Trainwise [entries|archive|friends|userinfo]
trainwise

[ userinfo | livejournal userinfo ]
[ archive | journal archive ]

THE WESTIES by T.J. English [Apr. 3rd, 2008|03:20 pm]
[Tags|]
[Current Location |The Office]
[mood | good]
[music |SEND ME AN ANGEL by Real Life]

 

THE WESTIES
by
T.J. English

Detailing the rise and fall of a brutal Irish gang that terrorized Hell’s Kitchen during the latter half of the 20th Century, THE WESTIES would be fodder for the airport rack were it not for author English, who proves himself to be a formidable reporter (and storyteller) in this debut book.

The Westies themselves were at best a small-time criminal operation, by and large confined to the streets of Manhattan’s West Side. Their history offers little of the glam and glitz most mob aficionados require to fuel their fandom. But English uses the spare backdrop of the docks, bars and construction yards to close his sights tightly on key players, and there he discovers an affecting story of success gone awry. The betrayals that get traded back and forth between boss Jimmy Coonan and enforcer Mickey Featherstone are reminiscent of the less-literal backstabbing normally found in high-power business narratives, and the comparative simplicity of this criminal organization helps render its politics more comprehensible than they would be in a gang as expansive as, say, the Italian mafia.

Furthering the flavor, English steadfastly refuses to tell the tale in sequence, often dumping readers in the middle of a shocking twist before backtracking to show us its roots. It’s like having cold water continually thrown in our faces—not that anyone would have trouble staying awake with all this violence. (One of The Westies trained as a butcher in prison, and passed his skills onto his fellow gang members upon his release—all of whom found predictably horrifying new uses for them.)

A unique crime book, from an author I can’t wait to revisit. But there are times you’ll wish he wrote about fluffy bunny picnics.

linkpost comment

LOW LIFE by Luc Sante [Apr. 3rd, 2008|03:18 pm]
[Tags|]
[Current Location |The Office]
[mood | good]
[music |COMPUTERLOVE by Kraftwerk]



LOW LIFE
by
Luc Sante

Rendered in impeccable prose, packed to the gills with lists of names and places and acts so bizarre that they resemble Burroughsian poetry, bursting with obsessive fervor, LOW LIFE is more like a cathedral than a book, and it’s impossible to read only once. Sante makes his enthusiasm for New York’s sordid history (largely Victorian and prior) into a communicable obsession, like cooties for your brain. Flip to any page, and immediately you’re lost in multiple examples of awe-inspiring endeavor—most impressive of which is the lassoing of all New York’s archival sin and squalor into a single rollicking fever dream. One of the best books about New York that you will ever read, this is historical spelunkery at its most ecstatic.

linkpost comment

GAMES PRISONERS PLAY: THE TRAGICOMIC WORLDS OF POLISH PRISON by Marek M. Kaminski [Mar. 27th, 2008|03:28 pm]
[Tags|]
[Current Location |The Office]
[mood | fine]
[music |COME ON by Air Traffic]



GAMES PRISONERS PLAY: THE TRAGICOMIC WORLDS OF POLISH PRISON
by
Marek M. Kaminski

Not to be confused with GAMES CRIMINALS PLAY, reviewed earlier this year, GAMES PRISONERS PLAY is about Polish prison culture as it existed in the mid-1980s, written from Kaminski’s recollections of his stint as a political detainee. It’s social anthropology with a peculiarly cerebral twist: Kaminski uses game theory to illuminate how the common interactions of his fellow prisoners proceeded logically from the “givens” of their environment, going so far as to include decision matrixes for key dilemmas.

Kaminski’s certainly adept at examining the “rules” of incarceration—a juvenile etiquette born of aggression and male panic, with fairly horrifying consequences for noncompliance. Some of his looks at the win/loss dynamics of prison are funny (to fart or not to fart in a crowded cell), others are decidedly less so (whether or not to have consensual sex with an inmate, in exchange for protection), but these exercises eventually interlock to form a portrait of degradation at its most concisely inhuman, such that any humor in the book’s approach is pretty well drained from the proceedings by the end.

In fact, GAMES’ attempts to maintain a clinical distance from its subject matter only help the content hit twice as hard—there’s no misguided optimism, or even outrage, to cushion the blow from prison’s endless procession of decisions no one should ever have to make.

linkpost comment

THE HORROR MANGA OF JUNJI ITO [Mar. 14th, 2008|05:16 pm]
[Tags|]
[Current Location |The Office]
[mood | good]
[music |NUMBER ONE by Lightspeed Champion]



THE HORROR MANGA OF JUNJI ITO

With horror maven Junji Ito’s manga being reissued by VIZ in brand new English-language editions, now is the perfect time to get acquainted, or re-acquainted, with his work. His ideas alone defy easy description, achieving practically hallucinogenic levels of surreality long before you’ve seen the grotesque, stunning artwork he uses to bring them to life.

