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June 10
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Hanny
took the never-ending book quiz.
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March 20
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Hanny
gave
 
to:
Novels in Three Lines (Paperback)
by Félix Fénéon
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my rating:
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read in March, 2008
Hanny said:
"Felix Feneon's "news" (better than "novels") "in three lines" were published over the course of 1906 in the French newspaper Le Matin. Called "faits divers," the items were unsigned, so we only have a definitiv...more
Felix Feneon's "news" (better than "novels") "in three lines" were published over the course of 1906 in the French newspaper Le Matin. Called "faits divers," the items were unsigned, so we only have a definitive collection of Feneon's contributions because his mistress kept clippings of them. I'm glad she did, and I'm glad I read them, because the little notices contain plenty of wonderful moments:
"'If my candidate loses, I will kill myself,' M. Bellavoine, of Fresquienne, Seine-Inferieure, had declared. He killed himself"
"Scheid, of Dunkirk, fired three times at his wife. Since he missed every shot, he decided to aim at his mother-in-law, and connected."
"Again and again Mme Couderc, of Saint-Ouen, was prevented fom hanging herself from her window bolt. Exasperated, she fled across the fields."
"Instead of 175,000 francs in the coffers deposited with the tax collector at Sousse, there was nothing."
"There were 12,000 francs in the safe of the rectory at Montmort, Marne. Burglars took it."
And so on.
The introduction to this volume makes a number of extravagant claims for the collection, (and includes the great phrase "recidivist gastronome"), but they seem overblown. The best that can be said about this book was said by Julian Barnes in his essay for the London Review of Books:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n19/b...
"... Fénéon, highly intelligent and ironical, found himself at a certain point in his life set to a task of journalistic drudgery. Over the long evenings at his desk at Le Matin, he made things as much fun for himself and his readers as was compatible with the needs of the slot. He took a long-established form and tweaked it, giving it a personal stylistic touch while acknowledging that the 19th-century fundamentals of narrative and fact-conveying had to be respected. The nouvelles were the journalistic equivalent of cocktail olives, and Fénéon devised a new piquant stuffing."
That's about it. Feneon's pieces are funny and well constructed, and consistently avoid cliche. (The second clause of a sentence, for instance, almost never follows obviously from the first.) Whether this little exercise formed the basis for Futurism (one of the intro's claims), I can't say. Nonetheless, this is a book worth dipping into from time to time. It was never meant to be read whole.
Two other things worth noting:
Barnes cites the particular "fait divers" that launched the 19th-century novel when Flaubert happened to read it: "Delphine Delamare, 27, wife of a medical officer in Ry, displayed insufficient austerity. Worse, she ran up debts. To avoid paying them, she took poison."
And, though the relevant essays aren't included in this work, I've found excerpts to suggest that Feneon produced something much rarer than well-turned sentences: concrete art criticism. This is from his contemporary review of Seurat's Grande Jatte. If anybody knows of a translation that includes more of Feneon's criticism, please pass it along:
"If one looks at any uniformly shaded area in Seurat's Grande Jatte, one can find on every centimeter of it a swirling swarm of small dots which contains all the elements which comprise the color desired. Take that patch of lawn in the shade; most of the dots reflect the local colors of the grass, others, orange-colored and much scarcer, express the barely perceptible influence of the sun; occasional purple dots establish the complementary color of green; a cyanine blue, necessitated by an adjacent patch of lawn in full sunlight, becomes increasingly dense closer to the borderline, but beyond this line gradually loses in intensity… Juxtaposed on the canvas but yet distinct, the colors reunite on the retina: hence we have before us not a mixture of pigment colors but a mixture of variously colored rays of light."...less
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Hanny
gave
to:
The Innocent (Paperback)
by Ian McEwan
bookshelves:
ian-mcewan,
thought-i-would-skip
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my rating:
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read in February, 2008
Hanny said:
"The Innocent is a Cold War thriller that is also an allegory for the "special relationship" between the British and the Americans. It's an interesting theme, but it's already been done, a dozen times over, by another Ian: Fleming. McEwan, w...more
The Innocent is a Cold War thriller that is also an allegory for the "special relationship" between the British and the Americans. It's an interesting theme, but it's already been done, a dozen times over, by another Ian: Fleming. McEwan, who's had some misadventures with the Kafka-esque in his early short stories, uses a quote from "The Burrow" as his epigraph, but the relationship between Leonard Marnham and Bob Glass is a high-minded take on James Bond and Felix Leiter. I didn't finish this one, and I'd suggest you skip it too. Just pick up From Russia with Love....less
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March 07
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Hanny
gave
to:
Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (Paperback)
by Paul Lettow
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my rating:
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recommended for: anybody interested in 20th-century or Cold War history, or nuclear policy
read in March, 2008
Hanny said:
"In most of the usual respects, this is a bad book. The writing is dull, if not outright horrible. There is no analysis; every irony implicit in what Lettow talks about is completely lost on him. And, like most books of its type, it is bloated with do...more
In most of the usual respects, this is a bad book. The writing is dull, if not outright horrible. There is no analysis; every irony implicit in what Lettow talks about is completely lost on him. And, like most books of its type, it is bloated with dozens of examples where two or three would serve.
