14 書香人生 B O O K S & R E V I E W S SUNDAY, MARCH 21, 2010 • TIMES Hardcover: US CD Reviews: A fervent plea to renew an old idea Leading historian and thinker Tony Judt explains how returning to social democracy can counter today’s social ills by Dwight Garner NY Times News Service, New York

he British historian Tony Judt is dying, slowly and painfully, Publication Notes T from a variant of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), better known The Peppermints (薄荷葉) Windmill (風籟坊) Rainie (楊丞琳) Various artists (合輯) as Lou Gehrig’s disease. He has written matter-of-factly about his Banished (流放地) Demo II (Demo 乙) Rainie & Love (雨愛) Monga Original Sound Track (艋舺原聲帶) condition — he is now, essentially, myspace.com/twpeppermints White Wabbit Records Sony Music a quadriplegic — in The New York Review of Books. At some point he will be able to communicate only aving been together for more paper, Windmill (風籟坊) sounds ainie Yang (楊丞琳) has come a he blockbuster movie of the year by blinking an eye. For now he is than a decade — practically an ON like the typical Taiwanese indie long way, evolving from her girl- also comes with an envelope- dictating his words to assistants. H eternity for a Taiwanese indie band. Its sound is full of references to R next-door role in the landmark T pushing original sound track, Best known for his book Postwar: band — the Peppermints (薄荷葉) are Brit-pop, post-punk, post-rock and Neil idol soap opera The (流 an extravagant double CD plus a A History of Europe Since 1945 showing their age, and in a good way. Young, among a laundry list of alternative 星花園) into the majestic Queen of Cute, DVD with behind-the-scenes footage (2005), Judt has long been an engaged Their third and latest release, Banished rock subgenres. one of the most intriguing up-and- that assembles the hippest names in and unpredictable intellectual of the (流放地), is a solid album of guitar- But what sets this trio apart is how it coming stars in the Mando-pop industry. Mando-pop. left, one who is sometimes given to driven rock that dwells on a brooding puts these elements together. Windmill’s Granted, Yang has never been Golden-Melody winning producer/ controversial opinions. Judt, who fascination with mental illness. latest release, Demo II (Demo 乙), is considered a top-flight singer or singer-songwriter Sandee Chan (陳珊 is Jewish, has argued, for example, Lead singer Shine Lin (林倩) says she a five-song EP that is unabashedly thespian. And Rainie & Love lacks the 妮) guided this ambitious project with that Israel is an “anachronism” that drew from a personal crisis in writing Western rock delivered with a uniquely haunting heartache or the raw emotions superb aplomb. The box set’s tracks are should convert “from a Jewish state to the lyrics for Banished. She spent time Taiwanese soul. Yang displayed in the theme song mostly original compositions interpreted a binational one” including Jews and in a psychiatric hospital last year to A running joke within the band is Little Jasmine (小茉莉) for the movie as theme songs with vocals on the first Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians. His receive treatment for severe depression, that lead singer and guitarist Chris Spider Lilies (刺青). But on this, her CD and then again in instrumental prose tends to be as biting as his ideas. and says “80 percent” of the experience Lin (林育詳) started writing the band’s fifth studio album, Yang nevertheless renditions on the second CD. Judt’s new book, Ill Fares the Land, Ill Fares the Land informs the album’s 10 tracks. lyrics in Hoklo (commonly known as demonstrates the tenacity of a well- Staying true to her aesthetics, Chan’s is a slim and penetrating work, a dying By Tony Judt Don’t let the heavy-handed song Taiwanese) because his voice tended to rounded entertainer in the mold of Jolin sound track is artsy, romantic and man’s sense of a dying idea: the notion titles turn you off. Someone in My stray off key when singing in Mandarin. Tsai (蔡依林). atmospheric without being bombastic. that the state can play a significant role 256 pages Brain (腦海裡的小人) has a sedate, You get that sense from the EP’s Though the album is in part a blatant It’s a revisionist musical take on a 1980s in its citizens’ lives without imperiling Penguin Press dreamy groove and is convincing for only non-Hoklo track, Zhu Feng Lan advertising tie-in (it contains three gangster fable heavily drenched in their liberties. It makes sense that this Lin’s detached vocal delivery and the Yu (竹風蘭雨). It’s not that Lin doesn’t theme songs from her current idol nostalgia and retro chic. book arrives now, not merely during mellow harmonies. sing well in Mandarin — he offers a fine soap drama Hi My Sweetheart (海派甜 The CD with the theme songs boasts the hideous endgame of the national On Claustrophobia, which is about performance on this number — rather 心), Rainie & Love also displays Yang’s a to-die-for roster of the hottest names health-care debate but during mud authorities that has been “elevated a suffocating train ride on the Taipei he sounds more at home and thus more growing range by tackling an array of in Taiwan’s entertainment industry. season; this book’s bleak assessment to a cult by Know Nothings, States’ MRT, the band’s catchy, electric guitar- convincing in Hoklo. musical styles including ballads, rock, Indie singer-songwriter Deserts Chang of the selfishness and materialism that Rightists, anti-tax campaigners and drenched hooks bring to mind Sonic The music and lyrics, included with hip-hop and trance. (張懸) delivers the poignant I Think You have taken root in Western societies — most recently — the radio talk Youth and The Breeders. The track ends Mandarin translations in the liner notes, The 25-year-old is capable of Have To (我想你要走了), an understated, will stick to your feet and muddy show demagogues of the Republican with some playful sound effects by artist play like a sound track to an indie movie conveying more nuanced and mature mournful ode to a lover who’s about to your floors. Right.” About the absurdities of and musician Yalin Wu (吳亞林). for 20- and 30-somethings in Taiwan. emotions than her girlish image suggests. leave. Sandee Chan’s hypnotic vocals But Ill Fares the Land is also anti-tax campaigners, he observes Lin’s whispery sweet voice sounds On 1982 (民國ཁ一), which has a catchy The irrefutable highlight is Yang’s drive the atmospheric Once, a jazzy optimistic, raw and patriotic in its that the notion that taxes might “be both vulnerable and disaffected on For vocal refrain and nicely textured guitar duet In Your Eyes with Mando-pop string-led gem with background vocals sense of what countries like the a contribution to the provision of the Dead, a hidden track on the CD tones, Lin waxes nostalgic about the heartthrob Alan Luo (羅志祥). In this provided by the movie’s star Ethan Ruan US and UK have meant — and can collective goods that individuals and one of the album’s better songs. innocence of childhood and growing up up-tempo, light-hearted ode to the bliss (阮經天). The undisputed highlight is continue to mean — to their people could never afford in isolation (roads, She sings with pitch-perfect execution, on the east coast. Summer’s End touches of love, Yang and Luo display a wink- the Brit-rock infused Tonight Tonight, and to the world. firemen, policemen, schools, lamp and the band benefited from having the upon youthful rebellion and coming of and-smile chemistry that makes this performed by the movie’s two leading Ill Fares the Land gets off to posts, post offices, not to mention vocals mixed by indie-folk musician and age, driven by a rousing guitar and bass delightful track a strong contender as a men, Mark Chao (趙又廷) and Ruan. a distressing start. Judt tells us, soldiers, warships and weapons) is producer Ze Hwang (黃小楨). groove that borrows from Joy Division. future KTV hit. The actors, who aren’t trained singers, right off the bat, that his book was rarely considered.” Although it doesn’t appear obvious, Though Windmill is probably best The Battle of Youth (青春鬥), a dance deliver assured and firm vocals for a “written for young people.” Which is Oddly enough, Judt writes, the the band says Banished is also known for being the rare indie band that number that echoes the catchiness of surprisingly effective theme song that’s something you never want to hear, left and right have swapped political dedicated to “society’s disadvantaged.” sings mostly in Hoklo, this is only half Tsai’s Love’s 36 Tricks (愛情36計), is an riveting enough to be the centerpiece really. It suggests that we may be in modes. The right has become Lin and drummer Zheng Gae-tan (鄭凱同) of the equation when it comes to the energetic rabble-rouser that celebrates of the CD. Mando-pop songstress Tanya for a graduation speech. And Judt radicalized, abandoning the “social served as activists in the controversial band’s appeal. Its three members have how love keeps a person young. Chua (蔡健雅) contributes her new does occasionally serve microwavable moderation which served it so well campaign to preserve the Losheng established a strong rapport for having The second half of the album targets composition You Come to My Head, a brunch-time banalities. (“Young from Disraeli to Heath, from Theodore Sanatorium (樂生療養院), a home for only formed in 2007 and come across as a completely different demographic with moody and entrancing ballad about how people must not abandon faith in our Roosevelt to Nelson Rockefeller.” It’s sufferers of Hansen’s disease that is seasoned musicians. the bubble-gum throwaway dance track love can make people override their political institutions,” etc.) But these the left that now has something to being torn down by