Books read January through December 1976
| Author | Garcia Marquez, Gabriel |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Spanish |
| Translators | Rabassa, Gregory |
| Publication | New York: Harper and Row, 1970 |
| Copyright Date | 1967 |
| Number of Pages | 422 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | January 1976 |
Garcia Marquez gives us the Buendia family from Jose Arcadio, the pioneer and founder of the town of Macondo, to his great, great, great, grandson Aureliano, eaten by red ants on the day of his birth. Each member of the family lives with his own peculiar and solitary vision and obsession - always absurd, ridiculous, ununderstood, unobtainable, or disastrous.
Macondo passes through magical events - the plague of insomnia, the gypsy flying carpet, the four years of rain, the ascension of Remedios the Beauty, etc., to inversions of reality - the banana company massacre, the mythologizing of Colonel Aureliano Buendia, etc.
A masterpiece of pure myth and allegory. A family and a society doomed from its inception, responding to each calamity with magnificent, ingenious, but essentially uncomprehending and tangential action.
This was the first book I read by Garcia Marquez. Everyone was talking about it at the time and it became the foundation work that led to GM's Nobel Prize.
I had not read any work of "magical realism" before. It struck me as something I shouldn't have liked. I never liked the "fantasy" or the "swords and sorcery" novels or "soft" science fiction, and my initial reaction was that this book was a kind of fantasy novel. But it really wasn't. It was fantastic alright, but it had nothing in common with the adventure fantasy of writers like J.R.R. Tolkien. All of the fantastic elements of the story, from the four years of rain to the epidemic of forgetfulness to the ascension to heaven of Remedios somehow followed from the inner logic of the story. It reminded me of Aristotle's argument that in real life events are often random and inexplicable but that in tragedy everything follows from the logic of its antecedents. If the logic required an ascension, then an ascension occurred and the reader should not worry about whether his world and Macondo followed the same laws of nature. The logic of both worlds was the same. Macondo just eliminated the random and inexplicable, substituting the logical and deleting the requirement for explanation based on chemistry and physics. It was a different way of thinking and writing, calling for a different way of reading. If the world it portrayed was different from the one we live in, it nevertheless had much to tell us about our world.
The book was not an easy read. It posed some challenges to the reader. But I found it to be a very rewarding book.
| Author | Fast, Howard |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Published by the author, 1951 |
| Number of Pages | 363 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Rome |
| When Read | January 1976 |
The story of the slave revolt ending in 71 BC, seen largely through the eyes of various Roman slaveholders. Characters include Gracchus, corrupt politician; Crassus, powerful filthy rich general who suppressed the revolt; Caius, homosexual lover of Crassus and a young fop; Lentulus Batiatus, owner of the school for gladiators; and others - plus the slaves Spartacus, Varinia his wife, and David the Jew.
The political content is excellent. Roman society is fully exposed for its moral and social degeneracy, false democracy, and inhuman cruelty, all inextricably linked to slavery. The consciousness of the slave, master, and non-slave holding privileged citizen are all interestingly explored. The permanence and historical importance of class struggle are asserted. The tremendous significance of the life of a slave in revolt is exalted.
Unfortunately, in spite of much more ambitious work than in The American, and many scenes of good writing, Fast fails again as a literary writer. Characters are wooden (with the possible exception of Crassus). Sexual themes are overplayed. Spartacus is unconvincing as a leader. The historical limitations of the revolt are not shown. Nonetheless, it's a brave work.
Fast should certainly have been commended for taking on a project like this and turning it into a popular story - published by himself due to the attacks of the McCarthyites.
Readers who like the book should see the movie made from it with Kirk Douglas, and will also find Douglas' book I Am Spartacus: Making a Film, Breaking the Blacklist interesting. Douglas published the book in 2014 at age 97. I wrote a lot of notes about it.
| Author | Lem, Stanislaw |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Polish |
| Translators | Kandel, Michael |
| Publication | New York: Seabury Press, 1974 |
| Copyright Date | 1971 |
| Number of Pages | 149 |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction; Comedy |
| When Read | January 1976 |
When a revolution breaks out in Costa Rica during the Congress of Futurologists, the authorities unleash powerful psychoactive drugs to quell the revolt. After overcoming the benignimizer and escaping to the sewer, Ijon Tichy is affected by massive overdoses of hallucinogens. He awakens in the future to find all life regulated by psychem. With much effort and luck he strips away one veil of illusion after another to reach the reality of total social decay amidst overpopulation and imminent destruction. Then he falls in the sewer and wakes up again in Costa Rica - all was a hallucination.
Lem's fantastic word play and the super logical yet helpless antics of Tichy make this about the funniest piece of black humor I have ever read. An ultimate parody of science fiction, futurology and contemporary American capitalism.
This really was an uproariously funny book. Lem was a master of comedy in general, but this book in particular may have been his funniest.
| Author | Forester, C.S. |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1939 |
| Copyright Date | 1938 |
| Number of Pages | 323 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Naval; Napoleonic Wars; Hornblower |
| When Read | January 1976 |
A continuation of Beat to Quarters. Hornblower, now captain of a 74 gun Dutch built ship, sails for the Mediterranean under the command of Admiral Leighton - new husband of Lady Barbara. After a series of feats of derring-do, Hornblower attacks a full squadron of four ships of the line, fights a brilliant battle damaging all four ships, and surrenders when his ship is reduced to a floating hulk - obviously to be continued.
The plot is not as well paced as in the previous volume. Action scenes are crowded in. Time intervals are passed over abruptly. Hornblower's self-criticisms become more of an affectation than a counterpoint to a too heroically drawn figure. As before, there are no other developed characters and, again, F's treatment of violence mixes real images with unreal themes for a poor overall effect. Still, the sea story remains in all its technical, though less of its romantic, fascination.
The scene from this book that I remember, the one that more or less blew me away, was a storm off the coast of Spain. In a powerful gust of wind, the masts of the Pluto, the Admiral's ship, are carried away. With the sails gone, the flagship of the little fleet of three ships is being blown towards a lee shore where it will break up when it hits.
Hornblower maneuvers his ship to a point where a cable can be passed from his ship to the Pluto. In a detailed scene of extraordinary seamanship in the midst of the storm, Hornblower and his crew tow the Pluto to a point where the land turns away and the wind will drive the flagship out to sea instead of into the lee shore.
The simple description above may seem a little ho hum, but to read Forester's description of the raging wind and sea, the masts, sails and rigging dragging in the water, the men battling snapping sails, hauling shrouds, pulling sails with thousands of pounds of wind energy in them, the masts bending almost to breaking point, and Captain Hornblower directing all the efforts to manage the chaos - it's quite a scene. I thought it was the centerpiece of the novel and one of the best descriptions of the fury of sail and storm that I have ever read.
| Author | Kushner, Sam |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: International Publishers, 1975 |
| Number of Pages | 224 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History; Politics |
| When Read | January 1976 |
An Informal history of class struggle in the fields of California from the 1860s to the present by an old veteran communist.
In a very frank book, Kushner relates many stories of equivocation, opportunism, or outright betrayal, not only in the teamsters but also in the AFL-CIO and the Democratic Party with even a slight swipe at a farmworker where called for. K emphasizes the role of communists in the organization of the 20's and 30's, but is still willing to give full credit to anarchist, liberal, church, and other groups where they make a contribution.
K argues that the farmworkers movement is as important as the labor movement in any other industry in the country, the opposition just as strong, the conditions just as bad or worse. Chavez and the UFW are succeeding because of the long background of the struggle, the ability to unite the field workers with liberals, sympathizers and movement people nationwide, and the resistance of the leadership to the traditional opportunities to sell out.
I think the average person in the United States today has little understanding of how incredibly difficult it is to organize a successful labor union, how powerful are the opponents of labor, and how varied, complicated, insidious, and effective are the techniques marshaled against them. The opposition may use everything from paid informers, to bribes to labor leaders, beatings by armed thugs, blackmail, "fake news", expensive lawsuits, legal frame-ups, and every other trick that money can buy. And terrible as all of that is, it's even more terrible when the workers are non-citizens, often undocumented, often with little or no English language, having no homes except the shack space that the landowners rent to them, and therefore all the more easily threatened and intimidated.
My impression of Kushner was that he was a real veteran of labor struggles and, although very few people would read a book like his, those who did learned a lot.
I assume that "International Publishers" is a Communist Party organization.
As a side question, I wonder if Sam Kushner is related to Jared Kushner, wealthy son-in-law of our current President Donald Trump. Would they acknowledge each other if they were?
| Author | Mann, Thomas |
|---|---|
| Original Language | German |
| Translators | Lowe-Porter, H.T. |
| Publication | New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1944 |
| Copyright Date | 1935 |
| Number of Pages | 311 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Joseph |
| When Read | January 1976 |
The continuation of the Joseph story to his being thrown in the pit and sold to Ishmaelites moving west.
Mann seems more concerned here with the fine development of character - the naturally favored, beloved, and yet inflated and foolish character of Joseph; the sweet humility of Benjamin; the highly rationalized and absurdly flawed character of Jacob - than with the nature of time, myth, or ancient consciousness.
Each person - Joseph, Jacob, Benjamin - makes a fool of himself over Joseph's natural charm. His physical beauty, his natural intelligence and precocity, his mystical dream tendencies, even his childish conceit which is not at all incompatible with benevolent feelings towards others - all these betray those who are enamored of such unsubstantial values. Yet the pursuit of Joseph's beauty is not evil, but frailty, weakness, even humanity. It is precisely in the high spirituality, sensitivity, and depth of character that such weakness resides - not in the rough strength of the ten brothers, This is the contradiction driving the novel forward.
A novelist attempts to build a character by assigning various personal traits to him. But how does he build a personal trait? Is it enough to say that he is intelligent or that he's handsome, or that he's friendly? Obviously not. He must show us this intelligence and friendliness in action. He must describe the handsomeness for us. I think part of Mann's genius is that he does that slowly, carefully, building up bits and pieces of personal traits until we not only believe in them, but we believe that this character has a truly exceptional set of traits. We might not have believed in him if we had been told about them all at once but when we see the different facets of his character individually and convincingly, then when they are all put together we give our assent. We say, yes, although Joseph is flesh and blood and fully recognizable as a human being like other human beings, still, he is no ordinary man.
In this volume of the novel we see Joseph stressed in many different ways. We see the hard things that his brothers do and the suffering of Jacob when he hears the lies about the lion eating him. We see Joseph responding, not with bravado and pride but with subtlety and understanding.
Mann works slowly and carefully. He knows that this is a great creation and the work of many years. He is patient. And the result is a masterpiece.
| Author | Asturias, Miguel Angel |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Spanish |
| Translators | Rabassa, Gregory |
| Publication | New York: Delacorte Press, 1968 |
| Copyright Date | 1962 |
| Number of Pages | 242 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | January 1976 |
A story of a Central American republic entirely under the sway of Tropbana - Tropical Banana Co. The central character, Cosi / Lester Mead / Stoner, appears as an adventurer, then independent grower, then secret power in Tropbana itself. He and his wife Leland are destroyed in a hurricane conjured up by an avenging worker who sells his head for revenge.
Very effective characterizations of middle level and some upper level U.S. exploiters and managers together with straw bosses, foremen, and some petty bourgeois from among the natives. The masses themselves always appear as a primitive natural force like, although in conflict with, the oppressive heat or the bananas or the sea. they are not individuated except in their upper reaches - those who come out of the mass to be set slightly above them.
This book is the first in a trilogy. It establishes a social milieu most effectively and creates a powerful sphere of symbols headed by the "strong wind" to represent the irreconcilable contradictions of imperialism. It would be an excellent beginning if the later books then reach back to the source of that sphere and bring out the masses.
I see that I said almost nothing here about the magical aspects of this novel. By the time I read it, I had already read One Hundred Years of Solitude and was acquainted with the "magical realism" movement in Latin America. I was, of course, well acquainted with the notions of "banana republic", the United Fruit Company, and U.S. domination of Latin America.
| Author | Maltz, Albert |
|---|---|
| Publication | Boston: Little Brown, 1949 |
| Number of Pages | 250 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | February 1976 |
A 73 year old man with "arthureetis" resolves to leave the rest home in Santabello California and get to a doctor in Los Angeles, 400 miles away. He is convinced that this doctor will cure him so he can get back to work and then compile a book on the history and progress of the common man. At the end of a difficult journey the old pipe fitter finds out his illness is incurable, but he returns to Santabello resolved to complete his task of compilation in spite of it.
A superbly written book. Maltz balances present and past, inner and outer life, with steady, perfect pacing. He steadfastly avoids the cheap trick of blaming Simon's problems on meanness and bad people. On the contrary, Maltz' message is the dignity and worth of all human life.
The book ranks Maltz with London and Steinbeck as writers of and for the common man. McKeever, for all his poverty and ordinariness, is a hero and an inspiration in showing what is a man.
I was aware of Maltz' persecution by McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee. He was sentenced to a year in jail, fined $1,000, and was blacklisted from publishing and from his work as a Hollywood screenwriter. I didn't know that he was also given a tough time by the Communist Party, of which he was a member. He was made to publish a self-criticism attacking his own article in which he had criticized communist writers for sacrificing quality to ideological correctness.
He was a very good writer and a real humanist but he got caught in the political mill by jerks on both sides.
| Author | Sartre, Jean-Paul |
|---|---|
| Original Language | French |
| Translators | Mathews, John |
| Publication | New York: Random House, 1974 |
| Number of Pages | 302 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Essays |
| When Read | February 1976 |
[No abstract]
I read only the first five essays of the collection originally written between 1959 and 1971. Sartre shows himself capable of restrained insight and deep sympathy for others. His philosophy however seems obscurantist and of the overly abstract speculative sort.
His Marxism during this period was anti-dogmatic, anti-USSR.
As I said in 1976, Sartre can be a very obscure writer. Here's a quote from one of the essays in this collection, excerpted by a Mr. Stephen H. Prop in an Amazon review of the book.
“Thus an intellectual cannot join workers by saying: ‘I am no longer a petty-bourgeois; I move freely in the universal.’ Quite the contrary; he can only do so by thinking ‘I am a petty-bourgeois; if, in order to resolve MY OWN contradiction, I have placed myself alongside the proletariat and peasantry, I have not thereby ceased to BE a petty-bourgeois; all I can do, by constantly criticizing and radicalizing myself, is step by step to refuse---though this interests no one but myself---my petty-bourgeois conditioning.’” (Pg. 261)
I don't think this is nonsense. Sartre is attempting to make a real point, but it's one that even a lot of Marxist intellectuals would have difficulty understanding much less accepting. Why should an intellectual consider that he is trying to resolve his own contradictions when he places himself alongside the proletariat and the peasantry? Why should he feel a need to change his state from being a petty-bourgeois into something else? Why is his own economic class an issue? Sartre assumes a lot that people on the same side of the class conflicts as he is would not necessarily assume. Most especially, I think, he is assuming that a person from an upper class, even the "little" upper class, is doomed to be a member of that class forever and cannot truly contribute to resolving the problems of the working class. If so, then Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, and other petty bourgeois intellectuals can't do much for the workers, white men cannot do much for blacks, men cannot do much for women, and so on.
I sort of understand it, but I don't buy it. I gave up on the book. However I don't claim to have a full understanding of Sartre's positions over the years and my critique of his ideas may be based on a misinterpretation of them.
| Author | Plievier, Theodor |
|---|---|
| Original Language | German |
| Translators | Winston, Richard and Clara |
| Publication | New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1948 |
| Number of Pages | 357 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | World War II; Eastern front |
| When Read | February 1976 |
The story of Stalingrad from the German point of view, from the time of its encirclement by the Russians in November, 1942 to its final surrender 77 days later.
Plievier is clearly writing for the purpose of explaining what happened to his countrymen who had heard only the Nazi version of the story. The German Army put up a huge, pointless, idiotic, and evil effort in which the propaganda about supermen, German destiny, Prussian honor, and the determination to obey orders, all lead to destruction in a false cause.
P emphasizes the physical and moral corruption, the complete dead endedness of militarism and the path to salvation through understanding and reorganization of German society. There is much repetition of individual and collective horror and good attempts at broad views of the situation, e.g., generals and privates, Berlin radio, dugout and snow, etc.
Plievier spent the war years in Moscow, working for the Free Germany Committee, helping to produce propaganda aimed at German troops and citizens. I'm sure that, by the end of the war, he had interviewed many soldiers on both sides and had a deep understanding of what happened to the Germans at Stalingrad.
The best book I read about the battle of Stalingrad was Vasily Chuikov's non-fiction The Battle for Stalingrad. Chuikov was commander of the 62nd Army that held the city for the Russians until the envelopment was finally sprung and the Germans were trapped. Chuikov's book was written from the point of view of a commander who could see the "big picture". Plievier's was from the point of view of the suffering, freezing, soldiers.
| Author | London, Jack |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: MacMillan Co., 1946 |
| Copyright Date | 1903 |
| Number of Pages | 366 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | February 1976 |
Humphrey Van Weyden, 35 year old dilettante and literary critic, falls in San Francisco Bay and is fished out by Wolf Larsen, master of the sealing schooner Ghost. "Hump" is forced to learn to "stand on his own two feet" becoming cabin boy, then mate and intellectual foil for Larsen.
The story consists in the struggle between Van Weyden's idealism and romanticism, belief in nobility, God, and immortality, and Wolf Larsen's incredible animalism and totally amoral materialism.
While Van Weyden wins the girl and the ship in the end and Larsen dies a horrible death of slow paralysis, the sea wolf is entirely unrepentant and consistent all the way to his watery grave.
As in Martin Eden later, London does not seem able to reconcile Darwin and Spencer with ideals in life. To believe that man is nothing but a bunch of chemicals, a "mote in the yeast" as Wolf puts it, can lead nowhere but to the exaltation of the individual against all. Yet London clearly cannot reject what he seems to see as the truth - in spite of its ugliness. In The Sea Wolf he allows the idealist his happiness. In The Call of the Wild he exalts the individual animal. In Martin Eden he elects knowledge and suicide.
(I read this book in Junior High School before now.)
Some of my favorite authors are armchair inhabitants. Educated, refined, in love with language and literature, they produce masterpieces of thoughtful writing. I'm thinking of people like Jane Austen, Henry James, and, although he's not one of my favorites, Marcel Proust. Jack London was as far from that as one can be. He was a rough and tumble fellow who developed his stories out of the fires in his own life.
If Henry James tried to create a character like Wolf Larsen I don't know how he could do it. London could do it and, when we read the book, we believe in it. London knew whereof he spoke.
