3 comments about A Crazy Occupation: Eyewitness to the Intifada.

1. Jamie Tarabay tells it as it is without the blandness commonly associated with autobiographies. You relive her experiences with her vivid descriptions of events and her desire to provide an objective an assessment as possible of the troubles around her. She takes you through the highs and lows of life as a reporter in a region many of us never understand. I learnt so much more about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict after reading this book. She explains it in a way that's uncomplicated and makes sense. And her adventures sound like fun, even if ducking bullets by hiding behind a car or hitching a ride with militia is a bit crazy. It's a very good read and I strongly recommend it.



2. Ever wonder what type of person, let alone a woman, wants to live in a war-torn area like Iraq so we can hear on the radio what's going on there? Jamie Tarabay epitomizes an incredibly brave group of people crucial to an open society like ours - reporters who put their lives at risk to inform us about the real conditions and people caught up in such grim circumstances. Jamie's clear-eyed descriptions of her real-time education in the complexities of the Middle East and the intractable Palestine-Israel conflict give the reader a more balanced appreciation of the underlying human and religious issues. I was hoping to learn more about what motivates sophisticated women (and men) reporters like Jamie and Christiane Amanpour to do this type of work. Jamie's book title promises to do this, but ultimately spends more time analyzing the other type of occupation involved. I'm very relieved to hear Jamie reporting for NPR from Baghdad in the New Year - I can continue to root for and care about her now that I know better who she is. Thank you and well done, Jamie!



3. This is an amazing read. Jamie Tarabay brings home what it's like to live in a war zone in a way few other reporters have in recent memory. The combination of personal details and experiences, along with touching and poignant descriptions of the tragedy of war make this book unique in its class.
   
   Refreshingly, the reporting is unbiased and fair, unlike most of the mass media reporting we all see on TV every night. Rather than focusing on good guys and bad guys, Jamie shows us that all sides in the Middle East conflict are made up of people who are very similar in so many ways, who all have fear, and anger, and who all bleed alike and die alike.
   
   After reading this book, not only will you have come to know and understand the crisis in the Middle East much more completely, but you will also have come to know and understand the working of a young, innocent and apparently fearless reporter putting her life on the line every day for the sake of the assignment. It's easy to become a big fan of this author very quickly, and one can only hope that she will follow up this work with a similar one based on her recent reporting from Iraq. Pulitzer-worthy.

4 comments about Song Man: A Melodic Adventure, or, My Single-Minded Approach to Songwriting.

1. Will Hodgkinson is an utterly charming guy - a first rate raconteur and a delight to hang with through this entertaining book.
   What first appears to be naught but a first person account of someone with little talent for and less of a clue to song writing, is actually a vessel for interviews with some of the best songwriters of the mid-late 20th Century. Some of the interviews are more revealing than others; some are revealing only of interviewee (Keith Richards, Ray Davies), some also of the songwriting craft (Andy Partridge, Andrew Lloyd Webber).
   That such luminaries agreed to meet and open up to Hodgkinson is evidence enough of his charm, but he charms us too, with a breezy, conversational style but also with his gall, naïveté (we don't even care if its put on or not), and affection for his friends and family (liberally laced throughout the book).
   I'm inspired to return the affection - in thanks for a couple of very pleasant evenings (the perfect book for a cross country or trans-Atlantic flight!) and surprising amount - albeit mostly superficially but, so what! - of insight into the craft of songwriting (a craft I've practiced myself). A most creative approach to the subject. Hodgkinson may not be able to write a song, but he most certainly can write a book!



2. Will Hodgkinson writes with a good sense of humor. Just like in his book, Guitar Man, he tells the story from the point-of-view of an ordinary guy trying to do something extraordinary for him. Great fun!



3. As a fan of Hodgkinsons excellent first book about learning the guitar, I was glad to find he'd lost none of his insight when graduating to something much tougher - writing a song that really touches people. On the way, he finds some of the funniest and most tragic people in the music industry. I thought the scene from Narcotics Anonymous with failed and desperate songwriter Lawrence (who I assume is an ex-star under a false name). Keef Richards agrees to help out as well, and you can't say fairer than that. Where Guitar Man was funny and self depreciating, Song Man is more about talent than skill - the mystery of what makes someone creative and how destructive that can be. Its made me listen to my favourite tunes in a compeletely different way.



4. One doesn't have to be a songwriter to appreciate Will Hodgkinson's odyssey. He does an admirable job of summing up the highs and lows of the creative process, regardless of genre. I thought _Song Man_ was particularly skilled at presenting the challenges of writing music in a way that doesn't require four years at a conservatory to appreciate.
   
   The interviews with a diverse range of musicians are amazing. It's not a surprise that most of their advice conflicts -- that seems to be one of the book's central themes -- but I heard plenty of observations by artists that were nothing like what I would have expected.
   
   And it's hilarious. I laughed out loud so often while reading _Song Man_ that people would stop me in public and ask about it. What a treat!

4 comments about Inside George Orwell: A Biography.

1. I studied George Orwell years back in College and wish I had had this book to read then. It's the best I've read so far, not only well and clearly written and firmly-based in research (including some fascinating new discoveries), but also a real page-turner. I hadn't realized how adventurous Orwell's life was (not only as a man but also as a man of ideas) and how closely his writing followed his experiences. This book is very convincing in exploring Orwell's state of mind - as a down-and-out in London and Paris, as a fighter in Spain, living through the Second World War in England, and writing '1984' at the start of the Cold War. It also very good in showing just how his last two books were misunderstood in the US. I took this book to read on a plane trip and found myself absorbed in it completely till we landed.



2. This book is the best of the newer Orwell biographies, but it still falls short in some respects. Bowker does a far better job than D. J. Taylor at creating a sense of continuity and purpose in Orwell's life. Bowker is a good writer, occasionally showing bits of inspired analysis, but still there are passages of utility-grade stuff.
   
   The two biographies, Bowker and Taylor, published in the same year, offer readers an opportunity to compare two quite different treatments of the same life, treatments that both use previously unknown materials. Taylor's treatment is more episodic and seems to lose no opportunity to highlight something dark, unflattering, or unpleasant about Orwell.
   
   Bowker gets at Orwell's quintessential Englishness. I was happy he used exactly that word, Englishness, which I think is an important and appealing aspect of Orwell. It is a word I've always associated with Orwell much as I do with figures such as Dickens or Graham Greene. This is a quality virtually ignored by Taylor, unless you accept his references to old-boy school snobbery as a rough substitute, references I believe are clear distortions.
   
   Bowker is sympathetic to his subject without ever being servile or sentimental, a position which is right for a biographer. While Taylor makes some effort to convince us of his old admiration for his subject, his words ring false. Taylor displays strong antipathy towards his subject, releasing it slowly through the book, and to my mind this is never the correct position for a biographer. Moreover, the clash between Taylor's claims of admiration and his clear antipathy introduces a howling note of falseness that warns of the author's intent.
   
   Bowker does an excellent job of summarizing the saga of Orwell's widow (his second wife) Sonia and his literary legacy - a tale in which the new Cold War becomes an important element - an interesting topic with which Taylor doesn't do much. Bowker also does a nice job of explaining why a biographer would write about Orwell despite the author's well-known wish that he wanted no biography.
   
   The portion of new material in either book dealing with Orwell's sex life does not shed a pleasant light on part of his character. I couldn't help thinking of passages in Benita Eisler's Byron dealing with the poet's grotesque servant-boy swapping and Mediterranean tours to buy boys in various countries - activities that would put him in prison today - passages that frankly left me feeling as though I needed fresh air. No, Orwell wasn't as twisted as Byron, but he was double-dealing in his sexual affairs and apparently sometimes found the charms of young girls selling themselves in exotic lands an irresistible purchase.
   
   I very much agree with Arthur Koestler's observation, quoted in Bowker, "I don't think George ever knew what makes other people tick, because what made him tick was very different from what most other people tick." Orwell was in many ways what contemporary speech might describe as "out of it." He was, if you will, an authentic English eccentric. This may help explain why Orwell was such a powerful critic and observer while remaining a second-tier novelist.
   
   In a way, something like this may be said of many incisive critics and great artists. The divine Mozart with his scatological letters and often buffoonish behavior. Beethoven's constant moving to new apartments, thunderous emotional storms, and self-destructive attachment to a worthless nephew. The ticks and quirks of the magnificent Samuel Johnson. Dicken's unbelievably obsessive, compulsive behavior.
   
   At the more extreme end of the scale, we have Rousseau's bizarre temperament, always ready to attack friends and admirers. The strange Herman Melville who may just have murdered his wife. Marcel Proust's sadistic penchant for sticking pins into live mice.
   
   Sometimes I think it is better just to enjoy the work of genius rather than digging too deeply into the lives of its creators. For this reason I am almost fearful of reading Norman Sherry's third volume on Graham Greene (reported to focus heavily on the unsavory aspects of Greene's life), one of my favorite twentieth-century writers and critics. But then again, we want to understand, and we find it almost irresistible to read about the lives of artists we have come to love. And whatever unpleasant we may learn, it remains the greatness of their work that drew us to them.
   
   Orwell wrote some of the twentieth century's best essays and occasional pieces, and, in 1984, not long before his death, he displayed a kind of penetrating political insight rarely seen before or since. Since great writing is so often the work of mature people, we undoubtedly missed a great deal when he died at 46.



3. The title is indeed descriptive as the author probes the inner workings of the great author - Eric Blair (aka George Orwell). Bowker exposes the dualism of Blair/Orwell to describe many of the man's layers.
   Blair, in his twenties, was a policeman for the empire in Burma. He came to loathe the job and what he did. Just what he did can only be conjectured - but one can imagine the power of a colonial authority in Burma in the early 1900's. In later years George Orwell would write about power in a far more pervasive atmosphere - notably in his two great twentieth century works - "Animal Farm" and "Nineteen Eighty-Four".
   While it is true, as Bowker says that his two major works were miss-interpreted, they are so substantial and multi-faceted in scope that they can be given many different interpretations. In their beauty, power and longevity they are multi-faceted. I feel that Bowker left out one for "Nineteen Eighty-Four" which is the cult of mediocrity (as seen through the proles). We certainly have been experiencing this for many years on TV, newspapers and magazines which constantly aim for the lowest common denominator.
   Also, while Bowker explores Orwell's relationship to several British authors (Maugham, Wells), he has skipped over the American side. What about Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tools" which is the most popular book on the Spanish Civil War. As Bowker points out it was Orwell's participation with the Republicans in Spain that led almost directly to "Animal Farm" and "Nineteen Eighty-Four". Also what of Sinclair Lewis whose social satire books were extremely popular during Orwell's era?
   Nevertheless he does paint a portrait of an extremely troubled man - his many affairs, his constant health problems. His dualism to experience poverty with people who were barely literate I found perplexing and as Bowker says anthropological. His accent would immediately set him apart and made him ill-suited to assimilate with homeless people - even though it led to his `poverty books'.
   Also Orwell could miss-read events - he sided with Chamberlain on the Munich appeasement. During the onset of war (the London Blitz) he predicted a forthcoming revolution to a classless society.
   Bowker's description of Orwell's essay on Dali's paintings is illuminating. Was Orwell seeing something of his inner self in the surreal and underworld Dali paintings - perhaps getting an all to close glimpse of himself in Burma, his philandering and sexual mis-treatment of women (Orwell was not one to shy away from direct sexual approaches to woman).
   Orwell died at age 46 - what other major works were hidden within him?



4. In general this is a useful biography of George Orwell. However, after at first clearly distingushing between the POUM, the lefist party in whose militia Orwell fought during the Spanish Civil War, and Trotskyism, the author then goes on to refer to "Trotskyists" in Spain and equate the POUM and Trotskyism. The POUM weren't Trotskyists. This is made clear in all the credible works on the history of the Spanish Civil War. This is a small point but it indicates some lack of understanding on the part of the biographer of the larger political context of the Spanish Civil War.
   
   Also, on page 235, the author refers to "the distinguished American Journalist Stephen Schwartz." Schwartz is a long time San Francisco colorful character and professional repentant former leftist whose work as a journalist has been limited mostly to his former job as an obituary writer at the San Francisco Chronicle. In the 1980's he worked as a public relations man for the Nicaraguan Contras and the Reagan Administration's war moves in Central America. Today Schwartz is a minor league neo-conservative war bird. There are no grounds on which Schwartz can be described as "distinguished," let alone as a distinguished journalist.
   
   The following article explains this further.
   
   Neo-conservatism and Stephen Schwartz: the further adventures of an obituary writer.
   
   [...]
   
   Kevin Keating

5 comments about Coal to Cream: A Black Man's Journey Beyond Color to an Affirmation of Race.

1. A fasinating look at race and color.Well writing and obviously lived by Eugene Robinson. As a White 57 year old male I found his account of black life in Brazil to be educational and interesting. Its a shame that there has to be divisions between the races. I could only wish to live to see a colorless society. What then would they all fight over?



2. i would recommend this book to any reader that wants a good perspective on how race and class abound our world. As a 18 year old Afro-American female,I too like Robinson, initially believed the myths of a Brazilian racial democracy, but later on I sadly realized the truth. Racism is just as explosive in Brazil as the US but only it is done in a more subtle and hidden fashion.

   Compare neiborhoods like Ipanema and the favelas(ghettos) of Rochina and Mangueira and see what colors are most dominate. And also see the racist killings of street children (80% killed are Black), and why the most dominate workforce for Blacks is domestic service(i.e. maids and butlers) The affirmation that Robinson made of saying that he was told he didn't have to be Black shows how in Brazil race is not soley based on heritage, but social status and education.

   Euguene Robinson digs into the reasons why the Black Brazilian Movement is finally starting in Brazil. Trying to find a voice in a racist society and have the series of "race" categorizations to seperate Blacks be removed so that Blacks can identify and work against racism in a country where they are dominate (UNESCO reports Blacks are 70% population) but used to be counted only as 6% in 1973 and then 44% in 1992 by the government, these figures do not show a boost in Black births, but a boost in Black identity and pride.

   Many will argue how Brazil can have Affirmative Action, but with a predomite population and predominte population of poor Afro-Brazilians, it is needed in Government and TV. I disagre with reviewers that claim that Black race identity leads to race "wars", it unifyies us, the only reason why people do not think racial conflict happens in Brazil is because most Blacks haven't been saying anything(ending that is Senetor Benedita da Silva).

   Even though I think that this book could have dug deeper in the realities and myths of race in Brazil, I belive this is a honest and well written work




3. In spite of my better judgement, I really like this book. As a quietly emotional, introspective and beautifully written report of one Black American man's reactions to Brazilian notions of race, it has no equal.

   Why do I give it only two stars then? It upsets me that people across the U.S. will use this as some sort of "text book" to decipher Brazilian race relations. It is not. In fact, for an intelligent, sensitive journalist, Robinson shows a shocking lack of knowledge of Brazilian history and culture, especially as viewed through Brazilian eyes. This fatally undermines his analysis of race relations in Brazil.

   To hear Robinson tell it, Brazil is in some kind of racial purgatory. Brazil's concepts of race never change. Or rather, its /lack/ of concept of race never changes. Brazilians, as we are told again and again throughout "From Coal to Cream" simply don't believe in the idea of race: they only see colors relative one to another. This theory of race in Brazil has a long and hallowed history in American academia. Unfortunately, Brazilian social scientists have pretty well demonstrated it to be full of enormous holes. There has been quite a long and well-documented tradition of seeing things in "black" and "white" in Brazil - a tradition which the Brazilian public ideologies of race would prefer to ignore. That this tradition remains alive and well in our quotidian world, however, is a fact that's brought back to me everytime I see some light-brown skinned kid wearing a "100% Negro" t-shirt here in Rio de Janeiro.

   Ironically, the years that Robinson spent as a journalist in Brazil saw some of the greatest historic changes in afro-descended Brazilians' perceptions of themselves and their nation. These changes were perhaps best (but not exclusively) symbolized by the 1988 Constitutional Resolution to give land to Brazil's surviving quilombo residents - a law which was only won through large-scale mobilization of Black Brazilian grass-roots groups. None of this exciting ferment and activity is touched upon by Robinson, whom, I suspect, is unable to read a daily newspaper in Portuguese. From what I've gathered in the book, he didn't know anything of this sort was occuring among Black Brazilians. If he did, he certainly didn't follow it up, prefering to maintain the old, thread-bare dichotomy of a Brazil which ignores race and doesn't progress opposed to a progressive, race conscious United States.

   Robinson would probably be quite suprised that, as regards his conslusions on race in Brazil, he is travelling the same path that many hard-core racists once tread. The French philosopher and scientific racist Gubineau (SP, sorry...) also believed that as a mixed race nation, Brazil was a contradiction in terms which could never, ever progress. The real question, of course, is why Robinson finds it necessary to do this and how does he have the power to be more widely heard on this subject than any one of hundreds of Brazilian journalists and scholars (of all colors) who are infinitely more well-informed than he is.

   Robinson needs to look into the mirror and realize that even though he's Black, he's also a U.S. citizen and thus inherits a certain degree of imperial power along with that status. Perhaps then he'd be capable of writing about Brazilian racism with a new degree of sensitivity - not only to his personal feelings, but to Brazil as well. What is scary to me is that "From Coal to Cream" is so convincingly written that even many Brazilians, ignorant of their own history, will buy into its precepts.

   When a journalist who barely speaks the language of a country attempts to tackle one of its deepest, most perenial problems based upon a few superficial travels, we should take his conclusions with a large grain of salt. Though it attempts to address Brazilian racism, "From Coal to Cream" is yet another in a long series of fantastic projections of Anglo-American fears and desires upon Brazil. Nevertheless, one should buy this book if one is interested in how Americans perceive and react to Brazil. /That/ is it's true value, and in this sense, Robinson has crafted a masterpiece.




4. I enjoyed this book because it is a thought provoking book. Too often the topic of race is avoided. The truth is that race may be the topic of the next decade in the US. The country is starting to have a substantially higher percent of population of non-whites. The largest California is already mostly non-whites. The author compares and reflects on his upbringing in the US with his experiences in Brazil thru the eyes of a dark Black man. I agree with the author that Brazilians do indeed think about race and are certainly not color blind. In my travels to Brazil I noticed from looks that some people certainly acknowleged the fact that I was Black by giving me a certain look or holding their look a little longer. However the lack of malice was apparent among my Brazilian contacts. In the US sometimes I have created static by simply showing up as a Black man at an all white affair or business meeting. The average Brazilian is actually quite a laid-back person. The American in comparison tends to be aggressive and highly opinionated. I hope to one day spend some time living in Brazil. I think that the author also overestimates the number of Blacks (by US standards) in Brazil. I have the number at around 50%. I actually prefer the terms AfroBrazilian and AfroAmerican. The author actually made it a point to study race. In Brazil race is certainly not one of the top conversational topics. Although this book is only around 4 years old, plenty has change in Brazil. Global changes have had an impact on Brazil and the people have adapted. Foreign films and TV shows have had an impact on Brazilian culture. Inventions such as cell phones and the internet have had a profound effect of reducing Brazils isolation. I can't wait to go back next year!



5. Robinson uses his own personal sojourn through South America as a framework to discuss broader issues of race relations and racial identity. When Robinson first visits Brazil, he views it as a utopia for black individuals, a place where unlike America race was not an immutable construct but rather a broad spectrum of possibilities which ebbed and flowed: "[t]he emphasis on the more mutable issue of color (rather than the rigidity of race) was at the heart of what I loved so much about Brazail--the absence of racial conflict, the ease of coexistence."
   
   At first, Robinson's exulation of Brazil as a paradigm for issues of race appears naive and simplistic. However, as Robinson's journey continues, he realizes that Brazil also suffers from its own insidious forms of prejudice and problems of racial conflict though manifested differently, exist there as well. Robinson's meditations on race are interesting and emerge from a well written and engaging story.

4 comments about Education of a Woman: The Life of Gloria Steinem.

1. I have admired Gloria Steinem since I came to this country in the 70's to go to college. She has had to make some tough choices in her life and I respect her greatly for the path she took. I particularly liked to read about her early years, her childhood and family, prior to the more public New York life of the sophisticated writer and feminist persona she became. After reading this book, I feel that I understand much better where her strong motivation came from. The author deserves much praise for this biography.



2. Growing up in the early 80's, I had a vauge idea who Gloria Steinem was and what she did. I was delighted to pick up this book and read the first (and probaly most accurate)book on such a revolutionary leader.

   Denounced by the extreme right and extreme left, Steinem's life has taken her from Ohio to Massachusetts to India, Washington DC and NY. Having cofounded Ms. the National Women's Political Caucus, the Women's Action Alliance and Voters for Choice, Steinem is truly an example of a good role model.

   Heilbrum's superb prose takes us into the infamous resentment born by Betty Friedan and Kathie Sarahchild. Although both of these women are famous in their own right, their inexcusable and childish tantrums undid their own feminist reputation without any help from Steinem. Also deserving of their repuation is Betty Harris who's paranoid delusions and lax work ethic jepordaized the working environment at the early MS. Steinem is a saint for having dealt with these crazies and still keeping cool.




3. A sympathetic biography of one of the most famous leaders in the women's movement. According to Heilbrun, Steinem's beauty and ability to remain constantly in the public eye have been a constant source of irritation to other feminists. She presents Steinmen as a slightly naive, well-intentioned and empathetic individual who never intended to lead the feminist movement and indeed would have preferred remaining in the shadows as a reporter and writer.



4. I read this book nonstop while on a lengthy car trip. I found it to be incredibly interesting, informative, well-researched, and enjoyable to read. If you've ever wondered how Gloria Steinem got to be the icon that she is, this book explains it all. Whether you are researching Steinem or just looking for an interesting non-fiction, this book is for you!!

4 comments about Dear Papa, Dear Hotch: The Correspondence of Ernest Hemingway And A. E. Hotchner.

1. I had a hard time rating this collection of letters, postcards and cables between Hemingway and A. E. Hotchner, Papa's friend during the last decade or so of his life. If I give "Dear Papa, Dear Hotch" 5 stars, what do I give my favorite book of all time - Hemingway's "In Our Time"? Since Amazon's rating system won't allow for more than 5 stars, I plead "nolo contendere." This book deserves 5 stars because it is the best it could be. Comparison with Hemingway's crafted work is not the point.
   
   That said, "Dear Papa, Dear Hotch" is a gift to all who love Hemingway. I congratulate DeFazio for a job well done. Gathering all the pieces of this intriguing story must have consumed countless hours and required lots of legwork. The process of deciphering Hemingway's penmanship and the necessary research to illuminate arcane references was surely daunting at times. A.E. Hotchner's Preface & DeFazio's Introduction are fascinating and admirably set the stage for what is ultimately a poignant story of friendship & loss.



2. In his Preface, Hotchner writes:"I was young and struggling and vulnerable." What these Letters reveal is that "Hotch" was ambitious, greedy and manipulative. Just read the exchange concerning the "True" article (pp 172-179).Though De Fazio and the University of Missouri Press are to be congratulated for their Herculean accomplishment, those familiar with other Hemingway letters/memorabilia and scholarship, published and unpublished, know why Hotchner "had fallen out of favor with Mary"(Preface 12), as well as with other family members, true friends and many Hemingway scholars. Conrad Aiken, who early on saw Hemingway's genius, wrote, on the occasion of T.S.Eliot's death 40 years ago, "that this is the age of the ex-wife and the editor."I would add a third category: the "so-called friend."



3. _Dear Papa, Dear Hotch_ is a triumph of precise editing: of scrupulous annotations that make this record of the final years of a great American writer come to life. The reader goes along effortlessly, instructed as necessary in diverse particulars-baseball trivia, the names of well-known trapshooters (!), the identities of guests at long forgotten gatherings, advertising slogans, specs for aircraft, Hemingway's confusion of a story by James Thurber with one by Ring Lardner. Those who have ever tried to run down one such datum will appreciate the scholarship, variousness, exactness, and energy of Albert J. DeFazio in presenting this collection.
   
   The 161 letters here were written in the final dozen years of Hemingway's life, in his decline, after he, arguably the most famous writer living, had said what he had to say. As such they make for increasingly sad reading. We see Hemingway's effort to recapture the vitality and tragic dignity that make at least two of his novels and several dozen short stories key documents in American literature and in American self-concept. The letters from A. E. Hotchner-at once a slick, opportunistic sycophant, a cheerfully dutiful factotum, willing to do whatever the once great man asks, and a competent adaptor of original work-do not brighten the picture, nor is it always easy to read "Hotch's" imitations of Hemingway's deliberately scabrous language ("Goddam but I'm glad about the [Nobel] prize," etc.) Sometimes the interplay between them has a sick fascination, "Hemingstein" trying to persuade himself "Everybody will be okay" and "Krotchner" feeding this illusion. One comes to the notes with a sense of relief. They are the real gen.
   
   A six page appendix, in which Hemingway objects to Hotchner's proposed deletions in _The Dangerous Summer,_ reveals more about the drift of Hemingway's writing practices than anything else I have read on the topic.



4. DEAR PAPA, DEAR HOTCH: THE CORRESPONDENCE OF ERNEST HEMINGWAY AND A.E. HOTCHNER isn't a light introduction: it's a scholarly collection recommended as a college-level pick for any collection strong in the works of either writer, presenting for the first time the collected correspondence between writer and agent. Hotchner adapted Hemingway's works for stage, movies and TV: these letters cover the final quarter of Hemingway's life and packs in nearly two hundred letters, cables and cards between the two. The result offers plenty of intriguing details and will prove a 'must' for any serious Hemingway scholar, in particular.

5 comments about Nobody Said Not to Go: The Life, Loves, and Adventures of Emily Hahn.

1. What a demand Emily Hahn had for authentic experiences and stimulating people! Her parents must have had sleepless nights wondering how their daughteer could survive her current situation and what she would what do or say next. Thanks to author Ken Cuthbertson, who tempted me away from hiking in New Mexico to hang around the hotel finishing his book. He was able to describe a person with whom I would love to have dinner and hate to work. Now I'm ready to read anything he writes: John Gunther's biography, grocery lists, whatever.



2. While I don't necessarily agree that Emily Hahn has been forgotten (see, for instance, Prisoners in Paradise: American Women in the Wartime South Pacific) I do believe that a biography about her helps us to understand the complexities of women's lives in the 20th century. Ken Cuthbertson has done a competent job of outlining Hahn's life and his prose is just about as lively as her adventures. However, I think his historical analysis is weak, especially in the matter of feminism, which was so controversial during Hahn's lifetime. Putting her life in sharper perspective with the historical times would have made this a fuller biography. But for people who don't really care about that, they will certainly enjoy the retelling of Hahn's fast-paced life and may even be motivated to dig up some of Hahn's own books.



3. Ah, Emily! It is perhaps appropriate that Emily Hahn was friends with Chinese writer and Kuomintang spy Lin Yutang, who despite his dubious politics was a fantastic philosopher and writer. Among his best known works was "The Art of Living," and Emily Hahn could serve as the poster girl for the Western version of his ideals.

   Her mythology is well known, although not as well as it deserves to be: she elbowed her way into a male-only university department, lived alone in New York, and drove cross-country with a girlfriend in a time when such things Just Weren't Done. Once she'd exhausted the adventurous possibilities of North America, she struck out for Africa and then China.

   She was a bohemian in Shanghai, and her flat enjoyed visits from even a grubby, earnest young Mao Zedong and the ever-dapper Zhou Enlai. Unlike other China Hands, though, Hahn mainly shied from revolutionary company in favor of the decidedly bourgeois literati, led by handsome dandy poet Shao Xunmei. (Read "Shanghai Modern" for more on him.) Hahn became Shao's lover and later concubine, and together they launched the literary magazine Tianxia, "Under Heaven". Emily was also a fixture in the expatriate scene, writing for the New Yorker and known for showing up at Victor Sassoon's lavish parties with a pet baboon in tow, clad in diapers after a few unfortunate mishaps.

   She moved with the war to Chongqing, and from there to Hong Kong, where she began an indiscret affair and had an illegitimate child with the head of British Secret Services. She sat out the Japanese occupation, returned to the States after the war ended, and then moved with her lover to England.

   Emily Hahn was more a writer and professional character than a journalist. Her best works are autobiographical, and when she ventured into research the result was painfully propagandistic puff pieces.

   But that is the problem with this biography: Emily Hahn's life had already been documented with both care and color in her own writings, so Cuthbertson's account mostly rehashes Emily's own words in more prosaic terms. The main advantage is to find out the historical characters behind the fictional names, and to have a clearer chronology than Hahn's writing provides.

   The thing is, Emily Hahn didn't lead that interesting or colorful or significant a life, not compared to the many other young Americans lured to the East at the same time. Rather, she was so talented at describing people, places, events with a sharply bemused eye for the ironic idiosyncracy. That is what makes her intriguing.




4. I knew nothing about Emily Hahn and I picked this book up being intrigued by a synopsis. It is a very well written book about an extraordinary life. Emily (Mickey) Hahn broke every convention of her time: a woman who studied mining engineering in collage, a lone white woman in Africa in the early 1930's, a single woman in China, an American "married" to a Chinese as his concubine and a journalist caught in the Japanese invasion of that country. Hopefully, I have said enough to tickle the interest of would-be readers since I don't want to give away any more.

   This is a life story that reads like a novel. Why the Chinese portion of this book has not been made into a movie is a surprise to me. There is a cinematic quality of Ms. Hahn's life in China (which she wrote about herself) that cries out for filming. Ken Cuthbertson tells the story of this life without judgement calls does not clutter his book with useless facts. The book is illustrated with photographs spread throughout the chapters where they are needed. I could not recommend this book more highly.




5. Considering that Emily Hahn wrote 52 books and countless articles and short stories--her career at the New Yorker alone spanned 68 years--and generated plenty of controversy both in her personal life as well as her writing, it's amazing that few people have heard of this unique woman. She was born in 1905, when women's place was in the home, so she found plenty of ways to shock people. In fact, she enjoyed doing it. Hahn took words like "no," "can't," and "shouldn't" as a personal challenge to prove that she could and she would. Without a doubt, Hahn was a remarkable woman who was clearly ahead of her time. Cuthbertson's well-done autobiography of this exotic one-time Shanghai resident allows us to enjoy a wild romp through Hahn's life story.
   
   Even during girlhood, Hahn showed that a propensity to break rules and to write would shape her future. She majored in engineering, despite the unpopularity it caused her. After graduation, Hahn refused to marry. She had too many other things she wanted to do, and she freely admitted that she hated housework. After a stint as an engineer, Hahn worked as a waitress and then a tour guide in Santa Fe for a few years. In 1928, her parents bribed her to come back north and try again by offering to pay her way through graduate school. So, Hahn attended graduate school at Columbia University. While in New York, a friend asked her to cover a journalism assignment for him. Her career as a writer was launched.
   
   Always living on the edge, Emily's next project was a satirical "how to" handbook on the art of seduction--certainly a subject nice young ladies should know nothing about! Hahn then moved in with a male friend, Davey Loth, and bought a Capuchin monkey. She loved to amuse herself by watching people's reactions as she went around the city with "Punk" proudly perched on her shoulder.
   
   Despite seeming to be on the road to success, Hahn succumbed to the family propensity for depression and attempted suicide in 1929. That, however, was probably also on the list of requirements for an artistic temperament. To recover, Hahn decided to move to London with her former male roommate, Loth. Though she loved spending time in the British Museum reading room helping Loth with research for a book he was writing, she readily became bored with London and decided to visit her old friend Patrick Putnam, who was a Harvard-trained anthropologist now working in the Belgian Congo. Of course a young lady traveling alone to Africa raised many eyebrows, as did her shipboard drinking contests with Corsican soldiers. Once she arrived in Africa, the journey she endured to Patrick's village would have daunted even the heartiest male travelers.
   
   Emily remained in the Belgian Congo for nearly two years, learning Swahili and paying for her living expenses by working as a nursing assistant at the hospital in Patrick's village. Naturally, her African experiences led to a book, which she called Congo Solo: Misadventures Two Degrees North.
   
   After returning to London, Emily began an affair with the already-married Edwin Mayer --a founder of MGM Studios. When that relationship ended, she decided to put the past behind her by going abroad again. This time, she decided to try Shanghai, which was "the place to be" in the 1930s. Jobs were plentiful, and many foreigners were able to live a lifestyle they could only dream of back home. Shanghai was also China's cultural and intellectual center, which suited Hahn, as she became part one of the socially hip. One of the highlights of this period was the time she posed nude for Sir Victor Sassoon. Before the local gossips had finished wagging about this event, Hahn stunned everyone by beginning a relationship with a man who was not only married but Chinese. Interracial relationships were highly taboo, but Hahn felt drawn Sinmay Zau not only because he was forbidden, but because he was a poet, an intellectual, and a publisher. Unfortunately, he was also an opium addict, who initiated Emily's battle with the drug. Smoking opium, however, fit her concept of herself as an artist. She thought the drug was exotic, daring, and romantic.
   
   Despite her opium addiction, her busy social life, and her scandalous affair, Hahn managed to remain highly productive during these years. She wrote for local English language publications and The New Yorker, she taught, and she worked on her next book, Affair. One of the more interesting series of articles she created during this period concerned a Chinese gentleman called Pan Heh-ven, who was based on Zau. Through Zau, Hahn gained an intimate view of Shanghainese life that few other outsiders could observe, or would dare to participate in.
   
   Hahn enjoyed her notoriety, but to ensure that the gossips had enough material, she adopted Mr. Mills, a pet gibbon she often took around with her. The naughty Mr. Mills was not very popular with Hahn's neighbors, but she enjoyed the boost it gave her colorful persona.
   
   In the fall of 1937, the Japanese took over Shanghai, threatening to put an end to Hahn's exotic escapades. She had just begun to write a book on the infamous Soong sisters, which became her most recognized work. She was excited about the project as it would be a reason to kick her opium habit and to break off her relationship with Zau. Because of the political situation, however, Hahn decided to actually marry Zau. Since he already had a wife, she would become a concubine. This move actually turned out to be less insane than it appeared to outsiders. Among several reasons, this strange union turned beneficial for her later, as being married to a Chinese allowed her to avoid being interned during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong.
   
   Following her "marriage" to Zau, Hahn went to Hong Kong to work on the Soong book, where she met 36-year-old British army intelligence officer Charles Boxer. Boxer was unhappily married to a wife who had been evacuated to Australia when he began an affair with Hahn. This was disgraceful enough behavior for an officer, but it became scandalous when he wanted to have a child with Emily. At age 35, Hahn assumed she might never get another chance, and she had been told by a Shanghai doctor that probably could not conceive. Since she had been told "no,"... well, by 1941 she was pregnant.
   
   Just imagine the rumor mill: a former opium addict, a Chinaman's concubine, who goes around with a gibbon on her shoulder and smoking cigars, refuses to leave Japanese occupied Hong Kong, and who was now pregnant by a married British officer! Inarguably, Hahn was living life fully and on her own terms.
   
   Hahn was teaching and writing in Hong Kong when baby Carola was born in October 1941. When the Japan attacked in December, it was too late to evacuate. After all the deprivations of war, Hahn returned to the States to discover that her bank account was flush with the royalties from The Soong Sisters and Mr. Pan. She was full of creative energy after her experiences. One of the first projects she completed was penning China to Me. Not everyone appreciated her honesty about her experiences or her views on China's political situation, but again she received mountains of publicity and provided ample fodder for drawing room gossips. She also became a regular contributor at The New Yorker. During this prolific outpouring, she was spinning out articles on a variety of subjects, earning $2,000 per article at a time when the average factory worker earned $1,700 per year. Not bad for a single mother who was only recently a half-starved, penniless refugee!
   
   After the Japanese surrender in 1945, Boxer made his way to New York and married Hahn, but naturally their marriage was anything but ordinary. After the wedding, the family of three made their home at Boxer's family estate in England. While Boxer felt at home as a "country gentleman," burying himself in his research and working at his dream job as a Professor of Portuguese History and Literature at King's College at U of London, Hahn rapidly grew bored. After giving birth to baby Amanda in October 1948, she accepted her dream job on the staff of The New Yorker. She seems to have invented the "commuter marriage" as she divided her time between the two continents for the rest of her life.
   
