Category: History

A Writer's Wit: Howard Zinn

8/24/2022

If those in charge of our society—politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television—can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.
Howard Zinn
Author of A People's History of the United States
Born August 24, 1926

H. Zinn

Coming Next:
THURS: AWW | Nadine Stair
FRIDAY: My Book World | Heather Clark's Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath

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Her Name Forever

7/15/2022

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A WRITER'S WIT
Fearlessness is like a muscle. I know from my own life that the more I exercise it the more natural it becomes to not let my fears run me.
Arianna Huffington
Author of On Becoming Fearless...in Love, Work, and Life
Born July 15, 1950

My Book World

Pellegrino, Charles. Her Name, Titanic: The Untold Story of the Sinking and Finding of the Unsinkable Ship. New York: McGraw, 1988.

I’ve been a fan of the Titanic’s story since I was a child. I read every magazine article, every book I could find on the subject—even as an adult I collected books. I watched every film, fiction or documentary. This book, though dated now in some ways, does combine two strands: 1) the eyewitness details left behind by those who were there to witness the sinking: passengers, crew members, children—always the more interesting narrative, to me. Pellegrino also unveils the thread of how oceanographer Robert Ballard locates the Titanic’s remains and visits them in a, for the time (1987), innovative “submarine” equipped with cameras.

The most astounding part of Ballard’s story seems to be that he is so overcome with emotion on seeing the pristine quality of certain artifacts left behind—china, passenger shoes, and other memorabilia—that he has no desire to lift any of it for souvenirs. Rather, he disguises the exact GPS location from journalists and the world, so that the site might remain what it has been since it all came to rest in the icy North Atlantic floor in 1912, and that is a place of memorial. Of course, other parties do locate the ship and make a commercial venture of it, but Ballard’s stance must be the higher ground, in a manner of speaking.

Coming Next:
TUES: AWW | Ethan Canin
WEDS: AWW | Cormac McCarthy
THURS: AWW | Sarah Waters
NEXT FRI: My Book World | Ellen Summerfield's Bite-Sized Poems: An Anthology

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Taking Whacks at Lizzie's Legend

2/25/2022

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A WRITER'S WIT
You go to school, you get a master's degree, you study Shakespeare and you wind up being famous for plastic glasses.
Sally Jessy Raphael
Host of Sally (1983-2002)
Born February 25, 1935

S. J. Raphael

MY Book World

Robertson, Cara. The Trial of Lizzie Borden: A True Story. New York: Simon, 2019.

If most readers are like me, what they know about one historical figure, Lizzie Borden, can be summed up in the following ditty:

Lizzie Borden took an ax,
Gave her mother forty whacks,
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.

After reading Robertson’s book, I see that there is so much wrong with this rhyming escapade. One, if Lizzie Borden did kill her stepmother and father, Borden was never proven guilty. The actual perpetrator whacked Mrs. Borden only nineteen times. And certainly Mr. Borden did not receive forty-one chops. I had always assumed that Lizzie Borden was convicted and had served time in prison. But no.

This book takes readers through the entire trial process beginning with a detailed description of the murder scene. Briefly, someone axes Mrs. Borden and then an hour and a half later, when Mr. Borden has returned to the house, someone axes him downstairs as he’s napping on a sofa. The police investigators, lacking obvious clues, begin to suspect Lizzie, who remains almost preternaturally calm throughout the initial investigation, neither crying nor showing any sign of agitation, as Robertson writes (33). Andrew Jennings, Lizzie’s counsel, addresses the jury: “’your task is not to unravel the mystery.’ Instead, he said they must ask themselves: ‘Have they [the prosecution] furnished the proof, the proof that the law requires, that Lizzie Andrew Borden did it, and that there is absolutely no opportunity for anybody else?” (208). And throughout the past one hundred years there has existed such a great desire, on the part of some, to solve the mystery.

Near the end, Robertson summarizes these various interpretations that begin in the 1950s. For example, there is “the widely held speculation, which gained currency in the early 1990s, that Lizzie Borden committed the murders after enduring years of sexual abuse by her father [she was thirty-two]. The bedrooms that opened onto each other, the dead mother, the powerless stepmother, the special understanding between father and daughter symbolized by the ‘thin gold band’—all crystalized into a suddenly obvious solution, a solution that seemed to explain not only the identity of the killer but also the very brutality of the crimes” (284).

In any case, Robertson’s thorough research (some eighty pages of Notes) and lightly treading interpretation make for a fascinating read, particularly if you are a true crime fan, as I am. The book abounds with photographs, as well, mostly provided by the Fall River, Massachusetts, Historical Society.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns

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A Writer's Wit: Douglas Brinkley

12/14/2021

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One thing “not right” on the 50th anniversary of the Selma marches is the sad fact that the Edmund Pettus Bridge hasn't been renamed the John Lewis Bridge.
Douglas Brinkley
Author of American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race
Born December 14, 1960

D. Brinkley

FRIDAY: My Book World | James Clear's Atomic Habits

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Is 'Midnight' Too Late?

12/10/2021

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A WRITER'S WIT
The intricacies, the problems, the trials and tribulations in relationships inspire me to give words to people's journeys.
Umera Ahmed
Author of Aabe Hayat
Born December 10, 1976

U. Ahmed

My Book World

Schiff, Adam. Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could. New York: Random, 2021.

