Tag Book Review

“Comic” Books: Two Reviews In One

Dusty 1 Comment

Books With Pictures:

Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh

Stitches by David Small

 

So I’m a word guy, right? I love books, love reading; I enjoy movies and TV, but not the same way. I teach Fahrenheit 451 pretty much every year; in fact, I’m teaching it now. We’re at the point when Captain Beatty is explaining why the firemen are a good thing, because books, he claims, are a bad thing. He says, along with a mess of other interesting statements, that things started changing when photography came into its own, followed by motion pictures, radio, and TV – and, though Ray Bradbury didn’t predict it, the internet, YouTube, memes, GIFs, et cetera. Beatty says that things got simpler because they had mass: because a picture of a face is more solid than the face that one might imagine given a description. Guy Montag, the hero of the novel, is described as 30 years old, having a thin face, black hair, heavy eyebrows, and a “blue steel shaved-but-unshaved look.” So which is more solid, the face you’re imagining after reading those words, or this:

 

(By the way: took me twenty minutes looking through Google image search to come up with that. Searching for the description got me page after page after page of male models with swirly/spiky hair on top that was shaved on the sides. I mean, this dude

is not Guy Montag.

(Also by the way: I had to go back and re-do this search because my GODDAMN MS-WORD CLONE CAN’T SAVE PICTURES AND THEN UPLOAD THEM TO MY BLOG AND WHENEVER I TRY IT CRASHES THE THING AND THEN THE WHOLE POST IS BLANK AAARRRRRGGGGH Okay, I’m fine now. This is also why I like words more than pictures.)

Now, Beatty is the bad guy in the book, and if he is for it, I’m pretty much against it, including replacing books with visual mediums like film and television and the interwebs. But as Professor Faber (he is the Yoda to Montag’s Luke Skywalker) explains later, it is possible for books and movies and TV to all accomplish the same good things – the same things that music, and art, and conversations with good friends can all accomplish.

I think these two books, even though they are as visual and pictorial as they are literary – as many pictures as words, and the pictures essentially communicate as much as the words do – do the right things in the right way. That’s why I’m putting them together in this review. That, and the fact that both, despite the largely light-hearted genres they ostensibly belong to (Stitches is a graphic novel and Hyperbole and a Half a web comic), are actually quite somber and poignant and sad.

Hyperbole and a Half is a web comic that I discovered, as I think a lot of people did, because the author, Allie Brosh, wrote about the Alot. I hate that word; I love that comic. So I got the book that Brosh published, and read it. It’s a collection of her comics, which are about herself and her life: and though they are frequently stunningly funny, they are also profoundly sad and poignant to read. Brosh lives with fairly severe depression, according to what she depicts here, and she pulls absolutely no punches in describing what that life is like, and also allowing that condition, those feelings, to bleed into her other comics, as it no doubt bleeds into all parts of her life. Realizing how much she struggles with this turns even the more conventionally funny and wacky comics a bit more serious; because the strangeness that at first was just amusing now seems another piece of Brosh’s lifelong alienation.

But as hard as that is at times to read, it is also, simply, brilliant. I have rarely read something so honest and perceptive and brave, something that so perfectly shows a unique mind both in turmoil and in triumph.

Oh hey – know when else I read something that showed the same sort of genius and pain at once? Why, it was when I read Stitches, by David Small.

This one is a more traditional graphic novel; as such, it is in a more familiar storyboard format, and the art looks more like comic art; Small is an excellent illustrator, where Brosh’s art is intentionally simple and childish (Though still effective, and amusing as hell where it isn’t heartbreaking.). This is also a single story, told in words and images, rather than a series of shorts and vignettes like Hyperbole and a Half. It is the story of David Small’s family, particularly his violently abusive mother. The title comes from Small’s experience with cancer as a child: he had an undiagnosed tumor in his throat, which eventually led to the removal of one of his vocal chords, leaving him essentially mute, and also with a Frankensteinian line of stitches across his neck. This one is an even more terrible story. It’s maybe a little easier to live with, because it has villains and therefore heroes; Small should be considered heroic simply for surviving and growing up and getting his freedom, and then finding the strength to write this book – but the fact of his heroism makes the villains that much more terrible, and the story that much harder to get through.

But like Hyperbole and a Half, it is worth getting through. And in both of these cases – despite what Captain Beatty might think – the images don’t make the story easier to read, though I do think they give the stories mass. Almost too much of it, in fact.

I hope I haven’t made these books seem too dark or painful to read; they are both hard to read, but both are wonderfully realized, and really more moving than anything else. They are both genuine and honest memoirs written by intelligent and creative people, and I recommend them both.

Just – don’t read them one after the other. Put something more cheerful in the middle, there.

(Here: try this. I think it’s funny.)

The Fountainhead

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The Fountainhead

by Ayn Rand

 

I don’t think I understood this book.

I understood parts of it. The hero, Howard Roark, is intended, I think, to represent the ideal man in Ayn Rand’s terms: he is self-made, dependent upon no one else, answers to no one but himself, acts for no other reason than his self-interest. He is not selfish in that he does not take things that he does not earn, does not steal from others nor hoard things that others would find valuable; he does not seek to impose his ideas on anyone else. He is a mix of what I would call an artist and what Rand would call an artist, in that she puts a higher premium on production and industry than I do, and thus Roark’s art – architecture – is seen as grander, by Rand than it is by me, because Roark erects man’s greatest achievement, in Rand’s view: the skyscraper. The city. I don’t know that I see cities as the ideal human creation, but I agree that architecture is an art with a particularly elemental aspect, in that architects build our homes, build our places, and thus have great influence on our lives. I can live with that as a sort of pinnacle of value.

(By the way: it isn’t that I would argue that architecture is a lesser art than, say, literature or music or painting; it’s just that art has to have an impact on the viewer to achieve its highest, or deepest, effect, and for me personally, a building doesn’t have the same magic as the perfect poem or song or painting. Totally subjective. Speaking of subjective, Rand keeps trying to pawn off Roark’s architectural style as the perfect ideal, and I don’t see it that way; she’s clearly a fan of Modern architecture, and I like several styles. Unimportant but kind of annoying while I was reading.)

