Sunday, December 31, 2017
"DEATH IS A GREAT TEACHER!"
Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself (Oakland: New Harbinger Publications/Noetic Books, 2007) ("Take a moment to look at the things you think you need. Look at how much time and energy you put into various activities. Imagine if you know you were going to die within a week or a month. How would that change things? How would your priorities change? How would your thoughts change? Think honestly about what you would do with your last week. What a wonderful thought to contemplate. Then ponder this question: If that's really what you would do with your last week, what are you doing with the rest of your time? Wasting it? Throwing it away? Treating it like it's not something precious? What are you doing with life? That is what death asks you. " Let's say you're living life without the thought of death, and the Angel of Death comes to you and says, 'Come, it's time to go.' You say, 'But no. You're suppose to give me a warning so I can decide what I want to do with my last week.' Do you know what Death will say to you? He'll say. 'My God! I gave you fifty-two weeks this past year alone. And look at all the other weeks I've given you. Why would you need one more? What did you do with all those?' If asked that what are you gong to say? How will you answer? 'I wasn't paying attention. . . I didn't think it mattered.' That's a pretty amazing thing to say about your life. "Death is a great teacher." Id. at 158-159.).
Saturday, December 30, 2017
"AGAIN THROUGH THE HAZE THE DOG AWAKENS ME." *
Jorie Graham, Fast: Poems (New York: Ecco/HarperCollins, 2017) (From the book jacket: "Jorie Graham explores the limits of the human and the uneasy seductions of the post-human. . . [T]hese poems give urgent form to the ever-increasing pace of transformation of our planet and ourselves. As it navigates cyber life; 3 printed 'life'; life after death; and biologically, chemically, and electronically modified life, Fast lights up the border of our new condition as individuals and as a species on the brink.").
* From "Vigil," at 53.
* From "Vigil," at 53.
Friday, December 29, 2017
DARK VOICES
Marcel Beyer, The Karnau Tapes: A Novel, translated from the German by John Brownjohn (Orlando: Harcourt Brace, 1997).
Ulli Lust, Voices in the Dark, based on a Novel by Marcel Beyer, translated from the German by John Brownjohn, English lettering by Kevin Cannon (New York: New York Review Comics, 2017) (From the back cover: "Germany, in the final years of the Third Reich, Hermann Karnau is a sound engineer obsessed with recording the human voices in all its variations--the ranting of leaders, the road of crowds, the rasp of throats contracted in fear--and indifferent to everything else. Employed by the Nazis, his assignments take him to party rallies, to the Eastern Front, and into the household of Joseph Goebbels. There he meets Helga, the eldest daughter: bright, good-natured, and just beginning to suspect the horror that surrounds her. . ."
Ulli Lust, Voices in the Dark, based on a Novel by Marcel Beyer, translated from the German by John Brownjohn, English lettering by Kevin Cannon (New York: New York Review Comics, 2017) (From the back cover: "Germany, in the final years of the Third Reich, Hermann Karnau is a sound engineer obsessed with recording the human voices in all its variations--the ranting of leaders, the road of crowds, the rasp of throats contracted in fear--and indifferent to everything else. Employed by the Nazis, his assignments take him to party rallies, to the Eastern Front, and into the household of Joseph Goebbels. There he meets Helga, the eldest daughter: bright, good-natured, and just beginning to suspect the horror that surrounds her. . ."
Thursday, December 28, 2017
TRAVELS THROUGH CUBA AND THE SOVIET UNION DURING THE 1960s
Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Tumult, translated from the French by Mike Mitchell (London & New York: The German List/Seagull Books, 2016).
Wednesday, December 27, 2017
FOOD FOR THOUGHT: DIGITAL BLACKFACE
VIDEO: The White Internet's Love Affair With Digital Blackface
All across the internet, white people feel empowered to play around with black identity.
YOU ARE BEING WATCHED AND YOU ARE YOUR CREDIT SCORE
Josh Lauer, Creditworthy: A History of Consumer Surveillance and Financial Identity in America (New York: Columbia U. Press, 2017) ("Whenever we promise to pay we become subjects of intensive surveillance." "This book explains how this happened and why it matters today." Id. at 4.).
Tuesday, December 26, 2017
MISCELLANEOUS READING, 2017
Micah L. Auerbach, A Storied Sage: Canon and Creation in the Making of a Japanese Buddha (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 2016).
Gyles Brandreth, ed., Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations, 5th. ed. (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 2013) ("I guess I just prefer to see the dark side of things. The glass is always half empty. And cracked. And I just cut my lip on it. And chipped a tooth."--Janeanne Garofalo).
Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Formalism and Historicity: Models and Methods in Twentieth-Century Art (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: An October Book/MIT Press, 2015) (From the "Introduction": "One of the questions to be asked, then, is whether any criteria of judgment whatsoever might be reinstitution. And, if so, to which registers of social and subjective experience and construction they could possibly refer. Yet simply by invoking the term, 'criteria,' it becomes instantly evident that the very concept is charged with a profoundly reactionary structuring of experience. After all, the criteria of distinction, of qualitative differentiation, have always been dictated from above, from the judgment seat of power. We have only to remember that it was always bourgeois white men such as T. S Eliot and Gottfried Benn in the first half of the twentieth century who insisted on the laws of aesthetic quality when confronted for the first time with the possibility of emerging proletarian practices of cultural production. And, later, in the 1960s and 70s, when feminist artist practices emerged, it was once again the patriarchal authorities who attacked feminist and politicized practices most vociferously. More recently, as artistic practices have emerged increasingly from outside the European and North American orders, the call for criteria of quality has risen anew from the voice of white make patriarchal power, as always in the name of defending tradition. Under theses historical circumstances, could it be worthwhile, or even possible, to reconsider the question of the criteria of judgment and evaluation--and, if so, what function could a renewed definition of criteria possibly serve?" Id. at xxxvi.).
Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand, Memoirs from Beyond the Tomb, selected and translated by Robert Baldick, introduced by Philip Mansel (London, The Folio Society, 2016).
Norma Clarke, Brothers of the Quill: Oliver Goldsmith in Grub Street (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 2016).
Albrecht Durer (Illustrator) & Hans Holbein (Illustrator), The Book of Common Prayer, foreward by Sir Patrick Cormack (London: The Folio Society, 2004).
Susan Faludi, In the Darkroom (New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt, 2016).
Jhumpa Lahiri, In Other Words, translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein (New York: Knopf, 2016).
Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (The William James Lectures Delivered at Harvard University, 1933) (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 1964).
John McWhorter, Words on the Move: Why English Won't--and Can't--Sit Still (Like, Literally) (New York: Henry Holt, 2017).
Anka Muhlstein, The Pen and the Brush: How Passion for Art Shaped Nineteenth-Century French Novels, translated from the French by Adriana Hunter (New York: Other Press, 2016).
Nostradamus (Michel de Nostredame), The Prophecies (A Dual-Language Edition with Parallel Text), translated from the French by Richard Sieburth, historical introduction and Supplementary Material by Stephane Gerson (New York: Penguin Classics/Penguin Books, 2012).
Christopher Ricks & Jim McCue, eds, The Poems of T. S. Eliot, Volume II: Practical Cats and Further Verses (The Annotated Text) (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U. Press, 2015).
Ruth Scurr, John Aubrey, My Own Life (New York: New York Review Books, 2016.
Susan Rubin Suleiman, Authoritarian Fictions: The Ideological Novel as a Literary Genre (Princeton: Princeton U. Press, 1993).
