Tag Archives: Writing

Background

Posted on by

1

I read a lot of history; I read it in sprees. For a year twentieth century history has been my nut, primarily the two European wars and Germany and the Soviet Union. There are times I’ll find an author, and buy books from Amazon or Bookfinder (and others), but most of my reading comes from used books, stuff bought at library bookstores or library sales.

Why read history? To understand more completely. In Barrons today, Jack A. Ablin of BMO Private Bank, is quoted (M16): “It is hard to conceptualize from our Western point of view, but roughly 80% of Russians surveyed believe that economic growth and jobs are more important than their form of government.” I agree. That has been an issue many books I’ve read over the last year, decade, scores of years.

However, I went to read three volumes by Richard J. Evans, the first being, The Coming of the Third Reich (borrowed from the library). In total the three volumes are about 1500 pages. I read the Preface, and Evans discusses other survey books telling of the Third Reich. He notes William L. Shirer’s books, The Rise and Fall and says it is weak, but he fails to mention it is the first. It is unusual for a historian to criticize, outside critical literature, books. He is complimentary to everyone he mentions, English and German historians. He finally, and has to mention Gordon Craig, an American, but only one of Craig’s books: The Politics of the Germany Army 1640-1945.

I finished the Preface and wondered why it was incomplete: Gordon Craig has a book, Germany: 1866-1945 (1978). It seemed spot onto Richard Evans’ topic, but it wasn’t referenced. A German who became an American wrote three volumes, the last covering 1840-1945. Hojo Holborn was a brilliant historian; he died in 1967. Reading about the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) and its culture, one finds Hajo Holborn mentioned. He was part of German academia and participated in the culture before the Nazis came to power. He left Germany in 1933 after losing his university position.

I wondered why Hajo Holborn and Gordon Craig’s other books were not in the Preface. I looked at the bibliography where they were also absent, saving Craig’s German Army book.

I turned the page to Chapter 1, page 1, line 1 or Evans’ The Coming of the Third Reich:

       “Is it wrong to begin with Bismarck?”

Richard Evans book was published in 2003, almost forty years after Gordon Craig’s book. I realized I had read this book before. I stopped reading. Indeed, Germany: 1866-1945 by Gordon Craig, Chapter 1, Page 1, line 1 reads: 

       “Is it a mistake to begin with Bismarck?”

DESTINY – FATE

Posted on by

0

In Joachim Fest’s biography, Speer, the biographer in the final chapter concludes about his subject: “Speer admitted that he would also have placed himself at the disposal of a ruler of a completely different ideological orientation, if he had offered him similar opportunities.” (343)

If that state of mind of a man like Speer is not absurd consider what comes next: “…when asked whether he would have behaved differently after all he had since learned about Hitler and the system created by him, [Speer] replied, after an astonished pause, ‘I don’t think so.'” (348)

Don’t learn from mistakes; don’t learn from experience; have no intelligence; forget free will; I did nothing wrong; I have no personal responsibility; everyone else was doing what I was doing. Speer is a guy who was born to be abused because life could teach him nothing. He would participate with the same group of thugs and criminals in the 1930s and 1940s, groups which have plagued human society since history began recording events. 

But Speer was supposed to be different; he was more intelligent. He figured he had spent 20 years in prison for the 12 years he participated in the Third Reich and afterward he expected to be relieved. According to his biographer, Speer did not understand why he wasn’t relieved after prison; he didn’t know why he felt more comfortable in prison-like settings. That answer is he never left prison. Speer never made the connection that his participation in the Third Reich was not destiny – it was not his fate. He had talent – architect and intelligence. Those abilities did not direct him to the Nazis. A point made in the biography was Speer took the Nazi road because it was easy. He did not have to think, consider or judge: JUST DO.

Socrates once said, “An unexamined life is not worth living.” Albert Speer lived an unexamined life. The first obligation any human being has is to understand he is a human being. He is not defined by being part of a social, political or religious group. What sort of human being was Speer? Pathetic, living and struggling through existence and never realizing who he was or how he should act to achieve happiness. He, not others, should make decisions about his life; he should make no choices; others directed him toward opportunities. Human beings should understand that taking the easy way may be more perilous than taking the hard way. The biography described what Speer did to survive, but not why he was incapable of being his own man.

Taking “the road less traveled” [from Robert Frost] is more difficult but frequently more fulfilling, provided one has made the choice and realizes the hazards, avoiding them, before the pot of goodies.

Since learning of Socrates’ axiom, I’ve stride to live an examined life, and it is often troubling. I remember a lot – never feelings, but people, places, dates, times, who said what when. I know that my current state of existence is derived from choices and deliberate actions based upon experience and learning. Nothing comes from destiny. I am not Mozart. My production comes from effort – intelligence, judgment, memory, understanding, intuition, experience, learning and what wisdom is there. I have eight books – six novels, a history and one of essays and stories on the iBookstore. I can post more if prudence warrants that.

