Introduction
The Gravity's Rainbow Support Group (GRSG) began in June, 2020 as a "reading group" of two people as a support mechanism to plow though Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow (a book you should never try to read alone) during the pandemic. The GRSG took much of the difficulty out of reading this challenging book and provided a way to keep two now-retired college chums (from Indiana University) Francis Walker of Winston-Salem, North Carolina and Murray Browne of Decatur, Georgia in touch. Basically, we decided to keep this good thing going.
This page is the fourth installment of our reading-discussion notes of books we assigned ourselves in 2023. Like in the Reading Note pages of the past it full of favorite quotes and passages. Don't expect coherent prose or well thought out arguments, but our musings may provide insights to your own understanding and enjoyment of these books.
Here are the lists of books read and discussed in previous years:
2020 Reading Notes Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon; The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker; Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov
2021 Reading Notes The Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust; Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner; Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-1945 by Barbara W. Tuchman; Cultural Amnesia by Clive James; The Periodic Table by Primo Levi; The Historian’s Craft by Marc Bloch; An Inventory of Losses by Judith Schalansky; Homeric Moments: Clues to Delight The Odyssey and Illiad by Eva Brann; Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
2022 Reading Notes The Age of Anger: A History of the Present by Pankaj Mishra; Mountains and a Shore: A Journey Through Southern Turkey by Michael Pereira; The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy Gentleman by Laurence Sterne; Grant by Ron Chernow; The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain; The U.S.A. Trilogy by John Dos Passos (The 42nd Parallel, 1919, and The Big Money); Under the Net by Muriel Spark; Two Wheels Good: The History and the Mystery of the Bicycle by Jody Rosen; Red and Black: A Chronicle of 1830 by Stendhal
And now we begin with our 2023 list:
A Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe by Robert Maraniss
Our first book of 2023 was Maraniss’s book of Jim Thorpe, a name we all know that he was a great athlete in the first quarter of the 20th century, but admittedly little else. Perhaps we may have known he was a member of an Indian tribe (the Sac and Fox tribe born on an Indian reservation before Oklahoma became a state). This all ended with the voluminous Maraniss book, published in 2022, about the life of Jim Thorpe (1887 – 1953), put into a context of the times he lived.
This book covered the same time period as John Dos Passos U.S.A. Trilogy which we read last year, but the approach, (Dos Passos’s book was fiction albeit with historical interludes) was different as two books could be, yet they work well together.
A Path Lit by Lightning book encompasses several themes. One is life for Native Americans in this period where the Indian tribes had reached the end of the sovereignty. The next question became was how best to assimilate hundreds of tribes with different languages and culture to the predominant white culture. Maraniss uses Thorpe’s experiences at Carlisle to explain the various approaches. One was schools like the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. With Jim Thorpe he arrived there in 1904 but it wasn’t until legendary coach Pop Warner (not necessarily an honorable man) recognized Thorpe’s bruising combination, of speed, strength and toughness on the gridiron did Thorpe emerged as force, playing against and defeating the college football powerhouses of that era (Army, Penn, Pitt). Thorpe’s athletic skills also included track and field which eventually led him to win two gold medals at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm. This makes the book a history of the early days of college and later professional football. Thorpe also played professional baseball with many greats of his era though he was not exceptional (unable to consistently hit the curve ball).
In the second half of the book, is more focused on Jim Thorpe’s sad demise: living hand to mouth, failing health, alcoholism, several failed marriages and tormented by his desire to return to greatness. However, Maraniss also admires Thorpe’s determination.
The Early Days of Football Are Not Unlike Modern Football
Chapter 4, Page 70:
“From 1901 to 1905 there were 71 recorded deaths in football. In 1905 a Union College back, Harold Moore, died of a cerebral hemorrhage after being kicked in the head while trying to tackle a New York University runner. He was one of 18 players who died that year. An unofficial casualty count of the 1905 season read like a military after-action report: deaths, 18; partially paralyzed, 1; eyes gouged out, 1; intestines ruptured, 2; backs broken, 1; skulls fractured, 1; arms broken, 4; legs broken, 7; hands broken, 3; shoulders dislocated, 7; noses broken, 4; ribs broken, 11; collarbones broken, 7; jaws broken, 1; fingers broken, 4; shoulders broken, 2; hips dislocated, 4; thighbones broken, 1; brain concussion, 2. And these numbers were likely an underestimate.”
Chapter 13, Page 235: (regarding the collapse of the stands at one of the games—one person died, many were injured).
The players had been warming up when the disaster unfolded and watched it all, some rushing to assist. What next? The powers that be decided the game must go on, so they played, and more than three thousand fans stayed around to watch “sorrowed by the sad accident that preceded the game.” (Unlike the Hamlin incident involving that the Buffalo Bills player who collapsed during a Monday Night Football game recently).
Chapter 10, Page 197:
He might have been serious, or not, but it was a refrain that would become familiar for the rest of his long career. Every year or two, reliably, Jim would say he was going to chuck it all, and the press would blast out headlines about his imminent retirement, which never followed. (Remind you of any pro football types like Tom Brady?)
Chapter 4, Page 72:
They also had their own dining room stocked regularly with beef, milk, potatoes, and flapjacks—fare the rest of the school was served infrequently…..The fact that football players received elite treatment fostered some resentment among other students, just as it did at many colleges around the nation. (This reminded us of the Gresham middle cafeteria at our dorm at Indiana University, where the football players feasted nightly, while we survived on starches and canned veggies boiled in soap.)
Baseball in the Early 20th Century
As Maraniss wrote, Thorpe’s professional baseball career was basically upside down. He went directly to the major leagues playing for the John McGraw’s New York Giants. He only played parts of six professional seasons, but for decades later he played in the minor leagues and barnstormed with semi-pro teams for years afterwards.
The highlight of his career was touring with McGraw’s Giants on their World Tour in the offseason of 1913-1914. McGraw signed Thorpe because of his Olympic fame and everyone wanted to see him including the Pope, Sir Thomas Lipton (of Lipton Tea fame). Playing a game in Egypt near the Sphinx, sparked the fertile imagination of E.L. Doctorow, author of Ragtime, (another Dos Passos companion book?) who placed one of his central characters, the financier Pierpont Morgan, at the monument at the same time. “As he passed the great Sphinx and looked back and saw men swarming all over her, like vermin.... The desecrators were wearing baseball suits,” Doctorow wrote.
Then there were the baseball writers of the era. Grantland Rice, Ring Lardner, who wrote the baseball classic, You Know Me, Al And, of course Damon Runyon, who created the stories upon which the musical and movie Guys and Dolls was based (and who was one of the most colorful sportswriters of his era).
Chapter 13, Page 249:
Damon Runyon, then covering baseball for the Hearst newspaper chain, was waiting for them, ensconced in the lobby of the St. James Hotel, ready to follow them for the cushy Paris-London-and-home end of the journey. Runyon wrote in the style of the joyful wise guy in on life’s joke. “Covered all over with foreign labels and all chattering away like Baedekers, the Giant White Sox party of sixty-seven—count them yourself—breezed into this sedate little village tonight with the firm determination of playing a five-night stand.”
Other Famous People
Here are my notes from the first half of the book. I did not clip quotes on his interactions with George Patton, Dwight Eisenhower, or Omar Bradley—or his fateful rides on boats—the USS Finland to Stockholm in 1912 just a few months after the Titanic disaster nor the Lusitania in early 1914 a few months before its disaster (not to mention his tour of all the royals virtually on the eve of WW1)--but they are all well documented in the book and of considerable interest.
The poet Marianne Moore was a teacher at Carlisle and Thorpe was one of her students. She also described the beauty and grace of Thorpe's athleticism: 'equilibrium with not stricture...the epitome of concentration, way with an effect of plenty in reserve."
