique is embodied in the Chinese wife of Waddington  An aristocratic lady who left her newly impoverished family after the Revolution to devote her life to the
Englishman.  And Kitty starts to appreciate the depth and intensity of her
surroundings and their inhabitants:

“Kitty had never paid anything but passing and somewhat contemptuous attention to the China in which fate had thrown her.  Now she seemed on a sudden to have an inkling of something more remote and sterious.  Here was the East, immemorial, dark and inscrutable.  The beliefs and ideals of the West seem crude beside ideas and beliefs of which in this exquisite country she seemed to catch a fugitive glimpse.”

Not that Maugham lets Walter get away with it either.  Walter had ‘courted’ Kitty, somewhat ineptly for many months before proposing to her. Indeed such had been his ineptitude that Kitty had not even been sure of his love interest at the moment of proposal.  But, she had been on the social scene for several seasons without any (in her mother’s eyes) ‘appropriate’ proposals, and she had accepted more of a desire not to disappoint her mother by not being left on the shelf.  It comes back to bite Walter, through Kitty’s infidelity.  And Maugham wastes no time in telling us that he was as much at fault as Kitty for marrying her in the first place, and he ultimately pays the price:

“What did it really matter if a silly woman committed adultery, and why should her husband, face to face with the sublime, give it a thought? It was strange that Walter with all his cleverness should have so little sense of proportion.  Because he had dressed a doll in gorgeous robes and then discovered that the doll was filled with sawdust he could neither forgive himself nor her.  His soul was lacerated.”

Maugham’s language is rarely flowery or sophisticated, and most of his novels are brief.  Yet, when you look back on his novels you see that you have gone on a journey with his characters, you have taken on their learning, you have wrestled with their dilemmas, you have lived in their physical space, and you have learnt about their cultural influences. 

That is Maugham’s true genius: that you don’t notice all of this until you reach the end of the journey.

The Wikipedia link to the book is here.

There was also a 2006 film which you can read about on Wikipedia here.

My one liner:  The Breath of Night by Michael Arditti digs deep into the Philippines, its culture, people, and politics, to give us a thorough examination of the conscience and appetite of the Church to help the poor and disenfranchised through armed struggle.  A morality tale that sits in the grey area between good and evil.

This is the third in an occasional series, Lessons from Fiction. The Breath of Night is a new book by English author Michael Arditti.  It has been promoted, sorry, reviewed, extensively in the mainstream media already, such as the Spectator, the Independent, the Scotsman, the Telegraph, the Guardian, and even the Daily Mail Online.  With such revered Thought-Leadership behind it, I was curious to see what all the fuss was about.  

Arditti raises important questions about the role of the Church and whether it should be more overtly political. In this article I would like to explore that suggestion. My conclusion is that economic intervention is more effective than political intervention and I have put some numbers around one of the examples in the novel to illustrate the point.

If you have travelled extensively in developing countries (is it ok to use that expression any more ? I still like “Third World”, but that’s definitely off limits now), you will feel the smells, the sounds, the taste, the moisture, the “vibe” of Philippines, even if you haven’t been there, because it is just like all those other countries you have visited.

“The pavement was almost as tricky to negotiate as the road.  Ahead of them a man, wearing nothing but shorts, soaped himself nonchalantly as if he were in his own bathroom.  To his left, three men played cards on an oil drum surrounded by a jeering an gesticulating crowd; to his right three women sat stirring brightly coloured stews an bubbling pots of rice while their children frolicked at their feet, perilously close to the wobbly stoves. All around them were stalls selling food, drink, scarves, T-shirts, sunglasses, lighters and pirated DVDs.”

Scratch below the veneer of the (faux-)colonial hotels and malls catering to the whims of the newly-minted Global Traveller, and you find an incredibly complex society.

Or, I should say, “societal structure”.  An anthropological order that existed long before the colonial masters arrived and departed and continues to survive long after the arrival of “independence” and “democracy”.

“Nothing in this country is the way it looks.  You think that because the Filippinos have Spanish names and speak English that you understand them. Big mistake !”.

