Some episodes of history are more than unforgettable, they are thrilling every time one thinks of them. One such is the battle of the bulge, when the allied forces were further out than could be logistically supported and German forces unexpectedly turned around to strike back, and the allies were surrounded on almost all sides with almost no option but to surrender or be massacred - and yet the commander famously replied "nuts" to the proposal of surrender from the Germans, barely taking the cigar out of his mouth for saying that much calmly, immediately, nonchalantly.
Patton was in Italy and was informed of the bulge and the urgency - and he drove his army in an impossible drive across to the battlefront in Ardennes near Belgian border in time to save the situation, the men, the battle and the war.
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Some of the books about the battle of the bulge:-
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Battle, The Story of the Bulge: by John Toland.
American Experience - The Battle of the Bulge
The Battle of the Bulge : the photographic history of an American triumph
by John R. Bruning
The Bitter Woods : The Battle Of The Bulge
by John D. Eisenhower
BATTLE OF THE BULGE, HITLER'S ARDENNES OFFENSIVE 1944-1945
by Danny Parker
The Longest Winter: The Battle of the Bulge and the Epic Story of WWII's Most Decorated Platoon (2004)
by Alex Kershaw
The Battered Bastards of Bastogne: The 101st Airborne and the Battle of the Bulge, December 19,1944-January 17,1945
by George Koskimaki
Seven Roads to Hell: A Screaming Eagle at Bastogne
by Donald R. Burgett
A Blood-Dimmed Tide: The Battle of the Bulge by the Men Who Fought It (Dell World War II Library) (1992)
by Gerald Astor
Time for Trumpets, A (1985)
by Charles Brown MacDonald
Alamo in the Ardennes: The Untold Story of the American Soldiers Who Made the Defense of Bastogne Possible (edit title/settings)
by John C. McManus
Company Commander: The Classic Infantry Memoir of World War II
by Charles B. MacDonald
Infantry Soldier: Holding the Line at the Battle of the Bulge (2000)
by George W. Neill
The Battle of Hurtgen Forest
by Charles B. MacDonald
Yanks : The Epic Story of the American Army in World War I (2001)
by John S. D. Eisenhower
Easy Company Soldier
The Endless Combat of a Sergeant from World War II's "Band of Brothers"
by Bob Welch (Author), Don Malarkey
IT NEVER SNOWS IN SEPTEMBER: The German View of Market Garden and the Battle of Arnhem September 1944
by Robert J. Kershaw
Germans In Normandy (Stackpole Military History)
by Richard Hargreaves
Victory Was Beyond Their Grasp: With the 272nd Volks-Grenadier Division from the Huertgen Forest to the Heart of the Reich
by Douglas E. Nash
Arnhem 1944: Operation 'Market Garden' (Campaign)
by Stephen Badsey
NIJMEGEN: U.S. 82nd Airborne Division - 1944 (Battleground Europe: Market Garden)
by Tim Saunders
A Drop Too Many: A Paratrooper at Arnhem (Stackpole Military History Series) (1980)
by John Frost
A magnificent disaster : the failure of Market Garden, the Arnhem Operation, September 1944
by David Bennett
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Friday, August 20, 2010
The Cambridge Illustrated History of Germany (Cambridge Illustrated Histories) (2000): by Martin Kitchen
There was a book on history of Germany I read a decade ago, probably between a short and a long visit to the country, and I have been trying to find the book again - it would be a bit of a chore to go all the way across the town to the new location of the library - but with little success since I thought it was Oxford publication and the writer was Mark somebody, so the google searches were as little successful as shelfari ones; meanwhile trawling through a thourough list of similar books I came across this one and the cover, the names, are close to what I remember, so is the size - likely this is the book I read, and was informed of much not known till then to me.
Some of it is not known to most people even now. For instance the fact that Prussia was once quite another nation with a completely different language and race of people whom Germans wiped out on their crusades (Jerusalem was too far away, too much trouble, and this was far more profitable, go east and massacre people and take over their lands and proliferate) before acquiring the whole region about a millennium ago or so. No wonder Germany was surprised very unpleasantly when this whole process of lebensraum met with disapproval when attempted more recently applied to other parts of Europe, even though other nations had applied it to other parts of the world in making empires.
(When in Germany, one is told Germany did not have any empire; usually such a discourse is based on the assumption that the listener is unaware of world history and facts of wwii, and won't question what then was Rommel doing in Africa, or know that some regions of Africa were in fact colonies of Germany.)
Even more recently we met a woman on a train to Paris from Germany, who pointed out at lands of France and said "all this empty land, and Germany needs land, it is too crowded" while officially German government encourages huge families by every possible means - tax breaks, free schooling, free rides on trains, et al. And apart from other breaks even the last is not negligible, German trains are quite another eye opener, what with excellent timings and good schedules and luxury in lowest class and the whole country connected so one need never drive.
Yet another German woman visiting a developing nation for more than third time spoke of her disapproval of uncontrolled breeding and crowds in that country, while she lives in another vast and empty country and travels to the said crowded developing nation for tourism - so we wondered at her veracity in toto. (Why travel for tourism and pleasure to a place you find this irritating due to crowds? Especially when Germany is neat and beautiful, and you live far away in a vast empty land? Is it really tourism or something illegal that drives such a person to the said developing nation while claiming tourism?)
This lebensraum was more than convenience, and far from guilty pleasure it has developed into a creed, is what the book informed me then - there is perhaps more than one German quoted to the effect that if one merely paid money to buy land it really does not belong to one, but spilling blood to take it makes it your own. Obviously he or they meant blood of others, unlike the usual convention that has it that blood of your own spilled makes a place yours, and however mistaken that might be in the first place the German variation is astoundingly the creed of a thief and plunderer outspoken like that of marauding hordes from Mongolia - and yet Germans also speak with horror of other nations and races with memories of Mongol attacks during Attila the Hun times.
All this was very informative of the consciousness of the nation, including the mourning for the lost parts such as the Baltic nations, and holidaying there and loudly proclaiming the ownership of the lost parts.
Some mistakes of obvious and racist nature in the book can be pointed out - such as ascribing plague in Europe to the ships bringing back rodents from Asia. Yet it is Europe that had no sensible waste disposal system whatsoever until a century or two at most ago, what with slop buckets emptied out of the windows - bedroom windows were high up on the third floor onwards - into the roads below with at most a shout to the passers by to beware, while Asia and in particular India had elaborate conventions followed meticulously for hygiene that got a bad name due only to a colonial racist mindset of denouncing all that a ruler sees in a ruled nation. Rodents moreover are more than capable of travelling on foot and were unlikely to be limited to Asia, since the continent is far from unconnected to Europe. Any travel is far more likely to have been in the opposite direction along with concepts of waste disposal in homes and bedrooms.
Apart from such a mistake or blip in attitude resulting in wrong assumptions, on the whole the book was very informative, about Germany and German mindset. I am hoping this was the book, since a search so far has not brought another candidate forth. Or I might actually take the time to drive out, find the new location of the library, possibly even locate the book unless they have changed the system or the collection - and it might be an Oxford publication by a Mark somebody.
Some of it is not known to most people even now. For instance the fact that Prussia was once quite another nation with a completely different language and race of people whom Germans wiped out on their crusades (Jerusalem was too far away, too much trouble, and this was far more profitable, go east and massacre people and take over their lands and proliferate) before acquiring the whole region about a millennium ago or so. No wonder Germany was surprised very unpleasantly when this whole process of lebensraum met with disapproval when attempted more recently applied to other parts of Europe, even though other nations had applied it to other parts of the world in making empires.
(When in Germany, one is told Germany did not have any empire; usually such a discourse is based on the assumption that the listener is unaware of world history and facts of wwii, and won't question what then was Rommel doing in Africa, or know that some regions of Africa were in fact colonies of Germany.)
Even more recently we met a woman on a train to Paris from Germany, who pointed out at lands of France and said "all this empty land, and Germany needs land, it is too crowded" while officially German government encourages huge families by every possible means - tax breaks, free schooling, free rides on trains, et al. And apart from other breaks even the last is not negligible, German trains are quite another eye opener, what with excellent timings and good schedules and luxury in lowest class and the whole country connected so one need never drive.
Yet another German woman visiting a developing nation for more than third time spoke of her disapproval of uncontrolled breeding and crowds in that country, while she lives in another vast and empty country and travels to the said crowded developing nation for tourism - so we wondered at her veracity in toto. (Why travel for tourism and pleasure to a place you find this irritating due to crowds? Especially when Germany is neat and beautiful, and you live far away in a vast empty land? Is it really tourism or something illegal that drives such a person to the said developing nation while claiming tourism?)
This lebensraum was more than convenience, and far from guilty pleasure it has developed into a creed, is what the book informed me then - there is perhaps more than one German quoted to the effect that if one merely paid money to buy land it really does not belong to one, but spilling blood to take it makes it your own. Obviously he or they meant blood of others, unlike the usual convention that has it that blood of your own spilled makes a place yours, and however mistaken that might be in the first place the German variation is astoundingly the creed of a thief and plunderer outspoken like that of marauding hordes from Mongolia - and yet Germans also speak with horror of other nations and races with memories of Mongol attacks during Attila the Hun times.
All this was very informative of the consciousness of the nation, including the mourning for the lost parts such as the Baltic nations, and holidaying there and loudly proclaiming the ownership of the lost parts.
Some mistakes of obvious and racist nature in the book can be pointed out - such as ascribing plague in Europe to the ships bringing back rodents from Asia. Yet it is Europe that had no sensible waste disposal system whatsoever until a century or two at most ago, what with slop buckets emptied out of the windows - bedroom windows were high up on the third floor onwards - into the roads below with at most a shout to the passers by to beware, while Asia and in particular India had elaborate conventions followed meticulously for hygiene that got a bad name due only to a colonial racist mindset of denouncing all that a ruler sees in a ruled nation. Rodents moreover are more than capable of travelling on foot and were unlikely to be limited to Asia, since the continent is far from unconnected to Europe. Any travel is far more likely to have been in the opposite direction along with concepts of waste disposal in homes and bedrooms.
Apart from such a mistake or blip in attitude resulting in wrong assumptions, on the whole the book was very informative, about Germany and German mindset. I am hoping this was the book, since a search so far has not brought another candidate forth. Or I might actually take the time to drive out, find the new location of the library, possibly even locate the book unless they have changed the system or the collection - and it might be an Oxford publication by a Mark somebody.
Connections: by James Burke.
Perhaps even before it was a television series this was a series of columns in a scientific journal with great popular appeal, and we were fans who later stuck on when the television series was available to us (being in some professions not only does not allow one time to watch television but also makes one being looked at askance if one so much as admitted to looking in the direction of a television, or thinking of buying one). Now it is a book, and I am sure there are dvds of the television series out for sale, it ought to be fun to read and to watch.
Whoever thought of it has a genius of some sort, connecting seemingly far out incidents, people, inventions, practices, events, as they were in life - it is only in today's increasingly narrower definitions of disciplines of study that things seem not connected as they in reality are.
Whoever thought of it has a genius of some sort, connecting seemingly far out incidents, people, inventions, practices, events, as they were in life - it is only in today's increasingly narrower definitions of disciplines of study that things seem not connected as they in reality are.
All Quiet On The Western Front: by Erich Maria Remarque.
Most accounts of war are bugle led parades, with heros marching to supposed victory, This is the first time a book, a film dared to be different, telling the story of little boys marching to war with all its ignominies and death being merely one of the many horrible facts they endured that no one ought to have to go through. Revolutionary for its time and all the more so because it was about the first world war, assumed to be the lesser horror of the two whether wrongly or not.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
A Bridge Too Far: by Cornelius Ryan.
It is difficult to describe in short the whole humongous war machine and the excellent men that came together in the fight for survival of humanity on one side, with glory of one nation out to conquer civilisation on the other. Cornelius Ryan has attempted that in his several excellent books on various parts, this one being about the attempt to control the bridge across the Rhine at Arnhem.
The plan was ambitious and not impossible but only practical with some guaranteed miracles, and much of men were lost in the process. Was it all for the glory of one prima donna, is not clear.
This is what they did, this is how they fought and died so we can live as free men and women, and it is worth a look or more, several looks, reads. And the film is excellent too.
The film version of the book by Cornelius Ryan is an excellent job with many, many superlative actors in comparatively small roles all worthy of notice, telling the story of battle to capture the bridge across the Rhine at Arnhem. Liv Ulmann, Sir Laurence Olivier, Sean Connery, and many more actors make it even more worth watching especially with their stardom bowing to the need of the characters being played well and stardom being forgotten. Robert Redford is very new, and yet memorable with just one silent expression when asked to do an impossible job. The end where the bitter officer questions the need of loss of quite so many men by a premature action is very memorable.
The plan was ambitious and not impossible but only practical with some guaranteed miracles, and much of men were lost in the process. Was it all for the glory of one prima donna, is not clear.
This is what they did, this is how they fought and died so we can live as free men and women, and it is worth a look or more, several looks, reads. And the film is excellent too.
The film version of the book by Cornelius Ryan is an excellent job with many, many superlative actors in comparatively small roles all worthy of notice, telling the story of battle to capture the bridge across the Rhine at Arnhem. Liv Ulmann, Sir Laurence Olivier, Sean Connery, and many more actors make it even more worth watching especially with their stardom bowing to the need of the characters being played well and stardom being forgotten. Robert Redford is very new, and yet memorable with just one silent expression when asked to do an impossible job. The end where the bitter officer questions the need of loss of quite so many men by a premature action is very memorable.
Secret Agent 666: Aleister Crowley, British Intelligence and the Occult : - by Richard B. Spence
Why this one is worth looking at - according to official description
"Crowley, also known as the Great Beast, has been the subject of several biographies, some painting him as a misunderstood genius, others as a manipulative charlatan. None of them have looked seriously at his career as an agent of British Intelligence. Using documents gleaned from British, American, French, and Italian archives, Secret Agent 666 sensationally reveals that Crowley played a major role in the sinking of the Lusitania, a plot to overthrow the government of Spain, the thwarting of Irish and Indian nationalist conspiracies, and the 1941 flight of Rudolf Hess. "
All of which sounds like something or someone one ought to know about. ”
"Crowley, also known as the Great Beast, has been the subject of several biographies, some painting him as a misunderstood genius, others as a manipulative charlatan. None of them have looked seriously at his career as an agent of British Intelligence. Using documents gleaned from British, American, French, and Italian archives, Secret Agent 666 sensationally reveals that Crowley played a major role in the sinking of the Lusitania, a plot to overthrow the government of Spain, the thwarting of Irish and Indian nationalist conspiracies, and the 1941 flight of Rudolf Hess. "
All of which sounds like something or someone one ought to know about. ”
Our Man In Havana: by Graham Greene.
If someone is willing to pay for a commodity and desperate to believe it exists, and the pay depends on the excess of its existence, it will be manufactured by fraud if necessary.
This book does not predate the happenings in post war Germany when US occupational authorities and their masters back home were willing to pay and forgive - even reinstate - nazi men in authority of yore, for sake of co-operation in cold war against Soviets, all of which resulted in Germans putting back all the nazis in place and inflating information against Soviets by hundredfold routinely, often manufacturing the figures, which in turn resulted in an escalation of arms race that cost poor people of both nation in terms of education and health, not to mention world's poor in terms of food, since exorbitant quantities were spent on arms never to be used but only to posture and to threaten.
The book does not predate any of this, but the happenings in Europe which went on for a few decades, but is written towards the beginning of it all when the pattern was established, and has the story set in Havana where similar events are set, a poor businessman this time single-handedly causing much trouble out of nothing due to paymasters from across the sea who are all too willing to believe any atrocious lies that go according to their imagination and not the facts.
This book does not predate the happenings in post war Germany when US occupational authorities and their masters back home were willing to pay and forgive - even reinstate - nazi men in authority of yore, for sake of co-operation in cold war against Soviets, all of which resulted in Germans putting back all the nazis in place and inflating information against Soviets by hundredfold routinely, often manufacturing the figures, which in turn resulted in an escalation of arms race that cost poor people of both nation in terms of education and health, not to mention world's poor in terms of food, since exorbitant quantities were spent on arms never to be used but only to posture and to threaten.
