Roundlets - poem - Eric Maroney

South winter light dappled

On the pallor of your skin

Yet blushing you the

Daughter of the highlands

A cheek of crimson flush

A mixed maiden

Half-girl half-wife

And fully luminous

The haloed girl of the north

You a body of garland and scent

Round and wild with hips tumbling

To the root of your mossy crag

Of a verdant tumbling land

You half-girl your hair damp

Roundlets rosy like drizzled berries

Dripping from a seasoned bog

Here but all from far away

Like a distant covered land

The Death of Grass by John Christopher

The Death of Grass, a 1956 post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by John Christopher, suffers from a number of fatal flaws. 

Christopher moves the novel at a swift place, which helps the novel in some places, while hindering it in others.  This book is supposed to illustrate how quickly people are stripped of their civilized veneer  as society collapses.  Fair enough given the genre. But Christopher really puts this concept into overdrive, and characters we hardly know are murdering and pillaging without sufficient preparation. Something feels missing.

The concept of the valley with the river is captivating, however.  And although the acute reader will figure out the end, it winds up being the thread that keeps the book moving forward with some urgency.  We all want to find safety in the valley with a swift river.

A War of Frontier and Empire: The Philippine-American War, 1899-1902 by David J. Silbey

A War of Frontier and Empire: The Philippine-American War, 1899-1902 by David J. Silbey, is the history of a little known conflict, an outgrowth of the Spanish-American War.  Our nation, takings its first steps as a world power, easily defeated the Spanish in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines.  But the Philippines had a native, organized army, which actually fought most of the war against the Spanish.  It was the hope of this government that American intervention would lead to immediate independence.

This was not the case.  The United States instead fought a conventional campaign against the Filipino army. These set piece battles caused high casualty rates on the Filipino side.  Then war then shifted to an insurgency/guerrilla campaign, and although the Filipinos were more successful at this stage, eventually America won the war and occupied the island. Silbey’s conclusions about the war and American presence in the Philippines will no doubt ruffle some feathers.  He views the American occupation as beneficial to the Philippines and its people.  No doubt, many would argue this point.   

Despite this, Sibley shines a fascinating light on American intervention abroad  in the early days of our nation as a world power. 

A Separation, by Katie Kitamura

Katie Kitamura’s novel A Separation certainly has merit.  The first person narrator is strong, sensitive, and observant.  We get the sense of a woman rooted to her world, and understanding both her pains and joys.   The author is adept at creating the fully formed voice of a person, a woman, both at odds and at home with her world.  This makes for pleasurable reading.

If some of her plot points fall a bit short, Kitamura more than makes up for it in her novel use of language, and fully fleshed characters.

From the Rear View Mirror: The Run of his Life: The People v O.J. Simpson

Jerry Toobin’s The Run of his Life: The People v O.J. Simpson makes for fascinating reading in the twenty years since the double murder and trial.  In 1996, it was easy for white America to discount the racial angle of the trial as a unique pathology of Los Angeles, and the LAPD.  The Rodney King beating tape appeared to be the locally anomalous behavior of a systemically racist police force.

The Simpson story can no longer be viewed as such an outlier.  The fact that Simpson was indeed guilty of the crime, but got away with it – is the exception that proves the rule.  African-Americans are charged with crimes and incarcerated far out of proportion to white Americans, as the proliferation of digitally captured police violations and crimes in the last few years illustrates.

But Simpson was a black man with the money and influence to play the race card effectively.  Combine this with a mostly African-American jury, numerous missteps by the police and prosecutors, and Toobin’s book details an all too inevitable result: Simpson would get away with murder.

It is hard not to see the Simpson case as the beginning of so much American social and racial pathology that has come to flower in the last two decades.

Science & Poetry: The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science

In The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science, Richard Holmes explores how science, which emerged in a strictly Enlightenment/Rationalist era, came of age during the Romantic era.  

For science in the Romantic Age, poetry and science, art and rational thinking merged.  The great scientists of this time socialized and worked with poets like Shelly and Byron, producing science that was both rigorous in its methodology, but often poetic in its expression.  

