14 書香人物 P E R S O N A L I T Y & B O O K S SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2009 • TAIPEI TIMES

[ HARDCOVER: US ] SUNDAY PROFILE

A giant Galapagos turtle walks along the Charles Darwin Station in Ayora Port in the Galapagos Archipelago, Ecuador. Home to unique flora and From this fauna, the Galapagos Archipelago, which was visited by Darwin, is a cluster of some 13 islands and smaller islets and rocks, located 1,000km west day to the ending of the continental shore. photo: afp of the world Fiction meets fact in Bernard Cornwell’s novel about Henry V’s victory at Agincourt

By DAVID HENDRICKS Ny times news service, San Antonio

Following two recent historical studies of English King Henry V’s improbable military victory on a muddy French farm in 1415, it is not surprising an historical novel would appear to tell the story in a more visual, personable manner. With Agincourt, prodigious novelist Bernard Cornwell presents a wonderful fictional version of the English army invasion of France and the Top and above: Sections of an subsequent showdown battle. exhibition on Charles Darwin held Cornwell, already widely known at the American Museum of Natural for his medieval historical History in New York. photos: afp novels and his Richard Sharpe series, which follows an English soldier through the Napoleonic wars, picked names off the 1415 rosters of soldiers and invented Agincourt: A novel backgrounds, personalities and interrelationships. By Bernard Cornwell Cornwell blends his characters 464 pages into the fragrant and coarse Middle Ages civilization and HarperCollins rounds out his story with appropriate timeless themes. English archer Nicholas Hook defeated the French — the is Cornwell’s lowborn protagonist muddy battlefield and the tactical in a story balanced with English use of the English archers vs and French characters. the leaderless French forces Darwin’s dawn Hook’s strength and archer overweighed by their own armor training leads him first to and weapons. He may be long dead, but Darwin’s theories live on as the foundation of biology and the curse of creationists Soissons, France, where the Cornwell’s narrative is grisly French re-conquer the English- at times, and the author displays AFP, LONDON occupied town. The atrocities a flair for inventing colorful and Hook witnesses motivate him as obscene medieval insults. harles Darwin’s ideas Cambridge University where he than a dog, anyhow”) and cons shared a common ancestor and he is recruited into the English Cornwell populates the novel on evolution changed studied to be a clergyman, but it (“terrible loss of time”) before expounded on the theory of army summoned by Henry, who with good and evil characters the face of science was the same story: he was more concluding he must wed. sexual selection — that certain seeks to strengthen his claim to from both sides. Even Henry is not forever, but he was a interested in collecting beetles He married his cousin Emma traits such as strength and good France’s throne. black and white. A humane and Cmodest, shy man who preferred than hitting the books. Wedgwood in 1839 after a quick looks improve an individual’s A generation before Joan of grateful leader, Henry also judges to stay at home with his work Then his life — and, in no courtship. Theirs was a contented success at mating. Arc, Hook, too, hears “voices” harshly, ordering the execution and family than revel in celebrity. small measure, the history of the union that produced 10 children. Darwin was endowed with that guide him through his of a soldier wrongly accused of “I have no great quickness of world — was turned on its head. After his Beagle voyage, extraordinary patience and adventures and the heat of battle. stealing a religious artifact. apprehension or wit,” he once One of his professors Darwin became more and more diligence, as well as a mental He believes his guardian angels The unfortunate soldier wrote. “My power to follow a recommended him to Robert convinced that species were agility enabling him to see both are the martyred saints Crispin happens to be Hook’s brother, in long abstract train of thought FitzRoy, captain of HMS Beagle, not static but evolved, and that fine detail and the big picture. and Crispinian. Cornwell’s story. is very limited ... my memory is who wanted a companion for this process was molded by But he also had the luck to The climactic Agincourt The ranks of the Christian