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What are we reading? 10/03/2024
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as i prediicted, not one message on here all day Weds, i get back on Thurs and seven messages lol!have ordered a secondhand account of Suez by Hugh Thomas, its amazing how little has been written about it in last decade, i found just one new book on the suez crisis!
i am fustrated that so many new non-fictionbooks are so damn expensive, there is so much to read but waiting for paperback means i forget so many of them. For exampleb a book on the decline of english protestantism(£36), or a book on the end ofcromwell(£17) ora book on the Hohenzollerns and the Nazis(£40). if a book is £36, it had better be damn good!
RussellinVT wrote: "The Devils - Finished this after reading it slowly over many weeks.It’s no revelation to say that Stavrogin is an enigma – a regular and imperturbable duellist, a figure of cold malice in the eye..."
reading it at 23 or 24, i was gripped by its dark, unsettling fire, the danger of idealistic young males to cause massive harm is etched deep in the prose. it could be updated to any modern violent idealogy, where the truth can only be in the name of the cause
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It was me :)
in The Politics of Thatcherism
i can draw many parallels with yesterdays UK spring statement, where benefit cuts werea large part of the announcements.One of the essays from 1980,looks at how Thatcher approached welfare, the now familiar system of demonising the system,cutting off welfare to striking workers, the introduction of means testing, the reduction of various benefits and the overall reduction in spend, so as to make benefits almost impossible to live on.
I can see a legacy of 1980 in 2025,45 years later, with recent experience of New Labour, Thatchers recasting of the "safety net" as infested with shirkers and scroungers remains deep. Dividing the unionised workforce almost in half(its almost absent in the UK private sector in 2025) has also dramatically curtailed the rights of workers who fall foul of the contractions of capitalist market economies.
So the link between safety in times of need and the employment market remains significant. More people work in precarious,non unionised jobs and then find the support essential in such a volatile system is lacking when they need it upon losing their job.. In 1980 Thatcher had to work hard to achieve this by 1982-83, in 2025, it seems permanent,with the workforce changed forever
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It was me :)"
And this may be the second time I've said it was Berkley and not you!
AB76 wrote: "RussellinVT wrote: "AB76 wrote: "I watched Casablanca last night for the first time and was amazed this is considered one of the best films ever..."Maybe it depends on the circumstances, and it a..."
If you want a gritty thriller set during the Second World War, you might be interested in:
1. Bon Voyage, by Alfred Hitchcock, with a French cast. An English airman has been smuggled across occupied France. A French intelligence officer tries to uncover what really happened-- between opposing factions of Frenchmen-- during his journey.
2. Five Graves to Cairo by Billy Wilder. Intrigue in a resort hotel, emptied by the war in the desert. A Frenchwoman is not interested in the war between the English and the Germans; she wants to make some bargain to get her brother out of jail. With von Stroheim as an enigmatic Rommel toying with captured English officers. Some wartime fun with the Italians.
3. Notorious by Alfred Hitchcock. Set immediately after the Second World War, a spy melodrama with a sharp script and an excellent cast: Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, and Claude Rains. Bergman's character is emotionally complex.
Robert wrote: "AB76 wrote: "RussellinVT wrote: "AB76 wrote: "I watched Casablanca last night for the first time and was amazed this is considered one of the best films ever..."Maybe it depends on the circumstan..."
thanks robert, will make a note of these
I personally have always seen film as a lesser medium than literature and am always amazed how it nestles next to literature and classical music, its much older and more hallowed in-laws, in review sections and journals. This doesnt mean i am not a fan of heavy, brilliant artistic films, i still remember the first time i saw Alphaville and thought, wow, every line is like literature, this is truly high art, but then its not Hollywood....
my personal hollywood fave is Chinatown
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But wait, I’ve just got to an extended passage about James Weston. In his grief after his wife died, he asked her relatives the Churchills to look after baby Frank, who grows up with them, and when they inherit a vineyard on the Margaret River they all leave for Australia. It’s now twenty years later and James’s sorrow and guilt have come back in force. I don’t remember Jane dealing with this in anything like the same detail, and I must say it is surprisingly affecting. AMS has found a different angle and does a fine job. I’m carrying on.