Indeed, Ito’s premises are so absurd that logic insists they should be funny. One section of GYO presents us with a group of citizens stricken with a mysterious disease, uncontrollably belching and farting as they wander the streets of their city--until a set of robotic insect legs clomps along and carts them off like stray dogs, running vacuum tubes into their butts and down their throats to harness the escaping gas as fuel. Logic would suggest that this scene should, at the very least, induce a befuddled giggle. Or perhaps an ironic “high comedy” chuckle, as in “ah yes, such a telling commentary on the nature of the industrial blah blah blah…” But Ito knows how to present these concepts so that they dive straight past your mental defenses, the way nightmares do, and his images make short work of any humor involved: These bloated corpselike things, eyes pearly white, bodies lifeless with infection, violated and piled like so much chaff onto the spine-like chassis of a parasitic mechanical insect...you’ll wish you could somehow shake the picture back out of your brain.

Ito’s equally deft at encompassing concepts that become frightening precisely because of their nebulousness, as illustrated by UZUMAKI, his most famous series. This set of linked stories concerns a town whose locals gradually become obsessed with spirals, accompanied by spiral-themed descents into madness and mutation. There is no monster to fight, no disease to cure, no demon to exorcise--only the image of the spiral, at once simple and horribly impalpable, gradually overtaking the minds of the townspeople, and finally their bodies. One character’s father commits suicide by forcing himself into the shape of a spiral. A spiral-shaped scar on a girl’s forehead eventually grows into a devouring vortex that consumes her eyes, her head, her legs... Like the best work of Lovecraft and Blackwood, even the notion of UZUMAKI is unsettling, presenting a horror that manifests itself in the world at large, but originates somewhere in the sticky corridors of the mind, and descends back there once it’s been introduced into your cognitive bloodstream.

To make matters more impressive, Ito wrangles these premises together using surprisingly straightforward plotting. His manga unfold with a queasy internal logic, dragging the reader along like a runaway train.  In fact, the stories are so well-crafted that they maintain their effectiveness even after repeated exposures--you'll savor the darkening mood and the cringe-inducing artwork each time…and you'll secretly hope that you will eventually develop an immunity.

linkpost comment

THE BIG SLEEP by Raymond Chandler [Mar. 3rd, 2008|07:21 pm]
[Tags|]
[Current Location |The Office]
[mood | groggy]
[music |WRESTLERS by Hot Chip]



THE BIG SLEEP
by
Raymond Chandler

THE BIG SLEEP is to detective noir what THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING is to fantasy, what DUNE is to science fiction--the pinnacle of a genre that flattered its author's genius with imitation, and imitation, and imitation.  Here, you'll encounter cliches before they became tired, better yet understand why they became cliches in the first place.

The plot is self-evidently standard stuff: A dying millionaire (check) hires a hard-boiled private eye (check) to solve a blackmail case (check) that is further complicated by the interference of the patriarch's beautiful and deadly daughters (check, check, check). If it all sounds ho-hum, believe me, Chandler literally wrote the book on this stuff, and you'll find yourself sinking into his dissonant symphony of corruption and double-dealing like it was scribed last week.  His prose is like a hypnotist's watch, drawing you into his world for its own sake--one borne of a singularly dark worldview: The men are violent, the women are treacherous, the only people of any humanity are dead, dying, killed or imprisoned. But all this only ups the stakes, energizing the mysterious, often erotic charge of every exchange.

As for Chandler's famous protagonist, Phillip Marlowe, there's no fictional character I can think of whom I'd rather spend a book filtering my brain through. He's all implacable honor and barely-disguised frailties, a steel-encased softie whose idealism knew too much to live.
linkpost comment

THE HOLLOW CHOCOLATE BUNNIES OF THE APOCALYPSE by Robert Rankin [Mar. 3rd, 2008|06:42 pm]
[Tags|]
[Current Location |The Office]
[mood | blank]
[music |TOO DRUNK TO DREAM by The Magnetic Fields]



