Books read January through December 1967
| Author | Twain, Mark |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Bantam Books |
| Copyright Date | 1894 |
| Number of Pages | xvi + 143 |
| Extras | Introduction by Langston Hughes |
| Extras | A Whisper to the Reader by Mark Twain |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | January 1967 |
Two babies born into a Southern slave owning family are switched at birth. One is the 1/32 black child of the family nanny and the other is the child of the master and mistress of the house. They look alike. Fearing that she and her son will be sold down the river, the nanny switches the two. Her son is raised as a spoiled aristocrat. The other boy is raised as a slave. Two decades later, the truth emerges and the roles are switched. It is a disaster for both boys.
The spoiled brat commits a murder and the lawyer Puddnhead Wilson, solves the case using fingerprints. This may be the first use of fingerprinting in a crime novel.
I don't remember the details of the novel but do remember liking it very much.
| Author | Howells, William Dean |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Bantam Books, 1960 |
| Copyright Date | 1889 |
| Number of Pages | xvi + 429 |
| Extras | Introduction by Van Wyck Brooks |
| Extras | Author's preface, 1909 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | January 1967 |
Howells wrote about the changing character of America as the economy became more industrialized, the urban working class grew, and a new society arose of rich and poor with advocates on all sides. The novel is about a new periodical in New York city with an owner out to make money, an editor out to champion the working class, a former Confederate slave holder on the staff, and everything going wrong for everyone.
Howells was an early writer concerned with the growing economic inequality forming in post Civil War American society. Although his book is fiction, it gave readers of the time a deeper understanding of of the growing conflict between rich and poor - ever wealthier capitalists and ever poorer and more oppressed workers. The "gospel of wealth" was becoming the dominant ideology of the time. For me, coming to the novel 72 years after its publication with already awakening leftist views, it introduced me to some of the history of the United States that I was never taught in high school. My political views were becoming more left leaning in the 1960s and this book was part of my education in the history of left politics in the U.S. I think I read it for an English class - probably the American literature class. The professor, whose name I wish I could remember, was very good at picking important books for us students to read. He was interested in literature as an integral part of society, not just an isolated world of its own.
| Author | James, Henry |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Airmont Publishing, 1965 |
| Copyright Date | 1903 |
| Number of Pages | 320 |
| Extras | Introduction by Neil H. Fisher |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | February 1967 |
The young adult son of a New England dowager has gone to Paris but, in spite of letters from his mother telling him that he's been gone a long time and requesting that he come home, he stays on in France. The lady sends her friend Lambert Strether, himself recently arrived back in the U.S. from England, to Paris to convince her son to come home. Strether is acting as an ambassador from the mother to the son. The novel involves Strether's own development, his own need for independence from social convention, and his personal development.
Shortly after reading The Portrait of a Lady and being impressed by it, I saw this 60 cent paperback and bought it. After 53 years, I do not remember the story and what I wrote above comes from re-reading the quite good introduction by Fisher. I see also that a newer Modern Library edition has a longer introduction by the novelist and James expert Colm Toibin. It too is impressive.
Fisher says that James regarded this novel as his finest. I do remember liking and thinking highly of it. I've read more since the 60's. I find James to be a quiet writer. He foregoes drama. He is interested in subtle thought and emotion. Books like his give readers a sense of reflection and depth that are not to be found in adventure novels.
| Author | Faulkner, William |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Modern Library College Editions, 1959 |
| Copyright Date | 1932 |
| Number of Pages | 480 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | Race and slavery |
| When Read | February 1967 |
The story of Joe Christmas.
See the abstract and comment from my second reading in 1998-08.05, and the diary entry noted below.
Read for my American literature class.
| Author | Fitzgerald, F. Scott |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Scribners |
| Copyright Date | 1925 |
| Number of Pages | 182 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | March 1967 |
See the book notes from my second reading of the novel 1996-07.04.
