I read The song of Achilles about two years ago, wrote a short review then but never got the chance to post it here.  This is one of the few fiction books I have read cover to cover  since I turned 40 – thanks to my daughter’s recommendation.

My 11-year-old daughter fell in love with Greek mythology lately and has filled her bookshelf with the likes of Percy Jackson and Trials of Apollo.  Frustrated with my complete ignorance of the subject, she tried repeatedly to get me to read some of her books.  She marveled at The Song of Achilles all the time and insisted I must read the book because it is simply “too good” to pass over.  Eventually, I caved in despite my reluctance—novels have largely ceased to interest me, let alone a novel about Achilles, whose story has become a cultural cliché, even in China. Who could forget about the heels that his mom famously failed to wash in the magic spring?

It turns out I enjoyed the book more than I thought I could.  Madeline Miller made me constantly guess the theme of the book, but she managed to outwit me at every turn.  Initially, it seems that the book is about the love between two young men: Achilles and I the narrator (Patroclus). Then, I thought the focus is the insanity of the Trojan war, and how it transforms an innocent boy into a monstrous killing machine.   At one point, Miller mocked nationalism and advocated humanitarian principles, when she proclaimed through Chiron (a centaur) “nations were the most foolish of mortal inventions” and “no man is worth more than another, wherever he is from”. Eventually, I realize the central plot may be the ancient conflict between a jealous mother and her son’s spouse (a son-in-law in this case).  Achilles’s mom, Thetis, refused to endorse his relationship with Patroclus till the very end, even after they are buried together.   In the eyes of the jealous mom, Patroclus is an unattractive mortal unworthy of Achilles, a man who cannot bear an offspring for him, and above all someone who committed the unforgivable sin of sharing the love of her son.  But more fundamentally, Thetis and Patroclus fought hard to bring about a different Achilles in the book: Thetis wants a god-like, ruthless warrior, while Patroclus prefers an empathetic, creative human.  It seems to me this discrepancy, not the Prophecy, finally sealed the tragic fate of the couple.

Having finished the book, I must say I don’t quite understand why my daughter and her friends like it so much.  It is a book written for adults, with contents that I imagine some parents might find objectionable for kids of her age.  I know for a fact in my generation such a book would be considered off limits for 11-year-old. But, hey, we live in a different age, don’t we？

Legend has it that King Solomon’s ring, also known as the Seal of Solomon, conferred on him the ability to command the supernatural and to speak with animals.  Despite the enticing title, the book has nothing to do with King Solomon and his famous ring, or Jewish history, or the Israel-Palestine conflict (since this topic is on everyone’s mind these days…).  Instead, it consists of interesting stories about the animals that the author raised to observe their behaviors.  Widely considered “the father of ethology”, Konrad Lorenz won Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1973 for his foundational contributions to the study of non-human animal behaviors.  King Solomon’s Ring, published in 1949 and written for a popular audience, remains his best-known book.  Lorenz was a controversial figure due to his association with Nazism, which apparently came to light only after his death.  According to Wiki, not only was Lorenz a Nazi, but he served as a psychologist in the notorious Office of Racial Policy during the war.  In his application for the party membership, Lorenz pledged to devote “his whole scientific work to the ideas of the National Socialists”.  That said, I found no racial slurs, dog-whistles or anything that can be construed as remotely antisemitic or hateful in the book.   Quite the contrary, the book was a relaxing and enjoyable read that made me giggle more than any book in recent memory. Beyond fascinating facts about animals, the reader will also be confronted with thought-provoking questions concerning human nature and the relationship between men and animals.

Lorenz described many species of animals that he kept in and around his home, ranging from fish and birds to dogs and monkeys.  Notably, he did not keep these animals in captivity but instead let them – to the extent possible – freely wander around on his property, even in his office.  In some sense this was the mandate of his work, since only free ranging animals can “be themselves” and thereby reveal their natural behaviors. However, to Lorenz these animals were more than just a research subject.   He lived with them, bonded with them, and cherished their company.   He saw humanity in these animals – or animal traits in humans, depending on your perspective – because humans, in a quite literal sense, are their descendants.   As a result, his writing adores and humanizes them.