The book does not predate any of this, but the happenings in Europe which went on for a few decades, but is written towards the beginning of it all when the pattern was established, and has the story set in Havana where similar events are set, a poor businessman this time single-handedly causing much trouble out of nothing due to paymasters from across the sea who are all too willing to believe any atrocious lies that go according to their imagination and not the facts.
The Pianist : by Wladyslaw Szpilman.
I stumbled on the par excellence film by accident at well past midnight one time a few years ago when working and absentmindedly letting the television run on, and sleep went flying out the window as the tale mesmerised one, work forgotten, gripped by the poor man hiding in various holes in the town and country torn by war after it was ravaged by occupation. Then on I kept vigil and watched it several times, and really it is one of the few one ought to keep a dvd of. The book I am waiting to get hold of to read, for it must be as good at least, except Polanski does wonders with visuals and every other aspect just right so if one is unfamiliar with any part of the subject a good film is a great help. It is a biography on the other hand, autobiography at that, so it has to be at least as good.
Almost every part of the story is unforgettable, the initial days when the family thinks of hiding wealth in parts of house they are afraid will be raided, the camps and the train, the escape and the hiding in various places, the man who is supposed to feed and instead gives rotten food for precious watch and other things taken from the pianist and all the while stealing the money the music community is providing to feed him, the German officer who helps, the war and the sheer danger to life for anyone in the neighbourhood, the miraculous survival, and the return to playing the piano.
Almost every part of the story is unforgettable, the initial days when the family thinks of hiding wealth in parts of house they are afraid will be raided, the camps and the train, the escape and the hiding in various places, the man who is supposed to feed and instead gives rotten food for precious watch and other things taken from the pianist and all the while stealing the money the music community is providing to feed him, the German officer who helps, the war and the sheer danger to life for anyone in the neighbourhood, the miraculous survival, and the return to playing the piano.
Sidney Reilley: Ace of Spies.
With a life and a character as fascinating, colourful, eventful as this, it is no surprise there are not only a plethora of books about Sidney Reilly but at least one television series - and what is more, films of a whole genre inspired by this character, and his style.
That the James Bond character was created based on this legendary man is the least of the enigma, so fascinating is the figure of this man veiled in mystery.
Born in Russia before revolution, his birth was another mystery, with an established well known wealthy family but a natural father so high up in hierarchy that when at one point he - the son - was assigned the job of toppling the Soviet government he was plausibly the intended figure to lead the revolt and take over in the name of a regime closer to the old monarchy.
He lived during a most turbulent time of history of Europe and the world, and while spying for more than one nation was also a businessman with flair, wealth he created and style he lived in attracting attention and more. He worked for various nations including Britain and Germany, with intrigues that had repercussions on Russia, Japan, Britain, Germany, and more.
Whatever one can find about such a figure of mystery is worth a look.
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Ace of Spies: The True Story of Sidney Reilly (Revealing History)
by Andrew Cook
Trust No One: The Secret World of Sidney Reilly
by Richard B. Spence
Sidney Reilly: The True Story of the World's Greatest Spy
by Michael Kettle
Britain's master spy;: The adventures of Sidney Reilly;
by Sidney Reilly
Reilly: The First Man
by Robin Bruce Lockhart
Ace of Spies
by Robin Bruce Lockhart
German Spies: Carl Von Ossietzky, Juan Pujol, Mutt and Jeff, Sidney Reilly, Fritz Joubert Duquesne, Alexander Parvus, Kurt Frederick Ludwig
Inter-War Spies: Sidney Reilly, Gertrude Bell, St. John Philby, Boris Bazhanov, Erich Mielke, Yakov Blumkin, Ernst Wollweber
Agent Double: Henri Déricourt, Aldrich Ames, Mata Hari, Anthony Blunt, Kim Philby, Sidney Reilly, Mathilde Carré, Ion Mihai Pacepa
Japanese Spies: Sidney Reilly, List of Japanese Spies, 1930-45, Patrick Stanley Vaughan Heenan, John Semer Farnsworth, Akashi Motojiro
Pre-World War I Spies: Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell, Sidney Reilly, Mansfield Smith-Cumming, William Melville, Claude Dansey
1870s Births: Sidney Reilly, Father Divine, Ma Barker, Albert Sharpe, Clayton Teetzel, Greenbrier Ghost, Auda Ibu Tayi, Charles de Saulles
Espion de La Première Guerre Mondiale: William Somerset Maugham, St. John Philby, Mata Hari, Sidney Reilly, Louise de Bettignies
James Bond: Sidney Reilly, James Bond Music, Bond Girl, Outline of James Bond, Gun Barrel Sequence, Inspirations for James Bond, James Bond Jr.
Double Agents: Mata Hari, Juan Pujol, Eddie Chapman, Mutt and Jeff, Donald Maclean, Sidney Reilly, Robert Hanssen, Radu Lecca, Aldrich Ames
Espion Allemand: Wilhelm Canaris, Heinrich Von Kleist, Mata Hari, Reinhard Gehlen, Sidney Reilly, Violette Morris, Fritz Joubert Duquesne
Reilly: Ace of Spies (TV Times special)
.....................
That the James Bond character was created based on this legendary man is the least of the enigma, so fascinating is the figure of this man veiled in mystery.
Born in Russia before revolution, his birth was another mystery, with an established well known wealthy family but a natural father so high up in hierarchy that when at one point he - the son - was assigned the job of toppling the Soviet government he was plausibly the intended figure to lead the revolt and take over in the name of a regime closer to the old monarchy.
He lived during a most turbulent time of history of Europe and the world, and while spying for more than one nation was also a businessman with flair, wealth he created and style he lived in attracting attention and more. He worked for various nations including Britain and Germany, with intrigues that had repercussions on Russia, Japan, Britain, Germany, and more.
Whatever one can find about such a figure of mystery is worth a look.
.....................
Ace of Spies: The True Story of Sidney Reilly (Revealing History)
by Andrew Cook
Trust No One: The Secret World of Sidney Reilly
by Richard B. Spence
Sidney Reilly: The True Story of the World's Greatest Spy
by Michael Kettle
Britain's master spy;: The adventures of Sidney Reilly;
by Sidney Reilly
Reilly: The First Man
by Robin Bruce Lockhart
Ace of Spies
by Robin Bruce Lockhart
German Spies: Carl Von Ossietzky, Juan Pujol, Mutt and Jeff, Sidney Reilly, Fritz Joubert Duquesne, Alexander Parvus, Kurt Frederick Ludwig
Inter-War Spies: Sidney Reilly, Gertrude Bell, St. John Philby, Boris Bazhanov, Erich Mielke, Yakov Blumkin, Ernst Wollweber
Agent Double: Henri Déricourt, Aldrich Ames, Mata Hari, Anthony Blunt, Kim Philby, Sidney Reilly, Mathilde Carré, Ion Mihai Pacepa
Japanese Spies: Sidney Reilly, List of Japanese Spies, 1930-45, Patrick Stanley Vaughan Heenan, John Semer Farnsworth, Akashi Motojiro
Pre-World War I Spies: Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell, Sidney Reilly, Mansfield Smith-Cumming, William Melville, Claude Dansey
1870s Births: Sidney Reilly, Father Divine, Ma Barker, Albert Sharpe, Clayton Teetzel, Greenbrier Ghost, Auda Ibu Tayi, Charles de Saulles
Espion de La Première Guerre Mondiale: William Somerset Maugham, St. John Philby, Mata Hari, Sidney Reilly, Louise de Bettignies
James Bond: Sidney Reilly, James Bond Music, Bond Girl, Outline of James Bond, Gun Barrel Sequence, Inspirations for James Bond, James Bond Jr.
Double Agents: Mata Hari, Juan Pujol, Eddie Chapman, Mutt and Jeff, Donald Maclean, Sidney Reilly, Robert Hanssen, Radu Lecca, Aldrich Ames
Espion Allemand: Wilhelm Canaris, Heinrich Von Kleist, Mata Hari, Reinhard Gehlen, Sidney Reilly, Violette Morris, Fritz Joubert Duquesne
Reilly: Ace of Spies (TV Times special)
.....................
Three Musketeers: by Alexandre Dumas, père.
Not only this tells one something about history, it also gives the window on the morals of the day - a male subordinate could plot and kill and rob in the name of politics until caught with his hands red or in pockets of another, but a woman unable to show all the pearls she had was more than a suspect, she was already condemned with loss of a pearl or two as undeniable proof of her adultery, giving no quarter to the whole possible spectrum of human relationships that span the gap between gift of pearls as a memento and an actual adultery, not merely a love of heart but an act physically committed.
And so with all the adventures of the musketeers and their success in reaching their destination and return, the most satisfying is the moment when the queen is able to show a full set of pearls, and the villain is accused of intending to present her majesty with extra pearls under an elaborate charade of making the king demand the queen show her pearls and insinuating the minister had two of them.
Second only to the superb, incomparable Count of Monte Cristo, and perhaps more fun in all its innocence compared to the tragic reality of the other, this classic.
And so with all the adventures of the musketeers and their success in reaching their destination and return, the most satisfying is the moment when the queen is able to show a full set of pearls, and the villain is accused of intending to present her majesty with extra pearls under an elaborate charade of making the king demand the queen show her pearls and insinuating the minister had two of them.
Second only to the superb, incomparable Count of Monte Cristo, and perhaps more fun in all its innocence compared to the tragic reality of the other, this classic.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Gone With The Wind: by Margaret Mitchell
Often people mistake characters for the actors that play them in a film, and just as often people judge them in light of their prejudices never apparent in spite of all progress of society and attempted enlightenment. It is amusing to notice the reactions of a hoard to a successful woman who was unfortunate in love, while they might claim to worship virtues that are held up nominally but practiced rarely. Hypocrisy and manipulation however do not come naturally to everyone, and one that is clear of those is seen with hatred by most who use the normal social tools.
Gone With The Wind is a part of US history, of the years around the civil war of US, and it gives a great deal of information about the era in an intimate way to those that are not from that part of the world.
Again, on an intimate level it is also about a woman who was very capable and independant in her mind before such ideas existed in that society - it does not mean not marrying or not loving, but knowing your own mind and will and being capable of supporting a family and a clan when necessary, in the direst of circumstances, through one's honest work.
For all the heroic qualities the heroine gets only brickbats, except from the other heroine - whose genre is quiet loving and a "thin blade of steel flashing" within, and supporting those people and those causes she believes in; - even the man who supported the strong, stubborn but a bit blind when it came to perception of people heroine, is not wise enough or strong enough to understand her or to be patient enough.
He is of course much supported and forgiven his flaws and misdeeds by all - while she receives almost universally bad sentiments from the people then and readers or viewers now. Little has changed in perception and gap of treatment in the century and half past.
It was only the writer who immortalised her heroine, who was based on someone real. The story was written as a way to relate to her husband the story of an era and a persona she had always heard spoken of as she grew up.
Strangely this is one of the convincing arguments against arranged or well thought out matchmaking for marriages when up against a love especially when both persons involved feel it. Thinking over the whole course of events it becomes somehow clear that if only Ashley had the wisdom, the courage to admit his love for Scarlett, if only they had married, Scarlett would be an adoring wife never stepping below the normally universally demanded standard of behaviour from "ladies" (which in fact she did not in action ever but was indicted just as universally for loving someone with a steadfast heart and going on with her life with marriages and children anyway, rather than living as an unwanted unmarried heartbroken woman pining for her lover who in fact loved her and desired her!), - much less looking elsewhere or a life that scandalised society in any way. A respectably married woman who does not care two hoots for company of another man is forgiven every other scandalous behaviour including the wet petticoats a la Grandma Robillard and Scarlett was not feminine enough to indulge in any of it, deep within she was more of man with a mind, a strong mind.
One wonders sometimes if then Rhett might have married Melanie, since he did always have respect and concern for her, and in this the two men are very alike, except that Rhett understood Scarlett - as a child who is willful and stubborn and crying for the moon - pretty much as her own father Gerald O'Hara did, and loved her for everything including her indomitable courage in face of every impossible adversity. Rhett was more Gerald's age or at any rate that of Ellen Robillard O'Hara, perhaps even older to her, anyway. And there have been some suspicions about Melanie's visit consoling him after the death of his daughter, which one suspects the writer had a toungue in cheek about, leaving the scenario the way she did.
All such speculations would hold water if the writer had not been so emphatic about her characrters, and explicit about every little detail. Thus one is told firmly that Melanie in fact was too timid and scared to death of anything male, especially virile robust males such as Gerald, and Rhett until he befriends her with respect and concern inspiring confidence in her, and that she sees him as a brother and says so. And if Melanie said so that is what she thought - neither of the two women are hypocritical when it comes to it, except in silence for sake of courtesy socially unless it is made desirable to break it or impossible to keep it.
Life would be very convenient if everyone loved those that make a good match, and understood that anything else was folly - but hearts don't do acccount books of life and have an instinct superior to mind often. Following heart takes more courage than some people have. Men ought to have courage in theory, but in this realm it is women who are wiser, with more courage to boot.
Why did Scarlett make marriages in cold blood is easily explained by the various discourses in the book if indeed it is a mystery in a system where a male might court anyone he wishes and a woman must hold her tongue and her whole self in check and respond only when asked, and accept one when suitable. Love as experienced by Scarlett's warm heart is a torture, and weary load to carry on her frail shoulders, and moreover an excuse for the hypocrites and the fortunate and the cold hearted to stone a loving hearted woman with impunity.
But there is more. Her mother, the aristocratic very proper Ellen O'Hara, loved just as impetuously and stormily and unfortunately at the same age, and married the first man she found suitable when she lost her love due to her family's interference. She was perhaps more fortunate in that her loved one died - which is when she married Gerald O'Hara, who had selected her after careful scrutiny of all possible eligible candidates. Gerald was in awe of his wife, and loved her, but while she was entirely proper and honourable in her life she also was a woman with her heart in the grave with her dead loved one, and cold.
With that perspective it is easy to see that what Scarlett knew about love was a little from her father and the rest from her own heart, with no example set for her. And in that perspective her entire conduct is more than noble, more than honourable. She is willing to give the promises her love asks - which is to take care of his wife, and the baby - and more. She is willing to labour and toil like a field hand when necessary to feed her own, never asking for help from others such as the O'Hara uncles or the Robillard aunts. In fact she sends them money knowing they have little to live on, money she earns with her own toil and risks she takes in the process in Atlanta.
As for her husbands, two out of three die before they know her heart was elsewhere and she married them for reasons other than falling in love. Which is fortunate for the first one, who never loved his fixed cousin and married Scarlett because he was in love with her and dazzlingly happy to think she loved him too. He died with this love, instead of a drab existence he had until then, and hence a fortunate man. As for the second husband, he was courting a younger woman and she was not in love with him either, except there seems to have been no one else from a neighbourhood full of young males courting Suellen O'Hara, who couldn't possibly have been so unattractive as all that - she was the younger sister of the same parents who gave birth to Scarlett and Carreen the fragile blossom beauty.
Frank married Scarlett the moment he thought she loved him, indeed he forgot about Suellen even in the first Twelve Oaks scene when Scarlett smiled at him and spent the barbecue vying with half a dozen other - much younger, strapping full blooded southern - males, bringing food for Scarlett. And he was happy enough - there are much worse mariages than his with Scarlett, with women who never have never experienced love and are far less attractive at that, and expect their husbands to provide for all their needs and luxuries too, unlike a Scarlett who worked hard to make her people secure so they never go hungry again.
As for Rhett, the never marrying man who fell in love and met his Waterloo in her and married her because he finally couldn't get her in any other way - he was about twice the age of the young woman (at her age most women of her class today are still dealing with various pleasures of life and not committed much less required to toil and fear starvation or being without a roof) and should have had the patience and understanding not to speak honesty. Having been the catalyst for her exclusion from society, the least he could have done is to reestablish her when he did so himself for his daughter. That he could not see her heart, concealed by her pride and her fear of his sarcasm, was his deficiency.
