As this sequel to Atwood’s worldwide bestseller and Hulu serialized drama, The Handmaid’s Tale was coming to a close I grew anxious. ‘There are’t enouAs this sequel to Atwood’s worldwide bestseller and Hulu serialized drama, The Handmaid’s Tale was coming to a close I grew anxious. ‘There are’t enough pages left to wrap this up,’ I thought, but I wasn’t giving Atwood and her editors enough credit.
The story is Atwood’s conversational response to readers who wanted to know what happened to characters left in extremis at the end of A Handmaid’s Tale. Atwood’s wonderful sense of humor brings the sharp-eyed, lumpy woman adorned in brown burlap and known as Aunt Lydia to life. Her diary is being composed as we read:
“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I took the one most travelled by. It was littered with corpses, as such roads are. But as you will have noticed, my own corpse is not among them.”
This turns out to be one page in Aunt Lydia’s apologia for misdeeds first forced upon her and then undertaken as a means to an end. Whose end we learn at the finish.
Two more points of view are given in short, discontinuous and not always parallel histories. A young girl growing up privileged in Gilead discovers at thirteen that she is considered marriageable. The horror of that notion stirs rebellion within her. An orphaned teen in Canada learns her guardians have been car bombed. She apparently has some debts to pay.
Atwood braids these three stories, giving each voice distinction and character. Our mind’s eye has each firmly in sight as they gradually find themselves within arm’s reach of one another. One of the girls tells the other that Aunt Lydia is the “scariest of all the Aunts…You get the feeling she wants you to be better than you are…She looks at you as if she really sees you.” Hmm, yes.
What was most interesting to me as I blazed through this big book—it is very easy to read, a straight-line adventure story—is how Atwood could see so clearly certain social and political trends that are evidenced in our society now. Her clarity and comprehensiveness of view reveals so much about her own personality. She’d be a wonderful friend.
Vermont and Maine get top billing as states on Gilead’s border where residents are known to be willing to transport ‘grey market’ goods like lemons or escaping girls. A New Englander myself, I was disappointed New Hampshire, the ‘Live Free Or Die’ state, was not similarly viewed until I considered the White Mountains would pose a significant barrier to anyone expecting to travel past them to the north.
In the end, I was gratified to discover Portsmouth, NH was chosen as a key location for by-sea person-smuggling from Gilead, just as it had been historically for black slaves of old seeking freedom in the north.
It is difficult to avoid Atwood’s premise that literature must be destroyed in a repressive state because new, creative notions about how to live are subversive. Atwood picked out for especial notice books that would be have an enormous impact on impressionable minds, like Jane Eyre, Anna Karenina, Tess of the D’Ubervilles, Paradise Lost, and Lives of Girls and Women.
I haven’t read the last but would like to, now. I might take issue with Paradise Lost. I read that a couple years ago to compare it to Jamaica’s Kincaid’s memoir See Now Then and I can honestly say that book is too dense, particularly for young girls who are just learning to read. But Atwood probably knows better. When one’s library is limited, sometimes one’s understanding becomes sharpened.
When the girls in Gilead were finally able to read, it came as a shock to them that the Aunts had lied to them about the Bible. The Aunts had told the girls that the dismemberment story of the concubine, while horrific, was an act of sacrifice, a noble and charitable act. Reading the words themselves the girls discovered there was only degradation and hatred in the killing of an innocent.
“I feared I might lose my faith. If you’ve never had a faith, you will not understand what that means. You feel as if your best friend is dying, that everything that defined you is being burned away; that you’ll be left all alone.”
We have to have some empathy, then, for those who will lose their faith, however weak it has become over the years, in a political party now called Republican. It is sad, this death of belief.
Very very glad to hear from Margaret Atwood again. I miss her already....more
Rachel Cusk was invited by London’s Almeida Theatre to write a new version of Euripides’s Medea. The new play is both thoroughly modern and bears the Rachel Cusk was invited by London’s Almeida Theatre to write a new version of Euripides’s Medea. The new play is both thoroughly modern and bears the stamp of personality of this talented novelist and memoirist. That she fiercely loves her children, two boys, is apparent. She followed Euripides’s formula, creating a storyline which places the blame differently.
If you remember the story, Medea kills her sons when her unfaithful husband marries the young & well-tended daughter of Creon. Considering how difficult it would be for anyone to contemplate such an act, and considering Cusk was severely castigated by readers for her memoir about motherhood, A Life’s Work, Cusk manages to make her work, like Euripides's work, many things at the same time: strong, agonized, righteous, and tragic.
Commentaries on the original Greek play had different interpretations of Medea herself. One made her out to be a young lover who changed her view of her husband when she’d had children. The things that she liked about her husband when he was a young man annoy her when she’s older. When she learned he was unfaithful and was looking for something new, she poisoned his new wife and killed the husband and sons out of pique and revenge.
A more nuanced interpretation, suggests Medea pursued her ambitious middle-aged husband Jason hotly, helping him to secure the fleece of the Golden Ram and thus develop a reputation as one of the most daring heroes of Hellas. But Medea was an foreigner and when she returned to Jason's home with him, her combative and fiery alien nature grated on the conservative natives . She grew tiresome for Jason and he sought another, younger, wealthier alliance that would increase his standing. Then Medea sought revenge.
Cusk’s Medea has less backstory, though from the voices of the chorus (a group of mothers meeting while their kids playdate, and who cross paths picking up their children at the school gates), we learn that Medea is not liked. She’s smart, but no one really likes her writing, if they read it at all. She’s opinionated, which doesn’t work if one wants a marriage to run smoothly ("she asked for it"). She’s a “snooty cow” because she doesn’t always recognize the women in different settings, her mind on other things. Cusk slips in a Holocaust joke: “She gone very Belsen,” referring to how Medea has stopped eating. “It’s called the divorce diet.”
Meanwhile, Medea turns to the audience and makes her case:
“A bad thing has happened to me You’re scared that if I name it, it might happen to you, too. …Sleep, woman, sleep. You won’t even feel it when he creeps to your side and slits your throat. What’s that you say? What about love? Yes, you’re loving souls aren’t you? You love the whole world, You love your little hearts out. It’s all right, you can hate me. Go ahead, feel free. It’s so much easier than hating yourselves.
Medea has other voices speaking with her, ones more intimate: the Tutor and the Nurse and the Cleaner. The Cleaner is clear-eyed and clear-spoken and shares what she learned from her mother: the best revenge is to be happy. Pretend if you don’t feel it. Women are good at pretending.
The eventual playing out of the story is unique yet retains the pain of the original. We hear Creon slyly telling Medea “You know, you look completely different when you smile” while she is in the midst of her life’s most curdling trial. “There’s the sourness again. The problem with you is you don’t know how to love…an unloving woman is a freak.”
The audience undoubtedly feels stress levels rising as the characters have interleaved speaking parts—talking over one another. If you’ve ever been witness to a disagreement, this is one…after another…after another. Any uncomfortableness we feel when Jason and Medea are speaking is relieved by Nurse, Tutor, and Cleaner pointing to the absurdities of male expectations. But the best joke goes to Aegeus, who will become Medea’s second husband.
Aegeus, speaking to a Medea distraught about the money Jason expects from the marriage says he understands Jason is about to get his needs “assuaged” by a wealthy heiress. This word comes as a surprise in the midst of conversation and surely would elicit a burst of laughter in any theatre. The word joke may only work in English, but its excessive formality and sound-similarity to “massage” is a perfect bomb.
Cusk’s originality in portraying the oldest stories of all—love and infidelity—continues to entrance. I am even more impressed now with her fictional trilogy Outline than I was before I read whatever I could of her work. This author is special. In a book talk at Politics & Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C., Cusk says a criterion to use when creating is that a work should be “useful.” Exactly. That’s why her work, her honesty, her humor, her willingness ‘to go there’ is so exciting. What she does keeps us alive....more
Foolish me. I thought I was going to look at the different editions of The Iliad and choose the one most readable but did not reckon with the overwhelFoolish me. I thought I was going to look at the different editions of The Iliad and choose the one most readable but did not reckon with the overwhelming beauty of the language and story. The truth is, it does not matter which edition you choose, so long as you read at least one. It is inevitable that you will find yourself drawn to the question of the most beautiful and complete rendition but you may (wisely) concede defeat at the beauty of each.