I wrote in 1996 that "I read this 30 years ago but got less out of it then." I have only vague memories of why I didn't care for it much when I read it in my American literature class. I seem to recall that I found Gatsby to be something of a rich fool whose monomania was rather repellent, and Daisy, the woman he pursued so vociferously, to be not worth pursuing. Now, in 2020, I'm far enough past the second reading, 24 years ago, that it's hard for me to choose between my two different interpretations with any confidence.
| Author | Hemingway, Ernest |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Scribners, 1957 |
| Copyright Date | 1929 |
| Number of Pages | 332 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | March 1967 |
Hemingway's first best seller features an American named Frederic Henry who has enlisted in the Italian army where he serves as an ambulance officer in World War I - as Hemingway himself did. Henry falls in love with the beautiful English nurse Catherine Barkley. After some travails they escape the war to Switzerland where Catherine and her infant son die in childbirth.
This is either the second or third book by Hemingway that I read. My notes show that I read The Sun Also Rises in 1962. The other book I know I read before beginning my more useful book notes was For Whom the Bell Tolls, which I may have read at age 12 or 13.
When I first heard about him, Hemingway was still a living contemporary author. I was taught that he created the writing style called "naturalism", though I see now that it is attributed to others before him. His books all made a strong impression on me. I still remember them, even the ones like this that I read more than 50 years ago.
| Author | Koestler, Arthur |
|---|---|
| Original Language | German |
| Translators | Hardy, Daphne |
| Publication | New York: Signet Classics / New American Library, 1961 |
| Copyright Date | 1941 |
| Number of Pages | 222 |
| Extras | Foreword by Peter Viereck, 1961 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction; Politics |
| Keywords | Communism; Nazism |
| When Read | April 1967 |
Hungarian, Jewish, German, French, English, Palestinian, Israeli, anti-Nazi, Communist, anti-Communist, Arthur Koestler, a true cosmopolitan, wrote this novel of a man imprisoned and tried by the state for anti-Party actions. His character Rubashov is a long committed Communist who has risen high in the Party for his unquestioning devotion to the Party line, even when arrested and tortured by the Nazis, and his willingness to do whatever is required of him by the Communist Party. At least that's the way he was. But he grows more and more conflicted. Is the great leader of the Party always right? Are the people being arrested, tortured, and executed during the great Purge always wrong? In terrible conflict between what he sees and what he has been committed to believe during his entire adult life, Rubashov confesses his unfaithfulness to the Party and is executed.
I remember the story better than I remember my reaction to it. Was I aware of the great purge of Soviet communists and those of affiliated parties in Europe beginning in 1936? I think I was. Had I begun to develop anti-capitalist views? I don't think that I had yet developed a clear Marxist ideology. My consciousness of racism, imperialism (especially the Vietnam War), and the oppression of the poor in the United States was already growing but had probably not yet become very ideological. I don't think my understanding of why Rubashov would have felt some obligation to the Party and especially why he would have confessed was yet developed. I don't think I yet understood the dynamics of Soviet politics. I think that, at the time, I would have regarded the case of Rubashov as much more clear cut than Rubashov himself did and seen his sacrifice as pure foolishness.
Today, I'm probably closer to where I was in 1967 than where I became around 1971-3. Thanks in part to Koestler, to Milovan Djilas, and to other non-conformist leftist writers, I never became a rigid ideologue or a slavish follower of Stalin, Mao, Fidel Castro or Ho Chi Minh. I joined the anti-Vietnam War movement and even joined Students for a Democratic Society, but when they split up and the radicals became the Weather Underground, I balked at that. I at least retained shreds of objectivity and as the war ended and I left the somewhat isolated and unique student environment my views gradually moderated again.
Koestler would have been happy, I think, to know that he played a small role in my retaining objectivity, my desire to place objective logic and simple humanity above rigid ideology. I hope (and believe) that I would have done that without Koestler and Djilas, but their books helped.
| Author | Mann, Thomas |
|---|---|
| Original Language | German |
| Translators | Lindley, Denver |
| Publication | New York: Signet Classics / New American Library |
| Copyright Date | 1955 |
| Number of Pages | 331 |
| Extras | Afterword by George Steiner, c.1963 |
| Genres | Fiction; |
| When Read | April 1967 |
Originally published as a long short story in 1913, Mann reworked it into a full novel and published it just before his death in 1955. It tells the story of a young opportunistic man who makes his way in the world as a liar, thief, and charming fraud. Apparently Mann intended to create a trilogy but only this first volume was completed.