RussellinVT wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "So is that chapter part of the book or not? I would say not. But if included it would have radically altered one's view of Stavrogin, because it wasn't just a question of a disreputable past. The girl who was raped was a child who then killed herself..."So just to clarify - you are saying that FD intended a chapter detailing a child rape by Stavrogin, but that it wasn't published as his editor refused? He wanted it in? Or did he accept the editor's view and reconciled himself to the revision? (Or - we don't know?)
Certainly, if such a passage had been included, Stavrogin would come out as a far nastier character than he does in the version I read... not that he was exactly 'sympathetic' either. Enigmatic, for sure.
AB76 wrote: "I personally have always seen film as a lesser medium than literature..."Can't agree with this - there are many great and profound films, and even more terrible ones - just as there are many great and profound books, and a plethora of awful ones!
The main difference (I think) is that a film does not depend only on one person (or maybe a few, as with a book - if we include first readers, editors and publishers). There are so many contributors in most cases - producers, directors, screenwriters, actors, cinematographers, sound technicians, film music composers etc. It's something of a miracle that films ever get made and completed. So when a film succeeds, it can be difficult to pin down which individuals are most deserving of the credit. A potentially good film can be ruined by an unsympathetic soundtrack, for example.
Robert wrote: "3. Notorious by Alfred Hitchcock.."An excellent film - I haven't seen the other two.
My focus on the Suez Canal Zone between 1900-1960, linked to the Newby novel set in Port Said reveals the sad post-colonial prejudices so common all over AfricaThe canal zone had a minority of european settlers among whom the majority were poor Greeks, Maltese and Italians. These were the staffers of bars, shops and markets for the middle class french and british Canal Zone employees and it created a truly diverse community in Port Said and the smaller canal zone cities of Ismailia and Suez City
Nasser destroyed this diversity in the 1950s as his government slowly squeezed the working class europeans into an existence they could never sustain, while setting quotas for egyptian employee numbers to enforce this. The wealthier europeans left with their wealth preserved, the Greeks,Maltese and Italians were less fortunate.
The Maltese,holding British citizenship had a homeland and an adopted one too, the Italians mainly fell foul of WW2 allegiances and left soon after 1945, the Greeks were the most troubled community. A good majority had never lived in Greece. Cyprus or the Greek islands for over 100 years, many came to Egypt in the 1820s, so they were forced into haggling and a reluctance of the Greek gov to let in thousands ofrefugees.(Nasser let the Greek Cypriots evade the laws he imposed)
Slowly the Greek communities or Egypthiots faded from the Egyptian coast, after the fading from Turkish Anatolia in the 1920s, this was probably the last exile Greek community to return home. (Ukraine has Pontic Greek communities but as many lived in war ravaged Kherson, i would imagine they may be in exile soon too)
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I think the evidence is that he did intend a chapter detailing a child rape and that it wasn't published because the editor of RM refused. As to whether it should be treated as a part of the finished work, I think it’s a case of no one really knows. In addition to what I said before, I’ve learned that after the serialization the book went through several editions in Russia during Dostoyevsky’s lifetime, and none of them includes “Stavrogin’s Confession”, which strongly suggests that, at the least, he acquiesced in the judgment of the RM editor. It’s of course quite normal for an author to be persuaded to accept changes proposed by a strong editor wishing to improve a text, though usually of a less substantial nature. Dost may have concluded that this editor was right. Also, apparently, much of the material from the omitted chapter reappears in The Raw Youth, where it is spoken by Versilov, which suggests that in the end Dost didn’t regard it as integral to Stavrogin’s character. Most critics are silent on the issue. The longest discussion I’ve found is in George Steiner, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky (page 281), and his view is that there are “substantial grounds” for not including the chapter.
