Mount TBR #49

I read this book for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge hosted over at My Reader’s Block from January 1 – December 31, 2017. The challenge is to read books that you already own.

Herman Melville: A Critical Biography– Newton Arvin

This biography of the author of the famous American novel about a whale won the National Book Award in 1950. In this pleasantly written book, Arvin nearly balances biographical information with critical views of the novels. Melville grew up in a family that was affluent until business reverses suddenly bankrupted his father in 1830. His father went into a slough of despair. After two weeks of bed-ridden agonies, he died. Arvin, without ostentation, wonders about the effect those two weeks would have had on a young boy.

Born under a wandering star, Melville took to sea in his early twenties, sailing first to England, then to Polynesia, where he found himself pursued by cannibals, becoming a mutineer, and getting it on with comely island maids. His first works were wild hits; an experimental novel failed; back to popular stuff twice;  then the novel about the whale. Post-Moby, the novels, experimental in daring and generally sad in tone, were only partly successful as art, misunderstood even by sympathetic contemporary readers, and commercial duds. Melville lived with his family in tight circumstances, working as a customs agent in New York City when federal employees were paid just about nothing.

I like these old-timey biographies, nicely written for general thinking readers unlike today’s jargon ridden biographies. Arvin places Melville in a context I needed to know, i.e., his place among writers such as Dana, Hawthorne, James, Cooper, and Henry Adams. Arvin is pretty daring when it comes to speculating on the unknowable. That is, he draws on the novels Typee, Omoo, Mardi, Redburn and White-Jacket for biographical purposes as well as critical observations. I guess since what went on in Melville’s head in his twenties is impossible to know, one may as well proceed as if information in a novel can give insight in that unknowable terrain.

The survey of "The Whale" is the center-piece of the book. The part about Melville as poet was interesting.

Yorktown Day, 2017

Ceremonies, a parade, fifes and drums performances, and special programs commemorate the 236th anniversary of America’s momentous Revolutionary War victory at Yorktown.

Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different - Gordon S. Wood

Historian Gordon S. Wood (Professor Emeritus of History, Brown University) neither emphasizes race, class and gender nor does he debunk the Founders with anecdotes that dwell on their personal faults and political shortsightedness. This probably appeals to readers who hero-worship the founders, who view history from the top down, and who could care less about the historical role of the less powerful and articulate. The preferences of certain kinds of readers, however, do not mean that Wood isn’t worth reading.

This book collects his fascinating essays that were originally published as chapters in books edited by other prominent historians. The essays examine six founders (Jefferson, Washington, John Adams, Hamilton, Franklin, and Madison) and the reasons why two figures are not regarded as founders (Paine and Burr).

“The past is a foreign country and it speaks another language,” said Joseph J. Ellis on Booknotes, “[A]nd, therefore, if you try and impose its values on the present, it's like a bad translation and you'll end up distorting more than you clarify.” Wood, like a good teacher must, reminds us to avoid applying post-modern meanings to words that the founders were using.

For instance, for the founders, “politeness” was sociability, cultivation, the source of civility, or civilization. An Enlightenment idea was that societies move through stages of development, from rude simplicity to commercial civilization, by the efforts of human beings whose leaders were “gentleman.” We post-moderns use “gentleman” as a sham-genteel synonym for “man” (or as on “Cops” shorthand for “white working class middle-aged half-naked overweight male arrested as drunken wife beater”).

However, for the founders a gentleman was reasonable, tolerant, virtuous, cosmopolitan, free of prejudice and religious zealotry– in other words, what a modern liberal arts education is supposed to deliver. Wood also points out that a leader was supposed to be a gentleman that was “disinterested” as in “impartial” or “fair” instead of our meaning of “indifferent” or “uninterested.”  Wood is obviously a reader – points in my book -- and cites Pride and Prejudice with Elizabeth Bennett’s search for a real gentleman with learning, grace, and character.