The Sea Wolf was one of those books that showed a raw sort of life that was so compelling that the reader cannot easily turn his eyes away from it. I won't use the word "enjoy" with regard to it but I will say that it was hard to put down.
| Author | Soseki, Natsume |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Japanese |
| Translators | Turney, Alan |
| Publication | Henry Regnery Co., 1965 |
| Copyright Date | 1906 |
| Number of Pages | 184 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | Japan |
| When Read | February 1976 |
A poet and painter goes up to a secluded mountain inn to achieve perfect objectivity, i.e., detachment from all personal interest in the world in order to perceive beauty more accurately. He meets an unusual woman, a mysterious divorcee believed by the local people to be insane. She presents him with image after image of herself, constantly bringing into conflict his desire to penetrate her mystery, even to love her, and his philosophy of aloof detachment. But for all his temptation toward involvement he remains true to his artistic principles, synthesizing his emotions and hers in a clear and detached visual image for a painting.
A superbly written book that combines philosophy, poetry, narrative, and plot in a carefully constructed work of art. The novel is at once a novel, an essay on art, and an essay on itself. Soseki adopts a radical aesthetic stance and yet maintains a consistently rational outlook and justification for that stance having no admixture of mysticism. It is an important work.
The literal translation of the Japanese title for this book is The Grass Pillow.
Knowing nothing about the history of Japanese literature I did a little research and see that it's quite old, going back over a thousand years. Looking up Soseki I see that he was a key person in Japanese literature and was also an expert in English literature.
Maybe I'll search for more of his books - though there is so much to read and so little time to do it.
| Author | Gorz, Andre |
|---|---|
| Original Language | French |
| Translators | Nicolaus, Martin A.; Ortiz, Victoria |
| Publication | Boston: Beacon Press, 1967 |
| Copyright Date | 1964 |
| Number of Pages | 199 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Politics |
| When Read | February 1976 |
Gorz proposes a gradualist approach to revolution which aims at avoiding reformism and violence which are respectively opportunist and self-defeating. His program is workers' control - labor struggle to control not only wages but also investment priorities. The aim is to increase social consumption, decrease irrational production, strengthen depressed regions, and reorient culture. One must struggle for these intermediate objectives if one is to struggle at all. Workers must be given a more positive socialist program than just higher wages.
His analysis of consumerism, the subordination of consumption to the needs of capitalist production, are excellent. However, despite all protesting to the contrary, he gives no real solid evidence to show that control over investment can be won by workers within the context of capitalism.
An anti-Leninist book, Gorz wants to unite many strata in a broad alliance made possible by the advancement of limited demands. He is a supporter of the Italian Communist Party model.
Here in the United States Gorz' program would be pure fantasy. The union movement has been broken. Most workers don't really even identify with each other any more - at least not the way they used to do. Instead of progressing from negotiations over wages to negotiations over investment, American workers are now pretty much unable even to negotiate over wages. Real wages in the previously unionized sectors have fallen for the last 35+ years. I'm not sure we can even speak of a "strategy for labor" anymore. The unions that remain have to keep struggling, but it will be a long time, if ever, before they can get back even to where they were.
Europe is doing better, but the Italian Communist Party, once the largest in Western Europe and getting around 1/3 of the vote, split apart in 1991 when the USSR failed. The part that still calls itself the Communist Refoundation Party, never got more than 8.6% of the vote and got only 2.2% in 2013.
| Author | Southworth, John Van Duyn |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Twayne Publishers, 1968 |
| Number of Pages | 370 |
| Extras | illustrations |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | Naval |
| When Read | February 1976 |
A simple, chronological history without much useful analysis of technical, naval, social, or historical affairs.
[No separate comment]
Among the ancient Greeks, it was mostly free men who rowed the galleys and were armed to serve as fighters if and when that became necessary. Under the Romans, and most subsequent Mediterranean powers, rowers were slaves, unarmed and chained to their benches, doomed to drown if the ship sank. Seamen were treated pretty badly in the sailing and steam navies, but rowing in a galley was about as far down as a man could go, perhaps equivalent to slaving in a mine shaft. It's the kind of thing that doesn't bear thinking about.
I don't remember but I suspect that this was a "coffee table" book with interesting illustrations but not very useful text.
In the early period of writing book cards I was more concerned to write my reactions to a book than to really write what it was about. The notes were intended to enable me to better recommend or recommend against a book to a library patron, and as for what it was about, well, I never forgot a book that I read, did I?
| Author | Hendin, Herbert |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1975 |
| Number of Pages | 354 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Psychology |
| When Read | February 1976 |
Psychoanalytic case studies of Columbia University students, both patient and non-patient. Hendin mainly concentrates on dream analysis and comes to the conclusion that young people are severely insulated, seeking to substitute sensation for emotional involvement. Sexual relationships tend to be unloving and selfish, defense against pain and fragmentation of personality are paramount. Topics include love, drugs, and student politics.
Hendin's social explanation is absolutely inadequate. Parents of the '50s came to believe that marriage is the vehicle for fulfillment. There was a revolution of rising expectations for marriage resulting in frustration, resulting in failure to emotionally relate to children.
It is significant that Hendin did not study parents, was uninterested in observing students outside his office, said not a word about the sociology of marriage in previous generations, and was unable to point to deeper causes for the changes. This seems a clear case of dogmatism. Its only redeeming feature was the acuteness of H's individual analyses. The picture he presents is significant but should not be taken as a reliable reflection of the whole truth.
I'm not the guy to ask about psychology. It's a subject that has always seemed opaque to me. A good practitioner can make something sound very plausible and yet someone else can make an opposed view sound plausible. That this seems so may be as much a comment about me as it is about psychology. I'm not sure which of us is at fault.
Were the students of the 1970s different from those of the 1950s? What about the other factors that made them different besides the marriage experience of their parents (assuming that was different from the marriage experience of their parents' parents?) For example, what about their rising financial expectations? What about the changes in the American economy? What about the Vietnam War? And to what extent are the problems of young people similar in many ages and societies? And to what extent are the problems of the young people different from the problems of older people or still younger people, and how much are these differences due to differences in age rather than other things?
As I indicated in my comment, I thought Hendin was a perceptive psychoanalyst but I was not ready to accede to any of his conclusions.
| Author | Levison, Andrew |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, 1974 |
| Number of Pages | 319 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Politics |
| When Read | February 1976 |
This is an attempt to dispel popular mythology about the working class, especially that it is a minority and declining, that it receives good incomes, that it is racist and conservative, that its unions are conservative, and that the working class cannot be a leading force for change. His style is popular and includes many small vignettes of working class life.
Levison shows that 60% of Americans work at manual or menial jobs, their pay on the whole is less than government standards of adequacy. They are socially segregated from the professional and upper groups and yet their attitudes on race and politics are more progressive than for the supposed liberal constituency. He calls on liberals not to consign the workers to George Wallace by their smug elitism.
An easy to read, useful book. Levison is very careful to avoid all sectarianism or offenses to established worker groups.
Levison is still alive and actively writing books and articles about the working class and politics. I just read an article he wrote for the New York Times in 2016 about who the white working class was supporting for President. He relied heavily on actual primary voting statistics that year and was much less sanguine about who these people would support. They came out for Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire but for Trump in Virginia, a more representative state, and very heavily for Trump in Georgia.
Huge amounts of money are spent every year to convince working class voters, and especially white working class voters, that "big government" has betrayed them, that blacks and Latinos are getting all the benefit of government support, and that we must bring back jobs by defeating foreign competition - which we can do by unleashing private enterprise from the burdensome taxes, regulations, and environmental policies that hold them back.
Levison's book was about encouraging liberal intellectuals and working class people to work together. Published in 1976, it ran into the Reagan Democrat phenomenon in 1980. I think Levison may have been humbled by that, but at least he's still fighting.
More power to him.
| Author | Forester, C.S. |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1938 |
| Number of Pages | 294 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Naval; Napoleonic Wars; Hornblower |
| When Read | March 1976 |
This is the last volume of the original Captain Horatio Hornblower trilogy. Hornblower is taken from prison in Spain with his first mate and his servant. They are to be executed after a show trial in Paris. On the way they escape, find shelter with an aristocrat and his widowed daughter-in-law (whom H seduces) and then float downriver to the Atlantic. There they steal an ex-English armed cutter, free some military prisoners to man it, fight off pursuing French forces, and sail to England where H is knighted and wins the heart of Lady Barbara. His wife Maria had died in childbirth.
There is less action and more Hornblower introspection in this one. In the end H wonders whether his new found wealth, honor, and love is really what he wants, or did he pursue it only out of a narrow conception of what is valuable in life. This time the questions are real. Hornblower is not merely modest - he recognizes a genuine shallowness in himself. Forester is ultimately not able to accept the romantic myths he creates.
Interesting. Curious.
Forester writes better sailing action than most other writers, though there are a few other good ones besides him, but I don't think any of the competitors books have quite as interesting a character as Hornblower.
| Author | Callison, Brian |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Saturday Review Press, E.P. Dutton, 1976 |
| Number of Pages | 192 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | World War II |
| When Read | March 1976 |
A ridiculous war story using the Hollywoodish loveable rogues fighting for country and Nazi gold. No attempt was made to make the book work. All pose, no solidity.
I read it as a review book for the library.
I see that I used this book as a standard of comparison in a couple of my notes for books read over the next few years. It represented bad writing.
Checking Amazon, I see that the book is still available in a Kindle edition as well as via the usual sellers of used books. It has four reviews, three of which are five star and one three star by a reviewer who says the book was "fun and entertaining" but "both the style of writing and the cast of characters tend to wear thin in further adventures."
In general, I'm inclined to think that any amount of silliness is fine in fiction. As long as people aren't writing hate literature, child pornography, or other hurtful stuff, they are entitled to write what they like and readers are entitled to enjoy it. I have evidence that Callison made at least three people happy with this book. Since he followed it up with more books about Trapp, there must have been some thousands of additional happy readers.
| Author | Lefkowitz, David |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Spartan Books, 1969 |
| Number of Pages | 215 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Computer science |
| When Read | March 1976 |
A good introduction to the general methods of organization of several different generic types of on-line storage and retrieval systems. Topics include multilist (threaded or linked list), inverted list and cellular partition methods. Particularly good discussion of directory decoding using different types of trees and randomizers.
L's method of classifying different approaches helps keep it all clear.
This book was quite important to me. I had a class in introduction to computers and another class in PL/1 programming, both in library school, both paced pretty slowly to avoid leaving behind the other students who were not nearly as interested as I was. So it was from this book that I learned about basic data structures.
Sometime perhaps around 1980 Bill Ford, my boss at Online Computer Systems, was engaged to give two speeches at the same time, so he told me he wanted me to give one of them. It was on how videodiscs worked. I was totally ignorant of the subject and knew nothing of either the electronics or the math involved, but he gave me some articles to read and gave me a couple of simple lectures, and some material for slides, and then I was on my own.
I gave the speech to an audience of several hundred people. Afterward, some people came up to ask me questions and one had a name tag reading "David Lefkowitz". I think it may have said that he was a professor of engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. He complimented me on my speech and I in turn asked him if he was the author of File Structures for On-line Systems and he admitted that he was. I told him what a great book I thought it was and I think we both went away a little pleased by our encounter.
| Author | Hess, Hans |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Pantheon Books (Random House), 1974 |
| Number of Pages | 160 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Art |
| Keywords | Painting |
| When Read | March 1976 |
A discussion of the material and social roots of modern art. Hess, a Marxist British museum curator holds that after the middle ages the artist's role gradually became divorced from its formerly integrated position in society. The production of artifacts for religious or other use gave way to the development of art for art's sake, culminating around the beginning of the 20th century in the complete estrangement of the artist and his activity. He produced first, in the Renaissance, for the market and later, around the 20th century, for himself.
[No comment]
I'm sorry that I wrote so little about this book. I studied a fair amount of art history in college (minored in it) thought about it a lot, and even did some work on aesthetics in the Philosophy Department. So I don't know which, if any, of my current ideas came from this book by Hess and which came from elsewhere.
Painting for the market brought about many changes. Subjects of portraits were no longer bishops and princes depicted in palaces with symbols and robes of office. They were often merchants for whom a depiction of the subject's character was more important than the trappings conferred by birth and power. Later, in the 19th century particularly, artists like Van Gogh or the Impressionists were willing to leave art patrons behind and pursue their own visions of reality - something that collectors of paintings would only later came to appreciate.
I will forego producing any more grand pronouncements on all of this. They're easy to produce but hard to justify in the face of serious analysis. I'll just say that I find books on the history of art and literature very interesting.
| Author | Cortazar, Julio |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Spanish |
| Translators | Rabassa, Gregory |
| Publication | New York: Pantheon Books (Random House), 1966 |
| Copyright Date | 1963 |
| Number of Pages | 564 |
| Extras | 349 pages plus "expendable chapters" |
| Genres | Fiction; Experimental fiction |
| When Read | March 1976 |
A tour de force of absolutely brilliant writing, perhaps the best display of words I have ever read. Horacio Oliveira, crushed by the disappearance of his loved one, goes gradually downhill into a state bordering on insanity.
Cortazar's knowledge of literature is extraordinary. Many passages are filled with allusion and critical comment. The overall style makes heavy use of free association - on meaning, on the sound of words, on the trend of the story, and so on. C is a master at conveying the trend of thought, the tendency of a feeling. "He thought that, perhaps, you never know and anyway." is typical. Complex images and moods are maintained over long passages. There is much emphasis on the forms, trends and activities of thought rather than on its progress in relating facts or establishing conclusions. The comedy is of the highest - subtle, but sometimes almost as extraordinary as Lem's.
The substance does not match the brilliant form. The book seemed too purely subjective, too trapped in the failings (albeit engrossing ones) of the main character, too oblivious to the objective character of life and existence. The book is truly superb, but not quite great.
This was a difficult book. I chose to read it the easier way, which was to start at chapter 1 and continue chapter by chapter to the last chapter, leaving out all of the "expendable" chapters. The other way to read the book was to follow a printed reading order which would include all of the chapters, but not in a front to back order. There might be a chapter from the middle of the book, followed by one from the expendable collection, then two from early in the book, one from the end, two more from the expendable, one again from the middle, and so on. It looked like a daunting prospect if the purpose was to understand a story, though my friend John Blegen, a better man than I, chose to read it that way.
My write up preserves something from my reading experience but I know that I didn't do the book justice. To do that I would have had to read it at least once in each reading order, and because of the complexity of the language and the ideas, maybe more than once.
Cortazar, along with Vargas Llosa, Garcia Marquez, Carpentier, and others launched a new era of experimental fiction in Latin America. It didn't seem to spread to the English speaking world and I don't know if it persists in Latin America, but it was a very notable development in literature.
I should also note that Cortazar, Vargas Llosa, Garcia Marquez, and some other highly sophisticated Spanish language writers were translated into English by Gregory Rabassa, who died last year at age 94. The Wikipedia article about him says that Garcia Marquez waited three years to get One Hundred Years of Solitude translated because he wanted Rabassa to do the work and "He later declared Rabassa's translation to be superior to the Spanish original."
| Author | Malraux, Andre |
|---|---|
| Original Language | French |
| Translators | Chevalier, Haakon |
| Publication | New York: Harrison Smith and Robert Haas Inc., 1934 |
| Copyright Date | 1933 |
| Number of Pages | 360 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | China; Chinese Revolution |
| When Read | March 1976 |
This is a story of the 1927 communist uprising against the northern warlord government in Shanghai, and the subsequent suppression of communists by Chiang Kai Chek's victorious Kuomintang. Principal characters include Kyo, Katov, and Hemmelrich, communist leaders, Ch'en the terrorist, Ferral the leader of French capitalism in China, Clappique the dissolute intellectual bum, and old Gisors the opium addicted Chinese professor.
Malraux brings out well the severe political dilemma facing the communists - to try to maintain the alliance in the face of obvious betrayal, or to fight a hopeless battle. While the time for victory was not ripe, the sacrifices of the communists began the long struggle that would be required.
Malraux is sensitive to the inner lives conditioned by the outer lives of his people - the fatalism and liquidationism of the old intellectual, the death wish of the terrorist, the venality of the capitalists. His people are not Chinese. They are non-national revolutionaries. The life of the people is not portrayed. Nonetheless, this was a significant book.
When Chiang started the Northern Expedition in 1926 to conquer the warlords, his Nationalist Party was still allied with the Communist Party. However, when he reached Shanghai in 1927 he turned on the communists and murdered as many of them as his army could catch. Anyone with red stains on his neck from the cheaply died red scarves that they wore would be summarily executed. That was the backdrop for the events in this book.
I don't know to what extent Malraux's novel accurately portrayed what happened. My estimate at the time was that it was not a historically accurate book. However I gave him credit for being one of the westerners to take an early interest in events that would eventually, as John Reed said about the Bolshevik revolution, shake the world.
| Author | Achebe, Chinua |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: John Day, 1966 |
| Number of Pages | 167 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | Africa |
| When Read | March 1976 |
Odili, a well educated village school teacher, is patronized by Chief M.A. Nanga, former teacher of Odili. Nanga invites him to his home, treats him like a king, and then steals his girl. In revenge, Odili plots to steal Nanga's girl and depose him from office. Soon the serious issues become apparent and Odili learns to some degree to distinguish his private, petty affairs from the public good. He loses the fight but wins the girl.
Achebe's description of Nanga is the heart of the book. Nanga is ignorant (though minister of culture!), crude, outrageous, and yet intelligent, cunning, charming, a master politician. His constituents accept Nanga's corruption and love him for his down home local boy made good ways. He is totally unprincipled and unscrupulous. The people are too politically unsophisticated to do anything about it.
Achebe's position is perceptive - deeply so, but not yet radical.
I know that comparing African and American politics can lead to a lot of confusion, nevertheless, I'm tempted to think of Nanga in terms of what we in the U.S. call "identity" politics. In the U.S. we have men like Marion Barry, former mayor of Washington DC, who appealed to black voters in spite of his obvious incompetence and venality. And on the other side we have men like Donald Trump and, in an earlier period, George Wallace, who appealed to white voters who identify more strongly with the white race than with intelligence, honesty, or competence. The comparison is not too accurate. Barry and Wallace may share some of the aura of Nanga's local boy made good. Trump isn't like that but he does appeal strongly to identity politics.
