Monday, October 30, 2006

National Portrait Gallery and All that Jazz

The recently reopened National Portrait Gallery and Museum of American Art is an absolute treat. We spent a few hours there on Saturday, looking at the portraits of famous Americans, as well as the best of the portrait contest entries. More visits to come, with much more to say.

Saturday night we went to the Baird Auditorium to hear eight members of the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra present a concert devoted to Billy Strayhorn music. Strayhorn wrote for the Ellington Band until his death at the age of 52, and although he stayed in the background, a significant number of the tunes and arrangements of Ellington's signature pieces were in fact by Strayhorn, or orchestrated by him.

Something to Live For, Multicolor Blue, Strange Feeling, Clementine, It Don't Mean a Thing if it Ain't Got That Swing, A Flower is a Lovesome Thing, Things Ain't What They Used to Be, Sitting and a-Rockin', All of a Sudden My Heart Sings, I'm Checking Out-Goombye, Satin Doll, Triple Play, What Else Can You Do with a Dream, UMMG, Tulip & Turnip, Daydreams, I Got it Bad and That Ain't Good, Take the A-Train.

Led by Loren Schoenberg, whose narration was informative and entertaining, with excellent vocals by Delores King Williams.

The audience was primarily white (strange for a jazz concert), and primarily old. Where is the younger generation? This was a program that anyone would have enjoyed.

Volcano (2 cents)

As we get ready to go to Hawaii (yes, you may not have known that), I read "Volcano", a beautifully written book by University of Oregon creative writing professor Garrett Hongo. Volcano is not Mauna Loa, but rather the town of Volcano, located near the timber line in the southeastern section of the Big Island.

Hongo's ancestry is not Hawaiian, but Japanese. In fact, Hawaiian natives are not to be found in this book. And Hongo, ethnic Japanese, who was raised in Los Angeles, discovers that his roots are in the town of Volcano, at the Hongo Store, founded by his grandfather, who like many Japanese came to Hawaii years ago to work in the sugar cane fields. Their lives were hard, the store was no supermarket, they had typical family issues, they were sent into detention camps during World War II, and they came to the mainland to try to get a fresh start.

But, like the Jews after the Holocaust, they were quiet about their experiences during the war, and it has only been recently that so many books about the Japanese experience have been written. But adolesence in Los Angeles was difficult. There was prejudice and, just as bad, lack of known history.

An adult writer, Hongo, his wife and young son, went to Hawaii for a sabbatical, and decided rent a house in the forest on the side of a mountain near Volcano. And here, Hongo finds his roots.

You get island history, you get a lot of family history, and you get an incredible amount about Hawaiian flora and fauna, and geology. And because Hongo is primarily a poet, you get all of this served up beautifully. Worth while even if you don't go to Hawaii.

Sunday, October 29, 2006

books ($2.10)

Two recent books read.

"Chanel" by Axel Madsen. Not surprisingly, I knew little about fashion designer Coco Chanel, but in reading recent books I saw references to her ambiguous (at best) stance during World War II when she stayed in Paris, and befriended a German spy. And that intrigued me.

The Madsen biography was written fifteen years ago, and I did not know if it would whitewash her, but it didn't. It portrayed her as a very talented and interesting person, who life was fascinating.

Basically, she was orphaned early and grew up in a Catholic orphanage, a fact she tried to hide all her life. She learned to sew and got jobs at shops of various sorts in the rural area where she was born. She tried singing and dancing, and met her first nobleman and millionaire and that started a series of relationships that continued throughout her life.

She was attractive, if not beautiful. She was always quite thin. She was bright without being intellectual. Her interests were wide, including interests in hobnobbing with the wealthy.

One of her male friends funded her first business, but she proved very successful very quickly, both as an entrepeneur and as a designer. Catering to the individual tastes of her wealthy clientele, bucking fashion trends, creating casual clothes in a fancy era (in part as a result of shortages during World War I and the need for women to get jobs), creating recognizable trademark designs and encouraging them to be copied by others, developing pearls as a jewelry of choice, and of course Chanel No. 5 perfume.

She had Jewish friends. She was clearly a French patriot. She hated war. She did not seem to object to the anti-Jewish practices of Nazi Germany, and seemed to feel that occupation would be better than war. she thought that she could end the war, as an emissary to her old friend Churchill, going with German support. It didn't happen this way of course.