Wood also points out that for us “character” means “personality” but for the founders “character” was a persona, what people seemed to be. Instead of keeping it real by disclosing their authentic selves, the founders were self-consciously playing the role of the disinterested gentlemen rendering service to their country. They were first-generation gentlemen, the first in their families to receive a college education, and really become somebody. In the essay on Aaron Burr, Wood says that Burr’s inherited claim to leadership set him apart from other leaders of that generation. Born fully into nobility of 18th century America, Burr behaved very differently in promoting his own selfish interests over the interests of his country.

Finally, the founders were not “democrats” in our sense of the term. They were the elite and they knew it and they expected to lead and be respected because they were impartial and dedicated leaders working for the common good. Ironically, the founders succeeded only too well in establishing democratic and egalitarian ideals. In the early 19^th century the voices of ordinary people began to be heard, and it overwhelmed the high-minded revolutionary ideals advocated by the founders. Think Jackson. Think No-Nothings. The elitists succeeded in preventing any duplication of themselves. Politicians started to claim humble origins so they could connect with “guys like us” and get their votes. Who would you rather have a beer with, the Old Racist Crackpot or the Know-All Hermione?

Basically this is an interesting book whether or not the reader believes in The People, i.e., the wisdom of crowds. It makes us understand that the founders created a world in which their elite and politically creative kind was no longer possible.

Mount TBR #48

I read this book for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge hosted over at My Reader’s Block from January 1 – December 31, 2017. The challenge is to read books that you already own.

A Most Contagious Game – Catherine Aird

In this 1967 whodunnit, our main character, Charles Hardin, is a London business man who has had to retire in his early fifties because of a dicky heart. While in hospital, he’s given his wife a blank check to buy whatever manor house she can find that she finds suitable.

Once discharged and in the house in the village of Easterbrooke, Charles is discouraged to find the house is not much of a fixer-upper. His attitude changes quickly when he discovers a priest’s hole, a hiding place for a priest built into many of the foremost Catholic houses of England during the period when Catholics were persecuted by the Tudors. The chamber, in fact, contains a skeleton about 150 years old. To parallel this old murder mystery is the contemporary murder of an errant wife, whose husband, having vanished, is the suspect.

As Charles does his research on the old murder, readers will be reminded of Josephine Tey’s classic A Daughter of Time, in which a bedridden copper rehabs the rep of Richard III. This village cozy has a brisk pace and well-drawn characters. The prose is witty and intelligent but not too much so. This is a stand-alone mystery, her only outing that did not feature the team of Sloan and Crosby. Though I have kiddish memories of an uncle who read mysteries having Catherine Aird books, this was the first one of hers that I’ve ever read. I can say that I’d like to read more, though I’m usually snooty about cozies. 

The Master of the Day of Judgment

The Master of the Day of Judgment – Leo Perutz

This 1930 classic fantastic mystery by Leo Perutz is set in Vienna in the early 20^th century. The themes and devices will be familiar to us post-modern readers.

A romantic triangle in the era of the late Hapsburgs as in Sándor Márai’s Embers. Guilt over sexual transgressions as in Arthur Schnitzler’s stories from decadent Vienna.  The secret revealed in a manuscript as in Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. The phantasmagoric atmosphere as in William Kotzwinkle’s Fata Morgana. The unreliability of an unsympathetic narrator – well, name your favorite modernist writer from the early 20th century.

Our narrator, the often ruthless and brutal Baron Yosch, narrates the events surrounding the suicide of actor Eugene Bischoff, the latest in a mysterious series of suicides. His chronicle is plagued by semi-confessed guilt over adultery. We readers receive tantalizing hints as to who is behind the eponymous "The Master of the Day of Judgment." As the amateur detectives Solgrub and Gorsky reconstruct the dead man's final hours, we realize we have to read this slowly so as not to be more confused than the author intends us to be.

Creepy, with a surprise ending. Readers looking for Kafka-lite won’t go wrong.

