Karl Popper, Parmenides

I read Poppers ten essays on the World of Parmenides. I read Parmenides a long time ago, when I was sixteen, and I remember him as one of the hardest reads ever, right up there with Being and Nothingness, Sartre's dissertation, which I read the same summer. I also recall I taught myself Chopin's Nocturne in E Major then. Learning the piano was easy. Parmenides was hard.

There are some interesting comments about my great foe, Aristotle. "Aristotle breaks with the reasonable tradition that says we know very little. He thinks he knows a lot..." (p. 2 of my edition, Routledge 1998). Popper also cites Kirk and Raven, that 'gross departures from common sense must only be accepted when the evidence for them is extremely strong." (p. 20) I also thought his point about the continuation of the cosmology of the Greeks being the science of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton, and that our our civilization is abased upon that science. (p. 105) And finally, kind words for my sore academic's heart: "I suggest that, as philosophers, we have a very special critical task -- the task of swimming against the tide. thus we should try, in spite of our critical attitude, to help and support any neglected idea, however unpromising, and especially any new idea; for new ideas are are; and even if there is only a little truth in some of them, they may perhaps indicate an intellectual need, or perhaps some confusion within the set of ideas that we have uncritically accepted so far." (p. 147)

And in closing, back to Aristotle. "Aristotlelian logic is the theory of demonstrable knowledge, and Dante was right when he called Aristotle 'the master of all who know'. He is the founder of the proof, the apodeixis; of the apodeitic syllogism. He is a scientist in the scientistic sense and the theoretician of scientific proof and the authoritarian claims of Science. Yet Aristotle himself became the discoverer (or rather the rediscoverer of the impossibility of knowledge: of the problem of demonstrable knowledge of of the impossibility of its solution. [Impossible within the Aristotlian epistemology, sure.] For if all knowledge, all science, has to be demonstrable, then this leads us (he discovered0 to an infinite regress. This is because any proof consists of premises and conclusions, of initial statements and of concluding statements; and if the initial statements are yet to be proved, the concluding statements are also yet to be proved." (p. 276)

Dickens, Popper

I finished reading Oliver Twist, which was a very good story, and I'm on the second volume of David Copperfield, Dickens' great Bildungroman. I also read Popper 's Unended Quest, his intellectual autobiography. Popper doesn't come off very well after the first few pages: he settles scores or pursues debates long since settled, it seems to me, and it's pompous as well. I also read his essay Poverty of Historicism -- this debate also seems settled to me.

Tea Bliss, Great Expectations, Maritain v. 3 and 4

I got a book on tea, Tea Bliss by Theresa Cheung. What I mostly learned was the vocabulary regarding the description of tea, and the idea that a tea's flavor can go flat. I immediately realized the truth of this, so much for my habit of reheating tea on occasion. Green tea goes completely flat. I also read Great Expectations, and I have to say I thought this was a masterpiece. The point of view of a young boy is marvelously rendered, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Maritain was an easy read for a philosopher. I continue to be amazed at the career of a Catholic philosopher, someone who studied Thomas Aquinas, in an academic setting. I continue to be surprised at the unabashed religious anthropocentrism, the naked feeling of Catholic superiority, that he constantly expresses. But of course this was all written in the 20's and 30's. I enjoyed Reflexions sur l'intelligence, which like many other books is really a collection of essays. It contains some interesting thoughts on analogical thinking, which is related to my research. For example, on page 120, he says that 'l'inadequation de la connaissance par analogie n'affecte que notre mode de connaitre, et non pas la verite de ce que nous connaissons..." The inadequacies of knowledge through analogy affects our mode of knowledge, but not the truth of what we know. Maritain makes in some of the later works some interesting connections between faith and science.I also thought it was interesting to see his discussions about Aristotle. On p. 227, "Pour lever le conflit qui mettait aux prises la Physique nouvelle et la philosophie d'Aristote, il aurait fallu des esprits d'une vigueur exceptionnelle, capables de discerner, derriere le nuage de confusions dont nous venons de parler, les lignes essentielles et la compatibilite fonciere des deux disciplines, au moment meme ou toutes deux, l'ancienne en pleine decadence et la nouvelle encore en formation, etaient le moins conscientes de leurs limites."

In v. 4, he has a charming biography of Thomas Aquinas. I knew nothing about him, although I had read some of the great Summa theologica, and so everything was a revelation, including the fact that he was controversial in his lifetime. Ah! The bishops of France have a great deal to answer for! The great essay, however, is Degres du savoir. It treats a wide range of questions -- Maritain's longer books, I am discovering, are often disjointed from one chapter to the next -- and provides a spiritual or religious basis for much of what we think of now as being purely scientific. On p. 315 of my edition, "...la loi scientifique ne fait jamais qu'exprimer la propriete ou l'exigence d'un certain indivisible ontologique qui par lui-meme ne tombe pas sous les sens (n'est pas observable) et reste pour les sciences de la nature un x (d'ailleurs indispensable), et qui n'est autre que ce que les philosophes designent sous le nom de nature ou essence." He also distinguishes between what exists and the representation of that object in the mind. I can't see how a philosophical system accommodating science can live with that distinction, as correct as it seems to be.

Karl Barth's Epistle to the Romans

Having read a good deal of Barth, I was curious to read this, his first book, the book which established his reputation. It certainly leaps off the page even today as a mystical commentary on Saint Paul, and was way ahead of its time in terms of what he understood it to mean for society, the individual, and the churches. After reading this, I have concluded that the problems of the churches which profess Christianity but do not seem to me to be living the values they talk about were in every way predictable and foreseeable through exegesis. That certainly comes as a surprise, although I'm also relieved to hear about it. I also came to realize in reading this last book, and the first volume of Pickwick Papers, that I read in part to feel a call to become something more than I am. Funny it took me so many books to understand that. Barth also discusses how the people of Israel come to sin because of their special vocation, a variation on 'to whom much is given, much will be asked.' Since I feel very fortunate in my life, this is not an entirely comfortable conclusion to read about. On both these points, Barth suggests that we need to fashion ourselves not according to the present world, but according to its transformation.

Karl Barth's Evangelical Theology

I read this book with an eye to seeing if there was anything he said about a theologian that also applies to the life of a university professor. As it turns out, there was. "...all theological work can be undertaken and accomplished only amid great distress, which assails it on all sides. ...theological work should be boldly begun and carried forward because, hidden in the great distress in which alone it can take place, its still greater hope and impulse are present." (p. 159) Yes, I do my work in hope -- disappointed often in some ways, and romantic in others, but hope nonetheless. On p. 165, Barth says that for the theologian, the 'only possible procedure every day, in fact every hour, is to begin anew at the beginning. An in this respect theological work can be exemplary for all intellectual work. Yesterday's memories can be comforting and encouraging for such work only if they are identical with the recollection that this work, even yesterday, had to begin at the beginning and, it is to be hoped, actually began there." There was also truth and similarities when Barth says that 'theological study and the impulse which compels it are not passing stages of life." (p. 172) Later on the same page he says that 'When properly understood, an examination is a friendly conversation of older students of theology with younger ones, concerting certain themes in which they share a common interest. Th e purpose of this conversation is to give younger participants an opportunity to exhibit themselves, and to what extent they appear to give promise of doing so in the future. The real value of a doctorate, even when earned with the greatest distinction, is totally dependent on the degree to which its recipient has conducted and maintained himself as a learner." I love it! This is the spirit of the university!

Then Barth speaks of what study is about: first, the student, young or old, has to inquire directly into what his predecessors had to say to the world, to the community of the present, and to himself as a member of that community. Then the student must allow himself indirectly to be given the necessary directions and admonitions for the journey toward the answer which he seeks. These instructions are gained from the theologians of the past, the recent past, and form his immediate antecedents. No one should imagine himself so inspired or clever and wise that he can conduct the primary discussion by his own powers.

