Kim, Eugenia Sunhee. The Calligrapher's Daughter. New York: Henry Hold and Company, 2009.
Elena Filios
I just finished a very interesting book which I would like to recommend to you all. The Calligrapher’s Daughter, by Eugenia Sunhee Kim. It is a very richly drawn novel about Korea, a country torn between ancient customs and modern times during the early 20th century. The central character is a young woman who fights against the traditional role of women. Although a novel, it is very “ethnographic,” with many details about a country and a culture I was unfamiliar with.
Elena Filios
Community Information Technology Coordinator
Hartford Public Library
Hartford, CT 06103
www.hartfordinfo.org
www.hplct.org
On order for Burling Library
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Patriotic Treason
Evan Carton. Patriotic Treason: John Brown and the Soul of America. New York: Free Press, 2006.
Reviewed by Joe Hewitt
(Missouri State University)
Today, Americans know John Brown as the man who ignited the U.S. Civil War with his failed attempt to start a slave revolt with weapons from the Harpers Ferry armory in Virginia. Shortly after his capture, a Virginia court charged him with treason against the commonwealth of Virginia, conspiring with slaves to commit treason, and murder. After a four-day show trial, the jury’s inevitable guilty verdict took only forty-five minutes. Brown discouraged any talk of a rescue attempt by antislavery allies saying “I am worth more to hang than for any other purpose.” During the month’s wait before his execution, he read the Biblical passages affirming the righteousness of human equality, wrote many letters to family and friends, and received a steady stream of visitors from the North.
Evan Carton’s Patriotic Treason examines the life of John Brown, his abolitionist activities, his friends in the antislavery movement, the role of religion in his motivation for freeing slaves, his military exploits and terrorist acts in Kansas, his personal and public life, the role of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in creating Bleeding Kansas, the role of the Fugitive Slave Act in criminalizing abolitionists who refused to return escaping slaves as required, and his final desperate act. An unconventional historian, Carton describes John Brown’s inner conflicts much like a novelist would write about a major character giving the entire narrative an exciting, page-turner quality, but the history is thorough and detailed with its story of a man of action and faith losing faith in the political process to correct a systemic wrong.
In his epilogue, Evan Carton notes that the American historical establishment demonized John Brown as a dangerous fanatic. “Private citizens agitating on single issues were not the preferred engines of history.” Carton argues that the story of the Civil War needed a villain and John Brown offended conventional mores enough to fit that role.
This book helped me understand why Kansas, where John Brown emboldened the Free Staters to drive proslavery hooligans from the state, has done so little to recognize this founding father. Although his image reigns over the Kansas State Capitol’s rotunda in John Steuart Curry’s famous mural, his homestead near my boyhood home in eastern Kansas is not marked. One hundred and fifty years after Harpers Ferry, John Brown’s vision of a democracy for all, regardless of race, is still misunderstood.
On order for Burling Library
Reviewed by Joe Hewitt
(Missouri State University)
Today, Americans know John Brown as the man who ignited the U.S. Civil War with his failed attempt to start a slave revolt with weapons from the Harpers Ferry armory in Virginia. Shortly after his capture, a Virginia court charged him with treason against the commonwealth of Virginia, conspiring with slaves to commit treason, and murder. After a four-day show trial, the jury’s inevitable guilty verdict took only forty-five minutes. Brown discouraged any talk of a rescue attempt by antislavery allies saying “I am worth more to hang than for any other purpose.” During the month’s wait before his execution, he read the Biblical passages affirming the righteousness of human equality, wrote many letters to family and friends, and received a steady stream of visitors from the North.
Evan Carton’s Patriotic Treason examines the life of John Brown, his abolitionist activities, his friends in the antislavery movement, the role of religion in his motivation for freeing slaves, his military exploits and terrorist acts in Kansas, his personal and public life, the role of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in creating Bleeding Kansas, the role of the Fugitive Slave Act in criminalizing abolitionists who refused to return escaping slaves as required, and his final desperate act. An unconventional historian, Carton describes John Brown’s inner conflicts much like a novelist would write about a major character giving the entire narrative an exciting, page-turner quality, but the history is thorough and detailed with its story of a man of action and faith losing faith in the political process to correct a systemic wrong.
In his epilogue, Evan Carton notes that the American historical establishment demonized John Brown as a dangerous fanatic. “Private citizens agitating on single issues were not the preferred engines of history.” Carton argues that the story of the Civil War needed a villain and John Brown offended conventional mores enough to fit that role.
This book helped me understand why Kansas, where John Brown emboldened the Free Staters to drive proslavery hooligans from the state, has done so little to recognize this founding father. Although his image reigns over the Kansas State Capitol’s rotunda in John Steuart Curry’s famous mural, his homestead near my boyhood home in eastern Kansas is not marked. One hundred and fifty years after Harpers Ferry, John Brown’s vision of a democracy for all, regardless of race, is still misunderstood.
