Gogol's Art This blog is usually about books I find at flea markets and tag sales, but really it is about good reading, enjoyable reading that stimulates the imagination and gives readers insights into this crazy world of ours.

I have written before about the trailblazing troika Pushkin, Gogol and Lermontov, three earnest young men whose common goal was nothing less than the creation of a first-rate national literature for their mother country.

And do you know what? They succeeded. I remember when I was 14 years old I started The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. I read the first chapter and had to put it away for three years before I could finish the book.

Everything is in there: the bastard Smerdyakov, the drunken patriarch and his purse of gold, the pestle, Ivan and his brain fever, Stinking Lizaveta, Alyosha (played by William Shatner in the movie) the simple soul who cannot fail to win your heart.

Then there is the stinking corpse of Father Zossima and abive all the disquisition of the Grand Inquisitor, which inspired T.S. Eliot when he wrote Murder in the Cathedral.

I acted in that play. I played the third priest, "Or sit and bite your nails in Acquitaine. In the still small circle of pain within the skull you still shall tramp and tread your endless round of thought..." [Full citation on request]

So Dostoyevsky wrote probably the greatest novel in history, the only book that I would ever recommend more highly than The Count of Monte Cristo, and Dostoyevsky said, "We all came out of Gogol's Overcoat." [He's referring to a story by Gogol called The Overcoat.]

Gogol and Pushkin, and later Lermontov, were like Ricardo and Malthus, as described by a contemporary: "They hunted together in search of the Truth, and huzzaed whenever they found her, without caring who found her first."

If you would like to know more about these three earnest young men who created Russian literature and their hero, Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, you really ought to read Gogol's Art: The Search for Identity by Laszlo Tikos.

I am a duffer. Laszlo is a scholar. Write BATI Publishers, PO Box 263 Leverett MA 01054. Or email me and I'll make sure you get a copy.  ¶ 7:53 PM 0 comments

  Congratulations Mridula! Here's another reason to take another look at Mridula Dwivedi's blog, Travel Tales from India: It has been named "Best Travel Blog" at the "Indibloggies" the Indian Weblog Awards. As a longtime fan of Mridula's tales, I am just delighted that she has received this well deserved recognition.

Mridula was also interviewed by the India Travel Blog about her blog and her stories on GoNOMAD.com. We're really proud that she was first published on our site.  ¶ 6:31 AM 1 comments

  More on Caulaincourt I took up Armand de Caulaincourt's With Napoleon in Russia last year and cited a few passages. It's a day-by-day account of the Russian campaign by a guy who was with Napoleon every day and who rode with him in the famous Berlin coach when Napoleon deserted the army and went back to Paris.

Here was a guy who (if we credit his account, which I do) did everything he could to talk Napoleon out of attacking Russia in the first place, urged a withdrawal when it was still possible -- in short did everything he could to prevent Napoleon from making these incredible bonehead mistakes that cost more than a million human lives, soldiers and civilians, and hundreds of thousands of horses, and laid waste to nearly all of European Russia, not to mention France itself, later.

I quoted his chronicle of the disastrous retreat in "To Sleep is to Die" about the thousands of men whom he saw freezing to death. There was another passage I didn't quote -- because it was too gross -- about the horses who fell and were cut up and eaten on the spot by desperate men without anyone having the decency to bonk them on the head.

What I don't get is that the freezing dying minions are standing up and cheering when the emperor's coach goes by. And even Caulaincourt, who lost his brother in the battle before Moscow, shows this fauning adulation for the bonehead who has just initiated all this needless destruction.

I just couldn't figure it out.

This war caused the destruction, not just of Smolensk, the Holy City, and Moscow, the ancient capital of the Russians, but also of Napoleon and all his grand schemes. France was invaded and occupied by foreign powers. It was tragic, sociopathic self-destructive stupidity.

Napoleon could have allied himself with Russia and the United States, then on the verge of war with England (War of 1812). Instead Napoleon gives as his pretext for war, the admission of American vessels into Russian ports.

So there's something I don't quite get. I believe it has to do with the fact that Napoleon did not make a single intelligent decision after his divorce from Josephine. For one thing he reversed his position on human slavery from "against" to "for."

But I have to say that reading Caulaincourt's memoir is like eating potato chips. The whole panorama of this hellacious debacle is set forth in crisp, dispassionate prose. You get to see it happen right before your eyes.

Even down to that last scene in Napoleon's palace in Paris, the Tuilleries, when they finally get there, where lines of mothers and fathers and daughters and sons and sisters and brothers and friends were all lined up to find out what had happened to their loved ones and the answer for all, 600,000 men, was the same - never coming back.

You'll be glad to know, I am sure, that neither Caulaincourt nor the Emperor got downhearted about the loss, in its entirety, of the largest, best equipped army in history and the miserable, horrific deaths of all its soldiers and horses. Caulaincourt reports they had a pleasant trip.

