UNESCO Part XII

I read De Gaulle's Fil de l'epee, an interwar essay on the military. As my partner Tony ably put it: "How many ways can you say: "I'm important!"?" What stands out for me is the line, roughly translated, which reads: "Men can no more go without leadership than they can go without food or water." And who is going to provide that leadership, may we ask, Charles?

I also read L'exclu by Constantin Toiu. Translated from the Romanian and published as a monster hit in the totalitarian period, I don't understand why it wasn't banned. Granted the protagonist slowly grows to become a dissident in his own thoughts, and the scene with an interrogator is a masterpiece of political jousting. It's towering, but otherwise it's fairly pedestrian. I wonder if it isn't context, if the book wasn't different with its slow hints compared the drivel allowed by officialdom at the time.

I also read Le cousin Basilio, a Portuguese novel, by Eça de Queiros, which didn't make much of an impression on me.

Rum Island by Simon Vestdjik was a standard historical romance, except that it was written in Dutch about the Dutch West Indies. There was no actual bodice-ripping, thank goodness, but otherwise it was a cut above some drivel I used to read for relaxation. Now I find it too dumb, just like I kept reading this book to the end expecting for it to deviate from the expected.