After the war, she fell out of fashion. She had lost control over most of her business.

She had no children. She never married. she was quite interesting.

Another Cheney Matter

Apparently, Congressman Rangel made it clear that President Bush has nothing to worry about if there is a Democratic Congress elected. Basically, he assured the president that impeachment was an impossibility as long as Cheney was vice president.

Saturday, October 28, 2006

Vice President Cheney (8 cents)

Vice President Cheney says that he was being misunderstood. That he did not say that he approved of "waterboarding" (a type of torture, apparently) and that approving it was a no-brainer.

He says he does not believe that accepting waterboarding as being appropriate was a no-brainer.

What was he talking about then?

Perhaps, he was speaking of himself.

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Finally a Good Radio Ad (12 cents)

After all my complaining, three cheers for Don Beyers Volvo. If only they weren't in far-out Virginia, and if only I wanted another Volvo.

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Viva Laldjerie (11 cents)

We have subscribed to a short series of Sunday afternoon films at the Smithsonian's Ripley Center. The first was a 2004 film, Viva Laldjerie, set in Algiers, and made by a French-born Algerian-by-ancestry filmmaker. The film has received mixed reviews, but we found it very interesting and worthwhile.

Basically, it centers around three women: a former cabaret dancer/singer, her 27 year old daughter, and a prostitute. They live in a down and out residential hotel in Algiers. The daughter is the main character; she has had a 3 year relationship with a married physician, she picks up men here and there for one night stands, she works in a photo shop, she goes to clubs, but she dresses modestly on the street. Her mother's world was shattered when her husband died "of disgust" and Islamic fundamentalists took control (social, one assumes) of the town in which they lived. The prostitute is also a mentor to our heroine (not in prostitution but in accommodating to the world around them).

Algiers comes across as a city without personality. On purpose, one assumes. Is it a western, modern city? Maybe. Is it controlled by Islamic forces? Perhaps.

In fact, neither description would appear accurate. The city, without a personality, without a clear identity, does not appear to know how to describe itself. There are western commercial forces (viz., the traffic and the camera shop), and there Islamic forces (viz., the female dress).

Go back to the women. They are caught in the middle. If Algiers was a truly Islamicist city, they could not lead the double lives (public and private) that they lead; society would not allow it. If Algiers were a truly western city, they would not lead the double lives that they lead; there would be no necessity. But Algiers is neither one, nor the other.

And while you get the feeling that this state of non-identity cannot be permanent, you also get the feeling that, whatever happens to Algeria, it will not be for the better.

The film has been shown in Algeria, which is also interesting. Although the more explicit sexual scenes and scenes of female nudity were cut out, not surprisingly.

Monday, October 23, 2006

Why I will never be an expert in African art (11 cents)

Fon, Kota Baman, Kissi, Kongo, Nafana, Bembe, Boki, Yoruba, Tsogo, Attie, Lumbo, Senufo, Bullum, Edo, Idoma, Dogon.

Those are the groups resposible for the 23 works of art in the preview exhibit of the 525 item Disney Tishman collection at the Museum of African Art.

To understand the art in just this preview exhibit, you would need to understand something about the Fon, Kota, Baman, Kissi, Kongo, Nafana, Bembe, Boki, Yoruba, Tsogo, Attie, Lumbo, Senufo, Bullum, Edo and Idoma, not to mention the Dogon.

Sunday, October 22, 2006

This says it all

The Washington Post reports that a few partially destroyed the United States Army Counterintelligence Facility at Ft. Meade. The sub-headline made it clear that American security was not adversely affected.

Three Disappointments in One Week (one cent)

A bit much, I'd say.

1. There is a major exhibit of Mexican paintings at the Ripley Center. It is the third Latin American exhibit that I have seen in the last year or so. The first was at the National Geographic and consisted of Peruvian works; the second also at the Ripley concentrated on 20th century Latin artists. Both were wonderful, and I assumed I would enjoy the all-Mexican exhibit to the same extent. There are about 100 works on display; they include works be the well known Diego Rivera, Tomayo, Sequieros and others. It is said that most have not been seen outside of Mexico. I didn't like any of them. It did not appear to me (but what do I know?) that any of the pieces, even those by first rate artists, were first rate pieces.

