Tag Archives: bookreview

My Lucky Star

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When a teen-aged Czech girl living outside of Prague heard Fred Astaire singing “You Are My Lucky Star” she was captivated.

I sang it as I heard it, phonetically, with no idea of the meaning.  To my ears the opening words sounded like some imaginary Czech words, Jú ár majlakista…

Zdenka Fantlová decided on a whim that she ought to learn to speak English.  When the race laws expelled her from her final year of school in 1940, she attended the English Institute in Prague and learned the language under teachers from England.  When it came to the darkest, blackest hour of her life, when she was hours from death, that knowledge of English saved her life.

Her fathers final words to her, words spoken while he was being arrested by the Gestapo, sustained her through her long journey: Just keep calm.  Remember, calmness is strength.  My Lucky Star is a remarkably calm narrative of a survivor of Terezín, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Kurzbach, and Bergen-Belsen. 

Somewhere inside each of us is a survival kit.  We never know where it is, or what is in it, until it opens at the critical moment.  It contains no drugs or bandages, just firm instructions about what to do – and the necessary strength to do it.   

After reading Fantlová’s memoir, I wanted to know more. 

I watched Fred Astaire singing You Are My Lucky Star.

Terezín (also called Theresienstadt) was presented as a model Jewish settlement with a flourishing arts culture, but in reality was a transit camp to Auschwitz.  Fantlová participated in theater productions; there were jazz bands, string quartets, choirs and symphony orchestras. Prisoner of Paradise (follow link to see archival photos) tells the story of Kurt Gerron, an actor and director who was forced to make a Nazi propoganda film. Terezin Chamber Music Foundation has a wealth of information.

Anne Sofie von Otter recorded Terezín/Theresienstadt, songs composed by inmates.  Listen to the samples and weep at the depth of soulful expression.  They are not all mournful melodies; some are sprightly, full of zest.

             

Finally I wanted to know more about Fantlova herself.  I found these photos (the left taken in 1946 and the second current) along with an interview at Radio Prague.

I recommend this book on several levels.  Most holocaust literature I’ve read has come from Polish, French, German or Dutch perspectives.  This is the first Czech author I’ve read.  It’s shorter length (201 pages) and level voice makes it, perhaps, a good entry book into the often traumatizing genre of holocaust literature.  While there is pain, hunger, loss, death in her journey, Zdenka’s calm writing  makes it all bearable to read.

Band of Brothers and Beyond

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Stephen Ambrose’s book Band of Brothers : E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest brings World War II down to a personal level.  Limiting the scope of the story to one company from their training at Camp Toccoa and their preparation for D-Day in England to several fierce battles to Berchtesgaden, Hitler’s mountain resort, provides a panorama of the war experience for a small group of citizen soldiers.  The parachute infantry was a new concept in soldiering.  Many men chose the Airborne because of the extra $50 pay per month; some craved the physical challenge; others wanted the respect and status that came with their reputation for daring exploits.  Since the HBO mini-series, this story has become famous.  Reading this book makes me want to read more all of Ambrose’s WWII books.

There is a limit to how long a man can function effectively in this topsy-turvy world.  For some, mental breakdown comes early; Army psychiatrists found that in Normandy 10 and 20 percent of the men in rifle companies suffered some form of mental disorder during the first week, and either fled or had to be taken out of the line.  For others, visible breakdown never occurs, but nevertheless effectiveness breaks down.  The experiences of men in combat produces emotions stronger than civilians can know, emotions of terror, panic, anger, sorrow, bewilderment, helplessness, uselessness, and each of these feelings drained energy and mental stability.  p.203

One man stands out as an incredible leader: Major Dick Winters.  His courage, leadership, humility, wisdom, and spunk are remarkable.  Two words, Winter says, encapsulate a good leader:  Follow me.  After reading Band of Brothers I wanted to know more about the Major.  In 2006 he wrote his memoirs, Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memoirs of Major Dick Winters.  I was bewildered by the overlap between the two books (a few paragraphs are almost identical) until I realized that Ambrose got much of his material from Winters himself.  Winters limits the scope of his book to the memoirs of the war time and follow-up of soldiers in the company.  He treasures his privacy and doesn’t reveal personal details.  At 91, Winters is the only officer still alive from the Easy Company.       

