FRIDAY, AUGUST 30 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE C3
dream world where grief slips be-
low the horizon, replaced by the
rising moon of memory, and we are
in Matsue again with the bush
warbler and his s ong.”
While the lives, loves and adven-
tures of Lafcadio Hearn hold cen-
ter stage in this novel, these are set
off by a rich brocade of social cri-
tiques — of slavery, colonization
and the repression of women.
With great generosity and compas-
sion, Truong explores the differ-
ence between writing and telling
stories, with the question of who
gets to speak and who remains
silent. Lafcadio, despite his many
identities, is fundamentally heart-
sick, torn between nations and
loves. The women he leaves behind
are also heartbroken. Still, they are
brave enough to share their unique
stories and reveal how, like the
object of literature, the object of
love is altered and shaped by the
one who loves.
[email protected]Diana A bu-Jaber is the author of
“Birds of Paradise” and “Origin.” Her
most recent book is the culinary
memoir “Life Without a Recipe.”build a new life for herself in Cin-
cinnati. But unlike him, she has a
grasp of the forces o f prejudice a nd
the dangers they face as an interra-
cial couple. They are eventually
pulled apart, and once again, Laf-
cadio s ets off on another unexpect-
ed journey.
Lafcadio moves to New Orleans,
where he compiles a book of Creole
recipes, and from there he travels
through the West Indies, absorbed
by its exotic beauty. Eventually, he
makes his way to Japan where he
assumes the name Koizumi Yaku-
mo and begins building a new life.
He marries Koizumi Setsu, daugh-
ter of a samurai, and the two be-
come partners in literature and
life.
These a dventures are i lluminat-
ed with lovely, painstaking details
that bring to vivid life the broader
currents o f history. S etsu muses: “ I
learned that modern buildings
were constructed of bricks, red as
camellia blossoms, with windows
paned with clear glass.” Truong’s
lush style is on gorgeous display in
these pages, her imagery evoking
hidden emotional depths: “I close
these eyes and I join you in theopen mind and heart.
I will also suggest t hat the
anxiety a nd excitement of leaving
home might b e a factor in terms
of the escalation o f your r omantic
feelings for y our f riend.
Regardless, y ou don’t h ave to
make a declaration. You can circle
around it and also p ossibly l earn
something f rom your friend.
You say, “ Wow, w e’ve really
been talking a lot more lately! I’m
going to miss that. I’ve been
feeling a l ot closer to you. Do you
think we can keep up o ur
conversation once we start
school?”
Listen to the answer, keep i n
touch with each o ther and s ee
where y our o wn life takes you.Dear Amy: Hello! I happened t o
see t hat the exact same letter y ou
ran (from “Disrespected D IL”)
was a lso p ublished i n another
advice column.
What’s your problem? Are you
running out o f material a nd
taking from other columnists?
How embarrassed are you?
Caught YouCaught You: People occasionally
submit their questions to
multiple columnists a t the same
time. T here is really no way to
prevent it.
I’m always interested to see
how other columnists answer. In
this case, our a dvice w as in sync.Amy’s column appears seven days a
week at washingtonpost.com/advice.
Write to [email protected] or
Amy Dickinson, P.O. Box 194, Fr eeville,
N.Y. 13068. You can also follow her
@askingamy.
© 2019 by Amy Dickinson distributed by
Tr ibune Content Agencyopen it.
Yes, my response would be
similar t o yours — yuck.
If your daughter is an adult,
she h as the r ight to react to it on
her o wn b ehalf.
However, depending o n her
age (and p erhaps depending o n
who paid for her airline ticket and
baggage fee), i f you want to
complain, you might t ake a
picture o f his note a nd f orward it
to the a irport’s management.Dear Amy: Over the p ast month,
one o f my c losest friends and I
have started to spend a lot more
time talking. I’ve l iked t his person
for s everal years, but f or a while
there were s ome obvious barriers
to us being t ogether ( they were
dating my o ther close f riend).
It s eems like we are finally on a
good track, but the problem is we
are both headed off to college this
fall in d ifferent regions of t he
country.
It i s exhausting being w ith this
person a nd n ot telling them h ow I
feel. I’d kick myself if t hey found a
new partner at s chool, k nowing I
never even tried. O n the o ther
hand, I ’m a fraid that i f I tell them
now, I’ll wreck our f riendship.
Is i t worth telling them how I
feel? I’m not sure about any
romantic future, but I definitely
want to continue the friendship.
Out o f TimeOut of Time: When it comes to
romance, timing really i s
everything. Using my “ mom”
voice here, I’ll tell you that it
really isn’t t he best idea to head
off to college with a brand-new,
long-distance r omance on the
burner. Promise yourself that you
will approach college with anDear Amy:
Recently my
daughter and I
traveled s everal
thousand miles via
major airline. D ue
to various mix-ups, our luggage
did n ot arrive at o ur destination
at t he s ame t ime we did. We h ad
conversations with airline
representatives at t he a rrival
airport, while w e tried to sort out
the p roblem. They s aid they
would deliver the bags.