   For the next 40 years, Hahn indulged her natural curiosity by writing about everything, and she thrived on the stimulation of being a writer in New York City. In her work, as in her personal life, she sought to be unpredictable. In some ways her career was harmed because she moved so effortlessly, and frequently, among genres. As a result, editors did not know how to market her work and publishers seemed at a loss as to how to promote an Emily Hahn book, as her work could not be categorized. Readers, however, liked her eye for intriguing detail and her casual perspective on life in a convention-bound era. When she died in 1997, Hahn was 92 years old, still busily tapping out articles on her trusty typewriter.
   
   Cuthbertson has done a fine job researching Hahn's life and making her story come to life in the pages of "Nobody Said Not to Go." The book is easy to read and inspires readers to explore Hahn's work. Was she simply born to be outrageous? Did declaring herself an "artistic personality" give her a license to do as she pleased? Does she deserve to rank among the best writers of her generation? As Hahn's work has been largely forgotten, the tantalizing answers are happily left for us to discover.

No comments about Gone Crazy and Back Again.

5 comments about Margaret Fuller, Wandering Pilgrim.

1. Murray analyzes Margaret Fuller's achievements as "America's first full-fledged intellectual woman," from child prodigy to crusading journalist to revolutionary agent in Italy, always struggling to make sense of the world around her and her own divided nature. Careful consideration of this Romantic woman writer's "gender / sex identity crisis" makes the book an original contribution to Fuller scholarship and brings us as readers face to face with a conflicted soul, never able to resolve all the contradictions of her mind and body. I recommend this biography to anyone with a serious interest in women's and gender studies.



2. Murray's study of the 19th century American feminist author and intellectual Margaret Fuller ,a creative,richly talented,conflicted, even bedeviled New England Romantic, is nothing short of brilliant. Murray weaves into the warp and woof of her complex Fuller tapestry a blend of criticism, history, literature, psychology, religion and theology, which together yield a finely nuanced picture of a brilliant but profoundly troubled woman who struggled valiantly though unsuccessfully to break free from the constaints of her strict puritanical upbringing and the oppression of a domineering father. Some may wonder whether anything worthwhile can be added to our understanding of Margaret Fuller after the publication of Prof. Capper's second volume. The answer: an emphatic "Yes". Murray's "Wandering Pilgrim" deserves a distinguished place alongside Capper's and the best of the other scholarly volumes on Fuller. A long time birthing, it should stand well the test of time. Murray's controversial interpretation of Fuller will not win acceptance by all Fuller scholars, but they can ill afford to ignore her. Her provocative biography is a must-read .



3. Margaret Fuller for Everyone
   
   Margaret Fuller, Wandering Pilgrim manages to be both a page-turning
   read and a richly dense one. The clear narrative will please and
   inform readers who know little about Fuller, a fascinating nineteenth-
   century author and thinker; at the same time, Murray's extensive
   research and careful analysis will be invaluable to scholars of both
   American literature and women's studies. The book balances
   psychological, historical, and literary background in a wonderfully
   successful attempt to explain the life and achievements of the complex
   woman who made a pioneering case for American women in her classic
   Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845). Even as Murray astutely
   prepares us for the ending of Fuller's life, we keep reading to find
   out both what will happen, and why.



4. Wandering Pilgrim is an excellent study of one of America's most important and neglected literary figures. Murray writes of Margaret Fuller with compassion, complexity and professionalism. Her account of Fuller -- a bold and brilliant woman who enthralled both Emerson and Hawthorne, who used her as a model for Hester Prynne - is a lively and original reading of this memorable woman.



5. As acknowledged by the author, I was involved in the early going, but years later, now that I can sit down with Meg Murray's Fuller biography, I am thrilled. Very few books about literary giants do justice to the narrative. It either seems cooked or perhaps worse lumpy and raw. Murry's story is riveting. I recently needed stories about the Tiber Island hospital where Fuller served as a nurse during the Roman seige and found Murray's account very worth quoting. This is a superb work of scholarship AND a compelling story about one of America's most neglected giants.

3 comments about Half the Way Home: A Memoir of Father and Son.

1. I read this book in 1988 for an autobiography class, and reread it about once a year. It is the only book that has ever brought me to tears. Anyone with a parent who kept their relationships with their children strictly formal will identify with this book.



2. Hochschild has written a gentle and elegant portrait of his family. I chose this book by pure luck (and Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost). I have been rewarded handsomely. It is one of my absolute favorite memoirs that I have ever read. It disturbed me, it moved me and set me on the way to examining and recalling my own memories, especially of the beauty of lost summers of yesteryear. Yet the book is able to deal with the complexities of extraordinarily difficult relationships, class and race consciousness and the very nature of power in society in a though provoking and beautiful way. Most importantly, Hochschild teaches that the past and all whom we know and love will live on within us.



3. A memoir of the author's relationship with his father, Harold, whom he did not appreciate or understand as a child. He grew up in a privileged environment, as his father was a wealthy businessman, but received a lot of harsh criticism from his father. However, after marriage and two sons, he developed an understanding of his father's background and an unexpected peace finally was made between them. A well-written, hard-to-put-down book--deeply moving.