WHIRLPOOL by LIU HENG SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS

WHIRLPOOL by LIU HENG

SUMMARY
A man named Zhou Zhalou who comes from Fujian, CN, studies medicine in urban China.  While at school, he had to dissect a woman who had donated her body to science and remarked that her essential humanity was absent in her lifeless body.
Zhalou goes on to become a Department Manager at a Scientific Institute in Beijing and regularly gives lectures around China.  He has a wife, a 10-year-old son, and a daughter who is slightly older than his son.  After giving a lecture, Zhalou returns to his hotel to find a note from a stranger requesting a meeting.  Zhalou obliges the stranger, and arrives at the meeting place to find a beautiful woman named Hua Naiqian who works under him at the Institute.  Although Naiqian is married, her husband, Lin, is impotent and she is not attracted to him.  Zhalou and Naiqian kiss, but vow to keep their working relationship intact.
Naiqian is a Master's student and has just completed her final thesis.  A man named Liu, who is an older peer of Zhalou's, grades Naiqian's thesis and penalizes her for incorrectly citing 2 works in her bibliography.  Zhalou attends a party at Naiqian's house, after which she drunkenly tells Zhalou that she finds Lin to be weak and cowardly.
Zhalou's family has been planning a vacation and request to come with Zhalou on his next lecture trip, but he insists that his family stay at home.  On this trip, Naiqian and Zhalou have sex for the first time.  Angry with himself, Zhalou attributes his weakness to primitive urges.
When Zhalou returns, he beats his son for smoking cigarettes.  At work, he is awarded a prize for outstanding achievements in science, a feat embroidered by his young age, and Liu congratulates him.  The executives of the Institute offer Zhalou a chance to interview for the position of Vice President.
Zhalou breaks up with Naiqian, because he does not love her and is only excited by her body, but insisting that he once did love her, and that their love has faded.  Naiqian is upset by the breakup, and tells Zhalou that she is divorcing her husband Lin.  Unaware that Zhalou has been sleeping with Naiqian, Lin approaches Zhalou and asks him to intervene in the divorce.  Lin feels that the divorce would hurt his children, and he and Zhalou both fantasize about killing Naiqian.
Zhalou wins the job of Vice President and sends word to his family, who are on vacation without him.  Naiqian comes to Zhalou's apartment, begging him to have sex with her again.  After Zhalou refuses, she becomes upset, and says that while she will not tell his family, she will prevent him from leaving her without consequence.  Later that day, Zhalou gives his acceptance speech for the Vice President position, and although he knows Naiqian is in the crowd, he ignores her completely.

ANALYSIS
This novella is about what makes a person human.  Zhalou was upset by the lifelessness of the corpse he dissected in school, indicating that he has a passion for the human spirit.  The urges Zhalou felt for Naiqian were, as Zhalou describes them, primitive, and he describes the emotion he felt when beating his son similarly.  Scholarly pursuits give Zhalou a sense of self-worth because they demonstrate to him that he is not an animal or a corpse.  Morality also factors into his perception of humanity as he feels compelled to act out of interest for his family.  Zhalou has control over himself, which he feels makes him dissimilar to animals and corpses, thus making him human.  When Zhalou ignores the woman who ignited his primitive desires to focus on his scientific achievements and the moral sanctity of his family, he realizes what he feels is his full potential as a human.
Zhalou's need to prove himself as being extraordinary is complicated by the fact that he comes from rural Fujian, CN, and is seeking to prove himself to elites in urban Beijing, CN, who initially viewed him as being primitive because the elites of Beijing, CN stereotype rural areas and their inhabitants as being primitive.  Additionally, Zhalou is much younger than his peers of similar stature.  His youth represents a perceived inadequacy to some and he is eager to prove that what he lacks in age he makes up for in capability.  By conquering temptation, he has conquered the demise that his enemies expect he will meet.  Zhalou's successful cessation of his extramarital affair represents a victory for him on multiple levels.
This book was great!  Without preaching or generalizing, this book takes the reader along for the journey of a young professional accomplishing their personal goal, which is what I certainly want to do in my life, making me all the happier for Zhalou.