But the fact that I am a writer is not destiny or fate. Except for mediocre law school grades, I would have been happy being an antitrust attorney where I was talented, motivated and driven. My initial medium in which to be original was music except I injured a hand early on.

I’ve asked myself why I made certain choices. I’ve come to the realization that I always make similar choices. My choices may be a mistake, or they my be natural. I remember, though, as a teenager I had the conception that I did not want to work for anyone; I didn’t want to exploit anyone. I wanted to take stuff from me and present it to the world. Good or bad that thought has been a significant influence in all my decisions when making choices. I have learned that some choices will force me into activities and actions that will reduce me to unhappiness. I don’t need that. I avoid those situations and activities that will disturb and disrupt my ability to fulfill my ease and comfort.

As for Albert Speer, living through his years and being compelled to act, looking back and he doesn’t think that he would have behaved or acted differently – Speer is properly destined for the hellish oblivion he lived in his entire life. 

As for myself making choices and going off road, I hope to make myself rich and famous. I can stop walking and buy a vehicle – a Honda Civic, a Ford Focus or anything to make my journey on the road less traveled easy.

SPEER – A FINAL VERDICT, Joachim Fest

Posted on by

0

The last chapter of this book, the conclusion, is a masterpiece. What is Albert Speer’s life worth apart from being Adolph Hitler’s architect and munitions minister? Not much, unless Speer can be used as a model of an early twentieth century German boy, man, adult to explain why the Germans, each of them lemmings, ran off the cliff again, after the horrible tragedy of World War One. This biography gives suggestions but does not provide a thorough analysis.

The book reveals little about the Nazis, although one anecdote is noteworthy. On April 24, 1945 Speer met Heinrich Himmler, SS honcho, who believes wrongly he is to become Hitler’s successor. After saying good-bye to Hitler, Speer has just left  Berlin, now under assault by the Russians. Himmler dresses down Speer, telling him he won’t be part of the new German government and since no building will be done in the foreseeable future [bombed out Germany in April 1945], Speer’s services as an architect won’t be needed. Knowing that Himmler is an abject coward, Speer offers him his plane so Himmler can visit Hitler one last time and say good-bye. Himmler refuses the offer.

There is a sense in the biography that Speer’s IQ ran ten points higher than anyone he dealt with, until May 1945. There is no confirmation in the biography. An elevated IQ will cause restlessness in a young man as thoroughly as wine, women, drugs and mental illness. Was there recognition that the boy, Albert, was bright other than excelling at school, and everything he did came to him easy?

Apparently not. It is not part of the biography. To give a sense of Speer and the society he grew into as an adult, one must write a Life and Times book – sociology, cultural affairs, religious matters, academic successes plus biography. A boy usually gets his initial bearings from his family, but Speer’s parents were distant and not affectionate. A boy is exposed to society though institutions – schools, social organizations and churches. Speer was never religious, but what of the other institutional influences? The book suggests that Speer had no anchor and no safe harbor, despite being married, until 1931 when he heard Hitler speak: First speech – reasonable; Speer joins party. Second speech – distasteful; Speer didn’t like it. Third speech – offensive; Speer remains in party. The party was someplace to be.

There is the statement that joining the Nazis and accepting architectural commissions was the easy way. Nature had made life and society easy for Speer, someone who did not know how to work through problems: Solutions came to him easily. When life comes to an individual easily there is a human tendency to claim self-righteousness and being right, all the time. Yet, Speer’s problem was after April 1945 when life, events and circumstances, and his psychology was not easy to handle or deal with, and for a long time about many issues Speer was lost forever. 

The problem with the biography and in German history with the rise of the Nazis becomes 50 million lemmings ran Germany off the cliff – a highly cultural, highly educated, a sophisticated, intellectual people could not see the the Nazi danger, avoided observing what was going wrong and continued to follow until foreign armies had crushed the country. If it were one person who had gone off the cliff, that would amount to nothing. If it is 50 million, that is a story that needs telling in full. 

NOT I

Posted on by

0

Not I by Joachim Fest

Many facts in this volume need to be known, but the author reaches the wrong conclusion. Fest wonders how Hitler, Nazism and the Third Reich took swift root in Germany. He presents a persuasive argument, but in the end Fest didn’t get it. One statement: “Democracy…if one approached it responsibly was rather boring.” (378) 

I concede that most of what happens in a democracy is not exciting UNTIL DEMOCRACY MUST BE USED. DEMOCRACY becomes efficient and powerful, much more so than totalitarian systems like Nazi Germany where everyone must wait for the chief thug to awaken from his beauty sleep to make the wrong decision.

DEMOCRACY might be boring it it is not material, relevant or important to balance the interests of individuals, or the interests of the individual versus society, or the interests of an individual versus groups of individuals, of the interests of groups of individuals versus those of other groups. Instead, the people of a totalitarian country have no need to worry because the chief thug can make snap decisions and the problem is eliminated.

