Ersatz TLS discussion

After the interesting exchanges this morning, welcome to the new thread

I don’t myself have much in the way of new books to discuss. My reading for the moment is largely limited to the same non-fiction books I’ve mentioned in previous posts.

Suzanne Massie’s The Land of the Firebird is principally a study of the culture but it is good on the general history as well. I didn’t realise what a wasteland most of Russia was for centuries after the second Mongol invasion of 1236. The Golden Horde massacred entire populations or abducted them, by the hundred thousand, to sell into slavery. The Medicis were among the buyers.

Richard Holmes’ The Age of Wonder has reached the absorbing story of Davy’s invention of the safety lamp, truly a wonder, the product of six months of intense experimentation closeted with his assistant Michael Faraday, following three dreadful explosions in the northeastern coalfield. Crucially he examined first the chemical properties of fire-damp before turning to the design of the lamp itself. What he discovered was that if the flame were enclosed in a metal column pierced with extra-fine holes, the flame would burn brightly in the presence of the methane gas but never leap through the gauze.

This work came after a wedding trip of 18 months through France, Italy, the Balkans and southern Germany - perfectly safe for an Englishman in 1813-14, provided you were also a distinguished scientist. The couple were accompanied by a young and very gauche Faraday. Lady Davy, a wealthy Scottish widow, resented his presence. She made him ride on the outside of the comfortably appointed coach, and treated him as a valet. Davy and Faraday were enthralled by the aqueduct bringing fresh water 50 kilometres from Uzès to Nîmes. The Roman engineers achieved average falls of 10 to 20 centimetres per kilometre, a miracle of measurement and construction, and this water supply worked for 300 years. How many of our engineering feats from 1725 are still working?

Brendan Simms’ Europe: The Struggle For Supremacy, instead of showing how mastery of Germany confers actual mastery of Europe, seems to me so far to be demonstrating a rather different point, that fear of (Habsburg) mastery of Germany caused princes inside and outside the HRE to act so as to keep the German lands disunited. Also, is it true that “the Great Rebellion against Charles [Stuart] was in its essence a revolt against Stuart foreign policy”, i.e. failing to intervene to aid co-religionists in the Netherlands and the Palatinate? A factor, yes, but the essence?

Ernst Jünger’s Paris Journals continue to impress with every page, and sometimes to appall. He observes that executioners who work with an axe take pleasure in their craft, compared with those who work with a guillotine.

Prompted by Robert, I’ve started a re-read of Claudius the God . I wonder how far these books derive from an amazing knowledge of the sources and how far from a deep imaginative reconstruction.

One other pleasure has been some old CDs I have from Classic FM in which well-known actors and poets read the top 100 Poems as chosen by listeners. How fresh and invigorating it is to hear great poetry read out loud. The readers are all excellent, in particular the late lamented Richard Griffiths.

Thanks Russ, just back from a funeral, a humanist event without black, for somebody i used to volunteer with. He was 81 and showed amazing generosity of spirit towards the old people he looked after at the day centre, an inspiration to us all. He had been in ill health for a decade since he retired but it was a positive upbeat occasion, i did the tribute

Weather was breezy and drizzly on the Surrey-Hampshire border.....so not much reading done today besides an NYRB article on AI

AB76 wrote: "Thanks Russ, just back from a funeral, a humanist event without black, for somebody i used to volunteer with...."

Apart from the times when someone dies far too young (we’ve known two young men recently killed in horrendous car crashes), funerals can be fine events, the dignified and sober marking of a life well lived, followed generally by the hubbub of a very good party.

RussellinVT wrote: "After the interesting exchanges this morning, welcome to the new thread

I don’t myself have much in the way of new books to discuss. My reading for the moment is largely limited to the same non-fi..."

Thanks for the new thread. I hope you enjoy Claudius.

I keep poking into the Junger diaries, re-reading some earlier sections. It feels overpriced, but sooner or later I'll do like Junger himself-- when he visited a Paris bookstore three or four times to look at the same book, he'd end up buying it.

Junger on 29 March, 1944: "This is an area that includes the attacks of the new rulers against the ancient concept of military honor and the remnants of chivalry... We will never grasp this if we cannot see through [Hitler's] desire to destroy the nomos [law, customs], which guides him infallibly."