The villain, Ellsworth Toohey, is the opposite of Roark. He lives entirely through others, but focused on himself in a purely selfish, greedy, and therefore evil manner: Toohey seeks to control others, to force them to obey his whims, for no other reason than because he desires that control (Rand hints, as she states more clearly in Atlas Shrugged, that by denying his own self-interest, what Toohey really wants both for others and for himself, is death. Okay.). He uses public opinion, which he can sway, to intimidate or extort others until they obey him; if they will not, he tries to use it to destroy them. He tries to destroy Roark because Roark can’t be controlled, because Roark doesn’t care about public opinion. (One of the best exchanges in this book is when Toohey, having used his manipulative wiles to screw up Roark’s life, catches Roark alone and says, “You can tell me what you think of me,” because he thrives on hatred and envy and bile. To which Roark responds, “But I don’t think of you.” That was a great line.) But because Roark doesn’t care about public opinion – because he lives only for his own happiness, using only his own reason to determine his value – Toohey’s attempts to destroy Roark do not work. Roark, like the honey badger, doesn’t give a shit. I appreciate that. I can even admire it.

The other character I understood was Peter Keating. Keating is not the opposite of Roark, but the negative of Roark: he cares only for public opinion. He never uses his own standards, nor even his own ability to accomplish anything; like Toohey, he excels at manipulation, and Keating uses that manipulation to worm his way into people’s trust and then take credit for their work. He is supremely successful because of that, and absolutely miserable: the opposite of Roark. (Keating too is an architect.)

I got all of that. I could appreciate that story, of Keating competing with Roark and not really understanding why he feels like he’s losing even though he wins every award, every contract, every accolade that he and Roark both try for. I could appreciate the story of the evil Ellsworth Toohey trying to destroy the good Howard Roark, and Roark essentially winning that fight even though Toohey is appallingly effective at manipulation, just because Roark doesn’t care what anyone else thinks, and because he is good enough at what he does for the quality of his work to show through despite what the critics have to say about it (Among other things, Toohey is the premiere critic of architecture in the book.).

What I didn’t get, though, was the love story. The female protagonist is named Dominique Francon: she is the daughter of Peter Keating’s boss and predecessor as most-successful-but-least-actually-talented architect, and she is, like Toohey, a critic of architecture. She is also, like Roark, a Randian ideal in that she thinks for herself and cares not at all what others think of her. She enters into relationships as a self-interested party offering value for value, which is how Rand says that love should work.

The problem is that she loves Howard Roark. It wouldn’t be a problem, because Roark is the ideal man and therefore of course she loves him, except: their relationship starts when Roark rapes her. Straight up, not simply according to my overly-sensitive interpretation; Roark breaks into her house at night and rapes her, and when she refers to it later, she says “He raped me.” And then they love each other. They love each other so much, in fact, that Dominique leaves Roark and marries Peter Keating. Who, because she does not at all love him, she does not respond to, turning into a lifeless mannequin whenever he touches her (A particularly distasteful element that Rand also played up in Atlas Shrugged, with one of the female villains in that book.). Now, Dominique does this ostensibly because she can’t stand to watch Roark go through the crap he has to deal with from Toohey and all of his allies as they try to destroy his reputation and therefore the man himself, but I really don’t get it. I don’t get why she marries Keating, I don’t get why she then leaves him and marries Gail Wynand (who I also don’t get), and I don’t get why she loves Roark after he raped her. I don’t get what Rand is trying to say with all of this. I don’t get why Dominique is the ideal woman when her major quality seems to be her unearthly beauty (Which, as an unimportant side note, I also couldn’t see simply because Rand’s idea of beauty is not mine: Dominique is tall and thin and pale and cold and has hair that is repeatedly compared to a helmet complete with metallic sheen. But that’s neither here nor there: if she had been described as my ideal imaginary woman, I still wouldn’t understand her actions or role in the book.) and her determination to leave the man she loves and marry a man she loathes. I don’t get how that’s good.

My problem with the book is that the parts I didn’t get took too much away from the parts I did get. I can’t root for Roark when he’s a rapist. I can’t root for Dominique when I don’t know why she does what she does. I can’t root for Toohey or Keating when I do understand that they’re scum. I would actually root for Gail Wynand, who is a badass and also a Randian ideal: he is self-interested, motivated, hard-working, and entirely self-made. It seems that his failing that makes him a flawed character is that he has built an empire based on public opinion rather than his own ideals and reason. Wynand sought power, and he found it along with wealth by becoming William Randolph Hearst: he owns all of the trashiest, most sensational, and most successful newspapers in the country. In the second half of the book, Toohey goes after Wynand (Because Wynand has power that Toohey wants), and Wynand is finally destroyed by Toohey, though Wynand makes it a Pyrrhic victory for Toohey. I’m not sure why Wynand loses, though. Rand shows how manipulating public opinion, and really socking home the idea that altruism is the only good and anyone who is wealthy is greedy and therefore vile and selfish, can destroy an empire; that’s how Toohey takes Wynand down. But I think Wynand is not supposed to be a victim, here: he is somehow partly responsible for his downfall. He used his papers to manipulate public opinion in order to garner power, and that is finally turned against him; I suppose that is his evil, his tragic flaw. But I feel that undercuts the message of Toohey’s villainy, and it made me unsure if I should be mad at Toohey or Wynand. And then there’s the fact that Wynand falls in love with Dominique, and she marries him and loves him on some level – but then drops him like a hot rock and goes back to her rapist. (And I feel like I’m supposed to appreciate how Dominique can look past the fact of her rape, and therefore I’m being like a stick in the mud or a prude or something by harping on this. And if so, well, bite me.) So is this more evidence that Wynand is flawed and I’m supposed to admire Roark more than Wynand? I don’t. I see Wynand’s evil side, in his abuse of power; but I see Roark’s evil side in his abuse of Dominique. And Dominique’s evil side in her betrayal of – well, everyone, in one way or another; particularly herself.

Basically, I dislike everyone in this book, and so I can’t see the ideal aspect I’m supposed to appreciate and try to emulate. I was not made happy by the happy ending.

So I figure, either I didn’t understand the book well enough to appreciate it, or I did understand it, and it’s pretty much evil crap. Either way, I can’t recommend it.

I invite anyone who feels they can explain the book to me to do so. I completely accept that I am not a fair judge of it because I didn’t really get it, and I would like to understand it even if I still don’t agree with it, should that be the case.

Book Rant — I mean, REVIEW: Dune Messiah

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Dune Messiah

by Frank Herbert

 

What does it mean when you don’t understand a book?

This is something that has bothered me for a long time, now. Because back in grad school, I signed up for a class that was going to focus on James Joyce’s Ulysses; each student in the seminar was going to annotate one chapter of the thing. I had never read Joyce, and so I got Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man out of the library, and read it, to give myself some idea of what I was in for.

Couldn’t understand it at all.

Two weeks later, I dropped the class and dropped out of grad school.

Joyce wasn’t the only reason I did that, and that wasn’t the only book I couldn’t understand. But it’s bothered me ever since, both looking back on that period in my life, and also whenever I read books now that, like Portrait of the Artist, I just can’t really grasp. There’s a spectrum, of course: some books I get almost all of it, except for a certain section, or just a few paragraphs; some I can’t break into at all. Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude was one of the latter; Wuthering Heights, one of the former.