Maybe one day there will be changes in the U.S. that result in higher education levels and lower levels of economic inequality. Maybe, if that happens, there will be a decline of identity politics. But at the moment, the prospects for that don't look too much stronger for the U.S. than for Nigeria.
| Author | Avnery, Uri |
|---|---|
| Publication | London: MacMillan Co., 1968 |
| Number of Pages | 215 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Politics |
| Keywords | Israel; Palestine |
| When Read | March 1976 |
Avnery is a sort of moderate socialist advocating creation of federated Jewish and Arab states in Palestine with full political rights and rights of repatriation of Arabs in both states.
He came to Israel as a young refugee of Nazism, joined Irgun, fought and was wounded in 1948, formed anti-Zionist groups since then, and is an MP in the Knesset.
There is some history here, especially some sense of the motivating spirit and political ignorance of early Zionism. Avnery attacks small-mindedness and gut Arab-fighter chauvinism of men like Ben Gurion and Dayan. However he considers "Hebrew nationalism" to be a legitimate progressive movement aiming at satisfying the national aspirations of the Jewish people in Israel. This nation does not exist throughout world Jewry but has been created in Israel.
Avnery is prominent but not influential. He may help rally dissent among Jews. A useful book for American Jews.
The problem of peace between Arabs and Jews in the middle east is so complicated, so freighted with deep emotion, so rooted in history and so confused by conflicting views of right and wrong, that it must be one of the most intractable problems in the world. My hat is off to men like Avnery who attempt to use reason and good will to bring the opponents together and settle the war between them.
As of this writing, I believe that Avnery, at age 93, is still alive, still writing, and still working for peace.
| Author | Zola, Emile |
|---|---|
| Original Language | French |
| Translators | Plarr, Victor |
| Publication | London: Elek Books, Ltd., 1957 |
| Copyright Date | 1880 |
| Number of Pages | 447 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | April 1976 |
A story of a courtesan who devours men and her circle of lovers, cohorts, scavengers, and hangers on. Nana is the foremost beauty of Paris, pursued by hundreds of men and many women. She runs through their fortunes and their emotions, "sucking them dry", to serve capricious whims. Finally she dies of smallpox after having gouged Steiner the Jewish banker, Count Muffat, Fanchery the writer, Phillips the captain and his baby brother George, and others.
Zola is a master at depicting the small minded, the hypocrite, and the glutton. His characters are driven by an excess of zeal into pursuing the opposite of their initial aims. Muffat, the pious family man, is driven to craving degradation. Nana takes thoughtlessly from everyone but makes idiotic, painful sacrifices for Fontan, the brute who misuses her and casts her out. She feels after such gluttony that self-sacrifice must be love. She is really an idiot. Nice touches include Mignon the man who manages his wife's affairs, Labordette who provides all needed services to prostitutes, Zoe the maid preparing to go into business for herself, and Satin with the sweet virginal face.
A rich picture of the disgusting waste in lust, greed, and adolescence to which the life blood of France was put. Nana dies at the beginning of the Franco-Prussian War, the end of her era?
This was a very powerful book. Nana is a figure of both scorn and some sympathy. I was repulsed by the way she ruined men for no reason other than whim, demanding very expensive gifts from them that meant nothing to her. It was the pleasure of dominating the men that she craved. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that she didn't really even see the men. It was the pleasure of seeing mankind debase itself before her, as if that elevated her. But when she contracts smallpox everything changes. From being a desirable beauty she turns into an ugly and repulsive outcast. No one will visit her. She dies in agony and despair.
This book extended my appreciation of Zola. He seemed to be able to slice off one component after another from French society, place it under a microscope, and expose the failures, the contradictions, the subversion of fine feelings, and the corruption that riddled it.
| Author | United States National Commission on Libraries and Information Science |
|---|---|
| Publication | Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975 |
| Number of Pages | 106 |
| Genres | Non-fiction |
| Keywords | Libraries |
| When Read | April 1976 |
At last, a national report recommending a national program and policy on library and information service. NCLIS recommends coordination and strengthening of all federal library services, development of national standards in all areas from bibliographic control to the telecommunications protocols to micrographic formats, stimulation of interlibrary cooperation, support of successful local programs, rational distribution of resources, a national preservation program, increased Library of Congress technical services, etc.
An excellent report offering a good basis for beginning a national program. No specifics are given - which is appropriate at this stage. Naturally, much is made of the role of the "private sector."
At the time this seemed like a very logical thing to do that no one would object to. Here in Maryland, the state had recently reorganized all of the old, individual public libraries into a collection of county wide libraries, all hooked together to enable a resident of any county to borrow books from any public library in the state, including, via teletype based interlibrary loan, books from the public colleges and universities. Why wouldn't every state do things like that and why wouldn't the federal government help organize it?
Today however, in the era of Trump and the Republican mantra of smaller government and fewer services, this kind of service is under attack. I don't know if librarians are still working on projects like this or, if they are, if they are getting any support from government.
| Author | Dickens, Charles |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Harper and Row, 1965 |
| Copyright Date | 1854 |
| Number of Pages | 284 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | April 1976 |
Stephen Blackpool, poor but honest and humble workman; Josiah Bounderby; humbug industrialist; Thomas Gradgrind, political economist and staunch support of hard fact and cold calculation; Tom Gradgrind, his son, the "whelp"; Louisa Gradgrind Bounderby, repressed young spirit; Sissy Jupe, Mrs. Sparsit, Tom Bitzer, and more.
A superb example of nineteenth century didactic, symbolic literature. Everything is overstated and yet so finely and sensitively drawn that it forms a successful self-supporting whole. The symbolism, satire, humor and sentimentality work in all but a few places. D's superb insight into the minds of his creations, his logical examination of the ideas presented, and his clear and straight dedication to social truth make fine tools of what, if used today, could appear as blunt instruments.
This book both displays the greatness of an earlier literature and shows the importance of the realist movement begun in France. D's method does not draw the reader into the work. It is a literature that stands apart from ordinary experience and expression. The reader peers at a stage - he hears a story that is a comment on life but not a "slice" of life.
I rate Dickens as great but not as great as Gogol in this genre.
I have made a strong distinction between English symbolical literature and French realism, but I'm not sure it's a fair one. Is it really "English literature" that I'm thinking of, or is it just Dickens? I tend to abstract and categorize what I read (and not just novels), and it's possible that I go too far and blur as much as I clarify. I'm not at all sure that Dickens, Thackeray, the Bronte sisters, Austen, Trollope, Eliot all fit usefully into any one mold.
Well, I won't worry about that unless and until I decide to write a history of English literature. In the meantime I'll just enjoy each writer for what he or she offers and take each one on his or her own terms.
In 1976 I rated Gogol above Dickens, but I hadn't yet read Great Expectations on the one hand, or Taras Bulba on the other.
| Author | Singer, Isaac Bashevis |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1961 |
| Copyright Date | 1958 |
| Number of Pages | 214 |
| Genres | Fiction; Short stories |
| When Read | April 1976 |
Short stories about the Jews of Poland, translated by various people. Singer is less sentimental than in A Day of Pleasure, but still shows his deep sympathy for ordinary folk. He is conscious of their shortcomings, the injuries and ignorance of their class, but he is not beguiled or mystified by intellectuality.
The lead story, the best in the collection, is about an old man who has studied philosophy, specifically Spinoza, all his life but has published nothing and lives in poverty over Market St. The meaning in his life is his sense of oneness with the universe - a finite bit of the absolute infinite. He ignores life, war, revolution on the street - and then falls in love with the working woman next door. An insightful commentary on intellectuality and its social position; good understanding of both the beauty and the irrelevance of Spinoza's metaphysics - at any rate of one tendency in Spinoza.
Other stories concern the Rabbi's orphaned daughter who believes herself beset by devils; Schloimele the intellectual hedonist and degenerate and his young wife Liese; old folks in the poorhouse reminiscing (the thief and the whore); "the man who came back", and others.
[No separate comment]
I, and everyone else too, consider Singer to be one of our finest short story writers. The title story The Spinoza of Market Street, is among his very fine ones. I can still picture the elderly philosopher sitting in his garret, thinking of his high intellectual aspirations and his obsession with the plain washerwoman, or whatever she was, and thinking, Oh mighty Spinoza, what a fool I am. (I don't remember the actual words, but I think that was the sentiment.)
This collection contained realistic stories without the dibbuks and omens that appear in some of his works. I like this kind best.
| Author | Braithwaite, E.R. |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: McGraw Hill, 1975 |
| Number of Pages | 190 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Politics |
| Keywords | South Africa; Apartheid |
| When Read | April 1976 |
The author of To Sir With Love, Reluctant Neighbors, Paid Servant, and other books traveled to South Africa to see for himself. A black man, B was raised in Guyana in South America, educated at Oxford, and became his country's ambassador to the U.N. Though sympathetic and articulate, he is not a socialist and restricted himself to liberal, anti-racist, anti-fascist criticism. He spent a probably inordinate amount of time talking about his own guilt or in justifying himself - much the way whites in the liberal civil rights movement sometimes did.
South Africa is even worse than I imagined. Blacks live absolutely at the whim of the authorities. A black running was stopped, beaten, and arrested because he might have been running away from some "crime". Depraved white torturers of a black child get suspended sentences. All land under blacks' houses is owned by whites or the government, they are subject to political evictions. Every black must have his pass book signed each month by any white man. Segregation in everything is absolute. Blacks cannot be in white areas after dark. Facilities for blacks stink. Repression of white sympathy is also severe. The ideology is pure Christian fundamentalist anti-communism. Censorship of sex and politics has reached ridiculous proportions.
Reading these notes from the era of apartheid in South Africa is a useful reminder of what things were like. I think it would have required a black person to make this report. At any rate, a black man would have been the object as well as the observer of this discrimination and oppression. I think that would give him a perspective that whites would not as easily achieve.
| Author | Lem, Stanislaw |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Polish |
| Translators | Kandel, Michael; Rose, Christine |
| Publication | New York: Seabury Press, 1973 |
| Copyright Date | 1971 |
| Number of Pages | 188 |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction |
| When Read | May 1976 |
Just prior to the great papyralysis, at the third pentagon buried in the Rocket Mountains, the following notes were written and preserved in the earthquake disaster that befell this last inbred headquarters of Kap Eh Tal.
The protagonist fights through layer after layer of deception, fabrication, obfuscation, dissimulation - searching for his true Mission. He is eventually presented with irrefutable proof of the meaninglessness of his endeavor, yet finally cannot rid himself of the suspicion that the proof may also be deception. And so he is devoured in the contradictions of a spy bureaucracy turned completely inward upon itself.
As in The Futurological Congress, the language is at once brilliantly clear and yet full of free association on semantic meanings and on sounds. Lem's character (without even a name) is superbly rational and yet neurotic. He doesn't shrink from even the most incredible suppositions but considers every possibility - a perfect observer - wholly caught in all the contradictions being described, and yet perfectly lucid about them.
Lem stands as the master of social, scientific and linguistic satire.
The "papyralsis" is a bacterial or viral epidemic that destroys all the paper in the world. It plays no role in the story. It starts some weeks after the memoirs containing the story are completed. It's just a coating of absurdity wrapped around an already absurd story, taking the reader into a land where nothing is as it seems. The memoirs are almost all the paper that we have left, preserved because they were shielded by the bathtub that survived the earthquake and the epidemic.
It is a Kafkaesque story. The main character believes he's a spy but doesn't know which side he's spying for, or exactly who the different sides are. But he can't reveal that he doesn't know. He has to pretend that he understands everything. He even has to pretend that he doesn't know that the fly that has landed in his coffee is actually a mechanical fly, not a real one.
It's a very sophisticated comedy and a satire on the spy thrillers that were popular reading at the time.
I should note that in this, as in The Futurological Congress, linguistic humor is a major part of the book. The translator of both books, Michael Kandel, must have had his work cut out for him making the books work in English.
| Author | Singer, Israel Joshua |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Yiddish |
| Translators | Samuel, Maurice |
| Publication | New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945 |
| Copyright Date | 1936 |
| Number of Pages | 643 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | May 1976 |
Simcha Meyer (Max) and Jacob Bunim (Yakob) Ashkenazi rise from petit bourgeois origins to become the biggest textile mill capitalists in Lodz, Poland, Max rises by great ability, hard work, and ruthlessness. Yakob by luck. After surmounting every storm they are finally destroyed by revolution and anti-semitic reaction.
This is a solid novel of the sweeping cities, generations, loves, revolutions, type. There are no literary fireworks whatever but the story is well told.
Singer's social realism is accurate and successful. The exploitation of all nationalities and the sponsoring of racism and nationalism by capital are amply illustrated. There are no illusions about any segment of the upper classes, and there is genuine sympathy for revolution.
Yet Singer does not come to any final political resolution. He is strong attracted to both socialism and Zionism and yet opposed to the nationalism of Zionism and the police tactics of Bolshevism. He is forced into being a historian and reporter without being able to be an agitator. But this is respectable. He tells all the truth he can perceive.
I.J. Singer is not to be confused with his brother, I.B. Singer. Both were wonderful writers.
| Author | MacLean, Alistair |
|---|---|
| Publication | Garden City: Doubleday and Co., 1956 |
| Copyright Date | 1955 |
| Number of Pages | 316 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Naval; World War II |
| When Read | May 1976 |
Good techno, war, sea, endurance, adventure story about a cruiser escorting a convoy to Murmansk. After tremendous battering by storms, cold, submarines, a cruiser, and aircraft, the Ulysses is finally sunk while defending the remnants of the convoy just minutes from the arrival of reinforcements. Details of the ship, the sea, and tactics seem highly authentic - better than most in this genre. The crew is treated heroically and sometimes cleverly, but without the depth and fullness of Bucheim in The Boat.
[No separate comment]
This was a riveting book, very difficult to put down. The book caused something of a sensation because, although it was sold as fiction, many people in Britain suspected that the premise of the book was true. MacLean suggested that one of the convoys over the North Cape and through the Arctic Sea to Russia was actually sent out as bait to lure the German battleship Tirpitz from its protected anchorage in Norway. In the story, the convoy is escorted by a relatively weak escort force led by HMS Ulysses while a strong force held back a couple of hundred miles to the west, waited to pounce on a German surface force that came out to destroy the convoy. It was therefore suggested that the many ships sunk by German aircraft and submarines were sacrificed. Many of them, and many of their crews, could have been protected if the powerful escort force had accompanied them to fight off the Germans. It was thought that MacLean's book was based on convoy PQ17, the most severely damaged of all the northern convoys, and that that convoy was used as bait. The Royal Navy denied the accusations.
One night on a cruise I met an elderly wheelchair bound man and his wife in the restaurant. He was very disheveled looking and would make what I took to be involuntary grunts once every minute or so. He turned out to be a retired professor of history at the Royal Navy college and asked me what I knew about the Russian convoys. I told him I had read HMS Ulysses and he praised it as a "powerful" book that described the reality of that part of the war.
| Author | Golding, William |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971 |
| Copyright Date | 1956 |
| Number of Pages | 178 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Ancient Egypt; Stone age; Rome |
| When Read | May 1976 |
The title story is about a King's family before the beginning of the empire in Egypt. The historical details are not bad (though there are mistakes) but the basic story is inadequate. The king, too old to hold up the sky anymore, drinks poison at the behest of the "head man", leader of the "clean men". One of his servants, refusing suicide and eternal life, overthrows the 12 year old latent homosexual prince to take his sister and the throne.
Clonk Clonk is a much better story of a 100,000 years back community. The women fish, gather, and drink beer while the men hunt. Lots of humor.
Envoy Extraordinary is about an inventor whose inventions, steamship, cannon, printing press, are rejected by a Roman emperor unwilling to upset the world for the sake of progress. Quite funny satire on both the Utopian scientist and the social paralysis of class society.
[No separate comment]
Besides reading this because I liked Golding's other books, I am also always attracted to historical fiction. Golding is one of the authors who makes a serious effort to look back into the past, though in this case there was a lot of humor that overrode any attempts at historicity.
There is a story from Roman times about an emperor causing an inventor of "flexible glass" (plastic?) to be strangled to death at the behest of the makers and sellers of metal and pottery cooking and storage vessels. I presume Golding knew about that.
| Author | Mankiewicz, Frank |
|---|---|
| Author | Jones, Kirby |
| Publication | Chicago: Playboy Press, 1975 |
| Number of Pages | 269 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | Cuba |
| When Read | May 1976 |
Extended interviews with Fidel by McGovern's former campaign writer and another independent journalist/film maker, plus their impressions of Cuba and two speeches by Fidel, on Chile and on women.
Castro comes across as marvelously intelligent, well informed, candid, and a man of truly high ideals and aspirations. He addresses questions boldly and directly, with tact, but little appearance of dissimulation. He supports every contention with mounds of statistics and offers very penetrating analysis of history and world affairs. Self-criticism crops up often.
Cuba appears to be the freest (in the western sense) of socialist countries. Yet it is progressive and its people committed to the revolution.
Interesting features were the new government structure with multi-candidate elections, Fidel's candid discussions of the USSR, the luxury subsidized worker hotels, old peasants still uncollectivized but with their children joining the revolution, the survival of sexism, the fine internationalist sentiments of the people.
Like other leftists I was perpetually in search of a model, a socialist country that I could hold up as an example of what I wanted socialism to look like. Nowadays I would have to include the Scandinavian countries in my list of candidates. They aren't socialist in the way that the USSR, China or Cuba were, but they aren't capitalist the way the U.S. is either.
| Author | Emecheta, Buchi |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: George Braziller, 1976 |
| Number of Pages | 168 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | Africa |
| When Read | May 1976 |
A thirteen year old Ibo girl leaves Lagos for her home town with her mother and brother after her father dies. Totally unfamiliar with traditional customs, she is thrown on the mercy of her uncle who keeps her only to get her bride price at her marriage. She falls in love with the local teacher, son of a son of a slave who, in spite of his relative prosperity, is an outcast.
One of her suitors kidnaps her to rape her and thus "spoil" her for any other man. She deceives him and runs off with her true love, but dies in childbirth, thus confirming the legend that says a woman whose bride price is not paid will die. In fact, she dies of her years of malnutrition and her hysterical fear of the magic and taboos invoked against her.
Emecheta reveals the barbarity and sexism of traditional African society in ways similar to, but even stronger than, Chinua Achebe's. She has great feeling for the inner life of her character and no illusions about her folk culture.
Emecheta, who died in January of this year in London at the age of 72, was herself a severely oppressed woman. Married at age 16, bearing five children in six years, being abused and beaten and having the first manuscript of this book burned by her husband, she left him at the age of 22.
I don't remember if I knew any of that when I read the novel but, in any case, I thought it was an authentic and true voice of the women of Africa.
| Author | Harris, John |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Mason/Charter, 1976 |
| Number of Pages | 272 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | World War II |
| When Read | May 1976 |
Fictional day by day documentary account of the Dunkirk evacuation of WWII, told mainly through British eyes but also a few French and German.