• Accomplished scientist begins an affair on a lecture tour
• Scientist is offered a chance to interview for a promotion
• Scientist breaks up with the person he was dating
• Scientist achieves the promotion

SOURCE

Liu, Heng. "Whirlpool." The Obsessed. Trans. David Kwan. Beijing, China: Chinese Literature, 1991. N. pag. Print. Book about a scientist conquering temptation.

AFTER THE SNOOTER by EDDIE CAMPBELL SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS

SUMMARY
Eddie Campbell lives in Scotland and enjoys playing football with his friends who are Celtic fans.  He makes a shot that is important to him in a game.  On the day when his father was scheduled to take Campbell to a match, Eddie is hit by a car and hospitalized.  At the hospital, he begins reading comics and falls in love with them.
There were no artists living in Campbell's neighborhood.  His father discouraged his interest in art as impractical.  Campbell is the only boy at many events he attends.  The first job Campbell gets as an artist is as a court room sketch artist for the local news station.  An insect called a 'snooter' flies into Campbell's home at night and bites him, causing a rash.  Campbell designs a 'snooter' superhero costume which resembles a quadruped fly.  The goal of the 'snooter' is to reduce complacency but it has little effect.
He moves to Australia from Scotland.  Against his father's advice, Campbell begins self-publishing out of his home in Australia and starts a family with his wife.  He rents a home and enjoys the simplicity of the rental arrangement.  A man from Georgia, US, represents Campbell's artwork in the United States.
A Hollywood company shows interest in Campbell's work for a film, and, although the movie is never filmed, Campbell receives a check large enough to buy a home for his family.
The family spends more than Campbell earns per year after buying the home and Campbell is stressed about money.  Although Campbell sees no need for his family to have a dog, he buys his children a dog due to the children's demands.  Neighborhood cats choose to hang out at Campbell's home rather than at the homes of their respective owners.
In the middle of the night, Campbell awakes to find an old man and the quadruped 'snooter' in his kitchen.  While the old man is eager to drink, the 'snooter' lectures Campbell on the evils of alcohol.  Campbell unmasks the 'snooter' to find that it is 'Mr. Dry' wearing Campbell's old 'snooter' costume.
Time passes and Campbell's income becomes more steady.  Campbell goes on a lecture tour with a friend named Neil who practiced self publishing, just as he did.  One of Campbell's movies is filmed and Campbell is invited to the premiere in Paris.  Campbell goes on a world tour giving lectures and selling his graphic novels to precede the movie premiere.  During breaks on his trip, Campbell puts the finishing touches on a new manuscript.
On his journey, Campbell visits all the significant places from his childhood.  When he returns, his children tell him that they barely remember what he looks like.  While Campbell is home, his daughter cuts herself breaking in through the window because Campbell's son locked the house doors as a prank while accessing pornography on the internet.  Before long, Campbell goes to Spain for another business trip.
Campbell goes to Paris with his family for the movie premiere.  He visits a famous cemetery where many artists such as Oscar Wilde are buried and pays his respects.  While Campbell is watching the film, Campbell hallucinates the 'snooter' as a character in the movie, offering Campbell a drink.  After the premiere, Campbell's wife congratulates him and while they are having sex, Campbell finds himself unable to perform because Campbell is comparing himself to his father and his wife to his mother.

