David Schwinghammer's Blog - Posts Tagged "wwii"
HOTEL ON THE CORNER OF BITTER AND SWEET
Were you thinking "THIS sounds like SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS" when you first read about HOTEL ON THE CORNER OF BITTER AND SWEET?
Well I'm sure Jamie Ford might have read that book, but HOTCOBAS has it's differences. For one thing, Henry Lee, who falls in love with a Japanese girl at the ripe old age of twelve, is a Chinese American. This is a love story but it's also about Japanese internment camps and the generation gap. Henry's parents send him to an American school where he and Keiko Okabe are the only Orientals. Henry, especially is mercilessly bullied.
Henry is not allowed to speak Cantonese in his home, despite the fact that his parents don't understand English, and his father makes him wear an "I am Chinese" button. He and Keiko work in the kitchen during lunch hour where he "befriends" the gruff lunch lady, Mrs. Beatty. She will play a major role in the story later.
Henry's father is from northern China where the Japanese persecuted his people and when he learns about Henry's relationship with Keiko he won't speak to him anymore.
Henry knows he won't be able to eat his lunch at school; he gives it to a street musician, Spencer, who is just beginning to make inroads in the Seattle jazz scene. They establish a lifelong friendship. A black man and a Chinese boy share the same heart, Ford seems to be saying.
Ford hops between WWII and the 1980's where Henry and his son Marty have a similar generation gap in some respects, although nothing like Henry and his father.
The Panama Hotel figures strongly in the story, hence the title. It's on the border between the Chinese and Japanese settlements in Seattle. We're expecting Keiko to be sent to an Internment camp eventually, and she leaves something important at the hotel.
So the big question throughout the novel is if Henry and Keiko will ever get together. The odds seem stacked against them, but Marty has a surprise in store for his father.
Well I'm sure Jamie Ford might have read that book, but HOTCOBAS has it's differences. For one thing, Henry Lee, who falls in love with a Japanese girl at the ripe old age of twelve, is a Chinese American. This is a love story but it's also about Japanese internment camps and the generation gap. Henry's parents send him to an American school where he and Keiko Okabe are the only Orientals. Henry, especially is mercilessly bullied.
Henry is not allowed to speak Cantonese in his home, despite the fact that his parents don't understand English, and his father makes him wear an "I am Chinese" button. He and Keiko work in the kitchen during lunch hour where he "befriends" the gruff lunch lady, Mrs. Beatty. She will play a major role in the story later.
Henry's father is from northern China where the Japanese persecuted his people and when he learns about Henry's relationship with Keiko he won't speak to him anymore.
Henry knows he won't be able to eat his lunch at school; he gives it to a street musician, Spencer, who is just beginning to make inroads in the Seattle jazz scene. They establish a lifelong friendship. A black man and a Chinese boy share the same heart, Ford seems to be saying.
Ford hops between WWII and the 1980's where Henry and his son Marty have a similar generation gap in some respects, although nothing like Henry and his father.
The Panama Hotel figures strongly in the story, hence the title. It's on the border between the Chinese and Japanese settlements in Seattle. We're expecting Keiko to be sent to an Internment camp eventually, and she leaves something important at the hotel.
So the big question throughout the novel is if Henry and Keiko will ever get together. The odds seem stacked against them, but Marty has a surprise in store for his father.
BILL MAULDIN: A LIFE UP FRONT
BILL MAULDIN: A LIFE UP FRONT begins with thousands of WWII veterans coming to see Bill at a nursing home in California where he is suffering from Alzheimer's. He stares off into space until one of them pins a medal on him; then his eyes light up.
Author DePastino then shows us how Bill moved from a hell-raising kid living on a mountain in New Mexico to STARS AND STRIPES cartoonist and premier morale booster of World War II. DePastino shows us Mauldin's undaunted will to succeed. Prior to WWII, he labored at his craft, sending out thousands of cartoons with little chance he would ever get anything published. He borrowed money from his grandmother to go to the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. We also see his mischievous side. He never did graduate from high school, thanks to a prank he pulled in a science class. He lit a cigarette and put it in the mouth of the class skeleton, too much for the teacher to overlook when he relit it and took a few drags.