The entire novel consists of passages from 1/2 to 1-1/2 pages long, each shifting perspective to another character, each character returned to front stage in a rotation. There are a number of false deaths, surprise recognitions, and similar tricks, and straightforward decently handled emotions of fear, confusion, disgust, and heroism.
All in all a rather mediocre literary construction that tends to limp. However Harris' concern seems genuine enough to save the work and make it a fair piece with some feeling of speaking from the heart.
From May 1976 until today (May 31, 2017) I read six books by John Harris. There was one (Vardy) that I thought was worse than this, several that I thought were good and one (Light Cavalry Action) that I thought was very fine indeed. Harris was in some respects a hack writer but in others a very serious and committed one who pulled some fine writing out of his head.
A particularly good book about Dunkirk that I read just last December was Miracle of Dunkirk by Walter Lord.
| Author | Kuhn, Thomas S. |
|---|---|
| Publication | Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969 |
| Copyright Date | 1962 |
| Number of Pages | 172 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Philosophy |
| Keywords | Philosophy of science |
| When Read | June 1976 |
An extremely important revolutionary analysis of the development of science. Normal science can only advance under the aegis of a "paradigm", i.e., a commonly accepted set of defining problems, theories, practices, and rules which all scientists in a given field agree upon. Without a paradigm scientists constantly debate first principles, do metaphysics, etc., without progressing to deeper research. Deep research is impossible without the narrowing of focus that can only be achieved through a paradigm. If and when severe anomalies occur which it appears cannot be solved, crisis occurs leading to a pre-paradigm like state, a search for new first principles, and ultimately a revolution.
Kuhn strongly attacks "sense data" empiricists who imply that there is a raw data and an interpretation. He also attacks the verification/falsification theorists. Scientific laws compete with each other out of opposing paradigms which are not entirely commensurable - with different views of what constitutes verification, anomaly, etc.
Kuhn also criticizes the view that science is developing toward "truth". It does not develop "toward" anything but is pushed forward by the contradictions of its past. It is an evolution from, not to.
A most dialectical study of science.
This book had an enormous influence in the philosophy of science. I think terms like "paradigm shift" became popular because of this book.
If I remember correctly, the principal example of a paradigm shift cited by Kuhn was the Copernican theory that the earth goes around the sun rather than vice versa. Once that was accepted, a completely new set of astronomical observations were made with a completely new interpretation of their meanings. The indispensable groundwork was laid for Newton's theory of universal gravitation and his related theories. Some similarly significant paradigm shifts might include the germ theory of disease, the wave theory of light, the cellular theory of living organisms, the theory of atoms and molecules, the theory of evolution, the DNA theory of genetics. Each of these opened an enormous opportunity for fruitful research that could not have been done without the new paradigms.
I am surprised to find that I recorded this book in 1976. I would have thought that I read it while I was still in the University of Illinois Philosophy Department sometime up to 1973. Perhaps I read it then and wrote it up later, or perhaps I read it twice, or perhaps I only read parts of it as a student but read the whole thing after I became a librarian.
One of the complaints that I had about academic philosophy at the U of I and other American universities, a complaint that grew stronger as time passed, was that philosophy was too isolated, too self-referential, not involved enough in other disciplines. Kuhn was one of the scholars who was so involved. He studied math and physics, getting a PhD in physics from Harvard. He also studied history and held professorships in philosophy and history and taught courses in the history of science at prestigious universities. His book took account of large developments in the progress of science, not just of philosophical disputes between professors of philosophy.
I have to say that, while I read a great many books of philosophy, this was one of the ones that seemed most immediately convincing to me.
| Author | Bryan, John |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975 |
| Number of Pages | 341 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Politics |
| When Read | June 1976 |
A study of the Symbionese Liberation Army by the editor of The Phoenix, an underground San Francisco paper. Bryan is a semi-radical counter culture type with the maturity to oppose ultra leftism but with the political consciousness to understand the development of the SLA as a product of a rotten society, and the human understanding to appreciate the heroism of these latter day narodniks along with their romantic and dangerous foolishness.
Most of his direct information comes from Joe Remiro, a Vietnam vet accused of killing the Oakland school superintendent, and the soldier of the title.
The SLA can never be a vanguard of revolution, only a provocative terrorist group. Nevertheless I appreciate better now that at least some of its members deserve a certain respect along with condemnation of their tactics.
An interesting, insightful book that shines in comparison to the hysterical trash that is usually published about the SLA.
Leaving aside my own very leftist (as opposed to "ultra-leftist") tendencies of those days, it still seems reasonable to me to offer some understanding to the people who join organizations like the SLA. But only in the sense of understanding their motivations, not their actions. In the same sense I can offer some understanding of young people who want to join ISIS. But feeling alienated, longing for a higher purpose, and wanting to do something brave for one's ideals, doesn't justify murdering people. So, understanding - yes, sympathy - only in a limited sense, acceptance - no.
For anyone reading this who was not around at the time, the Symbionese Liberation Army was a small group (6 or 7 people if I remember correctly) that organized bank robberies and some murders in the early 1970s in the name of revolution in the United States. They became famous after kidnapping Patty Hearst, daughter of a publishing millionaire. Ms. Hearst then became a member of the group and participated in a bank robbery and became a huge topic of national interest.
| Author | Hellman, Lillian |
|---|---|
| Publication | Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1976 |
| Number of Pages | 155 |
| Extras | Introduction by Garry Wills |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Politics |
| Keywords | McCarthyism |
| When Read | June 1976 |
Hellman recounts the McCarthy period attacks on her and Dashiell Hammett. She stood up very bravely, sacrificing a wealthy career as a Hollywood screenwriter and director in order to avoid demonizing anyone at her HUAC interrogation. Hammet, an actual Party member, went to jail for some months and lost all his money too.
Hellman is no radical, merely a very decent person who has a high standard of personal right and wrong. She suffered deep psychological wounds as well as financial hardships for her scruples.
The scoundrels are not only the Nixons and McCarthys (and Trumans - she believes Truman launched the red hunt to destroy Wallace's presidential campaign) whom she regards as cynical opportunists who knew quite well that the whole thing was a farce, but also the cowardly intellectuals Clifford Odets, Elia Kazan, Sidney Hook, etc., who caved in to the red baiters to save their comfortable positions.
The introduction by Garry Wills is asinine - merely intended to defuse Hellman's strong judgments - i.e., don't print anything even half radical without a critical disclaimer.
Many of the books I was reading in the 1960's and 70's were by or about people who were victimized by the McCarthy crowd. When I read the books I could never help wondering how I would have responded to the persecution. Would I have stood up to it? What if family told me that they depended on me to make a living for them? What if friends told me they depended on me to not testify against them? Would I have made a plan and stuck to it or would I have gone into my interrogation and decided on the spur of the moment how to answer each question - seemingly a recipe for giving in?
Garry Wills is an interesting man with a distinguished career. Was my interpretation of his introduction accurate? Was his introduction read and approved by Hellman? I could write to him and ask but I don't think the answer will be important to me now. And if I did get an answer I think I would assume he told the truth but wonder if his memory were accurate or whether there were shades of meaning to it.
| Author | Szulc, Tad |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Viking Press, 1974 |
| Number of Pages | 180 |
| Genres | Non-fiction |
| Keywords | CIA |
| When Read | June 1976 |
Quickly done expose' of the Watergate burglar by a former New York Times staffer. Szulc has done fast, limited research (perhaps reading 3 or 4 books plus some of Hunt's novels and interviewing a handful of unidentified CIA and government contacts) and cranked out a book while the iron was hot.
Hunt is notable only for his novel writing. He was an extreme right wing social climbing spy living in the semi-reality of CIA and semi-fantasy of his thriller novels.
Interesting points include the suppression of anti-Batista Cubans in the CIA invasion army; Donald Nixon's gambling casino venture; and the stink of corruption, influence peddling, expense account padding, and blackmail that permeated the Nixon government. Also interesting was the mixture of liberal Eastern establishment and Hunt types in the CIA.
The impression from this book was that Nixon's CIA contained people who would hardly be called professional, but I don't remember how those people arrived in the CIA, or even whether Szulc knew how. Did it begin with Kennedy or Johnson? Was it always that way? Is it that way today? I'd like to believe, which is to say that I'd like it to be the case, that Watergate "plumbers" and Cointelpro tricksters have been purged from the CIA and FBI and that those agencies obey the law today, but unless someone can do a credible study of the agencies we have no way to find out.
The suppression of anti-Batista Cubans in the invasion army surely dates from the Kennedy administration. It surely indicates that the Cubans who were recruited to run the operation included the gangster types from the Batista administration (itself much in the pay of the Mafia), and that the American paymasters were okay with that. This kind of thinking goes back even further into the Eisenhower administration that recruited Iranian gangsters to help with the overthrow of the Shah, corrupt people in Indochina, and similar types in Central and South America. In other words, the agency, for all its "liberal Eastern establishment" people, always maintained an important component of cowboys and gangsters to do its dirty work.
Szulc's study was quick and dirty but it was still important for its exposure of information that is otherwise hidden.
| Author | Ott, Wolfgang |
|---|---|
| Original Language | German |
| Translators | Manheim, Ralph |
| Publication | New York: Pantheon Books, 1957 |
| Copyright Date | 1954 |
| Number of Pages | 432 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | World War II; Submarines |
| When Read | June 1976 |
WWII German navy story showing many influences of the inter-war writers such as Remarque and Hemingway. A group of young men is followed from the pre-war fishing boat days to despair and destruction in the U-boat war.
Much of the early emphasis is on drinking, brawling, and whoring. The last half is horrible scenes of U-boat combat and death with a single slim passage attacking Nazism. Ott emphasizes the random horror and absurd sacrifice of the war rather than any concrete political content.
Competently written - with reservations. Teichmann is unconvincing as a 17 year old. His attitudes are 30-40ish. Ott stays too close to the surface of the plot (or rather activity) with no deep emotional or political analyses.
I seem to recall that, when I read this, I wasn't sure who were the sharks and who the little fish. I guess that, until 1943, the sharks were the Germans. After that it was the Allies.
Ott, born in 1923, was himself a young submariner in the war.
| Author | Galbraith, John Kenneth |
|---|---|
| Publication | Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973 |
| Number of Pages | 143 |
| Extras | Photos by Marc Riboud |
| Extras | index |
| Genres | Non-fiction |
| Keywords | China |
| When Read | June 1976 |
A very unimpressive account of Galbraith's journey to China - probably written in two days immediately after his return. There are some witticisms, especially the kind of anti-professor jokes which professors use to simultaneously get the crowd to identify with them and to rise above the other professors.
Actual observations are not more sophisticated, even in economic matters, than from other travelers. G did not seem to have done much homework before the trip or after.
His analysis relied on the "Chinese genius for organization", work ethic, and discipline with hardly a word about class struggle or the dynamics of historical development.
If it's true that Galbraith tossed off this little book very quickly it may have been a mistake on my part be so harsh on it. It should probably have been read more as a travelogue by a well known scholar than a failed piece of attempted scholarship.
| Author | Mann, Thomas |
|---|---|
| Original Language | German |
| Translators | Lowe-Porter, H.T. |
| Publication | New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1938 |
| Copyright Date | 1936 |
| Number of Pages | 664 (2 volumes) |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Joseph |
| When Read | June 1976 |
No abstract
Mann is particularly good at interweaving the intellectual, spiritual, and psychological in such a way that what appear to be wholly different realms of explanation of human motivation and action turn out to be truly understandable only as inseparable components of the personality. It is not so much that one is primary (though the psychological seems most primitive) as that all three are aspects of one thing - thus the magnificent many faceted explanation of Joseph's temptation, abstention, and fall.
Again I am struck by the intimate understanding of the complex points of view of author, reader, character, original chronicler, the past culture of the characters, etc. M often pauses for discussion of complex problems in the presentation of the story which both help the reader appreciate the story and stand as small masterpieces by themselves.
Attention to detail in speech is astonishing. M is deliberate rather than clever. He delineates his characters with exquisite attention to the contents of their speeches - making each say things that clearly and remarkably reveal the differences between ancient consciousness and our own - but without much bothersome feeling of clever style.
No piece of writing that I have read stands higher than this series.
The four volumes of the Joseph story run together in my mind but I believe that this was the one in which Joseph, working as a slave on Potiphar's immense estate, attracts the attention of his master, is trusted by him, interprets Potiphar's dream, and becomes an important and powerful man in Egypt.
Sometimes a single paragraph, or a single sentence, or even an unspoken part of the story in the Bible becomes a chapter in Mann's books. One that blew me away was the first meeting of Joseph and Potiphar. Joseph is in a tree, pollinating the tree with pollen taken from other trees. Potiphar happens to walk by, sees him, calls to him, and asks what the young man is doing. Mann ruminates for several pages about the importance of this question. Joseph may never in his whole life be addressed by Potiphar again. This is his only chance to make a favorable impression. He understands the significance of the moment and recognizes that his answer may be a critical turning point affecting the rest of his life. He calls down his answer: "I am doing the work of the wind." That intrigued Potiphar and intrigued me. I have remembered it all these years.
I imagine Mann conceiving of each of these scenes. I imagine him thinking about one from each character's point of view, and from the point of the view of the novel before the scene and after, and how this scene can and will form yet another turning point in the story. I imagine that only after meditating on each of these perspectives does he bring them all together. Only then has he found the essence of what he must write. I imagine him taking his time to get it all right and in the clearest language he can muster.
I could well be wrong about all this. Maybe Mann wrote quickly in a "fictive dream", all unconscious of what motivated him to write what he wrote. But that's not how it appears to me. I tried to read the books with what I took to be the same thoughtfulness and care that I imagined Mann to have used in writing them.
| Author | Hammett, Dashiell |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Modern Library (Random House), 1934 |
| Copyright Date | 1929 |
| Number of Pages | 267 |
| Extras | New introduction by the author |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| When Read | June 1976 |
Sam Spade is, as Hammet says in his introduction, what no private eye was but which they all dreamed of being - tough, supremely competent and confident.
This is a classic whodunnit, criminal characterization, police expose', etc., written most effectively to maintain a careful tempo of action. A real plot reader's book in which other elements are blended just neatly and fully enough to support the story.
Only the second mystery I have finished.
Prior to my arrival as a librarian at Pratt Library I never read mystery stories. I read science fiction, historical fiction, adventure stories, and many regular novels, but I never had any interest in mysteries. Then at Pratt I discovered that mysteries were the staple of what most librarians read. After working among the other librarians for a couple of years I felt that I had to read some of these and find out what was so attractive about them. So I read some, including this classic.
Some years later, I bought my first car equipped with a cassette tape player and began borrowing audiobooks at the libraries. A high percentage of the available books were mysteries and so I increased my reading of them. Eventually I too became a reader of mysteries. They never became my favorite genre, but I've read a lot of them.
| Author | Graves, Robert |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Random House, 1938 |
| Number of Pages | 564 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Ancient world; Byzantine Empire |
| When Read | June 1976 |
Fictional biography of Belisarius, a most important general of the Byzantine Empire, born 500, died 564 AD, narrated by the eunuch slave Eugenius, servant of B's wife Antonina, daughter of the Hippodrome green faction chariot driver.
Belisarius is the paradigm of a noble man. Brave, intelligent, honest, capable, loyal, he does everything asked of him, performing feats of near impossibility. He reconquers Africa and Italy for the Empire and defends it against superior forces of Persians and Huns in the east. His valor is rewarded by betrayal, greed, insult, and false accusations from the Emperor and many below him. In the end he is dishonored and blinded, saved only by the gratitude of the mob.
A beautifully constructed tale that succeeds well both in telling a fine story of a fine person, and yet explains faithfully an important aspect of the politics of the age. It is clear that Belisarius' high-mindedness cannot produce any good in such a society. Battles, religious disputes, sports/religious/political factions, the blend of cultures, the blindness of statecraft at that time, are all knowledgeably reported.
Not as finely told as I Claudius.
When I read ancient histories or historical novels as a boy I was excited by the idea of a great, glorious, and civilizing empire. Rome and Byzantium developed architecture, engineering, commerce, roads, seafaring, literature, history, law, and much more, spreading these to the barbarian tribes of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. But as I got older and read more I learned about the hollow and corrupt parts of those empires and the hollow and corrupt men who seized power in them.
Robert Graves understood both the promise and the reality of the Roman and Byzantine worlds better than any other author of historical fiction that I have read. Although this was not his best historical novel, it was still better than almost anyone else's - at least that I have read.
| Author | Bowles, Samuel |
|---|---|
| Author | Gintis, Herbert |
| Publication | New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1976 |
| Number of Pages | 340 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Society |
| Keywords | Education |
| When Read | June 1976 |
A heavily documented study of schooling combining much empirical research on the class consequences of American education with lots of elementary Marxism. Bowles and Gintis explain basic economic and political theory at considerable length in order to be sure that the reader is equipped to appreciate the basic thesis of the book, namely that education can never be fully informed until capitalism is overthrown. Until then it will remain an instrument for preparing young people to integrate into, and reproduce, the conditions of capitalism. Working class youth will learn obedience, discipline, politeness. Middle class youth will absorb the inner direction and initiative needed for supervision and management.
No real discussion of teaching, grades, homework, unions, literacy, etc. No mention of the crisis of urban schools.
Still, a good book. I have taken notes and intend to write to the authors.
One of the positions that I and many of the other radical students at the University of Illinois took was that the University was exactly what these authors thought the public school system was - a place to train people to support the status quo. My well developed confirmation bias prepared me to say "Yes" to what I read in this book.
Reading my notes now I am inclined against what I wrote back then. I still think it's true that education is an instrument for preparing young people to integrate into, and reproduce the conditions of capitalism, but I'd be inclined to substitute the phrase "the working world" in place of the word "capitalism". I don't know that education would or should be different in a socialist country. It would still be necessary to teach basic literacy, math, science, and social skills. It would still be necessary to teach discipline, politeness, and even obedience to authority - though I would want the students to be conscious of their own rights as well as of their obligations to their employers.
I don't recall the arguments in this book. They may have been good ones. I do indeed believe that there are aspects of education that instill undesirable ideas and values in children, but there are also aspects of education that instill positive ideas, teaching the children things that their parents might be upset about but that the children should learn - like the theory of evolution and a hopefully less biased understanding of politics than their parents may have.
As with so much in society, I now think the solution is not to overthrow the existing systems, but to attack specific problems and make progress on them.