This was the first novel of Mann's that I read. It led me to read eleven more. There are still a few that I have not read, planning to leave them for my old age, which, I now seem to have reached. Perhaps I'll still be able to get to Royal Highness, Lotte in Weimar and The Holy Sinner.
I remember that when I was working in the Humanities Department at Pratt Central Library in 1974-77, a young man came up to the reference desk and said he was confused about whether Felix Krull was a short story or a novel. I explained the early and later writing. He then told me that he had asked me for information in the past and was impressed with my knowledge of literature. I smiled. It was a high point in my mundane life as a librarian.
| Author | Hibbard, Howard |
|---|---|
| Publication | Baltimore: Pelican / Penguin Books, 1966 |
| Copyright Date | 1965 |
| Number of Pages | 255 |
| Extras | black and white photos, figures (architectural plans), notes, index |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Art |
| Keywords | Sculpture |
| When Read | May 1967 |
Lavishly illustrated with black and white photos of Bernini's sculpture and that of some of his influential predecessors and contemporaries, Hibbard's book has information about B's life and times, but it is mainly about his work.
I don't remember whether I bought this book for one of my art history classes or bought it just for the pleasure of reading about and seeing photos of the work of a man whom our teachers deeply respected and taught us to appreciate. I see the University of Pittsburgh bookstore sticker on it and the price of $2.45. That was expensive for me in those days for something that I didn't need for school, but I might have bought it anyway. The sticker fell off when I picked up the book but, out of my typical feelings of nostalgia, I put it back in between two pages.
Nowadays, of course, photos of these works are available for free, in color, in higher resolution than in the book, and in indestructible form, on the Internet. However, it is only because I am converting my old list of the book titles that I read to this XML form that I looked again at this book, and only because I looked at it again that I viewed some of the images and remembered how much I liked Bernini's work.
I'll note that the book was published in Baltimore, possibly even in the Penguin Books offices only a mile or so from Marcia and my old house on Rockridge Road. I always wanted to knock on the door and go in to see what was there. Was it a sales office? A warehouse? Or was it an honest to god publishing house with a print shop? I looked it up on the Internet and found some very recent mentions of the place by employees at glassdoor.com. Most sounded like they did office jobs of some kind but one said he had to produce 500 books per hour - which sounds like he ran a printing press, or whatever machinery they use to print books these days. Another article said that they just (August, 2020) signed a 66 month lease on a one million square foot warehouse outside of Baltimore. The photo in the article shows shows a truly gigantic building. That's surprising to me since I imagined that a great deal of printing was now done "on demand" when books were sold rather than in advance with the books stored in warehouses. I'm also surprised that print publishing is still growing - if it actually is. My compliments to Penguin. May they survive and thrive.
Memories come and go, and sometimes they come again. I'm now pretty sure that I bought this book as part of an Art History class at the University of Pittsburgh. Pitt had an excellent art history department and I took at least three courses there, not because I had any previous interest in art history, but because the professors were so good and the classes so fascinating. I remember a lecture in which the professor showed us a slide of a sculpture, the Rape of Persephone I believe, and pointed out the way the hands of the man depress the skin of the woman in a very naturalistic way.
| Author | Frisch, Max |
|---|---|
| Original Language | German |
| Translators | Bullock, Michael |
| Publication | Vintage, 1962 |
| Copyright Date | 1954 |
| Number of Pages | 377 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | May 1967 |
A man arrested coming in to Switzerland is said to be Anatol Stiller, a Swiss sculptor, not the American James White whom he claims to be. A complex novel follows concerning the nature of personal identity and the choices a person may attempt to invoke in hopes of changing his past and his future. This was a famous book of comedy, tragedy, and existential philosophy.
