There were raised eyebrows here when I reported that my summer reading was Notes on a Century: Reflections of a Middle East Historian by Bernard Lewis. Chuckle as you did at such esoterica, but now the full story of my summer reading has been told: CWL: Between Two Empires: The Curious Case of Bernard Lewis.
Following Tom Blackburn's advice I also read Nicholas Nickleby--what a circus!!
I didn't know Lewis had been in MI6. He would have been in his 20s then. Like everybody else I read "Islam and the West" when we all had to get up to speed for Iraq War I. Then a foreign correspondent told me to no, read Edward Said; he knows. And I found out Said and Lewis disagreed at scholarly altitudes that gave me a headache. It is always dangerous when people who know things get close to people who have power because power is a courtesan and brainwork is a laundress. Good review. Much better reading that what Said said about Lewis, and vice versa. Now I know more than I did.
ReplyDeleteI've just taken up "Caliphate" by Hugh Kennedy, which sets out to tell us just what the caliphs were and what the caliphate was that ISIS thinks it can recreate. More hard names than a Russian novel. Here are three straight caliphs: Muhtadi, Mu'tamid and Mu'tadid. Try keeping them apart.
There was and still is, per Kennedy, no agreement on whether the Caliphs spoke for God, for the Prophet, for the Koran or for themselves. Kennedy implies there never has been anything like the caliphate, but it begins to look an awful lot like the Vatican back when the popes had an army, except that the early popes were smart enough to settle that they spoke for God before the poets started writing about them.
Glad you enjoyed the Infant Phenomenon. I reread Barnaby Rudge this year -- what a riot!
And Mrs. Nickleby! Diversionary conversationalist.
DeleteRe: Lewis and Said: The bookstore where I bought Lewis has probably never had to remainder Said, who no doubt remains a favorite at Columbia up the street a few blocks and where he taught.
MI6: all the recent reviews of John Le Carre bask in the idea once a member, always a member. Like the OSS-CIA??
DeleteI regret to say that my summer reading didn't include such erudite works as those of Bernard Lewis or Charles Dickens. The last book I read was "Bring Her Back" by David Bell. I had previously read some of Bell's books, such as "Cemetery Girl", which I liked. But with this latest one I have decided that I am done, as in finished, with him. When all of someone's books have the same plot (missing teenage girl) with the same characters (messed up single dad with a long-suffering female family member) they need to break out of the mold, or hang it up. Formula writing isn't always bad, but cookie cutters are for gingerbread.
ReplyDeleteThe next book I plan to read is "Sacred Wilderness" by Susan Power. I loved her last book, "The Grass Dancer", which was written nearly 20 years ago. She isn't a prolific writer; her themes are Native American, past and present.
I was shanghai'd into teaching Young Adult Lit at the last minute and spent the latter part of my summer madly charging through the 12 required novels and feeling awash in teen angst. Not that some of the books weren't interesting.
ReplyDeleteCan you give us a list of what teens are angst over?
DeleteWhen I taught at Ball State in the seventies, the second course after introductory psychology was an applied course on fear and anxiety.
DeleteThe day section was the unusual undergraduates and their anxieties about lovers, friends, and exams. The evening section of adults had experienced war, major operations, near death experiences, divorces, etc. Two different worlds.
Interesting contrast, Jack.
DeleteTeen angst:
ReplyDeleteLove
Fitting in
Getting raped/bullied
Struggling with sexual identity
Struggling with ethnic identity, especially for mixed race students.
Major theme, however, across all our novels, is family dysfunction: divorce, parental adultery, step parents, parental addiction, and worry over siblings.
I find these themes really hit a nerve with the students, and I have to let them spend 20 minutes "relating" whenever we start discussion on a new book. If I don't, it's impossible to drag them back to the more literary aspects of the text.
Today they asked what I worried about in high school. I said my friends' draft lottery numbers. That was a conversation stopper.
I think they thought I couldn't remember that far back.
The Vietnam documentary came up at break today at work. There were two guys under 30 sitting at our table. To them it was like talking about WWI would be for us. We haven't been watching the documentary. Maybe later.
DeleteI thought it was very weird that Barry Sadler's "Ballad of the Green Beret" was not part of the doc sound track. Big hit in 1966. We had a Christmas party in our school cafeteria, and that was the only song we were allowed to play.
DeleteAlso weird that it didn't touch on the portrayal of Vietnam vets in movies through the 1980s as buffoons (Bill Murray in "Caddy Shack") or nut cases (Robert DeNiro in "Taxi Driver" or pretty much anybody in "Apocalypse Now" and "Full Metal Jacket"). Vets were often really angered by that.
The VA is still stonewalling efforts to put some cancers on the presumptive list for Agent Orange and napalm. Rates of the same family of cancers that I have are inordinately high among Vietnam era vets. Watching this closely, since I grew up near the chemical plants in Midland, Michigan, where Dow manufactured those defoliants (and God knows what else).
Vietnam's news service reports it has among the highest rates of cancer in the world. http://tuoitrenews.vn/society/8725/death-rate-in-vn-cancer-patients-among-worlds-highest
Better living through chemistry!
Yeah, they laughed when Barry Goldwater hollered, "Defoliate." Turned out, when LBJ tried it, that it wasn't funny.
DeleteDid they know what it was a draft lottery for?
ReplyDeleteYes, they did. They're all watching that Vietnam documentary like everybody else. A lot of the students in the class a double majors in English and history.
Delete#138. At the time, I opposed the war as something that obviously wasn't working and had no chance of attaining its goals. It was not worth the cost to the country in lives and dollars, and was definitely not worth the moral cost in slaughter of the Vietnamese. I felt no fellowship with most protestors. I felt that many would lose their passion if the draft were ended or their personal risk were gone. Looking back on it, what would a backward country hobbled by totalitarianism
ReplyDeleteadd to the threat from the CCCP and Mao's China? It was US capitalists that built China into a real rival. And they and now Russia are still fully totalitarian, just a different flavor. Democracy's not doing too well here, either.
My husband and his brother bet each other a case of beer who would have the higher number. His was #13, his brother was 17. They figured they both lost, split the case of beer. And drowned their sorrows.
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