If one followed the two impeachment hearings of ex-president Trump, one became quite well acquainted with the rhetorical skills of Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA), who led that trial. And one will recognize much of the material he includes in this book but also much, much more. One gets an inside view of what he experienced to reach that point where Trump needed to be impeached. He recreates important scenes on the floor in public; he recreates scenes out of view as he confers with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other congressional leaders. Reading his account fills out one’s view if you only watched it on TV, especially if your viewing was spotty. Most important, however, is the revelation of Adam Schiff’s character. Into his narrative are woven personal anecdotes about family members, congressional staff members, and other personalities. These reveal a wholly human and humane person who would make a great speaker of the house or president, should he desire to run.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | James Clear's Atomic Habits

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Cromwell Comes to Life

12/3/2021

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A WRITER'S WIT
Writing is very cathartic for me. As a teacher, I hear many students say that writing can be painful and exhausting. It can be, but ultimately I believe that if you push through, the process is healing and exhilarating.
Francesca Lia Block
Author of The Thorn Necklace
Born December 3, 1962

F. L. Block

My Book World

Mantel, Hilary. Wolf Hall: A Novel. Book One of the Thomas Cromwell Trilogy. New York: Picador, 2010.

Quite an enjoyable read, one that combines history and literature alike. I read this one aloud to my partner and was able to hear what a masterful job Mantel does with the language—quite musical. She, more than most writers, makes great use of interior monologue, by which we always know who is thinking what. This retelling of King Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and Thomas Cromwell (among a distinguished cast of many) is worthy of all the accolades it has received (winner of England’s Man Booker Prize). Can’t wait to read the other two parts of this distinguished trilogy.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | TBD

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Close to 'Road of Unfreedom'

11/26/2021

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A WRITER'S WIT:
"People don’t talk much now about the Spanish influenza, but that was a terrible thing, and it struck just at the time of the Great War, just when we were getting involved in it. People came to church wearing masks, if they came at all. They’d sit as far from each other as they could" (41).
From Robinson’s novel Gilead
Marilynne Robinson
Born November 26, 1943

M. Robinson

My Book World

Snyder, Timothy. The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America. New York: Duggan, 2018.

A scholarly and erudite book, The Road to Unfreedom is a plea for Western peoples to wake up and smell the borscht burning on the stove. Snyder begins with two phrases: politics of inevitability, “a sense that the future is just more of the present,” and that nothing can be done (7); the other phrase, politics of eternity “places one nation at the center of a cyclical story of victimhood” (8). As Snyder develops his thesis that both Europe and American could be on the way to unfreedom, he repeatedly weaves into the fabric of his text these two terms. Russia has already traveled down this road, accepted its role as victim, that the world is always out to get Russia. If Europe and America do not pay attention to the signs of fascism or authoritarianism present in their own countries, they, too, could wind up like Russia. For the general reader, this book can be tough reading, but I invite anyone wanting to know what might be wrong with our country to take a look at it.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall: A Novel. Book One of the Thomas Cromwell Trilogy

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Jobs for Women on 'Maiden Voyages'

11/19/2021

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A WRITER'S WIT
Sloppy language leads to sloppy thought, and sloppy thought to sloppy legislation.
Dick Cavett
Author of Brief Encounters: Conversations, Magic Moments, and Assorted Hijinks
Born November 19, 1936

D. Cavett

My Book World

Evans, Siân. Maiden Voyages: Magnificent Ocean Liners and the women Who Traveled and Worked Aboard Them. New York: St. Martin’s, 2020.

This is an interesting book in which Welsh author Evans focuses on thirteen women (some famous, some not) in the early twentieth century who make careers on the seas. Mostly by way of working on lines such as the White Star and Cunard, these women toil as conductresses, stewardesses, and nurses, sometimes rising to supervisory positions. During an era when women are not encouraged or even allowed to work outside a domestic situation, these women serve as pioneers who earn good salaries and are able to support families back home in the UK, where the man of the household, say, has been lost to war. Of course, their success is hard won, and it is only a beginning, but indeed there must be a thread that connects them to airline hostesses and to female astronauts such as Sally Ride. A quick but meaningful read.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Timothy Snyder's The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America

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Rise and Fall of an Institution

9/10/2021

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A WRITER'S WIT
AIDS and malaria and TB are national security issues. A worldwide program to get a start on dealing with these issues would cost about $25 billion . . . . It's, what, a few months in Iraq.
Jared Diamond
Author of Upheaval: How Nations Cope with Crisis and Change
Born September 10, 1937

J. Diamond

My Book World

Leonnig, Carol. Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service. New York: Random, 2021.

This book is one of the most fascinating contemporary reads to emerge in a long time. Leonnig, a distinguished Washington Post reporter, delves into the 155-year history of the United States Secret Service—the agency designed primarily to keep the president and family safe. She brings to light its early history: Within a period of thirty-six years, the U.S. experiences three presidential assassinations. Lincoln. Garfield. McKinley. Following Lincoln’s death, the Service is established with minimal or feeble funding. After the third assassination, the congress still refuses to provide additional protection, not wanting the president to be treated like royalty. When Kennedy is assassinated, the congress ultimately realizes it must provide more resources for the Secret Service. And presidents must adjust their thinking. Kennedy may, in part, have contributed to his own death by not adhering to the Service’s request that he not get as close to crowds as he liked. And also by not riding in an open car and by not allowing agents to stand on the rear bumper of his limo.

Leonnig explores subsequent presidencies to inform readers in great detail about each administration since: Ford’s two close calls. Reagan’s near-death attack. How the Service erodes during Bush’s and Clinton’s administrations. How the Service is pushed beyond its capabilities during Obama’s era when threats and attempts on him rise exponentially and when two different “jumpers” leap over the White House fence, one of them actually coming within feet of the Obama family’s living quarters. The author informs us of the unrest within the Service: the frequent change of leadership, the history of good old boy networks that reward relationships instead of meritorious service. She tells of the scandals that rock the service, including details of the one in Cartagena where at least ten agents become extremely drunk and involve themselves with prostitutes. Her conclusion: many problems still exist. The agency needs a complete restructuring, much more funding, and a coordinated effort to heartily renew its mission of always putting the lives of the president and family and other figures ahead of lives of agents sworn to protect them. Until these things occur, the Secret Service will remain stretched beyond its capabilities and perhaps remain a second-rate organization.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Reinaldo Arenas's The Doorman

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Flanders: A Rough Theater for War

5/28/2021

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A WRITER'S WIT
Probably induced by the asthma, I started reading and writing early on, my literary efforts from the age of about nine running chiefly to poetry and plays.
Patrick White
Author of Voss
Born May 28, 1912

P. White

My Book World

Groom, Winston. A Storm in Flanders. The Ypres Salient, 1914-1918: Tragedy and Triumph on the Western Front. New York: Grove, 2002.

