Classic #13

For category “Set During a War”

Enemy Coast Ahead – Guy Gibson

This was first published as a Sunday Express serial in December 1944, then in hardcover in February 1946. It has seldom been out of print in the last 70 years. Written during the hostilities, the book has immediacy and that un-put-downable quality that characterizes the best war memoirs such as From El Alamein to Zem Zem (Keith Douglas) and With the Old Breed (E.B. Sledge).

Guy Gibson joined the RAF in 1936 “to learn how to fly,” and by 1942 was a Wing Commander in Bomber Command leading his squadron on raids on major German targets. He was awarded the VC for his gallantry and inspiring leadership on the Dambuster raid in May 1943. He realized he had to get a lot out of his crew, so he toned down his arrogant and bombastic qualities, according to Dambusters veteran Johnny Johnson on Youtube. His true leadership qualities came out when he got across the message to the men that they were all in it together.

Though the Dambuster  raid caused damage to the Möhne Dam, the Germans were rapidly able to return to normal production of war materials. The Dambusters Raid, however, provided a morale and propaganda boost for the Allies and Gibson was awarded the Victoria Cross for his efforts and leadership. He was dispatched on a lectures tour of America and Canada to keep him off the front; it was during this period that he wrote this memoir. Upon his return to Britain, he prevailed upon “Bomber” Harris to return him to combat operations.

On a mission in September, 1944, a faulty fuel tank selector may have lead to Gibson’s Mosquito running out of fuel. He and his navigator were buried at Steenbergen and had streets in the town named in their honor.   Fearing that the celebrity-hero’s death would have a an adverse effect on RAF and public morale, his death was not announced to the general public until January 1945.

Cloak & Dagger #7

I read this for the 2015 Cloak and Dagger Mystery Reading Challenge

Red Gold – Alan Furst

This is the sequel to The World at Night, the historical espionage thriller that introduced film producer Jean-Claude Casson and his adventures in the French Resistance during WWII. Casson reaches a point where he can no longer sit out the Nazi occupation of France. For one, he is already a fugitive who escaped out of a toilet window of Gestapo headquarters in Paris. For another, he can no longer feel afraid. He doesn’t feel much of anything. He becomes more active in the Resistance not so much out of patriotism but out of a feeling that there is nothing left that he could do that could give his life meaning. I think the story and characterization are more economical and readable in this novel compared to The World at Night. Furst creates the same tense, murky, romantic atmosphere, but does not let ambiance take over like in The World at Night.

Casson has been recruited by a Gaullist officer DeGrave, under whom he served early in the war. This faction wants to fight the common enemy with the more organized and numerous Communists. They assign Casson to find the Communist leadership and find out what they need to make a deal. Casson eventually meets Weiss, Moscow Center’s rep and supervisor of a motley collection of teenagers, Jewish people in hiding, and thugs out to kill people who happen to be Germans because it’s fun. Weiss and his people set a price on cooperation - a thousand machine guns, with ammunition. Used to negotiating when getting movies made, Casson keeps his feet on the ground:

“We have a lot to offer, Casson. Help with field operations, intelligence -- but they have to ask. From the first contact we felt that no matter how hard we've fought against each other in the past, we now have a common enemy, so it's time for us to be allies.”

“War changes everything.”

Weiss smiled. “It should, logically it should. But the world doesn't run on logic, it runs on the seven deadly sins and the weather. Even so, we have to try to do what we can.”

“And it helps,’ Casson said, “to have machine guns.”

DeGrave introduces Casson to Helene, a Jewish woman who could be denounced at any time by a malicious co-worker. Casson also works to get Helene out of France. Handling this sub-plot, Frust captures the inescapable desolation – as Simenon called it, Dirty Snow -  of the occupation.

With his power to convey atmosphere and incidents, Furst can induce strong emotions in a reader. "I write entertainment novels," said Furst in a 2004 interview. "I write what I call novels of consolation for people who are bright and sophisticated.” I’m not sure what he meant by that, but he may be saying that a certain kind of reader would use the novel as moral yardstick, wondering what he or she would do in circumstances such as resisting an occupation by an enemy. I guess certain readers would console themselves that they would do the right thing, that it would be two-thirds of everybody else that would collaborate or watch an occupation from the sidelines.