Since Thorpe lived in California and was involved with the movie about his life he met and hobnobbed with movie stars like Bob Hope and Burt Lancaster who played Thorpe in the 1951 biopic Jim Thorpe--All American directed by Michael Curtiz of Casablanca fame.
Speaking of Hollywood, here's an except which illustrates the decades long debate of cultural appropriation to gain employment:
Slowly but inevitably the real story started to emerge. Sylvester Long had been born not in the sweetgrass of Montana but in Winston-Salem. He was neither a member of the Blackfeet nation nor a Cherokee from North Carolina or Oklahoma. His parents were African Americans, descendants of slaves, treated as second-class citizens in the Jim Crow South. There might have been an ancestor on his mother’s side of Croatan Indian descent, which was common in an area where oppressed blacks and Indians often mixed, but that was it. … Sylvester Long had reinvented himself as Long Lance and Chief Long Lance and Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance as a means of surviving as a black man in a hostile world. It was how he got into Carlisle, how he made his name and fame, how he was hired in Hollywood and welcomed into the haughty Explorers Club. His skin was too dark for him to try to pass as white, but he could fool people into thinking he looked like an Indian and was talented enough to pull it off for two decades. - Page 388
Discussions
Maraniss's approach to the racism towards the Indians. We both found that Maraniss seemed very careful and mindful of explaining that certain racist aspects of way society portrayed Native Americans in general and Thorpe. This is not surprising in the times we live in where political correctness is paramount in the media. We don't condone the way Thorpe was treated and it was wrong, BUT to go on and on (constant references to sculpture The End of the Trail and the Alexander Pope poem and title of the Chapter 11, "Lo the poor Indian") to make sure "we get it" can be tiresome for the reader. Just sayin'.
Francis adds;
No matter how hard Maraniss pushes the possibility, he marshals little evidence that it was anti-native American sentiment, attacks from an unsympathetic press or unsympathetic coaches, bosses and officials—but rather, Thorpe’s own tragic flaws of neglect, binge drinking and lack of persistence with family and enterprises he undertook that were the cause of his demise. What is far more impressive are the numbers of vocal and influential supporters of Thorpe—who would repeatedly lend him money to be misspent, give him introductions to diverse opportunities to be squandered, and welcome him despite his flaws, compared to the paucity of his generally circumspect detractors. In retrospect, it seems likely that it was the bitter outcome of the second half of his life, perhaps beginning with the irretrievable loss of his first son, that created his need for vindication by beginning the quest for the return of his Olympic medals and trophies, and—in some way these are the same forces which may have pushed his family, and his supporters, half a century later, to bring it to fruition.
Great Athletes. In 1950, the AP sportswriters voted Jim Thorpe as the greatest athlete in the first half of the 20th century far outdistancing Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey, but who was the greatest athlete in the second half of the 20th century? Francis thought maybe Muhammed Ali and his Deb his wife -- with her affiliation with UNC - suggested Michael Jordan with his basketball greatness and short stint in the minor baseball. I voted for Bo Jackson. (He qualified in the NCAA Collegiate Nations in the 100 meters, won the state decathlon, Heisman trophy winner, and made the All-Star game as both a professional football and baseball player. Was the MVP in 1989 All-Star game. (That year a friend and I drove from Lafayette to Chicago to specifically see Jackson play left field at old Comiskey Park. He did not disappoint. With a runner of first White Sox Pudge Fisk drove a ball into the left field corner. At the 330 mark, Jackson retrieved the ball and threw it on the fly all the way to home plate. The ball's trajectory was only about 8 feet off the ground. (Think of the arm strength to do that.) The crowd did a collective "Awwwww" as the ball sailed past. Jackson had a career tragically cut short by injury, but he was not bitter about it (See the 30 for 30 ESPN bio on him ) and he went on to be a successful businessman.
The Difference between Obstinacy and Perserverance
Henry Ward Beecher once described the difference between perseverance and obstinacy is, that one often comes from a strong "will" (think Jim Thorpe), and the other from a strong "won't" (Think his 3rd wife, Patsy).
Obstinacy in a bad cause, is but constancy in a good. -- Sir Thomas Browne (see the inverse—Thorpe persevered—but only in being dysfunctional!)
Francis's' Summary, which he posted on Amazon:
Four stars
Up and Down
The first half of this biography is written with tempo and pace worthy of the lightening quick moves and remarkable athletic records of its subject. The second half of the book reconstructs, in overdone detail, the subject’s recurrent pattern of hustles, broken dreams, inconstancy and lack of direction. While it makes ample allowance for the tragic flaws of its main character it reads like an exposé of them in organizations and individuals whose paths crossed Thorpe. Noteworthy journalists are spared, except those whose prose is politically incorrect, the citations of which are heralded by spoiler alerts. Despite its excessive prose and editorializing, the book accurately portrays the remarkable strengths and recurring weakness of Jim Thorpe as well as those of the country in which he was born. It is also a remarkable record of global celebrities of the first half of the twentieth century—many who seemed to have made his acquaintance. Recommended for those with an interest in sports and twentieth century Native American history.
Another posting about the book appears on the The Book Shopper blog "Filling the Sports Void"
Heart of Darkness (1902) by Joseph Conrad
Despite its reputation as a work dripping with racism, this novella is back in vogue especially with the recent publication of Siddarth Kara's Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives.
Similarly, in The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, (2015) Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing when she writes about what she terms as 'salvage accumulation' a process that through which leads firms to amass capital without controlling the condition on which commodities are produced, she cites Conrad's novel as a perfect example.
But the most well-known appropriation of Heart of Darkness is Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 film Apocalypse Now, which Jocy Carol Oates in the Introduction of the Signet Classics edition, describes as "imaginative in concept and vivid in execution, AN is undermined by the ludicrous overacting of Marlon Brando in the role of Kurtz, which neither he nor his director seems to have understood'."
However other writers such as Viet Thanh Nguyen are far less kind. In both his novel The Sympathizer (2015) and his Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (2016) he eviscerates Coppola's vision. In both works Nguyen deAmericanizes the portrayal of the war in Southeast Asia according to the New York Times review which also compares the indifference of the narrator in The Sympathizer to—get this, Joseph Conrad.
Conrad - Bio
Conrad (1857-1924) was born in what is now Ukraine and English was his third language after Polish and French. He was orphaned before age 11 and was put in the car of his uncle and finally was enrolled in the French merchant marine. He spent years at sea, which contributed to his writing because sailors have a unique perspective. Francis commented:
For centuries, weren’t sailors the unacknowledged masters of cultural literacy—experiencing human societies in their myriad forms, even before the creation of written language? And too, weren’t they unacknowledged experts in accepting the unknown ranging from the beauties and terrors of the sea to the good and evil of human nature—as in the allure and dangers of sirens and the lotus plant?
A Word About Editions
Francis as usual prefers the e-book format. I relied on two versions. The Oxford World Classics edition is edited by Cedric Watts. It has extensive annotation, which is most helpful as he explains the history of the European exploitation in the region and in the Introduction, he gives the backstory of how it was considered a racist in an essay by Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe in 1977. There is also the Signet classics edition (mentioned earlier) with the introduction by Joyce Carol Oates where she gives the same perspective but reminds us "that more literary esoteric novels Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf and James Joyce—bear the imprint of their time, place and social perspective; unfair; no art can be universal, for no artist is universal."
Notable Passages
Page 11:
Because triumphant health in the general rout of constitutions is a kind of power in itself.
Page 15:
No, I don’t like work. I had rather laze about and think of all the fine things that can be done. I don’t like work— no man does—but I like what is in the work, the chance to find yourself. Your own reality—for yourself, not for others—what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.
Page 32:
But the wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude—and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core.
Page 42: But with every word spoken the room was growing darker, and only her forehead, smooth and white, remained illumined by the unextinguishable light of belief and love.
His face was like the autumn sky, overcast one moment and bright the next.