Prior to WWII, Bill joined the Arizona National Guard. Four days later the guard was mobilized into the United States Army. He began his cartoonist career working part-time for the 45th Division News, going full-time when it was sent overseas. It was the hell-raiser kid who appealed to the soldiers. Bill was a sergeant in the Infantry before he was a cartoonist. There's a cartoon of Bill's characters Willie and Joe throwing tomatoes at the head of an officer as their unit enters a liberated city. This was one of the cartoons that would arouse the wrath of General George S. Patton, who wanted Bill fired. Thankfully other generals, Mark Clark among them, liked Bill's work enough to ask for signed originals.
When he returned from the war, Bill eventually went to work for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, then the Chicago Sun-Times
as a political cartoonist where he took on such issues as segregation in the South and the House Un-American Activities Committee. His cartoon of Lincoln holding his head in his hands after the Kennedy assassination would become one of the most famous of the 20th Century. He won the Pulitzer Prize twice.
The book also examines Bill's personal life in elaborate detail. He was married three times, his second wife dying in a car accident after a massive stroke. There's an especially touching anecdote about how he reconciled with his first wife after fifty years apart.
As a writer I found Bill's work regimen especially impressive. For one thing he used a Polaroid camera to take pictures of himself in various poses. "Capturing precisely the curl of an arm, the twist of a face, or the wrinkles in an overcoat was an ongoing obsession." The man never stopped trying to get better, and should be remembered as an authentic American hero. Like Snoopy, let's all quaff a root beer with Bill Mauldin on Veteran's Day.
Author DePastino then shows us how Bill moved from a hell-raising kid living on a mountain in New Mexico to STARS AND STRIPES cartoonist and premier morale booster of World War II. DePastino shows us Mauldin's undaunted will to succeed. Prior to WWII, he labored at his craft, sending out thousands of cartoons with little chance he would ever get anything published. He borrowed money from his grandmother to go to the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. We also see his mischievous side. He never did graduate from high school, thanks to a prank he pulled in a science class. He lit a cigarette and put it in the mouth of the class skeleton, too much for the teacher to overlook when he relit it and took a few drags.
Prior to WWII, Bill joined the Arizona National Guard. Four days later the guard was mobilized into the United States Army. He began his cartoonist career working part-time for the 45th Division News, going full-time when it was sent overseas. It was the hell-raiser kid who appealed to the soldiers. Bill was a sergeant in the Infantry before he was a cartoonist. There's a cartoon of Bill's characters Willie and Joe throwing tomatoes at the head of an officer as their unit enters a liberated city. This was one of the cartoons that would arouse the wrath of General George S. Patton, who wanted Bill fired. Thankfully other generals, Mark Clark among them, liked Bill's work enough to ask for signed originals.
When he returned from the war, Bill eventually went to work for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, then the Chicago Sun-Times
as a political cartoonist where he took on such issues as segregation in the South and the House Un-American Activities Committee. His cartoon of Lincoln holding his head in his hands after the Kennedy assassination would become one of the most famous of the 20th Century. He won the Pulitzer Prize twice.
The book also examines Bill's personal life in elaborate detail. He was married three times, his second wife dying in a car accident after a massive stroke. There's an especially touching anecdote about how he reconciled with his first wife after fifty years apart.
As a writer I found Bill's work regimen especially impressive. For one thing he used a Polaroid camera to take pictures of himself in various poses. "Capturing precisely the curl of an arm, the twist of a face, or the wrinkles in an overcoat was an ongoing obsession." The man never stopped trying to get better, and should be remembered as an authentic American hero. Like Snoopy, let's all quaff a root beer with Bill Mauldin on Veteran's Day.
The Orphan's Tale
Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the ORPHAN'S TALE is the versatility of the author, Pam Jenoff. She has a bachelor's degree in international affairs, a masters degree in history from Cambridge and a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania, besides her writing credits.
As a diplomat she handled Holocaust affairs in Poland. She got the idea for this book from the archives of Yad Vashem, the WWII Jewish museum. One of the lead characters, Noa, gets pregnant by a German soldier and is thrown out of her home by her father. The only job she can find, after the Nazis take her baby, is as a cleaning lady at a railroad terminal. One day she hears an eerie sound coming from one of the cars. It's a carload full of dead and dying babies. But one is still alive; she reaches in, grabs him, and starts walking. She could never hold her job and keep the baby. Also at Yad Vashem, Jenoff ran across a circus that rescued Jews. Noa is taken in by a fictional circus and taught how to be an aerialist. The second main character is Astrid, who teaches her how to work on the flying trapeze in a matter of weeks. Astrid is a Jewish woman who was married to a German soldier until Hitler outlawed such marriages. He told her to hit the bricks. Astrid was raised as a feature performer on the flying trapeze at another circus. They were disbanded because the owner, Astrid's father, was Jewish. But their main competitor takes her in.