The Homeric epics are said to be the greatest stories, martial stories, ever sung or written of all time, so if for some reason they did not resonate for you in high school, you may want to revisit what your teachers were talking about. When they describe the death of a man in the full bloom of his strength looking like an flower in a rainstorm, head and neck aslant, unable to withstand the beating rain, we understand. I listened to the audio of Stephen Mitchell’s streamlined translation, and it was utterly ravishing and compelling.
The Iliad is one episode among many in Homer’s epics, and it may have been assumed that listeners of the original spoken performance would be familiar with all the players in this war. It is argued by some, including British scholar M.L. West, that The Iliad has had pieces added to it over the years. Stephen Mitchell follows West’s scholarship and strips out the extra passages, a notion expanded upon in a review of Mitchell’s translation by classicist Daniel Mendelsohn in The New Yorker (2011). Mitchell’s translation may be the most readable, the most listenable one in English. It is also the shortest. Mitchell also shortens the lines in English so that they have speed and momentum for an impressive delivery.
The recent (2017) Peter Green translation, begun when Green was nearly 90 years old, is similarly easy to read; Green tells us that he began in a relaxed attitude for diversion and completed the whole within a year. Colin Burrow reviewed Green's translation in the June 18th 2015 edition of the London Review of Books. Neither the writing or the reading of this version is anguished or tortured, and Burrow points out that Green was a historian but didn't allow that to obfuscate or weigh down the poetry.
The Green & Mitchell versions both retain a long recitation of those who prepared their ships to sail with Agamemnōn to Troy to bring back Helen, the wife of Menelaös. One imagines ancient listeners shouting when their region is named, much along the lines of the cheering section of a field game, when each player’s name is called. And later, as the blow-by-blow of the battle proceeded, one imagines each region cheering when mention of their leader is declaimed, though some died horrible deaths.
This is another reason to read this ancient work: We live and die not unlike one another, we who lived so far apart in time, and perhaps the ardor young men of today have for the sword and for fame will be doused by the utterly desolate manner of death recounted here, one in particular that I cannot forget: a spear through the buttock and into the bladder meant a painful and ugly death. However, it is true that Achilles chose fame over life, knowing that his exploits in Troy would mean his physical death but his fame amongst men would be sung for “thousands of years.”
One wonders how the ballad was delivered—in pieces or over a period of days—perhaps in sections by different singers? Caroline Alexander, after a lifetime of her own research into the Homeric epics argues in The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer's Iliad and the Trojan War that the work certainly required days to recite, and may have been performed in episodes. The length of the piece suggests the piece was once short enough to be memorized, leaving room for invention and modification as befits the oral tradition.
I wonder now which European language has the most translations, and do they sometimes dare to attempt translations from ancient Greek to, say, French, and then to English? It seems we have enough scholars understanding ancient Greek to give us satisfactory versions without resorting to piggybacked translations. An attempt was made by John Farrell in the Oct 30, 2012 edition of the Los Angeles Review of Books to untangle the English translations and sort them for clarity and poetry. Those of us who love this work will read them all, especially the fascinating introductions to each in which the scholars themselves wax eloquent about what they loved about it. Mitchell's introduction is especially accessible and impelling: I could hardly wait to get to the story.
I have read reviews of people who prefer Lattimore, Fagles, Fitzgerald, or Lombardo translations and all I can say is I’m not the one to quibble about great works. Daniel Mendelsohn "graded" four translations in the article discussing Mitchell's translation. It must be a curse and a blessing both (for one's self and one’s family both) to understand ancient Greek and to feel the desire to translate Homer. All the questions any editor/translator must address, e.g., spelling, which edition is ‘original,’ more poetry or prose, whether to render the translation literally or by sense…how exhausting the decisions, but how exciting, too.
In the end, whichever edition gives you the greatest access for your first attempt to breach the ramparts of this ancient work is the one to choose for a first read. The other editions will naturally come later, once you have the sense of the story, a few names nailed down, and have that deepening curiosity about the poetry and the beauty.
One last observation is that the men in this epic were mere playthings of the gods, gods that could be cruel, petty, jealous, and vengeful. These gods were helpful to individual men or women insofar as it helped their cause vis à vis other gods. There was striving among men, but most of the time human successes or failures had less to do with who they were than with who they knew. Was it ever thus....more
Christopher Logue was a poet. Irreverent and utterly original, he was asked to “contribute to a new version” of Homer’s Iliad. Despite protestations tChristopher Logue was a poet. Irreverent and utterly original, he was asked to “contribute to a new version” of Homer’s Iliad. Despite protestations that he knew no Greek, he looked over the earliest attempts to translate the work and came up with something…irreverent and utterly original.
Logue offers “an account” of Homer’s Iliad, just as a later poet, Alice Oswald in Memorial, would offer an interpretation…not a translation. Lovers of the Iliad, those who know well the story and joyfully encounter each new translation, will just as eagerly sink into the off-beat nature of this poet’s unique and modern take.
We know Achilles hated Agamemnön, but Achilles’ shouted challenges to the older man in the voice of earlier translators did not have the modernistic sensibility of Logue’s:
‘Mouth! King mouth!’ Then stopped. Then from the middle of the common sand said: “Heroes, behold your King— Slow as an arrow fired feathers first To puff another’s worth, But watchful as a cockroach of his own.”
Ah, I love that. May I say I can think of another leader who fits the ‘watchful cockroach’ image, who sports a hair mantle not unlike that of the cockroach's carapace. Damn hard to eradicate him, too.
The sport of the gods is evident throughout, despite the bloody gore of a war among equals.
“But they just smile. They are the gods. They have all the time in the world. And Lord Apollo orchestrates their dance. And Leto smiles to see her son, the son of God, Playing his lyre among them, stepping high, Hearing his Nine sing how the gods have everlasting joy, Feasting together, sleeping together, Kind, color, calendar no bar, time out of mind, And how we humans suffer at their hands, Childish believers, fooled by science and art, Bound for Oblivion—
And Aphrodite, Queen of Love, “her breasts alert and laden with desire…” addresses Helen:
“Do stop this nonsense, Helen, dear… ...Try not to play the thankless bitch: ‘Such a mistake to leave my land, my kiddywink…’ What stuff. Millions would give that lot For half the looks that I have given you… ...Be proud. You have brought harm. Tremendous boys Of every age have slaughtered one another Just for you! … Bear this in mind: Without my love, somewhere between the Greek and Trojan lines A cloud of stones would turn your face to froth. So, when they lift the curtains, and he looks—you hesitate. And then you say: Take me, and I shall please you.” Pause. What do you say? ‘Take me, and I shall please you.’ “Good. Now in you go.”
Christopher Logue died in 2011, so his account of Books 1-4 and 16-19, this fragment that ends with the death of Petroclus, is what we have left. His similes remain: "Spears like nettles stirred by the wind," “Dust like red mist,” Pain like chalk on slate,” Arrows that drift like bees,” “Tearing its belly like a silk balloon…” And so it goes on.
One is never finished with the Iliad when one has read it. It lingers, and while it does, Christopher Logue’s version gives some joy.
The poetry of Alice Oswald is preternatural…preternaturally gorgeous, preternaturally immediate and relevant and precise. We want to sink into that laThe poetry of Alice Oswald is preternatural…preternaturally gorgeous, preternaturally immediate and relevant and precise. We want to sink into that language and be in that bright place—perhaps not to live (among the flashing swords), but to die there, amongst one’s brethren, with poetry read and songs sung in one’s honor.
