Italics are mine

15 best books I've read in 2015

(I have no idea why the pictures of the book covers below don't display in three rows of five like they're supposed to and no time to figure it out so let's pretend I meant to have it look like that - it does look very artistic... -AT)

Here are my 15 favorite books that I've read in 2015 (in no particular order):

1. Aaron Copland: The life and work of an uncommon man by Howard Pollack
2. Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
3. Elia Kazan: A Life by Elia Kazan
4. Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography Volume I From Grantham to the Falklands by Charles Moore
5. The Lady and the Peacock: the Life of Aung San Suu Kyi by Peter Popham
6. The Georgetown Set: Friends and Rivals in Cold War Washington by Gregg Herken 
7. Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
8. Richard III by William Shakespeare
9. Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee
10. August: Osage County by Tracy Letts
11. Havel: A life by Michael Zantovsky
12. Howling Near Heaven: Twyla Tharp and the Reinvention of Modern Dance by Marcia Siegel
13. Scars of Sweet Paradise: The life and Times of Janis Joplin by Alice Echols
14. Margaret Fuller: A New American Life by Megan Marshall
15. Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler

And...

As bonus book in the list, I also want to mention Being Nixon: A Man Divided by Evan Thomas. Since I got it as an audiobook, I'm reluctant to include it in a list of books I've read, but it provides a fascinating and instructive perspective into the life and downfall of the former President.

Finally, I prepared this post before I had finished reading the poetry collection Empty Chairs by Liu Xia, and in hindsight it should probably be in my Top 15. I'll let you decide which book above it should dethrone. 

Best wishes for a happy 2016 full of joy, success, good health and books!

Poems: "Empty Chairs" by Liu Xia

I read little poetry so I will not pretend to be able to accurately evaluate the technique of poets. I judge the little poetry I read by how it makes me feel and since my favorite poet is Anna Akhmatova it is quite easy to guess what sort of poetry resonates with me. With Empty Chairs, Liu Xia took my breath away through the aching beauty of her poems, the fleeting moments she describes, the sheer mastery of her craft - aided as far as the US translation is concerned by Ming Di and Jennifer Stern, and with many thanks to the people at Graywolf Press for making this possible.

Liu Xia practices poetry as a necessity for living. She is also known for her backstory, specifically, that she is married to Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo and has been under strict house arrest since he received that prize. Liu Xiaobo took part in the Tiananmen Protests, for which he was sentenced to two years in prison. He has also spent three years in a labor camp for criticizing China's one-party system. From the Nobel Prize citation: "For over twenty years, Liu has fought for a more open and democratic China... In 2008, Liu was a co-author of Charta 08, a manifesto which advocates the gradual shifting of China's political and legal system in the direction of democracy. He was arrested in December 2008, and sentenced a year later to eleven years' imprisonment for undermining the state authorities."

I didn't know about Liu Xia and only heard about her thanks to PEN America - the Twitter feed of PEN America, if I may add, which does show Twitter can serve a valuable purpose. Back in October I happened to see a tweet about her on the day that marked the fifth anniversary of her house arrest, read a couple of articles about her (this and that) and ended up pre-ordering her poetry collection. It is the first volume ever of her poetry, and for added fun the edition also happens to be bilingual, so that even if you don't understand Chinese - and I don't - you can occasionally guess some words that are repeated in the English translation and enjoy a rare glimpse into Chinese texts.

The earliest poem dates from 1983 and, while some are dedicated to Xiaobo and may refer to their situation with respect to the Chinese authorities, many are simply about everyday life and sorrows such as the passing of Xiaobo's mother. The collection has many poems I love but my favorite poem is Untitled p. 97/99, which starts with "You speak and speak and speak the truth..." It is dated September 2009 and refers not only to the events of twenty years earlier without naming the Tiananmen Square events but to Liu Xia's determination to speak "to accompany [dead] spirits", "to seek the truth with them", although there is "no answer", "no light on the path". It is a remarkable poem about the toll that standing up for what is right can take on people advocating for human rights in an environment intent on crushing them. An eerily beautiful poem with an important message.

Buy the book, read it, and then read it again. 