DEMOCRACY is boring if considerations, elements and factors constituting and defining freedom and liberty are uninteresting to a people who are grabbing the feet of the chief thug, heiling him at every chance and giving their lives to the caprice of a mentally ill victim of medical malpractice.

In essence Fest does not explore as fully as he should to excuse the actions of the German people into 1945. Unlike Fest’s father who never cooperated with the Nazis, Fest seems to accept still the German influences which infected his family: The glories of German culture.

This book admirably adumbrates circumstances leading the Germans to Hitler: Education, family, culture and society. Fest’s father is political; he attends political meetings. But one wonders about the naiveté and the ignorance. After the War starts the father discusses with a like-thinking neighbor whether they or anyone could justly kill a tyrant. The men discussed St. Augustine and Johannes Althusius (158). Assassination if a political act. The killer does not need theological or philosophical sanctions.

This disconnect to reality reminded me of Lenin’s comment about the Germans: (paraphrased) The Germans could not occupy a train station unless the window were open for sale of platform tickets.

Fest writes “…trust in the German culture always won out…A nation…that had produced Goethe, and Schiller and Lessing, Bach, Mozart and so many others would simply be incapable of barbarism…” (181) Having laid out facts, Fest presents a few examples. Germans quote Goethe to one another. Fest employees Goethe in the text sometimes to provide explanations. The German reaction seems to be if Goethe did it or talked about it, the solution is obvious; the matter is resolved. 

Note Americans and English use authorities, but Abraham Lincoln played games with Shakespeare. In Illinois his friends and he would recite the Bard, not as an authority about life, but to gain the upper hand.

An uneasy sensation comes from reading Not I. Germans are not always living in reality. Gather all the facts and weigh them against individual wants and needs. But Germans carry a load with them, what they call their culture which directs and controls their lives. When Germans wants their culture to restrain the Nazis and save the nation, they imposed too much culture. Culture became meaningless, and the Nazis used culture icons smartly. I believe when Hitler had succeeded to avoid war at Munich and much of Czechoslovakia was taken, German radio made the announcement and punctuated it with a Beethoven symphony, as a grace note.

How detached were the Germans swept into poetry and culture? A neighbor of Fest’s neighborhood was “singing in her wailing tremolo that she was doing to dance into heaven…” (182) Americans, at least, want to dance in the streets.

Americans knew what to do with German culture. Fest became a prisoner of war. Upon his arrival at the POW camp, Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony (supremely beautiful music) “thundered from all the loudspeakers, and was still doing so nine days later when we left; day and night without stopping and with an annoying click after the sixty-fourth bar.” (295) I’m not sure Fest appreciated this aspect of American punishment combined with humor.

If I read Not I correctly (I doubt because I can’t believe such poor, ignorant advice departing from reality), Fest’s father urges him to study the Italian renaissance, especially Fifteenth Century Florence. That city as supposed to be the happy combination of art and culture plus and a positive political system. How can anyone be more wrong? The American Founding Fathers studied all Italian politics intensely and thoroughly and realized how temporary were those affair. Florentine politics were obviously not exemplary. Machiavelli thought not. He had to write The Prince.

Fest fails to provide an explanation why Germans who prize intelligence, education and knowledge did not take lessons from World War One: The failings of the German government and shifting politics (in the end it wasn’t a monarchy but a military dictatorship), the inadequacy of its leaders, limits to military success and relying to much on the military, and a necessary restructuring of the whole government. The Germans did none of those things after the First War, although the facts were before them. They acted on ignorance, misinformation and myth (stab in the back). In the end the Germans could only rely on an excuse, a superior culture. [Note the Germans had to wait until after World War Two (1955) to get an excellent book about World War One, Germany’s War Aims in the First World War, Fritz Fischer.] 

Lessons to take from Not I and the German domestic experience is how wrong a people can be. The Germans were not just misled by an evil tyrant and his herd of evil doers, but many in the country supported him, disregarded the horrors of Nazism and overlooked their deteriorating lives. Fest writes about members of his own family who refuse to talk about the Nazi years in Germany, although they knew Fest was researching and writing about those times. It is equally odd that more books like Fest’s have not been published. Germans, telling where they got it wrong, could do much to influence humanity for the better. My perception is that they have avoided that responsibility, unlike European Jews who wrote under the most adverse conditions during those times, to save humanity.

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH, William L. Shirer

Posted on by

0

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH, William L. Shirer

In a memoir, A Native’s Return, W. L. Shirer tells about selling The Rise and Fall to a studio and the meeting the studio chief in 1960. Shirer was an East Coast guy, and he took along two East Coast friends: John Houseman and George Roy Hill, then a Broadway director.

