What are we reading? 16/12/2024

[Robert]

scarletnoir wrote: "Robert wrote: "Much of the book centers on the cafes and bars that attracted foreigners..."

Indeed. I had two or three problems with the book, iirc. First - the condescending attitude towards the ..."

Actually, I enjoyed the part on Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida." I had difficulty with this play, and enjoyed the fresh perspective.
One thing I didn't enjoy was the defense of Stalin's military and political strategy. Shouldn't one character have pointed out to the parlor Marxist that Stalin was not blocking Hitler-- rather, he was raking in his share of the loot!

[scarletnoir]

Robert wrote: "One thing I didn't enjoy was the defense of Stalin's military and political strategy. Shouldn't one character have pointed out to the parlor Marxist that Stalin was not blocking Hitler-- rather, he was raking in his share of the loot!."

I didn't remember that at all... what I retain is the insouciance of the expats, downright odd and inappropriate (IMO) in the circumstances. However, I see that Manning's irresponsible husband was (apparently) a marxist of some stripe, so presumably that passage either reflects or merely reports his views!

[scarletnoir]

AB76 wrote: "War Without Hate covers the North African conflict in WW2...Mussolini ordered his dashing and vile General Graziani to invade British Egypt, across the Libyan border in 1940...."

As you may realise, my knowledge of history is patchy to put it mildly... I tend to read around incidents and periods which are covered in novels... so I know even less than you about this period.

Having checked him out on Wikipedia, "vile" seems if anything too kind a word for Graziani, who ordered several revolting war crimes. He should have been prosecuted after the end of WW2 but wasn't, apparently out of the indifference of the Allies (the crimes were against Ethiopians...). Ironically, his only prosecution came from the Italians for "collaborating with the Nazis". He served 4 months of a 19 year sentence! On release, he became president of what seems to have been a neo-Fascist political party.

The 'Mausoleum controversy' provides a bizarre postscript:
In August 2012, $160,000 of public money was used to help finance the building of a large monument atop Graziani's tomb in Affile. The subscription was supplemented by private funding from the mayor of Affile, Ercole Viri. The new mausoleum was engraved with the words "Fatherland" and "Honor".... In 2017, Viri and two other Affile town councillors were convicted of the crime of "fascism apology" for building the monument and were given jail sentences, although the court did not order the removal of the monument.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodolfo...

[AB76]

My best reads from 2024, with decade they were published and nationality

Best novels:

The Martyred by Richard E Kim (1960s-USA)
Death of an Adversary by Hans Keilson (1930s-GER)
A Guardian Angel Recalls by WF Hermans (1970s-NED
In A Lonely Place by Dorothy Hughes (1940s- USA)
The Murderer by Roy Health (1970s- WEST INDIES)
Adrift om the nile by Naguib Mahfouz (1960s-EGYPT)
Death comes for the archbishop( by Cather 1950s-USA)
The Shipyard by Onetti (1950s- URUGUAY)

Non-fcition:
Musil- Politics and Litewrature
Klemperer-Munich 1919
Czapski- Inhuman Land
Reimann-Diaries 1955-63
Fowles Diaries 1966-76
Neave The Flames of Calais

[AB76]

Ever shrinking newspapers part 4,566:

in my lunch break at work about 15 years ago, on a monday, Media Guardian was my key read, 6 pages of informed reporting on the press world and it was a gem. It slowly reduced over 5 years to barely 2 pages and i stopped bothering

FT weekend review section has been a pleasure in last 8 years, 6 pages of good book reviews which was easily a match for the Guardian in its review years too. Its slowly reducing now to just 3 pages , its sad this keeps happening...

[Robert]

scarletnoir wrote: "AB76 wrote: "War Without Hate covers the North African conflict in WW2...Mussolini ordered his dashing and vile General Graziani to invade British Egypt, across the Libyan border in 1940...."

As y..."

A tank commander named Crisp wrote "Brazen Chariots," a sharp memoir of the war in the Western Desert. As his name suggests, Crisp's humor was dry and salty. Worth reading.

[Tam]

I have finished Apereigon by Colum McCann. I have to rate it as the best book that I have read this year. Though I have to say there have not been that many of them this year. I have discarded more than half attempted having not gone much beyond 20 pages or so. I have had reading troughs before, so I am not downhearted.

Apereigon is that rare thing, something elegiac and yet totally frank in its story telling which is the life experiences of two men. One Israeli, Rami, and his friendship with Bassam a Palestinian living on the West Bank. Both men have lost daughters, one to Palestinian suicide bombers and the other to a rubber bullet fired by an Israeli soldier outside her school. They meet up and become good friends whilst working with a united campaigning group, across religious divides, who are dedicated to founding a peaceful solution to the occupation, by Israel, of Palestine’s West Bank.

