Tag Archives: Writing

READING

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I know how to stir myself to write something original. Read, read everything, read a lot. Garbage in, garbage out. Last week I came up with three ideas to write into new separate novels.

Most of this year has been devoted to advancing manuscripts toward publication. Concentrating on previous efforts of originality has presented a problem: Will I ever write anything new and original again?

If I can’t write, my life is over. I may as well die. That thinking didn’t get far. I went to library booksales and bag sales at the end. A dollar for all the books that would fit into a grocery bag. Three cents a piece for each book was fantastic.

What to do with that bag of books, plus 20 others purchased and unread over the year? From October to today, I’ve read, sampled and surveyed texts. Here’s a list, out of order:

Ghandi, William L. Shirer, not compelling but of interest.

History of the Ottoman Empire, vol 1, Shaw, very interesting passages – Shia/Sunni sects, the Ottoman Empire suffered greatly from a complex, fixed social structure, explained in 50 pages of detail. I skipped over most of that.

The Sleepwalkers, Clark, a fantastic book about the 20 years in Europe leading up to World War One. I recommend it strongly.

A Short History of Medieval Philosophy,  Weinberg, looked good but I’m no longer interested.

Trafalgar, Rene Maine, read another history, not this one, about that navel battle.

Brighton Rock, Graham Greene, It is readable, but not as interesting as the promos on the back cover.

Force and Freedom, Jacob Burckhardt, I know Burckhardt wrote an excellent book about the Renaissance, but this book is heavy wood and labored.

Galapagos, Michael Jackson, technical, detailed – why feathers on this bird vary from feathers of birds on nearby islands – the sorts of thing Darwin saw plus more. If I were going to those islands, I’d take the time to read it, but I’ll never make it.

Old Rail Fence Corners, compiled ancedotes, tales from early Minnesota. I had hoped for a bunch of Lincolnesque stories. There wasn’t much that was funny about any of them.

West Coast Journeys,  Carolyn Leighton, young woman travels from east coast to west coast in the 1860s. The volume tells of  her experiences, few of which are engaging or interesting.

The Fist in the Wilderness, David Lavender, excellent book well worth reading. About the fur trade among and between the French, Indians, British, Spanish and Americans on the North American continent.

The Atlantic Essays, compiled essays from the Atlantic magazine from 1930-1950s. Like any compilation there are a lot of duds and a few beauties.

The Composite of Acting, Jerry Blount. I knew the author. I like the book and recommend it.

The Quiet American, Graham Greene. I read this long ago. It is the best novel about Vietnam although it was written 10 years before American became engulfed in that country.

Wartime, Paul Fussell, excellent book, well worth reading about the home fronts in Britain and the US.

The Mexican War, 1846-1848, excellent book about that war. I recommend it, and the earlier book it disagrees with. I read this book some time ago and bought it for my library.

The Economy of Early Renaissance Europe, 1300-1460, Miskimin, a good economic survey of the Europe before the age of discovery expanded the European wealth.

Selected Short Stories, Hawthorne, read the short ones. The long ones are difficult because Hawthorne’s nineteenth century style puts many, many words on a line in this Fawcett Premier edition.

Australian Short Stories, Penguin, the dialects are difficult to fathom. I read some and looked at many stories but I gave up.

The Rights of Man, Tom Paine, very readable political science. It affirmed my impression that Paine is the second best writer from the American Revolution. The best writer is Franklin; third best Jefferson.

The Ancient Civilization of Anghor, Christopher Pym, well presented, somewhat dated (1968) and certainly out of my areas of historical familiarity.

The River and I, John Neihardt, not very good. 1908 journey down the Missouri. I had a grandfather canoe down the Wisconsin a few years later. There isn’t much detail; historical decryption is lacking.

The Maltese Falcon, Hammett, see the 1941 movie of the same title.

The Good Soldier, Ford Maddox Ford, I got to page three and wondered why I was reading the same points that were on the first page. I stopped.

The Other Californians, Heizer/Almquist, excellent book about Native Californians and their slaughter – Spanish, Mexicans and mostly in the Central Valley and inland area, Americans. It was heartbreaking.

Houdini On Magic, Edited, picked up at three cents and after reflection I realized I won’t read it.

The Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels, does not give much text from those gospels, but the interpretation of the author. I wanted to see the text.

J.S. Bach, vol 2, Albert Schweitzer, thought I was interested but no.