ANALYSIS
Campbell is unsure of many of the decisions he has made in his life.  He identifies the car crash as a life changing moment for himself where he chose the path of the artist.  As an adult, he looks back on his life and imagines himself progressing in several different ways.  At the end of each of these imaginary paths, however, he finds that he winds up living in a cliche.
Being an artist is not as much fun as Campbell imagined it would be.  The insect he calls the snooter which bit him identifies his drinking alcohol and becoming complacent with old habits as the poison sucking the fun out of his life.  Because Campbell's father is a drinker, and Campbell does not want to become his father, Campbell dislikes himself for drinking and behaving similarly to his father.  What he most wants is to break free of a cliche and ordinary existence, and his alcohol and complacency in his lifestyle is the hindrance to that achievement.
In this graphic novel, Campbell tells several stories of people being bitten by the snooter and their lives being ruined.  In each of the stories, the person drastically changes the direction of their course in life due to regrets.  It is unclear if Campbell is suggesting that complacency saves people from making bad decisions to change, in certain instances.
My University recently added 'Comics' as a Major.  This book is a graphic novel and makes an excellent case for the art form as a serious academic endeavor.  Campbell is good-natured enough to poke fun at the parable-like nature of some of his stories, which lessens the feeling that he may be speaking down to his reader.  While this book is 90% autobiographical, it contains enough fictional elements to be considered fiction, at least for me, and I'm the one who wrote the page.

• Man becomes an artist
• An insect bites the man and begins speaking to him as his good conscience
• Man self-publishes and ends up with a movie deal
• The insect still haunts the man after he is successful

SOURCE
Campbell, Eddie. After the Snooter. Paddington, Qld.: Eddie Campbell, 2002. Print.Book about a man on his journey to success in the art industry.

THE POTBELLIED VIRGIN by ALICIA COSSIO SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS

THE POTBELLIED VIRGIN, or, LA COFRADIA DEL MULLO DE LA VIRGEN PIPONA by ALICIA YOSSO

SUMMARY
In a small town there is a Spanish family named the Benavideses who oppose the Indian Pandos family in a small town.  All of the Pandos' land was stolen by the first Benavides to arrive in the area,  Both the Pandos and Benavides families are run by men, although the Benavides men run their family from abroad and allow the townspeople to believe that the Benavides women are in charge while maintaining order with a military force.
One member of the Benavides family, Manuel was told he was a bastard by his parents and defected to become a Pandos.  Jose Pando is a longtime servant for the Benavideses.  The two families share little in common besides devotion to a statue of a potbellied virgin.
The town's former priest, de los Angeles, founded the sisterhood of virgins for which the statue of a potbellied virgin stands.   De los Angeles founded the sisterhood to purify young Indian girls the Pandos family was using to keep the Indian race alive.  Since the creation of the statue, the Benavides girls have been charged with cleaning and dressing the virgin and cutting off their own blonde hair in turns to fashion the statue wigs.  One day when the Benavides girls were dressing the statue they were attacked by the townspeople for dressing too provocatively, and Manuel Pandos came to their rescue.
Dona Carmen Benavides gained favor with de los Angeles.  She sent her sons into the Priesthood and lobbied the Vatican for a deaconry.  The sisterhood gained permission from the Vatican to excommunicate people.  De los Angeles dies, and the town has not found a replacement by the time Dona Carmen decides to seize control, declaring herself leader of the town's church and enforcing with an old family hunting rifle in the hands of Jose.  Carmen kidnaps three missionaries and bribes them to allow her to run the town's church.
A drought sweeps the area, and the bishop orders that another wooden virgin be carried to each drought-ridden town.  After the virgin leaves town the drought returns, so villages begin fighting over the statue.  The bishop decides to put the potbellied virgin into circulation, as well, to stop the bickering.  After the sisterhood refuses to comply with the bishop's orders, the ishop sends in the Benavideses' troops who the townspeople band together to fight against with household items.  Although many civilians are injured or killed, the townspeople drive the soldiers away.  People whisper that the virgin lost her potbelly because she gave birth to a God during the battle.
Carmen hires a new organ player for the church named Figueroa.  Magdalena Benavides and Figueroa run away together.  To replace Magdalena as handmaid to the virgin, Carmen hires Manuel's daughter, Marianita.  The virgin's potbelly returns.
Manuel Pando and the church's magistrate promote a communist agenda.  Jorge Pando spraypainted the town's walls with communist graffiti and Carmen gives Jorge a bicycle so that Jorge will not spraypaint the town anymore.  Under pressure from the sisterhood, the magistrate sends his daughters, Socialjustice, Surplusvalue, and Passionaria, to give thanks to the virgin.  Carmen then orders all the books which Manuel Pando enjoys from the library and burns them.  After Carmen catches the magistrate crossing out one of the sisterhood's signs, Carmen fires the magistrate and hires Nicasio Pando.
Townspeople argue about whether or not to resist the Benavideses.  Jorge and his friends build Molotov cocktails and kill one of their opponents.  Some communists murder Nicasio.  Jose Pando defects from the Benavideses and tells Manuel Pando that the men run the Benavides family and that the army is paid by the Benavideses to suppress the Indians.  Manuel spreads the word to the townspeople just as the military throws a parade to announce its good intentions.  Everyone but the Benavideses leaves town.