This passage reminds me of The Revolution of Nihilism, a book that former Nazi Hermann Rauschning published before the Second World War. He wrote that "the National Socialism that came to power in 1933 was no longer a nationalist but a revolutionary movement." Upper-class and professional German Nationalists who joined the Nazi Party found that they did not have the weight that they expected to wield in the Party movement. Instead, they were expected to serve as transmission belts of Party doctrine to their old circles. The book ends with an appeal to the German Army to act.

Junger developed similar views. I note that he, too, refers to Nazi zealots as "nihilists."

I suppose that I should take a break from World War II, but the historical characters are so well sketched in the books in my To Be Reread pile.

Robert wrote: "RussellinVT wrote: "After the interesting exchanges this morning, welcome to the new thread

I don’t myself have much in the way of new books to discuss. My reading for the moment is largely limite..."

i always try and balance out WW2 reading, so i dont read too much but there is just so much to read out there. I thought Junger was very good on what happened after 1933 with the nationalism movement. As for nihilism, i see the Nazi's as 100% in that vein

I think also that very few of the Nazi's came from the Junkers or right wing conservative cultures they used to get into power, so it was an alien world they always held in contempt. But then there is also the issue that most of the Nazi's involved in running things were educated and middle class, its quite amazing to see how many people who should have known better were infected with the cancer of Nazism. So many monsters came from stable, good backgrounds, well educated and also it seems well adjusted till they were called do things beyond the pale.

AB76 wrote: "i always try and balance out WW2 reading, so i dont read too much but there is just so much to read out there...."

Likewise - but one WWII book I have been meaning to read for decades and must eventually is The Nemesis of Power by JW Wheeler-Bennett (very old now, 1964, but revised and updated by Richard Overy in 2005) about how from its peak of power in WWI the Army high command fell into total subservience to the Nazis. I believe it will fit neatly with Robert's comment:

"Upper-class and professional German Nationalists who joined the Nazi Party found that they did not have the weight that they expected to wield in the Party movement. Instead, they were expected to serve as transmission belts of Party doctrine to their old circles. The book ends with an appeal to the German Army to act.

RussellinVT wrote: "AB76 wrote: "i always try and balance out WW2 reading, so i dont read too much but there is just so much to read out there...."

Likewise - but one WWII book I have been meaning to read for decades..."

Whenever i look at the 1918-1933 period, it is striking how much the etablished military lost in that 15 years.

Since late Prussian times(1850s), the large military, the reserve corps and the prestige of victory in conflict had created a deep and dominant military caste, accross all class lines (due to the reserve system). The novels of Fontane capture a society in thrall to the military and in WW1 it became almost a military state

But 1918 and the strange defeat was followed by 18 months ofd revolution, then Versailles and the reduction of an army which had been 500,000 strong at its smallest from 1830-1918, down to 100,000. That must have caused mayhem for so many men reliant on pay and pensions from the military system, no wonder the Nazi's seemed offer a return to military prestige and the expansion of numbers. I estimate maybe 100,000 or more embittered casualties of military reduction were happy to use the Nazi's but were instead used , although by WW2, they seemed quite happy with another war and nostalgia for 1866 and 1871

It was almost like a brotherhood of men was marginalised by the Weimar state but it should be noted the sheer numbers of German men who served between 1914-18 was far in excess of anything in the 80 years before 1914, hence this was the largest scale "dis-armament" a modern state had every seen, without the visible signs of defeat. (One feature of mass conscription was its classlessness, all segments of male German life had been sucked into the military maw, meaning this idealogy had probably reached even deeper than in 1871-1914)

The "stab in the back" myth formed another layer of embitterment.

Was musing on the nature of resistance to the Nazi's, related to Ricarda Huch(see my post on the G) and it is inspiring to see these groups who resisted the Nazi regime

I dont mean the plotters of 1944 and Jungers friends, who were mostly happy with a greater germany and a military conservative era but the Communists, Socialists and other free thinkers who were brave and died due to their bravery. Hans and Sophie Scholl in Munich , or Otto and Elise Hampel(who Hans Fallada wrote Alone in Berlin about). There were many others, all who took incredible risks within a pitiless, violent system where conformity was not a choice.