The author of Forrest Gump changes his hat to historian here. In 276 pages he does a superb job of summarizing this one battle of World War I. In some ways the war is a family squabble: “England’s George V, Russia’s Nicholas II, and Germany’s William II were all cousins, either directly or through marriage, descendants of England’s Queen Victoria” (6). Mostly, Groom documents the wastage: the millions of soldiers’ lives lost on all sides, the Brits, the Belgians, the French, and the Germans. (Not to mention civilians, the Canadians, and others who aid the Allies.) The huge “puddles” caused by shelling and excessive rain. The Christmas where all fighting stops and soldiers from both sides “celebrate” together. (What? you ask.) The lack of quality leadership on all sides. One failure passes off his work to another failure of leadership. And the only people who suffer are the men in the ranks and civilians. I don’t know about the Triumph Groom references in his title (except that the Allies “win”), but there is certainly a lot of Tragedy. Millions of people of one generation are never able to see their lives come to fruition, mostly because of the hubris of a few men.

NEXT BLOG: Tuesday, June 15, 2021

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The Horizontal Near Southwest

5/21/2021

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A WRITER'S WIT
A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.
Alexander Pope
Author of The Rape of the Lock
Born May 21, 1688

A. Pope

My Book World

Flores, Dan. The Horizontal Yellow: Nature and History in the Near Southwest. Albuquerque: U of NM Press.

First of all, I love that Flores takes possession of this subject right away with the term, “Near Southwest”—a region stretching from eastern Louisiana and including all of Texas and New Mexico. I come over twenty years late to reading this elegantly scripted book about the area’s ecology, but the ideas he expresses here seem to gain urgency as time passes. Flores alternates sections of family history (French and Spanish) and other histories with first-hand accounts of living, say, on the Llano Estacado, as well as poetic and lyrical sections of fiction to bring alive said histories.

Flores is always on the move. After advanced schooling at Texas A&M, he explores, to mention a few places, the Chihuahuan desert, the Southern Plains of Texas (Llano Estacado or Steaked Plains), Abiquiu, New Mexico—finally lighting in Montana. But the Horizontal Yellow of which he speaks is the once real, now metaphorical, wave of yellowing grasses that cover what locals call, with a certain inelegance, the South Plains. It is where he builds a primitive place to live in Yellow House Canyon, about thirty minutes from where he teaches at the local university. It is where he lives with two wolf-dog hybrids as their alpha male (a role he doesn’t particularly relish; it’s the critters’ idea). It is a place remaining in his heart as he makes his home up north, where he can establish and retain a closeness to nature that the Texas South Plains has mostly expunged from its existence. His is an admired life but one I’m not sure I could pursue myself. I adore my life in town—Internet, TV, central heat and air—a bit too much.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Winston Groom's A Storm in Flanders

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Elegies for Two Homelands

5/14/2021

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A WRITER'S WIT
That cry of the soul to be lifted out of the bondage of the narrow circle of life, which carries up to God the protest and yearning of suffering man, never finds a more sublime expression than where humanity is oppressed and religion is corrupt.
Hall Caine
Author of The Shadow of a Crime
Born May 14, 1853

H. Caine

My Book World

Akhtar, Ayad. Homeland Elegies: A Novel. New York: Little, Brown, 2020.

This is one of the most enjoyable and yet profound contemporary novels I have read in a long time. I had to keep reminding myself that it was indeed a novel, so interwoven is the plot with events we’ve all lived through in the last twenty years. The protagonist’s parents, both physicians, move from Pakistan to Staten Island in the early 1960s. When he is still young, the family relocates in Wisconsin. Throughout, readers get a feel for what it is like to live in America if you are not white-skinned, if you speak with an accent, or in any way attempt to retain religious or cultural customs from your former country. Not pleasant, to say the least.

At one point the car of the protagonist (by now a renowned playwright) breaks down in Scranton, PA. He is directed by a kindly highway patrolman (ah, good) to a mechanic who turns out to be related to the patrolman (uh oh). He is quoted a particular price for one problem, but when he picks up his car, he ascertains there is a second problem he’s not been informed about and is charged almost three times the original quote. He must phone his bank and make arrangements to raise his credit card level (and interest rate) to cover the cost.

The white-skinned reader must take note. This part is NOT fiction; this sort of explicit bias happens every day to dark-skinned, “other” people in America. People who work hard, people who pay their taxes, people who try hard to color inside the lines but somehow come up short in the eyes of so-called natives (whose ancestors were immigrants). The novel is really about how this man and his father handle their American lives differently: one an elegy for Pakistan and one for the USA. It is worth every minute of the reader’s time to live vicariously through these brave souls who come to American to build a better life. Theirs are true profiles in courage.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Dan Flores's The Horizontal Yellow

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A Wilde Man Indeed

5/7/2021

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A WRITER'S WIT
What is marriage but prostitution to one man instead of many?
Angela Carter
Author of Angela Carter’s Book of Fairy Tales
Born May 7, 1940

A. Carter

My Book World

Ellmann, Richard. Oscar Wilde. New York: Knopf, 1988.