extensive but hazy.” a two-year, round-the-world individuals who had adapted best have independent wealth, which battle, as noted by William priests vary from the purely evil Darwin was born on Feb. 12 surveying mission. to their habitat. gave him the time to research Shakespeare’s play, occurred — one English priest loves to 1809 in Shrewsbury, western The Beagle set sail in 1831, He was finally forced to make and reflect, and to be living in on the feast day of those saints, rape — to the comforting and , to a wealthy family when Darwin was aged 22. The his ideas public after another Victorian England, within a Oct. 25, 1415. empathetic. — his father was a doctor, one voyage extended to five years, naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, train ride from academies and Cornwell’s narrative vividly The extraordinary Agincourt grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, taking in places like Brazil, the wrote to him in 1858 outlining institutions in London, then the tracks the historical plot as battle continues to fascinate was a noted natural philosopher Galapagos Islands, Tahiti, New ideas similar to his own. world’s scientific hub. Henry’s army sails to the mouth because it stands more for and another, Josiah Wedgwood, Zealand and . Thursday is the 200th anniversary of Darwin was stunned, but “He was a quintessential of the Seine River and begins a what happened than why it set up a famous pottery. Despite chronic seasickness, Charles Darwin’s birth. photo: afp it was decided that the two British amateur in the best prolonged siege on the walled happened. The English continue He was a reluctant student. the young man was thrilled. men’s theories should be made possible sense,” said German city of Harfleur. to draw national identity After school, he went to “My mind has been, since He published Journal of public side-by-side at a London historian Wilfried Rogasch. “He The siege takes longer than from it. The Laurence Olivier Edinburgh University to study leaving England, in a perfect Researches Into the Geology and scientific society. had the means and the time expected, and Henry’s army is movie during World War II, medicine like his grandfather, hurricane of delight and astonish- Natural History of the Various He then condensed his and the intellectual capacity to widely infected and weakened based on Shakespeare’s play, father and brother but was ment,” he wrote. Countries Visited by HMS theories into On the Origin of follow what was going on.” with dysentery before it can was government-financed for bored by lectures and horrified Darwin collected a mountain Beagle, the book which made him Species, published in 1859. Darwin died in 1882, aged march inland for the return trip propaganda purposes. by watching surgery without of flora and fauna specimens, all famous, in 1839. The book was a massive 73. Typically, he wanted to home via Calais, France. For a three-dimensional view anesthetic. of which were carefully tagged, But stress began to take its popular success, prompting wide- be buried near his beloved The French confront Henry’s of the event, readers should He started studying natural and resolved to write a book toll and the ill health which spread debate, angry opposition home, Down House in Kent, small, starving 6,000-member devote time to consume three history in his own time, taking on his discoveries when he dogged him for the rest of his life from theologians and references southeast of London, but his force with about 30,000 men. works: Cornwell’s novel, Juliet long walks on beaches near returned home. took hold. to Darwin in a slew of cartoons, contemporaries campaigned for Cornwell’s extended battle Barker’s 2005 history, also Edinburgh, where he hunted for The Beagle docked in Britain He agonized over whether to songs and advertisements. a grander send-off. narrative articulates the historical titled Agincourt and, of course, shells and watched wildlife. in 1836 and Darwin, who never get married to ease his anxiety His fame grew further with His funeral was at London’s explanations of how Henry’s Shakespeare’s history play, King Darwin quit medicine and ventured abroad again, buried and drew up a list of pros The Descent of Man in 1871. Westminster Abbey, also his final outnumbered army resoundingly Henry V. his furious father sent him to himself in work. (“constant companion ... better It argued that Man and ape resting place.

