Dreams Into Lightning 2

"Where the West Ends" - Michael J. Totten

Excerpt from Where the West Ends:

Screwing up in the strange parts of the world is never fun and is usually miserable, but you learn things by doing it. You see things that governments and ministries of tourism wished you would not. Ukraine is so strange that you can even see these things in the dark. We actually saw more of Ukraine’s strangeness because we showed up in the dark.

I don’t remember what time we crossed the frontier. Eight o’clock in the evening? Anyway, it was dark. When I say it was dark, I mean it was dark. The back roads of Western Ukraine are as black at night as the most remote parts of the American West where no humans live in any direction.

Yet Western Ukraine is not empty.

And, oh God, the roads. I don’t care where you’ve been. You almost certainly have never seen anything like them.

The second worst road I’ve ever driven on was in Central America in the mid-1990s. It’s only a fraction as bad as the road Sean and I took into Ukraine. This one would have been no worse off had it been deliberately shredded to ribbons by air strikes. The damage was so thorough that the surface could not possibly have been repaved or repaired even once since the Stalinist era.

I white-knuckled it behind the wheel while Sean cringed in the passenger seat. I did not dare drive faster than five miles an hour. Even at that speed I had to weave all over the place to avoid the worst of the gaping holes, some of which were as wide as mattresses and deep enough to swallow TV sets.

I saw no cars, no street lights, not even a single light from a house. Ukraine looked depopulated. My maps said there were villages all over the place, but where were they? Did we just drive into an episode of Life After People?

“This is exactly like Russia,” Sean said. “Exactly.”

He had visited Russia two years earlier and will never forget the vast darkness at night on the train between Moscow and St. Petersburg. “We’re in Russia!” he said.

Then the ghost figures appeared. ...

You can pre-order the book here.

From my review:

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Probably most of us are guilty of throwing around terms like "the West" and "the Middle East" without really thinking too hard about what they mean, or where those places begin or end. If you want to understand what "the West" is, read this book to learn where it is, and where it is not.

There is a persistent feeling of loneliness in this book. It is the loneliness of communities cut off from one another and from themselves; but it's also the loneliness of certain individuals who refuse to be confined within the communal walls that are assigned to them. ...

One final note: The values and traditions that we cherish in the West are by no means assured of continuance. "The West" is an abstraction that exists in space and also in time. If in the title you replace the word "where" with "when", the book is also a warning.

Read the full review of "Where the West Ends" at Dreams Into Lightning 1.

Sketches for Hereville 2 by Barry Deutsch

My friend Barry Deutsch has posted sketches for the cover of the forthcoming Hereville 2.

If you haven't read the original Hereville - what are you waiting for?

Millay: Christmas 1940

... I wanted to tell you about us, how wicked we are.
And yet also to say that the Star—you know the star I mean—
Is for some of us clearly visible still in the east at midnight rising, and all the night long burns serene—
And that on such nights on unaccustomed knees we kneel and in sweet discomfort
Pray for hours, and mean it, to be better than we are.
I am not one of these, I fear;
I loved you always for the things I read
About you in a book we had.
I did not meet you for the first time through the incense and stale smell
Of a room seldom aired, where people purred of heaven and howled of hell.
I used to read all day, when I was ten:
—You and Don Quijote were my heroes then.

Perhaps because of him I have been kind
Often with my heart, before consulting my mind.
I might have been wiser, had I learned direct from you—
Learned to make curlicues in the sand or on a scratch-pad while deciding what to say or do ...
Such as, "Sin—the waves come in—all pushing pebbles—each alone ...
I have it!—Let him among them who is without sin!—cast the first stone!"

I learned so young to know you, I could never see
Why we should not be playmates; you were wonderful,—
Oh, you were shiny!—and for some strange reason, fond of me.
But nothing will be done. I can do nothing. Nothing at all.
Only remember what you said, your voice, the way you said it,—
For it never was like something read, it was something heard, even while I read it—
And try to be wiser and kinder, in a world where Pity from place to place
Flees under cover of darkness, hiding her face;
Give Pity breathing-space.

- Edna St. Vincent Millay
from Make Bright the Arrows

"Peace was my earliest love": the unremembered Millay.