2. Then there was Saturday night supper at Nirvana, the Indian restaurant at 19th and K. It is a very busy place at lunch time, but at 6:30 on a Saturday night was virtually empty. It is a vegetarian restaurant, so I knew the menu would be no problem. Except that there was no menu, because it was Diwali, and there was a special all you can eat thali menu, with about 7 or 8 different dishes, served in those little tin dishes that is used for thalis. Diwali is a sweet holiday, and the dishes seemed all to be party starch and partly sugar. Big disappointment, especially at $20 a head.

3. Finally, as part of the Washington Performing Arts Society "edge" series, Israeli born cellis Maya Beiser performed last night at the Kennedy Center. Her show had been written up pre-performance both in the Post and the Jewish week. I knew it was a "performance artist" show, that there would be mixed media, and that the pieces were all very, very contemporary.

There is no question but that Beiser can play the cello. No question. but, with few exceptions, the pieces left me completely cold. The best (and my wife agreed) was a Cambodian piece called Khse Buon, written by Chinary Ung, who is not only a composer, but a scribe who has preserved much of Cambodian folk tradition. And a shorter piece called Feige/Antiphonal Song by Tan Dun matched the cello with a young Chinese woman singing a folk song of her particular ethnic tradition on a screen. We enjoyed that as well. But the highlight of the show, so they said, was a 40 minute song by Armenian composer (I guess, composer) Eve Beglarian, where there were seven tv screens of various sizes (all showing the same black and white video), the cello, and Beiser's speaking voice. It is called "I am writing to you from a far off country". It should have been called: "Sonata for solo cello, television and platitudes". Absolutely worthless, I thought, as must have some of the people that left in the middle.

But again, there is no question but that Beiser can play that cello.

Thursday, October 19, 2006

The Influence of Ibsen on Hitler and the Chinese Fortune Cookie Industry (4 cents)

Last night, we saw Henrik Ibsen's "Enemy of the People" performed at the Washington Shakespeare Theatre. And it was a very good production of the 19th century drama about the doctor who discovers that the water in the town's baths is polluted and, rather than being the hero that he believes himself to be, turns into an 'enemy of the people' because of the potential effects on the town's economics and on the potential effects on the influence and reputation of the town's leadership.

What is the right thing to do? If your position is correct but will cause consequential damage, what should you do? How is public opinion formed? Should public opinion be what counts? When should deference be given to established leadership, and when to revolution? All this and more forms the core of the play.

U.S. Holocaust Museum scholar Steven Sage (see earlier post) has written a book which claims that Hitler was influenced by Ibsen, and acted out his conception of some of Ibsen's characters. "Enemy of the People" is one of the plays mentioned by Sage, who is quick to add that Ibsen was blameless, and that Hitler was the problem. But, I must say it was hard to see the connection watching the play. On the other hand, maybe with the play fresh in mind, it is time to look at the book.

But Ibsen's influence was not limited to Germany.

About ten years ago, I opened a fortune cookie at a neighborhood Chinese restaurant and received the odd 'fortune': "never wear your best pants when you are fighting for freedom". How random, I thought, where could that have come from.

Now, I know. When Dr. Stockmann's pants show a rip, he says to his wife: "you should never wear your best pants when you are fighting for freedom".

So, who writes fortune cookie fortunes? Down in the luck Ibsen scholars?

The night at the theater was odd in another way. The entire plebe class of the Naval Academy was in attendance, bedecked in their dress blues. Hardly anyone else. I felt I needed to apologize to the usher for forgetting my uniform at home.

Did the plebes like the play? I guess so. They clearly liked the young actress who played Stockman's daughter (and who was the only young woman in the production). She won by far on the applause meter. And turned a little red.

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Toho Koto

The foreign minister of Japan, Yoriku Kawaguchi, gave an award in 2003 to the Washington Toho Koto Society for spreading the knowledge of Japanese music across the United States. Did they deserve it? Did they spread this knowledge to you?

Today, two society members, Kyoko Okamoto and Sachiko Smith (suspicious last name, Smith) played the koto and the shamisen at the Church of the Epiphany. When they started with a 16th century piece which seemed like discordant plings to me and nothing more, I said to myself: this may be two weeks in a row that I cannot sit through the entire hour, but.....

