European Reading Challenge Sign Up

I will read these books for the 2019 European Reading Challenge.

Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991: A History - Orlando Figes

The Vertigo Years: Europe, 1900-1914- Philipp Blom

The Winter War: Russia's Invasion of Finland, 1939-1940 - Robert Edwards

Novel TBD - Georges Simenon

Five Days in London, May 1940 - John Lukacs

They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 - Milton Mayer

Wrap Up: 2018 European Reading Challenge.

I read these books for the 2018 European Reading Challenge.

The Spies of Warsaw – Alan Furst (Poland)

Posted: January 26

Call It Treason: A Novel - George Howe (Germany)

Post: February 4

Eminent Georgians - John Halperin (UK)

Post: February 28

When Paris Went Dark - Ronald C. Rosbottom (France)

Post: March 14

The Hard Sell – William Haggard (Italy)

Post: April 10

The Disappearance of Odile - Georges Simenon (Switzerland)

Post: April 19

Extra – Unqualified!

Mission to Paris – Alan Furst (France)

Post: June 10

2018 European Reading Challenge

I will read these books for the 2018 European Reading Challenge.

1/ The Irish Sketchbook of 1842 - Wm. Makepeace Thackeray (Ireland)

2/ Call It Treason: A Novel - George Howe (Germany)

3/ When Paris Went Dark: The City of Light under German Occupation, 1940-1944 - Ronald C. Rosbottom (France)

4/ The Spies of Warsaw – Alan Furst (Poland)

5/ Eminent Georgians - John Halperin (UK)

European RC #2

I read this book for the European Reading Challenge

An English Affair:  Sex, Class and Power in the Age of Profumo - Richard Davenport-Hines

The Profumo affair was a British political scandal that came out of a brief sexual relationship in 1961 between John Profumo, the Secretary of State for War in PM Harold Macmillan's Tory government, and Christine Keeler, a 19-year-old model who like to party. The first two-thirds of the book is a readable and fascinating description of the time, the post-WWII UK, with an emphasis on the middle 1950s and early1960s. The remainder, a blow by blow account of the affair, cover-up, or fall-out overwhelms with copious detail and the contempt a sapped reader feels for such deceitful types as high-level politicians.  

Davenport-Hines asserts that the strict socialist regulations of the immediate post-war years were to blame for recalcitrant rule breakers trying to get around investment-unfriendly red-tape. Money guys were looking to cash in on the construction boom and develop bombed out sites in the City and shopping complexes in the suburbs of cities. Mixed in with their avarice and power-hunger, of course, was the usual lust of middle-aged guys for young women. Like Roger Ailes, they were generally so misogynistic, oafish, and ugly that they needed money, power, and connections to meet and then set up party girls, models, and other would-be celebs in apartments. The story is all about what is bewildering about the species called the wealthy: that money and power and recognition are never enough, greedy men are always insatiable, they despise the people they con and cheat and use, they demand loyalty from the same subordinates that they would leave twisting in the wind.

But this book indicates that just about every man in a position of power in the public and private sectors were getting it on with younger, poorer girls and boys. John Profumo, the secretary of war, had enough smarts to skate through Harrow and Oxford where he made plenty of connections. He had a good WWII. He needed his breezy charm to balance what his fellow stupid conservatives called his Eye-tie name, which brought to mind women’s scent.

Christine Keeler came from terrible circumstances, coming to maturity in old railway car with no electricity, plumbing, or privacy. As a babysitter, she was routinely groped and fondled by fathers of the kids she sat. Her step-father’s sexual advances forced her to sleep with a knife under her pillow. She as desperate to get away from home and start leading a glamorous life. She started working in a nightclub in London where she met Mandy Rice-Davies. They got themselves into society through older men. They weren't angels but nobody deserves the treatment they had to endure.

Finally, as a writer for the right-wing magazine Spectator, Davenport-Hines takes predictable swipes at the left, but, to his credit, castigates the police and press for objectionable practices. The language used by the the papers is shocking in their anti-women venom.  Police procedures to demoralize and coerce persons of interest will disgust readers and frighten people who assume they live in a democracy, not a police state. Davenport-Hines also observes that the public itself fed this corruption with hypocritical attitudes and by purchasing the newspapers. Nobody get away unscathed in this brilliant and riveting overview of that time and place.

European RC #2

I read this book for the European Reading Challenge 2016.