Everything about this book is beautiful, and new and bright and contemporary. The Afterword written by Eavan Boland answers all the questions one has while reading this wholly original poem, this ‘oral cemetery’ memorializing the men who fought the Trojan War. I am tempted to suggest you read the Afterword first, but no, of course you must proceed directly to the glory that is the language exploring the feel of the Iliad, a story with so many deaths, so many deaths of young and old and brave and foolish and handsome men.
EPICLES a Southerner from sunlit Lycia Climbed the Greek wall remembering the river That winds between his wheat fields and his vineyards He was knocked backwards by a rock And sank like a diver The light in his face went out…
…Even AMPHIMACHOS died and he was a rarity A green-eyed changeable man from Elis He was related to Poseidon You would think the sea could do something But it just lifted and flattened lifted and flattened.
Oswald gives the names she memorializes at the beginning of her work and then proceeds to tell in startlingly immediate language, how exactly they met their end, or some tiny biographical note that makes them, contrarily, come alive.
EUCHENOR a kind of suicide Carried the darkness inside him of a dud choice Either he could die at home of sickness Or at Troy of a spear wound His mother was in tears His father was in tears but Cold as a coin he took the second option…
Oswald tells us that the ancient critics of the Iliad praised its ‘enargeia,’ or ‘bright unbearable reality.’ And that is exactly how we perceive the language Oswald gives us: all the bright young brave men, all dead.
ECHEPOLUS a perfect fighter Always ahead of his men Known for his cold seed-like concentration Moving out and out among the spears Died at the hands of Antilochus You can see the hole in the helmet just under the ridge Where the point of the blade passed through And stuck in his forehead Letting the darkness leak down over his eyes.
Oswald strips the narrative from the oral tradition and gives us a kind of lament poetry aimed at translucence rather than translation. She wants to help us see through to what Homer was looking at. But the context is remarkably unnecessary. It is about young men at war. We understand immediately, sadly.
And IPHITUS who was born in the snow Between two tumbling trout-stocked rivers Died on the flat dust Not far from DEMOLEON and HIPPODAMAS
The poetry of war. Breathtaking. Heartbreaking....more
The New York Review of Books has republished the Palmer Brown books that many people say they have never forgotten, having read them in childhood,The New York Review of Books has republished the Palmer Brown books that many people say they have never forgotten, having read them in childhood, 45 long years ago. The reprints are child-sized, about 4" x 6" and have lovely reproductions of the artwork that makes this collection so special.
In this story, a baby mouse wonders aloud over what she should get for Christmas for someone special (her mother) who seems to have everything. All kinds of things are considered until the mother helps her decide that to give one's love is the most precious gift of all. ...more
This play sounds like the voices of educated British schoolgirls in the beginning; I was a little surprised to find that Jean Anouilh was a French natThis play sounds like the voices of educated British schoolgirls in the beginning; I was a little surprised to find that Jean Anouilh was a French national. I suppose the difference between British and French is not so great, but somehow I always thought the cadences were different, to say nothing of the cadences of girls from Greece two thousand years ago. But this is written in English and it is ravishingly comprehensible and utterly contemporary.
What a joy is this play as written by Anouilh. The canny cunning of a young girl who makes an earth-shattering decision and refuses to be swayed is here in its entirety. Of course she is right, Antigone, taking the moral course, but none is as fierce in her determination, and none so brave. Antigone deflects and protects The Nurse and Ismene, and tries to do the same for poor, dead Polynices.
Did you notice Ismene describes Antigone as having a different kind of beauty: “…it’s always you that the little boys turn to look back at when they pass us in the street. And when you go by, the little girls stop talking, They stare and stare at you, until we’ve turned a corner.” This description captures that difference also between Lila and Lena in Elena Ferrante’s novel of Neapolitan Italy. Antigone is fatalistic, as is Lila.
The great wisdom Anouilh brings to this work is that melodrama works because one is never sure of the outcome, and the strength of the argument passes from one character to another, depending on circumstance. With tragedy on the other hand, the end is preordained, and therefore is calming. There is nothing to be done except play out the roles.
I especially liked what Anouilh did with the story of Eteocles and Polynices. I have no idea is this is part of the myth or something Anouilh added. I won’t spoil it for those of you who haven’t learned the myth yet, but this added to my sense of this whole thing as soap opera par excellence. Just as one thinks one has the characters pegged, up comes a new wrinkle that makes them out to be opportunists or really thoughtful and self-sacrificing beneath the visible outlines of their actions.
Gorgeous piece of work. Won’t finish the rest of the plays right now, I’m afraid. Bad timing....more
I am not well-schooled in tragedies--the Greek tragedies, that is--but when I learned that one of the books I intended to read for the Man Booker awarI am not well-schooled in tragedies--the Greek tragedies, that is--but when I learned that one of the books I intended to read for the Man Booker award this year was based on the story of Antigone, I thought now was a good time to have a look.
This is the first I have encountered of the play, I loved it. It is filled with terrific emotion and common responses to tragedy, as well as wisdom unbound. The personalities are strong and salty...and act on their promises.
Those of you who know the story will still be thrilled by the Chorus at the end saying "Grand words of proud men are punished with great blows, and this, in old age, teaches wisdom." And "Wisdom is by far the foremost part of happiness..."
Oedipus's two sons kill one another, as decreed by fate, and his two daughters are forbidden by King Creon to bury the body of one of the sons because Creon thought him a traitor. Antigone decides she will bury him anyway because this is the custom of the city and is a courtesy to the gods. Terrible events ensue.
We never learn here why the two sons are unequally loved. Perhaps that backstory is given in another play.
This edition is printed left side with the Greek, right side with English. It has a detailed introduction in which the story and all the characters mentioned are described in their relationship to the main actors in this story. That was helpful. At the end are extensive notes and discussion about word choices and inferred meanings. I thought this was impressive....more
The 2008 animated documentary of the same name by Ari Folman and David Polonsky took four years to complete. The frames of this graphic novel may haveThe 2008 animated documentary of the same name by Ari Folman and David Polonsky took four years to complete. The frames of this graphic novel may have come from the film itself, and the sense of the film is uncannily captured without the sound or movement. Both book and film are so powerful I could not make it through in one sitting. A tremendous sense of anxiety and foreboding is generated by white/brown/black monochrome washed with an acid, chemical yellow, the slavering wild dogs, and the dissociative reality of war on a beach.
For anyone who hasn’t seen this film or read the graphic novel, I urge you to put aside anything else you have on your plates the minute you obtain a copy of either. It probably won’t take more than an evening to read/watch this remarkable act of witnessing, and you will remember it for the rest of your lives. Folman was a nineteen-year old recruit in the Israeli army when he was sent to Lebanon in 1982 to stop PLO rocket attacks and to retaliate for an assassination attempt on the life of Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom.
At the time, many displaced Palestinians were living in refugee camps in southern Lebanon in permanent structures like houses. Their lives did not look temporary, but there was always agitation because their refugee status did not change. In Lebanon, the sectarian Christian leader Bashir Gemayel aggressively challenged (some might say crushed) the rights of Palestinians and Muslims, and shortly after he became president-elect in the 1982 presidential election in Lebanon, he was assassinated.
Gemayel’s party, the Christian Phalangists, took their revenge on two refugee camps, Sabra and Shatila. Israeli forces were slow to recognize and respond to an unfolding massacre. It appears they simply did not recognize the evil for what it was--it was too monstrous. The scars of those days left many men unable to understand what had actually happened in September 1982 and their role in it. Forman and Polonsky managed to show us that paralysis that comes over someone, even a group, when something bad is happening. The men protested up to their leaders, but not loudly, confidently, definitively enough. This phenomenon is not unknown. It may even have happened to us.
Much of the story is about the elusive nature of memory, and what scars the trauma of war leaves. The authors decided not to try and give voice to the other participants in this extraordinary event, but to just focus on the point of view of someone who was there but not directly implicated in the killing and who retained no memory of the time. We can forget these times of trauma, which is why the Holocaust is constantly referred to and memorialized. One must remember in order to forestall similar atrocities in the future.
