Southern Chi

Title: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Author: John Berendt
Publisher: Vintage Books
Rating: A*


When I was looking up this book at the library, I was surprised to see it was in the non-fiction section. I had seen the movie (which I vaguely remember) and wanted to read the book for some time, but never had any clue it was a true story. Being a lover of non-fiction, it was a pleasant surprise.

The story takes place within the confines of the city of Savannah, a city lost in time, where Southern hospitality and Victorian architecture can be seen from every street corner. A place where the social column takes precedence over world news, and the most important day of the year is the Saturday of the Georgia-Florida football game.

John Berendt, a New York journalist, transplants himself in Savannah, which would have been a culture shock to anyone else, but he seems to take it in stride. In his eight years there, he uncovers many of Savannah’s well-hidden (and not-so-well-hidden) secrets, giving the town a vibrancy that mostly went unnoticed prior to the release of this book.

One of Berendt’s many friends made in Savannah, Joe Odom is a piano-playing, squatting entrepreneur who is often in financial and legal trouble. But his charisma and Southern charm make him a lovable character. Another of Berendt’s friends is Jim Williams, a successful antiques dealer and a member of the higher echelon of Savannah’s social circles. He hosts the party of the year at the Mercer House, his privately owned Victorian mansion.

The lovely backdrop of Savannah, with its architecture and rich history, is perfectly contrasted by the events and characters introduced by Berendt. The contrast gives the story an almost surreal feeling, but in reality the inconsistencies of life catch up with the citizens of Savannah in the oldest and most brutal manner: murder.

Jim Williams is arrested for shooting his employee and lover, a 21-year-old troubled boy known for prostituting himself in one of the many town squares. Many facts about Savannah’s most popular host unfold throughout the novel. Berendt gets below the surface, not just with Williams, but with many of the other colorful individuals in Savannah. At times these characters seem too out there to be true.

Even Joe Odom comments:

So now we have a murder in a big mansion. Goddamn! Well, let’s see where that puts us. We’ve got a weirdo bug specialist slinking around town with a bottle of deadly poison. We’ve got a nigger drag queen, an old man who walks an imaginary dog, and now a faggot murder case. My friend, you are getting me and Mandy into one hell of a movie.

Odom hits it right on the nose. But he also demonstrates one of the many themes of the book too. While conserving Savannah’s elegance by blocking progress, they also kept many of the prejudices so prevalent in the early part of the 20th century and before. Prejudices not just toward gays and blacks, but also toward each other. It is amazing how people have lived together in this town for decades, and their families had been there for generations, yet they really didn’t know each other past the parties or the dresses or the mentions in the society column.

And then there’s Chablis. Probably the most entertaining character in the novel, Chablis is a black drag queen who fancies young blonde men. More than a drag queen, actually, she lives her life as a woman, receiving estrogen shots to give her a more womanly look. The friendship that blossoms between Chablis and Berendt is priceless and adds a fresh perspective to the book.

Another mysterious woman in Midnight is the voodoo witch Minerva. Her services are retained by Williams to assist with his murder trials. (Notice the plurality: Williams held the record for the most times a person’s ever been tried for the same murder, four.) Minerva adds yet another element of Southern history with her spells and conversations with the dead.

Despite the town’s obvious downfalls, Berendt does an excellent job of portraying the strength of the town and its ability to let bygones be bygones for a good party and a drop of Marnier.

* I know that my ratings have been repetitious since I have been giving out so many high marks. These are strictly based on my personal enjoyment of the books, and luckily for me I’ve been reading a lot of great books.

Bird Song

Title: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Author: Haruki Murakami
Publisher: Vintage International
Rating: A+

The events that caused my stumbling upon this book seem so appropriate now after reading it.

At the beginning of the summer, I was visiting my sister for her college graduation. I told her about this amazing book I just read, Kafka on the Shore.

Both of us grew up with a love of reading that never faded. We constantly traded books and rummaged through each other’s personal libraries as kids. But after I left for college, our lives’ paths veered, as did our personal reading preferences. We still talk about what we are reading constantly, and often make suggestions to one another.

I was so entranced by Haruki Murakami’s new book that I wanted to buy it for my sister while I was visiting her. Every bookstore we went into I looked for Kafka, but to no avail. It was always out of stock.

On my last day there, we went into yet another bookstore to see if they had it in stock. Unfortunately, they did not. But my sister brought over to me a book she just read and really wanted me to read. Amazingly, it was Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. We had been hunting around all over Northern California for a book by the same author of the book she just read and was recommending to me.

It was an unconscious sibling connection that’s hard to ignore, although cynics might say it was nothing more than a coincidence. But with Murakami’s focus in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle on the connection between people on a subconscious level, it made our “coincidence” all that more intriguing.

Murakami has a way of writing so that the reader feels as if in a constant dream state along with the characters. This book, written seven years before Kafka, still carries the same voice as his latest book. There are small and large similarities. For example, in both books spaghetti, lemon drops and cats make an appearance.

On a larger scale, both books’ characters are drawn into actions by a force they do not fully understand. But they put all of their faith in that force, what one might call fate.

Similar to Kafka, Murakami’s earlier book tells many different stories. While Kafka’s plotlines ran parallel to each other, until they finally collided, Wind-Up Bird’s stories are more like points on a circle that eventually ran together in the middle.

Both stories’ events begin with a lost cat. In The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, it is the search for the cat by the main character, Toru Okada, which unfolds the events in the rest of the book. After the cat goes missing, Okada’s life seems to fall apart. He is introduced to some very strange characters including two sisters; one is a soothsayer, the other a former prostitute. Both have incredible powers of consciousness.

Next his wife mysteriously leaves him. She says she’s had an affair, but history and their six-year marriage leave him disbelieving. Her story is unconvincing to him due to her newly rekindled relationship with her cold, powerful brother Noboru Wataya. Throughout the novel, Noboru Wataya is a dominant force, the antagonist and the symbol of everything evil. It is his part in Kumiko’s, Okada’s wife, leaving that gives Okada doubts.

Okada has found an unusual ally in his sixteen-year-old neighbor. Obsessed with thoughts of death, May Kashahara is wise beyond her years. She becomes a close friend to Okada and helps him throughout the novel understand the events happening to him even if she knows nothing of what’s going on in his life. She is also the one to prompt him to come up with his nickname “Mr. Wind-Up Bird.”

Murakami’s magic is displayed when each of these unique characters enter Okada’s world. Murakami has a way of making the reader feel a certain way when each character enters the story. Creta Kano, one of the two sisters, always presents an aura of calmness. She has been through excruciating ordeals in life. But it has not tainted her demeanor. Although somewhat detached, there is still warmth in her presence. Whenever she appears in the novel, the reader can feel that she is another ally without Murakami saying it.

Through a completely separate group of circumstances, Okada is introduced to Lieutenant Mamiya. Yet another unusual character, Lieutenant Mamiya shares his horrid stories of life during WWII. This becomes another axis of the wheel that moves this novel forward. The contradiction of the horrifying stories of Mamiya’s past to his present old, good-natured self is another seed of Murakami’s genius. The reader feels the frustration within Mamiya and the release he feels by finally being able to share his story.

Through these characters, and many more that have not been introduced here, Murakami addresses the dark side of humanity. There is evil within everyone. But there is also strength within the most normal individuals. Strength to change the course of fate. Strength to battle the evil within all of us.