In his entry of 29 January 1944, Junger mentions a difficult trip to Berlin, where he seeks leniency for his son, arrested for criticism of Hitler. He is referred to Navy Judge Otto Kranzbühler

For RussellinVT

I know you enjoyed Emylia Hall's The Rockpool Murder so here is another one you may like:

Robert wrote: "In his entry of 29 January 1944, Junger mentions a difficult trip to Berlin, where he seeks leniency for his son, arrested for criticism of Hitler. He is referred to Navy Judge Otto Kranzbühler"

this is the saddest part of the diary and the tone does change as he tries to save his son. i actually found the last 75 pages where he is home near Hanover the best, suddenly he is just another german civilian and the nation is falling apart

giveusaclue wrote: "For RussellinVT

I know you enjoyed Emylia Hall's The Rockpool Murder so here is another one you may like:

"

Thanks - well remembered, and timely too, as I’ve just been thinking I need something a bit lighter and diverting in our summer heat. I’ll ask the library tomorrow if they can get the Mary Grand (fine name!).

I only ever went to the Isle of Wight once, to Cowes, to speak with a witness in a copyright dispute over the design of the hull of a racing yacht. He gave me less than half his attention, up there in his cavernous sail loft, as he was busy laying out a new main sail. A good sort of setting for a crime novel…

Do you have an opinion on Seichi Matsumoto? He’s been getting a lot of love over on WWR, currently Inspector Imanishi Investigates (the one someone found lying on a café table and couldn’t stop reading). Another of his I’ve seen mentioned more than once is The Tokyo Express.

AB76 wrote: "Whenever i look at the 1918-1933 period, it is striking how much the etablished military lost in that 15 years...."

Good summary, AB, tks. I remember reading once a quote of FDR, towards the end of WWII, that he was determined to wipe out every last trace of Prussian military junkerdom, which – even under the Nazi regime - he still saw as the source of Europe’s misfortunes for the previous hundred years. Though he wasn’t there to see it, that class and culture was indeed extirpated. I’ve hunted all over for that quote and not found it.

RussellinVT wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "For RussellinVT

I know you enjoyed Emylia Hall's The Rockpool Murder so here is another one you may like:

"

Thanks - well remembered,..."

i love Matsumoto Russ, i read both novels you mentioned and they are superb, a great mix of "state of the nation" japan appraisal and intricate plotting. My views of late 1950s and early 1960s Japan have been improved by reading Matsumoto

RussellinVT wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Whenever i look at the 1918-1933 period, it is striking how much the etablished military lost in that 15 years...."

Good summary, AB, tks. I remember reading once a quote of FDR, towa..."

in some ways i can see the 1871-1914 "junker" iteration as looking falsely benign. No real conflict since defeating the french in 1871 and a nation growing powerful on trade and business but with the military forming such a strong part of it all, there was always that wolf in sheeps clothing feel. Not to forget that in colonial terms, the seeds in German SW africa were being laid for events in WW1 and much more severley in WW2

AB76 wrote: "RussellinVT wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "For RussellinVT

I know you enjoyed Emylia Hall's The Rockpool Murder so here is another one you may like:

"

Thank..."


I haven't read any to be honest so can't help you there.

If you are looking for my crime/mysteries there are plenty on My Books list you may find interesting!

giveusaclue wrote: "...If you are looking for my crime/mysteries there are plenty on My Books list you may find interesting!..."

Thanks - I'll check that out. Off to the library in a moment.

AB76 wrote: "i love Matsumoto Russ, i read both novels you mentioned and they are superb..."

Thanks, AB. I'll definitely get to these before too long.

Our format shifted rapidly, didn't it? Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956 by Anne Applebaum describes what happened to members of the former Communist underground in East Germany, Poland, and Hungary after the Red Army came in. In each country occupied by the Soviets, a new communist leadership came in from Moscow-- "on the baggage train of the conquerors" as they said of Louis XVIII. Her book describes the new regimes' suspicion of the former underground members-- too many individual decisions, and harsh consequences, in their pasts. Instead, a new generation of Communists was brought up, younger people with blank political histories and little knowledge of Marxist ideas.These scenes immediately brought back memories of Koestler's Darkness at Noon-- and the Hungarian film Angi Vera.

Robert wrote: "Our format shifted rapidly, didn't it? Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956 by Anne Applebaum describes what happened to members of the former Communist underground in East Germa..."