The art in the film and the book is exceptional for its originality. The drawings are a certain kind of primitive and for that reason are all that we can project onto them. It may be the horror is something we bring because objectively speaking, until real photographs appear at the very end, events are only hinted at: we have the blank stares of the affected soldiers and the bizarrely horrible sudden deaths of soldiers playing on a beach—and this all from the point of view of what might be called the Israeli bystanders.
They were part of the army, and they had ordnance, but they had little passion for battle, the Israeli participants. The Palestinians and the Phalangists were locked in what became a battle to the death, giving and receiving no quarter. The whole record of the movie and the book should go down with oral histories of ancient battles not at all heroic but horrible and instructive and something forever to be avoided.
After making this film, Ari Folman said he no longer has interest in simply shooting actors in traditional filmmaking. There was something even more exciting to him about the art of David Polonsky, who tried using his non-dominant hand to draw so that the smoothness of caricatures did not distract from the roughness of the subject matter. Animation was a relatively new industry in Israel when they began, and since they had no infrastructure, they made decisions that more practiced and wealthier studios may not have made.
Both the film and the graphic novel are for grown-ups, or for people who want to be grown-ups....more
This is a great book that discusses what we should seek in a politician. Eleanor Roosevelt's control and calm is what I admire most. She was comfortabThis is a great book that discusses what we should seek in a politician. Eleanor Roosevelt's control and calm is what I admire most. She was comfortable in her own skin by the time her husband and her best friend, Tommy, died, when she wrote this book. She was well situated financially, but it was more than that: she gives examples of people who never did learn, in all their years, how giving is more rewarding than taking, and sharing is what a good life is all about.
And she ought to know. Eleanor Roosevelt became a force and a celebrity in her lifetime despite suffering in childhood from great shyness. She wasn’t pretty and she was inexperienced, and in the man’s world of the time, she was often underestimated. She learned early that discipline gave one some breathing space in a confusing and fast-paced world.
This is a personal book, but because she was a public figure from marriage, she includes observations about public life as well. Many of the difficulties that are crippling us as citizens now were already apparent when she wrote this in the late 1950’s.
"If people come up the financial ladder but still maintain a low educational standard, with its lack of appreciation of many of the things of artistic and spiritual value, the nation will not be able to grow to its real stature."
This is true for our leaders as well. Not only do we need boldness in our leaders, we need a lack of corruption, and values that elevate the chores we must undertake to allow states their individuality at the same time they add heft and stability to the group we call a nation.
"Nobody really does anything alone."
Our greatness, if we have any, is ever only displayed in relation to, in concert with, our fellow citizens. Like happiness, greatness means nothing in solitude.
The last chapter of this book is called Learning to be a Public Servant. Our consciousness has been raised lately and we are much better aware of what we think constitutes a good public servant, so reading this chapter refreshes for us what kind of person we are looking for to lead us in government.
The first thing E.R. notes in this chapter is that few people begin their careers planning to run for office. Politics provides an uncertain future because one’s position comes up for reassessment every couple of years. And secondly, politics is not generally as remunerative as other careers. A competent person will be generally looking for stability and security in a career so that politics, if it comes up at all, is an accidental or situational possibility. If a person decides to run for office they must be sure they have enough money to do so: that is, they must be able to take the risk of losing the job again and therefore not be forced into compromises that tarnish either the candidate or the office.
The family of the prospective politician must be thoroughly onboard with such an uncertain life in the public eye. And the politician must truly love people and his/her constituency to be able to spend all the time one needs to do the job well on their behalf. He/she is the conduit to introduce the particulars of his/her own state to the nation, to the world, and at the same time bring the world and the nation’s interests back home to his state, explaining on both sides and seeking agreement between needs.
E.R. talks about ‘timing,’ and how important it is for a politician to sense the best time to propose, the moment one can be assured one’s attitudes will be rewarded with agreement and compliance. The politician must be able to move people towards new ideas and grasp the moment that is auspicious for general acceptance. It helps, she says, for a politician to be able to draw people to himself/herself. The only reason E.R. did not talk more about women in politics, she says, is because women seem to be more sensitive to criticism than men, and therefore take themselves out of the fray. Even that holds some truths for us today.
We live in a world in a state of flux, she wrote in 1960…
"The problems are new…To meet these new challenges we look for new ingredients in our public servants, an elasticity and flexibility of mind that enables them to change to meet changes; an alert and hospitable intelligence that can grasp new issues, new conditions, new peoples. We look especially for a man who knows that he thinks and can make his views clearly understood without ambiguity or hedging…It is no longer possible for us to look back over our shoulders if we are to keep abreast of our world, let alone maintain leadership. We cannot say “Nothing has changed,’ or ‘The old ways were best.’ The point is that the old conditions are gone and we are left confronting the new."
What is so very interesting about Eleanor Roosevelt is that she says she is an optimist but does not believe “everything will have a happy ending.” She writes that she had seen too many examples where this was not true. Instead, she is congenitally hopeful, in part because she believes that we can remake our world when things get out of whack. And most instructive of all is what she says of youth:
"There is no human growth without the acceptance of responsibility and I think it should be developed as soon as it reasonably can be…it is often people who refuse to assume any responsibility who are apt to be the sharpest critics of those who do…Nearly every one of us, at some time or other, thinks what a great waste and pity it is that the older generation cannot teach the younger generation, cannot share their experiences, cannot save the young their mistakes…and yet it is possible this is the best way. After all, so much that the older generation learned is wrong! And perhaps they didn’t always learn as much by their experience as they thought they did."
Most of the chapters begin with a strong statement, for instance:
"Happiness is a by-product, not a goal."
The rest of the chapter is a casual, articulate discussion of the topic with examples from her life. It must have been the crowd she hung with, but juvenile delinquency referred to drunken brats from wealthy families making no effort to involve themselves with important themes and jobs. The poor, she theorizes, see how important they are to the cohesion and survival of the family group so they do not have similar problems.
Look how things have changed in fifty years, that the poor see no future for themselves and so can sometimes set themselves at cross purposes to that of the larger society. This, and drug abuse rather than alcohol, have changed the dynamic. The wealthy have not as much security as before, so must continually scramble, besides the fact that the ceiling has been lifted on wealth. No longer is it crass, crude, and criminal to flaunt one’s wealth in the faces of, and obtained at the expense of, those with less.
E.R. is so grounded and unfussy, so kind and humble that we wonder if such a person could exist today. Much of what she says I recognize as the attitudes of earlier generations of women in my family. Those women are all dead now, but there is some comfort in reading someone articulate where they got their firm views about what is expected of individuals and citizens. This was a comforting, insightful book to read at this time, to give us perspective, and hope....more
So this is the book that won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature in 2016. And it is a winner in every sense. The trilogy together geSo this is the book that won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature in 2016. And it is a winner in every sense. The trilogy together gets under one’s skin. It has very little black/white discussion about it, which is exactly as it should be. The marches in Alabama and Mississippi were not so much about race as about human rights.
First off, kudos to John Lewis for lasting so long in the midst of such outrageous attacks on both his person and on his humanity. His personality must have just the right amount of tamped-down rage to light a spark but not start a fist-fight. How the authors (including the informative and evocative drawings by Nate Powell, and the dialog boxes by Andrew Aydin) decided what to focus on, what to emphasize, in this telling is what I admired so much.
There was division amongst the groups raising consciousness among black people in the south, and we see that. There were egos involved in who was leading by what method, e.g., Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Stokley Carmichael, Jim Forman, Fannie Lou Hammer, James Bevel. There was real ugliness in the behaviors of resistant white folks, even mothers with children, against peaceful black marchers demanding their lawful rights. There were murders and beatings and unlawful detentions by police and state law enforcement officials—the people we pay to protect us—with no state or federal oversight for years, despite direct pleas from demonstrators.