The chief greeted them and while leading the way into his office, says to Shirer: “For three nights my wife and I have read your book [The Rise and Fall].”

Shirer looks at Houseman who says, “That’s absolute bullshit.”

Nobody can read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich in three days, let alone three nights. It is an invaluable book by a writer/journalist writing about people he saw in action twenty years before. In this writing he got to tell a more complete story. Most of it centers in foreign policy and diplomatic efforts, incidences Shirer was able to observe and report at the time. The text presents well, spelled out or implied, about this blunder of that one. Shirer hits the German-Soviet Union August 1939 Pact, partitioning Poland and designating spheres of influence, hard. He notes correctly that Stalin’s agreement started the War: Hitler likely would not have invaded Poland with no agreement if the Soviet Union had not committed itself and Hitler were not certain.

It was an enormous mistake for the Soviets, a nation of chess players. Two little-known Soviet accommodations to German war successes included shipping supplies from Murmansk to Norway in 1940 and shipping rubber across Russia to Germany. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union (June 1941), the Soviets were confused, perplexed and overwhelmed – the Soviets had done almost everything the Germans wanted. But the German Army was professional and proficient. Millions of Soviet citizens were killed; complete Soviet armies were destroyed; and three million prisoners of war were captured (few lived to see the War’s end).

This complicity is observed, and a balance is noted. The Soviets complained that they had to face the German Army alone in Europe in 1942-1943. Early on the Germans did not make the mistake they made when invading Russia. Shirer notes the D-Day invasion force and its provisioning was a huge effort before June 1944. He notes the completely inadequate German preparations to invade Britain in 1940 and gives the assessment that the British would have chewed up any Germany army put ashore in Britain. Perhaps Stalin wanted the British and Americans to be as reckless with their men as the Germans and Russians were with their own.

Equally poor was the ability of the French and British to foresee foreign policy and diplomatic mistake after mistake. At one point Shirer says Charles Lindbergh was “startlingly naiveté.” Lindbergh was a moronic dupe. Yet at one place Neville Chamberlain (British Prime Minister) was “well meaning,” but Shirer hardens against the mustached P.M. Having read Shirer’s description of Munich (French/British surrender of Czechoslovakia September 1938), it is easy to conclude the only thing Chamberlain failed to bring to Britain after the negotiations was a toothbrush mustache. As PM Chamberlain interfered with Churchill’s plans to defend Norway. In short the best service Chamberlain performed for Great Britain was to die in November 1940.

Shirer notes what the German’s learned: Had the Czechs fought the Germans in 1938 Germany may have finally won but it would be greatly weakened the German army and left it incapable of pursuing further war.

Throughout the history Shirer noted the assassination attempts to kill Hitler. This is a matter of course, but the attempts are not equal and should not be treated that way. The assassination plot before the Munich agreement was very credible. Shirer’s book is an early history and is not as complete as Joachim Fest’s (and others) book on the same subject.

!I have read much about World War Two. Reading The Rise and Fall, I realized the war was fought in stages: I. Rhineland occupation, 1936; Austria Anschluss, March 1938; Czechoslovakia, 1938. Those lands and their industrial and economic bases were captured with no or little destruction. II. Poland, September 1939; Scandinavia, May 1940; Netherlands, Belgium, May 1940; France, June 1940. Those lands sustained more damage, but the industrial and economic base would be restored. III. Britain, Soviet Union, Balkans, Africa – the Germans were invading lands that were destroyed or desolate and the population was targeted. Little benefit came to Germany by having its armies run 1,500 miles across eastern Europe.

Equally maniacal and idiotic were Nazi racial policies. I have not read it but surmised if the Germans were not so obsessed with killing people and more devoted to overcoming their opponents’ military abilities, Germany had a chance to win the war. Shirer somewhat discusses this point especially with the invasion of the Soviet Union(June 1941). But the Germans were incapable of treating any occupied peoples (Danes and Dutch included) as anything other than second-class human beings.

Omissions occur in an 1140 page book like this. The text concentrates on The Rise of the Third Reich. The telling of The Fall, one-quarter of the book (December 1941 to May 1945), concentrates on the military and Nazi leadership.

By in large absent from the book is Third Reich Domestic Germany, and much Sociology of the German People – there is no humor, comedy or black humor.

Military campaigns especially those adversely affecting Germany are raced through e.g. the air war against Germany is told statistically (except the German people wanted to lynch captured American and British fliers). That air war kept 70 percent of the Luftwaffe at home defending the fatherland; the Soviet army benefitted from the lack of air support.

The German people knew they were losing the war – lines on a map got closer, but more likely they witnessed bombed out cities, factories, facilities and homes. “The White Rose” protests (February 1943) seemingly came from nowhere because the German people are portrayed as monolithic.