THE HOLLOW CHOCOLATE BUNNIES OF THE APOCALYPSE
by
Robert Rankin 

APOCALYPSE makes for amiably snarky reading, particularly when we're talking about its two central characters: Jack, a human adrift in a corrupt city of living toys, and his buddy Eddie, a talking alcoholic teddy bear who can't use corroborative nouns. (One of many linguistic gimmicks of the author's, all of which are as clever as...)
linkpost comment

THE MENSTRUATING MALL by Carlton Mellick III [Mar. 3rd, 2008|06:36 pm]
[Tags|]
[Current Location |The Office]
[mood | tired]
[music |SWEET TALK by The Killers]



THE MENSTRUATING MALL
by
Carlton Mellick III

If you were disappointed to find that Nathaniel West’s DAY OF THE LOCUST did not contain any giant grasshoppers, or that THE CATCHER IN THE RYE had nothing whatsoever to do with playing baseball in a grain silo, you will be thrilled to discover author Carlton Mellick III, whose books (THE BABY JESUS BUTT PLUG, THE OCEAN OF LARD) never fail to make good on the surreal, often revolting promises of their titles.
 
A cross between George Romero’s DAWN OF THE DEAD and Agatha Christie’s AND THEN THERE WERE NONE, THE MENSTRUATING MALL concerns a group of walking American stereotypes (the Jesus-freak, the wanabee-gangsta, the valley girl) who find they can’t seem to bring themselves to leave their local shopping center--a mall that has begun, as advertised, to bleed. Once these losers are left alone with each other, they begin to die at the hands of a mysterious killer, who claims to be punishing them for their conformity to type.  They embark on an increasingly desperate quest for new identities, encompassing nonsensical dress codes and randomized vandalism as these cookie-cutter-characters scramble to get a third dimension, pronto.
 
The story itself isn’t very long, in fact it’s really more of a short story--or, if you like, a kind of picture book for perverts. Food Fortunata's crude drawings, which have little to do with the plot, are the sort of thing you'd expect to find in a defaced middle-school textbook. Mellick's prose is similarly lowgrade stuff, as though he wants us to think that a ten-year-old came up with it.

Indeed, this book raises a question common to both fans and detractors of the outsider art scene: Do Mellick and Fortunata's primitivisms represent a choice, or just the limits of their abilities?  In the case of Fortunata, I'd say the latter, in a big way. But in the case of Mellick, there is a sense of misbehavior to his style, like a kid who lets his parents down to piss them off. His plot is also well-served by its brevity, buzzing by too fast for its conceits to collapse on themselves. Whereas an author like Harlan Ellison can prop up his bizarre ideas with powerhouse prose, Mellick keeps the whole thing afloat by rushing you through as fast as possible. It's the fictional equivalent of jalopy-hawking, but either way, it's a successful sale.
 
Just ask me again in a month if the car still starts.
linkpost comment

GAMES CRIMINALS PLAY by Bud Allen and Diana Bosta [Jan. 28th, 2008|05:55 pm]
[Tags|]
[Current Location |The Office]
[music |Air Conditioner]



GAMES CRIMINALS PLAY
by
Bud Allen & Diana Bosta

A BOY SCOUTS' MANUAL for corrections officers, now in its twenty-eighth printing, GAMES CRIMINALS PLAY sets out to teach prison employees how to recognize inmate manipulation, and dismantle common ploys for contraband.  The set-ups themselves are generally more complex than you might expect, often impressively subtle, and hardly unique to prisons--readers who have spent time in any institutional environment, be it an office or a school, will recognize similar strategies at play in their own workplaces.

The tone of GAMES can be almost humorously authoritarian (its last line is, "IT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU") but it's also strangely idealistic--according to Allen and Bosta, the trick of good corrections work is learning to set strong behavioral examples without either hardening to the point of coldness, or softening to the point of vulnerability.

That's worthwhile advice for any profession, though particularly ironic when paired with the environment it is being applied to here.
linkpost comment

THE PERSIAN BOY by Mary Renault [Jan. 28th, 2008|05:50 pm]
[Tags|]
[Current Location |The Office]
[music |Air Conditioner]



THE PERSIAN BOY
by
Mary Renault

The second novel in Mary Renault’s ‘Alexander the Great’ trilogy, THE PERSIAN BOY focuses chiefly on the leader himself, with writing that feels more like an eyewitness account than historical fiction. Much of the book’s success in that regard stems from Renault’s choice of narrator: A young Persian eunuch named Bagoas who becomes Alexander’s companion, and gradually falls in love with him. At once proud and fiercely loyal, Bagoas is every bit as engaging as the figure at the book’s center--and his outsider status helps Renault relate the culture of the Greeks to readers who may be similarly alienated by it.