And Frank Herbert’s Dune Messiah, the sequel to the legendary classic Dune, is another one that, like Wuthering Heights, I couldn’t quite get all of it. And I’m not sure why. I don’t know if it’s because I’m not as smart as I think I am, or if Frank Herbert thought I (and the rest of his audience) was even smarter than I am, or if Frank Herbert wasn’t nearly as smart as he thought he was. All I know is, though I could follow most of the plot, and there are parts of this book that I actually really enjoyed, there were a number of sentences, paragraphs, and even chapters that I had to read over and over, and at some point, I said “Screw it,” and just skimmed those parts, thinking, “Yup, don’t get this. Don’t get this at all.”

So the general idea of the book: Dune is a story of intergalactic intrigue. There is a noble family, many millennia in the future, called the Atreides; they are put in charge of the most valuable planet in the galactic Empire, the planet Arrakis: known as Dune, because the entire planet is one huge desert. Dune is the most important planet in the galaxy because it is the sole source of melange, the spice; the spice is a drug that allows people to see into the future, which is the only way that spaceship pilots can steer through hyperspace. The spice has various other effects, too, not the least of which is that it extends human life (Unless you stop taking it, in which case, you die.). So the Atreides family gets to take over Dune, but unfortunately, they have enemies, and their enemies invade Dune and wipe the Atreides out. The wife of Duke Atreides escapes with her son Paul, and they find refuge among a group of desert nomads called the Fremen, who are, because of the incredibly harsh conditions of their life on Dune, the baddest-assed badasses in the whole galaxy. Paul and his mother are adopted by the Fremen, and over time, Paul comes to be their leader; he leads the Fremen back out of the deep desert and reconquers Dune, and from there, the entire galactic empire, because as soon as he controls Dune, he controls every powerful person who uses the spice, because if he cuts off their supply, they will all die. He threatens to do that, and he also blackmails the emperor, and hey presto, Emperor Paul Atreides. End Book One.

Now, that’s not the whole story. There is a crapton more, because Frank Herbert liked him some complicated universes, and there are various factions and issues wrapped up in the whole thing – the Landsraad and CHOAM, the Bene Gesserit, the Harkonnens, the Sardaukar, on and on it goes. There are also prophecies and religious ideas, and Paul becomes Muad’dib, and the Mahdi, and also Usul, and he’s the kwisatz haderach – it’s a lot. You wouldn’t want this guy’s life. But that’s the main plot: family gets destroyed, son comes back and takes revenge and seizes power for himself. Combination of Macbeth and Hamlet. No problem.

But then there’s Dune Messiah.

I would like to note here that my father, in discussing this series with me some years ago (This is my second time through the series; the first time I made it to Book 4, God-Emperor of Dune, before I gave up.), expressed his opinion that the first book was a fluke, that the other five books were the ones Herbert wanted to write, and the first book had somehow gone astray — and was, he said, the only book Herbert wrote that is worth reading. Just something to keep in mind.

In Dune Messiah, Paul Muad’dib has been Emperor for twelve years, and his legions of Fremen have been waging a successful jihad against the rest of the galaxy – there’s a point when Paul talks about Genghis Khan and Hitler, and the millions of people they killed; then he says that a conservative estimate would put his death toll at 90 billion humans. Paul and his sister, St. Alia of the Knife (If I ever had a daughter, that would be her name. St. Alia of the Knife Humphrey. And I wouldn’t let her shorten it, either.), have been turning themselves into religious idols, mainly because both of them are prescient: they can see the future. It doesn’t seem like this is a good idea, though, because neither of them want to be gods, and they have grown to distrust their own theocracy. Paul is also having trouble in his personal life because he has a sort of unofficial marriage with the Fremen woman he loves, Chani, but in order to become Emperor he had to officially marry the daughter of the former emperor, a woman named Irulan, whom he doesn’t care about but has to placate in order to keep his throne secure. Both of these women want to have Paul’s children. Paul only wants to have children with Chani, but he can’t cast aside Irulan; but for some reason (it isn’t an accident) he and Chani can’t conceive. Meanwhile he’s dealing with this whole issue of the Fremen turning on him, partly because they think he’s become corrupt, partly because they’ve become corrupt – it’s not clear. And then there are the Bene Tleilax, (Want to know how to pronounce all of these names? So do I. Guess. It’s what I do.) who resurrected one of Paul’s old friends and teachers, who was killed in the first book when the enemies overtook Dune, and have now sent that guy to — maybe kill Paul? Maybe help him maintain power? We don’t know. And then there’s a guy floating in a tank of orange gas, because he’s so addicted to the spice that he breathes the shit; and that makes him prescient, though not as prescient as Paul – because of the kwisatz haderach thing, in addition to the fact that Paul’s horking down spice by the bucketful; but the kwisatz haderach thing is why the Bene Gesserit are so obsessed with him, because the Bene Gesserit are a quasi-religious order who are basically eugenicists, who have been trying to breed the perfect human for like ten thousand years, and they finally did it, and it’s Paul. And now they want him to have kids and pass on his perfect genes – but Irulan, who is a Bene Gesserit, is their choice, while Paul only wants kids with Chani, but if he binds himself more closely to the Fremen then they will take the whole Messiah-Jihad thing waaay too far, and will kill Paul’s whole family and probably the universe, too. And Paul can pretty much see all of the possible futures, except for where another prescient person is involved because then they muddy up the timestream because they can see what’s coming and therefore can react to it, which changes Paul’s ability to see what comes next, and so he’s trying to pick the best future but he can’t really see which one it is, and every future kinda sucks.

And that’s not even what I couldn’t understand. Other than the Bene Tleilax, who literally make no fucking sense but are really cool anyway because they have these people called Face Dancers who can change their appearance at will and I love that name, I could follow all the political stuff. And most of the time stuff. The last ninety pages or so are the best part of the book, largely because the motivations become simple; also at one point Paul gets blinded – but it doesn’t matter because at that point he can see the future so completely clearly that he can see where everything around him is, in his visions; so he can point to people and describe their appearance, even though he has no eyes in his head, and it’s both cool and interesting.

