In London last month I picked up a nice, fat paperback “The Making of Modern Britain, From Queen Victoria to VE Day,” by Andrew Marr, to read while flying across the Atlantic. It took me weeks to finish (the plane ride only lasted 10 hours) and I enjoyed every information-packed page.
The fact that a Scotsman wrote it primarily for an English audience makes the project even more interesting. An American reader becomes a bemused bystander, listening to the Brit-speak, fascinated to find out what they may have to say about us.
By Brit-speak, I mean “this syren (sic), this goat-footed bard, this half-human visitor to our age from the hag-ridden magic and enchanted woods of Celtic antiquity” (John Maynard Keynes describing the politician Lloyd George). Marr does call that description “going it a bit.”
Marr takes for granted that his readers have heard of Lloyd George and King Edward VII, Ben Tillet, Lord Kitchener, Mr Rolls and Mr Royce, the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift, Music Halls, and more. But do the British know where the common knowledge differs from historical fact? The detailed argument Marr offers is fascinating.
One example is the British evacuation through Dunkirk in June, 1940. Marr writes, “One can peel away the layers of misremembering for ever... Men did fight for places on the boats. Others became wildly drunk, or broke down. It is not true that the British army was saved by flotillas of little pleasure boats taken across the Channel by their plucky owners. Many fishermeen, lifeboatmen and commercial boat owners refused point blank to help... The Royal Navy was always in the lead, taking absurd risks and suffering severe casualties to get the troops away. Nor it is true that the (soldiers) returned home full of contempt for Jerry and determined to get back to Europe and fight as soon as possibile. There are many eyewitness and first-person accounts of demoralized, angry, near-mutinous men, shattered and humiliated, returning to the English ports.”
“Looking back,” he says, “we learn to see ourselves more sharply. Our forebears were living on the lip of the future, just as we are. Their illusions about what was to come should make us, right now, a little humble. They were tough, passionate and young, however ancient they seem now.”
Marr vividly describes the Edwardian-era British as “very far, and strangely near... Few of us would feel at home there for any length of time. Every town had places where the children were literally shoeless and where people were withering... from malnutrition. The smells of the town included human excrement and unwashed bodies, along with tobacco, beer, coal smoke and the rich reek of horse... Every middle-class household had a maid, or maids, a cook, and often a gardener or groom. Class distinction was not an abstract thing, but present in most houses, standing quietly in the room.”
It’s familiar, but somehow strange. In 1908 there already was deep-seated unease about the growing power of the Kaiser. One journalist “warned a friend to get rid of his German nanny because, as a keen cyclist, she was almost certainly a military agent.” Others claimed the “German high command had a secret civilian army hidden in England, posing as waiters, clerks, bakers, hairdressers and servants.” According to one Member of Parliament “there were 66,000 German reserve soldiers living secretly in the Home Counties with an arms dump at Charing Cross, just across the road from (Parliament).”
The mania erupted again at the beginning of the Second World War. “Unfortunate Germans, Austrians and Italians were rounded up and sent to internment camps in the north of England or on the Isle of Man... of these many were Jewish professional people who had fled Hitler – the Isle of Man camp became a bubbling center of culture unmatched almost anywhere else in wartime Europe.”
“The Making of Modern Britain” brilliantly pulls together hugely diverse historic strands into a clear narrative, while oddly omitting events that took place in British colonies. It happened like this, to these people. Decisions, votes, wartime events could have gone another way; but this is how it turned out. This book is an important, easy-to-digest effort to renew the historical record, a project important to any modern citizen in whatever country.
NOTES:
Andrew Marr earlier wrote “A History of Modern Britain,” taking the story to current times. Both books were big sellers in the UK, and both were the basis for BBC documentaries. As far as I can tell, the BBC does not allow North American viewers to view them. There may be other ways to view or sample these programs, and if you find them, please let me know.
IMPORTED ENGLISH EDITION: “The Making of Modern Britain” by Andrew Marr. MacMillan UK hard cover $34.95. ISBN 0230709427.