Dickens, Barth

I have read Nicholas Nickleby, which I thought was masterful. I'm going to have to read Pickwick Papers shortly, which has failed to capture my examination. I also read Protestant Theology in the 19th Century, which was full of references to theologians of whom I had never heard. I also read Knowledge of God and Service of God by Karl Barth. I read Diane Paxson's Ravens of Avalon, which was a gift. It was the story of Bodacia, the queen who defeated the Romans in England.

Protestant Theology had some quotes I'd like to share. The first is something I'll reuse, I'm sure. "The Reader is invited to reflect on the omissions. He will find all sorts of gaps that I would not leave open today, and accents which I would now place differently. ... And he will probably stumble on one or other error of interpretation or judgment, caused by the haste in which I had to work and, at a deeper level, by limits to my vision." (p. 11, London: SCM Press, 1972).

"For fundamentally the astonishing thing is not that Hegel believed his philosophy to be an unsurpassable climax and culmination. It is that he was not right in thinking that after him the development was possible of a school of positivism, of pessimism and even of materialism, of Neo-Kantianism and whatever else the other modern philosophies may be called." (p. 384)

Barth, Dickens

I have read three of Karl Barth's books: Word of God and Word of Man, a bunch of homilies; Credo, a summary of his doctrinal beliefs; Community, State, and Church, three essays. None of them made a big impression on me, but then I read the volumes of Church Dogmatics. I also read Dickens' Bleak House, which I found not remarkable, and Little Dorritt, which I enjoyed more despite its now cliche plot. I am reading Pickwick Papers right now, as a break from Maritain. I also collected about 60 articles to read for my project on counterterrorism.

Maritain, Theonas, Introduction a la philosophie

I was very interesting reading an introductory philosophy text by Maritain, after reading so many of the courses on the same subject that Heidegger wrote. Maritain is much more clear, but then I am reading him in the original language. I liked the quote from Henri Bergson, about being quiet enough to speak of the “ronron continue de la vie profonde.”

I also thought that the dialogue with Théonas was clever, although I would have preferred a direct approach to discussion such issues. But after reading so much French fiction, I am perfectly aware of how much the French like clever conceits for books.

I also found it amazing the gems supporting some of my own positions in research. Hence:

“Au XVIIe siècle, la réforme philosophique de Descartes eut pour résultat de séparer la Philosophie de la Théologie. » (Introduction générale à la philosophie, p. 125, in Oeuvres Complètes, v. 2

« Si l’on considère dans le sens commun l’intelligence immédiate des premier principes évidents par eux-mêmes qui est l’un des éléments du sens commun, alors on peut dire que celui-ci est la source dont dérive toute la philosophie. » (Idem, p. 133)

And here’s another elegant solution to a common scholarly problem, that of fearing mistakes: saying so in so many words! I’m going to use this quote! « Nous ne nous dissimulons point les imperfections que comporte presque inévitablement un exposé général et didactique comme celui-ci. Si, malgré le soin avec lequel il a été rédigé, certaines erreurs s’y sont glissées, nous serons reconnaissant à ceux de nos lecteurs qui voudront bien nous les signaler. » (Ibidem, p. 282) .

Karl Barth's Dogmatics in Outline and Christian Life

In the case of both these books, I was quite taken by the sincerity and simplicity of the forewords. For Dogmatics in Outline, it was the revealing that the book was born from lectures given in 1946 Germany, in the semi-ruins of a formerly glorious Schloss where the University of Bonn had relocated, to the sounds of bulldozers, and after singing a hymn or psalm "to cheer ourselves up." I can only imagine the challenges of lecturing in such a setting, and at such a time. In the case of Christian Life, it was the student-published notes from public lectures given by Barth, who evidently gave in to over-enthusiastic and persistent audience members, and implored the reader not to expect the rigor of theology, but to accept as such 'merely what was offered.' Having read the multi-volume Church Dogmatics previously, I did not find any material that was new in these charmingly-introduced little books.

Jacques Maritain, Philosophie bergonienne, Arts et scholastiques

The book on Bergson starts with an extraordinary 40 page second preface to the edition, written by Maritain 15 years after publication. This second preface is full of gems.

• “C’est pour un auteur une épreuve pénible et un exercice de mélancolie que de relire et de remettre au point le moins mal possible un livre dont un long intervalle de durée le sépare.” (p. 12)
• Charles Dubos’ point in Le Dialogue avec André Gide (Paris : Au sans Pareil, 1929), about ‘cette sorte d’insistance et d’euphorie qui menace…une intelligence trop heureuse d’avoir raison. »
• The Descartes idea about intelligence being like ‘tableau mental interpose entre le réel et l’esprit.” (p. 30)

Beyond that, there are many interesting statements related to the questions and research in which I am interested.

• ‘Notre premier mouvement, quand nous voulons philosopher, est d’appliquer à la spéculation les procédé de connaissance qui nous sont naturels, c’est-à-dire qui sont créés par notre pratique et pour elle. » (p. 106)
• « Pour la philosophie bergsonienne tout le mal vient d’Aristote et de Platon, qui ont fondé la science de la réalité sur l’intelligence et sur les idées, et qui n’on pu, par site, que négliger le devenir et le mouvement, reconstitués à grand peine à l’aide du kaléidoscope et du cinématographe. » (p. 205)
• « …la connaissance vécue, - la connaissance par sympathie ou connaturalité, -- a été négligée par les docteurs scholastiques, qui en faisaient la sagesse par excellence, et a été découverte il y a quelque vint ans par les philosophes de l’intuition et les philosophes de l’action. » p. 271

He has an elegant way of saying that he is criticizing Bergson without withdrawing any good opinion of Bergson’s work: on p. 528, “La discussion critique que j’ai tenté d’en faire dans ce chapitre est un hommage à sa grandeur. Car les erreurs qu’on est en droit de lui reprocher n’ont pu elles-mêmes prendre forme que comme les extrêmes conséquences logiques de la projection, dans un champ de conceptualisation malheureusement tout empiriste (et nominaliste), d’intuitions et de vérités qui touchent aux racines des choses. »

In Art et scholastique, Maritain speaks of habitus (estabished ways of thinking) as virtue, because it triumphs over the original indeterminacy of the intellectual faclties. To which I say, “Well, at least at the start.” But then on p. 642 of this edition, here is the great quote on esthetics: “Si la beauté délecte l’intelligence, c’est qu’elle est essentiellement une certain excellence ou perfection dans la proportion des choses à l’intelligence. De là trois conditions que lui assignait saint Thomas : intégrité, parce que l’intelligence aime l’être, proportion, parce que l’intelligence aime l’ordre et aime l’unité, enfin et surtout éclat ou clarté, parce que l’intelligence aime la lumière et l’intelligibilité. »

All this is from Oeuvres completes v.1, Paris: Editions Saint-Paul, 1986.

Wilmot's Struggle for Europe, Irving's Hitler's War

These two books were the tail end of my reading about war arising from the works of John Keegan. They are both excellent books, and I found very revealing the discussion of various mistakes: the unconditional surrender requirement of the Allies that prolonged the war by several months; the lack of protest of the taken-aback German high command at some of Hitler's more fanciful decisions. I admired the inclusion of all troops in Struggle for Europe. The opening gambit of Hitler's war about the lack of direct responsibility of Hitler for the Holocaust strikes me in retrospect to have been either a career move to attract attention or the start of a revisionist's career.

I also found at the bottom of my book pile a forgotten novel from the Goncourt list, Croix de bois, which I will now read before moving on to a review of intro textbooks in preparation for a proposal for a scholarly press.

