May 11 2016

Einstein — His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson

“Did he have an interesting life?” asked a friend when I mentioned that I had started reading Einstein — His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson. Yes, he did, very interesting, and Isaacson is an able chronicler. More interesting than previously known, in fact; Isaacson used sources that were newly available at the time of writing (the book was published in 2007) to show that Einstein fathered a daughter with his first wife, Mileva Maric, prior to their marriage. The two went to considerable lengths to ensure that there was no official record of the girl, and both Mileva’s pregnancy and the birth are mentioned only in a very few letters. From the fragmentary evidence that survives, it is not clear whether the girl was given up for adoption, or if she died of scarlet fever in 1903 while in the care of friends or relatives.

From the historical point of view, the discussion of the unknown daughter, referred to as “Lieserl” in the few bits of remaining correspondence, is the most significant new element of this biography. Some FBI files were also newly accessible after 50 years had passed, and Isaacson uses them to show how the Hoover-era Bureau suspected Einstein of subversive tendencies. They also show how a quasi-fascist organization first called Einstein to the FBI’s attention and the bureaucratic after-effects of such a denunciation. Neither of these aspects reflects well on the FBI’s role in a free society, nor in its judgement about political matters. That, unfortunately, is a tale with many chapters.

As the foregoing makes clear, Isaacson writes as much about the private and political Einstein as about the scientist. In his telling, they are all of a piece. Einstein was reflexively anti-authoritarian from an early age, and it was a matter of personality and disposition as much as education. Indeed, his non-conforming personality drove his education, causing him difficulty in the systems of the German-speaking world in the late nineteenth century, but ultimately leading to his momentous insights in physics.

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/05/11/einstein-his-life-and-universe-by-walter-isaacson/

May 10 2016

Young Poland – The History of Polish Literature by Czeslaw Milosz

“Modern Polish literature,” writes Milosz, “begins with the generation that emerged from adolescence around 1890.” (p. 322) If Romanticism is the first literary movement with which Milosz and his contemporaries were in dialogue, this generation, called “Young Poland” (Młoda Polska) after 1899, are his immediate forbears, the literary uncles (and much more rarely aunts) who shaped the culture in which Milosz was raised and educated. Young Poland had parallels across Europe, although not always contemporaneously; Milosz mentions Young Germany (Junges Deutschland) and Young Scandinavia, while Young Italy (La Giovine Italia) and the Young Turks offer other points of comparison. “Cosmopolitanism is the proper word here, because European culture, in an age when one traveled without passports, was felt to be all of a piece, and young people, whether they were Frenchmen, Poles, or Russians, pored over the same Latin and Greek classics, read the same German philosophers and French poets.” (p. 322) Milosz’s invocation of free travel highlighted the differences between the period about which he wrote, and the time in which he wrote his history (1969), when the Iron Curtain divided Europe. Almost fifty years on, openness across Europe is closer to the era before the first World War.

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/05/10/young-poland-the-history-of-polish-literature-by-czeslaw-milosz/

May 09 2016

The Balkans by Mark Mazower

As part of a series published by the Modern Library, Mark Mazower wrote a 200-page history of The Balkans, and it appeared back in 2000. It’s a handy little book, and it makes me want to take a look at the rest of the series, which feature well-known and opinionated authors writing about subjects on which they are experts, but writing for a general audience, and at a length that encourages them to concentrate their arguments.

I’ve read and enjoyed two of his longer books (Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century, which I read right around the end of said century, and Salonica — City of Ghosts, which I read but did not review back in 2007), and I have his World War II book Hitler’s Empire on my to-be-read shelf.

The Balkans fits in squarely with the rest of the oeuvre: carefully researched, fluently written, clearly argued. The argument in this particular case is that the Balkans are not noticeably more barbaric than the rest of Europe, and that understanding broader currents of European is more important to understanding the Balkans than vice versa. In particular, over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, political groupings in the region have harnessed the interests of the Great Powers for their own ends, and trying to grasp Balkan politics without keeping the Great Powers in mind is a fool’s errand.

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/05/09/the-balkans-by-mark-mazower/

May 06 2016

The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Left Hand of Darkness takes place on a world nearly frozen, with people constantly contending against the natural forces that will kill them, given half a chance or just a little too much inattention. The Word for World is Forest takes place on a warm and pleasant planet, where plentiful rains and abundant sunshine ensure that all available space is covered by plant life, lush, dense forests alive with every kind of life. Yet The Word for World is Forest is by far the bleaker work.

Both books are set within Le Guin’s group of Hainish stories, a series of tales concerning humanity as a starfaring species, but one that has been distributed among numerous planets in the distant past, allowing evolution to take its course, and then reconnected in a future where faster-than-light travel is not possible, but superluminal communication is. The Word for World is Forest takes place just as instant communication across the stars has been mastered, and the network for it is being set up. Previously, communication had been limited by the speed of travel, meaning that colonies in other star systems had often had no feedback from the mother planet within the course of a regular human lifetime.