No: the problem with this book is the way people talk. Herbert expects us to pick up on their subtleties, to understand not only what they say but what they really mean, so clearly that he never explains what the characters mean when they talk. It’s worst with two specific characters, both related to the Bene Tleilax: a Face Dancer named Scytale, and the resurrected friend of Paul’s, who was originally named Duncan Idaho and now goes by the unfortunate name of Hayt, which is much too much like a bad screamo band name. When these two guys talk, it just – it makes no sense at all. In the first chapter, Scytale is having a meeting with his other anti-Paul conspirators, and he says, “You wish to draw me into this fools’ fight? Very well. We’re dealing with a potential messiah. You don’t launch a frontal attack upon such a one. Martyrdom would defeat us.” I mean, okay, but you know what he left out? What their goal is. Kill Paul? Replace him? Take down his self-made religion, and his jihad? Bring back the old ways? We have no idea. They just – can’t have a martyr. And then one of his partners says “You think that’s the only danger?” And when Scytale doesn’t respond, and she says, “Well?” Scytale says, “I was enjoying the silence. Our hostilities are better left unvoiced.” And again: what hostilities? It’s never explained. You don’t like each other, sure, I don’t like you either, but – why not? If you don’t like each other, why are you working together? And why is it better if the hostilities are left unvoiced?

I guess we’re supposed to either figure these people and their goals out from subtle clues, or else just – know. Somehow. Herbert never explains what the Bene Tleilax want. He says that they create tools, but by the end of the book I don’t know if Paul is the tool, or if Hayt/Idaho is. Or both. Maybe neither. And it’s not just these people, though Scytale is the worst: we’re not clear what Paul wants, or what St. Alia of the Knife wants, or what the Fremen want, or anyone, really. Which made this book terribly annoying when it wasn’t talking about very simple things: by the end, Paul wants his wife Chani to live. We get that. St. Alia of the Knife wants to be loved. Sure, yes, good. Hayt wants to be Duncan Idaho again, and remember what that meant. I get that, and I approve. And if that had been what the whole book was about, I would probably like it; as I said, there were parts that I liked, and I did really like Dune.

But then there’s this kind of shit: (Note: Hayt is a ghola, a reanimated zombie, basically, who used to be Duncan Idaho; he is also a mentat, which is a human computer, like a Vulcan, pure logic, no emotion, super fast thoughts. There is no reason to think he would know the future, and yet somehow they all seem cool with him making predictions. Your guess is as good as mine. Oh – and he has steel eyeballs instead of normal ones.)

“Hayt,” Paul said, “are you the tool of my undoing?”

“If the substance of here and now is changed, the future is changed,” the ghola said.

“That is no answer!” Chani objected.

Paul raised his voice. “How will I die, Hayt?”

Light glinted from the artificial eyes. “It is said, m’lord, that you will die of money and power.”

Chani stiffened. “How dare he speak thus to you?”

“The mentat is truthful,” Paul said.

“Was Duncan Idaho a real friend?” she asked.

“He gave his life for me.”

“It is sad,” Chani whispered, “that a ghola cannot be restored to his original being.”

“Would you convert me?” the ghola asked, directing his gaze to Chani.

“What does he mean?” Chani asked.

“To be converted is to be turned around,” Paul said. “But there’s no going back.”

“Every man carries his own past with him,” Hayt said.

“And every ghola?” Paul asked.

“In a way, m’lord.”

“Then what of that past in your secret flesh?” Paul asked.

So. Dunno why Paul asked that first question when he’s the one who can see the future. Dunno what Hayt’s answer means. Dunno why Paul asks the second question, either; Chani wants to know what the hell he’s doing with this zombie thing that can’t be trusted, and Paul doesn’t fucking help at all, he just makes it more confusing – and he completely ignores Chani when she voices the same confusion that I’m feeling. Which I assume is why she changes the topic entirely in the middle of the conversation – maybe she’s offended by the money and power comment, though I can’t for the life of me understand why it’s offensive – but then Paul is the one whose answer makes no sense, but they slip right past that into this last exchange, ending with the “secret flesh” thing, which – huh? He’s no secret, you’ve known all along that he’s the reanimated zombie of your friend. Everybody knows it. What fucking secret flesh, Paul? WHY DON’T YOU MAKE SENSE, PAUL?!?

Anyway. Maybe it does all make sense, and I’m too dim to understand it. All I know is, I probably should have stopped after the first book. I don’t think I’ll read the third.

 

One last thing: I have a new theory why this book was so confusing for me. Here is the cover of my book (finger added for emphasis):

And here is the title page, also with emphatic finger. See the problem?

Book Review: Modoc

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Modoc: The True Story of the Greatest Elephant That Ever Lived

by Ralph Helfer

 

This is a very sweet book, an amazing story about a remarkable elephant. It is also unbelievably cheesy.

That doesn’t have to be a problem, of course. Most love stories are cheesy to one extent or another, and this is, most definitely, a love story. It’s a story about a man named Bram Gunterstein and the three loves of his life: the two women he loved, Sian and Gerdie, and the elephant, a female Indian pachyderm named Modoc. He called her Mo. Mosie.

Mo and Bram were born on the same day, in the same hour, on the farm owned by Bram’s elephant-trainer father, near the Black Forest in Germany. The two grew up together, and the pastoral idyll of this portion of the book is almost painfully innocent and sweet – it did, for me, get a bit saccharine, especially when Gerdie comes into the picture and she, Bram, and Mo spend summertime frolicking through the hedgerows and splish-splashing in the lakes. Ah, Youth. But then reality catches up and the owner of the circus where Modoc performs with her elephant family sells everything to an American circus owner. Bram is to be left behind as Modoc and the other animals are moved to America.

But Bram can’t leave Mo. So instead, he leaves Gerdie – and as sad as it is, it is clearly the right choice.

Unfortunately, when Bram and Modoc leave the pastoral perfection of their childhood, frankly, the shit hits the fan. A whole lot of shit hits a whole lot of fans, and spreads far and wide. The two have incredible adventures, most of them in some way terrible. There is suffering, war and blood and death, disease and starvation and fire and misery. There is also a tremendous amount of love, and quite a lot of spirituality; Bram believed that the way to God was through communion with nature, particularly through close bonds with specific animals as he had with Modoc. If he was right, then he no doubt found his way to God, because I can’t imagine a closer bond than his with this elephant.

In the end, I liked the book. It was absolutely riveting at times, and heartbreaking at others; though the author, Helfer, who knew Bram and Modoc both towards the ends of their lives, tends heavily towards the cheese, I would say it’s because he’s an animal trainer, not an author. I will also say he’s a much better poet: there is a memorial poem he wrote included at the end of the book which is by far the best moment of writing. But even if he was a terrible writer – which he is not – this book would be worth reading just for the story, and the characters. Definitely recommended.

The Complete Douglas Adams

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The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide

by Douglas Adams

 

I don’t think the world needs me to say that these books are brilliant and wonderful. They are brilliant and wonderful, but I hope everyone already knows that. If anyone out there within sight of these words has not already read these books, then you absolutely must pick them up as your very next piece of reading – particularly since it is summer time, and there are no better beach reads than these.