The film suffered not only from necessity of being shorter than required to show so huge a canvas of a story, dealing with generations and families from Ireland and France to beginning of Georgia and Atlanta and civil war, but also from biased direction and screenplay, and poor casting except for that of Scarlett O'Hara. Beautiful Olivia de Havilland was far from the timid and plain Melanie afraid of males (- Audrey Hepburn could have done far superior a job of portraying Melanie, if the film had not come at a time when she and Anne Frank alike were part of the victims of the war going on in Europe and the occupation of their country by the brutal), Rhett really ought to have been someone far more like Cary Grant - and as for Ashley the dreamy love, he is a blond noble beautiful dreamy thinker, and only Gregory Peck would do except for the blond bit which is a must. Mitchell's descriptions leave no room for a doubt or a different interpretation, and I don't know if there is any performer that would suit to play Ashley.
Gone With The Wind is a part of US history, of the years around the civil war of US, and it gives a great deal of information about the era in an intimate way to those that are not from that part of the world.
Again, on an intimate level it is also about a woman who was very capable and independant in her mind before such ideas existed in that society - it does not mean not marrying or not loving, but knowing your own mind and will and being capable of supporting a family and a clan when necessary, in the direst of circumstances, through one's honest work.
For all the heroic qualities the heroine gets only brickbats, except from the other heroine - whose genre is quiet loving and a "thin blade of steel flashing" within, and supporting those people and those causes she believes in; - even the man who supported the strong, stubborn but a bit blind when it came to perception of people heroine, is not wise enough or strong enough to understand her or to be patient enough.
He is of course much supported and forgiven his flaws and misdeeds by all - while she receives almost universally bad sentiments from the people then and readers or viewers now. Little has changed in perception and gap of treatment in the century and half past.
It was only the writer who immortalised her heroine, who was based on someone real. The story was written as a way to relate to her husband the story of an era and a persona she had always heard spoken of as she grew up.
Strangely this is one of the convincing arguments against arranged or well thought out matchmaking for marriages when up against a love especially when both persons involved feel it. Thinking over the whole course of events it becomes somehow clear that if only Ashley had the wisdom, the courage to admit his love for Scarlett, if only they had married, Scarlett would be an adoring wife never stepping below the normally universally demanded standard of behaviour from "ladies" (which in fact she did not in action ever but was indicted just as universally for loving someone with a steadfast heart and going on with her life with marriages and children anyway, rather than living as an unwanted unmarried heartbroken woman pining for her lover who in fact loved her and desired her!), - much less looking elsewhere or a life that scandalised society in any way. A respectably married woman who does not care two hoots for company of another man is forgiven every other scandalous behaviour including the wet petticoats a la Grandma Robillard and Scarlett was not feminine enough to indulge in any of it, deep within she was more of man with a mind, a strong mind.
One wonders sometimes if then Rhett might have married Melanie, since he did always have respect and concern for her, and in this the two men are very alike, except that Rhett understood Scarlett - as a child who is willful and stubborn and crying for the moon - pretty much as her own father Gerald O'Hara did, and loved her for everything including her indomitable courage in face of every impossible adversity. Rhett was more Gerald's age or at any rate that of Ellen Robillard O'Hara, perhaps even older to her, anyway. And there have been some suspicions about Melanie's visit consoling him after the death of his daughter, which one suspects the writer had a toungue in cheek about, leaving the scenario the way she did.
All such speculations would hold water if the writer had not been so emphatic about her characrters, and explicit about every little detail. Thus one is told firmly that Melanie in fact was too timid and scared to death of anything male, especially virile robust males such as Gerald, and Rhett until he befriends her with respect and concern inspiring confidence in her, and that she sees him as a brother and says so. And if Melanie said so that is what she thought - neither of the two women are hypocritical when it comes to it, except in silence for sake of courtesy socially unless it is made desirable to break it or impossible to keep it.
Life would be very convenient if everyone loved those that make a good match, and understood that anything else was folly - but hearts don't do acccount books of life and have an instinct superior to mind often. Following heart takes more courage than some people have. Men ought to have courage in theory, but in this realm it is women who are wiser, with more courage to boot.
Why did Scarlett make marriages in cold blood is easily explained by the various discourses in the book if indeed it is a mystery in a system where a male might court anyone he wishes and a woman must hold her tongue and her whole self in check and respond only when asked, and accept one when suitable. Love as experienced by Scarlett's warm heart is a torture, and weary load to carry on her frail shoulders, and moreover an excuse for the hypocrites and the fortunate and the cold hearted to stone a loving hearted woman with impunity.
But there is more. Her mother, the aristocratic very proper Ellen O'Hara, loved just as impetuously and stormily and unfortunately at the same age, and married the first man she found suitable when she lost her love due to her family's interference. She was perhaps more fortunate in that her loved one died - which is when she married Gerald O'Hara, who had selected her after careful scrutiny of all possible eligible candidates. Gerald was in awe of his wife, and loved her, but while she was entirely proper and honourable in her life she also was a woman with her heart in the grave with her dead loved one, and cold.
With that perspective it is easy to see that what Scarlett knew about love was a little from her father and the rest from her own heart, with no example set for her. And in that perspective her entire conduct is more than noble, more than honourable. She is willing to give the promises her love asks - which is to take care of his wife, and the baby - and more. She is willing to labour and toil like a field hand when necessary to feed her own, never asking for help from others such as the O'Hara uncles or the Robillard aunts. In fact she sends them money knowing they have little to live on, money she earns with her own toil and risks she takes in the process in Atlanta.
As for her husbands, two out of three die before they know her heart was elsewhere and she married them for reasons other than falling in love. Which is fortunate for the first one, who never loved his fixed cousin and married Scarlett because he was in love with her and dazzlingly happy to think she loved him too. He died with this love, instead of a drab existence he had until then, and hence a fortunate man. As for the second husband, he was courting a younger woman and she was not in love with him either, except there seems to have been no one else from a neighbourhood full of young males courting Suellen O'Hara, who couldn't possibly have been so unattractive as all that - she was the younger sister of the same parents who gave birth to Scarlett and Carreen the fragile blossom beauty.
Frank married Scarlett the moment he thought she loved him, indeed he forgot about Suellen even in the first Twelve Oaks scene when Scarlett smiled at him and spent the barbecue vying with half a dozen other - much younger, strapping full blooded southern - males, bringing food for Scarlett. And he was happy enough - there are much worse mariages than his with Scarlett, with women who never have never experienced love and are far less attractive at that, and expect their husbands to provide for all their needs and luxuries too, unlike a Scarlett who worked hard to make her people secure so they never go hungry again.
As for Rhett, the never marrying man who fell in love and met his Waterloo in her and married her because he finally couldn't get her in any other way - he was about twice the age of the young woman (at her age most women of her class today are still dealing with various pleasures of life and not committed much less required to toil and fear starvation or being without a roof) and should have had the patience and understanding not to speak honesty. Having been the catalyst for her exclusion from society, the least he could have done is to reestablish her when he did so himself for his daughter. That he could not see her heart, concealed by her pride and her fear of his sarcasm, was his deficiency.
The film suffered not only from necessity of being shorter than required to show so huge a canvas of a story, dealing with generations and families from Ireland and France to beginning of Georgia and Atlanta and civil war, but also from biased direction and screenplay, and poor casting except for that of Scarlett O'Hara. Beautiful Olivia de Havilland was far from the timid and plain Melanie afraid of males (- Audrey Hepburn could have done far superior a job of portraying Melanie, if the film had not come at a time when she and Anne Frank alike were part of the victims of the war going on in Europe and the occupation of their country by the brutal), Rhett really ought to have been someone far more like Cary Grant - and as for Ashley the dreamy love, he is a blond noble beautiful dreamy thinker, and only Gregory Peck would do except for the blond bit which is a must. Mitchell's descriptions leave no room for a doubt or a different interpretation, and I don't know if there is any performer that would suit to play Ashley.
Trapp Family Singers: by Baroness Maria Augusta Von Trapp.
This is the true story behind the beautiful film shot a good deal on location, blue skies and hills and golden sunshine matched only by the beautiful children and Maria herself. If anything the real story is more fun. More lovable, more adorable.
I remember reading this long ago, and several years later when driving about in Vermont I managed to find the place where the Trapp family has managed to make a second home after leaving Austria. They told us Maria Von Trapp usually came down early to dinner, but we could not wait too long, driving in dark in rather unfamiliar hills would be risky. We waited as long as we could and then went away.
Another decade and more, and now we were in Salzburg, the hometown of Maria and her family where in fact they have special Sound Of Music tours. We took the comprehensive which included a couple of the important sights anyway. It was funny to discover that the house shown in the film, the Von Trapp home, is in fact two different houses, one with a lake front and another where there is the driveway. The chapel is very popular for weddings.
None of that compares with the delightful writing of Maria Von Trapp - the anecdotes, the simplicity, the spirited young woman who grew into a loving and still spirited mother of ten - she lost two of her own and had seven from her husband's previous marriage.
Some that stick in memory are the episode about the sandwiches, the camera, the baby that did not stop crying and embarrassed the mother (and runs the place now), the horse and the house and the singing camps, the woman who told the greengrocer indignantly "ten cents? I can become a cabbage myself around the corner for five cents" - perhaps my memory is incorrect about the cents number, but other than that it is as fresh as the film based on the story.
I remember reading this long ago, and several years later when driving about in Vermont I managed to find the place where the Trapp family has managed to make a second home after leaving Austria. They told us Maria Von Trapp usually came down early to dinner, but we could not wait too long, driving in dark in rather unfamiliar hills would be risky. We waited as long as we could and then went away.
Another decade and more, and now we were in Salzburg, the hometown of Maria and her family where in fact they have special Sound Of Music tours. We took the comprehensive which included a couple of the important sights anyway. It was funny to discover that the house shown in the film, the Von Trapp home, is in fact two different houses, one with a lake front and another where there is the driveway. The chapel is very popular for weddings.
None of that compares with the delightful writing of Maria Von Trapp - the anecdotes, the simplicity, the spirited young woman who grew into a loving and still spirited mother of ten - she lost two of her own and had seven from her husband's previous marriage.
Some that stick in memory are the episode about the sandwiches, the camera, the baby that did not stop crying and embarrassed the mother (and runs the place now), the horse and the house and the singing camps, the woman who told the greengrocer indignantly "ten cents? I can become a cabbage myself around the corner for five cents" - perhaps my memory is incorrect about the cents number, but other than that it is as fresh as the film based on the story.
Naked Came I: A Novel Of Rodin: by David Weiss.
It is strange that a much beloved relative prove so right in so major a fashion, when he cautioned me against idolising artists or poets or writers, with a discreet but definite distinguishing border drawn between their work and their persona.
While one cannot help admiring or at the very least noticing works of Rodin, this biography makes it clear how separate the two, the man and the artist, were. On one hand he creates a thinker, on the other he is so lacking in honour as to not only use two women majorly - exploiting them for their hearts, their talents, their appreciation of his work, and robbing them of all honour, even cheating one of her own work comparable or possibly superior to his - but denies legitimacy to his own son by one he married only at the end of his life, for no discernible reason.
The book gives a good account of the artist and his life.
While one cannot help admiring or at the very least noticing works of Rodin, this biography makes it clear how separate the two, the man and the artist, were. On one hand he creates a thinker, on the other he is so lacking in honour as to not only use two women majorly - exploiting them for their hearts, their talents, their appreciation of his work, and robbing them of all honour, even cheating one of her own work comparable or possibly superior to his - but denies legitimacy to his own son by one he married only at the end of his life, for no discernible reason.
The book gives a good account of the artist and his life.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
The Boy In The Striped Pajamas: by John Boyne.
One knows about the topic before one begins the story, but this is a discovery of the history by an innocent boy he is living through, and one rediscovers the horrors of the fence and the inmates through the eyes, the mind of the boy on the other side of the fence. One experiences his thwarted need to explore, his wonder at the adults who cannot make up their minds about what work they wish to do for life, his trauma at his new friends being ill treated by the fearsome soldier, his shame at having been a coward, his penitence and his goodness of heart. But more than anything else one is petrified with a growing horror while the story proceeds inexorably towards the unthinkable, not believing someone would not stop it all and save the little eight year old and his friend in time, and then the total disbelief as the end arrives without any saviour at all, it is too late, both the boys and the men around them are shut in to perish. One keeps thinking, no, no, not the innocent boy, he did not deserve it too - all the while questioning and answering oneself, of course none of them deserved it, those that were there by design and not by a boyish mistake of ignorance, the boy in the striped pyjamas or his relatives or his ilk, either. And of course one has been horrified by all that for decades. But this one more, a little boy of eight, innocent of guilt and horror his people perpetrated on others, innocent of knowledge of any of it until it was too late, he did not deserve it, either. If only -
The picture is well rounded, too - the innocent mother with her good instincts who thanks the camp inmate for treating her son with his medical knowledge, the grandmother who would not visit, the soldier who is unwilling to lose his own life or report on his father, the girl who is young enough to be enamoured of the creed for all the wrong reasons, the father whose career might be affected by any discovery of his family not falling in line but who has to nevertheless give in on thought of his children and the effect of this atmosphere on them, and the end that perhaps only one of the family deserved being the perpetrator himself but certainly neither the mother nor the boy did.
The picture is well rounded, too - the innocent mother with her good instincts who thanks the camp inmate for treating her son with his medical knowledge, the grandmother who would not visit, the soldier who is unwilling to lose his own life or report on his father, the girl who is young enough to be enamoured of the creed for all the wrong reasons, the father whose career might be affected by any discovery of his family not falling in line but who has to nevertheless give in on thought of his children and the effect of this atmosphere on them, and the end that perhaps only one of the family deserved being the perpetrator himself but certainly neither the mother nor the boy did.
Mary, Mary: by St. John G Ervine
Mary, Mary, quite contrary goes a rhyme, and that is what the title is taken from. Delightful play about a witty young woman with a fragile beauty that she is unaware of, and a wit she uses to protect herself consequently, resulting in situations where a man might find it hard being in love with her - she is treating every overture as a table tennis ball to be hit back. She is divorced when the play opens, and visiting her ex husband to go over some accounting problems for him for taxes. He still loves her and has given it up as hopeless. And then there is the friend of the husband, a successful and handsome actor, who happens to be around and finds her attractive. Will the couple in love find their way back to their marriage? Will she realise she is beautiful as a woman, and learn to bask in the love that comes her way?
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Gracie: by George Burns.
I remember living alone, far away from anyone I knew, and being relatively free after a few years of stress, buying a television - my first, and a very good one for that time, with facilites that the company normally offered only in larger models - and discovering the Burns and Allen show one late night when looking for something to relieve stress.
Thereafter it was a routine, being awake every night until late to watch the reruns of the show, and what a blessing it was watching it, laughing, forgetting all stress and worry and so forth for just that short while.
When I discovered the book, it was a sort of combination of a memory of the show relived and a whole new delight as well, with the book adding a few details to the life of the couple one had come to love.
"My uncle bent steel rods with his teeth until they bent"
"He must have been very strong"
"Yes, but he looked funny with bent teeth"
- And unless one sees the incomparable, unique Gracie one would think this is not very funny. At least not as much as when she says it.
Thereafter it was a routine, being awake every night until late to watch the reruns of the show, and what a blessing it was watching it, laughing, forgetting all stress and worry and so forth for just that short while.
When I discovered the book, it was a sort of combination of a memory of the show relived and a whole new delight as well, with the book adding a few details to the life of the couple one had come to love.
"My uncle bent steel rods with his teeth until they bent"
"He must have been very strong"
"Yes, but he looked funny with bent teeth"
- And unless one sees the incomparable, unique Gracie one would think this is not very funny. At least not as much as when she says it.
Doctors: by Erich Segal.