There are evaluations by German generals justly criticizing Eisenhower’s hands-off participation of the Sicilian and Italian campaigns.(1943, 1944)

A theme in the book is suggested by the facts, but I did not sense it was cogently advanced. It is obvious that the Nazis tried to construct a very robotic society founded on terror and murder. Most of the terror and murder are set out, but other forms and uses of coercion to conform and to comply are omitted. Any society urges compliance from its population and uses overt and subtle means to insure order and stability. The idea of happiness might arise from these efforts: If everyone is content doing the same thing, everyone should be happy. I don’t know if anything like this postulation popped up in Nazi Germany. I suspect it had to – the rulers’ definition of happiness for each individual – is present in any totalitarian society. Shirer does not get around to tell his readers about it.

When The Rise and Fall was published (and perhaps today), the Germans grossly objected to it as anti- German and anti-Germany. The book is fair; those German critics and defenders are wrong. Those German critics and defenders exalt in German culture. It is true that the Germans excelled in music and advanced that art much. I note though that Mendelssohn was considered Jewish, and by the late ninetieth century the Germans were not the best composers. (Mahler was Jewish.) The other arts? Painting: Albrecht Durer, the best German painter but who since 1530? Sculpture – Nada. Literature: Goethe, but who else throughout the nineteenth century – persons who weren’t Jewish, or considered non-Aryan, disreputable and degenerate like Thomas Mann? Education: The Germans had to best universities until the brains left, and the Americans got the pickings. Film: Thank you for sending Billy Wilder and many other great talents.

If the Germans base their superiority on uncontaminated, cultural and intellectual attainments, Shirer tells the Nazis destroyed that superiority immediately. Shirer suggested but fails to analyze how a people so supposedly artistic sensitive and appreciative of fine arts and achievements, can be politically dense, stupid and inept. An idea was recognized that the Germans swooned about the arts and intellectual accomplishments; so long as that production was possible, Germany was superior. After the Second War Bertolt Brecht conceived the axiom (paraphrased): Maybe the Germans will now stop thinking about trees. (quoted in Hitler, Joachim Fest.)

Shirer gives no cause and effect, but there is a suggested answer. German philosophy. While many European countries experimented and implemented enlightenment policies and improvements, making strides to remove themselves from the strictures surviving from medieval society, the Germans looked at the enlightenment and ran the other way: Shirer writes an essay(Chapter 4) about the creeps of German philosophy – Hegel, Heidegger, Nietzsche and Marx. Divorced from any human exposure and experience these men advanced concepts of people, their thinking and society that decades later resulted in National Socialism, Hitler and the horrors perpetuated. As part of their intellectual superiority the Germans got caught up in ideas completely remote – intense philosophical stories, pretentiously profound, devoid of faith and disassociated from any human thinking and behavior. That an an excellent definition of a Nazi.

If German critics and defenders complain about The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, they should start with this pillar of William L. Shirer’s book.

 

ENVISIONING AN ENGLISH EMPIRE

Posted on by

0

Editors: Robert Appelbaum, John Wood Sweet

This is not a Valentines Day post. 

What were the English thinking when they commenced exploration and colonization of the New World, @ 1575-1630?

The 12 well-referenced essays in this book present a fresh perspective on many issues. Some issues are resolved. For instance, reports from the early Jamestown settlement (1608) complained of hunger and starvation. English and Native American ideas of eating differed. The English were becoming civilized – meals at set times during the day. The Native Virginians ate what nature served. When food was plentiful, they feasted and gorged; when food was scarce they went hungry but didn’t complain. Englishmen did not like the hunger spells endured by the native Virginians. The English figured they were starving; many got sick and died.

There are essays on landholding and titles; investigations into specific sources which mislead students today; a description of John Smith’s 1612 map of Virginia as thought it were a literary production; English relations with the Turks and Moroccans; Grace O’Malley, Irish female entrepreneur and pirate, and her meeting with Elizabeth; and many references to Elizabethan and Jacobian literature, drama and poetry…when they refer to issues involving colonization – political, sociological and economic. 

This book is heavy lumber. The essays are well-written and packed. I could not read it fast; I could not read much of it during a day. But the challenge of reading was enjoyable. I can read law, (land titles) which I went through quickest – I don’t need to know much more of that stuff. But there are many essays to stir the imagination in a subject matter foreign to many readers.

SHIPWRECK

Posted on by

0

The the Lighthouse            Virginia Woolf

A current fad among those promoting the conventional wisdom is to embrace Virginia Woolf as an excellent, significant writer. Trying to read this novel and stopping, I know anyone with intelligence and reading comprehension knows it is a shame they let Virginia die a natural death.

The writing in To the Lighthouse is very undisciplined. Voices of the author and Mrs. Ramsey mix; the characters are not well presented. The novel is in need of severe editing. Virginia needs to learn English punctuation and grammar and avoiding using parentheses.

I finished the first chapter of To the Lighthouse. I had bought the paperback for a buck. I got to the end and saw that Chapter 2 was six (6) lines long. Chapter 3 hard at the writing was longer. To learn whether the novel involved alternating long/short chapters, I went through Chapter 3 and discovered another discontented reader. The corner of the first page of Chapter 4 had been turned down, to serve as a bookmark. From the condition of the remaining pages and the binding, the reader who owned the book before me had stopped reading at the end of Chapter 3.

Chapter 1 is impossible. Mrs. Ramsey says to her son: “Yes, of course, if it is fine tomorrow.” The kid wants to go outside and play.

Rather than stick to the weather, the author prefers whether and evaluates the boy’s reaction:

“Since he belonged, even at the age of six, to that great clan which cannot keep this feeling separate from that, but must let future prospects, with their joys and sorrows, cloud what is actually at hand, since to such people even in earliest childhood any turn of the wheel of sensation has the power to crystalize and transfix the movement upon which its gloom or radiance rests, James Ramsey, sitting on the floor cutting out pictures from the illustrated catalogue of the Army and Navy Stores, endowed the pictures of a refrigerator as his mother spoke with heavenly bliss.”

This is a hell of a sentence, but other than letting her son go outside tomorrow, Mrs. Ramsey said nothing. She did not speak – there are no quotation marks, a sure sign. I don’t know where the “heavenly bliss” came from, but I know no one said anything approaching that description. Inside the writing of the sentence are disjointed, unconnected clauses and phrases tossed together to extend its length but detracting from its meaning and impact. In fact incomprehensibility seems to be the purpose of the sentence: The longer it is the more meaningless it becomes, and the more profound critics of FOV (Friends of Virginia) can claim it to be. Thereby a novel of such sentences is a work of genius. HOWEVER, beneath all the words from the sentence are two thoughts: The boy is excited and delighted; he can go outside tomorrow. And, Mrs. Ramsey is mentally ill.

Mr. Ramsey speaks next: “It won’t be fine [tomorrow].” Summarizing from there to the end of that paragraph: Mrs. Ramsey wants to kill Mrs. Ramsey. He is forcefully opinionated. He has crossed her, albeit about tomorrow’s weather. But what he said was true. The children detest him after Mrs. Ramsey’s input.

The next paragraph Mrs. Ramsey sticks to her guns: “But it may be fine – I expect it will be fine.” This paragraph next dwells partially on “…how would you like to be shut up for a whole month at a time, and possibly more in stormy weather, upon a rock the size of a tennis lawn? she would ask, and to have no letters or newspapers, and to see nobody, if you were married…”etc., etc., etecera! 

I note this paragraph uses no quotation marks, as well a few periods. Perhaps the author needed a typewriter in good repair, one that had the keys controlling periods and quotation marks in good working order.

From a blurb on the back of the book, I gather this story takes place during the summer. A month or longer in the house – NONSENSE! Most of this wandering paragraph is immaterial, irrelevant and incompetent; it is filled with invented fears and other mysteries haunting Mrs. Ramsey. BEFORE SUBMITTING, EDIT THE DAMN STORY, VIRGINIA!

A house guest pipes up in the next paragraph, reporting the wind is “due west.” Mrs. Ramsey is egregiously upset about this observation, but either she [or the author] denigrate him: Tansley is “an atheist.”

Finally the atheist clarifies the point a few paragraphs later: “There will be no landings at the Lighthouse tomorrow.” This is a grave insult to Mrs. Ramsey. In one of her [or the author’s] paragraphs, it says, atheist “was such a miserable person…He couldn’t play cricket…” Obviously, this house guest is completely unstable and totally unreliable.

Mrs. Ramsey rejoins the God-gainsayer: “Nonsense.” Not only does Mrs. Ramsey want to kill her husband because he disagrees with her about tomorrow’s weather, but she can’t tell which way the wind is blowing. “Indeed,” [the author or Mrs. Ramsey]

“she had the whole of the other sex sex under her protection; for reasons she could not explain, for their chivalry and valor, for the act that they negotiated treaties, ruled India, controlled finance; finally for an attitude toward herself which no woman could fail to feel or find agreeable, something trustful, childlike, reverential; which an old woman would take from a young man without loss of dignity, and woe betide the girl – pray Heaven it was none of her daughters! – who did not feel the worth of it, and all that it implied, to the marrow of her bones.”

In the paragraphs that follow Mrs. Ramsey and the author restate their opinions of life in the house, the Bank of England and the Indian Empire. Admittedly, Mrs. Ramsey states that she cares for her daughter, but whether the weather be fine or foul, the son can play outside, come hell or high water. Mrs. Ramsey’s attitude toward her son appears to be: (1) Tomorrow, you can play on the freeway. (2) What about traffic? Tomorrow you can play on the freeway if there is no traffic. (3) There is always traffic. Tomorrow you can play on the freeway if there is northbound traffic in the southbound lanes.

