Recommended Reading

A couple weeks ago my old roommate came up to stay for the weekend. During his time staying with me he asked to borrow some books that I thought he might enjoy. After picking over my limited selection I came up with a few that I felt fit the bill. The picks were Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, Sand County Almanac, Dr. Zhivago, and I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. Though things being what they were he forgot them on my coffee table as he ran out the door Monday morning and I have been reading back over them ever since.

Fruits of the Land and Pictures by Hand


Sand County for me is up there with Walden and Desert Solitaire if not exceeding both of them. Unlike Walden it does not take itself too seriously and unlike Abbey, Leopold was content to reflect on his land and not try to go and milk it for personal gain. I have "borrowed" my father's copy from when he was young (the reprint is from 1970). I am rewarded for this theft by the illustrations which do much more for me than the photographs lining the newer editions. Illustrations such as the ones found in my edition of SCA are one of the few times that the human hand can give more than it takes in regards to nature. I do not dispute that some photographs encapsulate a great deal of emotion and that good photography takes skill. But some of the most powerful pictures are often simply a matter of luck, left to shutter speed and chance.

Sacrificial Lambs

I feel that the latest edition of Black Lamb... with the introduction by Cristopher Hitchens is to be avoided. I was blessed that when I purchased my cheap paperback version, Penguin felt that Rebecca West could stand or fall based upon her own merits and did not try to muddy the waters by adding a modern voice to try to contextualize things by adding a two bit hack to ride on her back as a tick might a dog on whose blood it is feasting.

I bought Love, Poverty and War based upon the fact that the back lauded that Hitchens was, "the best...essayist Britain has produced since Orwell". Woe to those who believe such drivel. Orwell's Road to Wigan Pier and Down and Out... and Homage to Catalonia could all be categorized as decent travel books. Orwell with his scarecrow like cut was the figure to capture discontent and revolution. Hitchens, with his paunch and inability to use a razor would do better to stick to a Cyril Connolly style of writing of personal failure and insightful wit (which I must grant him). Travelling in the same circles as Bremer and Wolfowitz in their "Liberation" of Mess-O-potamia is a far cry from street fighting in Barcelona or even an honest attempt to capture the tragedy that is the Balkan experience. Who would have thought that a communist dictator was the best that one could hope for? His latest book God is Not Great is currently number 21 on the best seller list. But has been pointed out other places, the question still remains as to whether or not the militant pursuit of secularism/agnosticism can bear fruit.

But as is so often the case with this blog, I digress. West raises many points in her meandering tale. Some are worth reflecting upon and others are best left to history and scholars to debate. There are a couple of lines that I have reflected upon personally and have exalted elsewhere.

Admittedly West goes on to slag on Hungary and Ireland, simplifying partition and Trianon in the extreme, but as a great man once said, "So it goes". After she and her husband finish their time in the Balkans they stop in Vienna. She reflects on the Civil War that had rocked Vienna a few years earlier.

Her chauffeur during her stay in Vienna who also happened to chauffeur Major Fey during his political pogrom of the Social Democrat's tenant houses.

"it has never been ascertained how many many of those luckless tenants were killed , imprisoned, or turned loose homeless and destitute; but such victims must have numbered in the many thousands. It was at this...that my chauffeur...had assisted, by driving...about from massacre to massacre, because he thought it was time that somebody did something"

This last line jumped out at me. How many events in history have been set in motion by that kind of ill defined inexplicable belief that something ought to be done. Far too often that something means shooting someone else. In this respect I am full agreement with Malachi O Doherty, that trouble with guns is that there's only so many things you can do with them.

The Doctor is in

Next to the fact that I some times break down and read crap on paper, my most closely guarded secret is that I love Russian literature. Yes Pushkin, Gogol et. al. thrill me in ways that few other authors can hope to. I am often amazed at how they are able to capture the endless steppes while at the same times bringing to life the claustrophobic social ties that constituted Russian society.

Ten Days That Shook the World be damned! Non-fiction has yet to terms with the fact that it takes more than reality to come to grips with the human experience. The book which varies radically from the movie is such a book in which life is cup into which experience is poured. As sometimes happens in order to capture the truth the cup must be allowed to overflow and we must let reality flow over to see it in all of its fullness.

Update: He actually did come back into town with his wife and newborn son. He did remember the books this time and I'm left without quotes to reference.

One For The Road

I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell not only made me nearly piss myself, it made me feel like a very bad person for laughing that hard. Have no doubts, if you buy this book you are a bad person. If you laugh then you are a full blown misogynist. If you actually empathize with Tucker Max at any point or say I've done something like that then you are without a doubt an irredeemable flesh puppet who has no soul who probably drowns puppies in your spare time because it makes you laugh. But I still recommend it.