Final Thoughts
My reaction is that it is an important book - classic -- and merits consideration, but I was thankful that it was only 100 pages. Sometimes I would get lost. Who was talking? Marlow the narrator? Or Kurtz? or the Russian who was kind of a Dennis Hopper figure explaining Kurtz to Marlow when he arrived at the outpost. (Hopper plays a photographer in the Apocalypse Now movie who explains Col. Kurtz to the Martin Sheen character who has been sent to assassinate Kurtz.)
Francis has a different take which he share on his Amazon review Behind the Mask:
The narrator, a veritable tsetse fly on a sea-wall, relates the tragedy of the interloper Kurtz in Africa. It is a recursive tale of how Europe infested the Congo and was avenged by its infection of the colonialists with tropical disease and the ultimately painful revelation of our roots in savagery. It too, is the tale of how human darkness can erode the soul, hidden from the light of faith and love in the magnificent folds of eloquent denial. But, is this an unavoidable consequence of human frailty? Fortunately for readers fed up with the tedious moralizing of modern writers, Joseph Conrad lets the story speak for itself and allows us to decide. Highly recommended.
We conclude with the Sheen-Brando clip that is one of the more well-known passages from the movie.
Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions (2016) by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths
Force: What It Means to Push and Pull Slip and Grip Start and Stop (2022) by Henry Petroski
On Bullshit (2005) by Henry G. Frankfurt
In an unprecedented turn of events, Francis and I selected three books to discuss at the same time. Because the GRSG is small book club duo we are able to pivot and reach a consensus on what to read much faster than a conventional book clubs. In this case, Francis had recently read Force on his own and sent it to me as a gift before Christmas. I was anxious to read to it, but he had already read it. (We wouldn't be able to discover its richness together.) So, to even it out I had been wanting to revisit Algorithms a favorite book of mine (winner of the blog's coveted Best Books Read in 2018) , so we decided that I would read Force while he read Algorithms.
On Bullshit was added because on my recent trip to New York to visit family I intended to read Force, but had left it home (goddamn it!), but I had a few magazine backups and On Bullshit which is a sliver of a book so I read that instead. However, Frankfurt's book may be small, but it is mighty and has to be read slowly and lends itself to discussion. (I picked up my copy at the library book sale for $1) I told Francis about it and the replied in an email, "I am a big fan of Harry Frankfurt and have read On B.S. as well as On Truth and On Inequality which follow the format of On BS--short, pithy and well-reasoned. On BS may be the best of the three, but the other two are not far behind. And, they make good travel companions since rereading them is a pleasure."
So this explains the three books in one session.
Algorithms
Fortunately, several years ago, I posted my notes on the book here, so jogging my memory was relatively easy.
What makes this book so appealing is that it uses computer science as a launching point to discuss how the logic of computing can assist our human thought processes as we try to manage daily problems. I was still working at the time so many of these chapters fit right into my Manager of Metadata Services wheelhouse.
The chapters are: Optimal Stopping – When to Stop Looking; Explore/Exploit – The Latest vs the Greatest; Sorting – Making Order; Caching – Forget about It; Scheduling – First Things First; Bayes’s Rule – Predicting the Future; Overfitting – When to Think Less; Relaxation – Let it Slide; Randomness – When to Leave it to Chance; Networking – How We Connect; and Game Theory – The Minds of Others.
“Exploration in itself has value since trying new things increases our chances in finding the best…In the long run, optimism is the best prevention for regret…If you’re a baby, putting every object in the house in your mouth is like studiously pulling all the handles at the casino.” (Chapter 2: Explore/Exploit). I know now that when my baby grandchildren put things in their mouths they are just doing some basic classification of the world placing all objects in two simple categories – Things I can fit in my mouth and the things I cannot fit in my mouth.
Here are a few examples of relevant quotes gleaned from my notes that I kept on the backs of postcards stuffed in the book.
“Much as we bemoan the daily rat race, the fact that it’s a race than a fight is a key part of what sets us apart from the monkeys, the chickens--and for that matter the rats.” (Ch. 3: Sorting) Getting to and from work in Atlanta is pure rat race.
“It is really true that the company will build whatever the CEO decides to measure.” (Ch. 7 Overfitting) I thought of this when I am asked to produce Key Performance Indicators (metrics) at work.
“We use the idiom of ‘dropped balls’ almost exclusively in a derogatory sense implying that the person in question was lazy, complacent, or forgetful. But the tactical dropping of balls is a critical part of getting things done under overload. “(Ch. 10 Networking) Hmmm. An excuse worth considering next time I miss a deadline --- such as catching up on my posting backlog.
Further Random Discussion on Ideas
(The river meanders because it can't think -Richard Kenney).
One aspect of our Zoom chat was the discussion of the role of spontaneous thinking and thoughts. Francis began with some quotes from other authors.
"The brain secretes thought as the stomach secretes gastric juice, the liver bile, and the kidneys urine." --Karl Vogt (circa 1850)
Thoughts arise in the mind spontaneously, without will or deliberation on our part and without producing any effect whatever on our behavior. - Jose Ortega Gassett (1883-1955) This Spanish philosopher also was a precursor to the Peter Principle when he wrote “Every public servant should be demoted to the immediately lower rank,” he wrote, “because they were advanced until they became incompetent.”
Here is what Algorithms to Live By says: Page 202 (William) James thus viewed randomness as the heart of creativity. And …..“A blind-variation-and-selective-retention process is fundamental to all inductive achievements, to all genuine increases in knowledge, to all increases in fit of system to environment.” …..And like James he was inspired by evolution, thinking about creative innovation as the outcome of new ideas being generated randomly and astute human minds retaining the best of those ideas.'
In this section Algorithms mentions Brian Eno, (who I personally admire and I "listen" to his ambient music to quiet my mind when I am agitated and can't sleep. My sleep doctor referred to it as "an active mind.")
Definitions in Algorithms in Algorithms to Live By
The upper confidence bound: If you are going to try new things, try to select those with the greatest upside potential over those with average but predictable potential. (Fits into the your description of infants trying out everything by putting it in their mouth--but perhaps a slightly more informed version of it.)
Pruning: The process by which the elderly come to predict outcomes more accurately, allowing them to prune away interactions that are less likely to be positive.
Memory hierarchies. The process by which we retain progressively smaller percentages of our knowledge in active short-term memory and recall caches, but yet we still retain them.
Ping Attack—Disabling an opponent by throwing at them multiple trivial attacks—that make for a major distraction.
Pre-crastination—The tendency for some people to handle tasks too soon.
Pre-emption cost. The cognitive tax imposed by too many interruptions.
Thrashing. The state of immobility that results when accessing and retrieving subroutines or plans cannot keep up with simultaneous demands from multiple sources.
Interrupt coalescing: The benefit of organizing interruptions so they come at predictable times instead of randomly—i.e., weekly meetings.
Buffer Bloat—When the need for too much information in short term memory exceeds capacity—see thrashing.
Constraint relaxation: Dealing with complex tasks by relaxing certain demands made by participants.
Exponential back-off: Dealing with backsliders, by forgiveness—but with an increasing penalty for each infraction.
Force
Algorithms and Force are similar in that they both examine more scientific, physical and mathematical topics in how they impact our daily lives without trying to technically bury us. Petrosky mixes anecdotes about his life extending back to his childhood playing with the Tricky Dog dog magnet (Chapter 2 - Magnetism) or in Chapter 13 when he reminisces about watching a clerk in a bakery slice a loaf of bread and then flawlessly place it inside a plastic bag (pg. 164). Petrosky writes:
The clearance between the contents and container appeared to be as tight as a piston in a cylinder. She left the bag open, lest the fresh bread be crushed in the course of closing it. She did not have to be so careful with a loaf of rye bread because its crust gave it both stiffness and strength to resist. Watching the whole seamless process and imagining the forces involved was to me the greatest thing since sliced bread itself.