After 53 years I have forgotten this book, constructing a very simple abstract from reviews on the web. It's a shame since I can see that it's a book I would have liked at the time and probably today too. I found many excellent reviews at goodreads.com.
| Author | Sartre, Jean-Paul |
|---|---|
| Original Language | French |
| Translators | Sutton, Eric |
| Publication | Bantam Books, 1947 |
| Copyright Date | 1945 |
| Number of Pages | 342 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | June 1967 |
Sartre's novel about several days in the life of a young writer attempting to find enough money to purchase an abortion for his mistress. As with others of Sartre's books, there are ruminations on the meaning of life
Recalling nothing of the book I found my copy in our basement and read a half dozen pages. I liked what I read and, who knows, might read it again.
| Author | Malraux, Andre |
|---|---|
| Original Language | French |
| Translators | Unknown |
| Publication | Unknown |
| Copyright Date | 1937 |
| Number of Pages | Unknown |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | Spanish Civil War |
| When Read | June 1967 |
Malraux served in the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side and, inspired by his support for the Republic and his experiences in the war, wrote this novel. The book was published while the war was still in progress and the supporters of the Republic still believed it was possible to win.
Ironically, Malraux's Man's Fate (q.v. 1976-03.06) was about the betrayal and destruction of a movement for the elevation of common men (the Chinese Kuomintang assault on their communist allies beginning in 1927) while this novel, Man's Hope, is about the creation of a people's movement (the Spanish Republic.) Since the Chinese communists eventually won their civil war while the Spanish republicans lost thirs, modern day Chinese and Spaniards might want to reassign the titles.
I was knowledgeable about the Spanish Civil War by this time. I had read Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls (it was before I started keeping records of books that I read around age 14, but I still remember reading it) and had invited a veteran of the war, a University of Pittsburgh professor, to come to my fraternity house to speak to the brothers about his experience. He has certainly died by now and, unfortunately, I don't remember his name.
| Author | Burroughs, William |
|---|---|
| Publication | Ace Books |
| Copyright Date | 1953 |
| Number of Pages | 166 |
| Genres | Fiction; Biographical fiction |
| Keywords | Narcotics |
| When Read | July 1967 |
Burroughs' first published book describes the life of a drug addict from his first drug use until his complete addiction, including (if I remember correctly), various criminal acts to get money to purchase drugs.
I have some lasting memories of this book. I vaguely recall that the main character takes his first dose of the illegal drug heroin, not with trepidation, but with determination. The drug makes him sick and he is soon vomiting. That doesn't deter him at all. The next day he takes another dose and within a few days he is quite comfortable with the drug. Within about a month he was addicted and shooting up more and more. The story is a novel but the descriptions of drug taking and addiction are thought to be autobiographical.
There are a number of reasons why I read the book. I had become aware of counter cultures and wanted to better understand those who rejected mainstream society. I was aware of B's famous Naked Lunch as an exemplar of life outside the bounds of conventional values and was looking for something shorter and more accessible in order to decide whether I wanted to make the larger commitment to read it. I was, myself, involved with drinking and drugs and was curious about what happens when they are taken to extremes.
| Author | Brown, Claude |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Signet / New American Library |
| Copyright Date | 1965 |
| Number of Pages | 429 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Autobiography |
| Keywords | Race and slavery |
| When Read | July 1967 |
In 1935 an African American couple left their lives as sharecroppers in South Carolina to come to the "promised land" of New York. They settled in Harlem, where life was harder for them than they expected. Their son Claude, born in 1937, grew up on the streets, drinking, stealing, fighting, joining a gang, and in trouble with the law. His parents sent him to his grandparents in South Carolina but it didn't help. Returning to Harlem he was sent to reform school three times, beginning at age 11. Brown lived a terrible life but he was not stupid. He lifted himself out of that life, gradually got a high school and then college (Howard University) education. This book, published in 1965 when he was 28 years old, was his account of his life.
The book was very popular with students and with many Americans, white and black, young and old. I would have heard about it from multiple sources but the book may have been assigned reading for my class in sociology. It taught me a lot about race relations in the United States and made a strong impression, reinforcing and developing my left-liberal political views.
| Author | Melville, Herman |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Signet Classic / The New American Library, 1964 |
| Copyright Date | 1849 |
| Number of Pages | 554 |
| Extras | Afterword by Henry Popkin |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | August 1967 |
After Melville's successful novels based on personal experience in the South Seas (Omoo and Typee) he produced this long, complex, philosophical story of three men in a canoe who paddle from island to island encountering different people, cultures, and experiences in each one.