About medical professionals, in their many specialisations and roles, including mishaps and - or - less than expected professional standards, with long lasting effects on human lives they affected.
Especially horrifying is the part where a doctor couple cannot guarantee a safe birth of their own first child, due to various mistakes on part of the professional colleagues they trusted.
Especially horrifying is the part where a doctor couple cannot guarantee a safe birth of their own first child, due to various mistakes on part of the professional colleagues they trusted.
This Child Is Mine: by Henry Denker.
Times have gone ahead of this, and now people give birth to what is after all a child of totally another couple, or at least some variation thereof. And while no one can question the benefit of a good environment, denying ties of blood is unrealistic to say the least. After all a mutual recognition that is immediate in one or both when seeing and hearing those that are related has to do with more than environment, and people inherit a great deal that does not change with adoption or living elsewhere.
It is interesting to recall the documentary on one information channel, Discovery or National Geographic or some such one, where they showed a spinner dolphin brought up since babyhood amongst bottle nosed dolphins in nature with no human intervention - and while other dolphins around this one jumped clear, this one spinned, never having been taught to do so by example in surroundings.
Again, this is not to deny the role adoptive relatives play - and after all, every friend, every love, every marriage is an adoption outside law or within, until there are bonds of blood created by children related to both - but law, bringing up, and love do not wipe out bloodlines and the characteristics inherited thereby.
Children are not property, and love ought to be shared by all without animosity of competition or exclusion of a part by another.
It is interesting to recall the documentary on one information channel, Discovery or National Geographic or some such one, where they showed a spinner dolphin brought up since babyhood amongst bottle nosed dolphins in nature with no human intervention - and while other dolphins around this one jumped clear, this one spinned, never having been taught to do so by example in surroundings.
Again, this is not to deny the role adoptive relatives play - and after all, every friend, every love, every marriage is an adoption outside law or within, until there are bonds of blood created by children related to both - but law, bringing up, and love do not wipe out bloodlines and the characteristics inherited thereby.
Children are not property, and love ought to be shared by all without animosity of competition or exclusion of a part by another.
The Chamber: by John Grisham.
A grandson appeals on behalf of a grandfather, one who caused his - the grandson's - own father's (which is, the grandfather's son) suicide from shame by his kkk connections and racist murders, in the process discovering more of the past.
Jurrasic Park: by Michael Crichton.
I saw the film first, and it was scariest at the level of the thought that some rich guy from US would actually do this! The whole creating of the park, I mean.
When reading the original book however the interesting part was how the big sister - with intelligence and courage - was the one who knew and was the savvy one who saved the poarty at one point while the kid brother was little and natural kid; in the film they changed it to big brother saves and knows while little sister is silly.
A similar change was made in the two versions of Hitchcock's film "The Man Who Knew Too Much" - the original English version had a mother who is a champion at shooting and it is her courageous kidnapped daughter who walks the edge of a terrace when the expert marksman mother saves her by shooting the villain pursuing the daughter, calm and unerring. The father is not short of manhood - he fights villains with his mind and fists both. The later version lacked the tense and intelligent edge and made up with colour and hysterics and music.
When reading the original book however the interesting part was how the big sister - with intelligence and courage - was the one who knew and was the savvy one who saved the poarty at one point while the kid brother was little and natural kid; in the film they changed it to big brother saves and knows while little sister is silly.
A similar change was made in the two versions of Hitchcock's film "The Man Who Knew Too Much" - the original English version had a mother who is a champion at shooting and it is her courageous kidnapped daughter who walks the edge of a terrace when the expert marksman mother saves her by shooting the villain pursuing the daughter, calm and unerring. The father is not short of manhood - he fights villains with his mind and fists both. The later version lacked the tense and intelligent edge and made up with colour and hysterics and music.
Disclosure: by Michael Crichton.
While the scenario crafted here with the usual skill of Crichton is far from unlikely when the two genders do achieve some sort of parity, the reality is that sexual harrassment is as much a male game victimising women who they can harrass - which in short includes all but females that are property of stronger males, such as boss or father or someone with power to smash a harrasser into smithereens - and usually the end game is to make the woman feel like nothing, like an object used and thrown when not needed, not a human or even a pet. Reality is women make males feel threatened without doing anything, and all the more so when they are competent, achieved, beautiful, smart, knowledgeable, or in any way superior. A threatened male does not rest until he proves that he can conquer the woman who makes him feel less by not noticing his maleness the only way he can, by preying sexually and then exposing her to the whole world as a mere object to be used at will, not necessarily for pleasure, even, but just to destroy her.
Smart women know this, and they pretend to be silly, stupid, dependent on every male, cowering, fawning, and giggling. It is a game they can play to their own advantage, because as long as they pretend things are the way the stupid men wish the women get away with anything. Almost.
So is any state of slavery, in any system.
But exposing this does not make news or sensational reading, so it must be inverted and a novel (with successful film following and money too) must show a woman boss harrassing a former lover who now works for her, and making false accusations of sexual harrassment against him, and to top it all must be the one villain in the corporate game who is responsible for the corporate damage as well by selling out to competitors or worse, covering up what is wrong, and so forth. Again, that all this is a usual male game and most working women are honest does not make sensational news or thriller.
Fatal Attraction made a thriller, while the original that was closer to reality - a small film about a male who went playing around the one weekend his wife was not around and when on his wife's return saw her answer the telephone, knowing his marriage was over - is merely reality, unsuitable for corporate conglomerate interests. For, if they do not drive females back to housework slavery, how do they enslave males that work for them? If men actually carried out promises made in church when they wed, families would be a reality and not just a slogan corrupted out of all meaning till it amounts to "kinder, küchen, kirche", to provide fodder for the arsenal profiteers.
As for women having power and being able to do what this book depicts, they do a far better job of it when they do not go out to workplace, and stick to the male game and turn it around on those that would enslave them.
Smart women know this, and they pretend to be silly, stupid, dependent on every male, cowering, fawning, and giggling. It is a game they can play to their own advantage, because as long as they pretend things are the way the stupid men wish the women get away with anything. Almost.
So is any state of slavery, in any system.
But exposing this does not make news or sensational reading, so it must be inverted and a novel (with successful film following and money too) must show a woman boss harrassing a former lover who now works for her, and making false accusations of sexual harrassment against him, and to top it all must be the one villain in the corporate game who is responsible for the corporate damage as well by selling out to competitors or worse, covering up what is wrong, and so forth. Again, that all this is a usual male game and most working women are honest does not make sensational news or thriller.
Fatal Attraction made a thriller, while the original that was closer to reality - a small film about a male who went playing around the one weekend his wife was not around and when on his wife's return saw her answer the telephone, knowing his marriage was over - is merely reality, unsuitable for corporate conglomerate interests. For, if they do not drive females back to housework slavery, how do they enslave males that work for them? If men actually carried out promises made in church when they wed, families would be a reality and not just a slogan corrupted out of all meaning till it amounts to "kinder, küchen, kirche", to provide fodder for the arsenal profiteers.
As for women having power and being able to do what this book depicts, they do a far better job of it when they do not go out to workplace, and stick to the male game and turn it around on those that would enslave them.
The Sunbird: by Wilbur Smith.
Based on an archeological expedition's findings of ruins and remains in southern parts of Africa, of what they surmised was a Carthaginian colony, implying that when Carthaginians were driven out and massacred they did not all immediately perish but some fled with ships to Africa sailing down along coasts of the land and finally coming to find this place a refuge and building a colony, a civilisation there, until a few centuries later they perished due to local circumstances.
This book incorporates all of this theory and has a story of romance, betrayal, reincarnation and archeological finds built around it.
This book incorporates all of this theory and has a story of romance, betrayal, reincarnation and archeological finds built around it.
Icon: by Frederick Forsyth.
I had started reading this under the mistaken assumption of what it was about and instead gained a lot of information on the Russian state of affairs post 1991, and certainly enjoyed it. As for the other one I thought it was, that is still lost, in that I remember the story completely but have no idea who the author or what the title is, pity!
The Negotiator: by Frederick Forsyth.
The art of negotiating, the kidnappers that seem to know what moves to expect and are always one step ahead, the boy that runs in an emaciated state towards freedom, and then the negotiator has to go after the kidnappers and those behind them. A mystery thriller about a conspiracy that could bring world close to brink of peril - as usual, and also as usual, brilliantly written.
The Afghan: by Frederick Forsyth.
This one takes off from after the Fist of God, with one important character, the British man who can successfully pass off as an Asian and is needed again to find out what is going on. Which he does but the problem is to inform those that need to know before it is too late.
The Fist Of God: by Frederick Forsyth.
A book that is far more than its genre of mystery thriller, with its background of Iraq and society in Iraq, and possible weapon plan and so on - and a British man who can successfully pretend to be west Asian.
The ingenious solution to the question of how to hide a weapon that is not exactly small, was interesting.
The ingenious solution to the question of how to hide a weapon that is not exactly small, was interesting.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
The Day Of The Jackal: by Frederick Forsyth.
Few sources could have let the world outside know about the various factors as far as people not involved with then diplomatic or political world involved, about the attempts on life of De Gaulle, a national hero of France since the end of wwII, and about the general displeasure about Algerian independence in various circles in France. It was electrifying in how much one learns from this tale set in the sixties in France.
The Odessa File: by Frederick Forsyth.
One of the most difficult books to write about even with superlatives.
Forsyth delves into the wwII and Germany as it then was, diving in straight from the time he wrote it, with a witness who lived only for the sake of testifying at the trial of a criminal only to find out that the criminals, the nazis and the ss, are in fact not only living and doing fine but will never be tried much less punished.
His - the surviving witness's - suicide, and the discovery of his diary that is then handed over to a reporter, starts the story and brings us to the organisation that was formed to protect precisely those criminals, ODESSA.
Forsyth does not go into why they were successful in surviving and doing well, and perhaps he did not then know, perhaps it was not then known to too many, but which now is known well enough to be aired on information channels.
Complicity and convenience of US authorities who needed to spy on the newly ex-allies, the Russians, and therefore allowed the Germans to do what suited them in exchange for the spying. Germans in turn made up vastly exaggerated reports that were largely responsible for US obsession with arms race escalation and impovrishment of not only much of the world but also of people of US.
Forsyth delves into the wwII and Germany as it then was, diving in straight from the time he wrote it, with a witness who lived only for the sake of testifying at the trial of a criminal only to find out that the criminals, the nazis and the ss, are in fact not only living and doing fine but will never be tried much less punished.
His - the surviving witness's - suicide, and the discovery of his diary that is then handed over to a reporter, starts the story and brings us to the organisation that was formed to protect precisely those criminals, ODESSA.
Forsyth does not go into why they were successful in surviving and doing well, and perhaps he did not then know, perhaps it was not then known to too many, but which now is known well enough to be aired on information channels.
Complicity and convenience of US authorities who needed to spy on the newly ex-allies, the Russians, and therefore allowed the Germans to do what suited them in exchange for the spying. Germans in turn made up vastly exaggerated reports that were largely responsible for US obsession with arms race escalation and impovrishment of not only much of the world but also of people of US.
Whispers: by Belva Plain.
It is far too common a story as far as the first part goes, a man abusing his wife and pretending he is not doing it, telling her she fell, or that it was her fault making him angry. Most societies unfortunately go with the lie or help actively to perpetrate it - partly because the man has the power physically and financially in most cases, partly because the woman has the need and responsibility not only about the children but also for love itself, partly because most societies treat young women as commodity and if the man loses this one he has usually a choice of a hundred others, or more if he is young and attractive enough and doing well - or even if he is merely able to feed another one.
Uses to be that there was no redress whatsoever, and the women took it out on children if they could when it was impossible to keep it in, or on other helpless souls at their mercy if they could. And this suffering with the imposed inability to do anything about it made a separate culture of women all over the world that specialised in verbal and emotional weapons, so women could inflict tremendous damage without lifting a finger, merely by a gossip session or a raised eyebrow.
Times may have changed somewhat but not enough, as anyone can experience. Police have to implement the law after all and that is where it comes to finally, even if a nation and a culture is raised enough in awareness to have laws to protect a woman. Often the husband has connections who not only refuse to help the abused and victimised woman but help the husband track her down to kill her. Or he can afford powerful attorneys and deprive her of the children, reputation, and much more. Not too many people are willing to take on a man who will go to any length to persecute an enemy, preferring to stay on the right side of the bad guys even when their own self respect is involved, and certainly a hapless victimised woman is a cause for few.
On the other hand most are all too willing to malign or further abuse and attempt to corral any woman who manages to escape an abusive man, whatever her relationship with him - daughter, sister, wife, friend. Hunting an injured one for a bite is the game of ghouls, and people are all too willing to turn into one for a bite.
The good thing about this book is the successful escape of this woman from the abusive husband, and her not necessarily jumping into another relationship immediately for security, but taking her time. It is necessary to paint a picture where normalcy is restored with a little courage, so more and more women become persons rather than staying cowering penned in slavery, or do not use this usual scenario to make slaves out of perfectly good men by clinging to a false helplessness.
One excuse most abusers offer is that they cannot control their temper. This is obviously false, since few are so out of control that they would attack their physical or otherwise superior males - an abusive boss, a rich and insulting customer, an armed policeman, and so forth. It is only a helpless woman they attack usually in privacy behind closed doors, so there are no witnesses they cannot control.
Of course it is extremely useful to thrash the wife before small children so the children cower and obey and never take side of the mother or never attempt to protect her. It is a tactic that mostly works. If not, the abuser can go viciously after the child that dares to be just.
Not that different from the tactics of nazi or any other totalitarian faith, culture, system of ruling slaves.
Uses to be that there was no redress whatsoever, and the women took it out on children if they could when it was impossible to keep it in, or on other helpless souls at their mercy if they could. And this suffering with the imposed inability to do anything about it made a separate culture of women all over the world that specialised in verbal and emotional weapons, so women could inflict tremendous damage without lifting a finger, merely by a gossip session or a raised eyebrow.
Times may have changed somewhat but not enough, as anyone can experience. Police have to implement the law after all and that is where it comes to finally, even if a nation and a culture is raised enough in awareness to have laws to protect a woman. Often the husband has connections who not only refuse to help the abused and victimised woman but help the husband track her down to kill her. Or he can afford powerful attorneys and deprive her of the children, reputation, and much more. Not too many people are willing to take on a man who will go to any length to persecute an enemy, preferring to stay on the right side of the bad guys even when their own self respect is involved, and certainly a hapless victimised woman is a cause for few.
On the other hand most are all too willing to malign or further abuse and attempt to corral any woman who manages to escape an abusive man, whatever her relationship with him - daughter, sister, wife, friend. Hunting an injured one for a bite is the game of ghouls, and people are all too willing to turn into one for a bite.
The good thing about this book is the successful escape of this woman from the abusive husband, and her not necessarily jumping into another relationship immediately for security, but taking her time. It is necessary to paint a picture where normalcy is restored with a little courage, so more and more women become persons rather than staying cowering penned in slavery, or do not use this usual scenario to make slaves out of perfectly good men by clinging to a false helplessness.
One excuse most abusers offer is that they cannot control their temper. This is obviously false, since few are so out of control that they would attack their physical or otherwise superior males - an abusive boss, a rich and insulting customer, an armed policeman, and so forth. It is only a helpless woman they attack usually in privacy behind closed doors, so there are no witnesses they cannot control.
Of course it is extremely useful to thrash the wife before small children so the children cower and obey and never take side of the mother or never attempt to protect her. It is a tactic that mostly works. If not, the abuser can go viciously after the child that dares to be just.
Not that different from the tactics of nazi or any other totalitarian faith, culture, system of ruling slaves.
Night of The Fox: by Jack Higgins.
One of the few books (or for that matter films or television series) about the wwII as the channel islands experienced it.
British left the islands since after Dunkirk they could not protect them, either, and it was hard enough to protect the mainland what with the relentless bombing of London and the countryside, with Britain standing alone (Roosevelt had his excellent mind and heart in the right place and knew that to let Britain lose was end of civilisation this time, but to persuade various factions, either the isolationists with blinders to reality or fellow travelers of the nazis in US, was highly non-trivial) against the destruction of civilisation.