My book on the Picnic of 89 mentions the bitter old communist Janos Kadar was furious with the re-habilitation of Imre Nagy. i found a good photo of the young, Kadar in 1945, Budapest, with a certain Lazlo Rajk. The young guns of the new communists, Rajk, who created the terror apparatus of the secret police in Hungary would end up confessing in a show trial to things he never did and being killed, while Kadar, who betrayed Rajk, would later betray Imre Nagy and lead Hungary for three decades. What a confederation of unpleasent dunces...

RussellinVT wrote: "AB76 wrote: "i love Matsumoto Russ, i read both novels you mentioned and they are superb..."

Thanks, AB. I'll definitely get to these before too long."

kudos to penguin for coming up with these translations and bringing Matsumoto to western audiences

Farewell to the Junger diaries for now. Junger's diary is studded with odd moments of observation, poignant wartime journalism, vivid reconstructions of his own dreams, and long passages of pontification. Sometimes an alert observer, sometimes an avid reader, sometimes a savant with the style of an earlier century.

I've started on The Last Tsar, Edvard Radzinsky's biography of Nicholas II. He draws on diaries, but these are the words of much different personalties.

Robert wrote: "Farewell to the Junger diaries for now. Junger's diary is studded with odd moments of observation, poignant wartime journalism, vivid reconstructions of his own dreams, and long passages of pontifi..."

did you enjoy the last section with the air raids and Junger as a mere civilian?

Just ordered The Chile Project about the neo-liberal assault on the Chilean economy after the 1973 coup, its origins with the Chicago Boys and its eventual limitations

I've read about all this from the liberal, progressive side and will be interesting to read about as a study of a strategy. (Not to say that this book is right wing, just that its topic is from the other side of 1973 and after)

The last section of the Junger diaries is a story of defeat, not just of Germany but of the values that Junger's class believed in. He is also in mourning for the death of his son, saved from Hitler's justice only to die in Hitler's war. He is now, as Candide recommended, cultivating his garden. There is much to rebuild, and uncertainty as to the likelihood of rebuilding. That so much of Cologne, Hamburg, and other old cities could be restored after the war was far more than he expected.

One last note on his entry of 29 January 1944. Junger was steered away from Doenitz in seeking help for his son, but the friend referred Junger to Navy Judge Otto Kranzbühler. (The diary mentions a different name, but Kranzbuhler was the judge holding that position.) Two years later, Admiral Doenitz was a defendant at Nuremburg, and Kranzbuhler was the defense attorney Doenitz chose. He chose well; the former Navy JAG picked up the Anglo-American art of cross-examination quickly, earning the praise of US assistant prosecutor Telford Taylor, and saving Doenitz and Admiral Raeder from the gallows by a brilliant initiative-- written questions to US Admiral Nimitz, who directed the main naval war against Japan. Nimitz's brief but frank answers, which appear in Taylor's memoir on the trials, allowed the defense to argue that both countries had signed the same treaty on submarine warfare, and interpreted it in the same way.

Off to the Allied side for a while.

I have finally got to the end of Richard Holmes’ The Age of Wonder. It is a very fine study of science and culture in the Romantic age. No specialist scientific knowledge is needed, just an interest in the progress of scientific thought, and the vindication of the inductive method. It is difficult to imagine anyone other than RH having the depth of knowledge to illustrate at every turn the two-way traffic between the advances of the “scientist” (a term first proposed in 1832, to replace the inapt “philosopher”, and rapidly gaining currency) and the leading poets and writers of the time.

Kinda had a love affair with North Africa this year, reading Newbys novel set in Port Said during Suez, Holmboe's travels in Libya in 1930 and Koni's novel of the oasis Tuaregs, so i decided to read the slim penguin collection of 3 essays by Camus Summer In Algiers

It was part of a series in 2005, i think somebody here recommended it to me and the essay Return to Tipasa was a wonderful immersion in his style, i loved his unfinished novel of his Algerian youth and this was very similar. I wasnt aware of Tipasa, another one of the numerous roman or greek ruins that dot the Algerian and Libyan coastlines. A thoughtful and lyrical essay

While waiting for a book from the library I’ve been re-reading Lawrence Durrell’s Justine which, in my twenties, I thought wonderful, for its sensuous, atmospheric rendering of cosmopolitan pre-war Alexandria. I see why many people find it overwrought. Justine herself – unfaithful, self-absorbed, searching - is described as a child of the city “which decrees that its women shall be voluptuaries of pain…” But I still find the prose enticing and will keep reading for the moment.