Here's the rub. Did you believe the part about the Jewish babies? Well, that part was true, except that many were toddlers. Jenoff emphasizes that the “babies” didn't even know their names. When Jenoff needs to move the story she will very often grasp at straws, so to speak. There's a convenient heart attack; the circus tent catching on fire, making the ending possible; the owner's son fires 2/3 of the support staff, who could have put out the fire easily; they were concerned about fires. They practiced dealing with this very thing. We also have two lovers, one of whom is the teenage son of a local mayor who is in cahoots with the Nazis. The woman can't help herself; she only knows she loves him. Actually, Jenoff needs the love affair more than she needs credibility. Then there's the part where Astrid's ex-husband shows that not even Nazis are all bad as he provides an escape for Astrid. Does he regret what he did to Astrid? Not enough to stand up for her. In the real version of this story, the husband refuses to give up his Jewish wife and joins the circus with her. But Jenoff needed Astrid to be another outcast.
I was a history major and teacher. Certainly the Yad Vasehem anecdotes were interesting, but the Nazi atrocities stand on their own. You don't need fiction when the real thing is so horrible. If you want to know about the Nazi regime, read THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH. You'll find out what happened to the animals who thought murdering Jews was “The final solution”.
As a diplomat she handled Holocaust affairs in Poland. She got the idea for this book from the archives of Yad Vashem, the WWII Jewish museum. One of the lead characters, Noa, gets pregnant by a German soldier and is thrown out of her home by her father. The only job she can find, after the Nazis take her baby, is as a cleaning lady at a railroad terminal. One day she hears an eerie sound coming from one of the cars. It's a carload full of dead and dying babies. But one is still alive; she reaches in, grabs him, and starts walking. She could never hold her job and keep the baby. Also at Yad Vashem, Jenoff ran across a circus that rescued Jews. Noa is taken in by a fictional circus and taught how to be an aerialist. The second main character is Astrid, who teaches her how to work on the flying trapeze in a matter of weeks. Astrid is a Jewish woman who was married to a German soldier until Hitler outlawed such marriages. He told her to hit the bricks. Astrid was raised as a feature performer on the flying trapeze at another circus. They were disbanded because the owner, Astrid's father, was Jewish. But their main competitor takes her in.
Here's the rub. Did you believe the part about the Jewish babies? Well, that part was true, except that many were toddlers. Jenoff emphasizes that the “babies” didn't even know their names. When Jenoff needs to move the story she will very often grasp at straws, so to speak. There's a convenient heart attack; the circus tent catching on fire, making the ending possible; the owner's son fires 2/3 of the support staff, who could have put out the fire easily; they were concerned about fires. They practiced dealing with this very thing. We also have two lovers, one of whom is the teenage son of a local mayor who is in cahoots with the Nazis. The woman can't help herself; she only knows she loves him. Actually, Jenoff needs the love affair more than she needs credibility. Then there's the part where Astrid's ex-husband shows that not even Nazis are all bad as he provides an escape for Astrid. Does he regret what he did to Astrid? Not enough to stand up for her. In the real version of this story, the husband refuses to give up his Jewish wife and joins the circus with her. But Jenoff needed Astrid to be another outcast.
I was a history major and teacher. Certainly the Yad Vasehem anecdotes were interesting, but the Nazi atrocities stand on their own. You don't need fiction when the real thing is so horrible. If you want to know about the Nazi regime, read THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH. You'll find out what happened to the animals who thought murdering Jews was “The final solution”.
Manhattan Beach
Eddie Kerrigan was having a tough time making it during the Depression, working as a bag man for his old friend Dunny, who was a lieutenant in the mob. But he only paid Eddie $20, despite the fact the Eddie had saved him from drowning as a boy.
Eddie has two daughters, Anna and Lydia, who is disabled. Eddie loves Anna but he's distant from his other daughter. He takes Anna to see Dexter Styles who's higher on the food chain than Dunny to ask for a job. He needs a wheel chair for Lydia and Dunny won't loan it to him. But Eddie is essentially a good man and what the mob is doing disgusts him; he rats them out to a state's attorney, coincidentally the other boy Eddie saved when a rip tide took them out to sea. That's when Eddie disappears, presumably dead.
