Tristes Tropiques

Part memoir, part travelogue, and part anthropological essay, this is Levi-Strauss's most personal book.

He mentions his debt to Rousseau, his attachment to Marxism, and his rejection of Existentialism. He devotes six pages to describing a sunset, summarizes a play he'd written based on one by Corneille, and describes his escape from France during WW2 (which played out in my mind like a scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark).

The writing is often erudite and abstruse, yet enlivened by arresting phrases (the "nostalgic cannibalism of history"); arresting ideas ("the primary function of written communication is to facilitate slavery"); and arresting images (the moon "an anguished lantern drifting across the sky," cultivated fields like "geographical musings by Paul Kee," and "date merchants with their produce piled up in sticky mounds of pulp and stones suggesting the excreta of some dinosaur").

The bulk of the book, and the most accessible part, describes the time spent by the author among the Bororo and the Nambikwara in South America. Here are poisoned arrows and penis sheaths (foreskin required), brazil nuts big enough to kill if they struck an unlucky head, parasitic fish able to swim up a stream of urine, and an astonishing 4-hour opera performed by a man in a trance.

The book communicates the dizzying intoxication of anthropology, especially in its narcissistic examination of primitive cultures (though it made me wonder to what extent anthropologists themselves, by their prying and poking, contribute to the wreckage of such societies).

Levis-Strauss, himself brooding on the role of anthropology, points out that it is a discipline that only Western society has produced. The anthropologist "is incomprehensible except as an attempt at redemption; he is the symbol of atonement."

Descartes' Secret Notebook

A True Tale of Mathematics, Mysticism, and the Quest to Understand the Universe

Descartes continues to fascinate us not just because he was a titan. He lived in a strange and unruly age, and led the sort of life one would not expect of a philosopher. He was a gentleman soldier and intellectual tourist whose life continues to provide a rich field of speculation for writers three centuries after his death.

The raison d'etre of this new biography is a secret notebook found after Descartes' death. It was written in code because (argues the author) it contained information that Descartes felt would endanger his life should the Inquisition get wind of it.

Leibniz apparently cracked the code but kept the secret to himself. (He was preoccupied by a feud with Newton over calculus.) Not until 1987 was the code deciphered and made public. Descartes had discovered a formula regarding geometric figures that is a property of space itself, and a foundation for the science of topology. A century after his death this formula was rediscovered by the Swiss mathematician Euler.

Descartes' Secret Notebook is smoothly and gracefully written, and its author, Amir Aczel, who is himself a mathematician, concisely explains some of the esoteric aspects of Descartes' work. Best of all are the final three chapters, which describe events after Descartes' death, including the involvement of Leibniz.

Existentialism

Descartes was a Catholic and took great pains not to run afoul of the Church, as Galileo had. Aczel quotes him as writing, "Fear of God is the beginning of wisdom." How ironic then that another Frenchman, 300 years later, would take a very different view. Sartre, an atheist, writes in Nausea, mocking Descartes:

I am, I exist, I think, therefore I am; I am because I think, why do I think? I don't want to think any more, I am because I think that I don't want to be, I think that I...because...ugh! I flee.

Both men lived through times of great upheaval in Europe -- Descartes the Thirty Years War and Sartre WW2, during which he spent nine months as a POW.

The Erasers

Nine murders have taken place in nine days, all at exactly the same time. Special agent Wallas is sent to investigate the most recent death. He's new at the job and it's a confusing case. He spends a lot of time walking the streets and getting lost. He stops in at several shops to buy an eraser.

Soon the reader is as confused as Wallas. It's difficult to know what's real and what's imagined. Even the identity of certain characters, who are often described in terms of the coats they wear, becomes blurred. The writing is packed with banal detail, often in the form of numbers and measurements, as though this is the only way to pin down what's demonstrably real:

...on a bed of toast, spread with margarine, is arranged a broad filet of herring with silvery-blue skin; to the right, five quarters of tomato, to the left, three slices of hard-boiled egg; set on top, at specific points, three black olives.

Finally Wallas, who is on job probation, begins to doubt himself. At the post office he receives a "pneumatic message" that appears to be incriminating. It seems that he physically resembles the alleged murderer and has the same type of gun that was used in the shooting. When he returns to the scene of the crime, he ends up killing the man whose death he was sent to investigate.

Characters

Roy-Dauzet - Minister of the Interior, who, distrusting his own police force, sends Wallas to take charge of the investigation.

Commissioner Laurent - the local police chief.

Daniel Dupont - a professor who receives a superficial gunshot wound.

Albert Dupont - a wood exporter mistakenly identified in the newspaper as the original victim, later killed in an auto accident.

Dr. Juard - a gynecologist who issues a fake death certificate to protect Daniel Dupont's life.

Marchat - a wood exporter in collusion with Juard and Daniel Dupont who comes to believe that he is the next victim.

Garinati - bungles the murder of Daniel Dupont.

Jean Bonaventure - Garinati's boss, aka Bona.

Fabius - the best sleuth in Europe, adept at disguises, Wallas's immediate superior.

Madame Dupont - Daniel Dupont's estranged wife, from whom Wallas purchases an eraser.

Jean - Daniel Dupont's illegitimate son, who may or may not exist.

Anna Smite - Daniel Dupont's half-deaf housekeeper who thinks Juard killed Dupont.

Juliette Dexter, Emilie Lebermann, and Madame Jean - post office employees.

Andre WS - the addressee of the "pneumatic message," described by post employees as resembling Wallas; the message's sender is indicated by a set of initials, J.B.

Madame Bax - a watcher at a window.

Nameless drunk - keeps turning up at the Cafe des Allies, where Wallas is lodging, to ask meaningless riddles.

Nouveau Roman

The Erasers was first published in 1953 as Les Gommes. At its most superficial, it could be read as a humourless parody of a detective novel, a recursive tale that keeps doubling back on itself. At a deeper level, it's a statement about the nature of reality.

The author, Alain Robbe-Grillet, was a leading figure in the nouveau roman movement. The translation is by Richard Howard.