There are a few things that I will add to the conversation.

First, this Omnibus edition is probably not the best way to read these books; it’s convenient to have them all together, but it’s much too large and unwieldy; this is the kind of book that you almost don’t want to read lying down in bed, because there’s no way to hold it up without your arms getting tired. And very little in life makes one feel more pathetic than watching your arms tremble from holding up a book. Also if you are, like me, prone to dozing off while reading, this book will do real harm if it falls on your face. I will also say that the bonus story here, Young Zaphod Plays It Safe, was almost entirely pointless. Not in a wacky Douglas Adams way, but in the way that I didn’t know why I had read it.

On the other hand, while I have seen the first three books everywhere for years in small convenient paperbacks, I have not seen the last two books, So Long and Thanks for All the Fish and Mostly Harmless in the same format with the same frequency. And just like Star Wars, while there are plenty of people who carp that the first three are the only good ones, I disagree; Mostly Harmless has some flaws, but So Long and Thanks for All the Fish not only fits in well with the others, but it has one of the best romances I have read in a light-hearted book. There aren’t a lot of comedic authors who can tell a good love story (Christopher Moore is actually the only one who comes to mind), but this book is a good love story. It is worth reading all by itself. Mostly Harmless probably is not, but it has some absolutely wonderful moments: Ford Prefect pulling a Mission: Impossible on the Guide central office; Arthur Dent as Master Sandwich Maker; the realm of The King; the planet of What Next. I hated the ending, predictably, as it is not funny; but it certainly puts a period on the series. I think fans of the books should read it, most definitely.

The second thing I would like to add is this: not only was Douglas Adams a creative genius and a hilarious man – probably the funniest author I know of – but he was, simply put, a hell of a writer. This is his description of the Vogon Constructor Fleet in the first book:

The great ships hung motionless in the sky, over every nation on Earth. Motionless they hung, huge, heavy, steady in the sky, a blasphemy against nature. Many people went straight into shock as their minds tried to encompass what they were looking at. The ships hung in the sky in much the way that bricks don’t.

That last sentence is pure genius. And for a simpler, beautifully done writerly trick, this is the way he describes the actual destruction of Earth (I can’t think that’s a spoiler: it happens at the end of the first chapter, for Pete’s sake.):

There was a terrible ghastly silence.

There was a terrible ghastly noise.

There was a terrible ghastly silence.

 

 

Some of my other favorites:

The first thing that hit their eyes was what appeared to be a coffin.

And the next four thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine things that hit their eyes were also coffins.

 

(Describing a paranoid military character practicing his menacing:)

Number Two’s eyes darted feverishly about the room again and then settled back on the mirror, like a pair of flies briefly distracted from their favorite piece of month-old meat.

 

From Life, the Universe and Everything:

“The dew,” he observed, “has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning.”

 

This, from So Long…, is a description of the woman half of the romance, and this is why this book should be read and enjoyed.

She was tallish with dark hair which fell in waves around a pale and serious face. Standing still, alone, she seemed almost somber, like a statue to some important but unpopular virtue in a formal garden. She seemed to be looking at something other than what she looked as if she was looking at.

But when she smiled, as she did now, suddenly, it was as if she had just arrived from somewhere.

 

And what may be my favorite description of all time:

If you took a couple of David Bowies and stuck one of the David Bowies on the top of the other David Bowie, then attached another David Bowie to the end of each of the arms of the upper of the first two David Bowies and wrapped the whole business up in a dirty beach robe, you would then have something which didn’t exactly look like John Watson, but which those who knew him would find hauntingly familiar.

 

The last thing I will say about these books is a personal confession: when I was 12, I auditioned for a school production of Pirates of Penzance by reading the Vogon poetry from Hitchhiker’s Guide. And when the director tried to cut me off by saying, “Okay, thank you,” I held up one finger to signal that I wasn’t yet done, and went ahead and finished the piece.

I didn’t get the part.

But you should get these books.

Oh freddled gruntbuggly,
Thy micturations are to me,
As plurdled gabbleblotchits,
On a lurgid bee.
Groop, I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes,
And hooptiously drangle me,
With crinkly bindlewurdles, mashurbitries.
Or else I shall rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon,
See if I don’t!

Book Review: Atlas Shrugged

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Atlas Shrugged

by Ayn Rand

 

My god.

Now: I’m a word guy, a writer and a literature teacher, so I read quickly. I enjoy it, so I dedicate a lot of my free time to it. I’m a high school teacher and it’s summertime, so I have a lot of free time. I’ve been averaging about a book a day since school ended.

Until I hit this one.

1070 pages of some of the smallest print I’ve seen outside of User Agreements. 562,000 words, according to the Indefeasible blog. For scale, that is 25,000 words less than War and Peace by Tolstoy, and 400,000 words more than The Grapes of Wrath, the longest book I’ve ever tried to teach. It is equivalent to 12.186 Fahrenheit 451s.

This took me eight days to read. I spend at least 3-4 hours a day reading, too. It was a tough slog, too; because it is a philosophical treatise as much as it is a novel, I had to concentrate on the ideas harder than I would on, say, a book from The Wheel of Time or Harry Potter. I did it because the book was recommended as an important first step in understanding a former colleague and debate opponent’s worldview, which he describes as Aristotelian and bears a lot of resemblance to Rand’s philosophy, which she called Objectivism. I wanted to understand his worldview because his ideas are different from mine, and he is very, very sure of his positions and opinions; so I wanted to know from whence came his surety, and if I could and should be thinking along the same lines. So I read the book.

It made me think lots of interesting things. It really did: it made me realize that there are some things that I have done (like mock and castigate industrialists – in my case my favorite target was Bill Gates) that I shouldn’t have done, some things that I do that I shouldn’t do (like use words ambiguously, or symbolically, with little concern for their actual meaning), and some things that I haven’t done that I should do (like think about what my purpose in life really is, and why). There are some parts of the philosophy espoused and exemplified that I find interesting, and that I plan to investigate further and perhaps even adopt, if I can verify that they work for me.

However: reading this book was not worth it. Even with my personal interest in knowing what it has to say, I got so bloody tired of reading it that for the last three days, I had to work twice as hard to pay attention – and since I had to work twice as hard as normal to pay attention in the first place, this has been a mentally draining task. I did it, though, and now I’m here to tell you: don’t do it.

Rand was not a good writer. I’ve read three of her books now, and while this one was leagues better than Anthem, that’s like saying that shaving with a chipped-flint spearhead is better than shaving with sandpaper: you still wouldn’t want to do it. I read The Fountainhead in high school, so I don’t remember it well; once I’ve recovered sufficiently from this one, I may read that one. I dunno, though. It’s only 311,000 words, but that’s still two Grapes of Wrath.