The Devils of Loudon – Aldous Huxley

We remember Huxley nowadays for the dystopia Brave New World. But he wrote many other fiction and non-fiction books, one of which was this history of religious and sexual obsession in 17th century France. Huxley’s theme is that that the evils we ascribe to religious intolerance are instead a product of human nature. That political bosses in any society manipulate ideas - fear, superstition, self-interest, patriotism, etc. -  and their dissemination in order to maintain their power and access to the other goodies like prestige, offices, awards, travel, prostitutes, and luxury food.

… Few people now believe in the Devil; but very many enjoy behaving as their ancestors behaved when the Fiend was a reality as unquestionable as his Opposite Number. In order to justify their behavior, they turn their theories into dogmas, their bylaws into First Principles, their political bosses into Gods and all those who disagree with them into incarnate devils. This idolatrous transformation of the relative into the Absolute and the all too human into the Divine, makes it possible for them to indulge their ugliest passions with a clear conscience and in the certainty that they are working for the Highest Good. And when the current beliefs come, in their turn, to look silly, a new set will be invented, so that the immemorial madness may continue to wear its customary mask of legality, idealism and true religion.

So the Communists are consigned to the trashcan of history but other hobgoblins - liberals, inflationists, the Federal Reserve, Blacks, Muslims, terrorists – are invented and utilized to scare the rubes.

Huxley gets across what a weird century the 17^th was, with regard to its mix of devout religion and unbridled sexuality. In 1632 an entire Ursuline convent in the village of Loudun was apparently possessed by the devil. That is, hysteria was contagious and the fame and wealth that came from all the attention was congenial. The girls and women accused a priest, Urban Grandier, of being in league with the devil. A village cabal hated Grandier. They trumped up the charges to get him tried and burned at the stake. I had to skip the dozen of so pages that detailed his torture before he was consigned to the flames for witchcraft.

While proving that his message of the danger of the powerful oppressing the vulnerable is still relevant in an election year of 2016, Huxley inserts essays about many other topics of interest, such as Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy (“an absurd and charming book”); bovarism, the glamorized estimate of oneself; and the shift of  the way of thinking of the medieval world to our more recognizable modern world.

When I read Huxley, I feel I am with a knowledgeable and witty but down to earth thinker. I don’t mind running to the dictionary about every other page. His ideas about Vendanta and Zen went rather over my head, as I don’t think I have the kind of mind to be an adequate mystic. For me, Huxley is rather too broad-minded about ESP and PK, too.

European RC #1

I read this book for the European Reading Challenge 2016.

The English:  A Portrait of a People – Jeremy Paxton

When I lived in Latvia (1994-97), I went to parties that mixed North Americans, Englishmen and –women, and Irishmen and –women. Drink flowed at the party but – so? -- many eye-opening conversations were to be had.  A British diplomat who was a Scotswoman raised my eyebrows with her plan to be the Scottish ambassador to Russia after Scotland gained its independence.

Another time a bank examiner from Louisiana was stunned to be informed by an Englishman that an American was not only a native or citizen of the United States but also a native or inhabitant of any of the countries of North, South, or Central America. The Louisianan looked at me in shock and exclaimed, “I never knew that” as if I, a bad English teacher, had neglected to tell her this through sheer incompetence.

Anyway, if I can’t travel or be an expatriate anymore, I can read books like this one to expand my horizons. It examines stereotypes, subjective assessments, historical myths, misconceptions, various phobias and criticisms related to England and its English inhabitants.  Be clear that the writer purposely focusses on only the English, not the Irish, Scots, or Welsh. He clearly distinguishes English (a people) from British (a nationality). He identifies the English national character as having “a quizzical detachment, tolerance, common sense, bloody-mindedness, willingness to compromise, [a] deeply political sense of themselves [and above all a] sense of 'I know my rights.’” He also grants what I always felt, “hard to know.”

Writing about national character is a dicey thing. Readers feel left out, claiming the writer is talking about a socio-economic class that does not include them. Some readers will see irony, humor and anti-Celt chauvinism between the lines, while others will not. Other readers will say the book – published in the late 1990s – is dated by now, that it does not help us understand the English since the world changed after 9/11 and protracted land wars in Asia, not to mention the 2008 global economic meltdown. Though he has read a lot, he does not use insights from sociology or economics. He doesn’t touch on the bane of the UK and US – prejudice about skin color. Recall Ellis in Orwell’s Burmese Days who “hated [blacks] with a bitter, restless loathing as of something evil or unclean.”

