Monona Doug's Book Ends: December 2009

Monday, December 28, 2009

Tidbits

Just picked up Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon. After reading the first few pages of the Introduction, I am horrified. I find myself gobsmacked because I considered that I knew this history. But widespread industrial neo-slavery?

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Do I dare trust Michael Crichton again? After the wretched State of Fear, I swore off him. When he died Crichton had finished a new book: Pirate Latitudes: A Novel by Michael Crichton

NPR's reviewer Alan Cheuse raved about it. I put it on hold.

You can never go wrong buying books for a book-lover. Here's my haul from 2009:

Gravity's Rainbow (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) by Thomas Pynchon OK, I just finished The Name of the Rose and now I get another book that requires a guide to understand (My review of Name of the Rose). Here's a free guide to GR

And not only that, I also received Pynchon's newest book, Inherent Vice.

More:

The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America by Timothy Egan This is Egan's followup to his award-winning Worst Hard Time.

Two books from the historical detective series featuring Hanno Stiffeniis the early 18th century Prussian magistrate. The series features Immanuel Kant as the behind-the-scenes mover. OK, so now I need to read Kant too.

Critique of Criminal Reason: A Mystery and Days of Atonement: A Mystery by Michael Gregorio

The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals

My review of The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals by Jane Mayer

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

A Lady Asked Dr. Franklin, "Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?", August 29, 2008

"A republic," replied the Doctor, "if you can keep it."

Quoted in the Afterword from the papers of Dr. James McHenry at the time of the 1787 federal convention in Philadelphia.

`The Dark Side' by Jane Mayer tells one of the most profoundly disturbing stories that I have ever read. Mayer details how the Bush Administration led America to what VP Dick Cheney called `the dark side' in order to fight terrorism. A small coterie of officials at the highest level of the administration took this country down a path that ignored and thus destroyed the rule of law. Whether the damage is permanent remains to be seen.

Here are some of the most salient points:

Mayer confirms what others have asserted: that Cheney runs the national security apparatus. At least in this realm, Cheney operates like the prime minister. What is less known is the extraordinary power exercised by his legal counsel, David Addington. Cheney and Addington share a belief in an extreme view of the proper powers of the President in the national security area. In their view, the President has no limits on his power. None. Cheney used 9/11 to snatch greatly increased power for the executive.

To be fair, the top officials felt a huge personal responsibility to protect the US from another terrorist attack. One can only imagine the burden. This burden caused them to act out of fear and panic. Any action that might help reduce the chances of another attack even by a small amount was worth doing. They acted as if they and all Americans were cowering weaklings willing to jettison liberty for security. As Ben Franklin's aphorism concluded, we got neither.

As a lawyer, I found it personally distressing that lawyers played the key role in providing the `golden shield' of legal immunity for all manner of horrific acts in the quest for `actionable intelligence'. Lawyers, especially government lawyers, are supposed to tell their clients `no' when a proposed action crosses the line into criminality. A handful of lawyers, John Yoo, Alberto Gonzales, and Addington in particular, always gave their bosses the answer they wanted, `yes, we can torture, spy, kidnap, hold secret prisoners in secret prisons without charges'.

A few lawyers within the administration did resist. When Jack Goldsmith the newly appointed head of the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel discovered John Yoo's secret `torture memo', he moved successfully to get it revoked. Less known is that after Goldsmith left under extreme pressure, a new memo authorizing torture was issued by Steven Bradbury. Most other lawyers either caved in to Addington's bullying intimidation or were simply cut out.

Mayer's triumph was getting so many people to talk to her both on and off the record about closely held administration secrets. The reliance on unnamed sources necessarily forces the reader to place a certain amount of faith in Mayer's judgment (although certainly not to the extent of Bob Woodward).

Mayer established that the US killed several subjects during interrogation and kidnapped (`extraordinary rendition') at least 8 entirely innocent people, tortured them, and held them in secret prisons. Mayer was able to establish that one of these people was held on the `hunch' of the head of the CIA's al Qaeda unit and was not finally released until weeks after it was clear he was just had the same name as a wanted suspect. The fate of the other seven is unknown.

Beyond dispute is the affect the torture and kidnapping regime had on America's reputation. It will take at least a generation to recover it. Perhaps most worrisome is that these actions will serve as a precedent for future administrations, which only criminal prosecutions would obviate. Mayer provides the basis for the indictments. My only quibble with the book is that it needed a little tighter editing. Highest recommendation if you can stomach it.

