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| Book review published in ForeWord Reviews |
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Read my book review of "Task Force Patriot and the End of Combat Operations in Iraq" by Pat Proctor
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Friday, September 2, 2011
Who are "Boomerang Kids" and why are their numbers increasing? Read my answer at USARiseUp.com
According to the National Center
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Book Review of "Less Than Human" by David Livingstone Smith
Read my book review of David Livingstone Smith's Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others
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| David Livingstone Smith http://www.realhumannature.com/ |
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
"The Tenth Parallel" by Eliza Griswold - A Book Review
In December 2010, InTheFray Magazine published "Parallel Lives," my book review of The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam. Click here to read my review.
The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam by Eliza Griswold
Hardcover, 336 pages
Publisher: Farrar , Straus and Giroux
Price: $27.00
Published: 2010
Published: 2010
Seven years ago, during a trip to Sudan, award-winning journalist and poet Eliza Griswold started investigating the complicated and longstanding conflict between Christianity and Islam that exists along the Earth's tenth parallel.
Any understanding of this Muslim/Christian divide must begin with a look at the world's religious populations and where these adherents are to be found. As Griswold puts forth:
- 493 million Christians live south of the tenth parallel, which constitutes nearly one fourth of the world's Christian population of 2 billion.
- 367 million Muslims live north of the tenth parallel, which represents almost one fourth of the world's Muslim population of 1.6 billion.
- Four out of five Muslims live outside the
- The
- Annual population growth in
Additionally, the problems of desertification and deforestation (which force mass migration), an ever-more fragile environment, territorial disputes over oil fields and revenues, corrupt governments, and failed states combine -- exacerbating the skirmishes between believer and infidel and prolonging religious persecution.
Griswold writes:
Griswold writes:
So much history and theology had been grafted onto the people of the tenth parallel over the centuries: the dramatic images of clashing civilizations and competing fundamentalisms; the demographics and big-picture analyses of the roles played by oil, weather, war, colonial interest, and clan conviction .... [And that] such people could accommodate conflicting worldly labels (evangelist, nomad, Muslim, and Christian) was a talent of post-colonial life, evidence of adaptation by people who have had different categories foisted on them by outsiders ....
Religious strife where Christian and Muslims meet is real, and grim, but the long history of everyday encounter, of believers of different kinds shouldering all things together, even as they follow different faiths, is no less real. It follows that their lives bear witness to the coexistence of the two religions -- and of the complicated bids for power inside them -- more than to the conflicts between them.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
"Skin Deep" - My Latest Book Review Published by "InTheFray Magazine"
In October 2010, InTheFray Magazine published "Skin Deep," my book review of The Lampshade: A Holocaust Detective Story from Buchenwald to New Orleans. Click here to read my review.
The Lampshade: A Holocaust Detective Story from Buchenwald to New Orleans by Mark Jacobson
Hardcover, 368 pages
Published by: Simon & Schuster
Price: $26
Publication Date: September 2010
When journalist
The Lampshade is a multifarious, indelible, and haunting tale full of silences and unknowns. To tell it—and tell it well—Jacobson delves into world history, American history, autobiography and biography, philosophy, religion, science, and current events, recognizing that the sweep and scope of human history is shaped by the interconnectedness of all things. Jacobson's skillful and excellent portrayal of this fundamental, cosmic relationship ensures, in turn, that The Lampshade serves as a commentary on the universality of humankind.
The sheer ghastliness of The Lampshade often requires a moment or two of reverential pause. Bewilderment looms and sadness sets in. But that is how it should be. Jacobson's formidable rendering of unchecked malevolence penetrates. And in the end, the poignant, abhorrent story of the lampshade heightens consciousness and demands contemplation.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
"InTheFray" Magazine Publishes My Latest Book Review
Mirrors reaches far beyond any traditional-type history book.
Galeano appeared on C-SPAN's BookTV in
"My intention was to write an homage to human diversity without boundaries, without frontiers. [No] frontiers of time or frontiers of the map. No frontiers at all. Freely. It was a mad adventure...
If there is any book in recent time that has strived for and attained an affective and unambiguous accounting of our human history, it is Mirrors.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Excellence Award Bestowed Upon Newfound High School in Bristol, New Hampshire
Newfound Regional High School Honored with Excellence Award
vguay@citizen.com
The secret is out.
With
"Be loud, be proud, because this is just the start of something big," said
He also said that the
"We have tremendous learning going here,"
After the assembly,
"They have worked so hard and put in so many hours to get where they are,"
"They school is doing amazing things with few resources but great community support,"
"I have seen this school evolve into what it is being recognized for today,"
The assembly also marked the school becoming part of the New Hampshire Scholars Program, a program which recognizes students who have taken a more rigorous course of study in high school, which will better prepare them for a four-year college or vocational or technical training after graduation.