Unreliable News(comments inspired by a 1979 article about populism in the USA, 37 years before Trump in 2016)Its a real concern in the modern world, at the source of news that many people digest as the gospel truth, via social media or online opinion channels and i am not sure we will ever manage the balance we had in my youth.A splintering effect will continue with social media being more influential and by default,less regulated and content monitored.
I'm relatively old and social media invisible but even a quick google can produce dozens of articles that create a world the conspiracy nuts or Elon Musks of this world want us to see.
I worry for future elections where the truth becomes even more elusive,less fact checking etc
AB76 wrote: "Unreliable News(comments inspired by a 1979 article about populism in the USA, 37 years before Trump in 2016)Its a real concern in the modern world, at the source of news that many people digest ..."
Keep going this way and Trump will elect himself president for life, rather like his bestie Putin.
RussellinVT wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "So just to clarify - you are saying that FD intended a chapter detailing a child rape by Stavrogin, but that it wasn't published as his editor refused? He wanted it in? Or did h..."Thanks very much for that information. I've had a very nasty cough/cold this week and wasn't up to doing any research!
I haven't read Steiner (since I much prefer FD to Tolstoy, I wasn't tempted though maybe that was a mistake). I did read Dostoevsky by André Gide, though - a long time ago - and found it very interesting, though I felt it told me as much about Gide as it did about FD. Certainly, he put his own spin on things.
giveusaclue wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Unreliable News(comments inspired by a 1979 article about populism in the USA, 37 years before Trump in 2016)Its a real concern in the modern world, at the source of news that many p..."
i fully expect something like this, or they just make Vance president without an election, declare an emergency of some sort or just ask Chief Justice Roberts to declare elections void, he likes doing President Chump favours
AB76 wrote: "I worry for future elections where the truth becomes even more elusive,less fact checking etc..."And you are quite right to feel like that. In the 1950s there used to be some sort of balance across the newspaper industry with the Labour supporting paper the Daily Herald (which later became the Sun!), the Manchester Guardian (traditionally Liberal) and the Observer (centre left) as well as the usual suspects on the right. Nowadays, the printed newspapers are overwhelmingly right wing, and the internet is controlled by a small cabal of nutters like Musk.
There is excellent information 'out there' for those able to find it and sort the truth from the lies... but how many of today's children are developing the skills to do that?
The War Journals of Ernst Junger( 1941-45) are just superb, i see them as a Tuetonic version of Sartre's diary of the phoney war,although the frenchman wrote his waiting for a war, sitting in military border posts,while Junger wrote his as the war raged in Paris, Russia and then back in Germany.Junger is an intellectual,alive with thoughts,alongside petty little meals with various squalid french traitors and opportunists. He is fair towards these frenchman who enjoyed a good war until 1944 and doesnt question why they are supping with the enemy, he seems more interested in their ideas, their writing and their souls. He has a few ladyfriends he calls on, despite being married, observes and notes attractive women in the streets and searches the bookshops of Paris for books and art.
But emerging from his interesting everday life as a junior officer in the occupation army is the bigger picture of German politics. The Wehrmacht administration in Paris is packed with officers who later were implicated in the Hitler assasination plot and brutally killed by the Nazi's. He discusses, in subtle terms the genocidal murder in the east, the men who have killed thousands, driving the Nazi state foward and is aware of the party vs the army machinations in Occupied France. He laments how the officer class are unable to outwit the Nazi beast: …
the pervasive weakness of the middle class and the junkers show in these Generals. They have enough vision to recognise the way things are going but they lack the authority and the ability to oppose minds motivated by violence The new masters exploit them like wardens …but what if these last props were to fall?...then leaden terror like the Cheka will spread over the land
I would like to think he has forseen the danger for his brother officers in their anti-Hitler stance but i have only reached Feb 1942 and he is more concerned with the Nazi policy of executing hostages in France, which he feels is futile. The German military commander in France, Von Stulpnagel resigns in protest at the hostage executions, he had followed orders in 1941 but felt by 1942 he could no longer do so.