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/05/06/the-word-for-world-is-forest-by-ursula-k-le-guin/

May 05 2016

The Thirty Years War by C.V. Wedgwood

As their dates of publication recede into the past, books of history increasingly become artifacts of what they chronicle. They illuminate two periods: the one about which they are written, and the one in which they are written. With academic or more specialist works, this process is faster and more conscious; monographs are written in dialog with other histories in a particular field, which moves along through the years. Works written for a more general audience can reflect scholarly consensus at the time, or an author’s iconoclastic perspective, or topics that are of wider concern at the time of publication.

Nearly 80 years have passed since C.V. Wedgwood wrote her classic history, The Thirty Years War. The current day is as distant from Wedgwood’s Germany and Central Europe as hers was from when Austria and Prussia were still contending for mastery in the German lands, when Bismarck was Chancellor to the Prussian king and not yet to the German emperor. Looking back, those nineteenth-century struggles have far more in common with their counterparts two hundred years previous than the conflagration that consumed Europe so soon after Wedgwood’s book appeared.

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/05/05/the-thirty-years-war-by-c-v-wedgwood/

May 01 2016

The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell

I love historical fiction. I don’t often read it (and too often fall into the trap of reading historical fantasy, which I’ve found to be an extremely problematic genre,) but I’m usually pleasantly surprised by how good historical fiction is. Perhaps that has to do as much with the nature of the author who goes into this kind of thing as with anything else: meticulous research often means conscientious writing, which sounds like it ought to be boring but isn’t, because it understands that the primary goal of fiction should be to entertain the reader. And The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell is wildly entertaining, hewing closely enough to the written records to make me feel immersed in the era, and highlighting the personal drama of its protagonist, Uhtred, in a very accessible manner while still allowing for enough period flavor to make it all seem exotic. And that last, I think, differentiates this book from lesser examples of the genre. Mr Cornwell knows exactly how to balance the melange so that I’m not glazing over with boredom at all the historical facts he’s unearthed and is excited to share. Historical facts and tidbits of culture and language are blended in extremely well with a thrilling tale of battle and inheritance, as young Uhtred seeks to claim his birthright without compromising his identity.

Another nice thing about this book, which will sound a bit more tepid in its praise tho honestly I don’t mean it that way, is that I didn’t feel compelled to run out and plunge immediately into the rest of the series. The Last Kingdom ends when Uhtred is 20, having covered his childhood and coming-of-age, and there are still many plot threads to follow (such as Kjartan!! I need to know what happens there!!) but it was an immensely satisfying novel on its own, discussing not only history and politics and battle but also the very personal issues of identity and maturity and faith. It was nice to see a hero who is aware of his own changeable nature, and who grapples with it without falling into an existential slough of self-pity. Overall, a terrific book and an outstanding example of the genre. I’m definitely looking forward to reading more of the series, eventually.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/05/01/the-last-kingdom-by-bernard-cornwell/

Apr 29 2016

Dshamilja by Tschingis Aitmatow

Louis Aragon swore that it was the most beautiful love story in the world. Dshamilja is beautiful, and it is a love story, among other things, but I am not sure I would go as far as Aragon. On the other hand, Aragon was a committed Communist, and Dshamilja is a story of love among the heroic workers providing food for the front during the Great Patriotic War, so there is perhaps an additional motive for his exorbitant praise.

Dshamilja is set in Kyrgyzstan, where the mountains give way to the steppes, and at a time when the traditional ways had not completely gone over to Soviet methods. Said, the first-person narrator, is likewise on the border, childhood giving way to adult concerns. The characters all live in a traditional settlement, an aul as Said calls it throughout the book, but they work on a collective farm, a kolkhoz. All of the men of military age have gone away to the war, leaving the farm work to women, youngsters, old men, and returned soldiers whose wounds prevent them from fighting. Several of Said’s older brothers are at the front, and one of them has left behind his young bride, the eponymous Dshamilja.

She is a free spirit, but also a model daughter-in-law. She is strong, and fierce, beautiful, and full of laughter and mischief. If that all sounds too good to be true, well, the reader sees her through Said’s eyes, and will have guessed how he feels about her long before he knows it himself.

And then one day a stranger comes to the aul. Danijar, a soldier returned from the fighting with a limp, and a thousand-yard stare, and a brooding silence. At first, Said and Dshamilja make fun of him. The village boys ask him to tell them about the war, but all he will say is that they should pray to God they never experience it. They are unexpectedly abashed, and thereafter leave him in peace on that question. After a particularly cruel trick that Said and Dshamilja play on him, Danijar opens up, not by talking to anyone, but by singing on nightly trips back to the aul from where they have delivered grain by horse-drawn wagon. He sings old songs, revealing his love of the land, suggesting to Said and Dshamilja that this clanless wanderer has unknown depths in his soul.