Marbo, Francis, Monnet, Privat, Bellocq, Pinguet, Dniaye, Sembrun

Well, I'm done my list, and what I've learned is primarily what sort of thing the juries are looking for. Most of these novels had great starts, unusual, gripping, right in the middle of the action. They are also usually more clever than good to read. I read Marbo's La Statue voilee, Francis' Bateau-refuge, Monnet's Chemin du soleil, a pastoral in patois, Privat's Au pied du mur, a war-prisoner novel told in flashback, Bellocq's La porte retombee, a good conceit but a bad novel, about closing up a house after the death of a family. I also read Pinguet's Quelqu'un, Dniaye's Rosie Carpe, a novel about a Caribbean woman. Sembrun's La deuxieme mort de Ramon Mercarder was a spy novel. Since Monesi, nothing gripped me.

Morel, Derennes, Monesi

Jacques Morel's Feuilles mortes made no impression on me, and I also read Derennes' Chauve-souris. The latter is supposed to be a charming childhood tale of a boy's fascination with a particular bat, but it failed to charm as such reading should. So now I'm reading an excellent novel about an au pair's sharp observation of her employer family, aptly titled Nature morte (Still life) bu Irene Monesi. It's an intriguing choice for an author herself at one time new to France and to French.

Megret, Mallet-Joris, Vialar, Vrigny

Megret's Carrefour des Solitudes is an interesting two-track novel, where the flotsam of war meet up in the persons of a Russian Valkyrie and a black American, and conceive a stillborn child during the only few days of happiness either knows. Not depressing, though. Mallet-Joris' Empire Celeste is a cliche novel about a strip club, with the unhappy former dancer, the immigrant restaurateur with the misspelled sign, the rich unhappy man, the rich unhappy wife, etc. Vrigny's Mougins de la nuit recounts the death of the narrator's father. I'm in the middle of Vialar's La rose de la mer.

curriculum review of university courses or programs

Since my department passed a resolution creating a curriculum review committee with student participation possible, this got me thinking about a number of issues, and as a result I've done quite a bit of reading on the subject. I will be posting in the research section of this blog my discussion of various aspects of that decision, including proposals for its work. Meanwhile, included in the reading list were

1. Lunde et al's Reshaping Curricula: Revitalization Programs at Three Land Grant Universities. This looked at more technical programs than our own, but the list of possible values that the department could embrace was interesting.
2. Peter Elbow's Embracing Contraries, a collection of essays that was quite illuminating on a number of points. It was interesting to read the correspondence between peers about visits to class.
3. A number of books by Graham Gibbs: Assessing More Students, Independent Learning with More Students, Problems and Course Design Strategies. These were all good, and all interesting.
4. Gaff's monumental Handbook of Undergraduate Curriculum Review, which had articles on every topic imaginable and discipline-specific proposals across any comprehensive university's degree programs.
5. Ronald Barnett's Learning to Effect, an edited collection from which I drew a number of ideas.
6. L.W. Andersen's Lecturing to Large Groups.

Etcherelli, Dhotel, Veraldi, Robles, Estaunie

I have read Etcherelli's Elise ou la vraie vie, a well-written novel about a young woman getting out from under a brother's tutelage and working; Andre Dhotel, who wrote the picaresque Pays ou l'on n'arrive jamais; Gabriel Veraldi's Machine humaine; Emmanuel Robles' Les Hauteurs de la ville; and Cantegril, a pastoral written in part in patois. I also skimmed Gene Sharp's second and more nuanced book on non-violence.

Genevieve Fauconnier's Claude

This is a graceful, unusual novel, written in the voice of a housewife and her journal. She speaks very simply of the life she leads, between tending her children and the dinner she just made (we can not only smell it, but we can hear the gurgles of the kitchen). I liked it very much. It closes on a nice thought, that she and her husband, even when not speaking, are plowing the same plot of land -- sound better in French.

Estaunie's Vie secrete, Blanzat's Faussaire

Estaunie's Vie secrete is a soap opera about obsession, set in a town with secrets and builds its intrigue around a strike and arson of a factory. Blanzat's Faussaire is a most unusual and effective novel, whose pages were so tragic I almost didn't want to turn. It has the plot of the play Our Town, i.e. dead people are granted a wish by the devil to return to life: a little girl to find she's not wanted, an old man to find he died in an insane asylum and is feared by his grandson, a sexually obsessed man to find he is hunted once again for murdering a woman, a grandmother who finds her son drinks secretly, as she did. Very quick read, simple vocabulary, style and structure, but with a slight pretension. Without the pretension, the novel would have been greater.

misbegotten love in French novels

I read Le Pari, a novel about a sexual awakening and betrayal. What was striking about this novel is the accuracy with which the author describes desire, and the self-doubt and the worry that accompany it for so many women. It reminded me of Indian movies -- they show desire without being able to actually show sex, because of the censorship. In the case of this and the other two novels, it is not possible to actually describe the sex, but the writing is actually more erotic than so many other more explicit novels I have read. I also read Sangs by Louise Hervieu, about the overwhelming desire for a child in a country couple. Said child winds up being brought up by nuns, as the machinations to actually get a conception held, you guessed it, the seeds of the family's destruction. This novel was interesting because of the French patois, sometimes similar to the French I speak. I also read Caroline, by Felix de Chazournes, about a woman who loves one man and marries another, conceives a child by her lover, and must then face life when he marries another. It's not really more than a cliche, and it gave me the impression it ought to have been written in English, set in the Islands as it is, rather than French.

Silvestre, Silve, Robida, Vincent, Berger, Bachelin, Galzy, Chadourne, Veraldi

I read a long series of novels that made next to no impression on me: Charles Silvestre's Prodige du coeur; Claude Silve's Benediction; Michel Robida's Le temps de la longue patience; Raymonde Vincent's Campagne; and Yves Berger's Le Sud. Le serviteur, by Henri Bachelin, is the memoir of a father by his son. Les Allonges by Jeanne Galzy is a novel about rehabilitation patients in 1920s France. It doesn't have the impact of Roman du malade, but it is luminous, and it's not nearly as philosophical as the Magic Mountain. Marc Chadourne's Cecile de la Folie is the story of a man's obsession with a woman. He wants to possess her, psychically as well as physically, and never does, and it was in reading this novel that I realized that men do not require perfection of women. This novel, written in the 20s, talks about how the object of obsession misapplies her face powder, for example, and this matters not a whit to the obsessed. Finally, there is Gabriel Veraldi's Machine Humaine, a novel which astonished me with its modernity, despite its dating from the 1950s.

de Lacretelle, Le Franc, Robert

I read a bunch of novels yesterday. First I read Roman du malade by Louis de Robert (all my authors had the French particle, as a matter of fact). It was wonderful -- full of truth, keenly observed, a quick easy read, luminously simple prose. That first page would get the novel published today. It's the story of a man sick with tuberculosis, and he tels the story simply of how people behave around him, of how he falls in love with someone who visits him, of the careful watch of every nuance of a doctor's pronouncements on his illness. Le Franc's Grand-Louis l'innocent is a love story between a shell-shocked soldier and a country woman. I found it somewhat cliche. I then read a daring novel about anti-Semitism, Silbermann by de Lacretelle. It's predictable, but the topic was not welcome in bourgeois France in the interwar period. Finally, I read Odyssee d'un transport torpille, which tells the simple story of a ship and its crews' adventures, going from port to port, before and during World War I.

Old Europe, New Security and Feminist Methodologies in International Relations

I read the two books above for professional reasons. Feminist Methodologies falls prey to that most common of flaws in theoretical or methodological works, claiming too much for its accomplishments -- I've done it myself just about as often as I've published. The book on security is actually more believable on the claim of women scholars' work being integrated into the mainstream.