A few years later when US was in the war (and as the saying then went, the island of Britain was like an aircraft carrier that is so loaded with personnel and other equipment it is not sinking only due to the RAF planes taking off every minute - or something to that effect), and the preparations for D-Day were on, is when this story begins, with one British officer wounded and marooned on the channel islands, but with knowledge of D-Day so he cannot be left safely on island with any chance of being taken by the enemy in custody and tortured in prison.
However, they have a couple of aces up their sleeves, what with a British professor who is a good impersonator as a nazi and with help of a woman to give more credence to his presence he arrives to take charge of the islands, with more surprises waiting - as luck would have it there is another look-alike that arrives in place of a high level nazi, and the first impersonator naturally knows nothing of the second impersonator and assumes his secret is now known, so he goes to assassinate him only to find it is a Jewish man impersonating a high level nazi.
The escape having taken place, there is yet another extremely unpleasant surprise for the impersonators in store on arrival in British mainland, adding to the grief and emotional devastation the first impersonator has gone through before the beginning of the story, resulting in his distancing himself even more emotionally from all around. Working for his nation he cannot stop, but going almost dead within is the only way he can cope.
British left the islands since after Dunkirk they could not protect them, either, and it was hard enough to protect the mainland what with the relentless bombing of London and the countryside, with Britain standing alone (Roosevelt had his excellent mind and heart in the right place and knew that to let Britain lose was end of civilisation this time, but to persuade various factions, either the isolationists with blinders to reality or fellow travelers of the nazis in US, was highly non-trivial) against the destruction of civilisation.
A few years later when US was in the war (and as the saying then went, the island of Britain was like an aircraft carrier that is so loaded with personnel and other equipment it is not sinking only due to the RAF planes taking off every minute - or something to that effect), and the preparations for D-Day were on, is when this story begins, with one British officer wounded and marooned on the channel islands, but with knowledge of D-Day so he cannot be left safely on island with any chance of being taken by the enemy in custody and tortured in prison.
However, they have a couple of aces up their sleeves, what with a British professor who is a good impersonator as a nazi and with help of a woman to give more credence to his presence he arrives to take charge of the islands, with more surprises waiting - as luck would have it there is another look-alike that arrives in place of a high level nazi, and the first impersonator naturally knows nothing of the second impersonator and assumes his secret is now known, so he goes to assassinate him only to find it is a Jewish man impersonating a high level nazi.
The escape having taken place, there is yet another extremely unpleasant surprise for the impersonators in store on arrival in British mainland, adding to the grief and emotional devastation the first impersonator has gone through before the beginning of the story, resulting in his distancing himself even more emotionally from all around. Working for his nation he cannot stop, but going almost dead within is the only way he can cope.
The Seventh Secret: by Irving Wallace.
A painting that turns up in Berlin gives a clue to a startling mystery, since the painter is supposed to have died in wwII but the subject of the painting features a building that was finished much later, and yet the painting is obviously made from life, not a plan or sketch. And to an art expert, a painting is what a fingerprint is to fingerprint experts or a signature is to experts in that area. Unmistakable proof.
It leads various people investigating into an ally that finishes with a serious question - what do you do if you are perfectly innocent, but nevertheless you and your progeny are not only remnants of a dark past but far more - a possibility of the past revived in future, unthinkable for survival of humanity and of anything and everything that is achieved by human civilisation, anything and everything that is good in humanity?
It leads various people investigating into an ally that finishes with a serious question - what do you do if you are perfectly innocent, but nevertheless you and your progeny are not only remnants of a dark past but far more - a possibility of the past revived in future, unthinkable for survival of humanity and of anything and everything that is achieved by human civilisation, anything and everything that is good in humanity?
Thunder Point:: by Jack HIggins.
An adventure and mystery and suspense thriller attractive for the background and the story both, in proportion depending on the reader.
A deep sea diver in tropical western Atlantic discovers something extraordinary on a dive when a current takes him to a place he has never been, and no one else has in a few decades from the look of it, where on a deep sea ledge he discovers a submarine wedged precariously - but it is a very valuable discovery, it is an old submarine, German in fact from the last war. On investigation there is more discovery, more revelations. But anyone doing any further investigations is in peril, since not only one might be trapped in the submarine, the submarine itself is in a very precarious position and might dislodge and go to the bottom of the ocean from the sort of deep sea hill it is resting in a nook of. Yet there are secrets of the submarine, what it was doing there, who was on it, and so forth, not to be dismissed easily.
A deep sea diver in tropical western Atlantic discovers something extraordinary on a dive when a current takes him to a place he has never been, and no one else has in a few decades from the look of it, where on a deep sea ledge he discovers a submarine wedged precariously - but it is a very valuable discovery, it is an old submarine, German in fact from the last war. On investigation there is more discovery, more revelations. But anyone doing any further investigations is in peril, since not only one might be trapped in the submarine, the submarine itself is in a very precarious position and might dislodge and go to the bottom of the ocean from the sort of deep sea hill it is resting in a nook of. Yet there are secrets of the submarine, what it was doing there, who was on it, and so forth, not to be dismissed easily.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Song of Bernadette: by Franz Werfel.
Life of Bernadette, the peasant girl who had visions and discovered the miraculous spring at Lourdes, is interesting for more than interest in her. She was young and innocent and pure, and so was able to perceive a vision from above directly, hear the vision and have conversations too. The then church authorities immediately went against her, suspicious of anyone with an access to Divine outside the approved channel of authority, and she suffered much including a possibility of fate such as Joan D'Arc. This she was saved, fortunately. In exchange the church had monopoly over the spring - and the town's facilities - at Lourdes.
It is interesting that she went through so much trouble due to her visions even after she found the miraculous springs, only because of a dogma that normal persons could not access heavens above and an authority, a central fixed one at that, had to certify all miracles - and now the same authority monopolises access to Lourdes, where one can only go by applying and permission from the said authority, Rome - and this continues in the so called secular nation of France, where anyone in an attire or cultural symbol other than traditional to France is likely to be treated worse than criminals (one presumes criminals get a trial, while a decent person of another culture, someone perfectly innocent too, is treated abominably) even in civil places such as airports - or even a so called French cultural centre in another country, and this is even true about people of the said other country entering the French centre in their own towns.
Such is the hubris of French culture and pride thereof, with the false badge of secular attached to cover a slave of Roman domination visible under a thin veil. Of course, when asked about secularity of certain laws a French visitor to another nation with a greater ancient tradition takes refuge in tradition of France, while the French centre silently but very unmistakably discriminates against the local traditions (and this is about those traditions that are other than any discrimination or worse against any part of humanity, for all that) and anyone supporting them to any visible extent thereby encouraging and perpetrating not only a colonial mindset but also a blatant hypocrisy.
Anyone from US visiting France knows about the attitude of course, perhaps one has to be rather sensitive to be aware of it. On the other hand one has met such friendly behaviour and unexpected gracious behaviour there too that one never loses the impression of charm and beauty.
It is interesting that she went through so much trouble due to her visions even after she found the miraculous springs, only because of a dogma that normal persons could not access heavens above and an authority, a central fixed one at that, had to certify all miracles - and now the same authority monopolises access to Lourdes, where one can only go by applying and permission from the said authority, Rome - and this continues in the so called secular nation of France, where anyone in an attire or cultural symbol other than traditional to France is likely to be treated worse than criminals (one presumes criminals get a trial, while a decent person of another culture, someone perfectly innocent too, is treated abominably) even in civil places such as airports - or even a so called French cultural centre in another country, and this is even true about people of the said other country entering the French centre in their own towns.
Such is the hubris of French culture and pride thereof, with the false badge of secular attached to cover a slave of Roman domination visible under a thin veil. Of course, when asked about secularity of certain laws a French visitor to another nation with a greater ancient tradition takes refuge in tradition of France, while the French centre silently but very unmistakably discriminates against the local traditions (and this is about those traditions that are other than any discrimination or worse against any part of humanity, for all that) and anyone supporting them to any visible extent thereby encouraging and perpetrating not only a colonial mindset but also a blatant hypocrisy.
Anyone from US visiting France knows about the attitude of course, perhaps one has to be rather sensitive to be aware of it. On the other hand one has met such friendly behaviour and unexpected gracious behaviour there too that one never loses the impression of charm and beauty.
The Permanent Purge
Zbiegniew Brzezinski then wrote about Soviets, perhaps the first or more logically the most immediately visible model then for this phenomena (inquisition did precede it, so Soviets were definitely following that, and other such, after all) of a permanent purge that is necessary to keep up any sort of a totalitarian absolute model of society.
Today it is more visible in more than one state, culture, geographical part of the word. A must read book for the simplest exposition on such totalitarian systems and purges needed to keep them in business.
The opposite of this of course is the ever shrill questioning and stymieing of a secular, democratic society by various interest groups, including but not limited to publicity based professions with a need of sensational sound byte every other minute, the said totalitarian regimes and cultures that would devour the secular, democratic cultures and states by using the machinery of open tolerant acceptance along with the checks and balances in the legal system, to destroy the secular and democratic open society so the totalitarian regime could then take over, or split with other such powers.
This opposite of the permanent purge, or rather the mirror image, is too an ever more familiar phenomena these days, across the globe.
Today it is more visible in more than one state, culture, geographical part of the word. A must read book for the simplest exposition on such totalitarian systems and purges needed to keep them in business.
The opposite of this of course is the ever shrill questioning and stymieing of a secular, democratic society by various interest groups, including but not limited to publicity based professions with a need of sensational sound byte every other minute, the said totalitarian regimes and cultures that would devour the secular, democratic cultures and states by using the machinery of open tolerant acceptance along with the checks and balances in the legal system, to destroy the secular and democratic open society so the totalitarian regime could then take over, or split with other such powers.
This opposite of the permanent purge, or rather the mirror image, is too an ever more familiar phenomena these days, across the globe.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
The Citadel: by A. J. Cronin.
When I read it it perhaps was a cult and I was unaware of that - a friend I valued and discussed ideas with talked of it and I read it, and that was that. Over the years it has become clear how it was worthy in more ways than one. Apart from the intimate portrayal of the country and city that is much familiar and yet not, apart from the portrayal of conflicts of love and marriage with professional life and stress and the usual male folly of forgetting that while one earns life is passing and the loved ones may not be able to wait forever, apart from the all other good reasons to read this great book - there is also the much recognised but these days forgotten conflict of values.
Those days people often stressed over the conflict between ideals and money, and this one does not even stick to the question of ideal but even gives the practical need of the side that is treating patients who might not pay the most - namely, the oath taken and believed in by most doctors when young and starting out, at least in those days.
Those days people often stressed over the conflict between ideals and money, and this one does not even stick to the question of ideal but even gives the practical need of the side that is treating patients who might not pay the most - namely, the oath taken and believed in by most doctors when young and starting out, at least in those days.
Beyond This Place: by A. J. Cronin.
A young man who discovered that his mother is in fact not a widow, she pretended to be one so her son could grow with no trauma. and that his father is serving for life for murder - and he knows in his heart that it could not be true, and sets out to find what is an old case but not quite forgotten in the small town where it happened, where his father is imprisoned nearby.
His father did always protest his innocence, and had no way of proving his innocence, but was a less powerful person than those that could and did not help. The son however has determination and a fresh youth on his side.
This is only an introduction - no way to sum up the writing of Cronin.
His father did always protest his innocence, and had no way of proving his innocence, but was a less powerful person than those that could and did not help. The son however has determination and a fresh youth on his side.
This is only an introduction - no way to sum up the writing of Cronin.
The Judas Tree: by A. J. Cronin.
A man who was well to do and on his way to become a doctor, and fell in love with a country girl, but could not sustain his promise to return to marry her, and is haunted by the memory of his having cheated on her.
He returns to look for her, and is startled to see her - young, fresh, the same beautiful innocent person he remembered. It is in fact her - but not his - daughter.
Filled with remorse about the way he treated the mother badly he resolves to make it up to the daughter, and decides he will give her everything he can, everything he should have given the mother - only to find himself repeating the same treacherous action, weak character that he is; he has deceived and used the daughter the same way he did the mother.
The Judas tree is a symbol, which stands outside his bedroom with his second - also wealthy - wife. And an indication of doom. To his character, his spirit, if not his life - which is spent anyway, even if he were to punish himself.
He missed his chance of retribution more than once, due to weak character, chronic cowardice, making compromises where one should not, and an ability and a habit of cheating the best in himself, and telling himself it will be all right.
He returns to look for her, and is startled to see her - young, fresh, the same beautiful innocent person he remembered. It is in fact her - but not his - daughter.
Filled with remorse about the way he treated the mother badly he resolves to make it up to the daughter, and decides he will give her everything he can, everything he should have given the mother - only to find himself repeating the same treacherous action, weak character that he is; he has deceived and used the daughter the same way he did the mother.
The Judas tree is a symbol, which stands outside his bedroom with his second - also wealthy - wife. And an indication of doom. To his character, his spirit, if not his life - which is spent anyway, even if he were to punish himself.
He missed his chance of retribution more than once, due to weak character, chronic cowardice, making compromises where one should not, and an ability and a habit of cheating the best in himself, and telling himself it will be all right.
Marnie: by Winston Graham.
One feels a surprising anxiety for the poor unfortunate girl caught between her past - which one presumes cannot have been choice as much as concatenation of circumstances not of her choice, which she dealt with by stealing and so forth as a strategy for survival. Now, she is not only married to a wealthy man who loves her, but she loves him and would rather not lose him - and he is finding out about her. the only other source of strength for her is the horse, and she could die in an accident
Friday, August 6, 2010
Stones Into Schools: by Greg Mortenson with Mike Bryan.
The story of Greg Mortenson and good work of Central Asia Institute of building schools in remote regions for poor children and especially girls continues from the first book Three Cups Of Tea in this book, with introduction to Afghanistan beginning repeating in the first part, but with considerably more detail than was included for that part in the previous book. Mortenson is more and more busy, giving speeches and meeting people in US for sake of more money for CAI so more could be done for the people of remote regions of western Himaalaya and contiguous mountain regions in Afghanistan. There is a great deal of interesting detail of stories about people of those regions, and the beautiful region too, making one wish this were full of photographs. Even better, one wishes there were a documentary one could watch on an information channel or buy a DVD of.
Meanwhile this book continues with little mistakes and subtle atmosphere of slight to India albeit with a somewhat effort to give a more balanced set of facts without compromising the politics of pro Pakistan (which has amounted to anti Indian over the six decades or so of all the history of Pakistan's existence), a tightrope walk this pair of writers do well enough.
Small mistakes are easier to point out - one small one to begin with is about meanings of words, here about the word Neelum which derives from Neel in Sanskrt which means Blue, and is so understood in all Indian languages including Urdu; the word Neelum is short for Neelamani which literally means Blue Jewel, that is to say Blue Sapphire, and that is precisely what Neelum means. Kashmir is known for the region's sapphires, more blue sapphires than any other, and while now science tells us that ruby and sapphire are the same stone in different colours, this is only very recent knowledge compared to history of jewels in India, so it is unlikely that this misunderstanding of interpreting Neelum as ruby is anything but a mistake of logic or information on part of the writers. If Neelum river valley does indeed yield rubies that certainly is not what gives the name to the river or the valley.
That much the writers could have inferred from the Afghan Koh-i-lal they mention where rubies are mined, and from the famous diamond Kohinoor of India - now in British possession - which is literally named Mountain Of Light by the Persians that looted it from India before it was brought back. So Lal must be ruby, they might have guessed, and indeed that is how it is referred to in Urdu (Maanik in Sanskrt, understood all over India) and spoken of in ordinary dialects that are closer to Urdu in north of Vindhya regions in India.