Civil War Stories, Ambrose Bierce, recommend. Some of the stories edge toward horror.

The French Navy in World War Two, Auphan/Mordal, a 50 cent book that is offered for sale on Amazon for $10-15.

Blockade Runners of the Confedercy, Cochran, Somewhat of interest, but not for the library. It has a story of a Union navel officer falling in love with a captured Confederate spy, female on a blockade runner. He died in 1865, so it wasn’t a long romance and a shorter marriage.

The Devil In France, Feuchtwanger, excellent book about a prominent novelist who fled Hitler and Germany being put into a French Concentration Camp during the first year of World War Two. The French realize they have imprisoned many opponents of Nazism and try to make amends, but author and wife still have to elude the police and escape to America.

Power in the Blood, Sabean, about deviancy in Renaissance Germany. It details a very complicated social structure of those times. I got half way through and stopped.

The Experience of Defeat, Christopher Hill, what happened to the Puritans in England after the Restoration of 1660? This book categorizes the Puritans and tells their stories. For the modern reader it does not say what the experience of defeat was, but it explains that experience from the view of the seventeenth century.

The Sixties Unplugged, Degroot, like all books about the Sixties its story is incomplete but it contains many salient tales and historical points.

Orlando, Virginia Woolf, another novel from this mentally ill author which I cannot read.

A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, Bird, something bought on vacation and mildly interesting but not a keeper.

Honky, Conley, from a library sale, UC Press, I believed it was set in California. I was wrong. I didn’t want to read it.

Democracy During the American Civil War, DP Crook, excellent book detailing the relationships between the British and Americans during that war. The larger, longer book by the same author on the same topic is not that much better.

Above are the books currently in my possession, in my rooms, to be moved. There are others I don’t remember. I won’t read so devotedly for a while because I’ll write the three stories that have come to me.

I’LL COME RUNNING (AWAY)

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I watched 40 minutes of this movie, I’ll Come Running. The script is on par with TV teleplay writing, low level incidents and ordinary dialogue in bad need of canned laughter.

Three Danish men, early twenties, travel in Texas. They eat in a restaurant, where they are loud and boisterous while speaking Danish. No one understands their rudenesses. That is a point Danes should understand – being rude works only if the words are understood by everyone. But no one in the world speaks Danish. They are so obnoxious they offend the Latina waitress.

One Dane, the protagonist (mostly English speaking now), decides to go home. His friends drive off leaving him in Austin. He has flight reservations in a few days. He can’t find the hostel – he sits around outside the restaurant doing nothing. Latina waitress leaves work and invites him to a party. One thing leads to another, episodically – the story is weak or nonexistent. Dane and Latina end up in bed; I don’t know why e.g. she doesn’t like his 10-day growth; the next day she insists he shave, a mistake!. He looks much better when he hides his face.

She cuts work to spend the day with him (She’s a working stiff – that all the film shows.) although the job is important to her. What do they do? Very little. She wants to go out; he wants sex. A local parade passes her house. He takes out his camera and films as people pass by. A Texan doesn’t want pictures being taken, grabs the Dane and moves him 20 feet into a fountain, pushing him in.

A writing point making for a better story: Texan grabs Dane who begins speaking Danish. Texans realize this guy isn’t speaking my language. Texan lets go. DANE (in English) “Pictures for Copenhagen!”

However, the fountain dunking puts the Dane in the shower, where Latina begins taking film of him. They get to film and touch each other, etc., etc., look at various and sundry sites on the Internet.

The next morning he leaves to return to Denmark. No tears, but many hugs and much smug satisfaction. Taxi drives off. Going down the highway Dane decides to turn around and go back. Why? The movie has to be longer than 40 minutes.

I realized the movie was over. For these two characters as the old saying goes, “We’ll always have Austin.” I don’t need to see more of their adventures in Texas and going to Denmark, is not like being in Austin.

ENOUGH ALREADY

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Review of THE IMITATION GAME

No one should hurry out to see The Imitation Game, the new British production about the World War Two program surrounding intelligence involving the Enigma machine.

Previous British movies and TV productions have centered on the Enigma machine: Enigma (2001) and Bletchley Park (2011). There is a little known British movie: Men are trained and become transvestites to be dropped into Germany and to get employed in the factory making Enigma Machines, steal the machine… The last movie is cute and complete shameful.