Joue-moi Espana, Jeanne d'Arc, Marie-Claire, Deborah et les anges dissipes

Well, I read a novel about the last days of the ancient Jewish community in Cairo, told not in a tone of grief but in a picaresque novel. I appreciate that from a novelist, and the story is really ridiculous: a generous American donor comes to see the orphanage she funds, and the locals substitute a bordello and its occupants for it. It all ends in a hail of bullets from Israel, ironically enough. The novel about Joan of Arc is a very quick read, and I will remember the detailed description of Joan burning at the stake for quite some time. Finally, both Joue moi Espana and Marie-Claire are bildungsroman, but the latter, written by what passes for a non-professional writer, Marguerite Audoux, sparkles with simplicity and light.

Handelman, Imprecateur, Grand Vizier de la nuit, Le reste est silence... by Jaloux, Juan Maldonne, Georgette Garou

I'm reading a truckload right now because I ordered the rest of my Femina and Goncourt winners from Interlibrary Loan and then found out a bunch of proposals I had made had come through with support. Wow! Do I have work to do!



I liked the start of Imprecateur, and the end, too. It's a first person narrative of mysterious deaths in the French subsidiary of an internal company, and it starts with the narrator in a psych hospital and ends with the narrator being released, and learning afresh about the murder that landed him in Psych in the first place just having occurred. Daring and entertaining, but the middle part bored me. Juan Maldonne is set in post WWI Turkey, with all the plot twists you might expect of a picaresque novel. Grand vizier de la nuit by Catherine Vieille is another skillful novel about the same-sex love of a servant for his master, and all the events that flow from it, with murder, love and betrayal, and at the end the death of the storyteller. It is set in the middle East in about 800 C.E. Le reste est silence, by Jaloux and Georgette Garou have as their themes marital infidelity perpetrated by women. In Jaloux's novel, the young son narrates, and comes to realize the sacrifice his mother made in staying in the family, a bourgeois French family at the turn of the century. In Georgette, it's a woman farm-owner who sleeps with another man to have a child, as her husband is sterile, and eventually leaves, realizing her husband drove her to the adultery. It is skillfully written as well, I suppose my taste for early 20th century literature is showing.



The book by Howard Handelman was about less developed countries, and the chapters corresponded to the problems they face. I was hoping for more public administration that this book actually had, but it was very complete and thorough in its approach. It's a quick easy read. I also read the third volume of Politics of Nonviolent Action -- also a breeze. I suppose after Heidegger, anything is easy.

Gene Sharp, Politics of Nonviolent Action

This is an excellent three-volume description of the use of nonviolent means in a confrontation between a dissident group and a state government, or state organization. I was interested in reading this book because it interests some potential collaborators of mine, and I’m very glad I did. First, it’s the closest thing I’ve read in a long time to the sort of work I do, and the sort of book I write, although frankly, this is much more detailed and comprehensive. Second, it made me think about what my own work is and is not – this is a philosophical read of the book in the manner of Berdiaev, but it is very useful to me. It’s on this last point that I would like to elaborate.

First, Sharp does not distinguish between psychological violence and physical violence, and I do. Mind you, this was written in 1968 or so, when no one was yet thinking about psychological violence except in the most unsubtle terms.

Second, the methods he recommends are limited to uses between a dissident group and a government. My work on strategy applies to the full spectrum of possible interactions between actors: person to phenomenon or event, person to person, person to group, person to international group, person to government, person to group of governments, group to phenomenon or event, group to group, group to international group, group to government, group to group of governments, international group to government, international group to international group, international group to group of governments, international group to phenomenon, government to phenomenon, government to government, government to group of governments, group of governments to group of governments.

Third, the politics of nonviolent action only really apply to a conflict or a confrontation. Strategy is applicable to conflict or confrontation as well as exploiting opportunities or making the best of a situation.

Fourth, to work, the politics of nonviolent action require the confronted government to have an audience about whose opinion it cares – in other words, there has to be the potential for that government to be embarrassed. It doesn’t work in the case of, say Communist China under Mao and Tibet, because Communist China didn’t care what the West thought of it.

Fifth, to work, the politics of nonviolent action requires there to be some value placed on the dissident group. Again, with China and its periodic target of certain types of crimes or criminals, the government places no value and does not care if it executes a hundred of them within a few days of arrest, because its values are on preventing a certain type of crime, as happened with embezzlement a few years ago.

Sixth, my work is about strategy, and Sharp’s work really is about tactics and counter tactics. This means that my work would complement Sharp’s to the extent that it would explore and train in detail how to use those tactics.

Seventh, my work is at a higher level of generality, hence the comments about greater than confrontation, greater than nonviolent means, etc. But strategy can make nonviolence better, in terms of understanding the power that is to be confronted, and underdog strategy can make nonviolent action even better too.

Eighth, strategy does not require success to be an equalization of power. Strategy can help assure survival.

Ninth, underdog strategy assumes a constant state of unequal power throughout the period covered by the strategy.

Tenth, strategy can be used by the powerful as well as the underdog. Fortunately, powerful people, groups or governments usually practice strategy of the strong, and they are usually bad at it.

Eleventh, nonviolent action requires the participation and long-term mobilization of a significant proportion of people. That doesn’t happen very often, it’s a tall order, and if a regime is long-lived enough or brutal enough, it can literally beat the life out of the people it is oppressing.

Twelfth, Sharp will work with liberal democratic countries and authoritarian regimes, but not the totalitarian ones unless they are already weakened for other reasons.

Takashi Nagi by Paul Glynn, Power of Nice by R. Shapiro, Maitre d'heure by Claude Faraggi

Well, Power of Nice was disappointing -- it's a book about negotiating, and I hoped that it was going to be how to have a non-confrontational process, but it seems it's still about winning, but about how winning and leaving hour opponent something, as opposed to nothing, is better. The book about Nagai was very interesting -- this is a physician pacifist who barely survived the Hiroshima nd Nagasaki attacks to become the voice of the conscience of Japan. I learned a lot about Jpaanese culture, and this despite my having worked there and conducted research on its politics. The story is a very sad one, although all Japanese alive in that period pretty much had a terrible time of it. Maitre d'heure is a mystery novel, I think, by Claude Faraggi. I didn't like it. It was hard to read because the paragraphs were not split often enough, and also the style of writing was mysterious as well - hence the uncertainty about it all. I'm now reading a novel called L'imprecateur, and it's a first person narrative of someone in a psychiatric hospital, with a great start. I read about 790 pages of it despite being sleepy... it's been a while since I read something that gripping.

Negotiations, Haumont

I read two books since I last posted -- one is The Power of Nice, written by two sports lawyers who find it pays to not be a complete shark, only mostly a shark, and Le trajet, by Mari Haumont. Le trajet failed to capture my attention. So it's been pretty boring. Power of Nice has a very good listening checklist that I am going to use in future, but that's about it.

Grenier's Cine-Roman

This is the story of a family and a small town in France, built around the ownership and operation of a small movie theatre. I hate it that I can't avoid the cliche, but this novel is cinematic, and in that sense, I suppose, it's a success. I was mildly interested, it was well structured, it was an easy if not a thrilling read. There's a coming of age novel in there too.

Fleutiaux, Bolletto, Lambron, Absire, Sonkin

I have read in recent days Pierrette Fleutiaux's Nous sommes eternels, Bolletto's Enfer, Marc Lambron's L'oeil du silence, L'Egal de Dieu by Alain Absire, and Un Amour de pere, by Francois Sonkin. Well, Fleutiaux was a long, slow read, full of stream-of-consciousness and heavy portents. It was hard to follow and poorly structured. Enfer is a verite low-life story, an easy read but unremarkable. Lambron's novel is about Lee Miller, a photographer and society woman, whose biography I had read. It was an easy read, but not very interesting otherwise. I really like Absire's novel, written by a monk remembering his days as the valet of a minor feudal vassal. I thought it rang very true, except of course that the French was much too contemporary. But if it hadn't, it would have been like reading Gargantua all over again, and who would want to do that? Sonkin's first person novel is mildly intriguing, and starts well with the story of the father caring for his sick son. I also enjoyed the peripatetic marriage negotiations of the bourgeois class in France.

more prize-winning novels in French: Debray, Delay, Biabciotti, Jardin

I read La neige brule, by Regis Debray. It was a novel I found thoughtful, and despite its conventionality (basically a Marxist revolutionary Harlequin -- oh! The author is going to kill me if he reads this!), thought-provoking. The narrator at one point says: "her warmth comforted me and annoyed me, like life itself." Is life always warm and also always annoying? I fear so, and yet I try and avoid concluding so. I also read an insipid novel, Riche et legere (rich and callous), by Florence Delay, whose title turned out to be entirely too apt . Hector Ciabciotti's first novel in French (despite the Italian name, his first language is Spanish) turned out to be meandering and just this side of pointless. It didn't hold my attention. Right now I'm reading Le zebre, by Alexandre Jardin, and I find it mildly intriguing. I also read Sylvie Germain's Jours de colere, which I kept mistaking for a Quebec novel, although it's clearly set in the Morbihan, in Brittany. Possibly the language characteristics survive until today....

The No Asshole Rule, Tous les soleils

I read two very different books yesterday. The first was yet another French novel about Italy, Tous les soleils, by Bertrand Visage, and then a management book regarding difficult workplaces, with the catchy title The No- Asshole Rule. The novel was unremarkable. It didn't leave much of an impression on me, except that I noticed it was a male author with a heroine. I always watch more closely to see if the men actually get it. This one did. The management book by Robert Sutton was written very clearly and simply. I r ead in an hour. It was interesting to the extent that it identified some of the patterns of a difficult person in a workplace. What interested me was the fact that this type of behavior may be catching, and also that there are some systemic chances of improving the situations, although only over the long term.

Keegan's Price of Admiralty, Six Armies in Normandy

So I have completed the reading of all of John Keegan's books. His Price of Admiralty was quite good, I particularly enjoyed his recounting of the battle of Midway. I also enjoyed the Canadian chapter in his book on the battle of Normandy. His writing was excellent, and he does have the occasional insight worthy of a master.

Keegan, Malraux, Apollinaire, Moliere, Jasmin

I was traveling and during various legs of my trip, I read some poetry, Guillaume Apollinaire 's Alcools, and a collection of Quebec poets, most of whom I didn't know. Apollinaire was more to my taste. I also read Moliere's great satire of religiosity, Tartuffe. I had read it before, and didn't get so much out of it on the second read. I also read Andre Malraux colonial novel, La voie royale. Claude Jasmin, a television writer since, also wrote an innocuous novel, La corde au cou. Beyond that, I also read Keegan's Fields of Battle, which is more of a travelogue for North American battlefields than anything else -- I didn't find his reminiscences about them particularly illuminating since they were more personal, and his comments about how great French Canada is because its women are charming and self-confident, well, I could live without. I am now reading a biography of Alexander of Tunis, the WWII general, by Nigel Nicolson. It is so far lacking in insight or depth. I am hoping some of the other books on my shelf about WWII will be more of greater quality.

Keegan: Barbarossa, History of World War I, Our World and War; Codevilla and Seabury's War

Keegan's First World War was good, but it was not as insightful as his Face of Battle or his Reith Lectures, War and Our World. The Reith lectures are worth reading for anyone: they contain the essence of Keegan's thinking, evidently prepared and given when his ego was in check. This is a good thing. I am now reading his book on military intelligence, and it is hard to imagine anyone discussing the First Crusaders and still managing to give to the reader the impression of self-importance. Barbarossa is quite a short essay, with much more space given to pictures than words, but then, this is a book in a series of illustrated histories. One of those pictures, of Russian women making a fire to thaw the soil before erecting a steel barrier during the Battle of Moscow in 1941, speaks volumes. It is hard to believe that I got a PhD in strategic studies without knowing how much the Russians had paid for the WWII victory.

Codevilla and Seabury's War is a good read, and a cogent lesson for anyone who wants to apply the same prism to too many events or problems. These authors work admirable well, but they apply the prism of war to all aspects of international and domestic politics, and it just doesn't fit in that neatly.

Keegan's Battle for History, Churchill

Battle is a 120-page long literature review about the great histories of World War II. It was interesting as a source of more books to read, but otherwise not that interesting. Churchill's life, after the insights Keegan is capable of in Face of Battle, was also disappointing. However, it gave me the idea to go online and find Churchill's speeches on the web. I'm now reading Keegan's history of World War I.

Une vie francaise, Dereliction of Duty, History of War

I read Une vie francaise, a picaresque novel written by Jean-Paul Dubois, a reporter at France's L'express. It is a rocking good novel, I have to say, and one of the few novels with scenes of family such as I once knew them, in my youth: political discussions which include raised voices, all sorts of unspoken undercurrents, surprises all round. I loved it. Then there was a fairly routine book on the failures that led the US to the Vietnam War, Dereliction of Duty by H.R. McMaster. It was a quick, easy read. Hans Delbruck's History of Warfare numbered almost 2000 pages, but it was worth it. I learned, for example, how much the British model of the army owes to Roman Antiquity, and it struck me that India used elephants as later some armies used tanks. I also had a good laugh at the lengthy excursii, the small print, much more specific and detailed parts of the book that followed the normal print of the chapters. It reminded me of Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics, that also had endless excursii. Must be a German thing. I regretted that Delbruck stopped short of the 20th century, I'd have enjoyed him. He also reminded me, in terms of the clarity and the soldier's eye-view, of John Keegan, whom he clearly influenced. All in all, a great week in reading. Battle for History is waiting for me at the university, I will only be able to retrieve it on Monday, rats! It's another Keegan, I'm most anxious to read it.

Creasy's Fifteen Battles; Keegan's Mask of Command

Mask of Command is also very good, especially the chapter on Wellington. I found the chapter on Alexander the Great too unspecific, although that is understandable given the sources. Creasy, on the other hand, is more venerable as an early source of military history than useful or interesting to me now.

On the basis of Mask of Command, I ordered up all of Keegan's book, and I am already half-way through his book on the Iraq war.

Comtesse de Ségur, née Rostopchine by Diesbach, Ghislain de, One Perfect Day by Rebecca Mead, Week-end de chasse a la mere

Week-end de chasse a la mere is boring and bland for a novel: it is about a child's view of his mother, and it joins a distinguished sub-genre of literature. I read it easily and it is short, but that is all that I can say about it. I wonder why it got the Prix Femina: probably because of its subject matter. How trite. On the other hand, I thoroughly enjoyed Diesbach's biography of my favorite childhood author, Comtesse de Segur. It's amazing to me that she is still know by her title instead of her name, in this day and age. In any event, the biography says nothing of her for prolonged periods: I suspect the author signed a contract (he is an award-winning literary biographer) before knowing how little documentation survives her. If not, he did a superficial job. The good countess is an original, to be sure, and commanded better prices for her novels than Zola or Balzac, but she started writing when she was 58. It's not unusual for a woman to start writing late, after the children are grown, but it doesn't make for sparkling reading. I nonetheless also enjoyed the author's appreciation of the 19 novels of hers that line my shelf of favorite books. I don't mention them in this column, but I often re-read those novels to relax, usually all 19 of them although in no particular order. At least once a year.

I also devoured Rebecca Mead's investigation of the bridal industry, One Perfect Day. I was plainly flabbergasted at the amount of money people spend and how ruthlessly exploited brides are. It was a revelation, and it remains inexplicable to me who in all likelihood will just happily keep living in sin without benefit of the ceremony. The author went to various ceremonies, unmasked the 'Apache Wedding Prayer' as being the product of a Jimmy Stewart film, Broken Arrow. (Apache don't even have a wedding ritual, although other first nations do.) And people spend on average 30 000 dollars US on the wedding and accoutrements, which is about the poverty line for a family of four. I was shocked again. Great read though -- I relished the Episcopalian diocese who set rules about what could NOT be done in a wedding. It was a fun read.

Staring at me from my bedside table is Creasy's Fifteen Battles (I'm half way through), and another classic by John Keegan.

Keegan, Runciman and military history

I read an article decrying the lack of impact of military history on current events, and that article conclude with a list of the great classics of military history. I have now requested a bunch of books that I hadn't yet read, although I had read the bulk of them. I also read right away the books held in our own library, which include John Keegan's Face of Battle and Steve Runciman's Fall of Constantinople. Keegan was excellent, especially in the first chapter where he discusses why he has written a book focused on what the experience of battle is like on a human level. He then discusses Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme. It's well-written and truly unusual in its poilu-tommy point of view. I suppose the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire is one of the great turning points of history. Certainly I knew nothing about it, and so I had trouble following the story, although the writing is very clear and the book is a quick, short read. I'm not sure that the Ottoman culture was so inferior in Istanbul compared to the Greek remnants of glory of Constantinople, but when the book was written such views were not questioned. Now I look forward to ready Creasy's account of fifteen historically important battles. I suppose he means important to Western Europe.

Laurens, Rolin

I read a short, easy read of a novel called Port-Soudan by Olivier Rolin. I thought it was a bit ordinary, a reminiscence about a past death and the difficulties of life in the Sudan in the thirties. I suppose the theme really was anomie. That theme always makes me yawn. Camille Lauren's novel Dans ces bras-la was excellent, about womanhood. It has an episodic, non-linear structure which I usually dislike but that I found added to the experience of discovering womanhood as events unfolded in the narrator's life. There were a few pages which were daring: one which describes (in non-pornographic terms) a sexual fantasy that is politically incorrect; another in which the author talks about why she never mentions her stillborn son now when asked how many children she has, because people don't understand, and yet finds that silence a violence to his memory. I liked it very much, it was full of truth and the author's talent and departures from convention served the novel well.

Francois Cheng, Peter Newman

I read with considerable interest Cheng's autobiographical novel, Le dit de Tiangyi, about a Chinese man coming to Europe in the fifties. The first part, set in revolutionary China, is riveting, and I am happy to read someone whose command of French as a second language is so inspiring. The latter parts are really interesting, discovering the West through the starry eyes of an immigrant.

I also read Peter Newman's The Secret Mulroney Tapes, spurred by the publication of Brian Mulroney's autobiography. The story of the book, which is a cut-and-paste of various interview transcriptions with the then Prime Minister of Canada, is as interesting and intemperate as the uncensored outpouring of the PM himself. It seems that Newman struck a deal with the politician to have uncensored access to papers and to contemporaneous interviews in exchange for a commitment not to publish anything until after the politician had left office. The Prime Minister then apparently got into the habit of unburdening himself unreservedly to the journalist, guarding neither his thoughts nor his language. After leaving office, the politician reneges on the deal in order to write his own autobiography, and the journalist ripostes by publishing a book of selected transcripts across the board. What emerges is a picture of a very self-centered politician deluded about his accomplishments and his place in history. Mulroney also displays appalling resentments and hatreds of, most notably, Pierre Trudeau. Well, Trudeau died several years ago and cannot defend himself. As for Sheila Copps and Joe Clark and Kim Campbell and John Turner, he refers to them variously as Nazi, stupid, profane, poor in judgment. Mulroney rates himself as second in history after Canada's founding prime minister in terms of greatness. I'm glad he does, because no one else will. Wow. Worth the price of admission, and although I am sure the transcriptions are accurate, I would have been interested to read the publisher's legal department's memo on possible libel.

Noguez, Nin, camelote

Camelote is the French word for bargain basement purchase -- I'm reading these days some things that my boyfriend got me. The most interesting was a study of D.H. Lawrence by Anais Nin -- one pornographer to another, I guess. Both writers are preoccupied by the life of the body, and for two cultured writers they certainly focused on the genitality of sex rather than any more spiritual meaning. there were two pulp novels, a Harlequin translated into French and a trashy novel written by a former actress -- Jeanne by Nicole Avril. The blurb says the author is passionate about writing: I hope that she is her own reward, because it's ordinary and predictable. There was also an Alfred Hitchcock Presents collection of short stories. Some of the stories have real originality, although horror is not my thing. In one story, someone who is a sculptor of lifelike works turns out to be a taxidermist...quite a twist. Finally, there is Amour noir by Dominique Noguez, an ill-starred love story between a white Frenchman and an exotic African beauty. anyone who's ever been in an unhealthy relationship will shudder in recognition. As you might expect, she treats him badly and exploits him shamelessly, much like Mildred in Human Bondage.

Carrere, Klein, Thomas

I read a historical novel, Les Adieux a la reine, by Chantal Thomas. It created a fictional character in the waning days of the French court, and covers only a couple of days. It was well researched, but as a professor of literature from Chennai once said to me: "I don't want a clever idea. I want a good read." I'm afraid that rather sums it up for me too, although it wasn't as bad as A. S. Byatt, for example. I also read Gary Klein's Sources of Power, about his studies in decision-making with the armed forces. It was one of the most relevant books I've read in the last five years, when it comes to my own research. I also just finished a novel by Emmanuel Carrere, La Classe de neige, about a young boy who winds up being molested by a pedophile. I hate to say ho-hum to such a tragic occurrence, but I certainly wasn't gripped by the atmosphere of dread and anticipation.

Flaubert's Trois Contes, Lefebvre's Production de l'espace

I read Henri Lefebvre's Production de l'espace because an article in New Scientist mentioned it as a classic. I didn't think much of it, at least in part because I don't think I understood it. I may have read it without concentrating, but on the other hand I did teach myself rudimentary quantum physics and I did read Sartre's dissertation Being and Nothingness (in the original French) when I was sixteen...so I am fairly confident about my intellectual capacity. I was on page thirty when I noticed we hadn't gotten out of the great philosophers yet. There isn't a footnote or an index in the damn book -- wish my own editors were that indulgent. Also I disagree that gender relations and relations of production produce space: I think at most they allocate or divide it. So there. Well, I give myself A for effort.

I was primarily interested in Flaubert's short stories because they were written in the period where he became neurotically fixated on creating perfection: apparently he wrote and rewrote the most minute detail in order to achieve harmony in his words. I admire that, although it does lead to a career like Harper Lee's, or a workday like James Joyce. I admire balance between melos and opsis, between the ear and the eye, and even the greatest authors only achieve it some of the time: Francois Mauriac and Therese Desqueyroux, Pearl Buck and The Good Earth. But I'm even less convinced that this is the province of anyone else but the poet, or that it can be achieved by effort. I think it is like being in the zone: it just happens, and it's wonderful and ephemeral and rare.

Readings on Special Operations

For professional reasons, I decided to read a bunch of books on special operations that happened to be on my bookshelves at home. I read Joes' Resisting Rebellion / The history and Politics of Counterinsurgency -- I had already read a good many case studies of counterinsurgencies, so I didn't learn that much. But there is a great quote int here about the strategy of the weak being guerrilla war. That's going to get quoted more than once. Dick Couch's Finishing School and Leroy Thompson's Secret Techniques of Elite Forces both served an important purpose: to tell me how small a place my own contributions, should they even be accepted, will play in the training of US special forces. I had read Dave Grossman's On Killing, and On Combat was not nearly as good. However, it did introduce to me to Maslow's levels of competence and the author's own principles of training, and that's going to help me teach.