More serious is when they attempt to discredit Kashmir's accession to India by painting the king of Kashmir, Maharaja Hari Singh, and his ancestors, in derogatory terms without checking on facts and making more than one mistake. For one thing they claim he cared only for his own possessions and sport - but one could point out in turn that this is largely true of most rulers of the day, and indeed few rulers in the world were known for doing better for their people than for themselves, two of such being known in India in fact but that is non sequitur.
One could also point out that one famous rich person they mention as a spiritual leader of a small sect of Islam who is now living in Paris was in fact from India, his palace was used to imprison Gandhi at various times and his wife - Kasturba Gandhi - died in prison there, and his living in Paris is perhaps due to the fact that he cannot make either Pakistan or India his choice of residence since he owns property in India and does not wish to declare a loyalty or lose property as millions of Hindus did when they were thrown out of western Punjab or Kashmir valley with death being the only option.
As a matter of fact Gandhi insisted that property of muslims that left - most were poor, but some did leave houses, and refugees from west needed shelter desperately - be kept for them to claim as and when they choose rather than be given to the refugees, no matter that the refugees mostly had left considerable property back in what was now Pakistan and that property was promptly taken by anyone who was muslim choosing to claim it irrespective of whether the claimers were neighbours or goons who had come in hoardes to murder and pillage and massacre and drive away Hindus and Sikhs. So anyone leaving India for Pakistan being in danger of losing property was only likely on grounds of being a nawab or princely status person, or someone who for political greed had wrought havoc on the nation to separate a piece.
One could also, in turn for the derogatory description of ruler of Kashmir, point out that at the very least he did not massacre or encourage a massacre of his subjects who were of a different faith than his own, as at least one ruler of a state acceded to India post independence did, which was credited to his soldiers while his name is usually not mentioned in the context for delicacy.
Fact is most rulers had a comparable lifestyle of wealth no matter where in the world they ruled, few did anything for people and the only reason king of Kashmir is bad mouthed is the war waged by Islam (and it seems tacitly supported by at least Mortenson and his various writers, or perhaps all church and perhaps all right wing US) on Hindu and other faiths that do not wage war for conversion. If the king of Kashmir were muslim and had butchered his Hindu subjects that would be painted in glowing colours or at the very least as natural by both Pakistan and generally muslims and this writer - as he does about Afghanistan ruler converting a whole region at sword point relatively recently.
As for the price That the king is supposed to have paid the British to purchase Kashmir, this interpretation on two sets of facts is ridiculous but incendiary - perhaps deliberately so? - since it is not as if British or anyone else in the world put up kingdoms for auction, and if a ruler paid taxes to the British to maintain a kingdom in his name rather than surrender it it was due to the fact that the British found it more profitable and less inconvenient; the heir and son to the famed king Ranjit Singh of Punjab (known for his valour) did not have such a choice, nor did the queen of Jhansi or many other including the royalty of Burma. The privilege of Kashmir being under a king rather than directly under British was entirely what British considered suited them best.
Perhaps the derogtory nature of this reference of purchase is due to a respect the writers maintain either openly or subconsciously for those that kill others to take power or land or money or wealth or women, rather than the respect the church is supposed to maintain for the gentle, the meek, the non violent and civilised. Germany after all is proud to have wiped out Prussia as it was and obtained lebensraum east to the borders of Russia, and US chose English over German as the official language of the new nation only by a thin margin. This speaks for the values of the two cultures meeting when Mortenson works in Pakistan and Afghanistan, even though officially Afghanistan had changed the name of Hindu Kush (meaning the place where Hindus were massacred) to a far more polite name over a couple of decades ago, before the destruction of Afghanistan far more by muslims than by Russians began (Khalid Hosseini's books give a clue to this statement with his character saying "this is the best time for women" before Russians are driven out with US arms and aid) and nevertheless the name Hindu Kush is used throughout this book. If that is in the name of tradition, while Indian traditions are disparaged throughout the two books of Mortenson, that speaks for a bias without reason or for truly bad reasons.
The final ridiculous detail in this little mistake is the five rupees per resident of Kashmir that the Maharaja paid the British for Kashmir (how much did the terrorists pay the Hindus that they threw out or massacred, or Sikhs?), which the writers say is price of a cup of tea on road stalls in India. Now if only they had sworn on their Bibles and Korans to the truth of this statement on all their faiths relate to, they would see everything they hold dear gone in their lifetime.
Fact is, inflation in US might have been affordable for the normal person, but it is not unknown. But in India it is not to be compared to the countries that have not known such travails. British looted the country (exact accounts are available, too) till it bled, crafts and professions were disallowed, and wealth was taken away - and then the British left, leaving debts to India that Pakistan refused to share although they demanded (and were given too) their share of the money what with Gandhi fasting to death for that even as Pakistan attacked India. Even after all this and the oil crisis, coca cola was less than half a rupee in India in seventies before the company was thrown out - now it is anywhere between twenty to forty rupees on "roadside" stalls, depending on your need and availability.
So - if a cup of tea in India on roadside stalls is five rupees today, that was not so even two decades ago, and the time when Kashmir was paid for with five rupees per resident a rupee was closer to a pound and bought far more in the land of plenty that was India. Five rupees most likely then was enough to buy an oxcart load full of household groceries enough for a year for a modest family.
Truth is, Kashmir was a state ruled by a king in India amongst many such other states under British protection once British established the rule all over, and in no way different or differently treated by India after independence - once the ruler signed over, India had legal claim to all the territory that was under the rule of the state, with boundaries in common with Afghanistan. If today that is occupied by Pakistan that is due to force pretty much as Baltic states were occupied by USSR, with one small difference - USSR did not swallow the said states. Today the erstwhile Soviet states have independence, while Pakistan occupied Kashmir like Tibet post occupation will never have any individual identity much less autonomy, forget independence.
Mortenson and co forget one very important fact - in their reverence for culture of killers and converters and lebensraum type of politics, they forget that the only person Mortenson respected in all of India (he traveled for just one day to India when he heard of her death, to sit with her body) managed to achieve her fame and glory due to one chief factor, namely she (and most of her faith, for that matter) was not murdered or molested in any way, unlike in Pakistan occupied Kashmir where the first onslaught of Pakistan army in 1948 had nuns murdered and raped in convents, and where today Mortenson has to look and behave like a local to remain relatively safe. In India he gets away with attitude and even publishing derogatory remarks, even to the faith of the majority.
Incidentally, it is all right with India - a matter of no importance at all, if he asked anyone in India - if Mortenson prefers aesthetics of Pakistan trucks, but in India trucks or any other vehicles or places that have any God or Gods in any place are not for decoration, any more than a cross or a crucifix or a Jesus or a Madonna in any place in west are for purposes of decoration signifying aesthetic preference or for that matter the one thousand minus one names of God in a mosque are a matter of decoration. If beauty is more in one place than another that is either subjective (Mortenson prefers Islamic style anti music anti beauty anti-Gods grim, others prefer Gods and Goddesses and music and sculpture and joy) or objective (most of us love snow, mountains, ocean, beauty of earth and heaven), while some are free to express their love and joy about such beauty in paintings and music and others (those respected by Mortenson and co) would rather kill all music and erect tombs over smashed temples just to terrorise and convert.
As almost a final insult, Mortenson tells about the terrorist attack in Mumbai (distorted to Bombay by British and corrected only recently in India) - as if there was only one rather than a continous series conducted while in perpetual denial officially, even as now one can hear their satellite phone conducted transmissions openly - almost as an afterthought and a postscript to the terrorists orgnisations helping their own nations' poor when over a hundred thousand were affected, by mentioning that the same organisation killed a hundred and seventy three in Bombay. This is comparable to mentioning that those that attacked the US are very charitable within Muslim world and benefit far more than they kill in lands far away, just in case anyone does not get why this mention in Mortenson the way it is done is atrocious.
Fact is, even the sheer number of people killed in terrorist attacks in India during last decade or more is over fifty thousand - even if one did not include Kargil, which according to Mortenson is "unconfirmed claim from India" to the effect that the attack was in fact carried out by Pakistan military with terrorists posing as a front at most, if that - it is far from impossible for army to wear Mortenson's favourite dress that everyone in Pakistan is forced to wear (incidentally salwar is the bottom part, loose pant or pajama, while the top or shirt is called kameez, which is not unrelated to chemise as a word - one of the many words Europe and English language borrowed from Asia either due to roots in Sanskrt or due to sojourn during crusades) but the documents found on the killed personnel can be checked for evidence, unless Pakistan has now executed whole families as well to deny that the said killed personnel were not army at all.
But even without that the number of people killed in India due to Pakistan oriented terrorist attacks is pretty huge, and the only reason Mortenson recognises the Tajmahal attacks is due to the pointed targeting of US, UK and Israeli rich (Taj is not a cheap place by any means - a decent middle class meal in a middle class restaurant for a family costs comparable to a cup of tea or coffee in a five star hotel, and Taj is more than that, it is luxury by any defintion except those contrived to keep India out of the club) while the tens of thousands of others dead in India due to Pakistan oriented terrorists attacks do not seem to count for this pair of writers, one doesn't know if they were not counted because they were middle class (which in India would be counted as poor by US standards) and poor, or because they were the wrong race, or because they were assumed to be all Hindu.
It is all about lebensraum after all - Germany had a policy of breeding profusely while going massacring other lands to expand so the growing German population could have room to live. The last time I heard about it was on a train to Paris from Germany where a German woman pointed out at the land (of France) we were rushing through and said, Germany needs land, we have no room. This was less than a decade ago. (There was another German woman who expressed dissatisfaction about the crowds in India where she visits repeatedly from Australia, her choice of settling land, and said she could not breathe due to the crowds; yet she returned on and on, was it to convert - which is against the law - or worse? We did not ask.) Now, in these books is implicitly clear Mortenson's tacit approval of the Muslims finding lebensraum in India after killing thousands and thousands.
India, if and when anyone pays attention to these demands of "hand over yet another state", wonders when this will stop. Pakistan was given after the Calcutta massacre in one three day period with thousands of dead by knives in name of demand for Pakistan forced Gandhi to accept the demand, and India still has more muslims than Pakistan. Now the demand is for Kashmir in name of Muslims, with Hindus and Sikhs and others of Kashmir thrown out from their homeland of forever to have to seem refuge in India, just as the ones from west Punjab were in 1947 and those from east are continously over the last six decades. When will it stop?
Pakistan knows the answer, not until the whole world is occupied and converted, of which India is only the first step, just as Israel is merely an excuse too. And if anyone thinks throwing a lamb or a neighbours' family to the wolf will satisfy it, think again - tomorrow it is your own.
But even meanwhile, the agenda really is not about faith or any such intangibles which are being used for an excuse to veil the real agenda, money - Kashmir has untapped potential what with tourism and mountaineering which already Pakistan benefits from, and the gems and more, just as Assam has other reasons for huge illegal migrations of Muslims from another piece of India that was so eventually it can be taken over with all its wealth.
And while Mortenson is doing good for the poor he helps with providing education for girls even though he allows their brothers in law to deny then the opportunity (shame, Greg!) for sake of not making any trouble for himself, this blindness to facts and truths won't do him or anyone else any good.
If you gain much and lose your soul, you lose.
.........................
Meanwhile this book continues with little mistakes and subtle atmosphere of slight to India albeit with a somewhat effort to give a more balanced set of facts without compromising the politics of pro Pakistan (which has amounted to anti Indian over the six decades or so of all the history of Pakistan's existence), a tightrope walk this pair of writers do well enough.
Small mistakes are easier to point out - one small one to begin with is about meanings of words, here about the word Neelum which derives from Neel in Sanskrt which means Blue, and is so understood in all Indian languages including Urdu; the word Neelum is short for Neelamani which literally means Blue Jewel, that is to say Blue Sapphire, and that is precisely what Neelum means. Kashmir is known for the region's sapphires, more blue sapphires than any other, and while now science tells us that ruby and sapphire are the same stone in different colours, this is only very recent knowledge compared to history of jewels in India, so it is unlikely that this misunderstanding of interpreting Neelum as ruby is anything but a mistake of logic or information on part of the writers. If Neelum river valley does indeed yield rubies that certainly is not what gives the name to the river or the valley.
That much the writers could have inferred from the Afghan Koh-i-lal they mention where rubies are mined, and from the famous diamond Kohinoor of India - now in British possession - which is literally named Mountain Of Light by the Persians that looted it from India before it was brought back. So Lal must be ruby, they might have guessed, and indeed that is how it is referred to in Urdu (Maanik in Sanskrt, understood all over India) and spoken of in ordinary dialects that are closer to Urdu in north of Vindhya regions in India.
More serious is when they attempt to discredit Kashmir's accession to India by painting the king of Kashmir, Maharaja Hari Singh, and his ancestors, in derogatory terms without checking on facts and making more than one mistake. For one thing they claim he cared only for his own possessions and sport - but one could point out in turn that this is largely true of most rulers of the day, and indeed few rulers in the world were known for doing better for their people than for themselves, two of such being known in India in fact but that is non sequitur.
One could also point out that one famous rich person they mention as a spiritual leader of a small sect of Islam who is now living in Paris was in fact from India, his palace was used to imprison Gandhi at various times and his wife - Kasturba Gandhi - died in prison there, and his living in Paris is perhaps due to the fact that he cannot make either Pakistan or India his choice of residence since he owns property in India and does not wish to declare a loyalty or lose property as millions of Hindus did when they were thrown out of western Punjab or Kashmir valley with death being the only option.
As a matter of fact Gandhi insisted that property of muslims that left - most were poor, but some did leave houses, and refugees from west needed shelter desperately - be kept for them to claim as and when they choose rather than be given to the refugees, no matter that the refugees mostly had left considerable property back in what was now Pakistan and that property was promptly taken by anyone who was muslim choosing to claim it irrespective of whether the claimers were neighbours or goons who had come in hoardes to murder and pillage and massacre and drive away Hindus and Sikhs. So anyone leaving India for Pakistan being in danger of losing property was only likely on grounds of being a nawab or princely status person, or someone who for political greed had wrought havoc on the nation to separate a piece.
One could also, in turn for the derogatory description of ruler of Kashmir, point out that at the very least he did not massacre or encourage a massacre of his subjects who were of a different faith than his own, as at least one ruler of a state acceded to India post independence did, which was credited to his soldiers while his name is usually not mentioned in the context for delicacy.
Fact is most rulers had a comparable lifestyle of wealth no matter where in the world they ruled, few did anything for people and the only reason king of Kashmir is bad mouthed is the war waged by Islam (and it seems tacitly supported by at least Mortenson and his various writers, or perhaps all church and perhaps all right wing US) on Hindu and other faiths that do not wage war for conversion. If the king of Kashmir were muslim and had butchered his Hindu subjects that would be painted in glowing colours or at the very least as natural by both Pakistan and generally muslims and this writer - as he does about Afghanistan ruler converting a whole region at sword point relatively recently.
As for the price That the king is supposed to have paid the British to purchase Kashmir, this interpretation on two sets of facts is ridiculous but incendiary - perhaps deliberately so? - since it is not as if British or anyone else in the world put up kingdoms for auction, and if a ruler paid taxes to the British to maintain a kingdom in his name rather than surrender it it was due to the fact that the British found it more profitable and less inconvenient; the heir and son to the famed king Ranjit Singh of Punjab (known for his valour) did not have such a choice, nor did the queen of Jhansi or many other including the royalty of Burma. The privilege of Kashmir being under a king rather than directly under British was entirely what British considered suited them best.
Perhaps the derogtory nature of this reference of purchase is due to a respect the writers maintain either openly or subconsciously for those that kill others to take power or land or money or wealth or women, rather than the respect the church is supposed to maintain for the gentle, the meek, the non violent and civilised. Germany after all is proud to have wiped out Prussia as it was and obtained lebensraum east to the borders of Russia, and US chose English over German as the official language of the new nation only by a thin margin. This speaks for the values of the two cultures meeting when Mortenson works in Pakistan and Afghanistan, even though officially Afghanistan had changed the name of Hindu Kush (meaning the place where Hindus were massacred) to a far more polite name over a couple of decades ago, before the destruction of Afghanistan far more by muslims than by Russians began (Khalid Hosseini's books give a clue to this statement with his character saying "this is the best time for women" before Russians are driven out with US arms and aid) and nevertheless the name Hindu Kush is used throughout this book. If that is in the name of tradition, while Indian traditions are disparaged throughout the two books of Mortenson, that speaks for a bias without reason or for truly bad reasons.