That’s the biggest problem. She used too many words. And I say that as a wordy writer, which I am; my first book was 200,000 words. But she repeats things too many times, unnecessarily, as though using five words to describe something makes up for the fact that she is telling and not showing; and when she explains them, she uses too many synonyms and appositives. As a random sample from a page I just flipped to:

The scream of an alarm siren shattered the space beyond the window and shot like a rocket in a long, thin line to the sky. It held for an instant, then fell, then went on in rising, falling spirals of sound, as if fighting for breath against terror to scream louder. It was the shriek of agony, the call for help, the voice of the mills as of a wounded body crying to hold its soul.

So there was an alarm, then. You know, just the word “alarm” implies that it was bad, and “scream” implies fear; you could basically say this same paragraph in three words:

An alarm screamed.

Now of course repetition creates emphasis, which is presumably the point of the extended description; but there doesn’t seem to be anything in this book that Rand doesn’t want to emphasize – which means, of course, that nothing is really emphasized, because all of it seems almost like – well, like a screaming alarm siren fighting for breath, crying to hold its soul. By the end of this book I was very tired of being yelled at. I can’t imagine how fatiguing a conversation with this woman must have been.

In addition, the level of rage leveled at people like me – political liberals, that is, which means Rand saw me as a looter, a moocher, a liar, a coward, a fool, a murderer, a thug, and the destruction of humanity – was just as exhausting. I knew going in that there was a critical speech at the end, when John Galt speaks (No spoilers – that’s the name of the chapter, “This is John Galt speaking.”), which explained the whole worldview being dramatized in this book; but the problem was that most of what Galt says had already been said by the narrator or one of the other characters. I probably could have just read Galt’s speech and skipped the rest of the book. I would have been happier, too, because Galt carries the deepest anger, the most righteous condemnation of anyone who would support, you know, taxes and welfare and stuff. So I had to read that after reading another 900 pages of pretty much the same stuff, just not quite as angry as when Galt says it. I got really tired of being insulted so many times, and with such bile.

I will also say that, while the story itself is interesting (though much too long) and, I think, disturbingly realistic, the characters are not. Not that I think Rand’s idealized hero-industrialists are absurd; I mean, they are, but they are absurd the same way that Tom Brady or Michael Jordan is absurd, or William Shakespeare, or Isaac Newton, or Michelangelo or Mozart: nobody should be that good at what they do. But as all those names (Just the first few to come to mind. Of course there are many more examples.) show, people really are that good at what they do. It is possible. No, these characters are unrealistic in the way they read each others’ expressions. Like this:

The suggestion of a smile on Mrs. Hastings’ face held sadness, but the face had no imprint of tragedy, only a grave look of firmness, acceptance and quiet serenity.

Picture that face, that smile, in your mind. Okay, that’s good, just the suggestion of a smile . . . No! No imprint of tragedy. That’s better – but it needs a little more firmness in that look of quiet serenity. Got it, now? Or this:

There was the faintest coating of mockery spread, like shellac, over the smooth notes of her voice.

I mean, I like that, it’s a nice phrase – but what the hell does that sound like? And how would someone pick up on it?

These aren’t the best examples, the best examples are when someone heroic looks into the face of one of the villains and sees what they intend to show, along with what they’re hiding, and also what they are unaware they are really feeling; but I didn’t want to spend the time looking through the book to find one. It took me long enough to find these examples.

There are thoughts worth thinking in this book. I intend to spend more time thinking about those ideas. But good grief: I have already spent enough time reading this book. No more.

Book Review: The Naked Ape

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The Naked Ape

by Desmond Morris

I’ve been carrying this one around for a while, never sure how much I actually wanted to read it; the cover talks about how explosive and controversial the book is, and that’s cool, but it was published in 1967, so it’s unlikely the controversy would still feel controversial, and might not even feel interesting. I had no idea what to expect from a book about human sexuality and interpersonal relationships from an evolutionary standpoint.

Turns out it was what I should have expected: this book (I’m sure it’s not the only source) was where the ideas were codified that people still repeat in terms of the evolution of humanity. This is where you can read about how men are hunters, while women are caregivers, so that humans have created pair-bonds of unusual strength so that the men can go out and hunt while the women stay home and care for the children, and both can trust that the other won’t go out pair-bonding with some tramp or the hunter next door.

This is where you can read about everything about humans is designed specifically for sex: we have tiny hair (Despite the title, we actually aren’t less hairy than other apes; it’s just that our hairs are mostly really tiny – at least for Caucasians like me. Africans, Asians, and Native Americans are indeed less hairy than monkeys. Maybe instead of Honkies, we should be Hairies. Heh.) so that we can enjoy touching each other more; we have earlobes so that we can enjoy more variety of erogenous zones; women have breasts because men can’t see their butts from the front, and poofy red lips because – never mind. He also comments (and this little factoid is repeated in the Wikipedia article on the book —  can’t imagine why this one should be the one people pick out in describing the book) that humans have the biggest penises out of all the primates. Fancy that.

This book explains everything. Unfortunately, almost every single word of it is speculative. It’s funny, because there’s a point in the beginning when Morris scoffs at one particular theory which was made without direct evidence; and then he proceeds to spin theory after theory without even a scrap of direct evidence for any of them. (Because I thought it was interesting: the theory Morris scoffs at is the explanation that we lost our coarse body hair because in between the fruit-eating monkey we once were and the savannah-living hunter/gatherer hominid we became, there might have been a coastal/aquatic stage, when the monkeys discovered the abundance of rich food at the seashore. This might explain the evolution of hairlessness, as a means of streamlining in the water; this fits because the body hair that remains actually mimics the pattern of water flowing over a swimming body. It also explains our hands being wide and flat and paddle-like. It’s an interesting theory. It’s a better one than “We have earlobes so we don’t cheat on each other when we’re out hunting!”) Morris has a fair amount of negative evidence that he derives from the animals he knows so well (Morris was a zoologist and zookeeper); so the explanation that human women’s breasts don’t need to be large for the sake of nursing, because chimpanzees breastfeed but have essentially flat chests, makes sense; but the idea that they are therefore specifically erogenous because breasts, nipples, and areolae swell during sexual excitement, and particularly the idea that they are meant to imitate the buttocks because humans mate face-to-face, are entirely speculative and really pretty ridiculous. (I have to recommend this song, particularly the last verse; beware, it is not safe for work.)