(The G still havent let this pass through the woke-mind censors.......tedious)
Mod
You need a bit more patience, AB, 😉, it's there.
I still have trouble understanding how someone who considers themselves to be left wing can use "woke" as an insult as the far-right do ...
AB76 wrote: "as i prediicted, not one message on here all day Weds, i get back on Thurs and seven messages lol!have ordered a secondhand account of Suez by Hugh Thomas, its amazing how little has been written..."
Years ago, Rhodes James' biography of Eden gave a quite fair account of the split between the British government and the Eisenhower administration over Nassar's nationalization of Suez.
Eden and his circle thought that by creating an alternative forum, the Suez Canal Users Association (SCUA), they could bypass the UN. However, any fair reading of Eisenhower's "My dear Anthony" letter to Eden was like the Steinberg cartoon, where all of the squiggles of dialogue over the head of the man behind the desk spell out a big "No." Eisenhower thought that Eden had not made out his case for military intervention, and needed to go to the UN.
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The Steiner is good value, not academic and careful but big and sweeping, though it can be quite a demanding read as it does assume familiarity with all the texts. He sees T and D as part of a panorama, picking up influences and parallels across a huge range of classic authors.
I remember enjoying the Gide too, despite the style being far less punchy. He is one who had very little to say on Stavrogin.
Robert wrote: "AB76 wrote: "as i prediicted, not one message on here all day Weds, i get back on Thurs and seven messages lol!have ordered a secondhand account of Suez by Hugh Thomas, its amazing how little has..."
The novel has quite a lot to say about the atmosphere in Port Said after the nationalisation of the Canal,as yet the Suez crisis has not turned into war...
AB76 wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Unreliable News(comments inspired by a 1979 article about populism in the USA, 37 years before Trump in 2016)Its a real concern in the modern world, at the source..."
If they wanted to make Vance President, Trump could resign tomorrow. Vance, as an elected Veep, would become President by succession.
Robert wrote: "AB76 wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Unreliable News(comments inspired by a 1979 article about populism in the USA, 37 years before Trump in 2016)Its a real concern in the modern world, ..."
good point, he will probably do that in Oct 2028, before he cancels the election due to national security issues but i somehow think Trump would like a third term to go with his nobel peace prize,canada becoming the 51st state, Greenland being purchased and Ukraine becoming part of Russia. Some of these things i say in jest but not all...
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Very interesting, AB. Did you get any sense that he was being guarded with his comments? There must have been some danger in keeping extensive journals expressing criticism of the German leadership, even if it was more implied than overt. Regardless, it’s clearly one for the TBR list. In a similar way, I’ve been meaning for ages to read The Nemesis of Power by Sir John Wheeler-Bennett, about the failure/inability of the Army generals to exert any control or even restraint over the Nazis once they were in power. A friend in college recommended it decades ago.
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In 1922, Johns (Capt. W.E. Johns, author of the Biggles books) was working in London as an RAF recruiter. Into his office walked an inferior physical specimen with a strange air of moral superiority. It was T.E. Lawrence, looking to enlist under an alias. The powers that be were meant to have sent the recruitment office a secret order telling them to sign up this fishy character; Johns later insisted he had seen no such instructions. He took the would-be recruit at face value, disbelieved everything he said, and booted him out. The man returned with a messenger from the air ministry, who handed over a letter. Johns looked at the official signature, shrugged, wrote 'special case' on the file and sent the fellow to the medical officer. Deeply unimpressed by the weedy person, the MO threw him out in turn. The affair escalated; Johns was told that if he didn't force the procedure through, his military career was over: 'You'll get your bowler hat.' So 'Aircraftsman Ross' was enlisted, and Johns picked up the phone to warn the training camp at Uxbridge 'Lawrence of Arabia is on his way.' Johns later said: 'Lawrence knew I knew ...' They had a long talk before the imposter left, but Johns didn't say about what. What stayed with him, on parting, was the imprint of Lawrence's clammy handshake.From 'A Life of Biggles' by Hilary Mantel.