Mount TBR #13

I read this book for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge hosted over at My Reader’s Block from January 1 – December 31, 2015. The challenge is to read books that you already own.

Houdini: The Man Who Walked through Walls – William Lindsay Gresham, 1959

This biography tells of the life and time of the famous escape artist. Gresham writes in a lively style for the general reader. Sometimes Gresham overdoes the enthusiasm with the overuse of exclamation marks. And Gresham tells what’s going on inside Houdini’s head when there is little evidence that anybody knew what was going on in that active, sometimes overheated, brain. But the book is worth reading, as mentalist Max Maven deems it "the best of all the Houdini biographies."

Gresham makes clear that Houdini was a paragon of the American dream. Born in Budapest in 1874, he was taken at the age of four to Appleton, Wisconsin, where his father, Mayer Weiss, was appointed rabbi at the Zion Reform Jewish Congregation. After his father lost his tenure, the family moved to New York City. The athletic Houdini was a track star in high school. With college out of the financial question for a family with six kids, he went to work cutting fabric in a necktie factor.

He was convinced he was made for better things so against his parents’ wishes he joined a circus and worked doing magic tricks on Coney Island.

Houdini met Wilhelmina Beatrice “Bess” Rahner, a singer and dancer in another Coney Island show. At first, she was part of the act, but they fell in love and married. This did not go over well with his parents or her Catholic mother. Houdini and Bess, however, made sure the women met and spent time together so they could get used to the situation. They even went to Europe on tour, paid for by Houdini and Bess. Houdini was extremely generous, helping out many in need of funds. And he always did that quietly, following his mother’s down to earth advice, “You don’t need a brass band to do a mitzvah.”

Houdini never claimed he used supernatural powers to free himself from sealed milk cans, prison cells, handcuffs, and straitjackets. He stood only 5’5″ and spoke in a comically high-pitched voice. But he made up for these with a winning smile and a manner that demanded attention and respect. Plus there was his sheer courage to do the stunts. On Youtube find video of him freeing himself from a straitjacket - in midair, shackled at the ankles, and suspended upside-down, high above a busy city street.

In the Twenties, he became active exposing spirit fakers. Gresham speculates that Houdini wanted to believe because he wanted contact with his deceased mother whose passing sent him into a long depression. When he realized the mediums were faking it by using tricks any magician knew, he was outraged enough so that his hard-charging character took up a crusade. In disguise he would break up séances and have the cops arrest the callous charlatans who exploited people’s grief. Gresham gives a fair overview of the Houdini contra Conan-Doyle argument, with the creator of Sherlock Holmes coming off sincere but credulous. In the summer of 1926, Houdini testified before the U.S. Congress against spiritualists who claimed to talk to the dead. Gresham’s account of how the pro-ghost faction confused the politicians reminds us that the forces of irrationality have hardly gone away but they still use the same arguments.

Houdini died on Halloween, 1926, from peritonitis due to a burst appendix, which was possibly caused from three punches to his abdomen nine days earlier. In the days before sulfa drugs were introduced in the 1930s, lots of deaths were caused by infection-induced inflammations.

Cloak & Dagger #6

I read this for the 2015 Cloak and Dagger Mystery Reading Challenge

Un crime en Hollande, 1929

Aka Maigret in Holland, tr. Geoffrey Sainsbury, 1940

A Crime in Holland – Georges Simenon, tr. Sian Reynolds, 2014

After an evening party given in the Popinga home in honor of Professor Jean Duclos, who has come to lecture in Delfzijl, Conrad Popinga is killed by a pistol shot. Maigret is informally asked to visit the town and investigate the murder. The suspects abound: Duclos himself, who was holding the weapon immediately after the murder; Beetje Liewens, the 18-year-old mistress of Conrad, who returned to the Popinga house after her lover had taken her home; the grumpy farmer Liewens, who had caught his daughter with the victim and sternly disapproved; the naval cadet Cornelius Barens, who loves Beetje; Oosting, the old salt, whose cap was found in the bathroom Popinga; finally, Mrs. Popinga and her sister Any, who stayed home after the departure of the guests. Oosting's cap and a cigar butt at the scene of the crime fail to impress Maigret since he is convinced that the old sailor had no reason to kill Popinga.