During the assembly, 21 students in the senior class who have fulfilled the requirements of the program and will be named New Hampshire Scholars this year.
When the announcement of the award was made,
Jette said the school met and surpassed every criteria for the award, including taking a personal approach to education; fostering a sense of school pride and community culture; being results oriented; having empowered teachers who help their students succeed; and offering extended learning opportunities.
"This is really a student body that has passion for what they do," Jette said.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Red Sox Foundation and Massachusetts General Hospital Present the 2010 Run to Home Base
Have you ever dreamt about running across home plate at Fenway Park as the crowd cheers you on? Want to be a part of an inaugural fundraising event that will help provide much needed services to local veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan?
You can do both in the RUN TO HOME BASE on Sunday, May 23rd. It’s a 9K (5.6 miles) fundraising race to benefit the new Red Sox Foundation Home Base Program, serving servicemen and women returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with traumatic brain injury and/or combat-related stress disorders. Only a limited number of runners can participate and advance registration is required. Please visit http://www.runtohomebase.org/ for details and register now! They served us. Now it’s our turn to serve them. Thank you for your kind consideration and charitable support.
Friday, March 12, 2010
USARiseUp — An Online Magazine about Race and Ethnicity
In February 2010, I wrote the cover story for USARiseUp.com's e-mag. The Chicago Defender: 104 Years of Defying Racial Prejudice is available for download in .PDF format. Click here to read the online version of my article — Chicago Defender: Abbott's Dream of Racial Equality Lives On.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
NBA All-Star Weekend 2010 and "Black Planet: Facing Race During an NBA Season"
The All-Star starting lineup is:
F – Carmelo Anthony, Denver
F – Tim Duncan, San Antonio
C – Amar’e Stoudemire, Phoenix
G – Kobe Bryant, L.A. Lakers
G – Steve Nash, Phoenix
Head Coach: George Karl, Head Coach of the Denver Nuggets
(This is Karl's fourth time as Head Coach of the Western Conference All-Star Team. He led in 1994, 1996, and 1998.)
F – Kevin Garnett, Boston
F – LeBron James, Cleveland
C – Dwight Howard, Orlando
G – Allen Iverson, Philadelphia
G – Dwyane Wade, Miami
Head Coach: Stan Van Gundy, Head Coach of the Orlando Magic
(This is Van Gundy's second time as Head Coach of the Eastern Conference All-Star Team. His first go-around was in 2005.)
In 2000, I published a review of Black Planet: Facing Race During an NBA Season by award-winning author, David Shields. It was celebrated as “One of the Ten Best Books of Nonfiction of 1999” by Esquire, Newsday, LA Weekly, and Amazon.com; and in 2000, it was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism.
Black Planet follows the Seattle SuperSonics' 1994-95 season—incidentally, George Karl was head coach of the 'Sonics at the time— and is structured around Shields's diary entries. During his season-long observation Shields becomes less interested in the "minutiae of [the game's] strategy" and more fixated on the theory that the NBA offers a "photo negative of American race relations." Black Planet is a "risky and brilliant book. . . . It is an emotional journey into Jock Culture's heart of darkness. Shields is willing to write himself naked about the hungers and envies that move across the grandstand like the wave" (Robert Lipsyte, The New York Times).
Black Planet: Facing Race During an NBA Season by David Shields
Hardcover, 223 pages
Published by: Crown Publishers
Price: $23.00
Publication Date: 1999
During the 1994-95 National Basketball Association (NBA) season, journalist/professor David Shields attended nearly all of the Seattle SuperSonics’ home games and watched most away games on television. three years later he collected his “hundreds of pages of often illegible notes” and “transformed” his scribblings into this book— “a daily diary which runs the length of one team’s long-forgotten season and which is now focused to the point of obsession, on how white people (including especially myself) think about and talk about black heroes, black scapegoats, black bodies.”
Black Planet is a blunt, potentially explosive book. It trades in self-conscious, clichéd talk about racism for deeply personal, bold statements about race relations in Seattle, Washington, as well as in the NBA.
In this book/diary Shields, an avid basketball follower, reveals intimate details about his marriage and sex life; his relationship with daughter, Natalie; and his bothersome stutter. He’s also unafraid to admit his awe-stricken regard for Gary Payton, the Sonics’ “language-besotted,” energized point guard.
One of the many underlying tensions of Black Planet is the city of Seattle and its over-the-top adherence to civic responsibility and courtesy. Shields tests Seattleites and their penchant for good behavior just about every day as he does the unthinkable: he jaywalks. Shields shoves this in the faces of his fellow Seattle citizens and waits for the fallout. In Shields’ mind, this act of rebellion complements Payton’s legendary, on-the-court trash-talking. It’s the closest Shields will get to riling up tempers and instigating confrontation. “Gary Payton,” Shields writes, “….allows me to fantasize about being bad.”