RussellinVT wrote: "AB76 wrote: "The War Journals of Ernst Junger( 1941-45) are just superb, i see them as a Tuetonic version of Sartre's diary of the phoney war..."Very interesting, AB. Did you get any sense that h..."
He is very careful with names throughout, many leading personalities have different names, he changes the names of his wife and mistress too.As regards keeping his journals, i havent read anything yet about whether he kept them private or not....if he told people or shared them.
I get the impression the military circles he moved in where very discreet on all matters and this is where he remained untouched until 1944, when the military friends he had were rounded up after the Hitler Plot he was close to being implicated apparently but there is a story that when his name was mentioned to Hitler, Hitler said " no one touches Junger"(but i need to look into this story more)
One thing that may have protected him generally was the fact he was a strong nationalist and conservative, who had always been distant from political Nazism but not critical until 1939. If he had been more liberal, he may have fallen foul earlier, he also had that reputation from the Great War and his writings that possibly worked in his favour too.
Clearly, while he wore the uniform and served, i get the feeling that he is constantly aghast at the policy in the east and in France regarding executions of hostages in reprisal for assasinations. His repeated references, at least in 1941-42(this is as far as i have read), to the "party" and the "army" in France shows me tensions where strong. France had a very unusual adminstration by Nazi standards, the army ran the German zone as opposed to the more directly ruled Eastern nations(nazi gauleiters control) and Holland where the SS were in control. (Southern and Central France was Vichy run and the very SE was Italian run)
Its a joy to read, apparently the last section, in Germany is the saddest, the loss of his son, the fact he is now a civilian under allied attack etc
Gpfr wrote: "Further to AB76's reading about T.E. Lawrence:In 1922, Johns (Capt. W.E. Johns, author of the Biggles books) was working in London as an RAF recruiter. Into his office walked an inferior physical..."
thanks for that GP!
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He is very careful with names throughout...
Really interesting, AB, thanks. What we read is so often from the perspective of the French (or the British or the Americans in France), a thoughtful German view not so much.
I think I'll have to get it from the library. It's available to buy, but it's not cheap. It looks as though it never came out in paperback.
Gpfr wrote: "Further to AB76's reading about T.E. Lawrence:In 1922, Johns (Capt. W.E. Johns, author of the Biggles books) was working in London as an RAF recruiter. Into his office walked an inferior physical..."
Fascinating! I must have read practically all the Biggles books between ages 10-12 approximately... I didn't know this tale at all, still less that Mantel had written anything about Biggles... clearly far more deserving of a biography than that wimp Cromwell... ;-)
Edit: I still have those books...
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I still have those books...
Like Mantel's husband, but you maybe don't take things as far. It was from an article called 'A Life of Biggles' in A Memoir of my Former Self.
"My husband has eighty-five of these titles and rules about his collection. He has to happen upon the books, not hunt them down. He won't pay silly money, and he'll have nothing to do with catalogues, internet searches or specialist networks. A day which to him is merely a dull day in a strange town is to him a Biggles opportunity; but as the number of second-hand bookshops seems to dwindle, I don't know whether he'll be able to collect the stories he's missing ..."
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Salt CreekLucy Treloar tells the story of a family in Australia in the late 19th century. The family leaves Adelaide to restore their fortunes (in the father's idea) by moving to the isolated Salt Creek where they have first cattle and make and sell cheese, then sheep ... A group of Aborigines lives nearby — all men are equal, but not really ...
I enjoyed this.