I know from the blurb on the back of the book proclaims, “Mrs. Ramsey is beautiful, dominate and generous. Her power is gentle but irresistible.” I don’t see these qualities except as they are firmly imbedded in Mrs. Ramsey’s own mind but not in her speech, her behaviors, her thoughts or her attitudes.

I admit I cannot play cricket, and I see no lure in those matches. To the Lighthouse may be a distinctly British book about a peculiar woman, a very eccentric woman, am extremely odd woman. But To the Lighthouse carried the connotation that the lights are out and a shipwreck is inevitable.

In the end I believe I wrote a better description of the first few pages of To the Lighthouse than Virginia wrote in the first place.

 

WRITING TRIALS ARE OVER

Posted on by

0

Think of the social and psychological pressures over the last two months hitting a writer.

Thanksgiving: A sleeper event. Usually this is the last time most Americans visit grandma’s house [or house of a relative living in a distant place] – over the hill, through the vale, along the Interstates, aboard an airline with the whole family: Kids, dog, goldfish. And Americans usually make the effort, something they will never recover from: Too much food, cholesterol, and fat. Loads a disagreeable conversation and too much familiarity. Too little sleep, relaxation and escape from the terrors of normal life.

Americans do Thanksgiving because it leaves the year end holidays, a true family event without the many annoying relatives. For a writer there are three dreadful, situational questions: What are you writing now? For the unpublished writer: When are you getting published? For the published writer: I saw your book [at the library], [in a bookstore] or [borrowed it]. I read a few pages and didn’t like it. I put it down. [Inference is: Why don’t you give it to me?]

Americans like to tell themselves about Thanksgiving, It’s only one day a year.

Religious Holidays in December. If each religion stuck to one day and kept it itself, everything would be fine. But, SHARE. We all live in the same world. The writer has less control over his life. Some persons like myself send Christmas [Season’s Greetings] cards and get a 20 percent return, which is pretty good these days. Older people get better returns, but my parents are considering paring the number of cards sent by 50 percent.

The mixing of the holidays means a relentless round of open houses, dinners, spiked punches, egg nog, cookies of all shapes and tastes, and other odd looking offerings which are undistinguishable except they are sweet. [How about fruit cake soaked for five months in 190 proof rum? That’s aging for the glutton.] There are also gifts guests and invitees bring. The appropriate response to these December “gifts” [including the liquor] should be a Congressional Act: The last Saturday of the year shall be known as NGSD – National Garage Sales Day.

There is a movement afoot to put Christ back into Christmas. Those proponents have one great obstacle. They believe Christmas has become too commercial, too festive and too irreverent. I mostly agree, hence I’m writing this post. BUT can anyone propose cutting back on Christmas giving and festivities: The American economy would grind to a halt. Certain proposed measures would discourage Americans from giving and spending. It is an unAmerican movement to broadly propose such a path.

New Years Day: This was once a period when unhappy people would cash out – drink and drive recklessly and kill themselves. Whereupon state legislatures realized that big money was to be made in drunk driving most of them raised fines and penalties. And law enforcement has commendably improved tactics to prevent many drunk drivers from killing themselves and hurting or killing others.

Americans use this day to make Resolutions – gone by Day’s end. Look back and rid themselves of memories. Face the unknown bravely. The flaw – Americans party with like-thinking friends, acquaintances and strangers. The reflection comes from a mirror of the past  – the restart of the football season after Christmas. Betting and pools. I’ve seen surveys about the drop in business productivity because employees are research and choosing terms, watching, arguing and moping about poor performances. It is egregiously perplexing when someone’s mother-in-law concerned about the grandkids, the family and who volunteers at the local library wins the loot. Everyone can speculate how she picked her teams. I tried to pay no attention to the games, except to observe that Stanford sucked in the Rose Bowl.

January. This was once a month when lives crashed. Nothing has happening. The January blues. People could reflect, meditate, take an inventory, and move on.

    Martin Luther King. Celebrations are no longer on his birthday, January 15, but whenever it will create a three day weekend. The day has become part of the January celebration rather than supporting the historical January tradition. President Obama started out well by defining the day as one of service – a message less apparent this year. Because the day is on a weekend now, it has become intertwined and lost along the Professional Football playoffs. No local parade will save it.

   Professional Football. This sport has overtaken January as its own. Note this occupation is in the middle of the Professional Basketball Season.

   Entertainment. There was once only the Oscars [Academy Award] ceremony in the late winter. It is passé and meaningless. Now January has become award-event month. Every week is a ceremony offering somebody, something: music, special effects, acting. Not only do movie ads tell how many Academy Award nominations have been received, but also they give a litany of previous awards – Golden Globes, Director’s Guild, Writer’s Guild, Janitor’s Guild [top trophy goes to best use of used condom].