You can't let that kind of thing get you down. I'm planning some future blog entries about their jolly trip that will show what sick bastards these guys really were.  ¶ 3:15 PM 0 comments

  Jimmy Breslin A while ago I wrote a series about authors who do not disappoint and through sheer negligence I forgot to include Jimmy Breslin.

My introduction to Breslin's work was a column in a New Tork paper where some police officers on New Year's Day were totalling up the number of homicides for the past year.

There was a guy who got stabbed around eleven o'clock on December 31 and died around 2 a.m. on January 1. The discussion was about which year to assign that murder to.

One of the policemen says it's like when a basketball player takes a shot before the buzzer and then it goes in after. That's Breslin's touch. It's like Patrick Ewing's finger roll.

In one of his books, maybe Forsaking All Others, a guy in New York gets in a fight with his wife and goes out on the front porch and lights a cigarette and then you pan down the street and see this line of tiny illuminations on all the front porches. He is just plain brilliant.

I think it's World Without End, Amen where one character goes to Northern Ireland during the British occupation and the reader gets a really perceptive view of that unhappy time.

But I think Breslin's masterwork is Table Money. It's about an alcoholic New York City policeman. If you're looking for a really good read I absolutely guarantee this work will not disappoint you.

If you know or are an alcoholic you will see a lot of familiar themes treated with the kind of insights that can only come from experience.

Jimmy Breslin, as a writer, reminds me of Curly Howard, as a comedian, rolling around on the floor in the Three Stooges movies: he gives his all, throws himself into it completely.

In Table Money there's this priest employed by the city who checks the records of policemen to see which ones are out on Monday, and this priest zeroes in on the main character, and after a number of episodes, gets him to go into rehabilitation.

The policeman arrives at the rehab center and learns that there is a two-hour wait, and he spies a liquor store in the distance and decides to have one last go.

So he treks out over the highway through the swamp and gets his fancy shoes all muddy and climbs up the embankment and over the guardrail and goes into the liquor store where he meets... (of course) the priest, who says something like, "All drunks are alike." And, of course, far from being contemptuous, he includes himself in this remark.

Jimmy Breslin's books are great reading.  ¶ 1:45 PM 3 comments

  Harry Golden, The Original Blogger When Martin Luther King was blasting white moderates in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, he mentioned five authors who had written about the evils of racial segregation "in eloquent and prophetic terms." One was Harry Golden, a Jewish writer from New York's Lower East Side who moved to North Carolina and founded "The Carolina Israelite," an occasional, eclectic periodical which became famous all over the world.

Golden wrote about whatever came into his head -- making him the original blogger. He wrote about Caesar and Cleopatra and Augustus, the Magna Carta, John Locke, Jean Jaques Rousseau -- whatever -- and he had a seemingly endless collection of anecdotes about America's founding fathers including the one about Gouverneur Morris and LaFayette's wife.

But what he loved most was writing about the Lower East Side of Manhattan, which he did so vividly that you can literally smell the kreplach and the latkes.

He wrote about his own times, too, from 1942 to 1968, upholding the cause of equality in the face of entrenched bigotry, but always with wit and good humor.

His essays, anecdotes and snippets were published in many different books, notably his three bestsellers, Only In America, For Two Cents Plain and Enjoy, Enjoy!

All his work is brimming with love for America and all that it stands for. Harry Golden was a true patriot. He loved this country enough to face up to the things that were so terribly wrong with it.

Here's a sample of his writing, a description of his mother:

"My mother, I would say, was a primitive woman. She spoke only Yiddish. She could read the prayers out of the book but that was all. She spent all her time cooking, cleaning, sewing; sewing for the family as well as professionally for the neighbors.

"I think my intellectual father guessed at my mother's 'amusement.' I have had the feeling that he knew she was not overly impressed [by the men's discussions]. My mother, of course, thought all those discussions were nonsense. What does a person need but God? And she had God.

"Sometimes I smile at all the goings-on over the radio about God. Whose God are they talking about anyway -- what do they know about God?

"My mother talked with God all the time, actual conversations. She would send you on an errand and as you were ready to dart off into the crowded, dangerous streets, she turned her face upward and said, 'Now see that he's all right.'"  ¶ 7:40 AM 0 comments

  Those Who Make Wars In his book The Face of Battle, Howard Keegan quotes an account by Lieutenant W.P. Joynt which was included in The Official Australian History of the Great War (that would be World War I). Lieutenant Joynt, during the Battle of Ypre came upon a circle of Australian soliders surrounding a two-story German pillbox.

"The Germans in the lower chamber soon surrendered," Joynt writes. "The circle of Australians at once assumed easy attitudes, and the prisoners were coming out when shots were fired, killing an Australian.

"The shot came from the upper storey, whose inmates knew nothing of the surrender of the men below; but the surrounding troops were much too heated to realize this. To them the deed appeared to be the vilest treachery, and they forthwith bayoneted the prisoners."

Keegan quotes the official historian's response: "The Germans in this case were entirely innocent, but such incidents are inevitable in the heat of battle, and any blame for them lies with those who make wars, not with those who fight them."

I think soldiers should be held accountable for deliberate atrocities, but cases of this kind are inevitable in war, and that's why waging aggressive war is a crime. It was one of the charges against the Nazi defendants at Nuremberg.  ¶ 3:43 PM 0 comments

  Martin Luther King Excoriates the Moderates I originally looked up MLK's Letter From Birmingham Jail because I wanted to introduce Harry Golden. He's mentioned by name in that most stirring political document.

King is in jail and his fellow clergymen of every denomination, including the local rabbi, are urging people not to support his cause. He has become utterly fed up with 'moderates' and decides to really let them have it. Watch for Harry Golden. He shows up on the roll of honor.

"I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers," King wrote. "First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate.

"I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice...

"I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress...

"In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime -- the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality... The other, Jeans Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness... Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

"I had hoped that the white moderate would see this need. Perhaps I was too optimistic; perhaps I expected too much. I suppose I should have realized that few members of the oppressor race can understand the deep groans and passionate yearnings of the oppressed race, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent and determined action.

"I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers in the South have grasped the meaning of this social revolution and committed themselves to it. They are still too few in quantity, but they are big in quality. Some -- such as Ralph McGill, Lillian Smith, Harry Golden, James McBride Dabbs, Ann Braden and Sarah Patton Boyle -- have written about our struggle in eloquent and prophetic terms.

"Others have marched with us down nameless streets of the South. They have languished in filthy, roach-infested jails, suffering the abuse and brutality of policemen who view them as 'dirty nigger lovers.'

"Unlike so many of their moderate brothers and sisters, they have recognized the urgency of the moment and sensed the need for powerful 'action' antidotes to combat the disease of segregation."  ¶ 7:13 AM 0 comments

  Letter From Birmingham Jail In April of 1963, Martin Luther King was in the Birmingham jail for organizing demonstrations when he read a joint statement issued by the clergymen of Birmingham - Catholic, Methodist, Baptist, Epsicopal, you name it - saying the demonstrations were "unwise and untimely" and urging local black people not to support them.

His response belongs to the ages, as Seward said of Lincoln. In my opinion Martin Luther King's "Letter From Birmingham Jail" is one of the most powerful bits of writing in the history of the English language.

He quotes Jesus and Amos and Socrates and Thomas Aquinas and John Bunyan and Martin Buber and Washington and Jefferson and Lincoln, and he focuses their statements with scientific precision on the points that he is making. King's irresistible moral logic, together with the passion and grandeur of his writing, cut through the objections of the local clergy like a splitting mall through cordwood, and I mean a big twelve-pounder.

As a father, I am especially moved when he speaks about his little girl:

"We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter.

"Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, 'Wait.' But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society;

"When you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"

You have to admire King's closing. He has just obliterated any claim these clergymen thought they had to being men of God, but there's no hard feelings:

"I hope this letter finds you strong in the faith. I also hope that circumstances will soon make it possible for me to meet each of you, not as an integrationist or a civil rights leader but as a fellow clergyman and a Christian brother.

"Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.

Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood,

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.  ¶ 10:17 AM 0 comments

  She Who Must Be Obeyed How does an ugly rag doll become an elderly barrister's wife? Well it's simple, really. First she is used by a nursemaid to frighten a young Englishman, who later writes an epic adventure novel about a mythical sorceress who ahieves immortality and rules over a primitive race of cannibals.

When he was a young boy in the 1850s, Henry Rider Haggard had a nursemaid who used a "particularly hideous" ragdoll to scare him into behaving himself. We learn this in an introduction by Donald A. Wollheim to the 1967 Airmont Library edition to his famous novel She.

This is one heck of a book. Two Englishmen sail off to uncharted lands in Africa to find the aforesaid sorceress and have one hair-raising adventure after another, dragging a boat through nearly impenetrable, unhealthy swamps and arriving at last in the land of "the people who put (red-hot) pots on the heads of strangers."

They are almost eaten at one point, but are rescued just in time by the emissary of "She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed" (who knew they were coming), a guy with a long white beard named Billali, who apologizes profusely.

"Thou seest, my son," Billali says (curiously, the pot people all seem to speak the English of the King James Bible) "here there is a custom that if a stranger comes into this country, he may be slain by the pot and eaten."

"That is hospitality turned upside down," says the Englishman narrator Horace Holly. "In our country we entertain a stranger and give him food to eat. Here you eat him and are entertained."

"It is a custom," Billali replies with a shrug. "Myself I think it is an evil one; but then I do not like the taste of strangers, especially after they have wandered through the swamps and lived on wildfowl."

The final step here is when the elderly barrister Horace Rumpole (created by the brilliant John Mortimer) uses the appellation "She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed" to refer to his wife Hilda (though not in her hearing). Mortimer's series Rumpole of the Bailey deserves a blog entry of its own. It's really delightful. Thanks to Nancy Towne Bennett for introducing me to Rumpole.  ¶ 10:11 AM 0 comments