Reading Force changes how one looks at some of the simplest objects like the binder clip and ballpoint pen (Chapter 12 - Stretching and Squeezing), the can opener (Chapter 6, Lever, Lever - Cantilever), and the tape measure (Chapter 14 Deployable Structures). You will even feel a little better about yourself when you learn that your fingerprints though they don't disappear, they do lose some of the tactile qualities which explains why I drop more objects (like pens, clips, and tape measures) than I used to.
This doesn't mean that Petrosky doesn't tackle bigger engineering feats like bridges, arches and domes, and obelisks. When he describes the reasons behind famous bridge collapses you may be thankful that bridge repair is part of the Federal infrastructure plan.
Other Discussion Notes
Experienced engineers…never accept outright the results of a computer simulation brought to them by a young associated, they make a hand calculation based on a simple model. (The same point can be found in Algorithms to Live By describing how minor changes in input data or details of modelling systems can lead to profound changes in the outcome of computer models). (p.128)
Gravity...He discusses Roger Babson, who was quite a character and innovative thinker--he also ran for president once. He is credited with the Babson Manifesto: Gravity: Our Public Enemy #1. He saw, correctly, that gravity was critical in all sorts of accidents--airplane crashes, broken bones, and even drownings. The force of gravity is ever present but so taken for granted we rarely consider it. (p.23)
Discoveries.... The author discusses the distinction of technology from science--how many practical discoveries came from trial and error not thinking--the technology involved in brewing alcoholic beverages, baking bread, making bronze and then steel weapons and many other ancient technologies were discovered this way. Further, he points out that even with applied science that often the finishing touches require the art of engineers to make them operational. For more on this topic, interested readers are referred to Terence Kealey's classic: The Economic Basis of Scientific Research. (p.118)
Small but Mighty
Our discussion also included Frankfurt's book On Bullshit, which should not be underestimated because of its size. Originally, I purchased the book for $1 at the Friends of the Library book sale thinking it would be easy bedtime reading like Jimmy Breslin's Can Anybody Here Play This Game about the 1962 Mets, but I was mistaken. Frankfurt book is a lengthy essay about a singular topic: What is bullshit and how does it compare to lying. It requires and merits concentration.
One difference is that in order to lie, one must know the truth, but truth is irrelevant to bullshitters. Another difference is that a lie must be focused (p.51-53).
"It is designed to insert a particular falsehood at a specific point in a set or system of beliefs in order to avoid the consequences of having the point occupied by the truth. This requires a degree of craftsmanship, in which the teller of the lie submits to objective constraints imposed by what he takes to be the truth....On the other hand, a person who undertakes to bullshit has much more freedom. His focus is panoramic rather than particular. He does not limit himself to inserting a certain falsehood at a specific point, and thus is not constrained by the truths surrounding that point or intersecting it....but this mode of creativity upon which it relies is less analytical and less deliberative that than which is mobilized in lying. It is more expansive and independent, with more spacious opportunities for improvisation, color and imaginative play. This is less a matter of craft than of art. Hence the familiar notion of the "bullshit artist."
Francis also explained how the book ends, when Frankfurt wonders how we can be sincere if you don't know your motive. (Lying to yourself; bullshitting yourself)
Dubliners (1914) by James Joyce
Considering that Murray and his partner Denise were planning a trip to Ireland in the late spring and that Francis was of Irish descent (Francis O'Neill Walker) with a pining for some ol' time classical-need-some-good-annotation fiction, we select Joyce's first major work. These 14 stories culminating in single long story (maybe novella - The Dead) are Joyce's portrayal of the struggles lower middle-class life in turn-of-the-20 century Dublin. The crushing presence of the Catholic church and the fact that Ireland was still under British rule kept the Irish people under their thumb though the Irish independence movement was in full swing. (Bloody Sunday, 1916, Irish Independence 1922)
Appreciation was mixed, but we did agree that Denise and Francis with their Catholic upbringing had an "advantage" in understanding Joyce's work. Still with good annotation such as James Joyce's Dubliners: An Illustrated Edition with Annotations (1993) edited by John Wyse Jackson & Bernard McGinley. The Penguin Classic edition with the introduction by Terrance Mann also has good annotation and a through introduction explaining the book's history (Joyce wrote the stories after he had left Dublin in 1905) provides the big picture of Joyce's work. Denise found a good audio version of the book narrated by XXXXXXX.
Was it Joyce's master work? Denise found Portrait of an Artist as Young Man (1916), which she read in high school had a profound effect on the view of the Catholic Church. The entire world agree that Joyce's final work Finnegan's Wake is for brave academics only, which leaves maybe Ulysses (1922). GRSG may do Portrait at some time, but not for SOME time.
Francis' Observations
1) Denise may be right about the Irish, by being under the thumb of London and the Vatican (not sure which is worse), are understandably depressed. Perhaps unlike the USA, the blessing and curse of the Irish is that they never could have successfully mounted, much less carried out a revolutionary war.
2) Here is a quote from Goethe, that I think is relevant to many of the stories: “As in Rome there is, apart from the Romans, a population of statues, so apart from this real world there is a world of illusion, almost more potent, in which most men live. “ In the stories, many of the characters have powerful illusions about others around them— potential romantic partners (Araby, A Painful Case, Eveline) the life of literary or musical celebrity (A Little Cloud, A Mother), an independent Ireland (Ivy Day in the Committee Room) , the redemptive ability of a Jesuit revival (Grace), the allure of motion, notoriety and money (After the Race). Faulkner writes about this too: “…so vast, so limitless in capacity is man's imagination to disperse and burn away the rubble-dross of fact and probability, leaving only truth and dream.” One could certainly apply this to Joyce’s characters.
3) Few of the characters handle disillusionment well. Here is how Justice Charles Darling puts it: “We can be of little service to our fellows until we become disillusioned without being embittered.” One of the reviews of Dubliners points out that the stories progress in the age of the main characters, which is most apparent in the final story, “The Dead” perhaps the one that describes a more mature approach to disillusionment.
(from Murray) Similarly a quote from Joy Williams in her book Harrow (2021), "We all lead three lives. The true one, the false one and the one we are not aware of."
4) Although I am familiar with the term “omniscient narrator” to describe some works of fiction, James Joyce intentionally did the opposite in that he said he wrote with “scrupulous meanness” i.e. avoiding as much as possible any interpretation of events. He also makes the point that writing about the people of Dublin could say a lot about all people. Here is Faulkner making a similar point: “To understand the world you must first understand a place like Mississippi”
5) A few quotes from the stories:
- “She dealt with moral problems the way a cleaver deals with meat: and in this case she had made up her mind.” "The Boarding House"
- “But there was no harshness in the eyes which, looking at the world from under their tawny eyebrows, gave the impression of a man ever alert to greet a redeeming instinct in others but often disappointed. He lived at a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glances. He had an odd autobiographical habit which led him to compose in his mind from time to time a short sentence about himself containing a subject in the third person and a predicate in the past tense. "A Painful Case" (It also has one of the “Eye” descriptions)
- An irregular musketry of applause escorted her also as far as the piano and then, as Mary Jane seated herself on the stool, (The Dead)
The Irish Eyes
While reading Dubliners you cannot help but notice Joyce's descriptions of eyes. It is everywhere. And this has not gone unnoticed. See Stephen Sherman's essay Dubliners: The Eyes Have It.
Film Adaptation of The Dead
Our final discussion of The Dead was around the John Huston's 1987 film adaptation of Joyce's work. The short film was the legendary director's last production and it starred his daughter Anjelica Huston. The movie is very faithful to the book and in away it consists of just two locations -- the house where the aunts held their party which featured piano works. When one of the guests, a tenor sings the song "The Lass of Augheim", Gretta (played by Huston) stops dead in her tracks and listens, a look of faraway sadness on her face. Later that night, in the hotel room where Gretta tells her husband Gabriel the story of young man she once knew and loved who died at a very young age.
Gabriel (played Donal McCann) is the narrator of the movie and we see the party mostly through his eyes. He is calm and literary (a book critic) and has spent considerable time on the continent and according to Jackson and McGinley is one of the few intellectuals in the book (Duffy in "A Painful Case" is another.). As Francis remarked, "he is disillusioned but not embittered." The movie ends with Gabriel staring out the window on the winter's night:
"His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."
TransAtlantic (2013) by Colum McCann
"No history is mute. No matter how much they own it, break it and lie about it, human history refuses to shut its mouth. Despite deafness and ignorance, the time that was continues to tick inside the time that is."- Eduardo Galeano (opening quote in TransAtlantic)
This book was kind of journey in itself. Murray took this book with him on his trip to Ireland. Before leaving the States, he read the first part of this historical novel about the two aviators Alcock and Brown who crossed the Atlantic in 1919 in a modified Vickers Vimy bomber. He determined this book would work as a surefire travel book, so he temporarily set it aside. While in-flight he read the second part of the narrative was about Frederick Douglass' trip to Ireland during the 1840s *around the beginning of the potato famine. On a sleepless night in Dublin he pulled out the book and read about special ambassador George Mitchell historic trip to Ireland at the behest of President Bill Clinton to help negotiate the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. Then Murray left the book tangled in the sheets of the hotel room (does this qualify for a housekeeping tip?). Reading was suspended. Finally he found a used copy of the book in an unusual book store in Kinsale.
Francis read his copy of the book on his Kindle.
We both agreed it was a good, solid book but neither of us were in awe of McCann's efforts, whose reputation as an award winning writer somewhat proceeds him.
The book covers the intertwined stories of people who crossed back and forth across the Atlantic to Ireland. Seemingly minor characters reappears as a major ones as the narrative spans 150 years. For example, a young female journalist Emily Ehrlich covers the Alcock and Brown takeoff from Newfoundland and asks the aviators to deliver a letter in her behalf. he book ends with her granddaughter now in 70s living out her last years wondering about the contents of the same letter, which remains unopened and addressed to a family that entertained Frederick Douglas. The cover verbiage explains the book most succinctly:
Stitching these stories intricately together, Colum McCann sets out to explore the fine line between what is real and what is imagined, and the tangle skein of connections that make up our lives.
Francis appreciated Emily's interview techniques, likening them to his own interviews with patients who had been asked dozens of times to explain their condition:
She knew he had probably talked the Vickers Vimy out of himself, hundreds of interviews over the years. And yet the whole of anything was never fully told. She would have to turn away from the obvious, bank her way back into it. - page 221
Frederick Douglas
In an interview (from the Kindle edition), Colum McCann said "And I was especially taken by this notion of a young black slave (Douglas) landing in Ireland and having enough experience to say “Lo! The chattel becomes a man!”; Then he looks around and knows that there are many forms of chattledom”
There was only so much he could take upon himself. He had to look to what mattered. What was beyond toleration was the ownership of man and woman. The Irish were poor, but not enslaved. He had come here to hack away at the ropes that held American slavery in place. Sometimes it withered him just to keep his mind steady. He was aware that the essence of proper intelligence was the embrace of contradiction. - p 85
George Mitchell
We both highlighted this passage from the end of the chapter about George Mitchell's summarization of the events. The words certainly ring true of the day.
On justice and being Irish
"The Irish abolitionists were known for their fervor. They came from the land of O’Connell, after all. The Great Liberator. There was, he’d been told, a hunger for justice. "- page 42
"He was told once that any good Irishman would drive fifty miles out of his way just to hear an insult—and a hundred miles if the insult was good enough. - Page 118 Parabellum
Final Thoughts
This is a good book if you are planning a trip to Ireland or read while in Ireland, but you still need to read a concise history of Ireland to full appreciate the richness of the country.
Regeneration (1991) by Pat Barker
Regeneration is the first book of Pat Barker's World War I trilogy, which also includes The Eye in the Door (1993) and The Ghost Road (1995). Rather than focus on primarily on battlefield events, Barker views the war from behind that lines at Craiglockhart War Hospital in Scotland. At Craiglockhart, the brilliant psychiatrist Dr. William Rivers treats a host of patients with tics and twitches including Siegfried Sasson, the noted poet and war hero who publicly refused to stay at the front. Faced with disgracing the British war machine transfers Sassoon to Rivers's car where the doctor must determine whether the war is insane or Sassoon is insane for saying it.
Although fiction, the book is seeped with many historical figures: Rivers, Sassoon, the poet Wilfred Owen who is also at Craiglockhart, the British novelist and poet Robert Graves and Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll). Another renowned physician in the field is Henry Head. Sassoon was a poet as well and in 1920 he was responsible for publishing Owen's works posthumously. Owen was considered a major English poet in the first quarter of the 20th Century. (He has his own entry in The Norton Anthology of English Literature.)
But what gives the book its depth is the female characters who unlike their male counterparts who practically domesticated in the trenches, these women work in the munition factories and have the freedom of having their own money and having escape in some cases their abusive husbands who are on the frontlines.
A couple quotes from the book illustrate this:
Though when you looked at what they did. Worrying about socks, boots, blisters, food, hot drinks. And that perpetually harried expression of theirs. Rivers had only ever seen that look in one other place: in the public wards of hospitals, on the faces of women who were bringing up large families on very low incomes, women who, in their early thirties, could easily be taken for fifty or more. It was the look of people who are totally responsible for lives they have no power to save...The war that had promised so much in the way of ‘manly’ activity had actually delivered ‘feminine’ passivity, and on a scale that their mothers and sisters had scarcely known. No wonder they broke down.
The second come from a scene at the factory when the women are talking about home life:
The others were talking about Lizzie's husband, who'd thrown her into a state of shock by announcing, in this last letter that he was hoping to come home on leave soon."
" I haven't had a wink of sleep since, " said Lizzie...
"Don't you want to see him?" asked Sarah.
"I do not. I've seen enough of him to last me a lifetime...Do you know what happened on August 4th 1914?...I'll tell you what happened Peace broke out. The only bit of peace I've ever had. No, I don't want him back. I don't want him on leave. I don't want him back when it's over. As far as I'm concerned the Kaiser can keep him."
Discussion
Because Francis is a neurologist, he was compelled to find more information on PTSD and its treatment, which was part of our talk. Here's and abstract of one academic article about the subject.
Martin A, Naunton M, Kosari S, Peterson G, Thomas J, Christenson JK. Treatment Guidelines for PTSD: A Systematic Review. J Clin Med. 2021 Sep 15;10(18):4175
Introduction
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a debilitating mental condition that can significantly impact the sufferer’s quality of life [1,2,3]. A study by Rapaport et al. found that 59% of patients suffering from PTSD had severely impaired overall quality of life based on the Quality of Life Enjoyment and Satisfaction Questionnaire [4]. Stein et al. found that 38.9% of patients with PTSD had missed at least one work day in the last month due to emotional problems, compared to only 5.4% of people who did not suffer from a mental health condition, and Kessler reported that a PTSD diagnosis increases the likelihood of being homeless by 150% [5,6]. PTSD is also commonly associated with comorbidities of depression and substance use disorders, and a significantly increased risk of suicide [7].
PTSD comprises four symptom clusters: ‘avoidance’, ‘numbing’, ‘hyper-arousal’ and the hallmark ‘re-experiencing’ or ‘intrusive symptoms’, which include unwanted thoughts, flashbacks and nightmares [8]. Nightmares are often resistant to general PTSD treatment and have been linked with a five-fold increase in suicidality [9]. Nightmares should therefore be considered one of the most important symptoms to treat, yet they are often overlooked as a secondary symptom of PTSD [10,11,12]. In addition, there appears to be few recommendations for the treatment of nightmares in guidelines, even though there are targeted treatments available, such as image rehearsal therapy (IRT) and pharmacotherapies including prazosin, terazosin and some atypical antipsychotics [13,14].