The Enigma machine provided the British and Americans with intelligence, Ultra, knowledge of German military maneuvers and planning. Before June 21, 1941 the British told the Russians invasion is upon you. The Russians ignored it. Montgomery and his planners ignored Enigmas intercepts before invading Belgium and the southern Netherlands in September 1944. It is a reason that military operation failed.

Enigmas is credited with winning the Battle of the Atlantic, safeguarding convoys. That is wrong. The reason the British needed intelligence was their own codes were being read, almost in real time, by the Germans. The intelligence advantage of Enigma was mostly a wash. What won the Battle of the Atlantic was equipment and men. Much of the equipment and weapons, radar/sonar were of British origin advanced further by the Americans. The primary equipment was ships, American produced destroyers and especially escort carriers. The British had the best submarine hunter, Johnnie Walker whom they did not promote. The Americans were very aggressive. That’s why a full U-boat is on exhibit in a museum in Chicago.

Before World War Two the Americans had decrypted the Japanese diplomatic code in real time. Those intercepts were called Magic. The Americans were working on decrypting the Japanese Navel Codes, one intercept leading to the first complete allied victory of the war: Midway. The Americans started from scratch.

With Enigma the British started at the 50 yard line in the 100 yard dash. Poland and the Polish people. In mid-August 1939 Polish intelligence invited French and British intelligence over to the office and said, “Look what we have.” During the previous decade the Poles had workers in the Enigma factory; they had a machine in Warsaw; they had analyzed it operations and its potentialities. The British and French both said, We want it. The Poles shared, and when they were losing and were conquered in the next six weeks, the Poles erased all trace of their enigma intelligence operation: equipment, papers, people. Some Poles ended up in France and later England.

To my knowledge the French have been considerate and gracious not to claim credit in movies or on TV for any Enigma feats. No so the British who won the War by decrypting Enigma intelligence. I’m tired of British hero movies about Enigma. It’s time for the Brits to fess up. The Poles did it.

THE SLEEPWALKERS

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This spectacular diplomatic history by Christopher Clark is about European foreign relations and history before World War One. It is an essential source to understand the years before the War.

It tells how Serbian goofballs and nuts, backed blindly by the Russians and supported by the indifferent French, were able to start the War. The British, flat on their asses, joined the French.

Oddly, the Germans were late to the party. Germany began mobilizing on August 1, 1914 two weeks after the Russians with French encouragement began mobilizing and putting a million soldiers on their Western borders. Historian Clark mentions that the Germans have been blamed for heightening tensions and starting the War. Blame is much better placed on the Russians and French. Clark refers to an excellent history by Fritz Fischer, but Clark does not discuss policy during the War, whereas Fischer does.

The Sleepwalkers is an appropriate title. The diplomats and rulers read, discussed, pushed papers and harrumphed. In Britain the Foreign Minister, Edward Grey (of Earl Grey tea fame), was aloof, spoke only English, disliked foreigners, preferred long country jaunts and liked fly fishing. And in 1914 Grey had the on-coming disability of going blind. Everyone in the government knew it but left him in place.

The Sleepwalkers is well presented and well-written. It raises a question: If the men who decided to go to war in 1914 had read this book before deciding, would they chose War? Clark gives the impression that the men were so impossibly devious and utterly stupid, that despite knowing all the facts the would chose War.

SUBVERSIVE WRITING

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REVIEW OF SUBVERSIVES by Seth Rosenfeld

I’m Michael Ulin Edwards, author of Bitch. (iBookstore). I am completely familiar with events in Berkeley, 1968-1974. I am familiar with earlier events and its literature and many other documents (1962-1967).

Much of Seth Rosenfeld’s book, Subversives, is set in a foundation of quicksand. I will touch on a few prominent disappointments. Reading this book it is obvious that the author did not live during the Sixties; he made no attempt to learn much about the people living in Berkeley during the Sixties; he failed to submerse himself into student life, actives and thoughts of the Sixties. Writing about students and events from 1963-1965 is much different from students and events in 1966-1968, or in 1971. Rosenfeld writes a top-down recounting of events – a writing from the perspective of the documents in his possession. He ignores documents that disagree with his views and fails to balance and weight their relative importance.

In this book every major impression about events after September 1968 is wrong, mistaken or falsified.

I read the text and what supposedly serves as notes. The notes are frequently summaries of documents. There is very rarely a quote in the text and a source, date, page number in the note. This book thereby becomes a perilous piece of history, sociology or journalism.