Durrell himself was portrayed as a rather exploitative figure in the TV adaptation a few years ago of Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals – a definite gap in my reading which I should make up for soon.

Reading Justine is also taking me back to Cavafy, who might be described as the sphinx of the city. He is currently receiving a lot of attention with the new biography by Peter Jeffreys and Gregory Jusdanis. This seems to be an impressionistic work, in the almost total absence of hard information, or even writings, beyond the poems themselves, which were never published in his lifetime. One of the reviews says that none of the translations captures the melody of the original Greek. Another, in The G, describes the poems as prosaic, “without metaphor, simile, rhyme or rich vocabulary.” Fifty years ago the only available translation was by John Mavrogordato, and it was good enough to enthrall me. Now any number of people have had a crack at it, so I will be trying some of them as well.

RussellinVT wrote: "While waiting for a book from the library I’ve been re-reading Lawrence Durrell’s Justine which, in my twenties, I thought wonderful, for its sensuous, atmospheric rendering of cosmopolitan pre-war..."

i have Clea, still to read of the Alexandria Quartet. I loved the setting of the first 3 novels and i liked Justine. Alexandria and Egypt came to life with Durrells prose and have left me with an interest in pre independence colonial Alexandria and its melting pot of Greeks, Jews, Lebanese, Italians and others

The last Alexandria book i read "Mountolive" was very good but Alexandria played a lesser role in it than i expected, i should be reading Clea next year. The geography of the city is now etched in my head and the lakes, the suburbs and the port area, the climate and of course the Coptic Christians who play a part in the stories.

Where Durrell stands as a great author is an interesting question, i must read his cold war novel of Serbia too,

Alexandria had a few famous sons, alongside Cavafy there was Ungaretti, the poet the futurist Marinetti and Gamel Abdel Nasser

AB76 wrote: "RussellinVT wrote: "i have Clea, still to read of the Alexandria Quartet. ..."

I remember liking Clea the best of the four. The look-back-in-time structure gave the whole enterprise depth and resonance.

I don’t think I will persevere with Brendan Simms’ Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy. Its great length is not in itself a problem. Rather it is that the effort to be comprehensive leads him far away from his theme of the centrality of Germany. I looked ahead from the 17th century to try passages on the 1870s-80s, the 1910s and the 1930s, and each time the diffuseness overtook the argument. On top of which the banality of his prose is depressing. Oh for an elegant essay by Robert Tombs on the same subject.

RussellinVT wrote: "AB76 wrote: "RussellinVT wrote: "i have Clea, still to read of the Alexandria Quartet. ..."

I remember liking Clea the best of the four. The look-back-in-time structure gave the whole enterprise d..."

makes me look foward to it even more, thanks Russ. I love novels set in foreign locations like The Alexandria Quartet with cultural depth and balance. I was led to Durrell after enjoying the Paul Bowles novels of Morrocco, written in the 1950s. If you havent read them, i recommend them, the style is very different though, cold, hard, non-judgemental but superb cultural depth and balance. (by cultural depth and balance i mean not relying on tropes and colonial superiority)
The three Bowles novels i recommend, if you havent read them are:
The Sheltering Sky
Let It Come Down
The Spiders House

RussellinVT wrote: "I don’t think I will persevere with Brendan Simms’ Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy. Its great length is not in itself a problem. Rather it is that the effort to be comprehensive leads him far aw..."

i'm always wary of historical studies that cover 3-4 centuries, i get excited about a new book and then look at the contents page online and think "oh dear". I prefer focused 30-40 year studies. Having said that the latest Christopher Clark historical work on 1849 is just my cup of tea and i havent read it yet...sloppy!

P.S Another damn heatwave here, boring me already, its been a dry and warm summer in the shires, not brutally hot but this is the fourth heatwave in 2 months, the lack of rain is a concern but i noticed a series of showers in late July has brought a tinge of green back to many fields, parks and verges. I hate to wish away August but roll on Sept and the shorter days...