I lived in Israel for around a year or so, back in the mid-seventies so many of the places in the book are familiar to me. I have to say that, back then, I was far more optimistic as to there being some sort of resolution to be found, that could accommodate both sides. This was during the Israeli occupation of the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula from 1967 to 1982. Since then there has been the ‘Intifada’ in 1987, and again in 2000, and then there is ongoing occupation and stealing, by Israeli settlers, with government backing, of Palestinians land, and the demolition of their houses, and of course this was long before ‘the wall’ was built.

I was pleased to see that Banksy’s hotel in Bethlehem gets a mention. And of course, things are so much worse now, since the Oct. 7th attack on Israelis, by Hamas, and the retribution that has since reigned down on Gaza. Despite all this, this is a book of optimism and grace, and a confirmation that good people who have suffered do not automatically resort to bitterness and revenge, but instead seek to understand, love and respect each other when they reach out for a solution of peace.

Really its more of a kaleidoscope of a book than an actual straight narrative one. Events are out of time, some might even seem a bit random, but somehow it all coalesces in substance. My favourite parts are the digressions on birds, however these die down somewhat as the book progresses and only reappear towards the end as a simple list of ‘The Holy Lands’ birdlife... At least the birds of prey only kill to eat, to survive. Orders containing the largest numbers of species, in Palestine, are: Passeriformes (including songbirds) with 192 species. The avifauna of the Palestine region is unusually rich in birdlife, with many just migrating through. If only humans could be just as tolerant of their neighbours who happen to be passing through, on their way to ‘elsewhere’... Sometimes you just need to listen to the songs, that come from foreign parts.

[AB76]

Robert wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "AB76 wrote: "War Without Hate covers the North African conflict in WW2...Mussolini ordered his dashing and vile General Graziani to invade British Egypt, across the Libyan borde..."

The total collapse of Graziani's forces in "Operation Compass"(the Allied invasion of Libya) is still amazing to read, especially as reading Spina's stories of 1930s Italian Libya in November, the gathering storm of war is present in every tale, (set in Cyrenaica, eastern Libya, this was the sizeable region that fell quickly between Dec 1940 and Feb 1941)

The Allies swept accross the diverse region, into the centres of population, the ports of Derna, Bardia, Tobruk and Benghazi. The area around Derna is fertilee and mountainous, most of the rest of Cyrenaica was good tank country.

General after General and his men were taken, many on the run, the ranks surrendering at will almost, though there were some fierce battles and bravery on the Italian side. By Feb 1941, all of Eastern Libya was in Allied hands, they took approx 130,000 Italian POW's and left Mussolini racing to reinforce western libya and the capital Tripoli.

The book moves fast on this first allied counter attack and it isnt quite clearwhy the Italians fought so poorly, they outnumbered the Allies 4 to 1. However the shock of the sudden attacks after the rather underwhelming Italian invasion of Egypt must have shattered morale quickly and the author suggests that most of the Italian armed forces were far below the standard of the British. The Australians played a large role in what was called "Operation Compass"

and then the pendulum in the desert swings Rommels way..the Brits pull out fresh NZ and well hardened Aussie troops to be sent to Greece , leaving a fragile force defending Eastern Libya

Rommel, with Italian reinforcements then stormed into the region, retaking Benghazi and Derna, capturing two British generals and devastating the inferior british tanks and guns. The Desert Fox, flying in a small plane or in a vehicle, berates his officers and he demands more and more of them.

The chapter i just read ends at the gates of Tobruk, this is a very fluid first 4-5 months of the Desert War and now the British were on the back foot and being routed

The whole region between Tobruk(Libya) and El Alamein(Egypt) barely had more than 100,000 inhabitants, though the distance between the two places was 340 miles!

[AB76]

Charisma and Disenchantment which collects the Vocation Lectures by Max Weber, is a real gem of German translation and editing.

The great sociologist was called by students in 1917, as WW1 raged, to lecture on the idea of calling and vocation and he delivered a second lecture two years later. Damion Searls has delivered some brilliant notes and translation context in this NYRB Classics edition and i'm intrigued by it

Weber discusses the difference between the USA and German university systems as they stood in 1917 and argues for specialisation over generalisation,commenting too on the capitalist model of education in the USA

This is the second German WW1 era publication by NYRB Classsics after Mann's lengthy arguments for the Great War Reflections of a Non-Political Man

[Robert]

scarletnoir wrote: "Robert wrote: "One thing I didn't enjoy was the defense of Stalin's military and political strategy. Shouldn't one character have pointed out to the parlor Marxist that Stalin was not blocking Hitl..."

The apology for Stalin may have appeared later in the war-- and the trilogy. Likely the Marxist analysis appeared in the second volume.

Once when I was browsing in the Second World War section of a used bookstore when I found a book by Anna Louise Strong written in the early part of the war. I had known Strong as a Maoist; when I read her chapter on the Nazi-Soviet pact, headed "The Pact That Blocked Hitler," I knew that she was a loyal Stalinist as well. The Marxist analysis in the postwar novel was much the same as Strong's in Stalin's time.