On order for Burling Library
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Beyond the Blossoming Fields--the story of Japan's first female doctor
Jun'ichi Watanabe. Beyond The Blossoming Fields. Translated by Deborah Iwabuchi and Anna Isozaki. London: Alma Books Ltd., 2008.
R. Stuhr
Blossoming Fields is the biography of the first female doctor trained to practice western medicine in Japan. This story, a bestseller in Japan and translated into English by my favorite translator, Deborah Iwabuchi and her colleague Anna Isozaki, presents Ginko in all of her bravery, hard as nails determination, and ego. Born into an important landed family, Ginko was married in the traditional manner of the time, but was unlucky enough to contract gonorrhea from her husband. She left her husband's household to return home to be cared for by her own family. Her illness served to magnify her unhappiness with her status as wife and even after she recovered she refused to go back to her husband--subjecting her family to the ignominy of a divorce. Her illness and recovery were the motivation for her medical pursuits. Seeking a cure, she and her mother went to Tokyo to visit a doctor trained in western style medicine. Ginko is mortified by the internal exam and this leads to her desire to become a doctor so that women have the option of being examined by a female rather than a male doctor.
The path is anything but smooth. Ginko is disinherited by her family, lives on almost nothing and studies at all hours so that she will be the top student in all of her classes. Watanabe leaves no doubt about the nearly insurmountable obstacles she had to overcome. It was not illegal for women to attend medical school or to practice medicine, but it was not done nor acceptable in the society. It took years for Ginko to get into medical school and then she experienced both verbal and physical abuse. Somehow, despite poverty, starvation, threats, and isolation, Ginko achieved her dream and opened a clinic in Tokyo where she treated both men and women. Ginko attended to her patients and her staff with fiery moral zeal. She was loved and hated. No one seemed to get past her very private personality until, following her conversion to Christianity, she meets a young man who has aspirations to set up a Christian utopia in the far north of Japan. She finds her self in the midst of another controversy when she decides to marry the younger man and eventually leave her practice to join him in Hokkaido.
Ginko’s life is never easy and in the end, her greatness was in what she achieved to become a doctor and in the door she opened for other Japanese women to do the same.
R. Stuhr
Blossoming Fields is the biography of the first female doctor trained to practice western medicine in Japan. This story, a bestseller in Japan and translated into English by my favorite translator, Deborah Iwabuchi and her colleague Anna Isozaki, presents Ginko in all of her bravery, hard as nails determination, and ego. Born into an important landed family, Ginko was married in the traditional manner of the time, but was unlucky enough to contract gonorrhea from her husband. She left her husband's household to return home to be cared for by her own family. Her illness served to magnify her unhappiness with her status as wife and even after she recovered she refused to go back to her husband--subjecting her family to the ignominy of a divorce. Her illness and recovery were the motivation for her medical pursuits. Seeking a cure, she and her mother went to Tokyo to visit a doctor trained in western style medicine. Ginko is mortified by the internal exam and this leads to her desire to become a doctor so that women have the option of being examined by a female rather than a male doctor.
The path is anything but smooth. Ginko is disinherited by her family, lives on almost nothing and studies at all hours so that she will be the top student in all of her classes. Watanabe leaves no doubt about the nearly insurmountable obstacles she had to overcome. It was not illegal for women to attend medical school or to practice medicine, but it was not done nor acceptable in the society. It took years for Ginko to get into medical school and then she experienced both verbal and physical abuse. Somehow, despite poverty, starvation, threats, and isolation, Ginko achieved her dream and opened a clinic in Tokyo where she treated both men and women. Ginko attended to her patients and her staff with fiery moral zeal. She was loved and hated. No one seemed to get past her very private personality until, following her conversion to Christianity, she meets a young man who has aspirations to set up a Christian utopia in the far north of Japan. She finds her self in the midst of another controversy when she decides to marry the younger man and eventually leave her practice to join him in Hokkaido.
Ginko’s life is never easy and in the end, her greatness was in what she achieved to become a doctor and in the door she opened for other Japanese women to do the same.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Ralph Nader's "Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us."
Ralph Nader, “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!” New York: Seven Stories Press, 2009.
Reviewed by T. Hatch
One might wonder how can the super-rich do anything but enslave us? Ralph Nader in the Author's Note implores us, in a corollary on Coleridge's willful suspension of disbelief, to utilize our sense of “imaginative engagement.” While Nader describes the genre of this work as a “practical utopia” (a charming and provocative oxymoron in its own right) I came to think of this process as more of a consciously informed credulity.