Treatments
Below, are descriptions of two treatments (from Dr. Google) discussed in more detail in the above article:
Imagery rehearsal Therapy
The treatment involves patients selecting a repetitive trauma-related nightmare, describing and writing out the dream in detail, choosing a change to the script or imagery of the dream to allow for mastery and/or completion, writing out this change and mentally rehearsing the changed dream imagery.
Prazosin
Prazosin is a medication used to manage and treat hypertension, benign prostatic hyperplasia, PTSD-associated nightmares, and the Raynaud phenomenon. It is a quinazoline derivative that acts as a competitive alpha1-antagonist.
Final Thoughts
Murray read Regeneration 20+ years ago and he was more impressed now than he was then. (Barker got a shout-out in Chapter 8 of The Book Shopper.) Francis also thoroughly appreciated the book, but quipped it was a little like work for him.
Under the Eye of Power: How Fear of Secret Societies Shapes American Democracy (2023) by Colin Dickey
"Secret societies, for good and for ill, erupted constantly in the U.S. as people lost faith with government--or when they wished to subvert it. (page 201)"
Francis suggested this book and at first when Dickey writes about the Freemasons in England and France it's a little slow, but the book picks up fast (rituals including drinking wine from human skulls and details on the practically pornographic bestseller that titillated the public with tales of religious lust). Dickey gives us examples of how conspiracies and the belief that secret societies and cabals control our society, but he relates them to the current political scene of Donald Trump, QAnon, January 6th rioters, militias., replacement theorists and Ron DeSantis.
"It is a common misconception about subscribers to conspiracy theories that they are uneducated - 1/3 of Trump voters made of $100 K a year."
This may not be comforting, but our American history is similar to the chaos, violence and general stupidity that are the foundations of this country (for better or worse).
There is a lot baked into this book and it took us two sessions to discuss many of the topics. Focus was a little of a problem, but it always is. One reason for the breadth of our discussion is that many of the topics touch on earlier books we have read in GRSG through the years.
The Civil War
The point where this book really gets interesting is when Dickey points out how the abolitionists of the North used conspiracy theories to taint the Southerners and likewise how the Southerners used conspiracy theories to strike fear and defend being slave owners. Just as we had read in other books such -as the Grant biography one the arguments that the Northerners used is that free slave labor gave the Southerners and "unfair" economic advantage. (This is especially true in agrarian Midwest -- home of Abraham Lincoln).
One of the more ridiculous arguments was the one future 10th President of the United States John Tyler who argued that the abolitionists "were not "friends" to enslaved Americans but instead their 'enemies' since their agitations drove enslavers to crack down on those in bondage." (p.80) This sounds as idiotic as Ron DeSantis redefining slavery as job training.
Thomas Pynchon
One of the major themes of most of Pynchon's novel, especially Gravity's Rainbow (it contains the 5 Proverbs for Paranoids - See ). In Chapter 20, Dickey also cites The Crying of Lot 49 which communicates via cryptic symbols including a muted trumpet. See Murray's website mutedhorncom.com
The Klan
Chapter 15, The (In Visible Society) about the Ku Klux Klan more specifically the second Klan which rose to prominence in the 1920s was one of the more interesting chapters. The initial Klan rose after the Civil War, but gutted by the Grant administration (we read the Chernow Grant biography last year) that sent Federal troops to control organized Southern violence.
The origins of the Second Klan had a resurgence of PR spectacles (including Stone Mountain) and morphed into a multilevel marketing pyramid scheme where every new recruit to the Klan paid $10 and $4 with the recruiter and the remainder going up the pyramid to the leaders' pockets. There was merchandising too.
Why Do We Believe in Conspiracies
Things that increase the likelihood of ascribing to conspiracy theories:
A) Personal factors:
- Ignorance,
- Historical amnesia,
- Impotence
- Sense of disaffection from society
- Personal failures
B) Exogenous factors:
1. Threats and their drivers:
2. Novelty (previously unexperienced threats are worse)
3. Threat level acceleration (e.g., increased flow of immigrants)
4. Human agency involved (cannot be a natural disaster—comet/volcano
5. Secrecy
Presence or perceived presence of peculiar codes, rituals or symbols (If you have ever been in a Masonic Temple it is loaded with this stuff)
Things that diminish the likelihood of ascribing to conspiracy theories:
A) Transparency
B) Resilience,
C) Success,
D)Historical memory.
E) Education
Relevant Quotes
These are quotes from Francis's catalog of quotes with commentary.
1) Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue. --La Rochefoucald
(This is why I think hypocrisy is better than autocracy—the autocrat commits far worse deeds as he does not care how his actions appear to the rest of the world, while at least the hypocrite does--FW)
2) A credulous mind . . . finds most delight in believing strange things, and the stranger they are the easier they pass with him; but never regards those that are plain and feasible, for every man can believe such. - Samuel Butler
3) Reflect on things past, as wars, negotiations, factions and the like; we enter so little into those interests, that we wonder how men could possibly be so busy and concerned for things so transitory. Look on present times, we find the same humor, yet wonder not at all. - -Swift, thoughts on Various Subjects, 1711
4) So obscure are the greatest events, as some take for granted any hearsay, whatever its source, others turn truth into falsehood, and both errors find encouragement with posterity. - Tacitus
5) Modern history had given us enough warning against treating simplifications as real. The totalitarian states….had been propelled by ideologies and what else was an ideology (…) other than a premature synthesis. Clive James Cultural Amnesia (The subsequent two quotes from Goethe, support his contention).
6) The only way to see absurdities of today in proportion is to compare them with great masses of world history. - Goethe
The history of philosophy, of religion, of the sciences all show that opinions are spread about on a quantitative scale and that the leading position always goes to that which is easiest to grasp, that is whatever is easier and more comfortable for the human spirit. Indeed the man who has fully educated and developed himself can always reckon to have the majority against him. Goethe
7) History is the present. That’s why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth. - E.L. Doctorow
8) Human blunders usually do more to shape history than human wickedness. AJP Taylor 1961
9) Combinations of wickedness would overwhelm the world did not those who have long practiced perfidy grow faithless to each other. Dr. Johnson (On why true conspiracies are so limited, also, see below)
10) Cunning has effect from the credulity of others, rather than from the abilities of those who are cunning. It requires no extraordinary talents to lie and deceive. Dr. Johnson 1781
11.) Conspiracy theories, after all, feed on historical amnesia. p. 128 Colin Dickey
12.) Conspiracy theories are rationally motivated irrational behavior. - p.238 Colin Dickey
Reminders
The book also reminds me of other things I have read. Most recently, the Southern Poverty Law Center's "The Year in Hate & Extremism" 2022 yearbook" which devotes a pull quote in the introduction talk about the prevalence of Replacement Theory. The SPLC agree that the recent mass shootings in Buffalo, Pittsburgh and Christchurch, New Zealand were fueled by Replacement Theory rhetoric.
Another book is Astra Taylor's Democracy is Not Much, But We're Going to Miss It When Its' Gone. Taylor's book is long and a little meandering but she makes but it makes many similar points and provides a rich historical perspective on our nation's strange history.
Conclusions
This book presents a thorough historical rendering of Conspiracy's roots beginning with the Freemasons of Colonial times (including George Washington and Ben Franklin) all the way through the riots of January 6th. We agreed that Dickey is not a rigid historian, and he has a perspective (agenda seems too strong). This book has no index either which is always a negative in a book like this. Still, we devoted two sessions to this book and it provided plenty discussion. If we had human skull wine glasses (as mentioned on page 54) we'd toast Dickey's efforts.