I was introduced to Melville and Moby Dick in my American literature class and it became my very favorite novel, or at least my very favorite American novel. I ranked it right at the top of the pyramid of American literature. Mardi was the next Melville novel that I read. It did not impress me as much as a novel as did the story of the great whale. The repetition of island visits in Mardi didn't have the same novelistic quality as Moby Dick and the characters were not as well developed, but it had other outstanding features. As a student of philosophy I was much impressed with M's knowledge of the subject. I read very few novels that were as deeply philosophical. Perhaps The Brothers Karamzov was the closest competitor.
As with almost all of the books I read, book club books excepted, I have no other readers to discuss them with. Perhaps if I majored in English instead I would have, but then I wouldn't have read as much philosophy and, under the same conditions of my graduate student experience from 1968-74, I would have had just as much trouble getting a degree and a professorship as I did in philosophy. So I guess, from the point of view of reading Melville, I did as well as I could have expected with my studies.
| Author | Trotsky, Leon |
|---|---|
| Editor | Dupee, F.W. |
| Original Language | Russian |
| Translators | Eastman, Max |
| Publication | Garden City: Doubleday Anchor, 1939 |
| Copyright Date | 1930 |
| Number of Pages | xvi + 524 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | Russian Revolution |
| When Read | August 1967 |
Originally written during Trotsky's exile in Turkey in 1930 and published in Russian in two volumes, it appeared first in English in three volumes in Eastman's 1932 translation. The three volumes were: "The Overthrow of Tsarism" (the February revolution), "The Attempted Counterrevolution" (Kerensky's government), and "The Triumphs of the Soviets". It's now available in a single very large paperback volume published by Haymarket books.
The version that I read was the one selected and edited by F.W. Dupee, taken from Eastman's 1932 translation. At any rate, that's the version that I found in my basement library.
If my dating estimates are correct, I was already a "leftist" by the time I read this, though I don't know that I thought of myself yet as a Marxist-Leninist, or even less as a Trotskyist. Later, I did think of myself in both of those terms, though I was never an "...ist" in the sense of believing in the words of anyone, be it Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, Castro or Ho; or Kennedy, Johnson, Humphrey, or McGovern; or even Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Hume, or Kant - simply because the words were produced by a person I admired. I always required convincing. However, Trotsky was a man that I came to admire, especially after reading Isaac Deutscher's magnificent three volume biography of Trotsky. I never actually joined the Trotskyist "Socialist Workers Party", but I did subscribe to their newspaper, The Militant, for some years. It was strongly Marxist and Leninist, but never accepted the Soviet authoritarianism endorsed by the Communist Party of the USA and so many other national communist parties.
In any case, leaving aside the big questions regarding the value of the Russian Revolution and the struggles and differences among its various leaders, we can all agree that it was an event of the greatest historical importance that had major implications for almost all of the countries of the world, including all of Russia's allies, dependents, and enemies, and every country with a communist party, which was almost every country, for many decades. Providing such a comprehensive and detailed history by one of the key insiders in the events was certainly an important contribution to human history.
| Author | Barth, John |
|---|---|
| Publication | Avon Library, 1964 |
| Copyright Date | 1956 |
| Number of Pages | 272 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | September 1967 |
In Barth's first published novel, started at the age of 24, he writes of a suicidal lawyer from Baltimore who has moved to the Eastern Shore of Maryland where he engages in a love affair, contemplates his condition, and considers whether or not to do away with himself. He decides not to kill himself but I don't know if that was Barth's or his first publisher's decision (see the notes below.)
The novel was not popular and was therefore not financially successful in spite of the original publisher's insistence on a more upbeat ending. However, after Giles Goat-Boy was published in 1966 and received wide acclaim, a new edition with the modifications removed and the original ending restored was published in 1967. I was unaware of the revised version and read a paperback published in 1964.