AB76 wrote: "RussellinVT wrote: "While waiting for a book from the library I’ve been re-reading Lawrence Durrell’s Justine which, in my twenties, I thought wonderful, for its sensuous, atmospheric rendering of ..."

'Just weeks before Ludwig Meidner began his apocalyptic series of paintings, in March 1912, a Futurist exhibition was held at the Galerie Der Sturm in Berlin. Filippo Marinetti, the main protagonist in the Futurist movement, declared in his manifesto “we wish to glorify War - the only health giver of the world” and he extolled “militarism, patriotism, the destructive arm of the Anarchist, the Beautiful Ideas that kill”. Meidner might well have taken the Futurists’ pontificating statements as part of a general trend to stir up nationalist sentiments amongst the public. Certainly, various factors seemed to combine, in ‘Fin de siècle’ Europe, to the ratcheting up of regional nationalist tensions, as well as to challenging the status quo. Otto Dix and Kathe Kollwitz were influential visual documenters of these decades of rapid change. They portrayed, in Dix’s case, a nation at war, and, in Kollwitz’s case, a nation at war with itself.'

Marinetti was quite the 'stirrer'!... And what of 'the beautiful ideas that kill'!... (from my Book of Hours') 'Elevenses - the New Objectivity'.

We are off to London for a few days, with sproglet and family. I hope its not too hot in town. Reading has slooooowed down somewhat. I have Deborah Levy's 'August Blue' to hand for the journey.

AB76 wrote: "RussellinVT wrote: "AB76 wrote: "RussellinVT wrote: "i have Clea, still to read of the Alexandria Quartet....."

I haven’t read any Paul Bowles. Thanks for the recommendations.

AB76 wrote: "i'm always wary of historical studies that cover 3-4 centuries,..."

I tend to agree about the value of shortness in historical studies. I think of the brilliance of Michael Howard’s The Franco-Prussian War and the micro-studies of Lytton Strachey, the epitome of elegance and wit (almost out-Stracheyfied by Aldous Huxley in The Author of Eminent Victorians). But then there are the long-view studies of people like Paul Kennedy, and Robert Tombs (The English and their History), and Christopher Clark himself, covering a couple of centuries centuries of Prussian history in Iron Kingdom, which I found riveting. Like you I’ve got his Revolutionary Spring sitting there – a bit intimidated by the size – so maybe I’ll wait till you pronounce!

Hot and dry here too, and yet, somehow, very humid as well. We're using our A/C units much more than I remember in previous years. It used to be that you needed A/C for a week at most.

RussellinVT wrote: "AB76 wrote: "i'm always wary of historical studies that cover 3-4 centuries,..."

I tend to agree about the value of shortness in historical studies. I think of the brilliance of Michael Howard’s T..."

its so sad, how climate change reaches 51N where i am and even the cooler reaches of Vermont. Southern Europe is a boiling basin right now and i;'m glad i live in northern europe but if i live to my 80s i would imagine summers in the southern UK will be hot and consistently dry, the weakening of the polar currents due to ice melt already means we get longer fixed spells of weather, unusual on an island with changeable weather for centuries

i bet in that future UK, there will still be minor A/C provision and no new reservoirs!

Tam wrote: "AB76 wrote: "RussellinVT wrote: "While waiting for a book from the library I’ve been re-reading Lawrence Durrell’s Justine which, in my twenties, I thought wonderful, for its sensuous, atmospheric ..."

Marinetti was deffo an odd ball

RussellinVT wrote: "AB76 wrote: "RussellinVT wrote: "AB76 wrote: "RussellinVT wrote: "i have Clea, still to read of the Alexandria Quartet....."

I haven’t read any Paul Bowles. Thanks for the recommendations."

all three are set in north africa, sheltering sky is set in algeria and the desert, let it come down is set in Tangiers and The Spiders House in Fez. His short stories are good and his travel writing about Morrocco is even better

his unique style has alwaysd intrigued me, its not a question of accessibility, he writes in a very direct and clear way, its the lack of moral judgement, everything is left in a kind of universe without rules, bad things are done by bad people but there is no register of shock or disgust, it just happens. While he uses european or american prinicipal characters the people and cultures of North Africa are a key part of his writing too

Tam wrote: "...Filippo Marinetti, the main protagonist in the Futurist movement, declared in his manifesto “we wish to glorify War - the only health giver of the world” and he extolled “militarism, patriotism, the destructive arm of the Anarchist, the Beautiful Ideas that kill”. ..."

