Herzl, Gardner, Morris

I read two books in honor of Israel's 60th anniversary: Alon's Herzl, about the great Zionist leader, and Benny Morris' Beginning of the Palestinian Refugee Problem. I didn't find Alon insightful about Herzl, and I raised my eyebrows when the biographer described Herzl falling in love, as he puts it, with little girls. There is no indication Herzl acted on his impulses, but it gave me pause. And then there are the tragedies of his wife, two children, and grandson committing suicide because of mental health issues, and his last daughter dying in Theresienstadt after spending her life in a mental clinic in Austria. Plus, the guy dies young. This was not a happy life. Morris' book certainly puts the early Israeli decisions regarding displaced Palestinians in a different perspective. I am not sure that people where so deliberate in determining a way to deport them all from Israel, although it certainly was normal for the founders to wonder what it would mean to have 40% Arabs in the new state. There were comparatively few and limited atrocities for a war made up of irregulars at the start. But the fact remains that the crush of Jewish immigrants being housed in abandoned Arab houses and the possession of Arab lands which started with the Jews not letting a harvest go to waste certainly meant trouble for the future: the Arabs could not then return. I'm not sure there wasn't more neglect and uncoordinated decision-making than Morris implies. I'm now onto to Righteous Victims, so it'll be interesting to see how he treats the material there.

I also read John Gardner's much praised How to Become a Novelist. It was a quick, easy read, and I thought he made some good points, but nothing that helps me in my novel-writing. Mind you, I've read about 50 of these how-to books by now.