The First World War (1998) by John Keegan
Why this book was selected.
We read Pat Barker's novel Regeneration earlier this year and we both liked the British historian John Keegan and have read other books by him (e.g. The Face of Battle). Adding to the timeliness, Murray was going to vacation at Ypres in September and he wanted to read up on World War I. His thoughts about his trip to Ypres can be found in the posting "Grave Significance".
General Observations
We both liked the book and found it worthy of GRSG. Murray said he didn't know how much he didn't about The Great War until he read this book. His knowledge about World War 1 is limited to its beginning with the 1914 assassination of Duke Ferdinand in Sarajevo and All Quiet on the Western Front movies and the like. This gap in knowledge became more apparent while reading Keegan's chapters to on the Eastern Front and Russia's campaigns versus Germany and Austria. (These were no small engagements as Russia lost 1.7 M dead and Austria-Hapsburg Empire 1 million), He includes details about how the Bolsheviks rose to power (largely through food riots and a lack of loyal home guard troops).
Keegan spends significant time on the first year of the war where the troop movements shaped the following years on the Western Front. This is in contrast to 1918 when America had entered the war when not that much was written. The Germans made a final offensive in 1918 because they knew the American manpower would swing the war to the Allies and the German populace was practically starving on the Homefront.
Keegan surprises us by calling the Great War, a "civilized war" compared to the Second World War, which introduced the war on civilians. Geographically, the battlegrounds are limited in the West to Belgium and France although the trenches stretched from the North Sea to Switzerland. (However, many areas were geographically unsuited for movements of large armies thus the Great Battles were often fought repeatedly over the same ground: Ypres in Belgium, the Somme, and Verdun in France.
Since Francis had been to Gallipoli, he especially appreciated that chapter on the ill-fated Dardanelles campaign, which was relatively short. Winston Churchill, who was the first Lord of the Admiralty was one of the main proponents of the naval engagement followed by the invasion of Australian and New Zealand Army Corp (ANZAC) troops. Earlier in the book Churchill was described by Keegan as "thirsting for action and glory." (Anzac Day is a commemoration of the anniversary of the landing of Australian and New Zealand troops at Gallipoli, Turkey on 25 April in 1915.)
Quotes & Excerpts from Francis
Page 93—the response to the slaughter of non-combatants, perhaps 1500 men women and children rounded up and shot in city squares in Belgium: “Even harder to bear were the expressions of disgust from the world’s great centers of learning and research; American as well as European universities denounced the atrocity and committees were formed in twenty-five countries to collect money and books for the restoration of the Louvain library.
Page 177: All these plans, though particularly those of Ruzski and the Stavka, characterize a distinctively Russian style of warmaking, that of using space rather than force as a medium of strategy. No French general would have proposed surrendering the cherished soil of his country to gain military advantage; the German generals in East Prussia had taken the defense of its frontier to be a sacred duty. To the Russians, by contrast, inhabitants of an empire that stretched nearly 6,000 miles from the ploughland of western Poland to the ice of the Bering Straits, a hundred miles here or there was a trifle of military maneuver. In their wars with the Turks, the Swedes, above all with Napoleon, whole provinces had been lost, only to be regained
Page 269: Troy v Gallipolli: “ It is difficult to say which epic Homer might have thought the more heroic.”
Page 299: “Plans made without allowance for the intentions of the enemy are liable to miscarry.”
Page 347: The problem of command in the circumstances of the First World War was insoluble. Generals were like men without eyes, without ears and without voices, unable to watch the operations they set in progress, unable to hear reports of their development and unable to speak to those whom they had originally given orders once action was joined.
Not that you want to give the benefit of the doubt, but this lack of communication did impact not only battlefield movements, but it partly explained how the assassination in Sarajevo led to the original outbreak of hostilities. Heads of governments and kings could not respond to their ambassadors in a timely manner, so sometimes there was a lag which led to further misunderstanding (and bloodshed). Keegan wrote about Sir Douglas Haig, the supreme British commander: "Haig in whose public manner and private diaries (showed) no concern for human suffering and compensated for his aloofness with nothing whatsoever of the common touch. He seemed to move through the horrors of the First World War as if guided by some inner voice, speaking of a higher purpose and personal destiny."
Page 450: The chronicle of its battles provides the dreariest literature in military history; no brave trumpets sound in memory for the drab millions who plodded to death on the featureless plains of Picardy and Poland; no litanies are sung for the leaders who coaxed them to slaughter…… The legacy of the war’s political outcome scarcely bears contemplation: Europe ruined as a center of world civilization, Christian kingdoms transformed through defeat into godless tyrannies, Bolshevik or Nazi, the superficial difference between their ideologies counting not at all in their cruelty to common and decent folk. All that was worst in the century which the First World War had opened, the deliberate starvation of peasant enemies of the people by provinces, the extermination of racial outcasts, the persecution of ideology’s intellectual and cultural hate-objects, the massacre of ethnic minorities, the extinction of small national sovereignties, the destruction of parliaments and the elevation of commissars, gauleiters and warlords to power over voiceless millions, had its origins in the chaos it left behind. Of that, at the end of the century, little thankfully is left. Europe is once again, as it was in 1900, prosperous, peaceful and a power for good in the world.
The two key questions posed by Keegan at the end of the book (page 456 gleaned from two paragraphs)
- Why did a prosperous continent, at the height of its success…risk all it had won…In the lottery of a vicious internecine conflict?
- Why did the combatants persist…to…pointless slaughter?
A century later there are no clear-cut answers to those questions.
Frankenstein (1818, 1831) by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
We decided to read this classic novel after Murray visited his cousin in Indiana before Halloween. The cousin mentioned that her granddaughter Jocelyn—a 6th grader and quite a reader—was currently reading Frankenstein. Adding to our decision is that the recent blockbuster movie Oppenheimer (was based on the biography American Prometheus) and Shelley's novel is often referred as the Modern Prometheus. Anytime a scientist— in the case of Victor Frankenstein —unleashes a new powerful force never before witnessed in humankind, the Prometheus comparison always shows up.
To help us to more fully understand the novel, we both enlisted the help of The New Annotated Frankenstein (2017) edited by Leslie S. Klinger and published by W.W. Norton.
Frankenstein. We Hardly Knew Ye
For starters, the Frankenstein of the title is for Victor Frankenstein the young doctor who created the fiend, the monster, not the name of the monster himself. It is Victor's story to tell a captain of an icebound vessel that is trapped near the Arctic Circle. Victor tells Captain Walton relates his story of science, creation, murder and madness. How mislead we were by those old black and white Boris Karloff's movies of the 1930s.
How else is the book differ from the typical Frankenstein movies including our favorite Mel Brooks' "Young Frankenstein" which enjoyed it's 50th anniversary this year:
A) There is no castle; B) Victor is very young and naïve when he creates the monster--not a middle-aged mad scientist. C) There is no Igor; D) The Movie monster is barely sentient, unlike the reasoning, scheming and duplicitous creature in the book; E) The monster was not animated by electricity; F) The monster is fleet-footed, agile and can steal along without others noticing him, unlike the lurching, lumbering Klutz in the movies. G) The book is a rather expansive travelogue (London, Scotland, the North Sea, Europe) while the movie is always staged in one locale.
It's a Classic from the Romantic Era
We certainly agreed that book deserves all the accolades it has received. After all, she wrote the book when she was 19 and the writing is solid. It embodies the Romantic Period times of Percy Bysshee Shelley (who she married at age 19) and Lord Byron. Victor Frankenstein embodies the romantic lifestyle and everything he says or does is wrapped in passion (we both thought he was a little tiresome). Remember he is younger in the book than we are accustomed to seeing in the movies.