This book of exhaustive research concerning Wilde’s life is a pleasure to read from his family history to his imprisonment years later and his resulting exile in France. Prior to reading this book, I had always had the impression that Oscar Wilde’s life (except for prison) was one wild ride (pardon the pun). And in some ways it was. He, even after experiencing financial success, was always in want of money, primarily because he was such a spendthrift, spending or giving away money he honestly didn’t have. He cared not about what people thought of his extravagant ideas, his extravagant living. Yet Wilde faced great public disapproval of how he lived his life. His only friends were other homosexual men or those liberal enough to accept him.

His downfall came in the package of one man, Lord Alfred Douglas, a much younger man, an aristocrat who both loved and used Wilde. If Wilde had never met him, he might have met his match with some other party, but I doubt it. The latter part of Wilde’s sad life was battling Douglas’s father in court. Lord Percy Douglas, Marquess of Queensberry, managed to have Wilde sent to prison for two years because he didn’t want Wilde near his son. Wilde did his prison time, and it broke him, both physically and emotionally. He never wrote anything substantial again, was always begging others for money, and suffered physical ailments that eventually brought on his premature death at forty-six. Ellmann’s distinguished book, more than thirty years old now, does great justice to the life of an extraordinary writer who lived, until he could no longer bear the speed of light, entirely ahead of his time.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Ayad Akhtar's Homeland Elegies

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Sillitoe: Good Judge of Human Nature

4/23/2021

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A WRITER'S WIT
Write. Enjoy writing. Then, and only then, worry about the business end of it. Start loving your hobby, and then you can't go too wrong.
Arthur Phillips
Author of The King at the Edge of the World
Born April 23, 1969

A. Phillips

My Book World

Sillitoe, Alan. The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner. New York: Penguin, 1992 (1959).

I enjoyed this mid-century collection of stories by British writer, Alan Sillitoe, because each male protagonist is a bit different, sometimes very different, from the leading bloke in one of the other eight narratives. Whether it is the sarcasm of the famed title character or one who wonders why his ex-wife has pawned a painting he thought she wanted back for sentimental reasons or the quizzical nature of a young man who narrates Eddie Buller’s sad story, each character is honed from Sillitoe’s astute observations of human nature.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Yasunari Kawabata's The Master of Go.

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Mr. Putin: As Bad As You Think

10/23/2020

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A WRITER'S WIT
A diary is the response to an impulse—as opposed to an instinct—for self-preservation.
Ned Rorem
Author of The Paris Diary
Born October 23, 1923

N. Rorem

My Book World

Hill, Fiona and Clifford G. Gaddy. Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin. New and
Expanded. Washington: Brookings, 2015.

When I tuned in to President Trump’s impeachment trial at the end of 2019, I was impressed with the testimony of Fiona Hill, at that time former Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European and Russian Affairs on Trump’s National Security Council. Her credentials seemed impeccable, and I told myself I would read the book she co-authors with Mr. Gaddy.

The Hill/Gaddy team paint a portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin that is not personal. They do not delve much into his upbringing or family life, only as those elements may apply to his long political life. They formulate what they refer to as Putin’s six identities, by which the book is structured: “the Statist, the History Man, the Survivalist, the Outsider, the Free Marketeer, and the (KGB) Case Officer (18).” The man manipulates or exploits each one of these identities in order to further his own career, his own strategies, and each study is an eye-opening view into the life of the real Mr. Putin.

Mr. Putin declares himself to be a gosudarstvennik, “a builder of the state, a servant of the state . . . a person who believes that Russia must be and must have a strong state” (40). The State is of ultimate importance, not the individual. Hill/Gaddy claim that “Putin continued with an analysis that echoed the language of the tsarist statist school, noting that Russia will ‘muscle up’ by ‘being open to change’ through state-sanctioned procedures and rules’” (55). The authors reinforce what President Obama once said of Putin, that Putin still maintains a nineteenth-century view of the world. He may utilize some of the tactics he learns while serving in the KGB, but his worldview is rooted in a glorified, pre-Soviet past: he aspires to be a tsar.

To summarize most of the other five areas, Putin manipulates history to strengthen his power. He is a survivalist who will do anything to get what he wants. Ultimately, his sense of strategy (over tactics, which only serve to fulfill his overarching set of goals) is one of his greatest strengths, one that Hill/Gaddy claim the West underestimates at its own peril. A man who creates a long-term strategy for the success of his State and is willing to do anything to see that it succeeds is to be to watched very carefully, something that the authors indicate the West has failed to do thus far. The West must see clearly how the man views himself, and the West, while not forfeiting its own values, must develop strategies for dealing with him, ones that realistically exploit his perceived strengths and weaknesses. Until the man is taken seriously, the rest of the world cannot deal with him in a realistic manner, and such a stance is not good for that world.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | George C. Edwards's Why the Electoral College Is Bad for America.

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The Fight to Vote Is an Old One

10/16/2020

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A WRITER'S WIT
When you're fifty you start thinking about things you haven't thought about before. I used to think getting old was about vanity—but actually it's about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial.
Eugene O’Neill
Author of Long Day's Journey into Night
Born October 16, 1888

E. O'Neill

My Book World

Waldman, Michael. The Fight to Vote. New York: Simon, 2016.

I wish I had read this book when it came out during the run-up to the 2016 election—when I bought it. Even though the last chapters seem dated now, considering what the country has been through, the early chapters give an excellent historical account of how this country has ALWAYS been divided into two camps: those who would like to allow everyone to vote and those who would only have so-called elites vote. White (heterosexual, one assumes) male landowners comprised that group in colonial times:

“And there were men who worked as hard to restrict the vote as others did to expand it, such as John Randolph of Roanoke, who fought to deny the franchise to men without property, declaring, ‘I am an aristocrat. I love liberty. I hate equality;’” (xi)

Slowly, and only through arduous struggles, did other groups gain traction over great spans of time: African-American males, white women, African-American women and other minority groups (including the young). Still, the fight to vote has wavered back and forth, according to the whims of the SCOTUS and voter suppression activities. One group rises up and gains three feet, and another group grabs power and sends progress back two feet. And tragically . . . the struggle still continues. If readers have time, they should consider devouring this informative and at times humorous book. If you’re undecided about voting in 2020, perhaps its contents may sway you to get registered and do so now!