Indigenous Peoples' Day 2017

Indigenous Peoples' Day is a holiday that celebrates the indigenous peoples of North America. It is celebrated in various localities in the United States on various dates.

The Skulking Way of War: Technology and Tactics among the New England Indians - Patrick Malone

After fighting the Indians in the 17th century, the English colonists in New England had to alter the way in which they fought wars. Instead of firing their muskets into tightly massed formations of enemy soldiers, they had to adjust by actually aiming at an individual adversary, taking cover behind trees and rocks, and attacking in ambushes. In short, they came to rely on the same skulking tactics of the Indians, which at first the colonists disliked because they thought such tactics cowardly and unsoldierly.

These skulking tactics became their doctrine of woodland warfare. Such were used against British troops during the American Revolutionary War. So, the patriots had learned forest tactics from their colonist ancestors, who had learned from bitter experience fighting the Indians.

The Indians based their use of firearms on their traditional way of fighting in the forest with bows and arrows. For one, their ability to aim was practiced since childhood. They preferred the flintlock to the musket because they thought it more natural to aim at a target. They obtained firearms despite colonial efforts to restrict sales of arms, ammo, and parts. When the English forces took an Indian fort during King Philip's War, they killed "'an Indian blacksmith' who repaired Narragansett firearms" and also "demolished his forge and took away his tools. Obtaining gunpowder, however, was a constant problem.

Malone also asserts that the Indians learned the way of total warfare from Europeans. Because of the harsh religious wars in Europe such as the Thirty Years' War, it was usual for armies to make war against civilians by firing villages and destroying crops. The Indians were at first shocked by the new increased intensity of war and the larger numbers of fatalities, which were unexampled in their previous experience.

This is a coffee-table book, lavishly illustrated in black and white, though some of the graphics are of the time and show Indians acting like white people’s ideas of Indians. I’m not especially interested in weapons technology and infantry tactics, but the book held my interest when it focused on these topics.  The author Malone was a Marine who saw combat in Vietnam. In the introduction he drily says he does not recommend the participant observation method to budding military historians. But the reader would have to grant unique experience should give the author a certain authority to add to his technical knowledge and expertise, and historical research.

Rich Presidents Too

From After Many a Summer by Aldous Huxley, a cool novel about LA in the 1930s.

Dr. Mulge was a college president chronically in quest of endowments; he knew all about the rich. Knew, for example that they were like gorillas, creatures not easily domesticated, deeply suspicious, alternately bored and bad tempered. You had to approach them with caution, to handle them gently and with a boundless cunning. And even then they might suddenly turn savage on you and show their teeth. 

The Bride Wore Black

The Bride Wore Black – Cornell Woolrich

Innocently, I had picked up The Red House Mystery, a 1922 mystery by A. A. Milne. Yes, Winnie the Pooh, that A. A. Milne - Eyore should have tipped me off. After about four pages, the coziness started to smother me. To get my wind back, I did fifteen pushups, three chin-ups, ran in place five minutes and then chucked The Red House Mystery as far as I could.

Like a shot put.

And then – panting – I turned to the 1940 classic of the suspense mystery genre The Bride Wore Black. Yee-haw! A raving beauty shoves a guy off a high-rise ledge, blasts another guy to death, and suffocates yet another guy inside a closet. Coolest of all, dressed as Diana the Hunting Goddess, she zings an arrow into a guy’s chest.  To summarize the plot would do a disservice to both Woolrich the writer and prospective readers. Suffice to say, Woolrich weaves noir magic in unemotional prose as he builds suspense to heart-stopping points, while still developing character and plot. The ending is a rocker.

Just read this exciting and well-crafted story! Don’t mind that the grotesque coincidences  because it’s not like real life is free of them. Ditto for the relentless prose. After all, it comes out of the venerable pulp tradition. And Woolrich is considered a founder of noir, up there with Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett.