No comments about Enduring the Most.

No comments about Perry of London: A Family and a Firm on the Seaborne Frontier (Harvard Historical Studies).

3 comments about Maeve Brennan: Homesick at the New Yorker.

1. There are many reasons to read Homesick at the New Yorker. Among them, the book may be the only existing full-length biography of this talented and fascinating author. And Homesick at the New Yorker is well-written, indeed.
   
   But there are shortcomings to this account of Maeve Brennan's life. The review prior to this one speculates that author Angela Bourke may have found her subject illusive. And that may be the case. But what certainly is the case is that Bourke's resulting portrait of Brennan is somewhat blurred. Is it because Brennan moves out of scope of the camera just as the shutter is capturing the image...or is it that Bourke's camera itself is moving? I don't know for certain. But repeatedly, just as it seems we're homing in for some tasty detail or substantive level of depth, Bourke takes off in another direction, and the initial thread is dropped. Frustrating.
   
   The very restraint that makes Bourke's prose so neat and elegant may also serve to diminish the overall impact of the book. Often the author brings us close to gaining insight about Maeve Brennan, and then abruptly pulls down the shade, as if it would be too embarrassing for her, us, or Brennan, to see what would be revealed if she analyzed her subject a bit more closely. Brennan's relationship with her father comes to mind; it seems an extremely important and complex relationship, but beyond stating that fact, Bourke doesn't pursue it. What conflicts did it create? What are the implications for her work? relationships? etc. Perhaps the author figured she could drop the ingredients onto the pages and readers could bake up our own conclusions, but I'd like to have had a few of her *theories* served straight up. I have few if any theories on Maeve Brennan myself, but Angela Bourke must, after clearly having spent a great deal of time researching Brennan.
   
   Another example, Brennan's relationship with her husband. Bourke may be trying to be journalistic, keeping distance from her subject(s), but the result is basically: they did this, and then they did this, and then they did this, and someone said this about them--but not what any of that might *mean* or how it would foreshadow X, or how that was reminiscent of Y, or how it seems to have affected Z. I suppose what I am saying is the author seems to keep too polite a distance from Maeve Brennan.
   
   Finally, the review prior to this one also commented positively on Bourke's frequent mentions of Irish history, in context of Brennan's life. To me, Bourke's attempt to braid her own interests in Irish history, Irish nationalism, and Irish language movement into the narrative of Brennan's life seemed gratuitous and somewhat self-indulgent. There are entire passages that could have been edited out. Not that they weren't in some way interesting, but they had little or no bearing -- neither direct not distant -- on Brennan's life or work. Consequently, these references were distracting and ultimately irritating, rather than illuminating.
   
   Perhaps Angela Bourke is more comfortable in the realm of "facts," rather than speculation or analysis. One biography cannot ever be the only biography. And perhaps this one will spur on others to research and write about Maeve Brennan. And, even if not, Homesick at the New Yorker is, quite lovely indeed, in many ways, a very nice read, even if it isn't everything that might be hoped for.



2. Angela Bourke, who has written a serviceable biography of Maeve Brennan, must have cringed when marketing suggested she include the totem words "The New Yorker" in the subtitle of her book.
   
   It is such bad taste to try to sell this book by linking it to the supposed chic of THE NEW YORKER. Imagine a comparable biography of, say, JD Salinger with the subtitle, "He Wrote for THE NEW YORKER." How reductive, how pointless, to make her reputation depend, like the sword of Damocles, on the perceived glamour of the magazine!
   
   Brennan, with two spiritual homes, one in New York, one in Ireland, was always homesick for whichever one she wasn't in. The subtitle, with its suggestion of "homeless" as well as "homesick," hints at her eventual destination: pauperhood, madness, wandering the streets like the lowest of the low. It's a sad story indeed, and more of an indictment of The New Yorker's corporate philosophy then anything else. If they stop glittering, chuck them out I guess! Watch out, Hilton Als! Alex Ross, you too!
   
   I like the book but I think Bourke is a little guilty of overselling her wares. One sentence in particular floored me, "Her effect on the people who met her, her eye for human behavior, clothing and interiors, her unsparing reading of literature, her memory of home and her courageous life as a woman alone in metropolitan America make her an icon of the twentieth century." Excuse me, but no, they don't. Angela Bourke, may I introduce you to the word "icon"? It's in the dictionary. It doesn't mean Maeve Brennan.



3. I really wanted to learn more about Maeve Brennan, but we got stuck with every detail around her in this book, like we wanted to learn about this colorful carousel, but all we got were details of the circus!

No comments about The Facts of Life.

5 comments about James Joyce (Penguin Lives).

1. This is one of several volumes in the Penguin Lives Series, each of which written by a distinguished author in her or his own right. Each provides a concise but remarkably comprehensive biography of its subject in combination with a penetrating analysis of the significance of that subject's life and career. I think this is a brilliant concept. My only complaint (albeit a quibble) is that even an abbreviated index is not provided. Those who wish to learn more about the given subject are directed to other sources.

   When preparing to review various volumes in this series, I have struggled with determining what would be of greatest interest and assistance to those who read my reviews. Finally I decided that a few brief excerpts and then some concluding comments of my own would be appropriate.

   On Joyce and Ireland: "Of all the great Irish writers, Joyce's relationship with his country remains the most incensed and yet the most meditative. Beckett, a much more cloistered man, was unequivocal; he made France his home and eventually wrote in French and though his elegiac works carry the breath of his native land, he did not expect Foxrock, his birthplace, to be etched in the consciousness of the world. Joyce did. He determined to reinvent the city where he had been marginalized, laughed at and barred from literary circles. he would be the poet of his race." (page 15)

   On criticisms of his portrayal of Dublin: Joyce "said he was not to be blamed for the odor of ash pits and rotted cabbage and offal in these stories [i.e. in Dubliners] because that was how he saw his city. 'We are foolish, comic, motionless, corrupted, yet we are worthy of sympathy too,' he laughed haughtily and added that if Ireland were to deny that sympathy to its characters, the rest of the world would not. In this he was mistaken." (page 78)

   On his deteriorating health: "The strains were beginning to show. he had endocrine treatment for his arthritis, had to have all his teeth removed and was fitted with permanent plates. His eyesight so worsened that he had only one-seventh normal vision. He was given iodine leeches for his bad eye but soon it was clear that they would have to operate." (page 130)

   On his enigmatic nature: "The truth is that the Joyce [others] saw was a fraction of the inner man. No one knew Joyce, only himself, no one could. His imagination was meteoric, his mind ceaseless in the accruing of knowledge, words crackling in his head, images crowding in on him 'like the shades at the entrance to the underworld.' What he wanted to do was to wrest the secret from life and that could only be done through language because, as he said, the history of people is the history of language." (pages 165-166)

   As is also true of the other volumes in the "Penguin Lives" series, this one provides all of the essential historical and biographical information but its greatest strength lies in the extended commentary, in this instance by Edna O'Brien. She also includes a brief but sufficient "Bibliography" for those who wish to learn more about Joyce. I hope these brief excerpts encourage those who read this review to read O'Brien's biography. It is indeed a brilliant achievement.




2. I read this book at the Jersey shore. Joyce's life was as bizarre as his fiction. This book gives you an insight into what Joyce was trying to do with "Ulysses" and later "Finegan's Wake." Of course, the Ellmann bio is still the definitive. This is a great little read with sand and roasted peanuts.



3. Biographies in this series are the perfect fun size. Light, but long enough to have a lot of real stuff in them, more than a mere introduction.

   The very first sentence of this book invites you into Joyce with an imitation of his writing style, & after that Edna O'Brien shares generously & mellifluously her great understanding of the man, his life, & his work, drawing on scholarly commentary of his books & from the journals & letters of him & the people around him so that you know how they all felt about his life & their lives in themselves & for the purposes of this biography in relation to him. It's so well-written & so interesting -- what a life he had, crazy as he was, that -- I could hardly put it down. Edna O'Brien's great interest in him comes across truly.




4. This book is a good introduction to Joyce. It is written with a real feel for his language and life. It is not the overwhelming biographical scholarship of Ellmann, nor the detailed reading of the text much academic scholarship gives.It is however a competent and at times especially insightful look into the tribulations of the writer's life As part of the popular Penguin series in which Writers tell of the lives of other writers, O'Brien focuses on what most interests her.She talks about the insult of the Joyce family's poverty , and what it meant for them to go down from a kind of bourgeois life to one of great neediness. She writes about Joyce's love life and she tells the story of his infidelities and his complicated relationship to his wife Nora without going into each particular incident at length. She has an interesting few pages on reader reaction to ' Ulysses' including Virginia Woolf's comment calling it ' underbred, the effort of a ' queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples' In this work O'Brien often generalizes insightfully about the writer's condition in general, maintaining controversially that the more dedicated the writer is , and the more capable of seeing into the feeling of others on the page, the more monstrous the writer becomes in life. She compares Joyce's lonely end with that of Tolstoy, O'Neill, Virginia Woolf and Dickens. She says ,"A writer and especially a great writer, feels both more and less about human grief, being at once celebrant, witness and victim. If the writing ceases or seems to cease the mind so occupied with the stringing of words is fallow.There was nothing he(Joyce at the seperation from Nora) admitted but rage and despair in his heart, the rage of a child and the despair of a broken man." p. 176
   She also provides very fragmentary but good analysis of Ulysses, explaining the stylistic genius of the ' Oxen in the Sun episode ' where Joyce parodies and rewrites the history of the English language stylistically.
   It is light and quick reading , a good glance at the great man's work and life.



5. Reading any biography of James Joyce reminds me of something that Bernard DeVoto once said to Robert Frost after the other had behaved abominably towards Archibald MacLeish on several occasions in the space of a few days: "Robert, you are a great poet, but a bad man." What can the biographer do with Joyce? Was he a great writer? His astonishing literary genius is completely beyond debate. But he was almost completely lacking in humane qualities, and it isn't clear that he was capable of any relationship with any human being surpassed the value a tool had for its user. There are other equally unpleasant figures in the history of literature, but not many, and I've yet to read a biography of Joyce that creates the suspicion that meeting him might have been a positive experience. In fact, for me reading about Joyce's life has in ways acted as an impediment to appreciating his books. The difficulty is that he stuffs so much of his own experience into his books that the reader is forced to know at least the rudiments. Indeed, both PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN and ULYSSES feature his alter ego Stephen Hero as the/or a major character.
   
   If any biography of Joyce is the biography of a morally repulsive individual, there is at least the consolation of his being repulsive on an epic scale. If Joyce is not a human being we can admire as a person, as opposed to a literary genius, he is as least an interesting brute. He fascinates with his utter lack of compunction in his use and misuse and abuse of others. It leads to the question of what personal qualities made it possible for him to mistreat so many people. Unfortunately, O'Brien does not help us discover this. In fact, I find that in her treatment of his life, Joyce the human being doesn't emerge in any detectable way. I ended the book without much of a sense of how he might have seemed if I had encountered him on the street. Instead, O'Brien's Joyce feels very much like a character in a novel. He seems unembedded in his world, partially exacerbated by O'Brien persistent failure to relate Joyce to any social or historical events. She rarely dates events, and often goes twenty or thirty pages without noting a specific date. For instance, very little dating is provided in conjunction with the obscenity trial in New York. If the book contained a chronology at the front or back of the book this might not be so unfortunate. This is important because other writers at approximately the same time were also facing censorship trials, such as D. H. Lawrence for THE RAINBOW, so Joyce's case was not an isolated incident. She also left so much out! She neglects, for instance, to mention that Joyce and Proust once shared a cab ride. Perhaps not a crucial moment for either writer, but given that in the English speaking world Proust and Joyce are widely regarded as the two literary giants of the 20th century, while internationally Joyce is considered second only to Proust one would have expected some acknowledgement of their encounter. So many details like this are excised from Joyce's story. The book also suffers by a complete lack of critical tools. As noted above, there is no chronology, but there is also no index and not much of a bibliography. These are lacks that detract from the book's overall usefulness.
   
   Where O'Brien excels is when she writes about the books themselves. Although I did not feel like I gained much insight into Joyce (that Joyce was a world-historical jerk is simple to document, but the intricacies of why he was and why people let him get away from it was largely untouched upon), O'Brien the novelist did a marvelous job of illuminating many aspects of the books themselves. Although she does not write exhaustively about any of Joyce's works, every passage she writes shimmers with understanding and insight.
   
   In one sense there is no overwhelming need for any new biography of James Joyce. Richard Ellmann's magisterial biography is not merely the finest book on Joyce, but arguably the finest English-language literary biography of the past half century. Given the large bulk of Ellmann's work, however, a solid brief biography is, however, highly desirable. I am not confident that O'Brien's book meets this need. The tone is far too impressionistic, the attention to historical and chronological detail too slight. I can recommend this to readers of Joyce who want to know a bit more about him, but I hope that someone writes a new biography sometime in the next few years.

5 comments about World War II on the Air: Edward R. Murrow and the Broadcasts That Riveted a Nation.

1. This is a unique and intriguing book which creatively captures the history of Edward R. Murrow and "Murrow's Boys." The book includes a CD containing 51 broadcasts just as they were heard live during World War II, with narration by Dan Rather. The text has symbols throughout, keying the reader to the CD track which compliments the written words with the voices of these brave men as they broadcasted from all over the world. The text includes concise profiles of the various members of Murrow's team: William Shirer (author of RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH), Eric Sevareid, Howard K. Smith, Larry LaSueur, Charles Collingwood, Winston Burdett and Richard Hottelet, among others. To those who remember WWII these names will be very familiar, and for those who do not, they tell the war's story with passion, intensity and professionalism. The authors have painstakingly researched the intricate details of how William Paley took the embryonic Columbia Broadcast System from a largely soft entertainment network to the premier news gathering and reporting organization which eclipsed all others during the war. The role Murrow plays in this evolution reveals a man of tremendous commitment to his craft, despite almost no previous experience in radio, with a great capacity for judging and selecting the others who became the critical reporters on his team. The travails of Murrow and the others as they faced death in flights over enemy territory, beach assaults and other combat assignments and suffered the tyranny of technological challenges with equipment strained to the breaking point make for great reading. The authors weave the complexities of personalities, politics, warfare and technology into a comprehensive and coherent book. The CD is haunting and chilling as these now dead voices bring back to the present momentous events which told America about the fighting of the war and the slow and painful process of winning peace just as they were happening. This book will be a superb addition to the library of any student of WWII and is also recommended for any reader who enjoys fast paced history in the making.



2. Collaboratively compiled and written by Mark Bernstein and Alex Lubertozzi, World War II On The Air: Edward R. Murrow And The Broadcasts That Riveted A Nation presents the stories behind the implacable and courageous radio correspondents who brought the reality of war itself into living rooms across the nation for the first time in history. More than 50 actual broadcasts, and an audio CD narrated by Dan Rather, enhance this unique and very highly recommended look at World War II events and personalities as the home front experienced it through the medium of radio broadcasting.



3. I read the Rise and Fall on the 3rd Reich in high school, and I had always thought of Wm Shirer as a historian - I had no idea that he was a reporter during the war, and had a unique seat and understanding watching the Nazi drama unfold.

   Great book. You can really appreciate the difficulty of getting a live broadcast from Europe done in 1938, and how hard Murrow and company worked at it. There was no "press freedom" then, and the deference the press is shown today didn't exist then. They were a courageous bunch, Morrow's boys. And look at the roster! Murrow and Shirer, Eric Sevareid, Howard K. Smith, Charles Collingwood, and back in New York, William Paley was calling the shots and rooting Murrow on. What a collection of talent. Amazing.

   The only irritating thing about it concerns the CD - why did Rather narrate it and not Walt Cronkite? Cronkite had front line reporting experience in WWII (was on the beach at D-day and made a jump with the 101st) and ended up working for Morrow after the war. Every time I hear Rather narrate, I have the feeling he doesn't deserve to be talking.

   Otherwise the radio clips are superb.




4. I bought this as a gift for my stepdad who is interested in all things World War II, and I could tell by his reaction as he read it that it wasn't the most engrossing material he'd ever read.



5. Excellent, valuable introduction and sampler to this topic; complements well Bob Edwards' work on Murrow and The Murrow Boys (and Girl)....
   Appreciated especially:
   the brief bios of the various chartacters, not only the well-known (Murrow, Shirer, Collingwood, etc.) but also the now lesser known (Paley, Paul White, Tom Grandin, for example).
   The operative word here for both the book and CD is Intro....
   What may be needed to supplement this work are CD sets of the actual broadcasts from archival sources, complete with the original intros and back-announces if extant. Indeed a sampling of a few original CBS evening news broadcasts in toto, to show how these overseas reports fitted in to regular domestic broadcasts. Of value would be the complete transcription of the first CBS Evening News Roundup, at the time of the Munich Crisis.
   Years ago, CBS/Columbia issued a 2-LP set in the "I Can Hear It Now" series, of a sampling of Murrow's 1939-1946 broadcasts, from BBC and CBS archival material. This has been art of print for decades. A reissue of this on CD by Sony would be valuable, especially for the student of broadcast journalism.
   Again, a very fine beginning.

5 comments about Hapa Girl: A Memoir.