These two quotes interested me enough to transcribe them from the audio book.  Doesn’t physical exhaustion leading to combat fatigue have applications in everyday life?

Physical exhaustion leads to mental exhaustion which in turn causes men to lose discipline.  Loss of self-discipline then produces combat fatigue.  Self-discipline keeps a soldier doing his job.  Without it, he loses his pride and he loses the importance of self-respect in the eyes of his fellow soldiers.  It is pride that keeps a soldier going and keeps him in the fight.

This quote about combat fatigue is poignant in light of the opening theme in the HBO mini-series based on the book Band of Brothers which shows a helmut fall to the ground and a man dazed.  I have seen this messing up of hair, pressing hands against the temples, hands-on-the-head behavior in people who are stressed out.   Shoot, I’m sure I do this myself.

When you see a man break, he usually slams his helmut down and messes up his hair.  I don’t know if it is conscious or unconscious.  But a soldier massages his head, shakes it, and then he is gone.  You can talk to him all you want but he cannot hear you.

These books are part of the War Through the Generations Reading Challenge.

Pimples Gathered in Peer Groups

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Pimples were gathered
in peer groups on his face.
(description of a 15 year old boy)

Her teeth elbowed each other
for room in her mouth…
(a shopkeeper)

~  Markus Zusak in The Book Thief

I’m only a third of the way through listening to this novel narrated by Death about a girl named Liesel Meminger living in Nazi Germany.  Death as the narrator sounds very creepy, but in fact it is incredibly clever. When I review it, qualifiers (caveats) will rain down like paratroopers on D Day.   

But this much I can say: 

I haven’t read writing so crisp and crackly since William Griffin’s translation of The Imitation of Christ or Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf.

Dr. Seuss Goes to War

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File this one under It Pays to Browse the Stacks.

Before I checked out my public library’s section on WWII, I had no idea that Theodor Seuss Geisel had a short career drawing political cartoons for the New York newspaper PM. 

On the back cover:

“this cat is not in the hat.”   Studs Terkel

“…lets us know what happens when Horton hears a heil.”  Art Spiegelman

Dr. Seuss was born into a German-American family which (before prohibition) owned the Springfield brewery  Kalmbach and Geisel, commonly called “come back and guzzle.” 

He was raised Evangelical Lutheran, was against American isolation and neutrality, against Charles Lindbergh, against America First.   He was an interventionist and wanted to show the connections between the isolationists and the Nazis.  He was against racisim and against anti-Semitism, but was stridently racist towards the Japanese.

I learned from this book that Dr. Seuss wrote Yertle the Turtle  about Adolf Hitler.  Of course, I had to go back to the library and check it out.

“Turtles! More turtles!” he bellowed and brayed.
And the turtles way down in the pond were afraid.
They trembled.  They shook.  But they came. They obeyed.
From all over the pond, they came swimming by dozens.
Whole families of turtles, with uncles and cousins.
And all of them stepped on the head of poor Mack.
One after another, they climbed up the stack.

More from Yertle, because it is too rich when you know that it is Hitler.

“You hush up your mouth!” howled the mighty King Yertle.
“You’ve no right to talk to the world’s highest turtle.
I rule from the clouds! Over land! Over sea!
There’s nothing, no, NOTHING, that’s higher than me!”

A Catalog of Political Cartoons by Dr. Seuss has all 400 of the cartoons reproduced, including 200 not included in the book.  Click on the cartoons to enlarge them.  They are engaging on many levels.

I’m part of the War Through the Generations Reading Challenge.

The Gathering Storm

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If you condensed The Second World War, Volume 1: The Gathering Storm into one sentence, it would be: “See, I told you so!”  Churchill’s Theme of the Volume is

“How the English-speaking peoples
through their unwisdom,
carelessness, and good nature
allowed the wicked to rearm.”   