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Fiona Hill's Mr. Putin

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She Explains Too Little

9/4/2020

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A WRITER'S WIT
No one has ever written, painted, sculpted, modeled, built, or invented except literally to get out of hell.
Antonin Artaud
Author of The Theatre and Its Double
Born September 4, 1896

A. Artaud

My Book World

Lardner, Kate. Shut Up He Explained: The Memoir of a Blacklisted Kid. New York: Ballantine, 2004.

About halfway through this book, I realized I had read it before—not because I recognized the material but because I found little thumbnail indentions indicating where I’d stopped a reading session. My first “review,” sketched in 2004, was rather short and not very positive: Poor writing and poor editing. What could have been enlightening and touching was scattered and uninteresting. Lardner keeps an emotional distance throughout that is not very pleasant.

In a way, I still feel the same. The writing is fine enough; it just lacks a certain depth. Perhaps that is the point where a better editor might have helped the author. Much of the book is really about Kate Lardner’s father, Ring Lardner, Jr., a distinguished screenwriter who is blacklisted in the 1950s because he refuses to answer the question at a hearing whether he is or ever has been a communist. He spends twelve months in prison simply for attempting to practice his First (or Fifth) Amendment right to speak (or not). And, of course, such an event does have harmful effects on a burgeoning family: A wife, herself a working actor, who ceases to be offered film roles because she is related to Ring; a daughter and two sons who need him to balance out an impatient mother who, though loving, is also bound and determined to have her own career.

What is most troubling, I think, is the pacing. Of ten chapters, “The Penal Interlude,” is the longest at 120 pages. Conclusions that the author could draw about the effects on her as a “blacklisted kid” are missing or shortchanged. At the end of the book, Lardner gives a hurried account of her college years, her stumbling around to find out what she wishes to do with her life, thumbnail sketches of her two marriages, and boom, we’re done. Either the book should focus more on her father, or she should have a book longer than 272 pages, in order to discuss how being a blacklisted kid has affected her entire life (she’s about sixty at the time she writes the book). This time around I don’t notice the “emotional distance” as much as I do in 2004, but there exists rather a flippant tone that seems to reduce the import of what she is saying about one of the most destructive periods in US political history and its ramifications for her family. Perhaps it’s her way of dealing.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Paul Monette's Last Watch of the Night: Essays Too Personal and Otherwise.

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Kon-Tiki: A Wondrous Naiveté

8/14/2020

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A WRITER'S WIT
Teens affect history. They affect lives; they affect our cultural growth and change, and yet, and at the same time, they are often the most vulnerable among us.
Mary E. Pearson
Author of Dance of Thieves
Born August 14, 1955

M. E. Pearson

My Book World

Heyerdahl, Thor. Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific by Raft. New York: Rand, 1950.

This book may have been written for adults, but I have to believe its adventurous tale appeals to the child inside each one of us. A Norwegian scholar develops a theory that at one time people of Peru crossed the South Pacific; Heyerdahl acquires this idea because huge statues on Easter Island so closely resemble ones found in Peru. Very quickly it seems he scrabbles together a crew of five other men and from drawings of a raft that would have been used in earlier times, the men build the Kon-Tiki essentially from nine huge balsa logs. That feat itself is a large undertaking as the men somehow receive permission from Peruvian officials to go into the forest and harvest such logs from balsa trees—even though commercial logging of balsa has been disallowed for some time.

Then there is the 4,000 mile adventure in which, at first, the raft with a sail is seized by the Humboldt Current. However, as they escape its grasp, the six men embark on a most idyllic, though challenging, cruise across the South Pacific. They worry little about food (though they’ve brought certain stores with them) as they are besieged in the morning with flying fish that they either cook for breakfast or use as bait to catch bigger fish. Creatures large and small are curiously drawn to their vessel, and, though the men are wary at first, they become friends with the aquatic beasts. The primitive raft has its shortcomings so when they finally come upon an island, because of the raft’s steering limitations, they must pass it by. Sometime later, however, they spot another island group, and this time their voyage comes to an abrupt end as the raft breaks up on a reef.

What follows may be the most delightful part of Heyerdahl’s perfectly arced narrative. Curious natives from a nearby island of 127 inhabitants see smoke from the men’s cooking fire and carefully approach them. The six men become heroes to the village and are treated royally for weeks on end before they are able to use their ham (amateur) radio and contact Tahiti and then Norwegian officials. A 4,000 ton ship is dispatched to pick them up, and then the six men and all villagers part with tears in their eyes. The book may be tinged with a childlike naiveté, but it is also filled with a certain curiosity and courage, qualities that are necessary for cultures to cross boundaries and for its inhabitants to realize they have more in common than they don’t.

FRIDAY, SEPT. 4: My Book World | Kate Lardner's Shut Up He Explained: The Memoir of a Blacklisted Kid

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Those Who Oppose Die Alone

7/17/2020

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A WRITER'S WIT
We spend the first twelve months of our children's lives teaching them to walk and talk and the next twelve telling them to sit down and shut up.
Phyllis Diller,
Author of The Joys of Aging and How to Avoid Them
Born July 17, 1917

P. Diller

My Book World

Fallada, Hans. Every Man Dies Alone. Translated by Michael Hofmann, with an afterword by Geoff Wilkes. New York: Melville, 2009 (1947).