Anne Umland & Catherine Hug, Francis Picabia: Our Heads Are Round So Our Thoughts Can Change Directions (New York: The Museum of Modern Art New York/Kunsthaus Zurich, 2016).
Gyles Brandreth, ed., Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations, 5th. ed. (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 2013) ("I guess I just prefer to see the dark side of things. The glass is always half empty. And cracked. And I just cut my lip on it. And chipped a tooth."--Janeanne Garofalo).
Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Formalism and Historicity: Models and Methods in Twentieth-Century Art (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: An October Book/MIT Press, 2015) (From the "Introduction": "One of the questions to be asked, then, is whether any criteria of judgment whatsoever might be reinstitution. And, if so, to which registers of social and subjective experience and construction they could possibly refer. Yet simply by invoking the term, 'criteria,' it becomes instantly evident that the very concept is charged with a profoundly reactionary structuring of experience. After all, the criteria of distinction, of qualitative differentiation, have always been dictated from above, from the judgment seat of power. We have only to remember that it was always bourgeois white men such as T. S Eliot and Gottfried Benn in the first half of the twentieth century who insisted on the laws of aesthetic quality when confronted for the first time with the possibility of emerging proletarian practices of cultural production. And, later, in the 1960s and 70s, when feminist artist practices emerged, it was once again the patriarchal authorities who attacked feminist and politicized practices most vociferously. More recently, as artistic practices have emerged increasingly from outside the European and North American orders, the call for criteria of quality has risen anew from the voice of white make patriarchal power, as always in the name of defending tradition. Under theses historical circumstances, could it be worthwhile, or even possible, to reconsider the question of the criteria of judgment and evaluation--and, if so, what function could a renewed definition of criteria possibly serve?" Id. at xxxvi.).
Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand, Memoirs from Beyond the Tomb, selected and translated by Robert Baldick, introduced by Philip Mansel (London, The Folio Society, 2016).
Norma Clarke, Brothers of the Quill: Oliver Goldsmith in Grub Street (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 2016).
Albrecht Durer (Illustrator) & Hans Holbein (Illustrator), The Book of Common Prayer, foreward by Sir Patrick Cormack (London: The Folio Society, 2004).
Susan Faludi, In the Darkroom (New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt, 2016).
Jhumpa Lahiri, In Other Words, translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein (New York: Knopf, 2016).
Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (The William James Lectures Delivered at Harvard University, 1933) (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 1964).
John McWhorter, Words on the Move: Why English Won't--and Can't--Sit Still (Like, Literally) (New York: Henry Holt, 2017).
Anka Muhlstein, The Pen and the Brush: How Passion for Art Shaped Nineteenth-Century French Novels, translated from the French by Adriana Hunter (New York: Other Press, 2016).
Nostradamus (Michel de Nostredame), The Prophecies (A Dual-Language Edition with Parallel Text), translated from the French by Richard Sieburth, historical introduction and Supplementary Material by Stephane Gerson (New York: Penguin Classics/Penguin Books, 2012).
Christopher Ricks & Jim McCue, eds, The Poems of T. S. Eliot, Volume II: Practical Cats and Further Verses (The Annotated Text) (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U. Press, 2015).
Ruth Scurr, John Aubrey, My Own Life (New York: New York Review Books, 2016.
Susan Rubin Suleiman, Authoritarian Fictions: The Ideological Novel as a Literary Genre (Princeton: Princeton U. Press, 1993).
Anne Umland & Catherine Hug, Francis Picabia: Our Heads Are Round So Our Thoughts Can Change Directions (New York: The Museum of Modern Art New York/Kunsthaus Zurich, 2016).
Monday, December 25, 2017
SUGGESTED FICTION
Naomi Alderman, The Power: A Novel (New York: Little, Brown, 2017).
T. Coraghessan Boyle, The Relive Box and Other Stories (New York: Ecco, 2017).
Anna Kavan, Ice, foreword by Christopher Priest (London & Chicago: Peter Owen, 1967, 2006).
Min Jin Lee, Free Food for Millionaires: A Novel (New York: Warner Books, 2007).
Min Jin Lee, Pachinko: A Novel (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2017).
Larry McMurtry, Thalia: A Texas Trilogy: Horseman, Pass By; Leaving Cheyenne; The Last Picture Show (New York: Liveright, 2017).
Ivy Pochoda, Wonder Valley: A Novel (New York: Ecco, 2017).
Anthony Quinn, Freya (New York: Europa Editions, 2017).
Richard Stark, Ask a Parrot (A Parker Novel), with a foreword by Duane Swierczynski (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 2017).
Richard Stark, Breakout (A Parker Novel), with a foreword by Chris Holm (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 2017).
Richard Stark, Dirty Money (A Parker Novel), with a foreword by Laura Lippman (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 2017).
Richard Stark, Nobody Runs Forever (A Parker Novel), with a foreword by Duane Swierczynski (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 2017).
Abraham Verghese, Cutting the Stone: A Novel (New York: Knopf, 2010).
T. Coraghessan Boyle, The Relive Box and Other Stories (New York: Ecco, 2017).
S. A. Chakrabortty, The City of Brass: A Novel (New York Harper Voyager, 2017).
Anna Kavan, Ice, foreword by Christopher Priest (London & Chicago: Peter Owen, 1967, 2006).
Min Jin Lee, Free Food for Millionaires: A Novel (New York: Warner Books, 2007).
Min Jin Lee, Pachinko: A Novel (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2017).
Larry McMurtry, Thalia: A Texas Trilogy: Horseman, Pass By; Leaving Cheyenne; The Last Picture Show (New York: Liveright, 2017).
Ivy Pochoda, Wonder Valley: A Novel (New York: Ecco, 2017).
Anthony Quinn, Freya (New York: Europa Editions, 2017).
Richard Stark, Ask a Parrot (A Parker Novel), with a foreword by Duane Swierczynski (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 2017).
Richard Stark, Breakout (A Parker Novel), with a foreword by Chris Holm (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 2017).
Richard Stark, Dirty Money (A Parker Novel), with a foreword by Laura Lippman (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 2017).
Richard Stark, Nobody Runs Forever (A Parker Novel), with a foreword by Duane Swierczynski (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 2017).
Abraham Verghese, Cutting the Stone: A Novel (New York: Knopf, 2010).
SUGGESTED FICTION
John Banville, Mrs Osmond: A Novel (New York: Knopf, 2017).
William Peter Blatty, The Exorcist, illustrated by Jeremy Caniglia (London: The Folio Society, 2017).
Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None, illustrated by David Lupton (London: The Folio Society, 2017).
Daphane Du Maurier, Rebecca, introduced by Hellen Dunmore, illustrated by D. G. Smith (London: The Folio Society, 2017).
Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach: A Novel (New York; Scribner, 2017).
Louise Erdrich, Future Home of the Living God: A Novel (New York: Harper, 2017).
Stephen King & Owen King, Sleeping Beauties: A Novel (New York: Scribner, 2017).
Danya Kukafka, Girl in Snow: A Novel (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017).
Lynda La Plante, A Face in the Crowd (A Prime Suspect Novel) (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993, 2013).
Lynda La Plante, Prime Suspect (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991, 2012).
Lynda La Plante, Prime Suspect 3: Silent Victims (New York: Harper Perennial, 1994, 2012).
Attica Locke, Bluebird, Bluebird: A Novel (New York: Mulholland Books/Little, Brown, 2017).
Charles Martin, The Mountain Between Us (New York: Broadway Paperbacks, 2010).
Claire Messud, The Burning Girl: A Novel (New York: Norton, 2017).
Bradford Morrow, The Prague Sonata: A Novel (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2017).
Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere: A Novel (New York; Penguin Press, 2017).
Philip Pullman, La Bell Sauvage: The Book of Dust, Volume One (New York: Knopf, 2017).
Augustus Rose, The ReadyMade Thief: A Novel (New York: Viking, 2017).
Salman Rushdie, The Golden House: A Novel (New York: Random House, 2017).
Richard Stern, Other Men's Daughters, introduction by Philip Roth, afterword by Wendy Doniger (New York: New York Review Books Classics, 2017).
Elizabeth Strout, Anything Is Possible (New York: Random House, 2017).
Gabriel Tallent, My Absolute Darling: A Novel (New York: Rivehead Books, 2017).
Weike Wang, Chemistry: A Novel (New York: Knopf, 2017).
Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing: A Novel (New York: Scribner, 2017) (See Tracy K. Smith, "Ghosts On the Bayou," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 9/24/2017.).
Cherise Wolas, The Resurrection of Joan Ashby: A Novel (New York: Flatiron Books, 2017).
William Peter Blatty, The Exorcist, illustrated by Jeremy Caniglia (London: The Folio Society, 2017).
Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None, illustrated by David Lupton (London: The Folio Society, 2017).
Daphane Du Maurier, Rebecca, introduced by Hellen Dunmore, illustrated by D. G. Smith (London: The Folio Society, 2017).
Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach: A Novel (New York; Scribner, 2017).
Louise Erdrich, Future Home of the Living God: A Novel (New York: Harper, 2017).
Stephen King & Owen King, Sleeping Beauties: A Novel (New York: Scribner, 2017).
Danya Kukafka, Girl in Snow: A Novel (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017).
Lynda La Plante, A Face in the Crowd (A Prime Suspect Novel) (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993, 2013).
Lynda La Plante, Prime Suspect (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991, 2012).
Lynda La Plante, Prime Suspect 3: Silent Victims (New York: Harper Perennial, 1994, 2012).
Attica Locke, Bluebird, Bluebird: A Novel (New York: Mulholland Books/Little, Brown, 2017).
Charles Martin, The Mountain Between Us (New York: Broadway Paperbacks, 2010).
Claire Messud, The Burning Girl: A Novel (New York: Norton, 2017).
Bradford Morrow, The Prague Sonata: A Novel (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2017).
Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere: A Novel (New York; Penguin Press, 2017).
Philip Pullman, La Bell Sauvage: The Book of Dust, Volume One (New York: Knopf, 2017).
Augustus Rose, The ReadyMade Thief: A Novel (New York: Viking, 2017).
Salman Rushdie, The Golden House: A Novel (New York: Random House, 2017).
Richard Stern, Other Men's Daughters, introduction by Philip Roth, afterword by Wendy Doniger (New York: New York Review Books Classics, 2017).
Elizabeth Strout, Anything Is Possible (New York: Random House, 2017).
Gabriel Tallent, My Absolute Darling: A Novel (New York: Rivehead Books, 2017).
Weike Wang, Chemistry: A Novel (New York: Knopf, 2017).
Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing: A Novel (New York: Scribner, 2017) (See Tracy K. Smith, "Ghosts On the Bayou," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 9/24/2017.).
Cherise Wolas, The Resurrection of Joan Ashby: A Novel (New York: Flatiron Books, 2017).
SUGGESTED FICTION IN TRANSLATION
Christophe Boltanski, The Safe House: A Novel, translated from the French by Laura Marris (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 2017).
Alejo Carpentier, The Kingdom of This World, translated from the Spanish by Pablo Medina, with an introduction by Edwidge Danticat (New York; Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2017).
Jesus Carrasco, Out in the Open: A Novel, translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa (New York: Riverbed Books, 2017).
Santiago Gamboa, Return to the Dark Valley, translated from the Spanish by Howard Curtis (New York; Europa Editions, 2017) (From the from from book flap: "Traveling between European cities scarred by terrorism that have turned increasingly xenophobic, Latin American landscapes with their primeval dangers enveloped in 'new world' promise, and the African continent that exerts a shadowy fascination on the European psyche, Return to the Dark Valley is a richly imagined portrait of a turbulent world where liberation is found in perpetual movement and determined exploration.).
Dominique Goblet, Pretending Is Lying, translated from the French by Sophie Yanow in collaboration with Dominique Goblet (New York: New York Review Comics, 2007).
Louis Guillou, Blood Dark, translated from the French by Laura Marris, introduction by Alice Kaplan (New York: New York Review Books/Classics, 2017).
Homer, The Odyssey, translated and introduced by Emily Wilson (New York: Norton, 2017).
Heidi Kaddour, The Influence Peddlers, translated from the French by Teresa Lavender Fagan (New Haven & London: Margellos World Republic of Letters Book/Yale U. Press, 2017).
David Lagercrantz, The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye (A Lisbeth Salander Novel), translated from the Swedish by George Goulding (New York: Knopf, 2017).
Patrick Modiano, Little Jewel, translated from the French by Penny Hueston (New Haven & London: Margellos World Republic of Letters Book/Yale U. Press, 2016).
Patrick Modiano, Such Fine Boys, translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti, foreword by J. M. G. Le Clezio (New Haven & London: Margellos World Republic of Letters Book/Yale U. Press, 2017).
Patrick Modiano, Sundays in August, translated from the French by Damion Searls (New Haven & London: Margellos World Republic of Letters Book/Yale U. Press, 2017).
Eshkol Nevo, Three Floors Up: A Novel, translated from the Hebrew by Sondra Silverton (New York: Other Press, 2017).
Orhan Pamuk, The Red-Haired Woman: A Novel, translated from the Turkish by Ekin Oklap (New York: Knopf, 2017).
Iraj Pezeshkzad, My Uncle Napoleon: A Novel, translated from the Persian by Dick Davis, introduction by Azar Nafisi (New York: The Modern Library, 2006).
Joan Sales, Uncertain Glory, translated from the Catalan by Peter Bush, foreword by Juan Goytisolo (New York: New York Review Books/Classics, 2014).
Mihail Sebastian, For Two Thousand Years, translated from the Romanian by Philip Ó Ceallaigh, foreword by Mark Mazower (New York: Other Press, 2017).
Peter Stamm, To The Back of Beyond, translated from the German by Michael Hofmann (New York: Other Press, 2017).
Magda Szabo, Katalin Street, translated from the Hungarian by Len Rix (New York: New York Review Books/Classics, 2017).
Varujan Vosganian, The Book Whispers, translated from the Romanian by Alistair Ian Blyth (New Haven & London: Margellos World Republic of Letters/Yale U. Press, 2017).
Alejo Carpentier, The Kingdom of This World, translated from the Spanish by Pablo Medina, with an introduction by Edwidge Danticat (New York; Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2017).
Jesus Carrasco, Out in the Open: A Novel, translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa (New York: Riverbed Books, 2017).
Santiago Gamboa, Return to the Dark Valley, translated from the Spanish by Howard Curtis (New York; Europa Editions, 2017) (From the from from book flap: "Traveling between European cities scarred by terrorism that have turned increasingly xenophobic, Latin American landscapes with their primeval dangers enveloped in 'new world' promise, and the African continent that exerts a shadowy fascination on the European psyche, Return to the Dark Valley is a richly imagined portrait of a turbulent world where liberation is found in perpetual movement and determined exploration.).
Dominique Goblet, Pretending Is Lying, translated from the French by Sophie Yanow in collaboration with Dominique Goblet (New York: New York Review Comics, 2007).
Louis Guillou, Blood Dark, translated from the French by Laura Marris, introduction by Alice Kaplan (New York: New York Review Books/Classics, 2017).
Homer, The Odyssey, translated and introduced by Emily Wilson (New York: Norton, 2017).
Heidi Kaddour, The Influence Peddlers, translated from the French by Teresa Lavender Fagan (New Haven & London: Margellos World Republic of Letters Book/Yale U. Press, 2017).
David Lagercrantz, The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye (A Lisbeth Salander Novel), translated from the Swedish by George Goulding (New York: Knopf, 2017).
Patrick Modiano, Little Jewel, translated from the French by Penny Hueston (New Haven & London: Margellos World Republic of Letters Book/Yale U. Press, 2016).
Patrick Modiano, Such Fine Boys, translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti, foreword by J. M. G. Le Clezio (New Haven & London: Margellos World Republic of Letters Book/Yale U. Press, 2017).
Patrick Modiano, Sundays in August, translated from the French by Damion Searls (New Haven & London: Margellos World Republic of Letters Book/Yale U. Press, 2017).
Eshkol Nevo, Three Floors Up: A Novel, translated from the Hebrew by Sondra Silverton (New York: Other Press, 2017).
Orhan Pamuk, The Red-Haired Woman: A Novel, translated from the Turkish by Ekin Oklap (New York: Knopf, 2017).
Iraj Pezeshkzad, My Uncle Napoleon: A Novel, translated from the Persian by Dick Davis, introduction by Azar Nafisi (New York: The Modern Library, 2006).
Joan Sales, Uncertain Glory, translated from the Catalan by Peter Bush, foreword by Juan Goytisolo (New York: New York Review Books/Classics, 2014).
Mihail Sebastian, For Two Thousand Years, translated from the Romanian by Philip Ó Ceallaigh, foreword by Mark Mazower (New York: Other Press, 2017).
Peter Stamm, To The Back of Beyond, translated from the German by Michael Hofmann (New York: Other Press, 2017).
Magda Szabo, Katalin Street, translated from the Hungarian by Len Rix (New York: New York Review Books/Classics, 2017).
Varujan Vosganian, The Book Whispers, translated from the Romanian by Alistair Ian Blyth (New Haven & London: Margellos World Republic of Letters/Yale U. Press, 2017).
Sunday, December 24, 2017
Friday, December 22, 2017
Wednesday, December 20, 2017
THE NEW YORKER ANTICIPATES A POLITICAL WAVE
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Tuesday, December 19, 2017
HERE'S MY QUESTION: HOW DOES TRUMP FEEL ABOUT BEING PUTIN'S BITCH?
Luke Harding, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win (New York: Vintage Books, 2017).
FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES, 12/19/2107
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WHITE IDENTITY POLITICS: KLAN NOT AS ORGANIZATION, BUT AS CULTURAL MOVEMENT
Felix Harcourt, Ku Klux Kulture: America and the Klan in the 1920s (Chicago London U. of Chicago Press, 2017):
Linda Gordon, The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition (New York: Liveright, 2017):
If we approach the Klan as movement rather than organization, we better appreciate the cultural politics and aesthetic ideology of Klannishness. The Klan organization was, at its heart, a deeply local structure. The national Klan was a fractured and federalized affair. Yet, across media, the forging of shared self unified a far-reaching national movement. The Klan appropriated the melodies of popular songs, adopted the format of adventure novels and tabloid newspapers, anticipated the power of film and radio, and was absorbed by the world of sports. The Klan movement was more than capable of both enjoying contemporary mass popular culture and turning it to its own ends. Hoosiers concerned by an impending invasion of papists, Georgians who feared an international rising ride of color, or Illinoisans who reviled a perceived breakdown in public morality--all could unite behind the image of the idealized Klan member that appeared around the country and across media. In the creation of a consumable cultural identity, citizens of he Invisible Empire bound themselves to an imagined cultural community.Id. at 9. From the book jacket: "In popular understanding, the Ku Klux Klan is a hateful white supremacist organization, . . Felix Harcourt argues that in the 1920s the self-proclaimed Invisible Empire had an even wider significance as a cultural movement."
Linda Gordon, The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition (New York: Liveright, 2017):
[M]y goal in this interpretation is to understand, not to conduct an argument or mount an attack. . . As a student of social movements I am less interested in condemnation than in explanation. Explaining requires that the historian avoid cheap shots and try to understand why perfectly reasonable people supported the Klan. Because the Klan was the biggest social movement of the early twentieth century, and because its ideas echo again today, examining it in order to grasp its attractions seems worthwhile. In what follows, I consider the Ku Klux Klan's methods of recruitment, the satisfactions it brought to its members, and the deep structures of its ideology. Its allures were manifold: they included the rewards of being an insider, of belonging to a community, of expressing and acting on resentments, of participating in drama, of feeling religiously and morally righteous, of turning a profit.Id. at 7-8.
Monday, December 18, 2017
AMERICA'S FINANCE CAPITALISM IN THE CARIBBEAN
Peter James Hudson, Bankers and Empire: How Wall Street Colonized the Caribbean (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 2017).
Sunday, December 17, 2017
RUSSIA: LITERATURE AND HISTORY
Anne Applebaum, Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine (New York: Doubleday, 2017) (From the book jacket: "In 1929 Stalin launched his policy of agricultural collectivization--in effect a second Russian revolution--which forced millions of peasants off their land and onto collective farms. The result was a catastrophic famine the most lethal in European history. At least five million people died between 1931 and 1933 in the USSR. But instead of sending relief, the Soviet state made use of the catastrophe to rid itself of a political problem. In Red Famine, Anne Applebaum argues that more than three million of those dead were Ukrainians who perished not because they were accidental victims of a bad policy but because the state deliberately sought to kill them.").
Milan Djilas, The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System (New York: Frederick A. Pra eger, 1957) ("It is the bureaucracy which formally uses, administers, and controls both nationalized and socialized property as well as the entire life of society. The role of the bureaucracy in society, i.e., monopolistic administration and control of national income and national goods, consigns it to a special privileged position. Social relations resemble state capitalism. The more so, because the carrying out of industrialization is effected not with the help of capitalists but with the help of the state machine. In fact, this privilege class performs that function, using the state machine as a cover and as an instrument." "Ownership is nothing other than the right of profit and control. If one defines class benefits by this right, the Communist states have seen, in the final analysis, the origin of a new form of ownership or of a new ruling and exploiting class." "In reality, the Communists were unable to act differently from any ruling class that preceded them. Believing that they were building a new and ideal society, they built it for themselves in the only way they could. Their revolution and their society do not appear either accidental or unnatural, but appear as a matter of course for a particular country and for prescribed periods of its development because of this, no matter how extensive and inhuman Communist tyranny has been, society. In the course of a certain period--as long as industrialization lasts--has to and is able to endure this tyranny. Furthermore, this tyranny no longer appears as something inevitable, but exclusively as an assurance of the depredations and privileges of a new class." "In contrast to earlier revolutions, the Communist revolution, conducted in the name of doing away with classes, has resulted in the most complete authority of any single class. Everything else is sham and an illusion. Id. at 35-36. "This new class, the bureaucracy, or more accurately the political bureaucracy, has all the characteristics of earlier ones as well as some new characteristics of it own. Its origin had its special characteristics also, even though in essence it was similar to the beginnings of other classes." Id. at 38).
Elaine Feinstein, A Captive Lion: The Life of Marina Tsvetayeva (New York: Dutton, 1987).
Elaine Feinstein, Pushkin: A Biography (Hopewell, NJ: Ecco Press, 1999).
Sheila Fitzpatrick, On Stalin's Team: The Years of Living Dangerously in Soviet Politics (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2015) (From the book jacket: "Stalin was the unchallenged dictator of the Soviet Union for so long that most historians have dismissed the officials surrounding him as mere yes-men and political window dressing. On Stalin's Team overturns this view, revealing that behind Stalin was a group of loyal men who formed a remarkably effective team with him from the late 1920s until his death in 1953.").
Masha Gessen, The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia (New York: Riverhead Books, 2017) ("Alexander Dugin enjoyed a period of international fame of sorts as a Putin whisperer: for a couple of years some analysts and journalists believed that we was the mastermind behind Putin's wars. Dugin continued to insist that the had great influence but negligible power. Still, his star rose ever higher in unexpected ways. With the election of Donald Trump in the United States, the neo-Nazi movement know as the 'alt-right' gained public prominent, as did its leader Richard Spencer, an American married to Nina Kouprianova, a Russian woman who's served as Dugin's English translator and American promoter." Id. at 482.).
Julie Lekstrom Himes, Mikhail and Margarita: A Novel (New York: Europa Editions, 2017) ("History came late to Russia. Geography isolated her and isolation defined her. In the ninth century, pagan Vikings discovered her from the north; Muslim Khazars ruled her from the south. The Cyrillic alphabet, which was to craft her story, made its way across the Carpathian Mountains on the backs of Macedonian monks only in the winding years of the tenth century. Even nine centuries later, Pushkin and Tolstoy were yet inventing those words which in Russian did not exist: gesture and sympathy, impulse and imagination, individuality." Id. at 13.).
Stephen Kotkin, Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1942 (New York: Penguin Press, 2017) (This is the second volume in what may well be the definitive biography os Stalin.).
Anna Larina, This I Cannot Forget: The Memoirs of Nikolai Burharin's Widow, introduction by Stephen F. Cohen, translated from the Russian by Gary Kern (New York & London: Norton, 1993).
Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope: A Memoir, translated from the Russian by Max Hayward, with an introduction by Clarence Brown (New York: Atheneum, 1970) ("People always clutch at straws, nobody wants to part with his illusions, and it is very difficult to look life in the face. To see things as they are demands a superhuman effort. There are those who want to be blind, but even among those who think they are not, how many are left who can really see? Or rather, who do not slightly distort what they see t keep their illusions and hopes alive?" Id. at 63. "I never hid the fact that I am Jewish, and I must say that among the ordinary people I have yet to encounter any anti-Semitism. In working-class families and among collective farmers I was always treated as one of them, without the least hint of what one found in the universities after the war--and now too, for that matter. It is always among the semi-educated easily take root. Anti-intellectual feelings are a greater threat than crude anti-Semitism as such, and they are rampant in all the overstaffed institutions where people are furiously defending their right to their ignorance. We gave them a Stalinist education and they have Stalinist diplomas. They naturally want to hang on to what they feel entitled to--where would they go otherwise?" Id. at 342.).
Sean McMeekin, The Russian Revolution: A New History (New York: Basic Books, 2017) ("The crazy twists an turns of the Russian Revolution should give us pause in drawing pat historical lessons form it. Far from an eschatological 'class struggle' borne along irresistibly by the Marxist dialectic, the events of 1917 were filled with might-have-beens and missed chances. The most critical mistake of the starts government was the decision to go to war in 1914, a decision warmly applauded by the Russian liberals and pan-Slavists but lamented by conservative monarchists. For this reason, it is hard to fault Nicholas II for refusing to take liberal advice during the war, to surrender power to ambitious politicians who had already shown poor judgment. Strange as it may seem to modern sensibilities that the tar preferred the counsel of the peanut faith healer Rasputin to that of the elected Duma leaders such as Rodzianko, the fact is that, had he listen to Rasputin instead of Rodianko in 1914, he night have died peacefully on his throne instead of being butchered by the Bolsheviks in July 1918." Id. at 345.).
Julia L. Mickenberg, American Girls in Red Russia: Chasing the Soviet Dream (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 2017) (From the book jacket: "If you were an independent, adventurous, liberated American woman in the 1920s or 1930s, where might you have sought escape from the constraints and compromises of bourgeois living? Paris and the Left Bank quickly come to mind. But would you have ever thought of Russia and the wilds of Siberia? This choice was not as unusual as it seems now. . . . [T]here is a forgotten counterpoint to the story of the Lost Generation: beginning in the late nineteenth century, Russian revolutionary ideology attracted many women, including suffragists, reformers, educators, journalists, and artists, as well as curious travelers. Some were famous . . . ; some were committed radicals, though more were just intrigued by the 'Soviet experiment.' But all came to Russia in search of social arrangements that would be more equitable, just, and satisfying. And most in the end were disillusioned, some by the mundane realities, other by the horrifying truths.").
Alec Nove, Stalinism and After (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1975) ("The Renaissance passed Russia by. Until the nineteenth century Russian culture was as backward as the way of life of the bulk of her people. Hardly anything was written which can be read with pleasure today, Then with dramatic suddenness came the flowering of Russian literature, which made it one of the world's finest: Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Chekhov. With them there came on the scene that most Russian of phenomena, the intelligentsia, Some of them were of the gentry, conscience-stricken at the sight of serfdom, privilege, oppression. Some rose from below. . . The intelligentsia combined in themselves a number of features: they were opposed to the Tsarist system, but this did not lead most of them to harbour any sympathy for Western liberalism. On the contrary, they disliked the 'merchant' culture of western Europe, and dreamt of finding some new Russian road. Some believed that the old Russian peasant communal traditions pointed the way, others like Lenin thought that Russian capitalism was destroying the old institutions . . ." Id. at 13.).
Serhii Plokhy, Lost Kingdom: The Quest for Empire and the Making of the Russian Nation From 1470 to the Present (New York: Basic Books, 2017) ("September11, 1854, became a day of humiliation for the Russian navy, later to be recast as a day of Russian glory and sacrifice. On that late summer day, the commanders o the Russian Black Sea Fleet were ordered to sink five battleships and two frigates in Sevastopol harbor, their home base. That was just the beginning. In August 1855, all the remaining Russian ships went to the bottom of the harbor. The Russian army soon left Sevastopol, marking the empire's defeat in the Crimean War of 1853-1856. "The Russian fleet was sunk because it turned out to be of little use in stopping the joint French-British-Ottoman invasion of the Crimea--sails were no match for the steam engines of the British and French battleships, and the empire had no steam-powered battleships on the Black Sea. On the day of the allied landing there in September 1854, there was no wind to fill the sails, and the Russian ships couldn't move. All that remained was to sink them in order to block the access of the allied fleet to Sevastopol harbor. To the embarrassment of the rulers of the empire and the amazement of future historians, the occupying powers got around the problem by building the first railroad in the Crimea, so that they could bring supplies from the port of Balaklava to the town of Sevastopol. "The peace treaty signed in Paris in 1856 was viewed in Russia as humiliation at the hands of the West. The conquerors of Paris in 1814, the Russians returned to that city forty years later to sign an arrangement that violated the territorial integrity of their empire. St. Petersburg was forced to abandon imperial possessions in the Caucasus and the Danube area, and eleven years later, the cash-strapped government sold Alaska to the United States, lacking the resources to defend it. It kept the Crimea but was banned from maintaining a fleet or fortifications on the Black Sea littoral. Even more significant was the empire's loss of face as a great power." Id. at 121-122.).