Lewis had a front-row seat to all that was going on in the south and in Washington. He was head of Student NonViolent Coordinating Committee and as the youngest of the “Big Six,” representatives of the most impactful civil rights organizations, he met with Presidents Kennedy and Johnson and Attorney General Robert Kennedy. Lewis has a story to tell, and in this collaboration with two younger men, shows us how momentous his contribution.
One thing that struck me is how much learning readers experience about how movements of resistance operate. Should we ever need to use nonviolent protest to preserve our rights as citizens (against a government or corporation acting unlawfully) there is much here to glean. How to prepare for pushback and what to expect, how to notify and organize the populace who may be supportive, and how to preserve unity among groups or ideas in the face of divisiveness. How to keep the economic, political, and social pressure on those we resist against, never giving them a peaceful nights' sleep.
Get this one if you have kids. This is worthy. Reviews of Books 1& 2....more
The insights and understanding shared with us in this dazzling work of erudition and scholarship entirely make up for its enormous length. One wondersThe insights and understanding shared with us in this dazzling work of erudition and scholarship entirely make up for its enormous length. One wonders how it can be that such a book has not been written to date, the need for such a work obvious from the moment Kendi begins to trace the evolution of America’s history of racist ideas, from the pre-revolutionary settlers and the sermons of Cotton Mather right through Thomas Jefferson, William Lloyd Garrison, W.E.B. DuBois, and Angela Davis. By the end we have a framework to evaluate and calmly deconstruct the words of Clarence Thomas and Bill Clinton and the voices raised in Black Lives Matter.
The work has a momentum that develops from a stately walking pace in slave times, gathering steam after the Civil War and World War I, until we experience a positive torrent of ideas, criticisms, actors, detractors in the 1990s, and 2000s when everyone has a megaphone and it seems no one is listening. Kendi strips all qualified “asks” away and insists that black people be accepted in the fullness of their humanity: good or bad, talented or not, criminal or not.
This often surprising history reminds us how completely our opinions are shaped by political and economic realities rather than by the most logical or rational argument. In the 1600’s Cotton Mather was a product of his time: blacks were inferior in every way except for their physicality, but they should be baptized. Jefferson thought they weren’t as inferior as all that, but some blacks are more enlightened than others, and even those must rely on white people for their “safety and happiness.” The “time wasn’t right” to free the slaves. This was also the opinion of George Washington. William Lloyd Garrison believed fervently that blacks should not be slaves, but they were not the social equal of whites. “It is not practicable to give undeveloped Black men the vote.” This was the opinion of Abraham Lincoln as well, who wanted to free the slaves and send them back to Africa. W.E.B. DuBois was a well-educated black man who believed black men could be the equal of white men, but perhaps just some black men, not the great unwashed. And finally, Angela Davis thought black people shouldn’t copy or aspire to white life in any way, that black people, including black women, were absolutely the equal of whites in every way, if only they had equal opportunity.
In every period Kendi discusses, the latest scientific theories would be put forth to “prove, undeniably” that black people were inferior to white people, in structure, in mind, in morals, in attitudes. Kendi discusses each with a dispassion bordering on amused curiosity. Each argument is eviscerated with cool observation before he moves on to the next attempt to convince white people that black people were worthy. By the end, he has taught us to evaluate each argument ourselves without falling into heated rhetoric or getting tangled in “should” and “oughts.” Kendi himself has concluded the only way black people would not be discriminated against in some way is if everyone recognize that blacks are at least as talented or flawed as whites and should be treated accordingly, that is to say, with the same amount of attention and acceptance of their potential talent, as for their potential for error. Anything less is racist.
I became utterly rapt when Kendi enters the period of Angela Davis and the modern day us. This is recent memory, and anyone can get first-hand corroboration on what people were thinking just forty years ago, as well as investigate the thickets surrounding any race discussions today. We, all of us, but especially white people, were lied to about what black people were about in this period. Because we were segregated, it was hard to get a clear idea or perspective on what was happening in each community. Kendi calls Davis’ first book, Women, Culture, and Politics, published in 1989, an “instant classic.” Davis wrote many more books once she began teaching classes in the university system in California. She understood right from her youth in Birmingham, Alabama that uplift suasion (becoming acceptable to whites by copying their attitudes, look, & culture), or assimilation (actually becoming more white through intermarriage & cultural overlap) were not going to give black people rights or respect. Black people needed then, and need now, the protection of the law. Enforceable law.
Kendi writes beautifully, in a totally engaging way, but the size of this tome may be a little intimidating. To assist uptake of his ideas, Kendi has provided a detailed Prologue and Epilogue. I recommend you read those, and then begin with the Angela Davis section. The momentum one attains in this whirlwind of ideas, popular figures, and known events will allow one to grasp his major theses. Then go back and allow Kendi to carefully outline his research and thinking as it developed. It's worth studying.
This book won the 2016 National Book Award for Nonfiction. ...more
Volume II is a continuation of the adventures of Riad as a young French-Arab in Homs in the mid-1980s. Riad is still a child, blond-haired and six yeaVolume II is a continuation of the adventures of Riad as a young French-Arab in Homs in the mid-1980s. Riad is still a child, blond-haired and six years old. He is ready to go to school for the first time, and is terrified. With good reason, it turns out.
Sattouf positively outdoes himself drawing scenes from the classroom. The headscarf-wearing teacher has a skirt so short and legs so large that our eyes widen in fear. Riad takes a frame to zero in on the impossible narrowness of her high heels, her calves looming dense and heavy above, like a boulder snagged over a walkway. She looks dangerous. That is to say nothing of the smile she holds a second before she strikes the boys on the palms with a wooden rod. Nothing so thin as a ruler, her tool is a rod that looks very solid and hard in her hand.
"Ha, ha, [Riad’s father chortles that evening] you’re funny. You’re just like me at your age. Scared of everything…Don’t worry, nothing will happen."
More false words were never spoken. Lots happens, and much of it is life-threatening. But perhaps most importantly we see the utter cruelty with which people treat one another. If there was ever a time to be grateful for political correctness in our daily interactions, after reading this you will breathe a sigh of relief for those tedious niceties. You will remember the menace of schoolyard bullies, and realize Arab society, in Syria at least, is taught this is normal human behavior: to be admired if you win, killed if you do not.
Sattouf takes his time with this installment of the story of young Riad. We spend a couple of days sampling the coursework in first grade: patriotic songs, basic characters for writing, reading skills without comprehension, and inventive slurs and punishments. We meet the neighbors: a police-chief-cousin whose stash of gold jewelry could finance a bank, and whose home is a huge unfinished concrete pile cratered with moisture-seeping cracks. We go on a day trip to Palmyra with a general while Riad’s father spends his time trying to wrangle the general into “putting in a word” for his advancement at the university where he works. Palmyra is littered with ancient-looking pottery shards which Riad’s father disdains.
"In the third century after Jesus Christ [Riad’s father says dully, lighting a cigarette] Zenobia turned the nomad’s city of Palmyra into an influential artistic center."
Riad returns to France and enjoys it at the same time he begins to realize he is changing…has changed. He is a desert child now, confused with the plenty that surrounds him in France. It is a poignant section we all recognize for its dislocation. He does not read or speak French particularly well. The French language is difficult, and complicated. Where does Riad fit in? Where does he belong? Where will he be accepted?
The scenes of RIad with the men in his community when he returns to Homs are memorable. Very little is said; the drawings do the work here. I did not understand all that was implied, but someone will. Perhaps the punchline will be revealed in another installation of the life of Riad in Syria. Riad’s father is becoming more and more unbearable as a husband, as a father, as a man. He is hopelessly out of his league wherever he is, and always aspirational, never in control. His wife is losing patience, and he himself is recognizing a few hard truths that have him sitting by himself in some frames, smoking and silent.