Rosenfeld misstates the scene. What is the background of students, activities and organizations? In the sources on the Free Speech Movement, people emerged from their corners and began leafleting and proselytizing. The Free Speech Movement [Goldwater Republicans to the far Left] by and through Savio had to beat these people and organizations off to present limited demands. By the late Sixties there were no controls, no discipline and no common goals. Every leader, person and group wanted every other person and group to follow it.

What is both funny and ridiculous is the FBI’s believing it could surveil and influence the groups with informants. A remarkable book was written at the time (1970) by William Divale, I Lived Inside the Campus Revolution. He describes how he was recruited, how he had to form political groups and eventually whom he met. His political indoctrination eventually made him a leftist; he testified in one trial. Divale tells of the disorder within the greater Left and student groups. There were no controls and no leaders. Rosenfeld likes to disparage persons whose experience and writing disproves his theses. He calls Divale “a self-described sex ‘swinger.’”(485) In the Sixties swingers weren’t considered worthy of demerits.

Rosenfeld suggests that one or two informants influenced and pushed people and organizations into wrong, unpopular actions. It ain’t so. Students, especially at Berkeley, were in charge. The Free Speech Movement leaders knew they had rolled the administration on constitutional issues. Given that standing students pushed more toward extreme positions.

Who were the FBI informants? Petty criminals, drug users, sexual perverts, hippies, morons and Democrats. A worry had to be, will my informant disappear to a commune in Marin, or Sonoma, or Mendocino, or Humboldt? What’s the quality of the information he just gave the Bureau? All information produced had to be culled and carefully checked. It was known among University students that people who appeared to live on the streets, lived on more than air. At best they were part-time informants, or squealing to get a felony lowered to a misdemeanor or to get a few bucks for the next joint or tab.

And what did the FBI do with the information once it verified it? After August 1963 the FBI learned Martin Luther King had a dream. The preacher had said so publicly. The raging question within the Bureau was “what was the dream about?”
It is more probable to conclude that the FBI was not playing with a full deck, and that Rosenfeld’s book gives the Bureau much more credit than it deserves.

The subtitle to Rosenfeld’s book includes “and Reagan’s Rise to Power.” Ronald Reagan is a villain in Berkeley. Too bad. “Prologue at the Governor’s Mansion January 1967,” happened two years, four months after the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley began, September 1964. Apparently the FBI met Reagan, and Rosenfeld cites this meeting a representing the close collaboration between them. It is misleading. Anyone who lived in the Sixties and watched Reagan’s rise to knew the FBI had nothing to do with his election victory in 1966 or the Governor’s popularity. Reagan represented one side of “anxiety triggers,” and the students represented the other side of the triggers:

“The campaign was supposed to be about big government, welfare and high taxation but, as Reagan recalled: ‘After several weeks of the campaign I had to come back and say, ‘Look, I don’t care if I’m in the mountains, the desert, the biggest cities of the state, the first question is, What are you going to do about Berkeley? and each time the question itself would get applause.’”DeGroot, Gerald J., The Sixties Unplugged, Cambridge, Harvard, 2008, p. 403.

Running against Reagan and that question, Pat Brown had no response. Brown was tied to an unpopular President. He lost badly. Or course, Rosenfeld presents none of this, how extremely unpopular Berkeley and the University of California were becoming. It is also distorting for Rosenfeld to suggest Reagan was an FBI stooge or got FBI help, rather than analyze Reagan as the effective, successful politician he was.

Much of Rosenfeld’s book discusses the FBI files and the Black Panthers who are mostly irrelevant to the University and University students during the Sixties. The Panthers began in Oakland in 1966; they had excellent speakers – Cleaver, Seale and Newton – but their activities were confined to activities in Black communities. Many of these leaders were in prison during the late Sixties. [Stokely Carmichael, not a Panther, spoke in Berkeley during the fall of 1967 to a large student crowd.]

In 1968 I believe Berkeley had fewer than 800 Black undergraduates of 28,000 total. Social Analysis 139X, Eldridge Cleaver’s course, Fall 1968, brought Cleaver onto the campus. It was not a Black Panther course. Its failure to get credit, and demonstrations and destruction of offices, stopped after Cleaver lost appeals for a parole violation and fled the USA. The Third World College, Winter 1968, involved many black-run organizations and included veterans from the San Francisco State protests and riots (Fall 1968). As riots that quarter continued, there were many fewer black rioters. After Winter 1969 Black organizations separated from many student protests in Berkeley.
It is unfortunate that Rosenfeld combines too much, student events with the Panthers. The Panther experience, incompletely written, is not serviced by mushing it with student/street people/hippie activities in Berkeley. NOTE, HOWEVER, if the FBI believed or considered that the student and Panther activities were directed by or coming from the same source, it reflects poorly on FBI analysis and indicates why the FBI was extraordinarily incapable to understanding anything. Ironically, Rosenfeld glosses over this point. The author of Subversives may have made the same mistake as the Bureau.

One gross problem, Rosenfeld misstates dates and facts. The Moses Hall, Social Analysis 193X arrests, did not involve 1,500 students.(425) Arrested were two bus loads rolling out to the University of California campus at Santa Rita. January 30 is on page 434. On page 435 comes the sentence, “Dissatisfied, Sheriff Frank Madigan sent an angry letter to Reagan…accusing the chancellor of failing to control the protests.” What Rosenfeld deliberate fails to tell readers is that for four days from February 1 was the worst street rioting on campus and around Southside that had yet to be seen in Berkeley. Note, these were not “protests” as Rosenfeld euphemistically calls them. They were full-scale riots.
Today, in southeastern Nevada Cliven Bundy, a rancher has used against all government regulations, land owned by the United States government. Bundy was supposed to pay rent for grazing rights; those haven’t been paid for 20 years. In essence Bundy is ripping off public land for his private use.

It is good to see that Seth Rosenfeld believes Cliven Bundy is correct. I didn’t believe anyone sane would support Cliven’s position. In 1969 disparate persons in Berkeley took land owned by the University and called it Peoples Park. Reagan opposed that taking. Of course there were huge riots periodically over four years including one instigated by the student newspaper, The Daily Californian (May 1971). During the bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong (April 1972) rioters ripped down the fence surrounding the property and ever since [45 years] that large vacant lost, now with a restroom, is a good cradle for street-level crime activities.

Rosenfeld lends support to Peoples Park supporters and the peoples take-ver by looking at that event in Berkeley like it is isolated from everywhere else in the United States. It’s a world of magic and drugs, of the people and love, of the community and hope, of tranquility and peace. The angels are singing all the way along the road to Hell.

Rosenfeld hypes with no specific examples the FBI-Black Panther feuds while discussing Peoples Park:                        “Reagan linked Rector’s death to those of a janitor killed by a bomb blast at UC Santa Barbara and two men shot on the UCLA campus in the feud between the Black Panthers and the United States. It was unknown that the FBI was in the midst of a counterintelligence operation using false letters, offensive cartoons, and informers that was intended to foment violence between the rival Black Power groups – or, as one FBI official put it ‘to grant nature the opportunity to take her due course.’”

This is wrong. Rosenfeld fails to identify and print one “offensive” cartoon, or print one “false letter,” or any other FBI generated or influenced document. I know that the cartoon may exist; the lack of one is appalling. Letters, whether truthful or false, have to be read and understood. Rosenfeld’s failure to present one letter destroys his argument and the book. [Note that Dan Rather’s charge and production of a questionable photo-copied letter, destroyed his career. Rosenfeld has taken Rather’s action a step further, produced nothing and said in words understood in Berkeley: the FBI, a counterintelligence operation, Ronald Reagan…The Boogie man is out there.]

In Subversives Rosenfeld tells of his long, brave fight to get lots of FBI documents. What Rosenfeld does not do is piece together specificities from all the pages and present a smoking gun: These documents show (A) An FBI plan, (B) reliable persons were contacted and (C) these documents show preparations: X riots, Y violence and Z injuries happened. Conclusion: FBI benefits as a result of A, B and C.

Instead, in a note for page 468, Rosefeld cites:
“On the FBI’s COINTELPRO involving the Black Panthers and the United States, see Church, book III, 189-195. The report says, “Because of the milieu of violence in which members of the Panthers often moved we have been unable to establish
a direct link between any of the FBI’s specific efforts to promote violence and particular acts of violence that occurred. We have been able to establish beyond doubt, however, that high officials of the FBI desired to promote violent confrontations between BPP members and members of other groups, and that those officials condoned tactics calculated to achieve that end.” ibid, 189.”

There is no evidence. The note is empty. The FBI may have desired anything: Eternal life to J. Edgar Hoover. But that is not a fact; it is not evidence; it is not logically supported; no reason stands with it. This note would not be permitted as support in any discipline: Not in law, not in sociology, not in history, not in journalism.