There is simply a kind of magic that occurs when Renault writes from Bagoas' point of view, the literary equivalent of an actor being cast in a plum role: You can sense her own fervor for Alexander infusing his voice, and we come to feel that we truly know the enigmatic figure he speaks of, not merely as a leader, but as a man. We understand why his achievements were remarkable in their time. We feel that we have come in contact with the sources of the conqueror’s ambition. As for Alexander’s famous eccentricities, Renault renders them comprehensible in the soft light of Bagoas’ affection.

I know this all sounds incredibly risque, but trust me, THE PERSIAN BOY is no Anne Rice kinkfest. Renault uses a talent for subtlety to "insinuate" the more alarming aspects of her story--readers not paying close attention to her prose might miss a dalliance, a strategem, even a murder. The approach allows Renault to paint a comprehensible portrait of a time-period usually mined for lurid violence and sex, presenting its essential brutality without wallowing in it. Indeed, Renault seems similarly intent on illuminating, if not normalizing, the customs of the ancient world. She’s not interested in shocking readers with tales of slavery and sacrifice, rather in showing us how, at one time, such practices were inseparable from the fabric of everyday life.

World-work aside, the beating heart at the center of this story is the relationship between Alexander and Bagoas, one of the most unusual matches in literature, made all the more remarkable because it is so moving, so real. Renault has brought one distant figure from history to vivid life, and built another into a haunting, heartbreaking character for the ages.  Her book is many things: It's a brilliant historical novel. It's a tragic romance. It's as much about the honor of love as it is about history, and it respects each as deeply as the other.

The best thing I've read in a long, long time.
linkpost comment

WISEGUY by Nicholas Pileggi [Jan. 23rd, 2008|11:17 pm]
[Tags|]
[Current Location |The Office]
[music |Air Conditioner]



WISEGUY
by
Nicholas Pileggi

Itself the source material for one of the greatest mob movies ever made (namely GOODFELLAS), WISEGUY can claim a similarly illustrious place at the top of its respective genre. It's one of the most bracing, enlightening accounts of organized crime in America that you're ever likely to read.  Those who come to mob histories looking to indulge in fantasies of power and entitlement will get a long, hard look at the violence and inhumanity such "privilege" depends on.

Anyone familiar with the Scorsese film (especially those of us who have committed its narration and dialogue to memory) will recognize much of what they read here: WISEGUY is the story of one Henry Hill, a half-Irish gangster who begins his career as a kind of mob prodigy, committing arson and selling swag by the time he's fifteen, and eventually receiving unprecedented access to the inner workings of the underworld...all of which comes in handy for Hill later in life, when he must rat out everyone he knows in exchange for Federal protection.

The story is told by Henry and his wife Karen, with intermittent notes from Pileggi. Together, their three POVs converge to provide a rich portrait of the underworld, one you feel you could step into. Karen, whose role in this account is far more illuminating than her filmic counterpart's, gives us a sense of how "the life" looks and feels to an outsider, and how she and the other Mafia wives come to terms with their husbands' professions. Meanwhile, Henry understandably carries the lion's share of the narration, displaying a unique skill for laying out the "business model" of the standard mob shakedowns. He's equally good at illuminating the peculiar psychology of his peers, who don't trust anything they haven't stolen themselves. (One capo tells Hill early in the book that, regardless of his largesse, he still prefers to eat out on stolen credit cards because the liquor "tastes better".)

For these guys, theft is not simply the refuge of the desperate, it's a kind of passion--the driving force of their lives. The lawful are seen as chumps and losers who aren't strong enough to take what's there to be had. But there's the rub, or in this case, the rubout: In a world where everything is free, life turns out to be even cheaper.

WISEGUY is more than just a vivid "true crime" period piece--it's a hard-to-shake examination of the urges and attitudes that foster, even nurture, corruption.
linkpost comment

CLUBLIFE by Rob "The Bouncer" Fitzgerald [Jan. 11th, 2008|12:18 am]
[Tags|]
[Current Location |Victorian Splendor, 11215]
[mood |awake]
[music |Air Conditioner]



CLUBLIFE
by
Rob "The Bouncer" Fitzgerald

A social anthropology text for bruisers of the outer-boroughs, CLUBLIFE tells the story of Rob Fitzgerald’s tenure as a doorman/shitkicker to New York's nightlife scene, tracing the descent of the pseudonymous club “Axis” (actually an amalgam of two such hotspots) into Mos Eisleydom.  But don't expect Fitzgerald to take issue with his lost evenings among the glitterati--just his growing chance of getting stabbed to death by coke dealers.

