The Gift of Isle of Dogs, Part I

 

Jon Frankel’s Isle of Dogs, Part I, is a book written on a large canvas, War and Peace style.  Frankel is a deft writer who, like Tolstoy, is able to handle both the vast sweep of history, and the details that make a novel feel real and living.  He keeps this dichotomy throughout, and it is an intimate and revealing view of a richly imagined world.  The reader does not get lost in either the big or little picture.  Things keep moving along. 

I am especially struck by the sense of a lost Eden, the sister having her brother, but also her father, as a lover.  Like any Edenic motif, this harkens to an age before sexual rules; a pre-fall view in a world that has already toppled.  This novel is cursed by a sense of loss and longing.

Toward the end, I was especially struck by the depictions of downtown Manhattan with both its street battles and everyday scenes of life.  Although this is a New York City set far in the future, Frankel still gives us a deeply and undeniably NYC novel.  But he also bows reverently to the genre, providing a strange otherness to the great metropolis.  

We are all fortunate this this is only Part 1 of Frankel’s epic.  More gifts await us.

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

 

For a long time, I avoided reading about the history of Northern Ireland.  I have a smidgen of Irish ancestry, and carry a bit of baggage from that side of the family.  So, I never believed I could read a history of Northern Ireland without oonfronting some of the intractable “self-hating” aspects of my identity.   Why would I want to read about Protestians and Catholcs refighting the Thirity Years War?  Weren't these sectarian disputes settled by other peoples a long time ago?

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe did not help me at all in this regard.  I still self-hate.  I see nothing enobling about The Troubles.  But that is not Keefe’s fault.  The Troubles is presented as what it was, a largely senseless, sectarian conflict that ended when there was little left to save in the end.  The violence ended because the match had burnt out.

That said, Keefe does an admirable job of presenting this history.  This is a gripping story, and he tells it well.  He humanized the terrible cost of communal violence.

The Moro War: How America Battled a Muslim Insurgency in the Philippine Jungle, 1902-1913

 

The Moro War: How America Battled a Muslim Insurgency in the Philippine Jungle, 1902-1913, by James R. Arnold, is a well-researched and written book, about a time when America sought an empire outside of the confines of North America.  Many white Americans have problems seeing the white supremacy behind that ‘standard’ history of our country.  We are too close to it to see it with clarity. The task is much easier when we read this book, as the fight against the Moros is so far removed from our standard national narrative. 

The Roosevelt government viewed the Moros as not fully evolved, and this idea granted the United States the supposed right to use extraordinary force in “pacifying” them.  We see all the tell-tale signs of a western power subduing a ‘native’ people.  Massacres, indiscriminate killing, destruction of property, ethnic cleansing bordering on genocide.  In armed encounters with Moro warriors, their numbers of dead and wounded far exceeded the US by many orders of magnitude.

The strategic goals of this war were so very limited that they are forgotten today.  I doubt this war needed to be fought at all.  People died in large numbers for immediatate and forgetable goals. 

Radical Breaks, Remakes and What Comes Next

Despite the title, End of the Jews, author Dan Mendelsohn Aviv is not predicting the end of Jews or Judaism.  Quite the contrary.  His sub-title reveals more about the substance of this book: Radical Breaks, Remakes and What Comes Next.  This book is about how Judaism is constantly evolving, always has and always will.  If you have never been exposed to this idea before, this is a great place to begin.  Rather than destroying your faith or Jewish practices, End of the Jews illustrates how when one part of Judaism gets played out, another rises to take its place, more often than not with great success.

Flappers and Philosophers

 

Flappers and Philosophers was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first collection of short stories, published in 1920. I had high expectation of these stories.  Scott made his name and most of his money through the publication of short stories.  But my expectations were tempered.  Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast reveals claims, perhaps falsely, that Scott would change the endings of his short stories (to happy endings) so that they would sell.  So, what to expect?

The first story, The Offshore Pirate, ends with the female character acting in a way substantially different then throughout the story.  Was this such an altered ending?  Benediction has another strange ending, with a different feel and texture than the story.  I wonder.

The only story that rises to the level of F. Scott Fitzgerald is Bernice Bobs Her Hair.  The rest revolve around cheap gimmicks and cute tricks.  For the most part his prose is superb.  This is what kept me reading.

The Kabbalah Reader: A Sourcebook of Visionary Judaism

The Kabbalah Reader: A Sourcebook of Visionary Judaism by Edward Hoffman is a rare book about Kabbalah in English in that it is not an introductory text as I define it.  Hoffman does not pick the standard Jewish figures or quote from the well-known works.  Rather, Hoffman provides a wider range, and in effect, moves us out and away from well throd self-referential books about Jewish mysticism.  Hoffman’s book is sweeping, bringing many under the tent of Kabbalah who are not typically allowed within.

The Taiping Rebellion

God's Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan, by Jonathan D. Spence, is a fascinating history of one of Chinese largest rebellions.  Taking place from 1850 to 1864, tens of millions died.  Hong Xiuquan created a type of Christian religion, where he was the younger son of Jesus.  Elements of Confucianism and Chinese folk religions were added to this mix.  In a time of social and political turbulence, his movement gained strength, threating to topple to regime in Beijing.

The Taiping Rebellion still lives on in the collective life of the Chinese.  The CPC recognizes five official religions, Buddhism, Catholicism, Daoism, Islam, and Protestantism, which are monitored by the state.  Other religious groups, no matter how benign, are illegal and often disbanded.  The CPC knows full well that the Taiping Rebellion began as a splinter group from mainstream Christianity, and grew in political and miltary might.  If infighting for power and religious prestige had not weakened them, the Taiping rebels may very well have taken power in China.