In Arditti’s model, there are essentially five main actors and somehow, like spheres rotating around a central gravitational force, they seem to maintain an equilibrium with respect to each other: the Elite Landowners, the Masses (workers in the cities and workers on the land, if they can get work), the Government, the Church, and the “communist” Freedom Fighters.

Revolutions and overthrows of the incumbent government come and goAquino
for Marcos, in the period covered by the book), but not much really changes:

“The most notorious Marcos ministers have been removed, but by and large the faces in both the Senate and the House of Representatives remain identical.  The army has been granted immunity for all its crimes during the State of Emergency”

Basically the Elite Landowners, control everything, and maintain their power
structures through the tacit or not-so-tacit government of the day. 

The personification of the landowner is the haciendo, the proprietor of the hacienda farm estate, acquired originally by the conquistadores.  The haciendo plays a benevolent role in society, because he provides work for tenants on his farm:

“Don Florante is reputed to be one of the more enlightened landlords. He takes a paternal interest in his tenants, advancing them money for seeds and tools, selling them cheap rice during droughts, and standing as godfather to their children (which, here, involves far more than remembering them at Christmas and birthdays).” 

And the tenants themselves recognise, accept and even embrace their own role:

“The farmers have a sense of indebtedness that goes way beyond  indenture.  They feel an almost mystical bond to the haciendos”

 Which is unfortunate, because economically, not surprisingly they are stuck:

“The share tenant is vulnerable to the proportion of his harvest due to the landlord, and the leasehold tenant to a fixed rent that takes no account of the all too frequent crop failures.”

I was fascinated by this statement, and since this article about lessons from fiction I would like to alight from the train here and just look into this a little it more: we will return to the Church and the Freedom Fighters later. 

Let’s analyse the above tenancy arrangements by putting some numbers on them.  These are unresearched assumptions, but they should give us a flavour of what’s going on.  I would be very happy to hear from readers who would like to challenge the assumptions or to provide better data to feed into the models.

Imagine a household which is a tenant on the hacienda, and which is a family of 5.  They harvest the land and for say four months of the year it produces an income.  Based on the Philippines’ 2011 GDP per head of $2,400 I have assumed 3 productive members of the household, so a total of $7,200 produced by the household during the year.   Assume that the household’s monthly expenses are $2 per person per day and 30 days per month.  Thus the monthly expense is $2*5*30 = 300, or $3,600 per year.

What happens under the first version described above, where the landlord takes a percentage of output ?  Let’s assume the landlord takes 45%. Why have I chosen this number ? Well, without doing detailed research I have made the following assumption.  It just so happens that at 45% the household is just about able to make some savings at the end of the year, amounting to $360.  The landlord is the one with all the information: if he sets the percentage too low he is not maximising his profit; if he sets it too high, the tenant has no incentive to work hard.  The tenant works the land in the Hope that he will put aside a meagre amount every year, and one day his family will be able to afford an education, or a life in the city.  The landlord is the one dispensing the Hope.

 And indeed it seems to work.  Look at Chart 1.  Lo and behold every year the household’s wealth increases, up to a respectable $4,320 after Year 12. 

But that’s not the whole story.  What happens if the crop fails ? Again, this is somewhat unresearched, but let’s assume one total crop failure during the 12-year period.  And let’s assume that there is a 75% probability of this happening, ie one total failure in a 12-year period (I did dig around a bit for some agricultural data, and I believe that’s not an unreasonable assumption).  And let’s say that this failure occurs in year 7.

What happens to our tenant household ? Well, on the one hand their savings will be wiped out, and the household will be put into debt.  Let’s assume that they can borrow the money, but will need to pay an interest rate of 50% pa (a reasonable assumption, I think).  Look what happens to their finances in Chart 2.  Ouch.  By the end of Year 12 our household is over $6,000 in debt.

So to re-iterate, although our model family has the Hope of steadily increasing its savings, in fact under our assumptions it has a 75% chance of ending up $6,000 in debt at the end of 12 years !

