It isn’t uncommon for people to reinvent themselves when they move to another country. Doing so in their homeland is difficult, as they may well be recognised, even of they undergo cosmetic surgery. Yours truly had an interview column for a while, and more than a few subjects (farangs) made up lies about themselves as they went along.
Not because they were outlaws on the run who wouldn’t want the publicity, but because they realised they’d led mundane lives, and didn’t want their new relations, friends and acquaintances to know how inconsequential they were. So the bullied kid on the block became the neighbourhood terror.
Why interview them at all? To give them their 15 minutes of fame, a bit of respect they never had. It wasn’t tell-it-like-it-is good journalism. I made exceptions. What brought these memories back is The Blade Artist, by Scottish author Irvine Welsh.
Not laid out in chronological order, we first meet Jim Francis as a middle-aged successful artist/sculptor, living with his young, second wife, Melanie, and two little daughters in an upscale home in Santa Barbara, California. Apart from an occasional violent streak, he appears normal.
Receiving word that the eldest of his two sons by his first wife has been murdered, he and Melanie go to his native Scotland for the funeral. In Edinburgh, his old life comes at him full-force. For one, his real name is Frank Begbie. His Pals still chuckle over their run-ins with the cops.
They insist he be the one to mete out justice, as he did in the old days, but for once he’s not eager to, because he’s learned that his younger son did in his brother. Has Frank lost his nerve? And Melanie is too luscious to stick to one man, even if he’s her husband.
Frank loses all semblance of self-control and turns on his biggest tormentor like a savage, literally cutting him to pieces. Returning to the US as Jim Francis, he tries to persuade Melanie that he’s reverted to his good self. She seems convinced, but the reader isn’t.
The Blade Artist portrays extreme, yet plausible, self-reinvention. Gestapo torturers managed it in South America. Perhaps Welsh has had more experience with such people than I have.
A taxing amendment
There seems to be a rule in literature — this reviewer doesn’t know how or when it started — that novels have two plots: major and minor. They dance around for a while, then come together. At times, the reader doesn’t know which is meant to be more important.
In The Patriot Threat, by Yank author Steve Berry, I’m still wondering.
His thrillers are well-researched. No locale is mentioned without his having been there. He presents historical facts, reinterpreting them plausibly. Actual and imaginative figures intermingle so well that we’re hard-put to differentiate between fact and fiction.
In The Patriot Threat, Berry focuses on the 16th Amendment to the US Constitution. Passed in 1913, it’s known as the Income Tax Amendment. He spells out for us the legal steps required to pass an Amendment. Red-tape in the extreme, by the state and federal governments.
The correct and proper procedure must be followed. No shortcuts. Any deviation or mistake and the process comes to a halt. But as Berry notes from his close study, the putting-together of the 16th Amendment was sloppy, to say the least. Just about everything that could go wrong did.
By all rights it ought not to have gone into effect, but it did. Which leads to the argument that all US income tax for over a century has been collected illegally and can stop being paid, in effect shutting down the country. Unless the error-filled original documents are made to vanish.
In the lesser (?) plot, an ambitious, ruthless North Korean has gotten wind of his enemy’s dilemma, and means to acquire those incriminating documents — one in particular — and expose it to the world. It’s up to elite operative Cotton Malone to take on Kim Yong-jin.
The venue shifts from DC to Pyongyang, Venice to Croatia, as bodies pile up. Berry rakes the People’s Republic of Korea over the coals, vividly describing its horrendous labour camps with 200,000 inmates. Kim opposes the nice treatment of the populace and intends to enforce a stricter regime when he replaces Dear Leader.
The penultimate chapter has Cotton and Kim drawing on each other in a church. I don’t advise you to stop paying your taxes. The IRS won’t take it kindly.
This source first appeared on Bangkok Post Lifestyle.