In most of his declarations about blacks and whites and their ever-strained, skeptical relations, Shields is dead-on. He writes intelligently beyond easy generalizations. He doesn’t need to conjure up or identify the absurdity of some people’s behavior in certain situations: any racial undertone that takes place speaks for itself and needs no embellishment.
Shields asserts with unabashed clarity that relationships between blacks and whites are less about relating to one another on a personal level to share common aspirations, notions, joys, and anxieties. They’re more about doing a fine dance around one another, avoiding directness and falling into assumptions:
During halftime, a guy plays familiar tunes by bouncing colored plastic balls on an enormous keyboard placed on the floor at center court. In the audience, most white people are applauding mightily; black people sit there, stunned, that this is apparently what white find lyrical.
[Radio commentator and former NBA player] Marques [Johnson] says, “Now that’s rhythm right there.”
Kevin [Calabro, Seattle radio sports commentator] says, “Mozart was doing that at age four.”
Marques: “Stevie Wonder at age three.”
Kevin: “So Mozart was an underachiever, huh?”
Is race racing through Calabro’s mind every time he talks to Johnson, or am I just imagining it? Is race on my brain, and am I screwed up? Or is it on everyone else’s brain, and am I just taking notes? No one ever acknowledges the true subject of our discussions; it can never get expressed directly, it simply can’t be, won’t be, isn’t allowed to be talked about openly, and so it comes out in a thousand indirect inflections.
By season’s end the Sonics are eliminated in the first round of the playoffs against the Los Angeles Lakers by 3 to 1. Shields registers fans’ collective, vicarious disappointment in the out-of-reach players/worthy deities who have been elevated to hero status all season long: “We resent that we need them so badly, that we live through them so completely; we’re embarrassed that we’ve created a religion with such fallible gods.”
And it’s in this type of analysis that Shields demonstrates his great ability to observe. Using the inane conversations between sports talk-radio hosts and the show’s sometimes irate, sometimes flattering callers as well as postings to the Sonics’ electronic bulletin board, Shields exposes and interprets the culture of fans’ hero-worship. At times, what Shields discloses bristles; at others, it amuses.
Black Planet deserves the attention of anyone interested in examining an original viewpoint on race as it relates to the NBA and society at large. While you may not agree with all of Shields conclusions, you will at least acknowledge his effort to identify the workings of racism and to divulge his own tendencies.
Portions of this book review appeared originally in MotherTown in 2000.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
A Look Back on "A Long Way Gone"
Hardcover, 229 pages
Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Price: $22.00
Published: 2007
When Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier was published in February 2007, it jumped straight to the number two position on The New York Times bestseller list. Nearly every national newspaper and popular magazine praised A Long Way Gone for its emotional intensity and unvarnished portrayal of depravity. Beah's harrowing story of being forcibly recruited at age 13 into the Sierra Leone army garnered critical acclaim from accomplished writers like Steve Coll, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for Ghost Wars (2004); Sebastian Junger (A Death in Belmont, 2007; The Perfect Storm, 1997); and Jeannette Walls (The Glass Castle, 2005).
According to Jeff Seroy, a Farrar, Straus & Giroux spokesperson, A Long Way Gone sold close to 700,000 copies in hardcover upon its release. Time placed it on its top ten list of the finest nonfiction books of 2007. It won two awards from the Young Adult Library Services Association: one, an Alex Award, which is given to adult books that have teen appeal; the other, a Best Books for Young Adults prize. The Quills, an awards program that honors the year’s most entertaining and enlightening titles, nominated A Long Way Gone as 2007's best Biography/Memoir and Beah as Debut Author of the Year. A Long Way Gone was published in paperback in August 2008.
And for Beah, 2007 was a year of constant conversation about his war-torn Sierra Leone, the brutal attack on his family that left him orphaned and homeless at age 12, and his role as a boy soldier who killed and tortured rebels from the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) while drugged-up on amphetamines, cocaine, brown brown (a mixture of cocaine and gunpowder) and marijuana. The year also brought about a media blitz. Appearances on television and radio programs worldwide put a face and voice to a story that's as astounding as it is disturbing and catapulted Beah to international recognition. And though this fame was born out of Beah's cataclysmal loss of childhood innocence and the tragedy of his diminished humanity, it has rewarded Beah—and the world at large.
Beah gave the keynote address at the Global Young Leaders Conference in July 2007, and was named United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Advocate for Children Affected by War in November 2007. He is a member of the Human Rights Watch Children’s Rights Division Committee and has spoken at the United Nations about the his experience as a child soldier to raise public awareness of the estimated 300,000 children engaged in warfare throughout the globe. In 2008, he co-founded the Network of Young People Affected by War (NYPAW) with a mission to raise awareness of the plight of children in conflict zones, encourage an end to hostilities, and offer role models for children who are currently striving to recover from war.
As Beah shows in A Long Way Gone becoming a child soldier is not an act of will. It is an act of survival. Children who've had their families murdered or been separated from them after a violent raid of their homes and villages have no where to go, no one to care for them, no guidance, no water or food, no sanctuary from harm. Because these children lack every essential need, joining a military group—whether it's the Sierra Leone army whose purpose is to defend their country and destroy the rebels or the RUF whose motivation is to annihilate the army and all civilians hostile to their cause—provides them protection, a sense of belonging, clothing, an end to their petrifying isolation. The group becomes the children's surrogate family, and the children will do that which is demanded of them to remain within the confines of that security. Methodically, they are conditioned by the groups' commanders to annihilate with impunity—after all, as the children are continually reminded, they're exacting revenge on the enemy who killed their families.
When Beah's village in Mogbwemo was attacked in 1993, he and his brother, Junior, were on a 16-mile walk to Mattru Jong to participate in a talent show. Beah and friends had created a rap and dance group, and Naughty By Nature, Heavy D & The Boyz, LL Cool J, and Run-D.M.C. were their icons. They learned of the attack the next day, but knew nothing of the fate of their parents or brother, Ibrahim. They knew it was too dangerous to return to Mogbwemo, or even to remain in Mattru Jong. Rumors circulated that it was the next village to be attacked. Within weeks, the RUF advanced on Mattru Jong, and Beah, Junior, and four friends fled the assault of machine gun bullets and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs). One of the villagers who was running behind Beah as they escaped into the bush "caught the fragments of [an] RPG. He cried out loudly and screamed that he was blind. No one dared to … help him. He was halted by another grenade that exploded, causing his remains and blood to sprinkle like rain on the nearby leaves and bushes." Terrorized, Beah and friends ran for over an hour to escape Mattru Jong.
They wandered for weeks from one abandoned village to the next barren town, searching for sustenance or the familiar face of a villager who might know the whereabouts of their families. While in the village of Kamator, where the boys spent three months helping farmers plant crops, the rebels launched a nighttime raid. Beah was separated from his friends—and he never saw Junior again.
It's best to read the rest of Beah's riveting story rather than to have any more detail revealed in this column. Beah's memoir is direct and unflinching and deeply personal. To read it is to experience it—and oftentimes, a pause is needed to stomach its depiction of cruelty.
A Long Way Gone brought Ishmael Beah to great heights in 2007. However, 2008 plagued him with controversy. An article titled "Africa's War Child" appeared in The Australian newspaper and reported "a possible key discrepancy in Beah's story," which, if it is true, undermines his chronology of events as a child soldier. The origin of the newspaper's investigation—as conducted by Peter Wilson, the London-based Europe correspondent—was a noble attempt to clarify statements made by a Sierra Leonean who claimed to be Beah's father. However, once the newspaper scrutinized Beah's assertions and suggested that A Long Way Gone misrepresented facts, the proverbial "can of worms" was pried opened—and the child soldier who at one time won a killing exhibition contest by slicing open a prisoner's throat with his bayonet shifted once again into self-protection mode. Beah released a statement addressing the The Australian's accusations in January 2008. You can read it here.
Despite Beah's pointed attempt to legitimize his story and tamp down the claims that he mislead readers, more bad press came his way. The UK's The Sunday Times published an article by Bryan Appleyard in February 2008, which exposed Beah's school documents as reported by Wilson in The Australian and again questioned the veracity of Beah's timeline.
"A clear possibility [for continued inquiry]," Appleyard writes, "is that the sheer success of the book and the celebrity of its author is driving a combination of envy and, in the small world of Sierra Leone, a desire to be part of the story.
"If you go round waving a book in Sierra Leone and asking, 'Who knows this person?' somebody is going to say, 'Of course, that’s my son or could be my brother,' who knows?," Beah explains. "I don’t worry about it. For me, my story is accurate and I presented it accurately and I stand by it. I’m not worried about it.”
Portions of this book review appeared originally in MotherTown in February 2008.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Do You Remember "How the Republicans Stole Christmas" and That "The War on Christmas" Is Underway?
Bill Press is “mad as hell”: con-
servative Christians within the Republican Party have declared a monopoly on religion. John Gibson is convinced there’s a conspiracy among liberals to ban Christmas and, by extension, Christianity itself. There isn’t much upon which these two high-profile commentators agree, and you can see and hear them espousing their brand of politics just about anytime you’d like: Press hosts the radio program The Bill Press Show, is a political analyst on MSNBC, and author of Spin This!: All the Ways We Don’t Tell the Truth (2001); Gibson is host of the FOX Radio program The John Gibson Show and author of Hating America: The New World Sport (2004).
In their Christmas-season commentaries on religion and its place in society and government, it’s no surprise that their views are equally divergent. Take, for example, the manner in which Press and Gibson opine on the country’s divisiveness, using the au courant color-coded system popularized after the 2004 presidential election. Press writes:
As spiritual leader, [conservative Christians] look to President George W. Bush: a man, they believe, God Himself placed in the White House. Displaying a total lack of Christian humility, Bush says he shares their belief.
Faith in God, which used to be the common thread uniting almost all Americans, is now portrayed as the exclusive province of the GOP. Ignoring the fact that [Senator John] Kerry won millions of votes in red states—and Bush, in blue states—the media pundits would have us believe that election 2004 proved that there are two kinds of Americans: red-staters, who worship God, love America, and voted for President Bush; and blue-staters, who worship the devil, hate America, and voted for Senator Kerry. . . . [T]hose who live in red states thrive in the godly, moral values of Jesus. Those who live in the blue states wallow in the filthy, permissive amorality of Hollywood.
Well, I don’t buy any of it—and that’s why I wrote this book.
Gibson writes:
You might assume that [the war on Christmas] is being fought in blue states, bastions of liberalism and multiculturalism, where anything traditional, Christian, or Western is a target. But the war on Christmas is broader than you can imagine. . . . As you will read in [my book], Christmas is under attack in bright red states such as Oklahoma, Georgia, Texas, and Indiana.
. . . The wagers of this war . . . are a cabal of secularists, so-called humanists, trial lawyers, cultural relativists, and liberal, guilt-wracked Christians. . . . These [“backers of the war”] are the churches that marry gays and turn their backs on preborn babies. Their congregants vote for John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, and Barney Frank. . . . These are the people who fly over the masses they seek to dictate to, crisscrossing the country back and forth from Hollywood to New York City, who . . . are certain that the people who voted for George Bush want to install a Christian Taliban as custodians of the levers of power.
Gibson and Press rely on the U.S. Constitution to establish their viewpoints. Gibson, whose book is limited to the celebration of Christmas and whose tone stings with more severity than Press’s, cites regularly the First Amendment, from which the principle of separation of church and state derives. Gibson shows how school superintendents, city managers, and state boards of education misinterpret this Amendment—and indeed, break the law— when they institute bans on Christmas and its expression. Such prohibitions include the use of the colors red and green within a public school district (Chapter 4: “Plano, Texas: A Red and Green-Free Zone”), putting up Christmas trees in municipal buildings (Chapter 5: “Eugene, Oregon: ‘Therefore, We Decided to Ban Them’ “), and use of the word “Christmas” on a school calendar (Chapter 1: “Covington, Georgia: “ ‘We Couldn’t Call It Christmas’ “).
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that these symbols and activities are secular, not religious, and that, as part of the First Amendment they do not violate constitutional law even if they appear or occur in the public arena.
Gibson explains that widespread adherence to political correctness, tolerance and diversity, and avoidance of potentially offensive practices trigger this pervasive “hostility” toward Christianity. And he adds to his aforementioned list of miscreants the American Civil Liberties Union and the Americans for the Separation of Church and State, the “left-wing” institutions that maneuver this battle.
Whether or not you agree that Christmas and Christianity are under siege or find Gibson’s characterization of the war-wagers accurate or hysterical, many insights can be drawn from his book. One in particular is exemplary: “ ‘If a Catholic is offended by a star of David, or a crescent and star, wouldn’t the right corrective be to educate the Catholic and get him out of his dim-wittedness and his bigotry [rather than censor that which offends him]?’ “
In his insightful, smart, and commonsensical book, Bill Press raises “a number of critical questions about the proper intersection between religion and politics.” His focus is broad, and along with the Constitution, he references extensively the Bible—both the Old and New Testaments—to show how conservative Christians preach the Bible but “[ignore] the most important teachings of Jesus, which place love and compassion above greed and intolerance.”
Having a degree in Theology and spending 10 years in the seminary studying for the priesthood, Press’s Bible-talk is authentic; it is not puffed-up rhetoric used to justify his opinions. Press takes the Christian conservatives’ political agenda, which is based on Scripture and the Gospels and which they believe is mandated by God, and breaks it down to illustrate the misconstruing of essential Biblical teachings, the hypocrisy, the false claims that often go unchecked.
Press’s comparing-and-contrasting is impressive, and he doesn’t side-step any of the challenging moral, ethical, and social issues facing our nation. He tackles abortion, the environment, the death penalty, homosexuality, gay marriage, the waging of a “just” war according to traditional Judeo-Christian requirements, stem cell research, education, health care, and poverty—all within a religious and moral context.
Like Gibson, Press has his list of troublemakers. They include Rev. Jerry Falwell (now deceased), Rev. Pat Robertson, a “handful of Catholic bishops,” and James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family. He derides Dobson’s institution, the American Southern Baptist Convention, and the Christian Coalition of America. Press also uses a fair amount of sarcasm in his observations, yet it is not acrid or mean-spirited.
One goal of Press’s book is to generate “an honest discussion . . . about how to arrive at the proper balance between religion and politics.” (Common ground between Gibson and Press?) Another is to inspire Democrats to reclaim the moral high ground, which they’d held for decades― Think of FDR, Press says― but relinquished. They can achieve this, first, by acknowledging that religion does have a place in politics, and second, by “getting comfortable again talking about faith, moral values, and God. Until we do, however, Democrats will remain a minority party.”
Happy Holidays to the readers of “Off the Bookshelf.”
Portions of this book review appeared in MotherTown in December 2005.
Monday, November 2, 2009
The Legacy of Anne Frank: 65 Years of Wonderment and Inspiration
In August 1944, diarist Anne Frank and her seven companions-in-hiding were arrested by the Nazi Gestapo in Amsterdam. Shortly thereafter, most of the group was transferred to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland. With the Soviet liberation of Poland in progress in the fall of 1944, Anne and her sister, Margot, were selected for labor duty because of their youth and sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. Both sisters contracted typhus and died in March 1945. Their deaths occurred only weeks before British troops liberated Bergen-Belsen in April.
For the last 65 years, Anne Frank and The Diary of a Young Girl, her disquieting chronicle of seclusion and human spiritedness published in 1947, have never been absent from the world's consciousness. Whether it is because Anne Frank represents innocence and morality in a time of vicious brutality or because the pages she composed capture the essence of human forbearance, there exists an enduring desire to remember her and a constant endeavor to comprehend the magnitude of her suffering.
To that end, Anne's seminal work was adapted into a play in 1955, with the movie version following in 1959. The book has been translated into dozens of languages, and new scholarly editions of the diary, which critique the craft of Anne's writing and analyze sections omitted from the original publication, are published with some regularity.
Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife by Francine Prose is the most recent contribution to the study of Anne Frank. In her book, Prose posits that "Anne crafted a memoir that has become one of the most compelling documents of modern history.... [With] ever-increasing maturity, she described life in vivid, unforgettable detail, explored apparently irreconcilable views of human nature—people are good at heart but capable of unimaginable evil—and grappled with the unfolding events of World War II, until the hidden attic was raided....
And Prose addresses what few of the diary's millions of readers may know: this book is a "deliberate" work of art. During her last months in hiding, Anne Frank furiously revised and edited her work, crafting a piece of literature that she had hoped would be read by the public after the war.
Read it has been. Few books have been as influential for as long, and Prose thoroughly investigates the diary's unique afterlife: the obstacles and criticism Otto Frank faced in publishing his daughter's words; the controversy surrounding the diary's Broadway and film adaptations; and the claims of conspiracy theorists who have cried fraud, along with the scientific analysis that proved them wrong. Finally, Prose, a teacher herself, considers the rewards and challenges of sharing one of the world's most read, and most banned, books with students.
How has the life and death of one girl become emblematic of the lives and deaths of so many, and why do her words continue to inspire? Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife tells the extraordinary story of the book that became a force in the world. Along the way, Francine Prose definitively establishes that Anne Frank was not an accidental author or a casual teenaged chronicler, but a writer of prodigious talent and ambition." (Courtesy of Brookline Booksmith)
Francine Prose appeared recently on C-SPAN's BookTV to discuss her book. You can watch her presentation by clicking on this link: Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife
While Anne Frank's influence and significance are often evaluated within the genre of nonfiction, her story— as well as the story of those who hid with her— inspired Ellen Feldman to write the speculative The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank (2005). Selected as a New York Times Book Review “Editors’ choice,” Feldman's novel is inventive and uniquely provocative. As the book review columnist for the former publication MotherTown, I reviewed The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank. Here is that review:
In The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank—one of the world’s most widely read books that recounts what daily life was like during the two years the group spent in hiding—Anne relates that she and Peter, to whom she gave the pseudonym Peter van Daan, developed a deep friendship and a romantic attraction for each other. Anne wrote: “I . . . never had someone I could confide in. . . . I’m so lonely and now I’ve found comfort!” And, it was Peter who gave Anne her first kiss.