Is it any better for the tenant to adopt the second model, and pay a fixed rent ?  Suppose the landlord charges a fixed rent of $250 per month, regardless of output.  In this case, the wealth accumulation is even better, there is more Hope for the tenant.  Chart 3 shows that the family accumulates $7,200 at the end of Year 12:

How lovely.

But look what happens (Chart 4) when there a crop failure.  The rent still has to be paid, so an even bigger liability is incurred when the Year 7 income disappears.  And the debt spiral at 50% pa interest rates take the household to a whopping $15,000 in debt by Year 12, although you would imagine they will have been evicted into destitution long before that.

Some Hope indeed that is being dispensed by the haciendos.  More like the Hope that people have when they walk into a casino, when in fact the odds of coming out with any money are so overwhelmingly against them.

 In the novel Arditti examines in depth the role of the Church within a society such as this.  Julian Tremayne, a Catholic priest of mid-ranking English aristocratic blood, leaves his home country in the 1970s and sets out for the Philippines to take up a posting there as parish priest.  Over time, his pastoral duties bring him into contact with exactly the type of people described in the example above.  Initially he plays the role that is expected from him, preaching to the congregation according to local custom, and providing food, shelter, medicine and money for those in extreme need.  In this role he is very much part of the Church Establishment, which above all wants to maintain cordial relations with all factions in Philippine society.

However, over time, Julian develops a closer relationship with the country’s
Freedom Fighters, the New People’s Army or NPA, who are engaged in violent and revolutionary struggle against regime of the day (first Marcos, then
Aquino).  At first it is logistical support that Julian provides (e.g. transport and shelter).  But he struggles increasingly with his conscience and feels that the Church as an institution should engage actively in the freedom struggle:

“Poverty and oppression endanger the soul [of the rich] along with the body [of the poor]. A woman whose children are starving may break the seventh commandment, just as a man driven mad by tyranny and injustice may break the fifth. So as a priest, I’m obliged to concern myself with the here and now as much as the hereafter; indeed, the two are inexplicably linked.  If a priest is to stand in the person of Christ, he can’t avoid being political.”

Hence he becomes more actively involved with the NPA (it is ambiguous as to whether he actually engages in any acts of violence or terror) and is eventually murdered in 1989.

The novel’s other protagonist is Phillip Seward, a young and out-of-work Art Historian, who has an emotional connection (you need to read the book to know why) with Isabel, the niece of Julian Tremayne, and her husband Hugh (who happens to also own a trading company that has extensive commercial interests in the Philippines).  Isabel was particularly close to her uncle Julian.

Isabel manages to persuade Hugh to bankroll an assignment for Phillip to the Philippines to report on an investigation that is underway there into whether Julian satisfied the requirements for being declared a saint.  Progress on the investigation has been painfully slow and Isabel feels that Phillip would be able to provide an objective view as to what is going on, and maybe to speed it up a little.

The story flips between Phillip’s 21st century induction to the country, as he uncovers Julian’s story, and the Julian’s letters, which tell his own story 30 years earlier.

Arditti wants us to question the role of the Church, and whether it should proactively align itself with revolutionary causes.  Is the Church by definition a political institution that must fight to prevent poverty as well as treating its symptoms ? Certainly in previous centuries, both the Protestant and Catholic Churches have been more explicitly combative.

The author himself seems not sure of the answer:

 “I think that’s what Julian objected to.  He didn’t want a world that was split into masters and servants.  No, he and his friends wanted revolution.  They were terrorists, even if they had no guns – and believe me, there are many who swear that they did.  Suppose they had succeeded, what then ? They get rid of Marcos and end up with Mao or Pol Pot. Do you think the people would have been happier with that ?”

Amongst all this ambivalence about political intervention, may I suggest an alternative route for institutions with the means, such as the Church. That is, that rather than pick political fights which may lead to worse outcomes and more destruction, such institutions can provide real economic assistance.  

Let’s go back to the example that we analysed above.  The astute reader will have noticed what the real problem is (actually, there are two – answers on a postcard, please).  The real problem is the interest rate that the household pays when it goes into debt.  

