I'm Baaaaack!

Time to jump-start this blog, I think. My goal will be to put something out here every week. Often it may just be the standard W3dnesday or 3fer-Thursday book reviews, but they count, after all, and I can almost guarantee an occasional bit o’ different every now and again.

Sorry to have been gone so long, Readers Mine, but I’m back now.

Violence: My reading has taken be down some darkly fascinating roads lately. Most recently, with Warren Hammond’s novels KOP and Ex-KOP. Reviews on Amazon tend to refer to them as “SF-noir,” but I think I’d class them more as “Mike Hammer on a Crappy Planet.” The main character, Juno Mozambe, is an aging, alcoholic enforcer for a corrupt police organization on a planet several light-years from Earth. Definitely some Hammer meets the Continental Op, with plenty of sultry brunettes, staggeringly brutal character backgrounds, and a city that seems to be the bastard child of Calcutta, Singapore, Bangkok, and Mexico City. Crime, violence, and murder ensue, with Juno’s anti-heroic moral code determining what gets investigated. Over all, it's not a bad series so far, but nothing really jumps out, either. Hammond does a remarkable job of portraying active alcoholism, but I began to wonder more than once how in the Nine Hells Juno remained standing. These novels go on the hard-boiled brain candy shelf. Interesting and entertaining, but not a series I need to follow devoutly.

In the world of non-fiction, however, I picked up something special. Richard Rhodes has written several books, using his skills as an investigative journalist to provide detailed and compelling works on a variety of subjects. Not too long ago I wrote here about Masters of Death, Rhode’s unflinching look at the operations of the Nazi SS Einsatzgruppen in Eastern Europe during the early years of World War Two. An excellent treatment of a horrific subject, the book also brought to my attention the work of sociologist Lonnie Athens, who has used case-study methodology to investigate just what, exactly, makes violent people violent. Athens’ subsequent theory of violentization as a process of socialization was applied by Rhodes to try and reveal how the members of the Einsatzgruppen could perpetrate such brutal, malefic violence so callously, carelessly, and regularly. I’ve read more than a few books on the Holocaust, not to mention the other attempted genocides, mass murders, pogroms, ethnic-cleansings, etc that stain human history like rotting blood, and I have never run across any explanation for the behavior of the perpetrators that rings so true, or that is applicable in every case throughout history, as Lonnie Athens’.

So I picked up Rhodes’ Why They Kill: the Discoveries of a Maverick Criminologist which details the life and work of Lonnie Athens, and applies his theories to a number of high-profile violent criminals, historical periods, and even shows it at work in the training of military and police forces. In brief, Athens proposes that individuals are socialized to violence, just as we are to any other behavior, that this violent socialization, or violentization, occurs in identifiable stages in specific sequence, and that the process is observable in every violent person. Athens’ work focused on scores of case studies of violent criminals through hours of personal interviews which Athens collected and analyzed over a period of years. The interviewees were convicted criminals serving time, and Athens’ was able to use careful study of their criminal records to cross-check their stories for accuracy. His discoveries included that violence was not a product of “passion” or temporary lapses of reason brought on by great stress, but a definite, conscious choice on the part of the actor. An individual’s readiness and willingness to use violence depended upon the level of violentization experienced, which process served to alter the way in which a person interprets a situation. In other words, a non-violent person might interpret a friend’s joke about his developing gut as good-natured ribbing that perhaps arose out of a genuine concern for him. A fully violentized person might interpret the same comment as a suggestion of weakness, softness, and conclude that the person making the comment was considering attacking him, or was disrespecting him, interpretations that would lead to violence in order to demonstrate the actors continued strength and to keep the speaker in his place.

The above is just a brief taste of Athens’ work, and some of his most significant work transcends criminology, to provide truly great insight into the psychological sociology of human beings. Athens clarifies Mead’s tentative idea of a “generalized other” into a far more concrete concept of “phantom communities,” the people in our lives who’s voices, outlook, and attitudes we internalize into our own decision making process. Ever seem to clearly hear your mom’s voice in your head when you’re thinking about doing something she’d disapprove of, even though she’s nowhere around? That’s a part of your phantom community talking to you. In later work, Athens examines dramatic self-change, and the presents the idea of the self as soliloquy, affirming that we are indeed, in large part, the stories we tell ourselves. Rhodes provides a truly fascinating, readable account of Athens’ development of these ideas, as well as the struggle he has faces professionally to have his work taken seriously, an area in which he has had far more success with professionals in law enforcement than with academics. Rhode’s applications of Athens’ theories to criminals and history are enlightening and bear out his work. Emotionally, it’s not an easy read, and I found myself reaching for some brain-candy about ¾ of the way through, just to take a break from the darker side of good ol’ homo sap’, but I honestly think it’s an important read. In fact, Athens’ The Creation of Dangerous Violent Criminals, the scholarly work where he presents his theory of violentization, is now on my to-be-read-pile. Lonnie Athens opened a new window on human behavior for me. How often does that happen?

What’s next? Well, with several exams looming next week, I’ve returned to H. Rider Haggard and The Treasure of the Lake to follow Allan Quatermain and his wise-cracking Hottentot servant Hans on another adventure into lost African worlds. Brain candy, to be sure, but really, really rich and yummy brain candy. The same way Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories are brain candy. I am constantly amazed at how much more intelligent late 19^th/early 20^th century adventure/young adult literature is compared to its modern descendants. After that, I may delve back into Athens with The Creation of Dangerous Violent Criminals, or go in an entirely different direction with Jeanine Basinger’s The World War II Combat Film: Anatomy of a Genre, as a continuation of my education in media studies. Also in the pipeline are more essays by David Lavery, and Owen Barfield’s Saving the Appearances.

After all, it’s good to let the mind romp about a bit, I think.

Exsisto Me Minerva!

For most of my life, a large Audubon Society-style print of a great horned owl has hung at the head of my bed. In fact it guards the bed in Mom’s guestroom today. The piece is massive, the frame extending a good foot and a half beyond the edges of the print itself, which is not exactly small, either. The entire thing literally takes up most of a wall. I have no idea where it came from, or why it wound up on my wall. No doubt it struck my fancy as a kid, but if so, this occurred in the time of my life before memory. The owl has always been there, alert, watching, guarding me as I slept and greeting me as I woke.

So.

A few years ago it became necessary for me to reacquaint myself with God. Now, don’t go scurrying off into the hills just yet, Readers Mine, I haven’t gone and got Religion, just a relationship with a higher power, if you will. This was not a process of discovery, but rather one of restoration. God and I had known one another before, but I’d done my best to walk away from the relationship over the years. Early on my personal theology had been heavily influenced by the writings of Joseph Campbell, particularly the idea of “masks of the Divine.” Simply put, there is one divine source (call it what you will), but we humans, with our little pea-brains, simply cannot comprehend Its totality. By definition, God is well beyond any human’s ability to understand It. Therefore, we approach God -- and It us – indirectly and incompletely through symbolism of one kind or another, with God revealing Itself to man in various ways that are accessible given the time, place, and culture.

Think of it as a Tiffany shade surrounding a white light bulb. Viewed from different angles and distances, the light has various colors, but the source of all of the colored light is the same, white bulb. Yahweh, Allah, Jesus, Odin, Shiva, Brahma, Zeus, Ahura Mazda, etc, are all attempts at understanding between humans and the Divine. For one reason or another, at one time or another, they all spoke to us, were recognized as containing some truth, or some part of the Truth (the Tao which can be perceived, after all, is not the true Tao). They are symbols of something larger, facets of Tiffany glass tinting the light.

That’s how I see it, anyway. If you see things differently, good on you. I’ve got no quarrel with you, Atticus.

So, a few years ago, I found myself well away from the Road and in the woods with Dante. We’ll call it a bit of rough going and leave it at that for now. I was beaten and broken, and I would have to be bloody and terrified before I realized that I wasn’t doing so well with this life stuff all by my lonesome, and that maybe it was time to get some help, both human and divine. Being chock full of knee-jerk prejudice which I had carefully tended as a kind of bullshit world-weary-and-wise-cynicism, the traditional religio-spiritual paths of my area of the U.S. weren’t going to work as viable lines of communication between God and me. I wasn’t going to hear anything that used that symbology. Something different was needed.

What came was an owl. An ancient owl stamped into the reverse side of a late 5^th/early 4^th century BC Athenian tetradrachma. It’s a symbol I first ran across in a novel by Neal Stephenson called Cryptonomicon, and which I later found out is also used as the signet for the curator of the Smithsonian Museum. In any event, it appealed to me strongly. The owl is traditionally a symbol of wisdom, and I really needed some of that. So I ordered a replica of the coin and put it on a chain around my neck where it dangles to this day.

Now there are two sides to a coin, and the obverse of this one had a profile of the goddess Athena, patroness and namesake of Athens, of course, but also, the entity to whom the owl of wisdom belonged. The owl is one of Her symbols. Another is the olive branch, representing peace and prosperity. Of course She is usually depicted with an Attic helm, and often with a spear held confidently, symbolizing her role as Goddess of War. Not the bloodlusting savagery of Ares, though, but the arts of tactics and strategy, Odysseus rather than Achilles. Here was strength combined with wisdom. More of what I desperately needed. And let us not forget the Aegis, at times depicted as a gorgon-faced shield or cuirass, and providing impenetrable protection. Oh that sounded good! Finally, Athena is also the goddess of crafts, for which you should think “technology”. Considering that my life had been saved by a combination of medical knowledge, skill, and high-tech, and that I believe in technology’s potential for our little species, that was perfect.

One could do worse than to call out to God and have It appear as a Warrior Goddess.

So Athena (Minerva in the Etruscan-Roman traditions), became my Patron, and my primary symbolic route to a relationship with God. Over time, my ability to accept and hear the wisdom in other symbologies has slowly grown, and hopefully will continue to do so, but Athena remains my guide and comfort. Imagine my surprised joy then when I walked onto the campus of the University I began attending this fall and in wandering about came across a quiet little place with a swing-set and trees and benches surrounding a granite plinth atop which rises a two meter bronze statue of Minerva in the classical style, Attic helmet tipped back atop Her head, reaching out as if to bestow wisdom on any who are willing to have it. I stopped dead, smiled and raised my right hand to my lips. Kissed it.

That is how one salutes the Goddess, after all. And She deserves such salutes for all of those years that Her owl spent on silent guard over an unwitting, unwilling soul.

3-fer Thursday

I know it’s late (again), Reader’s Mine, but here’s this week’s bookish post.

Wars and Aristos: It’s been a busy weak, reading-wise. I finished up Masters of Death by Richard Rhodes. As I wrote last week, the subject matter (the mass murder of the Jewish populations in Eastern Europe by special SS “task groups” in the early years of World War II) makes this book a difficult read, but an important one. Rhodes does a good job with a difficult subject, and his history is rigorously researched, detailed, moving, and horrifying. Which is why I decided not to read it in bed at night right before going to sleep, since, after all, I wanted to sleep.

So I picked up a beautiful Everyman’s Library edition of Mikhail Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time, translated by Vladimir and Dimitri Nabokov. Yes, that Nabokov. Who’s brief introduction illuminates the text brilliantly, as well as revealing Nabokov’s view on the duty of a translator to render the original language as exactly as possible even and especially when the language as used does not conform to “proper” usage. The work itself is wonderful, and riveting. Lermontov draws the reader progressively deeper into the psyche of his “hero” Pechorin, who is a thoroughly unlikable, manipulative, chauvinistic, and aristocratic ass, and while showing us the truth of these character traits, nonetheless somehow makes us like the guy anyway, and even root for him. Just lovely and (according to Nabokov) this is accomplished in the original with rather unpolished, rough Russian. Lermontov reads like a light novel, but what he does earns him a place among the greats, revealing with each chapter another layer of Pechorin, and as we come closer and closer to knowing this character as well as we can know any person, and in addition come to like him, despite of -- in fact because of -- his faults, the reader is forced to wonder if, perhaps, the same might not be true for all people, if we could but know them as well. Good stuff.

Last, but by no means least, I did something unusual for me by picking up a fantasy novel. More, it’s the first novel in yet another frakkin’ series, and one that has only just begun to come out. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a good fantasy tale, but it is here more than perhaps any other genre that I get really picky. Tolkien not only plowed this particular field, but he also, sowed, watered, weeded, and reaped the crops. Thoroughly. Most fantasy, particularly series fantasy, boils down to Tolkien redux, only far less skillfully done. There are exceptions, however, and I have come to realize that my taste in the genre runs to what I am calling hard fantasy, where (odd as it may sound) there’s a solid vein of realism running through the narrative. Where the hero’s marriage can fall apart, where life is hard and generally unfair. Where bad guys often win, war is blood and shit and horror, and people who make their place in the world with weapons are violent people, for good or ill. Richard K. Morgan’s The Steel Remains suits my preferences to a tee. Morgan has long been one of my favorite contemporary novelists, having brought hard boiled and gritty back to SF in a big way with books like Altered Carbon, Broken Angels, and Market Forces. The Steel Remains is his first venture into the fantasy genre, but he does not disappoint, giving us a homosexual protagonist who revels in violence despite a marrow-deep war weariness and a world that is as chaotic, confused, compromised, and real as our own. Plus, unlike so many authors who launch a series, Morgan actually gives us something more than the usual build up to a cliff-hanger ending, wrapping up a plotline in blood and still leaving plenty of room and desire for more. Morgan is not for everybody, but I think this is some of the most original fantasy writing out there. Great stuff.

Along with Colonel Jackson: Currently I’ve started Union 1812 by A. J. Langguth, a highly-touted history of the War of 1812 and the events leading up to it. I just read the first few pages this afternoon, so it’s too early to give any sort of informed opinion, so I’ll save it for next week.

Next: There are always… possibilities. I’m off to the beach for a glorious two weeks of delayed honeymooning at the end of the month, and I’m really trying to save the rest of Haggard’s The Treasury of Allan Quatermain Vol. II for the beach. The fiction pile is getting pretty small, though, so I’ve joined the Science Fiction Book Club, and there is a shipment of books coming my way soon. As always, I’ll keep you posted.

W3dnesday

By now, Readers Mine, you know the drill: today is all about books. What I’ve been reading, what I’m reading now, and what I’ll read next.

Genre-ally Speaking: I finally finished The Television Genre Book, edited by Glen Creeber. I have to admit this was not the most gripping read, but it was an excellent introduction to the use of genre theory in the critical analysis of television. As I read, however, I became more and more convinced that genre theory today has limited applications. Modern television often thoroughly mixes genres (generic hybridization in academese) to the point where attempting to analyze a show on the basis of genre is fruitless. For example, was The X-Files horror, science fiction, fantasy, soap opera, cop show, or character drama? Well, yes. Containing elements of all of these genres and more, The X-Files defies generic analysis and classification. This is not to say that genre theory is irrelevant. As Stacey Abbott points out in Angel, television shows can often push the generic envelope, particularly when it comes to network censorship by a kind of Trojan horse technique, as when the results of physical violence are graphically depicted in the police procedural CSI, or body penetration horror in the loosely noir-detective framework of Angel. Still I doubt I’d be able to philosophize along these lines without having read Creeber’s book, so it’s worth a look.

Historical Horrors: Currently, I’m not quite half-way through Masters of Death by Richard Rhodes. Masters of Death details the history of the Nazi SS-Einsatzgruppen, or “special task groups,” on the Eastern/Russian Front during World War II, and the emergence of the Holocaust. The Einsatzgruppen followed the German Army east after the invasions of Poland and the USSR. At first used to “decapitate” the political leadership of conquered territories as well as elements that might serve as rallying points for resistance to the Nazis, the groups quickly became the vehicles for the execution of the Jews by mass shootings. These are the creators of the hundreds of mass graves and burial pits throughout Eastern Europe, for atrocities such as Babi Yar, and for the development of the truly industrial means of mass murder eventually used at places like Auschwitz.

This is an excellent history, but a hard one. Rhodes details the psychology and methodology of both the highest and the lowest, from Hitler and Himmler to the rank and file. It is brutal stuff, men women and children shot to death by the tens of thousands day after day. Entire villages wiped out in a morning, and children tossed into the air before being shot lest the bullets, passing completely through their little bodies should cause dangerous ricochets. The book overwhelms the reader, and I think I’m going to start something very light and fun to read before bed, relegating Rhodes excellent work to hours long before sleep. As difficult as such histories are to read, though, they are of vital importance. We cannot turn away from the darker places in our past, lest we create a sanitized version of history that allows or even encourages us to forget the people who didn’t have to worry about reading the history because they died trying to live through it.

Next Up: Lord God, something light! Some more Jack Williamson, maybe, or H. Rider Haggard, even Lermontov, but definitely fiction, and hopefully with a nice, happy ending.

Godfather

Recently some close friends asked me to become Godfather to their daughter. Take-the-cannoli jokes aside, I was touched to be asked, and really quite honored, and so I agreed. Then, Readers Mine, I realized that I really didn’t know what a Godparent was supposed to do. I mean, none of us are Catholic, so the traditional role of someone who sponsors a child at baptism and oversees the kid’s growth in the Church doesn’t apply. Not to mention that Ramona (a pseudonym based upon an uncanny resemblance to the Beverly Cleary character) was baptized several years ago anyway. Then there is the fact that, while Ramona’s parents and Mockingbird are all at least semi-regular churchgoers, I only tend to show up on the highest holidays, and then only if and when Mock’ asks me to. So as a religious guide I’m less than ideal, though I have some experience with undertaking a spiritual journey. Still, it leaves me wondering: what’s the deal with being a Godparent in the modern age?

Well, after some quick and dirty internet research, I found an article on AskMen.com by Steven Shaw that defines the basic responsibilities of a good godfather as follows:

“It is absolutely essential that you be a positive role model to the child. This means ensuring that you display all the positive characteristics that the child should develop. This ranges from basic things such as having excellent manners and high standards of behavior to things such as good personal grooming, being health-conscious and fit. It also means that you should not smoke or swear in front of the child, nor should you drink to excess. Being a positive role model also means having great self-esteem -- if a child looks up to someone with good self-esteem, it is more likely that he will also grow up with good self-esteem and will benefit from all its advantages, both socially and professionally.”

Me. A role model.

Readers mine, I tell you true: a few years ago, the very idea of me as a role model would have been ludicrous. The idea that doing the hard work that it takes to be a good man is truly a worthwhile endeavor is a fairly new one in my life. That I might have something to teach or pass on to a kid strikes me as unlikely, but it’s flattering as hell. Maybe I’m looking at it more deeply that I need to, but I’m unlikely to have a child of my own and if I’m going to be a Godfather, I probably ought to take the responsibility seriously. Which means more soccer games (yay!) and dance recitals (ugh) in my future, and more work, and getting to watch a beautiful, intelligent little girl grow up, with, potentially anyway, a chance to help her out now and again. Not to mention the opportunity to spend lots more time thinking of Ramona rather than myself.

Which brings us back to that spiritual journey I was talking about, doesn’t it?

Good deal, this Godfather gig.

W3dnesday

This week Readers Mine, W3 Wednesday is going to be pretty simple as I’m just going to focus on one book, Jean Edward Smith’s absolutely brilliant Grant. U.S. Grant has long been a hero of mine, and is one of those historical characters that continually fascinates. He has also been one of the primary targets of the so-called “Lost Cause” (or, as Smith unflinchingly labels it: "white supremacist") school of American historiography, which has resulted in a shift in his reputation from being the most famous and respected man in America to being largely regarded as a drunken incompetent. Only within the last 40 years, as the “Lost Cause” has been wholly discredited, have modern historians begun to seriously reexamine Grant’s life and, in the process, challenge the prevalent negative view of the man and his career as soldier and president.

Smith’s Grant is a powerful entry in this revisionist movement. Meticulously researched and annotated, written in an easily accessible, readable, and entertaining style, Grant is arguably the most complete biography of this complex man ever written. Though he admits to having a positive view of Grant, Smith’s lens is absolutely clear, and he unhesitatingly details the aspects of Grant’s life and personality that are less than flattering. Instead of using Grant’s defects of character as a means of demonizing or maligning him, or even as points requiring apologia, however, Smith reveals them to be what such failings usually are: part of the human condition in a man who was much greater than the sum of his parts.

Most fascinating for me was Smith’s careful attention to Grant’s two terms as president, a period that is often curiously neglected by historians and biographers alike. Traditional wisdom paints Grant as one of the most incompetent chief executives in US history, but the facts show something quite different. President Grant emerges as a man determined to insure the execution of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments throughout the United States, and to protect the rights of freedmen under the law, particularly in the postbellum south, long after the American public at large had lost interest in ensuring the civil rights of African Americans. Grant also enacted fundamental reforms in the government’s policy towards Native Americans preferring peace (albeit on American terms) to what he knew could easily become a war of extermination. During the economic crisis of 1873, Grant vetoed a bill to inflate the dollar by pumping unredeemable paper currency into circulation, and enacted legislation to return to a policy of specie-backed currency. His administrations were also responsible for the ground-breaking Washington Treaty between the US and Great Britain, breaking the Whiskey and Gold Rings, and the first survey of the Panama isthmus with the object of digging a canal. Far from being a political nonentity controlled by his cabinet, Grant was instead a deeply involved and tremendously active and effective president, and one who was unafraid to take full and final responsibility for his policies.

With Grant, Smith has written what I believe to be the seminal work to date on U.S. Grant, and done so in a superbly readable style. It is history that reads like a great novel: gripping, intense, and utterly, wonderfully human. Perhaps it is this that sets Smith’s work apart, for Grant is a truly humanistic book which brings its subject to vivid life, and gives the reader a real sense of who he was, not just as a soldier, general, president, and writer, but as a man. Wonderful, wonderful book. Buy it.

3-fer Thursday (On Friday)

The Questions:

What have I been reading lately?

What am I reading now?

What will I read next?

The Answers:

Saberhagen Redux: This past weekend I tore through Jack Williamson’s Lifeburst, a good, old-fashioned space tale. Williamson was, literally, a Grand Master of SF, publishing his first story in 1928, and his last novel in 2005. Prolific and versatile, Williamson’s body of work traces the evolution of modern science fiction. He has been one of my favorite SF writers for many years. That having been said, Lifeburst was just fair. The antagonist, a “Seeker” is a member of a biomechanical race designed as weapons in some forgotten war long ago, immediately bringing to mind Fred Saberhagen’s Berserkers, and frankly, Saberhagen does it better. Williamson’s story is an almost archetypal SF bildungsroman centered on a highly capable and resourceful young man, and Williamson carries it off as if he’s done it a hundred times before. Which he has, and often with far more skill. Still, I took this one off the pile because I wanted a fun read, and it was definitely that, and comforting in its familiar progression. Even Grand Masters have to pay the rent, Readers Mine.

Unconditional Surrender: Sunday night I finally picked up Jean Edward Smith’s Grant, and now I’m thoroughly sucked in. This is a great biography, and a great book. The research is meticulous, the scholarship of the highest caliber, and it grips the reader like the best of novels. I’ve read many biographies of US Grant, and none have been as well done as Smith’s. I’m only a couple of hundred pages into the book, so I don’t want to rave too much, lest it fall apart and disappoint, but I think this is that rare perfect diamond of a biography which will become a seminal work on the life of Grant. More on Smith’s Grant later, but this one’s worth buying. In hardcover.

I’m also still working on The Television Genre Book, edited by Glen Creeber. I’m happy to report that, after the introductory chapter, the book has become far more readable. It still drags at times, and occasionally sinks into the impenetrable mire of academese, but overall it’s proving to be a handy introduction into the field of TV genre studies. Of necessity, the generic categories used are very broad and general, and seem to me to be a bit out of date. Then again most of my TV watching life has been during a period of increasing generic hybridity (I can do academese too, by the way). In other words, I grew up watching shows that tended to mix and match different genres, making easy pigeonholing of the shows as “cop show” or “science fiction” or “horror” very difficult. Most interesting thus far are the bits I’m learning on the history of generic development as TV broadcasting evolved in response to new technologies, economic realities, and social changes. Still, this one’s definitely an I’m-reading-this-because-it’s-good-for-me/I-need-the-information-in-it book.

What’s Next? Soon, it’s honeymoon time, Readers Mine, two weeks at the beach with very little to do but walk, read, eat, love, and live, so I would venture to say that Allan Quatermain may come back on the scene, or maybe even Mikhail Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time, which has been on the pile for a few months now. So many books, so little time…. YEA!!