It's possible that I wrote to the authors but I don't remember if I did, or if they answered.
| Author | Kushchevsky, Ivan |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Russian |
| Translators | Costello, D.P.; Costello, B. |
| Publication | New York: St. Martin's Press, 1972 |
| Copyright Date | 1871 |
| Number of Pages | 369 |
| Extras | Forward and notes by the translators |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | Russia |
| When Read | July 1976 |
A superbly conceived and executed life story of an extremely successful young man from age twelve to perhaps his middle twenties. He is intelligent, intellectual, writes stories and articles, studies hard, never gives way to extremes of emotion, always takes the prudent path. Other characters are also beautifully drawn; Andrei Negorev - light hearted, good natured, extroverted, honorable deep down; Overin - absolutely devoted to theory whether religious, mathematical or revolutionary, caring nothing for himself; Sonya - the liberated woman, daughter of a thief; Anninka - repressed school girl turned voluptuary; Malinin - submissive, meek, studious; and others. All are magnificently characterized. There is no caricature.
The young people go through exposure to school, ideas, literature, liberalism, and police repression. Only Nikolai emerges totally untouched, a man fully capable of understanding everything but never inclined towards anything that can harm him in any way. His intellectual and emotional maturation is complete, and yet never modifies his selfish temperament.
An outstanding book, Gogolesque in its superb images and characterizations.
Checking online I see that this book is still available at Enoch Pratt Free Library. There's one copy in the Fiction Department of the Central Library, published in 1972. I think it is almost certainly the same copy that I read in 1976. It's probably in the closed stacks and was probably there in 1976 too. If so, no one would find it unless they first found it in the catalog and then requested it - unless, like me, they had a pass to get into the closed stacks. I wonder if anyone else read it since I did. It's one of the many buried treasures in the great libraries around the world.
There is a seller of used books that is offering a copy on Amazon and, surprisingly, there is even a review of it, giving it five stars. There's also a one star review but it's by a guy who is mad because he ordered the book and didn't receive it - of course blaming Amazon, which was just a middleman, and perverting the star rating system.
| Author | Villa, Pancho |
|---|---|
| Author | Guzman, Martin Luis |
| Original Language | Spanish |
| Translators | Taylor, Virginia H. |
| Publication | Austin Texas: University of Texas Press, 1970 |
| Copyright Date | 1965 |
| Number of Pages | 512 |
| Extras | photos |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Autobiography |
| Keywords | Mexico |
| When Read | July 1976 |
These memoirs were dictated to, and then edited by, Villa's secretary before Guzman got them. They show much revision and polishing. They begin with Villa's first killing at age 16 in 1894 of a landlord who molested or insulted his sister, and end midway in 1915. A second volume is, or was, to follow.
Despite many platitudes about the elevation of the poor and destruction of the rich, the main content of these memoirs is Villa's ego. He almost always acts in the most dictatorial fashion, executing enemies, apprpriating huge sums of money, acting the Don Juan, and responding to every real or imagined insult to his pride.
He seems to have been a very good, and certainly a successful, general, waging campaign after campaign. Yet other heroes such as Zapata and Madero are mentioned but never discussed. In fact, V never discusses anything but himself. He seems to have no concrete program or ideology.
As general of the Northern division, one of four divisions, V never hesitated to deal with foreign powers, order summary executions, defy orders, issue proclamations, confiscate or print money, or in other respects behave as a warlord. He was a man given to violent and neurotic anger and impulsiveness. He only read one book. He seemed to have much to contribute but was not suited to high leadership.
I didn't record what book Villa read.
Does progress in society depend on men like Villa? Or does he actually hold things up? Seeing what happened in Mexico, Russia, China, and many other places with violent revolutions certainly helps make the case for democracy. I don't know if democracy's track record is much better than revolution's track record, but there's certainly a lot fewer people killed.
But of course to say that democracy is a lot nicer than revolution doesn't meant that revolution is unjustified. What it means is that revolution may be unjustified in a democracy. Whether it was unjustified in Russia, China, or Mexico is an entirely different matter. China seems a particularly good example of a country where revolution was justified and Russia and Mexico probably were too in the specific situations in which their revolutions occurred.
| Author | Forester, C.S. |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1950 |
| Copyright Date | 1948 |
| Number of Pages | 310 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Naval; Napoleonic Wars |
| When Read | July 1976 |
Hornblower's early years, age 17-21(?) told in ten virtually self-contained chapters making what could almost be ten short stories.
The stories center on action from the burning of a French privateer to the cutting out of a corvette, to almost single handed capture of a Spanish galley, to a small boat rescue of shipwrecked, storm tossed, seamen.
Forester concentrates on plot and his marvelous knowledge of seamanship while showing us the development of the famous Hornblower character.
This was the sixth Hornblower book and the first one that went back in time to Hornblower's youth instead of forward to an advancing career. Forester had already published Lord Hornblower that took the story to the end of the Napoleonic Wars. So F had to either go back in time, as he did here, or go forward beyond the wars, as John Le Carre did when the Cold War ended.
One wonders with all series books that use the same characters and circumstances whether the author is reprising his financial success or performing a labor of love. I presume there's something of the former in the Hornblower series but it seems to me that there's a good amount of the latter too.
| Author | Wibberley, Leonard |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: William Morrow Co., 1976 |
| Number of Pages | 250 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | July 1976 |
A silly religious book masquerading as science fiction. An aging reporter is recruited by a little known millionaire to investigate a plot by the Chinese to kill off 3/4ths of the rest of the world at the behest of extra-terrestrial beings. The beings are insinuated to be devils from hell.
The only interesting way of reading the book is as an example of the lengths to which true religious believers are driven to give even faintly plausible interpretations of their views. Thus we have heaven and hell as space civilizations. But of course all this can only be insinuated since it's so patently ridiculous that the author cannot bring himself to say "yes, this is how it is." He tries to escape derision by leaving some slender rational out to the realist.
It seems surprising that such an accomplished comedy writer (The Mouse That Roared and other books) should be such a sap.
Reading my notes from 40 years ago I had to wonder if I totally misinterpreted the book. Maybe it was a satire. So I found a Kirkus review that concluded: "This novel ventures into the territory of C. S. Lewis' space trilogy--a ponderously foolhardy excursion." It looks like I got it right.
| Author | Gellner, Ernest |
|---|---|
| Publication | Hammondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1968 |
| Copyright Date | 1959 |
| Number of Pages | 299 |
| Extras | Introduction by Bertrand Russell |
| Extras | index |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Philosophy |
| When Read | July 1976 |
A polemical attack on "linguistic" philosophy, also called "ordinary language" philosophy. According to Gellner, this philosophy is characterized by the following beliefs, usually "insinuated": 1) All (or most) philosophical problems are founded on misuses of words. 2) Ordinary language already embodies all (or most) of the distinctions worth making. 3) All meaningful terms must have a contrast. 4) Philosophy is "second order", it can only discuss language, not the world. It is impotent.
Gellner criticizes some of the strengths of OL as well as weaknesses, e.g., its insistence on "third person", i.e., a social view of knowledge. But most of his criticism are to the point. OL is a reactionary philosophy that avoids science and social affairs, retreating into sterile and esoteric discussions of meanings of terms. By refusing to amend inconsistent, archaic, or confused uses of terms it fails to clarify and advance our perception of the world. By studying only words and not things, it trivializes what are genuine problems.
Gellner does some sociological analysis of the movement. He sees it as an attempt to save armchair philosophy from the twin horns of laboratory science and social commitment. Wittgenstein's original grounds are not even motivations any longer ("we cannot stand outside language".) It is the comfortableness of the method that makes it attractive.
See diary entries for this month.
Stiffening my bum leg I hauled my carcass up the stairs and found the volume of my diary with this year in it. I found about nine pages of hand-written commentary on this book! The issues I wrote about pertained to technical concepts in philosophy (as did Gellner's book) that are too complex and would require too much effort to reproduce here.
I am many years removed from my study of academic philosophy but I will try to summarize my recollection of what "linguistic", or "ordinary language" philosophy is about. In epistemology (theory of knowledge) we might try to answer questions like "What is truth?" and "What is meaning?" It is not unreasonable to begin an investigation of those questions by asking, "What do we mean when we use the word 'truth', or the word 'meaning'?" In some important approaches to the problem we never get beyond how the words are used because, it might be believed, that thinking and knowledge in general are inseparable from the language that is used to express them.
Other ways of thinking are possible. It may be argued that truth is truth and it's entirely independent of what words we use to talk about it. From one point of view the basis of truth is pragmatic - it's our ability to make predictions about things, a notion that comes from our advancing science. Another point of view emphasizes the role of logic.
Many thousands of words can be exchanged on these questions and I think it would be a great mistake to assume either that the questions are superficial or irrelevant. However the issues are far more complex than can be seriously discussed in these book notes.
| Author | Agee, Philip |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Stonehill Publishing Co., 1975 |
| Number of Pages | 640 |
| Extras | indexes |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | CIA |
| When Read | July 1976 |
A CIA agent from 1957 - 1968, Agee finally had his bellyful and tells everything in as faithful a reconstruction of actual events, real names, and actual personal feelings as he can remember. His disaffection begins with doubts about, and then disgust with, the governments of Latin American that he was working to "stabilize". It ends with an understanding of the real basis of American policy in supporting those governments. Important experiences were the invasion of the Dominican Republic, his first knowledge of torture, and the massacre of students in Mexico City.
The CIA is incredibly powerful, engaging in massive interference in Latin America. It routinely infiltrates and partially controls several important newspapers, the major police and military intelligence forces, important political parties, telephone and postal systems, labor unions, and major student organizations in every single country. Principal targets were local communist parties, agents and missions from socialist countries, and then anything not favoring American policy.
Levels of secrecy and technical capabilities are very high. There are codes within codes and bugs everywhere. The disorganized and corrupt societies of Latin America wee essentially helpless.
[No separate comment]
If I remember correctly, the turning point for Agee came when he was in a police or military intelligence office in Uruguay when he saw a tortured man dragged down the hall. It was a man that Agee himself had fingered for the authorities - not a criminal by any reasonable definition of the word, but a labor organizer. This was not what Agee had joined the CIA to do - to assist in capturing and torturing people trying to make a better life for the ordinary people of their countries.
Agee was hounded for the rest of his life, accused of all sorts of nefarious acts - many quite ridiculous, driven out of one country after another, continuously spied upon. His life had something in common with that of Wikileaks founder Julian Asange, and Edward Snowden, the man who released a trove of U.S. intelligence documents.
I think Agee was a man of principle who was attempting to do good and succeeding at it. I am inclined to think the same of Asange and Snowden as well.
| Author | Smith, Denis |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Saturday Review Press, 1972 |
| Number of Pages | 215 |
| Genres | Non-fiction |
| When Read | July 1976 |
Smith has worked as a fireman for eight years. He purposely transferred to South Bronx which has the highest number of calls of any station in the country. There are false alarms, trash fires, fires in all abandoned buildings, and calls made by people who don't know whether police or an ambulance will show but know that a fire truck will be there in two minutes after a call.
In addition to the false alarms and continuous arson, the worst thing is the insensibility to other humans so often found - random violence, ash cans pitched from roofs, senseless hostility from little kids, bricks thrown at the trucks, arson set just to steal a TV set, murder for nickels and dimes.
Smith is an important person - an ordinary firefighter with a tremendous need to understand and touch what is important in life. This is not an investigation by a reporter but a baring of the soul of a fine man - a real hero in his way.
This book was published in an era of intense alienation of the American urban black population. At least from Smith's portrayal of it, the South Bronx was something of a hell hole. Even the police tended to stay away from it and firemen under attack couldn't always get police help. I think Smith wanted to work there, not because he was an adrenaline junkie, but because he wanted to do something meaningful, to make a difference in people's lives. He didn't want to sit in the firehouse playing cards with his buddies. He wanted to put out fires and carry children out from burning buildings. And after so many years of it, he wanted other people to understand this intense life and urban tragedy that he experienced.
Looking him up today I see that Smith worked another ten years as a firefighter in New York, then created a magazine for firefighters, helped found or run a number of organizations, and published 15 more books! Not bad for a working class guy who made his career the hard way.
The book was very popular when it came out and was widely read in high schools around the country.
| Author | Weeks, John |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Mason Charter, 1975 |
| Number of Pages | 192 |
| Extras | index, diagrams, photos |
| Genres | Non-fiction |
| Keywords | Military |
| When Read | July 1976 |
[No abstract]
One of the better popular technical military books with what actually looks like accurate and reasonable information - a rarity for this type.
I didn't think it necessary to write an abstract for the book. The title explains it. As I recall, it was about the history and technology of infantry versus tank warfare, and how it has shifted back and forth as new anti-tank weapons and new armor weapons are developed.
There is a large market for books like this. I'm not the only kook who likes to read this stuff.
| Author | Gladkov, Fyodor Vasilievich |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Russian |
| Translators | Arthur, A.S.; Ashleigh, C. |
| Publication | New York: Frederick Ungar |
| Copyright Date | 1925 |
| Number of Pages | 311 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | Soviet Union |
| When Read | August 1976 |
Gleb Chumalov returns to his home city on the Black Sea after three years in the civil war to find his old workplace idle, his wife Dasha an emancipated women's leader, and his daughter Nurka wasting away in a children's home. As a Red Army regimental commissar he is given a responsible position as a leader of the cement factory and finally succeeds in getting it back in production.
A roughly written but superbly realistic work. Gladkov exposes the weakness, bureaucracy, and corruption in the Party with no romanticization of its outcome.
Especially interesting is the transformation of love and family relationships caused by revolution. Dasha leaves Gleb in spite of his fineness because she can never again become a housewife or be bound by the conventions of marriage. Badin, the Party secretary, is particularly difficult to handle as he is an opportunist who throws others to the wolves, a libertine and outright rapist, and yet the most capable of the officials.
And yet the masses advance. Gladkov has a strong sense of the scope of the transformation of society working itself out through the small scale and contradictory events on an individual level.
This book was the real thing, a novel of the reality of the immediate aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution, written before Stalin's takeover of the Party and the country, and before the imposition of Stalin's censorship. It was an enlightening book. I learned, for example, that the cement factory couldn't just be restarted. There had to be raw materials coming in and finished cement going out. For that to happen, the suppliers and the purchasers had to start up their own enterprises - enterprises for which the owners and many of the chief managers and engineers had all fled the country. And of course the suppliers and purchasers had their own suppliers and purchasers that may or may not have continued to exist at the end of the wars. Then the railroads had to be operating. For the railroads to run it was necessary to have operational telegraphs, operational coal mines, track gangs, factories for the manufacture and repair of engines and rolling stock, and so on. The entire economy had been driven into the ground by the war, the revolution, the exit of skilled professionals, the redrawing of borders, the civil war, and a whole new untrained, untested, and unprepared bureaucracy that had no idea what it was doing. It is amazing that the Soviet Union got off the ground at all.
Gladkov's novel portrayed all of that and also portrayed the disruption to society from schools to family institutions as millions of people re-evaluated their roles in society.
I thought it was a remarkable document describing a critical period in the history of Russia and explaining the truly disruptive consequences of political and social revolution. It was a novel, not a history, and it was written in didactic form to teach people what had to be done. Still, I think Gladkov made an honest effort to see and describe the crisis as it was.
| Author | Mann, Thomas |
|---|---|
| Original Language | German |
| Translators | Lowe-Porter, H.T. |
| Publication | New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1944 |
| Number of Pages | 608 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Joseph |
| When Read | August 1976 |
The final volume of the series. Mann concludes with the death of Jacob and the final reconciliation of the brothers. Although this does not seem quite so perfect a work as the others in pacing and rich detail, it is nonetheless full of the dep understanding of subtle emotion, the search for the highest in religion, and its parallel in the high development of the ego, the meaning of myth, the fine intelligence, and so on of the others. It successfully concludes this great project, begun so many years before in such different times.
This is a great masterpiece, one of the several most outstanding achievements in literature. Yet, like others of Mann's works, its exclusive concentration on individual consciousness and its extraordinary refinement leaves out of account certain human factors which should be represented in such a work.
Many interesting questions can be asked about the relationship of this work to the author's milieu.
Just as this was a great achievement for Mann, so too it's something of an achievement for the reader. I have read a number of multi-volume works - novels, histories, and biographies, where the books constitute a single whole rather than a series of separate stories, like Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe books or Simenon's Maigret books.
I knew this was going to be a special experience as soon as I finished the starting essay in volume 1 and felt the breeze of ancient times on my neck. From there on the story got deeper and richer. Mann took his time. He didn't cut anything short. It was as if the story dictated itself to him and he stayed with each scene until he understood it completely and had laid it out completely for the reader. There are many other great novels but this is clearly one of the greatest.
When I read about Mann it seems to me that I'm reading about Magic Mountain, Buddenbrooks, and perhaps Doctor Faustus. It is my impression that I don't see as much about the Joseph novels, even though, in total, they are twice as long as his second longest book. Is it because the investment is too great? Do people not read the Joseph novels for that reason? Is it because they are about ancient history? Or am I mistaken?
Looking at the count of reviews in Amazon I see 211 for The Magic Mountain, 124 for Buddenbrooks, and only 52 for a complete edition of all of the Joseph novels.
| Author | Vazov, Ivan |
|---|---|
| Editor | Zabriskie, Lilla Lyon |
| Original Language | bg |
| Translators | Alexieva, Marguerite; Atanassova, Theodora |
| Publication | New York: Twayne Publishers, 1971 |
| Copyright Date | 1889 |
| Number of Pages | 400 |
| Extras | glossary |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Bulgaria |
| When Read | August 1976 |
Partly based on Vazov's own experiences, this is an account of the April 1876 Bulgarian uprising against Turkish rule. The main character, Ivan Kralich, alias Boicho Ognyanov, alias "the Count", has escaped from political prison to devote his life to revolution. An "apostle" of revolt, he is a pure nationalist, rejecting Marxism as too far divorced from popular consciousness.
When the insurrection breaks out it is uncoordinated, not fully prepared, and unsupported from abroad. It's easily crushed by local Turkish militia/vigilantes. Ognyanov, after many adventures and a romance, is finally trapped in an old mill with his sweetheart/bride and best friend. They fight it out to the bitter end.
A melodramatic story with lots of romantic idealism. This first Bulgarian novel is nevertheless realistic about the failures of the revolt. There are also some fine little sketches including an extremely funny theater scene.
All things considered, a good book for its time.