That desire establishes the foundation for myth, religion, superstition and much of the thinking that goes on and lingers in Berkeley today: What happened to the glorious Sixties? Don’t look at facts, evidence, reason or logic. Berkeley has myths, superstition, boogiemen, devil evil-doers, Ronald Reagan and like-minded persons who caused the downfall of Berkeley as a university and as a town.

In Berkeley at War (1989) William Rorabaugh tells that Berkeley professors felt uneasy leaving work, papers, research and writing in their offices. They knew what had happened at Columbia – wholesale distribution of University files and destruction of others. Berkeley professors saw disclosure and destruction of files at Moses Hall (October 1968). They observed rioters on several occasions trying to overturn card catalogues in the Main Library, and knew of the one arson attempt on the library in March 1970. They observed great violence hitting university buildings in the Winter/Spring 1969 and Spring 1970. Academia was under fire. How many professors did not come to Berkeley? Rosenfeld’s Subversives discusses none of these issues.

!Is there any issue omitted from Rosenfeld’s book, that should be there? YES. It was important to every male older than eighteen. The Draft. Berkeley and Stanford cooperated making one of the best Draft Resistant organizations in the United States. It is surprising and lubricious that Rosenfeld would overlook an issue, an organization and its activities on a National Security issue, War, which involved student groups. Options:

If the FBI made no investigations of the Draft Resistant movement and had no files, that demonstrates again that the FBI did not know what it was doing, it had no ability to analyze, and its collection of paper was stupid and fruitless. Rosenfeld should have mentioned that. Or,

If Rosenfeld fell upon many Draft Resistant documents and decided to omit any discussion of the issue, what else is omitted from the text of Subversives? Or,

If the FBI were successful sabotaging Draft Resistance (doing everything Rosenfeld claimed the Bureau did), Rosenfeld may have had facts, evidence, proof demonstrating in this issue that the FBI was successful. However,
Perhaps Rosenfeld realized, cynically, when it came to politics, the FBI was a failure. He omitted giving examples on the Draft issue, and decided to pander to the superstitions, speculations, myths, boogiemen and the feelings and sensitivities of people in Berkeley.

If the FBI were successful sabotaging Draft Resistance (doing everything Rosenfeld claimed the Bureau did), Rosenfeld may have had facts, evidence, proof demonstrating in this issue that the FBI was successful. However,
Perhaps Rosenfeld realized, cynically when it came to politics, the FBI was a failure. Hence, Rosenfeld panders to the superstitions, speculations, myths, boogiemen and the feelings and sensitivities of people in Berkeley.

DOWNTON FORELORN

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For three seasons I’ve enjoyed Downton Abbey. Characters have ebbed and flowed, matured and changed. Characters had resilience. But I didn’t watch the series when it was broadcast last winter. I DVRed it to watch it all at once. I began peeking earlier this month. It was disappointing, and it was difficult to watch (3 1/2 programs).

The immediate problem were character, development during and after an incident and consistency with that prior character. I’ve watched these persons for three seasons, and bought those DVD discs. In the development of any character are experiences which guide (control) and influence future actions. That can be anticipated, unless actions are out of character. Now those characters are using training wheels.

The audience never saw the after-marriage story of Lady Mary and Matthew, complete devotion and final love. They saw mostly, the social and business transactions surrounding that marriage. Mary had told Matthew she is neither powder-puff nor pure, unlike his previous flu-ridden finance. The audience should expect experiences in Seasons 1-3 to make Mary tougher and mature.

But Lady Mary mourning for six months, reclusive and shunning people. Lady Mary loved Matthew, but she has suffered loss before: The cousin on the Titanic, the Turkish gentleman, and the newspaper publisher. Remember also, Matthew was almost lost in the war, to wounds and to another woman.  Loss or near loss are not new to Mary.

Rape of Anna: That is an attack on the institution of Downton Abbey. No other person better than Anna should appreciate that. The Bates experience with its connivings and near execution of Bates has taught her the power and influence of that institution. Mrs. Hughes as head housekeeper should know that, and not follow the spontaneous reaction of a woman so traumatized. This was a very poor story point to raise this issue.

Tom and and Lady Grantham’s maid. We have learned that Tom has a good, progressive business mind. He can change things in this area of England. In Season Three he purports to love his daughter, but in Season Four? He seems to toss it away for quick convenience, sullying his own name and marring the memory of his wife. It is hard to believe.