Sattouf leaves us feeling unsettled and unsure. Do we want Riad in this place with these people? I think his mother is feeling similarly unsure. The father…one gets the sense that however much the father thinks he is the man, there is precious little he does control.
This installment just cements my sense that this kind of graphic novel may be the easiest, most immediate, most fun way to learn about a culture. When it is done well, a boatload of information can be transmitted in a couple of frames. Sattouf appears to be completely frank about life in Homs as he sees it, and it is remarkable for its insights as well as its humor.
I love this series and will insist upon reading everything about Riad growing up. The Tintin series was the first set of books Riad had access to, the series being only one of two books his academic father had in his personal library. The other book was the Quran. Will look to see if I can see the influences from Tintin in Sattouf’s marvelous story of growing up Arab before his third book hits the stands.
The terrific translation of this work is done by Sam Taylor, and the U.S. publisher is Metropolitan Books, a division of Henry Holt. ...more
This tiny little story is just long enough to get the young ones imagining the secret lives of kitties, ferrets, rabbits, foxes, and a whole host of nThis tiny little story is just long enough to get the young ones imagining the secret lives of kitties, ferrets, rabbits, foxes, and a whole host of neighborhood animals who are abroad in the fields at night. For those that have the series of Beatrix Potter you will recognize many now-famous characters of the blue-coated Peter Rabbit and the terrifying Mr. Tod the Fox, among others. You don’t want to miss this one. For those that dimly remember Potter's characters, this story has wonders made evident by the exquisitely expressive voice of Helen Mirren who shows us the very best way to read a bedtime story. Listening to this story will set you down in an England seemingly long gone, but completely alive nonetheless. It is a gem and well worth seeking out.
A short extract of Helen Mirren reading this story is posted on my blog....more
I was eleven or perhaps twelve years old when I learned that ignorance is no excuse for anything.
That revelation completely changed the way I viewed I was eleven or perhaps twelve years old when I learned that ignorance is no excuse for anything.
That revelation completely changed the way I viewed the world. I ran to my parents, separately, I remember, my eyes wide. I said to each of them, “Ignorance is no excuse!” It won’t save anyone from the repercussions of whatever they are ignorant of. You can die as a result of ignorance or you can participate in something evil as a result of ignorance.
As I remember it, my parents did not say anything. There is much I would think as a result of my eleven-year-old coming to me with such a revelation, and I am not sure I would know what to respond, either. But it was a big moment, and it came from reading a novel.
Now I wonder which novel gave me such an insight, but I cannot remember. I was an ordinary schoolgirl, with no special access to literature. I read too much, my sisters said, and most of them were bodice-rippers…
This book reminds me of that moment of realization. The insights into what man is and how he responds to national, political, and personal trauma come fast and hard in this work. Alexievich begins by recording voices from the Gorbachev years: “Those were wonderful, naïve years…” Both for and against Gorbachev, the voices record people’s naiveté. They had an excuse, the lack of reliable, comprehensive news coverage one of them, but it would not save them from their future nor their past.
There is simply nothing to compare with this fabulous reconstruction of the lives of people under communism and after. Alexievich records the stories of people under the dictatorship of the people, and there is so much nuance, so much pain, fear, crazy love, faith, and delusion tied in with people’s understanding of those years that it becomes as clear a record of what humanity is that we have.
“Changing the nature of man” was on the table. From the sounds of some voices, it succeeded on every measure. But if nature can be changed, we question again what "nature" is. Naomi Klein tells us man is not hopelessly greedy but it is hard to see that when greed is rewarded and protected. The Soviet Union, Russia, has gone through enormous social upheaval in the last one hundred years, and Alexievich manages to give us a window through which we can begin to see what happened to people.
Among the voices are ordinary folk, high Kremlin officials, members of the brigades who spent their days shooting “enemies of the people.” We see what they were thinking at the time and what they are thinking now. Because governance the world over has many similarities, constraints, and imperatives, everyone who can read should see how governance actually plays out, no matter what we believe.
These people are not so different from us. They are just people after all. All that they did, all they experienced, can happen to us. It is necessary to be vigilant, to be aware, so that we do not, inadvertently, give evil a chance to thrive. Alexievich has taken memory and made literature. For me, it will be one of the most meaningful books I have ever come across.
I want to point everyone to Ilse's review of this title. She does such a lovely job of articulating what Alexievich managed to accomplish....more
Orthofer lives in New York currently and was founder in 1999 of the complete review, a website dedicated to reviews of recent literature from around tOrthofer lives in New York currently and was founder in 1999 of the complete review, a website dedicated to reviews of recent literature from around the world. In 2002 Orthofer included a blog, The Literary Saloon, which carries news from interviews, reviews, and notes on awards, publication, items of interest from around the internet. Orthofer has been updating it nearly every day.
The reach of Orthofer’s interests is nothing short of astounding. In this compendium of contemporary world literature he tries to include short mention of the work of leading litterateurs around the world and includes dates of publication and translation when a work is mentioned. This is an indispensable guide for those interested in world literature for it introduces readers to new authors and commonalities among authors either in genre or style that allow us to find what suits our own voracious reading habits.
This work can be read for itself, but it is more likely to be used as a reference text for readers interested in contemporary world literature. It can be downloaded as an ebook or referenced from the hardcopy. Continents are broken into constituent parts and each countries’ authors are mentioned with reference to their major works. While I have always thought myself interested in “world literature,” the range of this work makes me realize how parochial my reading has been, mostly limited to the overseas imaginings of writers of English. I note a recent entry in The Literary Saloon claims there has been a huge outpouring of translations of contemporary Arabic literature, a trend surely long awaited.
North American literature is not included in this work because the author is pointing to the need for American readers to vary their diet and expand their horizons:
”Because American authors provide an enormous amount and variety of work, American readers are arguably spoiled for choice even without resorting to fiction from abroad…In almost every other country, foreign literature occupies a central and prominent position, but in the United States it seems to sit far more precariously on the fringes…foreign literature can offer entirely new dimension and perspectives…great literature knows no borders.
When I founded the Complete Review (complete-review.com) in 1999, one of my goals to to take advantage of the Internet’s tremendous reach and connectivity…Ironically, though, one of the shortcomings of this and most other Internet resources is its tremendous scope…[This book] provides an entry point and more general overview various nations’ literatures, as well as a foundation to help readers navigate what is available on the Internet.” —from the Introduction
Orthofer has attempted something most of us might consider impossible, and he has done a convincing job of it. If it lacks anything, it is up to us to help straighten it out. I highly recommend everyone have a look at this book to see what you are missing. If it seems overwhelming, I sympathize. Imagine how Orthofer felt when he began....more
Tim Weiner deserves enormous credit for amassing such a huge and detailed body of information for us to look at and judge the CIA. He writes history tTim Weiner deserves enormous credit for amassing such a huge and detailed body of information for us to look at and judge the CIA. He writes history the way I prefer to read it: chronologically. When characters appear before or after their moment in the limelight, Weiner tries to keep them in context of events happening contemporaneously. This is a huge aid to both our understanding and to our judgment. That having been said, this was a difficult book to read/listen to because of the poor assessment of the Agency, because of the accretion of evidence of mistakes and incompetence, because of the massive amount of information readers get about how the Agency operated at different times under different leaders with different mandates.
The easy solutions to repairing or overhauling the Agency when they have done something spectacularly inept--or not done something, like prepare us for 9/11--have all been tried, each unsuccessful in its own way. Weiner has given us the material with which to begin to understand what we as citizens have tasked (and funded) the Agency to do and to ask ourselves if this is still a valid and do-able goal.
Soliciting secrets held by foreign governments can be very difficult work. Most of the time those secrets are revealed because individuals have a reason for wanting to impart the information, a reason that may have little to do with money, though money often does grease the wheels. The information could be disinformation. It takes an unusual person who is willing to use their language skills and familiarity with other countries to live overseas undercover, to deceive, steal, and manipulate their way to secrets. “It’s a dirty business.” [Richard Helms] It would seem the very nature of the work would predicate a small clandestine field arm, therefore limiting the size of the analyst arm.