   State of the Union. It was too long. If President Obama has wanted anyone to remember the speech and what he said, he would have spoken for 15 minutes rather than 65 minutes. Even that is too long to get noticed. Better yet the President could have put it to music and given us a rap song in 3 minutes. Best yet, the President could have devised an aphorism, no longer than 20 words, something everyone would want to carve onto stone. 

Super Bowl. This is the true end of social and psychological confrontations disturbing writers. It’s the big game which will go on much too long. Americans will attend parties, overeat, over drink, talk about golf, and look forward to a time for rest and relaxation.

I will watch none of the game because (1) it is only a football game. I only need to know the result, not how someone won. (2) There are too many ads. (3) This it not a football game which should last only 2 1/2 hours. That game has its own pulse. The teams can get into a rhythm. One can go into a slump. (4) The whole spectacle is too commercial, apart from the ads. (5) There are too many ads disrupting the game.I don’t want to watch babies selling diapers or a stock brokerage firm. (6) Also, let’s watch men beat one another up. Perhaps a player will die; they’ll drive him off the field in a golf-cart [Hence the natural golf-football crossover.] A few players will get injured. Too many will suffer permanent physical injuries which will increase Workers Compensation costs. An unknown number will suffer head injuries aggravating previous injuries and leaving them unable to live productive lives after their playing days. (7) I’ve decided against watching gladiator sports only a month after the religious holidays. Why watch the carnage? 

I know I shall be culturally deprived. I will miss the Super Bowl Ads. I could record the whole show and run through, watching the ads. But I’ll leave advertising where it is [last year’s ads were mediocre]. I hope to do something useful for myself or for others.

February: The end of the season.

I know the Winter Olympics are coming up. They seem a let down after the rip-roaring action of the previous two months.

I know that Valentines Day is coming up. Love, hearts and dripping sentiments seem a let down after the rip-roaring actions of the last two months.

A QUESTION OF PERCEPTION?

Posted on by

1

I can be impatient especially when I’m reading and little or nothing is coming out. Criticism in some of my blogs on specific books might reveal this weakness. But I like when I learn that I should trust myself.

In A Moveable Feast Hemingway reports a conversation he had with a poet, Evan Shipman who called the younger writer, Hem.

“‘I’ve been wondering about Dostoyevsky,’ I said. ‘How can a man write write so badly, so unbelievably badly, and make you feel so deeply?’

‘It can’t be the translation,’ Evan said…”(p. 137, NY, Scribners, 1964) 

Hem’s was was my impression: Why is this guy writing about mentally ill people staying in Germany? I could not feel deeply for anything Dostoy wrote because I couldn’t get by the writing. I feel good that my reaction is affirmed by someone else in this business.

I also should not be influenced by critics and toady scholars with a vested stake in Russian literature. It is likely they know nothing. Elsewhere in A Moveable Feast Hem gives advice to another writer after a whining conversation: “Look, if you can’t write why don’t you learn to write criticism?” (p. 95)

A Moveable Feast is not directly about Hemingway’s writing career in Paris, circa 1920-1925, but there are many solid points that he makes in passing. He also has an enlightening and funny chapter on F. Scott Fitzgerald and a sour chapter describing the rich discovering a ski resort. 

CRITICISM

Posted on by

0

Since blogging in August 2013, I’ve read novels and put forth my comments. I’ve been direct – complementary or derogatory. It something is unreadable, I’ll say that.

But this morning I put down a novel (more than 500 pages), and I am reminded of Mark Twains purported evaluation of Henry James’s novels: Once you’ve put down one of his novels, you can’t pick it up.

I won’t identify the novelist or her first novel. The subject matter is something I’ve thoroughly versed with – a student going to college in a strange place. Chapter One is long and slow. Ten pages into it I realized it was common stuff. Not a lot happened – dialogue, descriptions, action – by page 20. But I recognized the source. It was obvious that this author had kept a journal in college and had devoted pages to the mundane as most journals and diaries are. This author had replicated in the book the journal conversations she had tediously recorded as a fresh student. 

If an author will write about a character who is boring, dull, mundane and ordinary, the author ought not to show those traits by being prosaic with the writing. It must be poetry (Lennie, Of Mice and Men). It is entirely possible that this author did not fully understand how the traits of the character might be perceived. That is a failure of the author’s, of editors and of the publisher; it should be noted in criticism. Stumbling along writing characters in common, everyday speech is not the way to do it. Fiction does partly reflect reality, but an author has to make up the language as she proceeds. The author does not get to literature by inserting every sentence ever uttered, remembered for a journal and put into a novel. However, that’s what this author seems to have done, and she should have been more wary. She states a fact that reveals the character is a moron. In the first 20 pages she mentions that the character took Geometry during his senior year of high school. Geometry is a high school freshman or sophomore course.

So I quit this novel before being insulted more. I had to put it down and quit it forever. I’ll be suspicious of anything more from this author. Fortunately there was no expense. I borrowed it from a library where I gladly returned it.