This novel, originally published in German in 1947, is the fictionalized story of a true-life married couple who denounce the Nazi regime. The couple are solid followers of Hitler until their only son is killed in battle. They then turn their anger outward in a quiet manner by handwriting postcards of denunciation which they deposit all over the city of Berlin. They carry on for over two years, placing nearly 300 cards without notice. Yet their campaign is basically a failure because most people who find the cards turn them into the Gestapo so that they do not themselves wind up in trouble. Due to a bit of carelessness, the couple are caught and wind up in prison. Fallada deftly portrays their ending as fearful but brave souls who have no problem talking back to prison officials.

Fallada concludes the novel on a positive note by bringing back into view a boy who, because of his terrible home life, has begun a life of crime until he is adopted by a caring and loving couple who help to change his ways. Fallada’s writing is very nineteenth century by way of its omniscient point-of-view in which we know what every character is thinking. He is also quite skilled in creating a large number of characters, yet giving the reader periodic hints about who is whom, thus keeping the narrative moving. Finally, he, from time to time, repeats or skillfully echoes his title, Every Man Dies Alone, in ways that expand its obvious or concrete meaning. Fallada’s novel is a keen reminder that freedom requires sacrifice, that no matter what culture we live in, we must always be on guard against its being taken away from us, or worse yet, that we hand it over without question.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Reinaldo Arenas's Novel The Assault

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The Poisonwood Bible: Stunning and Timeless

7/3/2020

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A WRITER'S WIT
The labor of women in the house, certainly, enables men to produce more wealth than they otherwise could; and in this way women are economic factors in society. But so are horses.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman,
Author of The Yellow Wallpaper
Born July 3, 1860

C. Perkins Gilman

My Book World

Kingsolver, Barbara. The Poisonwood Bible. New York: HarperCollins, 1998.

In 1959, a Baptist minister, his wife, and his four daughters, leave their Bethlehem, Georgia home for a year of service to the Congo in Africa. The mother, Orleanna, opens the novel with a long lens; we learn right away she will lose one of her daughters, and so we read on patiently to see how such an event will unfold. Of course, we sort of forget, and we’re shocked when the youngest, Ruth May, is killed by a poisonous snake much later in the story after we have come, like her mother, to love her.

This expansive novel is divided into seven books, always a sign of what will be a sprawling narrative. Each book opens with a chapter narrated by Orleanna, the frazzled mother who dares not rile the ire of her preacher husband. The remaining chapters of each book are narrated alternatively by each one of the daughters: Rachel, a light-haired blonde, probably born about 1945, who has visions of high fashion and easy living in her life—having not much use for her father’s strict evangelical life; the twins, Leah and Adah, one a healthy adherent of her father’s ways (for a while), the latter injured before birth and who limps yet has a brain equal to her twin sister’s. The former will eventually marry a Congo native; Adah will return to Atlanta and become a doctor. Before her demise, Ruth May, the youngest, is a sprite, a child with her own language, her own worldview, a darting derring-do that will eventually serve to take her life.

Each chapter then widens our view of their village in the Congo as it survives an historical upheaval: one popular but revolutionary leader being killed within three months of his election, and the return to office of a corrupt man who will conspire with the West (mostly America) to spend thirty-five years amassing great wealth while his countrymen and women survive (or don’t) lives of poverty. One additional character, Mother Nature, or her evil sister, makes life at the least difficult, at the most, a disaster of magnificent proportions. In what feels like the climax, a giant wave of ants marauds their Congolese village, and its inhabitants must survive by, among other things, climbing trees until the rampage has passed. When this family returns to their house and accompanying buildings, they find only bones left where their chickens once roosted. The house is spotless, as if cleaned by a squad of maids. At this point, Oleanna gathers her three remaining children and abandons her husband. Now this is not as easy as it sounds. She has always served Nathan and his god with blind faithfulness, but now she sees that he is not well (think heart of darkness) and must save her remaining three daughters. Only she is not even able to do that. Rachel marries a South African man of questionable character (and three more men in serial monogamy). Leah marries her native. Adah returns to Georgia with her mother. It is a family broken in so many ways it takes an entire book to portray how. Oh, and the title? The poisonwood tree is an apt name because of the substance it oozes; its bible an apt metaphor for the despoliation of one family. A stunning, timeless read.

NEXT TIME: My Book World | Jim Harrison's The Summer He Didn't Die

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Cole Porter Letters Reveal a Vibrant Life

6/5/2020

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A WRITER'S WIT
The poem, the song, the picture, is only water drawn from the well of the people, and it should be given back to them in a cup of beauty so that they may drink—and in drinking understand themselves.
Federico García Lorca, Spanish Poet
Born June 5, 1898

F. García Lorca

My Book World

Eisen, Cliff and The Letters of Cole Porter. New Haven: Yale, 2019.

If you are a fan of Cole Porter and his music, you will probably enjoy this collection of letters. Though some of them refer to his bisexuality, most of them pertain to his many professional and personal connections. Such communications illustrate many characteristics about Mr. Porter. One, he is a consummate professional, in spite of his propensity to play and play hard during vacations and between gigs on Broadway or Hollywood. He answers every bit of mail himself, except when he occasionally calls on his secretary to take care of something. He is a team player, important for anyone working in a collaborative arena like the theatre. Second, he is also fierce but polite about not doing anything musically that would (in his opinion) ruin a show. At the same time, when overpowered by those above him, he sometimes gives in, particularly, it seems, when the issue does not matter that much to him.