The final ridiculous detail in this little mistake is the five rupees per resident of Kashmir that the Maharaja paid the British for Kashmir (how much did the terrorists pay the Hindus that they threw out or massacred, or Sikhs?), which the writers say is price of a cup of tea on road stalls in India. Now if only they had sworn on their Bibles and Korans to the truth of this statement on all their faiths relate to, they would see everything they hold dear gone in their lifetime.
Fact is, inflation in US might have been affordable for the normal person, but it is not unknown. But in India it is not to be compared to the countries that have not known such travails. British looted the country (exact accounts are available, too) till it bled, crafts and professions were disallowed, and wealth was taken away - and then the British left, leaving debts to India that Pakistan refused to share although they demanded (and were given too) their share of the money what with Gandhi fasting to death for that even as Pakistan attacked India. Even after all this and the oil crisis, coca cola was less than half a rupee in India in seventies before the company was thrown out - now it is anywhere between twenty to forty rupees on "roadside" stalls, depending on your need and availability.
So - if a cup of tea in India on roadside stalls is five rupees today, that was not so even two decades ago, and the time when Kashmir was paid for with five rupees per resident a rupee was closer to a pound and bought far more in the land of plenty that was India. Five rupees most likely then was enough to buy an oxcart load full of household groceries enough for a year for a modest family.
Truth is, Kashmir was a state ruled by a king in India amongst many such other states under British protection once British established the rule all over, and in no way different or differently treated by India after independence - once the ruler signed over, India had legal claim to all the territory that was under the rule of the state, with boundaries in common with Afghanistan. If today that is occupied by Pakistan that is due to force pretty much as Baltic states were occupied by USSR, with one small difference - USSR did not swallow the said states. Today the erstwhile Soviet states have independence, while Pakistan occupied Kashmir like Tibet post occupation will never have any individual identity much less autonomy, forget independence.
Mortenson and co forget one very important fact - in their reverence for culture of killers and converters and lebensraum type of politics, they forget that the only person Mortenson respected in all of India (he traveled for just one day to India when he heard of her death, to sit with her body) managed to achieve her fame and glory due to one chief factor, namely she (and most of her faith, for that matter) was not murdered or molested in any way, unlike in Pakistan occupied Kashmir where the first onslaught of Pakistan army in 1948 had nuns murdered and raped in convents, and where today Mortenson has to look and behave like a local to remain relatively safe. In India he gets away with attitude and even publishing derogatory remarks, even to the faith of the majority.
Incidentally, it is all right with India - a matter of no importance at all, if he asked anyone in India - if Mortenson prefers aesthetics of Pakistan trucks, but in India trucks or any other vehicles or places that have any God or Gods in any place are not for decoration, any more than a cross or a crucifix or a Jesus or a Madonna in any place in west are for purposes of decoration signifying aesthetic preference or for that matter the one thousand minus one names of God in a mosque are a matter of decoration. If beauty is more in one place than another that is either subjective (Mortenson prefers Islamic style anti music anti beauty anti-Gods grim, others prefer Gods and Goddesses and music and sculpture and joy) or objective (most of us love snow, mountains, ocean, beauty of earth and heaven), while some are free to express their love and joy about such beauty in paintings and music and others (those respected by Mortenson and co) would rather kill all music and erect tombs over smashed temples just to terrorise and convert.
As almost a final insult, Mortenson tells about the terrorist attack in Mumbai (distorted to Bombay by British and corrected only recently in India) - as if there was only one rather than a continous series conducted while in perpetual denial officially, even as now one can hear their satellite phone conducted transmissions openly - almost as an afterthought and a postscript to the terrorists orgnisations helping their own nations' poor when over a hundred thousand were affected, by mentioning that the same organisation killed a hundred and seventy three in Bombay. This is comparable to mentioning that those that attacked the US are very charitable within Muslim world and benefit far more than they kill in lands far away, just in case anyone does not get why this mention in Mortenson the way it is done is atrocious.
Fact is, even the sheer number of people killed in terrorist attacks in India during last decade or more is over fifty thousand - even if one did not include Kargil, which according to Mortenson is "unconfirmed claim from India" to the effect that the attack was in fact carried out by Pakistan military with terrorists posing as a front at most, if that - it is far from impossible for army to wear Mortenson's favourite dress that everyone in Pakistan is forced to wear (incidentally salwar is the bottom part, loose pant or pajama, while the top or shirt is called kameez, which is not unrelated to chemise as a word - one of the many words Europe and English language borrowed from Asia either due to roots in Sanskrt or due to sojourn during crusades) but the documents found on the killed personnel can be checked for evidence, unless Pakistan has now executed whole families as well to deny that the said killed personnel were not army at all.
But even without that the number of people killed in India due to Pakistan oriented terrorist attacks is pretty huge, and the only reason Mortenson recognises the Tajmahal attacks is due to the pointed targeting of US, UK and Israeli rich (Taj is not a cheap place by any means - a decent middle class meal in a middle class restaurant for a family costs comparable to a cup of tea or coffee in a five star hotel, and Taj is more than that, it is luxury by any defintion except those contrived to keep India out of the club) while the tens of thousands of others dead in India due to Pakistan oriented terrorists attacks do not seem to count for this pair of writers, one doesn't know if they were not counted because they were middle class (which in India would be counted as poor by US standards) and poor, or because they were the wrong race, or because they were assumed to be all Hindu.
It is all about lebensraum after all - Germany had a policy of breeding profusely while going massacring other lands to expand so the growing German population could have room to live. The last time I heard about it was on a train to Paris from Germany where a German woman pointed out at the land (of France) we were rushing through and said, Germany needs land, we have no room. This was less than a decade ago. (There was another German woman who expressed dissatisfaction about the crowds in India where she visits repeatedly from Australia, her choice of settling land, and said she could not breathe due to the crowds; yet she returned on and on, was it to convert - which is against the law - or worse? We did not ask.) Now, in these books is implicitly clear Mortenson's tacit approval of the Muslims finding lebensraum in India after killing thousands and thousands.
India, if and when anyone pays attention to these demands of "hand over yet another state", wonders when this will stop. Pakistan was given after the Calcutta massacre in one three day period with thousands of dead by knives in name of demand for Pakistan forced Gandhi to accept the demand, and India still has more muslims than Pakistan. Now the demand is for Kashmir in name of Muslims, with Hindus and Sikhs and others of Kashmir thrown out from their homeland of forever to have to seem refuge in India, just as the ones from west Punjab were in 1947 and those from east are continously over the last six decades. When will it stop?
Pakistan knows the answer, not until the whole world is occupied and converted, of which India is only the first step, just as Israel is merely an excuse too. And if anyone thinks throwing a lamb or a neighbours' family to the wolf will satisfy it, think again - tomorrow it is your own.
But even meanwhile, the agenda really is not about faith or any such intangibles which are being used for an excuse to veil the real agenda, money - Kashmir has untapped potential what with tourism and mountaineering which already Pakistan benefits from, and the gems and more, just as Assam has other reasons for huge illegal migrations of Muslims from another piece of India that was so eventually it can be taken over with all its wealth.
And while Mortenson is doing good for the poor he helps with providing education for girls even though he allows their brothers in law to deny then the opportunity (shame, Greg!) for sake of not making any trouble for himself, this blindness to facts and truths won't do him or anyone else any good.
If you gain much and lose your soul, you lose.
.........................
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Women Writing In India: edited by Susie Tharu and K. Lalita.
This collection contains writings of women from since various times, and often the writers are not professional - which is not new for India or indeed anywhere for that matter. In India there have been various poets who simply sang their verses as they did housework and other work, men and women, and often those verses became famous due to their popularity which in turn was due to their high worth, subsequent to which they got written and recorded. But this collection is not of those well known works, rather is about a good many works of very astoundingly good quality that lay about in corners after or without publication.
The couple of stories that stick in mind after all these years are one about a woman despised by her husband who wanted a posh wife, and later came to find her not only worthy but attractive - but he was now married to another woman (there was no divorce then, Hinduism has no divorce in tradition and the nation had not yet legalised such a provision for Hindus, but polygamy was still legal), and moreover, as he found to his surprise, his first wife (who was still a virgin albeit legally his wife) spurned him strongly out of not a mere revenge or anger but a self respect he found astounding, and moreover a sense of morality that she declared made it impossible to allow them to cohabit since he not only had declared he could not see her as his wife but also had married another woman, now her friend.
The other one is about a woman who learned to write long after she was married and had children, and she writes about her life, amongst the details of which one is about how she was simply unable to have any food for three days at one time due to various small details of household life, although she was cooking for the whole household of over a dozen people all this time.
The couple of stories that stick in mind after all these years are one about a woman despised by her husband who wanted a posh wife, and later came to find her not only worthy but attractive - but he was now married to another woman (there was no divorce then, Hinduism has no divorce in tradition and the nation had not yet legalised such a provision for Hindus, but polygamy was still legal), and moreover, as he found to his surprise, his first wife (who was still a virgin albeit legally his wife) spurned him strongly out of not a mere revenge or anger but a self respect he found astounding, and moreover a sense of morality that she declared made it impossible to allow them to cohabit since he not only had declared he could not see her as his wife but also had married another woman, now her friend.
The other one is about a woman who learned to write long after she was married and had children, and she writes about her life, amongst the details of which one is about how she was simply unable to have any food for three days at one time due to various small details of household life, although she was cooking for the whole household of over a dozen people all this time.
Immortal Wife:- by Irving Stone.
She found and loved a man whose work took him away across the continent - he was an explorer, a cartographer in an era when earth and the continent newly being explored by immigrants from across the Atlantic who were settling a new nation, and the natives were being slowly pushed back into smaller and smaller areas. Danger for his life and worry was part of her life, and his work necessary for the new nation of US.
The Hidden Flower: by Pearl S. Buck.
Post world war II when the relationships between various nations needed to be smoothened, and others were worsening due to complications of relations between erstwhile allies, humans often forged relations that went beyond the political dictats and old prejudices, cultural differences and wartime injuries.
The young man from occupying US military in Japan is innocent and without prejudices, and everything in the country he is now seeing is new, fascinating. The Japanese woman - hte hidden flower in one sense - is young, innocent, open to a true heart, and love happens. How the couple face the difficulties of parents' disapproval in Japan, how the young man overcomes their hesitations, is the gist of the gentle story.
The charm of the book is the delicate subtle beauty of Japanese culture brought out in aspects of family life - the three point arrangement in the nook in wall that the young girl does every day and the gentle approval or correction by her parents, the beauty of a little garden behind the house, the conventions of sitting thus and proprieties observed, all very charming.
Goodness of heart and love between humans can overcome the horrendous injuries inflicted by even so horrible wars as this one was.
The young man from occupying US military in Japan is innocent and without prejudices, and everything in the country he is now seeing is new, fascinating. The Japanese woman - hte hidden flower in one sense - is young, innocent, open to a true heart, and love happens. How the couple face the difficulties of parents' disapproval in Japan, how the young man overcomes their hesitations, is the gist of the gentle story.
The charm of the book is the delicate subtle beauty of Japanese culture brought out in aspects of family life - the three point arrangement in the nook in wall that the young girl does every day and the gentle approval or correction by her parents, the beauty of a little garden behind the house, the conventions of sitting thus and proprieties observed, all very charming.
Goodness of heart and love between humans can overcome the horrendous injuries inflicted by even so horrible wars as this one was.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Enemy At The Gates: by William Craig.
Based on facts of battle for Stalingrad, fierce all the more due to its name, where the devastation wrought upon the poor and poorly equipped soldiers of the Russian army by the well prepared military engine was neatly foiled by the expertise of snipers, in particular one, trained by generations of people who live in desolate outer realms of eastern parts of Russia and hunt for life with literally life or death stakes what with wolves hunting solo or in packs and munition as precious as humans scarce.
The tide of the battle and the war turned partly due to the valour and steady fight given by such men and women - women fought alongside men in Russian army, albeit perhaps not in equal proportion just then - and their fierce intention to not give in to the stronger enemy.
The tide of the battle and the war turned partly due to the valour and steady fight given by such men and women - women fought alongside men in Russian army, albeit perhaps not in equal proportion just then - and their fierce intention to not give in to the stronger enemy.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Life With Mother: by Clarence Day Jr.
One of the most delightful books one can ever find.
A very neat, organised, methodical young man sets himself up in work and personal life before marrying someone he liked - only, she is neither organised nor methodical, not enough for him anyway.
On the other hand she is caring and wishes to keep up relationships, which goes towards disturbing his plans and life further what with relatives arriving and staying on for visits, and joining them for outings. And then there is the engagement ring he never gave her, and the question of church which he thinks he is too grown up now for, except as a benevolent head of the family looking on at others joining - very proper.
And above all, the accounts! The sicknesses and the preferences of each about how to deal with them .....
Really full of love it generates while reading, because it is chronicled by the son.
The good stories continue, this time with more focus on the mother and how she suddenly achieved a taste for some independence after going on a tour of Egypt with a friend and thereafter refused to give back the remaining money and declared she ought to have money of her own, and so forth - the endearing saga of impulsive mother and methodical defeated father continues.
A very neat, organised, methodical young man sets himself up in work and personal life before marrying someone he liked - only, she is neither organised nor methodical, not enough for him anyway.
On the other hand she is caring and wishes to keep up relationships, which goes towards disturbing his plans and life further what with relatives arriving and staying on for visits, and joining them for outings. And then there is the engagement ring he never gave her, and the question of church which he thinks he is too grown up now for, except as a benevolent head of the family looking on at others joining - very proper.
And above all, the accounts! The sicknesses and the preferences of each about how to deal with them .....
Really full of love it generates while reading, because it is chronicled by the son.
The good stories continue, this time with more focus on the mother and how she suddenly achieved a taste for some independence after going on a tour of Egypt with a friend and thereafter refused to give back the remaining money and declared she ought to have money of her own, and so forth - the endearing saga of impulsive mother and methodical defeated father continues.
To Catch A Thief: by David Dodge.
When I first happened to catch the film on television at a flatmate's it was rather surprising to see Grace Kelly as the girl one thought was a bit different - Grace Kelly fits most in Rear Window if anything, and not quite as much in this one. But then a director, even those of the caliber of Hitchcock, is human, and has likes and dislikes and pets and favourites.
Set in southern France, the book doesn't let a reader know if the person - main character - that the police are after has really not committed the robberies the police are after him for; after all he did commit robberies before, and his villa in the quiet upscale part of southern France is capable of hiding his past as it can hide any booties recent acquisition. a dizzying series of action packed story later the suspense is revealed in a surprising way.
The film is worth seeing for the locales of France and Monaco, while the book is more fun if one is after the story, which is not to say the film is not as well done as Hitchcock's name leads one to expect.
Set in southern France, the book doesn't let a reader know if the person - main character - that the police are after has really not committed the robberies the police are after him for; after all he did commit robberies before, and his villa in the quiet upscale part of southern France is capable of hiding his past as it can hide any booties recent acquisition. a dizzying series of action packed story later the suspense is revealed in a surprising way.
The film is worth seeing for the locales of France and Monaco, while the book is more fun if one is after the story, which is not to say the film is not as well done as Hitchcock's name leads one to expect.
Nicholas And Alexandra: by Robert Massie.
Alexandra had a choice of at least two possible consorts from high royalty of Europe, and chose to marry Nicholas, liking him better from the possible offers. And the times were turbulent but they had a happy life as a couple (albeit with dire worries as parents since their only son was haemophiliac, but that could happen to normal people too) - until the turbulence could not be kept out of their personal and family life, with some events of Russian revolution eerily imitating those from the French not too long before.