Browsing through that paperback today I am struck with the brilliance of the writing. I think I decided to read it because of the sudden popularity of Barth's later books, The Sotweed Factor and, especially, Giles Goat-Boy. Reviewers were describing Barth as the next American literary genius. I was deterred from reading Giles at the time by the great length of the book and decided to read this shorter book instead. I was not disappointed but I never got around to reading B's longer works, though I did read The End of the Road thirty years later.
Marcia and I attended a public scientific conference on something to do with brains, I don't remember the exact title of it, offered at Johns Hopkins. For some reason, in addition to the presentations from scientists, including a Nobel prize winner whom I accosted (I'm embarrassed that I did that but I couldn't help myself at the time), they also invited an academic philosopher and a writer - John Barth. The philosopher bored everyone and engendered the contempt of the scientific community but Barth chose to entertain us all instead and he was a hoot. He knew what he knew and didn't know and he didn't try to jump into the scientific discussion, instead offering a brilliant comic review of the issues. Marcia and I loved it and even the scientists seemed to appreciate his participation.
I'm not dead or visibly dying yet, and I still have some mental marbles in place. I may yet get to one of B's longer books.
| Author | Zinn, Howard |
|---|---|
| Publication | Boston: Beacon Press |
| Copyright Date | 1967 |
| Number of Pages | 154 |
| Genres | Non-fiction |
| Keywords | Vietnam War |
| When Read | September 1967 |
Professor Howard Zinn lays out the social, economic, and political conditions in South Vietnam and explains how they lie at the root of the war that the United States had joined there. If I remember it correctly, 3,000 families owned half or more of the agricultural land there, including almost all of the most productive land. The peasants who worked it were sharecroppers who did all of the work, making only enough for basic food and necessities, while the landowners made all of the profits.
The landowners were socially as well as economically separated from the peasants and workers. They were Catholics. They often spoke French at home. Their children were sent to France or elsewhere in Europe for their educations, including college education. They lived a European style life. These people constituted a ruling class and made up the great bulk of the government. The common people on the other hand were largely Buddhist and lived traditional lives with very limited educational or career opportunities and were mostly excluded from political life.
The elections that were supposed to be jointly held by the northern and southern parts of Vietnam in 1956 were canceled by the South Vietnamese government out of fear that Ho Chi Minh would be elected and institute land reform in the south as he had in the north - causing the ruling class to be displaced. It was after this occurred that the Viet Cong, made up largely of ex-Viet Minh, moved from political to armed resistance.
Zinn argued that the U.S. was backing the wrong side in the war, the side that concentrated wealth and power in a tiny in minority of exploiters who controlled the land, the wealth, and the government of South Vietnam. His goal in writing the book was to stir up resistance to the American participation in the war and urge Americans to work for American withdrawal.
This was the first of many books that I read about the war. The things I learned from the book stayed with me for a long time and I still remember the parts that I wrote about above. It enabled me to take a stand on the war in Vietnam that was based, to a significant degree, on knowing the facts of the war. After reading it, I believed that opposing the war was not just a partisan political idea, but a rational judgment based on fact.
In 2016 I noticed that there were very few reviews of the book at amazon.com so I wrote a review which, as of the current time, is still visible on the Amazon website on the page with the Beacon Press hardcover edition - though I'm pretty sure I read a paperback that, like the hardback, is out of print and will eventually become unavailable.
| Author | Melville, Herman |
|---|---|
| Publication | Garden City, NY: Double Anchor Books, 1957 |
| Copyright Date | 1849 |
| Number of Pages | 301 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | Sailing |
| When Read | October 1967 |
"Being the Sailor Boy, Confessions and Reminiscences of a Son-of-a-Gentleman in the Merchant Service"
Melville's fourth novel was about a young American man from a well to do family who signs up to work on a sailing ship headed for England. Expecting to be treated as a "gentleman", he finds himself treated with no respect and given the worst jobs on the ship. He leaves the ship in England and experiences various other adventures.
Tremendously impressed by Moby Dick, I continued reading Melville's books. I liked this one too though I have no recollections of it after all these years. The Wikipedia reports that it was very well received, much better than the more philosophical Mardi, on both sides of the Atlantic. Some critics argued that this was his best book other than the later Moby Dick but, again according to the Wikipedia, Melville thought it was his worst.