Efraim Karsh's Islamic Imperialism

Prof. Karsh's account disappointed me. Instead of setting out a thesis about how Islam is imperialistic, he gave me the impression he cherry-picks stories of Muslim imperialists. One could do the same for Christianity's Catholic Crusaders or, later on, Protestants. I didn't find it persuasive, and I regretted that my copy of the book was being distributed free of charge by the Institute on Religion and Democracy.

Zola, Travail and Verite

I finished the last two books in Zola's series, and it was a hard slog even compared to his previous books. The last three books were written when Zola was in England after losing his case about the Dreyfus affair, and he must have written these books to make money. They are lifeless. Travail should have been called Infidelity, since it is not about work but about people not keeping faith with each other. For his valedictory, Zola chose in Verite to retell his version of the Dreyfus case, by telling the story of a Jew falsely accused of sexually assaulting and murdering a little boy. The Church stands in for the army and government establishment, and there is also the issue of intermarriage. The novel isn't any more lively, but it is interesting to see how Zola sums up the whole legal and controversial experience. It was no pleasure.

The Last Man Who Knew Everything

This is a biography of a polymath. Thomas Young was a physicist, doctor, and archaeologist who deciphered the Rosetta Stone. It is written by a science writer. I was attracted to this biography because it was about a polymath: polymaths are historically not well received by academics. But I have only reached one conclusion: never read a biography written by a science writer. There are essays on Young's scientific discoveries, as opposed to insights into his life and character. Rats.

Frapie, Nau, Tharaud, Moselly

I read four Goncourt-winning novels since yesterday. Tharaud's Dingley is a satirical novel, unusually written in collaboration, about the British in World War I. I didn't think it was possible to laugh at that, although national caricatures are always easy. It was a quick read, fairly insignificant. But as with the other three, the Goncourt dared to reward novels very different one from the other, and in any event it is a nice change from Zola (although I just started his last three novels, Fecondite being the first). Moselly wrote Terres lorraines, a tragic pastoral about betrayed love ending, you guessed it, in suicide. I saw the tragedy coming from far away, and the betraying feckless young man is an unusually flat character -- I have still no idea why he took up and dropped the same woman twice. He portrays the seas better than this plot-essential person. Nau in Force ennemie (in English, I'd translate it into 'fifth column' wrote an unusual novel about a mental hospital, an unhealthy place in early 20th century France. It reminded me of The Snake Pit and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in terms of content, and the waterboarding scene was used in the terrible movie The Fifth Floor. There are assaults, mistreatments, lies. Finally, Frapie's novel La Maternelle is about a cleaning woman in a early childhood school, complete with sexual harassment, lies, mistreatment of children, etc. These were all quick reads. Frapie and Nau went to the trouble of introducing a first person narrative point of view, which most authors today skip.

Zola, Pot-Bouille and Bonheur des Dames

So I finished reading the two last books in the Rougon-Macquart series, Pot-Bouille, a dismembering of the French bourgeoisie, it's that acerbic, and something about a ladies' shop in Paris, Bonheur des dames. Neither are particularly memorable, but the description of a birth by a woman alone at home in Pot-bouille just leaps right off the page. The true but never-mentioned excrement which accompanies birth pangs was described dryly, but with great naturalism. All in all, there are certain books that are riveting, like the famous Germinal, but otherwise I repeat my complaint that Zola is a polemicist, and not a novelist, and that he fails to bring most characters to life, to make us care about his characters. Ah, and Balzac did that so effortlessly, even when the plot twists weren't remotely believable. I suppose only Tolstoy had it all: plot, character, telling detail.

Zola's La Terre

Zola is at his best describing humanity's lowest moments -- assault, disloyalty, poverty. Otherwise, he is a run of the mill writer, and is particularly uneven. I read the contemporaneous reviews of La Terre, and we are in agreement. And I like a good pastoral -- this one is just a melodrama with long scenes of sunrise and wind on wheat fields. So much for that.

Sade's Crimes de l'amour

I read Sade's Crimes de l'amour, and it is not literarily memorable. This turned out to be a privately printed collection of short stories. I noticed that the distribution was assigned to an individual living who knows where in Europe, and had a circulation restricted to 'bibliophile' aficianados known to the guy who paid for the printing. And I was shortly to find out why: there was a story at the end that qualifies as pornography (i.e. minors coerced into sexual acts) even if it is not explicit by today's standards. The fine binding meant that an individual could bring it into Canada without it being particularly noticed. So I'm going to recycle it rather than donate it and let it circulate again. Who knew? And it was purchased for me as a gift (because it was in French) at the local public library used bookstore. Nobody at the library read it, that is for sure. Mind you, I've read books I thought were pornographic, i.e. describing sexual acts in which women were not willing participants, that were held in our public library, protested, but was ignored. Put it down to experience.

Zola, Eugene Rougon and Argent, other books

I didn't think much of Zola's political novel, Son excellence Eugene Rougon, the best of a bad genre according to some professors of literature. It doesn't hold a candle to Trolloppe's, for example, it fails to come to life. Argent is about financiers in Paris, and has more interest for me, but is still not very lively.

I got as gifts several books in French, all of them translations. So I read La Popessa, about the nun who looked after Pius XII -- I doubt the accuracy of some of it, it's kind of trashy. I also read a translation of Danielle Steele's Loving, which took little engagement on my part to follow the plot. I have as a last book something by the Marquis de Sade. I've read some of his novels and a biography, and don't feel a critical need to know more, but I plan to read it. Finally, a great play by Jean Anouilh, Antigone, which I read in high school. It's wonderful. I guess they're all headed for the donation bin.

Emile Zola, Reve, Oeuvre, Page d'amour, Therese Raquin

Well, Zola is certainly at his worst when he is writing sentimental drivel. Le Reve is about a young woman who literally pines away to marry her boyfriend, the illegitimate son of a Catholic bishop who opposes the marriage. I mean, really. She expires on the first kiss after the ceremony, right there on the church's doorstep, in her wedding gown, surrounded by onlookers. Hopelessly honeyed. Then L'oeuvre is about a painter who marries his model and paints his son right after he dies. "Sounds unsanitary" I said to myself, unmoved. Therese Raquin, by contrast, is striking in its emotional truth and telling detail, about two lovers who conspire and then murder the husband, only to find life unlivable with the fear of prosecution. Even with the incapacitated mother-in-law living with them, an unbelievable plot twist, the novel works beautifully. He really is at his best describing the worst in human nature...

Zola's Rougon-Macquart Series

I have read the first five in this twenty-odd fresco of France's Second Empire, following the legitimate and illegitimate branches of the same family. The best so far is La fortune des Rougon, which launches everything that follows. I also enjoyed Ventre de Paris, about the misfortunes of small shop owners. I am reading Eugene Rougon now, the sixth in the series. I have already read Nana, about prostitution, as well as Germinal, about labor issues, and L'assommoir, about alcoholism. I also read the trilogy about catholicism, Paris, Rome, Lourdes. Catholicism and money, catholicism and the bogus claims of miracles, catholicism and politics...it's a riveting indictment, of course, as with all Zola's efforts. And that poor priest Froment, who keeps having crises of faith right on schedule....But I find his characters don't spring to life as they do in La comedie humaine, by Honore de Balzac, which was Zola's model. No, the real stars are the unjust social conditions, and how fragile middle class status is.

Zola's Germinal

Of course, Zola is famed for his realism, and Germinal is naturalistic, admirably so. But he is also unbelievably depressing. Germinal is about a failed strike by miners who are defeated by capitalism and hunger. Along the way, the same family has the senile grandfather die while strangling a local Lady Bountiful, has a son become handicapped in a mining accident and then work in such clouds of dust he's clearly going to die shortly of lung disease, the father and daughter die in an endlessly described other accident, and the novel close on the mother going back to work at 40 saying: my son and I make 50 cents a day. If there weren't six of us, we'd have enough to eat. It's an excellent novel, but I got depressed reading it. It depresses me all the more to think of all the mining jobs around where I live.