Anna's mother Agnes, a former vaudeville performer, as was Eddie, raises her daughters alone. One of the delights of the book, is what Agnes and the girls do when Eddie's not around. They dance, and they spoil Lydia, giving her baths in delicious smelling oils. Anna doesn't see a disability; she just sees the sister she loves.
Then we skip ahead to WWII, where Anna is working in the Navy yard, measuring parts for battleships. She has a friend, Nell, who uses her feminine wiles to get the use of a fellow worker's bicycle. She lets Anna use it; that's when she notices the Navy divers; she wants to be one. She asks her boss, who has a soft spot for her, to arrange an interview with Lt. Axel, a male chauvinist pig if you've ever seen one. He wants nothing to do with Anna, but someone puts in a good word for her (most likely her boss) and Anna gets to prove her metal. She's the best recruit Axel has.
We have lots of people with a point of view here. Eddie, for one. I never thought he was really dead. This is where we see author Jennifer Egan's ability. Egan plants the fact that Eddie was a vaudeville performer, doing Houdini-like tricks. So what do you think would happen if Eddie wound up wearing cement shoes?
Eddie's got to get out of this place, right? He joins the merchant marine. This leads to some harrowing ship wreck scenes and another scene where Eddies's essential goodness shines through. The bosun always treated Eddie like dirt, but when the roles are reversed Eddie treats him like a human being.
There's one plot thread I had trouble with. Anna ends up preggo; you can guess where that leads. It's a bit melodramatic. Again Egan seems to be aware this segment is a cliché, so she adds a character, Brianne, her mother's sister, another vaudeville performer who has a 21st century attitude towards sex. Anyway, she's a rock for Anna, and she adds some humor to the drama.
Egan's last best seller, A VISIT FROM THE GOOD SQUAD, was recently picked as one of the best books of the new century. This one doesn't quite live up to that one, although it did make the NY Times best seller list for a long stretch.
Eddie has two daughters, Anna and Lydia, who is disabled. Eddie loves Anna but he's distant from his other daughter. He takes Anna to see Dexter Styles who's higher on the food chain than Dunny to ask for a job. He needs a wheel chair for Lydia and Dunny won't loan it to him. But Eddie is essentially a good man and what the mob is doing disgusts him; he rats them out to a state's attorney, coincidentally the other boy Eddie saved when a rip tide took them out to sea. That's when Eddie disappears, presumably dead.
Anna's mother Agnes, a former vaudeville performer, as was Eddie, raises her daughters alone. One of the delights of the book, is what Agnes and the girls do when Eddie's not around. They dance, and they spoil Lydia, giving her baths in delicious smelling oils. Anna doesn't see a disability; she just sees the sister she loves.
Then we skip ahead to WWII, where Anna is working in the Navy yard, measuring parts for battleships. She has a friend, Nell, who uses her feminine wiles to get the use of a fellow worker's bicycle. She lets Anna use it; that's when she notices the Navy divers; she wants to be one. She asks her boss, who has a soft spot for her, to arrange an interview with Lt. Axel, a male chauvinist pig if you've ever seen one. He wants nothing to do with Anna, but someone puts in a good word for her (most likely her boss) and Anna gets to prove her metal. She's the best recruit Axel has.
We have lots of people with a point of view here. Eddie, for one. I never thought he was really dead. This is where we see author Jennifer Egan's ability. Egan plants the fact that Eddie was a vaudeville performer, doing Houdini-like tricks. So what do you think would happen if Eddie wound up wearing cement shoes?
Eddie's got to get out of this place, right? He joins the merchant marine. This leads to some harrowing ship wreck scenes and another scene where Eddies's essential goodness shines through. The bosun always treated Eddie like dirt, but when the roles are reversed Eddie treats him like a human being.
There's one plot thread I had trouble with. Anna ends up preggo; you can guess where that leads. It's a bit melodramatic. Again Egan seems to be aware this segment is a cliché, so she adds a character, Brianne, her mother's sister, another vaudeville performer who has a 21st century attitude towards sex. Anyway, she's a rock for Anna, and she adds some humor to the drama.
Egan's last best seller, A VISIT FROM THE GOOD SQUAD, was recently picked as one of the best books of the new century. This one doesn't quite live up to that one, although it did make the NY Times best seller list for a long stretch.