Not something I remember seeing in art books. I will look at his pieces with a new eye!

RussellinVT wrote: "Tam wrote: "...Filippo Marinetti, the main protagonist in the Futurist movement, declared in his manifesto “we wish to glorify War - the only health giver of the world” and he extolled “militarism, patriotism, the destructive arm of the Anarchist, the Beautiful Ideas that kill”. ..."

Not something I remember seeing in art books. I will look at his pieces with a new eye!"

I take that back. Herbert Read quotes exactly those words in A Concise History of Modern Sculpture, which was a school prize (you were allowed to choose the book yourself), so I’m surprised not to remember it. He quotes quite a bit more from the manifesto, describing it as “breathless and incoherent” and you have to agree. The examples of Futurism chosen by Read are mainly by Boccioni, and seem to me rather good, particularly the bronze called Unique Forms of Continuity in Space.

Summer in Algiers(1936) is a short essay by Albert Camus and another piece of literature capturing French Algeria and pieds-noirs culture.

While as less evocative than Return to Tipasa, or his longer novels of Algiers (including L'Etranger), this brief essay explores summer in the white city and the culture of the people who live there, meaning the pieds noirs or white algerians(a mix of Italians-spanish-maltese-french-jews), of which he was part.

Camus had a spanish mother (Oran not Algiers however was where the spanish influence among the pieds noirs was strongest) and managed unlike the majority of his fellow working class pieds noirs to get to university and in his essay he observes a lack of any real interest in learning or intelligence among his people. He describes the natural beauty of the city, the largest city in French Algeria, the world of sun and bathers. The men who married too young and were then washed up and crumbling in their 50s.

For the pied-noirs, their society was almost gone within 26 years, 1962 saw an exodus of the 950,000 or so of them to France, Spain and the new world. They left behind some great writers (Camus, Pelegri) and philosphers (Althusser,Derrida, Henri-Levy)

I compare them in some ways to the british in rhodesia, in the aggressive way they began to frame their relationship to France, although the main difference was the Rhodesians were keen to seperate from Britain in the 1960s, while the pied noirs wanted to stay part of France(aka the mainland). Of course at the height in Rhodesia there were maybe 240,000 whites, far less than the 1,000,000 or so pieds noirs

AB76 wrote: "Summer in Algiers(1936) is a short essay by Albert Camus and another piece of literature capturing French Algeria and pieds-noirs culture...."

I didn't know the pieds-noirs were such a mix. I always assumed they were essentially French.

We saw some friends the other day who had recently been visiting Southern Africa. They hated the atmosphere in Cape Province - not a mixed society at all - but loved Botswana and, surprisingly, Zimbabwe, which I had supposed was still in the grip of the racial tensions even post-Mugabe.

RussellinVT wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Summer in Algiers(1936) is a short essay by Albert Camus and another piece of literature capturing French Algeria and pieds-noirs culture...."

I didn't know the pieds-noirs were such ..."

Suprisingly for a nation very careful about recording ethnicity or religion for over 70 years, due to lacite, the french did manage to gather some great census data about the Pied Noirs. The Maltese in North Africa are a fascinating minority among all the colonial empires, in Tunisia, Libya, ALgeria and Egypt. As most had British citizenship they appear as a large "british" source in these places, (it seems from my reading they were not popular due to this alleigance)

In fact, the french contingent is probably as low as 45-50% due to many non-french attaining citizenship and becoming French,despite never living in France. or being born there. However, being majority Catholic and mostly southern european, the society wasnt as visually or culturally diverse as it seems)
This is where they resemble Afrikaners in some way,a mix of european races who never grew up in Europe. (within the Afrikaner population are Germans,Danes and Belgians, all part of the dutch colonial expansion in the 17c, plus the significant French Hugenot population that followed a bit later, estimates suggest that maybe 40% of Afrikaners have Hugenot descent, hence the french surnames that are so common)

With Zimbabwe the white population is now tiny, barely 48,000 i think so its place in Zimbabwe is reduced to a minor role, unlike SA where there are still about 4m whites but they are majority Afrikaner, not British South African with other europeans mixed in too,( significant Portugese numbers who moved south from Mozambique in the 1970s)

The Picnic: An Escape to Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain was a superb read, highly intelligent, thoughtful and mixing personal stories and testimony with political theory and ideas.