Paris, Chereau, Isolde

I've been thinking about the late French director Patrice Chereau (1944-2013) a lot since this summer, when I saw the Ring at the Bayreuth Festival in the production by Frank Castorf (more on that some other day, but my summary is that the first two operas in the cycle are superb and the last two underwhelming). I primarily knew Chereau as a French movie director and stage director, but it turns out he was made famous, at least in certain circles, by his centenary production of the Ring Cycle at Bayreuth in 1976. By a stroke of luck, I managed to buy the very last new copy of Chereau's Ring Cycle on Amazon (back when it was offered at a reasonable price; it's now being reissued with a hefty price tag) so I've watched it from beginning to end and was very impressed by Chereau's creativity and ingenuity, although the production is sometimes a bit dark (visually) for my taste. And he was only 32 at the time! Imagine that. He also directed a landmark stage production of Phedre in 2003 with one of his favorite actresses, Dominique Blanc, in the title role.

But Chereau for me remains first the director of many movies that have marked my youth. He tended to work again and again with actors he liked and he happened to like many of the foremost French actors of that generation. I feel American movie-goers don't know what the trend toward blockbusters is depriving them of, with either ad-hoc casts put together for each movie or franchises using cardboard characters in the same lifeless roles. In France when I was in college I remember the movies by Chereau the most and also by Arnaud Desplechin, who also tended to hire repeatedly the actors he liked to work with (Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Devos, etc).

Last week I watched Queen Margot again starring the superstar Isabelle Adjani, as well as Vincent Perez, who disappeared from the screens when he got tired of the heartthrob roles (or didn't negotiate the transition successfully, or didn't find roles he liked and decided to do something else with his time), Pascal Greggory, who was Chereau's long-term partner, Dominique Blanc, Jean-Hughes Anglade, and so many actors such as Emmanuel Salinger who make a cameo at the beginning of the movie as wedding guests that you just know from the cast list how much of a privilege it was to take part in a Chereau movie. I remember that movie, at the end of my high school years, before I moved to Paris. How my girl friends and I all chatted about the movie (Isabelle Adjani! Vincent Perez!) instead of studying for the baccalaureat.

I also remember Those who love me can take the train. The movie isn't particularly action-driven and so wouldn't be to most Americans' liking (you can tell this is the case from the fact that the movie isn't offered on Amazon Instant Video, contrary to Queen Margot). In some French movies and French novels, nothing much happens - people argue, people reconcile, and so on. We French people like to talk. I remember watching the movie when I was in Paris - I was in engineering school back then, I think it was the end of my second year.

The movie is about people who are on a train to go to the funeral of someone they knew, who wants to be buried in Limoges. I went to see the movie because Valeria Bruni Tedeschi was in a leading role (sister to Carla, but a very different personality), as well as Charles Berling, and Jean-Louis Trintignant (names that may mean nothing to my American readers), and Vincent Perez cast as a transsexual who is transitioning to being a woman (how many young, handsome male actors who had half the teenage population in love with them would dare do that? and this was 1998, let me remind you). Chereau wasn't afraid of being ahead of his time on certain topics - the sign of a true, uncompromising artist.

There is a final twist to this post. I've been researching Wagner's Tristan und Isolde because of a novel I'm writing (I saw that at Bayreuth too this summer, in addition to the Ring), and the very best production I've ever been able to watch, whether live or in DVD, is the one with Waltraud Meier and Ian Storey at La Scala in 2007. I love the use of light and shadow, the spare sets that avoid being too abstract, the choice of costumes - I love absolutely everything to the DVD, except that in the third act, the person who was making the DVD decided to use a lot of "fading to black" between scenes, which is distracting and sometimes downright aggravating. But besides that, I worship that production like few others (Luc Bondy's Tosca at the Metropolitan Opera comes second). And guess who directed the Scala production of Tristan? Sure enough, Patrice Chereau. 

People who are not particularly creative are quick to dismiss creative people. What is it, they wonder, that those creative folks do that is supposedly so important? And it is true that a lot of "art" produced by pseudo-creatives is drivel. But when you see the work of someone like Chereau, or Yael Farber today, you really understand what makes exceptional artists so needed in today's society. They make us see the world in ways we hadn't imagined before - they offer new perspectives, fresh insights, shed a new light on a well-known play or opera, bring an aspect of human relations to the forefront by making a movie about it. Chereau died at 68 from lung cancer two years ago (read his obituary in the New York Times and in The Guardian). That was much too soon.