ANALYSIS
The Benavides family is a symbol for the Spanish conquistadors of South America.  The Pandos family is a symbol for the native inhabitants of South America.  The interactions between the two families in this novel illustrate the injustice many native inhabitants of countries endure at the hands of colonists.  In the end, the Indians leave the Benavideses' ill-gotten town, choosing to self-govern rather than be controlled by illegitimate rulers.  It's not clear if relocating is a suggestion the author is making.
A communist interpretation of the word 'bourgeoisie' is used in this novel to emphasize that the entire production chain is corrupted for natives in a colonized society.  In order to get a job, one must speak the language of their employers.  If the employers are colonists who have stolen all of the nearby land, rendering the natives poor, then one must submit to being colonized in order to survive in the colonial society.  Provided conquering the colonists is not an option, the only recourse for a native who does not wish to bow to an alien ruler is to leave.
The virgin symbolizes white purity to the Spanish settlers.  To the Indians, it symbolizes hope.  The statue gives birth when the Indians mount a resistance to the Spanish army, implying that the spirit which had been coiling within the townspeople had released.  When Marianita, an Indian girl, became the virgin's new handmaid, the virgin became pregnant again.  This second pregnancy resulted in the second rebellion of the town's desertion by its original rulers.
Although the metaphors in this book were entirely too heavy-handed, Cossio has an enjoyable writing style.  There is very little dialogue and nearly all conversations are summarized.  The obvious symbols and direct narrative waste little of the reader's time.  viva la reabhloid

• Two rival families live together in a small town
• One of the families siezes control of the church and oppresses the other family
• The oppressed family decides to leave the town

SOURCE

Cossío, Alicia Yánez. The Potbellied Virgin. Trans. Amalia Gladhart. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print. Book about the fight for domination of a small town.