When they moved into the 20th century, things improved. Listening to this music is like looking at a Japanese print, or perhaps like reading a poem. It is not music like melody and harmony and rhythm. It is music like: let's set the mood, and luxuriate in it. Hana Ikeda (also known as flower petals) just brings up the delicate flowers floating down the stream or across the lake. Other offerings showed children at play at the ned of day, and showed autumn closing in.

So much sounds like raindrops, like the fountains in a Japanese garden.

Do Japanese whistle? If so, they don't whistle these songs, but they come out of the concerts as if they were in a transcendental meditation session.

By the way, does anyone know how Japanese music is written? Can't be with clefs, staffs and notes, can it? That would really be coincidenta.

Change the station, please

So everyone will know: I will change the station whenever I hear a Head-on or Activ-on commercial, a Geico commercial (except for ones with the gecko), a Melwood commercial, or a McDaniel College commercial. Broadcast stations, beware. Taking their money is not worth it.

Monday, October 16, 2006

Recent Miscellany (5 cents)

1. "Schlemiel" is a musical written by Robert Brustein, based on one of Isaac Singer's Chelm stories. Chelm of course is the Podunk of the Pale of Settlement, filled with people not quite bright enough to live anywhere else. Schlemiel is sent to spread the word to the rest of the world of the intellectual strength of the Chelmite elders. He gets turned around and finds himself back in Chelm, but believing he has found another town which is a clone of Chelm, complete with a woman who looks just like his wife (but is nicer) and kids who look just like his (but are more polite). It was performed as a modified concert reading, complete with klezmer band at the JCC and was quite a success. Brustein was in attendance.

2. Timothy Naftali, a UVa professor, has recently been appointed to head the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, where he will hae the task of melding the National Archive's Nixon presidential and post-presidential material, with Yorba Linda's pre-presidential material. Before taking on this task, he has written a number of books on the Soviet Union, two with respected Russian historian, Fursenko. The newest book, "Khrushchev's Cold War" is a story of the Khrushchev decade from the point of view of the Russian leader. It was based on recently discovered notes by Khrushchev's note taker (a low-tech equivalent of Nixon's tapes), and provides insight into the Russian's way of thinking. Basically, they knew how inferior Russia's strength was, and decided to bluff us. They knew they could not bluff Eisenhower, but thought Kennedy was weak, and that he was simply a puppet of the wealthy capitalist families.

The premise was fascinating, and Naftali is an excellent speaker. He talked at a free session at the Washington Spy Museum. I bought the book (retail!).

3. The next day, I went to see former Secretary of State James Baker, speak about his new book at the 18th Street Borders. Perhaps I would have bought it, but could not purchase two full price books in as many days. Baker is very engaging and affable. I did not necessarily expect that, and talked about himself as a Houston lawyer, who chanced into politics. I am sure that the book is interesting.

4. Saturday night, we saw the Caps lose their second in a row overtime game, this time to the Atlanta Thrashers. Neither team looked its best. Our Russians clearly had an off night.

5. There were a number of book sales this weekend. My most interesting buy, I think, was a copy of one of Elie Wiesel's books, inscribed to Colin Powell.

6. Sunday, we went to a friend's house and saw her son-in-law, David Edelman, read from his new (and well reviewed) science fiction book, "Infoquake". Just may read it on the plane to Hawaii. Oh, yes, we are to fly to Honolulu on the 2nd of November. If the earth does not quake again.

7. Food: another very good meal at Rosa Mexicana, a decent, but not as nice a meal as usual, at Jaleo's, and a nice broiled rockfish at Crisfield's in Silver Spring. Does anyone go there any more? Pretty empty on a Sunday night.

8. Sukkah is coming down today. We had dinner in it one night, lunch twice, and I had a number of breakfasts. Altogether, not bad. We also had two sukkah meals out, one with our study group, and one freezing with friends in Rockville. Both just fine (if cold).

9. We also saw Al Gore's global warming movie, "An Inconvenient Truth". Well done documentary showing increasing carbon dioxide, melting glaciers, changing oceans and flooding coast lines. Goes well the Tutavu the week before, which is receding into the sea. And think about Venice and the perpetual walkways in St. Mark's Square. And then I saw an article yesterday that said that Hawaii's Big Island would sink beneath the sea in only about 80 million years. And then an even more mysterious one about the central downtown area of Mexico City, which is apparently sinking over 2 1/2 inches a year. Where is it sinking to? No ocean near there.

So, now we have the Big Bang theory confirming creation, and global warming leading to the next Noah.

Sunday, October 15, 2006

More Gruber (3 cents)

The second Ruth Gruber book I read was called "Haven", and I recommend it highly, although I think it reads best if you first read her memoirs, "Ahead of Time". She has now finished her education, is back in the United States, and has moved to Washington work for Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes. World War II is raging, and the government has done little to assist the Jews who are trapped and being liquidated. In fact, no country is doing very much, and England has closed Palestine to further refugees.

Bowing from pressure on both sides of the issue, the administration decides to make a concession and admit 1000 refugees. A selection committee is appointed, and Gruber (now in her late 20s) is the Interior Department's representative. She is also asked, particularly because of travel experience and linquistic ability to accompany the refugee on the passage to America.

900+ individuals, mainly but not all Jewish, young, old, with families, alone board the ship in Italy for a harrowing two week passage. Not only is the ship crowded, but they need to (they are part of a convoy) fight of German air and submarine attacks. They land safely in New York.

The refugees are not being admitted to the country as immigrants, only to wait out the war and then be returned to their homes (of course, most don't have homes any more), and they are moved by train to Oswego NY, where they will stay on a decommissioned military base for over a year, their fate unknown, their situation better than in Europe, but not good.

Finally, additional litigation is passed allowing them to be permitted to come into the country on immigrant visas.

Throughout all of this, Gruber has collected their individual stories, has asssited them adjust, and has lobbied for them in Washington.

She wrote the book (which has recently come out as a re-issue) in the early 1980's, thirty five years after Oswego was closed, and following a reunion with many of the refugees.

What a difference 35 years makes: lawyers, doctors, professors, business executives. Virtually everyone remained in the country and at least a large number of them did very well indeed.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

For the first time, I walked out.... (1 cent)

of the Tuesday concert at Epiphany Church. There were two sopranos and a piano. It sounded like the singers were miked. They were not only loud, but they were muffled and loud, and with the sounds reverberating off the walls of the church, they were creating their own echo. They were not bad; they just were (for me) impossible to listen to.

Monday, October 09, 2006

Busy Day (5 cents)

Saturday was pretty busy. It started slowly as the outdoor book sale at the Georgetown library was rained out, but it quickly picked up.

1. Movies at the National Geographic. NG was having its "all roads" film festival and I selected two hour long films which began at 11. They were both about Pacific Islands, the first about the nation of Tuvalu (formerly the Ellice Islands) and the second about the Big Island, Hawaii.

The first movie was an extraordinary downer. There are eight islands in Tuvalu, and the total population is about 10,000. The islands are atolls, so there is no topography. Just flat land (and not much of it). The islands have been a nation only since the late 1970s, and are very poor. There is also no future as global warming is contributing to rising sea levels and it is estimated that in about 50 years or so, they will have to be completely abandoned.

A good deal of the population has already left, mainly going to New Zealand. Sixty of these emigrees formed a "malaga' (Tuvalan for something or other) and headed by boat back to the islands for a stay of two months. It included the elderly who wanted to go home one more time, young women who wanted their children to see where they came from, and the children. Many had been a way for a decade or two.

Two young American filmmakers followed the malaga. You could see the excitement when the boat left Auckland. You could see the disappointment when they saw what had happened to their home. Poverty, crop failure, boredom, trash. Nothing was good.

The saddest movie I have seen in a long time. It is called "Time and Tide". The filmmakers were there for a talkback.

The second movie was called "Mauna Kea: Temple Under Siege", and it was the story of the conflict between native Hawaiians who revere Mauna Kea, whose ancestors are buried on the mountain, and want to see it remain (or return to being) pristine, and the world astronomy community and the University of Hawaii, who have built seven or eight observatories on the mountain and are planning more. I found it hard to decide whose side I was on here, and did not know how honest the movie was about the varying positions. But it was interesting (and depressing) and a good introduction to our first visit to Hawaii next month.

2. Lunch was at the Beacon Hotel, where I expected more than we got. Very limited Saturday menu. We had ordinary omelet, in the too-cold sunroom, with lackluster (at best) service.