I am ambivalent about Sir Winston.  He sounded the warnings, raised a ruckus and was unconcerned about opinion polls and minority viewpoints.  Sadly, what he predicted came to pass.  Reading the section on German rearmament and European appeasement is an exercise in frustration.  Thank God for Winston Churchill.

And yet…  There is a know-it-all attitude that I find off-putting.  Too many details included for vindication’s sake.  Too many speeches reproduced verbatim.  What kept me going through the pages was his command of English: the satisfying sentences, the robust words, the grand oratory.   

…amid a ceaseless chatter of well-meant platitudes…

Death stands at attention, obedient, expectant, ready to serve,
ready to shear away the peoples en masse…

British fatuity and fecklessness which,
though devoid of guile, was not devoid of guilt…

So they go on in strange paradox,
decided only to be undecided,
resolved to be irresolute,
adamant for drift,
solid for fluidity,
all-powerful to be impotent.

One can hardly find a more perfect specimen of humbug and hypocrisy…

I always went to bed at least for one hour
as early as possible in the afternoon
and exploited to the full my happy gift
of falling almost immediately into deep sleep.
By this means I was able to press a day and a half’s work into one.

The_Gathering_Storm_2002_poster  

Not everyone has time for chunky books: voila the DVD!  Albert Finney excels as Winston Churchill.  There are moments of mild vulgarity: some backside nudity (of an old man getting into a bathtub – ewww!) and some tacky language. But the movie tells the story of the people who made history.  I loved how Churchill composed speeches while he dressed and shaved, the interactions between Clementine and Winston, the long-suffering private secretary, the pontificating in Parliament, the scenes at Chartwell.  If you love England, if you love the BBC, you will like The Gathering Storm.

The Second World War in Color

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photo credit: Imperial War Museum
my favorite photo:  a RAF pilot reading
John Buchan’s Greenmantle while getting a haircut
(I see the book, my son sees the Spitfire!)

Sniffing around our public library, I found The Second World War in Color a companion book to a documentary by the same name.  Initially, I thought I’d just flip through the book and return it to the library.  The pictures, however, were compelling.  Respect demanded more than a flip-through.  Then the diary entries hooked me; soon I started on the title page and read through the book. 

As in this blog entry, the photographs and the diary entries in the book have no relation to one another.

The diary entries and official announcements come from combatants and civilians from most of the nations involved in WWII.  A Russian surgeon writes:

Even those who disliked and dread Stalin have learned to trust him.  Propaganda?  Yes and No.  He has succeeded in transforming the country, though often by savage methods.

A British pilot, killed on his first flight:

The most terrible aspects of Nazism is its system of education, of driving in instead of leading out, and putting the state about all things spiritual.  And so I have been fighting.

The notes of Theodor Morell (condensed here), Adolf Hitler’s personal physician on 20.7.44, the day of the explosion set by Lt. Col. von Stauffenberg which killed four officers, interested me so soon after watching the movie Valkyrie.  Hitler went on the radio later explaning that his survival was ‘a confirmation of my assignment from Providence to carry on my life’s goal as I have done hitherto’. 

Blood pressure [evening after explosion] 165-170
Blister, burns, contusions, open flesh wounds 

Photo credit show me a man reading and I’m smitten

Ivor Rowberry’s letter to his mother, written in the event of his death, won the Best Letter Written by a Member of the Armed Forces during the Second World War contest.  Oh. My. Heart.  Yet the wry humor about grammatical tenses! It begins:

Dear Mom,
   Usually when I write a letter it is very much overdue, and I make every effort to get it away quickly.  This letter, however, is different.  It is a letter that I hoped you would never recieve, as it is verification of that terse, black-edged card which you received some time ago, and which has caused you so much grief.  It is because of this grief that I wrote this letter, and by the time you have finished reading it I hope that it has done some good, and that I have not written it in vain.  It is very difficult to write now of future things in the past tense, so I am returning to the present.