Lady Edith: She has had no character development. She is the same pathetic Edith. Hanging out with the card-shark newspaper man who will become a German citizen so he can divorce and marry Edith, she is the most consistent character in the series, but she is not worth watching.

So Downton Abbey,  I can no longer watch further episodes. I’ll let the people drift inexpertly toward another war with Germany without me.

NOT ELEGANT AND BRILLIANT

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In the Wall Steet Journal, September 6-7, 2014, is a book report of Beyond the First Draft, John Casey. In the review is a quote from Casey’s book” “There is an appreciation of the Irish essayist, Hubert Butler, whom Mr. Casey rightly calls, “one of the great under appreciated writers of the twentieth century…elegant and brilliant…”

Has Casey or the reviewer ever ready any of Hubert Butler’s essays or other works? It seems unlikely. Upon reading that evaluation, I searched for Butler’s books – more than 6,000,000 in the Los Angeles County System. There were none. Pasadena bought one (selected essays, I supposed the best). But given the quality of the words and thoughts, that purchase is forfeited. UCLA had four books, most in the library reserves, 7,000,000 books known as the SRLF.

Butler is a provincial writer who inherited the family estate and didn’t have to make money so scribbled for 70 years. There’s never a sentence that is not overstocked with words. Paragraphs somewhat stick on course but drift. And throughout, Butler writes about “I,” I, I, I, I. Not many writers do that. They camouflage themselves within their stories and essays and never use I. Writers realized that use of “I” reveals poor writing and distracted story telling. Writers know that the author’s opinion and personality will emerge from any well written novel, short story, tale, essay or criticism. Indeed, using “I” is a redundancy. The reader assumes already that I – writer – author wrote it.

Using I reveals the author has limitations, prejudices, biases, ignorance, blindnesses. Writers are not honest to tell the truth about themselves; immediately without candor there is routine, boredom and revelations of falsehood: I brushed my teeth; I dressed; I moved a trunk; I did the laundry. I ate breakfast. It is noon. An “I” author will not tell what happened what planned that morning: “I slipping on my butt while picking oranges for juice. The resulting back strain made trio-sex impossible. I couldn’t get into position for the best angle…”

Butler comes from that school of nonsense writers of this language requiring excavation and sometimes a backhoe to dig through sentences and a paragraph. In a “diary entry(?)”, he writes about Henry and Frances (1950) Butler quotes one sentence from a novel of Frances: “There is something extremely indelicate in professing a Passion for a virtuous Woman before we have undergone a sufficient Quarantine after the Contagion of an abandoned one, and Man in such a situation resembles a Centaur, half-humamn and half-brute.” Anyone who purports to understand this sentence and can explain it, send me $10.00.

In the sad end all is lost for Butler’s Henry and Frances: “But his marriage was still recent and wholly satisfying when Henry left Maidenhall. He must have felt that a turning point in this life had been reached and that a rather more solemn self-analysis than he had hitherto attempted should be undertaken. On leaving the house he made a will in favor of Frances and her infant son and wrote upon the wrapper the reasons for his marriage and his theological beliefs.”

This is not great storytelling. None of it is brilliant or elegant. It is doubly sad for readers of Henry and Frances who realized they were reading poorly written tripe usually found in tourist materials: “As for Maidenhall, it has not changed very much, it’s successive owners have always been poor and never had the money, to make many of the lavish improvements which were admired in Victorian times.”

Butler reveals obvious naiveté based upon ignorance common and accepted in Ireland to this day: “I believe passionately in Irish neutrality, not an ignoble one in Hitler’s War…” Irish sentiments were obvious when upon learning of Hitler’s death, the Irish Prime Minister signed the Condolence Book at the German Embassy in Dublin on May 4, 1945. In 1939 Britain offered Ireland the Six Counties [Northern Ireland] if Ireland would allow British use of Irish bases for the duration of World War Two. The identical offer was made after the Americans entered World War Two. Both times the Irish refused. It is no wonder the British resisted and over came the resistance during The Troubles 25-45 years later. (Crossing the Border and The Kagran Groupe discusses Irish sentiments. See also utter, foolish speculation about a German occupation of Ireland in The Invaders Wore Slippers.)