the Taipei County Lin is a solid guitarist who uses That Would Just Kill Me (要我的命) and better judgment, to the CD. soggy bits are rare. conserve, “the institutions, legislation, government, and have been outspoken distortion and tone tastefully, while the half-baked ballad Second Romance The second CD of instrumental services and rights that we have supporters of Aboriginal laborers’ rights. drummer Chen Tai-yuan (陳泰元), who (二度戀愛). — ANDREW C.C. HUANG versions of the theme songs written inherited from the great age of 20th- The unsettling mood of the album is also plays with the Bearbabes (熊寶貝 by producer Chan, is performed by the century reform.” carried by macabre tunes like Bala Bala 樂團), and bassist Sky Tai (戴杏芳), a Asia Philharmonic Orchestra, . We must revisit What caused this dire loss of Party (肢解派對), which was inspired veteran of the scene as a member of Bad Two delightful bonus tracks here are faith in our government and leaders? by a grizzly murder in Japan. But one Daughter (壞女兒), make up a nimble but A Stir in Silence, a tune written by “the ways in which Judt spreads the blame around. He has to wonder if the band is pushing always tight rhythm section. Sodagreen’s (蘇打綠) front man Wu criticizes the narcissistic left of the too hard in songs like Deja Vu (既視 Because it leans more toward Ching-feng (吳青峰), and The Love our grandparents’ 1960s, which was largely uninterested 感), where Lin sings in English, “maybe shoegazer rock, Windmill might be Affair That Never Happened, a guitar in social justice. “What united the 60s I need a favor/a favor of someone/ overlooked for younger and more instrumental performed by supporting generation handled generation was not the interest of all, pushing me to commit suicide.” flamboyant groups in the scene like actor Rhydian Vaughan (鳳小岳). but the needs and rights of each,” he — David Chen garage rockers The White Eyes (白目樂 — ANDREW C.C. HUANG comparable writes. He blames that generation’s 隊) or electro-rock band Go Chic. political leaders too. What the baby- But the band is carving out a niche boomer politicians have in common, challenges and worthy of attention. — David Chen he notes, is “the enthusiasm that they threats. fail to inspire in the electors of their respective countries.” ” He surveys an earlier and — Tony Judt, historian “superior class of statesmen,” who, regardless of its members’ political Hardcover: UK Instead he is persuasive about leanings, “represented a political the disillusionment that smart, class deeply sensitive to its moral and idealistic young people feel today. social responsibilities.” Politically They do need a talking-to. “The speaking, he declares, “ours is an age Glutton fights global warming last time a cohort of young people of the pygmies.” expressed comparable frustration at After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the emptiness of their lives and the the West missed an opportunity Ian McEwan’s epicurean protagonist exemplifies the problem of excess that is devouring our resources dispiriting purposelessness of their to reshape the world. “Instead,” world was in the 1920s,” he writes. “It Judt writes, “we sat back and By Hephzibah Anderson — time enough to have crammed in he shake the notion that this might one is not by chance that historians speak congratulated ourselves upon having Bloomberg 11 affairs. Then his wife retaliates by Publication Notes day change. From the squishy comfort of a ‘lost generation.’” Judt does not won the Cold War: a sure way to To take global warming seriously would bedding their builder. of a queen-sized bed, he fantasizes about talk down to these imagined young lose the peace.” Here is his historical mean thinking about it all the time, says Beard, irritated by his own jealousy, kicking fried foods and taking up tennis. people; he talks up to them, and the judgment: “The years from 1989 to a character in Ian McEwan’s new novel. agrees to join an Arctic expedition to “Human imperfection was a large effect is bracing. 2009 were consumed by locusts.” And that’s impossible, she adds: “Daily witness the effects of global warming subject,” he later muses. Judt surveys the political and Judt doesn’t spare today’s life would not allow it.” first-hand. The trip, similar to one McEwan anatomizes each of Beard’s intellectual landscape in Britain intellectuals, who “have shown Happily for skeptics and believers McEwan took, morphs into a running failings, from lust to tardiness. Meantime, and the US since the 1980s, the remarkably little informed interest alike, Solar is serious only in a Charlie joke, as Beard finds himself the only the comedy keeps coming. Beard falls Reagan-Thatcher era, and he worries in the nitty-gritty of public policy, Chaplinesque way. It’s a farce with a scientist among a bunch of artists. afoul of a feminist academic, and the about an increasing and “uncritical preferring to intervene or protest on somber message — a satirical parable In the few daylight hours available tabloid press dubs him a eugenicist. His adulation of wealth for its own sake.” ethically defined topics where the of human nature in all its entertaining, near the North Pole, a sculptor named business partner frets that the world What matters, he writes, “is not choices seem clearer.” He fears we doomed folly. Jesus hews polar bears out of ice; might not be heating up after all. Beard how affluent a country is but how will be “further disappointed” by The story pivots on a freak accident others perform experimental sound reassures him. unequal it is,” and he sees growing US President Barack Obama that catapults a tubby physicist, Michael works. One moment of surreal slapstick “It’s a catastrophe,” he says. “Relax!” and destabilizing inequality almost and other politicians. He is even Beard, to the forefront of the race to find involves Beard’s frozen genitals and a If only they could. In the final stretch, everywhere. He reminds us that the more concerned that callow a sustainable energy source. Pursuing stick of lip balm. lawyers, two of Beard’s lovers and one word “public” — in terms of what politicians like Sarah Palin “can only this worthy goal in the run-up to the 2009 Things take a darker turn when Beard angry ex-con — not to mention his own a government can provide for the benefit from rising confusion and Copenhagen summit on climate change, returns to London. A violent death, porcine body — look poised to catch up majority of its people — “was not anxiety in the face of apparently the balding British boffin will clock divorce, perjury — all occur within a few with the Nobelist as he gathers investors always a term of opprobrium in the unmanageable change.” thousands of air miles and resort to pages. In middle of all this, he glimpses a and journalists to watch him electrify national lexicon.” If Ill Fares the Land sometimes intellectual property theft and worse. bright future in a pile of scientific notes. a small town in New Mexico with his Wistfully, Judt cites some of the reads like a graduation speech, then it Beard is a Falstaffian character, Someone else’s notes. Solar artificial photosynthesis plant. achievements of the Democratic- is the Platonic ideal of one — concise, both in his gluttonous appetites and his Fast-forward to 2005. Beard has By Ian McEwan The novel is partly a love letter led Congresses of the 1960s, hardheaded, severe in its moral implausibility. While in his 20s, he wrote turned into a global-warming evangelist, to science, and McEwan refers to achievements that would be nearly arguments. “We must revisit the ways a paper that led to a Nobel Prize for certain that only his system of artificial 285 pages Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and impossible in today’s political in which our grandparents’ generation his contribution to quantum theory, the photosynthesis can avert an energy Cape “coincident M2-branes.” Even a highway climate: “food stamps, Medicare, handled comparable challenges and “Beard-Einstein Conflation.” He has been crisis. He’s also fighting the urge to get runs “straight as a Euclidean line.” the Civil Rights Act, Medicaid, Head threats,” Judt argues, noting that resting on his wilted laurels ever since. hitched for a sixth time. Yet Beard’s orb-shaped body Start, the National Endowment “social democracy in Europe, the New The novel opens in 2000; Beard is 53. His appetite for women is surpassed tells the story of our polluted planet for the Humanities, the National Deal and the Great Society” were His professional life has become a swirl only by his gluttony. McEwan chronicles steak, all wrapped in bacon, topped more vividly than any amount of Endowment for the Arts and the among those rational responses. of lecture junkets, media punditry and each mini-bar raid with a skinny man’s with cheese and served alongside jacket well-explained physics. Though the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.” It is “incumbent upon us to state-funded sinecures. His private life faint revulsion. The delights of salt- potatoes “impregnated with butter and scientist’s mind may hold the answer Some of these programs are reconceive the role of government,” is what consumes most of his energy. and-vinegar potato chips are described cream cheese.” to our predicament, his flabby flesh endangered, he writes, thanks to an Judt admonishes his audience. “If we Unaccountably attractive to women, in sensual detail. The gastro porn Beard is incapable of self-restraint or embodies what we really need to unhealthy suspicion of our public do not, others will.” he’s five years into his fifth marriage continues with stacks of chicken and exercise. Nor, for all his rationality, can overcome: our own natures.