Probably the most amusing thing in reading this book – other than the smutty dirty parts, which are always fun to read (and this book talks A LOT about sex) – was the glib way Morris plays up his own ethnocentrism. He mocks other ethnologists and anthropologists who study small, extraordinary populations, claiming that the real information should come from a study of the mainstream, “most successful” version of humanity – which, he assures us, is clearly the Western European and American culture. Just look how many of us there are! Obviously we’re the best and most normal human. (And again there is a remarkably oblivious hypocrisy in this, because Morris goes on to talk several times about rare and unusual ape behavior or traits as analogous explanations of human behavior; the breasts-as-front-facing-buttocks thing comes partly from one particular type of baboon that has a similar adaptation. One type of one species of ape. “Who would think it was a good idea to study small and atypical populations to understand a whole species? Ridiculous!”) It was fascinating because I know that at the time, the book was seen as incredibly radical and liberal and offensive, arguing as it did that our tendency to pick a single mate for life is evolved, not set down as right and good by Almighty God, et cetera; but now, the stances it espouses are become almost entirely conservative: American is the best kind of human; the family should stay as a single unit; the man should work outside the home (modern version of hunting, Morris tells us several times — and describes how men are always competitive, seeking “the kill” in their business lives because we don’t hunt mammoths any more. Not sure what “the kill” is for a high school teacher…) while the woman raises the children; the best sexual position is face-to-face, probably missionary style – “Good old-fashioned, man-on-top-get-it-over-with-quick,” to quote George Carlin. I wonder what Morris would have made of the current ideas about gender. Since he talks about how homosexuality is an evolutionary failure and therefore anomalous, I have a guess.

Overall, it was more interesting in terms of what it said about the author and the culture he was writing in, than in what the book actually purports to explain. As an ethnologic artifact, it’s not bad; as an explanation of humanity, I wasn’t impressed.

Book Review: The Forever War

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The Forever War

by Joe Haldeman

 

Science fiction classic – check. Hard SF/military SF – check. Rocket ships, laser beams, weird alien races – check. Human lives ruined through time dilation – double check.

The Forever War is about humanity discovering a functional method of interstellar travel, using wormholes; we begin serious space exploration and colonization – until we encounter the aliens. Then we go to war. Haldeman was pretty optimistic, really: the novel was written in the 1970’s, and set (at first) in the late 1990’s; basically he gave us 25 years to discover interplanetary travel that could bring us up close to light speed, which gives us access to the wormholes. Damn – we’re 20 years behind schedule. Better get on that, guys.

The main character is a soldier named William Mandella. He is conscripted into the war, precisely because he is a college student; I’m sure this was used as a twist for the Vietnam-era audience Haldeman wrote this one for. Mandella is drafted out of his graduate physics program and sent to be a space-soldier. The first part of the book is his training, which was interesting; it happens on an ice-planet far out in the solar system, where it is so cold the surface is frozen hydrogen. The recruits, all of them superb specimens of humanity with high intelligence and excellent physical capabilities, are trained there to use the enhanced combat space suits that will be their standard war gear, and to build and maintain a base in even harsher conditions, which will happen when they deploy. The conditions are deadly, the weapons are deadly, a fair number of the recruits die before they even engage the enemy. Then they go into their first mission, and actually battle the aliens, becoming the first humans to actually see one of the aliens in person: the first encounters were all ship-to-ship. Once they get into actual combat, they quickly find that the biggest danger they face isn’t the enemy: it is their superiors.

Once that first battle – and the battle, as well as the lead-up to it, are an excellent example of hard military science fiction – is over, then the major theme of the book comes up: as these soldiers have flown to their mission, they have approached light speed; which means that time has gone slower for them than it has for the rest of the universe. While they have spent a few weeks or months in transit on the way to their battle, the Earth has moved forward twenty or thirty years. So when they rotate back home for leave after the fight, they find a different world than the one they left: and it isn’t a good world. They quickly discover that, though they have the option to leave the military after this, they don’t have any real options for getting a job other than to re-enlist in the military.

Which they do. And they go back into combat, even farther away – which means more time spent in sub-light travel (The trip through the wormhole is instantaneous, like teleportation; but getting to the wormhole’s entrance is the issue.), which means more time dilation. Repeat this experience: combat, where the aliens are rarely the actual threat to the soldiers’ life and limb; then return to a different home than they one they left; then back into combat, because at least they feel like they belong in the military.

This was a pretty good book. Like most hard science fiction, the ideas were fascinating, the science both realistic and interesting; the writing was okay. The blurbs on the back talk about what a wonderful character Mandella is, and sure, he’s fine; but he wasn’t extraordinary to me. He’s an Everyman, which fits the novel well, because he’s essentially a grunt. So the interest in the book wasn’t in watching Mandella go through this, it was watching the crap that – anyone – would have to go through in these circumstances. Point is, the story is good, the science is good, and surprisingly enough, I really liked the ending. If you’re a science fiction fan and you haven’t read this, you should. If you’re not a science fiction fan, then don’t sweat it.

How to Read the Book “How to Write a Sentence”

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How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One

by Stanley Fish

This was a good book that, for me, just missed being a great book.

I wanted to read this one because I am planning to give my AP Language and Composition class some kind of writing guide next year; I am considering Strunk and White, and William Zinsser’s On Writing Well; I went to Barnes and Noble looking for those two (Which I used to have, dammit, and I don’t know what I did with – presumably I donated them both at some point. The book-hoarder in me is righteously pissed.) and came up with this one, instead. It’s a slender book, which will appeal to my lazy-ass students, and I really liked the beginning of this, when Fish starts talking about how you have to master the basic building blocks of writing before you can really read well or write well – and the basic building block, he says, is the sentence.

Professor Fish (A title I cannot resist using) goes on to talk about what a sentence is and what a sentence does, and he does it without resorting to grammar, and he does it with some wonderful examples from literature; this was where this book was on its way to being a great book. Reading the first four chapters or so, I was getting more and more excited about giving this one to my students: it is in plain English, and it breaks down the sentence beautifully, talking about form and content both, showing how the rules of English allow for magnificence that is only magnified if you really understand what the author is doing. Professor Fish also recommends a writing exercise that I appreciate (though honestly, I don’t do it enough; I will start) that I learned in my upper-division college composition course, which is imitation of the form of beautiful sentences with original subject matter.

So I was loving it: and then I got to about the fifth or sixth chapter. This is where Professor Fish divides sentences into two basic structures: hypotaxis and parataxis. Hypotaxis is a sentence where the elements are subordinated, put into a definite structure with a basic root element and then other elements that branch off of that basic root. Parataxis is basically (I’m oversimplifying. Poorly.) stream-of-consciousness, where the pieces of the sentence are added without any particular relationship other than an additive one. This is a weird lens to view sentences through, and it isn’t one that my students will get. He spends two chapters on it, one on each structure, and while the hypotaxis (The simpler and more common sentence type, despite the complex definition I have given and failed to clarify) chapter is easy enough to follow, the parataxis one is not. The few chapters right after that don’t get any simpler, and Professor Fish lost me – which means he hasn’t a prayer of keeping my students.