Seventeen aging billionaires at the behest of Warren Buffet take to meeting at a resort hotel in Maui and conspire to lead a series of mass movements that successfully commodifies worker justice and democracy. Naturally along the way a host of reactionaries such as the U.S. Chamber of Congress and the management of Wal Mart push back but the “Meliorists” are too well organized, too well funded, and being the old geezers that they are have nothing left to lose.
Nader clearly wants to stand Aldous Huxley on his head (insomuch as he openly says so). Several of the reviews of “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!” have focused on the more fanciful elements of the narrative, e.g. Wal Mart management caving into popular pressure and acquiescing to unionization of its labor force, as evidence of some form of nostalgic dementia on the part of Mr. Nader. Anyone who confuses this book for a blueprint or a guide to action misses the point. The imagination that Nader appeals to reminds me of the Annalist historian Marc Bloch's use of the term. For Bloch, a member of the French resistance tortured and killed by the Nazis at Lyon, that imagintion was a means to an empathetic historical understanding. It does not mean creating a narrative cut from whole cloth, rather it is an injunction to creatively imagine the solving of problems. Nader is clearly not using imagination then in the same way that the utopian socialist Charles Fourier was.
I spoke with the author albeit briefly on a radio call in show today (October 7th) shortly before writing this critique. Unfortunately Mr. Nader did not answer my first question which wasL: is corporate capitalism worth saving through reform. He instead concentrated on my comment that he mentions what was being served for lunch and food in general dozens of times throughout the book. There is much I wish I had said but didn't. For instance, by last March I was sorry that I hadn't voted for you for a fourth time.
On order for Burling Library
Reviewed by T. Hatch
One might wonder how can the super-rich do anything but enslave us? Ralph Nader in the Author's Note implores us, in a corollary on Coleridge's willful suspension of disbelief, to utilize our sense of “imaginative engagement.” While Nader describes the genre of this work as a “practical utopia” (a charming and provocative oxymoron in its own right) I came to think of this process as more of a consciously informed credulity.
Seventeen aging billionaires at the behest of Warren Buffet take to meeting at a resort hotel in Maui and conspire to lead a series of mass movements that successfully commodifies worker justice and democracy. Naturally along the way a host of reactionaries such as the U.S. Chamber of Congress and the management of Wal Mart push back but the “Meliorists” are too well organized, too well funded, and being the old geezers that they are have nothing left to lose.
Nader clearly wants to stand Aldous Huxley on his head (insomuch as he openly says so). Several of the reviews of “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!” have focused on the more fanciful elements of the narrative, e.g. Wal Mart management caving into popular pressure and acquiescing to unionization of its labor force, as evidence of some form of nostalgic dementia on the part of Mr. Nader. Anyone who confuses this book for a blueprint or a guide to action misses the point. The imagination that Nader appeals to reminds me of the Annalist historian Marc Bloch's use of the term. For Bloch, a member of the French resistance tortured and killed by the Nazis at Lyon, that imagintion was a means to an empathetic historical understanding. It does not mean creating a narrative cut from whole cloth, rather it is an injunction to creatively imagine the solving of problems. Nader is clearly not using imagination then in the same way that the utopian socialist Charles Fourier was.
I spoke with the author albeit briefly on a radio call in show today (October 7th) shortly before writing this critique. Unfortunately Mr. Nader did not answer my first question which wasL: is corporate capitalism worth saving through reform. He instead concentrated on my comment that he mentions what was being served for lunch and food in general dozens of times throughout the book. There is much I wish I had said but didn't. For instance, by last March I was sorry that I hadn't voted for you for a fourth time.
On order for Burling Library
Friday, October 16, 2009
It Takes a Pillage
Nomi Prins. It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bailouts, Bonuses, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street. Hoboken New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons, 2009.
Reviewed by T. Hatch
A trillion here, a trillion there, the next thing you know.... $19.3 trillion dollars is the current price tag for the bailout of the nation's banking system according to author, and former managing director at Goldman Sachs, Nomi Prins. That robust total includes everything chipped in from the Federal Reserve, the Department of the Treasury, The FDIC, and from Congress, to save capitalism as we know it. Prins has labeled this event as “the Second Great Bank Depression.” It is the single largest transfer of wealth in human history; we watched while it happened.
The magnitude of this brazenness is difficult to get one's mind around. Quantified a little differently, one million dollars in cash (i.e. 10,000 one hundred dollar bills) weighs about 144 lbs. Therefore $19.3 trillion weighs 2,779,200 pounds. A fifty-three foot semi trailer holds approximately 46,500 pounds of load; this is enough currency to fill sixty of these trucks. How far this cash would stretch into outer space if placed end-to-end is an open question.
Prins is clearly angry and it shows in her writing. While this contempt is understandable, and shared by almost everyone who is not a CEO with a Wall Street Bank, it does become somewhat tiresome. If the subject were the Holocaust or the Atlantic slave trade no rational or moral person would defend either practice. But to condemn the evil on every page wears the reader out and detracts from the larger argument.