On August 4, 1944, the Grüne Polizei, (a division of the Security Service) stormed the group’s hiding place and arrested everyone. The men and women were separated—never to see each other again—and transported to concentration camps. Hermann van Pels was gassed at Auschwitz in October 1944. Auguste van Pels died sometime in April 1945, either during the forced march to a military base in Czechoslovakia or shortly after arriving. Fritz Pfeffer died of starvation at Neuengamme in December 1944. Edith Frank died of malnutrition at Auschwitz in January 1945—twenty-one days before the Red Army liberated the camp. Margot died of typhus at Bergen-Belsen in March 1945. Anne, also at Bergen-Belsen, died of the same disease within days of Margot and within weeks of the camp’s liberation on April 15 by British troops. It is not known whether Peter van Pels died during a forced march out of Auschwitz or perished at Mauthausen sometime between April and May 1945. Otto Frank was the sole survivor.
In 1994, author Ellen Feldman (Lucy, 2003) visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. A guide remarked during the tour that there are records that document the fate of all of the inhabitants of the Secret Annexe except for one: Peter van Pels. Feldman’s “imagination was captured” by this mythical possibility: “If this young man did not die with the others, I speculated, what might he have go on to?”
Feldman discovered during the research for this novel that the tour guide was either “misinformed or romantically inclined” and that Peter indeed died; but by the time Feldman made this finding, “Peter van Pels had been living in [her] mind for several years.”
So, Feldman stayed with the premise that Peter survived. The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank is Feldman's marvelous, speculative tale of the life that Peter van Pels may have created for himself after World War II. It is a terrific novel, one that captures our imaginations and forces us to question how much of our memories and our pasts should we allow to define and influence our present. Can we even escape our pasts? And what do they become if we deliberately alter our memories of them? Did they still happen, or have we transformed them from being a part of our reality to being a part of our imagination?
The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank begins in 1952. Peter is the narrator. He has been in the United States for six years, and no one knows anything about his past. He disavows being Jewish. He is 26-years-old; happily married; a father; an American citizen. He is edgy, sarcastic, circumspect, and apprehensive.
We first meet him during a session at his psychiatrist’s office. Peter has lost his voice. Dr. Gabor plies Peter with questions in order to ascertain the cause of this odd state of speechlessness. Peter whispers curt, evasive responses, deflecting Dr. Gabor’s prying for fear that his answers will reveal too much of the Peter van Pels that he once was.
In his mind, though, Peter replays the history and events with which he has had to reckon since leaving Amsterdam and arriving in America. Silently, in his monologue, he tells us of the “spitefulness” of memory: “[M]y existence before [“my current life”] is a mystery. Even when I’m trying to remember it I have difficulty. . . . I know certain facts about my life. I can even put them together in sequence, because that must be the way they occurred. But I have no recollection of when things happened, or where they happened, or even if they happened to me or someone else. I was born six years ago in a customs shed on the Hudson River. I was conceived a year before that on a lightening-charged night in a dung-smelling barn somewhere in Germany. Any previous existence is a rumor I overheard. Instead of memory, I have instincts; in place of a past, I have this inexplicable, ill-gotten, entirely remarkable present.”
Peter also remarks on the mild, “palliative” language used to “keep the unthinkable at bay,” “all-purpose” words spoken by people who know nothing about torment to describe the horrors of a world beyond imagination. He confides that “Home” is one of his favorite English words..
We soon discover the reason for Peter’s lost voice. It has to do with the publication of Anne’s diary and its subsequent adaptations into a play and a movie—both of which misrepresent actual events. The deprivation and brute misery that Peter endured has become the stuff of casual conversation and entertainment. The popularity of the attic-dwellers’ plight is unavoidable—Peter’s own wife is fascinated by the story—and Peter is beset by reminders of his past and tortured by the distortion of facts.
Having his history publicized is a threat that provokes the near-breakdown of Peter’s fabricated world and identity. We become engrossed in Peter’s telling of his desperation; his attempts to keep his two worlds from colliding; his rage at having to confront Anne’s fame, a celebrity status that he finds perverse; his fractured memories of what happened in the attic versus the “pack of lies” that the play and movie maintain.
Should he reveal the truth? he wonders. Would his “cosmic sin” be forgiven? How long can he hide behind the pseudonym Anne gave him? Should he tell his wife? If he does, what could he expect her response to be?: “Would she tell me to stop joking, because this is not a laughing matter? Would she believe me? And if she did, then what? Would she take me to her bosom? Would she shoulder my suffering? Would she slip the silvery key of her love, brightly polished like all the silver in the house, into the lock of my past and twist it?”