One wishes they had been allowed to survive as people, just a family, as many did escaping to various other countries - Paris was a favourite choice of White Russians and had a considerable colony - and in fact they could have survived in England, since the king was a first cousin of both Nicholas and Alexandra, former through his mother and latter through Queen Victoria. But the king of England was advised not to give refuge to the Russian deposed royals, since this would be seen with disfavour by the Russian new government and possibly by the people of England with liberals winds blowing strong.
One wishes they had been allowed to survive as people, just a family, as many did escaping to various other countries - Paris was a favourite choice of White Russians and had a considerable colony - and in fact they could have survived in England, since the king was a first cousin of both Nicholas and Alexandra, former through his mother and latter through Queen Victoria. But the king of England was advised not to give refuge to the Russian deposed royals, since this would be seen with disfavour by the Russian new government and possibly by the people of England with liberals winds blowing strong.
Random Harvest: by James HIlton
A story of loss of oneself more than once, woven around two people who loved each other, and set in England around the war, peace, and war again.
Once has to read Hilton to experience the beauty that is of his world and his portrayal of it.
Once has to read Hilton to experience the beauty that is of his world and his portrayal of it.
Lost Horizon: by James HIlton.
James Hilton is far too much undervalued in literature and he deserves far more respect. This is one of his best works, though many others are close and generally he is a high level.
Conception of a place that is hidden in clear sight under open sky in high and extremely remote mountains, designed to protect in a tranquil surroundings as much of precious treasures of knowledge as possible, while making it possible to create and live as well, all this at the place called Shangri La, which became a name for utopia of dreams - this was his creation, his gift to humanity, and while it might very well have been based on a real place in Himaalaya or elsewhere in India; still, it is his gift that west had the concept at all generally - while the connotation of what it stood for was forgotten by most, so people know the name but not the meaning.
Lost Horizon is about finding such a heaven while wars rage on in world out there with threats of annihilation.
Conception of a place that is hidden in clear sight under open sky in high and extremely remote mountains, designed to protect in a tranquil surroundings as much of precious treasures of knowledge as possible, while making it possible to create and live as well, all this at the place called Shangri La, which became a name for utopia of dreams - this was his creation, his gift to humanity, and while it might very well have been based on a real place in Himaalaya or elsewhere in India; still, it is his gift that west had the concept at all generally - while the connotation of what it stood for was forgotten by most, so people know the name but not the meaning.
Lost Horizon is about finding such a heaven while wars rage on in world out there with threats of annihilation.
Good-Bye, Mr. Chips: by James Hilton.
One cannot help loving this stoic, steady, old fashioned school master who won't budge from routine and discipline though he loves his students and is a very gentle person, and his firmness is without any accompanying meanness or violence or cruelty, an ideal of what a school teacher or parent ought to be - and he is fortunate enough that he meets and loves and is loved entirely by the very counterpart he needs, a woman with intelligence and beauty and lightness of heart who sees his worth in his honesty and his defending her rights as a person, never mind she is a stage dancer (not considered quite respectable those days) - and their happy marriage makes his life and his work far easier for him for ever.
There is life not so personal affecting the times and lives, war for instance, affecting all those living in England shattering peace of their small towns and the school is no exception what with boys at front and planes dropping bombs. Mr. Chipping carries on, just as gently and firmly, with ducking for cover when planes roar above included.
As all other Hilton works do, this one too goes to heart - and stays there.
There is life not so personal affecting the times and lives, war for instance, affecting all those living in England shattering peace of their small towns and the school is no exception what with boys at front and planes dropping bombs. Mr. Chipping carries on, just as gently and firmly, with ducking for cover when planes roar above included.
As all other Hilton works do, this one too goes to heart - and stays there.
Life With Father, Life With Mother: by Clarence Day Jr.
Life With Father:-
A neat, methodical man married to a woman who plays from heart, so that she is always hassled by his need of keeping accounts and he is always puzzled why she would not keep accounts, she welcomes unannounced relatives with open heart and joy while he is stressed about the disturbance they are certain to create in his routine, she wants to be left alone when ill and he wants to be petted an patted and massaged when he is ill and neither understands the need of the other in this respect, and on top of everything when she is given money to buy something she spends it on something else the house needs while charging for the first item she had taken money for so he is driven crazy and she is in tears telling him she won't stand being accused of mismanagement while she is trying to manage in so small a sum (he is not accusing her, merely attempting to comprehend the tangled accounts).
And then there are the four redheaded boys who are mixed in albeit most of the trouble seems to be either between the first son, the author, and the father (if any left over from the trouble between the parents, church, relatives et al) what with the delicate watch and the violin the son has to struggle with.
One of the most relaxing books, brings joy and smile and a melting of heart with the stories and the characters that one feels entirely close to.
..................................................................
Life With Mother:-
One of the most delightful books one can ever find.
A very neat, organised, methodical young man sets himself up in work and personal life before marrying someone he liked - only, she is neither organised nor methodical, not enough for him anyway.
On the other hand she is caring and wishes to keep up relationships, which goes towards disturbing his plans and life further what with relatives arriving and staying on for visits, and joining them for outings. And then there is the engagement ring he never gave her, and the question of church which he thinks he is too grown up now for, except as a benevolent head of the family looking on at others joining - very proper.
And above all, the accounts! The sicknesses and the preferences of each about how to deal with them .....
Really full of love it generates while reading, because it is chronicled by the son.
The good stories continue, this time with more focus on the mother and how she suddenly achieved a taste for some independence after going on a tour of Egypt with a friend and thereafter refused to give back the remaining money and declared she ought to have money of her own, and so forth - the endearing saga of impulsive mother and methodical defeated father continues.
.......................................................
A neat, methodical man married to a woman who plays from heart, so that she is always hassled by his need of keeping accounts and he is always puzzled why she would not keep accounts, she welcomes unannounced relatives with open heart and joy while he is stressed about the disturbance they are certain to create in his routine, she wants to be left alone when ill and he wants to be petted an patted and massaged when he is ill and neither understands the need of the other in this respect, and on top of everything when she is given money to buy something she spends it on something else the house needs while charging for the first item she had taken money for so he is driven crazy and she is in tears telling him she won't stand being accused of mismanagement while she is trying to manage in so small a sum (he is not accusing her, merely attempting to comprehend the tangled accounts).
And then there are the four redheaded boys who are mixed in albeit most of the trouble seems to be either between the first son, the author, and the father (if any left over from the trouble between the parents, church, relatives et al) what with the delicate watch and the violin the son has to struggle with.
One of the most relaxing books, brings joy and smile and a melting of heart with the stories and the characters that one feels entirely close to.
..................................................................
Life With Mother:-
One of the most delightful books one can ever find.
A very neat, organised, methodical young man sets himself up in work and personal life before marrying someone he liked - only, she is neither organised nor methodical, not enough for him anyway.
On the other hand she is caring and wishes to keep up relationships, which goes towards disturbing his plans and life further what with relatives arriving and staying on for visits, and joining them for outings. And then there is the engagement ring he never gave her, and the question of church which he thinks he is too grown up now for, except as a benevolent head of the family looking on at others joining - very proper.
And above all, the accounts! The sicknesses and the preferences of each about how to deal with them .....
Really full of love it generates while reading, because it is chronicled by the son.
The good stories continue, this time with more focus on the mother and how she suddenly achieved a taste for some independence after going on a tour of Egypt with a friend and thereafter refused to give back the remaining money and declared she ought to have money of her own, and so forth - the endearing saga of impulsive mother and methodical defeated father continues.
.......................................................
Life With Father: by Clarence Day Jr.
A neat, methodical man married to a woman who plays from heart, so that she is always hassled by his need of keeping accounts and he is always puzzled why she would not keep accounts, she welcomes unannounced relatives with open heart and joy while he is stressed about the disturbance they are certain to create in his routine, she wants to be left alone when ill and he wants to be petted an patted and massaged when he is ill and neither understands the need of the other in this respect, and on top of everything when she is given money to buy something she spends it on something else the house needs while charging for the first item she had taken money for so he is driven crazy and she is in tears telling him she won't stand being accused of mismanagement while she is trying to manage in so small a sum (he is not accusing her, merely attempting to comprehend the tangled accounts).
And then there are the four redheaded boys who are mixed in albeit most of the trouble seems to be either between the first son, the author, and the father (if any left over from the trouble between the parents, church, relatives et al) what with the delicate watch and the violin the son has to struggle with.
One of the most relaxing books, brings joy and smile and a melting of heart with the stories and the characters that one feels entirely close to.
And then there are the four redheaded boys who are mixed in albeit most of the trouble seems to be either between the first son, the author, and the father (if any left over from the trouble between the parents, church, relatives et al) what with the delicate watch and the violin the son has to struggle with.
One of the most relaxing books, brings joy and smile and a melting of heart with the stories and the characters that one feels entirely close to.
Dibs In Search Of Self:-
About Dibs, a child whom the teachers have given up hope on, since he does not communicate at all with anyone in class, and won't even hang up his coat, or join class to listen to a story, or play - and then a psychology professional came into his life via his school with a new therapy, play therapy, in a room all by himself with the therapist only there to see he comes to no harm, and to listen and respond, but leaving all initiative to him to do as he pleases. For an hour with a promise of another hour to come at an interval, regularly.
And the child begins to untangle and then blossom. Incredible, since the parents or the teachers could have easily let him have this freedom, this playroom to blossom in, to develop. But schools have become structured (or rather, they then had - now the fashion has swung to the opposite extreme for a while and a teacher must appreciate whatever crap a college student delivers in name of whatever subject, and woe to the teacher that dares to grade objectively or refuses to appreciate science quizzes done wrong as a matter of learning for the teacher) and so play had to be reinvented.
Dibs had a brilliant father and a brilliant mother who had had to give up on her career to have children, which then was the rule practically, as it is imperative even now (since US approves of no help whatsoever for the woman from either a husband or a mother or any other relative or servants, and mothering as well as scientific career can never be part time) - so she had to prove her worth over and over to herself and even more so to her husband, for having given up on her career in science, by proving Dibs was brilliant.
And the stress was too much for the child who was in fact brilliant, so he had withered and collapsed in on himself, no longer responding to anyone, while the other two children that followed were not subjected to any such requirements of proving brilliant and so in fact they were both normal and brilliant. The parents were about to give up on Dibs and institutionalise him, when fortunately the therapist with a new idea happened, and things changed.
This book is the story of that change, and it is astounding, touching, wonderful. One wonders how western education and society generally lost play, got so very structured as to need a therapist to have a play room or space. Even though there are playgrounds everywhere.
Today, of course, while those with any expertise and knowledge dare not criticise any mistakes or worse by others, while the lumpen hold the whip, and bullies rule every playground, including internet sites meant for readers and books.
And the child begins to untangle and then blossom. Incredible, since the parents or the teachers could have easily let him have this freedom, this playroom to blossom in, to develop. But schools have become structured (or rather, they then had - now the fashion has swung to the opposite extreme for a while and a teacher must appreciate whatever crap a college student delivers in name of whatever subject, and woe to the teacher that dares to grade objectively or refuses to appreciate science quizzes done wrong as a matter of learning for the teacher) and so play had to be reinvented.
Dibs had a brilliant father and a brilliant mother who had had to give up on her career to have children, which then was the rule practically, as it is imperative even now (since US approves of no help whatsoever for the woman from either a husband or a mother or any other relative or servants, and mothering as well as scientific career can never be part time) - so she had to prove her worth over and over to herself and even more so to her husband, for having given up on her career in science, by proving Dibs was brilliant.
And the stress was too much for the child who was in fact brilliant, so he had withered and collapsed in on himself, no longer responding to anyone, while the other two children that followed were not subjected to any such requirements of proving brilliant and so in fact they were both normal and brilliant. The parents were about to give up on Dibs and institutionalise him, when fortunately the therapist with a new idea happened, and things changed.
This book is the story of that change, and it is astounding, touching, wonderful. One wonders how western education and society generally lost play, got so very structured as to need a therapist to have a play room or space. Even though there are playgrounds everywhere.
Today, of course, while those with any expertise and knowledge dare not criticise any mistakes or worse by others, while the lumpen hold the whip, and bullies rule every playground, including internet sites meant for readers and books.
The Bridges At Toko-Ri: by James A. Michener.
War is hard enough for people to go through, without having to explain to one's partner why one is not attentive and loving, which is a hazard when one cannot say much about the mission or its dangers, for various reasons. Or when - as it happened with Korean war - the rest of the world is at peace and it is hard to explain to everyone you know that there is still a war somewhere that must be attended to. And then there is the difficulty of the mission itself, which one may or may not succeed and return alive from, since the bridges at Toko Ri must be taken and they are situated at an extremely difficult place.
A Thing Of Beauty; by A. J. Cronin.
The original English title is Crusader's Tomb, while later across the Atlantic the same book was published under a different name as it is often done for sake of the specific needs of the market across the Atlantic - perhaps the publishers feared the people of the new nation being perplexed with there being no crusades and the story being about an artist in England in recent times rather than a chevalier in the crusades. This title is taken from Shakespeare's "A thing of beauty is a joy forever".
Beauty in its true high realm of spirit is what Hilton always writes about, with a soul coming across an experience and holding on to it in face of all impossibility in this world, what with the need to compromise in order to get along with society. Hilton's people are those that stay true to the spirit and the high realms of Beauty, no matter what life and society hits them with.
The artist, painter, Stephen Desmonde of England in this book - published also under the name A Thing Of Beauty, later - tells the story of how a visionary of art faces society condemning his work, his vision, the beauty of his work, all due to his being ahead of times while mediocrity would be safer for him to stick to and acquire fame and wealth. As it is he faces destruction of his work and court cases and poverty, with few supports for his spirit and his life apart from his work. The one constant support is his wife, of less noble a birth and bringing up than him but someone who not only loves him, someone who also comprehends the greatness and beauty of his work. Her dignity in the face of his fame after his death is one of the most moving memories that stay in mind after reading this.
Beauty in its true high realm of spirit is what Hilton always writes about, with a soul coming across an experience and holding on to it in face of all impossibility in this world, what with the need to compromise in order to get along with society. Hilton's people are those that stay true to the spirit and the high realms of Beauty, no matter what life and society hits them with.
The artist, painter, Stephen Desmonde of England in this book - published also under the name A Thing Of Beauty, later - tells the story of how a visionary of art faces society condemning his work, his vision, the beauty of his work, all due to his being ahead of times while mediocrity would be safer for him to stick to and acquire fame and wealth. As it is he faces destruction of his work and court cases and poverty, with few supports for his spirit and his life apart from his work. The one constant support is his wife, of less noble a birth and bringing up than him but someone who not only loves him, someone who also comprehends the greatness and beauty of his work. Her dignity in the face of his fame after his death is one of the most moving memories that stay in mind after reading this.
Mischief: by Charlotte Armstrong.
Mischief begins with a stranger in the house, with children in the house (I am uncertain of the details, after all these years it is a mist veiled memory), the stranger is supposed to baby sit, and seems very quiet, demure, but the mother of the children is uneasy, for no discernible reason that she can think of; so the couple go out for the evening.
And then, slowly, the young woman now no longer demure or quiet, runs amok, just for fun, just mischief - so much so the guy who meets her for fun is afraid. There is an eight year old child, a girl, in danger.
Fortunately of course the mother's instinct wins over the rational edicts of the day to put the couple's sex life first and she rushes home, saving her child in the process.
It is obviously about cautioning people about letting in strangers in their homes, and what havoc can then be let loose even by young people out to make mischief just for fun.
And then, slowly, the young woman now no longer demure or quiet, runs amok, just for fun, just mischief - so much so the guy who meets her for fun is afraid. There is an eight year old child, a girl, in danger.
Fortunately of course the mother's instinct wins over the rational edicts of the day to put the couple's sex life first and she rushes home, saving her child in the process.
It is obviously about cautioning people about letting in strangers in their homes, and what havoc can then be let loose even by young people out to make mischief just for fun.
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