This is an aggressively frank memoir, devoid of the glitz that's normally dangled in accounts like it.  To Fitzgerald and his fellow bouncers, these clubs are nothing more than grifts, luring losers through their doors through the strategic positioning of velvet ropes and stanchions.  His characterization of the clientele is no less disillusioning: Pull the thick and rusty zipper down the back of your average B&T party monster, and you'll find an insecure sot who's traded a week of earnings for a few hours of unearned respect.

Fitzgerald's writing, somehow crude and clever simultaneously, is almost calculatedly offensive.  He wants you to know he can be a sonuvabitch.  But he's a sonuvabitch who puts the other sonuvabitches in their place, like television's endless stream of vampire-slaying vampires.

It's been said that an authentic New Yorker is someone who can say they well and truly hate the place.  By that measure, this Fitzgerald character is mighty real.

linkpost comment

YAKUZA by David E. Kaplan and Alec Dubro [Dec. 26th, 2007|08:57 pm]
[Tags|]
[Current Location |Victorian Splendor, 11215]
[mood | good]
[music |Air Conditioner]



YAKUZA
by
David E. Kaplan and Alec Dubro

A dense, engaging expose of the so-called "Japanese Mafia", YAKUZA does a great job placing this unique criminal organization in cultural context, exploring their dual role as gangsters and nationalist pin-ups. "In some respects," the authors explain, "it is as if the Ku Klux Klan and the Mafia formed an enduring, politically potent alliance."

The Yakuza have used this conflicted image to their advantage, infiltrating Japanese businesses, and going about their dirty work with surprising transparency. Gang headquarters will often proudly bear the insignia of their respective crew, the way a legitimate business might display its logo. The names of their corporate extortionists are even published in a yellow-page-style manual. (How else are you going to know where to send the blackmail money?)

Kaplan and Dubro feature plenty of detail on the gangs' colorful traditions, such as their famous practice of finger-severing and elaborate body tattoos, but the primary focus of the book is on their methods of fleecing the host society. Japan's social prerogative of "saving face", for instance, leaves the door wide open for subtle and effective forms of Yakuza intimidation, while its widely-held national traditions of gift-giving make most Yakuza shakedowns undetectable. Even more conveniently for the gangs, the sweeping liberties taken by the Japanese government during World War II make it very difficult to introduce the kind of surveillance techniques that would be necessary to nail mob figures with hard evidence. By exploring the social sensitivities that have allowed The Yakuza to thrive, Kaplan and Dubro help reveal how criminals capitalize (literally) on weak points and taboos within a given culture, working wherever there is enough darkness to safely hide.

linkpost comment

MAFIA DYNASTY by John H. Davis [Dec. 16th, 2007|07:43 pm]
[Tags|]
[Current Location |Victorian Splendor, 11215]
[mood | lazy]
[music |Air Conditioner]



MAFIA DYNASTY
by
John H. Davis

The Reader's Digest of the American mob, MAFIA DYNASTY provides a high-level overview of the modern underworld's progress from the 1920s through the 90s.  The Gambino Family's rise to power is used as the backbone of the narrative, and it provides a good opportunity for Davis to touch on "big moments" in mob history, and our government's long road toward recognizing, and counteracting, its power.

Davis is no stylist, but he has compiled a ton of information here, and does a great job peppering the broad-strokes with memorable details: The way Carlo Gambino's wife would pacify angry visitors with coffee and small talk before they met with her husband.  The specifics of the FBI plot to bug Paul Castellano's Staten Island estate.  ("Phase one: The drugging of the Dobermans.")

Unfortunately, since MAFIA DYNASTY was written right after the indictment of "Dapper Don" John Gotti, a large section of the book (and by large, I mean about 200 pages) is devoted to describing his many trials, and it's here that the narrative screeches to a halt; it's a level of detail that would have been better devoted to other subjects.

Before that happens, this remains a brisk overview of a perennially fascinating subject.
linkpost comment

THE DICE MAN by Luke Rhinehart [Dec. 4th, 2007|08:59 pm]
[Tags|]
[Current Location |Victorian Splendor, 11215]
[mood | crazy]
[music |Air Conditioner]



THE DICE MAN
by
Luke Rhinehart

Bored with his own identity, a psychiatrist begins to randomize his life, leaving decisions up to a toss of the dice. He loses his family and peers in the process, but eventually earns a following of like-minded acolytes, all bent on "diceliving" along with him.

Actually penned by George Cockroft, THE DICE MAN is presented as the autobiography of Luke Rhinehart, its titular anti-hero, whose "dicepeople" movement is still pretty intriguing today, and will strike many readers as an obvious precursor to the so-crazy-they-just-might-be-sane cults at the center of later works by A. S. Byatt and Chuck Pahluniak. Only Rhinehart isn't nearly as good at undercutting the enticing aspects of his premise with its realistic consequences, be they good or bad.

Even worse, as his book's escapades become increasingly carnal, the story devolves into a series of self-gratifying (not to mention dull) sex fantasies, and the otherwise clever conceit of diceliving starts feeling like a cover-up for somebody's run-of-the-mill midlife crisis.

Whether the author's or his character's, I cannot say.

linkpost comment

I HAD TO SAY SOMETHING by Mike Jones with Sam Gallegos [Nov. 22nd, 2007|01:53 am]
[Tags|]
[Current Location |Victorian Splendor, 11215]
[mood | aggravated]
[music |DOWN THE WRONG ROAD BOTH WAYS by Magnolia Electric Company]



I HAD TO SAY SOMETHING
by
Mike Jones with Sam Gallegos

When escort Mike Jones learned that his kinky client "Art" (into sex toys and crystal meth) was actually Evangelical minister Ted Haggard (into hawking anti-gay legislation at megachurches) he was faced with a tricky decision--stay silent and let the hypocrite off the hook, or go public and put them both out of business. I HAD TO SAY SOMETHING is the story of Jones' life as a sex worker, his relationship with Haggard, and his (eventual) decision to expose him...one of history's few "excusable" tell-alls, since its author had to abandon his career just to write it.

Reading about Jones' escorting work is strangely touching, especially since most of his clients are from communities where their homosexuality must remain an absolute secret. Their loneliness is palpable, and Jones never underestimates what their time with him means to them (which is often more than it should).

Jones' personality comes through plainly, and I do mean plainly--co-writer Gallegos seems to have sensed that leaving his ordinariness intact would help counteract our preconceptions of the author. Readers expecting to find a liberal firebrand will encounter instead a gentle meathead whose long road to exposing Haggard is fraught with overdose levels of both hemming and hawing…and lots and lots of crying. They may also be surprised by just how workyday the particulars of being an escort really are; it's more like being a dental hygeinist than you'd think.

As for Haggard, there is no attempt to make him seem like anything more than he was, either: A troubled man whose political stance was perhaps a way of fighting from without what he couldn't conquer within.

linkpost comment

PERFIDY by Ben Hecht [Nov. 16th, 2007|04:16 pm]
[Tags|]
[Current Location |The Office]
[mood | okay]
[music |Meeting Room]



PERFIDY
by
Ben Hecht

PERFIDY, Ben Hecht’s passionate exculpation of the “Kastner Affair” (a 1953 trial that remains radioactively controversial to this day) is itself the subject of intense debate, and was banned in Israel for decades.
 
What we know for sure is this: Rudolph Kastner, head of the Jewish Aid and Rescue Committee, somehow persuaded the Nazis to allow about 1600 of his fellow Hungarian Jews (including Kastner’s family and many of his prominent peers) to escape to Switzerland in 1943. A decade later, an elderly amateur journalist living in Israel asserted that this great good was done in exchange for a greater evil—that to secure these escapes, Kastner had agreed to help the SS keep the other Jews in Hungary ignorant of their destination at Auschwitz.
 
The government of Israel sued the accusing journalist for libel, arguing that Kastner’s deal with the SS was merely part of the Nazis' strategy to develop humanitarian “alibis” in preparation for their now-inevitable arrests at the end of the war. But whatever Kastner’s intent, his self-asserted dealings with the Nazis (as well as his role in the exoneration of SS Officer Kurt Becher, who dodged war-criminal status thanks to an affidavit from Kastner) eventually saw him labeled as a collaborator by a number of Israeli citizens—even though the Israeli Supreme Court would not uphold the charges.
 
In PERFIDY, Hecht weaves the Kastner Affair into a tapestry of conspiracy, intimating that the Hungarian Jews were essentially permitted to die by Israel’s Zionist elite, who hoped to hold onto power by helping British superiors enforce their strict cap on Jewish immigration to Palestine. Hecht even goes so far as to suggest that the Zionists nixed operations to save Jews from Hungary, and did their best to keep news of the holocaust’s extent from leaking out abroad.
 