Next on my viewing list:  his very last production, opera Elektra by Richard Strauss at the 2013 Aix-en-Provence festival. I have no doubt it's going to be spectacular.

Is your work life a Shakespeare play?

Here are possible ways your work life could be a Shakespeare play. Enjoy!

• Are you a recent graduate thrust into a position of leadership ? If so, you could be Hal or Hotspur in Henry IV Part 1 and Part 2.
• Hal and Hotspur are both sons of a king or would-be king, and fight alongside their father in battle. At first Hotspur looks like the more valiant of the two, while Hal appalls his father with his free-partying ways in the taverns of Eastcheap, but once he's enjoyed his youth, he proves a determined soldier on the battlefield - killing Hotspur in battle - and ultimately a good king, at least in the Shakespeare play.
• Hal becomes Henry V by proving himself less hot-headed than Hotspur, a great strategist, a valiant fighter, and also a man who is willing to cut old ties to people who would drag him down and prevent him from achieving greatness (such as Falstaff, who expects a special appointment simply because he knows the new king). Yes, Hal breaks Falstaff's heart in Part 2 by repudiating him, but you must learn to let old relationships die when you've outgrown certain people. If you have become someone very different from the person you were back then, what is the point in associating again with people that don't reflect your best self back to you? Loyalty is important, but even more so loyalty to the right people, so maybe you don't need to give a job to your sorority Big Sister just because she was your Big Sis in college. 
• Hotspur is quick to anger and spouts diatribes when he feels wronged. Anger never serves any purpose. Losing control never serves any purpose. If you want to get angry, go and sit in your car (preferably after having parked it on a shopping mall's parking lot where you won't run into coworkers, rather than making faces in your company's parking lot). If you want to get angry less often, try meditation. I rarely start my day without a 15-min meditation. If I feel cranky I'll do a 30-minute meditation to figure out how to deal with things. Once a week I do a 1-hour meditation. It quiets my mind like nothing else can, and afterwards (not during!) I get a ton of insights, fresh perspectives into problems, ideas for new projects.
• If you are expected to take over the family business after college or after a few years in industry, you are definitely Hal or Hotspur. Just make sure you end up a Hal (future King Henry V) and not a Hotspur. Interestingly, Hal once he is Henry V has some advisors but does not seem to have one very close mentor. Mentorship, whether through Falstaff (bad example) or Henry IV (good example), happened while he was still prince. Once he is king, Hal is his own person.
• Do you have subordinates (e.g., graduate students of the research group you manage) who badmouth other subordinates of yours and try to set you against them? If so, you could be Othello or King Lear.
  •  It is always good to ask yourself what agenda people have when they share news with you. We all want to believe we surround ourselves with trustworthy people thanks to our exceptional judgment, but we are often only able to read people definitely after working with them for extended periods of time, during which the least ethical of them may try to manipulate us or steal our place.
  • If subordinates (e.g., graduate students) are competing against each other to become the favorite, that would make you King Lear. In contrast with many of the other kings in Shakespeare's plays, King Lear is rather pathetic - an old man who wants to be loved but goes about the wrong way in finding out who loves him most.
  • In other words, King Lear is not a king you want to be. You might be blind to the fact that Cordelia has different values than what you expect and won't stoop to badmouthing her colleagues, which you might interpret as an admission of guilt regarding whatever she was accused of. The trick is to figure out which subordinates are badmouthing others and which ones are sharing important information you need to be aware of. This is not something you will figure out on the spot, so resist the temptation to banish Cordelia right away (fire the subordinate, remove him from project leadership, etc) and to divide your kingdom into the two other daughters, who really just wanted power to begin with. 
  • What you want to do is to take the time to observe and judge for myself, so resist rolling your eyes and complaining you don't have time for this, whether "this" is bringing you bad news or having to deal with people who can't lead a project. If people bring you information, say thank you, don't commit and think about it. Either you've just been given information on the lack of ethics and desire to manipulate of the person who brought you the news, or you've learned something about the person they spoke about. Either way, you're bound to learn something new about your team. Be grateful if it happens when you can still do something about it. 
  • King Lear has two power-hungry "bad" daughters who want what he already has said he will give (his kingdom). Othello has a confident who actively plots his downfall out of revenge for a slight. Is someone you have passed over for promotion giving you advice, and does that advice include negative facts about other people who work for you? If so, you could be Othello.
  • I write "negative facts" purposefully, because Iago is masterful at planting evidence. Yes, Cassio has Desdemona's handkerchief, but that's because Iago planted it in his chambers. Maybe a subordinate writes you an email that you find ridiculous and that can only have been written by an incompetent person, but perhaps Iago told her to write it like that because he assured her that he knew you best and that was the right way to phrase things to get your attention.
  • Do you know your weak spots? In the end, King Lear's "bad" daughters Regan and Generil exploit his need to feel loved and Iago exploits Othello's sense of outsider-ness and worry his new wife has already stopped loving him. What is the type of story you often tell yourself to explain what happens to you? Could someone exploit that story to their advantage?
  • A typical one would be "I'm the only one who understand the true challenges we face in this business and everyone else is asleep at the wheel [or incompetent, or out-of-touch, or...]" and, if you're not able to see through that little game, Iago would play on your feeling of one-against-all to make you feel he's the only one who deserves your trust and then he would "helpfully" point out that the person you have just promoted as your second-in-command for your division is having a lot of lunches with your big adversary who controls the other branches of the business.
  • Although I advocate cutting Iago types loose as soon as you can, there might be some benefit in keeping them close before you can get rid of them, in order to prevent them from wreaking havoc in the company. But you need to be on your guard and at the top of your game to pull it off. 
• Are your peers or colleagues badmouthing you and plotting your downfall? You could be Cassio, Cordelia or Desdemona (in Othello, King Lear and Othello, respectively).
  • Cassio and Cordelia are both warriors (Cordelia leads the army of the King of France once she marries him) and Cassio is hated by Iago precisely because he was promoted instead of him. Desdemona is a sweet, loyal thing but a bit clueless. In the workplace she would more likely be an allegory for something that the main character really wants, like the top job at the company, rather than a real person.
  • Cassio and Cordelia have in common that they have high integrity but Cassio isn't even aware of the plotting in his back while Cordelia refuses to imitate her unethical sisters to get her rightful share of the kingdom. In that sense, Cordelia is a far more inspiring figure.
  • Do you believe skill, talent and character alone are enough to win the game? Don't become a Cassio. Think about who might want to make you fall. Who might envy you? (people who competed with you for your last assignment, people who have been in a job position longer than you and yet have not been promoted while you were, people whom you have bested in your projects,...).
  • Cassio's demise comes from the fact that, at Iago's prodding, he gets drunk although he knows he shouldn't, and Iago has arranged for him to get into an altercation with one of his (Iago's) acolytes and thus create a ruckus sure to infuriate Othello. In other words, to bring Cassio down Iago doesn't just use words and stories he plants into Othello's mind. He pushes Cassio to make a mistake (get drunk, get into a fight) so that Othello demotes him. Then Iago uses Cassio's attempts to get his job back to destroy Othello through Desdemona, by suggesting to Cassio that he beg Desdemona for help. (And then he hints to Othello that Cassio and Desdemona are seen together because they're having an affair.)
  • In contrast with Cassio, a better awareness of politics wouldn't have helped Cordelia, since she witnesses her sisters' great speeches of love to King Lear and simply refuses to play the same game. Cordelia's main issue is that she is outnumbered. Her sisters and her sisters' husbands ally while she is cut out from her inheritance and only finds an army when the King of France marries her. She is the lone warrior who takes a stand for her values, a bit like Gary Cooper in High Noon. Lone warriors in real life get themselves boxed out, marginalized and neutered.
  • It is hard to think of good advice to give Cordelia. No one should have to compromise her values to get what is her due. She must have known, if only by overhearing them chat once in a while, that her sisters were manipulative shrews obsessed with power, and so she should have figured out earlier that not only she should watch her back but it was her responsibility to look out for her father, who after all was so tired that he wanted to relinquish power - a sure red flag. He didn't become wary with power overnight. She also should have seen that her father was the sort of person who yearned for great professions of love and thus would be easy to manipulate by bad people.