In his introduction to the Norton book, Guillermo Del Toro (the actor) writes about Romanticism:
Like all great movements "Romanticism was born out of rage and need...a way to fight the overbearing certainty of science..." (Which is rather interesting in that he wrote that in 2017, which sounds a bit prescient--given all the rage, at least by some, about "science" that followed the pandemic - Francis). "To quote Lord Byron, 'The great object of life is sensation—to feel that we exist—even though in pain.' ”
Francis appreciated another aspect of the book and the history of using electricity in medicine from a contemporary of Shelley, Giovannie Aldini:
In 1803 the College invited Professor Giovanni Aldini to carry out galvanic experiments on the body of George Foster, who had been found guilty of murdering his wife and child by drowning them in the Paddington Canal. Aldini required access to the bodies of people who had died very recently, in the belief that these still held their ‘vital powers’. In contrast, those who had died of disease might have ‘humours’ which would resist his experiments. Later, writing up his London work, Aldini admired England’s ‘enlightened’ laws, which provided murderers with an opportunity to atone for their crimes by such uses of their bodies after death. He argued that galvanic experiments were especially in the interests of a British public, for Britain was a commercial and maritime nation filled with rivers and canals. When people drowned there, he wrote, galvanism might provide the necessary ‘means of excitement’ to return them to life.1 Dealing with the dead in controversial ways always requires some form of rationalisation. It is part of the process through which access to bodies is socially negotiated.
Reading the records of this scientist’s work at the College in 1803, it is not difficult to see why others believed such men liked to play at being God. Always conscious of his audience, Aldini made the dead perform tricks. He boasted that in Europe he had once placed the heads of two decapitated criminals on separate tables, then connected them with an arc of electricity to make them grimace to such an extent as to frighten spectators. He had also made the hand of a headless man clutch a coin and throw it across a room.
The College provided Aldini with an opportunity to undertake some new experiments on George Foster, whose body had been left hanging for an hour in temperatures two degrees below freezing point. Aldini applied arcs to various parts of the corpse to make George Foster perform. His jaw quivered, his left eye opened, and his face convulsed. When conductors were applied to his ear and rectum, the resulting muscular contractions ‘almost [gave] an appearance of reanimation’.2 One hand clenched and the heart’s right auricle contracted, amazing Aldini’s audience.
The experiments continued for more than seven hours after the execution. Aldini denied any intention to reanimate the corpses upon which he went to work, but everyone in that room would have considered it a triumph had he managed to do so. The Times noted that a principle had been discovered ‘by which motion can be restored to Dead Bodies.’3
Such possibilities had not been on the minds of England’s legislators when they had worded the Murder Act. Dissection was meant to mutilate the dead, not resurrect them. Bringing murderers back to life might have been a matter of congratulations for the man who achieved it, but it would have been a complicated problem for the law. Aldini himself spoke ambiguously about his intentions. He said the object of his experiments ‘was not to produce re-animation, but merely to obtain a practical knowledge how far Galvanism may be employed … to revive persons under similar circumstances’.4
This is an edited excerpt from Helen MacDonald, Human Remains (Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 2005 and Yale University Press, London, 2006).
Notes
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Aldini, John, An Account of the Late Improvements in Galvanism, with a series of various and interesting experiments performed before the Commissioners of the French National Institute, and repeated lately in the Anatomical Theatres in London (to which is added an Appendix, containing the author’s experiments on the body of a malefactor executed at Newgate, etc etc), Cathell & Martin, London, 1803, pp. 67-8, 189-90, 191.
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Aldini, An Account of the Late Improvements in Galvanism, p. 194.
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Times, 24 January 1803.
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Aldini, An Account of the Late Improvements in Galvanism, p. 201.
And what discussion of Frankenstein would be complete without including clips of the best Frankenstein movie -- Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein. The first excerpt features Marty Feldman with Gene Wilder and Terri Garr. The second has Peter Boyle with Gene Hackman. Hackman proves that a good actor can do comedy if the writing is good. (Julia Louise-Dreyfus included.)
Galileo and the Science Deniers (2020) by Mario Livio
Francis and I were in agreement that overall this book was average because it had some serious flaws. You can't criticize the importance of Galileo Galilei (1562-1642) and his discoveries in astronomy, mathematics and physics, but as advertised much of the book is devoted to his naysayers and his battles with the Catholic Church. The weaknesses were two fold. Since Livio revisits his earlier works about Galileo some of it reads like a rehash of previous material and secondly Livio draws conclusions about Galileo's battles with the church and comparing them to today's science deniers seems tacked on.
That being said our discussion was spirited proving that even a less than stellar book can prove to be worthy of GRSG's time. The book is roughly divided into thirds.
Opening Chapters
Murray liked the first third of the book when Livio gives an account of Galileo finding himself as a mathematician and philosopher and not as a medical doctor as his father wished. For years Galileo was on the hustle and living in Padua (not too far from Venice) for a dozen years. (Murray spent the day there in the historical city known for its Scrovegni Chapel with the frescos.) Galileo also worked for the Venetian military. His fine telescopes were of use of the military as well as the armaments that could give the city-state an advantage.
In the early pages (p.22-24) there is the quote that caught both of our attention from Einstein:
" How is it possible that mathematics, a product of human thought that is independent of experience, fits so excellently the objects of physical reality?
To Murray that did seem kind of amazing, but Francis had a differing opinion. He cited the story of The Dog That Knew Calculus. Well, the answer can be found with Elvis the dog mentioned in the article. In short, dogs know calculus they can calculate trajectories and arcs every time they follow a frisbee and snag it. Francis reminds us that our brains have been wired, via evolution, to incorporate the physical reality of the world in its ability to function and move the body since time immemorial. Those organisms who couldn't catch on to this, did not survive.
Also, in the early pages (40-41) there is mention of how in the case of Galileo astronomical discoveries were proven centuries later. Livio writes " Science progresses sometime by experimental results preceding theoretical explanations, and sometime theories making predictions that are later confirmed (or falsified) experimentally or observationally." Livio mentions how one Einstein 's theories of relativity published in 1915 was not proven until observations were made in 1919 on the remote of islands of Principe (off West Africa) and Sobral (off Brazil) Coincidently in the opening paragraphs Paul Johnson's Modern Times From the Twenties to the Nineties, he says the expedition to that proved these theories marked the beginning of Modern Times.
There is a lot of scientific explanations of Galileo's work which the general reader such as Murray have a tendency to glaze over (skimming). Francis was more understanding. He writes in his Amazon review: "There are some good quotations relevant to the history and philosophy of science in the book--which would be of interest to budding scientists, but perhaps not so much for a more general readership."
Middle Ground
"Galileo's comments on the human ability to decipher nature's secrets also echoed in his famous Letter to Benedetto Castelli, when he stated that he did not believe that the same God who has given us our senses, reason, and intelligence wished us to abandon their use."(p. 81)
Much of the middle chapters of the book are devoted to the detailed arguments between Galileo and other scientist and philosophers and the Catholic Church. It is here that we are introduced to casuistry: the use of clever but unsound reasoning, especially in relation to moral questions; sophistry. (the above from an on-line dictionary). The Jesuits, by the way, were in particular known for their casuistry. It seems Livio was ignorant of this concept, which is OK, but if you are going to write 4 chapters on it, why not just summarize it in one?
Not even the quaint list of Italian insults used by Galileo: “pezzo d’asinaccio” (“piece of utter stupidity”), “bufolaccio” (“buffoon”), “elefantissimo” (“most elephantine”), and “baldordone” (“bumbling idiot”) can save this part of Livio's book.
Late Rally The ending of the books is a little better for the general reader as we learn about Galileo's final years under house arrest. But Livio seems to tack on modern relevance as an afterthought in hopes of creating buzz when it compares the life and times of our current society when public health advocates battle with anti-vaxers.
This concludes 2023 GRSG Reading Notes. To continue, go to 2024 GRSG Reading Notes
