|
|
As the past month or so has indicated, I’ve been somewhat uninspired when it comes to writing original posts. It’s not that there aren’t ideas on paper and in my head but, as Hugh Prather said, “If the desire to write is not accompanied by actual writing, then the desire must be not to write.”
One third of the posts last month were book reviews. There will even be a temporary lull in those, though, because there are maybe two books I’ll need to review between now and year-end. It’s something I’m actually looking forward to and, in fact, I passed on a half dozen or so books to create the time for that respite.
As I’ve said before, I find there’s a difference between reading a book for review and simply reading a book. I also think that there’s a seasonal element to not wanting to read for review this time of year. I feel I just want to kick back and read for sheer enjoyment, to hopefully get lost in a book. It isn’t that I don’t enjoy reading for review purposes. I think my aging brain gets a little weary near the end of each year.
So for the next four weeks or so I plan to read what I want when I want. If I want to put a book down to start another one, it will be without worrying about having time to write a timely review. Equally important, I can spend as much time as I want doing what I’ve long called “reading with my eyes closed.”
All men hesitate
Separately, always, seeing another year gone
Philip Larkin, “And now the leaves suddenly lose strength,”Collected Poems
Again, a relatively short list and the library is serving as my source for three of them. One good thing about the holidays, it seems to provide more time to read, especially when you see it as a way to insulate yourself from some of the holiday rush and tumult.
The Hangman’s Daughter, Oliver Pötzsch — I certainly couldn’t let the year end without having at least one work of translated literature on the list. In addition to the novel being set in 17th century Germany, I am intrigued because this is the second release by Amazon’s new translated literature imprint.
I’m Dreaming of a Black Christmas, Lewis Black — I’m a big fan of Lewis Black because much of his humor and curmudgeonliness mirrors my thoughts. Thus, I can’t resist reading his latest to get me in that “Christmas spirit.”
The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, Walter Mosley — Some quite favorable reviews and the subject — the travails of old age and dementia — brought this to my attention. As I’ve never read any of Mosley’s books and he’s primarily known for crime fiction, the fact the library has this gets it on the list.
Spiritual Envy: An Agnostic’s Quest, Michael Krasny — Given the proliferation and attention paid to the so-called “new atheists,” I’m intrigued by a self-proclaimed agnostic’s take on religion in the 21st century.
Third Class Superhero, Charles Yu — I recently read Yu’s How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe and loved his touch of humor and his writing. Thus, I now want to read his previous collection of short stories.
Report Card:
Year-to-date (January-November)
- Total Bibliolust books: 59
- Number read: 41 (69.5%)
- Started but did not finish: 4 (6.8%)
Cumulative (September 2008-November 2010)
- Total Bibliolust books: 145
- Number read: 102 (70%)
- Started but did not finish: 8 (5.5%)
There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.
G.K. Chesterton, Charles Dickens: A Critical Study
George Orwell said they defend the indefensible. According to George Carlin, they “conceal reality.” Both reasons can explain how euphemisms have come to pervade modern media and be increasingly relied upon in government and politics. The so-called war on terror has generated plenty of them, from “regime change” to “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Yet one of the characteristics of euphemisms is that there is often a grim reality at their core.
 Such is the case with the term “extraordinary rendition,” the shibboleth used to describe the extrajudicial transfer of a person from one jurisdiction or country to another for arrest, detention and/or interrogation. From a legal perspective, rendition simply describes one government surrendering a fugitive to another. Yet as Steve Hendricks points out in A Kidnapping in Milan: The CIA on Trial, the root of the word also means to violently tear or to split apart. His sweepingly researched account of the extraordinary rendition of Muslim cleric Abu Omar (Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr) from Italy to Egypt in February 2003 reveals how that etymology might also apply.
Although he focuses on Abu Omar’s kidnapping and interrogation, Hendricks covers much more ground in his book. We learn that more than a century ago the U.S. Supreme Court ratified kidnapping a fugitive in a foreign country and returning them by force to the United States for trial. Abu Omar’s and similar renditions are “extraordinary” because they weren’t brought to the United States, where U.S. law would apply, but to countries where restraints on interrogation techniques were minimal to nonexistent. A Kidnapping in Milan also examines America’s use of rendition against terrorists, stemming back to the Reagan Administration and including President Clinton being the first to authorize extraordinary renditions. Hendricks summarizes the history and efficacy of torture and research into by the United States government as well as its Cold War efforts to create shadow armies in European countries to be prepared for action should a Communist party take control of a government, whether legitimately or not.
As a result, Abu Omar’s rendition is placed in the overall context of American policy. Although the rendition itself and the subsequent detention and interrogations seemingly went according to plan, this is a case that would blow up in the CIA’s face. Not only would an Italian prosecutor investigate, last year an Italian court convicted 23 Americans, 22 of them supposedly CIA agents and the other a U.S. Air Force colonel, and two Italian intelligence agents for the kidnapping. The Americans were tried in absentia. Even that verdict, however, leaves unclear exactly where the decision to take Abu Omar was made.