In a business that can be crass and cold at times, Porter is also very caring and thoughtful of everyone he comes in contact with. He sends thank you notes for the smallest favors, and, because he often runs short of money before he makes it big, he is generous with cash gifts and loans later in life. Third, his wit and sharp tongue are unmatched with regard to the social whirl of the 1930s through the 1950s. Though he wouldn’t dream of hurting anyone publicly, he does not mind getting off a zinger or two during a personal letter to a dear friend. Perhaps most interesting is how Porter shares some of his methods for songwriting:

In a related matter, of what compels him to accept a job or assignment, he says:

“My sole inspiration is a telephone call from a producer. If Feuer and Martin phoned me today and asked me to write a new song for a spot, I’d just begin thinking. First, I think of the idea and then I fit it to a title. Then I go to work on the melody, spotting the title at certain moments in the melody, and then I write the lyric—the end first—that way, it has a strong finish . . . I do the lyrics like I’d do a crossword puzzle. I try to give myself a meter which will make the lyric as easy as possible to write without being banal. On top of the meter, I try to pick for my rhyme words of which there is a long list with the same ending” (499).

A friend who travels with Porter in 1955 relates this story: “We were not stopped very long at the border. On the Spanish side, one of the soldiers came out with Cole’s passport in his hand, looked in the car, and said, ‘Cole Porter . . . Begin the Beguine!’ and kissed his fingers to the air, and began to sing the song. Cole’s music is known everywhere we go—even in the remote spots” (507).

I think that just about says it all about Cole Porter, his music, and how many fans he still has in the world!

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Alison Smith's Name All the Animals

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A Cautionary Tale That Never Dies

4/10/2020

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A WRITER'S WIT
Tourists don't know where they've been, travelers don't know where they're going.
Paul Theroux
Born April 10, 1941

P. Theroux

My Book World

Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr I. with translation by Thomas P. Whitney. The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation I-II. New York: Harper, 1974.

In some ways I’m embarrassed to say that this book has been on my shelf since 1974—unread. It is a paperback of such vintage that I had to be careful about cracking the ancient glue in the spine or pages would have fallen out. Though the read was a slog—not having a Russian history background—I was able to glean much of its purpose. The writer wishes for people in the West to know that Russian citizens experienced a purge probably as horrendous as what took place in Germany in the 1940s, if not worse. At least a million Soviet citizens held in custody by the Allies at the end of World War II were handed over to officials at the end of the war. This does not include other enemies of the people.

One must remember scads of acronyms in this book, and yet they are based on the Russian words, not the English version, so it is more difficult to recall the connections. For example SMERSH stands for Soviet counterintelligence but means “death to spies.” GPU stands for Russian words meaning State Political Administration. Also difficult to recall for an English reader are people’s names; except for Stalin, most are quite multisyllabic.

Yet there is much the naïve reader can take from this book. Solzhenitsyn speaks bluntly of many things.

“I smiled in pride that I had been arrested not for stealing, nor treason, nor desertion, but because I had discovered through my power of reasoning the evil secrets of Stalin. I smiled at the thought that I wanted, and might still be able, to effect some small remedies and changes in our Russian way of life” (167)

Perhaps Part II, about the prison conditions themselves, is most understandable of all, the most universal. Solzhenitsyn calls the trains that take people to the prisons “ships.” I’m not sure I’ve ever read anything as painfully disgusting as his descriptions of the conditions: men literally sitting on top of one another; few if any toilets so men must soil themselves; at best, a kind of gruel to eat, if anything at all; unbearable cold or heat. Then there are the prisons themselves: again little or no heat; no healthcare; poor food and sanitation. Draconian punishments for the tiniest of (sometimes manufactured) infractions. And the people must bear these sentences, most begin as tenners (ten-years), with great aplomb, hoping they will in one way or another escape the hell they are in (even death would be prefable).

The Russians present to the world such a mixed and puzzling heritage. On the one hand, we treasure great Russian literature and drama, superb music including ballet, fine visual art and more. On the other, Russians, either by way of their isolation from the rest of the world, and its inherent paranoia, have a mean streak in their DNA, whether it is by way of the Czarist leaders, the Soviets, or post-Soviet PutinWorld. They desire to be respected as a substantial part of the world, but simply put, do not know how to play nice. And it seems to be a cycle that is difficult to break.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Jennifer L. Eberhardt's Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do

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One Citizen's Days Are Numbered

4/3/2020

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A WRITER'S WIT
What people see the first family do has an effect. And from a slightly different aspect, I think that family living in the White House is going to have a profound effect on many Americans.
George Stevens, Jr.
Born April 3, 1932

G. Stevens, Jr.

Cenziper, Debbie. Citizen 865: The Hunt for Hitler’s Hidden Soldiers in America. New York: Hachette, 2019.

Cenziper focuses her book on two main groups. First, she tells the story of Polish Jews who, during World War II, become Hitler’s pawns. Hitler is looking to expand Germany’s borders so that his people have more space in which to live, so he annexes Poland. After the war, some of these displaced persons flee to the US, for they have no one or nothing left at home. The other group Cenziper develops is the people who work for the Office of Special Investigations (OSI), one of whom is a fresh new historian, Peter Black. Historians are relentless researchers, so they make a good team along with others, lawyers, in particular.

Their work is to ferret out particular ex-Nazi’s, particularly “Citizen 856,” who later minimize their involvement with killing Jews to US Immigration officials, and thus gain illegal entry into the country—a frightening idea to the legal immigrants living nearly side-by-side their torturers in some cases. The OSI spends decades building cases against this group of Ukrainians and Russians who are recruited and rewarded by the Nazis for carrying out their orders to exterminate about 1.7 people. The OSI’s work is arduous and their results are mixed. Because most of the accused Nazis appeal the decision to be returned to their native countries to face trial there (except in Germany, where officials do NOT want these people back), some of them die before deportation, but a few do have to face justice in their home countries.