This is a solid book because it is thoroughly researched and Prins has the technical expertise to make sense of the subject matter. Several themes are developed in some depth in this work. Bipartisanship may seem like it has disappeared from Washington but it remains alive and well when it comes to providing the banking industry with all of the taxpayer funds they need to sustain the current casino environment on Wall Street. The Fed is a highly secretive organization that operates with impunity in providing liquidity to the members of the financial elect. The removal of critical and effective regulation (especially the Glass-Steagall Act) was a disaster. And, allowing banks that were too big in the first instance to further consolidate through merger and acquistion is pouring gasoline on the fire. Finally, since almost nothing has changed structurally in our financial system there is bound to be another melt-down even worse than the current crisis, sometime in the not to distant future.
Prins also provides updated information on her website showing where, and how much, money is going to various financial institutions. It is clear from the information on the website and reading It Takes a Pillage that free markets are anything but free.
On order for Burling Library
Reviewed by T. Hatch
A trillion here, a trillion there, the next thing you know.... $19.3 trillion dollars is the current price tag for the bailout of the nation's banking system according to author, and former managing director at Goldman Sachs, Nomi Prins. That robust total includes everything chipped in from the Federal Reserve, the Department of the Treasury, The FDIC, and from Congress, to save capitalism as we know it. Prins has labeled this event as “the Second Great Bank Depression.” It is the single largest transfer of wealth in human history; we watched while it happened.
The magnitude of this brazenness is difficult to get one's mind around. Quantified a little differently, one million dollars in cash (i.e. 10,000 one hundred dollar bills) weighs about 144 lbs. Therefore $19.3 trillion weighs 2,779,200 pounds. A fifty-three foot semi trailer holds approximately 46,500 pounds of load; this is enough currency to fill sixty of these trucks. How far this cash would stretch into outer space if placed end-to-end is an open question.
Prins is clearly angry and it shows in her writing. While this contempt is understandable, and shared by almost everyone who is not a CEO with a Wall Street Bank, it does become somewhat tiresome. If the subject were the Holocaust or the Atlantic slave trade no rational or moral person would defend either practice. But to condemn the evil on every page wears the reader out and detracts from the larger argument.
This is a solid book because it is thoroughly researched and Prins has the technical expertise to make sense of the subject matter. Several themes are developed in some depth in this work. Bipartisanship may seem like it has disappeared from Washington but it remains alive and well when it comes to providing the banking industry with all of the taxpayer funds they need to sustain the current casino environment on Wall Street. The Fed is a highly secretive organization that operates with impunity in providing liquidity to the members of the financial elect. The removal of critical and effective regulation (especially the Glass-Steagall Act) was a disaster. And, allowing banks that were too big in the first instance to further consolidate through merger and acquistion is pouring gasoline on the fire. Finally, since almost nothing has changed structurally in our financial system there is bound to be another melt-down even worse than the current crisis, sometime in the not to distant future.
Prins also provides updated information on her website showing where, and how much, money is going to various financial institutions. It is clear from the information on the website and reading It Takes a Pillage that free markets are anything but free.
On order for Burling Library
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo
Larsson, Stieg. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Knopf, 2008.
Submitted by Catherine Rod
Swedish author Larsson was a journalist who died at the age of 50 and before his three novels were published. The others in the series of three are The Girl Who Played with Fire (Knopf 2009) and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (Knopf 2010). Dragon Tattoo is about corporate and family corruption, tragedy and human vulnerability. Catherine Rod, an avid reader of mysteries, notes that this is the first of Larsson's three posthumously published novels. "It is absolutely riveting and has an interesting main character. If you like mysteries, try this one!"
All three novels are on order for Burling Library.
Submitted by Catherine Rod
Swedish author Larsson was a journalist who died at the age of 50 and before his three novels were published. The others in the series of three are The Girl Who Played with Fire (Knopf 2009) and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (Knopf 2010). Dragon Tattoo is about corporate and family corruption, tragedy and human vulnerability. Catherine Rod, an avid reader of mysteries, notes that this is the first of Larsson's three posthumously published novels. "It is absolutely riveting and has an interesting main character. If you like mysteries, try this one!"
All three novels are on order for Burling Library.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Road Dogs by Elmore Leonard
Leonard, Elmore. Road Dogs. New York: William Morrow, 2009
Walter Giersbach '61
Robert Pinsky, reviewing for The New York Times in May 2009, said Elmore Leonard’s Road Dogs “is about the varying degrees of truth and baloney in human relationships. Sometimes the truth or the baloney is lethal. Droll and exciting, enriched by the self-aware, what-the-hell-why-not insouciance of a master now in his mid-80s, Road Dogs presents interesting questions: Can a grown person change? Specifically, can a man abandon expertise that wins him respect but makes a mess of his life? Can anybody trust anybody? Is love ever true? Is friendship ever real? Or, leaving aside love and friendship, does loyalty exist? We road dogs—trotting along companionably on our way to sniff and woof and boogie-woogie and perhaps knock over an occasional trash barrel together—are we reliable?”