I have little memory of this book and none pertaining to how I found it or why I chose to read it. It was probably related to my general interest in Russian and East European literature at that time. It's amazing that the public library in Baltimore had a copy.
| Author | Svirsky, Grigory |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Russian |
| Translators | Clough, Gordon |
| Publication | New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976 |
| Number of Pages | 305 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Autobiography |
| Keywords | Soviet Union; Jews |
| When Read | August 1976 |
Svirsky is a professional writer, war hero, and a Party member. His wife, an outstanding chemist, had her whole family shot by Ukrainian Nazi collaborators, and herself had great difficulty getting her degree or a job because of her Jewishness. S encountered some discrimination and bigotry from many quarters but was especially incensed by the deliberate failure of the Party to combat it. He wrote a number of articles but none were published, ever, anywhere. Finally he made a bold public attack on a leading editor of Friendship of the Peoples. Pressing the attack led to investigation of him for slander rather than the editor, in spite of iron clad proof of the truth of his charges. Eventually he was attacked for an anti-censorship speech, expelled from the Writers Union and the Party, and could get no more of his work published. For six years he endured poverty and humiliation and finally emigrated to Israel.
Svirsky leaves no doubt that great nation chauvinism of all sorts exists in the USSR and that the leadership condones it. The picture that emerges of the leadership is one of bureaucratic hacks and philistines. It is not unconvincing. S makes some mistakes but I am attracted to him as a genuine communist - a man who thinks, believes in equality, and fights for what is right. Not a Solzhenitsyn.
This was the period when all the stars aligned to enable Russian Jewish emigration to Israel. The Soviet government made antisemitic propaganda from the fact that Jews were emigrating to Israel rather than West Europe or the U.S., presented to the Russian people as Zionist action and set in the context of Soviet support for the Arab regimes - hence Jewish nationalism and anti-Soviet behavior. The Israelis were eager to get European Jews to offset the large numbers of Arab Jews (or Jewish Arabs) in the country. The U.S. pushed hard for Jewish emigration to Israel as a concession to a politically powerful "Israel lobby", which included fundamentalist Christian components as well as Jewish ones. And so guys like Svirsky, who would probably have preferred to stay in the USSR and worked as a communist intellectual, wound up being forced to make the only move they could make to preserve any kind of future for themselves and their families. Pushed, humiliated, stressed, facing family problems as one adult in the family might work and the other might not be able to, knowing nothing of the Hebrew language or the Jewish religion, they arrived in Israel after many trials and difficulties.
I've never really understood racism and antisemitism, especially among people who call themselves communists and who have achieved important positions in society. Is it pure opportunism - winning the support of ignoramuses by persecuting blacks or Jews? Is it simple bigotry, i.e., the leaders themselves are ignoramuses? Where is the benefit to themselves, much less to their countries?
I don't know what I was thinking about in my negative remark in 1976 about Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. As a leftist, I tended to see the failures of the USSR as departures from socialism and I criticized the USSR "from the left." However I think most of the people who grew up and were educated in the USSR, and especially those like Solzhenitsyn who were persecuted by the state, considered that the country was socialist, and that socialism was bad. I thought of such people as insufficiently analytical. They, of course, thought of people like me as foolishly ideological. My position today is undecided. I no longer condemn those who would criticize me "from the right." But neither have I given up all my dreams (they would say "illusions") of the possibilities of socialism. In any case, pragmatism, human rights, concern for all people, and democracy now seem to me to be requirements for any society and I would choose either a capitalist or a socialist government over one of the other persuasion that ran roughshod over those values, as the USSR did.
| Editor | Suvin, Darko |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Random House, 1970 |
| Number of Pages | 217 |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction |
| Keywords | Short stories |
| When Read | August 1976 |
Particularly good were Ilya Varshawsky's "Noneatrins" and other stories, Anatoly Dneprov's "Island of the Crabs", and of course, all the stories by the inimitable Stanislaw Lem.
Suvin claimed that a major feature distinguishing all socialist SF from American SF is its search for a better society, a "utopia", and a concern with philosophical problems in general. H.G. Wells and other early western writers' interest in invasion from space indicates the influence of imperialism and racism and fear of its being done to them. Naturally, there is also the assumption of the permanence of capitalist institutions and the heavy emphasis on individualism and the individual hero.
Suvin traces Russian Utopian literature at least back to Chernyshevsky's What is to be Done? - an extremely widely read book of a better society with people whose life activity and philosophy of personal liberation are integrated in a struggle for advancement. Stalin suppressed talk of the far future until Efremov's Andromeda broke open the doors again.
Interesting stories: "... Crabs" is about a metal consuming, self-reproducing crab brought to an island to evolve through survival of the fittest into a weapon of warfare. Vladimir Colin's "The Contact" is a classic they-found-us story - well done. Nikolay Toman's "A Debate on SF-Moscow 1965" is semi-fiction, semi-criticism. A few are poor. The most developed SF is in the USSR with about 50 writers. Next is Romania with 30, including 10 full time.
As I see it, based on the books I've read coming out of the USSR, the period after Stalin's death was a period of great turmoil in Russian and East European literature. Some writers kept on doing what they had been doing before, but many began to experiment. How much could they get away with? Should they keep the forms but experiment with content, or vice versa? If some criticisms of capitalism are thrown in, does that enable the author to get away with criticism of state bureaucracy?
It's easy to condemn these writers but I think that would be a big mistake. Here in the U.S. we criticize centrist politicians from the left and the right for failing to be pure, but many of them are trying hard to actually solve some problems in spite of the difficulties and criticisms. So we got Obamacare when what we wanted was Medicare for All - which we couldn't get.
The problem for the Soviet writers was more acute because failure didn't just result in an inability to sell many copies of a book. It might result in an inability to publish any books for the future, and to lose one's livelihood, if not worse. So, while they tried to skirt the edges of the censorship, they they made concessions that it is easy for us but hard for them to avoid. I think they were trying hard to be good writers - intelligent, articulate, and sensitive. They were trying hard to write stories with imagination and good ideas. They should be judged on what they achieved, not so much on what concessions they had to make.
| Author | Brennecke, Jochen |
|---|---|
| Original Language | German |
| Translators | Stevens, R.H. |
| Publication | London: Burke, 1958 |
| Copyright Date | 1956 |
| Number of Pages | 320 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | Naval; World War II; Submarines |
| When Read | August 1976 |
WWII U-boat history done by a Nazi with no misgivings about anything. Some interesting technical info and statistics. Lots of stories.
[No comment]
I was quite interested in the U-boat war and read a number of books from survivors on both sides. Some were straight accounts of what the authors went through and some were fictionalized. It was a critical part of the war. Winston Churchill said in his history that the only real fear he had of losing the war was in the Battle of the Atlantic. He didn't think the Germans could ever successfully invade Britain, but he thought they might starve them into making peace.
The German writers, as expected, were optimistic in the first years of the war but by mid-1943 they had lost and were demoralized by what often turned into suicide missions. Many of these men were ordinary patriots who volunteered to fight for their country. Some were Nazis who believed in the racial and national gobbledegook and Hitler's mission of conquest. I don't remember anything about Brenneke today but, obviously, when I read the book I placed him in the latter category.
I see some information about Brenneke on the Internet but it all appears to be in German and there is more than one Jochen Brenneke.
| Author | Kantor, MacKinlay |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: M. Evans and Co., 1975 |
| Number of Pages | 339 |
| Extras | bibliography |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | American Revolution |
| When Read | September 1976 |
An impressionistic piece written as a collection of streams of consciousness of contemporary figures, including Washington, von Steuben, Lafayette (all of whom are portrayed heroically) and a number of common soldiers.
The real emphasis is not on politics or history but on the ordinary consciousness of those times. Its great strength is its masterful use of archaic language and its portrayal of the horizons of consciousness of 18th century apprentices, farmers, wagon drivers, etc.
Not as good as his great masterpiece Andersonville, or even as rich as Spirit Lake, it is still an achievement.
These people, at least the common folk, have a convincing earthy attachment to family, mama, food, animals, and the Bible.
I don't know in what years I read Andersonville, about the Confederate prison in Georgia and Spirit Lake about an Indian raid in 1857 that massacred some settlers in a remote area of Iowa. I'm sure it was before I went to college. I remember a great deal of the Andersonville story, not much of the Iowa story, and very little of Valley Forge. Kantor was a man with a deep interest in the people who came before him and a great desire to get at the truth of their stories. Although he died in 1977 I see that many of his books are still in print (not just in Kindle) and still attracting readers. He was a favorite of mine in my teenage years.
| Editor | Asimov, Isaac |
|---|---|
| Publication | Garden City: Doubleday and Co., 1962 |
| Number of Pages | 313 |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction |
| Keywords | Short stories |
| When Read | September 1976 |
Hugo award winning novelettes and short stories from 1955-6.
The only really excellent one is Daniel Keyes' "Flowers for Algernon", a diary of a mental retard temporarily turned into a genius and then deteriorating again into a retard. It is overemotional but effective.
The others beautifully illustrate the thesis that science fiction written in the capitalist countries is profoundly limited by the limited consciousness in that society. Leinster's "Exploration Team" is about a rugged individualist with high powered rifle, trained eagle, and pet bears fighting off and killing hundreds of vicious carnivores on an alien planet. An SF white pioneer among the savages, he rejects the idea of repelling the beasts with a scent, refusing to be a "stinkbug". Simak's "The big front yard" is about a Yankee trader/tinker who makes his own deals with alien worlds and holds all contact from earth in his own hands. All of the others except possibly Poul Anderson's "The longest voyage" presume the unchanged continuance of capitalist society.
The writing quality is generally of adequate professional caliber. There is good attention to tempo, excitement, etc.
As soon as I read my pronouncement about the limited consciousness in capitalist society I thought, Oh my, what will someone reading this think of me now? But then I went on and read the brief synopsis of Leinster's "Exploration Team". It happens that I remember that story surprisingly well. It was written in a way that would attract Americans who aspire to be rugged individualist hunters in the wild west. The protagonist went into the wilds with his genetically modified eagle that scouted for him and his two genetically modified (or artificially bred) grizzly bears who were intelligent and under the protagonist's control, but were even more fierce and powerful than typical grizzly bears. They walked through the land easily disposing of 800 pound cat like predators either by bullet or by bear mauling. Leinster portrayed it as great fun.
The Simak story also shows a society, not a likely one I think, in which an individual entrepreneur has control of all communications and trade between earth and alien worlds. It's kind of like John D. Rockefeller sitting astride all of the oil transportation in the country and dictating terms.
Was my comment too far off?
"Flowers for Algernon" was a fine story. It was much talked about at the time and a movie was made from it in 1968, "Charly", starring Cliff Robertson. I and many others liked it.
| Author | Berger, John |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959 |
| Number of Pages | 238 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | September 1976 |
A novel by an English Marxist art critic in the form of a diary left behind by an exiled Hungarian artist and discovered and annotated by his critic friend.
Janos Lavin, 60 year old painter, is tortured by the contradiction between his desire for a quiet artist's life in London and his feelings of obligation to the revolution. Is his work significant? How? Regardless, he is driven to art.
Berger's comments on art give a highly authentic sounding and clear view of the work of the artist. Discussions of color, form, and art history abound and never fail to be interesting. B opposes formalism and demands that art be connected to social life. The artist who pursues only his interior feelings without connection to the world produces sterile art. At the same time, he opposes that state art in which the state lays down what is and is not acceptable - that can only lead to opportunism. The state should educate its artists to be socialist rather than prescribe the limits of their work. Change the man and see what he will create - He will paint the truth in a deeper way than can ever be prescribed.
A serious novel, not written in a popular style.
I read this book because it was considered serious and important by the book reviewers. It was not a subject that I normally read. It took more effort to get through it than most novels, but it was rewarding.
I have always tried to read a mix of popular and serious writing, political and non-political, highbrow and lowbrow (within reason, I don't like to drag my brows across the floor), difficult and easy. Sometimes I indulge escapist whimsies and sometimes I try to face difficult truths.
Remembering this book, I recently read the same author's G, an even more unusual book. Berger was one of the many writers who stretch the notions of fiction into directions that most writers do not see.
| Author | Deutscher, Isaac |
|---|---|
| Publication | London: Oxford University Press, 1954 |
| Number of Pages | 540 |
| Extras | index, bibliography |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Biography; History; Politics |
| Keywords | Soviet Union; Socialism |
| When Read | September 1976 |
An excellent political biography showing Trotsky as a brilliant and dynamic leader, but also revealing his faults. Trotsky excelled as an orator, journalist and pamphleteer, historian, and organizer. He was absolutely devoted to the revolution, giving nothing to himself. He was also a strong believer in preserving the achievements of bourgeois culture.
T led the Petrograd Soviet in 1905 and made a world famous name for himself then and after during his public trial. He became the revolution's most famous spokesman. Never a Bolshevik until 1917, T made many insulting and uncalled for attacks on Lenin as a splitter of the party. He did not participate seriously in clandestine work between '05 and '17. Yet he was the first to call for "permanent revolution", the immediate push to socialism in Russia.
Despite his humanitarianism he often approved dogmatic, rigid and, as war commissar, bloodthirsty acts. He was accustomed to considering himself right.
Deutscher's exposition is often very enlightening. He is clearly one of the best of the historians of the period.
This was volume one of a three volume work. It was my favorite political biography. I understand the word "Prophet" in the title to refer to Trotsky's ability as an ideologue, a man who promoted a strong political philosophy and had strongly argued views about all aspects of what the revolutionary movement should be doing. I understand the term "Armed" to refer to Trotsky's participation in the revolution of 1917 and its aftermath in the civil war. He was an effective leader of the Red Army defense of Petrograd and in other battles. When the Bolsheviks were quailing before the advance of a White army on Petrograd Trotsky said that to think that 15,000 soldiers could take a city of one million people is ridiculous. He proceeded to organize Red Guard militia to defend the city and repulse the attackers.
Lenin was the leader of the Bolshevik revolution but Trotsky was considered the number two man.
I'm glad that I worked at Pratt Library where they had, and still have, Deutscher's works. I don't see them in the catalog of the Baltimore County library.
| Author | Forester, C.S. |
|---|---|
| Publication | Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1952 |
| Number of Pages | 306 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Naval; Napoleonic Wars |
| When Read | September 1976 |
Told from the point of view of Lt. William Bush, these are Hornblower's exploits in the Renown. A mad captain, his own participation in near mutiny, promotion, and then extreme poverty during the brief peace, his life as a gambler, introduction to Maria, and of course the inimitable Forester technical sea adventure.
[No comment]
| Author | Zamyatin, Yevgeny |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Russian |
| Translators | Ginsberg, Mirra |
| Publication | New York: Viking Press, 1972 |
| Copyright Date | 1921 |
| Number of Pages | 204 |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction |
| When Read | September 1976 |
A thousand years after the great 200 year war between city and countryside, a mathematician and spaceship builder for the One State is introduced to doubts about the organization of society.
All people are now named only with numbers. The sin of the One State, governed by the Benefactor, is to eliminate all individual differences between people and remove all freedom and remove all freedom of choice - thus making life straightforwardly happy. The means are coercion, thought control propaganda, regimentation, and even brain surgery. D503 rebels but cannot free himself from the One State ideology. He is operated on and returned to the fold, but resistance has shaken the state.
Z believed that it is the role of the writer to criticize the failings of the state. A revolutionary against the czar, he continued to criticize the Bolshevik regime. This book was his response to war communism. It and other writings led in 1929 to his total exclusion from access to publishing. He was allowed to emigrate in 1931 and died in Paris, still considering himself a Soviet man.
This novel, very well written, was the basis for 1984. Zamyatin is more allusive, less realist, than Orwell.
This book is still in print and is available in several editions from Amazon, where it has hundreds of reviews. However, 1984 has nearly 20 times as many reviews. I expect it's still being assigned in many high school classes.
| Author | Fast, Howard |
|---|---|
| Publication | Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1948 |
| Number of Pages | 280 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Ancient world |
| When Read | September 1976 |
The story of the Maccabean revolt against Syrian Greek domination of Judea in the 2nd century BC, told by Simon ben Mattathias, brother of Judah and three other heroes. There is also a chapter written as a report from a Roman legate.
Predictable Fast. He emphasizes the progressive character of revolution and egalitarianism to teach the modern reader a lesson for today. He adds the usual "human interest" touches such as love and jealousy to appeal to the popular audience and add "life" to his characters.
Coming as it did in 1948, this can only be seen as a pro-Israel book designed to redress deleterious images of Jews in the American public.
As usual, Fast shows enough commitment to history and logic (though he bends history in romanticizing the movement's anti-rich and anti-slavery character) and enough genuine sympathy for his subjects to make this a worthwhile and successful book.
I don't know if anyone knows much about the Maccabean revolt. In the years since reading this I've read a lot more history and some historiography and have become more aware of the pitfalls in trying to determine what happened last week, much less 2,000+ years ago. Was the Maccabean revolt aimed at Seleucid Greek suppression of Judaism? And if so, was it against the Greeks per se or against the Jews who were adopting Greek religious customs, i.e., a kind of civil war between orthodox and reformist Jews. The terms "orthodox" and "reform" are freighted with modern meanings, but there may be some similarity in them to what was occurring in Palestine in those years.
Whatever is the case with the ancient history, I've always liked reading Howard Fast. His sympathies are always for the little guy, the underdog, the oppressed and enslaved. And although he took a didactic approach and was trying to influence people, he was still a pretty good writer. He both influenced and entertained me.
| Author | Le Guin, Ursula K. |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Garland, 1975 |
| Copyright Date | 1966 |
| Number of Pages | 126 |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction |
| When Read | September 1976 |
A young woman of a primitive tribe falls inlove with the leader of an earth colony on a planet in which the year lasts 60 earth years. Both groups are threatened by an even more primitive tribe but fail to unite in time. There is primitive distrust, war, some telepathy, and word play ("erken" for air car "thiatr" for theater.) The earth colony is 600 years old, 10 planet years, and has been out of touch for that long.
The story is decently written but trite. Aliens overcome prejudice on both sides and by deus ex machina "adaptation" they become genetically compatible. The earthlings have a law forbidding them to use technology superior to that of the natives, thus making the war dramatically undecided, yet they do have enough technical superiority to pull it off. The fine tolerance that grows between "farborns" (earthlings) and "Tevarans" does not extend to the "Goals", who are slaughtered freely.
This is early Le Guin but if it's representative of her work, and if this is the best of US SF, it's pretty poor. Its "sociology" is second rate Gothic.
