LOL! That's is why I read on, getting more and more perplexed at the more and more snarky things he said. And he gets snarkier at each pearl stop always thinking, that is not the person I know (except for Zeide to whom he was much too gallant!) As far as snark goes I got the least of it, of anyone until the last person. Too bad he didn't get to her first- she was the geographically nearest to his last teaching job. Contrary to the title, his book had no romance at all. He was like a disrespectful anthropologist poking into a foreign world and treading without respect, then reporting foolishness...
So the mermaid never cried for him. His book is without soul.
Ok, so what? so are Kitty Kelly's gossip tracts.
When dealing with such a profound subject as pearls, their history and mystery, there was room for passion and high contrast and humility, Storms and Shakespearean prose, not to mention true comedy, like laughing at himself comedy- the mysteries of the pearl allow that.
Oh. I forgot about his return to the theme of the cocaine trade over and over. What did he know about that? Beyond Johnny Depp's movie about Jorge Jung? Or even the book it was based upon? Why didn't he do the research for learning the cocaine trade before he used it as a metaphor, as though pearls pearls were an illegal highly refined super-sugar from which you must always crash?
Perhaps the trade in cocaine has borrowed from other trades in the underground, but that was rarely the pearl's position in trade. On the contrary, pearls were acquired, sometimes in far away lands, moved out of the shadows of the trader's gowns and into the hands of royals and those the royals bestowed upon others. Every king had a pearl procurer, sometimes the same pearlman moved between many kings- Tavernier already wrote that book, but his was an ancient path, followed since trade began. Not illegal trade. The heart of the natural pearl trade today is the same as it has always been, secret and discreet.
On the other hand, cultured pearls are a perfectly legitimate business carried out by farmers, corporations with factories and craftsman, and then sold to importers, then distributors then wholesale retailers and buyers. As far as business goes, he could have studied any legal market goods, say pajamas, made in foreign countries and our own land. But he did not intend to get scholarly or intend to say anything new or well put. Or even make a point about pearls. It was an utterly foolish book.
If only Douglas McClaren had written the book! He has a passion and knowledge of pearls comparable to none, is an excellent scholar and writer in two languages, but, alas, he labors at his tiny pearl farm producing a few kilos of incomparable pearls a year and sweating the bills and the hurricanes hoping only to feed his family with two other jobs and hang on another year. Why didn't he get the commission and the cash? And the fame and royalties? He would make royalties because everyone in the pearl world and in his own country has respect for him and would love to learn about pearls from him.
But no, some dude doing time at Iowa Aggie needs to get out bad and get a teaching appt where he can raise his kid in a city. He already wrote about the only interesting thing in Iowa, the Hasidic-run slaughter houses, so he cooked up this idea one night as he was almost asleep and he remembered the clickclick of his mothers pearls-and he was off an running. He unfortunately took his jaundiced view with him.