IMPORTED ENGLISH EDITION: “A History of Modern Britain” by Andrew Marr. Pan Publishing UK paperback $15.95. ISBN 0330511475.
US EDITION: “The Making of Modern Britain” will appear in a US paperback version in November 2010. $14.95. ISBN 0330510991.
About the WWII internments: “By 1943 the vast majority of internees had been released to do war work.”
Two BBC pages on the author... and this one...
To make the Dunkirk story more clear: There was of course a flotilla of little boats of all kinds, including ferries... they got across the channel under the eye and with the help of the Royal Navy, which towed many. The main use of the small boats was to move troops off the Dunkirk beach (the docks were destroyed by then) and ferry them to the large Royal Navy ships offshore which then transported them home. Few of the small boats made the round trip unaided, and none or almost none carried soldiers all the way back. Overall about 338,000 men were rescued. Of that number 123,000 were French. Many more French would have been left behind if Churchill had not insisted on an additional day of rescue by his navy. As it happened, 30,000 or more French soldiers had to be left behind to surrender to the Germans.
24 June 2010
18 June 2010
Anthony Hayward gives Hayward a Bad Name
I posted a question on Facebook today: “It’s time to think up another episode of Words on Books. Any suggestions?
“Graphic novels!” my daughter Sophia said. “Books by people named Anthony, or about people named Anthony,” a friend wrote. “Blockbusters you’re just getting around to,” said another.
As of two years ago, Anthony was the seventh most popular male name for US newborns. Google reports there are 9,435 people named Anthony living in Nevada, 4,658 in Utah. I think there must be more than that. Anthony derives from Antonius, a Roman family name (see: Mark Antony, of Cleopatra fame). St. Anthony the Great founded Christian monasticism. Dozens of Anthonys, and Tonys have become famous -- think Blair and Banderos, Bennett and Bourdain, Curtis, Hopkins, Randall, Shaloub, even made up people such as Tony Soprano, Anthony Goldstein from Harry Potter, Anthony Stark AKA Iron Man. Then there’s Tony Hayward of BP, now turning “Hayward” into a bad name worldwide.
Need I say more? Probably not and never again. But thanks for the idea!
I have been trying to find a way to work in a plug for the Soapbox essays that appear each week in back of the trade magazine Publishers Weekly. You would never normally get a chance to read these, because why would you pick up a rag concerned with publisher financials or employment gossip? Oh, that’s why – for the reviews. And the short, witty essays.
Most recently Richard Curtis presented a “Sneak Peek at Floppatronic’s Reader” which of course turns out to be a printed book, “operated by two hands, one to support it and one to activate the page-turning function.”
I enjoyed Annabelle Gurwitch’s piece “You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up” on “the highlights, lowlights, and downright misguided adventure of writing a book with your husband.”
In another issue literary agent Stephen Barbara explained “How Stephanie Meyer Cramps My Style.”
“Authors... expect me to know things,” Barbara writes. “The number one question I am asked by these aspiring writers is ‘How do I break in?’ ... Over time I came up with a nearly airtight answer. I quoted Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 Hours of Practice rule. I told of the 100-some rejection letters F. Scott Fitzgerald nailed to the wall of his office before having his first story accepted... And then I learned the story of how Stephenie Meyer (author of the Twilight Series) broke in... one night Meyer had a dream, feverishly wrote the complete manuscript of ‘Twilight’ over the next three months, sent it to several literary agencies... sold her series at auction for a then-unprecedented $750,000 advance... knocked J.K. Rowling from her top spot on the bestseller list, and in the space of four years became the world’s most popular author.”
He concludes, “I have a new response... read until you nearly go blind; write till your fingers are numb. Be ready to face years of rejection. Or just wait for a dream to hit you and transcribe a phenomenal world-wide bestseller in three months’ time. Either way, it’s the best answer I’ve got, these days.”
Richard Curtis at the end of last year spun out “The Yr of the Tweet, A look back at 2009" in verse: “Oh Muse, I pray, your face make visible, And help this bard pen something risible...”
“Novelists who couldn’t get work
Found it on the social network,
Washed up hacks got off their bums
And took to texting with their thumbs.
Now any writer sane or dotty
Calls himself a twitterati,
Producing literary treasures
In hundred forty unit measures.
The future Milton, Pope or Keats –
Immortalized in deathless tweets!”
NOTES:
Visit Publishers Weekly for additional Features, Foreword, Bestsellers and Reviews.
Annabelle Gurwitch and husband Jeff Kahn are co-authors of “You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up: A Love Story” Crown Publishing Group hard cover $24. ISBN 030746377X. Due in paperback in January, 2011.
The Facebook discussion, and too bad about privacy, people:
It's time to think up another episode of Words on Books. Any suggestions?
Sophia Ferrel: Graphic novels!
Anthony Miksak: I have Donald Duck in Italian... otherwise, nothing at hand. Good idea, though.
Russ Harvey: Blockbusters you're just getting around to. I've seen every Pride & Prejudice adaptation ever made, but actually hadn't read it until last year. Had never faked it, though, in case you were wondering.
Lisa B Lai: Books by people named Anthony. Or about people named Anthony.
7 hours ago · Unlike · 1 person ·
Anthony Miksak: c'mon people....! OK Lisa... I vamped up a couple of paragraphs on "Anthony".... I'm that desperate...
Christie Olson Day: Why is the culture obsessed with zombies, vampires, and dystopian fantasy like the new and absolutely rockin' bestseller The Passage? Discuss!
Claire Amanno: to iphone or not to iphone... does research qualify for words on books?
“Graphic novels!” my daughter Sophia said. “Books by people named Anthony, or about people named Anthony,” a friend wrote. “Blockbusters you’re just getting around to,” said another.
As of two years ago, Anthony was the seventh most popular male name for US newborns. Google reports there are 9,435 people named Anthony living in Nevada, 4,658 in Utah. I think there must be more than that. Anthony derives from Antonius, a Roman family name (see: Mark Antony, of Cleopatra fame). St. Anthony the Great founded Christian monasticism. Dozens of Anthonys, and Tonys have become famous -- think Blair and Banderos, Bennett and Bourdain, Curtis, Hopkins, Randall, Shaloub, even made up people such as Tony Soprano, Anthony Goldstein from Harry Potter, Anthony Stark AKA Iron Man. Then there’s Tony Hayward of BP, now turning “Hayward” into a bad name worldwide.
Need I say more? Probably not and never again. But thanks for the idea!
I have been trying to find a way to work in a plug for the Soapbox essays that appear each week in back of the trade magazine Publishers Weekly. You would never normally get a chance to read these, because why would you pick up a rag concerned with publisher financials or employment gossip? Oh, that’s why – for the reviews. And the short, witty essays.
Most recently Richard Curtis presented a “Sneak Peek at Floppatronic’s Reader” which of course turns out to be a printed book, “operated by two hands, one to support it and one to activate the page-turning function.”
I enjoyed Annabelle Gurwitch’s piece “You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up” on “the highlights, lowlights, and downright misguided adventure of writing a book with your husband.”
In another issue literary agent Stephen Barbara explained “How Stephanie Meyer Cramps My Style.”
“Authors... expect me to know things,” Barbara writes. “The number one question I am asked by these aspiring writers is ‘How do I break in?’ ... Over time I came up with a nearly airtight answer. I quoted Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 Hours of Practice rule. I told of the 100-some rejection letters F. Scott Fitzgerald nailed to the wall of his office before having his first story accepted... And then I learned the story of how Stephenie Meyer (author of the Twilight Series) broke in... one night Meyer had a dream, feverishly wrote the complete manuscript of ‘Twilight’ over the next three months, sent it to several literary agencies... sold her series at auction for a then-unprecedented $750,000 advance... knocked J.K. Rowling from her top spot on the bestseller list, and in the space of four years became the world’s most popular author.”
He concludes, “I have a new response... read until you nearly go blind; write till your fingers are numb. Be ready to face years of rejection. Or just wait for a dream to hit you and transcribe a phenomenal world-wide bestseller in three months’ time. Either way, it’s the best answer I’ve got, these days.”
Richard Curtis at the end of last year spun out “The Yr of the Tweet, A look back at 2009" in verse: “Oh Muse, I pray, your face make visible, And help this bard pen something risible...”
“Novelists who couldn’t get work
Found it on the social network,
Washed up hacks got off their bums
And took to texting with their thumbs.
Now any writer sane or dotty
Calls himself a twitterati,
Producing literary treasures
In hundred forty unit measures.
The future Milton, Pope or Keats –
Immortalized in deathless tweets!”
NOTES:
Visit Publishers Weekly for additional Features, Foreword, Bestsellers and Reviews.
Annabelle Gurwitch and husband Jeff Kahn are co-authors of “You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up: A Love Story” Crown Publishing Group hard cover $24. ISBN 030746377X. Due in paperback in January, 2011.
The Facebook discussion, and too bad about privacy, people:
It's time to think up another episode of Words on Books. Any suggestions?
Sophia Ferrel: Graphic novels!
Anthony Miksak: I have Donald Duck in Italian... otherwise, nothing at hand. Good idea, though.
Russ Harvey: Blockbusters you're just getting around to. I've seen every Pride & Prejudice adaptation ever made, but actually hadn't read it until last year. Had never faked it, though, in case you were wondering.
Lisa B Lai: Books by people named Anthony. Or about people named Anthony.
7 hours ago · Unlike · 1 person ·
Anthony Miksak: c'mon people....! OK Lisa... I vamped up a couple of paragraphs on "Anthony".... I'm that desperate...
Christie Olson Day: Why is the culture obsessed with zombies, vampires, and dystopian fantasy like the new and absolutely rockin' bestseller The Passage? Discuss!
Claire Amanno: to iphone or not to iphone... does research qualify for words on books?
10 June 2010
Letter to My Daughter Sophia
A letter to my daughter, after reading “The Year is ‘42” by Ukranian/French author Nella Bielski...
Dear Sophia,
My grandfather Eli, your great-grandfather, once showed me a scar on his head he said was delivered by a Cossack’s sword. Maybe it was a tale made up to impress a little boy, but I could see the red scar on his glistening bald head.
In the year 1908, Eli and his future wife Ida came to America from Byelorussia, fleeing bad times for Jews. They had been living, unknown to each other, in neighboring cities, Minsk and Pinsk, where Jews once made up more than half of the population.
Eli met Ida in New York City. A relative urged him go knock on the door of this lovely young woman. He did, and soon the two refugees had married. They moved to San Francisco, where Eli worked as a house painter, Ida as a seamstress.
They lived on Wood Street, a one block microcosm of the old country. Yiddish was spoken up and down the street and housewives competed to see whose laundry appeared earliest on backyard clotheslines.
Ida and Eli had one daughter, Florence, my mother, your grandmother. She commuted by ferry to school at UC Berkeley, then found depression-era employment in the news department of a Chicago radio station.
That’s where she met my father, Joe Miksak, your grandfather. He was a second generation Czech Catholic, an out-of-work actor reading news for a living. Florence wrote scripts and watched him read them through studio glass. Together they attended the Art Institute of Chicago, working with Bauhaus great Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, then moved to Greenwich Village in New York, where their friends were bohemian artists and performers.
On Sunday, December 7, 1941, Joe heard on the radio the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Next day he enlisted in the Army. “What did you do in the war, daddy?” I would later ask, and he would say “I never was in the fighting. I was officer in charge of wash cloths.”
First Lieutenant Miksak took part in the invasion of north Africa, then the invasion of Sicily. He was sent home near the end of the war, and I was born in 1945. Ever since, I’ve associated my birth with the first atom bombs and the beginning of a middle-class era of hope and prosperity. My brother Matthew came along in 1950. Much later, in Mendocino in 1976, you were born, Sophia.
“The Year is ‘42" is an uncorrected proof from 2004, back when I ran a bookstore. I have no idea why I picked it off the shelf last night, but there it was and here it is now.
It’s a short novel that takes a group of German and Russian characters through one difficult year of the Second World War. Kurt Bazinger, a Wehrmacht officer, is living well in Paris under German occupation. Gradually he comes to the attention of the SS and also of resistance forces. He volunteers for the Eastern Front, and as the publisher writes, “a beautiful, stoic Russian doctor with her own painful history will heal Karl and offer him hope and goodness in the midst of hell.”
This book feels real, Sophia. Wallowing in death and destruction I found myself reflecting how fortunate we are to be alive today, progeny of an unbroken line of survivors that stretches back through countless generations.
It is a powerful thing, survival. It’s certainly something to ponder.
NOTES:
“The Year Is '42" by Nella Bielski, translated by John Berger. Vintage Books paperback $12.95. ISBN 1400076641. First published in 2004.
Nella Bielski also co-wrote a two-part novel with John Berger:
“Oranges for the Son of Alexander Levy” (Arcadia Books paperback $12.99 ISBN 1900850338) is described by the publisher as “Two novels in one. ‘Isabelle’ is John Berger and Nella Bielski's powerful story in shots which brilliantly recreates the life of Isabelle Eberhardt. ‘Oranges for the Son of Alexander Levy’ is Nella Bielski's powerful meditation on the nature of love and loss ...
Nella Bielski is the author of several novels and has also written for the cinema. Her play A Question of Geography was staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company. She was born in the Ukraine and lives in Paris.
Dear Sophia,
My grandfather Eli, your great-grandfather, once showed me a scar on his head he said was delivered by a Cossack’s sword. Maybe it was a tale made up to impress a little boy, but I could see the red scar on his glistening bald head.
In the year 1908, Eli and his future wife Ida came to America from Byelorussia, fleeing bad times for Jews. They had been living, unknown to each other, in neighboring cities, Minsk and Pinsk, where Jews once made up more than half of the population.
Eli met Ida in New York City. A relative urged him go knock on the door of this lovely young woman. He did, and soon the two refugees had married. They moved to San Francisco, where Eli worked as a house painter, Ida as a seamstress.
They lived on Wood Street, a one block microcosm of the old country. Yiddish was spoken up and down the street and housewives competed to see whose laundry appeared earliest on backyard clotheslines.
Ida and Eli had one daughter, Florence, my mother, your grandmother. She commuted by ferry to school at UC Berkeley, then found depression-era employment in the news department of a Chicago radio station.
That’s where she met my father, Joe Miksak, your grandfather. He was a second generation Czech Catholic, an out-of-work actor reading news for a living. Florence wrote scripts and watched him read them through studio glass. Together they attended the Art Institute of Chicago, working with Bauhaus great Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, then moved to Greenwich Village in New York, where their friends were bohemian artists and performers.
On Sunday, December 7, 1941, Joe heard on the radio the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Next day he enlisted in the Army. “What did you do in the war, daddy?” I would later ask, and he would say “I never was in the fighting. I was officer in charge of wash cloths.”
First Lieutenant Miksak took part in the invasion of north Africa, then the invasion of Sicily. He was sent home near the end of the war, and I was born in 1945. Ever since, I’ve associated my birth with the first atom bombs and the beginning of a middle-class era of hope and prosperity. My brother Matthew came along in 1950. Much later, in Mendocino in 1976, you were born, Sophia.
“The Year is ‘42" is an uncorrected proof from 2004, back when I ran a bookstore. I have no idea why I picked it off the shelf last night, but there it was and here it is now.
It’s a short novel that takes a group of German and Russian characters through one difficult year of the Second World War. Kurt Bazinger, a Wehrmacht officer, is living well in Paris under German occupation. Gradually he comes to the attention of the SS and also of resistance forces. He volunteers for the Eastern Front, and as the publisher writes, “a beautiful, stoic Russian doctor with her own painful history will heal Karl and offer him hope and goodness in the midst of hell.”
This book feels real, Sophia. Wallowing in death and destruction I found myself reflecting how fortunate we are to be alive today, progeny of an unbroken line of survivors that stretches back through countless generations.
It is a powerful thing, survival. It’s certainly something to ponder.
NOTES:
“The Year Is '42" by Nella Bielski, translated by John Berger. Vintage Books paperback $12.95. ISBN 1400076641. First published in 2004.