So, my advice is to read it for entertainment and in any case not as absolute truth. Paxton, by the way, is famous as a TV interviewer whose dogged style of getting after politicians to answer the goddamned question should be imitated by the lapdogs and lickspittles who work for US networks.

European RC #5

I read this book for the European Reading Challenge 2015.

The Donkeys – Alan Clark, 1961

World War I started in late 1914. So in the centennial of 2015 I decided to read this book about 1915, the year that saw the destruction of the old regular British army. In the introduction to this book, Clark observes with amazement the fact that the British Empire alone lost more men killed in the first two hours of Loos in 1915 than all three armed services on both sides on D-day in 1944.

Clark examines the reasons why British generals in 1915 failed to win their battles at Arras and Loos with the intelligence, improvisation and talent of Moore of Corunna or the Dukes of Wellington and Marlborough. His thesis blames pigheaded incompetence, self-seeking ambition, and back-stabbing rivalries among the senior British staff.

Though a Tory (he worked for Thatcher and Major in the 1980s), Clark writes with much anger toward the officer caste whose strategic and tactical mistakes lead to the death and injury and maiming of thousands of men. He’s as savage in his criticism of hopeless offensives as writers in the 1920s and 1930s like Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon and Vera Brittain.

The book is about not only battles. Clark also describes the political intrigues behind the scenes as commanders and cabinet ministers jockeyed for influential positions in London, with all of them against the Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener.  Clark also briefly but clearly goes over Field Marshal Sir John French's ambivalence dealing with the French allies.

This book is short and not scholarly.  But back in the early Sixties, it contributed a great deal to the debunking of generals and anti-war sentiments for the generation born after WWII. To my mind, Clark makes a strong but narrow case. He suggests explore how strategy and tactics could have made the war any less of a mess. But I still figure war is always a mess. Haig and his staff didn’t even have radio communication and phone lines were easily disrupted by bombardments.

Still, it is passing strange – veterans who returned from France were in fact angry about brass hat incompetence – don’t soldiers, sailors, marines, and air troops always complain about officers? -  but they were angrier about a lack of jobs and respect from clueless civilians and jingoes. Haig, French, Rawlinson, etc. all received respect and homage, honors and titles. They attended countless memorials in the 1920s, apparently without being spit on by angry people. About a million people turned out for Haig’s funeral in 1928. It was in the late 1920s and 1930s when the writers and war poets depicted the agony of the PBI (poor bloody infantry) in contrast to the perceived callousness of the generals. Clark’s whole thesis may be an artifact of his time.

European RC #4

I read this book for the European Reading Challenge 2015.

Memoirs of an Anti-Semite – Gregor von Rezzori (tr. By Joachim Neusgroschel)

This novel is made up of five long stories. The narrator is Sicilian by ancestry, Austrian by education, German culturally and linguistically, and Romanian only by a treaty that came of out of World War I. The narrator is anti-Semitic – his kind of people simply don’t like Jewish people and wish they would stay in their place. His disposition doesn’t stop him from being drawn to Jewish people. He basks in the noisy, supportive environment of a Jewish boarding house (“Lowinger’s Rooming House”) and carries on affairs with vulnerable Jewish women (“Troth,”  “Pravda”).

Set between the wars, each story recounts his deep relationship with a Jewish person that he treats unkindly. In boyhood, he befriends a Jewish boy but becomes jealous of him because he turns out to be a musical prodigy. Working a ridiculous dead-end job. In Vienna, he has an affair with a maternal widow who calls him “Baby.” In the rooming house, he is infatuated with a Jewish teacher, who is far ahead of him in maturity, integrity and modernity. Later the narrator marries an affectionate Jewish woman. They have a sickly son but break up due to his prejudiced racial feelings. The narrator is fascinated and disturbed by what he perceives to be Jewish otherness, Jewish distinctiveness. Ultimately, for him, Jewish people can do no right. He can’t stand them when they flee Germany for their lives and make the other cities crowded. Nor does he like it when German cities, empty of Jewish people, seem deserted because “there’s nobody left to hate.”

Readers with an interest in the social and psychological nature of prejudice will find this an interesting book. As will readers who are looking for a portrait of Europe between the wars, similar to the atmospherics Alan Furst goes after. Some parts are over-written, overdoing the tragic sense of life. But the character sketches are brilliant. Well worth reading.

European RC #3

I read this book for the European Reading Challenge 2015.