I’ve maintained a list of every book I’ve read since 1973, starting when I realized I was reading an embarrassing amount of pop fiction at the expense of more worthy literary efforts. Not that Robert Ludlum is bad, but it’s genre writing. Finishing my seventh Elmore Leonard opus I realized it was time to get back to Drew Gilpin Faust’s This Republic of Suffering or David Liss’s Conspiracy of Paper. Then I had my epiphany: Elmore Leonard was an extremely good writer.
You know Leonard from the films Get Shorty, Stick, Mr. Majestyk, Jackie Brown and 27 others. You just haven’t read him.
The Christian Science Monitor’s James Kaufman (who teaches at the U. of Iowa) wrote in 1983, “It’s taken awhile for people to catch onto Leonard, though Stick finally brought him the scrutiny of the critical establishment…. But like more overnight successes, Leonard had been writing…since 1953.” Newgate Callendar, writing in The New York Times Book Review in 1973, stated, “When [Leonard’s] 52 Pickup appeared in 1974, it had some critics talking in terms of Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald…. But it is really wrong to talk of this writer in terms of Chandler and Macdonald. He has little in common with those two. They are ‘clean’ writers; there is no profanity to speak of in Chandler, and Macdonald has never been an exponent of the verismo school of speech. Leonard is.”
Leonard’s characters are for the most part, good, decent people, but ones who might challenge you to arm wrestle. The writing is spare and lacking in simile or metaphor. His protagonists have interior thoughts and existential questions. What remains when the reader puts down a Leonard work are characters drawn in clean, sharp lines. He is Hemingway, unexpurgated and sitting in a bar or police squad room.
Then you may find Road Dogs and Leonard’s 40 other novels are addictive.
Books (and a couple of films) by Elmore Leonard at the Grinnell College Libraries
PS3562.E55 (3rd floor)
Walter Giersbach '61
Robert Pinsky, reviewing for The New York Times in May 2009, said Elmore Leonard’s Road Dogs “is about the varying degrees of truth and baloney in human relationships. Sometimes the truth or the baloney is lethal. Droll and exciting, enriched by the self-aware, what-the-hell-why-not insouciance of a master now in his mid-80s, Road Dogs presents interesting questions: Can a grown person change? Specifically, can a man abandon expertise that wins him respect but makes a mess of his life? Can anybody trust anybody? Is love ever true? Is friendship ever real? Or, leaving aside love and friendship, does loyalty exist? We road dogs—trotting along companionably on our way to sniff and woof and boogie-woogie and perhaps knock over an occasional trash barrel together—are we reliable?”
I’ve maintained a list of every book I’ve read since 1973, starting when I realized I was reading an embarrassing amount of pop fiction at the expense of more worthy literary efforts. Not that Robert Ludlum is bad, but it’s genre writing. Finishing my seventh Elmore Leonard opus I realized it was time to get back to Drew Gilpin Faust’s This Republic of Suffering or David Liss’s Conspiracy of Paper. Then I had my epiphany: Elmore Leonard was an extremely good writer.
You know Leonard from the films Get Shorty, Stick, Mr. Majestyk, Jackie Brown and 27 others. You just haven’t read him.
The Christian Science Monitor’s James Kaufman (who teaches at the U. of Iowa) wrote in 1983, “It’s taken awhile for people to catch onto Leonard, though Stick finally brought him the scrutiny of the critical establishment…. But like more overnight successes, Leonard had been writing…since 1953.” Newgate Callendar, writing in The New York Times Book Review in 1973, stated, “When [Leonard’s] 52 Pickup appeared in 1974, it had some critics talking in terms of Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald…. But it is really wrong to talk of this writer in terms of Chandler and Macdonald. He has little in common with those two. They are ‘clean’ writers; there is no profanity to speak of in Chandler, and Macdonald has never been an exponent of the verismo school of speech. Leonard is.”
Leonard’s characters are for the most part, good, decent people, but ones who might challenge you to arm wrestle. The writing is spare and lacking in simile or metaphor. His protagonists have interior thoughts and existential questions. What remains when the reader puts down a Leonard work are characters drawn in clean, sharp lines. He is Hemingway, unexpurgated and sitting in a bar or police squad room.
Then you may find Road Dogs and Leonard’s 40 other novels are addictive.
Books (and a couple of films) by Elmore Leonard at the Grinnell College Libraries
PS3562.E55 (3rd floor)
Road Dogs. 2009 On Order The Hot Kid: A Novel. 2005.
Mr. Paradise. 2004.
Tishomingo Blues. 2002.
Pagan Babies. 2000.
Be Cool. 1999.
Riding Rap. 1995.
Rum Punch. 1992.
Maximum Bob. 1991.
Get Shorty. 1990.
Killshot. 1989.
Films
3:10 to Yuma. 2008
Rum Punch. 2002
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Hunger
Knut Hamsun. Hunger. New York: Noonday Press, 1967. Originally published in Norwegian in 1890.
R. Stuhr
According to the Isaac Bashevis Singer's introduction to this translation (by none other than Robert Bly), Hamsun is the father of modernism, won the Nobel Prize in 1920, and sadly, was a dupe, and therefore a pariah in his own country, to Hitler. The friend who recommended this book to me told me he was a Nazi, and through the entire novel (I read the introduction last) I kept thinking, that my friend had mispoke on that detail. But Singer lays it out unambiguously. Singer writes, "The Knut Hamsun who had kept aloof of the masses and social reformers allowed himself to be taken in by Nazi demagogues. It was a sad day for many of Hamsun's followers when a picture of him greeting Hitler appeared in the newspapers. In it, Hamsun's face reflects shame, while Hitler looks at him mockingly....Following Hitler's defeat, Hamsun's sons were imprisoned."
Singer considers Hunger to be one of Hamsun's four best novels along with Mysteries (1892), Editor Lynge (1893), and Pan (1894). Hunger takes place completely in the mind of the main character who is an impoverished writer living in Christiania, Norway. From time to time he looks for a job, but he makes what living he does make through writing. Hamsun's character is nearly insane from malnourishment and want, but always conscious of his wild compulsive behavior. Despite his tenuous grasp on life and sanity, he continues to try to write. When he knows he is at his limit, money suddenly materializes in some way, but it never lasts long and it is never enough to restore him to health. The book ends abruptly when the writer convinces a ship captain to take him on board to work.
After all the pain and desperation, wildness and compulsiveness, Hamsun's character is overjoyed at the prospect of the ship and not bitter about his days of poverty in the streets of Christiania. He ends the novel, "So he gave me a job to do ...When we were out on the fjord, I straightened up, wet from fever and exertion, looked in toward the land and said goodbye for now to the city, to Christiania, where the windows of the homes all shone with such brightness."
Burling 3rd Floor PT 8950 .H3 S813x 1967
R. Stuhr
According to the Isaac Bashevis Singer's introduction to this translation (by none other than Robert Bly), Hamsun is the father of modernism, won the Nobel Prize in 1920, and sadly, was a dupe, and therefore a pariah in his own country, to Hitler. The friend who recommended this book to me told me he was a Nazi, and through the entire novel (I read the introduction last) I kept thinking, that my friend had mispoke on that detail. But Singer lays it out unambiguously. Singer writes, "The Knut Hamsun who had kept aloof of the masses and social reformers allowed himself to be taken in by Nazi demagogues. It was a sad day for many of Hamsun's followers when a picture of him greeting Hitler appeared in the newspapers. In it, Hamsun's face reflects shame, while Hitler looks at him mockingly....Following Hitler's defeat, Hamsun's sons were imprisoned."
Singer considers Hunger to be one of Hamsun's four best novels along with Mysteries (1892), Editor Lynge (1893), and Pan (1894). Hunger takes place completely in the mind of the main character who is an impoverished writer living in Christiania, Norway. From time to time he looks for a job, but he makes what living he does make through writing. Hamsun's character is nearly insane from malnourishment and want, but always conscious of his wild compulsive behavior. Despite his tenuous grasp on life and sanity, he continues to try to write. When he knows he is at his limit, money suddenly materializes in some way, but it never lasts long and it is never enough to restore him to health. The book ends abruptly when the writer convinces a ship captain to take him on board to work.
After all the pain and desperation, wildness and compulsiveness, Hamsun's character is overjoyed at the prospect of the ship and not bitter about his days of poverty in the streets of Christiania. He ends the novel, "So he gave me a job to do ...When we were out on the fjord, I straightened up, wet from fever and exertion, looked in toward the land and said goodbye for now to the city, to Christiania, where the windows of the homes all shone with such brightness."
Burling 3rd Floor PT 8950 .H3 S813x 1967
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
A Prairie Reading at the Faulconer Gallery
Faulconer Gallery, Grinnell College Libraries, and Prairie Studies co-hosted a thoroughly enjoyable event last Tuesday night (September 1) at the Faulconer Gallery. The reading celebrated the closing week of the Small Expressions and Beneath the Surface exhibitions that have been going on all summer and that include an array of visual representations of the prairie. We had thirteen participants reading and performing, students, faculty, and staff. I, for one,was inspired by the choices and the enthusiasm behind the choices, so I decided to share the program with the Grinnell Community. If you have a favorite text that represents the prairie or nature in some respect, please let us know at the Book Review (bookreview@grinnell.edu)--just send us the title 0r the title and a sentence or two description.