Weiner starts with the genesis of the Agency, an outgrowth of the Office of Strategic Services which parachuted agents behind enemy lines in WWII Europe to sabotage the enemy and influence the course of the war. While it was put about when speaking with the American public that an Agency that could understand the intent of hostile nations would be better prepared against attack by those nations, really its model was not merely listening, but acting. Immediately upon its conception, a result of the predilection of Agency leaders and because powerful men, including presidents, found the secrecy aspect of the Agency irresistible, the Agency became an instrument, not simply of “intelligence” but of covert action. And every president sought to change (even wanted to abolish) the Agency when its failures became politically unbearable.
The truth is that a spy agency that operates in secret has also often withheld their secrets from the president and his council of advisors. Worse than that, sometimes they tailored the information they gave to the president to suit his predilections.
Weiner gives examples of successes amidst the roster of failures of intelligence. The CIA muscled the Taiwan government into abandoning its plan to develop a nuclear weapon; they managed to cripple the Abu Nidal organization through disinformation; the CIA stymied Soviet attempts to steal corporate software by implanting bugs into targeted software. And Weiner seems to admire, or at least not coruscate, certain CIA officers like Robert Ames, the Arabist scholar-spy memorialized by Kai Bird in The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames and who was killed in the Beirut embassy bombing in 1984. Weiner also gives a pass to Robert Gates, former CIA director and Secretary of Defense under two presidents. Weiner acknowledges the extraordinary patriotism and selflessness of certain agents in the field, who tried to accomplish their missions despite the dysfunction at home.
It is easy for us to forget that the Agency was only started after WWII, in 1947. Before that, we used to get intelligence through journalists, businesspeople, and embassies. We did not usually attempt to influence events except through pressure at national levels, among statesmen. When it began, The Agency was obsessed with Soviet power around the world and a balance of that power. Even then our intelligence was faulty, subject to political jostling, and influenced by the fears of our government. Although revolting to learn, it does us no good to turn away from Weiner’s assessment of these years, since millions of Americans before us have made their indignation known and demanded better. It forced changes in the Agency, which was decimated after the fall of the Soviet Union, which caught the vast arsenal of analysts completely by surprise.
The Agency underwent several RIFs in its history, and it was even thought that outsourcing to private contractors would provide better intelligence. The result was higher prices for intelligence and less control over agents. Weiner talks us through the failures of several directors, and their determination to make the Agency great again: Charges of too big, too small, too old, too young, too restrained, too wild have all been dealt with in the way one might expect a large bureaucracy might try to change its image. None of the changes have really worked. Finally, because presidents have had difficulty relying on the CIA for accurate information, they now call on a plethora of different agencies for intelligence which are run mostly by former military men, and much of the CIA's capabilities are outsourced.
What is undeniable is the secrecy of the organization has come close several times in its history to ruining us. Outside threats are one thing, but many times the Agency was operating to contain threats we created through fear. The reason our democracy has succeeded as long as it has is because we have managed to maintain some kind of public accountability through transparency. Weiner asserts that Soviet leaders knew before the Berlin Wall fell that the lies and secrets their government kept from their people ultimately ruined them. A large and secret bureaucracy takes on a life of its own that cannot have adequate oversight. It becomes a danger rather than an aid.
Despite his dire assessment of the Agency and its current capabilities, Weiner does not advocate its abolition. He acknowledges it may have an important role to play in spite of the difficulty of its mission and the difficulty of finding the right personnel. He suggests that it may one day be refashioned to fit the needs we have with a leadership that can shape and control it. Until then, however, it is a liability we rely upon at our peril.
The fact that we now experience violence and terror from non-state actors might predicate more changes for the CIA. More agents has been the simplistic solution loudly proposed by at least one presidential candidate (Marco Rubio), but we already know that is hardly likely to produce the desired results. The CIA has always been plagued by its inability to recruit and retain good personnel because of its image and history but also because covert work is very hard to accomplish successfully. It may be time to reduce the size of the Agency once again, which may seem counterintuitive in this time of diverse threats. Getting vast numbers of analysts or agents unsuited to the task is probably not going to yield the kind of information we wish we had.
I remain skeptical that a large bureaucracy can produce intelligence beyond what a large news organization can organize and analyze. I wonder that we have the hubris to influence events in allied countries, or to organize the defeat of leadership in countries with which we are not allied. I have no argument with obtaining information, as long as that information serves to better prepare us for changes which affect us. I note that the largest changes which are bound to affect us profoundly in immediate years, e.g., climate change, do not seem to have registered a blip on the government radar while we scurry to contain events which will not have as great an impact on us. It looks like a kind of overheated masculine-style delusion predicated on fear rather than the rational measure of risk.
Therefore, before eliminating the organization entirely, perhaps we should bring it back to its earliest roots during this time of terrorist insurgency. Keep the organization small and flexible and covert, like our enemies’ organization. Covert undercover work may have been useful during WWII, but it didn’t work well after that. The CIA did real damage to countries around the world by involving themselves with regime change predicated on fear whipped up by our leaders. Surely the American people have progressed beyond that, even if some of their self-proclaimed leaders are still caught in the dark ages.
Weiner told us nearly everything, but he didn’t tell us what became of the analyst(s) who were responsible for the U.S. bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, reporting that it was a weapons cache.
I listened to the Blackstone audio production of this book, read by Stefan Rudnicki. It was beautifully produced and read, and though Rudnicki mispronounced some people and place names, those mistakes did not obscure understanding. This is a real masterpiece of journalism. ...more
The title of this book comes from a poem by Taha Muhammed Ali, a Palestinian poet with a style so direct and immediate that the reader grasps that theThe title of this book comes from a poem by Taha Muhammed Ali, a Palestinian poet with a style so direct and immediate that the reader grasps that they are hearing something new and yet undeniably ancient at the same time: a viewpoint that eclipses the worn, the bombed-out, the broken. We are given fragments of, and context to, Taha’s poetry in this work, all showcased by Adina Hoffman’s careful, patient, gentle, and ferociously intelligent excavation and reconstruction of a meaningful life. It is an extraordinary work of witness.
What can poetry do that bombs, bullets, and knives cannot? Adina Hoffman shows us in this biography of Taha, former resident of Saffuriyya, a Palestinian village with a long history of resistance against authority. Saffuriyya was bombed in 1948 by Israeli aircraft, and ever since the mere mention of the town carries the whiff of resistance.
"Even before he could see the village, he has said, the scent of it was overpowering—the thyme and the mint and the lemon trees, the broom and the wheat and the olives. The thorns themselves seemed to smell sweetly there, and though he couldn’t say which perfume belonged to what plant—or explain how he knew the difference between the fragrance of a Nazareth sage bush and a sage bush with its roots in the soil of Saffuriyya—the boy was convinced that he could tell in his nose when he’d crossed the border, and as he made his way toward home through the basatin, as the orchards and vegetable gardens were known, the scents grew stronger and more complicated, more human. The fruit trees were everywhere, and at the Qasral spring he got a clean, cold whiff of the abundant water that made the village lands so rich (and, according to local lore, its people so strong-headed), then, getting closer, the smoky perfume of the cabbage, parsley, cauliflower, scallion, cucumber, and his favorite, mlukhiyyeh, the dark green mallow that his mother would chop fine or spread out to dry and that they would eat as a stew. Thinking of it would make him hungry and eager for the other scents to come: the way the garlic she fried before adding the leaves would blend and merge with the piercing aroma of the basil planted in clay pots before the nearby houses."
Hoffman’s biography of Taha Muhammed Ali is resistance literature also: the quiet, unsensational accretion of fact and personal testimony, newspaper accounts, and the patient unpicking of tangled threads of disputed reports or repressive memory. What Hoffman has done indirectly is raise serious questions about race, identity, and belongingness, about nationality, statehood, and the nature of resistance. She places the poet Taha squarely in the events that influenced his creative consciousness: the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.