THE LAKE by GERHARD ROTH SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS

THE LAKE, or, DER SEE by GERHARD ROTH

SUMMARY
Paul Eck is a representative for a pharmaceutical company who is travelling to various Doctors' offices and offering his drugs to them.  He takes many pills to improve his cognition, aid digestion, relieve allergies, induce drowsiness, and reduce pain, and is dependent on the drugs he takes.  Paul Eck's parents divorced 30 years prior to the start of the novel.  He has not seen his father since the divorce, although his father is wealthy from a hunting and fishing business and continued to pay for Eck's medical studies after they ceased contact.  Eck's father participated in the Hungarian resistance movement and was involved in smuggling guns from Switzerland through Hungary to Serbia.  Eck's mother committed suicide exactly one year before the novel begins, and Eck was forced to mop up his mother's blood after she'd died.
Eck takes a bus to a historic castle and accidentally wanders into a former concentration camp. The next day, he tries to sell drugs to Professor Basaglia at a medical clinic where there are many sick and hopeless people.  Eck meets two women in a cafe who pleasure him sexually and then he is robbed of his money, wallet, and passport by a group of men who were alerted by the women that Eck had money.  After he awakes, he sneaks across the border to return to his home and checks into a hotel to rest.  He decides to not accompany his father for a boating trip which Eck's father invited Eck to, and a storm breaks out on the day of the trip.
The next day, Eck reads in the newspaper that his father went missing in the storm.  Eck visits a friend of his who is a mechanic and takes Eck on a boat trip across a river where Eck sees a trailer park which rents rooms by the night, and Eck checks into the trailer park.  He then goes to see his family doctor who uses acupuncture, and spiritual healing, as well as brutal surgery and recommends his drugs.
A boy named Hermann asks Eck for a ride and Eck obliges, first stopping at a hunting store to buy a gun using a false identity and steps outside where two policemen find Eck and ask him to come to the morgue to look for Eck's father's body.  After identifying the body, Paul Eck is announced as a suspect for the murder of his own father, and told to stay in the trailer park by police.  He is approached by a strange man who knows that Eck was invited to the lake by his father and tells Eck to be careful.
Eck visits his grandfather's home in Hungary and is followed by a blue Toyota for the whole trip.  A police officer emerges from the Toyota the next day and accompanies Paul Eck and his friend named Robert on a boat ride while they look for a clue Eck's friend claimed to have seen.  While they are gone, Eck's trailer is stripped and searched.  A journalist who is interested in the story approaches Eck and offers to help piece together information on the case.  The next doctor Eck visits is named Dr. Goriupp and tells Eck of his father's involvement in the gun trade.
A gypsy who previously worked for Eck's uncle finds the car in which Eck's father was murdered before  the body was chopped up and put in the ocean.  Eck sees his stepbrother there and they plan to go fishing to discuss family matters the next morning.  On their fishing trip, Eck and his stepbrother fight and capsize their boat, resulting in a cut on Eck's forehead.
To get his wound stitched, Eck returns to Dr Goriupp.  While stitching Eck's head, the doctor begins coughing blood, and Eck hallucinates that the doctor is a cannibalistic monster, causing Eck to shoot the doctor in the eye.  A short while later, Eck awakes in the gypsy's home after experiencing drug-induced amnesia.  When Eck returns home he meets the journalist who tells him the police suspect a military man named Laposa of shooting both Dr. Goriupp and Eck's father.  Eck and the journalist go to the military base where they witness Laposa being arrested and confessing to killing Eck's father.
A gun fight breaks out in the trailer next to Eck's trailer which sparks a fire.  Eck takes some LSD he was given by a Swiss colleague.  Paul Eck and Robert fly away in Robert's plane.

ANALYSIS
There are many references to genocide in this novel.  Eck visits both a Jewish and a Serbian cemetery.  He also sees a former concentration camp, a Swastika, and a racist meeting in his journeys.  Paul Eck clearly feels guilty about the crimes of Nazis and the Bosnian Serbs.  Eck mentions that he feels like the stains of the past are haunting him presently when he discusses cleaning up his mother's blood.  I believe the purpose of the thematic inclusion of wartime material is to emphasize that the aftermath of genocide still haunts Europe.
Some silverfish infest Eck's trailer.  Although they appear to fall with gravity after the murder is resolved, Eck sees them the next day when he opens the Bible, which he falsely swore on earlier in the novel.  He leaves the trailer where the silverfish are contained.  The silverfish resemble most closely his conscience, and after the trailer park burns down, it is implied that Eck feels relieved as he hallucinates becoming one with the birds under the influence of LSD.
Throughout the novel, Eck experiences many discomforts within his body.  The reaction of his body to alcohol, and drugs, is well documented.  Every stomach ache Eck endures in The Lake is well documented and it is clear that he likes to tense his abs, and feel warm and full.  Why Roth shared these facts about Eck, I don't know.  To be honest, spending so much time as a reader swimming around inside of Eck's body as well as spotty translation made this book sort of dull for me.  Next week, I promise by book will not have anything to do with genocide, as that seems to be a recurring theme in my selections.

• pharmaceutical representative goes on trip to sell prescription drugs
• the representative's estranged father is secretly involved in the illegal gun trade
• the representative's father is murdered and the representative becomes a suspect
• the police discover that the representative's father was murdered by someone involved in the illegal gun trade

SOURCE

Roth, Gerhard. The Lake. Trans. Michael Winkler. Riverside, CA: Ariadne, 2000. Print. Book about a man suspected of killing his estranged father.