"Redburn was praised but Melville wrote in his journal, 'I, the author, know [it] to be trash, & wrote it to buy some tobacco with'. He later complained: 'What I feel most moved to write, that is banned — it will not pay. Yet, altogether, write the other way I cannot. So the product is a final hash, and all my books are botches.'" (Wikipedia article on "Redburn")
Surprisingly I think, I well remember my professor of American literature pacing back and forth in front of his classroom, staring mainly at the floor as he paced, but speaking with conviction of Melville's great achievements and great trials as a writer. He told us students that Melville died in obscurity and the New York Times recorded his passing as that of "Herbert Melville", not even getting the name right.
| Author | Holborn, Hajo |
|---|---|
| Original Language | German |
| Translators | Bainton, Ronald H. |
| Publication | New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1966 |
| Copyright Date | 1937 |
| Number of Pages | viii + 214 |
| Extras | bibliographical note, index of names |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Biography; History |
| Keywords | Christianity; Reformation |
| When Read | October 1967 |
Hutten was an important figure in the Protestant Reformation in Germany. He became a knight, a poet, a satirist, and a religious reformer against the papacy and the Catholic Church. He died of a disease, now considered to have been syphilis, at age 35 in 1523.
I was much interested in history in my youth, looking at more and more sophisticated historical issues, such as the transition from the Medieval to the Renaissance periods in Europe. At that time, as today, I had no real reading plan, choosing each book to read next after I finished one. My general interest in the Renaissance and Reformation were certainly a factor in my choice of this book but I can't help thinking that the price tag on the book was also a big factor. I got the book used but it is still in excellent condition. I like to own books that I read so that I can look at them again in the future. This was one that would not likely be available in public libraries, and at the marked price of 19 cents, there was hardly any penalty for buying it.
| Author | Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Russian |
| Translators | Fineberg, Joseph; Hanna, George |
| Publication | New York: International Publishers, 1929 |
| Copyright Date | 1902 |
| Number of Pages | 176 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Politics |
| Keywords | Communism |
| When Read | November 1967 |
Answering a question posed in the title of a novel by Nikolai Chernyshevsky in 1863, Lenin argues that a society by and for working people could not be achieved by individual struggles between labor unions and employer. It required a "vanguard" political party that would unite workers throughout the country. This "pamphlet" was his prescription for how that could be achieved. It is said to have precipitated the split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in what had been the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party.
After reading Trotsky's work The Russian Revolution I wanted to find out what Lenin's writing was like. I started with this book.
When Stalin came to power after Lenin's death in 1924 he soon imposed a form of rigid party discipline enforced by pervasive, top down censorship that eliminated all political argument and all dissent. As a result, the quality of the publications coming out of the USSR declined precipitously. It's not that the writing was unintelligent (though of course there was unintelligent writing just as there is in free countries), it was rather that all the publications took uniform, single minded, predetermined positions that met the changing state of Stalin's positions, period, full stop. For example, before August 1939, Nazism was totally and thoroughly condemned. After the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact signed on August 23, the Soviet press went silent on German aggression and oppression. After the German invasion of the USSR on June 22, 1941, the position reversed again. The changes all happened at the same time, from all published authors.
As with Trotsky's, Lenin's writings turned out to be a breath of fresh air in left wing Russian writing. Reasons were given. Counter arguments were recognized and addressed. After reading this and other writings of Lenin I was inclined to agree with the view by Trotskyists and others that Stalin really had turned the Soviet Union in a direction that Lenin and other early revolutionaries would have decried. If Lenin, who died at age 53, had lived another 10 or 20 years, things would have been very different.
Of course I can't know that for sure. "Democracy" in the American sense was not a key principle in the movement for the "dictatorship of the proletariat". Maybe Lenin would have instituted his own brand of terror. Maybe Stalin would have displaced him even if he hadn't died. And if Stalin died, maybe someone equally bad would have displaced him. It seems to me that useful speculation on historical alternatives is sometimes possible but always difficult and unverifiable.
| Author | Davis, R.H.C. (Ralph Henry Carless) |
|---|---|
| Publication | London: Longmans's Green |
| Copyright Date | 1957 |
| Number of Pages | 421 |
| Extras | illustrations, bibliography |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | Middle Ages |
| When Read | November 1967 |
Davis was a highly regarded historian and this is considered to be his most important work. It covers the area of the Western European continent but extends to Russia and the middle east. Amazon reviewers praise its organization, its selection of topics, and its clear writing style.