Peace was my earliest love, and I presume

Will be my latest; but today, adult,

Arguing not to prove but for result

Opposing concepts in this thoughtful room,

I wonder at whose prompting, schooled by whom

I urged that Peace the Slogan, Peace the Cult,

Could turn the edge of sledge and catapult

And leave us calm to cull the grafted bloom.

In all my life I never knew a thing

So highly prized to be so cheaply had:

Longing to wed with Peace, what did we do?—

Sketched her a fortress on a paper pad;

Under her casement twanged a lovesick string;

Left wide the gate that let her foemen through.

If these lines from Edna St. Vincent Millay don't ring a bell with you, you're not alone. They're from one of her last published collections, Make Bright the Arrows. The mature Millay's work did not go over well with the WWII-era literati and intellectuals. I'll let Answers.com explain:

Carelessly expressed outrage at fascism detracted from Make Bright the Arrows (1940); The Murder of Lidice (1942) was a sincere but somewhat strident response to the Nazis' obliteration of a Czechoslovakian town. She was losing her audience; Collected Sonnets (1941) and Collected Lyrics (1943) did not win it back.

(The same article pronounces Millay's 1921 play Aria da Capo "a delicate but effective satire on war.")

A bit more to-the-point was this 1940 review in Time, which vividly likened the poet to "a lady octopus caught in a whirlpool."

But it was Edna St. Vincent Millay who understood, in 1940, that There Are No Islands Anymore:

And oh, how sweet a thing to be
Safe on an island, not at sea!
(Though someone said, some months ago—
I heard him, and he seemed to know;
Was it the German Chancellor?
"There are no islands any more.")

She also understood the Intelligence Test that confronted her generation:

Q: What, if anything, would you do
To keep your country free?... A: Lay
Down my life! Q: You? You mean you'd die?
A: Certainly. (Chorus: That's a lie.)
Q: For your country's defense, how much would you give,—
If it weren't taxed out of you, I mean. A: All that I have. ...

If, like me, you read and loved "Renascence", you might resonate with the burden of understanding that comes to the "probing sense" of the older poet in these passages.

I'll leave it to you to make your own judgments about Edna St. Vincent Millay's late works. Here's one last selection, a sonnet from Huntsman, What Quarry?

His stalk the dark delphinium

Unthorned into the tending hand

Releases . . . yet that hour will come . . .

And must, in such a spiny land.

The silky powdery mignonette

Before these gathering dews are gone

May pierce me — does the rose regret

The day she did her armor on?

In that the foul supplants the fair,

The coarse defeats the twice-refined,

Is food for thought, but not despair:

All will be easier when the mind

To meet the brutal age has grown

An iron cortex of its own.

Cinnamon Stillwell on (and in) 'The Bathsheba Deadline'

Cinnamon Stillwell:

Author and columnist Jack Engelhard has been both a colleague and a longtime supporter of my work. In fact, when his latest novel, The Bathsheba Deadline, began coming out in installments via Amazon Shorts (a modern version of a literary form that goes back to the nineteenth century--the serial novel), I found myself appearing as a character of sorts in its pages.

Engelhard's novel, a love triangle of, literally, biblical proportions set against the backdrop of the war on terrorism and modern day journalism, includes references to both current events and current players in the world of new media. So it was that my name came up on more than one occasion, all of which were, of course, quoted on the homepage of my website in the "What People Are Saying" section. I also blogged about the book, describing it as "fiction straight out of the headlines." For I read each installment as it came out and found myself eagerly anticipating the next.

Happily, The Bathsheba Deadline is now out in book form and my earlier blog post, with a few adjustments and additions, appears as the foreword. ...

On Reading American History

For a while now, I've been wanting to fill the gaps left in my knowledge by the lack of any serious education in history in the public schools of the 1970s. Recently I began taking steps to correct that; of course the study of history is a lifelong undertaking. Here are some initial thoughts on the American History books I've been reading.

The books I've been reading on American history are:

Hugh Brogan - The Penguin History of the United States
Paul Johnson - A History of the American People
Schweikart and Allen - A Patriot's History of the United States
Winston Churchill - The Great Republic

Also, scored the beautiful two-volume seventh edition of "Growth of the American Republic" by Samuel Eliot Morison et al.