Later t hat afternoon, my
daughter’s bag a rrived, and i nside
was a handwritten note from
someone, presumably one of the
baggage claim r eps, who said he
found h er attractive a nd enjoyed
talking w ith her. He w rote down
his number and asked her to call.
I was s tunned. She simply
dismissed it.
I feel it was c ompletely wrong
for t hem t o open h er b ag, since
there was a tag clearly identifying
the b ag on t he outside. I also f elt it
was s o wrong to put in a personal
note of ANY kind.
My d aughter says I ’m
overreacting, but YUCK.
What do you think of this?
Baggage HandlerBaggage Handler: I h ave shared
your question with the m edia
representatives of two major
airlines and also t he Transport
Workers Union, which r epresents
baggage handlers. All have
acknowledged receiving y our
question but have n ot responded.
I assume that this behavior is
not s anctioned but h appens f rom
time to time.
The note was p ut into your
daughter’s bag b y airline or
airport personnel AFTER it had
been security s creened a nd flown
to its destination. ( It’s a lso
possible t hat the n ote had been
placed in the b ag by a third-party
contractor at y our destination
airport.)
Because the bag was c learly
tagged for d elivery on the o utside,
I can’t i magine a valid reason toSalt,” “ Bitter in the Mouth”), a mix-
ture of fact and imagination, is
about the author Patrick Lafcadio
Hearn, but this book is actually
made up of women’s v oices, each of
them relating their own version of
the brilliant w riter they loved.
Born into a stultifying and patri-
archal Greek family, Rosa Cassi-
mati falls for the foreign charm of
Charles Bush Hearn, an Irish sur-
geon with the British Army. They
marry, and in 1850, she gives birth
to her son on the Grecian island of
Lefkada. Rosa moves herself and
young Lafcadio to his father’s na-
tive country. Her marriage can’t
withstand their cultural and per-
sonal differences, though, and
Rosa soon realizes that she’s o n her
own. Isolated and uncertain, Rosa
agrees to allow her son to be raised
by one of Charles’s well-heeled re-
lations, and she returns to Greece
alone, leaving behind only traces
of herself in her son’s imagination.
Consequently, she sets in motion
Lafcadio’s search for home, identi-
ty and connection that will last his
lifetime.
Rosa’s is the first of three ex-
tended first-person narratives, in-
terlaced with e xcerpts from a 1906
biography by the journalist Eliza-
beth Bisland, which together con-
struct a life in collage. Each voice
gives an almost entirely unique
accounting of the illustrious writ-
er, as Lafcadio seemed to continu-
ally re-create himself, and, in so
doing, gives each of his narrators a
new subject, a new life story to
imagine.
Despite his Irish father, Lafca-
dio finds no sanctuary in Ireland
where he is bullied and beaten. He
makes his way to the United States
as a young man, landing in Cincin-
nati where he finds work at a local
newspaper. He also strikes up a
friendship with Alethea Foley, the
cook at his boardinghouse. Ale-
thea narrates the story of their
early courtship, the home they
moved into and the child they
raised. She observes that while she
might be illiterate, she under-
stands the deeper currents of char-
acter and story. Lafcadio relies on
her skills to guide him to the heart
of his articles, deepening and
drawing out their riches. Their
time together is sweet yet fraught.
Alethea had been born into slav-
ery; like Lafcadio, she is trying to
BOOK WORLD FROM C1
that “Blinded by the L ight” was
too c lose t o the same thing.
“Familiarity is good, because
people l ike the tried and true
when they’re plunking down their
hard-earned dollars,”
Dergarabedian says. “ But too
much familiarity can make it
harder to get them b ack in w ith a
similar movie.”
One p lace where there’s n o
such thing as too much
familiarity, i t seems, i s Disney. I t’s
no accident that t he sentimental
escapism that d efined the
summer also happens t o describe
the h ouse s tyle of the s tudio t hat
now c ontrols a Lion King-size
share of the movie b usiness.
Having r eleased half of the
highest-performing movies of the
year so far, D isney i s sitting on the
fat end of a seesaw that s eems t o
be getting o nly more w ildly
disproportionate. It’s a rich-get-
richer world, a nd if the c ompany
has l earned a nything f rom
shrewdly e xploiting i ts back
catalogue, it’s t hat one rarely g oes
broke i ndulging t he fondest soft-
focus memories of people who
still buy tickets to see movies.
Past i sn’t j ust prologue
anymore. It’s o ur future.
[email protected]believe t hat the c urrent political
era is its own bizarre historical
blip — and everyone else is on
some kind of physical, mental o r
economic edge — it’s
understandable that we’d l ook to
movies for relief. S till, t he fact
that so many o f the m ost
successful s ummer movies were
remembrances of things past
doesn’t b ode w ell for the c inema
of the f uture — or one that’s
responsively engaged with the
present.