Elizabeth Pond, From the Yaroslavsky Station: Russia Perceived (New York: Universe Books, 1981).
Leon Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories, translated from the Russian by Ronald Wilks, Anthony Briggs & David McDuff, with an Introduction by Anthony Briggs (New York: Penguin Classics, 2008).
Mikhail Zygar, The Empire Must Die: Russia's Revolutionary Collapse, 1900-1917 (New York: PublicAffairs, 2017) ("The tragedy of the early twentieth century is imprinted in Russia's cerebral cortex. Even a century later, the middle class unconsciously expects a recurrence. Russia in the early twenty-first century looks nothing like its early twentieth-century counterpart: society today is incomparably more educated and prosperous than hundred years ago. Nevertheless, the psychological trauma is still felt. The experience of the civil war and the Red Terror forces new generations of Russians to repeatedly ask themselves: Should I leave? Will it soon be too late? [] To this day, sections of Russian society continue to wage war on each other and on their historical predecessors. For the country as a whole, this is yet another tragedy. The cleansing of the intellectual and business life is eroding its future. Russia has never come to terms with its past; the historical traumas are still raw; the psychological hang-ups persists. Russian story is an illness. Russian history has made us all sick. I do not want to die for this illness." Id. at 518-519.).
Milan Djilas, The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System (New York: Frederick A. Pra eger, 1957) ("It is the bureaucracy which formally uses, administers, and controls both nationalized and socialized property as well as the entire life of society. The role of the bureaucracy in society, i.e., monopolistic administration and control of national income and national goods, consigns it to a special privileged position. Social relations resemble state capitalism. The more so, because the carrying out of industrialization is effected not with the help of capitalists but with the help of the state machine. In fact, this privilege class performs that function, using the state machine as a cover and as an instrument." "Ownership is nothing other than the right of profit and control. If one defines class benefits by this right, the Communist states have seen, in the final analysis, the origin of a new form of ownership or of a new ruling and exploiting class." "In reality, the Communists were unable to act differently from any ruling class that preceded them. Believing that they were building a new and ideal society, they built it for themselves in the only way they could. Their revolution and their society do not appear either accidental or unnatural, but appear as a matter of course for a particular country and for prescribed periods of its development because of this, no matter how extensive and inhuman Communist tyranny has been, society. In the course of a certain period--as long as industrialization lasts--has to and is able to endure this tyranny. Furthermore, this tyranny no longer appears as something inevitable, but exclusively as an assurance of the depredations and privileges of a new class." "In contrast to earlier revolutions, the Communist revolution, conducted in the name of doing away with classes, has resulted in the most complete authority of any single class. Everything else is sham and an illusion. Id. at 35-36. "This new class, the bureaucracy, or more accurately the political bureaucracy, has all the characteristics of earlier ones as well as some new characteristics of it own. Its origin had its special characteristics also, even though in essence it was similar to the beginnings of other classes." Id. at 38).
Elaine Feinstein, A Captive Lion: The Life of Marina Tsvetayeva (New York: Dutton, 1987).
Elaine Feinstein, Pushkin: A Biography (Hopewell, NJ: Ecco Press, 1999).
Sheila Fitzpatrick, On Stalin's Team: The Years of Living Dangerously in Soviet Politics (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2015) (From the book jacket: "Stalin was the unchallenged dictator of the Soviet Union for so long that most historians have dismissed the officials surrounding him as mere yes-men and political window dressing. On Stalin's Team overturns this view, revealing that behind Stalin was a group of loyal men who formed a remarkably effective team with him from the late 1920s until his death in 1953.").
Masha Gessen, The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia (New York: Riverhead Books, 2017) ("Alexander Dugin enjoyed a period of international fame of sorts as a Putin whisperer: for a couple of years some analysts and journalists believed that we was the mastermind behind Putin's wars. Dugin continued to insist that the had great influence but negligible power. Still, his star rose ever higher in unexpected ways. With the election of Donald Trump in the United States, the neo-Nazi movement know as the 'alt-right' gained public prominent, as did its leader Richard Spencer, an American married to Nina Kouprianova, a Russian woman who's served as Dugin's English translator and American promoter." Id. at 482.).
Julie Lekstrom Himes, Mikhail and Margarita: A Novel (New York: Europa Editions, 2017) ("History came late to Russia. Geography isolated her and isolation defined her. In the ninth century, pagan Vikings discovered her from the north; Muslim Khazars ruled her from the south. The Cyrillic alphabet, which was to craft her story, made its way across the Carpathian Mountains on the backs of Macedonian monks only in the winding years of the tenth century. Even nine centuries later, Pushkin and Tolstoy were yet inventing those words which in Russian did not exist: gesture and sympathy, impulse and imagination, individuality." Id. at 13.).
Stephen Kotkin, Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1942 (New York: Penguin Press, 2017) (This is the second volume in what may well be the definitive biography os Stalin.).
Anna Larina, This I Cannot Forget: The Memoirs of Nikolai Burharin's Widow, introduction by Stephen F. Cohen, translated from the Russian by Gary Kern (New York & London: Norton, 1993).
Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope: A Memoir, translated from the Russian by Max Hayward, with an introduction by Clarence Brown (New York: Atheneum, 1970) ("People always clutch at straws, nobody wants to part with his illusions, and it is very difficult to look life in the face. To see things as they are demands a superhuman effort. There are those who want to be blind, but even among those who think they are not, how many are left who can really see? Or rather, who do not slightly distort what they see t keep their illusions and hopes alive?" Id. at 63. "I never hid the fact that I am Jewish, and I must say that among the ordinary people I have yet to encounter any anti-Semitism. In working-class families and among collective farmers I was always treated as one of them, without the least hint of what one found in the universities after the war--and now too, for that matter. It is always among the semi-educated easily take root. Anti-intellectual feelings are a greater threat than crude anti-Semitism as such, and they are rampant in all the overstaffed institutions where people are furiously defending their right to their ignorance. We gave them a Stalinist education and they have Stalinist diplomas. They naturally want to hang on to what they feel entitled to--where would they go otherwise?" Id. at 342.).
Sean McMeekin, The Russian Revolution: A New History (New York: Basic Books, 2017) ("The crazy twists an turns of the Russian Revolution should give us pause in drawing pat historical lessons form it. Far from an eschatological 'class struggle' borne along irresistibly by the Marxist dialectic, the events of 1917 were filled with might-have-beens and missed chances. The most critical mistake of the starts government was the decision to go to war in 1914, a decision warmly applauded by the Russian liberals and pan-Slavists but lamented by conservative monarchists. For this reason, it is hard to fault Nicholas II for refusing to take liberal advice during the war, to surrender power to ambitious politicians who had already shown poor judgment. Strange as it may seem to modern sensibilities that the tar preferred the counsel of the peanut faith healer Rasputin to that of the elected Duma leaders such as Rodzianko, the fact is that, had he listen to Rasputin instead of Rodianko in 1914, he night have died peacefully on his throne instead of being butchered by the Bolsheviks in July 1918." Id. at 345.).
Julia L. Mickenberg, American Girls in Red Russia: Chasing the Soviet Dream (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 2017) (From the book jacket: "If you were an independent, adventurous, liberated American woman in the 1920s or 1930s, where might you have sought escape from the constraints and compromises of bourgeois living? Paris and the Left Bank quickly come to mind. But would you have ever thought of Russia and the wilds of Siberia? This choice was not as unusual as it seems now. . . . [T]here is a forgotten counterpoint to the story of the Lost Generation: beginning in the late nineteenth century, Russian revolutionary ideology attracted many women, including suffragists, reformers, educators, journalists, and artists, as well as curious travelers. Some were famous . . . ; some were committed radicals, though more were just intrigued by the 'Soviet experiment.' But all came to Russia in search of social arrangements that would be more equitable, just, and satisfying. And most in the end were disillusioned, some by the mundane realities, other by the horrifying truths.").
Alec Nove, Stalinism and After (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1975) ("The Renaissance passed Russia by. Until the nineteenth century Russian culture was as backward as the way of life of the bulk of her people. Hardly anything was written which can be read with pleasure today, Then with dramatic suddenness came the flowering of Russian literature, which made it one of the world's finest: Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Chekhov. With them there came on the scene that most Russian of phenomena, the intelligentsia, Some of them were of the gentry, conscience-stricken at the sight of serfdom, privilege, oppression. Some rose from below. . . The intelligentsia combined in themselves a number of features: they were opposed to the Tsarist system, but this did not lead most of them to harbour any sympathy for Western liberalism. On the contrary, they disliked the 'merchant' culture of western Europe, and dreamt of finding some new Russian road. Some believed that the old Russian peasant communal traditions pointed the way, others like Lenin thought that Russian capitalism was destroying the old institutions . . ." Id. at 13.).
Serhii Plokhy, Lost Kingdom: The Quest for Empire and the Making of the Russian Nation From 1470 to the Present (New York: Basic Books, 2017) ("September11, 1854, became a day of humiliation for the Russian navy, later to be recast as a day of Russian glory and sacrifice. On that late summer day, the commanders o the Russian Black Sea Fleet were ordered to sink five battleships and two frigates in Sevastopol harbor, their home base. That was just the beginning. In August 1855, all the remaining Russian ships went to the bottom of the harbor. The Russian army soon left Sevastopol, marking the empire's defeat in the Crimean War of 1853-1856. "The Russian fleet was sunk because it turned out to be of little use in stopping the joint French-British-Ottoman invasion of the Crimea--sails were no match for the steam engines of the British and French battleships, and the empire had no steam-powered battleships on the Black Sea. On the day of the allied landing there in September 1854, there was no wind to fill the sails, and the Russian ships couldn't move. All that remained was to sink them in order to block the access of the allied fleet to Sevastopol harbor. To the embarrassment of the rulers of the empire and the amazement of future historians, the occupying powers got around the problem by building the first railroad in the Crimea, so that they could bring supplies from the port of Balaklava to the town of Sevastopol. "The peace treaty signed in Paris in 1856 was viewed in Russia as humiliation at the hands of the West. The conquerors of Paris in 1814, the Russians returned to that city forty years later to sign an arrangement that violated the territorial integrity of their empire. St. Petersburg was forced to abandon imperial possessions in the Caucasus and the Danube area, and eleven years later, the cash-strapped government sold Alaska to the United States, lacking the resources to defend it. It kept the Crimea but was banned from maintaining a fleet or fortifications on the Black Sea littoral. Even more significant was the empire's loss of face as a great power." Id. at 121-122.).
Elizabeth Pond, From the Yaroslavsky Station: Russia Perceived (New York: Universe Books, 1981).
Leon Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories, translated from the Russian by Ronald Wilks, Anthony Briggs & David McDuff, with an Introduction by Anthony Briggs (New York: Penguin Classics, 2008).
Mikhail Zygar, The Empire Must Die: Russia's Revolutionary Collapse, 1900-1917 (New York: PublicAffairs, 2017) ("The tragedy of the early twentieth century is imprinted in Russia's cerebral cortex. Even a century later, the middle class unconsciously expects a recurrence. Russia in the early twenty-first century looks nothing like its early twentieth-century counterpart: society today is incomparably more educated and prosperous than hundred years ago. Nevertheless, the psychological trauma is still felt. The experience of the civil war and the Red Terror forces new generations of Russians to repeatedly ask themselves: Should I leave? Will it soon be too late? [] To this day, sections of Russian society continue to wage war on each other and on their historical predecessors. For the country as a whole, this is yet another tragedy. The cleansing of the intellectual and business life is eroding its future. Russia has never come to terms with its past; the historical traumas are still raw; the psychological hang-ups persists. Russian story is an illness. Russian history has made us all sick. I do not want to die for this illness." Id. at 518-519.).
Saturday, December 16, 2017
PANTHERIM SHECHORIM
Francine Klagsbrun, Lioness: Golda Meir and the Nation of Israel (New York: Schocken, 2017) (Learned some history I did not know! "They called themselves the Black Panthers (Pantherim Shechorim), a name adopted from radical blacks in the American civil rights movement and chosen for its shock value. Most were young people who had come to Israel as children with their parents from Morocco, Algeria, Iran, and other Arab countries in North Africa and the Middle East, cast out of their homes and lands after the establishment of the state or during the Sinai campaign in 1956. They watched as the new Soviet immigrants received clean, relatively spacious garden apartments while they lived in cramped, deteriorating flats in slum neighborhoods, the same neighborhoods where their families had settled when they first arrived in a less prosperous Israel. They watched as the Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe and Western countries rose ever higher on the economic scale and continued to dominate every aspect of the nation's political, financial, and cultural life while they and their people, called Sephardim, and latter Mizrahim, held the most menial jobs. Few in their communities finished high school, and those who did might go on to vocational schools, rarely to a university. About 20 percent lived below the poverty level." Id. at 551-552. As we Americans continue to struggle--some seriously, others not so much--with and at the intersections of poverty and race/ethnicity America, a reminder that it is a global problem and condition. Social, political, and economic equality is the elusive butterfly.).
Friday, December 15, 2017
UNITED STATES AND IRAN
Ervand Abrahamian, The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations (New York: The New Press, 2015).
Trita Parsi, Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran, and there Triumph of Diplomacy (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2017):
Trita Parsi, A Single Roll of the Dice: Obama's Diplomacy with Iran (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2012) (This book examine the diplomacy between the U.S. and Iran during the first two years of the Obama administration.
Trira Parsi, Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2007): From the book jacket: "This book traces the shifting relations between Israel, Iran, and the United States from 1948 to the present, uncovering for the first time the details of secret alliances, treacherous acts, and unsavory political maneuverings that have undermined Middle East stability and disrupted U.S. foreign policy initiatives in the region."
Jay Solomon, The Iran Wars: Spy Games, Bank Battles, and the Secret Deals that Reshaped the Middle East (New York: Random House, 2017).
Trita Parsi, Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran, and there Triumph of Diplomacy (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2017):
This book is focused on geopolitics and foreign policy and more specifically, on how the leaders of Iran, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, and China avoided the twin dangers of war and a nuclear-armed Iran. It's the triangular story of an intertwined geopolitical battle primarily among the United Stares, Israel, and Iran. The security interests of the United States and Israel, which never fully coincided, increasingly diverged after the 2003 Iraqi war, while the enmity of the United States and Iran was never complete either. The book seeks to document and explain how domestic and geopolitical factors--as well as luck--made diplomacy possible, and how the diplomats and negotiators made the nuclear deal achievable. It analyzes this decisions of the governments and actors involved, as well as factors that impacted the decision-making process, such as lack of information, mistrust of the other side's intentions, and domestic constraints on foreign policy maneuverability. [] This book is in many ways the third part of a trilogy, and shows not only how the United States and Iran resolved the nuclear crisis, but also how the American policy of containing Iran and establishing a Middle East order without Iran's inclusion--which is at the center of the geopolitical tensions--finally came to an end.Id. at ix-x.