Accompanying Peter as he meanders through the muck and anguish of his present and tries not to let the recollections of those harrowing days and nights in hiding consume him is a remarkable journey upon which we gladly embark. Feldman has given us a tremendous character in Peter. He is marked by trauma, but he is not stymied by it. He has seen humanity’s wickedness, yet he believes in, and treasures, love. Feldman imbues Peter van Pels with an authenticity seldom encountered in contemporary historical fiction, and the narrative she has created captivates. The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank is an outstanding success. It is an unforgettable story.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Return to "Caracol Beach": Eliseo Alberto's International Literary Accomplishment
Caracol Beach by Eliseo Alberto, Translated by Edith Grossman
Hardcover, 286 pages
Published by: Alfred A. Knopf
Price: $25
Publication Date: 2000
In the "conservative," "fashionable" resort community of Caracol Beach, Florida, a madman prepares to unleash his fury. Memories of combat and the loss of his cadre of infantrymen torture Beto Milanés, a former Cuban soldier in the Angola war of the `70s and `80s. He wants to put an end to his life, to stop the feelings of guilt which haunt him, but he's unable to bring himself to commit the act. On this strange, random, and important Saturday night Milanés sets out on the prowl, determined to find someone to kill him.
Winner of Spain's distinguished International Alfaguara Prize in Fiction Caracol Beach is a masterful blend of suspense, creativity, intrigue, woe, and magical realism. In his own words Cuban-born Eliseo Alberto describes his novel as a story about "fear, madness, innocence, forgiveness, and death." And he dedicates Caracol Beach to his "dear maestro, Gabriel Garcia Márquez—the writing world's most well known magical realist.
The novel's characters include aging police chief, Sam Ramos; his estranged transvestite son, Mandy; the overeager new police officer, Wellington Perales; the lonely wino gymnastics teacher, Agnes MacLarty; and the three unfortunate high school graduates whom Milanés drags into his night of mayhem: Laura, the cheerleader beauty queen; Martin, the inexperienced studious one; and Tom, the jock.
All are feisty and believable, and Alberto is adept at getting you to feel a certain kind of tenderness for them. That their destinies meet on this one dreadful night is a disturbing acknowledgment of life's chaos and unpredictability.
Even the "madman" Milanés—whose sorrowful history we learn by reading snippets from his "Soldier's Notebook"—cannot be entirely hated. Milanés wanted to be a pitcher on a Havana baseball team, until he broke his elbow. "Damn, I could have been a great pitcher," he says. But now, "I'm crazy."
If memories of war destroy one's soul, if fighting "with suicidal valor under unfavorable circumstances" eliminates peace of mind, can one be blamed for wanting an escape? For Milanés the uncertainty of the memories that he cannot rectify causes the worst turmoil:
"At the beginning of his exile at Caracol Beach, his past ... would appear withou warning: a torrential downpour at dawn ... or the sudden smell of pencil wood, was enoug to ruin the day with the echoes of many questions that had no satisfactory answers because they depended on the possibility of a return that was absolutely forbidden him. The nights turned kaleidoscopic and the soldier grew dizzy on the carousel of remembrance. Memory left him adrift."
When Laura, Tom, and Martin meet up with Milanés, the teen-aged trio are on a typical errand to buy more beer for their spur-of-the-moment high school graduation party at Martin's parents' resort home in Caracol Beach. Martin had assured everyone that the house had "enough beer to make all the firemen in St. Petersburg drunk." He was wrong.
Alberto's simple statement that follows Martin's boast—"He wouldn't live long enough to regret that sentence"—embodies the deeply moving and philosophical moments of Caracol Beach when we are reminded of how fleeting our innocence is.
Milanés ambushes the group, gives the orders for his suicide-by-proxy to the boys, and kidnaps Laura. The boys go off to get weapons; they arrive at the auto salvage yard where the soldier makes his home, prepared to do the deed. The absurdity of chance plays itself out again, and tragedy prevails.
Alberto's writing is crisp, distinctive, evocative, and filled with wisdom.
Alberto can wax poetic, as in: ". . . the only way to confront with relative success a life
besieged . . . . is to invent for ourselves a love at any price, do you see? Some kind of
solidarity . . . an alliance . . . . And all you can do is defend that love, kicking and scratching, even if it turns out to be an illusion bigger than the moon."
And he sets scene and character simply and vividly: "Sam shaved his head . . . . On that Saturday in June he gashed the back of his ear. A warm trickle of blood rolled down his neck and spread over his right nipple. His hand wasn't what it used to be. Neither was his patience. One of these mornings he'd end up slitting his throat."
Caracol Beach gives us a world where the triumphs and perils of being human are tested in one night of terror. It's a place where love exits and hatred looms; where forgiveness is granted and guilt persists; where death comes and life follows; where acceptance goes forth and fear overruns; where darkness falls and dawn arrives.
Caracol Beach is a modern-day, dreamlike, sometimes outrageous tale, and Alberto has achieved a significant international literary accomplishment.
This book review was originally published in MotherTown in 2000.
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