Dean Porter opened our program with a reading from Jacqueline Edmonson's Prairie Town: Redefining Rural Life in the Age of Globalization (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003). (HN79.M6+E36+2003). This is a contemporary study of conditions in the rural areas of the midwest.
Betty Moffett read an essay that she wrote about her own personal prairie, "My Prairie," and then sang a song, again her own composition, with Sandy Moffett and Mark Schneider, "Golden Iowa." Both her essay and song depict the peaceful beauty one can experience stepping off of the pavement and into the grasslands of Iowa. Betty's essay was published in Midwest Woodlands and Prairies and you can hear the Too Many String Band perform her songs at Sts. Rest Coffee House on the third Wednesday of every month.
Jacob Gjesdahl enthusiastically recommended The Emerald Horizon: the History of Nature in Iowa by Cornelia F. Mutel (University of Iowa Press, 2008). (QH 105.I8 M875 2008) Mutel describes the way the prairie tends to itself (if left to its own devices). Mutel's book seems to be one that can lead the reader to a deep appreciation of the subtle Iowa landscape. If you have friends or family who wonder how it is you live in the middle of the country surrounded by cornfields, this might be a good book to give them.
Mark Schneider read the poem "Soy Beans," by Alan Orr from Hammer in the Fog. Mark also sang (with Sandy and Betty!) the song "Roseville Fair" by singer Bill Staines. "Soy Beans" is a poem about the hardships of farming versus the different kind of risk taken by the speculator.
Katherine Vanney read from a childhood favorite, Laura Ingalls Wilder's By the Shores of Silver Lake.
Tilly Woodward read from the booklet of poems by Paula Smith and available at the gallery. The poems were "Rhizomes," "The Grassland," and "The Tallgrass on Fire."
Richard Fyffe read two of his own poems, “Peterson’s Guide (Only a God Can Save Us Now)” and “Like a Picture, or a Bump on the Head,” and “Prairie Proper” from Merrill Gilfillan's Rivers and Birds (Johnson Books, 2003).
Kayla Koether read from Kent Nerburn's Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder (New World Press 1994). Kayla's reading illustrated the perspectives and cultural orientation of native people on the prairie.
Rebecca Stuhr read a short poem by Gary Snyder, "It Pleases," and played two etudes for flute by Robert Wyckes, "The White Tailed Kite," and "The Marsh Hawk."
Hart Ford-Hodges read an excerpt from the text she'd used in a biology class, Konza Prairie: A Tall Grass Natural History by O. Reichman. (University of Kansas Press, 1987). QH105.K3 R45 1987.
Catherine Rod read an excerpt from the writings of an early settler in Grinnell. You can find this memoir in the college archives and learn something about the unpredictability of Iowa weather and the boom town of Westfield.
Eliza Mutino read from the poet laureate, Ted Kooser, "So this is Nebraska," and "In the Corners of Fields."
Finally,
Jon Andelson read an excerpt from a novel by Herbert Quick (Bobbs-Merrill, 1922.) Vandemark's Folly PS3533.U53 V3. This excerpt celebrated the hard and sometimes miraculous work of the farmer, while at the same time mourning the loss of the prairie caused by the emergence of farmland.
You can see that the mixture of selections was eclectic. Each reading left me wanting to hear more from the poet or author or song writer ... You might want to investigate some of these readings as well, many of them are available in the libraries.
submitted by Rebecca Stuhr
Dean Porter opened our program with a reading from Jacqueline Edmonson's Prairie Town: Redefining Rural Life in the Age of Globalization (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003). (HN79.M6+E36+2003). This is a contemporary study of conditions in the rural areas of the midwest.
Betty Moffett read an essay that she wrote about her own personal prairie, "My Prairie," and then sang a song, again her own composition, with Sandy Moffett and Mark Schneider, "Golden Iowa." Both her essay and song depict the peaceful beauty one can experience stepping off of the pavement and into the grasslands of Iowa. Betty's essay was published in Midwest Woodlands and Prairies and you can hear the Too Many String Band perform her songs at Sts. Rest Coffee House on the third Wednesday of every month.
Jacob Gjesdahl enthusiastically recommended The Emerald Horizon: the History of Nature in Iowa by Cornelia F. Mutel (University of Iowa Press, 2008). (QH 105.I8 M875 2008) Mutel describes the way the prairie tends to itself (if left to its own devices). Mutel's book seems to be one that can lead the reader to a deep appreciation of the subtle Iowa landscape. If you have friends or family who wonder how it is you live in the middle of the country surrounded by cornfields, this might be a good book to give them.