The Jewish Agency’s response to PERFIDY flatly states that this is all fiction, and to be fair, Hecht is a screenwriter, not a historian; his book reads like a film treatment, specifically one by Oliver Stone. Hecht’s also prone (like all the machination-minded) to attribute sinister motives to choices that may not have been choices: What’s perceived as the Zionists’ unwillingness to inform the world about the camps may have been the unwillingness of the world to listen, and his assertion that The Jewish Agency’s bureaucratic cross-purposes masked an unwillingness to rescue Hungarian Jews could have simply been managerial incapability. In short, what Hecht regards as strategic indifference may have just been failure, plain and simple.
 
Yet, as with any good conspiracy theory, the fishiness will not entirely wash off. Though it’s been revealed that many of Hecht’s source materials are selectively quoted, Kastner’s testimony from the libel trial is included in long tracts, and it’s pretty damning. Plus there’s the fact that Kastner’s personal trial never had the chance to happen—he was assassinated before it could.
 
Hecht’s self-admittedly biased account of these events will have many readers seeing red, but they may find that it soon fades to an unsettling shade of gray.
linkpost comment

WHY MASCOTS HAVE TALES by Fred Willman [Sep. 23rd, 2007|07:47 pm]
[Tags|]
[Current Location |Victorian Splendor, 11215]
[mood | good]
[music |Ethan & Phill Rehearsing EDGAR]



WHY MASCOTS HAVE TALES
The Illinois High School Mascot Manual
from Appleknockers to Zippers
by
Fred Willman

Marrying the straightforward tone of a PTA bulletin with the factual exhaustiveness of Gary Gygax's early Dungeons & Dragons manuals, this primary source of the American weird is awe-inspiring...and more than a touch bonkers. WHY MASCOTS HAVE TALES catalogs every High School mascot in the state of Illinois, interweaving this data into a cross-referential study of mascots on the national level and containing the back-stories of 144 individual mascots, complete with logos and maps. Along the way, mascot choices are tied into the history of Illinois, that of the nation itself, and finally, that of the Illinoisian ecosystem.

The book is real, people. Published by the Illinois High School association, and not even remotely ironic, it's a labor of love (verging on a labor of obsession) compiled after two years of research by uber-fanboy Willman. And although it's currently available only from the web store on the IHSA website, to quote the author's oft-repeated exhortation, "It is worth going out of your way to see..."

linkpost comment

ON KILLING by Lieutenant David Grossman [Sep. 12th, 2007|01:01 pm]
[Tags|]
[Current Location |The Office]
[mood | cheerful]
[music |PUEBLO by Pavement]



ON KILLING: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL COST OF LEARNING TO KILL IN WAR AND SOCIETY
by
Lieutenant David Grossman

ON KILLING examines the psychological barriers that prevent us from killing, and the inevitable consequences of successfully overcoming them. It studies how, in the military, group psychology and emotional distance can work together to break down our resistence to committing acts of violence, and how dehumanization becomes a necessary tool for psychological survival in combat. These are concepts that have been implemented for years to create 'more effective' soldiers--in fact, according to the author, conditioning techniques developed after World War II have resulted in a near-quadrupling of the firing rate. What was slow to develop alongside this was any real understanding of the repercussions for soldiers who experience (and yes wield) this violence.

Grossman's book remains eye-opening, even essential, over ten years after its release. It does much to dispel macho myths about the supposed ease with which "real soldiers" face violence, arguing that lethal acts come naturally to very few. Accounts of soldiers experiencing nervous collapse after their first taste of battle, or freezing-up during combat, demonstrate this in no uncertain terms. Even among very experienced soldiers, Grossman finds that psychological repercussions are well-nigh unavoidable, and sometimes deadly in and of themselves. It's an important fact to face: No one is 'cut out' for war.

The book's viewpoint is also valuable, representing a unique opportunity to view the world from a perspective at once distinctly military and relatively free of spin. War and murder are 'givens' here, and even atrocity is regarded in almost purely strategic terms, but these acts are neither judged nor glorified. The author avoids easy answers, and steers clear of taking political stands--no flag waving, no finger pointing. We’re asked to take responsibility for our nation's actions in the collective sense.

I do have gripes, of course. Grossman's tone sometimes marries the coldness of military writing with the coldness of psychological writing, and he seems unable to speak of medals, parades or patriotism outside of the context of behavioral conditioning. The armed forces start to sound like a Skinner experiment, with the soldiers as the rats.