I had heard a lot about Le Guin as a promising author of science fiction. Her books sold a lot and I decided to read this one because it was one of her better known books at the time. I was disappointed but have read others of her books since then that I liked better.
| Author | Bulgakov, Mikhail |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Russian |
| Translators | Glenny, Michael |
| Publication | New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967 |
| Copyright Date | 1965 |
| Number of Pages | 190 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | Soviet Union |
| When Read | September 1976 |
A brilliant novel satirizing the egomania of Stanislavski and others at the Moscow Art Theater (MAT). The hero, a proofreader for the Shipping Gazette, writes a novel that comes to the attention of the "Independent Theater" (standing in for MAT). He is recruited to write a play version which is recognized as the best modern play in Russia. However, due to jealousies and the exaggerated egos of the founders, all sorts of unreasonable demands about rewriting and rehearsing are made so that the play never reaches the stage. The author commits suicide. In a mock epilogue Bulgakov dissociates himself from the novel saying that he was given the manuscript by the author just prior to his suicide.
This satire does not have the fine beauty of White Guard. Its subject matter does not allow that. However it is brilliantly clear and funny. Like Zamyatin and Lem, B creates a marvelously ingenuous, thoughtful, and perceptive hero. The narrative and speech are disarmingly straightforward without wasted words, and yet, partly because of that, quite subtle.
Bulgakov appears to stand outside of politics here. All is personality. It is based on his own experience of the production of his play Day of the Turbins (based on his novel White Guard.)
The copyright date listed above is, I think, the date it was published in the USSR. I noted on my book card that the book was probably written some time in the period 1936-39. Bulgakov died in 1940.
| Author | Harris, Richard |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: W.W. Norton, 1970 |
| Number of Pages | 219 |
| Extras | index, photos |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Biography; Politics |
| When Read | September 1976 |
A very brief biography of Che with some detailed explanation and analysis of the Bolivian guerrilla operation. Che was a great revolutionary, absolutely committed to world revolution, absolutely selfless, as fully prepared as it was possible to be.
A principal cause of failure in Bolivia, according to Harris, was the betrayal of the pro-Moscow Bolivian party leaders. They not only failed to support the guerrillas in spite of their promises but actually obstructed militants who tried to support them and betrayed Che to the CIA. They were later denounced by Castro and expelled from the Party, but H believes they acted not only out of opportunism, but also out of orders from Moscow. He believes the Russians considered Che a crypto-Maoist whose activities would strengthen the Maoist influence and upset peaceful coexistence.
Che's forces won skirmish after skirmish but failed to attract popular support and were caught like the proverbial fish out of water. This was due to misperception of conditions in Bolivia, failure of the Party to organize support, and lack of time to fully prepare.
[No comment]
Among all of the Central and South American countries, Bolivia was chosen by the revolutionaries in Cuba as the country most likely to succeed in a communist guerrilla war. Its people were the poorest and probably most exploited (though every country was full of poor and exploited people.) Its countryside of mountains and forests was the best for a guerrilla army and the most difficult for a conventional army equipped with motor transport and aircraft. It already had a Communist Party and many dissatisfied people. And yet the revolution never got off the ground. If I remember correctly, Che had something like 19 people with him when he was caught and killed.
There have been movements that lasted longer than Che's failed movement in Bolivia. The Tupamaros in Uruguay, the FARC in Columbia, the Shining Path in Peru but, from the little that I know of them, my impression is that they all degenerated into terrorism, drug running, kidnapping, extortion and other behaviors that looked a lot like criminality and lost a lot of popular support.
I'm certainly no expert on any of this and don't understand everything that happened. However it's my impression that, when the state turns to organized violence against its own people, especially when it's supported by money, expertise and intelligence from the United States, the state has vastly more resources and capabilities than the revolutionaries can muster. The revolutionaries are soon driven into paths they never wanted to take just in order to survive. But it's not enough and they are eventually either destroyed or totally marginalized. I should note however that, although many of the Tupamaros were killed and many imprisoned, one of them eventually became President of Uruguay and some others are still alive and productive.
I admired Che and despised those who killed him, but I'm thankful that I live in a country where I can live in peace, prosperity and freedom. I don't think I'd be good at fighting in the mountains.
| Author | Manry, Robert |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Harper and Row, 1965 |
| Number of Pages | 254 |
| Extras | index, maps, diagrams, illustrations |
| Genres | Non-fiction |
| Keywords | Sailing |
| When Read | September 1976 |
Manry, a copy editor for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, crossed the Atlantic from West to East in a 13-1/2 foot sailboat - the smallest yet to have made that voyage. The wooden boat was his own home converted wooden dinghy, including many parts, sails, etc., of his own design.
Although M was not really a very experienced sailor, he was exceptionally well prepared in every respect. He had read all the accounts, planned well, brought spares of all necessities, made repairs at sea, navigated flawlessly, rode out storms well, etc. He put out a sea anchor and drifted at night while sleeping. His only serious mistake was the use of stay awake pills resulting in some serious hallucinatory episodes. He had no effective self-steering gear except for an ingenious but only briefly used twin genoa arrangement.
The list of fittings, gear, and supplies at the end would be invaluable to other sailors, as is the book in general
An attractive and modest person too.
I think that it was in this book where I read an incident of a solo sailor, Manry, high on benzedrine, stepped off his boat in mid-ocean expecting to set foot on an island. The cold ocean water woke him up fast and he was able to swim to and board his boat. He stopped taking stay-awake pills after that.
I must have read a half dozen books describing solo sea voyages in small and inexpensive boats. As with other aspects of my fantasy life, this was one that loomed large in imagination but small in practical planning. I did go so far as to build an 11 foot Mirror Dinghy and sail it with Marcia and various friends in the Chesapeake Bay. But I never got beyond that. Books have always been acceptable substitutes for real adventures for me.
Sitting in our Barclay Tower hotel room in Virginia Beach, looking at the Atlantic ocean from the seventh floor (room 728 to add a bit of detail), and thinking about Manry's voyage, I looked up this book note and read it. I see that I left something out of my account of stepping off the Tinkerbelle into the cold Atlantic. I believe that Manry had tied a rope to the stern of his boat and let it float in the water behind him as he sailed. It was a protection against being washed overboard in a storm. Waking up to a vision of his Tinkerbelle sailing on without him he was still close enough to the boat that he grabbed the rope and hauled himself up to the stern where he climbed aboard. I don't expect to ever sail off towards the horizon but, if I ever meet someone who is planning such a trip, I'll try to remember to tell him this story and encourage him to buy a rope.
Memory isn't the only tool available we have for recalling the past, whether of books we read or something else. I searched Google for Robert Manry and found important facts that I had forgotten. I remembered that he worked for the Cleveland Plain Dealer but did not remember that he was a copy editor. I re-learned that and also re-learned that he embarked from Falmouth, Massachusetts and arrived at Falmouth, England where he was surprised to meet his wife and a cheering crowd greeting his arrival.
Manry died young, at age 53, in 1971, but not before he and his wife bought a 27 foot sailboat and sailed from Cleveland through the Great Lakes, the Mississippi, the Gulf of Mexico, the Carribbean, up the Atlantic Coast, up the St. Lawrence Seaway, and back to Cleveland.
| Author | Traven, B. |
|---|---|
| Publication | Unrecorded, 1938 |
| Copyright Date | 1929 |
| Number of Pages | 228 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | Mexico |
| When Read | October 1976 |
A North American comes to an Indian settlement in tropical Mexico to hunt alligators. He stays for a dance, which never quite comes off. A little boy, wearing shoes brought by his step brother, slips off the logging company bridge and drowns. His absence is gradually discovered and finally, after much searching and reasoning and a little magic with a candle on a floating board, he is found and brought out. The rest of the story is the mourning and the funeral.
Traven eulogizes the unsullied humanity of the primitive people while attacking capitalism, North American imperialism, and the entire garbage collection of cultural artifacts imported from the U.S. He effectively exposes "TaintGonnaRainNoMo" and "YesWeHaveNoBananas", Bing Crosby, little sailor suits, pictures of Jesus, and all the other trash that consumes the paltry aspirations of these poverty stricken folk.
As the critics say, this is "hauntingly" beautiful writing, Utopian but straightforward, honest, and full of the deepest human sympathy.
I tried to learn more about B. Traven, called "Bashful Traven" in a New York Review of Books, or New York Times Book Review, I forget which. I could find hardly anything. However the library did have at least one other of his books and I read that, The Rebellion of the Hanged, in 1978. His strong anti-imperialist, pro-native peoples stance appealed to me.
| Author | Doyle, Arthur Conan |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: A.L Burt Co. |
| Copyright Date | 1887 |
| Number of Pages | 188 |
| Extras | Bound with other stories not named on the title page or in a table of contents. |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| Keywords | Sherlock Holmes |
| When Read | October 1976 |
This is the first Sherlock Holmes story.
Watson leaves the army after wounds and illness and comes to London where he shares an apartment with the eccentric Sherlock Holmes, the most scientific sleuth in history.
There is a murder. The detection proceeds quickly without revealing any of Holmes' clues. Then there is a long passage beginning 40 years before giving the history of the outrage leading up to the crime of revenge (it includes the wild west and Mormonism.) Then there is a final resolution explaining how the crime was committed and solved.
Well written popular fiction of its day. This is not the classic I expected, but then it was the first of the series.
I seem to recall that the book opens with Watson looking for an apartment and finding Holmes who has has found one to share. Watson is put off by Holmes' peculiarities and arrogance but, over time, comes to appreciate the great detective's sterling qualities.
I don't know exactly what it was that made Holmes and Watson such attractive characters and the stories so compelling. But I did like them very much, in spite of the flashback events in the wild west of the USA or in India, which I didn't care for. I was sorry that there were only four full length novels in the series.
| Author | Durden, Charles |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Viking Press, 1976 |
| Number of Pages | 287 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Vietnam War |
| When Read | October 1976 |
Hawkins, a freaked out grunt in Vietnam, goes through one absurdity after another, always attempting to hold himself aloof. In the end he too becomes a killer, but only of VC in spite of his supposed impartiality.
Effective in its impressions of the war, though there are also many clinkers like the three year old wired with explosives by the VC. At first one feels - yes, this is it, this tells the truth, but gradually the clinkers, the slightly phony battle scenes, the silly smuggling and whore sequence, and the "I didn't remember cause I was stoned", etc. take away the realism and leave us flat. There are many moments of inspired turns of phrase but the overwhelming use of cute simile shows Durden's immaturity as a writer.
In any case the book betrays itself at the end. Hawk has fought with the army to avoid becoming a killer but he loses. However D still wants him to smell like a rose, so he has him kill in fits of self-righteous insanity and return home insane by army standards but really right on cynic hip anti-hero to the reader. He's even macho. But even in this he kills only VC and not the Americans he swore to get. D has failed to understand the depth of his hero's failure. It is not just a response to pressure, but a kind of sellout by Hawk and Durden. Very disappointing.
I read this book again in 1986, not realizing that I had already read it ten years before. My reactions to it (q.v.) were more positive than in this first reading.
I imply here that some of the scenes were made up - especially the one about the three year old girl wired with explosives by the Viet Cong. Could such a thing have happened? I don't know. My inclination is against it. What do the VC say to the mother and father when they take the child? Could the VC have survived in the bush as well as they did if they were sending three year olds as suicide bombers?
I know from talking to returned soldiers that the young soldiers heard and often believed a lot of wild rumors. That's not surprising, especially when considering that they were surrounded by an alien culture speaking an alien language, and that they saw themselves as under deadly threat from those alien people. I should think that stories about three year old suicide bombers would be believed without evidence. Did Durden see something like this happen, or is it something he only heard about through the rumor mill? I'm inclined to believe the latter though I have to admit that I too have biases that could be blinding me to the truth.
| Author | Capote, Truman |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Random House, 1968 |
| Copyright Date | 1948 |
| Number of Pages | xviii + 231 |
| Extras | Introduction by the author |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | October 1976 |
A beautifully written story of loneliness, reaching out, and neurotic love. Joel Harrison Knox, age 13, has lost his mother and goes to live with his unknown father in an old rural southern house. He finds his father a total cripple being cared for by Amy, his wife, and her cousin Randolph. Other locals are Jesus and Zoo Fever, Little Sunshine, Idabel and Florabel, and others.
Each person is terribly lonely and craves the love of some unreachable person. There are no escapes for any of them.
The fineness of this book is in the fineness of its characters. These are sensitive, intelligent people - Randolph and Joel, loving, caring people like Zoo, independent upright people - Idabel. They have much to offer but are unable to offer it except to people who cannot accept it. Their half conscious torments and longings are exquisitely perfected and presented in streams of consciousness.
Written at age 23. Capote's 20 years later introduction is most interesting.
This was a complicated book for which my 3x5 inch write-up does scant justice. Each character is different, interesting, and complex and the interplay of the characters is the essence of the novel.
Capote was a powerful writer but with many emotional complications of his own. These complications played an important role in driving this very young man to produce such an unusual book.
| Author | Efremov, Ivan |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Russian |
| Translators | Hanna, George |
| Publication | Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1959 |
| Number of Pages | 373 |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction |
| When Read | October 1976 |
Science fiction in the grand scale - rarely attempted in the West. E depicts communist society several thousand years hence. Most people are now scientists or artists. Earth is in touch with a whole communications network of intelligent extra-terrestrial beings. People change jobs every few years to prevent boredom. Children are raised professionally. Personal possessions are considered to be encumbrances. Thousands volunteer for every dangerous experiment. All the characters are deeply involved in the perception of human history and human progress as a whole.
The plot involves a search for contacts with other civilizations and efforts to overcome the absolute speed limit E. It sticks to known or plausible science most rigorously and commendably.
The characters are terribly stylized and uninteresting but the book is exciting. It faces the philosophical and social questions of the future of man head on and attepts to answer them in a high, serious, and courageous way.
I don't know the history of SF in the Soviet Union. I read Zamyatin's We, the novel that was the inspiration for Orwell's 1984, but that was written before the Stalinist takeover of Soviet literature. I think this book was the earliest SF novel of the true Soviet era that I read. I found it by specifically looking for Soviet SF and found references to this as the book to read.
It was not like American SF of the period. It didn't have the tradition of publishing and sales that created an audience, and a set of expectations. I am no longer sure that the scale of this book was rarely attempted in the West, and I doubt if it had the mass audience appeal that the American writers had. In many ways it was a stilted book, written to conform to expectations by the censors rather than by the readers. However it was certainly interesting as a historical piece.
| Author | Zhukov, Georgi K. |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Russian |
| Translators | APN |
| Publication | New York: Delacorte Press, 1979 |
| Copyright Date | 1969 |
| Number of Pages | 703 |
| Extras | index, photos, maps |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Autobiography |
| Keywords | Soviet Union |
| When Read | November 1976 |
Zhukov was of poor peasant stock, apprenticed to a furrier he was drafted into the Czar's army in World War I. He joined the revolution in 1917 and the Party in 1919. He fought well in the Civil War and was sent to commanders school to become a cavalry officer. He rose very rapidly, commanded the Soviet army in the Khalkin Gol battle against Japan in Mongolia and became second in command under Stalin. He seemed particularly to believe in thorough preparation, reconnaissance and concentrating everyone on the main blow in offense. He always advocated avoiding dissipating forces in minor offensives or ill-prepared ones and made no fetish of the offensive.
He seems clearly to have respected Stalin and fully accepted his leadership. He thought Khrushchev a fool. He studied hard to master Marxist theory but was basically uninterested in politics. His absolute devotion to the Party and the communist movement rested on his experience as a youth and his perception of great things socialism had done for Russia and the terrible evil of socialism's enemies.
He is quite frank in his criticisms of others and of himself. A capable and powerful man.
This was a big book packed with information too detailed for me to remember, but I have read a considerable amount about the eastern front in World War II and even about the Khalkin Gol battle against Japan.
In one of the books I read the author gave his opinion that the German generals believed that war was an art and the Russian generals believed it was a science. Zhukov was very much the military scientist. His job was to bring sufficient force against the weakest place in the enemy formation. That meant calculating numbers and coordinating sufficient numbers of aircraft, tanks, guns, shells, men, trucks, railroad cars and so on to win the battle. Casualties were not irrelevant, but winning was everything. Zhukov and Stalin were of one mind on that.
After Stalin died Zhukov was dispatched to arrest Lavrenty Beria, the head of the NKVD, ending the reign of terror that he and Stalin had created.
| Author | Kent, Alexander |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1968 |
| Number of Pages | 328 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Naval; Napoleonic era |
| When Read | November 1976 |
Royal Navy Captain Richard Bolitho fights the French, the American rebels, a mutinous crew, and the cruelty of his first officer.
Sea opera with some, but not all, of the technical nautical competence of Forester. Bolitho is less interesting than Hornblower and the plot a bit mushier
Kent attempts to reject some of the cruelty and idiocy of naval life. He even has passages told from the point of view of crewmen. The press, the lash, the perpetual slavery, are all reproved but not really condemned.
Naturally, the result is total contradiction. K wants to condemn cruelty, etc. yet hold on to the honorability of killing for imperialism. K tries to plunge in and out of these issues leaving Bolitho intact.
The social problem of historical novels has always been a big one for me. When I read novels of Rome and encounter slaves, I can't help but think about the evils of slavery. Colonialism, imperialism, economic exploitation, serfdom, racism, sexism, castes and classes, all conjure up images of real suffering. Telling myself that it's not a problem that I have to worry about, telling myself that the people of the time accepted this, telling myself to just read the story and enjoy it, doesn't work for me. I won't say that the nastiness ruins the stories for me. I read a lot of historical fiction and I get something from each book. However the issues are always present to me and I can't help noticing the attitudes of those in command to those who must obey and judging accordingly.
Alexander Kent (Douglas Reeman) didn't set out to write a sociological tract. He set out to write a sea war sailing adventure. To his credit, he at least recognized and faced the issues that he encountered and he had trouble simply adopting the attitudes and beliefs of an 18th century English officer and gentleman. I don't condemn him for doing what he did.
| Author | Rae, Hugh C. |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: St. Martin's Press, 1976 |
| Number of Pages | 227 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| When Read | November 1976 |
A somewhat silly story of barbarian romance made "adult" by the interjection of gory violence.
Harkfast, chief Druid of the last of a dynasty of suppressed Pictish kings, takes an eleven year old survivor of a pirate massacre to raise up as the new king. They will attempt to reconquer and unite the scattered tribes left after the withdrawal of the Romans. The boy, Ruan, is trained in war for this task and must prove himself in single combat and then go in search of the great warmonger, etc., etc., etc.
The gory and imaginative combats grab attention but the total work is a failure. We see nothing of authentic barbarian life. There is no hint of a serious treatment or analysis of this quest. There is no end to the story. The author even seems to flirt with Druid mysticism, supernaturalism - or at least his clumsy fabrication of it.