Hendricks does a fine job detailing the actual abduction and the subsequent detention and interrogations. As he notes, though, much of it comes from Abu Omar himself, not necessarily contemporaneous documents of others. Equally intriguing is the Italian investigation, based in large part on SIMs cards used in European cell phones and records from cell phone towers. Where some readers may encounter problems is the potpourri of Islamic and Italian names and the various pseudonyms used by the surprisingly large number of Americans involved in the operation. While this can’t be avoided, Hendricks also occasionally uses too jocular a phrase or words that contrast too much with the straightforward narrative style of the book (for example, referring to “leporine” renditions in discussing the removal of rabbits from Aviano Air Base due to the flight hazards they posed).
All in all, though, A Kidnapping in Milan shows an unvarnished truth behind a euphemism used frequently by the American government over the last decade.
A problem with preparing men to seize a country is that they may grow dissatisfied when not allowed to do so.
Steve Hendricks, A Kidnapping in Milan
Through the Publishers Weekly blog I see Hugh Prather died. While I’m quite skeptical contemptuous of most self-help, touchy feely or pop psychology books, I’ve probably read Hugh Prather’s Notes to Myself: My Struggle to Become a Person more than any other book in the last 35 or so years.
Written in a journal style, Prather’s book essentially consists of jottings or notes, some short and others longer, of his thoughts on a variety of life’s important — and not so important — issues. It probably resonated with the public because it expressed thoughts many of us have at various stages of our lives. I know every time I’ve read the book over the last three plus decades, parts of it spoke to me and not always the same parts. It is, in fact, one of my Desert Island Books.
First published in 1970, people of my era are probably familiar with it. Even though it is still in print, I’m guessing it isn’t on the radar of younger individuals. Most of the book is timeless, though, and so I gave each of my children their own copy. Here are three passages that always struck me. In fact, the first may be my favorite from the entire work.
- “There is a part of me that wants to write, a part that wants to theorize, a part that wants to sculpt, a part that wants to teach…. To force myself into a single role, to decide to be just one thing in life, would kill off large parts of me.”
- “My trouble is I analyze life instead of live it.”
- “I live from one tentative conclusion to the next, thinking each one is final. The only thing I know for sure is that I’m confused.”
With Prather’s death, I have no doubt I’ll read it again this week — and it will become perhaps even more dogeared and underlined.
Perfectionism is slow death.
Hugh Prather, Notes to Myself
Dystopian literature stems from no particular geographic boundaries. Aldous Huxley and George Orwell were British, Margaret Atwood is Canadian, Philip K. Dick and Kurt Vonnegut were American. Thus, while Ana María Shua sets Death as a Side Effect in her native Argentina, the conditions that beset that future society are perhaps universally possible.
Survival is one of the underlying themes here, both personal and economic. The rich live in gated neighborhoods with 24-hour surveillance and security guards. The average person lives in “no-man’s-land,” avoiding the “occupied zones” controlled by criminals and dangerous thugs. Marauding gangs make the streets of Buenos Aires so unsafe the average person takes armored taxis to get around town and to go to protected areas for walks. Thus, when “vandals” break into the apartment below him, Ernesto Kollady’s reaction is ingrained:
When I heard the banging and explosions, I did what we all do: I made sure the security features in my apartment were working. I played music full blast so I wouldn’t hear the screams. I locked myself in the bathroom and turned on the shower.
 Ernesto, like others, must deal with life in a society where life seems cheapened. Paparazzi with video cameras crowd around hospitals hoping to get footage of someone dying. The Suicide Channel is one of television’s more popular offerings. Only the poor go to hospitals, where, to ensure a profit, the “franchise owners” require patients’ families to provide the food. Both physicians and families, meanwhile, are required to report the declining health of older people so they can report to “convalescent homes,” paid for by selling what property the individual has. As a result, older and ill people pay doctors under the table to be their “secret” physician because an “official” physician would be required to report them.
Yet while Death as a Side Effect has abundant social commentary, Shua does far more with the narrative. At bottom, the dystopia she envisions is essentially a stage upon which a larger and more common literary theme plays out — human relationships. Told in the form of Ernesto writing to the mistress who abandoned him, this slim narrative examines family relations, particularly that between Ernesto and his father. Although impacted by this society’s mandates, particularly the convalescent homes, the family issues here are not necessarily unique. Ernesto is a seemingly ineffectual everyman. His father on the other hand is a powerful, controlling figure who seems to have always found joy in humiliating Ernesto. Yet Ernesto has a somewhat kinder view of his father than his sister, who never really had a life outside the family home and in whom a searing hatred has grown. Their mother, meanwhile, has descended into Alzheimer’s-type dementia.
When a large intestinal tumor forces Ernesto’s father first into a hospital and then a convalescent home, his mother’s dementia and his sister’s enmity leave Ernesto responsible for his father’s fate. Thus, although Ernesto’s own children are no more than passing references in his writing, he is required to come to grips with the archetypal father-son conflict. Despite his father’s long history of demeaning him, Ernesto also confronts the preservation of personal dignity in a society seemingly devoid of the concept.
Originally published in 1997 and translated into English for the first time by Andrea G. Labinger, Death as a Side Effect uses dark satire to effectively meld societal and personal tribulations. Although the Spanish edition of the book was selected by the Congreso de la Lengua Española as one of the 100 best Latin American novels published in the last 25 years, its themes and issues are universal.
Madness is a lot like death.
Ana María Shua, Death as a Side Effect
|
Disclaimer 
Additionally, some links on this blog go to Amazon.com. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. There is no additional cost to you. Contact me You can e-mail me at prairieprogressive at gmaildotcom.
|