  • Things she could have done include helping him with day-to-day decision-making to take some of the weight of king-ship off his shoulders so that he would have delayed relinquishing the throne, building alliances for instance by getting married earlier and asking for her share of the kingdom as part of the marriage negotiations to the King of France. Cordelia does die in the play but she dies with integrity and honor. King Lear realizes his mistake but collapses and dies shortly afterward. 
• Are your associates egging you on to make an unethical move that would put you at the top, and would make them right-hand-men to a really very powerful person? Be careful not to turn into Macbeth. Macbeth is a brave general who first commits regicide (egged on by his wife, after witches tell him he will be king) to ascend to power, and then kills and kills and kills again to remain in power.
  • What I find interesting in the play is that Macbeth starts out as a good man, and then is caught into a spiral of murders. The play is about his wife's naked political ambition and his own lust for power that he proves unable to relinquish. In the process, he and his wife become monsters.
  • The other thing I find interesting is that the witches may have known he wouldn't become king if they didn't tell him he would and thus incite him to murders. They know exactly what to tell him to bring his downfall, a little bit like a confidant who insists you deserve better, so much better, you should be sitting at your boss's desk right now, so that when the occasion presents itself to (figuratively!) orchestrate a coup, you find a resolve you would not otherwise have had and get rid (again, figuratively) of your boss. Meanwhile, the witches may laugh at your gullibility, but you're already far down the slippery slope of backroom intrigues, Machiavellian manipulations and illegal practices that you need to remain in power.
  • Is there someone near you who seem to have unbridled ambition in his lust to reach the top? If you stand in his way, you may end up as Banquo, who was Macbeth's friend and fellow general, and is murdered by him because the witches prophesied (after telling Macbeth he would be king) that Banquo would be father of kings, although not one himself. (The murderers who kill Banquo also try to kill his son but he escapes.) 
  • If someone near you, like your boss, stands in that person's way, but that person can't reach your boss directly, then he might try to get rid of the people who make your boss effective, such as you. If so, you'd be like Macduff's wife and his little children, all assassinated while Macduff is out of the country although they had no direct role in the intrigues. 
• Do you have achieved the top? You will surely be aware that some people will try to take your place, but don't become Duncan, the king Macbeth kills, in placing too much faith in your lieutenants. (Duncan is killed while he spends the night in Macbeth's castle. This was asking for trouble from the start.) Further, be careful that people around you don't mistake you for Julius Caesar. 
  • Julius Caesar is murdered by a group of men led by envious Cassius, who takes advantage that Julius Caesar is so loved people want to give him absolute powers to spur uneasiness in his friends and claim Caesar is letting power go to his head. Cassius manipulates Brutus into taking part in the ploy to murder Caesar. Cassius pretends he is doing a good deed for Rome but he is really just acting out his envy at Caesar's power. 
  • Brutus is taken advantage of by Cassius's good words and convinces himself he is acting in the interest of Rome, out of a sense of honor and moral responsibility. In contrast with Cassius, Brutus really believes what he says. If a colleague tries to incite you to take part in a backroom coup on the grounds that your boss has become out-of-control, you may be a Brutus.
  • Cassius and Iago behave in similar ways, giving interpretations of others' gestures that are false but become ingrained in the minds of the people they talk to. In the end, Brutus is the last one to stab Caesar in the back. Julius Caesar turns around and sees him. His "You too, Brutus?" in surprise at Brutus's betrayal is something Brutus would have had to live with for the rest of his life, but it turns out that Brutus is killed not too long afterward. The perpetrators of the backroom coup are fired, and the Brutus-like character doesn't even have his honor left, since he associated with envious, manipulative colleagues to betray his boss, who viewed him as someone he could trust. 
  • If you're the lone man trying to do the right thing and not only avenge your boss, fired after a meritless power coup, but get rid of the conspirators who engineered his downfall, then you're Marc Antony. Later, much older Marc Antony will succumb to the charms of much younger Cleopatra and make a fool of himself that will cost him his empire, his honor and his life, but in Julius Caesar, Mark Antony is the good guy who, thanks to his oratory, sets the crowd against the murderers and thus brings about the murderers' own death. He is the right-hand man who doesn't let you down even after there's nothing more you can do for him. We all need people like that in our lives.