A Sailor of Austria: In Which, Without Really Intending to, Otto Prohaska Becomes Official War Hero No. 27 of the Habsburg Empire

Here's my review of A Sailor of Austria: In Which, Without Really Intending to, Otto Prohaska Becomes Official War Hero No. 27 of the Habsburg Empire (The Otto Prohaska Novels) by John Biggins

Rescue John Biggins From Undeserved Obscurity!, February 15, 2007

In 'Sailor of Austria', John Biggins introduced Otto Prohaska, captain of an Austro-Hungarian submarine during the Great War. The tale is told from Prohaska's perspective as a 100-year old resident of a nursing home in rural Wales. Surprised by the interest of a young worker at the home, Prohaska sets about recording his story. This 'looking back' perspective allows a modern sardonic narrative voice somewhat in the manner of Thomas Berger's Little Big Man.

The manner of telling is reminiscent of George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman: A Novel (Flashman), as others have remarked, but darker. At times the book is laugh-out-loud funny - particularly early in the book when the dire consequences of a submarine crew fed on rotten cabbage stew leads to a serendipitous result. Biggins gives the reader a convincing sense of life and death aboard the absurdly primitive WW I submarines.

As the book moves into the later stages of the war, humor takes a backseat and tragedy takes center stage. Biggins' remarkable description of the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire puts the reader amidst the shock and utter chaos of a crumbling world. And then the Spanish Flu makes its entrance.

It's exciting to see the renewed interest in John Biggins works, which were hardly big sellers when first published in 1991 but are now being brought back by McBooks Press. I was only recently put on to Biggins over on LibraryThing and the discovery's been one of those great unexpected experiences that come along only rare even to devoted readers.

Help rescue John Biggins from undeserved obscurity. The writing is really first-rate and so is the story. Highest recommendation.

Judgment on Deltchev by Eric Ambler

My review of Judgment on Deltchev by Eric Ambler.

Fans of Alan Furst, Attention!, July 5, 2009

Although this book is set in post-World War Two, Alan Furst's debt to Eric Ambler jumps off the page in Judgment on Deltchev. Ambler's protagonist is an amateur at the cloak-and-dagger game, a game that he never really intended to play. Foster (we never learn his first name) is a playwright sent by an American newspaper publisher to cover a show trial in an unnamed Eastern Bloc country. Deltchev, the former leader of the People's Party and the government, now stands accused of treachery, treason and conspiracy to assassinate the new leader.

Foster slowly allows himself to be drawn deeper and deeper into the behind the scenes machinations until he finds himself in very deep trouble indeed. His minder, Pashik, tries to keep him in check, but Foster only sees that as an effort to control what he writes. A former (?) British spy turned journalist lurks around the edges. Can he be trusted? Doubtful. Good old Pashik turns out to be a bit more complex than he first seems, but is he dangerous? Has the reactionary Officer Corps Brotherhood come back to life? At first convinced of Deltchev's innocence, Foster's doubts grow as the trial proceeds. Surely there must be *something* behind the outlandish charges.

In addition to spinning out a fascinating tale of intrigue, on the very first page Ambler lays out an excellent and concise explanation of the purpose and methods of the political show trial. "Where treason to the state is defined simply as opposition to the government in power, the political leader convicted of it will not necessarily lose credit with the people....[H]is death at the hands of a tyrannical government may serve to give his life a dignity it did not before possess....His trial, therefore, is no formality, but a ceremony of preparation and precaution. He must be discredited and destroyed as a man so that he may safely dealt with as a criminal."

Ambler also creates the feel of life under a dictatorship (returning to my thesis of Furst's debt to Ambler). Freedom of movement is constrained and access to information is tightly controlled. For Foster to meet with citizens is pregnant with risks. The triumvirate of life (food, booze, and tobacco) is scarce. (Women aren't exactly abundant either.) The place is gray and bland by day with dark corners and long shadows by night. Are you paranoid or are you really being followed? Or both?

Highest recommendation.

Olive Kitteridge

My review of best-seller Olive Kitteridge: Fiction

Life Hands Out a Licking, September 30, 2009

4.5 stars. The setting of Elizabeth Strout's extraordinary short stories is small town Maine and the people are utterly middle class (and exclusively white or very nearly so). Small town and middle class, yes, but not in a Babbitt (Signet Classics) way.