Sequels and remakes have
become s ummer staples as
reliable as sunburn and
snowcones, of course. And l et’s
not f orget t hat one o f last year’s
biggest s leeper d ocumentary hits
was “ Won’t You Be My Neighbor?,”
a gently uplifting r emembrance o f
national surrogate father Fred
Rogers. But i n recent years, w e’ve
had s urprise c rowd-pleasers s uch
as “Girls Trip” a nd “ Crazy R ich
Asians” t o help u s snap to. This
summer f eels m ore o bsessed than
ever with wistful l ooks b ack.
A glance at t he top p erformers
tells t he story — or, m ore
accurately, retells i t: “Avengers:
Endgame.” “ The Lion King.” “ To y
Story 4 .” D uring a summer that
was a couple of percentage points
down from l ast year at t he box
office, the sure bet was
comforting filmgoers w ith the
familiar a nd u nambiguously
branded. While o riginal
comedies, i ncluding “Booksmart”
and “Late Night,” never fully
found the audiences they
deserved, it was rare to see a non-
sequel break through. Although
Lulu Wang’s b eguiling family
comedy “The Farewell” was a
welcome exception, the summer’s
biggest o riginal s uccesses w ere
“Rocketman,” “ Yesterday” a nd
“Once Upon a Time in
Hollywood,” e ach some form of
self-soothing n ostalgia trip, albeit
the l atter served up w ith a
Ta rantino edge.
The outlier, strangely e nough,
was p robably the most endearing
of the b unch: “Blinded by the
Light,” a bout a Pakistani British
teenager finding himself through
the m usic and lyrics of the B oss,
failed to ignite the b ox o ffice, a
blip Comscore senior media
analyst Paul D ergarabedian
attributes t o a crowded August
marketplace and, perhaps, viewer
fatigue w ith the genre. I f someone
had j ust gone to s ee “ Yesterday,”
for e xample, they m ight have feltmovies that g ot this w hole mini-
trend started.
Hollywood has a lways relied on
the t rope of the sudden, random
event — the blow to the head, the
newly d iscovered w ormhole, the
accidentally a ctivated DeLorean
— to get the a ction going. B ut
snaps, b lips a nd o ther g litches in
the Matrix feel p articularly
plentiful l ately, n ot j ust to explain
the i nexplicable, but a s reflections
of the c ollective m ood a nd,
unintentionally, t he dramatic
vagaries currently buffeting the
movie business.
The blips of this s ummer are
actually a subset of t he s eason’s
larger theme, which was o ne of
flagrant n ostalgia: I f studios
weren’t t rotting out r emakes and
sequels o f their greatest hits, they
were offering original f ilms t hat
were steeped i n the s ense
memories of vividly remembered
eras. No s ooner h ad “Rocketman”
relived t he heyday of Elton John
than “Yesterday” l ulled audiences
with lovely Beatles covers — only
to be elbowed aside by “Blinded
by the Light,” a delightful c oming-
of-age musical featuring the songs
of Bruce Springsteen. Meanwhile,
if you e njoyed revisiting the
Leonard Cohen tunes in t he
documentary “Marianne &
Leonard: Words of Love,” y ou
were suitably primed to s ing
along to “David Crosby:
Remember My Name” a nd “Echo
in the Canyon,” e ach of which
celebrated t he Laurel Canyon
music scene i n 1960s Los Angeles.
While a ging h ippies
reminisced about Woodstock on
the 5 0th anniversary of three days
of peace, music a nd m ud, Quentin
Ta rantino put his o wn spin on
that pivotal time, r omantically
resurrecting the L.A. o f his
childhood and insisting on a
happy ending for a n episode that
has b ecome a metonym for t he
demise of ’60s i dealism. Amid the
hazy, a mbered tenderness of
“Once Upon a Time in
Hollywood” — give o r take the
odd b loodbath — the echo in the
canyon i sn’t t he screams o f the
innocent, but coos of reassurance
that order had been restored.
There a re moments o f
loveliness in Ta rantino’s p ortrait
of his h ometown, even as i ts
willful rewriting o f reality feels
self-indulgent. At a time when
most Americans are desperate to
HORNADAY FROM C1
ANN HORNADAY
A summer of looking back
The women behind a brilliant writer Luggage
issue leads
to mystery
note in bag
Ask Amy
AMY
DICKINSONTOP: Aaron Phagura in “Blinded by the Light,” one of several nostalgic films to hit theaters recently.
ABOVE: Reflective documentaries also cropped up, including one about musician David Crosby.EDD LUKAS AND IAN COAD/SONY PICTURES CLASSICSWARNER BROS. PICTURESHARUKA SAKAGUCHI
Monique Truong blends fact and imagination to tell the
many life stories of the author Patrick Lafcadio Hearn.DONATE YOUR CARWheels For WishesBenefitingMake-A-Wish®Mid-Atlantic* 1 00 % Tax Deductible
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