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Gpfr wrote: "Biggles... Like Mantel's husband, but you maybe don't take things as far...."No indeed. All the books I have were bought for me when I was a kid - a couple of dozen, probably. They reside in our French place as well as some other books of mine which madame felt were cluttering up the place here. (Soon replaced with others, rather inevitably.) I don't 'collect' books - I only buy to read. Some I pass on to friends or charity shops - others, I am reluctant to part with!
RussellinVT wrote: "I finished Emma by Alexander McCall Smith. As a stand-alone modern novel, it would be perfectly acceptable – 360 pages of amiable prose and light social observation. As a re-telling, you wonder wha..."Sounds like a miss. I read quite a few of the No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency stories and some of the Edinburgh based 44 Scotland Street series. The former were pretty good light entertainment and so were the latter - up to a point - though eventually the author's inherent conservatism and contempt for certain behaviours which maybe link to what is now called 'wokery', and his political slant, eventually became wearing and I gave up on him.
Re: Ernst JungerFurther research into his military career, shows he was dismissed from the army after being indirectly implicated in the Hitler Plot,which may have been the source of Hitlers quote about Junger, so a minor punishment. There was no doubt by 1944 he was entirely anti-Nazi, will be interesting how that section of the diary reads, when i get there
He also apparently burned any controversial stuff he wrote from 1933.He wrote an underground essay called The Peace, which he circulated amongst the plotters and Rommel, it was a work that would have meant death to him if discovered.
RussellinVT wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "...I haven't read Steiner (since I much prefer FD to Tolstoy, I wasn't tempted though maybe that was a mistake). I did read Dostoevsky by André Gide, though - a long time ago - ..."i must look up that Gide book
Busy weekend with neices and nephews, the first truly mild start to spring since covid in 2020, obviously i loathe the absence of rain and cold. Its feast or famine in the shires, after maybe 16 wet months, in March it has barely drizzled,the mud of winter is now just dust.Its set fine for next 10 days, temp range of 15-19c but the nights dropping to 2 or 3c still, thats a reminder of early springAfter a weekend of zero reading but much fun, i'm looking foward to some reading this evening
Something to Answer For by PH Newby(1969) is a truly unusual taleI'm halfway in and its very impressive but also getting more and more of a mystery of killing and the mystery of the main characters impaired memory and behaviour. Suez and Port Said are vivid in its burning heat, water and the uneasy days after nationalisation of the zone, the humour is subtle but knowing and one feels small influences from Durrells "Alexandria Quartet" set nearby.
As it won the first Booker in 1969,my mind goes back to John Fowles describing one of his stints as a judge on a panel in the 1970s and the meetings of writers sitting and discussing the collection of books nominated.I can see why this won the prize.
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Something to Answer For: The First Man Booker Prize Winner (other topics)Salt Creek (other topics)
Dostoevsky (other topics)
The Politics of Thatcherism (other topics)
Les eaux du Danube (other topics)
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It’s no revelation to say that Stavrogin is an enigma..."
... Unlike Ivan (Karamazov) and Raskolnikov, I never felt that I completely got inside Stavrogin's head. .."
In the David Magarshack 1950s Penguin version there's no mention of a rape as such, only a hint of something like a seduction, a hint so tangential that I had trouble understanding what Dost was getting at. In the Introduction, which I've now read, DM talks about the serialization in The Russian Messenger. It seems that the editor of the RM refused to publish a long chapter dealing with Stavrogin's "disreputable past". DM says this must to a certain extent be held responsible for the obscurity of Stavrogin's characterization. Exploring a bit further, there's a bit in Marc Slonim, The Epic of Russian Literature, saying that the chapter was omitted from the final version of the book as published, and didn't appear in print until 50 years later. So is that chapter part of the book or not? I would say not. But if included it would have radically altered one's view of Stavrogin, because it wasn't just a question of a disreputable past. The girl who was raped was a child who then killed herself.
The Memoir by Anna Dost is a wonderful read, recommended by Berkley, iirc. (And yes, he = Dost, should have been clearer.)