3. Then on to the new Katzen arts center at American University. We had not been into the building before, and it is very nice (and very, very expansive). We went to see the first round competition of eight AU student musicians vying for the chance to perform with the AU Symphony at a spring performance. There were three vocalists, two violinists, a cellist, a clarinet, and (believe it or not) a tubist. We did not stay for the judging, but the quality was quite good and although we were probably the only people there who were not students or parents, we were glad we went. The music choices were interesting and we learned that someone named Edward Gregson actually wrote a tuba concerto, and thought I wanted to hear the complete Concerto No. 1 in F minor for clarinet and orchestra by Carl Maria von Weber.

After the concert, we looked at two exhibits at the museum. The first, to commemorate the 50th anniversity of the 1956 Hungarian uprising, consists of a large number of photographs taken in Budapest by photographers and residents. The brutality and the amount of destruction is striking. A very worthwhile exhibit. Then, we saw works in glass (not sculptures, but geometric forms of translucent colors, with other colors wafting through) by Mindy Wiesel, which were also quite nice.

4. A quickish dinner at Jaleo was followed by the Capitals home opener against the Stanley Cup champion Hurricanes. After their poor, poor showing two nights earlier against the Rangers in NY, fans (and there were many) were expecting the worst. But it was a 5-2 victory, with Alexander Semin scoring three times, and Alexander Ovechkin scoring twice. We will see what happens from here.

Sunday, October 08, 2006

Susan Strasberg's "Bittersweet" (3 cents)

I am not sure "Bittersweet" is the right name for Susan Strasberg's 1980 memoir. A better title would be "Sad".

Strasberg, daughter of Actors Studio method acting instructor Lee Strasberg and acting coach Paula Miller Strasberg, died in 1999 at the age of 60 of breast cancer. Her mother died of the same disease at an even earlier age.

Why, sad? Because Strasberg seemed to me (and I am not sure why I read this book, or having started it why I finished it) a very attractive, intelligent woman who was completely lost. She blamed a lot on her parents (and she probably is correct in this) both for babying her and ignoring her at the same time. They also wanted her to avoid an acting career and pushed her into it.

Yet, she remained extremely close, much too close, to them, running back to them from time to time, and reverting to what appeared to be a little girl every time she did.

After starring, as a teenager, as Anne Frank, in the initial Broadway run of "The Diary of Anne Frank", she never hit the top as a stage or screen actress, although she seemed always to have enough to keep her busy. She knew everyone in the theatrical world (and perhaps not many others), and the lives of these actors and playwrights, directors and producers gave her a warped view of normal human relationships from the beginning.

She was very close to Marilyn Monroe, for whom her mother acted as a drama coach and companion, and who left the administration of her estate to her father (his estate, and his widow, apparently still control Monroe affairs).

She became sexually involved with actors, such as Richard Burton, at a very young age. This seemed just fine with her otherwise overprotective parents, but was disastrous for her. It appeared that she never (at least up until she wrote this book; I don't know what happened later) had the maturity either to pick appropriate male companionship, or to deal with the emotions that her bad choices created for her. She was married once to an actor named Christopher Jones; this was probably the lowest point in her relationship with men. He and she vacillated between periods of closeness and estrangement, but he drank and was physically abusive to her over a long period of time (slapping her, blackening her eyes and cheeks), etc., but she always came back for more. Until one day, she did decide she had enough.

I am not sure where the "sweet" comes into play. Her early Broadway success? It is not described as a happy success, just a professional one. The first few months of her love affairs? They don't show sufficient maturity on her part to be considered "sweet". Her relationship with her parents? No. Her daughter by Jones? Perhaps, although you don't get a chance in this book to get a full picture of it, since her daughter was so young when the book was written.

Not "bittersweet", just sad.

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Slaughterhouse Five (10 cents)

I watched Slaughterhouse Five tonight, the movie version of Kurt Vonnegut's book that was made over 30 years ago. Never saw it before.

This is one good movie.

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Music, Music

Tonight was a night for music.

First, the Federal Music Connection playing dixieland at Colonel Brooks' Tavern (every Tuesday night).

Then, on the way home, Bach's Concerto for Two Pianos in C minor on WGMS. They said that it is Bachtober.