A somewhat topical issue on which the Church of England has recently expressed a view as well.  Now, look what happens if the tenant can have access to cheaper credit, say at an 8%pa interest rate.  Chart 5 applies this to the first example (tenant paying a proportion of output), but I assure it works for the second type as well. 

 Et voilà ! A steady recovery back to prosperity.

This is the idea behind micro-finance, and there is no reason why the Church (or indeed any other religious institution) could not deploy its considerable balance sheet to become a serious micro-finance lender, not just in developing countries, but also in more developed markets.
 
Now that really would be putting its money where its mouth is.
 
There is no Wikipedia entry for this book.  The Google Books link to the book is here.

Emile Zola – L’Assommoir (The Drinking Den) 1877, Translation by Robin Buss (Penguin Classics) (2004)

My one liner: Zola’s classic and probably most famous.  Evocative 19th
century Paris. Trials and tribulations of Gervaise the laundry girl, who finds success and happiness through hard work. Then loses it all through drink, and through events  beyond her control.

“Her dream was to live amongst decent people, because if you kept bad company, according to her, it would hit you like a blow from a mallet, break your head and flatten a poor woman in no time”
 
Gervaise is a laundry-woman who knows what is like to be poor, abused, and abandoned by a lover to bring up two children. Miraculously, given that this is 19th century Paris, she manages to turn it around.  With the support of a caring and supportive new husband M. Coupeau the roofer, the generosity of a neighbour-lender M. Goujet and his mother, and by dint of sheer grit and determination, she becomes the proud proprietor of a successful laundry business.  Surely, knowing where she came from, she will not let the idyll slip away. Yet, by end, “no one even knew what exactly she died of. There was talk of cold and warmth, but the fact was that she died of poverty, or the filth and weariness of her own life.”
 
Of course in reality it is more complicated than that.  A classic illustration of self-fulfilling prophecy in both directions.  Success breeds success, of course.  On the way up.  But on the way down you have no shortage of detractors who wish your downfall. Chief amongst these are M and Mme Lorilleux, Coupeau’s sister and brother in law.  Opposed to the marriage in the first place, jealous in the extreme when Gervaise shows signs of success, they are the first to spread gossip rumour and innuendo as soon as they spot chinks in the armour.  

An unfortunate roofing accident for M. Coupeau has incapacitated him, temporarily, we all want to believe, as he is a hard-working and honest man. 
But he is not emotionally equipped to recover from setback, and soon the comforts of his incapacitation, the medical care funded out of Gervaise’s  savings, and the success of her business make him delay his return to work.  As do the increasingly frequent visits  to the drinking den.  When he increasingly keeps the company of men such as “Bec-Salé (also known as Drinks-Without-Thirst)” you know where fate is taking him.
 
New dependants arrive in the Coupeau household.  A baby daughter.  Mme Coupeau, the mother (foisted by the Lorilleux). And unbelievably, M. Lantier, the former lover.  All supported by Gervaise.  If this were a play, at every act of generosity the audience would be willing Gervaise not to take it on.  But she does, and runs up more debt from her benefactors the Goujets.  

And she has a further opportunity to avoid the impending train crash. M. Goujet, physically strong and emotionally stable, works at the forge, a classic hero.  Gervaise frequently stops by and cannot helped but be entranced by his masculinity. A close friendship develops.  We hope he will be the deus-ex-machina that will prevent the unfolding tragedy.  On several occasions, and even as she is descending into disaster, he entreaties her to elope with him, confident that he can care for her and her children. 

In the end though there is to be no happy ending. There are many factors at play here, some voluntary, others of weak-will, aided and abetted by a cruel and gossiping society. But Zola had a single-minded agenda in this book, and he was determined to execute it:
 
“I set out to show the fatal collapse of working family in the poisonous environment of our city slums.  With drunkenness and laziness come the loosening of family ties, the filth of promiscuity and the gradual abandonment of decent feelings; then, in the end, shame and death. Quite simply, this is morality in action.”

 It was ever thus.
 
[A word on the translation – clear, and captures the essence. Easy for the lay reader, and hence an important contribution to opening out this important work to a wide  readership.]

Here is the wikipedia link for the book.