Retired school teacher Olive Kitteridge holds center stage in most of the stories. I heard her described as `a force of nature', an apt description particularly if one pictures mostly stormy weather. It is a good thing the book consists of shorts because few readers could make it through a full book of Olive. Olive is not easy to take and yet in the stories she is a compelling figure, excruciatingly human but not quite pathetic.

As I read these stories, I kept picturing the `KER-POW' and `BIF-BAM' graphics on the old Batman TV series. People do get battered, seldom physically and only occasionally by Olive. Life hands out a licking. (If you're 50 and haven't figured that out yet, you may be a Panglossian or just incredibly lucky. In that case, your luck could be about to change.) And yet the people in the stories often seem quite placid, quiet, and calm - normal as normal can be. And they are, but then you find that they are dealing with one or another of our utterly human pains, sometimes physical, nearly always emotional. Children, aging, your children aging, marriages, illnesses, adulteries, suicides, insanities, accidents - they are all in here, not sensationally, but just as part of life, if you hang around long enough.

Strout's writing powerfully draws the reader into each story. I found the book to be emotionally exhausting, but very often insightful in direct and uncomplicated ways. Great stuff.

A Rumpole Christmas

Here is my review of A Rumpole Christmas: Stories by the late John Mortimer.

Rumpole, One More Time, December 19, 2009

The very idea of reading A Rumpole Christmas evoked several responses: melancholy, because it is likely to be the last publication of more or less new stories from the pen of John Mortimer; a wry smile, because of the unlikely juxtaposition of Rumpole and Christmas; and gleeful hand-rubbing anticipation, because we get to read more Rumpole.

If you are reading this review, you probably know who Rumpole is. If not, I would suggest that start at the beginning: The First Rumpole Omnibus by John Mortimer. Technically, to start at the beginning you should watch the BBC shows from the 1970s starring the inimitable Leo McKern (Rumpole of the Bailey, Set 1 - The Complete Seasons 1 & 2). (I was unaware until very recently that the scripts for the BBC TV show actually preceded the books.)

This collection of stories (most previously published in magazines) is not the best of Rumpole, but they do feature genuine Horace, She Who Must Be Obeyed, Mr. Justice Gravestone, Soapy Sam Ballard, and a sprinkling of Timsons. One story here features an accused terrorist whom Rumpole agrees to defend - when the other barristers make excuses. Rumpole kept fighting the good fight usually with gentle humor and always with an insistence on the rights of each and every person facing the power of the government. So long old darling.

***

Augustus: A Novel

Here is my review of Augustus: A Novel by John Edward Williams, who also wrote Butcher's Crossing (New York Review Books Classics).

Many Suffered From Close Contact with Augustus - But Not Readers of this Work,

January 28, 2007

By	Douglas S. Wood "Vicarious Life"

John Edward Williams won the 1973 National Book Award for 'Augustus' and deservedly so. This amazing piece of literature masquerading as historical fiction (and I like historical fiction) draws the reader into the world of Gaius Octavius, later to be Augustus, first emperor of Rome.

Williams tells his tale by the unusual technique of presenting letters, journal entries, and memoirs. By this method he allows the reader to gradually enter, indeed become immersed in, the world of Augustus, his family, friends, enemies, and most important, his Rome. 'Augustus' traces his rise from the vulnerable adopted son of Julius Caesar through a steady accretion of power as he becomes first a triumvir (with Mark Antony and the nonentity Lepidus), and then settles in as emperor of the world.

The historical record for Augustus's life has gaps that challenge an author and Williams grasps the challenge deftly, just as Augustus grasped power. We see Augustus as an aloof, cold and calculating politician whose assiduous pursuit and cautious exercise of power allows him to hold that power for over four decades, but always using that power for Rome, always for Rome, his Rome.

Yet many people suffer from their close contact with this man - his equally calculating wife Livia, for one, his dear friends Maecenas and Salvidienus, to name two more, but none more so than his daughter Julia. The last third or so of the book focuses on the break between Augustus and Julia. Williams presents an interesting and shocking explanation for Julia's exile - at least an explanation that Augustus believes or claims to.