Some Americans, like Pat Buchanan, oppose the OSI’s work, want to dispose of the OSI. They believe those mass murderers should be forgiven and forgotten. It is difficult to see how these usually conservative people, can form such a free-and-easy view of what should happen to war criminals—when otherwise they are usually such hawks. Is that really a Christian posture? Maybe someone will write a book about them to figure out why they would hold such a position.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation I-II

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Cap Arcona: A Ship Like No Other

3/13/2020

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A WRITER'S WIT
Sometimes I can be walking down the street, or riding a bus, and suddenly I see somebody who reminds me of somebody I know back home, and I close my eyes and find myself thinking of the sea, or the taste of grafted mango, or the smell of saltfish frying, and then I come back to myself and open my eyes and realize where I am.
Caryl Phillips
Born March 13, 1958

C. Phillips

Watson, Robert P. The Nazi Titanic: The Incredible Untold Story of a Doomed Ship in World War II. Boston: Da Capo, 2016.

Even as a child, I was a sucker for disaster reads, particularly those taking place at sea: Titanic, Andrea Doria, and others. Watson seizes upon the fame of the Titanic to make a case for his story about the German ship, Cap Arcona (German for Cape Arcona). Without the Titanic reference in the title, the book might not have much shelf appeal. I’m not sure that there are too many real parallels between the two ships except that they both sank.

Nevertheless, Watson’s book is a fascinating one about the extraordinary history of a German luxury liner that services travelers from the Baltic to South America from 1927 until 1939. At that time the Nazis expropriate the ship and transform it for war purposes. Its most important history comes at the end of its life, in 1945, and I’m not going to spoil the read by giving away the ending. Suffice it to say that the Cap Arconastory is one that has been overlooked, and we have Robert Watson to thank for keeping it and its historical significance alive.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov

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Writing a Family Memoir | History II

3/11/2020

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We must love our friends as true amateurs love paintings; they have their eyes perpetually fixed on the fine parts, and see no others.
Madame Louise d’Epinay
Born March 11, 1726

Madame d'Epinay

[If you missed yesterday's post, please scroll down. This will make more sense.]

WHEN THE BOOK BEGAN
In 2012 I swabbed my cheeks to get a DNA readout from National Geographic Genographic Project. Briefly, the Project determined that my “deep DNA” was about 41% Germanic, 41% Mediterranean, and 17% Southwest Asian. The NGGP results piqued my curiosity about the three generations of Dutch (half), German (quarter), and Welsh (quarter) ancestors immediately preceding me.

HOW THE BOOK PROGRESSED
I wouldn’t know much about those people, except that my mother and to some degree my father saved everything, which brings me to the second stage of my work. Since my parents died in the aughts, I had stored away boxes and boxes of documents and photographs and negatives, some going back a hundred years or more. My intention was to toss everything I could, but I decided that I should examine every document before disposing of it.

WHAT I FOUND
Hundreds of letters my mother wrote (I’d never before read them); letters my grandfather wrote to his hometown newspaper from France when he fought in WWI, with naïve but fresh descriptions of the Atlantic, the British and the French people; letters to and from other relatives; a dozen issues of Jayhawkerinfrance, a newspaper published by my grandfather’s Kansas Army regiment tracing their movements through France; journals my mother, my maternal grandmother, and my great-grandmother kept, as well as my father’s journal covering the two and a half years he spent in the South Pacific during World War II. In addition, I located newspaper cuttings that pertained to many family members, including ornately written obituaries from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I came upon creative writing; art work; photographs, and much more revealing the joys and heartaches of my family.

WHAT I DID WITH THE INFORMATION
First, I felt compelled to write about my nuclear family, portraying how my parents (both with rather nonnurturing mothers) raised my brother and sister and me. I felt compelled to tell about my sister with Down syndrome and how her disabilities affected our family life, both positive and negative. I included a chapter about the tiny house (750 square feet) where I grew up, almost a character in its own right, a dark dwelling where many sad yet joyous things happened. In another section I write about my parents’ youth: my mother’s life on a farm in Kansas; my father’s life in suburban New York City. In the next section, I write about my maternal grandmother and her parents, a great-grandmother who suffers the loss of her first husband to a flood. I write about my maternal grandfather and his parents, even my third-great-grandfather who hails from Wales in 1790 (consulting several books having been written about him by other relatives). I then turn to my father’s parents and their parents, who live in Breda, Holland for many generations before my grandparents emigrate to the US. From my memory and from documents and from extrapolation I glean instances of abuse, premature deaths that cripple the family, shotgun weddings, mysterious decisions (like not placing my grandfather’s name on his crypt in New York), psychological and physical illness, severed hands and time spent in hospitals, missed opportunities for education, and much more. In the fourth section I return to revisit ghosts of my sister and my parents, once again bringing up the past but in an atmosphere of forgiveness, seeing everyone in his or her full humanity. Acceptance.

WHERE I AM NOW
I have written four drafts. In the first I submitted, over a two-year period, one chapter per month, to my writing group. After studying their critiques, I wrote a second draft; this time returning to my research to include information that had, the first time around, seemed irrelevant. In the third draft, I finally abandoned the idea of directly addressing each ancestor and relied on first and third person. Now, most recently, I realized, finally, that the inner chapters were not presented in the most felicitous order, so I am reordering them and dealing with the ripples that such a change makes. I feel close to the end, having read the six-hundred-page MS aloud multiple times for rhythm and to eliminate clunky language, not to mention other errors that only seem to rise to the surface when read aloud (such as omitted articles or verbs). I am ready to give birth to this monster and hope to wrap things up as soon as the thing presents itself to me. I have never enjoyed writing a book as much as this one, but I am ready to be done and move on!

I shall keep you informed!

Take a look at members of my tribe in the slideshow below.

FRIDAY: My Book World | Robert P. Watson's The Nazi Titanic

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