So why four stars? Because, using documents that have been declassified in the past decade (and many of them only in the past year or two), Lettow establishes a series of important points about the Reagan administration, and thus about the Cold War, that nobody else has yet dealt with. Until somebody reworks this topic into a better book (or, preferably, a thorough essay), it is, I'm afraid, required reading.
Lettow's major point, well established, is that abolishing nuclear weapons was one of Reagan's primary goals. This point is crucial: it was a primary goal *of Reagan's*. It was not shared by most of his advisers. In fact, it was directly and passionately opposed by most of them. The image of Reagan as an "amiable dunce," plodding along while his cabinet did all the work, has been discredited quite a bit in recent years. This book is valuable by making a few very specific corrections to it:
1) The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) or "Star Wars"
The notion of a shared missile defense that would render ballistic nuclear missiles obsolete was conceived and pushed by Reagan alone, often in conflict with his Cabinet and advisers.
2) SDI, the "militarization of space"
In the mid-1980's, propaganda against SDI as a plan for the "militarization of space" was the most widely distributed notion in the Soviet-controlled press. Many in the West, particularly in the Chomsky-ite know-nothing left, found this convincing. The recently declassified "memcons" (memoranda of conversation) from Reagan's summits with Gorbachev in his second term make it clear that this was not a cynical enterprise. Reagan was not using SDI as way to deploy a space shield that would give the United States an advantage in a first strike against Moscow. He repeatedly emphasized this fact, and repeatedly made it clear that once SDI was developed he would immediately give it to the USSR as well as an international body constituted for the purpose. In 1947, something like this was proposed with the "Baruch Plan" that would have internationalized nuclear power and eliminated nuclear weaponry. The plan failed, and SDI was part of Reagan's vision for meeting its goals.
3) SDI and "leverage"
The reason the USSR spent so much time railing against SDI is that they were aware of the fact that they could never compete with the US on a new "Manhattan Project." Their economy was spent, and a new arms race would destroy it. (It may have actually done exactly that.) Some of Reagan's advisers thought they could use this fact to their advantage by keeping SDI alive as nothing more than a bargaining chip. Reagan disagreed. In Reykjavik, he went so far as to pass up an opportunity to eliminate *all* US and Soviet ballistic and strategic nuclear weapons because Gorbachev insisted on tying that deal to a halt to SDI. Reagan felt that a missile shield was necessary to assure a nuclear-free world against a cheater or a "madman." This has proven true: there were a few "madmen" during the Cold War (like Castro or Curtis LeMay in the US) who advocated the use of nuclear weapons. None of them became President of the United States or the General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party; none of them had access to The Button. With the possibility of nuclear weaponry coinciding with the full insanity of Islamism, recidivist Zionism or Hindu fundamentalism, protection against a "madman" is no longer guaranteed.
Gorbachev tied his demands about halting SDI to the ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) Treaty, and the ABM Treaty brings us to the most important insight in Lettow's book, though it's one that he doesn't understand fully. The ABM Treaty didn't only limit the development of offensive missiles; it also limited the development of defensive systems. Why? Because an effective defensive system would have made it possible for one or both sides to suffer less-than-devastating losses in a "nuclear exchange," and that would mean that MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) would be compromised. Everybody in the policy establishment who felt that nuclear weapons and MAD were an inevitability was determined to make it so. The goal of US-USSR negotiations from the Kennedy-era was not to change this situation. It was to guarantee it. The ABM Treaty, the notion of "parity," Détente: all of this did nothing but enshrine MAD. As Amis put it back then:
"Most of us believe, incorrectly but with good reason, that we live under the auspices of Mutual Assured Destruction. In fact, the Soviet Union has never subscribed to MAD; and neither has the United States, except for a brief period in the Sixties (when McNamara briefly allowed the notion to hold sway as a means of heading off military procurements). The underlying strategy has always been something else: preemption, counterforce, escalation dominance, prevailing, denying victory to the Soviet Union. Or, if you prefer, *winning*, which means *going first*. Why then does MAD continue to loom in the public consciousness? Because it is an accurate description of reality. Whatever the policy, whatever the plan, MAD will result. Mutual Assured Destruction is not an arrangement between the US and the USSR. It is an arrangement between human beings and nuclear weapons." (VMN, 21).