Sunday, October 01, 2006

Three Recent Books (12 cents)

I have read three interesting books in a row. Wow!

1. Vantage Press is a vanity press. That is, it is one of those companies you go to when you want to publish your own book (at your own cost), but want it to look like a real book. These books obviously rarely sell, and their quality varies, but fairly often you find books that are surprisingly interesting. Particularly, memoirs. And a lot of these books are memoirs, the stories of the lives of the author, to be preserved for children and, more often, grandchildren.

The book I picked up is called "The Last of the Numbered Men" and was written by Harry Posmantier, and published in 1984. Posmantier's photograph is on the back cover, and he looks like a typical, normal, average person. He is a plumbing contractor in Skokie, Illinois, which furthers that image. But it is deceptive, because he did not come to the United States until 1957. Until 1948 (through the war), he lived in Poland, spending the last several years in various Nazi work camps, escaping extermination. And from 1948-1957, in Israel.

A normal childhood in Bendin, Poland, with a typical Jewish middle class family. Then, the Germans enter Poland, and he, like many Jewish males, was sent to a work camp, and because he remained fairly healthy, he stayed in the camps for 4 1/2 years. Getting by on his strength, his stamina, and his personality. The stories are interesting, to be sure, and Posmantier gives you a good description of the fellow detainees he comes in contact with, as well as some of the German or Polish guards and townspeople, some of which are quite surprising. For example, a number of camp workers, when they left the camp on days off, would go to see Posmantier's parents (before they were deporting) bringing letters back and forth and CARE packages. At some danger to themselves.

And some other surprising things. He was at a camp at one time which had both Jewish and Russian prisoners. He says that the Russians, when one of their own died, engaged in cannibalism. Is that possible?? And he also gives credibility to the reports of soap made from Jews' body fat, and lampshade, made from human skin. Is that true, or not?

That raises the question, in any memoir of this type, as to how much is accurate and how much hyperbole. Reading through this, you believe everything you read, even the fantastic parts. I have to assume that these books are truthful. And when you read this book having read earlier this year Imre Kertesz' "Fatelessness", you see the similarity of their work camp experience.

2. Ruth Gruber is a well known Jewish reporter, who has written a lot about Israel since before the earliest days of the state. She has written many books, and I believe is still alive in her 90s. I picked up "Ahead of Time", a recent book described as "my early years as a foreign correspondent". The memoir is extraordinary.

Born in Brooklyn to eastern European refugees, her parents thought she was going a long way from home to go to college (at age 15) in Manhattan. But she pursued, studying German language and literature, and winning a fellowship first to the University of Wisconsin (she hitchhiked there by herself) and then to the University of Cologne Germany, where she came into contact with the burgeoning Nazi movement. Obtaining a Ph.D. in English literature in Cologne in one year (a record, particularly since one of her oral examiners was a professor, who was known to hate Jews, women and American), she returned to the U.S., got a job as a journalist, and before she was twenty five, went back to Germany in 1935 (!), to Poland to visit her mother's family (read the book and see what happened in her ancestral shtetl), and to Russia, when she went to the artic regions as the first foreign correspondent in Soviet times. And a second trip to the USSR, this time to Yakutsk in far northeast Siberia.

An unbelievable story that makes you want to look at everything else she wrote and follow her career.

3. The third book was a biography of Caresse Crosby by Washington writer Anne Conover. Another fascinating story, Crosby left her husband to marry Harry Crosby, seven years her junior, and they set Paris aflame in the 1920s, meeting all the creative types in that city at that very creative time, founding the Black Sun publishing house, giving X-rated parties, and (more or less) having a terrific time, until Harry committed suicide. After a while, Caresse comes back to the U.S., and after a short time in rural Virginia, comes to Washington, where she opens a prominent gallery which operated throughout the war years, and continues her publications, fostering new artists and writers from Europe in the immediate post-war years. Then she leaves that part of her life behind, and spends the rest of it trying to foster world peace and world government, coming in contact with another group of prominent world citizens.

All three books are worth reading.

What comes next? Well, I must be on a female biography binge. I am reading a biography of Coco Chanel (she interested me because of questions about her politics during World War II when she was in France), and the autobiography of Susan Strasberg, the original portrayer of Anne Frank, and the daughter of method acting coach Lee Strasberg. So far, both are very engaging.