Tito: The Man Who Defied Hitler and Stalin a.k.a. The Heretic: The Life and Times of Josip Broz-Tito – Fitzroy Maclean

The author of this biography and his subject worked together in Yugoslavia for nearly two years during World War II. On the Adriatic island of Vis or in the Yugoslav interior, Maclean was head of the British mission to Tito and the partisans who were battling both Nazi occupation troops and non-communist forces composed of Croats (the Ustaše) or Serbs (the Chetniks). Maclean also acted as a go-between in a meeting between the Yugoslav leader and PM Winston Churchill in Naples in August 1944.

Obviously in two years of close proximity, Maclean was able to converse with Tito at length. Like Edgar Snow gathered material from Mao Tse-tung for Red Star over China, Maclean collected much interesting early life information and stories about the “illegal” life of a Communist conspirator-activist between the wars. He was also able to observe Tito and his comrades as it gradually dawned on them that supreme power was within their grasp. This book was the first study of the partisan war in Yugoslavia so it’s well worth reading for readers interested in how a socialist insurgency could take over a country with limited aid from either bloc.

Maclean, an anti-Communist, gives an objective analysis on how Tito and his people stifled dissent, nationalized industry, persecuted religious people, and forced peasants onto collective farms. Maclean relates the powerful story of the harassment, trial, and imprisonment of Archbishop Aloysius Stepinac, who angered Tito with the public complaints that "273 clergymen had been killed" since the Partisan take-over, "169 had been imprisoned", and another "89 were missing and presumed dead.”

He also treats objectively two other example of Balkan ambiguity: Dragoljub “Draža” Mihailović and Milovan Djilas. Mihailović was a Serb, royalist general whose career during WWII was admirable on one hand but appalling on the other. He was the first to organize bands of Chetniks to resist Nazi occupation, but later many Chetnik groups collaborated or established a modus vivendi with the Axis powers. Milovan Djilas was a Partisan hero who later fell out with Tito because of Djilas’ dissident writings. Djilas could be seen as national romantic, patriot, or naïve idealist. If nothing else, this book will give a sense of the thorny questions and impossible choices Europeans had to face in the 20^th century.

Maclean tells an unreal story about the surreal court of Stalin – the ghoul Molotov and the goblin Mikoyan and killer Beria partying all night long in drunken banquets at Stalin’s dacha; the cruel bullying and the fear Stalin promoted among his henchmen. Stalin acted senile and gluttonous, indulging in foul jokes and inane drinking games and humiliating dancing. It makes one wonder if he had a medical problem that was affecting his brain.

Maclean also explains clearly the events leading up to Tito’s expulsion from the Soviet bloc in 1948. It reminded me how little regard the Stalinists had for the truth when they were claiming disloyalty and deviationism. Tito turned to the West again and even landed some Marshall Plan aid from the US. Maclean again acted as a go-between.

I highly recommend this book for those into Balkan and Communist topics, Stalinism, and guerilla war. By the way, Maclean’s autobiographical Eastern Approaches (1949) is fun to read. It covers his life as a junior diplomat in Moscow in the Thirties and the show trials; his travels in the Soviet Union and forbidden zones of Central Asia; his adventures in the British Army and SAS in the North Africa theatre of war; and of course his time with Tito and the Partisans in Yugoslavia.

European RC #2

I read this book for the European Reading Challenge 2015.

Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia - Orlando Figes

The author is probably best-known for his prize-winning narrative history A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891 – 1924. He takes the title of this intellectual history from a scene in War and Peace. Princess Natasha tosses her French-influenced ways aside as she dances a Russian peasant dance. Nobody taught her the steps, hand motions, or stillness of her head. In short, not needing instruction, she just has the knack, through genetics, or inherited characteristics, what Lafcadio Hearn would call “the race ghost.”

Without bugging us general readers with the jargon of Theory, Figes argues that the Russian sense of identity has been socially constructed over the course of time. Russian thinkers rejected the automatic Westerner-worship of Peter the Great to create their own sense of identity, literary language, and canon of literature, often coming up with ideas as dubious as “the race ghost.” Figes persuasively argues Russian culture has borrowed from many traditions such as Mongol, Persian, Kazakh, and ethnic Russian, besides the usual Western European traditions.

This is a serious book, but it is readable. As he proved in A People’s Tragedy, he has an eye for the telling anecdote, which is often quite funny or forceful or both. This on the effect of sheer numbers of serfs available for tasks:

At Kuskovo, there was a horn band in which, to save time on the training of the players, each musician was taught to play just one note. The number of players depended on the number of different notes in a tune; their sole skill lay in playing their note at the appropriate moment.

I highly recommend this brilliant work to readers into things and people Russian.