I read these kinds of stories for their subject matter - like the sea adventures. But they're really pretty disappointing.
I remember that I picked this up off the new book shelf in the Fiction department and started reading the first page. It was a very violent but very compelling scene of a barbarian raid on a coastal village. I put the book under my arm and brought it home with others. However I was surprised in reading it that the intensity of the first chapter was never reprised in the rest of the book. By the end I suspected that the author had gotten someone to help with with the first chapter and then did the rest himself. I have no reason to believe that's true, but the change in the character of the writing was really pronounced.
| Author | Elon, Amos |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1971 |
| Number of Pages | 359 |
| Extras | bibliography, index |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History; Society |
| Keywords | Israel |
| When Read | November 1976 |
An impressive study of the consciousness and attitudes of the different generations of Israelis. Elon relies heavily on personal diaries, poems, novels, analysis of linguistic conventions, study of architecture, and other cultural products of the Israeli society and its European past. As a critic, he is insightful and worth reading.
He is most sensitive to contradictions in consciousness, idealism and blindness to injustice, opposition to antisemitism and Israeli chauvinism. He sees Israelis as sensitive to the injustices of Zionism (or at least as having a large contingent of sensitive people), but unable to face up to any compromise with their national aspirations. He sees the Arabs as not even sensitive to any injustices in their own position.
Elon is an anti-ideologist, considering Marxism to be speculative metaphysics. His views are left liberal reformist. Yet he has a well integrated rational / aesthetic / emotional style in spite of his rejection of an integrated world view. His method is most complementary to political - social - historical analysis.
I think what I was saying in that 40 year old comment was that Elon was not an ideologue but he was nevertheless very good at writing political, social, and historical analysis.
Israeli society has changed tremendously from the early years of young European idealists founding kibbutzim to work the land and share their labor. Elon, born in Vienna in 1926 was not part of the early years but he arrived in Palestine when many of the early pioneers were still alive and the institutions they created were still operating. Although he wrote this book after the Six Day War and the occupation of the West Bank, the transformations that led to Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, Ariel Sharon, and Benjamin Netanyahu had not yet come to fruition and the outcome wasn't yet clear. Elon could see the building contradictions but I think, in reading his book, I was still seeing something of the idealism that seems to have been lost in Israel today.
| Author | Sakharov, Andrei D. |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Russian |
| Translators | Daniels, Guy V. |
| Publication | New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975 |
| Number of Pages | xvi + 109 |
| Extras | Publisher's introduction |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Politics |
| Keywords | Soviet Union |
| When Read | November 1976 |
Sakharov is so brave to say what he says that I must respect his integrity and honest attempt to get at the truth. But his perceptions of the West are so incredibly naive and so dangerously false that they put his whole statement in doubt.
He begins with an expose of privilege, bureaucracy, callousness, conservatism, disregard for law, and criminal brutality in the Soviet government. It is clear that he speaks with first hand knowledge. However his suggestions are: 1) to institute Utopian liberalism - no restriction on individual activity, especially the right of free emigration, which he takes to be paramount; 2) decentralization of industry and a return to petty capitalism in light industry and services; and 3) an appeal to the West to unite against communist totalitarianism.
He criticizes "left liberal faddishness" and actually supports the U.S. aggression in Vietnam, Portugal, Africa, etc., which he calls defense of freedom. He advises the third world to stop all its carping about colonialism and neo-colonialism and get down to the real business of economic development.
Sakharov is like many others who, because of a sort of celebrity status, are able to attract attention to otherwise uninformed and unenlightening opinions. Still, his testimony on life in the USSR should not be ignored.
Sakharov was the Russian nuclear physicist often cited as the father of the Soviet atomic bomb. His prestige in both the USSR and the West was extraordinarily high and enabled him to get away with criticisms of the government that would have cost others their jobs or landed landed them in a psychiatric ward or in jail.
I was trying hard at this period of my life to work out better informed and more thought through ideas about capitalism and socialism. I read books by Russian and East European writers as well as American and West European ones. I read books that criticized my own point of view. I was attempting to overcome what we now call "confirmation bias" and develop objectivity. It wasn't easy to do then and isn't now. Objectivity is hard to achieve. Although Sakharov's IQ was through the roof, I don't think he achieved objectivity either. But, at least to the extent that I beg some indulgence for my anti-capitalist ideas, I have to accord the same indulgence to him for his anti-socialist ones.
I once heard someone from the German Democratic Republic talk about how, living in East Berlin, he was able to pick up West German radio and TV broadcasts. He listened to the commercials like the one for laundry soap that got clothes whiter than white and brighter than bright and became convinced that everything in the West was much better than what they had in the East. After the Berlin Wall came down and the country was re-united, he was disappointed to find that the laundry soap from the west was no better than what they had in the east.
I suspect that people like Sakharov fell for Western ideas and advertising jingles just as I and others like me were taken with the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and the Cuban new man. It's easy to see the failures of the society all around you but hard to see what's really going on in far away places that sound so idealistic.
| Author | Balzac, Honore de |
|---|---|
| Original Language | French |
| Translators | Marriage, Ellen |
| Publication | London: J.M. Dent and Sons, 1961 |
| Copyright Date | 1833 |
| Number of Pages | xxv + 290 |
| Extras | Introduction by Marcel Girard |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | November 1976 |
In his youth, M. Benassis behaves badly towards a young woman who loves him. When she, and later their son also, dies, he retires to a backward provincial valley to live out his life in service to others as a country doctor. There he makes tremendous improvements to the wealth as well as health of the valley by fostering enterprise. There also Lt. Colonel Genestas finds him at the beginning of the book to unravel the story.
Benassis is in most respects arch-reactionary. An open apologist for religion as opiate, he also argues for monarchism, aristocratic rule, sexism, etc. Like Dostoevsky his great ideal is innocence and purity, and like D, one feels that it is out of remorse for his own felt sins.
A downright silly book in its political philosophy. Balzac extols every form of crass opportunism and exploitation masquerading as Honor, Duty, Patriotism, and Christianity. Needless to say, it was very popular. His passages on class warfare and Napoleon in the chapter "Napoleon of the people" are models of reaction mixed with good observation of the French scene.
For all that he is a good writer, worth reading as a mirror of his times. I will read more of him.
When I read this book I was under the impression that it was a very early book, the first novel, or one of the first novels, that he published. But that's apparently wrong. It was written the same year as Eugenie Grandet and just two years before Pere Goriot, both much better books in my estimation.
Perhaps I misinterpreted the book. The Wikipedia article says, "... the reader has to avoid confusing Balzac's political principles with the convictions of Dr Benassis on which critics have often given contrary opinions." Looking back on it, that makes sense. I walked downstairs at Pratt Central Central Library to the fiction department, browsed through the stacks, picked books, and read them. I did relatively little research about the authors.
| Author | Wilder, Thornton |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Harper and Brothers, 1948 |
| Number of Pages | 246 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Rome |
| When Read | November 1976 |
In this novel a modern historian arranges and edits a collection of letters of important Romans written during or about the last eight months of Julius Caesar's life. Diaries, signed and anonymous letters, histories, police copies of stolen notes, etc., provide the documents. Much effort is made to incorporate the flavor of Roman gossip as well as to delineate characters by this technique.
The subject is love, or especially - the perversion of love in the pursuit of wealth and power. Caesar is portrayed sympathetically as a candid, self-conscious, not at all tyrannical person, betrayed by women and men, and aiming at efficient administration.
The book is well written. Much of the style, if not strikingly authentic, is at least not unconvincing. The documentary technique works well and is well developed. The characters of Caesar, Cleopatra, Pompeia, and a few others are well drawn.
The limitation however is that, while the style is effective, the content leans too much on pure personalities. The struggles, the dynamics of the age, are not at all well represented. Robert Graves' work is much better.
I remember Wilder as one of the most highly regarded American playwrights. I read him both because he was known as a good writer and also because of his historical interests, more common, I think, in the 1940s than they are among writers today.
| Author | Feierberg, Mordecai Zeev |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Hebrew |
| Translators | Eisenstein, Ira |
| Publication | London: Abelard-Schuman, 1959 |
| Copyright Date | 1898 |
| Number of Pages | 136 |
| Extras | Forward about the author by Solomon Goldman |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | Jews |
| When Read | December 1976 |
Nachman the madman, son of a rabbi, is brought up to be a warrior for Jewish orthodoxy. He studies Talmud and theology and accepts total alienation from the actual world, believing instead in the world of spirits, devils, repentance, and prayer for the coming of the messiah.
Each contact with the world, each spurt of growth, heightens his contradictions until, in a series of steps culminating in his marriage to a wealthy sophisticate, he breaks with religion. However he is tormented by his failure to carry on his father's mission and by the unrelieved condition of the Jewish mass from which he has escaped.
After two years of marriage he abandons his wife and returns to his poor village to find the resolution of his dilemma. He studies the literature of Judaism and of agnosticism and atheism. He becomes increasingly absorbed and sick. Finally he discovers Zionism and sees it as both the hope of the Jewish masses and the salvation and rejuvenation of his moribund heritage. The fulfillment of his father's mission.
This unpolished work by a young Jew soon to die is an authentic voice of 19th century Jewry in crisis. A remarkable book.
Napoleon transformed the situation of the Jews in Western and Central Europe and created the initial conditions for the subsequent "Haskalah" or enlightenment. Feierberg was part of that movement and this novel was part of the effort to work out the new dilemmas and opportunities facing the Jewish communities.
Unfortunately, Feierberg was not a healthy man. He died the year after this novel came out, at age 25.
| Author | Tolstoy, Leo |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Russian |
| Translators | Garnett, Constance |
| Publication | New York: Grolier Inc. |
| Copyright Date | 1877 |
| Number of Pages | 1329 |
| Extras | Introduction by Ernest J. Simmons |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | Russia |
| When Read | December 1976 |
A great masterpiece of psychological detail. Anna Karenina and Count Alexey Vronsky, Konstantin Levin and Kitty Schtcherbatov, Stepan Arkadyevitch Oblonsky and Darya Alexandrovna Oblonsky - and Karenin, Seryozha, et. al. are all magnificently detailed. Every gesture, act, thought and impulse are in keeping in complex and extraordinarily three dimensional characters.
The illicit love affair of Anna and Vronsky progresses toward its doom in neurotic jealousy, despondency, and suicide in spite of every effort by the two. The other love of Levin and Kitty develops positively because of their efforts applied within the realm of moral and social possibility. Both are fascinating stories.
The philosophy at the end fails, but not through lack of seriousness. Levin comes to accept religion as a primitive, unjustifiable, but self evident force for good. No intellectual philosophy can ever provide any alternative groundwork for the moral, worthwhile life. All philosophy is finally artificial and irrelevant.
One cannot but believe that the irresolvable contradictions of the Russian nobility cannot be rationalized - and this is Tolstoy's prime motive in turning to the irrational.
For some books, the best time to write about them is immediately after finishing. For others it takes time for one's ideas to gel. And it's not just the book that determines when to write. It's also what else one is reading and what else is going on in the reader's life.
Reflecting back over the years, and thinking about how I have thought about this book since reading it, and I've thought about it a lot, I would like to say that what struck me most about the book was the inevitability of the tragedy of Anna and Vronsky's love affair. As the story progressed I would keep thinking of solutions to their problem, but they tried all of the solutions. They didn't work, not because they weren't tried or because they weren't tried properly, but because the extra-marital affair of the lovers was beyond the bounds of acceptability in society. It simply could not succeed. The conventions were too powerful to be overturned.
Tolstoy's understanding of both the lovers and the society was exceptional. I never felt that he failed to understand something that might have saved them. I never felt that he portrayed his characters as too limited to be able to overcome their dilemma. I never felt that he hid any facts either from the characters or from the reader. The story was open, honest, and complete, from beginning to end. When Anna stepped off the train platform at the end of her journey, mirroring the opening scene of the novel, I accepted what happened and gave in to the tragedy. It was an inevitable tragedy ordained by the rules of society and there was no escape.
I consider Anna Karenina to be one of the greatest novels ever written. It is outstanding not just for the power of the story, or the reality of the characters, or the complexity of the author's understanding, but also for the coordinated perfection of all of its elements. Sometimes a great writer can produce powerful ideas that sweep the reader away, and Tolstoy is able to do that. But he also packages everything together in a logical whole in which all of the elements work together.
While I still have mind and memory, I will always remember this book.
| Author | Rojas Sandford, Robinson |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Spanish |
| Translators | Conrad, Andree |
| Publication | New York: Harper and Row, 1976 |
| Number of Pages | 276 |
| Extras | notes, index |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | Chile |
| When Read | December 1976 |
A well documented inside account of the development of the coup. There is much material culled from messages and reports of the fascist officers and some from American sources, but not as much.
Rojas accuses Allende of continuous capitulation in the face of mounting criminal acts leading up to the coup. Maybe his is hindsight. Maybe Allende and his CP backers did what really appeared smart. But now there can be no more excuses.
This is a powerful book about a heart rending subject. I cried at the last chapter on the atrocities of fascism.
Everyone had high hopes when Allende won the election in 1970. Here, at last, was a democratically elected socialist government operating in a country with an educated population and democratic institutions. Did it ever have a chance? Could it have had a chance if the United States had left it alone? We have no way of really knowing and, at the time, I don't think there was any chance that the United States would have left it alone. After World War II, the U.S. committed itself to overthrowing any socialist government that it could, anywhere in the world. Perhaps now that the Cold War is over, America's commitment to that policy is changing, but I'm not convinced that it has.
A lot of fine people were tortured and murdered after the coup and we in the U.S. have much blood on our hands.
When I read the book I was convinced by the author's judgment that Allende was too tolerant of anti-democratic and authoritarian behaviors by the military and their civilian supporters. Had he cracked down on them, especially after their assassination of General Rene Schneider, the head of the Chilean army and a supporter of democracy, he might have beaten them while they were still weak and disorganized.
My own inclinations would have been much like Allende's. I'm not the kind of man who would want to start shooting or even arresting my political opponents. Allende was attempting to develop democratic socialism, not Bolshevik style revolution. He was aiming at a democratic country, not a dictatorship of the proletariat. But events have shown that his enemies had no such democratic scruples, something he should have known, and that they were too strong, something that he might also have known.
Was there ever a chance? If he had arrested the generals and replaced them with men who would support the government, could the coup have been avoided? If the coup had been avoided would there have been other actions launched against the government - diplomatic, economic, subversive, or military - that would have brought him down anyway? We don't know. One thing we can say for the revolutionaries in Russia, China, Vietnam, and Cuba was that they knew what they were up against and they were in it to win it. For Lenin, Mao, Ho, and Castro, they were ready to die fighting for their revolution. Paradoxically, all of them lived but Allende died fighting for his democratic government. Perhaps it was because the successful revolutionaries knew what they were in for from the beginning and had no illusions. Perhaps Allende had illusions and was killed because he believed in them..
| Author | Forester, C.S. |
|---|---|
| Publication | Boston: Little Brown and Co., 1962 |
| Number of Pages | 344 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Naval; Napoleonic Wars |
| When Read | December 1976 |
Episodes from the blockade of Brest begun with the renewal of war in 1803. Hornblower has just married Maria when he is assigned as commander of the 24 gun sloop Hotspur. He is sent to Brest to be the advance ship of the inshore squadron of the Channel fleet.
The action begins with a magnificent duel of seamanship in a westerly gale off Brest. Hostpur is pursued upwind by the 38 gun Loire. F writes every detail of ship behavior in gales with superb analysis of the sailing qualities of the two different designs. This rates with the rescue of the Pluto in Ship of the Line as superior ship adventure.
There is also a raid on a telegraph tower, thwarting of a night escape in a snowstorm, the interception of a Spanish treasure fleet, lots of generally high quality technical stuff. Good Hornblower personal development as well.
A good one.
More than 40 years later I can still recall that scene in which the Loire comes out of harbor, bearing down on the Hotspur. A heavier ship, it has better windward performance than the Hotspur in the high winds. After a several hour chase it becomes clear that the Hotspur will be caught. Hornblower plans his move carefully, tacking one way, then another, training the Loire to follow his every move, and then feints a tack, feints back, and then continues the tack, catching the Loire "in irons" and unable to block the Hotspur's quick run down alongside, firing a broadside, and getting downwind. Hornblower doesn't run any further. He knows that, in the lighter ship, he can escape downwind any time he wishes. The Loire has no way of catching him.
It takes a lot of deep understanding of sailing in a 19th century ship to write a scene like that, and some literary talent too.
Note: the "telegraph" in that period would have been the French system of signal towers where flags and lights were used to relay a message to the next tower down the line. In favorable conditions, messages were transmitted from Paris to Lille, 143 miles away, in 32 minutes.
| Author | Finley, M.I. |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Viking Press, 1965 |
| Copyright Date | 1954 |
| Number of Pages | 176 |
| Extras | Revised edition, bibliography, index |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | Ancient world |
| When Read | December 1976 |
A short and popular but sophisticated explanation of the background to the Odyssey and Iliad.
The two poems were orally composed in the form we have them by different authors in the eighth century B.C. They were first written down in the late sixth century B.C. They reflect the views of eighth century bards looking back to their own past.
The principal social unit in the Homeric poem is the "oikos" - a family household including extended family, retainers, slaves, and hired freemen, headed by an "aristoi" (literally "best people".) Kings, to the extent that there were any, were mainly war chiefs. The economy was mainly pastoral with some farming, some crafts, some piracy, and a very little trade. The common people, "demos", played no role in affairs and were treated as inferiors by the aristoi.
There was no state. Justice meant only revenge. Exchange was principally in the form of gift giving. Political and social ties were formed by individuals, to be maintained by individual action. Ethics, among the gods or among men, was practically non-existent in Homer. Yet this was the society that produced classical civilization. Finley does not explain the transition.
[No comment]
Reading the Homeric classics, one is drawn into the world of gods and heroes and larger than life events. We know that the stories cannot be true, at least not as written and handed down to us, but we don't know what the people were really like. Our notions of the classical Greece of Plato and Euripides aren't helpful. The world of Odysseus was not the world of Plato.
Finley's book gives us an in depth view of this world that made it much more real to me.
Doing a bit of research, I see that M.I. Finley, nee Moses Isaac Finkelstein, was fired from his job at Rutgers University after exercising his fifth amendment rights and refusing to testify to the House Unamerican Activities Committee in 1952. Unable to get any more work in the U.S., he moved to England where he was hired by Cambridge University, had a brilliant academic career, and became a British citizen. He died in 1986, suffering a stroke the day his wife died and dying himself the next day.