Maigret goes after the culprit, but he must examine deeper human truths along the way, as part psychologist and part anthropologist. He contrasts his own culture (French, urban, Catholic) with that of the Protestant bourgeoisie in a small Dutch town. He realizes the behavior of the characters is profoundly influenced by a strict and austere environment against which some – like Conrad and Beetje – must rebel. Plus, he must contend with an unspoken attitude that doubts the social utility of denouncing and punishing the guilty if the guilty one belongs to the upper classes. Such a bad example for the lower classes, after all. As for comic relief, Maigret, the bull in the china shop, must deal with the delicate sensibilities of the Dutch police and Professor Duclos, who wants Maigret to do as the Dutch do when in Holland.

Fans count this one, the eighth Maigret novel, as one of the better early novels, written in the Depression era. Simenon’s powers lie in his economical style, his simple vocabulary, his way of setting scenes to evoke atmosphere, his probing of the psychology of his characters, and his awareness of and icy compassion for fallibility.

Classic #12

I read this book for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2015.

An Ermine in Czernopol – Gregor von Rezzori, tr. By Philip Boehm

In 1959 this novel won the prestigious Fontane Prize, a prize for German-language books. It chronicles in a roundabout way the misadventures of a Hungarian hussar in a Romanian town between the wars. His main problem is that he is totally devoid of a sense of humor, which dooms him to raillery against his pompous pride. “Laughter in Czer­nopol,” the narrator tells us, “had been elevated to an art form, a folk art of unparalleled authenticity . . . well endowed with the most vivid references, not to mention all manner of innuendoes.”

As in his better-known book Memoirs of an Anti-Semite, von Rezzori loves to capture types. The hussar’s wife is alternately depressed and anxious while his sister-in-law entertains half the men in town. The monstrously ugly Widow Morar scares the bejesus of the young von Rezzori and his older sister with the lurid story of her husband’s suicide, which she and her three sons witnessed through a keyhole. A recurring character is the creepy prefect, Herr Tarangolian, whose devilish looks and manner fascinate the kids, though they readily see through his patently insincere advice: “Dealing with people, my friends, is really nothing more than a question of the price that one is willing to pay. The better you understand life, the more capital you build.”

Much of the book is related to how children see the world. This, on the discovery of the power of words.

The sayings we overheard, the whimsical sentences, the amazing word formations all burst into glowing colors when touched by the magical light of association [. . .]. It was like a star dropping from the sky if one of my siblings actually used in speech one of the words that had so excited us—for instance, when Tanya spoke of a leap of a great capacity—and if we were able to trace it back, not to the gymnastic exercises which Herr Alexainu had also described as a king of capacity, but to a name—in this case that of a certain Fraülein Kapralik. Of course we had never laid eyes on her, but people said she gave Italian lessons. In any event, beyond our associations with capers and capricious—expressions our father liked to use in reference to us—her name called to mind a fun-loving woman from Capri. A similar wealth of associations opened up when a chance to overlap in pronunciation created by the miracle of fused meanings; for instance, when we heard the newly experienced word ektase—ecstasy—in the name of Năstase, which right away seemed to capture this young man’s tango-like essence.”

The other appeal is that the city of Czer­nopol is also a character in the book.  It belonged to Austria-Hungary until 1918, and then was part of Romania until 1940, when USSR sovietized it. Today it is Chernivtsi, Ukraine.

I would recommend this novel only to readers who liked Memoirs of an Anti-Semite and The Snows of  Yesteryear. The author, in this his first novel, has a tendency to over-write. But this probably just me, for whom lushness is prose goes right over his head.