This marriage eventually ended in divorce .  By the Victorian Era, science and poetry departed company.  For Holmes, this is detrimental.  This quote sums up his view:

The old, rigid debates and boundaries — science versus religion, science versus the arts, science versus traditional ethics — are no longer enough. We should be impatient with them. We need a wider, more generous, more imaginative perspective. Above all, perhaps, we need the three things that a scientific culture can sustain: the sense of individual wonder, the power of hope, and the vivid but questing belief in a future for the globe.

Generally, this book is interesting and informative.  The structure of the work can be confusing.  Holmes introduces characters, then other characters, then loops around again to previously discussed material.  This mars the flow of the book, placing it somewhere been a demanding text and a popularizing work.

Literary Zombies: Colson Whitehead's Zone One

Colson Whitehead’s novel Zone One, a post-apocalyptic zombie work written by this, a literary fiction writer, suffers from the same flaw as the one other work I have read by this writer (The Intuitionist): it starts off fundamentally slow.  Painfully slow. 
  
Of course, this is the kiss of death for a narrative. It takes Whitehead nearly 70-100 pages to really get a head of steam on this work.  The urge to toss the book aside is strong (and I did so once, only to come back).  His propensity for tangents, his excessive wordiness, buries the narrative flow.

How can Whitehead get away with this fatal trait?  Part is his reputation.  If it were any other writer with a propensity to stumble just right out of the gates, the literary power types would move on; but Whitehead is different, and this is overlooked.

But to be fair, the novel does have many virtues.  Whitehead’s deadpan delivery oddly suits the world he has created.  His protagonist, Mark Spitz, survives not because he is special – but by virtue of his mediocrity.  He is a man who tip toed through the world before the disaster, not making a big splash, while not failing either, and this middling existence contributes to his survival.  He is a man with low expectations, and this new world delivers.  In the end, it is the character's odd sort balance with a shattered world that rescues this novel.

Our Police State: The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap by Matt Taibbi

The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap by Matt Taibbi, explores the growing gap between the rich and poor in our country, especially in regard to the criminal justice system.  A few have complained that this book lacks methodological rigor; it doesn’t have graphs and charts to provide evidence of this phenomenon. But they something crucial here: the author is writing journalism, and sticks to specific stories of people. Yes, he writes about wider trends, but the narrative is always story driven.

In a way, Taibbi is not telling a new story.  Wealthy white men in American have always had laws that applied specifically to them, or did not apply, as the case may be, while people of color, particularly African-Americans, have been subject to a different, harsher set of laws.  This has always been the case (as it is with all minorities, and women). What is new is the scale.   In post Great Recession American, we have become a society ruled by oligarchs from Wall Street who operate above the law.  Financial firms do pay fines for gross wrongdoing, but no one ever goes to jail.  But in black neighborhood, stop and frisk laws, and “broken window” policing, keep minorities under the tight grip of a police state.

Taibbi’s prose presentation might be a bit adolescent at times, but that does not take away from the importance of his book.  He is angry, as we all should be, about the state of our state.  We are now a bifurcated as a society; and this divide is only getting worse, much to the determent of our democratic institutions.  Shy of a vast progressive movement with widespread support, it may already be too late.

The Grinder: Acceptable Loss: An Infantry Soldier's Perspective by Kregg P. Jorgenson

I started Acceptable Loss: An Infantry Soldier's Perspective with some misgivings.  From the title, it looked like it would be a glorification of war.  But Jorgenson writes about the experience of war with nuance.  

He takes to soldiering in Vietnam with alacrity, volunteering for Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols, where Rangers are dropped close to NVA positions. They spend five days in the field, careful not to engage the enemy, trying to gather intelligence on NVA positions.  With only five man crews, not engaging the enemy is all important. But things go wrong, of course, and Jorgenson is wounded in a firefight.

The reader gradually realizes that  a nineteen year old in combat becomes less effective once wounded.   The author can no longer be a LRRP.  On his second assignment, he rescues downed helicopter crews.  While with this crew, Jorgenson is wounded twice, totaling three times – three purple hearts.  He wins the silver and bronze star.  By the end of his tour he is running the camp's enlisted bar.  His friends have rotated out, and he will be gone soon as well.  The war is no longer his war.

It is hard not to see Jorgenson’s  point: a war takes young men and woman, burns away their effectiveness, and then brings more young men and woman to replace them.  Some are wounded, and other die - but all are stamped by the war.  This cycle is particularly grim considering the overall tenor of the Vietnam War.

Class & Gender: The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters

Sarah Waters novel, The Paying Guests, showcases this author’s distinct ability to take a momentary emotion, a fleeting feeling fed by a glance, a touch, a smell, and then shape her words into a multilayered and dense examination of our emotional lives.  

Waters has this touch, and more; she manages to create the world of 1922 England which we expect, but seldom to never does she rest on cliche or stereotype.  This novel is about gender and class in a typically English way, but Waters brings a fresh edge to these well-worn topics.

Perhaps the novel goes on for too long.  Toward the end, events grow belabored as the novel takes a sudden and dramatic turn.  This blemish is forgivable given the first three fourths of the book.

Zap: a novel, by Svetlana Lavochkina

Svetlana Lavochkina’s novel “Zap” offers readers a rare combination of a well-written, smart novel, combined with biting, often bawdy humor.  

The author knows her trade.  She deftly brings the reader through various eras of the Soviet experiment (and the pre-Soviet era) in her native Ukraine with an insider’s knowledge, bringing a verisimilitude of place, a fixation on accurate, often hilarious detail, to an otherwise sprawling, epochal, novel.

I know the author, and this work was long in the making.  The reader will be amply rewarded by the author’s effort.  Lavochkina writes in an English idiom largely of her own making, crafting a work that is unique in the sound and tempo of the language, something a native writer would be hard pressed to construct.

In fact,“Zap” is very different in tone, style, pacing and structure from most novels.  It is a truly singular work, with exceptional insights, style, tone and pacing. 

The Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil War and the Social Revolution That Transformed the South

In Bruce Levine’s The Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil War and the Social Revolution That Transformed the South the author explores what he characterizes as “A war launched to preserve slavery [which] succeeded instead in abolishing that institution more rapidly and more radically than would have occurred otherwise.”

In other words, had the south not seceded from the Union, slavery would have probably been preserved in some form or another in America for years to come.  For Levine, the Civil War quickly became a second American Revolution - really a social revolution, as he calls it; the south would not only be defeated, and soundly, but the entire structure of the American Republic would be altered.

In the decades prior to the Civil War, the planter class wielded a great deal of authority in all branches of the government ­­­– far exceeding their size or economic importance.  The war would end that dominance in 1865.  

Of course, this revolution was incomplete.  Levine only handles reconstruction, its failure, and Jim Crow, very briefly.  The promise of the Civil War would not truly be realized into law until the Civil Rights movement a hundred years later.  And we continue to grapple with the issues of the Civil War today.  In a real sense, the revolution is ongoing. 

My European Family: The First 54,000 Years

In My European Family: The First 54,000 Years, by Karin Bojs, the author explores her own ancestry using a variety of tools.  She explores the archaeology of various areas in Europe, especially Scandinavia, the oral stories of her family, and the technologies that have developed recently in the genetic study of ethnic origin.

Bojs is a science journalist, and so is adept at explaining complicated details for the laymen without dumbing down the material.  At the same time, she is apt at weaving her own family and personal story, along with the wider scope of human historical trends.  This makes for a both very intimate and yet objective book.

Of course this book would not have been possible without the recent rise of relatively cheap genetic tests.  Bojs explores the possibilities and limitations of these tests, raising legitimate concerns about the limitations, which are often downplayed.

Fiend: A Novel

Peter Stenson’s Fiend: A Novel had just enough verve to keep me reading, even though the initial premise of the book seemed thin or lacking.  In Fiend, meth users are the only people to survive a zombie apocalypse.  Stenson pulls this novel off largely by not straying from the mark.  I admire this kind of writer, one who stays true to his or her vision.  In the end, it provides the ballast for a story.

A note: a sloppy read of Fiend makes using meth seem a romantic or enhancing experience.  It is neither, so please don’t read the novel in a sloppy manner!  

When Corruption Rules: Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa, by Jason Stearns

Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa, by Jason Stearns, is an account of the political and military unrest in the Congo for much of the 1990s onward. Stearns does a remarkable job considering the complexity of the war, and the ignorance of people about the Congo.

What we get is an account of how the Congo works, or fails to work, as a political and social entity. This makes for sober reading.  If a culture can develop, or evolve, into such an utterly corrupt entity where any contact with it comprises a person’s moral sense, we should all be very troubled.  For if it happens in the Congo, it can just as well happen here.

Race, Class, & Gender: The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed

The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed, is an exhaustive look at race in America, both during the time period of Thomas Jefferson’s interactions with Sally Hemings at Monticello, and American as a whole.

Yet the complexities of this story extend beyond race as well.  Gordon-Reed must and does explore gender inequality, social inequality among whites and blacks, as well as race and ethnicity along with the idiosyncrasies in the lives of particular white and black people; this makes for a layered complex story.

Rather than shy away from this, Gordon-Reed dives right in.  She is hobbled by the fact that half of her subject matter, the enslaved people of Monticello, particularly the Hemingses, have little if any written records of their lives. What we know of them is from their own recollections years later, memories of descendants, or any records kept by Jefferson and his employees.

Therefore, Gordon-Reed must make many speculative jumps.  She has no other choice.  Yet these are very well informed jumps, and I believe most readers will be satisfied with the voice she gives to people who were very purposefully blotted from the Jefferson family history.

A Lonely World: On re-reading Of Mice and Men

I remembered Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men as misogynistic and racist.  Yet returning to the book eliminated those notions.  Steinbeck's central theme illustrates how our prejudices, our social class, the color of our skin, and our sex – erect barriers, creating lonely creatures who are desperate to reach out to others.

Take Curley’s wife, who isn’t even given the dignity of a name.  In my memory, she is a plot device, the floozy who “had it coming” because of her loose morals.  But it is very clear that she is a tragic figure: trapped in a loveless marriage, isolated from other people, she yearns for human connection above all else - and even says so in one informative moment of dialogue.  It is the ranch hands who  paint her, wrongly, in misogynistic colors.

Then there is Crooks, the African-American.  He is made to suffer alone for his skin color, just as Curly’s wife is because she is a woman.  Forced to live in an empty bunk house, he is constantly reminded of his second class citizenship – one which prevents him from forming lasting human bonds.

Then there is Lennie and George.  At first glance they seem ill paired.  But they are bound by one powerful impulse: hope.  The need to form an attachment, to watch out for each other, and, most importantly, to dream of a time and a place where they will no longer be the pain of separation and loneliness.

But in this world, people are fundamentally estranged and there is no remedy.  And their attempts to form loving bonds are so strong, they lead to destruction. Lennie is yearning set loose upon an indifferent world - and that yearning to love is so strong he must be killed before he destroys everything he loves.

The Survival of the Chinese Jews; The Jewish Community of Kaifeng: The Jewish Community of Kaifeng by Donald Leslie

The Survival of the Chinese Jews; The Jewish Community of Kaifeng by Donald Leslie is a comprehensive look at the Chinese Jews of Kaifeng.  In their long history of nearly a thousand years in China, this community has left clues as to their origins, daily life, and ultimate extinction.  Leslie takes these topics in turn

The merits of Leslie’s book are the detailed drawings and photos.  The shortcoming is that this work was written quite some time ago so the prose is sometimes clunky, and the Chinese transliterations are in the old style, and odd to read.

However Leslie’s book is overwhelming helpful.  Hopefully, there is a scholar of Chinese and Jewish history out there who can take Leslie's work, update the translations, analysis their Hebrew books and Chinese inscriptions and provide a definitive work on the Jews of Kaifeng.

The Chinese Jews of Kaifeng: A Millennium of Adaption and Endurance

The Chinese Jews of Kaifeng: A Millennium of Adaptation and Endurance, edited by Laytner and Paper, is divided into two parts, Past and Present.  By far the past is the most interesting section, with the papers by Berstein and Paper examining the unique Chinese Jewish elements which characterized the Kaifeng community during its prime.

The Present is far less interesting, as it is readily apparent the ancestors of the Kaifeng Jews show little interest in returning to Judaism in any meaningful sense.  Although some of the essays on the Chinese government crackdown on attempts by descendants of Chinese Jews and Western Jews at reviving the religion are fascinating.  

Judaism is not an “official” religion in China.  The Chinese government is wary of religions they don’t understand or control, as some of the most destabilizing wars in Chinese history (like the Taiping Rebellion) were led by messianic figures at the helm of east/west hybrid religions.

The Chinese government even covered the old well on the former grounds of the Kaifeng synagogue with gravel, the only remnant of the building on site, the last bit of the synagogue in situ!

Kaifeng synagogue well, now buried

Paris Stories by Mavis Gallant

I had high hopes for Paris Stories by Mavis Gallant, largely because of the glowing preface by Michael Ondaatje, whose novel, The English Patient, I admire greatly.  

Unfortunately Gallant’s stories tend toward the ponderous, both in style of the prose and pacing.  She is writing for another time and place, and while that does not discount a book’s quality (and in fact, it can be a virtue) for Gallant this scars the whole collection.  I found myself constantly searching for a perch where, as a person, I could feel the pulse of Gallant's stories.  I only found a few.

Yes, Gallant can write, and write well.  And therein may be the central problem: her stories are too solidified, too set into place; they do not breathe, and this makes for suffocating reading.

Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow

Weehawken dueling grounds, New Jersey

Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton is a masterpiece of a biography.  Chernow presents this complicated man without shying away from those complications, or relying on overly reductionist explanations of why Hamilton could be so noble at certain time, and petty at others.

In this way, Hamilton was no more or less like any other person.  But as a public figure, and as one of the founders, his actions were writ large.  So, his highs were high, and his lows, low.  This should be familiar: our leaders suffer the same extremes.

Chernow’s biography is instructive not only about Hamilton, but about the entire founding generation.  They were men (all were men) capable of selfless, statesman-like behavior.  But they were also petty, mean, and held lifelong grudges against their perceived enemies.  

What we call the spirit of partisanship was rampant in those early days, especially in Washington’s second term.  It threatened to tear our young republic apart, just as its  similar form of political polarization today places our country in existential jeopardy.

Provost’s Review of the Social Sciences at Cornell

I seldom write about Cornell, my employer of nearly 19 years, except in a veiled way.   The university, overall, has been very good to me, providing a vital and challenging environment to work and exist.  But here I break that rule for the email below.

As an organization, Cornell tends to think and coordinate as organizations do: they form committees and generate studies.  In the context of the long email below, Cornell administration tends to be disingenuous in its statements.  In keeping with other committees investigating similar themes and topics, the sentence containing the statement that the goal of the committee is to “identify opportunities for continuing to strengthen the social sciences at Cornell” means one thing: to somehow centralized the Social Sciences at Cornell, and strip power for the individual units.

The reason for this move is cost savings.  The end result will be some overarching entity, The School of Social Science, The Social Science Entity,  Social Science Incorporated; this entity will supposedly pool resources and eliminate redundancies.

Centralization certainly has its place in congregations of people gathered together to perform some task(s). But it has a shadow side in all but ignoring the benefit of organic growth and the decentralization that fosters it.  The centralized folks, of course, prefer centralization.  It is where they derive their power and authority.  Decentralization is tantamount to disorder, and even chaos. And it is supposed to be less cost effective.  Yet where is the evidence that Cornell’s centralizing drive saves money?  Has anyone studied that outcome?

The Provost is a shadowy and strange presence on campus, feeding money or not depending upon their internal (and often opaque) reasoning.  Besides tightening a belt that may very well be on the waist of bogie man, what do they do?  Why do they exist?

Provost’s Review of the Social Sciences at Cornell

Charge

Review the current state of the social sciences at Cornell, and identify opportunities for continuing to strengthen the social sciences at Cornell.

Scope

The review will focus on the traditional social science disciplines as they appear in all colleges and schools, as well as research infrastructure units that support the social sciences. However, the review will also recognize and consider disciplines that intersect traditional social sciences. Contributions to the research, teaching, and public-engagement missions of the university, as well as the organization of social sciences faculty throughout the university, will be included.

Process

First, a small internal committee will be convened to develop a document that describes the current state of the social sciences at Cornell. The report produced by the committee will be descriptive—it will not provide a critique of social sciences, nor will it be prescriptive in tone. The report will be informed by data and information that are internal and external to Cornell, pertaining to the teaching, research, and public-engagement missions of the university. The internal committee is not intended to be representative of all social science disciplines, but rather is meant to be a small group with enough knowledge to produce the descriptive report. The Provost will invite nominations from the campus and will appoint the membership.