Trita Parsi, A Single Roll of the Dice: Obama's Diplomacy with Iran (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2012) (This book examine the diplomacy between the U.S. and Iran during the first two years of the Obama administration.
In examining the diplomacy between Washington and Tehran during this period--both the respective domestic political trials as well as challenge from Iran and America's region allies--I argue that the current statement has more to do with the domestic political limitations Obama and his Iranian counterparts face than it does with a genuine failure of diplomacy. Obama's political space on this issue was compromised from the outset of his presidency by pressures from Congress, Israel, and some of Washington's Arab allies. The Iranians, in turn, were limited by the fractures within their political elite, particularly after the fraudulent election of 2009. The Iranian government's internal and external conduct after the election, in turn, further limited the Obama administration's diplomatic maneuverability. Had greater time and space existed for diplomacy, and had the modalities and agenda of the negotiations been different, the outcome would likely have been more favorable, Contrary to the prevailing narrative, the limited diplomatic encounters between Iran and the U.S. in 2009 and 2010 can't be characterized as an exhaustion of diplomacy.Id. at ix-x.
Trira Parsi, Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2007): From the book jacket: "This book traces the shifting relations between Israel, Iran, and the United States from 1948 to the present, uncovering for the first time the details of secret alliances, treacherous acts, and unsavory political maneuverings that have undermined Middle East stability and disrupted U.S. foreign policy initiatives in the region."
Jay Solomon, The Iran Wars: Spy Games, Bank Battles, and the Secret Deals that Reshaped the Middle East (New York: Random House, 2017).
Thursday, December 14, 2017
SADEGH HEDAYAT
Sadegh Hedayat, The Blind Owl, translated from the Persian by D. P. Costello, with an introduction by Porochista Khakpour (New York: Grove Press, 1957).
Sadegh Hedayat, The Blind Owl, introduced and translated from the Persian by Naveed Noori, with an introduction by Porochista Khakpour (???: Editorial L'Aleph, 2011).
Michael Beard, Hedayat's "Blind Owl" as a Western Novel (Princeton: Princeton Legacy Library/Princeton U. Press, 1990).
Sadegh Hedayat, The Blind Owl, introduced and translated from the Persian by Naveed Noori, with an introduction by Porochista Khakpour (???: Editorial L'Aleph, 2011).
Michael Beard, Hedayat's "Blind Owl" as a Western Novel (Princeton: Princeton Legacy Library/Princeton U. Press, 1990).
Wednesday, December 13, 2017
FORUGH FARROKHZAD
Forugh Farrokhzad, Another Birth and Other Poems, translated from the Persian by Hasan Javadi & Susan Sallee, introduction by Hasan Javadi (Image Publications, 2010).
Forugh Farrokhzad, Sin: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad, edited and translated from the Perian by Sholeh Wolpe, forward by Alicia Ostriker (Fayetteville: U. of Arkansas Press, 2007).
Forugh Farrokhzad, Sin: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad, edited and translated from the Perian by Sholeh Wolpe, forward by Alicia Ostriker (Fayetteville: U. of Arkansas Press, 2007).
Tuesday, December 12, 2017
Monday, December 11, 2017
THE BIG TRUMP UGH--THE POINT IS THAT HE IS POINTLESS
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Sunday, December 10, 2017
READNG GIORGIO AGAMBEN
Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Meridan: Crossing Aesthetics), translated from the Italian by Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford, CA: Stanford U. Press, 1988).
Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception: Homo Sacer II, 1, translated from the Italian by Kevin Attell (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 2003).
Giorgio Agamben, Stasis: Civil War as a Political Paradigm: Homo Sacer II, 2 (Meridan: Crossing Aesthetics), translated from the Italian by Nicholas Heron (Stanford, CA: Stanford U. Press, 2015).
Giorgio Agamben, The Sacrament of Language: An Archaeology of the Oath: Homo Sacer II, 3 (Meridan: Crossing Aesthetics), translated from the Italian by Adam Kotsko (Stanford, CA: Stanford U. Press, 2011).
Giorgio Agamben, The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government: Homo Sacer II, 4 (Meridan: Crossing Aesthetics), translated from the Italian by Lorenzo Chiesa with Matteo Mandarini (Stanford, CA: Stanford U. Press, 2011).
Giorgio Agamben, Opus Dei: An Archaeology of Duty: Homo Sacer II, 5 (Meridan: Crossing Aesthetics), translated from the Italian by Adam Kotsko (Stanford, CA: Stanford U. Press, 2013).
Giorgio Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive: Homo Sacer, III, translated from the Italian by Daniel Heller-Roazen (Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books, 2002).
Giorgio Agamben, The Highest Poverty: Monastic Rules and Form-of-Life: Homo Sacer IV, 1 (Meridan: Crossing Aesthetics), translated from the Italian by Adam Kotsko (Stanford, CA: Stanford U. Press, 2013).
Giorgio Agamben, The Use of Bodies (Homo Sacer IV, 2) (Meridan: Crossing Aesthetics), translated from the Italian by Adam Kotsko (Stanford, CA: Stanford U. Press, 2015).
Giorgio Agamben, Profanations, translated from the Italian by Jeff Fort (Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books, 2015).
Giorgio Agamben, The Use Mystery of Evil: Benedict XVI and the End of Days (Meridan: Crossing Aesthetics), translated from the Italian by Adam Kotsko (Stanford, CA: Stanford U. Press, 2017).
Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception: Homo Sacer II, 1, translated from the Italian by Kevin Attell (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 2003).
Giorgio Agamben, Stasis: Civil War as a Political Paradigm: Homo Sacer II, 2 (Meridan: Crossing Aesthetics), translated from the Italian by Nicholas Heron (Stanford, CA: Stanford U. Press, 2015).
Giorgio Agamben, The Sacrament of Language: An Archaeology of the Oath: Homo Sacer II, 3 (Meridan: Crossing Aesthetics), translated from the Italian by Adam Kotsko (Stanford, CA: Stanford U. Press, 2011).
Giorgio Agamben, The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government: Homo Sacer II, 4 (Meridan: Crossing Aesthetics), translated from the Italian by Lorenzo Chiesa with Matteo Mandarini (Stanford, CA: Stanford U. Press, 2011).
Giorgio Agamben, Opus Dei: An Archaeology of Duty: Homo Sacer II, 5 (Meridan: Crossing Aesthetics), translated from the Italian by Adam Kotsko (Stanford, CA: Stanford U. Press, 2013).
Giorgio Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive: Homo Sacer, III, translated from the Italian by Daniel Heller-Roazen (Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books, 2002).
Giorgio Agamben, The Highest Poverty: Monastic Rules and Form-of-Life: Homo Sacer IV, 1 (Meridan: Crossing Aesthetics), translated from the Italian by Adam Kotsko (Stanford, CA: Stanford U. Press, 2013).
Giorgio Agamben, The Use of Bodies (Homo Sacer IV, 2) (Meridan: Crossing Aesthetics), translated from the Italian by Adam Kotsko (Stanford, CA: Stanford U. Press, 2015).
Giorgio Agamben, Profanations, translated from the Italian by Jeff Fort (Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books, 2015).
Giorgio Agamben, The Use Mystery of Evil: Benedict XVI and the End of Days (Meridan: Crossing Aesthetics), translated from the Italian by Adam Kotsko (Stanford, CA: Stanford U. Press, 2017).
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