A number of publishers have produced the book. As of this writing, it's still in print and apparently still sometimes used in classrooms - though I see a ridiculously high Amazon price that looks like an error.
This is a book that I'm sure I would be interested in today but, alas, I have forgotten everything about it. I probably read the book for a course, but I don't see a copy in my basement.
| Author | Nietzsche, Friedrich |
|---|---|
| Original Language | German |
| Translators | Kaufman, Walter |
| Publication | New York: Random House, Vintage, 1967 |
| Copyright Date | 1872 |
| Number of Pages | 144 |
| Extras | Translator's introduction and commentary |
| Extras | bibliography, index |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Philosophy; Theater |
| When Read | December 1967 |
Nietzsche's first book looked back at ancient Greek Tragedy to find ideas that could enable contemporary people to better understand the nature and philosophy of life.
The edition of the book that I read included Nietzsche's small edits and his "Attempt at self-criticism" published in his last edition. It was bound with The Case of Wagner, a smaller book that I haven't read but which Kaufmann (translator) and others considered to be a valuable explanation of this work.
I hadn't read anything of Nietzsche before this but knew him to be a famous and influential German philosopher. His notion of the "will to power" was appropriated by the Nazis as a philosophical justification of Hitler and Hitler's drive for German domination of the world.
I remember several of my reactions to the book.
First of all, I didn't really see any tendency towards, or justification of, Nazism, at least not in this work. I did see that the language N used was esoteric and could be construed, and easily misunderstood, in different ways. However I don't recall seeing any antisemitism in his book and discovered later that N criticized both Judaism and Christianity but explicitly rejected antisemitism.
Secondly, I found N's ideas not so much wrong as headed in directions that were uninteresting and unappealing to me. I didn't think that N's notions of "Apolonian" and "Dionysian", a philosophy of order and clarity vs. a philosophy of disorder and emotion, and their fusion in Greek tragedy, shed light on the philosophical issues that interested me. I preferred my philosophical reading, and my readings about literature too, to be more down to earth and logical and less emotional and psychological. I might even say, more Apolonian and less Dionysian. As a student being trained in the empiricist and analytical schools of philosophy, Nietzsche seemed very obscure to me.
I still haven't read any more of his books. Perhaps I should have gone on to read The Birth of Tragedy, as recommended by Kaufmann, but there is so much to read and so little time that, without being unfair to N I hope, I wanted to move on.
| Author | Tolstoy, Leo |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Russian |
| Translators | Aylmer Maude |
| Publication | New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1960 |
| Copyright Date | 1897 |
| Number of Pages | xviii + 213 |
| Extras | Introduction by Vincent Thomas |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Philosophy |
| Keywords | Aesthetics |
| When Read | December 1967 |
Tolstoy write this critique of the nature and deficiencies of the art of his time late in his life when he was deeply committed to a religious outlook on life.
Uncharacteristically, I wrote the name of the translator that I read in my notes. I don't seem to have whatever copy I read so I chose Bobbs-Merrill as the most likely publisher because it was the Aylmer Maude translation shown on the Library of Congress website published most nearly before my reading of it.
I have no recollection of this book read more than 50 years ago, but I do have good notes on two other works Tolstoy published in this period, Resurrection and My Religion (q.v.).
When I still imagined that it might be possible to name the very best novels ever published, my candidates were War and Peace and Anna Karenina. I'm far from the only person who might make the same rankings. Although Tolstoy is deservedly ranked among the top rank of novelists, his philosophical writing is not nearly as popular or well regarded. I agree that the philosophical/religious views that he adopted in later life are problematic. I expect that they are equally problematic in this book from my and many other points of view. However he's such a brilliant writer and such a serious one that I can't not take his ideas seriously.