And yet... The bilateral elimination of nuclear weapons, guaranteed by an effective, internationalized, "shield," would have been the end to MAD. This was Reagan's insight, and, perversely, most of those in his administration who shared the insight wanted nothing else but to give SDI away in order to maintain the "parity" status quo. Not Reagan. His policy with respect to the Soviet Union has always been seen as transformative, but everybody has missed the transformation. Reagan's major contribution was not to bankrupt the Soviet Union with a new arms race; it was to recognize the moral bankruptcy of MAD and work to render it obsolete. And, much as it pains me to concede this to the man behind Iran-Contra, 80's South America policy, the S&L Scandal and so much else, he succeeded.
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Of interest to some: this was the first book I read on my new Amazon Kindle. As a device, there's plenty to complain about (it's too easy to his the "Next" button and too hard to take notes). But, as far as the reading experience goes, there's nothing much to say. "e-Ink" passes the major test: before long, I forgot that I was reading a device rather than a book. I was just reading. More than ever, I'm absolutely convinced that paper books are going the way of our CD collections, though we're still on the "Rio" of eBook readers rather than the iPod....less
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December 30
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Hanny
marked as to-read:
Mountain Interval (Paperback)
by Robert Frost
bookshelves:
robert-frost,
to-read
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my rating:
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Hanny
marked as to-read:
North of Boston (Paperback)
by Robert Frost
bookshelves:
robert-frost,
to-read
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my rating:
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Hanny
marked as to-read:
A Boy's Will (Perfect Paperback)
by Robert Frost
bookshelves:
robert-frost,
to-read
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my rating:
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Hanny
marked as to-read:
The Collected Prose of Robert Frost (Hardcover)
by Robert Frost
bookshelves:
robert-frost,
to-read
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my rating:
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Hanny
marked as to-read:
The Notebooks of Robert Frost (Hardcover)
by Robert Frost
bookshelves:
robert-frost,
to-read
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my rating:
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Hanny
gave
to:
The Shadow of the Sun (Paperback)
by Ryszard Kapuscinski
bookshelves:
ryszard-kapuscinski
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my rating:
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read in January, 2008
Hanny said:
"http://www.richardwebster.net/...
Before starting this book, I'd already read John Ryle's review in the Times Literary Supplement (link above). The review focused on Shadow ...more
http://www.richardwebster.net/...
Before starting this book, I'd already read John Ryle's review in the Times Literary Supplement (link above). The review focused on Shadow of the Sun, but also included a discussion of The Emperor. Ryle is an Africa specialist, and he cataloged a huge number of errors in Kapuscinski's books. He was right to say that "artistic vision" cannot be a blanket excuse for inaccuracies in allegedly non-fiction works. But, that said, the supposed inaccuracies in The Emperor were to an artistic point. (The apocryphal "Minister of the Pillow," for instance, said quite a bit about the psychotic vanity of a decadent despot.) The fabrications in this book say nothing. Here's a sampling:
- “[In Southern Sudan,] Killing cattle is forbidden, and women cannot touch them.”
- "In Africa a cousin on your mother’s side is more important than a husband."
- "The European and the African have an entirely different concept of time. Africans believe that a mysterious energy circulates through the world an energy that gives them the strength to set time into motion.”
This is all silly, stupid and vapid. They don't add anything to the greater whole, but, they also don't detract too much. Ignore them, and you don't miss anything.
The same is not true of all the book's problems. Shadow of the Sun is filled with obviously fabricated quotes. Again, the same is true of The Emperor and The Shah of Shahs. But there they were elements of brilliant parables and anecdotes. Here, they are instances of one of the most irritating conventions of Third World writing: peasant wisdom. Moreover, that wisdom concerns the most boring and depressing aspect of humanity: the desire to be a member of some pre-fab group (call it a tribe, a clan, a class, a nation, a religion). In Somalia, all doors are open because all people live in a single home; in Angola, every man regards every member of his tribe as a brother and a friend; in Eritrea, but who really cares about any of this?
What makes this so depressing is not only the fact that this nonsense is being dispensed by the man who wrote The Emperor and The Shah of Shahs. Shadow of the Sun itself is filled with brilliance, especially in the descriptions of animals (the death of elephants, the pursuit of mosquitoes by reptiles, the transformation of old lions into man eaters.) Despite its flaws, Shadow of the Sun almost ranks as highly as Africa Addio as an essential impressionistic document of post-colonial Africa. It is still a very good book (though it peters out to a weak ending). But given how destructive Africa's "identity politics" have been, it's a shame that Kapuscinski is not more critical of them....less
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