Photo credit British soldier and Italian women doing wash

I particularly liked the glimpse of community (perhaps membership, à la Wendell Berry…in microcosm?) between British liberator and the liberated people of Belgium in this letter dated 9-29-1944

All these people had only a few rationed, foul cigarettes and had not seen chocolate for more than 4 years.  How pleased they are when we give them a bar!  They give us all they can, we give them all we can, there is no mention of money at all, and it is all quite a Christian affair.  For four months now, money has just not meant a thing to me; I rather like it.

Because of this book, I learned of the Imperial War Museum Collections, another place to visit if I ever make it to London.

It’s Diverting, It’s New, It’s Community

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Diversion

Modern popular culture is not just the latest in a series of diversions.  It is rather a culture of diversion.

I had an astonishing glimpse of a quieted (un-diverted) heart this week.  An older gentleman brought some tax information to my house.  He usually brings his wife with him, but this time he was alone.  It was going to take  30-45 minutes to complete the year-end work.  I offered him some magazines which he declined.  He sat at my table, content, doing nothing for that length of time.  He. just. sat. there.  He was happy.  It was amazing. 

The realization of how I would chafe at not having a book with me was a revelation of my own restlessness.  

~   ~   ~

Novelty

The quest for novelty is not simply a search for new distractions; it involves the notion that a new thing will be better than the old one.

The love of novelty is manifest at the singing of the National Anthem at ballgames.  Artists are forever trying to give the music a tweak, either in rhythm, note-bending, chord structure or style.  We see the same thing with Christmas carols. Sometimes a new approach is fresh and refreshing; many times it is wearisome and freakish.

Curt and I will never forget a faculty music recital we attended.  The saxophone player, gifted with skill and brilliance, wooed us during the first half with ballads, smooth riffs, gorgeous tones, melting tunes.  The second half he introduced his experimental music which bordered on the obscene.  Unnatural hand positions, blowing through the instrument without making any sound alternated with playing the instrument without breathing into it–nihilistic nonsense.  It was novelty on steroids.                                                                                                                                        

~   ~   ~

Community, or “the membership”

As industrialized populations became more and more mobile, the ties to family and community became weaker and weaker.  The sense that every individual person had a place of belonging within a family or the society of a community was soon lost.

Is the hunger for community hard-wired into our genetic makeup?  Immediately after this sentence, Myers says that many people voluntarily give up community and want to lose themselves in a crowd.  I have single friends who live in community in our rural part of the world; they are often advised to move to the city, where the possibility of meeting a potential life partner is greater.  Is that good or bad advice?

Is it harder or easier to establish community in a urban or rural setting? Does that matter? 

Prudence, Space and Diversity

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Well, folks, I’m going to wuss out on you.  My schedule doesn’t allow me much time to ponder and interact with this week’s reading for Cindy’s book club chapters 2-3 discussion. In lieu of deep thoughts, I give you snippets.

Culture has very much to do with the human spirit.  What we find beautiful or entertaining or moving is rooted in our spiritual life. 
(This quote is going in my journal.  The implications are profound.)

Many of the decisions we make about our involvement in popular culture are not really questions about good and evil.  When I decide not to read a certain book, I am not necessarily saying that to read it would be a sin. It is much more likely that I believe it to be imprudent to take the time to read that book at this time in my life. 
(“But is it wise?” is a question I need to plow deep into my thoughts.)

In observing the Sabbath, man was culturally structuring time in accordance with a holy pattern.  This was part of his cultural commission, along with the task of being an architect in space by tending the Garden.   Space and time were thus consecrated by man’s original culture. 
(I’m used to thinking about how I spend my time as a wisdom issue; the wisdom involved in structuring my space is a new twist.  Hmmm.)

It is interesting to note that Scripture records an amazing amount of cultural activity in the line of Cain.
(Mentioned in Cain’s line: urban life, nomadic life, music and foundry. My thoughts spread like tendrils contemplating the ramifications.)  

The experience of human culture in all its diversity is the way we enjoy being human. It is being human, not being saved–it is the image of God in us, not regeneration–that establishes the capacity to recognize the distinctions between the beautiful and the ugly, between order and chaos, between the creative and the stultifying. 
(Does this explain why Christian stuff can be so cheesy and outclassed by the creativity of non-Christians? And how does this quote mesh with the first quote?  I like to think that I love diversity; I like diversity from a distance, for sure, diversity in a controlled setting.)