Saffuriyya was always a “turbulent community,” police records filled with mention of locals talking with their fists amongst themselves. Hoffman suggests
"Saffuriyya was, let us say then, a 'village of murderers' in the sense it was a village with murderers in it. Saffuriyya was, however, also a village of tinsmiths—and shoemakers, shepherds, teachers, teething babies, laborers, shopkeepers, new brides, barbers, folk poets, gravediggers, carpenters, landowners, teenaged boys, builders, dyers, musicians, butchers, tailors, traveling salesmen, knife-sharpeners, old women, and a wandering ice-cream vendor who would appear on holidays and sell the children melting half-piaster scoops of their favorite flavor—chocolate, vanilla, or mint. It was a village of brilliant talkers, blubbering idiots, fat grocers, thin imams, of a kind Italian nun named Georgina, a fez-wearing Egyptian male nurse known as Sheikh ‘Umar, and Abu Qasim the peripatetic ritual circumciser, who never went anywhere without his black doctor’s bag and noisy motorcycle."
So you see how Hoffman agrees with the official line and undercuts it in the same breath, how she forces us to acknowledge that we cannot paint a people with a broad brush. When the Israelis came, after they bombed the village in 1948, they found Stone Age olive jugs and oil jars in the ramshackle houses—could this be the same population they believed had no culture? A difference of perception combined with a will of steel might break what bombs cannot, and while many have fallen, the Palestinian consciousness remains.
"That many of the Jewish state’s new and future immigrants had just suffered the torments of the Holocaust at the hands of European Christians did not, to Palestinian minds, explain why they themselves were being asked to forfeit their hold on vast tracts of citrus groves and fields of grain, to give up direct access to the Red Sea and to the port at Jaffa, or to become—as 40 percent of the Palestinians suddenly would—members of a minority in a Jewish state."
Now Saffuriyya is forested and has been designated a National Park in the Israeli state. Displaced Palestinians have never given up agitation to return to those lands, that village. “The most important thing was that there were no leaders, no intellectual leaders to explain what was happening and what we had to do.” This has ever been, to my mind, the “problem of Palestine” but also Israel’s problem. Lack of enlightened leadership is the region’s greatest failing.
Saffuriyya has become a symbol. Hoffman traces the movement of Taha’s family (first to a refugee camp in Lebanon and then back to Nazareth) along with the intellectual development of the boy he was, then the teen, then the adult. Taha’s interest in words that could explain and express his sense of dislocation, dignity, and love of life were what propelled him. “His obscurity won him the freedom to write whatever he pleased.” Hoffman carefully picks apart the relationships and political leanings and urge to create among Taha’s friends and acquaintances, and in the process, we see Palestine, that country with a flag and a people but no land and no rights.
Hoffman herself is an outsider, something she argues is what makes writers able to see the environment they write about. “I think it might actually make me anxious to feel too much of an insider. That's not good for a writer -- and, I might argue, I don't really think it's so good for the Jews.” (interview with Mya Guarnieri @ Bookslut)
When we finally see Taha's poetry reprinted, the effect of it is magnified by the quiet industriousness and skill with which Hoffman prepared us. Hoffman’s work is so hushed and intimate we have the sense that we are sharing a conversation with a deeply humane independent thinker of enormous gifts and fine discrimination. And that is how I view what I have read of her work: that it is a gift to all of us, even those whose policies do not align with her view. Her careful scholarship and unblinking gaze quietly points the way to living well in the world…with others.
The exquisite care Adina Hoffman and her husband, the poet and translator Peter Cole, took in both translating and publishing the work of Palestinian peasant and poet Taha Muhammed Ali, and then in picking apart the knotty strands of his life to show the creation of Taha’s particular genius, is everywhere evident in this unique work of biography.
"Warning"
Lovers of hunting, and beginners seeking your prey: Don't aim your rifles at my happiness, which isn't worth the price of the bullet (you'd waste on it). What seems to you so nimble and fine, like a fawn, and flees every which way, like a partridge, isn't happiness. Trust me: my happiness bears no relation to happiness.
--Taha Muhammed Ali, from Fooling the Killers, (1989)
The thing about Robert “Iceberg Slim” Beck, the reason he is so magnetic, is that he is actually not the “Iceberg” he pretended to be. In this memoir The thing about Robert “Iceberg Slim” Beck, the reason he is so magnetic, is that he is actually not the “Iceberg” he pretended to be. In this memoir of his life on the streets, he revels in his successes but also agonizes over his failures. He seems to tell us straight: this worked, that didn’t. He concludes it is necessary to hide one’s feelings behind an icy exterior, hiding his fear and doubt and empathy from his stable of whores and from other con men on the street who would double-cross him.
Beck reminds us several times how close pimping is to slavery, and where the crass brutality of it came from:
”[The book of pimping] was written in the skulls of proud slick Niggers freed from slavery. They wasn’t lazy. They was puking sick of picking white man’s cotton and kissing his nasty ass. The slave days stuck in their skulls. They went to the cities. They got hip fast.
The conning bastard white man hadn’t freed the niggers. The cities were like the plantations down South. Jeffing Uncle Toms still did all the white man’s hard and filthy work.
Those slick Nigger heroes bawled like crumb crushers. They saw the white man just like on the plantations still ramming it into the finest black broads.
The broads were stupid squares. They still freaked for free with the white man. They wasn’t hip to the scratch in their hot black asses.
Those first Nigger pimps started hipping the dumb bitches to the gold mines between their legs. They hipped them to stick their mitts out for the white man’s scratch. The first Nigger pimps and sure-shot gamblers was the only Nigger big shots in the country.”
Slim introduces us to the slavery of the skin trade. Not liking the choices he had for getting ahead, Slim decides he will pimp his way to “some real white-type living.” It is a soul-crushing world of double-cons and triple-crosses and his first couple forays onto the streets bring him low. But Slim sucks up to Sweet, a master who pimps “by the book,” and learns how to beat his whores into submission for the scratch they could earn.
Robert “Iceberg Slim” Beck writes in street slang but also in full, richly detailed sentences, paragraphs, and chapters that draw us in and sketches for us his shaky beginnings and long affiliation with the whoring trade. From time in the clink and from other street hustlers ‘Berg learned the necessity of applying psychology to his treatment of his whores: he used the oftentimes horribly broken life-stories of the whores against them, and used bling and flash and cunning to dazzle his stable, their tricks, and his competition. He noted his emotional reaction times also slowed considerably when he had a noseful of coke.
But the beauty of this memoir is also in the writing. Slim was in and out of prison from the time he was twenty. In one of the best escape scenes I have ever encountered, Slim describes his jailbreak from one prison that crackles with tension and bravado. We are aching for him to make it outside.
In the end, it is not Iceberg Slim’s cold exterior that draws us to him but his vulnerability and susceptibility. His humanity is the most endearing thing. We have reason to hate this criminal and liar. Perversely, however, we come to admire him for surviving, and persisting in learning every day. He lets us in on those lessons. It may be his best and longest con of all, and we’re all his whores.
A few weeks ago I reviewed Street Poison, the Biography of Iceberg Slim by Justin Gifford. His introduction to Iceberg Slim led to my seeking out this memoir, first published in 1969. In a heartbreaking coda to Iceberg's vulnerability in learning the street game, this first book by Iceberg Slim had a wonky contract with the publisher that earned him little. He did, however, gradually earn international recognition, and the style and naked honesty revealed in this book spawned a culture in music, film, and literature that persists to this day. Years ago I'd first seen this book; at that time I believe it wore a shocking pink cover emblazoned with an eye-popping silver scrawl. There comes a time in a reading life when a book makes sense in the order of things. The time had come for me. I can promise you an unforgettable reading experience, and perhaps some insight into the life of one black man who believed his salvation lie on the street. It is a cautionary tale, and a worthy memoir of a black man in a white world....more
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