I also have to say: I wish he had branched away from the classic canon of literature in finding his examples. I am not particularly enamored of Jane Austen; I prefer James Baldwin, maybe Edward Abbey, certainly Diane Ackerman. I have more recently been re-reading Douglas Adams, and I have to say: I have found my sentence examples for my students. To wit:

“The dew,” he observed, “has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning.”

–from Life, the Universe and Everything

Now: with more effort from me, this book will likely be perfect for my students; I’ll need to explain those later chapters for them, and spend some time finding better examples of good sentences. I’m thinking I may just have them read excerpts from this book – and then buy Strunk and White.

This was a good book for me to read, as a writer and teacher of writing. Not sure it’s great for a student of writing, but I will put it to my students, in some way, and then report back.

Book Review: Homage to Catalonia

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Image result for homage to catalonia

Homage to Catalonia

By George Orwell

 

In 1937, when he was in his mid-30’s, George Orwell decided he needed to take an active role in the fight against fascism. Orwell was already a published author and fairly well-known critic and journalist; he was even better known as a socialist. His first book, Down and Out in Paris and London, had been published by a leftist publisher, and in early 1937, he published The Road to Wigan Pier, a book about the living conditions of coal miners in the north of England. Both books describe the terrible conditions faced by the poor and working class, and both are strong indictments of the capitalist system. Orwell, deeply concerned by the rise of Hitler and Mussolini, watched closely as the Spanish civil war began and intensified; when General Franco’s fascist forces, backed by Germany and Italy, began to rise to power, Orwell went to Spain to join the other side. He had trouble finding a place that suited him; he was already growing disillusioned with the corruption of Communism in Soviet Russia by Stalin, and the weak way that European socialists knuckled under to Stalin’s will – The Road to Wigan Pier is as much a criticism of English socialists as it is of the mine owners, and the publisher added a disclaimer to the book, hoping to prevent a backlash from the left. Orwell tried to join the English Communist Party – but was refused because he wouldn’t do what he was told. He eventually connected with John Macnair, who was a member of the Independent Labour Party, and who got Orwell a spot in the militia of the Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification, the POUM in Spanish.

This is where Homage to Catalonia, the book that Orwell wrote about his experiences, begins: when he goes to boot camp as a new member of the POUM militia. It covers the next eight or ten months, which was all the time that Orwell spent in the war and in Spain before returning to England, eventually to write Animal Farm and 1984, two of the most effective criticisms of Soviet Communism ever created. This time, these experiences in this war, contributed to his disillusionment with Communism under Stalin’s influence.

Those two themes, the experience of actual warfare and the criticism of European leftists, especially the Communists, are the meat of the book. Orwell turns all of his remarkable ability as a journalist, his ability to describe and explain a scene, and his gift for clear and sharply-drawn imagery, bring the war to life: for half of the book, you could very well be in the trenches with him, or in Barcelona, where he was on leave from the front lines when fighting broke out in the streets between different factions of the Republican forces who opposed Franco’s fascists. Orwell talks about inadequate supplies, the freezing and filthy conditions, and, interestingly enough, the generally plentiful food and wine, and the overly abundant lice, which he experienced as a member of the militia. He was involved in several battles, most of them inconclusive, though he managed to escape the battle that eventually ended the POUM’s militia, a battle for the town of Huesca that killed thousands of militiamen and won nothing at all; Orwell was seriously wounded before that when he was shot through the throat by a sniper while standing in a Republican trench — targeted probably because he was quite a bit taller than most of the Spaniards in the trench with him. The bullet missed his carotid artery by a slim margin and left him unable to speak and in considerable pain.

When he is not describing life at the front, Orwell explains the convoluted situation on the leftist side of the war: Spanish Republicans included labor unions, Communists, socialists of all kinds; they had rebelled against the monarchy when Franco’s coup began, but had also led the successful resistance against the fascist general’s military forces. When Orwell was still in England, and then when he first arrived to join the militia, Spain was apparently the first successful people’s revolution: the bourgeois had fled or been eliminated, the Catholic church had been broken, churches looted and the clergy all but vanished. The POUM had attempted to create a classless militia, where the officers and the enlisted men received the same pay and lived in the same conditions, sharing tents and food and equipment regardless of rank. Members of the militia did not salute their superiors, and orders did not have to be followed if the men did not understand or agree with them; officers could not force compliance, but had to rely on persuasion, explaining to the men why the orders should be followed. (In a rather strange coincidence, the book I read two days after finishing this one, Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, talks explicitly about this phenomenon, the POUM militia in the Spanish Civil War, where the men could refuse their superiors’ orders. I wonder if Haldeman read Homage to Catalonia.) But the POUM was a small piece of the Republican forces: much larger and more influential were the Communist Party, a different Spanish socialist party, and the two largest labor unions. And all of these groups soon took their lead from Stalin’s Russia, essentially because the Soviets supplied them with weapons and materiel for continuing their fight.

This does not sit well with Orwell. Several chapters break down the conflicts between the leftist parties, showing clearly which side Orwell himself was on; he meticulously tears apart the reporting of the war by the European Communist papers, particularly the fighting in Barcelona while he was on leave: it was begun when the police tried to take over the telephone exchange which was held by the labor unions, and led to several days of nasty fighting in the streets which eventually left something like 400 dead and over 1000 wounded (Though the numbers are reported by Orwell’s enemies and so seen as basically unreliable). After it was over, however, every major Communist and socialist media outlet blamed – the POUM. At the end of the war, after he is recovered from his wound, the Communists and socialists cracked down on the POUM, jailing hundreds of their leaders, usually without trial or even an accusation of a crime. Orwell, assuming that he would also be on the list for arrest, has to flee the country with his wife, leaving behind his friends and compatriots to die in dank prison cells, or to be shot by police and thrown into mass graves.

This war, these crimes, are what eventually create Napoleon of Animal Farm and O’Brien of Room 101 in 1984. Having read those books – several times – it was fascinating to read this book and see the seeds of what would come, a decade later. There is even a moment when Orwell expresses his visceral hatred of rats; and all I could think was, That’s why O’Brien uses them on Winston Smith.

As a description of a war experience, the book is vivid and interesting. As a political commentary, it is largely obsolete, but still fascinating if one is interested in Orwell’s fiction. This is the truth that is almost – but not quite – stranger than it. And the writing, of course, is brilliant. After all, it’s Orwell.