1. I am sure that Ms. Chai earned an A+ in creative writing class for her novel. I was in school with the author and her brother for a couple of years. In fact, I had my senior pictures taken at her mother's studio. She did a nice job and was a fun lady. I knew she was married to a Chinese man. I couldn't have cared less. It made no difference to me. I am sure that I speak for most of us in town. We had plenty going on in our own lives to get too worked up about someone elses ethnic background. There is no question that most of us were of European descent. With the Univ of SD in town, we were exposed to other cultures. It wasn't like we were the United Nations, but we were far from the 'dueling banjos' of "Deliverance." There are a few bad apples in our town-- like any town on the planet. It is certainly humbling to read of her experience in our town. The violence in the halls at school, locking all the doors to the school, attractive girls opting to get poor grades to date the cool guys, etc. Her creative juices got the best of her. Hopefully, this spiteful piece of half-truths/ fiction was therapeutic or lucrative for the author.



2. I could not put this book down... it was alive and witty and just plain filled with love of this girls family her mother played a very inportant part in this girls life , maylee since has lost her mother to breast cancer . the story was so wonderful deplicting how a family with different racial backgrounds . Maylee is outspoken and make the book come alife to me . thanks you for the wonderful story of part of my family.. always aunt susan



3. Reading this book, I was appalled at the portrayal of this terrible, small, South Dakota town where I, too, would have hated growing up. I feel very badly for the author's hardships she and her family endured during this time. Ironically, I did grow up in this town; moving there in 1966 at the age of 12 and eventually leaving eastern South Dakota in 1977. I am amazed at the dramatic changes that took place there in the 2 years between 1977 and 1979. This was not the town I remember in the least bit. As I read about overt violence in the high school while teachers looked away, rampant inbreeding, and widespread fear of being killed by Native Americans I can only conclude that there is a motivation behind the story that only the author can answer. Much of this makes for great fiction and hopefully, this has been therapeutic for her. I have spent the majority of my adult life in successful Engineering positions in the Silicon Valley as a result of my education at the schools in this town and colleges in the state. My two daughters are products of the California public school system so, believe me, I know about mediocrity in education. Most of the kids in this South Dakota community do not grow up on farms nor have aspirations of owning one, one day. It is quite natural for many kids in this university town to do as I did- continue education and go on to a professional career. I don't recall a lot of violence at school. My wife (also from this small town) and I could not think of any "cousin relationships" of which we were aware. Our parents would never have tolerated the disrespect and name calling described as rampant in the book. I don't feel we were the exception, either. I certainly hope the author has facts behind the story she tells of the circumstances around a young man who committed suicide; if not, shame on her. I will say that most South Dakota communities are predominately white and by and large fairly conservative. I am not necessarily surprised that it was difficult for this family to feel comfortable and "fit in". There are racists everywhere, though, and in my world experience I've never felt this community to be more so than most. Unfortunately, it sounds like there were mean spirited bullies who made life miserable for this author during adolescence. Because of the wild and reckless characterizations of certain things that I know to be untrue, the author lost most of her credibility while I read. My younger brother is 2 years older than the author. When I first heard of this book, I asked him about her. He didn't recall, went to his yearbooks, and recognized her as someone who had been a winner in the same Math contest as he during high school. Seems like an odd non-recognition for someone who was so "stared at", maligned, and the center of adversity. By the way, we did use baseball bats for baseball (not weapons that I ever recall). Much like the author describes of suburban New Jersey, there was a vacant lot behind our house where my brothers and the neighborhood kids would gather and play baseball and whiffle ball for hours on end. My apologies for a long winded review without comment regarding the quality of the writing, however, I felt compelled to raise concerns about the accuracy of the facts in what is intended to be a non-fiction book.



4. Maylee's gentle mastery at weaving words, memories and strands of her family's struggles into a rich and powerful tapestry of human experience held me captivated; I read her book in one sitting.
   Don't mistake Maylee's memories as bitter - her message is clear to those who have eyes to read it and the faith to believe it, "Love Trumps Hate."



5. I have read all of Chai's books and found each one carefully crafted. Chai is articulate, and her commanding voice has an authority that sweeps the reader up and over the plains of rural Wyoming, a place of natural beauty and also a warped, ungenerous and unwelcoming social milieu which becomes Hapa Girl's crucible. Chai's rendering of a Chinese-American family's struggle to be recognized, respected and ultimately accepted is heart-rendingly believable, in many instances heartbreakingly sad, but finally redemptive. It's the sort of narrative that challenges the reader (could I manage these circumstances if I were the protagonist?) and ultimately shows us not that suffering is ennobling, but that there are survivors who have come through suffering's gauntlet and emerged with wise conviction and a formidable dignity. Five stars for this book and its talented, smart and wise author!
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

No comments about Petain: Verdun to Vichy (Military Profiles).

No comments about Oscar and Bosie: A Fatal Passion.

No comments about The Master.