[ HARDCOVER: U S ] Yu Hua laughs in the faces of Chinese characteristics Modern turns out to be a weird, perverse, more than half-crazed and wholly unique phenomenon in the work of this profound satirist and sensationalist

By BRADLEY WINTERTON short-listed for the 2008 Man its popular Korean TV soaps, and a shorter-lived Maoist center magazine). inns and fashionable spas. They Contributing Reporter Asian Literary Prize, and the only Eternity bicycles, factory labor, construct are both ditched in Part One covers the boys’ may not have had characters falling This huge novel, half a million response possible to its not winning Big White Rabbit candles, neon favor of something more surreal, youth during the Cultural into a cesspit in a public toilet while Chinese characters long in the is that the novel that did win must lights and raucous music, plus plastic and absurd. This is Revolution. Baldy Li discovers his trying to catch glimpses of women’s original, was a national sensation have been magnificent indeed. — for the successful — French classic comic writing, where the sex drive at the age of 8 and finds buttocks, as here, but their aims when it first surfaced in China The story involves two wines, Italian furniture and a new grotesqueness found in real life out about revolutionary Struggle and techniques were similar. three years ago, its two parts stepbrothers, the maverick Baldy white Mercedes. is concentrated and intensified Sessions at around the same age. There’s now an established together selling over a million Li (so-called because his mother The novel as a whole prompts by a process of relentless This part of the story comes to a tradition in Chinese novel- copies. Its fleshy sensationalism told the barber to shave off all the thought that China isn’t so accumulation to portray a world climax when the brothers’ father writing of these garish, shocking, also appealed to Western critics his hair as a child to save money) much a socialist country busy gone mad. And yet much of has his left elbow dislocated and outrageous novels — Please Don’t who hailed Yu Hua (余華) as a and the more philosophical Song embracing hyper-capitalism as this gross fantasy is rooted in his home looted before being Call Me Human (千萬別把我當人), profound satirist who’d peeled Gang. Their shared passion for the a weird, perverse, more than fact — there really was a Miss casually murdered by Red Guards by Wang Shuo, (王朔), and the away the veneer of respectability beautiful Lin Hong snakes its way half-crazed and wholly unique Artificial Beauty Contest in China while attempting to buy a ticket many novels of Mo Yan (莫言) are that had concealed the realities of through the book. phenomenon. The “Chinese for recipients of plastic surgery, to . The bravery of his some other examples. Initially some of the most bizarre decades Sexual detail is everywhere, characteristics” described by for example. As for the Virgin wife is strongly presented, but stigmatized as “hooligan literature,” in all China’s history. but narrated in a brash, farcical Deng Xiao-ping (鄧小平) include, Beauty Contest at the center of she doesn’t have much longer to they today constitute part of the Brothers (Xiong Di, 弟兄) was way. Unprecedented orgasms, for this author, the furthest Part Two of the book, the reality live either. mainstream, and contrast with first published in Chinese in two fake bust-enlarging creams, reaches of sexual inventiveness it covers isn’t hard to imagine. A comic style would be the sophisticated, urbane work of parts — with the second very artificial hymens and silicone and the most bizarre of plastic Much of the novel’s comedy inappropriate to such nightmares, writers such as Wang Anyi (王安憶) much the longer — in Taipei in implants are strewn through the surgery techniques. Toilets, springs from the portrait of a so Yu veers instead into using the and Dai Sijie (戴思杰), whose style 2005 and 2006. This vigorous and novel’s many pages. gold-plated or otherwise, feature BROTHERS society of the newly rich who same kind of physical directness, perhaps derives from that of Eileen racy English version is translated Eating, too, features promi- prominently, as do hymen- can’t quite shake off their peasant only now to horrific rather than Chang (張愛玲). by Eileen Cheng-yin Chow (周成蔭) nently, along with the sex and reconstruction surgery (no by Yu Hua ways. And the essential style humorous effect. Yu’s Chronicle of a Blood 許三觀賣血記 and Carlos Rojas, both American violence — all three directly imaginary procedure) and get- 642 pages remains cartoon-like, as the The book as a whole raises Merchant ( ), reviewed academics. Interestingly, the latter physical things, and the opposite rich-quick schemes in the spirit of names of the characters testify memories of the English 18th in the Taipei Times on Nov. 23, was one of the editors of Writing of the mental subtleties involved in the modern Chinese enthusiasm Pantheon — Popsicle Wang, Success Liu, century where Fielding’s Tom 2003, was very much in the same Taiwan, reviewed in the Taipei aesthetic appreciation or metaphys- for all aspects of capitalism. Victory Zhao, Yanker Yu, Scissors Jones (also containing two boys style as this new book. Brothers, Times on Jan. 18, and the two ical speculation, neither of which Confucian values of modesty, Guan, Writer Liu (who thinks brought up as brothers) and though, is far more impressive. have in addition edited Rethinking constitute Yu’s natural strengths. respect for elders and selfless zany narrative. up advertising phrases for his Smollett’s scabrous and racy novels Indeed, it’s a major achievement by Chinese Popular Culture This widely-ranging and ironic integration into the social order Individual re-invention mirrors factory) and Poet Zhao (who’s featured sensational, picaresque any standards. Already published in (Routledge, 2008) together. portrait of modern China evokes couldn’t be further from the world a national re-invention in which only ever published four lines of adventures with frequent punch-ups the US by Pantheon, it will appear This new translation was the very feel of the place, with described in this ribald, lurid, both a 5,000-year-old civilization verse in a mimeographed cultural set somewhere between country from Picador Asia in April.