I was never a big fan of animals. Growing up in a small and poor city in China, where few families keep pets in their home, I was naturally disposed to be afraid of most animals, including dogs and cats.  Yet, I think even I would find the gaze of Lorenz’s beloved dog, named Tito, irresistible.  Tito was an Alsatian (or German Shepherd), famous for being “exaggeratedly faithful”.    Lorenz recalled that Tito would remain lying at his feet for hours and hours as he works at his desk, and

she was far too tactful to whine or to call attention to herself by the slightest sign. She just looked at me. And this gaze of the amber-yellow eyes in which was written the question “Are you ever going to take me out?”, was like the voice of conscience and easily penetrated the thickest walls.

Lorenz injected a delightful sense of humor into his storytelling that is truly infectious. I remember several instances when I laughed so loudly in my office that people in the hallway could probably hear me.   His vivid account of the territory-setting battle between two stickleback fish was a great example.  He wrote, describing how the distance from a male fish’s nest is a reliable predictor for the strength of not only his will, but also his actual ability to defeat his rival,

In the immediate neighborhood of his nest, even the smallest male will defeat the largest one…. The vanquished fish invariably flees homeward and the victor, carried away by his successes, chases the other furiously, far into its domain. The further the victor goes from home, the more his courage ebbs, while that of the vanquished rises in proportion. Arrived in the precincts of his nest, the fugitive gains new strength, turns right about and dashes with gathering fury at his pursuer. A new battle begins, which ends with absolute certainty in the defeat of the former victor, and off goes the chase again in the opposite direction.

On another occasion, Lorenz saw a father jewel fish accidentally swallow, at the same time, his own baby—a duty he routinely performs to save his children from drowning—and an earthworm, his favorite food. The father thus faced a dilemma, as in his mouth were two different things “of which one must go into the stomach and the other into the nest”. Lorenz recalled with amusement what unfolded next,

The fish stood stock still with full cheeks, but did not chew. If ever I have seen a fish think, it was in that moment! … For many seconds he stood riveted and one could almost see how his feelings were working. Then he solved the conflict in a way for which one was bound to feel admiration: he spat out the whole contents of his mouth: the worm fell to the bottom, and the little jewel fish, becoming heavy in the way described above, did the same. Then the father turned resolutely to the worm and ate it up, without haste but all the time with one eye on the child which “obediently” lay on the bottom beneath him. When he had finished he inhaled the baby and carried it home to its mother.

Using his jackdaw bird colony, Lorenz repeatedly explores what appears to be an important theme of the book: the similarities and differences between human and animal behaviors.

He observed how jackdaws teach their youth about the danger of the enemy by making a rattling sound in response to a dangling black object in sight. This is remarkably “human” for two reasons. First, knowledge is passed on to the next generation through “learning” rather than “inheritance”. Second, like jackdaws, humans also fall victim to such blind, instinctive reactions (the black object). I am certain Lorenz had his former Fuhrer in mind when he asked,

“Do not whole peoples all too often react with a blind rage to a mere dummy presented to them by the artifice of the demagogue?”

Lorenz observed that a “married” jackdaw couple would not only take each other to love and to cherish till death do they part, but also, apparently, maintain “the glowing fires of the first season of love” throughout their marriage.    Even after many years, he wrote, “the male still feeds his wife with the same solicitous care, and finds for her the same low tones of love, tremulous with inward emotion, that he whispered in his first spring of betrothal and of life”. At first glance such a relationship feels amazingly human; but if you pause and think again, you realize it is in fact quite nonhuman, if not superhuman.  Although humans may live in a life-long marital union, Lorenz lamented, they tend to forget “the thrilling enchantment of courtship’s phrases entirely” as time goes on, and only perform the ritual of their marriage “with the mechanical apathy common to other everyday practices”.

It is well known that a definite order – by which each animal is afraid of those above them in rank – exists in many social animals.  Lorenz’s jackdaw colony is no exception. The interesting twist is that a female jackdaw can acquire a higher rank by marrying a male who ranks above her – a social mobility that is, unfortunately, not available to a male (again, how very human this is!).  If the bird marries the king, she will be granted by every member of the colony the status of a queen.  When this happens, the news of the marriage, and hence the promotion of the wife, spreads quickly in the colony. The funniest part of the story is how the newly crowned queen, having suddenly risen far beyond her own station, would “conduct herself with the utmost vulgarity” when she encounters other jackdaws whom she must look up to only a few days earlier:

She lacked entirely that noble or even blasé tolerance which jackdaws of high rank should exhibit towards their inferiors. She used every opportunity to snub former superiors, and she did not stop at gestures of self-importance, as high-rankers of long standing nearly always do.