Second, a group of highly regarded scholars, external to Cornell, will be identified and invited by the Provost to review the report of the internal committee and to participate in a site visit that will include interviews, tours, and discussion. This group will be asked to provide its assessment, together with recommendations for further strengthening the social sciences at Cornell.

Progress reports will be provided to the Faculty Senate Committee throughout the process.

Internal Committee

Co-Chairs: Judith Appleton and Ted O’Donoghue
Members: Rose Batt, Jesse Goldberg, Katherine Kinzler, Yael Levitte, Katherine McComas, Kelly Musick, Holly Prigerson, Jed Stiglitz, and Martin Wells.

September 2017 Update

Following completion of the self-study, receipt of the report of the external review committee, and a period of invited comment on the report, the next step in Cornell’s review of the social sciences will be to address the central issues raised in the process to date.

Committees will be formed to address:

1.     Organizational Structures: university level organization of the social sciences, including academic units and centers/institutes (work to begin late September 2017)

2.     Idea Panels: explore areas of strength and opportunity for radical collaboration in the social sciences (work to begin October 2017)

3.     Administrative Issues: specific concerns regarding current policies and practices that impact faculty productivity (work to begin Spring 2018)

Charges for all three committees, along with up-to-date committee membership, can be found here [current draft September 20, 2017]

Any questions or concerns you may have on the review process may be submitted to ssreview@cornell.edu.

Phillip Pullman’s The Golden Compass: vast profunditie obscure

Phillip Pullman’s The Golden Compass, the first in the His Dark Materials trilogy, derives its title from this section of Milton’s Paradise Lost

On heav’nly ground they stood, and from the shore

They view’d the vast immeasurable Abyss

Outrageous as a Sea, dark, wasteful, wilde,

Up from the bottom turn’d by furious windes

And surging waves, as Mountains to assault

Heav’ns highth, and with the Center mix the Pole.

Silence, ye troubl’d waves, and thou Deep, peace,

Said then th’ Omnific Word, your discord end:

Nor staid, but on the Wings of Cherubim

Uplifted, in Paternal Glorie rode

Farr into Chaos, and the World unborn;

For Chaos heard his voice: him all his Traine

Follow’d in bright procession to behold

Creation, and the wonders of his might.

Then staid the fervid Wheeles, and in his hand

He took the golden Compasses, prepar’d

In Gods Eternal store, to circumscribe

This Universe, and all created things:

One foot he center’d, and the other turn’d

Round through the vast profunditie obscure,

And said, thus farr extend, thus farr thy bounds,

This be thy just Circumference, O World.

—Paradise Lost bk vii, lns 210-31 (1667)

The literal golden compass of this tale holds the secrets of creation. The device is both an artifact of religious veneration, and a piece of technology.  Lyra, the protagonist, is obviously some vital piece of a cosmic drama which holds the secrets of “the vast profunditie obsure,” although the first book only alludes to this. In book one it appears that the world and creation are more complex than the official church doctrine.  And of course, this can only lead to a bewildering drama.

English Romantic Poetry: An Anthology (Dover Thrift Editions)

English Romantic Poetry: An Anthology (Dover Thrift Editions) hits all the major Romantic poets, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats and Shelly.  

If you are like me, and have not read these poets since high school or college, and when you read them you did so apathetically, then this is a book loaded with gems.  Stylistically, thematically, and linguistically, these poems are at once familiar and numinous.  They are protean forms in the mind and heart, forming shifting, evocative images and scenes.

The Dover Editions once sat on a rack near the register of book stores (do they still?)  As if these little one or two dollar books were an impulse purchase like a pack of gum.  The world has changed a great deal. 

The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust by Edith H. Beer

The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust by Edith H. Beer is the story of Beer’s rather remarkable survival during the Second World War.  She became a “U-boat,” a Jewish person hiding under false papers.  But she went much further than that: she married a member of the Nazi party, became a Nazi hausfrau, bore a daughter, as the rest of European Jews, including her family, were murdered.

There is a telling moment after the war where Edith searches for family in the camps.  When she reveals to former Jewish prisoners who she is, and how she survived, they call her terrible things, in essence equating her survival as on less of a parallel plane to those in the camps.