Bittersweet Française

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Suite Francaise is my first book completed for the WWII Reading Challenge.  Listening to the audiobook with the French accents made the book more present, more authentic.  I was so captured by this story that when bedtime came and I had one disc left, I went to bed with headphones on.  (“Has it come to this?” my husband wondered.)

Irène Némirovsky’s tragic story makes this a bittersweet read.  She lived through the German invasion and occupation of France, writing these two novellas as the events were current. She died in Auschwitz in 1942.  Her daughters rescued her manuscript and left it, untouched,  in a suitcase for 60+ years.  The English translation was published in 2006.  This is very likely the first WWII fiction written.  I am eager to read Némirovsky’s story in the appendix of the print edition.  Her words from the story give us a glimpse of what her life must have been like:

Living constantly in fear of death like this was only bearable if you took one day at a time.  If you said to yourself each evening, “Another twenty-four hours where nothing really bad has happened, thank God.  Let’s see what tomorrow brings.”

The first novella, Storm in June, follows several Parisians scurrying to the country to avoid the Nazis. Némirovsky chronicles the confusion, the chaos, the denial that exasperated the lack of preparedness. This isn’t a happy story of people banding together, displaying sacrifice and courage. She paints realistic pictures of art dealers who care more about porcelain than people, a mother who sees herself as generous until she realizes her family may suffer want, an author who pulls strings to get favorable treatment.  Some of the characters don’t survive.

The second novella, Dolce, set in the countryside, examines life under German occupation.  Most able-bodied French men are gone, leaving the women to manage then daily challenges and adjust to having Germans live with them in their homes.  Némirovsky’s watercolor of French country life was my favorite part of the Suite.

I am not sure how/if this book was edited. There were places where editing would have improved the writing.  But as a first draft (if that is what it is) this book is magnificent.   

A few more quotes:

They didn’t speak.  Between these two women every topic of conversation was a thornbush they only approached with caution.  Reaching out a hand might result in injury.

~   ~   ~

Jean-Marie never got tired of watching them.  He wanted to write a story about these charming little horses, a story that would evoke this day in July, this land, this farm, these people, the war, and himself. He wrote with a chewed up pencil stub in a little notebook which he hid against his heart.  He felt he had to hurry; something inside him was making him anxious, was knocking on an invisible door.  By writing he opened that door.  He gave life to something he wished to be born.

~   ~   ~

Her upbringing had been strict and Puritanical, but she had not been unhappy.  The garden, the housework, a library–an enormous, damp room where the books grew mouldy and where she would secretly rummage around–were all enough to amuse her.

         

Whitefoot

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The Amazon box came yesterday and I am jubilant!  Wendell Berry’s book for children is a winsome read. 

First the size.  It measures 6¼  x 7½, a lovely size for small hands.  The quiet black and white illustrations are elegant simplicity itself, engaging the eye, illustrating but not dominating the text. 

But the glory of this book is the prose.  A mouse called Whitefoot makes her home in an abandoned glass jar in a hollow near a river.  When the river floods she is propelled into a dangerous adventure, clinging to life while floating precariously on a log.   

Fans of Berry’s Port William fiction will recognize the themes he weaves through the pages of each story: careful work, thankful hearts, the rhythms of an ordered life. 

She made it snug.  She did her work according to an ancient, honorable principle: Enough is enough. She worked and lived without extravagance and without waste.  Her nest was a neat small cup the size of herself asleep.  When she went into it for her daytime sleep, she slept drawn into a ball, her eyes shut, her tail curved around so that its outer end lay under her nose.  Her sleep was an act of faith and a giving of thanks.

If you had seen her, you might have thought she was being patient.  She was capable of patience, I think, but now she was simply doing nothing, which was all there was to do.

As morning brightened the mist over the river, a pair of wild geese sailed down together, like two arrows shot, and sliced the surface of the water as they touched it and settled, and then they floated quietly, dignified and alert.

She was taking, hour by hour, the opportunity to live.