Establishing a pecking order is one way by which social animals resolve conflicts without suffering excessive casualties. Lorenz mentioned another mechanism that I shall call the surrender’s inhibition.  According to this law, a victor emerging from a bloody battle for dominance would be inexplicably “forbidden” from hurting the loser, as long as the latter surrenders, i.e., offering to his adversary the most vulnerable part of their body as a submissive gesture. Humans evidently have inherited the habit of making submissive gestures (e.g., kneeling and bowing) when facing a dominant aggressor. Unfortunately, such an appeal to mercy is not as failproof among humans as in the animal world. Homer’s heroes, noted Lorenz, often killed supplicants “without compunction”.  Bai Qi, a Qin Kingdom general, killed 400,000 surrendered soldiers after the Battle of Changping, a prelude to the kingdom’s brutal campaign to unite China under imperial rule.  Mongols, of course, had an abhorrent reputation for indiscriminately slaughtering entire cities of people when they faced even the slightest resistance during their conquests. Nor do we have to go back to primeval or medieval times for the evidence of our species’ sub-animal barbarity.  About three weeks ago, on October 7^th, 2023, Hamas militants invaded Israel and killed more than 1,000 civilians, including many children and elderly – many of the victims, I imagine, would have begged for their lives, but to no avail. Why?

Lorenz argues that the surrender’s inhibition is a result of evolutionary adaptation.  That is, for a species to survive, it must develop a social inhibition to prevent the abuse of its lethal weapon which could endanger the existence of the species.  However, we humans make our weapons “of our own free will” rather than grow them on our bodies as dictated by nature.     Because human weaponry developed so rapidly relative to the time scale of evolution, our instincts could not keep up with it, leading to a lack of adequate inhibition in its usage.  There is a certain truth to this argument.  However, humans also have far more reasons to murder the members of their own species than the imperative of survival. Ideology, for example, offers a powerful motive for mass killing infidels, heretics, or those who happen to have an intolerable identity.  In the end, Lorenz expressed optimism that humans can learn from animals, that if anyone slaps us on the right cheek, we should, as Bible teaches us, turn to him the other cheek also.  This is not so that our enemy may strike us again, explained Lorenz, “but to make him unable to do it”.  I admire his faith in humanity and wish he was right, but I am deeply skeptical whether this age-old wisdom would have saved anyone who was killed by Hamas fighters on October 7^th.

Doris Goodwin’s ‘Team of Rivals’ was the first presidential biography I ever read.  Biography was not among my favorite genres, but I did have a desire to learn more about Abraham Lincoln.  He is widely considered the greatest American president. In fact, to many even that title seems an understatement.  Tolstoy once wrote that Lincoln ‘was bigger than his country—bigger than all the Presidents together…and as a great character he will live as long as the world lives’.    Like most people, I’ve heard about the highlights of Lincoln’s remarkable life as I passed through grade schools: the self-made lawyer and politician haunted by family tragedies, the epic struggle to end slavery while forging a truly United States of America, and the ultimate sacrifice for the cause at the zenith of his career.  Still, I am not quite sure how to make Tolstoy’s melodramatic assessment. The book partially solved the puzzle for me.

Goodwin’s narrative is constructed around, and often from the perspectives of, Lincoln’s key cabinet members who were once his rivals:  Salmon Chase (Secretary of Treasure), Henry Seward (Secretary of State), Edward Bates (Attorney General), and Edwin Stanton (Secretary of War). The first three men ran against him for the nomination of the Republican party, and Stanton, when serving with Lincoln as co-counsel in a lawsuit, not only questioned the then country lawyer’s legal expertise but openly ridiculed him as ‘a gorilla and an imbecile’.  As Goodwin follows Lincoln’s footsteps from the humble origins to the poignant end, she recounts many stories of these rivals, often quoting extensively from their public speeches and private letters.  This helps unlock the mystery in Lincoln’s persona that ‘led countless men, even old adversaries, to feel bound to him in admiration’.