Worthen's D.H. Lawrence, Montefiore's Stalin

John Worthen's biography of D.H. Lawrence certainly makes him come alive. It's filled with telling details and anecdotes, including the memorable quote: "D.H. Lawrence was a giraffe in a world of well-behaved dogs: unexpected, unforgettable, and seeing a good deal farther than most." But since Worthen's task is to prove that Lawrence is less of a misogynist and a sadist than his reputation allows, I think he fails. The details of Lawrence's last months, dying of tuberculosis, brought to mind the final volume of Les Plourdes by Roger Martin du Gard. Endless hemoptysis, coughing up lung pieces, fighting for breath...I just finished reading Sebag Montefiore's Stalin. The subtitle refers to the dictator as the red Czar, and the metaphor sticks throughout the book. It is all magnates and plundering and murders (mass and individual). I don't know anyone who knew that Stalin's wife had committed suicide. Some of the details are revolting, especially with respect to the Ukrainians, and of course Khrushchev's striding onto center stage is ominous. The chapters on World War II are the most riveting, with Stalin defecating in front of his aides during a trip to a battlefield, when no one could be sure the area had been thoroughly demined. The chapters describing the Roosevelt/Churchill/Stalin summits are also interesting since the author has no reverence for either Roosevelt or Churchill...The comparison of Elliott Roosevelt and Vasily Stalin (arrogant, alcoholic, self-destructive, pilots) is especially striking. And Stalin's other son, Yakov, whom he had heroically refused to ransom, had been dead two years before Uncle Joe found out. As the war ended, Joe was agonizing over the fact that he expected him to be killed in prison on the Russian advance. And still the Russians advanced...

Trollope, Lacey

I've been reading lots of military material for professional reasons, but I also finished The Way We Live Now, which was relatively boring, and Robert Lacey's Monarch: The Life and Reign of Elizabeth II. This latter book had some gory details about the royal family that I hadn't known, including the fact that George V was indeed euthanized. Anyway, it's the book on which the movie The Queen is based.

Sulivan, Mais il y a la er

Jean Sulivan is a priest who writes spiritual material and novels with a spiritual flavor. Here, he is writing about a Spanish cardinal who throws himself into the ocean. It was a short easy read, but I guess I wasn't wowed by the naturalism of the writing, which is a little vague, or the material of a cardinal committing romantic suicide. I suppose I don't think suicide should ever be romanticized....I am now reading the last of Trollope's numerous novels.

Court Society by Elias, Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy, Cannadine

I read both these books at top speed. Court Society is historical sociology focusing on the court of Louis XIV. I was irritated by the fact that the author did not seem to grasp the power that flowed from the Crown and explained much of everything. However, I was new to the notion that the job of an aristocrat is to match expenses to the dignity of the title or position. Decline and Fall is excellent, and I devoured its 700 pages in two days. It discusses the loss of money, land, social standing, political power, and even the role in Anglo-Catholicism through three large phases: decline, ornamentation (i.e. symbolic roles only), and gradual extinction. I thought Cannadine's conclusion correct -- that the greatest moment of the landed gentry is the fact that it went quietly, putting country before interest, unlike other European nobles. An excellent read, exhaustively researched and rich in telling detail.

Turgenev, Emmons, Lacey

I have finished reading Turgenev's novels, in recent days the shorter ones such as The Lear of the Steppes and The Priest's Story. The comments I made about his longer novels apply to his shorter one. I am glad to have filled out the Russian canon, but I didn't not find him riveting like Tolstoy, whose naturalism is so acute and whose mastery of language is so obvious. I went on to read, rather idly, Emmon's Russian Landed Gentry. I was interested by the title, which turned out to be too general -- it should have read 'The Abolitionist Movement in the Russian Landed Gentry.' I was interested to read that in the days of serfdom, it was not the land which was mortgaged, but the serfs. Their exploitation is what provided the gentry with income. I also read Robert Lacey's Aristocrats. This was also something of a puff piece about titled people who are no longer necessarily rich -- but the only people in the book are both titled and rich. Hm mm, is there is a bias here?

Marai, Turgenev

I finished reading Marai's Memoirs of Hungary, and it was as good as the first few pages, right to the end. I still recall one of the last lines: "The train began to move, and we went forward into a world where no one was waiting." Very poignant. The man is also a great anti-Communist. I also read more of Turgenev's novels: Sketches of a Sportsman, and Torrents of Spring. Torrents is merely a tale of love lost -- I am getting bored with sentimental efforts, but also these novels are the same as other sentimental 19th century novels, there is no difference, as the French would say. I enjoyed Sketches the most, I like a good pastoral, but the author recounts terrible things like the beating of a Jew or the despair of a serf with a lightheartedness unbecoming to a modern reader.

Trollope, Nina Balatka, John Caldigate, Linda Tressel, The Kellys and O'Kellys, Ralph the Heir, The Landleaguers

Since my last post, I had read a number of Trollope's books: Nina Balatka, John Caldigate, Linda Tressel, The Kellys and O'Kellys, Ralph the Heir, and The Landleaguers. Trollope portrays Jews sympathetically, but with still a strong sense of otherness, in his novels. Nina Balatka is a about a Christian woman who loves and eventually marries a Jew. Like Guess who's coming to dinner, the character of the other is practically a saint. I also read two of Trollope's Irish novels, The Kellys and The Landleaguers. Kellys is Trollope's first novel, and I always read a first novel with curiosity. It certainly announces all his strengths, without actualizing all of them quite yet. Landleaguers is not particularly remarkable. Linda Tressel is another tale of love misplaced. I found Ralph the Heir was irritating with all its characters called Ralph -- this was ineffective as a device and irksome for the reader. John Caldigate is about Australia, and has the long legal plot, about the legality of a marriage, of a number of Trollope's novels.

I also read Sandor Marai's Embers and Casanova in Bolzano. Marai is only now being translated from the Hungarian, and the two novels I have read (only three are available) show a great propensity for the characters making speeches several pages long. The Memoirs of Hungary, however, are riveting and written much more vividly.

Anthony Trollope, Bullhampton, Clerks, etc.

I have read the Vicar of Bullhampton, Three Clerks, He Knew He Was Right, Richmond Castle, Dr. Wortle's School, An Old Man's Love, The Struggles of Brown, Jones and Robinson, and Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite. The Vicar of Bullhampton is a pathetic story, with the fallen woman returning to the berth of her family after walking a long distance, displaying 'an appetite not quite in keeping with the romance of her situation." I enjoyed that flash of wit, but the story is lengthily sad. I laughed only at the introduction of the reverend Mr. Outhouse and his wife. Three Clerks is a satire of the post office, thinly disguised as the Weights and Measures office, and anyone who knows bureaucracy will laugh at the conscientious worker Fidus Neverbend, and all the competing for jobs. It's right up there with Cold Comfort Farm. He Knew He Was Right is a conventional melodrama, although long at 950+ pages. Richmond Castle is the same, save that it is set in the Irish famine, and has little asides deploring the scandalous inaction of the government. Read Blanche Fitzgerald's history of the famine instead of this, it's riveting. (She has a double-barreled pseudonym, which I now forget.) Dr. Wortle's School also is a satire, with a clergyman discovering his wife's previous husband, supposedly dead, is still living, and all the scandal that brings. An Old Man's Love is elegiac, as you might expect from Trollope's last novel, and the elderly (he's 50!) hero loses the girl in self-sacrifice. Sigh. The Struggles of Brown, Jones and Robinson is another attempt at satire, which doesn't work, and Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite is another melodrama, albeit a short one.