Nella Bielski also co-wrote a two-part novel with John Berger:
“Oranges for the Son of Alexander Levy” (Arcadia Books paperback $12.99 ISBN 1900850338) is described by the publisher as “Two novels in one. ‘Isabelle’ is John Berger and Nella Bielski's powerful story in shots which brilliantly recreates the life of Isabelle Eberhardt. ‘Oranges for the Son of Alexander Levy’ is Nella Bielski's powerful meditation on the nature of love and loss ...
Nella Bielski is the author of several novels and has also written for the cinema. Her play A Question of Geography was staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company. She was born in the Ukraine and lives in Paris.
03 June 2010
Back and Forth Like a Rubber Band
We’ve been traveling again. Not globally, not locally, just Britain, Denmark, Italy. As if attached to a rubber band (“elastico” in Italian) we keep bouncing back to Europe.
I can report the Euro is down, the ash has ceased ashing all over everything, and two weeks ago Spring hit England like a Luftwaffe attack. An attack of hay fever, certainly. The British winter was endless and cold, then a sudden accession of heat and sunshine caused every tree in Hyde Park, Green Park and all the other parks to burst into bloom on one dangerous day.
Through cracked and bleeding eyeballs I think I saw swans with cygnets, ducks with ducklings, and a lovely gin-and-tonic sitting on a table near my dripping nose. Call it Hyde Park fever. Hang up if it calls on you.
Somehow, as always, we took along books and purchased others. This is where an E-book reader really could come in handy – Rick Steves and Lonely Planet at your fingertips. No need to tear out the London section from an old Fodor’s guide and toss the rest.
Still, no E-book reader in the world could have presented the fascinating record of voyages past presented by the lending library onboard the National Geographic Explorer. Previous passengers left behind a sort of mind map of those who take part in what the Geographic people call “expeditions.”
Those gently rocking shelves held a number of pastel-jacketed fluffy novels starring heartsick females, plenty of good-for-you books like “Field Guide to the Night Skies,” and mysteries charming and polite, or manly and bloody. These are the books people bring onboard, but never want to see again.
I donated my copy of Roddy Doyle’s 1999 novel “A Star Called Henry” not because I never want to see it again, but because my suitcase needed liposuction. I hope someone on a future expedition enjoys reading this novel about 1916 Ireland as much as I did.
“A Star Called Henry” is an entertaining and adventurous novel, both serious and painful. It’s part of a trilogy that concludes with the worthwhile but much less engrossing novel, “The Dead Republic.” Here, former Irish rebel Henry Smart peers backwards at a misspent life filled with adventure. Having run off to America, the Hollywood director John Ford rescues Smart and plans a film about his spectacular life, but that doesn’t work out well. Returned to Ireland, elements of the Provisional IRA take up Henry Smart as a long-lost but totally spurious “hero” of the revolution. There are moments in “The Dead Republic” as funny or poignant as anything in the first, rambunctious, tale, but overall it’s a bit plodding. The energy that burst out in “A Star Called Henry” cools off in a small town near Dublin, inhabited by a very old man.
I still have the middle novel to read, “Oh, Play That Thing,” and by all reports this one is great fun. Henry Smart starts a new life in America. He meets mobsters, peddles hooch, and partners with Louis Armstrong.
In trade for the Roddy Doyle book I snagged a copy of “Kavalier & Clay” by Michael Chabon, another book I’ve been meaning to read since it was published ten years ago. It has the mind-numbing overabundance of an early novel, spilling energy and asides all over the place. It is a multi-person love story, a history of the Golden Age of Comic Books, and a chronicle of Jewish angst before and during World War Two. No wonder so many have enjoyed this one.
Then there were the Italian versions of Mickey Mouse (“Topolino”) and Uncle Scrooge (“Zio Paperone”) I picked up in a bargain box in Venice, and Michelin guides, and grammars and workbooks and Andrew Marr’s “The Making of Modern Britain” and the writers we met and the things we did.
But that’s for another time, children. Glad to be back!
NOTES:
“A Star Called Henry” by Roddy Doyle. Penguin Books paperback $16. ISBN 0143034618.