But this is a blunt and ugly way to view her story.  Beer survived both because of her tenacity, and because four Germans helped her at pivotal moments.  Without them, she probably would have been discovered. These Germans, her former employer, a man in a Nazi office (who had a connection with her employer) in charge of racial certification, a young friend, and her husband, saved her, at the risk of their own lives, for no other purpose than their great love for her.

If more Germans took such risks, more Jews like Edith Beers would have survived the war.

The Torah Sutras - A New Direction

My book, The Torah Sutras, will be published by Albion-Andalus Press.  Publication date TBA.

This work is the  type of book I have long wanted to publish.  The book is mixed genre: non-fiction, fiction, poetry, and religious philosophy.  This work does some heavy lifting, shifting the emphasis and definition of certain time honored Jewish concepts and pouring them into a classical, Chinese, religious mode.

The Torah Sutras is the direction I want my future religious writing to take; unlike my first two non-fiction books on religious topics, I will now write religious works that are more activist than descriptive.  The fact that this book emerged from a such descriptive book, which failed to find its axis (and was to be my third book) supports my hunch that the death of the book was a productive "failure" which I was fortunate to experience. 

I want to breathe life into “old” modes of religious thought.  This book is the start of new directions in my writing – a nexus where old and new meet to combine and create novel forms. 

The Prisoners of Breendonk: Personal Histories from a World War II Concentration Camp

James M. Deem’s The Prisoners of Breendonk: Personal Histories from a World War II Concentration Camp is an account of a relatively small prison in Belgium during the Second World War.  Deems takes the investigatory path of many recent Holocaust scholars: he concentrates on a few individuals in a camp, both the victims and the tormentors, and through their story, tells the story of the camp at large.

What we get is almost a day-to-day account of life in Breendonk.  He charts the course of the prison as the war proceeds, details how prisoners were tortured and killed, what they ate and where they slept.  The prison was photographed for propaganda purposes, to show how well treated the inmates were.  Despite this, the wealth of photographs can’t hide malnutrition and physical abuse.  One prisoner was an artist, and the camp commander commissioned him to sketch prisoners for his private collection. The artist drew one for the commander, and one for himself.  These drawings are startling, giving an inside, unexpurgated view of camp life.

Suddenly, reading about the Holocaust is quite important again.  As the world contracts toward ridged nationalism and parochialism – reading accounts of the end result of this process, its most raw and inhuman form, is extremely relevant.

The Mindfulness Solution to Pain: Step-by-Step Techniques for Chronic Pain Management by Dr. Jackie Gardner-Nix

The Mindfulness Solution to Pain: Step-by-Step Techniques for Chronic Pain Management by Dr. Jackie Gardner-Nix has a simple theoretical premise which is difficult, but not impossible, to put into practice.  This is necessarily the case, for mindfulness demands a great deal of focused attention.  It takes practice and work.

One of the chief insights in this book is that physical pain and our mental states go hand in hand. Pain is a physiological response to something wrong with our bodies, certainly, but equally important in this equation is how we frame the experience of pain in our minds. 

This book sets out many techniques on how to frame, or re-frame, our experience of pain.  This is helpful for alleviating our pain level.  Even sitting still with our pain, allowing it to happen, not fighting it or judging it, is helpful, and a great start.

Birds of America: Stories

Lorrie Moore’s Birds of America: Stories is a compelling read, but not for reasons that most readers may find.  Almost all the stories start off on very unpromising notes.  Moore veers this way and that, and the reader may wonder where she is going and what she is doing.  There is unfortunate goofy descriptive language.  Most of the stories, with an exception or two, begin this way, and it is perplexing.

But Moore has the very strange ability to “turn” her stories around, often in the last few pages.  She veers us away from the verge of doom again and again, creating stories with great insights and pathos. So, if you read this book, stay with the task.  You will be rewarded in the end.

Empires of the Word

Nicholas Ostler's Empires of the Word is wide ranging examination of how languages evolve, spread, and die out.

Ostler takes a wide view: we move from India, to China, to Arabic speaking countries, to Europe and end on English, the current lingua franca.

Ostler’s book is fascinating, and VERY detailed, so it demands some patience on the part of readers.  But readers will be rewarded for their effort with some firm analysis of the complexities of how languages live and die. 