The book's closing section also posed problems for me. The author attributes an almost supernatural conditioning power to video gaming and filmmaking, insisting that an increase of violence in our entertainment was largely responsible for the surge in crime that the US experienced in the 1990s. Even if that's true (unlikely, since the murder and assault rates have dropped each year since the book's release, despite the rise of Rockstar Games) I can't escape the irony of a military psychologist urging me to change the world...by reducing the amount of pretend killing in it.

Still, warts and all, this is an important text--the first I’ve read this year that I honestly feel everyone should pick up.

* * *

For the record, the friend who recommended this to me back in 1999 has since joined a cult.

linkpost comment

VENUS IN FURS by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch & CONFESSIONS by Wanda von Sacher-Masoch [Sep. 3rd, 2007|01:29 am]
[Tags|]
[Current Location |Victorian Splendor, 11215]
[mood | aggravated]
[music |IT'S EASIER NOW by Jason Molina]



VENUS IN FURS by Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
&
THE CONFESSIONS OF WANDA VON SACHER-MASOCH by Wanda Von Sacher-Masoch

I’d been advised to read these books back-to-back, and having made good on that recommendation, I’m passing it on to you: Read them together if you can, for a unique instance of literary 'he said, she said'.

* * *

First it's VENUS IN FURS.

Initially responsible for introducing the concept of the dominatrix to 19th-Century Europe (and itself the origin of the term masochism) VENUS tells of a man who dreams of being 'punished' by a beautiful, powerful woman...in furs. The kink leads him to nag his lover into becoming the lady of his very nightmares, and very soon our pseudo-hapless protagonist is contracted to her as property, forced into servitude, regularly flagellated, and finally made to endure her open infidelity. In the end, all this wish fulfillment proves to be too much of a bad thing, corrupting him at least as much as he's corrupted her.

VENUS IN FURS is not entirely convincing, but it's hard to ignore, since it set in motion so many archetypes of 'the dirty book'...not to mention 'the dirty life'.

It's also virtually impossible to put down.

* * *

CONFESSIONS is often regarded as a kind of nonfiction companion to VENUS IN FURS, being the memoir of von Sacher-Masoch's wife. In it, we see her overcome a destitute childhood to find love in the arms of The Author, whom she meets as the result of a friend's CYRANO-esque epistolary ruse. Once married, his idiosynchracies begin to materialize, not the weirdest of which is his insistence that she fulfill the role of the dominating mistress portrayed in his then-famous novel YOU-KNOW-WHAT. Forget that Wanda's busy trying to raise three young children on his pelting income. She must also whip her husband regularly, wear ridiculous furs at every possible opportunity, and actively seek a lover outside the marriage at her husband's behest...though she knows the latter act will give her husband legal recourse for a divorce.

As the incidents surrounding their domestic and professional lives become increasingly reminiscent of early Pinter plays, Wanda dives into the mire with eyes wide open and pen at the ready, seeing into the motivations of her companions like an X-ray machine, even anticipating 'the beginning of the end' with her husband long before it occurs.

Along the way we get an unforgiving portrait of an artist who is largely incapable of interacting successfully with anyone he didn't make up; Sacher-Masoch seems to want the complex outer world of reality to match the simplistic and self-serving one of his fiction.

We see, too, the phantasmagoric world of wealth and corruption that swirls around this literary figure in the late 19th-Century, and the desperate work his wife must do to keep her family and her sanity intact under the circumstances

* * *

The final tragic twist is that Wanda's account is so well-written! A better book all around than VENUS IN FURS, featuring all the depth of character and sense of place that her husband's sketchy narrative lacks.

If there is any justice in this book, it's just that.
linkpost comment

ENCYCLOPEDIA HORRIFICA by Joshua Gee [Aug. 17th, 2007|04:29 pm]
[Tags|]
[Current Location |The Office]
[mood | excited]



ENCYCLOPEDIA HORRIFICA
by
Joshua Gee
 
Get this junior-level IN SEARCH OF for your kids, and you are guaranteed they will grow up to be cool.
 
If you don’t buy it for its detailed, comprehensive overview of paranormal phenomena, or its eagle-eye view of horror literature and folklore over the centuries, or its densely layered spreads of gorgeous color imagery and archival photography…get it because I am in the book, suckas!
 
Seriously. There is a kid-friendly interview with me about the work of Sensei H.P. Lovecraft, and I pose with a copy of The Necronomicon.
 
Don’t believe me? Just check the index. I’m between US Coast Guard and Vampires.
linkpost comment

navigation
[ viewing | most recent entries ]
[ go | earlier ]