Beautiful Horizons

Robert Sklar

I was stunned to hear of the news of Robert Sklar's death, especially, given the circumstances: a bicycle accident in Barcelona.

I had read his seminal work, Movie Made America years before I had the pleasure of meeting him when I worked for Films, Inc. a distributor of feature films in 16mm format for showings in non-theatrical settings. Not only was he one of my customers, but I arranged several screenings of some of the more obscure Bogart, Cagney and, in particular, John Garfield films (we had an extensive collection of RKO titles) for his book, City Boys: Cagney, Bogart, Garfield, for which he was gracious enough to give me an acknowledgment when the book was published several years later.

He was one of the primary figures to establish the link between studies of popular culture and social history.

Another role for which he was less well known was as one of the founders of Rotisserie League Baseball, i.e. fantasy league baseball.

Rest in peace, Bob.

I'm really getting tired of writing obituaries . . .

The Baader Meinhof Complex

When I lived in Germany in the 1970's, the Baader Meinhof Gang aka the Red Army Faction (RAF), were the Al Qaeda of that decade. A group of leftist middle class terrorists, they targeted media, especially the Axel Springer Group, publisher of the wretched Bild Zeitung, US military sites in Germany, including Campbell Barracks in Heidelberg, resulting in the death of three, and numerous bank robberies to finance their activities, one of which took place in Kaiserslautern about nine months before I moved there.

I recently got the BluRay disc of The Baader Meinhof Complex, a film that was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film in 2008 and cannot recommend it enough. It faithfully captures the era, but it is also an excellent character study of the main protagonists: Andreas Baader, the leader was captured effectively in all his rage, sexism and bombast, Gudrun Ensslin, Baader's girlfriend and a fiercely dogmatic and subtly cruel "revolutionary" and Ulrike Meinhof, the journalist turned terrorist, willing to wreck her daughter's lives in the name of "revolution." The two scenes that resonated with me deeply were the blatant culture clash at the Fedayeen training camp in Jordan and the moment when Ulrike Meinhof has the opportunity to say no to terrorism and, by jumping out a window, says yes.

I am also reading the book on which the film is based, Baader-Meinhof: The Inside Story of the R.A.F., by Stefan Aust. While the book is gripping, it appears to have been translated rather poorly and for a British English reader, using such terms as holdall (a duffel bag in England, I believe) and boot for a car trunk.

Notwithstanding the fact that he and Ulrike Meinhof worked for the same publication at one point and he knew her, he injects precious little of himself in the book. Indeed, it was him along with a former RAF member who rescued Meinhof's daughters from being turned over to a guerrilla training camp in Jordan and reunited them with their father. He did so, I might add, at great personal risk. His account in the preface may be one of the most dry examples of understatement I have ever read:

There was an attempt after that to shoot us in Hamburg, but it failed.

I do believe that I would find it difficult to be quick that casual about it.

Robert B. Parker, RIP

I was saddened to hear of the passing of Robert B. Parker, the author of the Spenser novels, most of which I read in college.

Spenser was a true renaissance man: literate, educated, athletic, brave, witty, enlightened, tolerant, a jazz fan and a great chef. All of the novels were in the first person and Boston and its surroundings became virtually another character.

There's something almost appropriate, if not poetic about hwo he died:

The cause was a heart attack, said his agent of 37 years, Helen Brann. She said that Mr. Parker had been thought to be in splendid health, and that he died at his desk, working on a book. He wrote five pages a day, every day but Sunday, she said.

Rest in peace.

Book Recommendation

In February 2007 while we were staying in Florence, Italy, we took a day trip by bus to Siena [ed. note: A traveler's tip: travel by bus to Siena is better than travel by train. Trust me]. From the highway I noticed something that I was unaware of: The Florence American Cemetery and Memorial. I was, frankly embarrassed by not being aware of the cemetery. My sole relative killed in WWII was a great uncle killed on a submarine.

I was also embarrassed by my lack of knowledge about the military campaign to liberate Italy from the Nazis. I knew some basic place names: Anzio, Monte Cassino, San Pietro and Salerno. I knew a few facts such as the Nazis destroying every bridge across the Arno in Florence except for the Ponte Vecchio; that Rome was left an open city when the Nazis fled. I did not know much of the details including the wholesale and horrid destruction of Naples by the Nazis.

There is no better nor readable book on this subject than The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 by Rick Atkinson. The book is not light reading, but it is comprehensive and, indeed, one can marvel at the amount of detail invested in the book: there are some 135 pages of endnotes.

One of its greatest strengths is the ability to draw the reader into the lives of soldiers of all ranks: hundreds of personal narrative from enlisted men, NCO's, lieutenants through the 5th Army commander, General Mark Clark are interwoven with accounts from the enemy and civilians.

While many of the participans are glorified, you cannot read the book without feeling a sense of the appalling waste of war: the wholesale destruction of the countryside, the tens of thousands of lives destroyed, the horrific human suffering both among the civilian population and the military. One need not deny the necessity of driving the Germans out of Italy by being horrified by the events that took place in order to effect the liberation.