Of the four single-volume histories, two are by Americans and two by Brits; Brogan is the lone liberal of the group. It's interesting to cross-reference between the books and compare accounts and interpretations of each event. I started with the Revolution and went straight through to the present day (except in Churchill's book, which ends with WWII). This week I'm going to go back and review, and highlight certain key areas that are of interest to me, for example the birth of the Progressive movement of about a hundred years ago - the forerunner of modern liberalism as we now know it.

Hugh Brogan's book is readable, informative, and fun. It's great to read if you want the viewpoint of an articulate, intelligent liberal in the 1970s era. He is laudably anti-Communist, but (I think) astonishingly naive about the Soviet Union's intentions. He falls back on the diversion that (paraphrasing) "Russia and China were never a monolithic bloc the way the scaremongers thought they were" - exactly as so many libs do today about the Arab/islamist regimes. Brogan also delivers a stinging condemnation of pre-WWII pacifism; but his comments on the State of Israel (near the bottom of page 622) will make you sit up and say "Huh?"

Paul Johnson is the British Conservative MP who wrote "A History of the Jews", and his history of the US is definitely pro-American. Johnson has a very illuminating section on the Progressive movement of the early 20th century, and (on page 636) a highly informative explanation of the change from small-government liberalism (which saw big government as "a conspiracy to steal money from the hard-working population") to big-government liberalism (which "began to see a strong federal government ... as the defender of the ordinary man and woman against the excesses of corporate power"). Only criticism of Johnson: way, waaaay too many statistics!

Both Johnson and Brogan stress the inherent danger of the myopic pre-WWII mindset of "neutrality" which refused to see nations in conflict as "aggressors" or "victims" but simply, and without distinction, as "belligerents". Moral relativism, anyone?

Schweikart's book is great. It was written explicitly as a conservative history of the US, and as a rebuttal to Zinn (the authors deny that last bit, but I think it's obvious). The authors are critical of American policy when it's appropriate, and devote a great deal of space to the civil rights movement. They have a great admiration for Theodore Roosevelt, despite his Progressive ways. They're sharply critical of Eisenhower, "hardly in the vanguard of civil rights", whom they blame for "cementing the view among black politicians that their only source of support was the Democratic Party." The section on the radicalization of the campus is invaluable. My only issue with "Patriot's History" is that I think the authors offer too many opinions as "fact". But there are plenty of facts there, and facts are what's been missing from the teaching of American history for much too long.

Howard Zinn's book "A People's History of the United States" was a success when it came out, and it sold well in paperback - and I can now see dozens of used copies of Zinn sitting on the shelves of Powell's (including, possibly, my own). I think Zinn's book was successful, not because Americans were looking for a left-wing history of their country, but because they were starved for any book on their country's history that promised to be readable and informative.

I'm looking forward to the release of the paperback edition of "Patriot's History", and I'm betting it will sell well, too.

Book Meme

Tagged by: Jeremayakovka

1. One book that changed your life

Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man

This one book changed my entire way of thinking about Orthodox Judaism and completely demolished the stereotypes I'd been taught by the liberal Jewish world.

- and -

Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

This book helped me to come to terms with my dysfunctional family background. Macon ("Milkman") Dead has to deal with a lot of tough problems, including external oppression (from a racist society) and internal oppression (from within the family). He learns to liberate himself by understanding the mistakes his parents made - and by accepting the magical secret that they passed on to him. I'm planning to write a post on SoS one of these days.

2. One book you have read more than once

Daniel Pinkwater, Lizard Music

This book is simply sublime.

3. One book you would want on a desert island

Samuel R. Delany, Stars in my Pocket like Grains of Sand

4. One book that made you laugh

Alison Bechdel, Dykes to Watch Out For (the series)

5. One book that made you cry

David Grossman, See Under: Love (tr. by Betsy Rosenberg)

-and-

Audre Lorde, The Complete Poems

6. One book you wish had been written

Stephanie McLintock, The First Half: My Life and Works at Age 42

If only.

- also -

Tammy Bruce, Mary Cheney, and Irshad Manji, GWOT: The Gay War On Terror; Why the Queer Community Must Unite Against Islamic Fascism

I'm thinking of using that for a post title.

7. One book you wish had never been written

Sayyid Qutb, the complete works

8. One book you're currently reading

Bernard Lewis, The Middle East
Richard Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics

9. One book you've been meaning to read

Stephen Wolfram, The Mathematica Book

A tragic update: David Grossman's son Uri has just been reported killed.