Lincoln ‘possessed extraordinary empathy’ and a ‘melancholy temperament’, wrote Goodwin.  These qualities might be the result of the tragic losses he endured from an early age – at 26, he had already lost three women dearest to his life: his mother, his only sister, and his first love. Empathy can be a curse ‘in a world environed by cruelty and injustice’ because, as Goodwin noted, the fellow-feeling for the misery of others inevitably causes pain and suffering.  It also sometimes made him appear weak and lacking the will to do what must be done in difficult situations. His attorney general confided to a friend that Lincoln, despite ‘very near being a perfect man’, was ‘unfit to be entrusted with the pardoning power’, because he too easily succumbed to touching stories and women’s tears. Yet, empathy was a powerful tool for Lincoln to gain the respect, trust, and devotion of others through understanding their motives and desires.  It also rendered him a remarkably magnanimous man, demonstrating an incredible capacity to forgive even those who had opposed, wronged, and betrayed him.

Goodwin also lauded Lincoln’s `literary genius’ and his mastery of rhetorical power.   His ability to explain intricate concepts through storytelling, coupled with a sharp sense of humor, was unparalleled among his contemporaries.  In the strictest sense of the word, Lincoln might not be as great an orator as Seward, who could deliver stirring, completely improvised speeches to a crowd for hours.  Lincoln was much more careful with his words, but he perfected ‘a language of enduring clarity and beauty’ that made him an extremely persuasive and effective communicator.

Lincoln believed in ‘the better angels of our nature’, a term coined in his first inaugural address.  He once told a friend that he preferred to believe in the possibility of human perfection, when asked about whether George Washington was a perfect man.  His entire life may be seen as the pursuit of becoming that perfect, inspiring human being he envisioned. It is the unwavering conviction to ‘engrave his name in history’, Goodwin noted, that underscores Lincoln’s greatness, carrying him through the dreary childhood, the political failures, the personal tragedies, the disintegration of his beloved Union, as well as the devastating military defeats in the early phase of the Civil War.

But Lincoln was also a realist.  Unlike Chase and Seward, who had advocated for radical abolitionist policies on moral grounds, Lincoln carefully charted a moderate path confined within the limits set by public opinion on slavery. His famous Emancipation Proclamation was timed and configured to be perceived by the people of the North as an indispensable instrument to win the war and preserve the Union, rather than as a necessary step to end slavery once and for all.   Goodwin sees nothing wrong for politicians to go along with public opinion, even if that means they must slightly bend their moral compass.  If anything, that expediency made Lincoln ‘the most truly progressive man of the age’, because he neither ‘wasted strength in premature struggles’ with the public nor waited to be ‘dragged by the forces of events’.  To be sure, Lincoln did owe much of his success to his exceptional ability to read and follow the will of the people.  But that does not make him ‘the most truly progressive’.  Based on what I gathered from the book, Lincoln is more of a pragmatist, a shrewd politician, maybe even a ‘political genius’ (As Goodwin likes to call him). Yet, he does not seem to have the burning conviction to reshape the world in the image of his ideology that many a great man of history possesses.  That difference, I think, is precisely what sets Lincoln apart from (or above, depending on how much you love him) that league of great men.

I was always curious about Lincoln’s view on race.  According to the book, Lincoln was against slavery but did not believe in racial equality.  He said the physical difference between whites and blacks would ‘probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality.’  As a result, he was not in favor “of making voters or jurors of n****, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry.”  Nor did he just say these things to get the white people’s votes.  Lincoln was a passionate advocate for colonization, the idea of aiding freed slaves to establish a colony in Central America. To sell this proposal to the country, he even convened a conference of freed slaves at the White House, where he said in his opening remarks, “you and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races.”  By today’s standard, therefore, Lincoln is a textbook racist. Should harboring racism in 19^th century diminish his greatness?  I imagine Tolstoy and Goodwin would dismiss such a thought as quintessential presentism. But many from today’s political left would probably disagree with them.

‘Team of Rivals’ is a thick book of nearly 1000 pages, of which about a quarter were notes.  It was meticulously researched and elegantly written, though at times, the lengthy quotes and extravagant details about the lives of the people in Lincoln’s outer orbit feel a bit excessive. If you don’t want to read the whole book, do not miss the last chapter, in which Goodwin describes how Lincoln met his destiny.  I finished that chapter on an airplane – I still remember having tears in my eyes that I had to hastily cover when a flight attendant asked me if I needed a drink. That rarely happened to me.   I shall end with a quote taken from the very end of the book.

“With his death, Abraham Lincoln had come to seem the embodiment of his own words—’With malice toward none; with charity for all’. The deathless name he sought from the start had grown far beyond Sangamon County and Illinois, reached across the truly United States, until his legacy, as Stanton had surmised at the moment of his death, belonged not only to America but to the ages—to be revered and sung throughout all time.”