Mark Schneider read the poem "Soy Beans," by Alan Orr from Hammer in the Fog. Mark also sang (with Sandy and Betty!) the song "Roseville Fair" by singer Bill Staines. "Soy Beans" is a poem about the hardships of farming versus the different kind of risk taken by the speculator.
Katherine Vanney read from a childhood favorite, Laura Ingalls Wilder's By the Shores of Silver Lake.
Tilly Woodward read from the booklet of poems by Paula Smith and available at the gallery. The poems were "Rhizomes," "The Grassland," and "The Tallgrass on Fire."
Richard Fyffe read two of his own poems, “Peterson’s Guide (Only a God Can Save Us Now)” and “Like a Picture, or a Bump on the Head,” and “Prairie Proper” from Merrill Gilfillan's Rivers and Birds (Johnson Books, 2003).
Kayla Koether read from Kent Nerburn's Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder (New World Press 1994). Kayla's reading illustrated the perspectives and cultural orientation of native people on the prairie.
Rebecca Stuhr read a short poem by Gary Snyder, "It Pleases," and played two etudes for flute by Robert Wyckes, "The White Tailed Kite," and "The Marsh Hawk."
Hart Ford-Hodges read an excerpt from the text she'd used in a biology class, Konza Prairie: A Tall Grass Natural History by O. Reichman. (University of Kansas Press, 1987). QH105.K3 R45 1987.
Catherine Rod read an excerpt from the writings of an early settler in Grinnell. You can find this memoir in the college archives and learn something about the unpredictability of Iowa weather and the boom town of Westfield.
Eliza Mutino read from the poet laureate, Ted Kooser, "So this is Nebraska," and "In the Corners of Fields."
Finally,
Jon Andelson read an excerpt from a novel by Herbert Quick (Bobbs-Merrill, 1922.) Vandemark's Folly PS3533.U53 V3. This excerpt celebrated the hard and sometimes miraculous work of the farmer, while at the same time mourning the loss of the prairie caused by the emergence of farmland.
You can see that the mixture of selections was eclectic. Each reading left me wanting to hear more from the poet or author or song writer ... You might want to investigate some of these readings as well, many of them are available in the libraries.
submitted by Rebecca Stuhr
Sunday, September 6, 2009
My Year in Iraq
Reviewed by T. Hatch
Some one recently asked me what is the funniest book you have read in the last five years? Honorable mention has to go to Pervez Musharraf's In the Line of Fire: A Memoir. But, for real belly laughs the undisputed champion is L. Paul Bremer's My Year in Iraq. The most endearing quality of the book is that despite the absurdity of any situation Bremer finds himself in he never fails to convey a sense of absolutely childish sincerity.
It is hard to know where to even start. Shortly after the U.S. invasion, in a surprise turn, the Iraqi army “self-demobilized.” Despite this setback Proconsul Bremer valiantly stuck to his principal mission, which was providing for the material well-being of the Iraqi people. Bremer was besieged by a range of issues such as “...what to do about subsidies, the state-owned enterprises and the currency, down to the price and availability of rice and beans.... We had inherited a structural crisis” (p.28). In a corollary to Mickey Rooney in virtually any Andy Hardy movie Bremer might have been heard saying: “Hey kids, let's put on a structural adjustment.” After all, just as sure as there were weapons of mass destruction to unearth, the decrepitude of Iraq's industrial base was due to Saddam Hussein's “economic mismanagement, lack of investment, and cockeyed socialist economic theory” (p.62). As everybody with an economics background knows, the way to turn around an economy with eighty percent unemployment is to put into place a flat corporate tax rate of fifteen percent. Privatizing state industries and devaluing the currency are also helpful in this respect.
Bremer, a master of improvisation, need not have concerned himself with any of the technical literature which erroneously maintained that the state sector in Iraq was established with little regard given to the competing models of collectivism or free enterprise. Imagine the naïveté of any one believing for a minute that the thing that mattered in Iraq was the relationship of senior figures in Saddam's regime to various enterprises, be they state industries or private ones. Patrimonial state development? Get outta here!
Despite a media that refused to report on the good news stories and focusing instead on all manner of negativity, Bremer remained steadfast in his hope for the people of Iraq. In a reflective moment he opined: “One day... a free Iraq with its educated, hardworking people will help transform this region” (p.70). Some what like Henry Fonda in Young Abe Lincoln, walking off into the sunset to the strains of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, Bremer remained positive to the end. “Once secure, this country will be a tremendous economic success” (p.388).
Bremer, who I argue missed his calling in life, like all great comedians has “got a million of 'em.”
Burling 1st Floor DS79.769 .B74 2006
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