The penultimate chapter draws Augustus's life to a close with a lengthy letter to Nicolaus of Damascus in which a dying Augustus bemoans his fate and the weight of authority he has had to bear - it is really most unattractive for one of the most powerful men in history to indulge in such self-centered despair, but it also rings true because Augustus spent his life denying himself so many pleasures in order to hold on to power for the good of Rome, as he convinced himself. In the end, Augustus saw himself as the embodiment of Rome - anything that threatened his power, threatened Rome. This is so well done that one finds oneself becoming angry with Augustus, who is after all just a character in this brilliant work of historical fiction.

'Augustus' is not an easy read. Prior knowledge of the historical era certainly aids the enjoyment and comprehension of the book. Ultimately, however, this remarkable work of historical fiction and literature deserves the highest recommendation.

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Devils of Loudon

My review of the Devils of Loudon by Aldous Huxley.

One of the joys of reading is how one subject can lead to a serendipitous find. Having recently come across a brief reference to the early 17th century barking nuns of Loudon I went in search of a more detailed exploration. In Aldous Huxley's book I found all that I sought and much more.

Urbain Grandier, the local parson of Loudon, is a very naughty cleric who partakes much too much of the sensual world. One morsel happens to be the daughter of his best friend. She becomes pregnant with unhappy consequences for many people. Grandier manages in this way of behavior to alienate nearly every important Catholic in Loudon as well as make an enemey of Richelieu.

When Grandier spurns the local prioress, Sister Jeanne, she claims demonic possession at the hand of Grandier as do 2 of her nuns. Grandier may have been guilty of many sins, but demonic possession was not among them. Exorcists are brought in as much too destroy Grandier as to throw out the devils (7 specific ones inhabit Sister Jeanne alone). The exorcists produce devils in 14 more nuns. The public exorcisms provide great entertainment, reviving the local tourist industry, but eventually produce the trial of Grandier, who in due turn is burned at the stake. The story continues when the Jesuit Surin arrives to finally successfully exorcise Sister Jeanne's demons.

Huxley's 1952 work explores the psychological aspects of demonic possession and exorcism, sometimes brilliantly against the backdrop of the madnesses of his own time. Liberal rationalists had "fondly imagined" an end to persecutions of 'heretics'. Instead, as he observes "from our vantage point on the descending road of modern history, we now see that all the evils of religion can flourish without any belief in the supernatural, that convinced materialists are ready to worship their own jerry-built creations as though they were the Absolute, and that self-styled humanists will persecute their adversaries with all the zeal of Inquisitors exterminating the devotees of a personal and transcendent Satan...In order to justify their behavior, they turn their theories into dogmas, their bylaws into First Principles, their political bosses into Gods and all those who disagree with them into incarnate devils. This idolatrous transformation of the relative into the Absolute and the all too human into the Divine, makes it possible for them to indulge their ugliest passions with a clear conscience and in the certainty that they are working for the Highest Good."

In the last third of the book he explores the nature of Sister Jeanne's possession, the possession of her exorcist Surin, and the manner of her recovery. The modern mind has some difficulty here. Clearly Surin and possibly Jeanne believed in the reality of demonic possessions (it is worth noting that many learned men, including those behind Grandier's fall and most Jesuits did not believe in the authenticity of these possessions). At the same, Jeanne is also play-acting at times as she concedes in her own subsequent writings. They believed in the Devil, they believed in possession, but understood that the Devil could not overcome the will of the possessed. Huxley paints a poignant, if oddly amusing, scene when he describes how Surin ordered Jeanne's devils to discipline themselves - in other words to flagellate Jeanne. Two of the devils lay on the whip with gusto, but Balaam and Isacaaron abhorring pain, would barely swing the whip and yet the possessed Jeanne would scream in agonized suffering.

An absolutlely fascinating read by one of the great minds of the 20th century.

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I have not seen the movie adaptation but here is a link to a rave review: The Devils.

"Quite possibly the ultimate “nunsploitation” movie, 1971’s THE DEVILS was adapted by the great Ken Russell (director of THE MUSIC LOVERS, TOMMY, THE LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM and many other unforgettable films) from Aldous Huxley’s THE DEVILS OF LOUDON, about a real incident that occurred in 17^th Century France, and John Whiting’s play THE DEVILS, itself based on the Huxley book."

I didn't really know there was competition for best nunsploitation movie.

Monday, December 21, 2009

The 10 best book websites - Times Online

Sunday, December 20, 2009

First Post - Favorite Nonfiction

Without further ado, let me introduce my new book blog. "Hello, book blog. How are you today?" "Just fine, thank you."

I have been writing reviews on Amazon.com since 2006.