There aren’t any surprises in the plot. The book is vividly written, conjuring the valleys of Kyrgyzstan tumbling out onto the Kazakh steppe, showing the dust and hard work of a collective farm during the war. And it’s a love story, so I suppose it would be unfair of me to note all of the things from Soviet collective farms during that era that aren’t portrayed in the book: violence, near-starvation, drunkenness, denunciations to the secret police, and more. Even the act of noting those absences probably marks me as too versed in the history to appreciate the book as just a love story and a coming-of-age tale. It’s slight, beautiful, and translated into English as Jamila, with the author’s name transliterated as Chingiz Aytmatov. In 2009, Kyrgyzstan issued a stamp commemorating the work with motifs from the story.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/04/29/dshamilja-by-tschingis-aitmatow/

Apr 27 2016

The Just City by Jo Walton

What if people took Plato’s Republic seriously enough to attempt putting it into practice? What if two of those people were the Greek deities Apollo and Athena, who have the power to make Plato’s implausible starting conditions real? Those are the premises underlying The Just City by Jo Walton.

The Olympians, as Walton describes them, can hop about through mortal time, although there are certain limits about being in the same time more than once. They have other divine powers as described in the Greek myths, and mortals can sometimes reach them through prayer. Apollo, for his own reasons, is considering becoming mortal for a while. He approaches Athena to discuss his notion.

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/04/27/the-just-city-by-jo-walton/

Apr 26 2016

The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon by Alexander McCall Smith

One of the pleasures of reading deeply into a series is the sense of stories arising naturally from the personalities of the characters as the author has shown and developed them over the course of many books. The banter between Jack Aubrey and Dr. Stephen Maturin is freighted with but not weighed down by the oceans they have crossed together, the scrapes they have helped each other out of, and the times they have nearly come to blows. Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax have their differences, and their different ways of witching, but neither is complete without the other. The interlocking stories that take place over the course of The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon, the fourteenth book in Alexander McCall Smith’s series about the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, show the established characters being very much themselves. One of them has a great change in her life over the course of the book, but she is true to herself in trying to limit how much that change will shape her life; I am looking forward to the next books in the series (the fifteenth and sixteenth have already been published) to find out whether she does.

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/04/26/the-minor-adjustment-beauty-salon-by-alexander-mccall-smith/

Apr 22 2016

The Song Of The Lark by Willa Cather

The Song Of The Lark is the story of how a small town girl becomes a famous opera singer by staying true to her instincts and artistic vision. Thea Kronberg is a difficult person to like: her talent and sensitivity mark her as a tall poppy to her detractors, but also attract the interest of those who can, and do, help her along on her path to education and success. It’s an interesting novel in that most protagonists celebrated in this way are men. Despite my own dislike of Thea’s personality (supposedly, she’s the kind of woman who gets along better with men than with other women, which made me roll my eyes each of the several times it was mentioned,) I enjoyed the fact that she was not punished merely for being female. Which isn’t to say that she doesn’t suffer the indignities flung at women from time immemorial: just that she was allowed to be evaluated on her talent and personality as opposed to her gender. I’m honestly not used to that from books of the period or earlier, so it was refreshing.

I was also impressed with Willa Cather’s ability to dissect what it means and how it feels to possess a restless talent. Her depiction of Thea’s drive and self-doubt but ultimate determination was encapsulated perfectly in Thea’s speech here to a benefactor/lover, as they are on the brink of a new chapter in their lives, “The past closes up behind one, somehow. One would rather have a new kind of misery. The old kind seems like death or unconsciousness. You can’t force your life back into that mould again.” Speaking of lovers, tho, I thought it odd how Thea kept attracting married men, and why this was never discussed in terms of her personality.

That aside, I enjoyed Ms Cather’s incisiveness and overall generosity in depicting the majority of the supporting characters. Maybe it’s just Asian Daughter Guilt, but I was comforted when Thea’s mother says to Dr Archie, “The children you don’t especially need, you have always with you, like the poor. But the bright ones get away from you. They have their own way to make in the world. Seems like the brighter they are, the farther they go.” Of course, this doesn’t apply to all children in all families, but it was nice to have this thought to counterbalance the fear of a lack of familial piety, particularly in the service of an ambition, even one so commonplace as personal happiness.

Anyway, not a book I would recommend to just anyone, as it’s a long, not entirely simple read. But definitely the kind of book to give to someone with a talent who might be afraid of pursuing it. Probably a good book for opera lovers, as well. Oh! And I found this fascinating article on the woman who inspired the book, and her relationship with Ms Cather, which was a great supplement to the novel.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/04/22/the-song-of-the-lark-by-willa-cather/