“Oh, Play That Thing” by Roddy Doyle. Penguin Books paperback $14. ISBN 014303605X.
“The Dead Republic” by Roddy Doyle. Viking Books hard cover $26.95. ISBN 067002177.
I found this Washington Post Book World review of “The Dead Republic” enlightening:
“The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay” by Michael Chabon. Picador paperback $16. ISBN 0312282990.
I can report the Euro is down, the ash has ceased ashing all over everything, and two weeks ago Spring hit England like a Luftwaffe attack. An attack of hay fever, certainly. The British winter was endless and cold, then a sudden accession of heat and sunshine caused every tree in Hyde Park, Green Park and all the other parks to burst into bloom on one dangerous day.
Through cracked and bleeding eyeballs I think I saw swans with cygnets, ducks with ducklings, and a lovely gin-and-tonic sitting on a table near my dripping nose. Call it Hyde Park fever. Hang up if it calls on you.
Somehow, as always, we took along books and purchased others. This is where an E-book reader really could come in handy – Rick Steves and Lonely Planet at your fingertips. No need to tear out the London section from an old Fodor’s guide and toss the rest.
Still, no E-book reader in the world could have presented the fascinating record of voyages past presented by the lending library onboard the National Geographic Explorer. Previous passengers left behind a sort of mind map of those who take part in what the Geographic people call “expeditions.”
Those gently rocking shelves held a number of pastel-jacketed fluffy novels starring heartsick females, plenty of good-for-you books like “Field Guide to the Night Skies,” and mysteries charming and polite, or manly and bloody. These are the books people bring onboard, but never want to see again.
I donated my copy of Roddy Doyle’s 1999 novel “A Star Called Henry” not because I never want to see it again, but because my suitcase needed liposuction. I hope someone on a future expedition enjoys reading this novel about 1916 Ireland as much as I did.
“A Star Called Henry” is an entertaining and adventurous novel, both serious and painful. It’s part of a trilogy that concludes with the worthwhile but much less engrossing novel, “The Dead Republic.” Here, former Irish rebel Henry Smart peers backwards at a misspent life filled with adventure. Having run off to America, the Hollywood director John Ford rescues Smart and plans a film about his spectacular life, but that doesn’t work out well. Returned to Ireland, elements of the Provisional IRA take up Henry Smart as a long-lost but totally spurious “hero” of the revolution. There are moments in “The Dead Republic” as funny or poignant as anything in the first, rambunctious, tale, but overall it’s a bit plodding. The energy that burst out in “A Star Called Henry” cools off in a small town near Dublin, inhabited by a very old man.
I still have the middle novel to read, “Oh, Play That Thing,” and by all reports this one is great fun. Henry Smart starts a new life in America. He meets mobsters, peddles hooch, and partners with Louis Armstrong.
In trade for the Roddy Doyle book I snagged a copy of “Kavalier & Clay” by Michael Chabon, another book I’ve been meaning to read since it was published ten years ago. It has the mind-numbing overabundance of an early novel, spilling energy and asides all over the place. It is a multi-person love story, a history of the Golden Age of Comic Books, and a chronicle of Jewish angst before and during World War Two. No wonder so many have enjoyed this one.
Then there were the Italian versions of Mickey Mouse (“Topolino”) and Uncle Scrooge (“Zio Paperone”) I picked up in a bargain box in Venice, and Michelin guides, and grammars and workbooks and Andrew Marr’s “The Making of Modern Britain” and the writers we met and the things we did.
But that’s for another time, children. Glad to be back!
NOTES:
“A Star Called Henry” by Roddy Doyle. Penguin Books paperback $16. ISBN 0143034618.
“Oh, Play That Thing” by Roddy Doyle. Penguin Books paperback $14. ISBN 014303605X.
“The Dead Republic” by Roddy Doyle. Viking Books hard cover $26.95. ISBN 067002177.
I found this Washington Post Book World review of “The Dead Republic” enlightening:
“The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay” by Michael Chabon. Picador paperback $16. ISBN 0312282990.
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