There is no greater human failing than war. As Bill Mauldin witnessed General Lucian Truscott on Memorial Day 1945 at the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery in Nettuno, turn on his back on the living and addressed the dead:

He apologized to the dead men for their presence here. He said everybody tells leaders it is not their fault that men get killed in war, but every leader knows in his heart that this is not altogether true. He said he hoped that anybody here through any mistake of his would forgive him, but he realized that was asking a hell of a lot under the circumstances . . . .He promised that in the future he ran into anybody, especially old men who thought death in battle was glorious, he would straighten them out.

Amen.

One more for the road - Menand on Mailer's courage

I just read an insightful requiem for Norman Mailer by Lewis Menand in the New Yorker, here. What struck me most was Menand's observation on Mailer's willingness (eagerness?) to bring the writer's persona to the table along with the work and why that was fundamentally admirable - courageous even. It's an insight into the production of all literature and journalism that's rarely expressed or expressed so well:

Mailer was simply making apparent something that modern literature and, in particular, modern journalism preferred to disguise, which is that a book is written by a human being, someone with professional ambitions, financial needs, tastes and distastes, and this human being is part of the story whether he or she appears in the story or not. It was not important for readers to like this person; it was important to know him. Mailer did not put the first person into journalism; he took it out of the closet.

This was so even in what is, stylistically, his least Maileresque—and, for many people, most successful—book, “The Executioner’s Song,” about the execution, in Utah, of the murderer Gary Gilmore, in 1977. Half of that book is Gilmore’s story; half is about the unseemly scramble by publishers and television producers to buy the rights to tell it. People made money off Gilmore’s death, and Mailer lets you know that he was one of them.

Mailer liked to think of his books as his children, and, when asked which were his favorites, to name the least critically appreciated—“Ancient Evenings” and “Harlot’s Ghost,” great literary pyramids that no one visits any longer. He did not pretend that those books did not exist. He put himself, with all his talents and imperfections, before his audience. Not many writers have been so brave with themselves. ♦

Belated Congratulations

A belated, but no less heartfelt congratulations to Patrick Nielsen Hayden, editor par excellence, gifted blogger and all-around good guy for winning a Hugo Award as Best Long Form Editor at the 65th Annual World Science Fiction in Yokohama, Japan.

Well-earned and well-deserved, Patrick.

ETA and the Roots of Terrorism

There is no country in Europe that interests me more than Spain. There is no ongoing issue in Spain that frustrates me more than ETA, one hopes the last homegrown terrorist organization in Western Europe.

A Righteous Smackdown

Revenge is a dish best served cold or at least sarcastically as Richard Kluger hands the execrable Richard Brookhiser his head here. My favorite part? This:

It was an honor to be so subtly awakened from my self-deception by Mr. Brookhiser, who has honed his own skills by laboring for 30 years on the staff of National Review, a beacon of insightful commentary as well as fair and balanced judgment. Thanks, too, to your staff for selecting him. As we say out here in Berkeley, that iniquitous den of bluest liberalism, have a nice day.

Ouch!

Tenet Cashes Out...I Mean Tells All !

George "Slam Dunk" Tenet is seeking absolution for his Iraq sins via 60 Minutes, a tell-all tale available on Amazon for $17.99 plus shipping, and the requisite book tour.
Former CIA counter-terrorism operative Larry Johnson says it's too damned little, too damned late, here. Follow the links in Johnson's piece (Give The Medal Back, George) for the full story of "Tenet Agonistes" (There's money to be made when rats desert sinking rats. Too bad Imus is off the air - 'cuz whatever else you might say about him, he could sure as hell sell books for wrong-headed hos like "Slam Dunk.")

A Little Knowledge...

    When it comes to reading, Laura the Librarian's hubby can't win. He gets lampooned for reading ("My Pet Goat" while Manhattan burned), not reading enough (about Iraq, among other things) and for reading pretentiously - 60 books in 30 weeks, if his flaks are to be believed, including Camus' "L'Etranger", presumably in translation.  It appears that he's been  reading again and he's found a book he really, really likes.  Cheney's also been seen carrying it around.

The President recently hosted a literary luncheon with such luminaries as Commentary's Norman Podhoretz, the WSJ's Paul Gigot and National Review's Kate O'Beirne, honoring the  book and author in question - British history buff Andrew Roberts and his "History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900".  If the title sounds familiar it's because Robert's intent is to update Winston Churchill's 4-volume "History of the English-Speaking Peoples" that starts with Ceasar's invasion of the British isles and ends on the eve of World War I.  The new volume ends with an account of the glorious Iraq War and the greatness of George W. Bush. According to Jacob Weisberg's Slate review: The president's prosecution of the war on terror is "vigorous" and "absolutely unwavering." His and Tony Blair's Iraq war has provided "excellent value for money" to the taxpayer. That Bush has brought "full democracy" to Iraq is stated as unequivocal fact.

As I said, the President really, really likes the book. Robert's wife, who accompanied her husband to the White House, observed, "I thought I had a crush on him, but it's nothing like the crush President Bush has on him."

So who is Andrew Roberts and what might be learned from his book?