Ostler does not leave us with any hard and fast rule about why some languages spread and others do not. Often, language spread because of conquest, as Latin did; or through a combination of conquest (British English) and prestige (American English).

Language is as complex and as multivariate as we are; really, we should expect no less.

The Hunger Games

This has all been commented on before, and Suzanne Collins has long pointed out that The Hunger Games owes a great debt to the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur.  

Katniss, like Theseus, volunteers to become a tribute in the King of Crete’s intentionally cruel, and unwinnable, tangle with the Minotaur in his maze.  He defeats the Minotaur, and becomes King of Athens.  

Katniss confronts an equally, if not more senselessly cruel state (more like Rome, as the name of the nation Panem, as in Panem et Circenses, Bread and Circus, alludes to). It is a country where blood sport is both a reminder of a rebellion long crushed, entertainment, and social distraction.

Of course, these is more here.  But I’ll leave it at that.  Reviewing YA books is not part of my bailiwick, and this book has already commented on extensively. 

Wuthering Heights & Die

Wuthering Heights is a Romantic novel with the capital “R”.  The Age of Reason is over, and Emily Bronte seeks, and succeeds, in exposing our most irrational natures.  In this novel, characters just speak about their great passions, and get sick, and die.  

Heathcliff and Catherine are the prime exemplars of this; Catherine’s love for Heathcliff is strong, but inchoate. She dies.  Heathcliff is constitutionally stronger than Catherine, but after years of tormenting, both emotionally and physically, those around him, he suffers death by Romance as well.

I write this tongue-in-cheek.  Wuthering Heights is a novel that should be read.  Certainly it makes demands on its readers.  But we should rise to meet its high mark.

A Book I’ll Never Read

I am not disposed to discuss books I have never read.  I shouldn’t have to explain this, although it is a habit many people have – in so much as they read anything at all.

But any book that laments the loss of a version of New York City has no appeal to me and I will never break its spine.  Vanishing New York is such a book (and blog).  

From viewing the author’s blog, it chronicles the closing of every semi-landmark diner, café, or flower shop. This is an old motif: New York was better in ________ (fill in the decade or year).  

As a boy "Regis and Kathy Lee" where always on in my house, every week day morning.  Regis would fill in the blank at “New York was better in the 1950s.”  No doubt he had good reasons for this stance.  The city had yet to enter its long decline through the 60s and 70s.  He was young, hopeful, and the city reflected his dreams and aspirations and could fulfill them.  Who  can blame him for thinking this?

In a round about way, this is the shadow side of that old saw that "New York City is the greatest city in the world". With that as a premise, NYC is always primed to topped from that lofty perch. The shadow version says the same thing, but on the other side of the coin, in whiny and nostalgic tones, that the city was better in _________ (fill in the decade or year).  The New York City you know and experience is but a shadow city.  You should have lived in the real city. As far as I can tell, this yardstick has always existed and is distinctly a New York historical dynamic.

The problems are self-evident.  The voices that lament the town’s gentrification in the late 80s and 90s (my generation) laid its groundwork.  They came in as “artists” whether they were or not, and laid the foundation for pushing low income people out of the Village or Alphabet City.  They planted the seeds of gentrification – and then bitched when those plants grew and morphed beyond their comfort or control.

My sense is that all this fuss has more to do with aging, articulate people afraid of what they have lost over the years, and we all lose something – who use NYC as a symbol or token of loss. I sympathize.  Loss is difficult.  As we age, the world feels less and less made for us.  It muscles us out. This hurts. New York leaves us behind.

But ultimately, NYC is good or bad according to a sliding rubric that can satisfy no single group, or even person.  If you want to jack off in a porn theater in Times Square, clearly that is a loss.  If you wanted to buy crack in Washington Square Park – yet another check in the loss category.  If you are an artist who requires a minyan of like-minded folks to sit in diners and drink old man coffee as you express ideas or concepts, clearly something vital is long gone. 

Ultimately, people will write eulogies to dying worlds.  Why not? You can no longer get a sandwich at the Carnegie Deli (as if delis were ever eternal?)  So lament and cry.  Write books about it. Despite being born in NYC, this is not my concern.  I try not to fall into the trap of narrowly defining my worth or joy to a place. In our world of rapid change, to do so seems masochistic.