Butler writes magazine quality pieces about this place, that person, another trip, spontaneous comments about justifiably obscure persons, places and things. There is a lot of superficial, supercilious non-fictional impressions relying on conventional wisdoms, legends and myths. An essay at the end of this volume, Independent Spirits, Butler write a feeble recounting of a meeting of PEN (1966), relying on glibness to relay aspirations and approval of the proceedings, but giving no indication that he understood, cogently any issue or the proceedings in whole. Compare an essay about PEN proceedings (circa 1945) by George Orwell, The Prevention of Literature.

TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY – THE HONOURABLE SCHOOL BOY – SMILEY’S PEOPLE

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I read these three John La Carre′ novels in one volume, 950 pages. They are also known as the Karla novels. Tinker, Tailor and Smiley’s People were well represented in their BBC productions, 1979 and 1982. The novels give the remaining 10-15 percent of each story. I recommend reading each.

The Honourable School Boy is the middle volume of the trilogy, and it tells what happened to British Intelligence after Tinker, Tailor: George Smiley’s stewardship of the Circus plus a successful mission. I like George Smiley; I liked reading it. There is spy craft on each page – plotting, method and engaging. They suggest espionage as it is, not the hyped swirl Hollywood crap – James Bond to gadget-thriller of the month from one studio or another. 

In the end of Smiley’s People there is character development (realization), mostly by the reader. George Smiley appreciates his marriage to the always unfaithful Ann has been ruinous to him personally and professionally. Because of her others have taken advantage of him. This realization nags him through the novel and arrives in his consciousness late. Any human being would wonder about such a marriage, and how it was fitting into life or changing it. George Smiley is sentimental and weak, and weakness is an admission most of us do not like to make, especially at the end of a career, near the end of life.

The writing in these three novels is laced with Britishisms that keep the reader going: “barking mad,” “authority without responsibility.” There are others, but I cannot forget a paraphrase of President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s statement about J. Eager Hoover: I’d rather have him in my tent pissing out, than outside pissing in. 

Schrunk & White, Elements of Style

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In the late 1940s EB White wrote about Will Schrunk, his professor at Cornell. White was asked by the publisher of Schrunk’s book to revise it for a new edition. Hence, Schrunk & White, Elements of Style. 

In a 1957 letter and in White’s other essays and stories, it is obvious he departs repeatedly from Schrunk’s rules. The exception is when a rule is followed. It demonstrates that most of Schrunk & White came from Schrunk, not White. It reveals why White’s essays, letters and reports are second-rate, and cannot be read for knowledge, insight or inspiration. It explains why White’s criticism is not well written.

It also explains why White was a sell-out: Witness rambling rumination on Henry Thoreau, Walden, and White’s excuses for flaws: “To reject the book because of the immaturity of the author and the bugs in the logic is to throw away a bottle of good wine because it contains bits of cork.” A Slight Sound at Evening, Summer, 1954.

Take a specific problem first, coming from White’s pen and limited imagination. He refers to Walden being inmature which can mean anything and having bugs in its logic. Once a book is launched, it is usually unchanged. Walden has be immature and buggy since 1854. Thoreau’s only salvation is the residency in New England. If he had been from Tennessee or Nebraska, the book would be appropriately forgotten. Of course White is from New England and always supports the homeboy.

Next, if a good wine has cork in it, it can be filtered, and the cork removed. But no one can filter immediately bugs from wine. It is best not to drink the bottle with the cork in it, although in New England the natives may swill anything and swallow. Hence, White’s simile is wrong, and it’s wrong in real life. Law books report cases when critters like bugs get inside bottles and containers. The expert advice is, don’t consume them.

The greater problem is when White extols immaturity and bugs in logic. How much of that ineptness must a reader endure? If a human being reads poor writing and decides to write, then the consequent output will be poor quality. Human beings only learn if they read, comprehend and understand good writing – saying something in five words rather than 20. Knowing that five words can state the full thought [concept, idea] makes the writer more adept – five words makes the writing easier and more pleasant to read.

But White cherishes homeboy, Henry David, massively imperfect, boring and probably using drugs while dwelling in his pond shack, polluting the pure waters and uttering Wow, all the time. Thoreau wrote about simple, mundane events and impressions, things any high schooler might believe significant. We don’t keep those immature writings full of bugs around – even the students themselves toss them. And we don’t put those writers on postage stamps.  Drugs are a possibility explaining why Thoreau was immature and infested, but drugs are not an excuse to read him. It remains mystifying why White defers to Thoreau and likes him (except EB White also paid no attention to the rules in Elements of Style).