The author's main conclusion seems to be that the freedom we had in the west from 1945-89, lacked something to the Easterners who fled. They sought freedom with community ties but found the atomised, individualistic, materalistic west confusing and dissapointing.

It made me wonder if they had fled between 1945 and 1955 whether they made have found a better West, with solid social security and a functioning social contract. One could blame Reagen and Thatcher for the post 1979 collapse of these ideals but Europe was less in thrall to this than the UK and USA.

He also frames the covid debates over masks and rights as a failure to understand what freedom actually means. It is not the right to do whatever you want as a private individual regardless of laws and cultural mores but in the last decade it would seem we have a real problem with this. The endless debates in the house of commons by Tories over mask wearing was an astonishing waste of political time when the world was struggling with a pandemic and in the USA, freedom has even more damaging connotations now it seems, freedom from responsbility and its consequences at every turn

I read Fromms "The Fear of Freedom" about 15 years ago and it reinforced my view of how freedom can be relative to your status, education and gender. Fromm's "fear" was the idea that freedom and unlimited choice can create paralysis and that human race craves order and guidance as a pack, (which since 1979 the liberatarian, atomised neo-liberal world has shattered, causing insecurity and precarity. )I see it in similar ways when you have the freedom to fail, to be homeless, to be jobless, to be an immigrant with no support network or state help. In a nutshell its society saying "there you go, get on with it, you are on your own but you are free"

Superb images of Northern Ireland in 1969 by a Japanese photographer, rich in colour and quality, makes me feel old to say, nothing beats film!

https://aperture.org/editorial/akihik...

AB76 wrote: "Superb images of Northern Ireland in 1969 by a Japanese photographer, rich in colour and quality, makes me feel old to say, nothing beats film!..."

Yes, very fine. In color too. In a strange way, from all the press photos at the time, one tends to think of the Troubles as happening in black and white.

RussellinVT wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Superb images of Northern Ireland in 1969 by a Japanese photographer, rich in colour and quality, makes me feel old to say, nothing beats film!..."

Yes, very fine. In color too. In a ..."

the vivid colour is so impressive, considering it was 56 years ago, my mother transferred some slides from her childhood onto her pc and the images were so clear and vivid in colour. One of my grandfather, in 1955, in the sailors cap he always wore(he loved sailing) looked like it was taken a few days ago and it really captures life so much better than black and white

Most of my interest in post-war Greece has been focused on the 1960s as the "regime of the colonels", well covered in literature and film. (After reading Z by Vassilikos(1967) and loving it, i have The Flaw by Samarakis(1965),. published by Aiora Press lined up to read)

My reading of Z 2 years ago ,set in Salonika, made me curious about the Greek Jewish post-war sitation and it is one of the saddest holocaust tales, there was a relatively small population of around 70,000 in 1941. They lived mainly in second city of Greece(Salonika), in smaller cities and on islands such as Corfu and Rhodes, in these places they were a significant minority, in other parts of Greece there were no Jews

In Salonika they were Sephardi descent speaking Ladino, in Yanina they were Romaniote Jews, Greek speaking and distinct from the Sephardi in Salonika, in Corfu there was Rominaiote/Pugliaese Italian Jewish mix and in Rhodes Sephardi(Ladino speaking)

By comparing the 1951 data to the 1928 data, in these regions, the Jewish population had fallen from 65,422 to just 1885. Survival rates in the camps was very low, so the Nazi destruction of Greek Jewry was very high.

AB76 wrote: "Most of my interest in post-war Greece has been focused on the 1960s as the "regime of the colonels", well covered in literature and film...."

Those statistics are terrible.

Not reading much at the moment. We have family visitors three weekends in a row, and we're racing to finish various projects before Labor Day weekend when there will be 19 or 20 of us around the house. I'm finding the short travel essays of Aldous Huxley a pleasant way to drop off to sleep. As he moves through Italy he discusses previous visitors - Goethe, Stendhal, etc. Just the ticket.